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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s something from the Facebook “chat” here in Central California.

We live among people who are so deeply ignorant that they don’t know that only U.S. citizens can vote.

It’s a truly pathetic time to be an American, and it can only get worse from here.

Further discussion:

Reader A: Are you still ignorant about who votes? What a bunch of crap you were fed by Trump. Work the polls sometime in November and get a little educated.

Me:  I appreciate you. But seriously, do you seriously believe that people like this have any interest whatsoever in getting educated?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Aldous Huxley put this thought by Marcus Aurelius a bit differently:

‘The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.’

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As shown in the graphic here, the U.S. was making decent progress until fairly recently.

Some speculate that the emergence of Donald Trump on the political scene released a great deal of pent-up hatred, allowing, in fact encouraging, white people to be their “worst selves.”

Of course, there are other explanations, e.g.:

Historically, all democracies have limited life-spans

Fox News and the other misinformation “news” sources predated Trump by more than a decade.

Social movements tend to respond according to “pendulum swings,” and perhaps it was simply time for America to revert into darkness.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Finland’s tackling homelessness is a far easier challenge than one might think, insofar as they actually care about stuff like this.  Everyone gets free education and healthcare in exchange for the taxes they pay, so their healthy and gainfully employed.

Perennially, it’s the world number one ranking country in the happiness rankings.  That’s not hard to understand; it’s a society where everyone takes care of one another.  Not a bad way to spend a lifetime.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I have a great deal of respect for the popular physicist Michio Kaku, not only for his prowess as a scientist, but for his capacity to translate his knowledge in a way that communicates to those of us of lesser intelligence.

Here, however, I disagree.  Dreams (at least mine) are surreal.  They’re the furthest thing from science.

Of course, we’re all, even our scientists, entitled to poetic license.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I just spoke with a guy in the wine industry, and I asked him how, if at all, climate change is affecting what he does.

From his perspective, it’s the horrific wildfires whose smoke imbues (or “taints”) the grapes with an unpleasant flavor that needs to be modified, normally by creative methods of blending.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here are a few thoughts that had not occurred to me:

When companies get caught “cooking the books,” the fallout is generally brutal. We’ve seen it before—Enron, WorldCom—where shady accounting led to total collapse and bankruptcy. Even when a company survives, trust is shattered, and the stock can stay in the gutter for years.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if the U.S. could face a similar danger. If our government starts manipulating or burying economic data to avoid bad news, there will be a reckoning.

The warning signs would be there: inconsistencies in reports, numbers that don’t add up, and growing doubt from investors and foreign governments. And unless we go full authoritarian, that kind of deception can’t be hidden forever.

If it ever got bad enough, the fallout could be massive—foreign investors pulling out of U.S. markets, interest rates spiking, stocks tanking, and the shockwaves rippling across the globe.

We’re not there yet. But early warning lights are blinking.

The “early warning lights” to which Rapier refers are, of course, Trump’s challenging statistics that make him look bad, e.g., the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics fiasco.

It’s too much to hope that Trump will change his ways and somehow become sane and honest.  However, it’s reasonable to hope that Trump will be gone before our nation loses its credibility in the world of global finance and is rendered as irrelevant as Enron.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

My alma mater, Trinity College in Hartford, CT, has been named to LinkedIn‘s inaugural Top 50 Colleges list, ranking #42 nationally and #4 among liberal arts colleges.  This ranking recognizes schools that “best set their graduates up for long-term career success, looking at real alumni outcomes like job placement rates, career advancement, and professional network strength.”

I make this point not to brag, but only to support my position that a liberal arts education actually does set the student up for success in their chosen vocation.  Give a young person four years to ponder the great questions that have been eating at humankind for thousands of years, and good things can happen.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The concept presented at left is important, but one whose only answer is that this civilization is far more likely to go extinct than it is to survive via the cessation of war.  I base this on the way our species came to be and evolved to where it is now, over the last 100K – 200K years, based as it is on tribalism and the endless wars between these tribes, combined with slavery and other forms of unimaginable cruelty.

Is there a chance that humankind will encounter some event that will pull us together in some unprecedented way that will overturn these trends? Sure, it’s conceivable.

The most optimistic of our science fiction writers have been working at this for generations.  Maybe one of them will ultimately be right.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I just met a married couple who recently retired from a lumber business they ran for 30 years in Southern California.  When I asked about any trends they see in the industry vis-a-vis environmental sustainability, they had plenty to say, perhaps the most interesting is the use of steel in building construction as a replacement for wood.  This is largely driven by concern for mold on/in wood of all types: lumber and engineered wood products, e.g., OSB (see pic above).

From an environmental perspective, this is unfortunate, as wood is largely sustainable.  If you don’t plant trees to replace those you cut down, there soon won’t be any left.  And building products sequester the CO2 they absorbed throughout they lives for many decades, even centuries. Compare this with the lifecycle of most plants, which decompose or burn in fires, re-releasing their stored CO2 very quickly.

The manufacturing of steel, by contrast, emits huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

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