Tuesday, August 22, 2023

News bits: Regarding America's real civil war; An untapped source of freshwater

CONTEXT: We are in an anti-democracy, anti-civil liberties, anti-inconvenient fact and truth civil war. Domestic American terrorists operate mostly in service to one or both of two cynical, immoral ideologies. One is enraged, bigoted and increasingly violent Christian nationalism (CN). The other is brass knuckles capitalism (BKC) and its brutal war on the environment. The CN war machine works to stifle civil liberties, while figuratively killing secularism and a literally killing secularists that God disapproves of. The BKC brigades literally kill by enhancing global warming in their unquenchable lust that trickles profit up to the elites while all the environmental damage and human deaths crash down on all of us.

No, that's not hyperbole in my firm opinion.

CN murders in the name of an allegedly loving, tolerant God 
The NYT reports about a woman shot to death by a gunman to punish her for flying a gay pride flag:
Every time someone ripped down the rainbow Pride flag from the Mag.Pi clothing store in the San Bernardino mountains in California, the store’s owner, Laura Ann Carleton, responded by putting up a bigger one.

Ms. Carleton, 66, did not waver in her support of L.G.B.T.Q. people.

Around 5 p.m. on Friday, she was fatally shot by a man who made disparaging remarks about the shop’s Pride flag, the authorities said.

The man, whose identity has not been released, fled the scene on foot. Deputies found him with a handgun, and he was killed in an encounter with law enforcement, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

Wait a minnit! What's the evidence of CN involvement?
It is possible this murder had no connection to the CN wealth and power movement. But maybe it did. At this point, it is clear that America is in a real civil war against democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, respect for truth, transparency in government and commerce, just plain civility, and etc. This war is murdering innocent, decent Americans right now. That is not a hypothetical.

Given the circumstances, the burden is on the CN movement to prove it was not a motivating factor in this murder. The burden is not on me to figure that out. The CN wealth and power movement, just like the BKC wealth and power movement is a deadly enemy. Both movements have conclusively proven they are deeply mendacious, immoral and corrupt. Innocent human lives mean little to either ideology. Therefore, logically speaking, they have earned and fully deserve no benefit of doubt for anything they say in their own defense. Only tangible evidence counts. Honesty and mere words are inimical to those extremists. 

The only apparent shooter motive I divine from all the reporting is that the murderer just hated gay people and would not tolerate someone talking back to him about his mindless hate. The reporting about the killing of the shooter by the cops is suspicious. So far, I've seen no explanation for why the cops shot the murderer dead. That makes it smell like excessive use of force by police.

Qs: Is it over the top or irrational to see the elites who run the CN and BKC movements as domestic terrorist organizations? If not, what is the criteria needed for them to be domestic terrorist organizations, e.g., a higher body count, an actual declaration of war? And finally, as usual, waddabout the rank and file who keep supporting and empowering both movements, e.g., by voting for corrupt radical right Republicans and corrupt neoliberal Democrats? 

Laura Ann Carleton preached 
“love, acceptance and equality”

For that sin, she was murdered in the 
name of the baby Jesus  
Credit...

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Too good to be true? Maybe not
Starting at ~8:32, this 16:31video describes a low tech way to harvest fresh water from the air just above the surface of the oceans. Ocean surface air is high in humidity, generally about 80%, (closer to 100% according to the video) making it a gigantic, reliable source of clean freshwater that can be captured and harvested.


In short, towers about 100 M high and 200 M wide are equipped with huge fans that blow humid air into giant ventilation ducts that are connected to giant condensers on land. The condensers use electricity to condense the freshwater from the air. Modeling calculations indicate that 9 towers could provide all the normal freshwater needs for Los Angeles. Cost of the operation and maintenance of the system is projected to be about $20/month for typical personal usage in California, ~ 300 liters/person/day. That is way less expensive than what we pay now, about 70% less costly. It is also a lot less costly than desalination because desal plant require huge amounts of electricity to operate compared to a gigantic condenser.
 

M = million

Other items to consider is that there are expected to be no adverse environmental impacts other than ecoNIMBYs killing trees and wasting vast amounts of paper by filing lawsuits to protect their ocean views. The amount of water collected from the ocean is trivial, so no impact there. Ocean water is going to evaporate and blow away, regardless of whether some of the moist air is harvested for water reclamation or not.

Diagram of the setup from the 


Projected water recovery along coastal areas
Bkg = billions of kilograms

This thing needs to be built and tested for its performance and cost. If the projections in the paper are even reasonably close to the modeling estimates, this could be a game changer for dealing with drought.

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