Turquoise methane

Gary Abernathy has noted that natural gas is greener than oil, as carbon-to-output ratio goes. Abernathy may sound like a Reagan-era "catsup is a vegetable" pubbican, to some.

Where methane competes with biodiesel, methane isn't Renewable. But what if it is?

Since we're going to have landfills, why not take methane thence. Terraform exists, also, to convert CO₂ into CH₄. As for purely "green" fuels like hydrogen and ammonia: it is cheaper to extract these from methane than from (say) water, and anyway I don't like to lose water.

These technologies have made natural gas, if not fully Green^TM, at least a link in the chain to "grey" even "blue".

Jannat 'Eden

Arabia benefits from the great Indian Ocean monsoons. The Sahara doesn't really have one now - but it used to. Less well known, the southern Hijaz also has seasonal downpours they call the Kharif. At the same time as the Sahara monsoons, the Earth was warm enough to rain more monsoon for Arabia, perhaps such that the Kharif could qualify as well. The blasted landscape of Rub' al-Khali then had a lake: so, Abdallah S. Zaki et al.

This ended around 3500 BC. Sumerians start reporting paraSemitic Akkadian a few centuries later, before they and the Eblaites write on their own. We read true Semitic maybe a millennium after that.

This lakebed cannot be the Urheimat of the whole Afro-Asiatic family, if it is a family. For one, Egyptian is already firmly lower-Nilotic. Also Berber could stem from the preSemitic language of the old "Natufian" Levant, maybe Chadic also. I wonder, rather, if this region be the Cushitic homeland, or if not then the core of EthioSemitic and Mehri before pushing Cushitic off the Arabia-Felix.

Takarkori, before R1b

Today, Nada Salam et al. brings "Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara -" [and Hyper Chad]. Which title goes on to its own conclusion.

From Takarkori in southwestern Libya, are - rather, in 5000 BC, were - two females. Salam posts their DNA, 60000 years before that: branched in a third group alongside us Out-Of-Africa. Meanwhile during the great Epipaleolithic ice-age backwash into Morocco and the Horn, they got some of our Neander genes. But not nearly as many. So, where and when did my R1b-cousins "V88" get here?

Takarkori was already firing ceramics and herding herds, although not the camel. Green Sahara was nice enough I can assume some relationship with sorghum as well. This was mediated by those postEuropeans from the north. Chad was, it seems, too hot for most of us.

As for Takarkori's main ancestors: a substantial branch supplied 40% of the ancestry to Taforalt in Morocco 13000 BC. The other 60% is "Natufian" that is, Levantine preSemitic. Elsewhither, Takarkorians visited Ghana.

All this is telling me these ladies of Takarkori were not Tuaregs nor any other sort of Berber, as might be found in Morocco's hills today. Women don't have Y chromosomes (as Kindergarten Cop teaches) so, we wouldn't see direct evidence here. But back then, a R1b daddy should have bourne some stark differences from such an anciently-divergent population, with him. So these two were not Cushites nor even, really, Chadites.

Ancestresses to Nilo-Saharan, best represented today by Nubians, would be my first guess.

Nuclear war scenarios

Various antiwar Influencers, not least Michael Cernovich, have been touting Ann(i)e Jacobsen. As one who lived through the red-giant phase of the Cold War, I got the feeling that somebody who knows what they are talking about should handle this one. Maybe Jacobsen knows what she's talking about, too.

First up: Reddit doesn't like her book. We also have Matthew Petti and (on that "hair trigger" meme) Peter Huessy. It looks as if Jacobsen, in fact, is less-versed on the topic than was... Stanley Kubrick. At least Jacobsen isn't telling us to abandon the space programme like some idiots.

I think one issue we have in the 2020s, or really in the 1980s, besides the same damn Ministry songs is the prospect of an efficient and small warhead. It would inflict about the fifteen metric-kilotons of a Hiroshima but without wasting so much munition. That is: it would be more-easily fireable and would also not spill so much fallout. We can assume this 2022 paper still holds up.

Limited nuclear war might become more of an invasion-repellent application than an intercontinental ballistic opportunity. Would we train ICBMs on Russia if it delivered 15 kT unto some Azov-Battalion base... in internationally-recognised Russian territory? I wonder.

More likely, it breaks the taboo. Extension to civil wars become possible; then, to border wars... like Pakistan/Taliban. As that happens, think: For All Time.

On the plus side, America could launch those Orions from Greenland; we're already polar-orbiting on chemicals.