When we think of Texas, we tend to call to mind tough-minded ranchers, pickup trucks with gun racks, cowboy boots, death penalty advocates, high school football as a virtual religion, and perhaps a few oil tycoons–each one a societal element that tends to vote Republican. (more…)
Are you trying to tell me that an actual educator will be functioning as Biden’s Secretary of Education? We were just getting used to that post being held by a person with no background in the subject, whose only qualifications were her generous donation to Trump’s election campaign and her commitment to work tirelessly to make our public schools as poor and worthless as she possibly could.
Biden has done a few things that progressives wish he hadn’t, but on balance, he’s been pretty impressive.
What a disappointment. Pathological liars like Trump can never be trusted to tell the truth, but wouldn’t it have been nice if, just this once…….
I was a young boy in 1964, but old enough to remember Barry Goldwater and the conservative ideals he represented. I didn’t agree with him, but I had a great deal of respect for his intelligence, his honesty, and his sincerity.
More recently we had Ronald Reagan. He was every bit as conservative, and, while he may have been a bit more doddering and less intellectually gifted than Goldwater, he seemed to be basically an honest person. (more…)
Here’s a subject we haven’t covered in a while: the net eco-benefit of electric transportation. It seems so straightforward at first glace: add up all the environmental footprint associated with putting an EV on the ground, add in that of generating N number of kilowatt-hours of the electricity required to keep in on the road throughout its expected life, and compare all this to building an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle and powering it with gasoline or diesel throughout its (much shorter) life. (more…)
Pictured here is a set of devices that are designed to extract the kinetic energy out of ocean waves. The rising and falling water lifts and drops the blue paddles which compress a fluid, whose tubes are connected to onshore turbines.
A permit granted by the Municipality of Tel-Aviv Jaffa allows the purveyor of this concept, Eco Wave Power, to proceed with the installation of the project on the seaside of the breakwater.
From this:
The works will include cement works for the breakwater’s reinforcement, and the installation of ten floaters on 30-metre-long pre-existing breakwater within the port. The floaters will have a combined installed capacity of 100kW.
Inna Braverman, Founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power, said: “Due to the onshore nature of the Eco Wave Power technology, the cement and floaters installation works will be straightforward and will not involve any ships, divers, underwater cables or underwater moorings, which are known to be extremely expensive and complex.
“All works will be performed from the land side, using standard equipment such as cranes, thus reinforcing the cost-effectiveness of the Eco Wave Power technology, in comparison to offshore solutions”.
Thank goodness for small favors. Yes, there are plenty of more expensive options re: converting the energy on ocean waves into electricity.
Yet, we need to face facts: these “floaters” were billed as a viable mechanism for generating renewable energy long before 2GreenEnergy arrived on the scene 12 years ago, and that was before the cost of solar and wind fell so precipitously.
If this concept has any legs at all, it will be for niche applications. If I owned some place on the coast of somewhere that conventional energy resources were hard to come by, I’d go for this every day of the week. See example below.
Overall, however, this seems to be one of those cases where the winners have won and the losers have lost, with these guys being in the latter camp. Having said that, I won’t be surprised if I’m still getting press releases from these folks 12 years from now. Some ideas die slowly, especially when investor capital is involved.
The United States has become a complete circus, and as we all know, no circus can function without a barker. One might have thought that when Trump lost the 2020 election by 73 electoral college votes (not to mention 7+ million popular votes) that the man in the top hat who had captivated the world with this chicanery and misdirection for four full years would have become irrelevant to American life going forward, but nothing could be further from reality.
The meme here is funny, but it’s not 100% true.
My mom is a political junkie who has little patience for liberals, but even she has to smile when I ask her about Bernie Sanders. “Oh, poor Bernie. He really does want to help, doesn’t he?” (more…)
The Sierra Club makes the point that most documentaries on climate change leave their audiences with a sense of hopelessness, whether by design or by accident. And indeed, the problem is large and growing, and human civilization, fragmented as it is, has not proven that it has the capacity to come together so as to create and implement solutions.
Powerful image here.
I can’t say what the issues preventing progress are in Germany, but here in the U.S., we have an entire political party that is trying to convince us of something they know to be false, i.e., that: anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a hoax, or the science isn’t resolved, or mitigating AGW is an anti-capitalistic job-killer.
The fossil fuel industry has a stranglehold on U.S. energy policy, and has no intention of releasing it. This is a group of extremely wealthy people who are getting richer by the day, via ruining our planet.
