The USA has much clean energy.  Better we are than most of the world.

I urge people on both "sides" of the clean energy issue to read the relevant and accurate data not just what confirms to some extent their side of the issue.

The trouble is, no matter if we are talking about energy or climate or taxation and yes, even transgender issues, people have a strong confirmation bias.  Lies on both sides will be propagated.  Emphasis will be given to events or data that support their side of the issue.

So little true critical thinking exists.  One has to want to see all sides, one has to truly wish to listen.

All well.

I would rather talk about fashion and hiking and travel and other things.  But, there is a place for good discourse on many things.  Makes life somewhat more interesting, don't ya think?

Chrissy

Quote from: Sephirah on August 09, 2025, 05:07:33 PMWe are approaching our fourth heatwave in the UK this year. It's kind of unprecedented and feels like every week we get the whole "Hottest since records began" speech. And over the last few years, every summer, half of Europe seems to be on fire. So I think we have to look at what we're doing to the planet and look for different options.

We are seeing record heat and extreme weather all over the planet. Long before Al Gore became VP, I found a webpage at NOAA's website. It tracked ocean buoys in real time. As a former Navy lass, you know what I am talking about. These buoys track sea level, water temperature, wind speed, and ocean currents. This data is compiled so that accurate weather forecasts can be made.

The webpage I found listed historical data going back about 100 years (or something). What the data showed was that the ocean temperatures warmed up just a fraction of 1 degree (F) over the past 20 years or so. (My memory is not good enough to recall exact numbers). People said that it was no big deal. What they missed was that the previous 20 years, the increase was even less, and 20 years before that, still less. It showed that the rate of warming was increasing (for whatever reason).

Another table showed that the ocean level rose at the same rate, correlating with the rate of warming. So the rate of ocean level rise was also increasing. This makes sense because warmer ocean water warms the air blowing across it, and glaciers start melting. Teams of experts went to Greenland, Alaska, Russia, and the poles and confirmed that the glaciers were melting. Glaciers hold most of the planet's fresh water.

Several years later, the term "Global Warming" was changed to "Climate Change" because people pointed to the data and the melting glaciers, and the "experts" (politicians) wanted it known that the climate warms and cools over a very long time. Millions of years.

But none of us will be around when it cools. In the meantime, we have heat waves, flash floods, wildfires, and air pollution that we have to deal with right now. As sea levels rise, coastal cities will be the first impacted. We are already seeing this.

I was having a discussion about this with my dad and went to pull up the webpage to show him the data. Error 404 Page Not Found. I did a Google search to try to locate where they stashed it. It was gone.

Can you spell C-O-V-E-R U-P? 

Quote from: Lori Dee on August 08, 2025, 09:58:08 PMI got them online. I am happy with them in general, but I left a scathing review on Amazon.

I very much enjoyed your review, Lori. I hope you're able to modify them so that they meet all of your requirements. There have been occasions when I've found it worthwhile to buy something that was *almost* what I wanted and then tweak it to get there. This may be the case for you withe these.

I've been burned a couple of times by those weird-named Chinese brands (and even straight-up counterfeit brand-name stuff) on Amazon, enough that I can't bring myself to buy any again. Like so many other things these days, it feels like one of those "too bad this has gone to hell; it used to be quite good" situations.

I don't want to clutter Lori's blog with political and semi-political content, but I do want to say that where I live hydroelectric dams have been demolished because they were generating more power than was being used. That drove down the cost of electricity, so the big utility companies weren't making enough money. Yes, removing them has benefited the environment in all of the ways expected and many that weren't, but ultimately the decision was agreed upon because the wealthy weren't making enough money.

There's a big push in the UK for homes to have photoelectric cells on the roofs. Solar power. I mean we have that giant, fiery ball in the sky... why not use it for something other than skin cancer? It usually comes down to money, Pema, you're right. And I don't think it's necessarily a political issue. It's just an issue. That, whatever your ideology, you can't really ignore when stuff catches on fire.

Oceans take longer to warm up because that's just the nature of how they are. But they hold the heat longer... and, worryingly, they contain most of the world's CO2, trapped at the bottom after the last ice age. When they get warmer, it gets released at an increasing rate.

The weird thing is, it would only take one huge supervolcanic eruption to send us all back into an ice age, lol. Dump a few billion tons of sulphur dioxide into the air... problem solved. How's Yellowstone looking these days?

Money and sex often seems to control many actions, and that can be quite unfortunate.


Unless that is not true, of course.

Morning funny, aka a comedy of errors.

We had a thunderstorm roll through last night with ping pong ball-sized hail. This morning, I turned on the local news to see how bad the storm was. Local news stations are prone to making small errors, some of which are quite funny.

After the weather segment, the news anchor said the next story coming up was about why two rattlesnakes had to be moved. They had the banner at the bottom of the screen that said, "Two Rattlesnakes Had To Be Moved". The video above the banner showed Trump and Putin shaking hands.

That made me laugh. I almost spit out my coffee. 

It turns out, the story was about two rattlesnakes that were being relocated to a remote area of the Garden of the Gods so they would not pose a threat to visitors to the park. After the commercial break, they showed the correct video of a Ranger moving the snakes.

I'm going to name those snakes "Trump" and "Putin".