"The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching." Aristotle | Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this Wordpress website are the views and opinions of the content creator, Dr. Reggie Goodwin, and should not be construed as shared, or sourced from The Environmental Protection Agency, or any organizations with which they have cooperative, or business relationships.
Artist’s conception of the dwarf planet Sedna in the outer edges of the known solar system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC))
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, NASA, Space Exploration
Astronomers are racing to explain peculiar orbits of faraway objects at the edge of our solar system.
Among the many mysteries that make the furthest reaches of our solar system, well, mysterious, is the exceptionally egg-shaped path of a dwarf planet called 90377 Sedna.
Its 11,400-year orbit, one of the longest of any resident of the solar system, ushers the dwarf planet to seven billion miles (11.3 billion km) from the sun, then escorts it out of the solar system and way past the Kuiper Belt to 87 billion miles (140 billion km), and finally takes it within a loose shell of icy objects known as the Oort cloud. Since Sedna’s discovery in 2003, astronomers have struggled to explain how such a world could have formed in a seemingly empty region of space, where it is too far to be influenced by giant planets of the solar system and even the Milky Way galaxy itself.
Now, a new study suggests that a thus far undetected Earth-like planet hovering in that region could be deviating orbits of Sedna and a handful of similar trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which are the countless icy bodies orbiting the sun at gigantic distances. Many TNOs have oddly inclined and egg-shaped orbits, possibly due to being tugged at by a hidden planet, astronomers say.
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights
Sixty years ago tomorrow, two dear friends turned a year old, and ten years old. Sixty years ago tomorrow, I was a year, and 12 days old. The March on Washington happened on the eighth anniversary of the terrorism and slaying of Emmett Till, August 28, 1955, the actual date of original march August 28, 1963, this coming Monday. The demonstrators asked for a form of reparations that would come in the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 the next year, the Voting Rights Bill in 1965, and the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Dr. King, in a recording before the march opined that “we were coming to get our check.” There were celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, and future politicos (on opposite sides now) Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. The march was a sea of “diversity, equity (sought) and inclusion (goaled for)” in that there were African Americans, white Americans, Jews, women and other minority groups on the Washington Mall. It was the “future and the hope” Gene Roddenberry and Lucille Ball launched Star Trek from. In two hundred years, we will have to get something right about living together.
At the original march, there were very few, if any, women allowed on the platform, John Lewis and Dr. King being the most famously remembered, as the Civil Rights Movement had a notable flaw: it was misogynist to its core. A lot of work behind the scenes, the arrests, the enduring of fire hoses was done by women like my big sister, heretofore unacknowledged. The hierarchy the then young people were marching against was a justification for those who “had,” and those who “had not,” but that did not let women at Langston’s table yet. This stratification is a competition for resources, and those who have had the resources are never eager to part with or share them, even if it insures species survival. It makes “trickledown” a gaslighting myth, as any distribution, regardless of speed, is anathema to the system.
Tomorrow, there will be a commemorative march populated by the “least of these”: African Americans, Asians, Hispanic/Latinos, LGBTQ, Women: all whose constitutional rights as citizens and EXISTENCE as humanity has been challenged since August 28, 1963. There has been a sustained assault by the ones who have benefited the most from the hierarchy that established Levittown’s that are more economically segregated (de facto) than de jure (by law). No one has to burn crosses on your front lawn if you can’t afford to live there. All of the aforementioned groups have seen the Voting Rights Act gutted, Roe vs. Wade eliminated, bodily autonomy and privacy of what we as citizens do at home in our bedrooms, down to contraception itself for the same reason: the hoarding of resources by those who consider themselves “worthy” so long as they have pariahs’ necks to stamp.
The world population in 1963 was estimated at 3,195,779,247.
The world population in 2023 is estimated at 8,045,311,447.
The globe hasn’t gotten bigger, and Zephram Cochrane hasn’t cracked the warp drive code (note: in the fictional Trek universe, he isn’t born until the 2030s).
The world population is projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, and to increase further to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100. As with any type of projection, there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding these latest population projections.United Nations
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Broadly defined, ecofascism is any environmentalism that advocates or accepts violence and does so in a way that reinforces existing systems of inequality or targets certain people while leaving others untouched. It is basically environmentalism that suggests that certain people are naturally and exclusively entitled to control and enjoy environmental resources. Some types of people, in other words, are “native species” and others are “invasive.”
The term itself is still very much up for debate but gathering currency largely due to high-profile individuals who have explicitly identified themselves as ecofascist. An example includes the man who murdered 51 People in a Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque in 2019. The El Paso, Texas, shooter, also in 2019, did not refer to himself as an ecofascist, but he plagiarized the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, including many of its bogus arguments about race, nation, and environment. More recently, as you mentioned, another young man drove several hours to Buffalo, New York, where he targeted Black grocery shoppers.
A common ecofascist argument, then, links national environment to population, contending that certain (often specifically nonwhite) populations, within the US or beyond it, are the primary cause of climate change and other environmental issues.
Environment. Levittown. Wealth. Population. All determined by a sick, psychopathy. Divided like a pie on the table of the depraved, in this case, the pariah Lazarus, and his kin get no crumbs from the Koinonia table. When you found a nation on the land grab and murder of its indigenous inhabitants, from Columbus to “Manifest Destiny,” when you cultivate and build your wealth on the backs of kidnapped enslaved people from the continent that BIRTHED humanity, the only way you can maintain such a system that would make Alfred Hitchcock BLUSH is through the application of unmerciful violence. “Christian nation” and “United States” become a form of delusion and self-gaslighting. You might have to ban a few books to keep up the façade. Burning them would be too obvious.
I don’t know what the world will be in 200 years, just like I don’t know if a Zephram Cochrane will ever exist, but I hope for my “little one’s” sake in six decades, it is still here, balanced on indigenous sensibilities with the environment, more egalitarian, and less authoritarian, the inequity quelled and every stomach filled, including hers, sixty years from now. She will be a little older than me, hopefully in a better world that I helped form.
Researchers from the University of Connecticut and colleagues have created a highly durable, lightweight material by structuring DNA and then coating it in glass. The resulting product, characterized by its nanolattice structure, exhibits a unique combination of strength and low density, making it potentially useful in applications like vehicle manufacturing and body armor. (Artist’s concept.)
Topics: Biotechnology, DNA, Material Science, Nanomaterials
Researchers have developed a highly robust material with an extremely low density by constructing a structure using DNA and subsequently coating it in glass.
Materials possessing both strength and lightness have the potential to enhance everything from automobiles to body armor. But usually, the two qualities are mutually exclusive. However, researchers at the University of Connecticut, along with their collaborators, have now crafted an incredibly strong yet lightweight material. Surprisingly, they achieved this using two unexpected building blocks: DNA and glass.
“For the given density, our material is the strongest known,” says Seok-Woo Lee, a materials scientist at UConn. Lee and colleagues from UConn, Columbia University, and Brookhaven National Lab reported the details on July 19 in Cell Reports Physical Science.
Strength is relative. Iron, for example, can take 7 tons of pressure per square centimeter. But it’s also very dense and heavy, weighing 7.8 grams/cubic centimeter. Other metals, such as titanium, are stronger and lighter than iron. And certain alloys combining multiple elements are even stronger. Strong, lightweight materials have allowed for lightweight body armor and better medical devices and made safer, faster cars and airplanes.
Electric field- and pressure-assisted fast sintering to control graphene alignment in thick composite electrodes for boosting lithium storage performance. Credit: Hongtao Sun, Penn State
Topics: Battery, Energy, Graphene, Green Tech, Lithium, Materials Science, Nanomaterials
The demand for high-performance batteries, especially for use in electric vehicles, is surging as the world shifts its energy consumption to a more electric-powered system, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and prioritizing climate remediation efforts. To improve battery performance and production, Penn State researchers and collaborators have developed a new fabrication approach that could make for more efficient batteries that maintain energy and power levels.
The improved method for fabricating battery electrodes may lead to high-performance batteries that would enable more energy-efficient electric vehicles, as well as such benefits as enhancing power grid storage, according to Hongtao Sun. Sun is an assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering at Penn State and the co-corresponding author of the study, which was published in and featured on the front cover of Carbon.
“With current batteries, we want them to enable us to drive a car for longer distances, and we want to charge the car in maybe five minutes, 10 minutes, comparable to the time it takes to fill up for gas,” Sun said. “In our work, we considered how we can achieve this by making the electrodes and battery cells more compact, with a higher percentage of active components and a lower percentage of passive components.”
If an electric car maker wants to improve the driving distance of their vehicles, they add more battery cells, numbering in the thousands. The smaller and lighter, the better, according to Sun.
“The solution for longer driving distances for an electric vehicle is just to add compact batteries, but with denser and thicker electrodes,” Sun said, explaining that such electrodes could better connect and power the battery’s components, making them more active. “Although this approach may slightly reduce battery performance per electrode weight, it significantly enhances the vehicle’s overall performance by reducing the battery package’s weight and the energy required to move the electric vehicle.”
This map shows global temperature anomalies for July 2023 according to the GISTEMP analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Temperature anomalies reflect how July 2023 compared to the average July temperature from 1951-1980. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, NASA
Editor’s Note: This release has been updated to add additional graphics and captions and to spell out the words degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius.
According to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, July 2023 was hotter than any other month in the global temperature record.
“Since day one, President Biden has treated the climate crisis as the existential threat of our time,” said Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Advisor. Against the backdrop of record-high temperatures, wildfires, and floods, NASA’s analysis puts into context the urgency of President Biden’s unprecedented climate leadership. From securing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history, to invoking the Defense Production Act to supercharge domestic clean energy manufacturing, to strengthening climate resilience in communities nationwide, President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate agenda in history.”
Overall, July 2023 was 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.24 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other July in NASA’s record, and it was 2.1 F (1.18 C) warmer than the average July between 1951 and 1980. The primary focus of the GISS analysis is long-term temperature changes over many decades and centuries, and a fixed base period yields anomalies that are consistent over time. Temperature “normals” are defined by several decades or more – typically 30 years.
The central role of HFIP: a solvent component that solvates POM. a. 1,1,1,3,3,3-Hexafluoro-2-propanol (HFIP): an effective solvent for polyoxymethylene (POM), the clustering of HFIP enabled the decrease of σ*OH energy38. b. Images of an undivided cell before (left) and after (right) the electrolysis. c. Reaction profile of POM bulk electrolysis at 3.5 V (60 °C), 0.1 M LiClO4 in CH3CN: HFIP (26:4). Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39362-z
Topics: Chemistry, Green Tech, Materials Science, Star Trek
A group of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrated a way to use the renewable energy source of electricity to recycle a form of plastic that’s growing in use but more challenging to recycle than other popular forms of plastic.
In their study recently published in Nature Communications, they share their innovative process that shows the potential for harnessing renewable energy sources in the shift toward a circular plastics economy.
“We wanted to demonstrate this concept of bringing together renewable energy and a circular plastic economy,” said Yuting Zhou, a postdoctoral associate, and co-author, who worked on this groundbreaking research with two professors in chemistry at Illinois, polymer expert Jeffrey Moore and electrochemistry expert Joaquín Rodríguez-López.
The project was conceived by Moore, who had experience working with Poly(phthalaldehyde), a form of polyacetal. Polyoxymethylene (POM) is a high-performance acetal resin that is used in a variety of industries, including automobiles and electronics. A thermoplastic, it can be shaped and molded when heated and hardens upon cooling with a high degree of strength and rigidity, making it an attractive lighter alternative to metal in some applications, like mechanical gears in automobiles. It is produced by various chemical firms with slightly different formulas and names, including Delrin by DuPont.
When recycling, those highly crystalline properties of POM make it difficult to break down. It can be melted and molded again, but POM’s original material properties are lost, limiting the usefulness of the recycled material.
“When the polymer was in use as a product, it was not a pure polymer. It will also have other chemicals like coloring additives and antioxidants. So, if you simply melt it and remold it, the material properties are always lost,” Zhou explained.
The Illinois research team’s method uses electricity, which can be drawn from renewable sources, and takes place at room temperature.
This electro-mediated process deconstructs the polymer, breaking it down into monomers—the molecules that are bonded to other identical molecules to form polymers.
The Herculoids were a Hanna-Barbara cartoon that only ran for two seasons, from 1967 to 1969. From ages five to seven, I didn’t demand much from my Saturday morning viewing pleasure: good guys, bad guys, action, good guys pummel bad guys, in this case, casting them off the planet. We landed on the Moon in their last year of air (it’s a shame that history is now controversial). Dr. King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated In Medias Res. My understanding of Physics and STEM came much later.
Zandor, Tara, and Domo were the human protagonists defending planet “Amzot” (the writers threw spaghetti at the wall on this name). In a tepid reboot, they called it Quasar, a little more astrophysical but nonetheless kooky. They had a laser ray dragon (Zot), a rock ape (Igo), and a ten-legged rhino/triceratops hybrid that shot energy rocks from his snout (Tondro, the Terrific, because, yeah). Gloop and Gleep were human-sized, protoplasmic creatures called “the formless, fearless wonders,” with eyes, and Gleep, was somehow the “son” of Gloop, without genitalia or gender (go with the bit?). The humans also shot energy rocks from slingshots at the foes too dumb to leave Zandor and his jungle planet alone. If the rocks were made of Lithium, they shouldn’t have lasted too long: one of its properties is its volatility in oxygenated atmospheres.
In 1967, I would have been five years old and not too demanding of my visual entertainment on Saturday Morning Cartoons, as this old form pastime was called.
Taking a few courses in Physics drives a probing question and observation:
Where were the flocks of laser ray dragons, the congress of rock apes, the herds of rhino/triceratops hybrids, and what marshy bog did the “formless, fearless wonders” ascend from? It seemed Zot, Igo, Tondro, Gloop, and Gleep were the only ones of their kind.
In “Sarko: The Arkman,” Sarko kidnaps Domo, Igo, and Tondro for his “collection” on another planet. Zandor rides Zot with Gloop to ANOTHER PLANET without the need of a spaceship, escape velocity, pressurized spacesuits, protection from radiation, or the friction of reentry to Sarko’s world. Even if the planet was in the same orbital plane as Amzot, it didn’t appear to take him long, and he wasn’t bruised by a single meteor during the trip nor tanned from radiation burns (or dead). Gleep clones five copies of himself to protect Tara then turns up in a scene making himself a pillow on Sarko’s world to catch Domo. Zot flew escort to Sarko’s ship on the way back to Amzot again, with no loss of life. Did you follow all that?
Five-year-olds don’t need Physics lessons, just a simple plot, a lot of action, and taking care of “evil-doers” before you play outside after Saturday cartoons.
It’s magical thinking, but not a way to run human society.
“The human understanding is no dry light but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called ‘sciences as one would.’ For what a man had rather were true, he more readily believes. Therefore, he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of the deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.”
Sir Francis Bacon, NOVUM ORGANON (1620)
Maui is a dystopian hellscape. It is now the deadliest wildfire in American history: until the next one. Reuters reports the cause of the fire is unknown, but 85% of all wildfires are caused by humans, as is the anthropogenic climate disruption that helped light the match. Hurricane Dora energized the spread, fanning the flames across the island that was experiencing a drought. Part of Maui’s problem is prior to the predictions of climate scientists coming true in recent real-time, Maui never had to prepare for drought conditions or massive wildfires. Did I mention the island chain is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean?
Maui was the Capitol of the old kingdom of Hawaii before colonization. It was a tourist attraction and the seat of culture. Maui is the place where the Hula dance and the Samoan language were reconstituted and practiced. A 150-year-old banyan tree burned in the flames. It will survive IF the roots survived the savage flames.
“Some 271 structures were destroyed or damaged, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser said, citing official reports from the U.S. Civil Air Patrol and Maui Fire Department.” Reuters
There is a throughline from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Hurricane Dora in Maui. That throughline is climate change, gestated into the climate crisis, birthed into climate catastrophe. In eighteen years, we have shuffled, obfuscated, and kicked the can down the road right into our children’s and grandchildren’s future. We have allowed political operators and lobbyists for the fossil fuels industry to quote their “science as one would”: “It’s summer.” “There is no climate change.” “It’s a (fill in the blank) hoax.” “How can there be global warming if New York is blanketed in snow?”
The tobacco and fossil fuels industry used the same researchers and same lawyers to sway public opinion and sell their products. It is a myopic concentration on quarterly profits, not looking at the damage to the planet beneath them going forward. If Adam Smith’s capitalism is our “salvation,” there should be market-based solutions to ensure a functional civilization as corporations pursue profits and bought and paid-for politicians pursue policies that sustain both commerce and civilization.
Otherwise, their vulgar opinions have not offered solutions nor modeled societal collapse.
The Guardian reported from the National Academy of Science that more than 50% of life is in the soil beneath us. Life on Earth may survive our own hubris. It likely won’t be intelligent or anything resembling human civilization.
Cartoon Network Physics is only good for five-year-olds on Saturday morning cartoons. There are no laser dragons, rock apes, rhino/triceratops hybrids, and energy rocks to deploy to our rescue. It fails humanity in the long term. “Sciences as one would” has led us to this precipice. “Sciences as one acknowledges” will lead us away from it.
Note: The blog will resume Monday – Friday postings on August 21st (traveling for work).
Topics: Education, Existentialism, History, Medicine, Nuclear Power
21st-century weather models show how radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests spread more widely than thought across the US
The Trinity Nuclear Test on 16 July 1945 is a key incident in the blockbuster Oppenheimer movie and in the history of humankind. Many scientists think it marks the beginning of the Anthropocene, a new geological era characterized by humanity’s influence on the Earth. That’s because Trinity’s radioactive fallout will forever appear in the geological record, creating a unique signature of human activity that can be precisely dated.
But there’s a problem. In 1945, radioactive monitoring techniques were in their infancy, so there are few direct measurements of fallout beyond the test site. What’s more, weather patterns were also less well understood, so the spread of fallout could not be easily determined.
As a result, nobody really knows how widely Trinity’s fallout spread across the U.S. or, indeed, how the fallout dispersed from other atmospheric nuclear tests on the U.S. mainland.
Nuclear Mystery
Today, that changes thanks to the work of Sébastien Philippe at Princeton University and colleagues. This team used a state-of-the-art weather simulation for the 5 days after each nuclear test to simulate how the fallout would have dispersed.
The result is the highest resolution estimate ever made of the spread of radioactive fallout across the U.S. It marks the start of the Anthropocene with extraordinary precision, and it throws up some significant surprises. Some parts of the U.S. are known to have received high levels of fallout, and the new work is consistent with this. But the research also reveals some parts of the US that received significant fallout without anybody realizing.
The findings “provide an opportunity for re-evaluating the public health and environmental implications from atmospheric nuclear testing,” said Philippe and co.
Between 1945 and 1962, the U.S. conducted 94 atmospheric nuclear tests that generated yields of up to 74 kilotons of TNT. (Seven other tests were damp squibs.) 93 of these tests took place in Nevada, but the first, the Trinity test in the Oppenheimer film, took place in New Mexico.
Topics: Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Existentialism, Global Warming
In my post on Friday, two weeks ago, I compared the Earth to a plastic or glass bottle in a microwave. Of course, YouTube has an example of someone not taking Thermodynamics seriously. After a LONG two minutes and some change, the explosion is a sad but apt metaphor for the climate change that we have allowed to become a crisis, barreling forward into a full-blown catastrophe. It’s dystopian what’s going on. A short list:
In Italy, they’re discussing “underground climate change” as the summer is so hot it melted the insulation on their power grid underground. They’re also evacuating for wildfires.
If you fall on the pavement in Phoenix, Arizona, you’re taken to the burn unit, as asphalt in Arizona has been measured at 180-degree temperatures. Well, it’s below boiling.
Off the coast of climate change-denying Florida, the ocean temperatures are 101.4 degrees Fahrenheit, balmy for a jacuzzi but catastrophic for coral that acts as a natural barrier to hurricanes and “us,” as it is in our food chain. Their death is the bellwether of coming food shortages, which of course, usually precipitates armed conflicts, either internal or international.
At the behest of a classmate from NC A&T, my wife and I attended her family reunion in Fayetteville, NC, a week and weekend before my family reunion in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The similarities I recall were striking (they’ll make sense as to how this relates to our current situation):
Good food! African American Family Reunions are legendary for spreading food, including fried chicken, baked beans, homemade macaroni and cheese, and potato salad.
Fellowship. I saw cousins I hadn’t seen in years. I did a “paint and sip” party, where I hadn’t painted ANYTHING in decades. It was a cathartic activity led by a therapy artist for people suffering from mental health crises like PTSD.
The purpose of the business meeting, in my friend’s and my family’s case, was the discussion where to have the NEXT family reunion. For my family, 2025 will be in California (Columbia, SC as a backup), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2027, and Greensboro, NC, in 2029.
In each case, planning for the NEXT family reunions assumes we have a functional planet to plan and experience them on.
Mathematics is said to be applied philosophy, physics applied mathematics, and engineering applied physics.
In America, policy is applied physics coupled with political realities.
Currently, in certain democracies, we have parties that concede to the reality of climate change and those obliged to the Fossil Fuels Industry, which is likely the most destructive industry, only second to military contractors.
Fossil Fuels has known about the effects of their product since the late seventies when I was in high school. They hired the same lawyers who obfuscated the effects of cigarette smoking, enabled by spineless politicians who themselves, like drug dealers, weren’t smokers. The body count rivals the holocaust.
That body count was in the millions of humans volunteering to pollute their bodies. The coming body count will number in the hundreds of millions of climate refugees fleeing from coastal cities and the house-less dying from heat exhaustion.
The hoarding of wealth does not consume me, which is the basis of our current crisis: industries and individuals who are too selfish to think beyond the current business quarter and the next quarter. That’s the span of their attention, and the only thing that will spark their attention is if any action they take is profitable and they can avoid paying taxes that help the rest of humanity they’re a part of.
What is happening astonishes climate scientists. This dystopian hellscape was to occur in the year 2050: a twenty-seven-year acceleration.
Part of planning family reunions is the notion that there is a future and a hope to have children and add to the legacy of families.
Millennials and GEN Z are starting out living longer with their parents than previous generations, not purchasing their first home, not attending worship services, delaying or opting to NOT have children because they’re bereft of a future, or hope, stolen from them by a generation in its twilight, that doesn’t care about the wanton destruction they leave in the wake of their grandchildren due to mental depravity and greed.
“People with hoarding disorder have persistent difficulty getting rid of or parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items. Attempts to part with possessions create considerable distress and lead to decisions to save them. The resulting clutter disrupts the ability to use living spaces (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).”
If you’re not used to sharing, you’re likely to use phrases like “socialism” and “communism” (or woke) when the fact is, you don’t care about anyone or anything other than yourself. This self-absorption will only buy them a few weeks at best after a full societal collapse. At that point, “billionaire” and “millionaire” are irrelevant titles with no places to spend.
Part of planning family reunions is the notion that there is a future and a hope to have children and add to the legacy of families.
Because of the avarice of evil men (mostly), I’m starting to have my doubts.
Topics: Climate Change, Energy, Existentialism, Global Warming, Green Tech
Noun: the branch of physical science that deals with the relations between heat and other forms of energy (such as mechanical, electrical, or chemical energy) and, by extension, the relationships between all forms of energy.
Heatstroke is a condition caused by your body overheating, usually as a result of prolonged exposure to or physical exertion in high temperatures. This most serious form of heat injury, heatstroke, can occur if your body temperature rises to 104 F (40 C) or higher. The condition is most common in the summer months.
Heatstroke requires emergency treatment. Untreated heatstroke can quickly damage your brain, heart, kidneys, and muscles. The damage worsens the longer treatment is delayed, increasing your risk of serious complications or death.
A metaphor: If you heat a bottle of water, the liquid inside will heat, causing pressure to deform the bottle if it’s plastic or, many times, shatter it if it’s glass.
Driving to and from work, I see house-less (I stood corrected by a man in Austin, Texas, who showed me his home, a tent in a field) with their quintessential signs, in the vernacular of the depression era, “panhandling,” begging for dollars to get a snack, a beer, a joint, to anesthetize their pain, and plights. There are rare times I present them with those bills, as with most people having credit cards, debit cards, and Apple Pay, I’m not always in a position to help them. My wallet, more often than not, contains coins and folded receipts.
The water off the coast of climate-denying Florida climbed above 90 degrees, putting coral and the ecosystem that we’re a part of at risk and giving the furnace to supercharge more deadly storms. Farmers Insurance has left the Sunshine State because insuring houses impacted by rising temperatures and climate disasters is becoming less cost-effective every day. The Sunshine State may no longer be a retirement destination if you can’t afford to repair or reconstruct a home shattered by gale-force winds. Disney may HAVE to move.
It’s easy to look down on the un-housed, speculate as we drive by in airconditioned cars that they’re lazy, that they have mental health issues, that. their families got tired of dealing with them, or, if their families were their financial “lifelines,” all lifelines succumb to Entropy and eventually have expiration dates.
Heatstroke is a condition caused by your body overheating, usually as a result of prolonged exposure to or physical exertion in high temperatures. This most serious form of heat injury, heatstroke, can occur if your body temperature rises to 104 F (40 C) or higher. The condition is most common in the summer months.
Heatstroke requires emergency treatment. Untreated heatstroke can quickly damage your brain, heart, kidneys, and muscles. The damage worsens the longer treatment is delayed, increasing your risk of serious complications or death.
What happens when the un-housed collapse? How long will we drive by in weather like Texas or Saudi Arabia, and instead of holding a forlorn sign, instead of asking for a few bucks, we’re instead hit through our airconditioning with a stench of rot more rancid than a thousand rodents in a bag? Will we gag? Will we call 911 or the Sanitation Department to collect the dead like refuse? Where will the bodies be buried, or will they be cremated, with the only record: “Jane or John Doe” and the date? Rancid bodies tend to incubate diseases: Are we, through neglect of climate change and apathy, generating the next pandemic?
A 64-year-old woman collapsed and died of heat exhaustion in Big Bend, Texas. A 27-year-old man collapsed and died of heat exhaustion in California. Both were hikers and tragically chose their activity. Circumstances chose the un-housed: all of us are humans on the same planet, in the same bottle, where the water is superheating.
Humanity is related to heat, and all forms of energy, from billionaires to paupers.
One group is far LESS likely to collapse in the streets from heat exhaustion.
Physics and Nano 