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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

From Ars Technica:

With the days counting down to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration has been undertaking a series of actions that will make it more difficult for its replacements to reverse any of its policies or pursue new ones. This is especially true in the area of environmental regulations, where both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior have recently issued decisions….The EPA has finally pushed through a new rule that could severely limit the ability of the agency to establish future regulations.  (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From this:

BREAKING: ANOTHER OF TRUMP’S PAID LIARS BITES THE DUST: Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted “President” Trump on the January 2 call when Trump pressured Georgia officials to “find” him votes to steal the election, has resigned from her law firm, hours after her law firm publicly called her out for the “concerning” call.

Always good to see justice done.  Have to wonder what she’ll do with the rest of her career–certainly not working for any respectable law firm.

It’s amazing how many lives Trump has ruined. The people who have anything to do with him get exactly what they deserve.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

So as to avoid the Biden inauguration, it was rumored that Trump wanted to be at his golf resort in Scotland on January 20th.  Nothing doing, says the Scottish government.

This would have been a poor choice in any case, given the UK’s extradition treaty with the United States.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

We can all see that Trump is burning the country (and the rest of the world) to the ground as he leaves office, yet his ploy of leasing the Arctic refuge is probably not going to work.  That’s because of:

The low price of crude,

The high cost of drilling and transportation, and

The immense PR damage that will accrue to whatever oil company that takes this on.

It’s likely that Trump will have to invent a new scourge to inflict on Planet Earth.

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

As the United States approaches the showdown associated with the presidency, we all need to keep in mind that there are no scenarios in which Trump concedes defeat and leaves with even the slightest bit of grace. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

All corporate polluters have one thing in common, and that’s true whether we’re talking about plastics, CO2 emissions, or toxic waste: our society gives them permission to use our skies and waterways as their own private sewers.

I’m sure that Coca-Cola isn’t proud of the fact that they’re ruining our planet and our children’s future, but they made $8.9 billion last year on $37.2 billion in revenues.  That’s a lot of incentive to continue business as usual, and zero incentive to look for alternatives.  In fact, given corporate law in the United States, the executive team has a fiduciary responsibility to Coke’s shareholders to maximize profits, and would expose itself to great liability if it did otherwise.  As a civilization, we get what we reward.

Want this tragedy to cease?  It’s as simple as a stroke of the pen.  Just force corporate polluters to pay the costs of cleaning up the mess they’re making.  All this would be gone by tomorrow morning.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It really is amazing how a single conman has highjacked the entirety of our democratic republic, and has the majority of Americans pulling their hair out.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Efficiency

Good news for the city of Detroit: The streetlights may soon come back on. Towards the end of 2012, only around half of the approximately 88,000 street lamps in the city were functioning. (To put that number in perspective, there are around 55,000 total street lamps in Portland.)

A lack of illumination can impact the safety of drivers and pedestrians. Many business owners and residents in Detroit have expressed concern that the lack of working streetlights is contributing to an increase in street crime and gang activities. Faulty streetlights can also lower perceptions of an area—if the streetlights are malfunctioning and neighborhoods go dark at night, then property values may drop.

But Detroit is not alone. Copper wire theft has left more and more streets darkened around the country in recent years. In Sacramento, copper thieves have vandalized
approximately 18,800 streetlights in 150 neighborhoods since 2010. (Fortunately, most of them have now been restored.) Thieves target the control boxes for the lights, which contain the wires. The control boxes are being made more secure as a result.

Street lighting is also making news overseas: In Paris, the City of Light, the French government is proposing to simply turn off streetlights throughout the country between 1am and 7am as a cost-saving measure.

Seattle is also planning on reducing their electricity bills—but without plunging the city streets into darkness. Instead, they are switching from sodium vapor lights to LED
lights in around 44,000 street lamps, which they estimate could save them as much as $2.4 million a year—or more—while keeping the streets and sidewalks illuminated and citizens safe at night. And Seattle isn’t alone in this pioneering effort: San Francisco, Vancouver, B.C., Portland, and Los Angeles are testing and installing them as well.

LED lights last considerably longer than traditional sodium vapor lights and are much more energy efficient. They are touted as a more eco-friendly way to save the city money on electricity bills without increasing safety concerns.

Street lights require ongoing maintenance, be it repair or simple upkeep. If you live in Portland and you notice a street light outage or any other issues with street lights such as vandalism, you can call the Street Light Outage Hotline at 503-865-LAMP (5267) to report it. (If you notice a problem with a traffic signal, call 503-823-1700.)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Human greed and indifference to the suffering of others didn’t just emerge on the scene in the last four years, but they certainly have been greatly amplified in a blink of an eye, haven’t they?  The U.S. president was elected largely because his supposed wealth was the object of the envy of the undereducated working class.

The obscene enrichment of a very few and the extreme suffering of the many are the defining characteristics of American life today,  especially in the face of a pandemic in which 22 million have lost their jobs, one-third of whom are suddenly without healthcare.

If there is a path that leads towards a sustainable civilization, it is most certainly not rooted in the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the world’s population, leaving masses of the hopeless and apathetic.

Enough–that’s a good concept.

“It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.” – Seneca

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

My cousin-in-law voted for Obama in ’08 and ’12.  A few years later, after a short but steady diet of Fox News, she told my wife, “Obama is a terrorist,” and “Trump is making America great again.” My wife gently challenged her, but this went nowhere.  The words “I’ve done my own research” are what ended this brief but sad conversation.

No matter how bizarre, illogical and unfounded your beliefs are, you will be able to find a couple of YouTube videos that supports them. From that time forward, you can say that you have “done your own research,” and walk away with an even stronger belief in the bull**** you started with.

 

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