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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Political pundits everywhere are struggling to understand how it’s possible that Biden, given his administration’s admirable performance across a wide range of metrics, has such a lackluster approval rating.

The answer seems to be that facts don’t matter, or put in other words, people have an insatiable appetite for information that supports the ideas that they so desperately want to believe to be true.

We have entire “news” networks that feed off these people; there is an entire industry built around providing people support for beliefs that have no real basis in reality.

How bad is the crisis at the U.S. border?  How strong is the economy?  Is there any merit to scientists’ concern about climate change?  How should Americans be lining up around support for Ukraine?  It all depends on what you already believe.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
In an earlier post, Fomenting of U.S. Civil Unrest, I responded to my colleague Gary Tulie’s concern that U.S. politics is so horribly partisan that civil war could break out at any time, especially given the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from running in 2024 based on his having participated in an insurrection.
I responded that U.S. politics, to an ever increasing degree, is driven by money–huge amounts of it–that are coming in from every angle, and that, without this disharmony, the torrent of contributions would slow to a trickle.  Sorry to sound cynical, but that’s an unappealing idea to most of our media.
Another point to be made here is that almost half the country, i.e., those supporting Trump, are having a great time talking about guns, civil war, the “Biden crime family,” building the wall, white supremacy, “taking America back from the radical left,” and so on.
While people like Gary, i.e., intelligent, sophisticated, and gentle people, abhor violence and hope to see dialog that leads to a national unity, there are tens of millions of American voters who would rather be diagnosed with cancer than they would accept some sort of “woke” middle ground. They’re having the times of their lives.
Another point to be made here is that these people are led my a man who openly commands them to violence.  Trump sent thousands of his thugs to the Capital on January 6, then watched them storm in, in a bloody attempt to stop the certification of a vote that he knew to be free and fair.
These people, and God knows their leader, don’t have the slightest appetite for hand-shaking, consensus, nor any other form of civility. Again, they’ve been looking forward to this all their lives.  
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

A few incorrect (though fairly unimportant) claims in the meme here:

Cow poop creates biodiversity. Wrong.  See link.

The lifecycle of grass takes CO2 out of the air and replaces it with oxygen.  Throughout a 24-hour cycle, the intakes and outputs of CO2 and oxygen from green plants balance themselves.  Yes, an infinitesimally small amount of CO2 is sequestered for a relatively short period of time in the grass that the cow eats, which is rereleased when the cow is processed.  This is why growing trees (vs. grass) makes a real difference, i.e., the CO2 is sequestered in wood that can be locked into building products lasting decades or even centuries.

The meat industry is the single most destructive thing we do with the respect to the planet’s health.  That’s because:

a) The land we’re using comes largely from the destruction of the Earth’s rainforests, often referred to as the planet’s “lungs,” which are being torn apart at the rate of 85 acres per minute, and

b) Every cow on Earth belches ~220 pounds of methane per year, a greenhouse gas that is shorter-lived than CO2, but ~28 times more powerful.

Bill Gates is just one, albeit an extremely visible one, of the many millions of people who are concerned about and taking responsibility for the planet’s health.  In fact, there are more than 200,000 groups on Earth whose mission is environmental justice.

Gates comes at this particular problem via a variety of efforts to reduce meat consumption via the promotion of plant-based and lab-grown meat, public relations, etc.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
From his home in Buckinghamshire, England, my colleague Gary Tulie (pictured) writes:
Dear Craig,
I have been watching with interest the unfolding legal drama concerning whether or not Donald Trump did or did not engage in insurrection, and if he did, whether such disqualifies him from seeking the office of presidency. 

(more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

My politically conservative, life-long Republican mom and I had a conversation last night that I thought I’d share.

Craig:  If you could receive a Christmas present in the form of a breakthrough in U.S. politics, what would that be?

Mom: Trump would announce that he’s not running, though I know this is impossible.

Craig: So whom would that leave?

Mom: DeSantis and Haley.

Craig:  Well, DeSantis is trailing badly, and one has to assume that his right-wing policies don’t appeal even to the GOP,  and would certainly not play well in the context of a general election.

Mom: What about Haley?

Craig: I have to admit that I admired her when she was a Democrat U.S. rep in Hawaii, but then she, perhaps along with her advisors, figured out that she could go further as a Republican.  In the blink of an eye, she went from, to take an example, claiming that abortion was a woman’s right to demanding that it be banned.  Maybe she had a personal epiphany on this and a dozen other hot-button subjects, but it seems more likely that she saw this as politically expedient.

I regard this is the same way as I would someone who told me that I could attain enormous power and wealth if were to write a book whose premise is that climate change is a hoax and that fossil fuels are the way of the future.  Not going to happen.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

In response to the reader who submitted the meme here, another fellow notes: (The existence of) God is an unfalsifiable proposition, meaning that science can’t say anything positive or negative about it. You’re welcome to believe whatever you want, but science and religion are non-overlapping domains, and I personally think it’s better for both if (we) keep them separate.

Good reply.  I would also add that most scientists are atheists, meaning that those whose life’s work is science itself refute the claim in the meme.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Young folks may not get the reference here, as the American sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” aired in the late 1960s.

This was a time before conspiracy theories and trickle-down economics.  When we had a problem, we didn’t ask Donald Trump or Ronald Reagan to fix it.

We were busy putting a man on the moon, and it never entered our minds to think that science wasn’t necessarily the best approach.

When it came to dealing with disease, we didn’t ingest bleach, insert high-intensity lights into our orifices, or prevent our governments from protecting its citizens with vaccines, social distancing, etc.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Perhaps America’s greatest news story right now is Trump’s attempt to have the Supreme Court rule that he is immune from criminal prosecution because he was president at the time he committed the alleged crimes.  Most of us view this as absurd, but let’s examine the subject more closely.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was randomly assigned to the federal criminal case accusing Donald Trump of conspiring to illegally overturn the 2020 election, has ruled that “presidents are not kings,” and therefore Trump had no special privilege to commit crimes with impunity.

Now, special prosecutor Jack Smith has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to make a ruling here, even though such a request “leap-frogs” the case over an appellate court.

Former federal prosecutor and legal analysts Glenn Kirscher makes a point that, IMO, explains why Trump’s assertion is, in fact, absurd: If the Supreme Court agrees with Trump, they are making the statement that they are not a co-equal branch of government as specified in the U.S. Constitution.  If Trump were to be reelected, he could, if he wished, simply disband the high court.

This is the type of political criminality that defines so-called “banana republics,” i.e., these countries’ executives somehow attain absolute power, and then wield that power to pound their judiciaries and legislative bodies (not to mention political opponents) into insignificance. Regardless of how conservative the nine-judge panel may be, they will not vote to set aside the Constitution so as to catapult Donald Trump to a position of leadership enjoyed by Kim Jong Un and the world’s other sociopathic dictators.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From a reader, apparently anxious to show off his ignorance of world affairs.

If we don’t support worldwide democracies against the aggression of authoritarian regimes, we’ll soon be fighting these fascists on our homeland.

If we won’t protect Americans’ intellectual property rights internationally, we’ll soon have no intellectual property that’s worth the paper it’s printed on.

Of course, by that time, if we don’t use our justice system to block Trump’s attempt to overthrow our government, we will have already become a fascist state, so maybe there’s no big deal to be made here.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This from Richard Stengel, author, political analyst, and former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Obama administration.

He’s right, of course.

What really matters, however, is that Trump’s base will never see this, and more to the point, would not agree with it even if they did.  When they hear Trump talk about “blood,” they read “white blood.”

 

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