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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’m not sure an atheist can answer this question, other than to say, “One either believes in things where there is evidence, or one doesn’t, and I was wired to be the former as opposed to the latter.”

Speaking for myself, I knew when I was three years old that the God thing wasn’t going to work for me.  How I was born like this I have no idea.

In the off chance that I leave this world and confront a God who takes me to task for my position, I plan to explain, “I’m sorry.  I simply didn’t see enough evidence to support that belief.” A loving God cannot have a problem with that.

If there is a God and it turns out He’s the angry old guy from the Old Testament, we’re all screwed anyway.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

The “discovery” that these four African girls supposedly made is called a microbial fuel cell, actually initiated in 1911 by an Englishman.

Among the other misstatements here is the idea of “six hours of electricity.”  How much electricity?  That’s like saying, “Six hours of flowing water.” How much water?  The Mississippi River, or a slow drip from a leaky faucet?  In this case, it’s far closer to the latter; microbial fuel cells produce so little current that they may as well not exist at all.

Some people claim that there could be a valid commercial application for these devices, especially in the processing of organic waste. I doubt it.  The subject strikes me as a terrific biochemistry experiment for high school kids, but that’s about it.

The idea that the media is conspiring to keep these kids’ work from the public adds just another slap across the face.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Until a phone call last night, I was unaware that the ferocious censure of Dr. Anthony Fauci by the right-wing news media continues to this very moment.

Apparently, all this ill-will is based on the idea he got the science wrong, that he shouldn’t have closed the schools, and that he made several misrepresentations of factual matters.

That seems like a weird accusation against a man who:

• Has been studying immunology for more than half a century and has advised every American president since Ronald Reagan.

• Was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush for his work on the AIDS relief program

• Was tasked with addressing COVID-19, a disease of a kind that humankind had never before encountered.

•  To most of the world, he appears to have done his best to minimize the damage to our population.

• Cooperated with senior scientists around the globe, given that the Unites States is only one of 208 nations on Earth.  As shown on this map, 168 countries closed or put restrictions on their schools. That’s 81%. Do you think Dr. Fauci called some guy in Belarus or Mongolia and told him what to do regarding his country’s schools?

Scientists who make important calls are doing their best under difficult circumstances and are subject to Monday morning quarterbacks from the anti-science community.

If I were to speculate, I’d say that Dr. Fauci’s only real sin was his failure to keep silent when Donald Trump was making wild, radically unscientific assertions about the disease and how it should be handled (shining ultraviolet light into the patient’s lungs, ingesting bleach, etc.)

This whole matter is a prime example of how an entire community can exist within our nation that’s based on a careful assemblage of disinformation.  If you turn on Fox News or, worse, Newsmax, you’ll see immediately that Dr. Fauci is only one of many dozens of objects of their vilification.

If you take a stand against Trump, whether it concerns some element of public policy, criminal prosecution, concerns for the environment, whatever (it doesn’t matter) be prepared to be torn into pieces by these sources of “news.”

This is why most Americans have such high levels of respect for people like Liz Cheney.  She warned the world that Trump is a criminal sociopath, and guess what: Trump wants her in jail.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

At left  is the essential tragedy of American politics of the last ten years.

But were our citizens’ dealings with the U.S. governments ever honest, at any real level? Of course not.

Consider the robber barons of the late 19th Century, or Warren Harding and Teapot Dome in the 1920s, or what the U.S. government has done to “protect its interests” by wiping out indigenous populations all over the entire Western Hemisphere.

Yet it didn’t change the planet too much if, 100 years ago, the wealthiest of us bribed our leaders to become that much richer.  There was a limit past which the effects of this criminality could not pass.

Now those limits have been removed.  Today’s corruption means spewing climate changing gases into our atmosphere, gasses that our scientists assure us are baking our planet and hastening the end of life on this planet.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

In my recent post: What Can We Learn from Emerson?  I wondered why I have a lower opinion of the world and the people living on it than I did a decade ago, and I contemplated what that says about me.

Maybe like-minded people shouldn’t feel so bad about all this, and consider what Emerson said here to be merely a reflection of his times.  The mid-19th Century featured far fewer people on Earth, a fervent and soul-nourishing push to emancipate the slaves, and no impending environmental disasters or proliferation of nuclear weapons.

He had reason for his optimistic strength; maybe we have justification for our deep level of concern–perhaps even sorrow.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Many of us have come across this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, but have we really thought about it? I hadn’t until just now.

I’ll admit that I have a lower opinion of the world and the people living on it than I did a decade ago, and I’m now compelled to wonder what that says about me.

Actually, it’s hard to know if I’m becoming more cynical, or if the world is simply becoming more disappointing.

Most people feel a deep sadness about a population in which a tiny number of people have far more money than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes, when so much of the rest of the world suffers in hunger, in disease and impoverishment.

Moreover, the entire planet is becoming uninhabitable due to our indifference. The United States, with its handful of multi-billionaires, is in a position to arrest the implosion of the environment.  But what do the top 0.001% choose to do?  Donate uncountable fortunes so that Donald Trump, clearly a criminal sociopath, can rule this country–and as much of the rest of the world as possible.  Some of them become ambassadors to France.  Others run the Pentagon.

Again, I don’t doubt that all this says something about me.  As I age my energy level is starting to flag, and so is my spirit to awaken my fellows to fight against what just may be the inevitable.

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Many pundits in the U.S. political arena have this subject on their minds: how did we get to a point where working class Americans–mainly white, religious folks with high school diplomas, residing in the center of the country, generally working with their hands–become Republicans?

In his article in The Atlantic:  “How the Ivy League Broke America,” David Brooks argues that blue collar workers are frustrated that they are not a part of the elite establishment, which tends to be Democratic, and are demanding a change.

I can understand that, but talk about “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”  I wish I could warn these people that the billionaire friends of Donald Trump are not their allies.  That sounds like something that would be self-evident, but sadly, it’s not.

Trump is appointing his biggest donors to positions in his government for which they are laughably unqualified, but that goes completely unnoticed.  For the next four years, our institutions of national defense, border security, energy, commerce, taxation, healthcare, and so forth will be run by people would are clearly entirely incapable of performing these jobs, but the MAGA base will think that everything’s just great.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I just had a conversation with a friend who laments that one of the scummiest people she knows received a huge and unexpected inheritance. Thinking of the song performed in the video below, I replied, “Good things happen to bad people, but only for a while.”

I’ll send her a link to the piece, and see what she thinks.

FWIW, I very much doubt that this thing with Trump is going to end well for him. I don’t really believe in karma, nor in any other cosmic or supernatural force like the famous “arc of the moral universe” that tends to push things in the right direction.  But horrible people make mistakes that eventually catch up with them.

How did things turn out for Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milošević?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Obviously, the meme here was composed by a Trump supporter who carries with him the erroneous belief that the incoming president will improve the standing of the United States on the world stage.

But is this likely, given his plans for huge tariffs, mass deportations, environmental deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the further demolition of our schools, cuts to Social Security, the end of Obamacare, buddying up with the world’s most vicious dictators, pardoning his criminal allies, and jailing his political opponents?

News flash: the rest of the world isn’t impressed with this course.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Well, I know exactly who needs to hear this (not that it will make any difference).

There are two different, though related types of anti-vaxxers:

1) Those who carry with them the erroneous idea that vaccinations don’t work.  It’s essentially an anti-science, Q-anon-style position, and it was quite popular during the height of the COVID -19 pandemic.  Vaccinations were believed to be dangerous, often lethal.  They were “experimental,” even though many billions of them had been administered, and there was no real evidence that they did more good than harm.

These people normally had an entire ensemble of conspiracy theories that solidified their crackpot ideas: the U.S. government had planned the pandemic, the medical community had grossly inflated the number of deaths from the disease, etc.

2) Selfish people who don’t care whether or not vaccinations (or masks, or social distancing) work on a societal basis.  These are the people who don’t vaccinate their kids against the common childhood diseases, and they are the reason that certain of these ailments that were all but eradicated many decades ago are coming back with a vengeance.

When you look at what’s going so wrong with our world, it’s not hard to spot the culprit.  It’s our population’s growing levels of ignorance and indifference to the well-being of others, and it’s growing worse with each passing year.

Here in the U.S., we happily re-elected a criminal conman to lead us.  Ask yourself if this could have happened even 20 years ago.

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