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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Those of you who have seen Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” will remember the scene in which young (9 years old?) Alvy Singer is so depressed about the ultimate fate of the Earth/universe (see clip below) that he cannot function and refuses to do his homework (“What’s the point?”).  Even a kindly psychologist hired by his mother fails to console him.

The movie is one of filmdom’s great comedies, and the audience fully understands that only severely neurotic people worry about what the universe will be like in five billion years.

Having said that, sane people do have reason to be concerned, and deeply so, about what is happening now and will grow worse quickly over the coming decades, which, unlike being vaporized by the sun, is something we can control.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business
(California Governor Gavin) Newsom: While the Trump Administration makes this country unrecognizable, California remains a stable, reliable partner in the fight for a clean energy future.
Another point to be made here is that California, while just a single state, is an extremely powerful entity, especially in the arena of tech development.
By and large, we’re a well educated and liberal-minded people who are scientific in our thinking, and we’re passionate about environmental sustainability.
It’s not that we don’t have Trump supporters, but there are very few of them, especially in our cities. Nationally, the president’s approval rating has fallen 10 points since last March, and stands at 33% today.  Statewide, here in California, it’s somewhere between 26 – 29%. Go to Santa Monica or Palo Alto and try to find a Trump hat.  Good luck.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business
(California Governor Gavin) Newsom: While the Trump Administration makes this country unrecognizable, California remains a stable, reliable partner in the fight for a clean energy future.
Though I understand that Trump is probably the worst single person who’s ever walked the Earth, there is a limit to the amount of damage he can do, principally because this country is so well protected by its constitution, the balance of powers, the rule of law, etc.
Yes, there is a huge number of Trump supporters, but there are fewer every day.  In addition to all the other insanity, this child sex thing is going to hurt him badly.  Even the most deranged fool is going to have a tough time with the claim that God sent us Trump to save the United States and have sex with young girls.    

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Of the dozens of people I’ve spoken to about climate change, it’s interesting that there are so many different viewpoints as to the gravest dangers it represents to human civilization.

The fellow at left seems to think it’s food shortages, and he may be right.

Others talk about climate refugees, i.e., huge numbers of people forced to evacuate their ancestral homes because of things like extreme heat, flooding, loss of land mass, etc.

Every time Puerto Rico gets torn apart by a hurricane, part of me is surprised that they keep rebuilding.  At a certain point, somebody’s going to say, “Look, we give up.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
This lady is a translator who was sitting there when she heard Trump say, “The United States and Italy have been allies since the days of ancient Rome.” And her face says it all.
I’ve seen this lady’s face before too, and I’m sure the circumstances were similar.
And yes, it speaks a thousand words.  In this case, “This is utter insanity.  Get me out of here.”
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
In January 2016, Trump held a televised “veterans’ fundraiser” that raised $2.8 million. The money was meant for veterans’ charities but was instead directed by his campaign and used to promote his political campaign.  This was and is wacky, not to mention illegal….
If you or I stole $2 million from a veterans’ charity, do you think a judge would simply tell us to repay the money?
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

On the surface, this idea has merit, and it’s been considered here in the U.S. for at least the last 20 years.  It’s never gone anywhere, because of:

The extreme cost of replacing existing pipe, and

The fact that it’s limited to water that flows downhill because of gravity.  (Obviously, if the water is pumped and you’re trying to extract some of its kinetic energy, you’re simply making the pumps work harder.)

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It appears that Trump is running out of room in his claim that he didn’t participate in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise.  Of course, what happens after all this comes out is hard to predict.

One of the things that is so shocking about Trump supporters is illustrated in the meme here, i.e., they don’t draw inferences about what happens outside of the United States.

COVID-19 was a good example. Many Trump supporters here in the States referred to it as the “plandemic,” meaning that they believed that our government made this happen, to test how far they could push the average American before he would refuse to follow orders.

I happen to know one of these people, and I asked him, “Well, you know that there are more that 200 sovereign nations on Earth, and every one of them took precautions to slow its spread.  So are you telling me that each of these governments decided to do the exact same thing, to deliberately  spread an often-lethal disease?”

It’s just a failure to think, especially in a manner that would inject doubt into a tightly held belief system.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

As shown in this short video, Donald Trump says that climate change is the biggest con job ever perpetrated on Earth.

We are to believe that Trump a) understands the subject better than the thousands of our planet’s top scientists, located in countries all around the globe, and b) he’s telling the truth, where they have somehow gotten together and conspired to lie.

That’s quite a stretch.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just got a chuckle that I thought I’d share.  One of the Newsmax commentators was talking about “Bad Bunny,” the entertainer who the United States hasn’t been able to stop talking about for the last few months re: his scheduled Super Bowl appearance next February.

A spokesperson for the National Football League made a comment in defense of the decision to have Mr. Bunny perform, on the basis that it’s very important for them to appeal to a wide variety of audiences, and the commentator referred to this (and him) as “woke and weird.”

Suggestion to Newsmax: Ask the NFL guy to go on live camera, in your studio, and have your commentator tell him this to his face.

Advice to Newsmax: Have a couple of EMTs and an ambulance ready.  If you think that “roughing the passer” is an issue in football, you haven’t seen anything yet; there will be little pieces of your talking head all over the room.

I’m by no means a man of violence, but I have to admit that I’d enjoy the spectacle.

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