Ken Fabian

With civilisation gone the means to relocate (easily) will be also. Lack of civilisation does not mean no tools or technology - especially since knowledge and remnants will mean people know a lot is possible. A whole lot of basic technologies will still be within reach, even if it's back to knapping knives out of stone. Whether those living in less than ideal climate will be displaced over multi-generations by those who (from here) look better suited could depend on how long before civilisations develop again. Most places now tend to have mixed populations - the genes for dark skins and light skins will co-exist and mix in populations in all kinds of climates. I think most humans will continue to have the capability of surviving in most locations, that the idea that there is an ideal climate or geography may not strictly apply, that ingenuity if not plain human stubborness that worked in our past will keep work in the future, regardless of location. I doubt we would see any significant evolution any time soon - and the mixing of genetic heritages may make it less obvious. Or make it necessary for new traits to emerge. I suppose the most significant kind of evolution might be ongoing genetic flow - genetics from one population type to another - as mixed populations mix even further, perhaps (if isolated long enough) into a more homogenous population.

We've come a long way in all aspects of renewable energy and we make a lot of good use of intermittent solar and wind. You can add a lot of solar to existing electricity networks without problems. More importantly adding wind and solar now sets things up for the next stages, which will include adding some on-demand backup or equivalent. It is a progression in stages, not an all at once change. At small scale - my PV fitted home for example - a relatively small amount of battery storage is enough to go from drawing power from the grid every night to (my estimate to date) about one night out of 50. And overall, we send four times the total power we use ourselves back into the grid. This will happen at larger scale - apparent already in the usefulness of the (still relatively small) Big Battery in South Australia (aka Hornsdale Power Reserve); it has exceeded expectations for it's role in system fast voltage regulation and fast, short term backup - and helping keep wholesale power prices constrained when gas or other "reliable" supply fails, and they do, surprisingly often if you look. We don't know how the last stages of transition to low emission will play out - fast start gas, batteries, pumped hydro, demand shifting - likely a combination of these will be used. Nuclear will struggle to find opportunity for profit outside the periods when solar owns the daytimes and wind, the windy times. Investment in serious storage will be resisted until the proportions of wind and solar grow to where they become needed (eg South Australia approaching this threshold), then viable proposals start coming. At this point in this transition adding as much wind and solar as the market demands (and it is now demand driven) makes good sense.

Phi for All - Australia previously had government owned electricity - selling it off to private enterprise has not resulted in better reliability, lower costs or improved investment practices. It's been something of a disaster for consumers and long term energy policy implementation - and because those selloffs and the consequent raised electricity costs overlapped in time with rising concerns about climate and support for renewable energy, it was popular and effective amongst climate science deniers to conflate the two and blame the largest part of rising costs on renewable energy subsidies (when the largest component was overbuilding within rules that made that possible and financially rewarding). In part things went worse with private ownership in this is because there isn't a market large enough to support genuine, efficiency inducing competition and in part because the conditions under which they were sold included government backed guarantees ie was not and never was actually a free market - although the rhetoric of "free enterprise will do it better and cheaper" was the selling point. Whilst nationalising them now would be problematic I disagree that government ownership of what is unlikely ever to be a free and open competitive market is intrinsically problematic, at least in Australia's case. Bazzy - Underpinning distrust and rejection of RE is usually distrust and rejection of climate science - as is continuing support for coal fired power. Politically in Australia arguing that coal is better than renewable energy tends to be a proxy for climate science denial - the main culprits preferring not to argue about the science directly, thus avoiding arguments that they can't win and that tend to make them look foolish. I don't know that it's possible to win arguments about the merits of low emissions energy with people who reject climate change science - who reject that there is any responsibility for climate change; their opinions are not based on good information and rational arguments. Depending on who they get their news and commentary and energy politics from - the current LNP govenment and large elements of News media for example - the idea that RE will be costly and unreliable will be something they hear all the time. They may be won over by cost savings alone - and solar for homes and businesses is winning them over at the local level - but this takes at least some pro-active research. In this, we are at a turning point, and we are seeing things shifting, with major energy companies choosing RE investments over coal (on the basis of ended RE subsidies and with an enduring amnesty for fossil fuels for their externalised costs) and facing criticisms by the pro-markets government for disagreeing with their "coal is good" mantra. I think the continuing growth of solar and wind, and increasingly, storage, will accelerate and attempts to shape opinion against them will fail. Even more than the (still mostly limited) emissions reductions, the near term impacts of the solar and wind success story is changing minds by showing as false the fears of economic disaster that opponents of strong climate action have pushed hard and made into their most powerful tool of persuasion. The political implications of that will be more fundamentally important for building support for a transition to low emissions than the emissions reductions themselves - emissions that won't come down significantly until the levels of RE mean everything we make or use will have a big RE component.

You could do that - and you will have to pedal harder. A lot harder. Whoever told you about energy losses was right - you'd be better saving that effort for making the e-bike go when it needs pedalling. The energy losses in pedalling to make motion are small, but energy losses converting crank power to electricity via an altenator, to charge a battery, back to an electric motor to turn the crank to make motion are much higher. Running the alternator on down hill runs in place of braking will result in a gain, but if you have to pedal where otherwise you didn't, you'll be working harder for very little (no) gain. More exercise and better health outcomes maybe, but you'd get that by using an ordinary bicycle, not an e-bike.

In a world without chairs, everyone will squat. Not the best of observations to assign that to any specific nation or race; white anglo old timers mustering cattle would squat around their campfires here in Australia, and probably a lot still do. And Darwin probably distractedly swiped at flies without noticing that he was feeling them through small body hairs - the hairs he was convinced served no useful function in man. Even highly skilled observers can get things wrong. I don't know about Einstein, however I expect racist sentiments, mixed with interpretations and misinterpretations of Darwin's work, were so widespread and unchallenged as to be seen as normal - even whilst, as a jew in Germany - he would have been subjected to ones he knew to be unwarranted. Sound like he may have spent time thinking about issues arising. Meanwhile his contributions to physics remain immense and beyond dispute.

As my post says I just wanted to give a sense of perspective to what the odds of "unlikely" chemistry look like at the scale of a planetary ocean and hundreds of millions of years - take that view and it looks not all so unlikely after all. Not anywhere near so unlikely as to be impossible - which is what is suggested by the "but it's so unlikely it must need godly intervention" arguments. I don't claim any expertise, so I don't know what specific chemical precursors. From my reading, a lot of what I would call complex organic chemicals are formed in vast quantities from non-biological processes - in space (precursor material to the Earth) and the waters of this planet - and these can and will react and interact in various ways under conditions that, whilst not universal, are still widespread and of long duration. Those conditions won't all apply to every ml of water (and when they do reactions may be occurring at much higher frequencies) but take a dozen zeros off my numbers and they are still enormous numbers. Wikipedia is always a good start, for a general overview, with attention to the sources listed recommended if you are serious about it.

I find placebo effects and the effects of patient attitude interesting. It does appear like these are real effects. I doubt that these work purely by psychological means and expect there will be biochemical processes at work.

I seriously doubt there has ever been any likelihood of NK giving up their nuclear weapons program - not for US threats, not for inducements. Having the biggest arsenal gives the illusion of overwhelming power to remake things the way you want but I think that's always been illusory. I

Abiogenesis came before bacteria. Those gazillions of opportunities to make complex chemisty made chemistry with enough attributes of life to become the living precursors to more complex forms. Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting bacteria - which are complex and sophisticated lifeforms with a lot of evolutionary history - got assembled from primordal sea chemistry in one extraordinary and unlikely chemical occurrance. Umm, that is unless you count the precursor life forms as extraordinary and unlikely chemical occurrances.

My own take on the odds of life originating by chance alone is to look at the scales of things - 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of liquid water (on Earth ie one planet) = 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ml About 1,000,000 bacteria per ml live in sea water, so if the chemical precursors for those are present in primordal sea water we get enough to make... = 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria's worth. Give it 500 million years of chemical reactions that happen at much faster than 1 per second rates I'll be generous and say only 1 reaction per second... = 15,750,000,000,000,000 seconds x 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria's worth = 20,475,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 opportunities to randomly make the appropriate complex chemistry Now this isn't definitive by any means - add or subtract a few zeros if that makes you happier. It is just an attempt to see how "very unlikely" fits with extremely large numbers of opportunities for "unlikely" to happen.

StringJunky - I didn't mean to suggest that you were suggesting otherwise - just answering the original post directly. But neglecting to detail how soap does that assisting...

My understanding is the main way that bacterial concentrations are removed is physical, ie scrubbed off and washed away. Soap may kill some bacteria but it mostly assists that physical removal.

I'm not sure I can agree with this. I was going to be flippant and say the arrow has to cover the last distance remaining, just by momentum. A bit more seriously ... The sum of the infinity of portions of the total distance equals the total distance. The time to traverse each portion is proportional to the distance of each portion; the sum of the times taken to traverse the infinity of portions of the total distance equals the time taken to traverse the total distance. It cannot take longer than the time to traverse the total distance to traverse that infinity of portions of the total distance.

It might need to be demonstrated that toxic material doesn't leach out under ordinary circumstances and maybe recycling/disposal facilities need to be in place ahead of approvals for use rather than as an afterthought. I think this kind of whole of life-cycle management increasingly applies to everything we do at large scale, not just Perovskite solar - because most of our activities are so large scale that 'big world, puny humans' no longer applies. Whether alternatives to lead compounds in perovskite solar cells can be developed and commercialised that are more environmentally benign is a question only time will answer but I'm sure people are looking.

Spoilers.. it depends, but they don't usually turn me off. Some stories depend on the suspense and the surprise being revealed. Some don't. I usually prefer something that has more appeal than suspense and surprise, appeal that is still there after the surprise is revealed. I like a story that turns out to be worth re-reading (or watching) - which I don't know until I've read it, but if a spoiler does ruin it the story probably won't have the other elements anyway.

I use Ken Fabian here because it's my name. Whilst I have sometimes said things on blogs or forums I regretted I am not going to duck responsibility for them behind a nom de plume. Some of the issue I discuss, like climate change, I think are better argued using my true name. The advice going about when I first started posting stuff online, to avoid using real names, seemed to overstate the dangers - or perhaps internet security caught up (mostly). I use to use Ken Fabos - and here and there I still do, because it's a hassle to change, and sometimes I've found my real name won't be accepted; I didn't think there were that many of us! Fabos was just a nickname used by a muso friend.

An individual human may look like an easy meal to a large predator but humans come in groups and when they are angered - say by a predator taking one of them - then even large predators have cause to fear. An individual may seek safe refuge but a relentless group hunt to track and kill the culprit - and anything that looks like it - is the usual group response. I do think those mostly unique to hominid capabilities - tools, communication, group organisation, problem solving abilities - overcome a lot of physical limitations. They don't just compensate but greatly overcompensate - to the extent that these become powerful aids that can turn a thin skinned, furless, slow running biped into the top predator in almost any environment.

Thicko, not everyone here is a mathematician - certainly not me. I can prove pythagoras' theorem but not much beyond that. But I believe the response I gave, that an infinity of fractions of a finite distance does not effect the rate at which that finite distance is traversed, is a 'solution'. Or you can use a search engine - google is popular. I did and found this - http://www.iep.utm.edu/zeno-par/#H2

I was never that impressed by Zeno's paradox - which seems to me to be more a misframing of a question than a true paradox. I mean, you wouldn't want Zeno as your running coach... "Now run to the place the person ahead of you is now - damn he's moved! To where he is NOW! No, NOW, NOW! Oh, you just went past him - I really didn't expect that!" Apart from that, consider that the existence of an infinity of fractions of a finite distance does not effect the rate at which distance is traversed; it does not take any longer to traverse an infinity of them than traversing the finite total and is irrelevant to the time it takes.

The highest tides reliably occur at New Moon and Full Moon - I can't see how vortices from ocean gyres (that have nothing to do with lunar and solar gravitational pull) can so closely align with lunar and solar gravitational pull. Fermer, the current understanding of how tides work provides consistent predictability; how they work is not a mystery that needs an alternative explanation.

Is it in the relative strength of these phenomena that JacobsLadder is mistaken? Centrifugal force from Earth spinning is real, just not very strong in comparison to gravity. Coriolis effect is real, just not very strong compared to air friction and momentum. JacobsLadder, any effort on my part to look to the numbers (measurements) and maths to demonstrate the relative strengths of the effects that you appear to believe must overwhelm gravity, friction and momentum would only be for my own amusement and edification. But you are claiming you can disprove the current science based understanding of how the combination of all these play out in the real world; I think it is up to you to put numbers to them that show that the centrifugal effect of a spinning world exceeds gravity and that coriolis 'force' on a flying helicopter exceeds and dominates over air resistance and momentum.

It always seemed obvious to me that if you can evoke a strong emotional response to an issue then the reasoning faculties are largely bypassed; political messaging uses this effect all the time. I hadn't thought of it in terms of bio-chemistry rather than psychology and I'm a bit surprised there could be identifiable bio-chemical processes involved.

It is nothing like what I would expect for an asteroid mining site - even not knowing what one would really look like. A lot more infrastructure for one thing. I seriously doubt there is the gravity to allow mine spoils to be dumped in a pile; filtered, packed and wrapped (or mixed with water and solidified) would be necessary if the whole region is not to disappear from view within a dust and debris cloud.

Raider, I think I would be alarmed by a politician getting too focused on something as speculative as bio-engineering plants for soil-carbon-deposition abilities. Farming for fuels - where the bio-engineered species are contained and controlled are less controversial than spreading of competitive species into the wider environment, such as oceans or forests. Support for the institutions and support programs that make wide ranging R&D possible wins points from me, not singling out any one area for support. The main game is managing the energy transition that is going on right now and I am most sceptical of anyone who can foresee how the last 20% on the way to below zero emissions will be achieved or insists we must have firm, costed plans for that before committing to that 80% of reductions. Coherent environmental and energy policies and an understanding of the nature of the climate problem and the issues related to it are what I'm looking for most in politicians. I think being visionary with respect to how to do support and implementation of commercial and nearly commercial technologies is more important than visionary with respect to specific yet to be commercialised ones.

Raider - Interesting but not world changing. I think that reducing emissions by displacing high emissions energy with low emissions alternatives must remain as the primary approach and, given that more new generation of electricity is now solar and wind than coal or gas, with storage technologies improving fast, that side of things is progressing better than a pessimist like myself expected. Those alone will not be enough but they are foundations that can be built on. Forestry, even genetically modified and at large scale, may complement other efforts but is not going to replace emissions reductions - even if we start with confidence that it will be cost effective, have no serious negative consequences, are grown under arrangements that can be relied on to last multi-generations and can be shown to divert carbon into sinks that are effectively permanent. Given we are unlikely to see much agricultural land diverted to forestry doing enough to lock carbon to equal what was released by centuries of forest clearing (to make that agricultural land) would be a remarkable achievement, let alone deal with all the fossil fuel burning as well. Biofuels like farmed algae might become a low emissions alternative to some fossil fuels but widespread sowing of oceans and other bodies of water with competitive new species designed to divert carbon compounds from the food chain is going to raise legitimate concerns and objections.