Just asking questions after getting caught begging a question is quite something.
Physician, heal thyself.
Comment on Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology? by AK
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by fulltimetumbleweed/tumbleweedstumbling
“construction zone”, some days I think autocorrect is the devil’s tool
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by fulltimetumbleweed/tumbleweedstumbling
I have smart meter but not by choice. They installed them here and that was all there was to it. Smart meters worry me because it is such a short move from a smart meter to having someone else control your thermostat or adding a carbon tax based on consumption as computed by a smart meter or deciding when you can draw energy based onto e greater good. We have begun using a parallel solar system, i.e. one that is totally independent of the one providing utility electricity and we are currently using the solar system for all rechargeable stuff and a few low draw appliances. The cost of integrating our system with the hydro company is far too high and I prefer the separation anyway. (They charge hundreds to thousands for the engineering study they require and that can also take months to complete.) My hope is as we expand the solar we can expand the second system and the use more and more of our own power without involving the utility at all.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by fulltimetumbleweed/tumbleweedstumbling
Monsanto….don’t get me started. My father-in-law used his own seed grain to avoid them. It didn’t actually affect his production compared to his neighbours because using your own seed grain costs so much less and I think over multiple generations his wheat was also locally adapted. He had an informal “club” of like minded farmers who would act as a bcak up in a bad year and they shared “good” seed around.
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Comment on Week in review – science edition by AK
<blockquote>AK</blockquote><blockquote>good to see you resign from the debate.</blockquote><blockquote>
that means that raw political power will settle things.</blockquote>So you think it's “<i>good</i>” that “<i>raw political power will settle things</i>”? And you think that my “<i>resign</i>[ing]<i> from the debate</i>” will even make a difference?
I think my comments make a difference. And IMO they'll continue to do so. But I also think people who reject the pseudo-science called "post-normal science" aren't going to accept anything from anybody who gives "post-normal science" a seat at the table.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by matthewrmarler
A new look for nuclear power [link]
Here’s hoping.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by rovingbroker
Re: The diesel fuel issue …
Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease
A Statement for Healthcare Professionals From the Expert Panel on Population and Prevention Science of the American Heart Association
From the section Potential for Prevention/Public Policy …
The increase in relative risk for cardiovascular disease due to air pollution for an individual is small compared with the impact of the established cardiovascular risk factors. However, because of the enormous number of people affected, even conservative risk estimates translate into a substantial increase in total mortality within the population.
http://www.circ.ahajournals.org/content/109/21/2655.full
Published in 2004.
The report was updated in 2010. It is interesting to note what was learned in the six years between publications and astonishing to see the volume of studies cited in the 2010 survey.
AHA Scientific Statement
Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease
An Update to the Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association
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Comment on Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology? by matthewrmarler
jim2: AK – it might be cheaper to build small towers that harness the Sun to create “wind.” Something like this, but smaller, without the “greenhouse,” and distributed through the field.
http:\\graphics8.nytimes.com\images\blogs\greeninc\solarupdraft.jpg
Wet and dry thermals do that already.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by jacksmith4tx
You can bet I’ll jump on the first chance I get to go off the grid with a viable battery system. I designed my system oversized to factor in a battery system plus a normal PV 25 year degradation and still supply 110% of my base average usage (2007-2011). I’m shedding over a megawatt a year into the grid so at least someone benefits for now.
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Comment on Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology? by PA
Joseph | June 26, 2015 at 11:57 am |
Rob, there are projections for sea level rise in the IPCC report
1. The subsidence in most locations is greater to much greater than the SLR.
2. The IPCC sea level rise curves, while initially reasonable, are deluded fantasies in the out years. Actual sea level rise (as opposed to ocean bottom sinking and inland subsidence, among other contributors to sea level rise) can’t go exponential The surface area increases with increasing sea level and it would take an exponential increase in ocean energy to cause an exponential increase in sea level rise (real rise not virtual rise)..
Perhaps some rational independent party needs to review the current way the satellite sea level estimate is created and fix the problem. About 1/2 of the satellite sea level change is virtual. The percentage of CGSLR is greater than the percentage (to this point) of CGAGW.
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Comment on Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology? by Willard
Next time, scratch your own itch, PA:
Climate change is already contributing to the deaths of nearly 400,000 people a year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, wiping 1.6% annually from global GDP, according to a new study.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/26/climate-change-damaging-global-economy
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Comment on Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology? by Willard
> there is no real cost of carbon emissions.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by Mike Flynn
jacksmith4tx,
Sorry I didn’t get round to answering before.
For the same reason I declined the offer to have a free PV system installed by the Government, I guess. I figured I’d wait for a while, and see how my next door neighbour fared. He took up the offer – who wouldn’t? Totally free, what could possibly go wrong?
Suffice it to say, I’m content with declining the installation of the free PV system.
One state that went with the economic modelling, and didn’t offer an opt out option for smart metering, is apparently regretting its decision, due to voter disenchantment.
Taking everything into account, I am happy to continue as I am. If circumstances change, I might reconsider. As they say, you pays your money, you takes your chances. You might come to a different decision if your circumstances are different.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by RiHo08
All choked up: did Britain’s dirty air make me dangerously ill? Very interesting article, I was unaware of the diesel fuel issue [link]
A few years back, the Green movement in Europe and UK persuaded complicit lawmakers to incentives a switch from petrol (gasoline) to diesel fuels because the diesel footprint was less than gasoline and diesel achieved 20% more miles per gallon. Of course there were unintended consequences in that diesel engines produce a prodigious amount of PM2.5 particles, the so call “respirable particles”. PM2.5 are inhaled deep into the lungs and can penetrate the alveolar gas exchange units and find their way into the blood stream. These black carbon particles carry the attached toxins that can cause cancer as well as inflammation of the arteries. The relevance of particulates causing artery inflammation becomes more important as the cholesterol etiology of arterial and heart disease has been shown to be false. Inflammation is the most likely reason for the significant heart disease in the world and why modifying diets to reduce cholesterol has not altered heart disease in the slightest.
As the Europeans had bought the diesel switch hook line and sinker, the European cities began having more and more pollution from diesel engine powered vehicles: cars, buses, and trucks inhabiting their cities. As air quality measures progressively have gotten worse, eventually the political types began to declare against diesel vehicles in their cities.
“The mayor of Paris on Sunday announced radical plans to ban diesel cars from the French capital by 2020 as part of an anti-pollution drive.” (December 2014)
For people who work on diesel engines like mechanics, railroad workers, truck drives and those people living along side busy roadways, NIH and OSHA have long observed the health consequences of diesel engines. The information is not new, just like some inconvenient truths about climate change, this information didn’t get much press because of the CO2 scare.
Imagine this: wouldn’t it be a hoot if heart disease were a major function of cigarette smoking in the middle of the 20th Century and air pollution because of the Green mania was responsible for keeping heart disease as a major health issue in the latter portion of the 20th and early 21st Century?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by Steven Mosher
That is the whole point of randomized testing. http://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8849695/weatherization-e2e-study-response
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by jacksmith4tx
Thanks Mike,
I guess this whole thing about is more about principles than economics then.To each his own. Good luck.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by rovingbroker
More on diesel particles …
Wall-flow diesel particulate filters usually remove 85% or more of the soot, and under certain conditions can attain soot removal efficiencies approaching 100%. Some filters are single-use, intended for disposal and replacement once full of accumulated ash. Others are designed to burn off the accumulated particulate either passively through the use of a catalyst or by active means such as a fuel burner which heats the filter to soot combustion temperatures. This is accomplished by engine programming to run (when the filter is full) in a manner that elevates exhaust temperature In conjunction with an extra fuel injector in the exhaust stream that injects fuel to react with a catalyst element to burn off accumulated soot and convert it to ash where it is stored in the DPF filter,[3] or through other methods. This is known as “filter regeneration”.
[ … ]
As of December 2008 the California Air Resources Board (CARB) established the 2008 California Statewide Truck and Bus Rule which—with variance according to vehicle type, size and usage—require that on-road diesel heavy trucks and buses in California be retrofitted, repowered, or replaced to reduce particulate matter (PM) emissions by at least 85%. Retrofitting the engines with CARB-approved diesel particulate filters is one way to fulfill this requirement.[15] In 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided funding to assist owners in offsetting the cost of diesel retrofits for their vehicles.[16] Other jurisdictions have also launched retrofit programs …
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by mosomoso
Was visiting my all-solar neighbours again the other night. It’s always fun to see what can be rigged up, and I like that sort of alternate thing. (In their case, the grid was not available when they started building.)
The son who had set up the projector for our viewing of the rugby league game was complaining about problems with powering a desktop and he was thinking of buying a new laptop with better battery life. This surprised me, but I’ve often noticed that appliances and other amenities cost them much more, have to be bought new most of the time, and require more fiddling and fuss – though I’m sure if they spent even more time and money the desktop issue could be resolved. What can’t you do with enough heavy manufacturing, coal power and money, right?
I go all-grid and all-electric apart from some local timber for the slow-combustion in winter. Any device works, and running a computer is a simple matter of saving a half dead old thing and putting some flavour of Linux on it. I’ve also done without a vehicle for long stretches, since I don’t have to fetch my power. In short, I live light and recycle without the slightest urge to be green. Don’t praise me, praise coal. Ah, the grid!
Of course, the real cost for my off-grid neighbours is in all the diesel, gas, wood, wear and tear on (two) heavy vehicles, trailers, chainsaws, cylinders etc etc. Then there’s all that perishing solar hardware, especially batteries. Ah, the off-grid!
Having lived before with all-solar, I’d like to go off-grid again purely as an expensive hobby. But I would never delude myself that I was saving money or emissions, let alone the silly bloody planet.
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by rovingbroker
From Cato: Directional drilling, horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and radical new advances in offshore platform technology and global positioning software have revolutionized both onshore and offshore oil and gas production.
http://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/sustaining-american-energy-renaissance
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Comment on Week in review – Energy edition by Mike Flynn
Steven Mosher,
I am of the view that, if possible, you find out as early as possible whether your program is proceeding as intended, whether based on models or not.
This should avoid the following type of thing –
“And yet, in this particular study, the economists found that the federal home weatherization program was not a particularly cheap way to reduce CO2 emissions. Although energy use (and hence carbon pollution) from the homes studied did go down, it came at a cost of about $329 per ton of carbon. That’s much higher than the $38-per-ton value of the social cost of carbon that the US federal government uses to evaluate the costs and benefits of climate policies.”
You obviously disagree about the value of monitoring from the start. I’m glad it’s your money your Government is apparently wasting, and not mine. Same with the climate modelling. What’s a good few billion dollars more or less, if it all turns out to be completely useless?
And there has been precious little of value demonstrated so far, wouldn’t you agree?
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