Re: Test of Climate Bill passes

June 27, 2009

Question: do you have a wiser, cost-effective proposal? One that doesn't favor

any particular group that happens to believe in their cause enough to invest

money in companies that work towards a greener environment?

Whether or not man has contributed to the changeover of climate getting

noticeably warmer to the point of climate change can be debated: what isn't so

readily debatable is the harm that a lot of the pollution mentioned does to the

quality of life. For those of us with chemical sensitivities and allergies and

lung problems (despite not doing something you'd expect to earn it, like

smoking) even without climate change (real or merely perceived) being a cause of

the change of policy, improving the cleanliness of the environment is a no-lose

proposition. The air quality in the late 60's and early 70's was much worse in

many places than it is now, at least in the US: I've got older siblings that can

vouch for that, and the effects it had on health. I, myself, am annoying

sensitive to air quality issues, due to asthma/allergies, and when there are

temperature inversions, my life is a living hell due to air quality, and I know

I'm not nearly the worst off, either in sensitivity or in the location I'm in as

far as air quality.

As for Al Gore, well... if he profits handsomely from improving the cleanliness

of the air I breathe, the water I drink, because he had the foresight to invest

in the companies that do such things, and they live up to their contracts for

cleaning things up, I look at it this way: he's putting his money where his

mouth is, and practicing what he preaches in that sense, and I can respect him

for that, and I won't get too upset if he gets rich off of helping make the

planet a nicer place to live. If he didn't invest in such things, and went

around proclaiming what he has, and had the means to do so, wouldn't that make

him a horrible hypocrite?

Related to that: for the life of me, I can't comprehend why Washington state,

claiming to be so environmentally-conscious as they are, does not have a bottle

deposit law at all... that made such a HUGE difference in Michigan when they

passed it when I was a little kid, and still helps greatly to this day. In a

way, you could liken the proposal for exchanging credits as sort of a pollution

deposit law, where you pay for what you put out into the atmosphere. If

everyone came together and decided to try to live more environmentally-friendly

by moving closer to work and where they shop, etc. such that everyone would be

able to take mass transit for the longer distances that aren't odd natural

attractions (and even then, get most of the way there via mass transit) such

that owning a car is more of an optional luxury and more of a burden than not

owning one, it'd be so much easier to have the overall pollution go way down,

because then the biggest pollution volume from human travel encountered would be

people farting while walking/running/bicycle riding! Such things can only be

feasible if there's a sufficient population density that allows mass transit of

some kind to work mathematically: the typical sprawling suburbs aren't a good

mathematical match for it, at their common population densities.

>

> This in spite of the fact that more and more reputable scientists are

> turning against the notion of human influenced climate change. The only ones

> still pushing this are politicians, including Al Gore, who stand to become

> exorbitantly rich. I've read that Gore alone is poised to take the tens of

> millions he made from his " the sky is falling " earth in the balance tour, and

> turn it into hundreds of millions via investments in companies who's

> technologies he promoted in his very show.

>

> Anyway, this isn't the way to address our energy issues. If this bill

> passes and DOESN " T tank the economy, I will be amazed.

>

June 27, 2009

I have some ideas, yes. What I would most like to find is a proposal put forward by Ben Stein back in the 1970's I've read about it and it sounds good, but I haven't found a copy of it.

It is entirely possible to encourage companies and private individuals to work toward a greener economy without a massive tax on energy and government interference and corruption. It should be noted that Europe tried a Cap and Trade program and it has been a disaster. Rather than clean the air, it turned into a lobbying free for all in the various governments by industry seeking favors and the cap and trade board has not reduced pollution but has only served to a few traders extremely rich. There is no reason to believe that it will be any different here. Obama has talked about Spain as being a model for a green society. How he can say this with a straight face is beyond me since Spain's unemployment shot up under the green programs and is now about 18%, twice the European average.

Lastly I will say that I remember the air in the 1970's. I remember a dark brown band around the horizon that could cover as much as a third of the sky, though was usually just about a handwidth. That is gone now. Speaking of allergies, I have them too, but to natural things, not pollution. Smog doesn't bother me, but pollen season is terrible.

As far as proposals go:

Solar Energy.

1. Rather than a giant, government boondoggle, expand existing programs that many states have to help people pay to get solar power. Some states will pay as much as $20,000 toward those costs. Instead of the government setting up an expensive bureaucracy and inefficient state industry, let it be known the program would begin in a year's time and allow private businesses to get set up to handle the work. Homeowners would apply for a voucher and it would be sent directly to them. The government could them come along later to inspect and verify not only installation, but that it was done properly.

2. Corporations could get a similar project. However, business might benefit more from tax write-offs to encourage such things. The biggest impediment would be the cost of solar power systems. Give businesses a tax credit equal to the full value of the system they install, verified by inspectors to make sure they don't pad the books, and this credit would be spread out over several years not all in a lump sum off of one year. Also allow them to fully amortize the system and, in 10 years or so time when the system needs to be replaced, repeat the cycle.

Now, this would have the effect of letting some people get solar power, particularly in rural and subdivision areas where they will have more open space for these systems. Once they get them and see how the system offsets some of the energy bill, I say some because it won't be all because of nighttime usage and that $20,000 probably would not be enough to cover an entire household's needs, though it would do more if batteries were left out of the system. If the system worked, then more people would want in and the program could spread. Keeping government's role minimal would keep costs and corruption down.

Fuel question

1. A system of converting carbon based trash (food waste, sewage, tires, plastic, paper, etc.) exists. It is being tried on the small commercial scale in a few places and it seems to work. If these systems were set up around the country, the US could produce enough fuel to run its transportation systems from farm wastes alone. Recycling garbage in this way would cut water wastage in terms of crowing corn or other plants for ethanol and would remove the food or fuel debate completely. Since it is a liquid fuel, we would not have to replace the entire infrastructure like we would if we switched to a hydrogen economy.

2. Continue using fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Garbage to fuel and other systems maybe be good, but they aren't mature. We will need fossil fuels for some time yet if only because it will take 20 years at least to begin build new infrastructure for things like Hydrogen, etc, not to mention replacing entire fleets of vehicles. In addition, most oil goes to non-transportation uses like generating power, making plastics or any of a vast variety of consumer goods and other items.

3. A crash program to develop nuclear fusion. If we can get fusion to work, we would have all the electrical power we could need within 40 or 50 years, depending on how long it would take to built enough reactors. Thing is, there are two kinds of fusion reaction. One kind uses a rare form of hydrogen but produces no radiative waste. The other kind uses regular hydrogen but produces some radiation, which would eventually contaminate the inner lining of the reactor. However, that lining would be solid waste and easy to handle, unlike the liquid wastes from fission reactors and it would be only about 1% as much. That second reactor would be the type we could most quickly develop and is what we should pursue, though it would face some silly criticism over the minute waste it would produce. In the mean time, we should push through third and fourth generation nuclear reactors and a place for the collection of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain site should have been good, but was foolishly canceled. Waste wouldn't have to be buried for 10,000 years because we will find a way to nullify the majority of it within a century if we developed that technology. To head off criticism, I do live in the outer evacuation zone of a nuclear power plant, so I am aware of the chance that one could meltdown or have other accidents.

I was going to mention a couple of other things, but this post is long enough already, so maybe another time.

In a message dated 6/27/2009 12:59:43 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

Question: do you have a wiser, cost-effective proposal? One that doesn't favor any particular group that happens to believe in their cause enough to invest money in companies that work towards a greener environment? Make your summer sizzle with fast and easy recipes for the grill.

June 27, 2009

AHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Waaa, a wimp is whining about his personal hell. Whining about how life and

everyone around him isn't fair. What a preposterous waste. He should swallow all

his sufferings and take charge of his life and dig his own way out of his little

hole, instead of adopting a victim role and saying woe is me when nobody wants

to hear it. He should learn from his breathing as best he can and move forward

productively. He should take the severe air quality like a cowboy and be made

stronger for it. He needs thicker lungs, popular culture doesn't like a spoilt

hypochondriac that acts like the big bad world owes them the rest of the planet

for any real or perceived difficult breath of any magnitude in the past.

Reasonable adults I've stated the basic facts, without names, would concur, and

just get a good laugh at the preposterousness of the self-proclaimed " wronged

asthmatic/allergic. "

Why, I have no verifiable proof he has any asthma/allergies at all, therefore

the world will end if he is shown the slightest caringness for these stories. He

who would pillory this bill's opponents for bending over backwards to do a good

thing for him. That paints a very bad picture when all these inconvenient truths

become more widely known.

Until he puts up, he has zero credibility to anyone that's experienced life with

the various warts and isn't looking to join a religion, and succeeds only in

annoying people. He never " shipped " his breathing troubles, never bothered to

get a video made of them and put on the web to show us, therefore they can't

possibly exist. Real asthmatics/allergics ship. He needs to drop his line about

having " asthma/allergies " because he NEVER earned that title by having completed

his symptoms presentation recognized by outsiders, many of them, that are

skilled in the realm to judge of such things. Self-proclaiming that has as much

validity as any one of us mere mortal writers proclaiming we are Elvis.

Merely a record that he was breathing badly has absolutely no factual value in a

court of law or public opinion when it comes to completing something required

for reasonable judgment of being some self-described " asthmatic/allergic " and is

the stuff

of vaporware announcements. The worst thing that happened was the doctors

actually made him take medicine instead of letting him make a film of his

symptoms, and now he is unemployed too, and this merely delayed things. Wow,

talk about a weak excuse. If it isn't made, it isn't made. He uses the

equivalent of the ancient " dog ate my homework! " excuse, where the dog is his

doctors/the system. Why hasn't he shipped yet? He is not a real

asthmatic/allergic, but merely a producer of vaporware, which are written about

in the press all the time. All his proclamations of being an asthmatic/allergic,

without completed symptoms judged by a sufficient number of outsiders (meaning:

not people that are rooting for him for some weird relation, but people that

don't personally know him), is pure fraud, plain and simple, and I promise to

keep on reminding him of that as often as the mods allow me to, applying the

same boundaries to me as to others as of course I trust them to do.

And if that assessment of the reality drives Strict into a mental

meltdown, remember: it's self-inflicted by living a lie that he chose, and no

outsider can do more than remind him of that.

Mods: Oh oops, I have called another member a fraud and a wimp, in a group that

bills as a caring space where " We offer our friendship to you. " But it's all

tough love, isn't it? and I am guided by observing an example of a member who

did this and still remained a valid cared-about part of the community.

June 27, 2009

ROFLMAO

You'll have to actually pick something where I was a fraud, and it wasn't

self-imposed. You failed the comparison, horribly, as makes sense, because...

there is no comparison that's valid.

>

> AHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>

> Waaa, a wimp is whining about his personal hell. Whining about how life and