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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It appears that Elon Musk is serious about colonizing Mars. A few points to be considered, however, many of which have been noted by others:

• If it’s feasible to colonize Mars, it’s feasible to fix the Earth. (Apparently came from Neil DeGrasse Tyson.)

• Wherever we go in the universe, we need a sustainable culture.  We’re actually fairly close to achieving that right here.

• If we tax the multibillionaires and apply the funds to things like decarbonizing our energy and transportation sectors, we’d be even closer.

• Transporting people and materials to Mars would be incredibly difficult and expensive.

• There’s essentially nothing on Mars conducive to supporting human life, in terms of water, atmosphere, temperature, and soil.

• Even if none of the above were true, all we would be accomplishing would be exporting human frailties (greed, tribalism, cruelty, cognitive biases, etc.) elsewhere in the solar system. We wouldn’t have gained a thing.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Many Americans are starting to feel like the lady whose observations we see at left.

Exactly how this moves forward from here is anyone’s guess.  Maybe the Democrats gain a huge majority in Congress in 2026 and then impeach and convict Trump–perhaps joined by lots of Republicans.

There are plenty of different scenarios.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Psychologists have been saying that Trump has some sort of mental disorders for many years.  But let’s rely on our own powers of observation for a moment.

Does he really seem any more mentally/emotionally disturbed today than when he came on the political scene ten years ago?

Does he lie more? Is he any less interested in learning about science, world affairs, or economics?  Is he any crueler, or indifferent to human suffering?

Trump needs to go, for dozens of reasons, but not because of an unsubstantiated accusation that he has “dementia.”

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’m sure all this at left is true.

But almost all these home remedies were popular before the 20th Century, and, since then, science has kicked in, and global life expectancies have increased from about 30 to about 70.

Causation here?  Maybe.

Is there corruption in the pharmaceutical industry? Of course.

Would I like to be fighting cancer with dandelion juice?  I don’t think so.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

This pic of Bill Nye reminds me of all the radio and television interviews I did when I was promoting my books a decade ago.  I never asked too much about the audience demographics in advance; I just presumed they were tuning in to learn something about environmental science.

All that went fine — until it didn’t — and a guy started screaming into his phone and calling me a “cockroach” because of my position that climate change posed a real threat to our civilization.

Here, Nye walks into the lion’s den.  Of course, that’s his brand.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m wondering if this can’t be done without being in gross violation of a whole raft of domestic and international laws.

Most Americans don’t support wanton criminality, which could be why Trump’s approval rating is 33% and continues to plunge.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Apparently, there is a shopping mall in Chicago with a 28% vacancy rate. I’m not an expert in commercial real estate, but that doesn’t sound terrible, given what I’ve seen the few times I’ve had the misfortune to be in such a facility.  They seem like ghost towns (see pic below).

The popularity of shopping malls has been falling over the last couple of decades, exacerbated by e-commerce and finally COVID-19, which had a crippling effect on top of America’s falling affinity for this type of shopping experience.

Making Trump’s claim even less supportable is the fact that the crime rate in Chicago is not rising.  An AI overview:

Chicago’s overall crime rate is higher than the U.S. average, with a total crime rate of 4,012.2 per 100,000 people and a violent crime rate of 539.8 per 100,000 people. However, recent data from November 2025 show significant decreases in violent crime, including a 24% drop in homicides and shootings, and a 41% drop in robberies compared to the same period in 2024. The city’s violent crime rate has increased over the past decade, largely driven by increases in vehicle thefts and assaults, although some reports show an overall decrease in violent crime for 2023 and 2024. 

Even through the barrage of nonstop lies, Trump somehow manages to maintain the support of 33% of American voters.  It’s hard to imagine how this is possible.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

There is so much we don’t know about all the moving parts that affect regulating our planet’s climate.

Are greenhouse gas emissions making it harder to reflect the energy from incoming solar radiation back into space?  Yes.  There are crackpots who claim otherwise, but this theory, called “anthropogenic global warming (AGW)”, is as universally accepted among climate scientists as the theory of evolution is among biologists.

That said, we’re constantly learning more about the pace with which all this is happening.  As an example, we keep improving our capacity to look inside massive glaciers to assess their “health.”

Moving on with the subject above, here’s an AI summary of “thermohaline circulation” of which the Gulf Stream is a major part:

Thermohaline circulation is a global, slow-moving current system in the ocean driven by differences in water temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline), which affect density. It functions as a large-scale “ocean conveyor belt” that redistributes heat from the equator to the poles, delivers oxygen to the deep ocean, and plays a vital role in regulating global climate. 

How far are we from disrupting this entire system?  I don’t think anybody really knows.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Re: the “one simple question” posed at left, it’s not that easy.

About one-third of American voters continues to approve of the way Trump is running the country. Most of them come from solid red states, where defying Trump would be political suicide.

Congressional Republicans appear to be people of near-zero integrity, desperate to stay in office.  Until they believe that they can get re-elected even after withdrawing their support from Trump, we have the quagmire exemplified by House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to swear in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) after her special election win, so as to block a crucial vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files.

These people are spineless.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Regardless of what Jeffrey Epstein said about Trump, most of his supporters believe he’s a saint.

Some, however, would put it like this, “Trump is a bad person with good ideas.”

Whatever.

This country will be a better place to live in dozens of different ways when Trump is gone.

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