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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Re: Shell Oil, Mother Jones reports:

Shell’s profits have climbed to $14 billion for the first half of 2024 after its decision to focus on fossil fuels over low-carbon energy delivered stronger than expected earnings for a second consecutive quarter.

Europe’s biggest oil and gas company rewarded its shareholders with a further $3.5 billion in share buybacks after reporting adjusted earnings of $6.3 billion in the three months to the end of June.

The latest results, which have taken the company’s total profits for the first half of the year to $14 billion and its share buybacks to $7 billion, have angered climate campaigners as Shell continues to grow its global gas business and pull back on investment in low-carbon energy.

At least these people are being honest.  They openly admit that they’re destroying the planet in order to make huge profits.

That’s a hell of a lot more than ExxonMobil can say with their enormous PR campaigns designed to convince us that they’re transitioning to hydrogen, biofuels, our whatever their latest round of bullshit is focused on.

As suggested in the photo above, this whole situation would evaporate the moment that Big Oil had to pay even a tiny portion of the costs that our civilization is suffering in terms of environmental damage.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Most of us would agree that Trump and his support base are “weird,” in the sense that everything these people stand for: the pathological hatred of immigrants, the rejection of science, the peeling back of human rights, etc., represent giant steps backward into the Dark Ages.

Most people would say that it’s a weird direction to be taken by a large segment of American society.  Yet the word doesn’t begin to capture the essence of what we are encountering here.

To call a person or a group “weird” means little else than that they don’t conform to our cultural norms.  I may say that my neighbor is weird because he comes outside in his underwear, or that a certain religious cult has weird beliefs.

But what we have here is better described as evil than weird.  Did any of the survivors of Hitler or Stalin describe their tormentors as “weird?”

Is this the best we can do to describe pure Trumpism? Is it proper to say that an attempt to overthrow the United States government is weird?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Come November we will have the answer to a very important question: What percentage of “56-year-old gun-owning country folks” think like this guy?

My guess: it’s not huge, but it’s big enough to get the job done.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Chris Murphy, senator from Connecticut, is a progressive with a great future ahead of him, if we can prevent this country from slipping into autocracy.

What on Earth was Fox News thinking when they decided to let Murphy come on camera and present the truth about the southern border?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This is a discussion we come across frequently.  What type of person both follows the teachings of Christ and supports Donald Trump, a man completely devoid of mercy and compassion for others?

The answer, of course, is that for some, Christianity has little to do with Jesus’ actual teachings; it’s the belief that the worship of Christ is the only path to heaven and the avoidance of eternal damnation.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Synthetic Fuel

Should you be investing in the tech that converts excess CO2 in the air into sustainable transportation fuels?

Well, that suggests that there is such a technology and that this company owns it.

Neither is the case.

If there is a path forward here, and there is, it doesn’t involve “excess CO2 in the air.” It involves capturing CO2 from point sources like coal-fired power plants and concrete manufacturing facilities, combining it with hydrogen from the electrolysis of water, and using huge amounts of off-peak energy from nuclear or wind plants.

The optimum process for synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels in this manner can be found here.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

For the vast majority of Americans who can’t read music, the left- and right-most signs in the meme here are what are called “repeats,”  I.e., read it once, then repeat it, so forth, in perpetuity.

There are many excellent reasons to teach music in elementary school. One of which is that music theory is firmly based in mathematics and basic physics.  What better way to teach fractions than by explaining the time-value of whole-notes, half-notes, etc.?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As a scientist who spent her life studying animals, Jane Goodall and her comment here should hit home for many of us.

Why we slaughter some animals and not others is a matter of freakish chance.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I have to confess that I have a terrible case of this “disease.”

It’s incurable, but there are two keys to managing it:

Silence, i.e., minding one’s own business and keeping these thoughts to oneself.

Patience, i.e., recognizing that lousy grammar is on the march.  When you hear a TV sports commentator describing an errant golf shot with, “That ball could have went anywhere,” respond with a smile rather than an incapacitating stroke or seizure.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

From a reader:

Back in the day, there used to be the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and FCC (Federal Communications Commission) who policed such things as false advertising. When was the last time you even heard about those groups, much less viewed or received any warning? Exactly. Just like thee and me, they are overwhelmed by a barrage of such BS and complaints. So, as usual, the responsibility rests on us. Cover thy hindquarters, do your own research, and make the best decisions you can based on the data you have… regardless of the hype. 

Like so many other elements of our society, the bad guys have overwhelmed governmental efforts to keep us safe from them.  I see this in the cleantech space constantly, e.g., products that are essentially perpetual motion or something similar that either violate the laws of physics or grossly overstate their capabilities.

These people should be in prison, but the justice system is inadequate to make that happen.

On the other hand, Trump is still, at least as of this date, a free man too.  It’s possible that his lawyers and the Supreme Court will delay justice indefinitely.

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