Global Warming?

[newbury]

If, as the now termed 'climate change' crowd tells us, a side effect of global warming can be 'a period of global cooling'. So are they going to also tell use that shrinking amounts of sea ice can cause more sea ice? Bearing Sea had record-breaking amounts of sea ice this past winter:

Bering Sea Sees Surprising Record Ice Cover - Yahoo! News

Seems a lot of people can't read past the title:

Persistent winds pushed ice from the Arctic Ocean down toward the Bering Strait, which acted as a temporary dam, trapping the sea ice in a bottleneck.

The Arctic as a whole had below-average sea ice cover during the 2011 to 2012 winter season. At its maximum, reached in mid-March, sea ice covered 5.88 million square miles (15.24 million square kilometers), the ninth lowest in the satellite record.

Bering Sea Sees Record Sea Ice Cover ? Arctic Effects of Climate Change | OurAmazingPlanet.com

So yes, there was more ice in the Bering Sea, BECAUSE IT HAD PLUGGED UP.

Overall the 9th lowest in the sat record.

Doesn't Idaho have "ice-outs" and rivers dammed up from melting ice UPSTREAM?

But it's a lot easier to read a title and if it supports a preconceived position flaunt it. Pretty soon everybody that relies on others doing their thinking may follow you. Like a lemming off a cliff.

 

[Rob-D]

This sounds like pure BS. I wonder if you even Believe it. 15 years ago solar panels were not very efficient. Life span was calculated at UP TO 20 years and very few lasted even 10 years.

Completely wrong, I have panels over ten years old that still produce over 90% of their original power.

Solar panels today are guaranteed output of 25 to 30 years, at that point they lose ten to twenty percent.

The energy to make a solar panel is recovered in one year with 29 more years of clean free output.
And you're are completely overlooking one of the most important aspects of technology.

Do you know what the greatest invention of the 20th century was? It was the transistor invented in 1949 by my old company Bell Labs. The transistor changes the way we live. Every house has it, communications expanded logarithmically, energy usage dropped logarithmically also. Technology of PV is moving forward daily.

The technology of renwables 10 years ago is basically gone. Modified sine wave inverters basically gone. Now we use microinverters on each panel. Now we have panels putting out 250 watts that are the same size as panels 10 years ago putting out 75 watts.

All those satellites in orbit that enable you to communicate here are PV electricity. Remember the 12 foot satellite dishes in people's back yards? Do you know why they are gone? It's because we've increased the power of our satellites.

So now tell me that renwables don't work.

Why do people who don't know a fiddle about technology have so much to say?

Rob

 

[EE_Bota]

You're late here, my intertie system cost me nothing! Actually I made money on it. My coop gave out incentives for PV installations.
I did pay for my off grid system but I put that in myself, it cost about 10k before gov. incentives.

But the big difference is that you're paying $8.00 a watt to have someone else put in your system and I put mine in for less than $3.00 a watt. If you were smart enough to put in your own system you would have spent 4.1 x $3.00 = 12.3k-30% = $8,6100.

The next thing you don't know is where you're using your electricity. What? That's equivalent to pouring money down a drain. How smart is that? I can tell you exactly what appliances in my house use the most KWH a day and exactly where my money is going. So are you an investment banker, or what?

The next thing is that you haven't accounted for rising energy costs.

The next thing is the grid. What will you do if the fragile grid dies tomorrow? At that point yearly pay back is moot.

Got an SUV? A truck? What's the payback on that. I know people with 45k vehicles that can't change a flat. How do you buy a car and not know how to maintain it?

What's my point? How do you live in a world with rising energy costs and not know how diminish their effect on you? How smart is that?

So tell me again who needs to be the investment banker because he doesn't know where his money is going. That wouldn't be me I spent 10k for over 8.4 Kw of PV and don't care if the grid flops on its face tomorrow.

It's called technology, you know how to type on your computer, pay for a car that gives you zero return but you don't know how to take advantage of technology. Back to the guy who buys a car and can't change a flat! I'll bet you know who won the super bowl though, now that's important!

Billions of dollars in incentives we give the oil companies doesn't seem to bother you.

Senate Republicans reject Obama call to end 'big oil' tax breaks - CNN.com

"With record profits and rising production, I'm not worried about the big oil companies," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden. "... I think it's time they got by without more help from taxpayers, who are having a tough enough time paying their bills and filling up their tanks."

To quote you:

"So who's smarter? NOT YOU!"

Rob

Boys. BOYS! I'll settle this...I'm smarter.

Nah, I ain't that bright, unless you ask my Mom.

But Rob, are you sure that the president is not using you as a patsy to foist propaganda on the rest of us by claiming the oil companies are getting special tax breaks and subsidies without stopping to consider that these are normal things in tax law, available to many many companies outside the oil industry?

I (and others) say name that tax break, name that subsidy, and no one ever does. You are sharp, so I may not be drilling a blind hole (installing a dead PV panel) when I say to YOU name that tax break, name that subsidy.

 

[Rob-D]

George Santayana the philosopher said something to the effect that 'those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.'

Some of you should read a little history. The fall of every major empire, ours included, started with the thinking I'm seeing here. We want to sit and watch super bowls for millions of dollars but we don't know how to live in a changing world. We're guppies, someone spreads a little food on one side of a fish tank and we all swim over to get it,. We don't think about the cost of fuel we put in our cars and how to stop that insanity that's affecting us and our planet personally.

The Russians taught the world how to control the masses with the media and we made a science of it. We have people here who have never put in a PV system but miraculously know all about why it won't work.

So who wants you to think it won't work? How about the American Petroleum Institute with billions of dollars in lobby money. They want you to keep going to the pump, they want you to think electric cars have no future and they want you to think that fossil fuel doesn't harm the environment and will last indefinitely.

They're smart people, we keep going to the pump and paying, and paying. We use electricity and don't know how much, forget how much coal we use and how much pollution we put into our environment from that coal.

So I think you should keep parroting the pabulum that the media tells you and whatever you do don't think for yourselves, don't think for an instant, "how can I defer these rising energy costs? Heck, I'll just sit back and watch the game, someone will come up with a new technology, a silver bullet."

Good luck with that.

Rob

 

[EE_Bota]

Seems a lot of people can't read past the title:


Bering Sea Sees Record Sea Ice Cover ? Arctic Effects of Climate Change | OurAmazingPlanet.com

So yes, there was more ice in the Bering Sea, BECAUSE IT HAD PLUGGED UP.

Overall the 9th lowest in the sat record.

Doesn't Idaho have "ice-outs" and rivers dammed up from melting ice UPSTREAM?

But it's a lot easier to read a title and if it supports a preconceived position flaunt it. Pretty soon everybody that relies on others doing their thinking may follow you. Like a lemming off a cliff.

Please read up on Lemmings if you have not already, as there are lots of myths about them.

 

[Redneck in training]

This sounds like pure BS. I wonder if you even Believe it. 15 years ago solar panels were not very efficient. Life span was calculated at UP TO 20 years and very few lasted even 10 years.




Your math is completely wrong (not based on facts) as is to where the $$$ went. Almost all of it went to solar & wind.

Your electric bill is more than 3 times mine. Ever turn a light off??
Why should I pay $128.00 a year for someone Else's electricity???
So it is good that we are sending more $$$ to China???

Just for the record, I am not against wind or solar power. Around 35 years ago I purchased a wind generator. We had too much wind and it tore its self up in a few months.

Wind & Solar, when they are actually able to compete, without Gov. subsides that will be great. 1 Hidden Gov. subsidy is that those selling excess power to the power co's get paid more for it than the power co sells it for.

China is selling solar panels for 70 cents/W. That bankrupted US manufacturers. Right now it is time to go solar regardless you care about climate or not. If you can install it by yourself you will make money. 5kW system would do it for you.
6.944KW Grid-Tie System, Grid-Tie Kit 6.944KW that is about double the size you need but it could give you an idea. Add 1 or 2k for incidentals. You don't have to take the subsidy if you don't want to. You will still come ahead money wise.

Well, I have 100% electric house and heated shop together 7500 sq ft of heated space. Shop will be heated by passive solar when I get to it after I retire in near future. Like this guy. DeSoto Solar Passive Heating Panel Installation

 

[Loren49]

How about the costs of air and water pollution from burning coal? Crash question - Modern and Up graded coal plants add almost no air or water pollution. Water is reused except for that lost as steam.

---I was referring to the water pollution from strip mining:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/science/earth/02coal.html
The most substantial effect of the new guidelines which the agency will promulgate to regional offices that issue permits will be to benchmark the permissible levels of mining runoff likely to be introduced into the waterways surrounding a proposed project. Operations that would result in levels roughly five times above normal would be considered too damaging

Water pollution from coal - SourceWatch
Water Pollution from Coal includes negative health and environmental effects from the mining, processing, burning, and waste storage of coal, including acid mine drainage, thermal pollution from coal plants, acid rain, and contamination of groundwater, streams, rivers, and seas from heavy metals, mercury, and other toxins and pollutants found in coal ash, coal sludge, and coal waste.

Many of the heavy metals released in the mining and burning of coal are environmentally and biologically toxic elements, stored in federally unregulated coal waste sites.[7] Sulfur dioxide scrubbers also create coal waste. The flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) process creates a wet solid residue containing calcium sulfite (CaSO3) and calcium sulfate (CaSO4). Often dry material such as fly ash is added to stabilize the sludge for transport and landfill storage.[17]

Coal combustion waste is the nation's second largest waste stream after municipal solid waste.[18] A power plant that operates for 40 years will leave behind 9.6 million tons of toxic waste.[4] According to a New York Times analysis of EPA data, power plants are the nation痴 biggest producer of toxic waste, surpassing industries like plastic, paint manufacturing, and chemical plants.[16] It is disposed of in landfills or "surface impoundments," which are lined with compacted clay soil, a plastic sheet, or both. As rain filters through the toxic ash pits year after year, the toxic metals are leached out into the local environment.[19][20]

In October 2009, Appalachian Voices released an analysis of monitoring data from coal waste ponds at 13 coal plants in North Carolina. The study revealed that all of them are contaminating ground water with toxic pollutants, in some cases with over 350 times the allowable levels according to state standards. The contaminants include the toxic metals arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and lead, which can cause cancer and neurological disorders. The study was based on data submitted by Duke Energy and Progress Energy to state regulators.[21]

Power plants have often violated the Clean Water Act without paying fines or facing other penalties: ninety percent of 313 coal-fired power plants that violated the law since 2004 were not fined or otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators. And fines are often modest: Hatfield痴 Ferry has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006, but has paid less than $26,000, even as the plant痴 parent company earned $1.1 billion.[

---- As stated earlier, there are many hidden costs that are a result of burning this fossil fuel for electricity. I predict that these costs would be many times the "subsidies" for renewables.

-----Also on your claims about solar voltaic panel's longevity. I have owned them starting in 1983 and none have failed and the two from 1983 are still producing at about 90% of rated value.

Loren

 

[Rob-D]

Boys. BOYS! I'll settle this...I'm smarter.

Nah, I ain't that bright, unless you ask my Mom.

But Rob, are you sure that the president is not using you as a patsy to foist propaganda on the rest of us by claiming the oil companies are getting special tax breaks and subsidies without stopping to consider that these are normal things in tax law, available to many many companies outside the oil industry?

I (and others) say name that tax break, name that subsidy, and no one ever does. You are sharp, so I may not be drilling a blind hole (installing a dead PV panel) when I say to YOU name that tax break, name that subsidy.

OK, let me say this one more time:

Intelligence is the ability to constructively resolve one's problems. Period!

Now if someone here thinks that's a bad definition and has a better one I'm all ears.

That's the criteria I use to evaluate myself and everyone around me. So when someone tells me the cost of installing a PV system is inhibitive I ask them what they spent on their car, their big screen TV,etc., etc. that give them absolutely no return on their money when they only way not to notice the inhibitive cost of energy today is with one's head firmly planted in the proverbial sand.
We have a nation of 'it won't work' thinking and I find if you have that outlook.... it never works! My outlook is how can I make it work to my advantage.
Gee, I can'tafford to have someone come in a install a system for me, Oh you think I should figure out how to do it myself and save 50 to 70%! Not possible!

Senate Republicans reject Obama call to end 'big oil' tax breaks - CNN.com

Origins
The Congressional Research Service states the fledgling oil industry in the United States first received government assistance in 1916. That was when intangible drilling costs were able to be fully deducted from a company's expenses for tax purposes. In 1926, a write-off for cost depletion was introduced. That provision allowed oil companies to deduct costs based upon overall gross receipts and not just the actual value of the oil.

Does that sound familiar? They couldn't make it without gov help!

So we give oil companies subsidies, why? Because they lobby this country to the tune of billions of dollars to get them.

Fossil Fuel Subsidies | The Price of Oil

"How much money does the U.S. government give oil, gas and coal companies?
Estimates of the value of U.S. federal subsidies to the domestic oil and gas industry alone (not coal) range from ç™»nly $4 billion a year, to an amazing $41 billion annually. One recent comprehensive study of U.S. energy subsidies (see graph below) identified $72.5 billion in federal subsidies for fossil fuels between 2002-2008, or just over $10 billion annually. For more information on the range of subsidies, see below.

But in the end, it proved to be an uphill battle to get the Super Committee to take a stand on fossil fuel subsidies and perhaps thatç—´ not so surprising, given the influence of fossil fuel industry money on the Super Committee. Eight Super Committee members received over $300,000 in contributions from the fossil fuel industry since 1999: Senators Back us (D-MT), Kyl (R-AZ), Portman (R-OH), and Toomey (R-PA), and Representatives Camp (R-MI), Clyburn (D-SC), Hensarling (R-TX), and Upton (R-MI)."

Sure industry gets 'tax breaks' but why are we giving the API those breaks? Are we getting a deal at the pump?

Rob

 

[Rob-D]

Please read up on Lemmings if you have not already, as there are lots of myths about them.

Forget the sea, they came here!

 

[Loren49]

EE_Bota- I know that you know better than me...we've been down this road before:thumbsup:

You discuss in a fair and respectful way and I appreciate that.

Concerning the subsidies :
Some consider tax breaks as subsidies:
Senate blocks effort to end oil industry tax breaks - Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON The Senate blocked an effort to end billions of dollars in tax breaks for the oil industry, brushing aside President Obama's argument that the five big oil companies were doing "just fine" while consumers were struggling with painfully high gasoline prices.

The measure to kill the industry tax preferences failed on a 51-47 procedural vote Thursday. It needed 60 votes to overcome a Republican-led filibuster that was supported by some Democrats from oil-rich states.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), would target more than $2 billion in annual tax subsidies to the so-called Big Five oil companies BP, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips.

Had the measure passed Congress, about half of the $24 billion in savings over 10 years would have been reinvested in tax breaks for biodiesel, wind, cellulosic ethanol and energy-efficiency programs. The other half would have been used to reduce the federal deficit.


Hey Mr. Green: Does the Coal Industry Get Subsidies?
The U.S. coal industry enjoyed subsidies of around $17 billion between 2002 and 2008, including tax credits for production of "nonconventional" fuels ($14.1 billion), tax breaks on coal royalties ($986 million), exploration, and development breaks ($342 million), according to a study by the Environmental Law Institute.

Around $1.5 billion of the federal costs are associated with damages to miners health such as the notorious black lung disease. Thinking of the miners plight lands us smack in a morass of hidden subsidies as thick as the billion gallons of coal-ash sludge that poured into eastern Tennessee in 2008.
--------

Should the costs of damage to air and water quality and the negative health and environmental results be paid up front or be a burden to those down stream and down wind? I believe the subsidies to help renewables is a drop in the bucket and is money well spent (at times -there have been wastes)

Loren