Study finds electric cars more environmentally damaging than gas guzzlers

10:57 am

Surprise, surprise! A new study has found that in many cases electric cars actually do more damage to the environment that gasoline-run vehicles.

The study has a lot of uncertainties, and is based largely on statistical analysis, which I always find suspect. In addition:

The study’s biggest caveat, acknowledged by the researchers, is that they don’t consider a full “lifecycle” analysis of emissions—so things like making the car, drilling for oil, or transporting coal aren’t included in the environmental costs. Some previous work has found that EVs are cleaner than gas cars when you consider the totality of impacts; others have found that’s only true if the power grids that charge EVs are also clean.

Notice how they also don’t mention any of the environmental costs for making the batteries and components of an electric car. I wonder why.

Nonetheless, this study illustrates again why we should never rely on the opinions of politicians in these matters. They know less than nothing, and always base their policy on raw, simplistic emotions rather than complex knowledge. Better to let freedom, and the market decide. It always looks for the most efficient way of doing things, which in the end is always going to be better for the environment.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Astronomers propose giant super Hubble replacement

9:52 am

A major university consortium that manages many ground- and space-based telescopes has proposed that a new giant optical space telescope be built to replace Hubble.

A report published today by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C., lays out the rationale for another orbiting observatory. It will have a mirror as big as 12 meters across, to both look for habitable planets around other stars and peer deep into the early aeons of the universe.

Hubble has a mirror 2.4 meters across, so this would be significantly larger. In fact, if built this new space telescope would make it bigger than any ground-based telescope that exists today.

As the article notes, the cost over-runs and delays of the infrared James Webb Space Telescope — which went from a $1 billion budget to $8 billion — will likely make Congress reluctant to fund a new giant project like this. Nonetheless, this report gives us a hint of where the astronomy community wants to head in future decades. For the past two decades they have poo-pooed the construction of a new and larger optical space telescope. It appears from this report that this culture is now changing.

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Great Britain space agency calls for an increased space effort

9:43 am

The competition heats up: The United Kingdom’s space agency has issued its proposed future strategy, focusing on a renewed involvement with ISS and the European Space Agency.

Following a public consultation and lengthy discussions across government, the new strategy, published today, concludes that continued involvement in the ISS and other programs via ESA membership is the best way to involve U.K. scientists and industry in human spaceflight. The document says the government will consider bilateral projects with other space agencies but fears always being the junior partner since the United Kingdom has no launchers or space stations. It does not think that the commercial launch industry is sufficiently mature for the United Kingdom to buy services commercially. The report also states: “The Agency will also consider its role in human exploration missions beyond Earth orbit, especially where this complements science and technology goals for robotic exploration.”

I wonder if the newly elected conservative British government agrees with this strategy. It appears to me that it was researched and written prior to the election.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Dawn recovers from safe mode

9:17 am

Spot 1

Beginning on June 30 Dawn experienced an as yet unexplained “anomaly” that put it into safe mode for several days.

According to JPL, engineers have uploaded “configuration changes” that solved the problem, and the spacecraft has returned to normal operations, continuing its second mapping orbit of Ceres. From this position they are gathering wide angle images of the entire planet, from which they will construct a detailed global map to be used as a baseline during later more detailed close-up orbits. For example, they released this very nice image today of what is called “Spot 1”, shown on the right. I have cropped it to focus on the spot itself. Looks almost like scattered snow on the surface, doesn’t it?

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Fifth anniversary fund-raiser

12:07 am

In celebration of Behind the Black’s fifth anniversary, I am considering ending the automated Google ads that presently appear on the site. To I remove these ads, however, I need to replace that income. I am therefore asking that my readers consider contributing to the website, either with a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right.

So far the response has been gratifying. My heart-felt thanks go out to all who have contributed.

Scroll down for new posts.

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All A-OK with New Horizons

12:00 am

Engineers have pinpointed the issue — “a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence” — that caused New Horizons to enter safe mode on Saturday.

Since they do not plan to upload any similar commands before the July 14th fly-by, they do not expect a repeat of this problem. Full science operations are expected to resume on July 7.

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Obamacare continues to cause health insurance premiums to skyrocket

1:06 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance companies are now requesting (and getting) rate increases from 23 to 54 percent due to the increased costs imposed by Obamacare.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.

The Oregon insurance commissioner, Laura N. Cali, has just approved 2016 rate increases for companies that cover more than 220,000 people. Moda Health Plan, which has the largest enrollment in the state, received a 25 percent increase, and the second-largest plan, LifeWise, received a 33 percent increase.

At the same time, many insurance companies are merging or leaving the market because of the law makes profitability impossible.

Obviously, we must all then vote for Democrats so they can use their brilliance (demostrated so clearly with Obamacare) to solve this problem by nationalizing healthcare.

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New Horizons temporarily loses contact with Earth

9:38 am

Engineers lost contact with New Horizons for an hour and twenty-one minutes on Saturday.

Engineers have since begun talking with the probe again, but NASA says it will take up to several days to get New Horizons back to normal. In the meantime, the US$700-million spacecraft is not recording science data. It is just 11 million kilometres from Pluto, and closing in fast.

Communication issues are exacerbated by the fact that it takes four and a half hours to send a signal, traveling at light speed, across the nearly 4.8 billion kilometres to the spacecraft — and four and a half hours back. In that elapsed time, the Earth has rotated so much that mission controllers must switch from one to another of the three deep-space antennas that communicate with spacecraft: in Goldstone, California; Canberra; and Madrid.

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Oregon fines couple who refused to bake a same-sex cake $135K, also ordering them to shut up

11:17 am

Fascists: Oregon’s labor commissioner has now imposed a $135,000 fine on the owners of a bankrupt bakery business for refusing to participate in a same-sex wedding by baking a cake.

Even worse, the fascist has demanded the owners shut up about the case.

In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs. “This effectively strips us of all our First Amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

What a wonderful way to celebrate July 4th!

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New poll finds hostility to the federal government growing

9:08 am

A new poll has found that the public’s hostility to the federal government, including the Supreme Court, has grown in recent years and jumped significantly in the past six months.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 33% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe that states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if their elected officials agree with them. That’s up nine points from 24% when we first asked this question in February. Just over half (52%) disagree, down from 58% in the earlier survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. …

Support for ignoring the federal courts is up among most demographic groups, however. Most voters have long believed that the Supreme Court justices have their own political agenda, and they still tend to feel that that agenda is more liberal than conservative.

That’s just the public’s changing attitude to the Supreme Court. Overall trust in the federal government is down as well:

A plurality (47%) of voters continues to believe the federal government has too much influence over state governments, and 54% think states should have the right to opt out of federal government programs that they don’t agree with. Even more (61%) think states should have the right to opt out of federally mandated programs if the federal government doesn’t help pay for them.

The Declaration of Independence, the foundational document that Americans honor on the Fourth of July, says that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, but just 25% believe that to be true of the federal government today. Only 20% now consider the federal government a protector of individual liberty. Sixty percent (60%) see the government as a threat to individual liberty instead.

The more power the federal government grabs, the more the public will resist. Eventually, the federal government, and all of society, will break under this strain. The sooner the public reins in the federal government, by voting for legislators who will do that reining, the better chance we will have of avoiding that collapse.

From what I can see right now, however, I must sadly say that I am not hopeful. Since 2010 the voters have clearly made their position clear: They want the government reined in. Our society’s intellectual class, including the Republican leadership in Congress working with the congressional Democratic minority, doesn’t seem to want to listen to that message unfortunately.

Then again, this update on the growing power of the Freedom Caucus in the House suggests that the voters might finally get their way if the next election puts more conservatives in office.

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Dragon/Falcon 9 launch abort test moved from Vandenberg to Kennedy

8:50 am

Instead of using the Air Force’s Vandenberg launch complex in California, NASA and SpaceX have shifted their plans for the final launch abort test of the manned version of Dragon capsule to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The date for the test has not been finalized, but it appears it will be delayed until after the next Dragon flight to ISS, itself delayed following the Falcon 9 failure on Sunday. The test will also be delayed until after the completion of the unmanned demo flight to ISS of the manned version of Dragon. SpaceX will then refurbish that demo capsule and re-use it for the launch abort test.

Update: I have rewritten the paragraph above, correcting my first version, which had mistakenly said that a refurbished cargo version of Dragon would be used for the launch abort test. My very knowledgeable readers noted the error and set me straight.

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Progress successfully launched into orbit

8:32 am

Supplies for ISS! The Russians today successfully launched a Progress freighter into orbit to bring cargo to ISS.

After three failures since October from three different cargo systems (Cygnus, Progress, and Dragon), this success is somewhat of a relief for both the astronauts on board ISS and the managers of the station. It gives everyone some breathing room until both Cygnus and Dragon fly again.

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Jonah Morgan – A GoPro view of surfing in Indonesia

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Taped on August 25, 2014. Hat tip Danae, who wrote, “It was 111.4 degrees under the side porch roof this afternoon, which explains why this video appeals to me. The visibility of the sea floor is just frosting on the cake.”

To me, this probably gives one who has never surfed (like myself) the best sense of what it is like to do it.

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The jets on Comet 67P/C-G come from its sinkholes

10:18 am

More on the comet sinkholes! New data from Rosetta has now confirmed that some of the plumes or jets that the spacecraft has seen emanating from Comet 67P/C-G come directly from the sinkholes that they have discovered on the nucleus.

In a study reported today in the science journal Nature, 18 quasi-circular pits have been identified in the northern hemisphere of the comet, some of which are the source of continuing activity. The pits are a few tens to a few hundreds of metres in diameter and extend up to 210 m below the surface to a smooth dust-covered floor. Material is seen to be streaming from the most active pits. “We see jets arising from the fractured areas of the walls inside the pits. These fractures mean that volatiles trapped under the surface can be warmed more easily and subsequently escape into space,” says Jean-Baptiste Vincent from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, lead author of the study.

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