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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Why on Earth would anyone want to ingest “climate optimism?”  What’s the matter with the truth?

The truth is that our oceans and atmosphere are warming, largely due to human activity, in particular, due to the release of greenhouse gases.  The scientific community is developing increasingly precise ways of measuring this, while both the private and the public sector in many nations around the world are working on a wide variety of solutions.

“It is what it is,” as they say.  I’d be far happier with the facts, than with some slant on the subject, whether that slant is positive or negative.

Are governments getting on board in any meaningful way?  Are glaciers melting?  Are feedback loops appearing?  Are there important breakthrough technologies on the horizon?  What does the future of thorium fission look like?  Fusion?  What role are carbon markets playing, how is this likely to change over time?

Just the facts, ma’am.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Though it was not intended to be funny, I have to report that this made me laugh.

Other than being in the natural gas industry, is there any conceivable reason to be behind it?

If you’re an environmentalist, you’re in favor of phasing out gas (and all fossil fuels) as quickly as possible, in favor of renewables and nuclear.  If you’re in coal in particular, you must have no problem not only with the greenhouse gas emissions, but also the heavy metals and radioactive isotopes that are poisoning the planet.

And call me weird, but to say, “It’s who I am” is so absurd it brought a chuckle out of me.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Over the millennia since humankind first domesticated the dog, much conversation has been devoted to their intelligence.

And for good reason.

When they learned from Donald Trump that they were on the menu in Ohio, they knew it was time to split the scene.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

There are many nonsensical aspects of Trump’s candidacy, with his healthcare plan close to the top of the list.  Since 2016, Trump and his party have had eight years to figure out how to “eliminate Obamacare and replace it with something better, ” a promise they made before and during the former president’s term in office.

If the Republican voters are happy that the United States is the only developed country on Earth without universal healthcare, that, while being cruel and idiotic, is something we’ll have to live with.

But how do you go onstage and tell the American people that now, as we move into 2025, that, although you don’t have a plan per se, you have a “concept for a plan?”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Are illegal aliens from Haiti eating our pets?  Are our schools performing sex-change operations on our kids (with or without our consent)?

Approximately half of U.S. voters simply don’t care that their preferred presidential candidate has no concern about lying in front of millions of debate viewers.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Until very recently in U.S. history, it would have been lethal to a presidential re-election campaign to have 91% of the candidate’s former cabinet refuse to support him.  But now the thinking of Trump’s support base is: “What a bunch of woke pansies. Who cares what these girly admirals and four-star generals say about the man God sent to Make America Great Again?”

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics
From Senior Finance/Energy Analyst Robert Rapier:
After the 2020 election, I went back and forth with several of you over the results. Some of you insisted that Trump really won, and would be inaugurated. I explained that the problem was you were listening to Trump and fringe right-wing media, and I asked you to consider — when Biden was inaugurated — that maybe your information sources were garbage.
But Biden was inaugurated, and you continued to rely on garbage sources. Some of you still believe Trump won.
Recently, Trump has made admissions that he did lose. People close to him have said he knows he lost. This triggered right-wing nationalist and Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who went on a rant.
The moral here is that Trump lied to you, and people committed crimes and even died as a result of those lies. https://www.usatoday.com/…/trump-admits…/75086053007/
—
Thanks, Nick, you bastard.  This is a statement that may have had more value had you made it long ago.
Having said that, the rank and file Trump supporter doesn’t read Rapier’s work, and it certainly doesn’t follow 2GreenEnergy, so this post has limited effect on U.S. politics.
Nonetheless, it’s a shame that:
1) There are hundreds of people rotting in federal prisons all around the country whose central crime was trusting Trump and believing his lies.
2) Trump, a convicted felon still under multiple criminal indictments, remains a solid candidate to win re-election in November.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The meme here was an accepted fact of life until Donald Trump came along.

Lying may be the only thing he’s good at, but give him credit, he’s intensely good at it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A reader asks: Re: the phrase “where we’re at”.  Is it grammatically incorrect and should be “where we are”? And did I get the period and question mark right?

The phrases “where we’re at, where it’s at,” etc. are all incorrect in formal English.  But personally, I think people make a bigger deal out of this than they should, especially given that this whole construction arose in the 1960, especially in song lyrics, some of which remain immensely popular today, e.g., Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone, an excerpt from which is:

You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomatWho carried on his shoulder a Siamese catAin’t it hard when you discovered thatHe really wasn’t where it’s atAfter he took from you everything he could steal   

I can imagine sitting with a cold martini watching a fantastic sunset and telling my friends, “Ya know?  This is really where it’s at” — knowing that they all would understand that I would not write like that in a business proposal.

To answer your other question, most pieces of punctuation, i,e., commas, question marks, and periods, come before quotation marks, where colons and semicolons come after.  Thus, the following are correct:

“Vote your conscience,” I told him.

“Do you really mean it?”

“Absolutely.”

Here’s a “rule of thumb”:  don’t eat before bed.

He told me not to call him “Shirley”; he said he’d punch me if I did.

 

by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability
A reader asks:  In today’s fast paced world, the idea is to get to the point (as quickly) as possible. Is it wrong to cut words out of a sentence as long as the message is clear and understood?
I see this as an impossibility, i.e., both to cut out words and to preserve lucidity.  I see things every day that are written so poorly that I can’t understand what the author is trying to express.  Yes, we live in a fast-paced world, but this kind of stuff slows us all down.
In addition, bad grammar communicates to the reader/listener that you’re uneducated. If that’s not a problem for you, go for it, but it’s not a statement I would deliberately make about myself.
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