Interesting Stuff Online

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Defossilization

That was a new term for me: defossilization. We will still very much need carbon-based compounds (even after we transition to 100 percent sustainable energy) for manfacturing of plastics, detergents, medicines, and more.

Okay, so we still have plenty of oil around...so why not use the oil for that? We should have plenty 'excess' capacity in the oil fields! Plan is a CO2-to-methanol process powered by solar energy and then the methanol is converted to olefines (e.g. ethylene & propylene) which are petrochemicals that can be used to manufacture plastics and more.

Sunday, March 1, 2026

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is always a worthy read & watch:

They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity (The Guardian)
https://youtu.be/HZdKKD0oLrs

Here's his main take from the article:

The 'old' heart of Christianity was lover & concern for other as lived by Jesus. The 'new' heart of Christianity is personal salvation and that required them to 're-make' Jesus into some else entirely.

Back in the late 1950s, some 52 percent of Americans were part of the so-called mainline denominations (e.g. Methodist, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, etc.) and about 33 percent were Catholics. Modern Christanity is instead dominated by megachurches, TV ministries, and right-wing evangelicals who are the MAGA core.

Mainline Protestantism surrenderd their version of Jesus to this new toxic form of Christianity without a fight & we see the same thing today with America: we are surrendering our version of America (as imperfect as it is) to MAGA without much of a fight.