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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Given that Trump appears to be gradually losing the support of his base (“smaller rallies, shrinking base”), one has to wonder what’s next. Presuming that no indictments are unsealed over the coming months, will Trump simply drift into oblivion, and cease to be an element of importance in U.S. politics?

The percentage of Republicans who say they think “very highly” of Trump fell from 72% to 53% over a period of just the last few months.  Congressional Republicans are reported to be tired of having to maintain the “Big Lie” and simply want to move on, back to the days before the GOP was associated with deceit, irrationality, and, of course, blatant criminality.

Keep in mind, however, that most pundits believe it’s not if criminal charges will be brought against Trump, but when. The latest news is that two days after election day on November 3rd, 2020, before the votes were fully counted and the election called, the former president’s son assured then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows via a series of text messages that team Trump had complete “operational control” over the outcome of the election.  A former U.S. attorney referred to this as a “smoking gun.”

Bang or whimper?  Too early to say.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This may sound good, but what does it actually mean?

In truth, there is no Russian politics.  There is no party, no opposition party, no political opponent.

There is one man, Putin, whose will is the only element in what could be called “Russian politics.”  If he wants it, it happens.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

The video below covers the pros and cons of hydrogen as a carrier of energy in a fair and honest fashion, and that’s not something that can be said about every attempt to address the subject.

As a quick reminder:

Grey hydrogen = the steam reformation of methane, producing CO2 that is released into the atmosphere. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Sorry, I can’t edit the meme so as to adjust the grammar, i.e., the agreement of subject and verb, but what Browder said is worth considering nonetheless.

We’re totally surrounded by moral atrocities, starting with treason here at home.  Moreover, what Putin is doing is not the only example of war criminality in our lifetimes.

Yet it’s hard to know what we should have been done about Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, Yemen, Cambodia, and the others.

Here, however, it’s crystal clear that every single one of us should be doing whatever we can to weaken Russia.  That means all American companies should cease doing business with the world genocide capital.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From this:

New text messages obtained by the January 6 committee show Trump’s closest circle was strategizing to overturn the 2020 election before the votes were even counted.

Wait a second.  Isn’t attempting to overthrow the United States government a crime?

When we were young, our history books made it fairly clear that treason was a crime whose criminal penalties were equal to that of murder.

Now, this is totally nebulous.  Is it OK, as long as you have enough political support?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I have to think we’re very close here.

There are no interpretations of what they did that don’t include the commission of numerous felonies.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I can only imagine the look on her parents’ faces when their pretty, young, college-educated daughter brings this thing home to meet mom and dad for the first time.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business
Regarding the meme here, a reader notes:
Cease calling it Defunding. It’s restructuring their purchasing choices. Using their available funds to streamline their efficiency to help, serve and protect their communities.
Defunding sounds like lawlessness, ignorance, and spitefulness towards first responders, while restructuring purchasing choices sounds like making them actually work for the betterment of all of society and communities.
Yes, “defund” was among the worst possible word choices.
My marketing services agency did, I would guess, 10 – 12 different projects in naming, positioning, and demand generation for Hewlett-Packard.  When I interviewed my main client on camera, I asked him, “Why did you hire us?”
He replied, “Simple.  It’s because H-P sucks at this.  If we had to market sushi, we’d call it “cold, dead fish.'”
“Defund” is just as bad.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Let’s start by admitting the obvious: Thomas Paine was a great thinker, but he never held any high public office .

Having said that, consider how few of those who rise in American politics today think like this.  The precise opposite could be argued, i.e., that making progress in political life absolutely requires one to pander for approval.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there actually are leaders of countries that are fairly inconsequential on the global scene, say New Zealand or Iceland, who live lives according to this principle.  Voters in these countries are generally intelligent and kind people, and the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people leave them alone.

But where there’s a great deal of money at stake, self-interest can’t be far behind.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

From this:

It’s not like you can make food out of thin air. Well…it turns out you can. A company from Finland, Solar Foods, is planning to bring to market a new protein powder, Solein, made out of CO₂, water and electricity. It’s a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs. It reportedly looks and tastes like wheat flour, and could become an ingredient in a wide variety of food products after its initial launch in 2021.

There is no reason this can’t happen, but there is certainly a reason it won’t, and that is the cost of energy.

Just like all the various concepts for synthetic fuels, if you rearrange the atoms in CO2 and water, you have the potential to wind up with hydrocarbons and carbohydrates.  Add in nitrogen, which composes 78% of our atmosphere, and it’s theoretically possible to build proteins.

The issue, again, is that all these processes are highly endothermic, meaning that huge amounts of energy are required to make them happen.

Concepts like lab-grown meat (aka “meat without slaughter”) are far more feasible, in that they start with actual animal proteins.

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