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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Here’s a new concept in electric transportation that I don’t expect to catch on.  Imagine you park your car somewhere on a sunny day, you unlock a roof-mounted container, and pull out an array of solar PV that you then unfold and drape over your car.  You plug the array into your car’s charge port.  When you’re ready to leave, you reverse the process.

While the car is parked, you get a maximum of 1200 Watts, meaning that you’ll need about 30 hours of sunshine to charge your base-model Tesla Series 3 from 20% SoC to 80%.

Aside from the issues of cost, added weight, wind-resistance, theft, and vandalism, how long will it take the average driver to conclude that this is a royal pain in the ass?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Why on Earth would anyone have expected anything else?  Concern for others is so far off-brand for Trump, it would be like McDonalds serving fresh-squeezed turmeric juice and wheat germ.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Trumpism is that the top people who worked for the former president during his term in the White House refuse to support him for re-election, including our top military officers, but that the typical Republican voter does not seem to care a whit.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Humankind domesticated the dog approximately 20K years ago, and since that time, most of us “dog people” have struggled with the issue:  What is it like to be a dog? At what level do they think?

Obviously, they’re beholden to us, but beyond that, it sure would be interesting to have some insight here, wouldn’t it?

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Alexander Vindman entered the American consciousness when he blew the whistle on Trump for extorting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskye; Trump sought to offer military assistance in fighting the Russian invaders in exchange for Zelenskye’s willingness to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden.

At left we see Vindman’s summary of the difference between the two U.S. presidential candidates.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Here’s a short video that a reader sent me in which Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the importance of pure research, i.e., theoretical scientific research, normally in physics, performed without an eye towards the development of anything of purpose.

He pointed out that one of Einstein’s equations laid the groundwork for the laser, which eventually became the technology by which we scan our UPC codes when we buy our consumer products, although Einstein (obviously) wasn’t contemplating that at the time.

It’s an interesting topic, to be sure. In 2011, I interviewed Dr. Martin Perl, an aging genius who, at the time, was running the Stanford Linear Accelerator, after having won the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering an elementary particle, the tau lepton.

I happened to ask him about the practical application of his life’s work, and he told me flatly, “There is none.”

I was stunned, and I immediately began to stammer to correct my mistake, ” Oh, let me ask this a different way.  Isn’t there a chance that something you and your graduate students are doing could eventually have some sort of practical implication?” He replied, again to my astonishment, “Not one in a million.”

Hey, I’m not a particle physicist, so I’m not in a position to argue, but it does seem a bit weird that what we’re learning about the core components of the universe couldn’t possibly have some future application in our lives.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Every American should be terrified of what’s happening within the U.S. Supreme Court–in particular with the presidential immunity case, in which our nation has been refashioned into a monarchy.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Someone asked me the other day what level of progress we’re making in phasing out fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy.  My response to this question hasn’t changed much in the 15 years I’ve been studying this subject: as shown in the graph here, we’re definitely making progress in terms of decarbonizing the grid and the light-duty transportation sector.

A more important question is this: If this trend is extrapolated, and eventually takes on the more difficult-to-address sectors, e.g.,  commercial aviation and ocean-going cargo freight, will this be sufficient to avert the worst consequences of climate change?

The answer is that no-one knows.  Personally, I doubt it, in the absence of some major technological breakthrough.

Our civilization consists of 200+ sovereign nation-states, that have shown essentially zero interest in coming together to address this existential threat.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way at the start of each football season.  The planet is on fire, and Americans everywhere are huddled around their huge TV screens watching the Packers take on the Rams.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized

No offence to the author of the meme, but your “experience” has nothing to do with the issue at hand.  The subject matter here is true by definition.

Conservatives want small government, low taxes, and the dominance of the white race, because all this enables them to retain as much of their wealth as possible.  Since they have no interest in anyone or anything else, this really says nothing more about the right and left than one could find in a dictionary.

I’m reminded of what the late multibillionaire Charles Koch said in an interview when asked about taxation and what he thought was fair.  His reply: “I get to keep my money.”

Of course.  What a thoughtful and useful response.   You benefit from your country’s infrastructure, law enforcement and justice system, disease control, military defense apparatus, air traffic control, and 40+ other governmental systems that all increase your level of health, safety, and convenience, but “you get to keep your money?”

You apparently have failed to notice that you live in a society, one that requires you to think beyond your own greed and selfishness.