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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business — No Comments ↓

An old friend sent me this article that deals with an instability that Team Trump is sewing into human civilization.

The real problem of course, is that people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump don’t rely on 401(k)s to provide the funds to keep them comfortable through their golden years, and thus they don’t really care if the stock market takes a dive due to the insane and self-defeating imposition of tariffs.

They don’t have kids with some rare form of cancer for which a cure was right around the corner, until the NIH got its funding cut.

Etc.

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles — No Comments ↓

Tesla sales were sliding long before Musk was appointed to be the lead executioner for essentially everything that the federal government does to serve the American people.

Bumper stickers like the one below began to show up as soon as we realized the world’s richest person was a terrible human being.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

I trust Bernie Sanders, and I’d like to believe he’s right here, but I actually don’t.

In 2024, a plurality of voters elected Trump, consisting of perhaps 20% amoral rich people and 80% uneducated morons.  These people absolutely adore what they’re getting out of Trump, and extremely unlikely to switch parties, regardless of what they’re hearing from the Democrats.

At this point, we either educate our young people, or look forward to an endless stream of candidates who appeal to hateful idiots.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Let’s be honest.  The American people elected this SOB just a few months ago, and he was hardly an unknown quantity.

We need to deal with the fact that almost half of U.S. voters approve of ignorance of basic economics, white nationalism, the systemic cruelty of asylum seekers, the abolition of minority rights, the rejection of science, and the demolition of public education.

I understand the impulse to apologize, but at the same time, we need to face the truth about who we are.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change — 1 Comment ↓

As shown at left, the people who want to muddy the waters on climate change (Big Oil?) are at it again.

In truth, there were occasional articles in the early 20th Century that (correctly) asserted that the emissions from burning coal were increasing the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere, though climate science had no rigor behind it until the 1970s, when precise readings of temperature and CO2 concentrations around the globe began to become available.

At this point, there is virtually no disagreement on the theory of anthropogenic global warming among those who study the subject seriously.

Now, are the people who write the news for Fox News, or the PR departments of the largest oil companies in line with this?  Of course not.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability — No Comments ↓

Bernie Sanders has this to say on the graph here: “Stress kills.”

To that I would add the multiplicity of other stuff that kills poor people: malnutrition, shoddy healthcare, living in communities whose air and water are polluted, dangerous professions, more interaction with police, incarceration, and driving older, less safe cars.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

From AdWeek: President Donald Trump referred to CNN and MSNBC “illegal” during a speech at the Department of Justice on Friday. It marked the latest escalation in his language about the news media and those two networks in particular since he returned to the Oval Office in January.

As we all know, making comparisons between Trump’s words and actions to those of the 20th Century fascists don’t win progressives any points, but it’s hard to understand how calling out the reporting of one’s critics as “illegal” don’t fall right into line here.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science — No Comments ↓

At left, we have the words of American planetary scientist Dr. Carolyn Porco, who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s.

FWIW, I don’t take the same tack.  As a guy who’s done his fair share of tutoring young people in science, and who has also raised two kids, I’ve had to deal with the issue a great many times.

When someone wants me to tell them what happens when we die, I ask, “Do you want to know what scientists have learned about the universe as it applies here, or what the believers in an all-powerful God think? I’m happy to explain the ideas of both of them.”

Normally, at this point, the kid (understandably) wants to change the subject, which is just fine with me.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — No Comments ↓

At left are the words of Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov, who went on to point out, “…which is basically everything a president does.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics — 1 Comment ↓

From a reader: Trump is causing a completely unforced recession, the markets (are) tanking, and your 401k’s plummeting, and he’s focused on invading Greenland.

Funny you mentioned that. I had a recent conversation with a Trump supporter in which she asked, What do you think is so wrong about our president’s demand to own Greenland, if it’s strategic to our national defense?

I responded:

Do you think that Denmark wouldn’t offer the U.S. whatever part of Greenland that could possibly protect world security, given that we have air bases in dozens of countries all around the globe, some of which have far less affinity for us than Denmark?

Maybe it’s for the same reason that he wants to turn the bombed-out Gaza into a U.S.-owned beach resort, or that he’s being so aggressive with our European allies, Panama, Mexico, and Canada.  Perhaps it’s the same reason he keeps asking about the prospects of having his bust carved into Mount Rushmore.

It’s time for us to understand that he’s never done a single thing for any person or group of people for any reason other than his own self-aggrandizement, and that he couldn’t care less about anyone who doesn’t make him richer or more powerful.  The well-being of  common American means nothing to him at all.

Let’s not forget that Trump pardoned hundreds of violent criminals who were serving long sentences that judges had imposed for storming the Capitol and causing the deaths of several policemen and the injury of 138 more.  Why the pardons?  These people were were among the most despicable Americans of all time, but they were among his support base.

We need to wake up.

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