“Ferrets are not people, of course.”

You know better quality people than me.

(apologies to any ferrets that I’ve offended)

do you think they’ll discuss plant inspection tomorrow?

OT: flip side. I live amongst lg fraction of Mennonites, ~100% unvaxxed. Some of them are ‘afraid’ of people who have been recently vaxxed (ie they ask and wont work for or around recently vaxxed people).

I’ve heard that this has been a problem known to the vial manufacturer(s) for a while. Apparently, the pH > 10 (I’m amazed that isn’t ‘uncomfortable’) in some injectables. In those very alkaline solutions the glass, unsurprisingly, reacts and forms clay particles that eventually are large enough and of sufficient quantity to be visible. Apparently, the Mg-bearing borosilicate glasses are particularly prone.

Delek has a chain of convenience stores and they’re also headquartered in Nashville. ;^)

3, 4, & 5 all seem to be quality control items. Are those likely to require another inspection? 3 and 5 explicitly state that the QC folks lack authority or evidence of authority. Seems like a bad thing to have not taken care of prior to inspection.

i find peer-review to be much worse. Check out PubPeer.com if you want to see the horrors of what makes its way into the scientific literature. Most of the stuff there is biotech related so it can be handy for deep diving into sketchy biotech companies.

My personal experience w the peer-review process is that it is only as valuable as an author wants it to be. A good author seeks out rigorous peer-review. A sketchy author usually manages to find equally sketchy peer-reviewers or journals that tend to use sketchy peer-reviewers.

However, even ‘notable’ authors from prestigious institutions still manage to get sketchy stuff published. There are several Nobel Prize winners and profs from Harvard, MIT, CalTech etc that have been outed for fraudulent papers. Frequently grad students & postdocs get thrown under the bus but the point is that the sketchy stuff makes it thru solely cuz of the trailing name on the author list. There have have been a couple cases where investigators have tested the process by submitting gibberish to journals and the stuff has been accepted for publication.

A more recent problem, particularly w authors from the PRC, is the Paper Mill. Those are professional scientific paper production enterprises. Until recently this practice was unintentionally incentivized by the central government. An author pays according to journal, language, impact factor etc and the mill churns out a paper - usually entirely fraudulent. On a good day, they may actually use real data but the data and the subject and conclusion are not necessarily related.

I am personally familiar with a scientist who has been publishing falsified science for at least a decade (not in the Karl Popper sense). He’s somewhat prolific. He uses real numerical data but what he attaches the numbers to is the falsified part. His work is peer-reviewed both prior to journal submission and by the journals. Nobody managed to catch him until I came along. The institution won’t fire him or retract the articles cuz liability (eg paying back many $millions and risking suspension/termination of a multi-$billion project).

Democracy is much better at self-correcting than science. You don’t hear about science fraud cuz institutions tend to be complicit in hiding fraud. In fact, in the case cited above, one of the management excuses is: “the work made it thru peer-review” so it’s ok.

thx. That was another question. Section 2.8 of Proxy seems to indicate closing within 5 business days of Feb 20 unless something else causes delay within a 3 month window starting on Feb 20.

Not sure 2022 is any more favorable tax wise or for moving to PR 8^)

Thx. Did PFE set up PF Argentum Acquisition to get around the BC-Supreme Court approval requirement or is that still necessary?

enh, peer-review isn’t all it’s cracked up to be ;^)

thx. Seems like options should be hopping off the shelves

perhaps stupid question: if TRIL is being bot for $18.50 why is it trading for ~$17.50?

read my entire message and the EIA page. I specifically addressed that

kind of surprised that this drivel comes from Barron's

11 billion liters is about what 100k people use/yr. that’s about 30% of their work force. They could probably make up a good chunk of the 11 billion liters by playing w their toilets and getting rid of employee coffee machines ;^)

this makes much more sense than tomatoes and is in line with my comment re vanilla (which could be much more lucrative).

The problem w vanilla is that either a specific bee species is required or each flower must be pollinated by hand. However, I saw an article recently about a ‘smart’ mechanical bee that had been engineered. Presumably, such a beast could replace hand pollination and avoid the environmental sensitivities of the live bees.

Vanilla vines take up a fraction of the space of cocoa plants and are prolific. I’m not sure if wholesale price/bean but retail is ridiculous. Successful greenhouse growing could probably cut price by at least 50%.

that’s what I would’ve expected. I don’t think the article was specific as to geography. If so, that is yet another important aspect that was neglected.

I’m waiting for somebody to come out with a scheme for harvesting H2 from nuclear waste/fuel rod storage/cooling ponds. Radiolytic hydrogen generation would be relatively clean and seems like it could be cheap. Turns waste into a resource. I’m sure the usual screaming meemies would get butthurt about such a thing so I don’t see it happening.

Also, re the 3.5% CH4 loss: that seems extraordinarily high. If it were true, there would be a lot more dead oil/gasfield workers due to H2S poisoning. I suspect this is another case of lies, damned lies and statistics. The writer has created the impression that the 3.5% loss is at the production point whereas if the number is real, it is the total from production thru the processing and distribution chain. That difference is important cuz the screaming meemies go with the 1st impression and want more rules and regs at the production point while ignoring the rest. Doesn’t accomplish much except for higher prices.

curious as to why u dumped HQH.

I’ve held HQL for >10 yrs.

I don’t think climate change will be prevented - or even mitigated - partially because population will increase. The original reason for this board was that global standard of living would parallel that population growth and there are investment gains to be made. The trade off is increasing energy consumption and damages to the environment. It’s inevitable. That doesn’t mean I endorse waste - quite the opposite. I think much of which is forwarded as being ‘green’ is actually wasteful and environmentally harmful for the global system. Ultimately, I think people will figure out that adaptation in the form of not worrying about Miami being under water is the more pragmatic solution. It’s not like it would be a new discovery. Folks were doing it before they figured out the wheel. I ‘spose that could be viewed as optimism.

As for fatalism, it’s a fairly common phenomenon for organisms to eventually trash their homes to the unlivable state - think yeasties in a champagne bottle. Eventually their waste prevents further metabolism no matter how much food is thrown at them. Portlandites and ebola virii might also serve as examples unless you want to quibble about viruses being classified as organisms.

Then there is the ‘shit happens’ factor and some of that is completely beyond the ability of humans to control or affect, eg pick a geologic or astronomical process. Again, inevitable and not necessarily something that is gonna take 1 million years. I’m pretty sure that’s why Elon and Bezos are on top of things (that’s a joke). Just wish Elon would hurry up with my disk….

“something will replace us some day”

exactly.

“I thought plants, trees etc. gave off mostly oxygen?”

my point was that environmental control systems tend to consume a lot of power and water. Lab protein requires a lot of both. Even if the local, facility power is generated by solar panels, somewhere along the line you can safely bet body parts that hydrocarbons were burned in producing the building and materials of the facility and the local power source. The environmental control for my grandfather’s cows was 0 and their water came from the creek. They obviously required some work but I’d bet that the human supplied power/kg protein was < than for lab protein.

“Good for us, not so good for the world's oceans”

The oceans will do fine - maybe not w the same set of creatures as exists now, but marine creatures have been resilient. The oldest carbonate rocks are >2.5 billion yrs. those rocks form by creatures removing CO2. The Devonian was considerably warmer and atmosphere considerably higher CO2 concentrations (and would have had really impressive surfing and full moons). The oceans and creatures in the oceans did fine until they didn’t and a new set of creatures came along. Some form of carbonate forming/atm CO2 buffering creatures were a constant throughout.

Folks that talk about ocean acidification are usually spouting BS.

“A mileage tax would encourage people to drive less.”

or find more ways to break yet another misbegotten law

“Plant-based meat emits 30%–90% less greenhouse gas than conventional meat (kg-CO2-eq/kg-meat)

Plant-based meat uses 72%–99% less water than conventional meat (l-water/kg-meat)”

I’d ask for the bases of these measurements before I’d believe them. Growing a kg of protein in a temperature controlled building will almost certainly generate more CO2 and use less water than growing a kg of cow on a pasture. In addition, I’m not sure of the ultimate point. Do the folks that come up w these statistics advocate eliminating cows as a species so that they don’t emit CO2?

these have been ‘under development’ in the US since 1960s. I’ll venture that the US will never see any benefit from that ‘investment’. The PRC probably will - both inside and in 3rd world nations.

that is aside from the point. Rockefeller/Durant/Ford…. built their businesses and set the stage for entire industries based on RISK of their money and that of their investors. The government didn’t say: “have a few $billion, try to build a business. If you fail, that’s ok. Btw, enjoy the fat salary our backstop will allow you”

also btw: excise & property taxes existed before income taxes. The former being explicitly mentioned in the original constitution and the 1st civil war (whiskey) being fought over that matter

the federal government didn’t subsidize Rockefeller or Durant/Ford at the advent of the of the oil industry and ICE vehicle market. Both were well developed by the time Eisenhower started the government build out of the interstate highway system - which was a combo defense/commerce project.

Similar for railroad systems and mining industries. The government gave incentives but didn’t place the burden on the tax payers for the development of those industries

Depletion allowance ‘subsidy’ - sure - just like any other depreciation allowance (oh, wait, I mean ‘subsidy’ /s)

The Electric Vehicle Welfare State

”Auto mak­ers have been tout­ing their in­creas­ing EV sales and claim elec­tric cars are the “fu­ture.” Great. Then gov­ernment doesn’t need to sub­si­dize them. Steve Jobs never asked the gov­ern­ment to pay peo­ple to buy iPhones or to fi­nance their pro­duc­tion.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-electric-vehicle-welfare-state-joe-biden-auto-makers-gm-volkswagen-stellantis-11628201680?st=xxwyl3i3ltjjldt&reflink=article_copyURL_share

I think he was just talking about LiFePO4 batteries in general cuz nominally cheaper and safer. There’s always trade-offs and ultimately, it’s not the solution.

Politics may be driving this stuff now but thermo and economics ultimately win.

almost $200k/person!

indeed. And I’ll start listening to anything John Kerry and Al Gore have to say when they give up air conditioning.

“Useful life” is a nebulous quantity. I’ve known people w EVs and the batteries needed replacement before the owners had achieved what they anticipated as “useful life” of the vehicle. I’ve owned 30 yr old ICE vehicles and they still functioned when disposed. No way a battery is going to last that long even if it was only taken out for a Sunday drives around the block.

The point was that your efficiency calculation was a great example of selecting numbers to fit the conclusion rather than a comprehensive analysis.

how often will the gas tank in the Mercedes need to be replaced?

don’t mean to shoot messengers.

I wouldn’t call any winners yet. politics has certainly skewed the market’s ability to sort out efficiencies but that won’t last indefinitely. Ultimately, displaced costs/subsidies catch up and voters will push back to what costs them less. Sometimes it takes a while, eg whales haven’t been a commercially viable commodity for >100 yrs but some governments are slow learners.

the 3x more efficient is yet another thing that falls into the realm of lies, damned lies and statistics, ie the system can be defined
such that it makes your answer accurate but that would be a narrow definition

I’ll leave that to an engineer but my WAG is: not much (maybe 10%)

when I looked at 1 of these schemes associated w CO2 capture, the amount of Cl2 produced would’ve dwarfed worldwide consumption. Considering the concentration factor of getting from seawater to 9000 ppm, I’d bet the quantity of Cl2 produced would also be enormous.

While I wouldn’t be inclined to immediately write off all filtration schemes for Li extraction, I certainly wouldn’t go after seawater as the source. There are many brine sources where Mother Nature has already done much of the concentrating.

Li doesn’t like to fit into most silicate minerals. That’s why it shows up in anomalously high concentrations in hydrothermal brines, hydrothermal clays, and late stage pegmatite minerals. It’s like the last kid picked for some team sport in elementary school. Nothing wants it until nothing else is left. That should be taken advantage of for industrial extraction.

yup. The cost offsets from things like chlorine should be a big red flag. It’s a scam I’ve also seen for CO2 capture schemes. If you do the math on how much chlorine will be produced to meet the production/capture metrics it would flood the market and crash the offsetting product prices thereby removing the claimed benefit.

The news release also says it uses $5 in electricity per kg - not $5/kg in production cost. Another red flag. In Saudi Arabia brine disposal might not be a problem but in the US such a process would incur disposal costs and I’d bet the membrane regeneration costs are in addition to the $5. If I were a funder, I’d demand to see all the details on real production and material costs as well as durability.