Stephan: And here is the antipode to the previous story that is going to be the source of the second migration based on a lack of water.
The Western US is in the midst of yet another dangerous dry spell. The drought has been building over the past year, and since November, a greater stretch of the West has been in the most severe category of drought than at any time in the 20 years that the National Drought Mitigation Center has been keeping records.
Western states are already facing water shortages, and with the National Weather Service projectingthat the dry stretch will continue, the problems that accompany droughts are likely to pile up heading into this summer.
Ryan Jensen saw the impacts of California’s last major drought firsthand while working for the Community Water Center in the San Joaquin Valley. When residential wells ran dry, students had to shower in their school locker rooms. To keep toilets running, some rural households relied on hoses slung over fences from their neighbors.
With groundwater depleted by that drought, which only ended in 2017, and ongoing overuse of water on farms,families have had to dig deeper wells, which can be prohibitively expensive.
“For some folks, the last drought never really […]
Stephan: Climate change is going to require a complete change in how we think about and use technology. You cannot have a technology that produces money but degrades the wellbeing of the matrix. You can make profit but only so long as it does not degrade wellbeing. Here is an example of what I hope is going to happen.
The Hellisheidi power plant. Credit: Carbfix
Carbon emissions are the leading cause forcing the climate crisis today. These emissions account for more than 60% of man-made global warming, as well as other conditions related to climate crisis such as ocean acidification and weather pattern disruptions. However, a new solution to these impending carbon catastrophes has been discovered by Icelandic startup Carbfix, which is turning carbon dioxide into stone.Carbfix offers a plan for reaching Paris agreement goals for limiting anthropogenic warming using a process known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). The project, founded in 2007 by Reykjavik Energy and several research institutions (now owned by Reykjavik Energy), aims to capture CO2 from industrial sites, dissolve it in water, and then inject it into the ground where it turns to rock. The process only takes two years, effectively accelerating the process of natural carbon storage to meet increasing carbon emissions throughout the developed world.
Carbfix’s proprietary technology “captures” the carbon dioxide from an […]
Stephan: Personally, while I feel there is a place for Hydrogen energy in the future, this essay raises some of the relevant issues which needed to be addressed.
Mike Barnard wrote a great piece yesterday on the hydrogen folly. As I was going through it, and building on months (or years) of reading, listening, and thoughts on this topic, I just decided that a few things could and should be put very bluntly in another short article on this topic.
Just note that these skip the whole efficiency problem, which is an underlying reason for why hydrogen isn’t sensible on a physics of economics level.
Money Grab
First of all, it’s a big money grab, as far as I can tell. Hype about hydrogen, and an idyllic hydrogen economy, and green hydrogen fields forever may seem harmless on the surface. But the hype turns into something — generous subsidies from governments around the world. The hype, combined with oil & gas lobbying, leads to a billion dollars here and another billion there to subsidize hydrogen projects. Who benefits? A lot of oil & gas companies and some small-scale enablers. Does society benefit? No, not really. In fact, if those hundreds of billions of dollars went to deployment of solar power, wind power, and electric vehicles, it could go much further in cutting […]
, - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Stephan: Yet another example of the inferiority of Republican governance. If you live in a state where the majority of voters vote for Republicans you do so placing your life and the lives of your family at risk. Think of all the people who have died because Republican incompetent ideologues set that state's response to the pandemic.
Covid vaccination Credit: Nature
STARTING IN EARLY SUMMER LAST YEAR, ANALYSIS FINDS THAT STATES WITH REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS HAD HIGHER CASE AND DEATH RATES
The per-capita rates of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths were higher in states with Democrat governors in the first months of the pandemic last year, but became much higher in states with Republican governors by mid-summer and through 2020, possibly reflecting COVID-19 policy differences between GOP- and Democrat-led states, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina.
For their study, the researchers analyzed data on SARS-CoV-2-positive nasal swab tests, COVID-19 diagnoses, and COVID-19 fatalities, for the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. After adjusting for confounding factors such as state population density, they found that Republican-governed states began to have consistently higher rates of positive swab tests in May, of COVID-19 diagnoses in June, and of COVID-19 mortality in July.
The results, published online March 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggest that policy differences between Republican- and Democrat-governed states, including mitigation […]
Stephan: I find it a disturbing but strong trend that Republican voters tend to elect incompetent nutters, and grifters. Why do they do this? I think it is because they are clearly not voting on the basis of a rational assessment, rather they are voting their fears, resentments, or racism with no real concern for the results of their votes. Just consider the latest batch voters have sent to Washington. Would you invite any of these people for dinner?
From upper left, clockwise: Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Texas Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, and Illinois Rep. Mary Miller. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Joe Raedle/Getty Images, Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 RNC via Getty Images, Dustin Chambers/Getty Images, Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc via Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, and Jason Kempin/Getty
Every town, midsize city, or urban neighborhood has one, or, perhaps, a family of them: the nuisance litigants, the business owners who address zoning board hearings while visibly intoxicated, the parents who ruin PTA meetings by accusing The Polar Express of encouraging demonry. They are the regulars in the police blotter section of the newspaper, the ones who have been banned from multiple softball leagues for reasons that somehow involve child support. They are America’s local ding-dongs and loose cannons. And, increasingly, they represent the Republican Party’s interests in Congress.
The demands of politics have always made “popular” figures out of the kinds of people who the average voter would find off-putting in person, and Mr. Psycho […]
