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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

If you’re going to be a part of the cult that is far-right-wing U.S. politics, you need to buy into at least some part (preferably all) of the story surrounding this country’s “corrupt” reaction to COVID-19.  This includes:

Our government deliberately wanted to hurt our economy and school system with unnecessary shutdowns, masking, social distancing regimens, and vaccinations.  Various groups, e.g., the Centers for Disease Control, and individual people, e.g., Anthony Fauci, were especially responsible for all this.

The meme here speaks to how ludicrous these belief systems are.

On top of this, I would ask the Fox News crowd to ask itself how and why each one of the other 200+ sovereign countries around the world came to create its own set of protocols designed to ruin its home economy.  Did the Germans and the Brazilians collude with Dr. Fauci, or did they develop their own plans to commit economic suicide, for no real reason, without any help from the U.S.?

Stupid is as stupid does.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Myth 1: Traditionally, Americans have opted for small government, focusing the public sector only on absolute necessities, and privatizing most societal functions.

Myth 2: The subject known as “civics” has been removed from our high schools in order to make young people unaware of the proper (small) role of government.

Truth: Shown at left is a page taken from a civics textbook just after the close of the Second World War.  Notice how it jibes with the major theme of both parties’ platforms of that time, through the Eisenhower administration, right up until Reagan came along in 1980 and turned all this on its head.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Demagogues like Trump are highly skilled at creating fear in their constituents, and, as Bertrand Russell points out here, this tends to make us more tribal, and more suspicious of and hateful to people who do not share our religion, skin color, sexual orientation, etc.

Notice how little facts matter in cases like these.  The strength of the U.S. economy is a good example.  But if you turn on Fox “News” or the other right-wing media, you’ll find a few cherry-picked data points that “prove” that Biden has ruined the economy.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here we have dialogue between Trump and one of his top aides, retired Marine Corps general John Kelly, in which we see Kelly trying to explain to the former president why it’s improper to praise Adolph Hitler.

2GreenEnergy supporter Gary Tulie sent me this, noting, “This is shocking.”

I don’t know.  It’s been clear from the onset that Trump admires political strongmen, without regard for how terrible the damage they inflict on the world around them.  And now he finds himself on the precipice of achieving that position of absolute power in the United States.

All he needs is to be granted immunity for the crimes he committed during and after his term as 45th president. He’s that close.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The clever meme here depicts a harsh reality of life in the U.S.  There are groups, heavily funded by billionaires, whose aims are to convince congress to dismantle all aspects of the federal government that serve the common American.

I’m reminded of Charles Koch, who, when asked what he regarded to be “fair” regarding taxation, replied, “I get to keep my money.”  Not much nuance there.  No recognition that this man, worth many billions of dollars, lives in a society that needs infrastructure, national defense, public education, etc.  When I heard these words come out of his mouth, I said, “All you’re saying is that you’re a swine.”

OK, so exactly how much real “thought” exists in these so-called “think tanks?”  For a chapter on the subject for my third book, “Renewable Energy–Following the Money,” I interviewed  a spokesperson from the right-wing Cato Institute, and focused the discussion on his organization’s approach to climate change.

Frankly, I found their position to be shockingly indefensible.  It included ideas like, “The most devastating effects of climate change lie decades in the future, so, we recommend delaying mitigation tactics until that time.”

I’m generally very noncombative when I conduct interviews, but I couldn’t help responding, “Oh, but that’s like having an oncologist tell a cigarette smoker that the patient has lung cancer, but since the disease is unlikely to kill him in the next ten years, it’s OK to continue to smoke until the cancer has ravaged his body.  I don’t think that doctor would be practicing medicine much longer.”

Efforts to invest in a future of things like quality education and environmental sustainability are met with pseudoscientific attacks from institutes with high-sounding names, all to protect the rich from paying taxes.

There is a limit to which this can be taken before the United States becomes a cesspool of ignorance and toxic chemicals, and fades into irrelevance on the global stage.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized

The graphic below shows that California, a few of the plains states, the mid-Atlantic, and New England rank highest in terms of educational achievement, and that the Deep South ranks lowest.

It’s interesting that there is a strong correspondence between the educational strength of a state’s citizenry and its appetite for progressive values. Conversely there is a strong correspondence between a state’s educational weakness and its demand to ban abortion and re-elect Trump.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

We need to ask ourselves, once again, how it’s possible that working class people don’t support Biden overwhelmingly.

Yes, they are frustrated that their wages have stagnated.  And yes, frustration leads to anger, and anger is what gets demagogues elected.

Yet, one would think that what has happened under the Biden administration in terms of job growth would cut a great deal of ice politically.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

The intense scrutiny that the rising temperature of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere is receiving raises an important question, and interestingly, it doesn’t concern the current temperature, which modern science has nailed with great precision.  Rather, it’s this: What were the temperatures in the late 19th Century, when readings first took place?

As it turns out, there were various ways of taking ocean water onboard sea-going vessels that led to significantly different findings.  As a result, one group of today’s climate scientists has found the planet has warmed 1.34°C over the 1850-1900 average, whereas another found temperatures had risen 1.54°C.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Here’s a scholarly article in Science Magazine that addresses the challenges our civilization faces in pulling CO2 out of the Earth’s atmosphere once greenhouse gases are released. It begins by admitting that we seem to be incapable of reducing current emissions to a safe level, and that the net-zero goals set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can only be achieved with CO2 removal.

To me, this translates as: “In the 2020s, we are incapable of accomplishing what is relatively easy, so here is what we need to do in the future, which, by constrast, seems impossibly difficult.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change
Below, environmentalist Zan Dubin, whom I highly respect, makes a point not too dissimilar to what I’ve often said about the failure of the media to cover Biden’s accomplishments, especially those pertaining to climate change mitigation and adaptation. She writes:
A small minority of Americans know about the historic contribution the Biden Admin has made to fighting climate change. Please take one fact here and keep talking about it. Here are some juicy points:
In his first term, Joe Biden has done more to address climate change than any President before him. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) alone is expected to wipe out 21 billion tons of planet-warming pollution between now and 2050. For comparison, that’s 73 times more emissions than the infamous Willow Project will emit over the same period. It’s like canceling out the emissions from the entire country of India for a decade.
Trump talked a lot about bringing manufacturing back to America and creating blue-collar jobs. But under Biden, manufacturing investment has grown faster than at any time in recent history thanks largely to the IRA. During Trump’s presidency, manufacturing spending grew by 5%. Under Biden, it has grown by 279%.
For decades, environmental advocates have tried to convince lawmakers to pass even the most marginal climate policies. And they’ve failed. It wasn’t until Biden took office that the logjam broke and the climate policies flowed. Since then, America has experienced remarkable progress.
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