Dr. Alex Cannara (pictured below) is the incredibly senior proponent of nuclear energy whom I’ve referred to frequently here.  He heads a group of about 50 of us who share his views, and writes:

Hi gang.  I wrote a short note to Chris Hayes who just interviewed a fellow discussing how grave environmental things are.  Chris is supportive of nuclear power, so he is easier to write.

It occurred to me that anyone who wishes to write any officials/groups on the subject might find the letter a useful source, so it’s attached…

Use anything you like from it.  Note that the 2nd attached graphic drives home the effectiveness of nuclear power by showing how France far exceeds other countries on reducing emissions.  If Ontario Canada were plotted, it too would display nuclear’s huge emissions benefit.

My reason for writing is that we’re getting into very bad straights caused by our bumbling around.  Australia says The Great Barrier Reef is in dire straits from warmed waters (see before and after pic above), yet Aussies still ship coal around the world and avoid nuclear.  Germany is similarly foolish.

The message is that there’s no runway left for fiddling with the controls.  I hope each of you can use this letter’s content to reach one or more others who might help others wake up and take action.

Thanks,

Alex

 

Note: At the risk of stating the obvious, the reason that the Aussies are shipping coal all around the world is money.  The wealthiest people in Australia know what everyone else does: coal is by far the most toxic energy source known to humankind, but it’s still just as lucrative as ever.

One would hope that these people would respond the way Richard Nixon’s lawyer John Dean did when his boss suggested hiding information on the Watergate break-in: “We could do it, but it would be wrong.”  But no, they couldn’t care less that it’s wrong, and that it’s destroying the only home we have.

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Sadly, there are American voters–plenty of them–who believe what they want to believe, despite all evidence.

A good example is that a law already exists that prohibits non-citizens from voting.  And it’s not  some obscure law like those concerning jaywalking or spitting on a sidewalk.  It’s the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Yet we have the Republican Speaker of the House stirring our country’s most ignorant people into an uproar over this point.  Most of the folks are no more familiar with the Constitution than they are with the procedures of open-heart surgery or sending rockets into space, and the Speaker knows this goddamn well.

If you need another reason to believe this, Johnson is an utterly disgusting human being.

 

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It’s hard to respect anyone whose viewpoints on social issues goes from white to black in the blink of an eye, simply to attain political power.

When Haley was a U.S. representative in Hawaii, she was a liberal–on everything from women’s rights to environmental responsibility to the duty of government to help those least capable of helping themselves.

A few years later she’s a garden-variety Trump supporter?

That’s just disgusting.

 

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If we look up the word “cult,” we find many different meanings, most of which are pejorative.  Here are two good examples:

a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.  “a network of Satan-worshiping cults”

a group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant (outside the norms of society)

As suggested by the meme here, once you’re a member of one of these groups, you’ve proven that you’re susceptible to this type of thinking, making you an easy target for another cult membership.

 

 

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For some reason, I’m on the email distribution list of “For the Love of Old Houses,” and one thing that this has confirmed for me is the old adage: “The three most important ingredients in evaluating real estate are location, location, and location.”

The house pictured above was built in 1919 near the ocean in Carmel, CA, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. It’s on the market for $7.995 million.  Now, consider picking this up, moving it almost anywhere else in the United States, and trying to get even half of that.

Conservatives like to say the bloom is off the rose for California and other “woke” parts of the country.  Tell that to investors in Chevron, Meta/Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Well Fargo, Apple, Disney, Intel, Google, Northop Grumman, and Oracle. These companies are a big part of the reason that, if it were a country, California would be the fourth largest economy on Earth.

It’s true that California is often the locus of innovations that make our lives longer and healthier, not to mention more productive and convenient.  And perhaps that has given us a reputation for being progressive.  Ya know what?  We’re actually proud of that.

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The good people at Inside the Movement write:

(We’re) the action toolkit for the climate movement. Come find your place (and your voice!).  Here’s how you can join us:

All this and more — Inside the Movement.

FWIW, I love keeping track of and promoting what these folks are up to, and I heartily recommend that readers do the same.

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The New York Times reports as follows:

Election Updates: Trump falsely claims the Biden administration was ‘locked & loaded’ to kill him.

We all know that there are tens of millions of hateful morons who will believe anything Trump tells them.  But fortunately, “tens of millions” isn’t going to get the job done in November.

In 2020, the former president got 74.2 million votes and still lost by almost exactly 7 million ballots. And that was before Trump was hit with indictments from four different jurisdictions totally 88 felony counts.

In many ways, we’re a pathetic nation.  Can anyone imagine Germany, or France, or Japan electing a criminal conman to lead them?  Yet our pitiable nature only goes so far, and that’s not nearly far enough to put Trump back in the White House.

 

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From this:

While former president Donald Trump won the Kentucky primary, thousands of Republican voters cast ballots for candidates who have dropped out of the race.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has already won enough delegates to secure the nomination, and each of his rivals has dropped out of the race. However, some moderate Republicans still refuse to vote for Trump. Instead, they are casting their ballots for other candidates like Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who ended her campaign in March.

The bad news is that, regardless of how many Republicans dislike Trump due to his criminality and opposition to the principles of democracy, Kentucky is going to vote overwhelmingly in his favor.  States that rank close to the bottom in terms of education, healthcare, and economic opportunity would vote for Adolph Hitler or Ivan the Terrible over a moderate Democrat like Joe Biden, and there’s not a goddamn thing anyone can do about that.

Fortunately, the U.S. electorate is composed largely of folks who uphold true American values: honesty, fairness, rule of law, and above all, democracy.

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The United States boasts the lowest inflation rate of the OECD nations, and that rate is holding steady at about 3.5%.

Yet the common American is having trouble affording basic goods and services.  Perhaps that’s because of record corporate profits, a phenomenon that the business world seems to be acknowledging.

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Thorium

Can solar and wind scale fast enough to keep climate change in check, by decarbonizing our energy and transportation sectors?  That’s a controversial matter.  What’s not at all controversial is that nuclear power, if it can be implemented safely and cost-effectively, renders the scalability of renewables moot.

Of course, that is a big ask, considering that we’ve been promised nuclear energy that is “too cheap to meter” since the 1950s.

Below is what could be called a “Goldilocks video” when it comes to explaining a complicated subject like nuclear physics: rich and well-presented, but without being overwhelming.

The element thorium, atomic number 90, represents an opportunity for nuclear power to be implemented with no chance for weapons proliferation, meltdowns/explosions, or issues with waste disposal.

Here’s how:

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