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Whata Fool
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 Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:49 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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Tim Bruening <tsbrueni@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
| Quote: |
HangEveryRepubliKKKan wrote:
"Tim Bruening" <tsbrueni@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote
As long as they are changing jobs, why not train them in jobs that help
the environment?
Is there a demand for such expertise?
There certainly will be as all the nations of the world scramble to reduce
their CO2 emissions before the rising sea water drowns them?
|
You are starting to sound as dumb as Al Bore and
Doomsday Hanson. |
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Whata Fool
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| Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 5:00 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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Tim Bruening <tsbrueni@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
| Quote: |
Whata Fool wrote:
Tim Bruening <tsbrueni@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
What happens if you splash sea water into them?
Pure distilled water has a very high resistance, meaning
low conductance.
But conductance goes up with the amount of salt added,
I have to add salt to my steam humidifier to get enough conductance
through the water to produce steam.
Why do you ask, do you live by the seashore?
In "Ecotopia Emerging" by Ernest Callenbach, one of the characters
discovers that dousing her solar power cells in sea water increases
their efficiency dramatically. She eventually traces the cause to
selenium. I was wondering if that might happen in real life.
|
Science fiction that has realistic and even plausible science
make better reading or video, but don't expect it to mean much.
Selenium has been used in various light detectors and
other devices using the photoelectric effect, but I doubt if it can
do as well as modern solar cells.
Selenium was also used extensively in DC rectifiers, I
had a 1949 Buick that I installed an alternator from a police
car on, and the 3-phase rectifier was multiple plates and about
as big as a loaf of bread.
The diodes that do the same job today are smaller than
a dime in diameter and about 8 mm thick.
Try to forget about salt water, if you don't go swimming,
it probably will never touch you. |
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john fernbach
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| Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:52 pm Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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On Nov 3, 6:59 pm, Whata Fool <wh...@fool.ami> wrote:
| Quote: |
Tim Bruening <tsbru...@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
Whata Fool wrote:
Tim Bruening <tsbru...@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
A group of activists called "Green For All" (greenforall.org) has
started a campaign to get Congress to allocate $125 million to train
30,000 young people a year in green trades such as weatherizing homes
and installing solar panels (both jobs that can't be outsourced
overseas, since you can't ship a house to China to be outfitted with
insulation and solar panels!), thus boosting both the environment and
the economy simultaneously!
It started with one Van Jones, an Afro-American social and environmental
activist who leads the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland.
He was tired of oil companies stampeding poor people into opposing
environmental initiatives, so he started a crusade to help
underprivileged blacks and other disadvantaged communities understand
that efforts to green America could create jobs for them. To that end,
Jones' group teamed up with an electrical union to create the Oakland
Apollo Alliance, which helped raised $250,000 from the city government
to create a training program that will teach young Oaklanders how to
weatherize homes and install solar panels. Van Jones believes that "The
green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and
health to low income people-while honoring the Earth. If you can do
that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is
good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the
country".
Do you mean there is anybody 16 or over that can't read
and follow the instructions on the package the weather stripping
comes in?
What if the entire house is being done, or you are old or sick?
There are small scale programs now to do a few houses
for the really old or disabled, the question is how many people
would want to turn loose a bunch of workers to make any major
changes to a home without a contractor being legally responsible.
Who will plan and supervise the projects on the actual
work on a home, is there certain individuals who are already
trained to do the design work, and assure that it will be safe
and effective.
Who is going to pay for the solar panels and the materials
to weatherize?
Some utility companies have financial assistance programs for solar power and
energy efficiency, and the California and U.S. governments provide tax breaks
for solar power.
Most residents in California don't need any energy conservation
if the house was built with any common sense, but many things work
in California that won't work in the northeast and midwest US.
Solar energy and insulation are not new ideas, in 1973 there
was a huge involvement by the states and the federal government
in supporting research and installation of alternate energy projects,
but it fizzled and many of the solar equipment companies went
broke or were divisions of large corporations that were shut down
with a big writeoff.
Please keep us informed about how it goes and how many
complete houses have been done, hopefully it will work.
What we really need is Electric Vehicles with generators
on the back, and off peak metering for charging the batteries,
it is autos that use the most oil, anybody heating a house with
oil is way behind the times, and needs to switch to something
else or add a primary heating system and just use the oil
for emergency backup.
All of the big projects ever saw resulted in individuals
or companies getting big handouts, with less than expected
results.
But don't let me rain on your parade, I am just feeling
a little disappointed because I was promised warming, and
all I get is heavy frost this week, and below freezing most
of the time for the next 5 months.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
|
WF - I think that if AGW is real - which I think it is, as the IPCC
and the National Academy of Sciences, etc. keep telling us -- then
electric cars are an improvement over our current cars ONLY under some
circumstances.
If the electric cars are charged from a grid that depends on carbon-
neutral fuels, or charged from individual home energy systems that
depend on carbon-neutral fuels, then fine. Using electric power for
the cars in THIS situation will reduce the society's overall CO2
footprint.
Or suppose the electric vehicles, or maybe the hybrid vehicles, are
just more efficient than the gasoline-powered and diesel fuel-powered
vehicles for various reasons. Here again - because we're getting
higher mileage per gallon of fuel - electric cars rock.
But if the electric cars are powered from a conventional utility grid
and the utility companies are getting their energy from coal or oil or
even natural gas, then electric cars are only going to concentrate the
total volume of CO2 emissions. They're not going to reduce that
volume.
And in fact, depending on the thermodynamic efficiency of the electric
motors combined with the thermodynamic efficiency of the coal-fired
power plants and the electricity distribution grid AS A SYSTEM,
electric cars could conceivably produced MORE CO2 per per per mile
traveled than gasoline-powered cars.
Simply because some of the usable energy from the coal-fired power
plants is going to get dissipated as waste heat in the grid, en route
to being used.
(Cf Amory Lovins, "Soft Energy Paths," 1978)
Electric cars in and ot themselves therefore are not the siliver
bullet that kills the CO2 vampire.
Also as any good biography of American utility entrepreneur Samuel
Insull will show, the coal-based electric utlity industry used
electricity powered transportation systems -- i.e. electric streetcar
lines -- as a big "load builder" for their systems during the
industry's early years, from about 1890 through the early 1930s.
Could it happen again, but with electric cars this time? Could the
coal- and nuclear-based utility companies, in the name of "clean air"
and "energy independence" and even "fighting global warming," sell the
American public and the world on an energy-intensive, electricity-
intensive path to transportation planning that might even make AGW
worse?
I think it could, but then I have known anti-corporate biases. |
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john fernbach
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 12:00 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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On Nov 5, 5:15 am, Tim Bruening <tsbru...@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
| Quote: |
Why do you ask, do you live by the seashore?
In "Ecotopia Emerging" by Ernest Callenbach, one of the characters
discovers that dousing her solar power cells in sea water increases
their efficiency dramatically. She eventually traces the cause to
selenium. I was wondering if that might happen in real life.
|
Tim - I don't know enough about solar cell construction to tell if
this is a good idea or not.
But I'm wonder - this discussion is focusing a lot of solar PV cells,
which obviously are interesting because of their ability to generate
electricity, a kind of energy we can use pretty readily.
But how efficient are solar PV cells, say, compared to "passive"
solar, or maybe we should call it "direct" solar technologies? Solar
hot water heaters, say, that are powered not by electricity at all,
but by the sun heating a black box located on somebody's roof? Or
solar home heating that partly consists of building houses with big
south-facing windows and with venetian blinds that can be closed at
night and during the summers?
Around 30 years ago when the Carter administration and the
environmental movement had gotten a lot of people interested in solar
energy, at least some of the alternative energy mavens were saying
that "passive" and/or "direct" solar devices were inherently more
efficient than PV cells, in addition to being cheaper and simpler to
build.
Have PV cells developed far enough that this is no longer the case?
Or is there still a potentially big role for passive solar and direct
solar technologies to play? |
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Tim Bruening
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:26 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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john fernbach wrote:
| Quote: |
On Nov 3, 6:59 pm, Whata Fool <wh...@fool.ami> wrote:
Tim Bruening <tsbru...@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
Whata Fool wrote:
Tim Bruening <tsbru...@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
A group of activists called "Green For All" (greenforall.org) has
started a campaign to get Congress to allocate $125 million to train
30,000 young people a year in green trades such as weatherizing homes
and installing solar panels (both jobs that can't be outsourced
overseas, since you can't ship a house to China to be outfitted with
insulation and solar panels!), thus boosting both the environment and
the economy simultaneously!
It started with one Van Jones, an Afro-American social and environmental
activist who leads the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland.
He was tired of oil companies stampeding poor people into opposing
environmental initiatives, so he started a crusade to help
underprivileged blacks and other disadvantaged communities understand
that efforts to green America could create jobs for them. To that end,
Jones' group teamed up with an electrical union to create the Oakland
Apollo Alliance, which helped raised $250,000 from the city government
to create a training program that will teach young Oaklanders how to
weatherize homes and install solar panels. Van Jones believes that "The
green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and
health to low income people-while honoring the Earth. If you can do
that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is
good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the
country".
Do you mean there is anybody 16 or over that can't read
and follow the instructions on the package the weather stripping
comes in?
What if the entire house is being done, or you are old or sick?
There are small scale programs now to do a few houses
for the really old or disabled, the question is how many people
would want to turn loose a bunch of workers to make any major
changes to a home without a contractor being legally responsible.
Who will plan and supervise the projects on the actual
work on a home, is there certain individuals who are already
trained to do the design work, and assure that it will be safe
and effective.
Who is going to pay for the solar panels and the materials
to weatherize?
Some utility companies have financial assistance programs for solar power and
energy efficiency, and the California and U.S. governments provide tax breaks
for solar power.
Most residents in California don't need any energy conservation
if the house was built with any common sense, but many things work
in California that won't work in the northeast and midwest US.
Solar energy and insulation are not new ideas, in 1973 there
was a huge involvement by the states and the federal government
in supporting research and installation of alternate energy projects,
but it fizzled and many of the solar equipment companies went
broke or were divisions of large corporations that were shut down
with a big writeoff.
Please keep us informed about how it goes and how many
complete houses have been done, hopefully it will work.
What we really need is Electric Vehicles with generators
on the back, and off peak metering for charging the batteries,
it is autos that use the most oil, anybody heating a house with
oil is way behind the times, and needs to switch to something
else or add a primary heating system and just use the oil
for emergency backup.
All of the big projects ever saw resulted in individuals
or companies getting big handouts, with less than expected
results.
But don't let me rain on your parade, I am just feeling
a little disappointed because I was promised warming, and
all I get is heavy frost this week, and below freezing most
of the time for the next 5 months.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
WF - I think that if AGW is real - which I think it is, as the IPCC
and the National Academy of Sciences, etc. keep telling us -- then
electric cars are an improvement over our current cars ONLY under some
circumstances.
If the electric cars are charged from a grid that depends on carbon-
neutral fuels, or charged from individual home energy systems that
depend on carbon-neutral fuels, then fine. Using electric power for
the cars in THIS situation will reduce the society's overall CO2
footprint.
Or suppose the electric vehicles, or maybe the hybrid vehicles, are
just more efficient than the gasoline-powered and diesel fuel-powered
vehicles for various reasons. Here again - because we're getting
higher mileage per gallon of fuel - electric cars rock.
But if the electric cars are powered from a conventional utility grid
and the utility companies are getting their energy from coal or oil or
even natural gas, then electric cars are only going to concentrate the
total volume of CO2 emissions. They're not going to reduce that
volume.
And in fact, depending on the thermodynamic efficiency of the electric
motors combined with the thermodynamic efficiency of the coal-fired
power plants and the electricity distribution grid AS A SYSTEM,
electric cars could conceivably produced MORE CO2 per per per mile
traveled than gasoline-powered cars.
Simply because some of the usable energy from the coal-fired power
plants is going to get dissipated as waste heat in the grid, en route
to being used.
(Cf Amory Lovins, "Soft Energy Paths," 1978)
Electric cars in and ot themselves therefore are not the siliver
bullet that kills the CO2 vampire.
Also as any good biography of American utility entrepreneur Samuel
Insull will show, the coal-based electric utlity industry used
electricity powered transportation systems -- i.e. electric streetcar
lines -- as a big "load builder" for their systems during the
industry's early years, from about 1890 through the early 1930s.
Could it happen again, but with electric cars this time? Could the
coal- and nuclear-based utility companies, in the name of "clean air"
and "energy independence" and even "fighting global warming," sell the
American public and the world on an energy-intensive, electricity-
intensive path to transportation planning that might even make AGW
worse?
I think it could, but then I have known anti-corporate biases.
|
We shall just have to be on guard against such a tactic. |
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Tim Bruening
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:01 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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Whata Fool wrote:
| Quote: |
tsbrueni@dcn.davis.ca.us wrote:
I urge that there be a Peace Corps or Civilian Conservation
Corps like program to train young people to weatherize
homes and install solar panels. This would boost the
economy, help stop global warming, and give young people
a personal stake in greening the economy.
And these young people are supposed to stampede
to the training places begging to help stop global warming
and greening the economy when I have trouble getting my
grass cut for $20 and it only takes half an hour.
Too bad there are no excess unemployed now, they
were all aborted more than 20 years ago.
|
The last I heard, the unemployment rate was in the high 4s, so there
should be enough for the "Green For All" program. Also, we could use
prisoners and illegal immigrants. |
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Ouroboros_Rex
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:35 pm Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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Tim Bruening wrote:
| Quote: |
Whata Fool wrote:
tsbrueni@dcn.davis.ca.us wrote:
I urge that there be a Peace Corps or Civilian Conservation
Corps like program to train young people to weatherize
homes and install solar panels. This would boost the
economy, help stop global warming, and give young people
a personal stake in greening the economy.
And these young people are supposed to stampede
to the training places begging to help stop global warming
and greening the economy when I have trouble getting my
grass cut for $20 and it only takes half an hour.
Too bad there are no excess unemployed now, they
were all aborted more than 20 years ago.
The last I heard, the unemployment rate was in the high 4s, so there
should be enough for the "Green For All" program. Also, we could use
prisoners and illegal immigrants.
|
You probably mean the rate of people who qualify for unemployment
insurance. Last I checked, actual US unemployment is 8% or higher. |
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V for Vendicar
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:02 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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"Ouroboros_Rex" <its@casual.com>
| Quote: |
You probably mean the rate of people who qualify for unemployment
insurance. Last I checked, actual US unemployment is 8% or higher.
|
And inflation is higher than it has been since the Carter Era. Gasoline
prices are much higher than the Carter Era, even when adjusted down for
inflation and the Bush is right on schedule for increaseing the U.S. federal
debt to 10.5 trillion dollar.
That's what you get when you let a RepubliKKKunt MORON run the nation. |
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V for Vendicar
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 3:55 am Post subject: Re: Green For All |
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"Tim Bruening" <tsbrueni@pop.dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote
| Quote: |
The last I heard, the unemployment rate was in the high 4s, so there
should be enough for the "Green For All" program. Also, we could use
prisoners and illegal immigrants.
|
5.5 percent in June 2008. But that considers the U.S. militray as
"employed" and also presumes that those not looking for a job are not
unemployed.
http://www.reliableplant.com/article.asp?articleid=12526 |
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