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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

This fellow makes a good point, but isn’t there a limit?  Given that were all endowed at birth with a huge brain and an enormous capacity for compassion and kindness, how is it possible that half of the United States has come to think that wokeness is a disease and that Donald Trump is the rightful president?

Many of the world’s wealthiest people are profiting from enterprises like Big Oil, knowing with full certainty that they are dooming this planet and everyone living on it to a future of extreme environmental degradation.  How is this possible?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s a reminder that life today, with all its moral and financial challenges, is actually pretty good, catapulted as it is by IT, communications, and healthcare technology.

On top of that, we may be right around the corner from expelling Trump from our lives, getting a grip on climate change and other environmental catastrophes, routing Russia out of Ukraine, etc.

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

He could have been a man of compassion, a humanitarian, a savior to millions of starving children, the spearhead of climate change mitigation.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger moral catastrophe.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

At left is the opinion of op-ed columnist for The New York Times Charles Blow, and he’s nailed it.

There is no doubt that violence will ensue as a result, but the alternative is far worse, i.e., abandoning rule of law just because some strong man will incite riots if he faces criminal charges.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Hydrokinetics

If you happen to live next to a year-round fast-flowing river, there’s no reason you can’t do what this guy did: buy a water wheel, connect it to a generator, and power your house.

Will this be cost-effective?  I doubt it, especially when maintenance is taken into consideration.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Quick question:  In a word or two, how would you characterize the youth of today?

Before you answer, perhaps it would be a good idea to “walk down memory lane” and see what some of our ancestors thought about this very issue.

I love this piece in Time Magazine, but trust me, it gets worse.  Quickly.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Maybe it’s time that the majority of Americans simply chill out with respect to the hateful stupidity that pervades our most backward states.  We’ve been trying to fix what’s wrong in the Deep South for 150 years.  It simply doesn’t work.

There’s a reason that most people in, for instance, Mississippi or Arkansas, live there.  If they want to ban books (see meme at left), deny science, or teach creationism as science, perhaps it’s time to say, Have It Your Way, as in the old Burger King commercial.

From Neil Young’s song: Alabama.  You have the rest of the union to help you along.  What’s going wrong? 

The answer: Nothing whatsoever. This is precisely what these people want.  So why not let them live their dream?  They’re already at the bottom in education, economic opportunity, and healthcare, and they’re close to the top in racial violence and gun deaths.  How much further can they fall?

Now, obviously, there is a line.  Don’t lynch black people.  If it comes down to bodily injury, we’ll be after you, as we explained to the assassins of Ahmaud Arbery and anyone else who was listening, when our justice system sentenced this innocent black jogger’s three murderers to life in prison, and, up until fairly recently, would have fried them in the state’s electric chair, like so many pieces of chicken.

Seriously, after almost two centuries, it’s time to learn that societal concepts like Trump, white supremacy, and cold, raw ignorance coupled with seething hate against non-Whites just may be the perfect path for some people.

Perhaps it’s plain time for the rest of us to turn our attention elsewhere.

There are problems we can solve, and others we simply can’t.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a piece in New Republic entitled Ron DeSantis Wants to Make It a Felony to Have an Undocumented Person in Your Home or Car.

The truth is this: No he doesn’t.  DeSantis knows that introducing a hateful and clearly unconstitutional bill like this is a quick and extremely effective way to attract media attention and drive this nation’s people into a frenzy, with him in the spotlight, yet one more time.

Can’t we just hear Americans’ thoughts?

Half of us: Didn’t we learn anything from the Nazis, when people were hanged for harboring Jews?  Can an Uber driver go to jail because he didn’t check one of his riders’ papers?  Can you think of anything more blatantly stupid and mean?

The other half: Yeah!  Biden has opened the border, and immigrants are pouring across it like ants to steal our jobs.  If the radical left has successfully weaponized the Justice Department to come after Trump, DeSantis is our last chance to save this great country!

Anyone who thinks that Ron DeSantis, an educated person, actually supports a law that couldn’t get past the Supreme Court in North Korea, is an idiot.

But, as they say, we live among them.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

It’s easy to see where Harrison Ford is coming from here.

Personally, I’m not too concerned about the denial of science in its most visible forms, e.g., QAnon and the flat Earthers.  Even the COVID and climate deniers don’t scare me.

What terrifies me is that our world leaders are motivated more by wealth and power than they are in making sure that science predominates our thinking when it comes to policy-making.

The reason this planet is in the process of baking itself isn’t that we have a certain percentage of idiots who don’t understand AGW (the theory of anthropogenic global warming); it’s that human civilization can’t motivate itself to do what our climate scientists are begging us to do.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Taking money from stupid people is a business model that dates back at least thousands of years.  As Aesop put it, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

Suppose you’re selling used cars.  Anyone with an IQ over 80 understands that he’s walking into a lion’s den when he shows up on your lot, and so, arguably, he deserves what he gets.

But consumers of news?  IMO, Fox News has no right to deliberately lie to its viewers, regardless of how unintelligent most of them are, and how poorly they’re regarded by the “news” source.

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