Daily Shaarli
October 11, 2020
How nuclear stacks up against other energy sources in terms of life-cycle emissions. IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change
This shows that despite the long list of stages at which greenhouse gases are emitted, and based on what researchers have been able to take into account so far, the overall life-cycle emissions for nuclear power are likely to be lower than for fossil fuels.
Sometimes, it behooves us to consider a larger perspective.
Here is one such perspective. On September 5, 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1, a deep space probe designed to study the outer Solar System. This device performed far better than expected. As I write this, the probe is over 13.6 billion miles from Earth, the farthest of any devices ever launched by man…and is still responding to commands.
By 1990, Voyager 1 had completed its primary mission and was heading out of the Solar System. However, it was to get one final and most significant mission. Astronomer Carl Sagan prevailed upon NASA to have the spacecraft take a “family portrait” of the planets in the solar system, including Earth. The pictures were taken on Valentine’s Day, 1990 from a distance of 6 billion miles from home. The one showing Earth is the subject of a book by Sagan. No thinking person can see that picture, read his words, and then logically conclude that this all “just happened” on its own.
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan, 1994
Richard Grenell
@RichardGrenell
I am calling for an investigation into @GavinNewsom’s election interference. This is a scandal. It’s being ignored by the media. It’s happening everyday! Here are two ballots mailed to two people who have been dead for more than 10 years! //
In Los Angeles County, where Grenell’s example comes from, Death Records AND Voter Records are handled by the same County organization, the Recorders and Registrars office. How these people could have died in Los Angeles County and somehow not end up removed from voter rolls shows GROSS incompetence. Even after a Settlement into removing dead people from voter rolls, LA County still refuses to comply.
Either they should do their job to the fullest of their responsibilities, resign, or be charged with aiding and abetting a crime. There’s no middle ground any more.
Pence is right: Shale drilling for natural gas has cut C02 emissions. //
it’s worth highlighting a new Energy Information Administration report that shows how fracking and competitive energy markets have done more to reduce CO2 emissions over the last decade than government regulation and renewable subsidies. Vice President Mike Pence made this point on Wednesday night, and he’s right.
According to the report, energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. fell 2.8% last year as many utilities replaced coal and heating oil with less expensive natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling has unleashed a gusher of natural gas production in the Midwest and Southwest. As a result, natural gas prices have plunged, putting many coal plants out of business. //
CO2 emissions from coal declined by more than 50% from 2007 to 2019, the report notes, and by 15% in 2019 alone. Between 2016 and 2019 the share of electricity generated by natural gas rose to 38.1% from 33.7% and by non-carbon generation (including nuclear and hydropower) to 38.2% from 35.5%. Coal generation during this period plunged to 23.3% from 30.3%. //
Increasing power generation from natural gas has accounted for 60% of the country’s decline in CO2 emissions from electricity since 2010. The carbon intensity of the country’s energy declined at about the same rate during the first three years of the Trump Presidency as from 2009 to 2016. //
The International Energy Agency earlier this year reported that the U.S. “saw the largest decline in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 on a country basis” due to a 15% reduction in the use of coal for power generation and “US emissions are now down almost 1 Gt [gigatonne] from their peak in the year 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period.”
To sum up: President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and eased the Obama-Biden Administration’s economically destructive climate regulations, and the U.S. is still leading the world in CO2 reductions.
Judge Pittman used the same rationale as all the other Obama appointees who have interjected themselves into state election process matters — the COVID-19 pandemic creates unprecedented challenges for voters to be able to cast their vote in a safe manner, and pursuant to a reliable process that ensures their right to vote will not be forfeited by a process problem. The argument boils down to whether a state can reasonably do something more that would make the casting of a ballot more convenient, and if so the State must have a compelling reason for NOT taking that step. The failure to do so is being determined by liberal federal district court judges as a violation by the State of the First and Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of the right to vote. //
Judge Pittman justifies his action by claiming that he is only returning the Texas process for collecting absentee ballots in person to the status it had between July 27 when Gov. Abbott issued his first Order allowing “drop boxes” without limitation on the number, and Oct. 1 when he issued his second Order that said no more than one “dropbox” per county regardless of the size of the county. //
While this argument has some facial validity, it ignores the words of Justice Kavanaugh in his “statement” accompanying the Supreme Court’s Order granting an emergency stay in connection with judicially mandated changes to South Carolina election law, which I wrote about in this story.
[F]or many years, this Court has repeatedly emphasized that federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules in the period close to an election.
Justice Kavanaugh did not write that “election rules” should not be altered close to an election — he wrote that federal courts should not altering election rules close to an election. Gov. Abbott’s Oct. 1 Order is an “election rule” under Texas law. Judge Pittman’s order changes the “election rule” less than 30 days prior to the election and after voting has already begun. The fact that he claims he’s only changing it back doesn’t make it any less of a change.
Gov. Abbott is accountable to the voters of Texas for his decisions. Judge Pittman is not. //
Judge Pittman has changed the election rules. It makes no difference that Gov. Abbot changed the rules on Oct. 1 — he’s not a federal judge, he’s an elected official in the State of Texas who has the authority invested in him by the voters of Texas who elected him.
I remember vividly the first time I saw this speech. Three thoughts raced through my head: 1. Since when does Trump talk like this?? 2. How is this the same man I’ve learned to hate?? 3. How the F have I not seen this before????? Kept rewinding, rewatching. ///
[Trump speech from 2016]
Pick up a research paper on battery technology, fuel cells, energy storage technologies or any of the advanced materials science used in these fields, and you will likely find somewhere in the introductory paragraphs a throwaway line about its application to the storage of renewable energy. Energy storage makes sense for enabling a transition away from fossil fuels to more intermittent sources like wind and solar, and the storage problem presents a meaningful challenge for chemists and materials scientists… Or does it?
Zogby poll showing that he has a 51% approval rating. That’s an important metric to hit, as Gallup has observed that historically, “all incumbents with an approval rating of 50% or higher have won reelection, and presidents with approval ratings much lower than 50% have lost.” //
So Gallup asked Americans between September 14-28 if they were better off now than they were four years ago and 56% said they were, even in the midst of a pandemic. The number was actually even higher in January before the virus at 61 percent.
% of Americans who say they are better off now than they were 4 years ago
Sept 2020: 56 percent
Dec 2012: 45 percent
Oct 2004: 47 percent
Oct 1992: 38 percent
July 1984: 44 percent
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/321650/gallup-election-2020-coverage.aspx
He’s 12 points higher than Reagan who won in a landslide in 1984 and 11 points higher than Obama in 2012 in that number. That should terrify the Democrats, especially when combined with Trump’s approval number.
The poll also asked, regardless of who they support, who did they think was going to win? A majority of Americans said Trump, by a lot, from 56 to 40 precent. //
The poll also found that while MSM polls were saying that Biden was leading, that more Americans agreed with Trump’s policy position than with that of Biden, 49 to 46 percent.
REPORTER: “Sir, don’t the voters deserve to know” your position on court packing?
BIDEN: “No, they don’t deserve” to know.
Matt Walsh
@MattWalshBlog
Biden: voters deserve to know about the president’s personal finances which have no effect on anyone but not his policies which could reshape the country for generations to come
Jennifer Epstein
@jeneps
Biden is again asked why voters don’t deserve to know his views on court packing. He responds: “The only court packing going on right now is going on with Republicans packing the court right now ... I’m going to stay focused on it so we don’t take our eyes off the ball here."
Laura Huhtasaari, an MEP and a member of the right-wing Finns Party, wrote to the Nobel Committee to nominate Trump for the 2021 prize “in recognition of his endeavors to end the era of endless wars, construct peace by encouraging conflicting parties for dialogue and negotiations, as well as underpin internal cohesion and stability of his country.” //
Huhtasaari said Trump has nearly completed a presidential term without involving the U.S. in a new foreign conflict, while withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. She also cited the Abraham Accords -- peace deals between two Arab Gulf nations and Israel. //
“It is hard to imagine a president of the United States from the last decades, or a current head of state, who would deserve more the Committee’s recognition in 2021 than President Trump for his efforts to build peace in the world,” Huhtasaari writes. //
Trump was first nominated by a Norwegian Parliament member for his role in the peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Days later, a Swedish Parliament member nominated Trump again for his role in a U.S.-brokered normalization deal between Serbia and Kosovo.
Last month, three members of the European Parliament submitted a resolution to call on the E.U. to nominate Trump for the prize.
McCain’s decision not to retire before his death threw Arizona into a years-long tumult to regain two, fully-vested senators to represent her. //
November’s contest will only serve to fill the final two years of McCain’s term. Then voters will have to go through this election rigmarole all over again. //
You and your family don’t own the Senate seat, Mrs. McCain, despite your late husband’s insistence on staying in it and holding us hostage, until he decided to work his own will in that vote. Don’t talk to Arizonans about anyone respecting people. Sen. McCain showed disrespect for Arizona, just utter disdain for the people he had promised to serve, by his own selfish actions.
MSM is pitching a lot of polls that might suggest that Joe Biden was ahead. You even have a CNN poll claiming that Biden was up 16 points.
But even Biden himself poo pooed that poll and said don’t be taken in by that, get out and vote.
Which means that Biden knows that that’s nonsense, and it’s much closer.
As I previously wrote, Biden wouldn’t be sending folks to Nevada and New Hampshire if he wasn’t seeing things that indicated a problem in those two states which previously were thought to be sure blue in his corner. Biden wouldn’t be suddenly activating people on the ground to go out and knock on doors in ‘battleground states’ if he didn’t think he desperately needed to do it, after doing nothing no reaching out to voters on the ground in person since March.
The MSM polls often have some major flaws: oversampling of Democrats, failure to account for the
shy Trump vote and often using registered voters rather than likely voters.
There are a few things that show why Biden may be justifiably panicking, as Townhall observes.
Newt Gingrich
@newtgingrich
The openness of a basement campaign: “Well, sir, don't the voters deserve to know?" DiMattei asked before Biden cut him off.
"No, they don't," Biden said. "
Every Democratic candidate for House or Senate should be challenged: yes or no on Court Packing
President Trump should be on Rush’s show once a week from now until the election
@BoSnerdley
@realDonaldTrump
MILLIONS getting to hear the president without a leftist journalist in the way.
Then something happened that I didn’t anticipate; a significant proportion of my Third Culture Kid clients presenting with either formal diagnoses of AD(H)D or clusters of behaviours that signalled experiences often pegged as AD(H)D.
Nuclear power is sometimes described as being free of greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s true of the nuclear fission reactions themselves. But here is a list of all the stages of the nuclear power cycle at which greenhouse gases are emitted: uranium mining, uranium milling, conversion of uranium ore to uranium hexafluoride, uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, reactor decommissioning, fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste disposal, mine site rehabilitation, and transport throughout all stages.
During these stages, greenhouse gases are emitted directly (for instance, by trucks) but also indirectly (such as through the use of materials such as steel and cement, which are manufactured using emissions-intensive processes). //
Quantifying all these emissions is a complicated prospect, but we can attempt to do it using a method called “life-cycle assessment”. The result of one such estimate (with which I agree) is quoted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (see pages 731-2).
http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch09.pdf //
My review of various estimates suggests that the greenhouse emissions from nuclear power vary from 10 to 130 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour of power, with an average of 65 g per kWh – or roughly the same as wind power. For comparison, coal power has emissions of about 900 g per kWh, and gas-fired power about 450 g per kWh. About 15-25% of nuclear’s greenhouse emissions come from building, maintaining and decommissioning the nuclear power plant.
JERRY DUNLEAVY
@JerryDunleavy
Kristen Welker (@KWelkerNBC), the moderator of the next presidential debate, has either deactivated or deleted her Twitter account. //
What does that mean? It means that she has so many things in her account that would be problematic she can’t delete them easily and she has to deactivate the whole account in the meantime.
The Supreme Court “has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.”
This is not — as so many Obama appointees seem to believe — a question of whether “My alteration is minor, or it makes the process fairer and easier for the voter”.
The principle is “Don’t change the rules to satisfy your views as to what is “fairer” or “easier”.
DON’T CHANGE THE RULES — it’s not your job.
Elections are about the political branches of government, and politics. Changing the rules accomplishes the goals of one political point of view at the expense of an opposing political point of view.
THAT is what elections are for. //
dging markvol
15 hours ago
That's exactly right. If you can hand in your vote to an authority, then you can vote in person.
I've said this in other posts, but this is the death of our republic. Many judges are doing this. They are rewriting laws they disagree with. This is blatantly unconstitutional. These judges, for the most part, are near the top of the field. They graduated from top law schools and often worked at top law firms. They know what they are doing is unconstitutional, but they do it anyway.
And it wears down the system. Even if most of the rulings get overturned, some will get through. More importantly, it sets the precedent that judges are allowed to issue unconstitutional rulings. In essence they wear down the constitution. The constitution then means nothing. And that, my dear friend, is the end of our republic.
A wise man once warned us to try and keep it. I think we failed in that endeavor. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.
Brit Hume
@brithume
Mr. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and eased Obama-Biden climate regulations, and the U.S. is still leading the world in CO2 reductions.
So you just marched to the White House because you understand to protect the lives of Black Americans and all Americans, you have to have your police support you. You have to have that. If the Left gains power, they’ll launch a nationwide crusade against law enforcement, and they’ve already done that, and you see them. They’re doing that at a level that nobody’s ever seen before.
We’re here today to deliver a united message to police officers all across our great land… every American, every race and color, we love you. Every race, color, creed, we support you. We honor you. It’s a dangerous profession. They’ve been doing an incredible job, and I just want to thank them on behalf of everybody here today, because that’s why we’re safe.
Chris Wallace Calls Out Biden for Dodging on Court-Packing: 'Foolish' and 'Impossible' for Him Not To Go on Record Before Election
Of course, we all know the answer that Biden won’t provide. If he had no intentions of packing the court, he’d just say so. There’s no risk to him making moderates like him even more, and we all know the rabid Democrat base will show up to vote against Trump anyway. That Biden refuses to answer such a simple question provides all the context we need to ascertain what he really thinks.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan denied a request from Republicans to stop Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s (D) plan to mail ballots to all registered voters.
Kagan, who has jurisdiction over the case based on geography, denied the request without referring the case to the full court.
The suit was brought by Joe Lamm of the Ravali County Republican Central Committee and other voters.
The GOP-dominated Legislature banned mail-in ballots for general elections, instead allowing only by-request, no-excuse-required “absentee ballots” and in-person voting compatible with Phase 2 safety restrictions in the governor’s COVID-19 reopening plan.
But Bullock argued an emergency declaration connected to the coronavirus pandemic allows him to suspend that state law.
Bullock gave counties wide latitude regarding mailed ballots. Counties with approved plans began sending them to all registered voters in those counties on Oct. 9.
At the Presidential Debate, the President asked Biden to say the words, "Law & Order", which he declined & turned back at him to tell white supremacists to stand down, which he did.
So why did America forget that Biden was the one who wouldn't say, "LAW & ORDER"?