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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The author of this meme asks a very good question–one I would love to have answered before I check out of here.

If you surveyed everyone who voted against Trump, I think you’ve find four prevalent responses:

• Trump has a very close connection with Putin and the Russian oligarchs from which he’s profiting handsomely.

• Trump may not be profiting from these relationships, but has a feeling of great reverence for the world’s dictators, i.e., those whose actions are completely unconstrained.

• Trump loves to create outrage.  He doesn’t particularly care what people are saying about him, as long as he’s in the news.  (I hadn’t realized this was a possibility until I saw his picks for key cabinet posts.)

• Trump’s nature as a sociopath commands him to make life miserable for everyone except his supporters, i.e., people who can do something for him.  Since Europeans don’t have any direct effect on U.S. politics, why should he care a damn what they think?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Perhaps there were times in U.S. history when government failed the people in a way that was not too different from what we have today.  I heard recently that the robber-barons of the late 19th Century were so corrupt that they essentially owned the presidency and congress.

Having said that, no Americans alive today have ever experienced anything like having Donald Trump in the White House, with his cronies in cabinet positions, with four long years to take battering rams to women’s rights, our healthcare system, national defense, education, and environment. If anyone thought there was any fairness in the justice system as it applies to rich people, as Dante said, “abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

As I explained to my mom on the phone the other evening, roughly half of this country walks around in a state of deep disappointment in the abject failure on the part of 76 million of their countrymen to apply basic moral reasoning at the voting booth.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This photo appears to have been taken about the same year I was these kids’ age, ca. 1965.  It depicts white and black school students , all standing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

What made this generation “the best?”  The unquestioning belief that the United States is the greatest country on Earth,  and that God goes out of His way to bless America over the other 200+ sovereign countries around the world?

I’m willing to believe that these kids’ parents’ generation, those who abandoned their educations and fledgling careers to overrun European fascism before it overran us, was, as they are frequently called, “the greatest generation.”

What did we “boomers” do?  Well, lots of us became fairly affluent, often as a result of the sacrifices our parents made on our behalf.

But what are we doing now?  For one, 76 million of us just reelected Donald Trump, a man whose political base is largely composed of hateful morons, a man who’s dead set on baking the Earth to a crisp for profit, ruining American education, and making the billionaires richer with each passing year.

It’s hard to understand what’s “the best” about that.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Trump plans to nominate Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy and environmental policy skeptic, to be the next energy secretary.  Wright plans to slow the process of phasing out fossil fuels in favor of renewables, and is perhaps best known for his statement, “There is no such thing as dirty energy.”

Outside of Big Oil/Coal/Gas, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that the consumption of fossil fuels is making our planet hotter and thus more prone to hurricanes, floods, wildfires, loss of land mass, desertification, ocean acidification, and cases of heat stroke.

Looking for flood insurance? Good luck.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I can’t deny that the scenario here happened occasionally.  What happened to me personally, is that if I had a burning desire to know something, I’d ask a teacher of that specific discipline, or perhaps my grandfather, who was a learned man.

The real difference is that now, I need to have only a mild curiosity about something before I go to Google or YouTube.

Technology is, IMO, the only advantage to living in the 21st Century. It certainly isn’t morality, courtesy, job opportunities for honest people, quality education, human rights, respect for one’s employees, or rule of law.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, have left the United States with no plans to return.

It would be interesting to know how many Americans have made the same decision, though, for most people, expatriating comes at huge costs in terms of proximity to loved ones, loss of relationships with medical professionals, disconnection from professional relationships, etc.

Still, it’s easy to see why people want to be as far away from the influence of Donald Trump as possible.  Watching him fill his cabinet with the people who wouldn’t be qualified to run a pizzeria is an extremely painful process.

God only knows what he’s going to do as president, now that all the federal charges against him for trying to overthrow the U.S. government have been dropped.

Will he succeed in his dream to become America’s first autocratic leader?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

This lady expresses exactly what I try to tell kids who think they hate (or are terrified of) physics but are good at math.  Physics is just math applied to the real world.

If I’m tutoring someone who’s taken first-year calculus, and I ask if he can take the derivative of the function x(t) = 100 – 16t2, he’ll say sure, it’s x'(t) = -32t. Now I tell him, OK, that function gives the position of an object dropped off the roof of a building 100 feet high at t seconds after it’s released.  All you’re doing is applying the math you already know to stuff in the real world.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Fossil fuel lobbyists are actually the largest single contingent of the COP (Conference of Parties on climate change) meetings. Sure, there are government entities, environmental protection organizations, the big players in solar, wind, energy storage, electric transportation, and so on, but there are more people from Big Oil/Gas/Coal than any other group, and it’s clear that they will fight low-carbon sources of energy to the very end.

ExxonMobil earned $8.6 billion in the third quarter of 2024, but that’s because they are not required to pay for the long-term environmental damage that their products are inflicting on the planet.

That sum of cash carries with it an immense amount of political power, making this transition an intensely difficult one.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’m sure the meme here was an attempt at humor on the author’s part, but the serious side of learning/teaching the subject is worth a comment.

I would never introduce even elementary physics to a kid who’s not proficient in first year algebra, and preferably algebra 2, with its functions, logarithms/exponents, trigonometry, etc.  That’s why Earth science and biology are taught before physics.

I doubt the little darlings shown at left have too tight a grasp on 8th, 9th, and 10th grade math.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

While I don’t believe that God is going to interview me when I leave this planet, I get the point here.

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