Martin Durkin’s work will be studied one day like Thucydides as a record of a bizarre moment in human history. It is so quintessentially British. I thought I’d seen it all in the climate debate, but this is so well done, perfect for a curious, matter-of-fact mind. It pulls you along, with timeless nostalgic footage in a classic English delivery, calmly unravelling mythology. It will resonate with people who remember cities, cars and great documentaries of long ago.
Because it’s not angry or activist it’s a gift you can send to friends who are science nerds, or history buffs, or who remember the sixties. Send it to people with teenagers who have no idea the curriculum hides a half a billion years of history. Send it to green friends, who have no idea a third of the food made in Africa rots before it can be eaten without fossil fuels and plastic to preserve and transport it.
Imagine the effect if this was shown at schools.
It’s the story of how an activist movement became a big industry, they say. But I can’t help thinking it was a big industry that grew an activist movement…
UPDATE: Surprisingly it is still on Youtube today (Sunday) and with subtitles in other languages. Vote it up there while you still can…
Honest scientists are no longer free,
To discover; what science should be,
Fearing censure and sacking,
And from colleagues no backing,
With consensus are forced to agree.
The planet-saving cars that are being forced upon us have another catch — they might make you vomit. Apparently, motion sickness is “a thing” for EV’s, not that our public broadcaster would mention it in the regular adverts they run to tell us how wonderful EV’s are “with ridiculous savings!”. Apparently the silent sudden acceleration of an EV is leaving some stomachs in a lurch — and some adults, kids and even dogs are throwing up.
Another user said: “I drive in an electric vehicle a lot, and I’ve found that regenerative braking absolutely makes me motion sick. I’m not always driving, so I don’t always have control of how it’s being driven, so other people’s driving really makes me sick… I really need to find a solution fast”.
Some drivers also reported their electric cars making their pets sick too. “Since [buying] the Tesla, [my dog] throws up in it almost every time…”
The theory is that EV’s are too quiet, too fast, and have too few cues to warn our insides to prepare for motion. But who knows, perhaps sitting inside a giant electromagnetic field triggers a queasy feeling too?
Shhh!
The problem (that no one mentioned in public) is apparently already so well known in the industry that car manufacturers are researching ways to reduce it. (Where are our journalists?)
Solutions include driving the car more like a combustion engine car and switching down the regenerative braking, both of which reduce the range of the EV (o’ the irony).
Manufacturers like Honda are looking to squash carsickness by revising their power mapping for a smoother ride at low speeds. Honda is on the case with its e:Ny1 (which is not available in Australia at this time) by changing their throttle map to emulate an acceleration similar to an ICE vehicle.
Adding that feeling of throttle lag that you get from internal combustion vehicles will help ease discomfort for those who aren’t used to the immediate torque of an EV, likely at the cost of some performance.
Hyundai is even adding fake engine noises to mimic normal cars.
Other brands, like Hyundai with the Ioniq 5 N, are adding fake engine sounds that are linked to the pedal on their EVs and even adding fake flappy paddles that mimic gear changes. While this is just a bit of fun for the owners, it could actually help combat some of the motion sickness felt in an EV.
This story is more about the media than about EVs. It’s hard to know how serious this problem is (where are those studies?). Perhaps it only affects a small percent of the population. But whatever it is, we know it’s worse than our normal cars. If there was any evidence that EV’s reduced motion-sickness by even 2%, the ABC and BBC would make it prime time news.
The clean energy revolution is failing, and everyone knows it
In a radical move, the CEO of an oil giant actually defended oil. For a brief moment the space-time continuum opened a worm hole to reality, and leaders of some of the world’s largest corporations briefly said sensible things.
The energy transition is falling apart so fast, even the prime targets of hate, the Big Oil Men themselves, are now openly pointing out what a waste of time and money solar and wind power are. BP was trying to cut oil production 40% until very recently when it flipped to increasing it. But now we have a whole conference of Big Oil.
HOUSTON — Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said Monday that the energy transition is failing and policymakers should abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas, as demand for fossil fuels is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.
“In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides with five hard realities,” Nasser said during a panel interview at the CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, Texas.
We spent trillions of dollars and we have nothing to show for it:
Nasser said alternative energy sources have been unable to displace hydrocarbons at scale, despite the world investing more than $9.5 trillion over the past two decades. Wind and solar currently supply less than 4% of the world’s energy…
Meanwhile, the share of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix has barely fallen in the 21st century from 83% to 80%, Nasser said.
The free market cut six times as many emissions with energy efficiency measures as the socialists did with wind and solar and billions of your dollars:
The CEO said efficiency improvements alone over the past 15 years have reduced global energy demand by almost 90 million barrels per day oil equivalent. Wind and solar, meanwhile, have substituted only 15 million barrels over the same period, he said.
And they say they care about CO2…
For thirty years it’s been obvious that we could make bigger reductions in emissions by burning coal at hotter temperatures, and using shale gas when we could, but instead of “saving the world” the Eco-Worriers really wanted to prop up their crony industries instead.
Australia is about to bolt headlong into a renewables quagmire that the rest of the world is starting to back away from. Spread the message!
Winning? For the moment the UN has quietly packed away plans to tell everyone to give up meat to stop bad weather
Back in November the UN was all set to boss the citizens of wealthy nations around. The plan was to badger them into giving up meat so their grandchildren would have slightly nicer weather.
Possibly, after thousands of farmers stormed across the EU in their tractors this winter, the idea has lost its appeal. Not that the UN has the honesty to explain why they changed their minds, or even to admit they did. But the first installment of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food systems roadmap has left the activists reeling.
The omission of meat-eating reduction from proposals in a UN roadmap to tackle the climate crisis and end hunger is “bewildering”, according to academic experts.
The group also criticised the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s report for “dismissing” the potential of alternative proteins, such as plant-based meat, to reduce the impact of livestock on the environment.
For the first time ever, some activists even called for “transparency”:
In a commentary published in the journal Nature Food, experts said the FAO’s failure to include a methodology on how the 120 actions it did support were chosen, or a list of authors, was “concerning and surprising”. They called for the next instalments of the roadmap to be more transparent …
A group of academics has written a paper in Nature criticizing the UN group. They can’t believe the UN would miss an opportunity to promote vegetarian lifestyles and fake meat. The head of the FAO group defended himself, saying “Dietary change is mentioned eight times in the 50-page summary report” which sounds like nothing at all, especially when they don’t even mention “reducing meat”.
It may not last, but looks acts and smells like a win. Score 1 for the farmers…. the UN is being badgered by The People.
Brave researchers have decided to save the world by pumping seawater onto ice sheets in the depths of winter. They are struggling through -30C windy conditions somewhere off the top end of Canada. Their plan is to thicken the ice so it will survive longer in summer, thus presumably raising the albedo of Earth.
For some reason the dedicated team at the BBC don’t mention what energy source drives the pump. I wonder where that cord goes?
Could the cord go to a diesel gen, sitting on arctic ice, snipped out of the photo?
If it was a solar panel, we know they would have told us.
Even the BBC calls the plan “insane” — though we sense they mean it in the same way a fourteen year old might describe a diamond encrusted skate park.
But a small number of advocates claim their approaches could give the planet a helping hand while humanity cleans up its act.
The ultimate goal of the Arctic experiment is to thicken enough sea-ice to slow or even reverse the melting already seen, says Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, whose team at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Climate Repair is behind the project.
Researchers are apparently excited that they’ve “already seen the ice thicken by a few tens of centimeters across their small study area.” That much eh?
Since arctic sea ice stretches across some 10 to 15 million square kilometers, this could be quite a task.
The experts at the BBC didn’t think readers need to know these details, but they do briefly hint that they might need “10 million wind-powered pumps to thicken sea-ice across just a tenth of the Arctic.”
Apparently the words “diesel, petrol, fossil fuel” can’t be mentioned in a story about solutions of climate change.
Naturally, they have a struggle session about whether this is even a wise experiment given that salty ice might melt faster than normal ice. The worst possible thing of course, is that polluters might get the crazy idea they could burn fuel without tantric guilt.
By golly. 1948. Some will remember a time when smart people got things done.
The three minute piece describes the awesome value of Yallourn Coal Power Plant — “converting brown coal to light and power”. This one plant supplied two-thirds of all the electricity the state of Victoria needed at the time.
Most of those turbines built from 1928 to 1961 have since been shut down, but the last one, built in the 1970s, keeps on running today. Yallourn W is rated at 1,450 MW and supplies one fifth of Victoria’s energy still.
H/t to David Maddison who says: “Sir John Monash (d. 1931) who built Victoria’s electricity supply back in the day would be appalled at what the Unipary has done to his creation.”
The Sydney Morning Herald goes full Coral Reef Seer — predicting not just the end of the vast Great Barrier Reef, but the complete loss of the entire world’s coral reefs. That’s a quarter to a half million square kilometers of reef, gone, pfft, destructo, just like that.
The basis for the prophesy is a set of photos taken last week from one point at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Apparently, like tea leaves and chicken entrails, this spot has magical forecasting abilities.
Australia’s climate targets must be bolstered to meet the global action needed to prevent the complete loss of the world’s coral reefs, experts warn, after the fifth mass bleaching event off Queensland’s coast since 2016.
People who actually dive on the reef to research it find it recovers from mass bleaching in as little as 18 months.
After 37 years of non-stop pollution, there are more corals than ever growing on the Great Barrier Reef.
The first coral reefs evolved 485 million years ago when the world was hotter and CO2 levels were ten times higher.
The worlds temperature has been swinging wildly for three million years. Somehow coral reefs survived this just fine but will be wiped out with another half a degree?
h/t David of Cooyal in Oz
Temperatures estimated from a stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ18O records.
REFERENCE
L. E. Lisiecki and M. E. Raymo (2005) — A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ18O records, Paleoceanography 20, 1003
High quality fuel produces high quality lifestyles.
Diffuse, unreliable fuels produce chaos and vulnerability. As humans slip back down the energy density ladder, they lose the power to create order. To build, to fly, to repair, and to eat pineapples from Costa Rica.
Entropy is coming to break your fridge and give you wrinkles.
BTW — If any reader knows a lot about fences and pillar and post retaining walls and is in Perth, I might have a paid job for you. Keen to get your advice too! — Thanks Jo.
The link on Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/ONMGnSiOLhjG/
and Vimeo https://vimeo.com/924719370
UPDATE: Surprisingly it is still on Youtube today (Sunday) and with subtitles in other languages. Vote it up there while you still can…