The Truth About Hydrocarbons vs. Renewables!

The Hydrocarbon (Oil, Gas and Coal) Industries have always turned a blind eye to the hazards of extraction, transportation, burning and waste products associated with their businesses.  By overlooking the aforementioned problems, and the costs of their direct and indirect consequences, supporters of hydrocarbon usage have presented a cost/benefit (of using hydrocarbons) analysis that is favorable when compared to renewable energy (Wind, Solar and Conservation). 

This lie has been told for so long and by so many that it is readily confused with truth.  The hydrocarbon industry has continuously promoted this lie for its own benefit. 

It is well past time to tell the truth and reduce problems and pollution, while actually growing sustainable industries and jobs!  

Wind and solar must be built, installed, operated and maintained; job creation.  Wind energy is captured by wind turbines of various designs well overhead of people and local buildings.  Some claim that birds are hurt and killed by these turbines, without any known evidence, while showing no regard at all for the creatures (including people) hurt or killed just by automobiles using gas or diesel fuels; both are hydrocarbons. 

Distributed electricity generation (net metered: roof top, solar panels or local, small to reasonably enormous wind turbines) require additional, intelligent distribution grids; more jobs created...

Conservation, wind and solar (distributed generation of electricity) present direct threats to the profit margins of oil, gas and large (enormous) utility companies and therefore have been, and will continue to be, resisted by any means they feel are needed; honesty be damned.

To restore and preserve the health of the only planet we have (and all the people, plants and animals that must live here) we must recognize the Climate Change that we the people have caused (there is no need to believe, because the evidence is everywhere) and change our ways.  This not only grows the economy, it reduces health care needs and costs as well.

This is one of the prime reasons for government: enforced regulation of industry.  Industries are in the business of making money and they, too often, will not take responsibility for their actions if it might reduce profit margins.

Register and Vote in every election for the people you think will do the best job in elected office.  Remember, if your vote were not important no one would be trying to make voting more difficult.  In 2008 and 2012 a concerted effort was made to purchase the Presidency of these United States for industry friendly candidates; both efforts were defeated by voters.

Give, “Hope and Change,” a Chance… and a Push!

Turning TX Blue in 2014!

The Future IS YOURS, but only if you'll work for it...

I've started my forth political campaign this year...  I started campaigning for political office, because nobody was running against the incumbent politicians!  The odds are greater than 9 to 1 against any challenger.  So, people complained about politics and politicians, then did absolutely nothing about it!!!

What can one person do?

Look around you.  Everything that surrounds you (a house, an office, a coffee shop, a car [hopefully you're not driving as you read], etc...) that is not nature was created after a single person asked, "What if?"

If you want an elected official who reflects your perspective, you (all of you) must elect that person and then you must be willing to push that person in the direction of your choice; again and again.  Whether this is an elected official in your: town, city, county, state or federal government, they will be entering office in an environment that already exists; that was built by the people who have been there (working in their own best interest) for a while.

The room doesn't spin in your favored direction just because you've arrived, once. 

Get in there, ask questions (again and again) till they are answered.  If you don't like the answer, then the next question is for you: How can I change this?

If your answer is, "Oh my, I'm just one person...  I can't do anything!"  That is both nonsense and self fulfilling prophesy; you've just made yourself irrelevant.

If you are to: Give, "Hope and Change," a Chance...  YOU must be willing to give it a Push, then another Push, and possible still more Pushing!!! 

Why?

Because you are not working in a vacuum!

There are others in there pushing, some in your direction (find them and work with them), some in similar directions (work with them, too), because others are pushing back; they don't agree and are working for their own perspective.

Register, vote, write, call, organize, act!  If you don't act, how is any person (or group) going to know that you are there; can help?

Own Your Future!  Help Your Democracy!  Help Your Republic!  Help Your Freedom!

Give, "Hope and Change," a Chance...  and a Push!!!

Science v. Belief; or Not!

David Brooks’ opinion (expressed via: Sidney Awards Highlight Conflicts in Belief and Science; published in the Austin American Statesman’s Viewpoints) attempts to support the right wing ideologues’ insistence that there is conflict twixt belief and science; there is not. 

Brooks oversimplifies, as conservatives are wont to do, and imagines a one or the other version of reality.  Beliefs can explain all, but can not be checked using an independently verifiable proof.  Science (facts) can be checked via said proofs, but can not (as yet) explain everything.

Facts require no belief and beliefs require no facts, but neither functions well alone.  Belief, once proven, becomes fact; as Alchemy morphed, through experimentation, to become Chemistry. 

D v R_Family Planning

A Democrat sees family planning, a Republican sees abortion.

A Democrat sees women’s preventative health care, a Republican sees abortion.

A Democrat sees treatment of feminine disorders, a Republican sees abortion.

This is what happens when your whole Republican committee on women’s health is grumpy, older, white men!

@Wealth and Power.edu

The root of government is the organization of society. The root of politics and politicians, in government, is power. Power is a means to wealth. Knowledge is the offset and access to both power and wealth.

That is why some seeking or protecting wealth and power often seek knowledge as well. Others abhor knowledge's ability to stymy pursuit, or protection, of wealth and power.

It is in the best interests of any society to educate everyone, because potential can't be known till it can be expressed.

None but government has the means and motivation to accomplish the education of everyone. It is a large, expensive and long term (from pre-k to post Doctoral) investment that for-profit businesses will not undertake.

Even if you aren't in, and don't have children or grand children, etc... needing education, it is still in your best interest to invest in the type of society that can happen only when everyone is educated as well as is possible. That is the only type of society that has a history of shared, reasonably universal success.

Govt., “of, by and for the people,” is the ideal, but in TX it is not the fact.

Of the people...  A TX legislator has a salary of $7,200 per year; a salary nobody can live on. You work 140 days, every other year, with the occasional 30 day, mandatory, special session. How many employers allow an individual the flexibility to accommodate that schedule; make a sufficient second income? 

None.  It helps to be independently wealthy. 

If you are a legislator long enough you can qualify for a retirement pension, based on a judge’s salary! 

Who can retire on, say, 80% of $7,200 a year? 

Nobody.

By the people... If a Texan wants to vote you must have one, of a specific and limited kind, of picture id. If you don't have such an id, and/or you don't have the specific document needed to attain said id, the state offers no assistance. The cost and travel involved in getting your picture id are going to be all yours! All to solve the problem of voter fraud that, study after study has discovered, happens a very small fraction of 1% of the time votes are made in person.

If you want to communicate, especially if you want to visit in person, with your candidate or legislator (or any other elected official) it helps to be a campaign donor; the larger the donation the better the odds.

Who is easily able to participate in the day to day functions of government in TX?

It helps to be wealthy, generous, older, white and male!

For the people... Corporations are legally defined as people. As the owner of a LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) I know it to be my property; not a person in any way, shape or form. 

Political contributions are protected as free speech, not as paid access to elected officials that it actually is. Political Action Committees are tax exempt entities that can collect large amounts of money, from anonymous donors, for political expenditures. If you don't have enough money, to compete with those who do, for the attention of your candidates and elected officials, oh well.

Tough luck!

This must change! 

Give, “Hope and Change,” a Chance... and a Push!   

Help Turn Texas Blue!

GMO and GE Products are Science Commercialized Too Quickly...

or: Profit Now!!!  Responsibility?  When Ever!

I dabble in science and scientific methodology, not a scientist by trade and training, but still have found peer reviewed research about genetically modified organisms (GMO) and genetically engineered (GE) crops comes up well short of sufficient. 

Industrial (read: unsustainable without enormous assistance from chemical and mechanical agents) agriculture has led to many a problem (e.g., desertification and dust bowls on multiple continents, red tides and other algae blooms in the world’s oceans, etc…)  and we’ve mentioned naught of the problems associated with Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO).  Now there is problematic GE that has led to GMOs that are untested in the lab and yet are already being grown down on the farm.  I greet these new, and insufficiently tested, additions to industrial agriculture (that is GE created GMOs) with great skepticism.

One of the earliest of the GMOs is golden rice; potentially increasing the rice's vitamin A content.  The extra genetic material was added, via GE, to a variety of rice that is not grown in the regions where vitamin A deficiency is most prominent.  Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria, corn is genetically modified to be herbicide resistant and is probably hastening the evolution of herbicide tolerance, negating the effectiveness of said chemicals, in the targeted weeds.  Herbicide resistant pollen has been wind borne to places where it was not supposed to go and is cross pollinating with plant species that aren’t corn.  The herbicide resistance leaves fields of corn and weeds  resistant to multiple types of patented agricultural herbicide formulas.  This is leaving crops unable to be treated with generic versions of said chemistry when patents expire (increased cost for farmers) and interferes with the most sustainable form of agriculture known as, “no-till farming.”

The research I’ve read, over the decades, suggest that genetics are more analog than digital in character: put this gene here, to do that there, but who knows if it will do as predicted, or whether it will stay only where it was placed.  What other reactions are changed hundreds, thousands, millions or even billions of genes down the double helix?  Only long term testing, in isolated biospheres, can even begin to tell if the intended consequences are happening as predicted, or are beginning to display the signs of unintended consequences that always occur when changes are made to incredibly complex systems.

Until such long term, isolated and peer reviewed testing is done and published I, at a very minimum, want GMO products clearly labeled: clearly specified in produce (fruits and vegetables), protein (meat and fish) and when used in processed food.  That way those modified products can be avoided when I go grocery shopping.