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Comments
Guvmint ought to step up and make it cheaper for EveryMan. Better than than throwing money at cleaning up the pollution mess AFTER the fact.
I would like to put in a pre-order of some blueberry flavored air please.
Remember the movie "Total Recall" with Ahh-nold? All that ice on Mars is just an atmosphere waiting to happen. Mars should be ready for Cohagen and the gang by the time this planet is polluted to death. :sick:
I thought you got over this quaint notion that the Earth was alive and needed care. From any practical point of view the Earth is not going to be harmed by anything mankind does. Even if we have an all-out nuclear and chemical war, life would be fine and recover within a very short time. The Earth has recovered from supervolcanoic eruptions and miles-wide asteroid impacts which dwarf anything man will do to the environment.
You just don't get it do you. Whenever the government gets involved with subsidies it just goes into the pockets of those selling, with no improvement in the product. It happened with the hybrids. The incentives were eaten up with raised prices for the cars. The current rebates on solar are just added onto making the prices higher.
If the Feds were really interested in giving the little guy installing solar a break. Why the $2000 cap on the tax credit? 30% of an average $50,000 solar installation should be a $15,000 tax credit. That is what Uncle gives to corporations for installing solar panels. Our congress is in the business of paying back debts to corporate benefactors. They are no more green than the lone guy commuting in a Hummer.
PS
I am not anti-hybrid, still skeptical, though softening. Not enough to buy another one.
Well, that's your opinion, with which I can feel free to disagree, and with which I do.
Today, the Prius is just another in a long line of green cars, along with the other 15 or so hybrids available.
Once the Clean Diesel folks get off their tush and give us some CARS in the USA, there will be even more clean cars.
Hybrids and HOV Lanes
I think there is a difference between harming the earth and just messing it up. The Exxon Valdez messed up the Prince William Sound with 9 million gallons of crude oil. It killed some birds and fish. It has since healed itself and recent counts have concluded that the fishery is not worse for the spill. For those of us that have wandered in the CA desert, we know that it was once part of an ocean. I have personally gotten sea shells from the sand out there. So if that happens again, so what. Nothing we do will stop or slow down the Earth's changes. Try to stop a lava flow sometime or a tornado. Man is insignificant at best. All your conservation does is make you feel good. I have no problem with that. I like to feel good myself.
In other news, Bob Lutz calls global warming "a total crock of $#!%"
COPPER RIVER DISTRICT
The commercial salmon fishing season in the Copper River District began on Monday, May 14. In accordance with modifications made to the Copper River King Salmon Management Plan, (5 AAC 24.361) at the December 2005 Board of Fish meeting, there was only one period per week during statistical weeks 20 and 21 when commercial fishing was permitted inside of the barrier islands as defined in 5 AAC 24.350(1)(B). The 2007 preseason commercial harvest forecast for
the Copper River District was 44,277 Chinook, 1,157,000 sockeye, and 278,161 coho salmon. The Gulkana Hatchery was expected to contribute 111,000 sockeye salmon to the 2007 commercial harvest. The actual 2007 sockeye salmon harvest of 1,899,635 ranked as the 3rd largest in the last 117 years.
Dang, now I'll have to go find a red to grill for dinner this weekend - you just cost me $17. :P
What do you mean by "made huge amounts of money during the cleanup with their boats"? Did you mean they helped in the cleanup and were paid for their work? Would you have expected them to do it for free?
And after the cleanup when the fishing was less profitable, why would they NOT complain? It was their livelihood. Are you saying a person should not complain when a large corporation makes a mistake that devastates their livelihood?
I like my mussels without an oil sheen on them, you know?
Ah well, we're a bit off-topic yet again.
How about a Chinese made EV for $30k?
Miles EV Gets New Funding For High-Speed Model
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/22/solar.plant.ap/index.html
And in the interest of promoting more clean-energy, I'm willing to sacrifice Death Valley as another good location. Fill the whole thing with solar power plants. Then we'll have energy to charge EV's.
"The construction of this solar plant and others under contract in the U.S. are subject to a long-term extension of the solar investment tax credit by the U.S. Congress." link
Shouldn't be a problem - they can just call themselves solar farmers when they lobby. :shades:
Many of the boat owners made more money in a month than they could have made in years fishing for salmon. It did not take that many years for the fishing to come back as good as ever. They gladly took the money paid for cleanup operations. Then wanted money to not fish. That oil spill was the result of poor legislation by Congress, less than watchful Coast Guard and a crew that was not well trained. If the ship was double hulled as they are now it would have not been the disaster it became. The sad part is you and I paid the bill. We paid in higher gas prices and lost tax revenues.
So, No I do not feel bad for the fishermen. They were well compensated for using their boats and the cash settlements they received.
If you want to read more on the current condition and debate.
Both groups of scientists agree that Prince William Sound’s waters, beaches, and animals have recovered for the most part. Both groups also agree that Exxon Valdez oil lingers below the surface of ~10 km of shoreline. The current controversy centers on whether this oil is harming ducks, sea otters, and other animals that live or feed in the biologically rich lower intertidal zone—the part of the beach that is only exposed during low tide.
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/sep/science/rr_exxon.html
We could flood a small part of Death Valley and make biodiesel from algae. More than enough room to supply all our diesel needs, all home grown...
1. Fishing at the TIME of the cleanup would have put about ZERO dollars in their bank accounts.
2. They were providing a service in which THEY ALONE were the best people for the job.
I'm not saying "feel bad for them" but I am saying "they don't deserve your wrath" -
It was an ACCIDENT. Preventable maybe, just like the Titanic. Certainly the fishermen, who had NO PART AT ALL in the accident, should remain blameless.
Blaming them is almost like blaming the cars who arrive at a freeway accident an hour after the crash and offer to help cleanup debris from the road.
A lot of the oil cleanup crews were carpetbaggers who came up just to work the spill, just like the good ol' pipeline boom days. Lots of people, including at least one Anchorage non-fisher friend of mine, bought boats to lease to Exxon. Everyone was scrambling to get in on the action and Exxon was spreading money around like chicken scratch.
Except me - we left for a road trip about that time. Ran into a camper in NM whose husband was working the spill. She was carrying around a baby food jar of fresh crude he had mailed her. Talk about aromatic. We got the most friendly waves and honks with our Alaska plates that trip when we hit New Jersey, home of Capt. Hazelwood. I bet I've bought less than 20 gallons of Exxon in the last 20 years.
One woman I've lost track of in Cordova lost her fishery (herring roe on kelp) to the spill. Last I heard the bank took her permit, but it's too long ago to depend on my memory. That's a shore fishery so she probably just worked it with an inexpensive skiff until the oil shut it down.
All of which has zilch to do with the topic....
Six years ago the fisherwoman met a guy and they fish July and August now. Not sure who had the permit or what they are harvesting now - thinking about her gave me a nice chance to catch up with an old friend who knew her back in the day.
In the news, NHTSA Submits Plan For Meeting 2020 CAFE Standard. Even though this is CAFE stuff, "NHTSA began work on the proposal in May after the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gases as tailpipe emissions under the Clean Air Act."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/environment/2008-02-25-plug-in-hybrids-pollu- tion_N.htm
NA and Europe are pretty well covered by electric grids. Grids in the rest of the world aren't so well developed.
The wide availability of telephone copper wiring apparently delayed the adoption of cell phone technology in this country, while countries without the hardwired infrastructure embraced wireless more rapidly (Norway proving the exception rule I suppose).
Anyway, how are electric cars going to enjoy worldwide economies of scale if they are going to require massive grid networks like ours to get the power to the plug, whether it's coal or nukes or natural gas supplying that power?
Now solar could be local to your house and even wind at my house. Different set of trade-offs there.
Thanks for the link.
Is he playing with a full deck?
Thank goodness I have two SUVs and a 262 hp daily driver. Maybe if I keep their pedals to the metal I can avert this catastrophe!
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
OT to Gagrice - Story about Cordova and the "crippling blow" in the same day's paper
As far as Cordova herring. I think they were overfishing it. That has happened in other places in Alaska. It is a very lucrative and greed surpasses conservation of the resource. All these fringe group lawsuits have done, is hold up the release of funds already awarded by the courts.
In the USA, we are still about .037 degrees above normal. Looks like merely a climate fluctuation to me. Probably just caused the La Nina event.
2008 will not likely be a record "warm" year... and remember: global warming trends are not ended by one cold year. All of these years:
1985
1989
1993
1996
were all cooler than the "Mean" since 1880. Those years did nothing to disturb the trend, and neither will 2008.
That chart shows what, a year? Doesn't seem too much of a trend to me. THIS is a trend:
I'll keep an eye on this chart and see what happens when the next 5 lines are posted.
Talk to me about "Global Cooling when you have a chart that shows a significant trend. During the 1964-1972 period, all those years were cooler than the mean. THAT'S a trend.
See this document:
Climate assessment report 2007
Charts on page 2 show:
Increasing surface temps
Increasing ocean levels
Decreased snowpack
If those three trifectas do not indicate a warming trend, then what does?
I'm shopping for an electric car to replace my TCH. I'll rent a car for long trips, and use my electric car for "around town" stuff. For things "in town" which are beyond the range of my electric car, I will take a Metro bus.
Oh no. Now we'll have all that pollution from the coal in the power plants putting out carbon dioxide along with pollutants. We'll have acid rain and the countryside will look like, well, a cadmium mining area where they get chemicals with which to make those batteries in hybrids, etc. We'll all die.
You really should think about just walking. Al Gore has.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Can't do that in Phoenix.
Back to the drawing board......(frustrated)
Well, I'm going to keep pumping out mass quantities of CO2 just in case... :P
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
9th Circuit, remember?
Never seen any place regulate fishing like Alaska (except maybe on the Bonaventure River up in Quebec ), so I doubt that overfishing was an issue.
Yes and no. One of my bosses was married to an Eskimo and lived in Unalakleet. He fished for Herring roe until the market went away. Could it be that no one is buying the herring roe and the Cordova fishermen are looking for someone to pay?
The 2007 herring biomass preseason projection was 38,415 tons. The department was unable to fly a peak biomass aerial survey this year. A pre-peak survey flown on June 8, by NSEDC biologists estimated 28,000 tons.
The allowable quota of herring harvest was over 7,000 tons, but there were no sac roe herring buyers this year. Seven fishers participated in a herring bait fishery and sold 65,489 pounds.
There was a wild kelp opening, but no fishers participated.
http://csfish.adfg.state.ak.us/newsrelease/view.php?year=2007&dist=NSH&species=2- - - 30&num=1
It looks like the oldest information on PWS Herring was 1997 and it was a good year. Kind of hard to pin something on the oil spill almost 20 years after the fact, when they have had a lot of good years in between. ADFG says it is a virus killing the herring.
It looks like the Cordova fishermen should head up to Norton Sound if they want to fish for herring. The Roe was the only thing worth collecting so no buyers no fishing.
Correctamundo!
I am hoping you will be able to explain to us why not a single global climate model of the past 20 years predicted the precipitous fall in global temperature over the 12 months of 2007. Not one of them!
Also, what is it about climate change models that would make them more credible over 20 or more years if they cannot even come close on a decadal scale? One might be led to believe the models are missing something important. Nah, perish the thought!
Exactly the point about this scientific theory. It's not correct because it doesn't address this drop in termperature. This anomaly reinforces that the hypothesis needs to be changed about global warming. Like many scientific theories which met a point where something was unexplaned, this one will lead to new discovery and understanding about what's going on. However, I don't believe there is a single theory at work here. It's probably more complicated than we think.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
link title
Pretty amazing stuff he is talking about. Unless we run out of CO2 as feedstock.
So we will need everyone that can afford it to drive a big ole SUV that will produce more CO2.
There are of course independent small vendors offering these type of conversions, but to me this is highly short sighted of the regulators.
The Weather Channel has lost its way, according to John Coleman, who founded the channel in 1982.
Coleman told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism.
“The Weather Channel had great promise, and that’s all gone now because they’ve made every mistake in the book on what they’ve done and how they’ve done it and it’s very sad,” Coleman said. “It’s now for sale and there’s a new owner of The Weather Channel will be announced – several billion dollars having changed hands in the near future. Let’s hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information.”
The Weather Channel has been an outlet for global warming alarmism. In December 2006, The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen argued on her blog that weathercasters who had doubts about human influence on global warming should be punished with decertification by the American Meteorological Society.
Coleman also told the audience his strategy for exposing what he called “the fraud of global warming.” He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose.
“[I] have a feeling this is the opening,” Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the media stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”
Earlier at the conference Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told an audience that the science will eventually prevail and the “scare” of global warming will go away. He also said the courts were a good avenue to show the science.
If selling carbon credits is found to be fraudulent in the courts we may see some REAL Science instead of Political Science. I can see more merit in that type of lawsuit than the ones CA are pursuing against the auto industry.