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Erich
Guest
Are you aware that mats of recycled Christmas trees are used to help control erosion?
Google [christmas trees erosion control] and you will get about 358,000 results.
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Google [christmas trees erosion control] and you will get about 358,000 results.
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Erich
Guest
In 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that, while low-flow toilets are estimated to have saved the city of San Francisco 20 million gallons of water per year [they’re not really sure, because they – especially the older ones – often have to be flushed multiple times to achieve their desired task], the reduction in water volume has caused waste sludge to back up in the city sewer pipes. The city is attempting to solve this by adding chlorine bleach to the pipes, a proposal that has raised environmental objections.
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lynnvinc
Guest
I guess one could also ask if oil and coal were cheaper than alt energy without their subsidies and tax-breaks – and that’s not even counting costs of military support for oil, or external costs of harms from oil and coal, including “natural” (but not so natural) abortions, as well as other human health harms and deaths, etc etc. If you add those costs in, alt energy wins hands down.
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lynnvinc
Guest
The amount of burning coal (to generate the less efficient and shorter lived incandescent bulbs) causes even greater mercury release into the air – which all people have to breathe.
We are faced with all sorts of choices…
I remember as a kid playing with “quick silver” from broken thermometers – we liked the way it beaded up. I guess that’s why I’m now brain dead in my dotage
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buffalo
Guest
Report shows UN admitting solar activity may play significant role in global warming
Read more: foxnews.com/science/2013/02/01/report-show-un-admitting-solar-activity-may-play-significant-role-in-global/#ixzz2Jl0uAPDW
Read more: foxnews.com/science/2013/02/01/report-show-un-admitting-solar-activity-may-play-significant-role-in-global/#ixzz2Jl0uAPDW
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estesbob
Guest
What tax breaks and subsidies do oil companies recieve?
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lynnvinc
Guest
Admitting??? Climate scientists have always known solar activity plays a role in global warming & cooling. And then there is the earth’s not so round orbit, and the the earth’s wobble. There are many factors. Like the gradually increasing solar irradiance on the sun’s way to self-destruction in about 5 billion years; in about 1 billion years it will get so hot that life will vanish on earth…unless we do the trick sooner.
So many strawmen, it’s enough to have a huge bonfire.
I have an idea, why not read what the climate scientists are writing or a basic book on climate and climate change. That way one does not have to go astray in creating strawman after strawman.
And BTW, Foxnews is a very poor choice for getting one’s science. Even the mainstream media get things wrong from time to time, but at least they are trying to report the truth and facts.
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buffalo
Guest
Science has no problem with the news when it reports what they want.
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Erich
Guest
I was going to ask, “what tax breaks and subsidies do oil companies receive that other companies do not?”
From this article,
Everyone wants to end subsidies to oil companies, from President Obama to John Boehner and Paul Ryan. My question was “What subsidies?” Remarkably enough, CNN Money provided the answer.
It turns out that they are all tax “breaks.” I even hesitate to call them “breaks” because some of them amount to little more than Congress defining accounting terms such as “capital equipment.” And the total amount of earnings not collected in taxeshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png (which liberals define as a “subsidy”) is about $4 billion per year. Here is how that breaks down.
Domestic manufacturing tax deduction – $1.7 B. This is a tax deduction given to every manufacturer in the US. Per CNN, it was “designed to keep factories in the United States.” If that deduction were eliminated for oil companies only, it would mean singling out oil companies from all other manufacturers.
Percentage depletion allowance – $1 B. Any industry can write down a portion of the cost of its capital equipment as part of the cost of doing businesshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png. Right now, oil in the ground is treated as capital equipment. Again, this “subsidy” amounts to how the cost of doing business is defined. All companies get it, not just oil companies.
Foreign tax credit – $850 million. Companies get credit for taxes they pay to other countries. All companies get this “subsidy,” not just oil companies. Should a company pay tax on tax? Should only oil companies pay tax on tax?
Intangible drilling costs – $780 million. According to CNN, “[a]ll industries get to write off the costs of doing business, but they must take it over the life of an investment. The oil industry gets to take the drilling credit in the first year.” Among these four tax “breaks,” this smallest one was the only one that treated oil companies differently.
Do you know what oil company does get US subsidies, and not just tax “breaks”? Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company.
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estesbob
Guest
The other myth is the so called tax shelters for the rich. Whenever someone posts about these i always ask them to tell me what they are as I have a lot of rich clients who could use them!
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lynnvinc
Guest
Some people depress me with their “can’t do” attitude regarding solutions to serious environmental problems that are killing people and threaten most, perhaps all, of life on earth. Sort of reminds me when I was a kid and a stable hand told me my broken bridle was irreparable and worthless. Well, I fixed it. And I have other stories about proving “can’t do” people wrong.
Here is something that uplifts me, rather than depresses me with “can’t doism,” something I just found at eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2013/02/05/1 :
**ELECTRIC CARS: Pentagon places big bet on vehicle-to-grid technology **
February 5, 2013
The Pentagon, the federal government’s largest user of oil and historical early adopter of cutting-edge technologies, has quietly placed its next big energy bet on plug-in electric vehicles.
…The Defense Department plans to spend $20 million in the first year of a pilot program testing a fleet of plug-in electric trucks, buses and related infrastructure that will allow them to communicate with the power grid. Such “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology uses the vehicles’ batteries as storage, moving power back and forth between parked vehicles and power lines based upon the utility’s needs – something companies are willing to pay a pretty penny for.
The Pentagon predicts that the revenue generated by providing these services will quickly offset the higher price of electric vehicles,…
Now that I have my Chevy Volt (running on GreenMountain 100% wind energy) and using on average 126 KWH/month ($16), I’m thinking of installing solar panels (and, yes, I do know the payback time is pretty long, maybe 10 years or more). GreenMountain allows users to sell them solar energy at the cost they sell it to customers. And I guess I can also store it in my car battery. A solar and EV expert told me I could, it would be “clean” energy, some 20 years ago…so I’ve just been waiting for the day…but first we had to redo our roof from leaky shakes to an energy efficient composite roofing with radiant barrier plywood underneath – which we just did last week, with all that money we’ve been saving from doing the EC (environmentally correct) things all these many decades.
The “can’t do” people will always be with us, but at least some of us should be around to hold up the tent of hope and do a good turn daily for life on planet earth, taking the road less taken along the the little way of environmental healing.
Here is something that uplifts me, rather than depresses me with “can’t doism,” something I just found at eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2013/02/05/1 :
**ELECTRIC CARS: Pentagon places big bet on vehicle-to-grid technology **
February 5, 2013
The Pentagon, the federal government’s largest user of oil and historical early adopter of cutting-edge technologies, has quietly placed its next big energy bet on plug-in electric vehicles.
…The Defense Department plans to spend $20 million in the first year of a pilot program testing a fleet of plug-in electric trucks, buses and related infrastructure that will allow them to communicate with the power grid. Such “vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology uses the vehicles’ batteries as storage, moving power back and forth between parked vehicles and power lines based upon the utility’s needs – something companies are willing to pay a pretty penny for.
The Pentagon predicts that the revenue generated by providing these services will quickly offset the higher price of electric vehicles,…
Now that I have my Chevy Volt (running on GreenMountain 100% wind energy) and using on average 126 KWH/month ($16), I’m thinking of installing solar panels (and, yes, I do know the payback time is pretty long, maybe 10 years or more). GreenMountain allows users to sell them solar energy at the cost they sell it to customers. And I guess I can also store it in my car battery. A solar and EV expert told me I could, it would be “clean” energy, some 20 years ago…so I’ve just been waiting for the day…but first we had to redo our roof from leaky shakes to an energy efficient composite roofing with radiant barrier plywood underneath – which we just did last week, with all that money we’ve been saving from doing the EC (environmentally correct) things all these many decades.
The “can’t do” people will always be with us, but at least some of us should be around to hold up the tent of hope and do a good turn daily for life on planet earth, taking the road less taken along the the little way of environmental healing.
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Erich
Guest
Charging a fairly efficient battery system from the grid is at best 70-80% efficient. Returning that energy from the battery to the grid, which includes “inverting” the DC power back to AC with efficiencies of about 90% yields 63-72% energy return to the system. This needs to be factored against potential cost savings as well as the additional wear and tear on the batteries (current batteries need to be replaced every couple of years, at a cost of $2400+, which requires additional materials and energy to manufacture) and especially increased emissions if the original source of power is fossil based.
Just look at ethnanol - billions of gallons of water need to produce the fuel, the significant increase in corn costs (think food here), 1/3 less efficient in mpg…BUT so long as people think it’s “better” for the environment, the gov’t can dump billions of $$$ into it and people will be ok with it.
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lynnvinc
Guest
I’m sure the Pentagon will come up with good solutions. They tend to be “can do” people.
15 years ago we invited the ComEd guy to come to our parish environmental committee meeting in Aurora, IL – ComEd is about 75% nuke, and 25% coal, which they need for peaking plants, since they have to run nukes at a constant level. We talked about that issue, and possibilities of using off-hours night energy to pump water into a higher reservoir, releasing it for hydro-electricity during peak hours.
When I mentioned EVs, the ComEd guy got really excited, and said, if enough people in their ComEd area got EVs and plugged them in overnight, they could lower their energy price by half!
So what are people waiting around for? I’ve already posted several times about how my Volt will pay for the difference between it and the car my husband wanted within 6.5 years, and go on to keep saving us money in our retirement years (and it will only take 6.5 years to pay the difference bec we only drive about 5000 miles a year imagine how it can save $$ for those who drive more).
EVs are not for rich, profligate people who can afford to burn money on their front lawns, but only for prudent people of modest means who cannot afford to be so extravagant…
…or for people who value their children and want to save planet earth for future generations.
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buffalo
Guest
Consider Natural Gas. We are sitting on trillions of cubic feet.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
It seems to me there may well be a future in electric cars for suburban people and retirees. I’m not sure the Volt is it, though. What’s the deficit on every Volt? Isn’t it $39,000 or something like that? If a car needs that kind of a subsidy, it’s not the answer yet.
For people who live in the country and those who travel in connection with their employment, electric cars are just not there yet, and might never be.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
There have been a couple of waves of natural gas use for vehicles. Both faded for various reasons. One troubling aspect of natural gas is that it’s under pressure and must run through hoses to the engine. A gasoline leak is fairly obvious. A gas leak isn’t.
Any ardor I might have had for natural gas powered cars was chilled when a local farmer was burned to death when a hose leaked, found a spark or other igniter somewhere on his propane-powered tractor and exploded in a fireball.
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lynnvinc
Guest
Hi Ridgerunner – you’ll like this story about grass-fed beef being good for the environment and just good:
grist.org/food/upping-the-steaks-how-grass-fed-beef-is-reshaping-ag-and-helping-the-planet/?utm_campaign=food&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
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estesbob
Guest
About two feet of global warming is about to hit the northeast. I know that wether events dont equate to climate change, unless climate change alarmists want them to, that is.
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lynnvinc
Guest
Well, you’re right – the Volt is probably not for people who drive more than 40 miles (the EV range on a Volt) to work everyday, or are traveling salespersons. Although there is a Volt owner somewhere up north who drives 45 miles to work everyday, and they let him charge up at work, so he’s happy as a clam with his Volt (and has found it a terrific economic savings car).
Since the Volt only gets about 38 or 40 miles per gallon on gasoline, one who drives a lot more than 40 miles a day for work may be better off with a Prius or something that gets 50 mpg, if they are going to do more than 60% of their driving on gasoline. Personally I would have never bought a Prius, bec we only drive some 6000 miles a year, and economically or environmentally it wasn’t much worth it. However, a plug-in hybrid EV like the Volt is very much worth it environmentally since our electricity is wind-powered (soon to be solar), and I found to my utter surprise it most certainly is worth it economically, even if we were not getting the subsidy.
However, I think is it wrong for people to willy nilly select homes very far away from work when they can find homes just as good and ones that fill all their specs much closer to work, such as close to both husband’s and wife’s workplace (or between), to schools, shops, in a decent neighborhood, etc. That to me expresses an “I don’t care about (others’) life, and I don’t want to be bothered about thinking about life” attitude.
Partly to blame are realtors. We have lived within 1 or 2 miles of work since the early 70s, and we have made it a point to do so, but every time we move to a new city the realtors take us all over the region, miles away, saying, oh it’s just an extra 30 minutes drive, or 45 minutes drive… We have to get really strict with them.
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stevegravy
Guest
News flash scientists discover sun heats earth details at 11.
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