The Viking Tir leaves Vienna this afternoon for Budapest, which will be featured in my blog tomorrow.  Today.  I'll instead post a sci-tech article which usually appears on Wednesdays. I regularly report on information provided by the American Energy Society.  While this society promotes energy, it tries to protect the environment, and attempts to curb global warming is an important goal. This year, the  AES writer of the year is Rosanna Xia . Her works offers new ways for us to think about resiliency and our relationship with the environment. Xia is an environmental reporter for the  Los Angeles Times . She wrote an award-winning 2023 book,  California Against the Sea . This year, she released  Out of Plain Sight,  a documentary film about the half a million barrels of toxic waste that were quietly dumped into the ocean decades ago, just off the coast of Los Angeles. I haven't read her book, nor seen her documentary, but understand from wh...

Did you know yesterday was Super Tuesday II?  Not that it mattered, but both Joe Biden and Donald Trump officially are now their party's choice to run on November 5.  Of all the ironies, Hawaii, the state that never votes electorally for Donald Trump, almost pushed him over the line to officially make him the Republican primary victor.  However, Washington was that state. By the way,  Georgia Judge Scott McAfee  just announced that 6 of the 41-count indictment returned by the Fulton County grand jury in August must be quashed.  These were not all that critical, and a lot more is left for Trump and his cronies to worry about.  McAfee reiterated that he will announce his decision on Friday about the fate of Fani Willis.  The nation awaits the televised trial of Donald Trump.  Remember Trump's mug shot?  Done in Georgia. Oh, one more political matter.  GOP Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado not only will not run for re-election, he will quit at...

Today I will update a posting of a dozen years ago, entitled:       WHAT IS THE STATE OF WIND ENERGY TODAY? In that blog of 5 August 2011 I said: In 2010 almost 40,000 MW of new wind energy conversion systems (WECS) became operational, an equivalent of 47 nuclear power plants (850 MW/reactor).  The world total now is at around 200,000 MW of WECS, or said to be  the equivalent of 235 nuclear facilities.    There are   442 nuclear power plants in 30 countries having a net electricity capacity of 375,000 MW, with 63,000 MW in 16 countries under construction .  However, almost half the new nuclear construction projects are in China, which has murmured the possibility of reviewing this option.  Germany will shut down all its nuclear plants by 2022 and Japan is in a real dilemma . So I will first see  how nuclear power has changed during these dozen years . Countries with nuclear power today = 32, or two more Number of power plants =...