Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 01:51am PT
|
At least the liberals go home to women. Here's your neocon dreamboat, Howard.
Jeff Gannon
|
|
Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 03:09am PT
|
Fatty, actually wheather or not oil is going to reach "some magical inflection point" is becoming more hotly debated everyday. And I'm not sure "theory" is the word to describe it. Then you jump back into good old American circular thought and "if we wish it, technology will provide"
So far technology has proven to be the problem, not the solution.
Solar and nuclear? That's cute; what exactly did you think you were going to put in your car? C'mon, tell me hydrogen, I dare you. And did you realize that nuke plants take at least a decade (not to mention $3-5 billion) to get online, burning fossil fuels every step of the way? One enrichment plant in Kentucky sucks the juice of two 1,000 megawatt coal-fired plants. If the US were to pursue a large-scale nuclear program uranium would likely peak within two decades. Don't forget we would need 10,000 of the largest reactors to reproduce our current fossil fuel supply.
Solar is so laughable I can't even go there.
In Saudi Arabia there is a saying, "My father road a camel, I drive a car, my son flies a jet plane, his son will ride a camel".
Karl is also right about the gold thing, but that's a separate issue altogether. I'd love to hear you explain to me how it was a stroke of brilliance when Nixon closed the gold window.
The difference between Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon, England, Spain, et al is that there was always somebody else to fill the power void. When the global civilization enters terminal decline who will fill the void?
And you also seem to know a lot about the evil terrorists, who they are, how they think, and what they want. I'm curious to hear where within Islam you have visited, under what circumstances you were there, and what your experiences were. Somebody with your level of understanding of Islam must have spent a lot of time chatting with imams, muezzin, and I would imagine you've read at least part of the Qu'ran?
|
|
John F. Kerry
Social climber
Boston, MA
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 09:37am PT
|
...Nothing in that bio told me she grew up poor, or interacted with grassroots America in any way. Just like Bush himself, it's easy to talk about personal responsibility when you've never been down and out...
Yeah! Good leaders need to come up poor and have been down & out, just like Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, and... John F. Kerry.
Wait a minute...
Funny how Karl doesn't mind silver spoons for his political idols, but let a Republican come from a wealthy background and suddenly its a frickin' crime.
|
|
Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 01:45pm PT
|
Solar is so laughable I can't even go there
Why, because you say it is?
I'm happy to say that I'm been able to put my money where my mouth is and I've invested in a system to power my whole house. And overall, I'm going to end up with a significant positive return on the investment, even if I turn around and sell the house within a year.
I lived in solar powered houses until I was 22 years old. Our neighbors on the grid would lose their power in nasty storms and the like. Not us. They also saw their power bills grow over the years, occasionalyl spiking to absurd levels. Not us.
A significant amount of the power in Tucson comes from a power plant that, among other things, burns coal. I really like the idea that that pollution will no longer be powering house.
I realize that a significant amount of energy was expended in creating the panels that will be powering my house. But that should be made up many times over, over the 20+ year lifetime of that equipment.
|
|
Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 05:57pm PT
|
I'm certainly not suggesting that solar be our only power source, merely that it's viable as one of a multitude of clean renewable power sources. Yes, soalr is well-suited to the west (and even moreso the southwest.) The midwest, not so muchm but the wind potential out that way is amazing.
My house has a standard 120V electrical system. The output from the panels is immediately converted to AC. No DC wiring here. This is true of almost all modern solar installations. Once it's AC, it's transmitted the same way as any other power. Yeah, you get line loss, but AC is much much better about that than DC.
Oh, and no nasty batteries for me (yeah, I know this means I lose the whole power-outage invinvibility thing. I'll live.) I'm hooked up for net metering, so the electric utility pays me for the power I generate at the same rate they charge me.
Even better, my generation happens during the peak hours of the day when AC usage is heaviest, so I'm actually helping (in a very small way, personally speaking) to alleviate the peak usage crunch. If more people did the same, it would help more. Cool stuff.
So, no, I'm not "scarp everything else. Just got solar", but I also think that to claim that solar is a joke is absolutely wrong. It can be an effective part of a comprehensive energy plan for a metropolitan area.
|
|
Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 09:10pm PT
|
Were you on the tour to Petra, fatty? That's always sounded like so much fun.
Forest, solar isn't a joke cuz I say it is, why don't you take out a calculator and do the math. Even if it wasn't, and even if we were pursuning a large-scale solar project, where exactly do you think all of those already expensive components are going to come from with out a petroleum economy to build it? Maybe you were hoping we'd still be using that 12,000 mile supply line from China. I think it's absolutely precious and charming how the American people have come to think it's all about keeping the lights on and keeping petrol cheap at the pump. And Forest, you were able to put your money where your mouth is because you're a rich person in a rich country. Period. The whole solar thing is Jevons paradox and the beauty of free markets all wrapped into one cozy package. I love it!
I still haven't heard from anyone you are going to put in your cars. I haven't heard anyone address whether or not the Earth can even tolerate our current carbon output for much longer, much less start finding new hydrocarbons to burn.
"Solar and wind power suffer from four fundamental physical shortcomings that prevent them from ever being able to replace more than a tiny fraction of the energy we get from oil: lack of energy density, inappropriateness as transportation fuels, energy intermittency, and inability to scale.
I. Lack of Energy Density:
"Few people realize how much energy is concentrated in even a small amount of oil or gas. A barrel of oil contains the energy-equivalent of almost 25,000 hours of human labor. A single gallon of gasoline contains the energy-equivalent of 500 hours of human labor. Most people are stunned to find this out, even after confirming the accuracy of the numbers for themselves, but it makes sense when you think about it. It only takes one gallon of gasoline to propel a three ton SUV 10 miles in 10 minutes. How long would it take you to push a three ton SUV 10 miles?
"While the energy-density of oil and gas give them rates of return comparable to a lottery ticket or marriage to a ketchup fortune heiress, the energy-density of solar and wind give them returns comparable to minimum wage jobs. A few examples should help illustrate this point more vividly:
1. It would take all of California's 13,000 wind turbines to
generate as much electricity as a single 555-megawatt
natural gas fired power plant.
2. On page 191 of his book The End of Oil: On the Edge of a
Perilous New World, author Paul Roberts tells us that:
" . . . if you add up all the solar photovoltaic cells now
running worldwide (2004), the combined output -
around 2,000 megawatts - barely rivals the output of
two coal-fired power plants."
3. It would take 4 Manhattan size city blocks of solar
equipment to produce the amount of energy distributed
by a single gas station in one day. With 17,000 gas
stations just in the United States, you don't need to be a
mathematician to realize that solar power is incapable of
meeting our urgent need for a new energy source that -
like oil - is dense, affordable, and transportable.
4. It would take close to 220,000 square kilometers of solar
panels to power the global economy via solar power.
This may sound like a marginally manageable number
until you realize that the total acreage covered by solar
panels in the entire world right now is a paltry 10 square
miles (about 17 kilometers).
5. To replace the amount of energy produced by a single
offshore drilling platform that pumps only 12,000 barrels
of oil per day, you would need either a 36 square mile
solar panel or 10,000 wind turbines.
6. According a recent MSNBC article entitled, "Solar Power
City Offers 20 Years of Lessons:"
"By industry estimates, up to 20,000 solar electricity
units and 100,000 heaters have been installed in the
United States — diminutive numbers compared to the
country’s 70 million single-family houses.
"This means that even if the number of American households equipped with solar electricity is increased by a factor of 100, less than two million American households will be equipped with solar electric systems. Assuming we are even capable of scaling the use of household solar electric systems by that huge a factor, we must ask ourselves two questions:
1. What do the other 68 million households do?
2. Since it is oil, not electricity, that is our primary
transportation fuel (providing the base for over 90%
of all transportation fuel) what good will this do us
when it comes to keeping our global network of cars,
trucks, airplanes, and boats going?
II. Inappropriateness as Transportation Fuels:
"Approximately 2/3 of our oil supply is used for transportation. Over ninety percent of our transportation fuel comes from petroleum fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet-fuel).
"Unfortunately, solar and wind cannot be used as industrial-scale transportation fuels unless they are used to crack hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes 1.3 units of energy for every 1 unit of energy it produces. In other words, it results in a net loss of energy. You can't replace oil - which has a positive EROEI of about 30/1 - with an energy source that actually carries a negative EROEI.
"Assuming away this not-so-minor problem, where are we going to get the energy, capital, and time necessary to replace a significant portion of the following:
1. 700 million oil-powered cars traversing the world's roads;
2. Millions of oil-powered airplanes crisscrossing the world's
skies;
3. Millions of oil-powered boats circumnavigating the world's
oceans?
"On top of that, we need to completely overhaul/retrofit the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure responsible for the fueling and maintenance of numbers one through three.
III. Energy Intermittency:
"In addition to suffering from poor energy-density and being largely inappropriate for transportation, solar and wind also suffer from energy intermittency. Unlike oil and gas, which can be used at anytime of the day or night, solar and wind are dependent on weather conditions. This may not be that big of a deal if you simply want to power your household appliances or a small scale, decentralized economy, but if you want to run an industrial economy that relies on airports, airplanes, 18-wheel trucks, millions of miles of highways, huge skyscrapers, 24/7 availability of fuel, etc., an intermittent source of energy will not suffice.
"The energy produced from solar, wind, and other green alternatives can be stored in batteries, but battery technology is woefully inadequate for the scale of our problem.
IV. Percentage of Total Energy Supply:
"Finally, most people new to this issue drastically overestimate the amount of energy we will be able to realistically derive from these sources inside of the next 5-25 years.
"In 2003, the US consumed 98 quadrillion BTU's of energy. A whopping .171 quadrillion came from solar and wind combined. Do the math (.171/98) and you will see that a total of less then one-sixth of one percent of our energy appetite was satisfied with solar and wind combined. Thus, just to derive a paltry 2-3 percent of our current energy needs from solar and wind, we would need to double the percentage of our energy supply derived from solar/wind, then double it again, then double it again, and then double it yet again.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
|
|
Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 09:53pm PT
|
No kidding. I'll be happy to answer that with following one liner.
We all need to be using a lot less power. No kidding....
|
|
Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
|
|
|
Jun 30, 2005 - 10:17pm PT
|
"la la la! nothing's wrong. I can't hear you over the sound of my hummer's engine. Huh? what poor people? What environment? La la la!"
|
|
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
|
|
It's too bad we just didn't start a thread on Peak Oil. It's an important subject all on it's own.
I want to say that there is a conservatism that I could totally embrace and respect. Living within our means, using money and resources efficiently and effectively, and taking responsibility for our own actions. Those are all wise things.
I just don't see them happening with our current administration. How are we going to take responsibility for a war based on lies that kills so many?
When it comes to Liberalism, I embrace tolerance, sharing, and diversity. Democrats don't live up to these ideals either but I think they come a bit closer enough that I'm siding with them, since it seems with our current system you have to take a side.
I'd rather us waste our money on social programs than on war. I'd rather not benefit by the exploitation of others.
But, to answer whoever flamed me above (can't remember now) Kerry and Kennedy and those guys are far from my heros. They are the lesser of the evils in a system that reflects the sum total of the human flaws that I have plenty of myself.
If we were all 30 percent better people, 30 percent more loving and intelligent, it wouldn't matter if we were capitalist, communist, right or left wing. It would all work out. Our denials are manifest in our system.
Peace
Karl
|
|
Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
|
|
"Without war to keep us free..."
Wow. Orwell would be proud of you, Howard.
|
|
Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
|
|
Karl,
One of the problems, as I heard the Fool of El Cap and Elsewhere put it, is that "Statistically speaking, half of all the people you meet are of below-average intelligence; take half of them and they are even dumber."
Kids, the solar message was largely cut-and-paste, I've gone back and edited it as such. I generally place quotes when necessary but was in a hurry. However, I have spent the four years since 9/11 traveling around the world with an eye and an ear toward agriculture, sustainability, economics and international trade, history, warfare, and Buddhist and Islamic societies. I spent two years trying to buy a farm in Laos, and am silently invested in a project there, but ended up going to Kashmir instead on the land hunt. I own a cow there as Ghulam wouldn't take it as a gift and insisted on giving us his old house instead. The point being that I have had the time to sit on my ass in a hammock, do my research, and put together some sort of different worldview that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to. Whether you agree with it or not is up to you, but I'm interested in healthy debate.
I take deep offense at "raghead" posts and those that pigeonhole "terrorists" and middle eastern people. I've been a lot more up close and personal with Islam than a lot of people (around 10 different muslim societies) and interact with Arabs on a daily basis pretty much everywhere I go except for America. My girlfriend and I have never experienced such kindness, intelligence, cleanliness, and hospitality anywhere, not even close. I go to the market and load my arms with vegetables and they won't take my money. Our Baba in Kurdistan had a hard time talking to us for two days because we walked rather then let him drive us up the hill. We end up spending weeks playing dominoes for tea; the final losers pay for all the tea rounds but as long as we are losing they will play until they do.
Incidentally, for those who are interested, here is Riverbend's recent blog post about Bushie's speech. It relates to the original topic of this posting, the view from the other side.
_
“Not only can they not find WMD in Iraq,” I commented to E. as we listened to the Bush speech, “But they have disappeared from his speeches too!” I was listening to the voiceover on Arabiya, translating his speech to Arabic. He was recycling bits and pieces of various speeches he used over two years.
E., a younger cousin, and I were sitting around in the living room, sprawled on the relatively cool tiled floor. The electricity had been out for 3 hours and we couldn’t turn on the air conditioner with the generator electricity we were getting. E. and I had made a bet earlier about what the theme of tonight’s speech would be. E. guessed Bush would dig up the tired, old WMD theme from somewhere under the debris of idiocy and lies coming out of the White House. I told him he’d dredge up 9/11 yet again… tens of thousands of lives later, we would have to bear the burden of 9/11… again.
I won the bet. The theme was, naturally, terrorism- the only mention of ‘weapon’ or ‘weapons’ was in reference to Libya. He actually used the word ‘terrorist’ in the speech 23 times.
He was trying, throughout the speech, to paint a rosy picture of the situation. According to him, Iraq was flourishing under the occupation. In Bush’s Iraq, there is reconstruction, there is freedom (in spite of an occupation) and there is democracy.
“He’s describing a different country…” I commented to E. and the cousin.
“Yes,” E. replied. “He’s talking about the *other* Iraq… the one with the WMD.”
“So what’s the occasion? Why’s the idiot giving a speech anyway?” The cousin asked, staring at the ceiling fan clicking away above. I reminded him it was the year anniversary marking the mythical handover of power to Allawi’s Vichy government.
“Oh- Allawi… Is he still alive?” Came the indolent reply from the cousin. “I’ve lost track… was he before Al Yawir or after Al Yawir? Was he Prime Minister or did they make him president at some point?”
9/11 and the dubious connection with Iraq came up within less than a minute of the beginning of the speech. The cousin wondered whether anyone in America still believed Iraq had anything to do with September 11.
Bush said:
“The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September 11, 2001.”
Do people really still believe this? In spite of that fact that no WMD were found in Iraq, in spite of the fact that prior to the war, no American was ever killed in Iraq and now almost 2000 are dead on Iraqi soil? It’s difficult to comprehend that rational people, after all of this, still actually accept the claims of a link between 9/11 and Iraq. Or that they could actually believe Iraq is less of a threat today than it was in 2003.
We did not have Al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the war. We didn’t know that sort of extremism. We didn’t have beheadings or the abduction of foreigners or religious intolerance. We actually pitied America and Americans when the Twin Towers went down and when news began leaking out about it being Muslim fundamentalists- possibly Arabs- we were outraged.
Now 9/11 is getting old. Now, 100,000+ Iraqi lives and 1700+ American lives later, it’s becoming difficult to summon up the same sort of sympathy as before. How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers somehow justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with the attack was Iraqi?
Bush said:
“Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. … The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."
He speaks of ‘abroad’ as if it is a vague desert-land filled with heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. ‘Abroad’ in his speech seems to indicate a land of inferior people- less deserving of peace, prosperity and even life.
Don’t Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as ‘Abroad’ was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?
Don’t Americans realize that ‘abroad’ is a country full of people- men, women and children who are dying hourly? ‘Abroad’ is home for millions of us. It’s the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children- your field of war and terror.
The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.
Bush said:
“We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who exploded car bombs along a busy shopping street in Baghdad, including one outside a mosque. We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul…”
Yes. And Bush is extremely concerned with the mosques. He might ask the occupation forces in Iraq to quit attacking mosques and detaining the worshipers inside- to stop raiding them and bombing them and using them as shelters for American snipers in places like Falluja and Samarra. And the terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul? Maybe they got their cue from the American troops who attacked the only functioning hospital in Falluja.
“We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard and rebuilding while a country is at war is even harder."
Three decades of tyranny isn’t what bombed and burned buildings to the ground. It isn’t three decades of tyranny that destroyed the infrastructure with such things as “Shock and Awe” and various other tactics. Though he fails to mention it, prior to the war, we didn’t have sewage overflowing in the streets like we do now, and water cut off for days and days at a time. We certainly had more than the 8 hours of electricity daily. In several areas they aren’t even getting that much.
“They are doing that by building the institutions of a free society, a society based on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and equal justice under law.”
We’re so free, we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so free to assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by American or Iraqi forces.
As to Iraqi forces…There was too much to quote on the new Iraqi forces. He failed to mention that many of their members were formerly part of militias, and that many of them contributed to the looting and burning that swept over Iraq after the war and continued for weeks.
“The new Iraqi security forces are proving their courage every day.”
Indeed they are. The forte of the new Iraqi National Guard? Raids and mass detentions. They have been learning well from the coalition. They sweep into areas, kick down doors, steal money, valuables, harass the females in the household and detain the men. The Iraqi security forces are so effective that a few weeks ago, they managed to kill a high-ranking police major in Falluja when he ran a red light, shooting him in the head as his car drove away.
He kept babbling about a “free Iraq” but he mentioned nothing about when the American forces might actually depart and the occupation would end, leaving a “free Iraq”.
Why aren’t the Americans setting a timetable for withdrawal? Iraqis are constantly wondering why nothing is being done to accelerate the end of the occupation.
Do the Americans continue to believe such speeches? I couldn’t help but wonder.
“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”
The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. “The most outrageous lie? How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!”
“They’d believe it.” E. nodded in the affirmative. “Or that Iraq was developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the Western world. They’d believe that too.”
|
|
Ouch!
climber
|
|
"Without war to keep us free there won't be any society to have programs for"
Yeah Right! You gotta be kiddin'! We stand to lose more freedoms under the cretin Bush than anything Saddam Hussein could have done in a century. Your Patriot Act is nothing but tyranny wrapped in a soiled flag.
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
"Spoken like a true raghead."
Spoken like a true dumbass, Jody.
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
Oh yeah...
Katherine Harris, ReNazican
|
|
Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
|
|
HowwierdDean,
You're one of the children in this forum and I can only hope you are in the literal sense as well because then I could pray society will collaspe before you get a chance to spread your seed, if you frightfully haven't done so already. I've never acknowledged your presence, nor will I ever aside from this.
|
|
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
|
|
Come on Jodster! Fes up with your new handle. You do such a piss poor job of reinventing yourself with a new handle and yet posting in exactly the same manner and the old Jody.
Why not stand by yourself and what you've written and said in the past? Or if you've changed in any way, tell us about it?
Good thing you're a cop cause you'd make a crappy robber.
Throwing in those lies about knowing Lynn and Katie and your trip up the Nose was a nice touch though. That made me doubt my suspicions.
And maybe I'm still wrong about Dr. Dean. If you're not Jody, email me and I'll hook you up with your soon-to-be best buddy with whom you'll agree about everything always
Peace
karl
|
|
Khun Duen Baad
climber
Retirement
|
|
A COP!!!! HAHAHAHAHAAHH!!!!! OF COURSE!!!!!! AHAHAHHAHHAAAAAA!!
That would make perfect sense....
|
|
Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
|
|
The down-side is that this is just more smoke and mirrors to hide the real solution to the illegal immigration policy. A solution that Republicans are eager to hide.
Send Federal marshals to the HQ of Iowa Beef Processors, Tyson Chicken and Gallasso Bakery. Haul the CEOs off to Leavenworth for hiring illegal workers. End of illegal immigration.
Republicans do not want this, however. They want cheap labor to replace well paid Americans. At the same time, they can use illegals as a wedge issue in elections. You keep hearing folks complaining about Mexicans taking American jobs. They are not. American companies are giving Mexicans these jobs.
fattrad and Howard's buddies are destroying the American way of life in order to enrich a few. Wrapping themselves in the flag while they do it.
|
|
Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
|
|
VISUALIZE ARMAGEDDON!
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!