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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability
The people who sell this product say:
Make your house seen at night.
Have you ever had your delivery missed at night? We know we have!
It can be quite annoying when your delivery drivers or guests drive by your house at night and then complain about how hard it is to find you. It can be frustrating and might double the time it takes to get to your home or business.
With THE SOLAR SIGN you’ll never have to worry about someone important not reaching you at a critical time.
How many deliveries are made at night?
This was a stupid idea even before we had navigation on our cell phones.  Now it’s ludicrous.
The only good thing to say about it is that it provides me an opportunity to re-emphasize the importance of refusing to buy useless stuff.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

hikespeak.com

The black arrow in the graphic below points to the approximate location of 2GreenEnergy “headquarters.”  Luckily, we’re not experiencing fires.  This year, that is. A few years ago, the entire mountainside shown here burned to a crisp.

There are 91 separate wildfires burning as of this date, but they’re all far north of here.

The planet’s on fire, as we start the professional football season.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

Here’s a piece on “hot rock” energy storage, where tanks of tiny stones, the size of peas, are heated to as much as 600 degrees C when energy from intermittent sources like solar and wind exceeds demand.

How this could possibly be more efficient or less expensive than molten salt, I have no idea.  The idea of using a solid rather than a liquid (that can be pumped) makes no sense to me, but this, apparently, is a “thing” in today’s energy world.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Here’s a farmer who wants to let us know about what he calls the “real green deal.”  He explains that in the course of a growing season, an acre of corn will absorb 11 tons of carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen.  It’s true that green plants take in CO2, combined with water and sunlight, to produce carbohydrate and oxygen.

What he doesn’t seem to understand is that once that corn is eaten, say, by a cow, the carbohydrate is broken down within a few hours, re-releasing the initial CO2 into the atmosphere. This happens mainly through the metabolic cycle of the consumer, but also through the disintegration of the animal’s feces, as well as its body upon death. There is no escape.

When we eat beef, this breakdown is transferred from the cow to our own bodies, but, in all cases, it happens fairly soon after the corn is harvested and consumed.

The only valid way to sequester CO2 via plants is through the creation of products that are incorporated into buildings that will last many decades.

Readers who watch the video will wonder: does he appear to want to understand any of this?  He makes no effort to hide his disdain for the promoters of the Green New Deal, closing with, “Don’t listen to those over-educated idiots who don’t understand the cycle of life.”

Ouch.

Obviously, there are people with no education in science, and I don’t have a problem with that.  But would you want to go to a doctor with this level of ignorance, and the smug confidence that educated people are idiots?

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

If you were trying to explain the phrase “tongue in cheek,” to someone unfamiliar with the idiom, the line of questioning below would be a terrific example.  Great work.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m a huge supporter of a woman’s right to choose, but I’m an even bigger proponent of solid logic, and the meme here fails in that arena.

The ostensible reason to ban abortion is that it’s murder, which is certainly not a personal choice like having an abortion or marrying someone of the same sex.  Murder is a crime, and no one disputes that.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The meme below points out a sad truth: there is no conceivable event that will heal the divides in our nation.  Regardless of what a progressive may want to do, there will always be a way of taking it out of context and using it as a weapon.

(more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

The name Mohamed Nasheed may ring a bell.  He’s a former president of the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, who survived an assassination attempt earlier this year.

If his name is, in fact, familiar, it’s probably because he engineered the most awe-inspiring PR stunt in the history of climate change, convening a Cabinet meeting in scuba gear, under water. The point, obviously, is that without aggressive climate change adaptation, his country will soon cease to exist, as sea levels continue to rise due to warming ocean waters and the melting of ice in Greenland and the Antarctic.

In all candor, the outlook appears bleak.  One meter of shoreline in the Maldives protected by a water-breaker costs $3,000. An embankment costs another $4,000 a meter. That’s $7,000 to protect a meter of shoreline, and there are hundreds of islands.

Manhattan has built this precise type of protection with water breakers, but the median resale price for Manhattan apartments is $999,000 this month, the highest on record, and the value of the island is estimated at $1.8 trillion. Manhattan’s GDP is $635.3 billion, is 113 times that of the Maldives ($5.6 billion).

Photo above: “Maldivian girl with aquablue eyes”

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Looks like economic upheaval in Texas, coming from two places:

Boycotts, as suggested in the meme here, and

Plunging real estate prices.  There are plenty of people living in Texas who are just as sickened as you and I are, who are going to have “for sale” signs on their houses very soon, producing a glut.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Below is a fabulous 10-minute video featuring Elon Musk’s vision of the future, which includes space migration and artificial intelligence.

He sure is excited about becoming a space-faring civilization.

I wish I could share his enthusiasm.  Our world today is defined by war, poverty, rapidly mutating viruses that are raging out of control, a world on fire via climate change, and a pervasive indifference to the suffering of others.  And you want to take this and spread it around the galaxy?  Why?

 

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