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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

This isn’t stupidity.  This is marketing.  This woman was elected by people so ignorant and hateful they eat stuff like this up with a spoon. She’s in the business of making asinine statements that please morons.  It’s her brand.

Demand creates its own supply, and that’s true regardless of the product.  It can be good like pandemic vaccines or renewable energy.  Or it can be bad, like opioids or race baiting talk radio.

Calling stuff like this “stupidity” is actually quite dangerous, because it hides the true evil behind it.  People are still saying that Donald Trump is stupid, where nothing could be further from the truth.  He has a terrible personality disorder that compels him to act only on his own behalf. That’s evil, and when it finds itself in a position of power, it’s disastrous.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The photo here suggests that there is no way out but to back up.  Perhaps that’s what we need to do here in the United States.

Before the presidential election in 2016 there was no QAnon, condoning of overt racism, or pathological  liar in the White House.  The U.S. wasn’t the laughingstock of the planet, and simultaneously despised for its cruelty to children and opposition to environmental responsibility.  We weren’t defunding public education or coddling the world’s dictators.

Let’s go back.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” is a phrase attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson in the late nineteenth century.

It’s not correct, as anyone familiar with marketing will tell you, and the business world is replete with examples–perhaps most notably Microsoft, whose operating system was described as “a cancer for a computer,” precisely as its market share was skyrocketing, ultimately to monopoly status.

Be this as it may, the guy in the video linked here actually has, IMHO, built the world’s best mousetrap, at least for humanitarians.  Take the little guys out to a local forest and turn ’em loose.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s something I wrote a friend who happens to be a politically conservative atheist that I thought I’d share:

I’m sure you’re aware that people who believe in monotheistic religions interpret anything that happens to them as God’s acting in a particular way. If it’s good, He answered my prayers. If it’s bad, He’s opening a door for me or it’s part of His plan, or He works in mysterious ways or it’s a result of my sin or wavering commitment to Him, or whatever. All these things cohere; there are no conceivable events that could call upon me to question what I believe, and shake my certainty that a loving God is interacting in every aspect of my life. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Not sure what to make of someone who calls herself a “polyamorous tantric sex guru,” but she certainly has nailed it here, as we’ve often discussed.  The more severe conditions get on this planet as a result of its warming, the more pain will be felt by the people living on it.  But that pain will be distributed quite unevenly, and, in fact, unfairly, with the people who had no role in causing the suffering experiencing it the most.

What are we going to do with, perhaps one hundred million “climate refugees?”  Rich people don’t know, nor do they care, as long as law enforcement can keep them far, far away from them. Regardless of how horrific things get here, there will always be juicy steaks, fine cars, yachts the size of small cities, and sexy members of the opposite gender to enjoy.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

The post title above comes from this article, which is certainly interesting, though it seems to raise more questions than it answers.  It appears the Pontiff believes that God created evolution and Big Bang, but in a way that isn’t magic.  That doesn’t elucidate too much, for me at least.

In any case, taking theological steps like this one is going to become more important as time goes on, and the hard scientific evidence of cosmology and biology continues to grow stronger and harder to refute.  If theistic religion is to remain a part of human culture, concessions like these are going to be necessary.

Of course, one could ask: if God created the Big Bang, how different is this from saying the Big Bang simply happened in some way that humankind can never comprehend, and simply remove God from the equation altogether?

Questions like these are above my pay grade.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Texas governor Greg Abbott concocted a grossly erroneous explanation of his state’s energy debacle, blaming wind energy and the “Green New Deal” for the costly tragedy. When the audience at Fox News ate it up with a spoon, mainstream media which immediately handed him his head, as exemplified in this interview he foolishly signed up for with CNN’s Brianna Keilar. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

Here’s the start of an article in the blog “The Long Tail Pipe,” with a few of my comments beneath it.

A few days ago Royal Dutch Shell announced it was accelerating its strategy to drive down carbon emissions while continuing to deliver value to its shareholders. But, while the press release focuses mostly on carbon emissions, in the details you see Shell admitting its oil production peaked in 2019. That makes it likely there’s another factor at play, which is the inability for Shell to increase its business through increasing oil production, and therefore the company is forced to shift to renewable energy. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I’ve long admired Bonhoeffer, and the punch of this short essay is one of the reasons why.

Trumpism as a 21st Century American phenomenon, however, is  only partially fueled by stupidity; strangely, there are some very intelligent Trump supporters.  And yes, as Bonhoeffer observes, reasoning with them is as futile as pushing a rope.

The former president has an amazing gift for filling people’s heads with utter crap.  He taps into the objects of his audience’s nightmares: what they hate, their fears, their passions, their misunderstanding about the world around them–and he uses that connection to implant ideas that have no basis in reality whatsoever, coupled with the absurd notion: “I alone can fix this.”

A great deal of his success is the stupidity of his followers, but it runs so much deeper than that.

A danger even more grave: this can happen again at any time.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As expressed at left, things may be looking up for the U.S.  Hate and ignorance at a national level have taken some sharp body blows.  Fox News ratings have crashed, an event insiders call a “self-inflicted wound,” referring to the channel’s doubling down on the stolen election myth, leaving many viewers shaking their heads and looking elsewhere for their information on current events.

Rule of law has been put back into place, respect for the United States from people around the world has largely been restored, and it appears that we’re looking at the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

This really could be an excellent year.

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