Gun Free Zone

I’m just a chemical and materials engineer, not an environmental engineer so I’m no expert on this topic.

I’m just curious what the environmental impact is of spraying thousands of gallons of ethanol and glycol on wind turbine blades from helicopters?

More or less than burning natural gas?

I know this picture is from France, but this is the standard for how deicing is done, so we know it’s being done in Texas this way too?

Update:

Just to give you a sense of scale:

Now consider that there are more than 13,000 wind turbines in Texas.

For comparison, only 1,550 747s have ever been built.

So just how much decier is being sprayed in Texas right now.

That deicer is toxic, so how much will land on grass that will be used to feed cattle or is eaten by other wildlife?

Seems like burning natural gas is cleaner.

Is it cold up there?

Not to rub it in, but yesterday I was staining the back porch deck and got a bit of a sunburn.

When you see it..,

Hat Tip Art Tessia

Every time opened a new tab today, my news feed contains an article about people boycotting Publix.

Make no mistake about it, this is an orchestrated hit job.

‘The last straw’: the US families ending love affair with grocery chain after Capitol riot

Wendy Mize’s family grew up on Publix, disciples to the giant supermarket chain’s empirical marketing slogan: “Where shopping is a pleasure”. As infants, her three daughters wore diapers bought from the Publix baby club. As children, they munched on free cookies from the bakery. There were even perks for the family’s pets, who are proud members of Publix Paws.

But now the decades-long love affair is over. After a member of Publix’s founding family donated $300,000 to the Donald Trump rally that preceded January’s deadly Capitol riots, Mize is pulling out of what she says has become “an abusive, dysfunctional relationship”, and joining others in a boycott of the Florida-based grocery chain that operates more than 1,200 stores across seven south-eastern states.

How in the hell is it an “abusive, dysfunctional relationship?”  She buys groceries there.  That’s it. And their customer service is wonderful.  So this is all in this crazy woman’s head.

Publix is an institution in Florida, the company growing from Depression-era roots in the 1930s to a regional behemoth with 225,000 workers today, and its founding Jenkins family now worth $8.8bn, according to Forbes. It prides itself on a family-friendly image, luring customers with prominent buy-one-get-one deals and a range of popular sandwich subs, and boasts of being the largest employee-owned company in the US.

How dare Publix lure customers in with good deals and quality food.  That’s so insidious.

Their hot bar is the best in the industry. I’d  rather have Publix chicken wings than wings from most restaurants.  (The garlic Parmesean are the best).  Their bakery is good too.

Yet the company and its founders have donated often and generously to partisan, conservative causes, including more than $2m alone by Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli, daughter of the late company founder George Jenkins, to the Republican National Committee and Trump’s failed re-election campaign.

That’s the problem.  Publix supports Republicans.  That’s the unforgivable sin.

Julie Fancelli has nothing to do with Publix. She inherited some money from her father.  That’s it.

But that’s cancel culture today.

Publix has been targeted before.

Readers of this blog know that Publix was targeted by David Hogg and March for Our Lives for support Adam Putnam for Ag Commissioner over Nikki Fried, a lawyer who knows nothing about agriculture but did want to reign in concealed carry and legalize medical marijuana.

Funny how one of the largest purchasers of Florida fruit would want an Ag commissioner who knows something about growing fruit.

Before that, Publix was targeted by LGBT activists for not wanting to pay $15K per year in HIV PREP drugs for employees the way they cover birth control.  HIV isn’t a “gay disease” but not paying for a drug to allow individuals to have unprotected sex with HIV positive partners is homophobic.

Keep in mind that Publix partnered with Governor DeSantis to administer the COVID vaccine.

I fully suspect that is why we have the media cheering on another boycott of Publix.  They can’t let Publix be a victory for COVID vaccination when Cuomo and Newsom, relying on hospitals and clinics, are having a disastrous time vaccinating people.

The Left is evil enough to all but say “Don’t get your COVID vaccine at Publix because Publix supported the Trump insurrection.”

Hampering the Florida vaccine rollout to hurt DeSantis and harming a company that supports Republicans is a victory twofer for the Left.

Publix has nothing to do with the storming of the Capitol, and they know it.

This is a political hit job to hurt DeSantis and a corporation that won’t toe the Democrat line.

Almost two weeks ago Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Biden’s Director of the CDC, said it was safe to reopen schools.

Then Biden’s Press Secretary said no, Walensky was speaking in her “personal capacity” despite her giving a presser in front of the CDC logo.

New evidence has emerged that before Walensky was CDC Director, she was asked by her local school district around Harvard what her opinions were on how to reopen safely.

This is her email reply.

Now, as Biden’s CDC Director, she is saying it’s not safe to open the schools just yet.

Throw into this that Anthony “Always Wrong” Fauci just said that in order to reopen the schools we need to pass the stimulus.

The Biden Administration is holding America’s children hostage as they fall behind, become depressed, and commit suicide at record rates.

The United States Federal Government is allowed our children to kill themselves to leverage a cash payout to teachers unions and political grifters.

The Capitol stormers should have gone into the Capitol Building with killdozers and woodchippers.

The Voice of Condescending Unity Mandate either forgot to tell Chrysler/Jeep about his little DUI arrest or they chose to ignore it hoping it would stay buried. Either case, people did not take to a dude from New Jersey pretending to be a salt-of-the-earth cowboy fake-preaching to them. And then somebody got pissed and let the big fat bearcat out of the bag.

Ouchy.

From New Scientist:

Life found beneath Antarctic ice sheet ‘shouldn’t be there’

The inadvertent discovery of sea life on a boulder beneath an Antarctic ice shelf challenges our understanding of how organisms can live in environments far from sunlight, according to a team of biologists.

James Smith and Paul Anker at the British Antarctic Survey drilled through the 900-metre-thick Filchner-Ronne ice shelf and dropped a camera down the hole in search of mud on the seabed. To their surprise, it revealed a boulder ringed by animals. Footage appears to show 16 sponges, accompanied by 22 unidentified animals that could include barnacles. It is the first time that immobile life like these creatures has been found beneath an Antarctic ice sheet.

“There’s all sorts of reasons they shouldn’t be there,” says Huw Griffiths at the British Antarctic Survey, who analysed the footage. He thinks the animals, which are probably filter feeders, survive on nutrients carried in the -2°C water. The conundrum is that they are so far from obvious nutrient sources, given that the boulder is located 260 kilometres from the open water at the front of the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf where photosynthetic organisms can survive.

This happens all the time.  Scientists say “life shouldn’t be able to exist there” then they find it.

The Soviets irradiated a forest in the Ukraine by blowing up a nuclear reactor.

Guess what?  Animals are thriving there.

Bottom of the  deepest trenches in our oceans?  Yup, crabs and tube worms and such.

A boiling geyser?  There’s life there too.

I’m convinced that if or when we get to Europa, Ganymede, or Enceladus, and we drill under the ice, we’re going to find life.

Maybe not intelligent life, but definitely a sponge or lichen or something else growing on a rock.