Michael Roberts

Comment Threads

• David L commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Rats are fairly smart. I suspect they had/have learned when the trains stop for the night and come out then. fewer annoying people trying to kill them at that time. And their food sources tend to be unmanned then. I read some stories about rats in the first year or so after 9/11 in downtown Manhattan. With all the people mostly gone from a large area (along with their food sources) they could be seen at times in waves headed down empty streets late at night. Haven't been able to source the story to find out if true....
• JohnS commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  David L @ 1237: Rats are fairly smart. I suspect they had/have learned when the trains stop for the night and come out then. fewer annoying people trying to kill them at that time. And their food sources tend to be unmanned then. I read some stories about rats in the first year or so after 9/11 in downtown Manhattan. With all the people mostly gone from a large area (along with their food sources) they could be seen at times in waves headed down empty streets late at night. Haven't been able to source the story to find out...
• gasdive (he, him, ia) commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Animals generally are smarter than humans give them credit for, but different. I worked with a guy who used to clean mussels out of seawater pipes that delivered cooling water to airconditioning units. It had to be done manually because they had tried putting poison in the system and the mussels had wised up to when the poison was being dosed. Initially by the time of day (these are in a pipe that's perpetually dark) and then when the humans started randomising the time, by some other means. He suspected they knew the sound of it being added, but who...
• David L commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Oh yes. I'm involved with 3 60+ pound dogs on a regular basis. Interesting how they vary in "smarts". But the consistent thing is their look ahead event horizon is about what is in their field of vision. They definitely live in the moment. Their only advance planning to about how to achieve a current goal....
• Bill Arnold commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Interesting analysis of the potentials for persistence of some pandemic-caused human behavioral changes to lead to (cause) decreases in the difficulties of global heating mitigation: Climate mitigation scenarios with persistent COVID-19-related energy demand changes (Jarmo S. Kikstra et al, Nature Energy, 11 October 2021) Here we present a set of global COVID-19 shock-and-recovery scenarios that systematically explore the effect of demand changes persisting. Our pathways project final energy demand reductions of 1–36 EJ yr−1 by 2025 and cumulative CO2 emission reductions of 14–45 GtCO2 by 2030. Uncertainty ranges depend on the depth and duration of the economic downturn and demand-side...