A Polluted Future?
 

As the price of natural gas goes up ? it is $9.50/MMBTU for big users who can buy off the NYMEX and more like $12/MMBTU for regulated residential users ? people will begin to be priced out of the natural gas market. Already we are seeing substitution for propane in rural areas. Premium wood pellets are already cheaper than propane @ $12.50/MMBTU. Old style firewood is not automatic and has limited utility for most people. I just cannot teach my cat to stoke the Papa Bear.

But ultimately, wood as fuel will let us down. That is why people began burning fossil fuel in the first place. Britain had been logged clean off for firewood, so they began burning coal.

There are still companies that make residential coal stokers (mostly in eastern PA where anthracite is common) and they aren?t even particularly expensive. They are designed to burn ?rice? (5/16?x 5/16?) anthracite coal, but if you can get bituminous that doesn?t agglomerate too badly it would work as well. Rice coal is sold washed (and actually a little wet) to keep down dust. Coal is so energetic that a little sheen of water does not diminish its value.

Problem is that residential users cannot afford the extensive emissions controls that industrial, institutional, and utility users of coal can afford. Natural gas, because it burns so clean, needs no emissions controls.

But the big boys are being forced by excessively restrictive government regs to substitute gas for coal. Even the most efficient combined cycle turbine system burns a staggering amount of natural gas per hour. The big boys are simply bidding the residential customer out of natural gas. You gotta heat your house, gas is getting out of reach and heat pumps don?t always work. So what do you do? Already wood pellets bring a premium price ? triple that of firewood. Coal may be the only option open to some people.

Soot in the neighborhood.

I would start with a LOT more insulation.

We have a wood pellet stove. I don't know where the technology is going, but it's been very good even in the short run at potentially paying for itself. We've had it for almost exactly two years.

I wanna say that we're buying wood pellets in the off season for a little less than $8 MMBTU.

Sounds to me like "unintended consequences" at work again.

The logical answer to this problem would be for the EPA and Congress to pull back on some regulation, in order to encourage the use of Coal by power generators. In the interest of making natural gas affordable.

Of course the EPA, Congress and Activists do not want to "turn back the clock". They'll probably end up banning the use of coal burning for home heating.

After all, it's not their problem if you are cold in the winter or have to chose between warmth and eating, is it? As far as Congress and the EPA employees are concerned, they are well paid.

The Activists probably either wear tons of sweaters, burn wood or ignore their own pollution.

Gene

Sounds like a drama queen with a coal agenda to me. You are ignoring a whole lot more options (and some obvious oes at that) for conserving energy, but sweaters is a good start. Sorry if the future seems that challenging for you, maybe you really are not smart enough to adapt?

But pollution and environmental change need to be managed because they have serious side effects. It isn't a question if they exist, but a matter of degree, and to say "why should they care?" begs the question: "Why should they care if you don't care?"

You don't have to be an activist to care, you just have to want to maintain some quality of life for future generations and be willing to make some largely-superficial changes in how we do things and think about things to effect that.

Coal? C'mon, you haven't learned anything and havent even tried apparently.

[QUOTE=skewbe;90944]Sounds like a drama queen with a coal agenda to me. [quote]

You sound like someone who likes to label people rather than honestly debate things. Note that I don't call you a name, I learned that minor difference between debate and playground arguments in grade school.

So, I'm not only a "drama queen with an agenda" but I'm stupid too? No wonder you feel the need to stick a gun in my face, under the color of law of course.

What are these options that you speak of? If they're so good, why are we even debating them? You don't debate things that are obviously good, do you?

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I forgot. It's a conspiracy. It's a class struggle between the monied interests who want the status quo and those who seek to save the planet, and humanity, from its own excesses. I'd understand these things if I were more enlightened, more progressive and able to see beyond my own parochial interests.

Meanwhile, you, who gets a sense of purpose and feeling of self validation from your politics and beliefs, is in no way being selfish or self centered?

Managed? By whom, and how? What sort of priorities are being set? What is the highest good here? Human needs or some sort of imaginary natural nirvana?

Who is going to pay for it? You?

Really... coal works just fine. Most of the electricity in the US is generated with coal.

Believe it or not, civilization is dirty. Civilization requires compromises. Note the term "compromise". Means to arrive at an agreement, not to "manage" things.

Yeah, you're going to manage me. You don't know the first thing about me but you feel the right to manage me. Of course you'll say it's being done under the aegis of the "democratic process", which basically means that some wealthy person will hijack your visions for their own purposes. That's how it goes in a democracy, where money talks and activists do as they're told by Corporate Foundations.

What are you talking about here?

Nothing superficial about shivering in the dark, Skewbe. Nothing superficial about one of my friends out in the rural areas being hassled by the enviro police because they have a spring. Nothing superficial about paying double for my electric power because it has to have "renewable" sources.

Nothing superficial about a "carbon tax" which will be flushed into some government spending rat hole, where I'll never see any personal benefits, where it'll be used to hire more people to monitor and manage my day to day life.

Yeah, why use such convenient concentrated energy? Within fifty meters of where I'm sitting is part of the "Pittsburgh Seam". It's been sitting there for millions of years doing nothing. It's of no value to anyone under ground. No DNA. Minimal fossils. It's too soft to build anything from. Until people learned it could be burned the stuff was probably considered a nuisance.

It's thirty degrees Fahrenheit outside, we have five inches of snow with sleet topping that. It's overcast and cloudy, something that is often the case around here.

I'm sure if the natural gas was too expensive I'd just toss another sweater onto my pipes to keep them from freezing. Maybe I'd go outside, fall on my knees and beg Gaia or Mother Earth to show pity on this poor sinner and give me enough sunshine to warm my home.

Why don't you toss my predicament into your spreadsheet and give me an answer, seeing as how I'm a "drama queen" and "stupid", and need someone enlightened like you to show me the way?

I'm gonna go to work, where I make energy saving devices for industry, driving my fuel efficient car. We brag that we can pay for our wares in one year from the savings in electricity. We were doing this sort of thing long before it became "fashionable" to save the flipping planet from "human cancer" because it made sense for industry to save money.

Believe it or not, Skewbe, businessmen do not like to waste. Waste annoys them. I realize that in your "managed" world waste doesn't happen. Everything is planned out to the last detail. Nothing is left to chance, even the sparrows that fall from the trees do not escape your all knowing eyes.


I probably do more in one day to save the environment than a herd of "activists" do in a day and I don't stick a gun in anyone's face while I'm doing it either. Generally they smile, say "thank you" and then send our A/R the check.

I think you'd do a lot better to persuade people like me if you'd get off of your high horse and start talking reasonably. First thing would be to divorce your self worth from your politics. Once you did that you could make adult compromises and get somewhere.

Gene

Big +1!!

The new generations of just about everything has been delayed, stopped, and labeled as bad in some way, fashion, or manner. As it is, special interest groups have tied the hands of individual freedom by increasing the costs of reasonably inexpensive opportunities for energy through new refineries, new more efficient electrical energy production, etc.

That's the conspiracy. It's been placed under the guise of being enviornmentally sound, while no scientist actually knows what the temperature of the earth should be, nor can they explain that the earths temperature stopped increasing somewhere between 1998 and 2001 even though the Chinese belched out incredible amounts of real polutants, polutants that could have reasonably and reasonably inexpensively controlled through emmissions equipment built on the backs of other economies.

All this talk about plug in hybrids, but electric prices go up. Where's the next electric plant coming from? Even people in water, wind, and solar recognize its current inefficiencies. Nuclear has a scare added to it just like the progressives claim that others do about terrorism.

South of Milwaukee, they are building a new power plant. A lot of the emissions are going to be reclaimed and made into gypsum which will be made into drywall. Great idea. Of course it's the worst thing in the world to some.

As US citizens, we live in one of the most technologically advanced societies the world has ever known, but there are those that only seek to tie everything up. That's not forward movement. It only saddles problems on the back of those that don't have the means to be insulated by the financial burdens of those claiming to "help". It restricts their ability to make choices, and burdens the entire nation with the burden of the concept of "carrying" everyone on the books of a government.

To me, that's tyranny.

1)yes, there is labeling and it's typically WAY off...as well as twisting of what is trying to be conveyed. ignorant interpretation perhaps?

2)yes, the gov't cannot be trusted in the best interest of the people:
raise taxes rather than cut spending?
deny domestic oil drilling, but allow China to drill near Florida?
block nuclear tech, while other nations use it effectively?

3)yes, some activists ignore their own pollution. thank you Mr. Gore.

If NG is so expensive - that's why electricity is so expensive in Houston [NG electricity plants]!

I wish we could get into Nuclear Power more.

Fellow global warmers,

I don't know if you all have ever dealt with someone with an addiction before, but they make the most bizzare rationales for their actions.

We are addicted to fossil fuels, not to mention a whole lot of luxuries and a high degree of wastefulness. Yah we are setting a nice example for china to follow.

If you are truley hurting for fuel to heat your house I would think an appropriate discussion on this forum would be to try to "hypermile" your house and your behavior, rather than be derisive about obvious ideas that DO help, i.e. wearing a sweater and turning down your thermostat, lots of people save money and resources by that simple act alone.

But no, we get long winded and irrational when the subject comes up, we don't take accountability for our own actions (and love to whine about people not taking responsibility for their own actions) and become rigid and inflexible so that we convince ourselves that there is no point to do anything different or to even overcome the addiction.

But collectively we are responsible, like it or not. Just like people fought for our so-called freedom that we have today, we need to fight for the rights and the quality of life for those yet to come. laissez-faire aint going to cut it.

"As long as I get mine, to hell with everyone and everything else."

-typical big dumb amurikan

We're no more addicted to fossil fuels than we are addicted to food and water. You're reasoning by analogy - a poor way to be logical and an abysmal way to persuade.


What is beyond debate is that fossil fuels are limited and that demand is growing. There are externalized costs to fossil fuels.

However to arbitrarily limit ourselves to certain modes of energy because of political correctness is irrational and foolish. To camouflage this foolishness in a peripherally insulting schema of chemical dependency shows a lack of imagination in presentation.

That you crib George Bush, a man considered a buffoon by most on the left, is richly ironic. More so that he introduced this asinine idea, that the US is "addicted to oil", as an entry note for delivering Archer Daniels Midland another generous slice of Corporate welfare.

Truth be told I wear a sweatshirt and drive fuel efficient car. By choice. I also turn out lights and conserve potable water. By choice.

Quite another issue when the commissar comes around to make me do it. For my own good, of course. Even lower mammals fight helplessness, something that every tyrant ought to consider.

I'm sorry, I don't buy into your dogma. Since I don't buy into your dogma I don't agree with all of your conclusions. To you that may seem "irrational" but that's not my concern.

You think so? I don't agree.

Like it or not, Skewbie, capitalism feeds, clothes and houses people. Like any powerful tool in the hands of the unscrupulous capitalism has engendered barbarity and heartbreak. Capitalism also has given longer and richer lives to billions of people. Capitalism works, often better than collectivism, at achieving human needs.

As for laissez faire "not cutting it", that's another of your opinions. We've seen the disasters of collectivism, including horrific ecological catastrophes.

If you intend to base your collectivism on green dogma may I enjoin you to consider thirty million children in Africa dead at the hands of the DDT ban. That's five time the number of dead in Hitler's Holocaust, most of them young children.

Gene

There has been a subtle push for more nuclear power in the US. I'm hearing rumors in the industry of new plants being built in the US. Beyond the planning stage, as in customers are sending orders for equipment.

I have some concerns about nukes. One of them is the waste issue. Most of the waste in the US, if my reading is correct, is kept "on site" at nuclear power plants. We really ought to start reprocessing waste to remove plutonium for future use. Since we're building down our nuclear arsenals this is now reasonable, in contrast to the 1980s when we were building our arsenals and could have used plutonium for that purpose. I do not know what percentage of plutonium is recoverable, how it would placed into future fuel and the costs.

The waste itself could be used for power generation. Geothermal energy is essentially energy from radioactive decay inside of the earth being used to heat a fluid that transports it where it can do work. Whether we could build a storage facility that can generate electricity, and do it on a cost efficient basis, is another issue altogether.

Another concern I have are the capitalization costs. Nuke plants are quite expensive. I think one of the reasons that elderly French die like flies during heat waves is because French electricity contains capitalized costs for the French nuke system. Of course I'm sure that French socialism taxes electricity to pay for "social spending" as well so which predominates I'm not sure.

One of the reasons that natural gas is popular is the anthropogenic global warming mythology. One carbon to those four hydrogen looks real good when you're frightened of carbon. Another is that it's a gas and is therefore far more easily transported than other fuels. I think this latter property is far more appealing to industry than green fairy tales.

Gene

Exactly.




I have seldom seen those that are of the global warming religion return to a position of any self sufficiency to the land and no technology. As we are typing this on the internet, on plastic keys using electricity, radio waves, heat or air conditioning....LOL!

I have a life. My father didn't have electricity when he grew up, terrible American, really. If we're addicted, yeah, I guess rehab should have started at the invention of the stick and the wheel.

I will not allow the religion of state to saddle my freedom of choice to make economic decisions that are in the best interest of my family's future. However, if you wanna live in a forest searching for berries, growing flax, and collecting solar energy, that is your personal choice. One can be addicted to that.

Look Guys, the title of this thread is "a polluted future", a real concern, due to some fuel choices that might be made. A more sustainable approach which should be key to the discussion would be to maximize the amount of insulation to minimize the amount of fuel (and pollution) required. The "logical thing" is not to throw more fossil fuels at the problem, that only compounds the problem. Sometimes government is "for the people" in that one must recognize (and I think you do) the imperfectness of the market system and it's capacity for unintended side effects. Polluting is cheap, but wrong for everyone else, everywhere else (call that dogma if you must). The market system is simply not capable of dealing with this bit of injustice, at least not in the time frame required. It is perfectly fine for many other applications though, no argument.

Well, what are the alternatives?

The EPA has done everything to crush diesels, which use fewer fossil fuels. Yes, more of some things, but that would reduce use immediately. Ethanol is put in gasoline, and while it replaces some gasoline, a fossil fuel, the reduction in mileage basicially negates the change. Additionally, it cannot be shipped by pipeline, so it has to be trucked, using fossil fuel.

Ultimately, I bought replaced an E150 van for work with an E350 diesel because I reduced my costs because I used less fuel. Not to mention with a diesel, more of the fossil fuel is used for moving everything.

Polluting is cheap. Cleaning it up is cheaper than it was years ago when the "first world" went to work cleaning things up. But the second and third world don't clean up stuff. They don't care. Might want to preach to them as there are more of them, right?

Progress in emissions has taken my 1983 $20 Sentra that got 42MPG driving down south in 1994 and given me what? Worse fuel mileage.

Unintended consequences show that no one really knows enough about global warming or global cooling. As it is, only God knows what the temperature should be. Certainly a consortium of "leading scientists" don't know what it is, nor can they explain why Mars warmed too without fossil fuels burning, humans, or emission controls.

I'm fine with being clean.

If coal is going to be in my future, I know there is technology that makes it a viable, cleaner opportunity that it was twenty let alone forty years ago.

Nuclear is good. Some need to get over that.

Reward is not without risk. There are enough on the fringe that stand in front of everything that might help us now. Without current development, there is no future development.

It is interesting, people have a tendency to think that when problems get over a certain size then it is Gods problem. I don't think she would mind one bit if we tried to take better care of the place though. Burying nuclear waste and churning out soot and CO2 and leveling the rainforests to maintain our current lifestyle choices is NOT taking good care of the place. Certainly it is not a sustainable lifestyle we have inherited and are extremely attached to.

Leveling rain forests is what the Brazilians have done for sugar based ethanol. Great for them. Guess they don't use as much oil.

As for God, I'm not calling on him, but I'm not going to put faith into a bunch of claims that we're warming or we're cooling. The fact is: there is factual evidence that the ideology of the religion of global warming is completely bogus.

And it still begs the question. If we are warming or cooling, what scientist, or think tank, is going to "decide" what that magic temperature is?

As it is, 97% of all species of life on earth is extinct. Environmental programs are out there that "protect" species all over the place. That's all fine, but there is an amount of Darwinism there. And when some of those "clubs" that put up boundaries against things to "protect" an animal go away when a developer or someone "donates" to them, well, that's polution too.

Check it out!

Using coal rather than natural gas to produce ethanol to replace gasoline, that can do less work.

:D :D :thumbdown:

In contrast to the perfection of regulation?

A short story....

Back in the late 1800s there were no drug laws in the US. Heroin, cocaine derivatives, "laundinum" and many other "hard drugs" were readily available. People had problems with drug addiction. Some coped with it, others fell victim to it.

In 1914 the Harrison Act was passed in the hope of limiting the use of narcotics. In 1937, based on the 1934 National Firearms Act, a "tax stamp" was placed upon marijuana. This gimmick allowed the Congress to regulate guns and drugs under the "Commerce Clause" of the US Constitution.

I've ignored Prohibition though it's a text book case of a regulation that was widely ignored, pernicious and totally counter productive.

By the 1960s drug use became more "fashionable". In response our elites declared "war on drugs". Begun by Governor Rockefeller and President Nixon, the pressure was amped up by Reagan. We even had "zero tolerance" and "Civil Forfeiture", which were meant to curb drug abuse.

In parallel US businesses, especially Corporate America, began to drug test employees.

The consequences?

Two million Americans are behind bars. Many of them are drug offenders. The US has more people behind bars per capita than any other G7 nation. At the very same time street drugs with horrific effects are easy to obtain, easy enough that even grade school aged children can get them. One in seven Americans abuses illegal drugs to some degree or another.

Instead of old fashioned drugs like heroin, coca tea, laudinum, marijuana tea, hashish and primitive hallucinogens we have crack cocaine, crystal meth, Ecstacy, PCP, and a whole legion of designer drugs. In a clear analogue to "everclear" being created by the need to concentrate liquor to make it easier to transport underground today's drugs are more concentrated, more addictive, and more dangerous then the kinder gentler drugs of old.

So I don't want to hear about how well regulation works...

The Market System's ability to regulate pollution was destroyed by British lawsuits against polluters which were struck down in the early 1800s. The legal precedent was adopted in the US. The argument was posited in the courts that pollution was the "Cost of industry". Given the primitive level of technology one could argue this, but crude pollution controls might have been attempted.

Since that time capitalism has been essentially helpless to remedy air and water pollution in the Courts. Since most people don't resort to mafia or private adjudication there was just the political process.

What some fail to recognize is that pollution, especially air pollution, is a form of "socializing" costs of doing business. It's not terribly different from dumping one's trash into the street, if one can prove that the items pumped into the air and water were in fact pollution.

NOx, SOx and SOME particulates clearly can be shown to cause health problems and property damage. I am skeptical about acid rain in many cases but damage to buildings and automobiles is easy to demonstrate.

One of the best examples of a toxic airborne waste was tetra ethyl lead. One of the few times I agreed that regulation worked was when this toxic precursor of lead oxide vapor was banned. However this could have been done in the courts decades before had the Market been allowed to do its job. The hazards of lead in paint and elsewhere were very well known to physicians and scientists decades before pressure began to ban its use as an octane booster in gasoline engines.

In contrast, other aerosols and some wastes are not demonstrable pollutants. Two good examples are water vapor and carbon dioxide. The latter is quite controversial, but experimental evidence is lacking, only glorified weather forecasting, argument from authority and some of the shoddiest science since Lysenko seems to support this "global warming" non-sense.

Ironically, water vapor has been demonstrated to do a better job than carbon dioxide at blocking the escape of infrared radiation back into space. However since free hydrogen is not freely available as a fuel nobody seems to mind its presence at the tailpipe or anywhere else. As Dillinger once said, you rob banks because that's where the money is and carbon is easy to hate because it's easy to tax and regulate.

Where some Greens help to maintain socialization of costs is in their zeal to abuse regulation to control industry and "capitalism" rather than protecting the environment against measurable damage. It's one thing to protect the environment, it's quite another to use the cause of protecting the environment as a vehicle for class struggle. Class struggle creates reaction and understandable reservations, which lead to maintenance of the status quo.

Protecting the environment, especially when the suggestions are based upon sound economics and genuine scientific principles, is easy to sell to most people.

Even some environmentalists, for example the founder of "Earth First!", have expressed reservations about the direction that the movement has been taking in recent years.

I am not quite sure where Skewbie fits in here but it's pretty darned obvious that the disasters of Prohibition and the US "War on Drugs" clearly show the limits of government regulation.

Gene

The benefit of using a market based approach to regulation is that it lets consumers decide by choosing the costs of regulations.

Today we accept the costs of automobiles. We accept the number of deaths on the roads. We accept the burdens of automobile ownership, especially the costs of the vehicles, their fueling and upkeep, the responsibilities of driving sensibly (which most of us do) and so on. We accept through insurance the costs of accidents.

In a like vein I think that people ought to be permitted to decide just how much they're willing to pay for a clean environment and for energy from biomass sources. I think that those who want such sources of energy need to market their choices to those who might have other priorities.

In contrast, government regulation is coercion. People are not free to weigh the costs and benefits in terms of their own values, judgment and experience. Instead we are confronted with either acceptance or punishment, based upon a third party's values and judgment. In essence we are being treated like children or livestock. We are being insulted and degraded like chattel or slaves.

I think Skewbie and like minded readers here need to re-examine their attitudes about the goodness and necessity of government regulation. They are not necessarily wiser or more intelligent than some of us who do not embrace their ideals, attitudes or conclusions.

Gene

I think you need to learn how to get to the point ya windbag. Quit with the BS stories chocked full of short sighted half truths. Talk about needing an attitude adjustment.

people with money to buy goods and services should not be deciding how much pollution other people, who do not buy those goods and services, should accept. nor should those goods and services be made artificially cheap by ignoring their impact on the environment. This is a failure of the market system, not britain or whatever half baked conclusion you have come up with this time.

The skewbe once again insults folks and refuse's to look at thought patterns. And any level of reasoning and idea development cause it doesn't meet his red square logic.

The regulation of drugs and pollution are not comparable.
My neighbor toking up in the privacy of his home does not harm me.
Putting in a coal fired heating system that will deposit radioactive isotopes and mercury in my yard does.

The market often doesn't include the price of pollution in products. Factoring in the cost of pollution clean-up and care of pollution related medical problems, the price of gasoline would start at $5 a gallon. Adding political and military costs, the price can climb to $11.

The State failed to protect the environment in the USSR. The authoritarian government in China, which continues to call itself "socialist", has a parade of ecological disasters. You claim that our "capitalistic" system has failed even though the US has some of the toughest pollution laws on Earth.

Failure is its own best demonstration, Skewbie.

Gene

Let's do the math, trollbait, shall we?

According to here https://igs.indiana.edu/Geology/coalO...Coal/index.cfm

The average sampled mecury content was 0.11mgHg/Kg of coal. This gives you per US ton of coal about 100 milligrams of mercury.

Assuming about three tons per year combusted gives 300 milligrams of mercury. That's a heavy figure, incidentally, as most of the people I know who burn coal might do a ton a year.

Let's assume that the coal is burned only during "cold" periods, about four months per year or about 120 days. That gives a daily dose of 300 milligrams divided by 120 or about 2.5 milligrams per day, or about 0.104 milligrams per hour. For purposes of simplicity we'll assume uniform rates of consumption of coal.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning a toxic dose of mercury in air is about 0.7 to 42 micrograms per cubic meter of air on a chronic basis.

Now, this is where things get complicated... exactly how much air is diluting that 0.104 milligrams of mercury per hour? Let's simplify it still more then...

Let's compute the amount of air needed for a threshold toxicity value.

Dividing 104 microgramsHg/Hr by 0.7 micrograms/meter cubed gives us 150 cubic meters of air per hour.

This is seems like a reasonable figure. However Trollbait there is a complication. I'm basically assuming that you're gonna stick your head into your neighbor's stack and breathe that nasty coal burning stuff until you get sick. The article did not define "chronic exposure" by duration but I have a feeling that other combustion products would get you before the mercury got you.

Most stack plumes reach up and out. People miles downwind might see trace amounts of it. If you and your yard saw one percent we're talking a very tiny amount of mercury into your yard and environs.

I'd be more worried about your neighbor getting the munchies and smacking into you with his car. Hopefully he or she planned ahead and is eating fondue or ice cream or chips or whatever instead of trying to pilot a car under the influence.

Now the other constituents of coal combustion, especially the NOx and SOx, could be a genuine nuisance issue. They smell foul. You'd be right to raise some hell in court, except that you can't do that any more.

No sir, Trollbait, the EPA and your State environmental regulatory agencies are on the case. Not you. Sorry.

BTW, I didn't get into the radioactive constituents of coal combustion products. They're mainly heavy items like uranium and thorium, which themselves are not terribly toxic to people. Thorium, for example, was used in lantern filaments and is part of some sand deposits in India. Uranium may still be used for whitening dentures. I don't think that fission products like cesium or strontium can be found in coal - those are nasty.


Says who?

What sort of "clean up" is associated with gasoline?

What are these "political" costs you speak of?

The military costs are pretty easy to see, though one could argue that our methods of doing business are unsound and that use and abuse of our military in the middle east is a form of military keynesianism rather than a direct cost of using oil. In plain English, we're using wars to "prime the pump" of the economy.


Gene

Those are states that are not governed by the people! Do you think like psy that everyone else is a commie if they don't agree with you? Do you not realize the focus on the environment is much greater now or do you have a static view of the world from 50 years ago?

If all you care about in life is money then you are going to throw out all other concerns. I think there are more important things in life than money, but the market system does not inherently preserve anything that is not associated with profit. People have bandied the religion word around, guess they are worshipping money, and it is a little sickening.

Recognize that the market is not perfect, that there needs to be checks and balances. Do you think Slavery was ok? We can just throw out those child labor laws, and kids born to parents w/no money can just be forced to work the coal mines as soon as they can pick up a shovel?

Face it, the market would sell it's own mother. What people want is what counts, not what a few long winded market zealots want.

It's tempting to get annoyed, even angry, when people start to call names and insult one's intelligence.

As I see it, the Market is about free exchange, value for value. I offer ideas, and they may not be accepted. So I offer other ideas, counterpoints and develop understanding.

The Market is about satisfying wants and needs. A fair exchange. A trade. Freedom of choice. I've lived my life by it for many years after I abandoned the sterile world of coercion and organized violence.

When I thought that I had the right to make others do my bidding, rather than offer them possibilities, alternatives or simply what they desired.


On the other hand, Skewbie acts like a government agent. He states how things are going to be. Anyone who deviates from the government view gets smacked down. You aren't asked what you want, you're told what you'll do.

The contrast is pretty plain. Most self respecting adults won't put up with being coerced given an alternative.

Gene

So if we are done complaining about our own injuries and can take a break from pandering to the "call everyone a commie or government agent" bandwagon (and patting ourselves on the back), then what IS your position on slavery and child labor laws? Will you say that some other country did it too so it is ok? That other countries are currently doing it? Do you even care what the people want if it has nothing to do with money?

Do you think that we're "governed by the people" in the US?

In 2000 Bush "stole" the election from Al Gore, who himself was trying to steal it in Florida by limiting ballot recounts. Same thing happened in Washington State a few years later, when the Democrat found 'ballots" and had enough recounts to win the election.

In 1960 Nixon conceded the election to Kennedy. He lost by 100,000 votes, most of which came from Cook County, and were probably faked.

Happened a lot in our country.

As Stalin put it best, "It's not who votes, it's who counts the votes". Lyndon Johnson (he was President in the 1960s) said, "Keep counting until you get the result you want".

I don't think you're a "commie". You sure do say some awfully authoritarian things, Skewbie. I'm frankly appalled at your lackadaisical attitude about coercion and organized violence.

You seem to think that passing laws and making people do things is perfectly reasonable.

Focus? Whose focus? Yours? Mine? The bulk of the people?

Do you think most Americans really care about the environment like you do? Is that why SUVs keep selling so well? Detroit is bringing back muscle cars!

Is that why our Senate rejected the Kyoto Treaty 92-0 the last time anyone bothered to submit it? Is that why the government has to subsidize "alternative energy" instead of consumers rushing to buy it?

Sounds to me, Skewbie, like a whole lot of talking and not a lot of action is going on about the "environment". Maybe because the "focus" isn't on the environment as much one as might imagine.

Actually, Skewbie, my point of view is growing and more "fashionable" than your tired old "let's make people do things" school.

BTW, fifty years ago was 1958. Year after the IGY. US and USSR were competing for influence all over the world. Fighting wars.

I'm not fighting any wars. Are you?

You have a very simplistic and naive view of capitalism, Skewbie. Much more to life than profit.

However, I'd tend to think that you're a bit enamored with power. I think you like to give orders.

I haven't breathed a word about my Faith, Skewbie. That's not germane to this conversation.

However since you broached the topic, do you believe in Gaia?

Wow, you want perfection. Imagine that, you want the Market to be perfect or it won't work, but you'll accept the State just as it is.

Checks and balances? Who watches the watchers? Helpful hint; Nobody watches the watchers.

Considering that I work several months each year to pay all of the taxes that I owe, I'd say "No".

To be honest, owning another human being is disgusting.

...except that mining coal is cheaper with machines. Children make lousy workers. I know, I work with kids in their late teens. Some of them are hopeless.

Do they feed kids stupid drugs today or something?

No. You face it. Selling one's mother would appall most customers, who'd refuse to buy from you.

You're being ironic, whether you know it or not, Skewbie.

The Market is solely concerned about what people want. People want gigantic SUVs and they're made. People want thrifty cars and they're made.

In contrast, zealots like yourself just want to make people do things. You're not worried about nature. If you were really worried about nature you'd be persuading people to help you preserve it. You'd raise consciousness.

You'd be telling me that saving the planet is good for business. You might discover that I'm hip about controlling pollution through lawsuits and other market oriented means.

In case I bored you with my "windbag" posts, I'll reiterate what I do for a living. I work in the energy industry, in saving power. I test and qualify devices that save electricity for industry.

My employer's machines will pay for themselves with one year of electricity savings. For several years afterwards we can save industry millions of dollars, burn less coal and do more with less.

I also bought one of the most fuel efficient cars made today. I can afford a gas guzzler, a pickup truck or an SUV. I voted with my money.

I bet I do more every day to save the planet than you do. I can almost guarantee it.

You've got an axe to grind with "capitalism". You want to coerce people. Saving the planet or nature takes a back seat. Your priorities, Skewbie, are crystal clear to me.

Gene

My position on slavery is that it is wrong. I'd support ending slavery in Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Yeah, that's not a misprint, those places have slavery, including sexual slavery of children.

How it's done is not through military force but through more indirect means.

Child labor is a touchy question. Very young kids, like under ten, are simply too young to work effectively. They aren't efficient and it wouldn't be fair to the kids. Please note the order of priorities, Skewbie, as I am not their parents. I'm someone who'd at most be in a position to hire them. I wouldn't do it.

Older kids ought to be allowed to have work. They can learn the skills needed to get along with others, to respect authority without being obsequious and most of all, to show up for work on time, focus on their tasks and do a good job.

Given that, they ought to have limitations on work so that they can attend school or be homeschooled. I also think that Apprenticeships ought to be encouraged and that child labor laws could discourage such forms of education.

I might add, for your benefit, that child labor laws are not as strictly enforced for children who work in agriculture. Whether you know this or not, Skewbie, agricultural work is the most hazardous sort of employment in the US. More dangerous than coal mining, which thanks to regulation (I'm not against ALL regulation) has been drastically made safer. So apparently the powers that be are not really worried about children's safety - more likely we can look to the originators of child labor laws, who were labor activists who hoped to drive up the costs of labor. Kids work cheap.


What happens in other nations is not the concern of the United States. We are not the world's policeman. We had no business being in Iraq, the Balkans, Korea or even in the former Axis nations. I'm not a pacifist but I am not into Imperialism either.


You ask me if I care what people want if it doesn't have to do with money?

I work making electronic devices that save energy. I'm proud of my work, which is reasonably challenging, sufficiently dangerous as to not be boring and very rewarding that I'm saving energy and opening up business ventures that would not be possible otherwise.

In my off hours I work with embedded controllers - strictly as a hobby - write and want to start martial arts. I share my results with my peers without expectation or desire of profit.

I'm also gunning to return to Graduate School, to complete my studies in mathematics. My employer has already agreed in principle to pay for my studies and we both hope I can do even more work for them in the future using skills that I will work for and for which they will pay.

On the other hand, I do not like being bossed around by busy bodies who do not work for a living satisfying consumer needs, who presume to tell me how to live my life, and who think that they have the unalienable right to steward every one of the Earth's resources.

Such an attitude smacks of Aristocracy. It's offensive to me personally, professionally and morally.

I think I do much more than average bear to save scarce resources. Enough.

Gene

An interesting question, depends how you define "life" I recon.

See, I get it from both ends here, you point to ussr/china failing to protect the environment as proof positive that laws don't work.


Most, but not all. Some customers (ok, almost everyone, myself included)buy services that pollute everyones environment. Just because the market allows it doesn't make it right. Plenty of mothers were sold into slavery in the slave market.

Again, only where there is money to be made. Government has to intervene when peoples rights are at risk. Unfortunately our government has been more interested in removing peoples rights lately. Polluting isn't a right, no, but we have lost a lot of liberty in the past 8 years I will grant you that.

Skewbe

What do you do besides preach to the choir or piss in the wind to help with energy or pollution.

I have a pretty good idea what Gene does.

I work with boilers, chillers, pumps, there subsets and controls. https://www.2boonesales.com/

Eff. in operation, power consumption, maint. are all major concerns. One project we were involved in is the only to date full co-gen plant in the world for a property in down town Tulsa. A local hospital has broke ground on the newest full co-gen plant in the world. Its pretty slick how these plants work. While many will have bits and parts of a co-gen plant. None but Williams Co. have the full package. St. Francis hospital will only be the second in the world.

Ive built one house with eco stuff in mind. Solar panels, house powered over all by 3 phase power, free air cooling when useful. Heat recovery for supplemental heating of hot water. And other niffy features. I took none of the possible green credits tax wise when I did it. And at some point I will apply a few tricks to this old house I live in now.

And be very clear about this. This stuff cost lots of money. BIG MONEY. And it wont get cheaper. So while wearing a sweater maybe a good answer. Its only part of it. And one can over insulate. You can end up with a sick building very fast. It happens a lot more in homes than commercial building. Most folks have no idea what free air cooling is. And what kind of air turn overs and exchanges that are needed to keep a building healthy.

Its funny. The home I own now was coal heated when it was built. The fire place is a coal hearth unit. The fire place is very shallow with a huge flue. The goall in such a setup is radiant heat. The coal that was burned was strip mined but a few miles from here. Then the home went to NG free standing fire for heat in most rooms with the fire place being retro fitted for NG radiant heat. Then came the floor furnace. I replaced that with a NG/AC high eff. package unit at the time. Its life cycle is coming to a close in the next few years. At that point I will take it to a new level. So just in the years since my home was built. Its fuel foot print has got better. And the house much safer.

So what are you doing skewbe?

I do things like, insulating, hypermiling, efficient windows, efficient appliances, watching how much energy I use, buying locally grown foods, paying extra for sustainable energy sources.

However, it isn't preaching to say that the market only protects the interests of those with money, just a statement of fact that some people have trouble with.

I was kidding around. Your religion is your own business.

I need to be more clear here - laws CAN work. They don't necessarily work.

The tragedy of the USSR demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, that centralizing decision making power and denying ordinary people a stake or sense of ownership, leads to indifference.

It's not enough to have a "voice". You need to have an interest. You need to have a personal reason to involve yourself. You need to have ownership.

We can say the very same thing about the law, Skewbie. The law used to say that owning people was a right. The Dred Scott decision cleared that one up nicely. Today two million people are in jail, many for victimless crimes. Since 1945 no President has declared war, but the Congress is supposed to do so before we start hostilities.

There isn't even a consensus upon what is "good" and "bad" in some cases about sales. There are people in the US who feel that selling guns is selling murder. There are people who feel that selling guns is empowering people. Which is true? What about liquor, high fat foods, pornography or books on making drugs, poisons or bombs? How about drugs themselves? Legal and illegal drugs.

You come to me and say that the market won't necessarily work. I come back and say that a system that denies the market, the USSR, failed to protect the health of the Russian people. They had no stake in the system but they were allowed to petition the government, hold demonstrations and vote. That's all we're allowed to do over here with our government. Aside the KGB and some social organizations all that differs for us is that we can hold property. For now.

I might add that the Soviets had pollution standards. Their microwave standards were tougher than US standards. They simply chose not to enforce their own laws. Who could make them?

You think we the people run this show? Really? How did President Gore do on 9/11 Skewbie?

Not exactly. Sometimes business people will sell at a loss or to barely break even. I've seen this happen, especially when the owner has alternate agendas.

I have to ask - what's wrong with making money? You make it sound like these transactions are tainted by commerce.

Do you think that government actions are altruistic and as pure as the driven snow? Sure I've seen decent bureaucrats. I've had IRS agents give me honest advice and be helpful.

I've also seen horrific things done by governments. Go look up "Operation Phoenix". When you're done with that, go google "White Hand" in conjunction with latin America.

Heck, take a look at the Dresden firebombings. We didn't need to do it, we just wanted to impress the Soviets.

Sometimes, Skewbie, people have to stand up for themselves. Sometimes good does not always prevail.

You mentioned Mr. Bush's excesses. How did you feel about seventeen kids dying at Mt. Carmel at Waco TX in 1992?

We could debate endlessly about the leadership of the Branch Davidians, but what would you do after the government shut off your electricity (and hence your well water) and subjected you to fifty days of "softening" to get you to quit?

No electricity. No water. Constant psychological pressure. For fifty days. Could you handle it, Skewbie? If you were taught about the apocalypse would not you feel that the forces of satan were at work? Would you surrender to satan?

We hear about how the CIA tortures suspected terrorists. Funny how people forget how the FBI used sounds of rabbit slaughter, chanting monks, irregular spot lighting and other "tricks" to "break down the resistance" of the Davidians.

Finally, exasperated by Howell's games, the FBI pumped in tear gas, including using "pyrotechnic" charges. A fire soon followed. We know that the FBI alerted local hospitals to expect burn casualties before they started gassing.

All but nineteen Davidians died. All of the children died.

I didn't support the Davidians. I thought that Vernon Howell was a first class narcissist and fool. Somehow in my occasional visits to the law library in Pittsburgh I never saw a Federal death penalty for being foolish or narcissistic.

Even to this day people remember four students shot at Kent State. Twenty times that number died at Waco under a Federal siege. A lot of the same people who shrugged off Waco in 1992 today complain about George Bush.

I brought up Waco because I don't really see too much difference between Clinton and Bush.


$10,000 dollar question about pollution. How much is too much? How much waste can be processed by the Earth's life processes and weather? How much will never be processed by the Earth's life processes, and weather?

The world does handle SOME pollution. How much? How much can the world take?

These questions need to be asked before we start regulating or suing or forcing objections. To insist upon "zero pollution" is impossible. To make people pay because they generate more than zero pollution is insulting.

Gene

I have this feeling, Skewbie, that you're an academic. I figure a college student, school teacher or some kind of soft science type. You rgue like one, for sure.

There's nothing wrong with doing that for a living, but I think those of us who are out there every day helping to save energy, who are multiplying our efforts, deserve some credit. Maybe more credit than I think we get from people who are "in the movement".

Most of us do have money. We vote with our decisions to spend. We reward and punish firms which serve us.

I punished Ford, GM and Chysler for making junky, inefficient small vehicles that need NASA techs to service. I rewarded Toyota for making an affordable and fuel efficient vehicle. I paid them.

I have trouble with your occasional oblique citations of class warfare. "Have money" means that these people are wealthy and influential.

You mean like Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller Family, the Kennedys or others who support "environmentalism" with a strongly coercive flavor? Those kind of folks?

How about good old Al "occidental oil" Gore? Winner of the Nobel Peace prize and a major shareholder of Occidental stock he got off of his father? Good old "Carbon Credits" Gore, who buys indulgences from the carbon traders so he can have that big old mansion in Tennessee.

Gene

Was there a point in all that rambling? I don't get paid to sit through these sort of infomercials you know :)

We are getting sidetracked here, we've somehow touched on about every subject under the sun, LOL.

Look, we can go back and forth saying and/or making up stuff about what a great job we are doing. Or throwing out examples that demonstrate any position you might want to take on any subject. To me, it is a question of principle, and that is really the only thing worth debating in a forum such as this, the rest is not going to lead us anywhere.

For this thread, the theme is pollution and energy choices/options. Well, are there any guiding principles beyond rudimentary survival instinct that we can agree on?

I don't believe pollution should be accepted as-is. As stated before, and as yet unchallenged, pollution is wrong for everyone else, everywhere else. It devalues the quality of peoples environment, and is typically done in the name of making or saving a buck. Don't get me wrong, make a buck if you can, but be principled about it. If I wanted to save money on garbage stickers by throwing my trash over the fence, the law would intervene. It would be far better for me to work on making less garbage anyway, and having exhausted those options then seek relief. The difference here is a matter of scale, as well as the concentration of money/power in the case of industrial pollution and pressure to keep prices low by consumers.

Do I live by this to the letter? Absolutely not. There are a few folks who have though and that is inspiring. Do I know what the right thing to do is? Absolutely, and it has nothing to do with money.

I've already demonstrated counter examples, that adhering strictly to regulation is questionable and possibly even counterproductive.

You, in turn, can't seem to get your mind out of the 1920s. It's O-V-E-R, Skewbe.


I think we can "tolerate" a certain level of pollution. We do so now and have done so for ages.


In other words, money is no object?

Gene

On the contrary, Skewbie, Jeff and I have shown our "bona fides". We both work to save energy.

I am not at liberty to name my employer. I can answer, in considerable depth, what I do for a living and how I save energy for industry.

Many times more energy than someone who buys "green energy" and organic veggies.

So, once again, let's hear it. What are you DOING to save the planet?

Gene