From Energy Storage News
http://www.energystoragenews.org/topic/profile/southern-california-edison/
2020-12-28 Most Mammals Are Livestock, Mostly Cattle
“Currently, estimates place 60% of the world’s mammals by weight as livestock… while 36% are humans. Only 4% of the world’s mammals are classed as wild animals.” Quote from this YouTube video
More about this in the following article.
https://www.livekindly.co/60-of-all-mammals-on-earth-are-livestock-says-new-study/
2020-12-27 Byron Bay, AU Solar Powered Train
This train runs using an EV battery! Amazing. We need a lot more like it.
Tom Scott’s short video
More information on this and other solar trains
https://futurism.com/worlds-first-fully-solar-powered-train-left-station
2020-12-26 Right To Not Get Vaccinated – V Hesitancy
Reply to FB comment.
Jessica Boyd
Said, “… I have the right to say I don’t want this in my body.”
It has already been established that you or your kids do not have the right to be around other kids or adults without being inoculated against certain diseases. If you’ve been vaccinated or have had those certain diseases then you or your kids can attend public schools. If not, then you cannot attend. As an adult working for a school district I was required to periodically take a test in order to stay employed. The fact is that student or staff, age didn’t matter. So if you think you have the right to expose others to an extremely contagious disease, you’re dead wrong.
Another of my comments
MBelmonte Montes de Oca
You seem to be a reasonable person, but what has driven you to be so skeptical about this vaccine? The vaccine was made in 7 months but many years of research have been put in before this. Humans are not guinea pigs that have never been vaccinated. There were 30 thousand volunteers that were in the pilot program and that was why it took 7 months: the vaccine had to be thoroughly tested.
It really bothers me that so many people are willing to risk dying because they have been misinformed by those who are telling lies for some reason.
This reminds me of the two old farts who lived in my apartment bldg. When they got their SS check in the mail they would go together to the liquor store and get a bottle of whiskey. By the time they got back home they had guzzled most of the bottle. They were standing in the street, feet next to the curb, and they were trying to help each other step up onto the grass. Like they were so totally fouled up that they couldn’t take that one simple step!! The evil people have spread so many lies about vaccinations that they have made people scared to death to take that one simple step and have a life-saving vaccination! Instead the misinformed person would rather risk death or a life of sickness and poor health instead of taking the opportunity to be healthy and protected.
Why would anyone tell others that they are injecting you with a microchip when they vaccinate you? That’s imossible to get a microchip through a vaccination needle! Something is really wrong with the naysayers who tell lies that can cause others to die. SMH.
Vaccine Hesitancy — If you’re “on the fence” about being vaccinated then there are many others like you out there. There are many who are afraid for various reasons, probably because they have read horror stories that have no relevance to those being vaccinated because the truth is not as bad and the case is so rare that it’s more likely you would be struck by lightning twice in the same day. What really needs to be feared is getting CoVID19 because you are dozens of times more likely to die or be seriously ill than if you got vaccinated. Think carefully about that: one chance in ten million you will die from a vaccination or one chance in ten thousand you will die from CoVID19. The choice is obvious.
2020-12-25 Costs of Fusion & The Steep Costs Of Nuclear Waste In The US
And it keeps on costing billions.
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us#gs.ofdufy
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This article says that many hundreds of billions, maybe more than a trillion dollars have been spent on nuclear fusion research. It said one article said that fusion won’t have any results until 2050.
https://www.powermag.com/fusion-power-watching-waiting-as-research-continues/
The reason I searched for “how much has nuclear fusion cost in the last fifty years?” was that I keep thinking that all those hundreds of billions of dollars could have been spent on proven technologies for generating renewable energy. The hundreds of billions could have been spent on building wind or solar farms in areas that have the best climates for wind and solar power. These could have contributed substantially to reducing greenhouse gases emitted.
Here is a dismaying quote from this article.
<< Among those pushing tokamaks was Robert Hirsch, head of the AEC’s fusion research program. Hirsch, an engineer and a nuclear physicist, has subsequently soured on magnetic fusion. He told The New York Times in 2012 that “tokamak fusion power has what I believe are insurmountable barriers to practicability and acceptability.” These include cost, radiation hazards, and radioactive waste disposal. He added that assessment assumes that the fusion technology would work, which he said is doubtful. >>
I knew that fusing hydrogen into helium creates nuclear radiation. But I didn’t think radioactive waste would be created. This is something I should look into.
2020-12-24 The Year’s Top 10 Environmental News Stories
This sums up the stories of 2020. The most harmful in my opinion has been Trump’s.
The following point is troubling to me: ” limiting the ability of 401(k) plans to invest in funds focused on environmental and social criteria”
To me this looks as if the federal government is trying to restrict the freedom of individuals to choose how they invest their money. It’s true that the 401(k) is a federal tax benefit, but that should not be the right of the government to determine how individuals invest. The Supreme Court determined that restricting how money spent on elections is a restriction of speech, so I think the same should be said about 401(k) investments.
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/top-10-environmental-news-stories-of-2020/
Quote:
<<
Trump’s assaults on the environment
The Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement was only one of many environmental policy rollbacks in the United States in 2020. Some of the other moves included:
- repealing the “Waters of the United States” regulation, which aimed to protect waterways and wetlands;
- weakening energy efficiency rules for appliances;
- relaxing rules on the release of mercury into the air;
- denying the link between chlorpyrifos, an agricultural pesticide, and health problems;
- stripping protection from the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a nearly 13,000-square-kilometer (5,000-square-mile) area off New England coveted by industrial trawlers;
- weakening the National Environmental Policy Act, including exempting federal agencies from having to consider environmental impacts of projects;
- limiting the ability of 401(k) plans to invest in funds focused on environmental and social criteria;
- weakening the Endangered Species Act;
- hiring a noted climate change denier to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and
- ending protections for Tongass National Forest, effectively opening up more than half of the country’s largest national forest to logging. >>
2020-12-24 Clear Consensus And A Climate Constitutional Amendment
We, the world must recognize that Climate Change is already causing damage worldwide and that governments must stop climate change by enacting permanent laws which put preventing climate change above all other laws. I propose that a constitutional amendment be passed that prioritizes preventing climate change above other laws.
The Environmental Protection Administration should have its mission modified to further climate change prevention and its name changed to reflect its mission.
2020-12-23 Harald Bluetooth And Our Cellphones
Tom Scott tells us the story of the Danish king who united the Scandinavians. How the ‘personal area network’ ln our cellphones got the name Bluetooth. He shows us the ancient runestones, one by Harald Bluetooth.
2020-12-22 Trump Has Lost Over 50 Lawsuits; Pardons
As of this date, Trump’s lawyers have lost over fifty lawsuits alleging there was fraud in the elections. I saw this on PBS Newshour.
It’s being said that Trump’s lawsuits are causing the voters to have doubts about the validity of the democratic process, voting and electoral system in the US.
The news on Dec 24 is that Trump has pardoned over 40 of the people convicted such as Papadopoulos, Manafort, Charles Kushner, Jared’s father.
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Some quotes *not* from the Trump nuts…
<< Bill Worley
The irony is that for decades now conservatives have been accusing liberals of being anti-American. But now we see that it’s actually the white-supremacist conservatives who are the traitors. When their beloved leader loses an election by 8 MILLION votes, it is these same white-supremacist conservatives who would burn our country to the ground to hold on to their equally anti-American leader. Shame. If you are refusing to accept the results of this fair and decisive election, move on to mother Russia, or Syria, or North Korea – somewhere where “leaders” can refuse to take part in a peaceful exchange of power as has been done with all 44 presidential terms before this one. These people are traitors and hate what this country stands for. >>
<< Gerry Fister
It is a virus. He can’t humiliate it, he can’t intimidate it, he can’t make fun of it. The virus doesn’t play by his rules, doesn’t care what he says or what he thinks or how much he lies about it. He did manage to give it a nickname.
Chuck Kaufman
Don the con simply did what he does. Lie, exploit every situation to benefit him personally. A true sociopath, he is utterly unaffected by others’ suffering and death. It is his enablers like most Republicans and Fox who know better and yet choose to betray America in their quest for power, who are truly despicable. #GOPsociopaths >>9
2020-12-21 Tesla Is Stock Of The Year
The Street declares TSLA the Stock of the Year. Here is a short Tesla Daily interview (10.5 min. YouTube video) of Jim Cramer and Rob Maurer.
