US Coal Production is Increasing Under Biden

 I might now like it. It might just be a recovery from the pandemic. But it's true:

Data via EIA.

US Debt is Decreasing Under Biden

Source.

Herschel Walker Is Just Plain Dumb

Hershel Walker, campaigning yesterday:

"Now let me tell you this here: If we was ready for the green agenda, I'd raise my hand right now," he said. "But we're not ready right now! So don't let them fool you like this is a new agenda, this is not a new agenda! We're not prepared, we're not ready right now! What we need to do is keep having these gas-guzzling cars, because we got the good emissions under those cars. We're doing the best thing that we can!"

Video. Via Yahoo News.

The problem with America is voters. A specific subset of them. You know what I mean.

World War II, Day-by-Day

This is fascinating:

 

John Kerry at COP 27

 John Kerry at COP 27 in Egypt. Everything looks calm and under control.

The Bravest Thing

Oregonians Barely Rejecting Slavery As Punishment

In Oregon, over 4 in 10 people have voted NOT to remove the punishment of slavery from the state constitution.

From The NY Times.

Finally *NOW* Britian Hates Brexit

Barely. 

Great Britian might be the only country that is as close of a mess as is the US, but ultimately it doesn't have the heft to compete in the Global Screwed-Up division. But, bless its heart, it's trying.

The beatings will continue until moral improves. It's simply a fact that the highest living standards occur in countries/regions with strong central governments. Amazing how many people don't understand that, or won't.

This from an emailed article by the NY Time's Peter Coy. No link available.

Sid Again

Giethoorn, Netherlands

US Gas Prices Not Exceptionally High

 

US #gasprices last week were 8% higher than the 22-year average when adjusted for inflation. That’s the 65th percentile. pic.twitter.com/16qCJDUGOy

— robert_heath (@robert_heath) November 1, 2022

Here's how the price looks without inflation:

 

Greta Boycotting COP27

Greta Thunberg is boycotting the upcoming COP27 meeting in Egypt. She explains why in this video clip:

https://youtube.com/shorts/rFNxtSllzOw?feature=share

COP27 is from from 6 November to 18 November.

US Energy Consumption Flat Since 2000

Interestingly, US energy consumption is essentially flat since the year 2000, between 100 to 105 exajoules (1 EJ = 10¹⁸ J). Even though population is increasing, per capita energy consumption is decreasing, from 12,900 watts in 1973 to 9,900 W in 2021.

Source: EIA

Charts - "Code Red" on Planet Earth

We are now at “code red” on planet Earth. Humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency. The scale of untold human suffering, already immense, is rapidly growing with the escalating number of climate-related disasters. Therefore, we urge scientists, citizens, and world leaders to read this Special Report and quickly take the necessary actions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

This week a group of a dozen scientists published "World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022" in the journal BioScience, led by two scientists at Oregon State University, William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf. It's open access, so I won't discuss it in depth (news & video), but I wanted to publish this interesting set of 16 graphs of time series of "climate-related responses."

I recently broke my left little finger and my hand & arm are in a cast, and Windows speech-to-text function is iffy, so I'm not going to write more than this. But it's interesting to have all these data in one place.

Money Supply Increase Under Trump, Not Biden

Conservatives like Ross Douthat complain that Biden ran up the money supply, causing inflation, but in fact the huge increase occurred under Trump, not Biden:

This is the M2 money supply relative to GDP, which is of course the correct comparison.

If the increase in M2 caused any inflation, it occurred during Trump's administration, not Biden's.

Blast from the Past

Remember these? Information used to be precious. Imagine not having the 1981 population of Bulgaria at your fingertips....

For some reason I've been carrying this around for 19 years. That ends today, but I always feel a little guilty about throwing away a book.

JJ Thompson, 1904

Didn't realize there were such good pictures back then:

Can you imagine, it was only 118 years since the electron was discovered! Now we talk about them like they are mere flies on the wall.

Desperate Junk

12-fold:

NY Times: "The cost to ship a container of goods from Asia to the U.S. West Coast inched up to $16,353 as of last Friday, before the latest coronavirus restrictions took effect, from $16,155 a week earlier. Rates have almost tripled from a year ago and have risen 12-fold from two years ago, according to data from Freightos, a freight booking platform." ====

"According to the World Wildlife Fund, wild animal populations have decreased by 68 percent on average over the past 50 years."

-- from the essay "Animal, Vegetable, Capital" by Ingrid Burrington, Lux Magazine, Issue 3, via Harper's, February 2022 pg 17.

====

It really sucks that vaccines became part of the culture wars just like everything else. pic.twitter.com/5OICtpOfCB

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) March 26, 2022

====

Widespread Drought in US West

I don't recall ever seeing a drought monitor with such widespread drought in the US west. To be sure I don't check every one, but this looks terrible and portends badly for the coming wildfire season, especially, it seems, in Oregon and California and Montana. And in Oregon and California at least, this is on top of a multi-year drought already in place -- in the West generally, the worst in 1,200 years. (Williams+ Nature Climate Change, March 2022.) 

The Economy!!