Category Archives: Evironment
Let The Olympic Games Begin
Let the Ri0 Olympic games begin.
Here’s Jonathan Turley in USA Today:
Rio is the IOC’s most signature moment: games held in a lethally polluted area with some athletes who are viewed as equally dirty. Dirty air, dirty water, dirty games.
Tesla Autopilot Crashes
I got to drive a Tesla once. It was cool. Like driving one of the HO slot cars I had as a kid.
But I think I’d be queasy about letting the car drive itself. There are those who say it’s a great innovation. Like speed control on steroids. But the car can kill.
Tesla Autopilot Crashes
The WSJ reports Tesla is being investigated by the SEC for not informing shareholders of a fatal crash involving its autopilot system.
Update:
Daily Beast says Tesla is misleading about autopilot safety. If you don’t brake it’s your fault because your weren’t paying attention. If you do brake it’s your fault because you were driving.
Holman Jenkins says the autopilot feature has been around since 1995. It’s basically cruise control and the driver still has to pay attention.
Rio Olympics
Rory Mcllroy quit the Rio Olympics over fear of the Zika virus. Other golfers, March Leishman of Australia and South African Charl Schwartzel, had already done the same. As had American cyclist Tejay van Garderen.
Rio Olympics
Last week the Russian track and field team took the easy way out – doping.
However, there were worse things than the Zika virus for olympic mascot Juma the jaguar. Juma got off her leash at an Olympic torch ceremony and was shot dead.
Brazil
The Olympics are coming to Brazil. The country is in deep recession, the water is filthy, Zika virus is rampant and the president is being impeached. President Dilma Rousseff was suspended by the Senate on Thursday.
She calls it a coup.
Coal Country Candidate
Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary 51.4% to 35.8%.
Before the primary an unemployed coal miner confronted Hillary for acknowledging that her policies would put a lot of coal miners out of work. She claimed that her remarks were taken out of context. Here are her remarks in context from Politifact:
So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?
And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.
Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.
Aside from EPA mandates, coal is being displaced by a cheaper and cleaner fuel – natural gas produced by fracking.