WSJ: Quest for electric planes.
WSJ: Quest for electric planes.
Why must we entertain and finance blatantly stupid ideas? Nothing is going to make Greta Thunberg happy, so let’s stop trying. No government money or mandates should encourage the dumb ideas.
City Journal: Politics and Physics Collide
The legislature and unelected regulators enjoy magical thinking because the time frames are long, they will never be held responsible and perhaps engineers can meet the goals. Automakers have long been burdened with fleet economy standards that must be met. The Laws of Thermodynamics are problems for engineers, not legislators. Cars became lighter and less safe while also becoming more complex and expensive.
The idea that the United States can quickly “transition” away from hydrocarbons—the energy sources primarily used today—to a future dominated by so-called green technologies has become one of the central political divides of our time.
Cats and dogs have an outsize carbon footprint, mostly because of their carnivorous diet. If the pet food industry, which mainly feeds dogs and cats, were a country, it would rank as the 60th-highest greenhouse gas emitter, equivalent to the Philippines.
When I was an RA at Ohio State my senior year, me and a few other RA’s got a bunny. We named him Travis. I don’t recall how or why we got a pet rabbit. Lisa, an RA in Barrett, was very sweet and loved animals, so it was probably her idea. Scott and I liked spontaneous dumb ideas, so we were in, and Barb liked being in on the secret.
WaPo: What We Know About Aliens
It came from space, hurtling at tremendous speed: a mystery object, reddish, rocky, shaped like a cigar. Its velocity was so extreme it had to have come from somewhere far away, in the interstellar realm. The astronomers in Hawaii who spotted it in 2017 named it ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.”
Don’t forget the unexplainable Wow! signal detected by Ohio State in 1977.
One would have to be incredibly naive or distracted to think that society is functioning properly. Very little of the federal government is operating in the best interests of the American people. On the local level, several cities have stopped enforcing laws and have gone quite feral.
SciTechDaily: CalTech satellite beams energy from space.
A space solar power prototype, SSPD-1, has achieved wireless power transfer in space and transmitted power to Earth. The prototype, including MAPLE, a flexible lightweight microwave transmitter, validates the feasibility of space solar power, which can provide abundant and reliable power globally without ground-based transmission infrastructure.
This is one of those dangerous ideas that sound wonderful until you understand it.
ATLANTA (AP) — The first American nuclear reactor to be built from scratch in decades is sending electricity reliably to the grid, but the cost of the Georgia power plant could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power as a path to a carbon-free future.
It is “virtually certain” that July is going to be the world’s warmest month since records began, according to scientists.
It’s a virtual certainty that this is all bullshit. You know that because they don’t say when records began.
BBC: Summer temperature strain the grid.
Nearly 200 million Americans are under “dangerously hot conditions” alerts with temperatures expected to soar past 100F (38C) in several major cities.
Those major cities are places where it often gets above 100 F in the summer, so no real surprise.
Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems.
I never knew that Mr. Bean is an engineer.
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