the crossing of the South Pole by bicycle by Omar Di Felice

Omar Di Felice, 41, is an ultra-cyclist. For years he has been riding his fat bike through the coldest territories in the world, from Iceland to Norway to Lapland. After the 4,000-kilometre crossing in the Arctic at the beginning of 2022, in November the athlete attempted a new feat, which no one else has ever succeeded in: reaching the South Pole in the Antartica unlimited project, to raise awareness, one month before the Cop 27, climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, on the state of the most fragile ecosystems, compromised by global warming. Despite the interruption of his ride, due to personal problems, he will not give up “Bike to 1.5°C”, the series of dissemination appointments on climate change in scientific and cultural festivals and in schools, organized together with the scientific partners Italian Climate Network and ESA-European Space Agency.

“Behind my crossings there is the will to explore my limits. Love for the world translates into the discovery of myself and the nature that surrounds me” explains Di Felice. The athlete, who set off on November 27 from Hercules Inlet, Chile. On his bicycle, the graphics of the climate stripes by the climate scientist of the University of Reading, Ed Hawkins. His path should have taken him, after more than 1,200 kilometers to the South Pole and then, after another 600 to the base of the Leverett Glacier on the opposite coast of Antarctica. On December 4, however, on the eighth day of his crossing, Di Felice had to change his plans, due to “serious personal and family problems, which did not allow me to go on”, he explained in a post on Instagram.

In Italy Environmental and tourist drama: snow is completely missing in the Apennines.

in the previous weeks I had already written on this blog about the climatic conditions that have been experienced in Italy in recent months… in particular from May 2022 until today, January 2023: temperatures above the average by even 10 degrees, and days that seem more of spring that winter. Just today, an article came out in ANSA (National Associated Press Agency) according to which snow is completely missing in all the regions with the Apennines: a monstrous and incredible fact that I believe has never occurred in the last few seconds in the Italian peninsula. Foreigners will probably mostly know the Alps, located in the north, which are known for their snow, skiing and tourism, but generally also the Apennines, between central-northern and central-southern Italy, have mountains which have always guaranteed winter tourism… This year there isn’t a single peak or ski slope that has the necessary, and it’s not even possible to make artificial snow because the temperatures are so high that they never drop below below zero, not even at night.

USA: Nuclear Fusion Power Plants

In mid-December, all the international media covered the news of a breakthrough in the science of electricity: in
the United States they managed to produce energy through nuclear fusion, producing more energy than needed to
trigger the production process.
Nuclear fusion, unlike nuclear fission – the process with which current nuclear power plants work – would produce
energy without giving off C02 and above all without producing waste.
Someone has already dubbed it ‘the discovery of the century’, even if it will take at least 30 years for its
commercial use, due to enormous scientific and technological difficulties.
Others, on the other hand, suspect that it is only speculative news and that therefore today the technique of
nuclear fusion still cannot find a place among man’s technologies.

US Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm
said that “This is a scientific milestone” “It’s just the beginning,” she
added at a press conference. The Department of Energy has thus confirmed what was anticipated by the American
media: for the first time in history, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have
produced a greater quantity of energy from fusion than that which is consumed during the process, a known concept
as “net energy gain”.

“This is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” cheered Granholm, explaining that
researchers have been working on this for decades. “This strengthens our national security and the fusion allows
us to replicate conditions found only in the stars and the sun,” added the US minister. “This milestone brings us
significantly closer to the possibility of carbon-neutral fusion energy to power our society,” concluded Granholm.
The researchers achieved this very important milestone on December 5, 2022 using a nuclear fusion technology
called “inertial confinement”.
The experiment took place by generating energy thanks to 192 laser beams in a few billionths of a second, the
energy produced in the United States, in the National Ignition Facility experimental structure located in
California, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The experiment took place inside a vacuum chamber, i.e.
a container from which the air is pumped out, and the lasers were aimed at a perforated cylindrical container a
few millimeters long.

TO CONTINUE READING

https://www.gabrieleromano.org/archive/USA-Nuclear-Fusion-Power-Plants.html

The Death of Pope Benedict XVI

On December 31, 2022, BENEDICT XVI ascended to heaven, the second Pope to renounce the Pontifical Office (after Celestine V) and the first to adopt the title of Pope Emeritus. Joseph Ratzinger dies at 9:34 on the last day of the year after days in which the media had talked about the precarious health conditions of the former pontiff. Pope Ratzinger was a fundamental Pontiff. He was the one who had to fill the legacy of the long pontificate of John Paul II. For many he was a Pontiff overshadowed by many problems that gripped and still gripped the church. In reality Ratzinger was an example of rigor and faith, although not as ostentatious as his predecessor. It was Ratzinger who dictated the first guidelines with the fundamental criteria: to inform the Holy See, to follow the provisions of civil justice and to remove suspicion from pastoral activities. Five years after the election, in July 2010, new changes were made to the norms of “De delictis gravioribus” drawn up by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, changes approved by the Pope himself.

However, there are some obscure and questionable themes: many media have written that the Pope Emeritus never expressed a word of solidarity with the family of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of the Vatican clerk who disappeared into thin air on June 22, 1983. A complex and obscure story to which a solution has never been reached, not even with the most disparate conjectures over the course of these decades. In any case, the girl’s tragic mystery occurred when Ratzinger was not yet Pope. After about 8 years of pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI resigns to the amazement of many faithful and even lay people. The real reason for Benedict XVI’s resignation has never been fully clarified, although he has spoken of it on a few occasions. For example, he denied that he was forced to resign, or that he was influenced, always saying that he acted “in complete freedom”. And on the day of his resignation he said that «in order to steer the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, vigor of both body and soul is also necessary, vigor which, in recent months, has diminished in me to such an extent that I have to recognize my inability to properly administer the ministry entrusted to me”

to continue reading the article…

https://www.gabrieleromano.org/archive/the-death-of-pope-benedict-xvi.html

♬ Folamour – Alive

video clip of the song “alive” by the singer Folamour

as the penultimate day of the year I would say to play a soft dance song as an aperitif in a bar…

LYRIC

everynight i feel it coming in my mind
everynight i feel it growing stronger
there’s no limit to the power of love
there’s no wall that will stop us baby

everynight i feel it coming in my mind
everynight i feel it growing stronger
there’s no limit to the power of love
there’s no wall that will stop us baby

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

riding through the summer with you by my side,
all night, we were dancing, blinded by the light,
for the first time, I felt I found my spot,
my place and my sun, my reason to get down

everynight i feel it coming in my mind
everynight i feel it growing stronger
there’s no limit to the power of love
there’s no wall that will stop us baby

everynight i feel it coming in my mind
everynight i feel it growing stronger
there’s no limit to the power of love
there’s no wall that will stop us baby

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

I read in the stars, the fire taking place
in my heart, there’s nothing that will stop it
just been too long, without seeing your grace
filling up the room, you make feel me so alive

☘ Peanuts Strip 30°-12-2022

Peanuts Strip – 30 december 2022

the depression of females is always something mild but fluctuating periodicity…

💡 🎄 the 2022 Christmas illuminations of the City of Campobasso

December 27, 2022, I walk through the city and I see some people walking on the street; most of them are crowded together in a bar in the center of the square. The air is fresh but not cold or frozen in fact even the skating rink tends to melt: fault of the last few weeks with tropical temperatures…
This year many doubted that the Christmas lights were at risk because the war in Ukraine war created higher energy prices
… but this year too Campobasso has showcased some beautiful lights ..

Startup Make Sunsets says it has started releasing sulfur particles into Earth’s atmosphere in a bid to change the climate

some components of the Make Sunsets start-up while releasing particles into the air

Right in this period, in which climate change is one of the fundamental themes, this incredible news comes out.

Start-up Make Sunsets says it has launched some weather balloons to release reflective sulfur particles into the stratosphere.

Let’s talk about geoengineering, or the branch of science aimed at deliberately and knowingly modifying the climate of our planet, reflecting more sunlight into space.

What Make Sunsets claims it has done, releasing micro particles of sulfur into the air, would mimic a natural process that occurs following large volcanic eruptions.

But this is all extremely theoretical.

In reality, most of the scientists involved in tackling climate change have refrained from carrying out outdoor geoengineering experiments, even on a small scale, because the risk of making things worse is extremely high.

For example, spraying sulfur and similar particles – as claimed by Make Sunsets – in sufficient quantities could potentially facilitate global warming.

The side effects of such initiatives, if done on a large scale, could also be dangerous: the impacts of such interventions could be worse in some regions than others, triggering geopolitical conflicts.

However, many of the start-up’s claims have aroused skepticism in the scientific community; several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke to condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering in this terribly immature early stage.

Even some potential investors and customers, when they reviewed the company’s proposals, said that it would not be a serious scientific effort or a credible business, but rather a way to attract attention.

Covid: Beijing sweeps the pandemic under the carpet

cartoon taken from the website of the cartoonist Natangelo of the Magazine il Fatto Quotidiano

It is a preventive measure for the screening of variants of the virus, specifies the Lombarida Region, and the swab is not mandatory. The decision comes after Beijing lifted travel restrictions, despite the epidemic causing at least 5,000 deaths and over a million infections a day.

This is probably one of the first measures that will have to be taken due to the serious things that are happening in China.
For months, China has been devastated by infections, because it has loosened the restrictive measures and the natural immunities derived from the infections are decreasing … Furthermore, the vaccination system has never been effective and has a wide coverage on the percentage of inhabitants … this could lead to a collapse of the health system in the coming months. The serious thing is the Chinese government keeps the real numbers of infections and deaths hidden. Many speculate that the dead could be in the millions and this could cause many problems such as the birth of new variants that would hit the whole world again, displacing it from the current stabilization obtained with vaccines.

But this is not an exaggeration: all the projections published these days by Chinese or international scientific institutes indicate that the deaths could be between 600,000 and 2.1 million. Epidemiologists note that the low circulation of the coronavirus in China in the three years of the pandemic makes this phase of uncontrolled reopening even more dangerous: the vast majority of Chinese women have not been exposed to Covid-19 and its many variants and are now more fragile. The highest mortality rate is expected in the over-80-year-old group, of whom 60 percent have not received more than one dose of the vaccine.

♬ Gryffin & OneRepublic – You Were Loved

video clip of onerepublic‘s latest song (winter 2022)

one republic have always made songs that sonically never quite hit me… this time I’m posting this song because this year one republic made the main song from the movie top gun 2 which i consider a colossal and so a movie to see…

LYRIC

I hope that you finally found it all (it all, it all)
All the things that you said that you needed after all (after all)
All those times we had, they left a mark (mark, mark)
And I know life goes on but I miss you in the dark
Days turn to years, turn to stories we tell about
All of the good times and times that were hell when
We were young (we were young), we were broke (we were broke)
We were chasin’ a fire and watchin’ it turn to smoke (smoke)
And some of us just let go (oh)
You got lost (you got lost), had enough (had enough)
Time, it did what it does and turned what you had to rust
But wherever you are, understand me
You were loved
(Loved, loved, ooh)
You were loved
(Loved, loved, ooh)
I hope that our paths, they cross again (again, again, again)
‘Cause I’m dyin’ to know all the places you have been (oh)
Some day when the future meets the past
That’s when we’ll make up for all of the years that went so fast, mm
‘Cause days became years became stories we tell
That I know you can’t deal but here’s wishin’ you well
We were young (we were young), we were broke (we were broke)
We were chasin’ a fire that suddenly turned to smoke
And some of us had to let go (oh), yeah
You got lost (you got lost), had enough (had enough)
Time, it did what it does and turned what we had to rust
But wherever you are, you should know (ooh)
You were loved
(Loved, loved, ooh)
You were loved
(Loved, loved, ooh)
You were loved
(Loved) loved (loved, ooh)
(Loved, loved, ooh)
You were loved
(Loved, loved, ooh)
(Loved, loved, ooh)