Are you scientifically literate?

[Gipper]

So you do want to be a hunter gatherer? Have you ever actually tried it? I taught wilderness survival for some years, and believe me, you wouldn't like it. You are more useful to nature dead than you are alive. Are you aware that electric cars are an ecologocal disaster in the making? Between the manufacturing of those batteries and disposal of them, they are a nightmare but you gobble up the claim that they are good for the environment. And how many dead raptors do you need to see before you grasp that windmills are a bad plan? Or are you really not concerned about wildlife unless it suits your agenda a la AGW?

Your complaints are hypocritical at the very least. By your presence here, it is clear that you are making full use of modern technology. I dare say that I am greener than you. I live on a small working farm of about 50 acres. I heat my barns with passive solar via stacks of 50 gallon drums filled with water in bermed earth facing south. I use wind to pump water for all of my use except drinking. I grow or hunt roughly 80% of all of the vegetable and animal products that I consume as food, and I have solar panels on my roof that generate enough electricity that there are periods where the power company is paying me. Additionally, I have protected the 30 acres of hardwood forest on my land in my will.

One must wonder what you have done to improve your own little corner of the world. You guys are big on talk but very rarely walk the walk. Your pope algore is a prime example.

I must say Pale it is great fun watching you destroy these foolish liberals over and over...

I have a neighbor who is on his third Toyota Prius. He really thinks he is saving the planet by owning that sh*tty car. Being a DF liberal he does not know any better. After he bought the first one, I told him of the horrendous environmental impact to manufacture the car. Typical of libs he refused to believe me. They are so simple...

And hey Pale, can we use one of those barns to store our Little Green Pills?

 

[palerider]

And hey Pale, can we use one of those barns to store our Little Green Pills?

We might be able to convert an old grain elevator that I never used. It is about 12 feet in diameter and maybe 14 feet tall. Should be able to store a green pill or two in there. It even has a conveyor to the loading port. A new 1/4 hp motor and some grease should get it moving again.

 

[PLC1]

More fantasy. You are living in a dream world. If you are going to have a fantasy, make it a big one. Perpetual motion. Surplus energy. According to the hypothesis of AGW, it is possible. All you need to do is figure out how to capture that excess energy before it is re radiated from the earth.

Maybe those space aliens who seeded this planet with life in the beginning will come and help us out. They must have at least developed cold fusion by now.

 

[Gipper]

In the past 22 years, the U.S. spent 100s of billions of dollars cleaning up after the messes the oil companies made with their leaking underground storage tanks. Kentucky alone had 80,000 of them. Did the oil companies foot the bill for this? Well, that depends on who you ask. They will say that they did. But the fact is that you did, at the pump. And the fact is that you will continue to pay at the pump, and with contaminated soil and groundwater because you will continue to have to use underground storage tanks until they are replaced altogether by the next technology that comes along. And that technology won't go online until we insist that they do.

You are not completely accurate with this statement. KY may have 800,000 USTs, but most do NOT leak. California has many more USTs than KY and they have 28,000 leaking USTs. See below...

USTs installed in the past 20-30 years are very advanced systems containing leak detection, secondary containment, double walled construction, fiberglass construction, etc. The days of single walled steel tanks without corrosion protection are long gone. Most states have considerable regulations controlling USTs and require pollution insurance to operate. Can't get insurance if the USTs are not in compliance.

And the technology to remediate leaking tanks has greatly improved. As with the oil spill, letting the gas naturally attenuate is often the best choice and costs nothing.

Abstract: California has 28,000 leaking underground fuel tanks. Approximately 7,000 have been actively remediated at a cost of $1 billion. It will cost roughly $3 billion to actively remediate the remainder. This paper demonstrates that it is not worth incurring these costs. We show that passive, or intrinsic, bioremediation (“exploiting the metabolic activity of microorganisms to transform or destroy contaminantsâ€) is the most cost-beneficial remediation technology to employ.
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cdlucsbec/1739.htm

 

[palerider]

Maybe those space aliens who seeded this planet with life in the beginning will come and help us out. They must have at least developed cold fusion by now.

I doubt it. If aliens are responsible for us being here, interference would invalidate the experiment.

 

[orogenicman]

So you do want to be a hunter gatherer?

Strawman.

Have you ever actually tried it? I taught wilderness survival for some years, and believe me, you wouldn't like it. You are more useful to nature dead than you are alive.

I'm a geologist, dude. I've spent weeks in the wilds collecting data, Mr. I really am a biochemist - no, really! I am!

Are you aware that electric cars are an ecologocal disaster in the making? Between the manufacturing of those batteries and disposal of them, they are a nightmare but you gobble up the claim that they are good for the environment. And how many dead raptors do you need to see before you grasp that windmills are a bad plan? Or are you really not concerned about wildlife unless it suits your agenda a la AGW?

When I read deniers try to pretend that they actually care about the environment by making such statements as the horse hockey above, I just have to laugh out loud.

Your complaints are hypocritical at the very least. By your presence here, it is clear that you are making full use of modern technology. I dare say that I am greener than you. I live on a small working farm of about 50 acres. I heat my barns with passive solar via stacks of 50 gallon drums filled with water in bermed earth facing south. I use wind to pump water for all of my use except drinking. I grow or hunt roughly 80% of all of the vegetable and animal products that I consume as food, and I have solar panels on my roof that generate enough electricity that there are periods where the power company is paying me. Additionally, I have protected the 30 acres of hardwood forest on my land in my will.

Yeah,. and you're a biochemist in a pear tree. (sung to the tune of the 12 days of Christmas).

One must wonder what you have done to improve your own little corner of the world. You guys are big on talk but very rarely walk the walk. Your pope algore is a prime example.

Well, since you feel the need to wave a penis flag, I have consulted on mitigation efforts on thousands of contaminated sites in 13 states. I have worked on every kind of site you can think of, from the mom and pop gas station down the street to the "valley of the drums". So don't pretend to me that you are some kind of environmental activist. When you make such pretenses, it just smells like what it is - a load of crap.

..........

 

[orogenicman]

Not it isn't. All we have is expensive, inefficient science experiments funded by government grants. Nothing that could even begin to replace our energy demands.

Certain they can put a dent in it. But I'll also ask you the same question I asked Gen. What is your problem with conservation? Do you honestly believe that our current energy demand is sutainable, or even rational?

 

[orogenicman]

"You are not completely accurate with this statement. KY may have 800,000 USTs, but most do NOT leak. California has many more USTs than KY and they have 28,000 leaking USTs. See below..."

I didn't say that Kentucky has 800,000 USTs. I said that they had 80,000 USTs (at the beginning of the UST program). It was estimated that 80% of them had experienced leaks and spills. Very few of them had leak detection, spill prevention, and cathodic protection. The actual numbers by the end of the program was far worse, since during the implimentation of the program, thousands of unregistered USTs were discovered, and many of them were so old they were full of holes from corrosion.

The systems that are installed today for the most part do meet the stardards set by the EPA, standards, I should point out, that would not have had to come from the government if the industry had been meeting its moral obligation to protect the public health and welfare.

 

[BigRob]

Well, it certainly can't compete if roadblocks are thrown up to prevent it from ever happening, can it?

What roadblocks are you talking about here? Alternative energy is heavily subsidized and given tax breaks etc...

No one is saying that it can or should happen over night. Likely, it will take at least 30 years to make the transition. And while the end result might look revolutionary, certainly the timeline is nothing even close to being disruptive. But what is the alternative. Dirty oil? Dirty coal? Dirty Nukes? When you consider the environmental damage and the potenital environmental damage those technologies have caused and likely will continue to cause, compared to the real clean technologies of wind and solar, to me, there is no comparison.

If within 30 years solar/wind becomes viable to the point of being able to compete with oil, then sign me up. Until that time, why would I want to pay more money for something that cannot currently meet demands?

I am not prepared to pay significantly more money for energy because of "potential environmental damage." Honestly, I just don't care. If you at least get them close (free of government intrusion), I might spring for the extra money, but not until that point.

In the past 22 years, the U.S. spent 100s of billions of dollars cleaning up after the messes the oil companies made with their leaking underground storage tanks. Kentucky alone had 80,000 of them. Did the oil companies foot the bill for this? Well, that depends on who you ask. They will say that they did. But the fact is that you did, at the pump. And the fact is that you will continue to pay at the pump, and with contaminated soil and groundwater because you will continue to have to use underground storage tanks until they are replaced altogether by the next technology that comes along. And that technology won't go online until we insist that they do.

It will go online when they figure out how to make it economically viable. Are oil spills a good thing? Obviously not... however does the presence of oil spills mean oil should not be used? No.

So you have to ask yourself, is continuing to use dirty energy worth the cost to human health and human lives?

For the time being... yes.

The cost of using petroleum and coal as energy sources goes far beyond the price we pay at the pump and when we receive our electricity and heating bills. These are the issues that are before us all, and must be addressed sooner rather than later.

I am all for addressing those issues... in the free market. Until the market can address those issues, then fossil fuels are what we will use.

 

[orogenicman]

What roadblocks are you talking about here? Alternative energy is heavily subsidized and given tax breaks etc...

It is today. It hasn't been as recently as two years ago.

If within 30 years solar/wind becomes viable to the point of being able to compete with oil, then sign me up. Until that time, why would I want to pay more money for something that cannot currently meet demands?

You are going to pay more money whether we convert to alternative energy sources or not. The difference is that present energy sources are very harmful to the environment, and cannot be made unharmful.

I am not prepared to pay significantly more money for energy because of "potential environmental damage." Honestly, I just don't care. If you at least get them close (free of government intrusion), I might spring for the extra money, but not until that point.

I didn't expect you to care. If yu did care about the environment, you wouldn't be so deadset on continuing the status quo.

It will go online when they figure out how to make it economically viable. Are oil spills a good thing? Obviously not... however does the presence of oil spills mean oil should not be used? No.

It is already going online, as we speak.

For the time being... yes.


I am all for addressing those issues... in the free market. Until the market can address those issues, then fossil fuels are what we will use.

So you are saying it was ok to pay out huge subsidies to develop our current dirty energy sources, but not ok to subsidize clean ones?

......

 

[BigRob]

It is today. It hasn't been as recently as two years ago.

I am a little confused why a subsidy, or even a lack of a subsidy is a "roadblock"?

You are going to pay more money whether we convert to alternative energy sources or not. The difference is that present energy sources are very harmful to the environment, and cannot be made unharmful.

As I understand it, without the current massive subsidies, the price comparison is not even close on things like wind and solar...Oil would need to go up a decent amount to get them on par with no changes... it will happen eventually sure, but it has not happened yet.

I didn't expect you to care. If yu did care about the environment, you wouldn't be so deadset on continuing the status quo.

I am not "deadset" on continuing the status quo, I am deadset against government mandating a change... that is the free markets job.

It is already going online, as we speak.

Partially yes...

So you are saying it was ok to pay out huge subsidies to develop our current dirty energy sources, but not ok to subsidize clean ones?

No, I don't support government subsidies for oil companies either. That said, I think it is important to remember a lot of those subsidies are for "alternative" energy.


As an aside as well, it might make it easier in your responses to do the quotes like I did above. That way it could be separated out, and when someone clicks "quote" they wont have to copy and paste your other post in just to quote it.

You can do it by just typing quote (surrounded with [ and ] on either side) and then when you want to end it type /quote with the same brackets on each side.

 

[GenSeneca]

November 7, 1973
President Nixon launches Project Independence, with the goal of achieving energy self-sufficiency by 1980. Recalling the Manhattan Project, Nixon declares that American science, technology, and industry can free the United States from dependence on foreign oil. - US Dept. of Energy

The same promises, decade after decade, billions upon billions, and renewables still provide less than 10% of our energy.

Alternative energy is heavily subsidized and given tax breaks etc...

It is today. It hasn't been as recently as two years ago.

Taxpayers have been shoveling money into R&D and subsidies for renewables for decades and every year the taxpayer funding of renewables has grown larger.

That's from 2007 and we were directly funding renewables to the tune of nearly $5 billion a year with an additional subsidy of nearly $3 billion a year in "End User" subsidies.

Subsidies to renewable energy resources have been growing most rapidly. In FY 1999, renewable energy received $1.4 billion in subsidies. By FY 2007, subsidies to renewable energy of all forms grew to $4.9 billion. - US Energy Information Administration

I know what you're going to say, "We haven't spent enough money!!!" That's what you guys always say.

I don't know if you noticed but... We're BROKE! We have trillion dollar deficits and a 13 trillion dollar debt.

I think we've spent enough money, it's time for the private sector to pick up the ball and run with it... Without help from the taxpayer.

 

[orogenicman]

"As I understand it, without the current massive subsidies, the price comparison is not even close on things like wind and solar...Oil would need to go up a decent amount to get them on par with no changes... it will happen eventually sure, but it has not happened yet."

And so the plan is to wait until the price gets there? And then start the development and implimentation? Considering the lead time involved, how does this prevent a financial crisis in the energy sector, and an energy deficit?

 

[orogenicman]

"I am not "deadset" on continuing the status quo, I am deadset against government mandating a change... that is the free markets job."

Yeah? Well, we saw what a success the free markets were in the fincancial collapse, and during the Enron years. The issue here is that most qlternative energy firms are small upstart companies. Why do conservatives hail tax breaks and tax incentives for small businesses in general but not alternative energy start ups? Why are they protecting tqax breaks for the petroleum industry, breaks they obviously don't need?

 

[orogenicman]

"No, I don't support government subsidies for oil companies either. That said, I think it is important to remember a lot of those subsidies are for "alternative" energy. "

Huh? Really? Where? Who is getting them? The subsidies I was referring to was to the nuclear power industry, which obviously is not self-sustaining without government handouts, and with the power grid itself, which was largely built with funds provided by Ike's Congress. The power grid was not built by prvate industry alone. It took huge government subsidies to make it happen.