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Post by trbixler on Jan 28, 2012 18:37:19 GMT
Mr Green continues his magic.  "Obama-EPA Destroying More Jobs in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland" "Washington D.C. - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said that FirstEnergy's announcement today that it will shut down six power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland due to EPA's Utility MACT rule is a prime example that while President Obama is talking the talk on an 'all of the above' energy approach, his administration is aggressively working to shut down American oil, gas, and coal development. "Today, hundreds of Americans learned that they will be losing their good-paying jobs because of the Obama EPA's destructive regulatory agenda," Senator Inhofe said. "Due to EPA's forthcoming Utility MACT rule, FirstEnergy will be closing six power plants, which will put 529 Americans out of work in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland - states that have already been hit hard by the recession. " epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=1bbe6c06-802a-23ad-4583-04101b7f3443 |
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Post by curiousgeorge on Jan 28, 2012 20:00:16 GMT
TR: I wish Inhofe luck. The EPA, and this administration generally, are totally out of control. I hope that this coming Nov. will be a turning point and we can get some semblance of sanity back in this country.
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Post by sigurdur on Jan 28, 2012 20:58:00 GMT
curiousgeorge:
I hope the continuation of how people vote stops. GWB was a lousy President. His 1st 4 years demonstrated this. Folks were to "scared" to vote for another party.
Well, President Obama is no better than GWB. I am not scared to vote for Ron Paul or Romney. They "might" be worse, but the odds of this are pretty durn small. And we don't know as they haven't demonstrated how poor they would be. President Obama certainly has demonstrated his lack of leadership ability and his lack of knowledge of basic economics.
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Post by trbixler on Jan 28, 2012 22:08:09 GMT
Mr Green continues to trash our tax dollars. "Drip, Drip, Drip: Yet Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!)" "Earlier this week, Stimulus beneficiary Evergreen Energy bit the dust. Then, Ener1, a manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles and recipient of Stimulus largesse, filed for bankruptcy. And today, the Las Vegas Sun reports that Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that received $5.9 million from the Porkulus, will cut two-thirds of its workforce, about 200 employees, only seven months after opening a factory in Nevada." www.globalwarming.org/2012/01/27/drip-drip-drip-yet-another-green-energy-stimulus-recipient-hits-the-skids-the-third-this-week/ |
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Post by hector on Jan 29, 2012 20:33:44 GMT
Bartering is a growing and viable alternative for many things. Cut out the middlemen and the taxman. Deal direct. Cutting out the middlemen is a good idea, and barter can be a viable economic model, but barter transactions are taxable. Your post implies that you thrust your tax liability from barter transactions onto me and other honest taxpayers by not paying taxes on your transactions. Yes, tax evasion will save you money until you get caught, but doesn't the immorality of the act disturb you? Whenever you barter and don't pays sales tax and income tax you're stealing from me, and I happen to resent that. www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.htmldor.wa.gov/Content/GetAFormOrPublication/PublicationBySubject/TaxTopics/Bartering.aspx |
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Post by stranger on Jan 29, 2012 22:41:08 GMT
Hector, the problem is that if we are forced to go back to barter, taxes will be paid as they were in the middle ages. In produce. Eggs, lentils, chickens and hams, in return for the shire reeve or the Laird's henchmen abstaining from torching the house - or cot.
The IRS is singularly unprepared to collect taxes in the only medium available, produce, or at last resort, enforced labor.
Stranger
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Post by hector on Jan 29, 2012 23:33:50 GMT
trbixler: I have to agree with the observations on CFL's. I switched several years ago to them. The lifespan posted verses real world is about 1/2. In fact, the bulbs seem to last approx 1.4 years in my environment. If you live down south, they may make sense. Up north, they make little sense I see now. The lack of heating during the winter, (the predominant time of useage of light bulbs), the lack of continued "brightness"......etc....etc. It appears from all factors considered that CFL's are a poor choice. They are not environmentally friendly, the longevity does not correspond to claims made, they do not provide needed heat.....etc.....etc. A dumb move by me.....and a dumb move by government it turns out. CFLs lifespan is determined by both burn time and starts. It varies, but 7000 starts is about all they're good for. They also have reduced output as they warm up. In an application like a closet, where you get maybe a minute of burn per start, CFLs are probably not the best choice, but then again, the total cost for that application is negligible. Your first conclusion, that you made a dumb move, seems to be based on emotion wrought by the lower-than-expected lifetime of the bulbs in your experience. Let's see if your gut feeling is accurate (using 75w incandescent equivalents): I assume your "not environmentally friendly" comment was about mercury. There is absolutely no science which supports that conclusion. Incandescent bulbs emit far more mercury indirectly through coal burning than a CFL even if the CFL is deliberately broken and the mercury scattered. If you're talking individual health, a CFL contains about 3mg of mercury. Assume you do a really lousy job of cleanup, perhaps you'll inhale/absorb/ingest 1%, or 30mcg. Seafood contains about 10mcg/oz of methylmercury, which is far more toxic than the elemental mercury found in a CFL. So, one small four oz serving of fish is going to give you about the same dose of a more toxic version of mercury as the broken CFL. Thus, if you eat fish more often than you break CFLs, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Plus, that CFL reduces your mercury uptake every day of your life by lowering the levels in air, fish, etc. Moving on to efficiency, let's take your example for CFLs (- say a CFL lasts 3 hours a day * 365 days * 1.4 years. At $0.13/KWH, it saves about $10 over incandescent bulbs in electricity. The CFL costs $1.89 (at Bulbs, inc) while the incandescent costs $0.53. Assuming that in the "real world" they last the same 1.4 years, the CFL will save you $8.64. This is assuming you don't keep receipts, as CFLs are required to be guaranteed for at least 2 years of residential use. The heating and cooling issue certainly depends on season and location. Switching between bulbs based on season might aid efficiency, but it seems like too much bother to me. Assuming your house needs heat 50% of the year and you use gas for heat (3 times more efficient than that incandescent), is comfy with ventilation or nothing 30% of the time, and needs cooling 20% of the time (10x more efficient), you still save $7.20 each by buying CFLs. Not a bad return - $7.20 over 1.4 years on a $1.89 investment! So, your first conclusion, that you made a dumb move, is simply wrong. (See? You're smarter than you thought!) Your second conclusion, that light efficiency requirements are dumb, is not based in reality. As I calculated above, CFLs save lots of money over incandescents, and for those few places CFLs aren't the best choice halogens work just fine and still fit the efficiency guidelines. However, CFLs are a 20th century technology and are simply not relevant to 21st century lighting. You should be looking at a 21st century product, the LED. Doing the math for LEDs- a bulb costs $47 and lasts long enough that amortization cost is what counts - at 6% the bulb costs $4.20 for 1.4 years. It will save $11.20 for a net savings of $7 without heating/cooling considerations and $5.36 with the decidedly cold-climate scenario mentioned above. Since heat is available for free from south-facing windows, thus reducing the need time for heat, while AC always costs money and energy, to get this less-good of a result you have to assume poor construction methods. So even at current costs, which will decline drastically and quickly, LEDs are almost as great a bargain as CFLs. Buying them also drops the price of future LED purchases, so you also get to feel good about providing early-adopter thrust to the industry. So, the take-home? CFLs are safe, environmentally good, and will be obsolete within a couple of years as LEDs plummet in price. Incandescents are a true environmental and economic disaster that should have been discarded years ago. The regulations will be a tremendous boon to the economy and your pocketbook. It probably would have been a good thing to include a declining subsidy for LED bulbs in the efficiency regulations as we need to replace both incandescent and CFL bulbs with LEDs. What do you think? |
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Post by trbixler on Jan 30, 2012 0:10:30 GMT
My CFLs actually went up in smoke. Maybe you have had a different experience. My LEDs work long and hard, no smoke and no mercury. No fancy math to prove how good they are. My Watt meter smiles.
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Post by hector on Jan 30, 2012 1:19:39 GMT
My CFLs actually went up in smoke. Maybe you have had a different experience. My LEDs work long and hard, no smoke and no mercury. No fancy math to prove how good they are. My Watt meter smiles. Good for you! You're doing the right thing for the planet, the country, and humanity. However, just to be a snit, let's play with some more fancy math. Assume you buy a $47 LED today while I buy a $0.53 incandescent. My incandescent lasts 1.4 years. I then buy an LED for $30 (the cost will come down according to Moore's Law). I spent $0.53 + $30 + $14.90 = $45.43, while you spent $47 + $3.70 + $3.95 in interest + $1.64 in climate control = $56.29. I save $10.86 and also end up with a 1.4 year newer LED than yours. |
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Post by sigurdur on Jan 30, 2012 1:24:18 GMT
hector:
1. I need to heat my house approx 75% of the year.
2. My daughter suffers from SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. I have to have full spectrum lighting.
3. I keep reciepts. However, with that said, I have not used that often. The lifespan of the CFL's that I currently use is approx 1.3 times the lifespan of an incandesent.
4. I use heating fuel, as I live in a rural area and ch4 is not available. I had used elec, as that is more efficient, but the increased costs of pollution control required the rates to rise where it is no longer affordable.
5. Mercury emissions from coal plants are very small. At least in the USA.
6. I keep the house fairly cool in the winter. The start up time on the CFL's is a pain, and they deff do not do well outdoors.
I am not happy with the life of the bulbs, the start up times etc. I plan on switching to LED's if I can find full spectrum LED's. At this time I have not yet found those, so will continue with the CFL's just because they use less energy. Whether they actually pay is doubtful because of the heat by other sources to overcome the loss from non use of the incandensent.
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Post by magellan on Jan 30, 2012 1:28:52 GMT
My CFLs actually went up in smoke. Maybe you have had a different experience. My LEDs work long and hard, no smoke and no mercury. No fancy math to prove how good they are. My Watt meter smiles. Good for you! You're doing the right thing for the planet, the country, and humanity. However, just to be a snit, let's play with some more fancy math. Assume you buy a $47 LED today while I buy a $0.53 incandescent. My incandescent lasts 1.4 years. I then buy an LED for $30 (the cost will come down according to Moore's Law). I spent $0.53 + $30 + $14.90 = $45.43, while you spent $47 + $3.70 + $3.95 in interest + $1.64 in climate control = $56.29. I save $10.86 and also end up with a 1.4 year newer LED than yours. $1.64 in climate control ;D ;D ;D CFL's are junk in my experience. Your glowing accolades for them are not based on reality for most people I know. My barn ceiling is 14 ft. I have grown tired of replacing those damned CFL's. Virtually none of them have lasted two years in the house, far less in the barn or any outdoor use. The porch lights have been replaced too many times to count, plus when I turn on the porch light I expect to actually see within a few seconds, not wait for a warmup period. Having been at this location for over 20 years, there is no way you're ever going to convince me the lifespan of a CFL is longer than an incandescent. I've tried every brand on the market. None of the CFL's are worth teets on a boar hog. Since incandescent bulbs transferred to China for production, they too are junk. Out of two packs I bought recently, 1 in each pack was defective, and they don't last. So this summer, I was at Menards and bought some good heavy duty incandescent bulbs made in the USA for the barn and porch. The brand is Aero-TECH. They are BRIGHT, don't break easy and thus far have outlasted every CFL....yes, six months. They are rated at 20,000 hrs MTBF. Next is your claim that a CFL, despite the mercury in them, is somehow emitting less mercury than an incandescent because of "burning coal". Such claims have zero hard data to back that up; it is just a math game. I'm sure the Chinese standards at their CFL production facilities are just as good as any of their standards for workers and pollution. Sure, when pigs fly.  As with many, I've had two or three CFL's literally blow up, but you failed to mention that little problem. That happening in the barn is a very real fire hazard; another reason why I abandoned them. Finally, you did not state the number of hours used to calculate the "savings" of a CFL. Depending on how many hours per day the light is used will greatly affect the total cost. So what's your take on the Chevy Volt? |
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Post by trbixler on Jan 30, 2012 1:31:31 GMT
My CFLs actually went up in smoke. Maybe you have had a different experience. My LEDs work long and hard, no smoke and no mercury. No fancy math to prove how good they are. My Watt meter smiles. Good for you! You're doing the right thing for the planet, the country, and humanity. However, just to be a snit, let's play with some more fancy math. Assume you buy a $47 LED today while I buy a $0.53 incandescent. My incandescent lasts 1.4 years. I then buy an LED for $30 (the cost will come down according to Moore's Law). I spent $0.53 + $30 + $14.90 = $45.43, while you spent $47 + $3.70 + $3.95 in interest + $1.64 in climate control = $56.29. I save $10.86 and also end up with a 1.4 year newer LED than yours. Glad you like to live in a police state I do not. Maybe the government is smarter than you are but I doubt it. I hope that you do not enjoy power over others it can be very destructive to everyone. |
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Post by magellan on Jan 30, 2012 2:23:24 GMT
Good for you! You're doing the right thing for the planet, the country, and humanity. However, just to be a snit, let's play with some more fancy math. Assume you buy a $47 LED today while I buy a $0.53 incandescent. My incandescent lasts 1.4 years. I then buy an LED for $30 (the cost will come down according to Moore's Law). I spent $0.53 + $30 + $14.90 = $45.43, while you spent $47 + $3.70 + $3.95 in interest + $1.64 in climate control = $56.29. I save $10.86 and also end up with a 1.4 year newer LED than yours. Glad you like to live in a police state I do not. Maybe the government is smarter than you are but I doubt it. I hope that you do not enjoy power over others it can be very destructive to everyone. Not mentioned is that CFL's lose their brightness over time. Ever notice that? Not a problem when you're saving the planet I suppose. |
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Post by curiousgeorge on Jan 30, 2012 4:10:20 GMT
“Scientists announce the discovery of a perverse, perplexing atom
The new element is Governmentium (Gv). It has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 3-6 years. It does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons. All of the money is consumed in the exchange, and no other byproducts are produced.”
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Post by magellan on Jan 30, 2012 4:52:43 GMT
“Scientists announce the discovery of a perverse, perplexing atom The new element is Governmentium (Gv). It has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 3-6 years. It does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons. All of the money is consumed in the exchange, and no other byproducts are produced.” Whenever a poster suggests subsidies should be employed for anything, you pretty much know where they stand on any subject  P.S. There is also the enabler molecule commonly referred to Congressium; very toxic. |
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