Trump Auctions Arctic Refuge To Oil Drillers In Last Strike Against US Wilderness (theguardian.com) 209
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump's administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers. The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation's highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum.
Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers. The refuge has become central to America's debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as the climate crisis accelerates. Climate experts say there should be no new oil and gas extraction, as the world is already more than 1C hotter than pre-industrial times. Even if humans stopped using fossil fuels today, the planet would continue to heat. [...] On Monday, the Trump administration also dramatically expanded the area where the government can lease public land for oil drilling to the west of ANWR. The plan would allow drilling in 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area bigger than the state of West Virginia, according to environmental groups, though the Biden administration could reverse that decision more easily than it could hold off drilling in ANWR.
Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers. The refuge has become central to America's debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as the climate crisis accelerates. Climate experts say there should be no new oil and gas extraction, as the world is already more than 1C hotter than pre-industrial times. Even if humans stopped using fossil fuels today, the planet would continue to heat. [...] On Monday, the Trump administration also dramatically expanded the area where the government can lease public land for oil drilling to the west of ANWR. The plan would allow drilling in 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area bigger than the state of West Virginia, according to environmental groups, though the Biden administration could reverse that decision more easily than it could hold off drilling in ANWR.
The painful part (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 72 million people voted for four more years of this shit.
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Yes, and now those 72 million people are pissed as hell, have most of the guns, and ammo. The next 4 years might be very fun to watch.
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:5, Funny)
Well he only needed 11,780 votes in Georgia. Maybe there would have been 11,780 Georgians alive to vote for him if he had taken COVID seriously instead of as a political football.
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well he only needed 11,780 votes in Georgia. Maybe there would have been 11,780 Georgians alive to vote for him if he had taken COVID seriously instead of as a political football.
Shockingly, those numbers are not far off [worldometers.info].
Of course, it tends to hit Democratic leaning cities harder, so if given the chance at a do-over, Trump would probably try to get those numbers up a bit higher.
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:4)
Sure, but it tends to hit the anti-mask, anti-social-distancing, "it's all a librual conspiracy to undermine tRump"ers harder.
I'm going to be morbidly curious to see how the long-term impacts of COVID hit demographics, especially in swing states. I live in a fairly democratic city, and most people are wearing masks. Drive a half hour or so in any direction out into the country, and it's a mask-free Trumpland.
If soy milk lattes had a chance of death, it's all fine and good for the batshit evil republicans to let that shit go on. Not going to kill their base with that. But COVID can and will. And it's that sort of short-sighted evil that just boggles my mind. When you don't even care enough to save your base, what are you doing? You go from evil partisan hacks to a death cult with a decision like that.
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I'm going to be morbidly curious to see how the long-term impacts of COVID hit demographics, especially in swing states.
Probably not very much at all. The fatality rate from COVID is very low.
The daily death rate from COVID in the US has remained under 4k, whereas the normal daily death rate is around 8k so you have at most less than a 50% increase in daily deaths before you start considering misdiagnosis (deaths attributed to covid but actually caused by something else) and overlaps (ie those that would have still been among the 8k daily deaths had they not contracted covid).
I live in a fairly democratic city, and most people are wearing masks. Drive a half hour or so in any direction out into the country, and it's a mask-free Trumpland.
The countryside has much lower population density
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You make it sound like 50% of daily deaths having one cause is a good thing. You realize that that other 50% has hundreds if not thousands of different causes don't you?
If no one is around you sure go ahead and don't wear a mask. Guess what if you are alone and not wearing a mask no one will know. If someone is able to tell that you aren't wearing a mask I would guess that is because someone is near you to observe that fact. I will admit that just because they can see you doesn't mean that they are close en
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The published covid death figures never peaked to 50% of the average daily death rate (it never hit 4000, highest i could see was 3876).
The average daily deaths from covid is considerably lower, the 7 day moving average peaked at 2783.
The overall average is not displayed and i can't be bothered to calculate it, but safe to say its considerably lower than the peak.
Information gathered from: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
The average daily death rate for 2019 was around 8000, so if there were an extra 4000
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No, not necessarily. If COVID is anything like the flu it becomes a reservoir in the rural areas .. it spreads there but slower. You still gather places on weekends and for various business, personal, fun, or religious stuff right? It can spread, but slower. That's what happened during Spanish flu in 1918, rural areas were hardest hit in the long term and became the source of multiple waves.
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure - until you all go maskless into the same bar to drink shitty Lite beer, then find yourselves with little to no ICU beds open in your rural paradise when you have yourselves a nice little breakout.
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Not everyone with COVID-19 end up in the ICU.
So what? If you're the one, that will be zero consolation. Or one of your relatives that you like, or your partner...
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:4, Informative)
Ever since August the districts reporting the highest rates of COVID-19 cases are rural and small towns. Rural areas *should* be safer, but the myth that they're COVID-proof makes them the most dangerous places in the US. If you go by per 100,000 population case rates, rural areas are almost always far worse than nearby cities -- e.g. Sioux Falls has 124000 total cases per million population, but 100 miles away Bon Homme County has 212,000 cases/million. In comparison early hot spots like New York city (53,000 case/million pop) are quite a bit safer, because mask compliance is higher.
COVID-19 is especially dangerous in rural areas because the average age there is six years older. Rural areas are also under-served by hospital beds, which have been disappearing for decades now. Also as hospitals have been closing, pharmacies have also been closing and in many rural census tracts. So you're more likely to get sick, less likely to have treatment available if you get very sick, and it may be a long time before you can get vaccinated. Now is a good time to get some masks if you don't have them yet.
You don't have to wear a mask when you're outside -- that's never been the CDC recommendation -- you have to *have* one on you so that when you can't social distance it's ready. So keep it in your pocket when you're working alone on your farm or driving your car, then put it on when you go into the store
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I'm sorry but half an hour outside of almost any moderate sized city the population is still quite close together. This is especially true when you put those people into stores (or don't these "rural" folk need to purchase food since they are all living off the land?).
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LOL you are either a dumbarse or just a liar. I guess you could be both.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov]
Here are the figures from the Trump controlled CDC. They caress them and hide them but there they are! Just stop sucking in the Murdoch juice. Grow up.
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:5, Interesting)
The death rate did not increase in 2020
Who told you this, and why were you stupid enough to believe them?
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In the beginning, yes, because Democratic voters generally are ones who are more mobile and travel for vacations and such worldwide. So Democratic cities were hit badly first because well, they imported it - New York, Seattle, LA.
Problem is it gets spread rapidly and ravages Republicans because of their large gatherings causing super-spreader events.
Re: TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:2)
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The GA Sec of State pointed out that more than 11,780 people voted in the Republican primary but not in the general election. I think he credited more to people being discouraged by Trump's baseless "this is all gonna be rigged against me anyway" claims than COVID deaths. I'm not sure if he knows how many opted not to vote vs. were dead. But it is interesting.
Re: TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:3)
Giving the numbers Trump was rattling off, which were all wrong of course, I think it was more that he wanted Raffensperger to essentially disqualify 11,780 votes for Biden, rather than create votes for Trump. Still illegal as all hell, impossible since the state had already certified the election, and in any sane political party asking that would turn you into a political pariah. Instead, you had a Georgia Senator in a run off blast the Secretary of State for recording and leaking the tape. As of 6:30 thi
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> The overwhelming majority of reporters and press outlets are Democrats, and they are the
> party's propaganda wing. [...] This basically means political coverage at a majority of
> news outlets is directly run by the DNC.
While this may or may not be true (I haven't checked), actual viewers - which is all that really matters - is very different. Fox news viewership is much higher than CNN and MSNBC. Believe it or not, it's actually almost as much as CNN and MSNBC combined.
Fox: 3,978,000
CNN: 2,510,
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
He lost. Move on
Take your emotional baggage elsewhere. Slashdot is not Parlor
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Wait, are you repeating a post from 4 years ago? :-)
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Again, go back to Parlor. This is the wrong forum
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What I never understood is how China, being a much poorer country than the US, the people are poorer .. the even the total GDP is smaller .. yet supposedly they are able to run massive scale operations here. Meanwhile we can't do anything in China .. no operatives there influencing things?
Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to be pedantic, by typical definitions of order or magnitude, that would not be several orders of magnitude. Usually when people say "order of magnitude" without a specific framework being cited, they mean powers of ten. Technically, it could be some other power, but it would be very weird for it to be a power of less than 2. Even if we're doing powers of 2, the population of China would only be about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the US. The generally accepted definition of 'several' is normally more than two (although opinions differ). Anyway, while China undoubtedly has a much larger population than the US, calling it several orders of magnitude larger is way too much of a stretch.
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Re:TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:4, Funny)
You forgot about George Soros and 5G. At least get on board properly.
Again, slashdot is the wrong place for this rubbish. Go back to Parlor
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What are you even trying to say with this comment? Are you implying something fraudulent went on?
Re: TRUMP: Best Moron Ever! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: TRUMP: Best President Ever! (Score:2)
It is spelled 'parlour'. Like Massage Parlour.
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You do realize that over 72 and over 74 are the same thing. If it was over 74 million then it definitely was over 72 million. The fact that it was 2 million over 72 million does not negate the fact that it was still over 72 million. AlanObject could have said it was over 5 people that voted for Trump and he would still be correct.
I guess math is a science though and since Republicans don't like science I could see how this could be confusing to you. 8^)
Re:TRUMP: biggest idiot loser ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
While the alleged president deserves to be arrested, he won't be. That would just be feeding the troll. The R's in Congress have slowly come to the conclusion that feeding the troll didn't work. Now they have no R faithful, they only have the alleged president's faithful. Remember: the only true thing about him is that he destroys everything he touches.
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I remember a lot of loud and angry complaints about it when Obama did it. But in politics, no one tries to remember further back than a couple years because it's easier to just make shit up.
https://www.latimes.com/archiv... [latimes.com]
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Re: The painful part (Score:2)
The fact that "How about we stop being idiotic lefties and righties and just use our brains some?" is downmodded says everything about why the country's society is at war with itself until it lays in ruins though, doesn't it?
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Hahaha, Melania you are just as crooked as your partner. Keep feeding him that junk food, and whatever is left of his "empire" will be all yours. BTW, the trick is to kick the golf balls while no one is looking.
Re: The painful part (Score:2)
Right, ... way to show you're the good guys . . .
Will you put on movie supervillain goon uniforms next?
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Re: The painful part (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you know that this defensive anti-intellectualist glorification of stupidity as "non-elitist down-to-earth real-world" is a distinctly American thing, caused by you having so many stupid people that they dominate and become confident they're right?
Elsewhere in then world, stupid people are still social enough to feel a sense of shame for doing stupid things, and haven't given up on intelligence.
Which is why a dumb person in the third world is so much more likable than in America.
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If there are no animals there why did the summary mention that the area is "home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred". Just because you have no intention of going to this part of the US doesn't mean that this area is deserted of all plant and animal life.
This Came Up Before... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and the companies wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
They know it would be political, legal, economic and public relations suicide.
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In the fracking era, drilling in the Arctic makes little sense.
Why go all the way to northern Alaska, pump oil a thousand miles to Anchorage, then load it onto a tanker, when you can just go to west Texas, squirt some soapy water down one hole and suck oil out another?
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Why go all the way to northern Alaska, pump oil a thousand miles to Anchorage, then load it onto a tanker, ...
Not disputing your argument, just saying that in addition to the trouble of drilling in the arctic, etc, there are other potential problems.
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Why go all the way to northern Alaska, pump oil a thousand miles to Anchorage, then load it onto a tanker, ...
Not disputing your argument, just saying that in addition to the trouble of drilling in the arctic, etc, there are other potential problems.
So what you are saying is that this auction is primarily of interest to Captain Planet villains?
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Re: not just the extraction (Score:2)
The extraction cost may be cheaper, but getting it to market isn't. Frack in the lower 48, and you can dump the stuff onto an interstate pipeline with relative ease.
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The extraction cost may be cheaper, but getting it to market isn't. Frack in the lower 48, and you can dump the stuff onto an interstate pipeline with relative ease.
wat [wikipedia.org]
Sure, you have to put it on a ship to get it from Valdez to the refinery, but it's not like it has to make a long trip thereafter. And there's loads of unused capacity on the pipeline.
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If they wouldn't touch it, why are they paying for drilling rights?
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“If there are no bidders on the lease sales at all, Alaska will likely never be able to develop our oil and gas potential from ANWR,” Murkowski said in an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News, where he also noted the oil and gas industry had historically contributed 70% of the state’s revenue.
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Re:This Came Up Before... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and the companies wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
They know it would be political, legal, economic and public relations suicide.
They don't care. If oil companies cared about public relations or were afraid of legal battles they'd be out of business by now. They certainly didn't give a shit about strip mining the surface of nature in Alberta.
Will be interesting to see how that bidding goes. (Score:4, Insightful)
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You think these oil companies will give up so easily? Once they get access to the land then they are going to hold on to it as if their jobs are on the line, because they will be. They will fight, if only to keep out some other oil company that might come in to lease the land and try to develop it. That's a lot of oil up there, and giving up on it will mean losing a lot of income. The oil companies also know that the political winds shift every two years with each election. They just need to hold on fo
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You think these oil companies will give up so easily? Once they get access to the land then they are going to hold on to it as if their jobs are on the line, because they will be.
Sure, then (to start) the government passes a law making it illegal to transport oil through/out of ANWR, then they come up with a hundred other things to impede things before eventually claiming eminent domain and buying the land back at "market rate", which be less than the original lease prices.
Maybe it goes differently, but it will be a crap-shoot for the oil companies.
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You mean if Congress passes a law. I presume Biden would sign it. However, the Senate is going to be so narrowly split that I doubt a law like that would pass. Even oil state democrats would vote against it.
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Hmmm. . .so could you point at all the court cases showing us your evidence for the crooked elections? Even the alleged president's judges rejected those cases as simply too stupid for words.
It would be reasonable for Biden (Score:4, Funny)
to forge exciting new "clean" energy projects, most of which coincidentally ended up being 800 foot tall windmills surrounding every single Trump golf course.
Re:It would be reasonable for Biden (Score:4, Funny)
to forge exciting new "clean" energy projects, most of which coincidentally ended up being 800 foot tall windmills surrounding every single Trump golf course.
Don't be silly, Trump will see this as a way to make money and put windmills *on* his golf courses -- I've seen a lot of putting greens with windmills on them. :-)
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Don't forget, hot air rises upwards! Your generators don't need to be 800ft tall. These only need to surround the golf courses and point outwards, because when hot air rises up does it pull in the cold from all directions (physically and politically ...).
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Wow are you implying there are negative effects from wind turbines? Kind of rude to be honest.
Yeah, some people are deaf to such arguments.
incoming... (Score:5, Interesting)
The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers.
As if he would. Every president in recent history has been a friend of the powerful oil industry. Trump just did him a MASSIVE favour by being the bad guy and leaving it to Biden to say "I wouldn't have done it, but now that it's done..." with a fake sad face.
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He doesn't even have to say that. He can just say, "Trump fucked so much up I need to do what I can to repair democracy. There are lots of priorities, and I can't get to them all unless you vote me into a second term."
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Trump just did him a MASSIVE favour by being the bad guy and leaving it to Biden to say "I wouldn't have done it, but now that it's done..." with a fake sad face.
I remember Obama saying the same thing about a bailout to the banks...
Actually Biden probably will block it (Score:5, Insightful)
Politically the GOP can always count on the gun lovers & evangelicals. They can give those 2 groups things that're no skin off their back (the important stuff is always money). The Dems are a working class focused party, so it's a lot harder for them to come up with things they can give their base without doing stuff for their base's bottom line.
As for why the Dems don't just do the stuff for their base's bottom line, it's hard. The GOP block it all, and thought it looks like they'll take a *very* slim Senate majority most votes need to be 60 to pass and Joe Manchin still exists and he's basically a Republican.
seems reasonable (Score:2, Troll)
1 Trillion Dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:1 Trillion Dollars (Score:5, Informative)
That will be needed. The BP case is now a textbook example that I've actually seen used in business courses that shows companies should not fold, admit fault, or offer to pay a single cent without legal action. The cost of the initial voluntary cleanup combined with the ultimate fine financially crippled the company and is often compared to the Valdez which Exxon opted to simply go through a 30 year legal battle which turned out to be far far cheaper.
You won't see companies putting a dime towards cleanup again.
* Satan liked this (Score:3)
Seriously, that is a level where you're just evil for the sake of being evil.
He's literally a movie supervillian now.
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I wonder if he has a mini me.
Time for Apple and Google (Score:2)
Foregone conclusion? (Score:2)
Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies...
Why wouldn't an environmental group bid instead? It is a foregone conclusion that energy companies will win the auction?
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Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies...
Why wouldn't an environmental group bid instead? It is a foregone conclusion that energy companies will win the auction?
Were you born this dumb, or did you receive repeated electroshock therapy?
Oh please (Score:2)
In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness
Yes ... all while cackling, twirling their handlebar mustaches, and lighting their stogies with $100 bills too.
Just how old are you people? 19? How juvenile can you get?
Re:Good, we need oil, for decades to come. Unless. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're wrong, but I hope you get paid by the word. Otherwise it's really not worth the time you're putting into being wrong.
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Know what else we were dependent on in the 1800's? Horses. We no more need to have our economy and transportation driven by fossil fuels anymore than you need to buy a buggy whip at Walmart.
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Know what else we were dependent on in the 1800's? Horses. We no more need to have our economy and transportation driven by fossil fuels anymore than you need to buy a buggy whip at Walmart.
In that era, you woke up every morning with horse shit dust on your furniture. Cars, with no filters, were a massive improvement.
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Excellent point. Just as we no longer need to use horses for transportation, we no longer need to use nuclear for power. In both cases, we don't want to deal with the shit.
Re: Good, we need oil, for decades to come. Unless (Score:2)
Saying from Saudi Arabia:
My grandfather rode a horse, I drive a car, my son flies a plane, my grandson will ride a horse.
lithium prices are stable tho (Score:2)
lithium prices are steady despite massive increase in demand, and the biggest country in the world mandating electric vehicles (china) most of which use lithium batteries. not to mention the laptops, ipods, ipads, phones, etc, all using lithium.
if there was a huge problem mining lithium i dont understand why the price is stable.
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There is a reason battery chemists are trying to reduce the use of cobalt in Lithium Ion batteries.
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Electric cars might be very nice rides but we will not have the manufacturing capacity for electric vehicles to replace the "infernal combustion engine" for decades.
[citation needed]
Not building new nuclear power plants is economic suicide.
[citation needed]
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Interesting Bible story which of course is not literally true. The baby was Judea, IIRC, and the idea was to divide it into Judea and Israel. Solomon was basically saying that no "True Jew" would be in favour of the division. Since Solomon was a mythical king, the story dates from a period of political unrest and was certainly invented by one side to evoke Solomon as supporting their stance. A bit like early Brits saying that King Arthur would not have allowed such-and-such.
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The climate really doesn't care where the atmospheric CO2 comes from. Thus, why complain about drilling in the arctic, but not about fossil fuel extraction in other places, which continues as usual?
Yeah. I mean, no one is protesting about any of that, and they certainly haven't been protesting about it since at least the 1970s.
Re: Drilling location is irrelevant (Score:2)
Hahaha, you think the United States Government would put binding environmental requirements on oil drillers.
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Drilling location would be irrelevant if the drilling were clean and safe because they spared no expense to make it so.
But they will in fact spare no money to make it so, and so it will be an environmental shit show.
So yeah, it matters very much where the drilling occurs, and only a total dildo who pays no attention to the world they live in or an oil company flack getting paid to do evil would believe otherwise.
Re: Orange Man (Score:2)
Bolsonaro is also the North American Bolsonaro, given who his bosses are.
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Bullshit. I know The Guardian is a left-wing shitrag, but that's beyond the pale. That is not reporting, it is propaganda.
Yeah, you're right. Trump has another few days to make more strikes against this nation, and the environment, at Putin's behest.
Best pocket change Putin ever spent
Re:"Last strike"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The democratic party is also in bed with big business, and they have the easy get out of just being able to blame Trump.
Democrats believe lots of dumb things but they're not dumb enough to believe that their party can't reverse shit Trump has done just like Trump spent his whole presidency undoing shit Obama has done (at least the parts he didn't spend golfing.) That level of stupidity is reserved for Trump supporters, who will believe basically anything you tell them (including that their donations will go to fund a reelection attempt when they're just paying down Trump's massive debt.)
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There is no longer a respectable right wing to vote for
There never was! They have always opposed equality, meaning rights for women and POC, for example. They have always been the warmongers. They have always been the worst gerrymanderers. They have always been the most corrupt. They were the ones who supported slavery. They are the ones who bomb foreign countries for profit and the ones who profit from rebuilding them after we bomb them.
The right wing in this nation has been morally reprehensible since before it was even a nation.
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Times change, and roles shift. Currently, the right-wing is much worse than the left-wing (and I vote accordingly) but it wasn't always that way.
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"wrong thing" and "honor" is matter of opinion. The fact is in the present we use petrochemical energy, and higher percentage of energy self-sufficiency has great benefit.