You mean on the Nevada side? I love where you see a giant billboard for a whorehouse right next to a church.
The ghost towns. I did accidentally pull into the parking lot of a brothel while looking for a restaurant. My 13yo thought I was dad of the year.
I stopped in Tombstone a few years ago while on a long roadtrip. I was pretty excited to see it. In addition to Tombstone being one of my favorite movies, I also really liked the “historical fiction” novel Doc by Mary Doria Russell, which is based on the history of Doc and his relationships with the Earps and others - the fiction part is mostly the dialogue between the characters she made up, which is done really well IMO. Anyway, the town was kind of a let down. Even though the original buildings are good to see, it mostly felt like a section of Disneyland - mostly cheap souvenir shops and overpriced junk food. Lincoln, NM, (site of the Lincoln County Wars of Billy the Kid fame) was actually much more interesting to me. An actual living town with real businesses and lots of historical info. However, it was about 25 degrees the day I was there which curtailed my visit, but I think it’s worth at least a few hours if you’re in the area and into that stuff.
Even so, they had a city council it was the county seat. I think the population went up to about 14,000 by mid-decade.
Thoughts? Microsoft signed a 20 year contract to take all of its production. You’re not bullish enough on uranium.— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) September 20, 2024
Nuclear is back baby! Well, not yet but this helps. A little more detail. BREAKING: BLOCKBUSTER MICROSOFT DATACENTER DEAL RESURRECTING THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR PLANTMicrosoft and nuclear plant owner Constellation have agreed to a massive, unprecedented deal to restart the closed Three Mile Island by 2028 to power its datacenters, per the New York… pic.twitter.com/IFx8JqSfRq— Mark Nelson (@energybants) September 20, 2024 My comments:Clearly, the biggest tech companies are desperate to buy up nuclear plants. This deal between @Microsoft and @ConstellationEG represents the biggest and richest of its kind. It won't be the last.Constellation needed to be sure it would recover the estimated $1.8…— Mark Nelson (@energybants) September 20, 2024
So not using the plant to help the grid and lower the cost of electricity for people. But allow a mega corporation to fuel their tech? Sigh...
The silver lining being that Microsoft would otherwise likely get this power by burning fossil fuels, no?
Hurricane Helene has caused at least 56 deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeast U.S., and more than 3 million customers were without any power. https://t.co/T8Z3NyXcja— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) September 28, 2024
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/helene-dumps-rain-millions-us-205413731.html Climate change is supercharging the frequency and sometimes the intensity of some of these extremes that lead to billion dollar disasters. There are some hotspots around the nation that have really changed because of these extremes in the past decade. Florida, Louisiana, parts of Texas have been bombarded with with impactful hurricanes, with hundreds of millions of dollars of damage each for some of these events. California and other places out west with wildfires. So what that does is it increases the cost, (premiums for homeowners insurance, business insurance, auto insurance, etc. etc.). Not only that, but we're having these compound extremes with cascading impacts, meaning they're happening in closer intervals. So it's bad for the bottom line dollar for insurance, but also bad for quality of life. And rebuilding -- it takes longer to rebuild. It's more costly. And insurance is really looking twice at these places and using data to determine if it is worth being in that market. Their is irony that NCEI - https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/ houses climate data in Asheville, NC. I have a lot of co-workers in Asheville, and everyone is accounted for
I lived in and around Asheville for a long time, and at least half of the people I'm in regular contact with are in Western NC. It's been gut wrenching. I'm less concerned about Asheville than I am about the other mountain towns.
An interesting move although I can see the argument it simply extends the use of fossil fuels... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o The only thing is we ARE still using fossil fuels. It's not like we're just going to stop. Of course, this is presented as being a large investment as £22Bn but that's over 25 years although, tbf, that's essentially 'seed money' from the government, meant to attract inward investment from other sources.
Carbon capture is the next infuriating link in a chain of obfuscation by the FF industry. It's gonna be hilarious when all of that excess carbon starts leaking back into the atmosphere.
I've been saying for years, the insurance industry will become the first, most urgent and most pressing crises as fallout from climate change. Without a functioning insurance industry, modern economies will simply break as we know them.
I saw a Lincoln project ad the other day that said a future president trump would remove all federal funding from disaster victims from climate change. But it occurred to me, if people in the US south east insist on voting for people who refuse to stop subsidising the fossil fuel industry, why should the rest of us keep bailing them out when the consequences of their actions occur? I get this is similar to how health insurance, (of any model), means that fat bastards like me expect to receive healthcare despite that extra slice of cheesecake I eat the other day but then, let's be honest... they're also quite quick to criticise that as well, So whether it's abortion healthcare, prison for minor drug use or any number of other things for which they think people should suffer the consequences of their actions, why is the result of climate change the only one they don't think is fair?