Links for you. Science:
Why Closing Ohio’s Nuke Plants Will End Up Killing More Ohioans
NASA Starts Cutting Spacecraft Heat To Prolong Voyager Mission’s Interstellar Journey
University of California loses access to new journal articles published by Elsevier after research access fight
The Death of a Patient and the Future of Fecal Transplants
Glacial melting in Antarctica may become irreversible
Other:
Nancy Pelosi’s Leadership Now Constitutes a Constant Dereliction of Duty
Progressives seek concessions from Pelosi over massive defense bill
Taylor Swift as Classical Greek helmets
What Does Nancy Pelosi Think She’s Doing?
Philly Fed economists: Here’s how highways ruined your city
How Minneapolis Freed Itself from the Stranglehold of Single-Family Homes
Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight
Gates of Hell Open Up as County Council Approves Accessory Apartment Bill
Kris Kobach Enters U.S. Senate Race, Misspells Own First Name
It Sure Looks Like Jeffrey Epstein Was a Spy—But Whose?
The Eagle’s Nest
Democrats In Congress Say Voters Won’t Stop Asking Them About Impeachment, As Campaign Officials Argue It’s Too Divisive
‘It Is Erasing Our History’: New Development Blurs Boundaries
What to Do If a Driver Hits You—or Nearly Hits You—While You’re Biking or Walking
It’s time to push the 2020 Democrats to work for D.C. statehood
School boundary questions touch off debates about race, income, equity
Microsoft Closes The Book On Its E-Library, Erasing All User Content
Bernie Sanders: America Is Drowning in Student Debt. Here’s My Plan to End It
Your Boss Might Be Ripping You Off: How To Protect Yourself From Wage Theft
A black principal, four white teens and the ‘senior prank’ that became a hate crime
mikethemadbiologist
**** Why Closing Ohio’s Nuke Plants Will End Up Killing More Ohioans ****
This was an extraordinarily dishonest article, and I don’t figure that’s an accident. The author is an obvious shill for the Nuclear Industry. The “study” he references flatly states it’s ignoring the possibility the nuke plants might be replaced by renewables like solar or wind, then proceeds to discuss other options like all-natural gas to all-coal. Next it puts out the 126-deaths figure by “averaging” – or assuming there will be a blend of filthy coal and much cleaner natural gas. This gives industry hacks like the Forbes author something to wave around.
Nobody is talking about the 40-year age of these plants. Lowest bidder built these facilities, and it’s safe to assume some sleazy things got done. Companies want to maximize their income, and take shortcuts. Civil War soldiers were often issued rotten meat. The Brooklyn Bridge has defective steel in the cables, but Roebling was able to compensate with more good stuff. And look at Boeing. Companies skimp on the upkeep too. The wiki of the named nuke plants have an endless procession of corner-cutting.
It’s a sight to behold that Forbes is pretending to be concerned about people dying from Dirty Fuels. Witness this charming piece from 2015 about the trivial amounts of mercury coming from the burning of coal.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/11/24/the-truth-about-coal-and-mercury/#330665dd4da0
Just like with CO2, it’s the evil volcanoes which are the true problem. Over 400 tons of mercury liberated from coal burning every year is Nothing To Get Concerned About!
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/09/high-cost-of-nukes-even-higher-if-medical-expenses-included/
While growing up I drank the koolaid about nuclear power. Why not? – it was the perfect solution to everything with fuel enough to last thousands of years. Turns out the nukes are generally badly designed, cheaply built, poorly maintained, barely guarded, and are as dangerous as a spitting cobra. There may be a more expensive way of making electricity, but if there is I haven’t heard about it. Burning antique furniture for power generation might be worse – if anybody was doing such a thing.
If there is any more dangerous source of energy, I haven’t heard about that one either.
The first sentence of the Antarctica link:
“Antarctica faces a tipping point where glacial melting will accelerate and become irreversible even if global heating eases, research suggests.”
This may well be correct, so it’s necessary to change the goal from “easing” global CO2 heating to “reversing” it. Some of the things are relatively easy – like planting hundreds of billions of trees. Going cold-turkey on Fossil Fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas will be harder, but this can be safely done as well. The immediate reversal of warming will be as dangerous as hell. I don’t know if constantly flying huge high-altitude airplanes to keep us under a cooling contrail blanket is cost-effective. The airliner groundings after 9/11 proved such a cooling effect exists, so it may have to be attempted. Orbiting and maintaining sun barriers (thousands of huge foil mirrors?) will surely cool the earth, but doing that is bound to have nasty effects on both crops and wildlife. It’ll be expensive, too. We may not have any choice, assuming civilization doesn’t collapse before we can get the project in place.
I looked up author Adam Morton and concluded he’s not some kind of industry shill. One of the new themes they’re starting to use is “It’s Too Late, So Relax And Learn To Adapt”. Sort of like what a famous philosopher from IU once said – “I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
*** University of California loses access to new journal articles published by Elsevier after research access fight ***
There may be other companies I’d like to go bankrupt before this one, but if so none of them immediately come to mind. Come to think of it, may the executives of this abomination spend a few thousand years in one of the lower circles of Hell.
It often takes a lot of effort, but I can usually acquire articles or reports if I really want them. Once I called a University Library and a helpful person there photocopied their 80-year-old magazine and emailed it to me. And earlier this year I contacted a person in India and for a trivial sum he send me a report I badly wanted. It was one Big Pharma had made completely impossible to get in the US of A. If you really look through the internet tubes, you can usually find a journal article. Sometimes they’re pretty well hidden, but with practice a person generally finds what he is after.