Stephan: Given the report from NOAA in the previous story, I think we can consider this very good news. New technologies are cropping up all over the world that will help the transition out of the carbon energy era.
The world’s first floating wind farm 15 miles offshore of Aberdeenshire, in Scotland. The 30 megawatt installation can power approximately 20,000 households Credit: Xinhua/Alamy
In the stormy waters of the North Sea, 15 miles off the coast of Aberdeenshire, in Scotland, five floating offshore wind turbines stretch 574 feet (175 metres) above the water. The world’s first floating windfarm, a 30 megawatt facility run by the Norwegian company Equinor, has only been in operation since 2017 but has already broken UK records for energy output.
While most offshore wind turbines are anchored to the ocean floor on fixed foundations, limiting them to depths of about 165ft, floating turbines are tethered to the seabed by mooring lines. These enormous structures are assembled on land and pulled out to sea by boats.
The ability to install turbines in deeper waters, where winds tend to be stronger, opens up huge amounts of the ocean to generate renewable wind power: close to 80% of potential offshore wind power is found in deeper waters. In addition, positioning floating turbines much further off the coast helps avoid conflicts with […]
Tim Coles, MD, Associate Researcher at the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, and a Columnist for Axis of Logic - New Dawn
Stephan: Another article by a physician who has had it with the pharmaceutical component of the American illness profit system.
Credit: New Dawn
The pharmaceutical industry is worth $1 trillion, half of which comes from US-based sales. The alternative health industry, by comparison, is worth just $59bn. Big Pharma bribes doctors, dominates advertising, and drives the anti-natural health narrative.
The biggest, multibillion-dollar companies are Pfizer (US), Novartis (Switzerland), Roche (Switzerland), Johnson & Johnson (J&J US), Merck & Co. (US), Sanofi (France), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK UK), AbbVie (US), Takeda (Japan), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden). The bulk of their profits come from prescription drugs. Big Pharma kills people in two ways: 1) pricing life-saving drugs out of the market and 2) aggressively marketing potentially dangerous products.
It often is cheaper for Big Pharma to break the law and pay fines than follow regulations that hinder profits. Every year at least one major drug company is fined for one or more of the following: bribery, drug safety, false claims, fraud, foreign corruption, off-label and unproven promotion, price-fixing, and violating consumer protection. Since 2000 in the US alone Pfizer has been fined by federal authorities 47 times totalling $4.4bn; Merck 42 times for $3bn; J&J 28 times for […]
Isaac Stanley-Becker, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: What is keeping the carbon industries in the game is the mindboggling corruption of the U.S. Congress members they legally bribe. To illustrate this point today's Republican Scum Award goes to Lauren Boebert, truly one of the scummiest of the new generation of Republican members, and given the competition that's saying a lot.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) failed to disclose that her husband had made nearly $1 million in recent years as an energy consultant. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg News
When Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting Republican firebrand, was running for Congress last year, she traced her income to Shooters Grill, a restaurant she and her husband own in Rifle, Colo.
She suggested her husband also did some consulting, listing “Boebert Consulting — spouse” on her candidate form, but identified his income source as “N/A.”
Only now, with Boebert not just in Congress but on the House Natural Resources Committee, has she revealed that her husband made $478,000 last year working as a consultant for an energy firm. He made $460,000 the year before, she disclosed in a filing Tuesday with the House of Representatives. Her husband, Jayson Boebert, earned that income as a consultant for Terra Energy Productions, according to the filing.
Boebert has been a staunch advocate for the energy industry during her first six months in office, introducing a bill in February seeking to bar the president from issuing moratoriums […]
Robert Reich, - Reader Supported News/Robert Reich Blog
Stephan: Robert Reich is absolutely correct. Corporate socialism is sabotaging the wellbeing of American society. It is why we have the worst wealth inequality of all developed nations.
Robert ReichCredit: Getty
You may have heard Republicans in Congress rail about how the Democrats’ agenda is chock-full of scary “socialist” policies.
We do have socialism in this country — but it’s not Democrats’ policies. The real socialism is corporate welfare.
Thousands of big American corporations rake in billions each year in government subsidies, bailouts, and tax loopholes – all funded on the taxpayer dime, and all contributing to higher stock prices for the richest 1 percent who own half of the stock market, as well as CEOs and other top executives who are paid largely in shares of stock.
Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Pharma, defense contractors, and big banks are the biggest beneficiaries of corporate welfare.
How? Follow the money. These corporations and their trade groups spend hundreds of millions each year on lobbying and campaign contributions. Their influence-peddling pays off. The return on these political investments is huge. It’s institutionalized bribery.
An even more insidious example is corporations that don’t pay their workers a living wage. As a result, their workers have to rely on programs like Medicaid, public […]
Stephan: An important aspect of the pandemic misinformation movement that is not usually discussed, but should be, is what is the effect on wellbeing for individuals who embrace misinformation. Here is some real data, and it is alarming. We have an immediate social crisis going on because we have uncontrolled misinformation distribution with no consequence in social media. A factor that did not have the same effect on the 2012 political process that it presently has today. And will have in the 2022 elections.
Misinformation about the coronavirus harming those who believe it was the subject of a Saturday segment on MSNBC’s “American Voices” with Alicia Menendez.
The host interviewed Prof. Roy Perlis, who teaches psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
“Harvard out with a new study shining a light on how misinformation affects public health. What have you learned?” Menendez asked.
“It’s pretty striking,” Dr. Perlis replied. “In our most recent survey, we ask our 20,000 U.S. respondents about four items of misinformation related to vaccination. One in five believe at least one of them and about half of the people we asked weren’t sure about at least one of them. So that gives you some sense of just how much misinformation is out there.”
“One of the things that was really interesting is, it can have a big impact on our mental health, right? That, just being exposed to that misinformation,” Menendez said.
So, before we even talk about mental health, there’s the fact that if you believe one of those items of misinformation, you’re about half as likely to be vaccinated,” he replied. […]
