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Comments
First off it is NOT free power from the Sun and Wind. The cost of Solar and Wind installations far exceeds other conventional sources of power. Neither the Sun or Wind is 24/7 so going on them is still a shared system with the energy providers. Unless you plan to put in a string of batteries and go off the power grid. The EPA has rolled over on many occasions and let CARB dictate the rules. In CA that includes NO coal power generation can be used. And unrealistic timetables to convert to alternatives such as Wind and Solar. Which in itself may have been fine. Except the Enviro Pigs have blocked access to areas that are usable for large solar and wind projects. In San Diego county the only Wind generation being used is on Indian land. Every other wind project is on hold or denied permits. Plus a power line to access those areas has gotten blocked by a variety of groups. The result is we pay fines via higher utility charges. That is controlling the populace with a hidden tax. You can go along with you smug attitude living in what is still the Wild, Wild West of AZ. Your day will come.
At some point, the light bulb will go off and the conflicting groups will come to a compromise on the allowance of the renewable energy production sources.
And Gary:
When my day comes, my meter will STILL be running backward.
Since solar, wind, coal, geothermal, oil, natural gas, and wood are all created by nature, how is one source of Energy (not power, as you define), any "freer" than another? Man must build devices to capture or use any of these.
Just curious how free this really is for you?
Net monthly outlay for "electricity costs" will be reduced overall on an annual basis. Lease payment goes up 3.5% per year.
The best part? Knowing that in 2020 my electric bill will STILL only be $109 a month.
P.S. What do "smug" mean?
Happy Friday to all !!!
You happen to have a lot of solar-energy due to a cloud-free climate due to geography. I know people in PA, who don't have nearly as many sunny days, and are located in higher latitudes; but they are located above natural gas sources. They have a well drilled for their own natural gas usage, and sell the rest from the well to the gas-company. Some people are able to easily tap geothermal energy. Some others are able to tap wind-power (not cheap start-up and requires certain siting to have minimum wind-speeds).
Many other people don't have the geographical settings to tap these energy sources. For example people in urban areas and high-rise apartments aren't going to have much land and require high energy density.
My father and grandfather used to have "free" energy too many years ago. They went down the street and picked up leftover coal from the PA anthracite coal mines. They'd fill a pail or 2 and run it home to cook and heat the house in the 2-ton coal stove.
Basically all energy is free. The cost is in transporting and using it (the equipment), and if you don't own the area where the energy is then you also have to buy the energy.
Nature has provide us with many types of energy; all (and we could use more) of which are needed to meet the needs of our growing world.
Removing the "redployment of wealth from one group to another angle" it appears that the true costs of your system out-weigh the true savings of it - at least in Dollars and Cents (or sense?)
But sometimes this area scares me it's so Wild, Wild West. Plenty of feisty cowboys still around here...Willcox in the 1920's and 30's led the nation in the total number of cattle shipped.
And Willcox is about to get a new slaughterhouse. It's before the City Council and they sound enthusiastic about it. They promise to curb the amount of large trucks, jake braking, over-dosage amounts of smelly animals standing around, sealing the floors and not allowing any animal blood and waste products to enter our water and sewage system because they're going to build the slaughterhouse to be only the latest, state of the art, etc.
Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin', larsb? You got it, we can take some of that animal waste and perculate it and burn it to make energy! Renewable, recycleable energy to power our homes!
See what living in Geronimo's old stomping grounds does to "normal" working blokes like me after a while?
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Loss of state payments forces closure of recycling facility
BARSTOW • The elimination of the handling and processing payments the state pays to recycling centers caused one Barstow facility to close and may make times hard for the others.
In July, the state cut 85 percent of payments used to reimburse local recycling centers for taking in bottles and cans because of a negative balance in the California Beverage Container Recycling Fund. Last month it eliminated the payments entirely. The fund is made up of unclaimed California Redemption Value deposits — the extra few cents people pay when they buy a soft drink, and are refunded when they recycle the container.
In January 2009, the state considered borrowing about $131 million from the fund, according to H.D. Palmer, a California Department of Finance spokesman. At that time the fund’s projected balance was $81 million. In May the fund was projected to have a balance of minus $162 million, Palmer said. The reason for the negative balance is that people are recycling more bottles and cans and are buying fewer soft drinks, he said. The governor is working with the California Department of Conservation, which oversees the recycling program, to develop a fix and will submit it to the legislature next year.
According to Chuck Riegle, vice president of public affairs for TOMRA North America, the reason for the negative balance in the recycling fund is because the state borrowed from it multiple times over several years. The date for repayment keeps getting postponed, he said. Earlier this month TOMRA and other recycling companies filed a lawsuit against the state over the eliminated payments.
The Barstow TOMRA facility was one of about 40 other TOMRA kiosks that had to close, said Adrian White, president of TOMRA Pacific Inc. Statewide the company laid off about 67 people, he said.
CA Ponzi scheme
For years California has courted a reputation as an eco-friendly, green-minded leader, but the state now finds its most basic program of recycling beverage bottles and cans mired in debt and litigation.
Dozens of supermarket recycling sites have shut down recently as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators spar over how to close a massive gap in the program's budget.
California's 23-year-old recycling program, managed by the Department of Conservation through fees charged to beverage buyers, has been hurt this year by recession, rising redemption rates and raids of its coffers to help ease the state's budget woes.
"If consumers can no longer find convenient outlets for recycling used bottles and cans, they are more likely to go back to their old ways of discarding them in landfills – or worse, on streets, beaches and other property," the lawsuit said.
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/2340449.html
No reason for the homeless to pick up cans and bottles along the highways and byways. Thankfully I gave up soda 20 years ago. It drove me crazy paying redemption fees that were such a hassle to redeem. I refill my water bottles until they fall apart. Then toss them in the neighbors yard for the dog to chew up :shades:
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
That one is a first, makes me wonder what kind of building permit he had to get to build something like that. And then it makes me wonder if it was even inspected at all before he...umm...roasted those poor people. For their health's benefit, of course. :sick:
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
I remember reading a story about one of those doctors. His career was nearly destroyed by his fellow doctors who were the recipients of money from drug companies who had millions riding on new antacid meds to treat ulcers.
That was a clear case where someone with contrary information was dismissed and ridiculed by the "scientific consensus".
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
I might trust YOU to do that study but some of these other clowns....no. These scientists are much too greedy to give us a non-biased answer.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Barbara Boxer from CA. (did gracie vote for her?) wants to put him/her in jail.
We can't just have people running around willie-nilly spreading the truth, can we? :confuse:
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
If the GW/CC crowd have lost an environmentalist like you, they are finished.
BTW, how's your search for the ultimate EV coming? Discover magazine had a few I'd like to test-drive.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
I guess NBC news couldn't keep the lid on any longer and actually mentioned the scandal last night for the first time afaik. Apparently this huge development did not meet their definition of news. They referred to the "stolen emails" and said it was no coincidence that it happened just before the big conference, etc.
I hope the new NBC owners fires the lot of them.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
What floors me is that the EPA has declared that the very breath we exhale is a pollutant. That makes us all potential targets of pollution control. Some day we may be regulated as to how much we can breath (for the common good).
That is total control that would make the worst dictator blush.
Why there wasn't an outcry when that decision was made, I'll never know.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Unless someone in government or some "activist" group decided that you are being greedy keeping all that energy you paid for to yourself. Maybe they'll decide to spread the wealth to us poor folks up here in the cloudy, cold northeast.
mmmmm, I feel warmer already.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Boy, you could write a psychology thesis on why people would go for something like that. Basicly, with the flight away from traditional religion people feel a need for something "spiritual". In that case it was Native American customs which the rich trendy crowd come to embrace off and on every few years.
The fact that people would be willing to give their money to some snake-oil huckster to be tortured makes you wonder if that isn't the same thing that makes "true believers" for the CC cult.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Some here may applaud that move. If they can tax your milk cow's GHG, we are next in the food chain. Have they passed this yet in NY? Are you guys trying to out do CA in screwing your residents?
The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month.
“The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog,” the release said. “Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.”
Take back Al Gore's Oscar, 2 Academy members demand in light of Climategate
No, it wouldn't do anything for the environment.
But two Hollywood conservatives (yes, there are some) have called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President Al Gore et al two years ago for the environmental movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both Academy members, are among a small, meandering pack of known political conservatives still believed to be on the loose in the liberal bastion of movie-making.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/12/al-gore-oscar-global-warming.- html
Earliest snow on record for Houston TX. How many places on the globe have to be colder, before we can get a consensus that we are in a cooling trend? In spite of higher GHG.
Antarctic Ice Melt at Lowest Levels in Satellite Era
Where are the headlines? Where are the press releases? Where is all the attention?
The ice melt across during the Antarctic summer (October-January) of 2008-2009 was the lowest ever recorded in the satellite history.
Such was the finding reported last week by Marco Tedesco and Andrew Monaghan in the journal Geophysical Research Letters:
A 30-year minimum Antarctic snowmelt record occurred during austral summer 2008–2009 according to spaceborne microwave observations for 1980–2009. Strong positive phases of both the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) were recorded during the months leading up to and including the 2008–2009 melt
The silence surrounding this publication was deafening.
It would seem that with oft-stoked fears of a disastrous sea level rise coming this century any news that perhaps some signs may not be pointing to its imminent arrival would be greeted by a huge sigh of relief from all inhabitants of earth (not only the low-lying ones, but also the high-living ones, respectively under threat from rising seas or rising energy costs).
But not a peep.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/06/antarctic-ice-melt-at-low- est-levels-in-satellite-era/
HuffPo's FundRace makes it look like the Comcast CEO is a big Dem. so I doubt that the reporting slant you perceive will change.
The email mess reminds me of the PR fight between Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who did what with calculus back in the late 1600's.
Newton "won" at first but Leibniz finally got credit (after he died). Meanwhile scientific research was stunted in England for a century because they wouldn't teach anything but Newton's laws. Seems pretty typical for people to seek glory over facts. (link)
But facts will out ... timing may be a problem if we are overheating the planet and it "tips".
There is the other possibility that my Sequoia is the only standing between the planet and a new Ice Age. Quite frankly I prefer it warmer to colder. I did my time in the deep Freeze of the Arctic. It is too cold for me this morning at 44 degrees. Costs too much to keep the house warm with all the taxes and fines on our energy.
I think the Farm Bureau quashed that trial balloon to generate money for the state.
When you think about it, this was the same reason they started raising taxes on tobacco products. The official stance was it was to mitigate the impact tobacco had on the population but the real plan was to price it out of the reach of most smokers.
By the same token, taxing food animals is the first step in the radical Vegan plan to make animal protein too expensive to eat.
If they were really serious about animal GHG they wouldn't let the deer population explode unchecked to the point they have. Believe me the deer around here are emitting tons of GHG from all of my crops they eat.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Hurry, rev that sucker up! It just started snowing here!
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
When you think about it, how is a $175. tax on each cow going to reduce their CO2 output? And how in the world can the cows afford to pay this tax?
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
BYD e6
The BYD e6 crossover will seat 7, go 0-60 in under 8 seconds, go 100mph tops and will have a range of 249 miles. It will start to be available in the U.S. in 2010 and will sell for just over $40,000. I have the 220V electrical socket right at my carport that the e6 will sit in, so that's already taken care of. We upgraded to a 220 service there about 1 1/2 years ago.
'Twil have a lithium iron phosphate battery, one of BYD's core technologies. The two-motor options use front and rear engines, making the car all-wheel drive.
A range of 400 km and consumption of 18kWh per 100 km implies a 72 kWh battery pack, which will be the largest in any production electric car. BYD mentioned a smaller 48 kWh battery pack for the e6[3] at its debut at the 2009 North American International Auto Show.
Probably two things will keep me from trading in for one of these new all-electric's from China. One, this.
"and will sell for just over $40,000."
The other, this.
My wife and I only have about 47,000 miles on our 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS and I don't know about her but I'm fantasticly in love with our Lancer GTS. I'm thinking that it will take the mighty hand of King Kong lifting me out of our sunroof and in to any other car at this point.
Even if our's is an ICE rig and the one he's gently dropping me in to is an all-electric. ICE's...they're so yesterday-I'm so sure. :P
One last note-$40,000 even with the BO $7,500 "green" car discount is more than I really am prepared to pay. $32,500 sounds better but it's still too much.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
When Yellowstone blows it's top, we will need all the "automobile caused global warming" that we can get!!
Were humans really better off in the last Ice Age when ice was a mile thick over Chicago and Paris!??! Well, Paris maybe, but Global Cooling is NOT 'cool'!!!
After Yellowstone blows it's top, I will be worried more about "[non-permissible content removed] warming" and finding anything to eat, rather than whether my food farts or not!!
The new hysteria should be "save fossil fuels for the new Ice Age"!! (And, I don't mean the movie!!)
.
Here is a snippet of a thoughtful letter:
Science is alive and well in the individual scientists who are not caught up in gaming the system for bigger grants. I call it small science. Many of them are doing very unfashionable things, and are happy to get no recognition for it.
That is where you can find the real scientists. That is where the future will be.
A milestone in this mess can be said to be when John Houghton of the IPCC said it was the IPCC’s job to “orchestrate” the views of science. Everything that has happened flows as an inevitable consequence of that.
Some important research fields have been “orchestrated” out of existence. Even before Climategate, I have been saying that we have set ourselves back a generation by taking the money from governments with so many strings attached.
Governments leaders wanted something where they could absolve themselves of the responsibility for making informed decisions. They would have to read science stuff otherwise. They ordered up a kind of unnatural scientist that would tell them precisely what they wanted to hear.
But they gave the puppeteers clubs to deal with those of us who remained true. And the perps of Climategate are what they got. All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.
You should understand that (real) scientists have had to pay the heaviest price for the creation of these monsters for decades. And they were not created by us.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/skeptics-in-wonderland
I'm still on my Issac Newton kick and that comment was true back in the 1600's. The royals would finance the research, but most of the philosophers had to at least pay lip service to alchemy, even if they really wanted to play with universal computers.
This fraud is not really about science, that is just a means to the real end of taking our wealth and giving it to someone else. Period. End of story.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."
Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.
As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.
Can anyone say with a straight face these climate jerks believe the crap they spew out? The worst part is it is all money wasted by the World's governments. Our tax dollars along with all the other countries involved.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
This is another example of how our leaders have used their political power, and corporate connections to give themselves a life of luxury and wealth. I'm sure some of these people have good intentions as well, but they are addicted to this sort of lifestyle, and think it is the norm.
The term "public-servant" is a joke. Government is about becoming as big and powerful as it can get, and getting in that "club" and grabbing all the wealth, power, luxury and pensions that you can.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-12-07-epa-greenhouse-dangers_N.htm?- loc=interstitialskip
Kerry: He has called EPA regulation a "blunt instrument" that would pose a bigger problem for industry than legislation crafted to mitigate some of the costs of shifting away from carbon emitting fossil fuels.
And that cost will be included in every product made in a U.S. factory and made with U.S. generated electricity.
You can't blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed's mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today's scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.
Science's prediction of "A full-blown, 10,000 year ice age," came from its March 1, 1975 issue. The Christian Science Monitor observed that armadillos were retreating south from Nebraska to escape the "global cooling" in its Aug. 27, 1974 issue.
That armadillo caveat seems reminiscent of today's tales of polar bears drowning due to glaciers disappearing.
While scientists march to the drumbeat of grant money, at least trees don't lie. Their growth rings show what's happened no matter which philosophy is in power. Tree rings show a mini ice age in Europe about the time Stradivarius crafted his violins. Chilled Alpine Spruce gave him tighter wood so the instruments sang with a new purity. But England had to give up the wines that the Romans cultivated while our globe cooled, switching from grapes to colder weather grains and learning to take comfort with beer, whisky and ales.
Yet many centuries earlier, during a global warming, Greenland was green. And so it stayed and was settled by Vikings for generations until global cooling came along. Leif Ericsson even made it to Newfoundland. His shallow draft boats, perfect for sailing and rowing up rivers to conquer villages, wouldn't have stood a chance against a baby iceberg.
Those sustained temperature swings, all before the evil economic benefits of oil consumption, suggest there are factors at work besides humans.
Sadly, the public just learned that our scientific community hid data and censored critics. Maybe the feds should drop this crusade and focus on our health care crisis. They should, of course, ignore the life insurance statistics that show every class of American and both genders are living longer than ever. That's another inconvenient fact.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/03/climate-science-gore-intelligent-technology-sut- ton.html
An "endangerment" finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions -- even if Congress doesn't pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any global deal inked in the Danish capital, where no binding agreement is expected.
Many business groups are opposed to EPA efforts to curb a gas as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide.
An EPA endangerment finding "could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery," he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126013960013179181.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStori- es
Best read this one. It is going to send a lot more jobs to Chindia in a real hurry. No manufacturer in his right mind will stay with the regulations the EPA has in mind. We will be lucky to have electricity when the EPA under Obama gets done with US.
I think I'm going to move away from being an engineer in a manufacturing company, and start taking some short-courses in environmental legislation and consulting. It looks like the future job-creation is going to be - being a leech on the economy - the people who produce things.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBPMmO6RsHA
Global Warming Is Not Slowing, Report Says
"The period from 2000 through 2009 has been “warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s and so on,” said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, speaking at a news conference at the climate talks in Copenhagen.
The international assessment largely meshes with interim analysis by the National Climatic Data Center and NASA in the United States, both of which independently estimate global and regional temperature and other weather trends."
Next up - weatherization for clunkers. Sign me up.
2013 LX 570 2016 LS 460
Hope all those wonks hanging out with Al Gore enjoy the free tricks provided by the local red light district. I wonder if Tiger flew over?
BTW: I wonder if the 3,00 Danes who paid $1,206.00 to shake Gore's hand, will get their $$ back. Oh yeah, he will pay them back, when he returns his Nobel peace prize
What a bummer.