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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seriously? Above your pay grade. Apparently reading any of the links is too hard for you too.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Isn't it possible that the Pentagon report about needed funding because of rising sea levels is just taking advantage of a left wing open door, to seek more funding since the left is generally tight with money for the military?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 10:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I scare myself. Now I'm even afraid of the military spinning climate change. Too funny. Try reading the links.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 11:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nw30 wrote:
Soooooo, you are saying that Global Warming is going to hit us at such an alarming rapid pace, so we will need the military to keep things calm and under control?

Seriously?
I think I might puke from laughing so hard!

Same here ... but a friend with a physics PhD who has studied AGW closely since the 1960s agrees that we are nearing tipping points that will trigger very dramatic and very sudden (as in months) climate swings nearing disaster levels. He is convinced that the minute we cross thresholds in permafrost melting, ocean acid levels, and [I forget his third trigger], it's all over and hundreds of millions will die.

I can't prove him wrong ... hell, maybe he's right ... but I did ask him about the 1970s dire warnings of the approaching deadly new ice age. He muttered something about discrepancies among different climate models.

Well, Punk ... why doesn't that same caveat apply now, when only the scariest models out of dozens predict disaster?
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uwindsurf



Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified

PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 11:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You call your friend a punk? Some friend you are.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mrgybe and crew must be so proud that their lies are working. This says it very well:

Quote:
By Eric Alterman

The New York Film Festival, now in its fifty-second year, is unusual in that it combines big-money extravaganzas like Gone Girland Birdmawith small, worthy films whose publicity budgets would barely cover the cost of Ben Affleck’s body waxings. Given the presence of so much of the film world in one place, the festival allows these latter movies to vastly increase their ability to secure media attention without the tens of millions of dollars that the studios devote to their superheroes.
A new documentary shown twice at the festival, and scheduled to be released in March, got my attention. Merchants of Doubt is directed by Robert Kenner and based on the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, two esteemed historians of science. The film, simultaneously entertaining, instructive and extremely important, traces the techniques through which profit-seeking corporations seek to undermine honest science in the public mind so that they might continue to make money poisoning our bodies and destroying our planet.
The argument can be condensed to one simple idea: the tactics perfected by the tobacco industry, which were designed to obfuscate the cancer-causing nature of its products back in the 1950s and ’60s, are now widespread throughout corporate America. When an internal Brown & Williamson memo declared decades ago, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public,” it created the template for countless oil, coal, chemical, agricultural, tobacco and manufacturing companies, as well as the front groups they fund and, more than occasionally, invent. By paying off members of Congress and exploiting the structural vulnerabilities of “objective” journalism, these companies have been able to fool the public and enrich themselves through a kind of slow-motion “murder for hire” operation.
I am ashamed to admit that I received the Oreskes/Conway book when it first came out, but despite its impressive research and evidence, I let it slide. I am sent too many books to do justice to even a tiny fraction of them, and it’s a cruel Catch-22 of American public intellectual life that unless a book is already getting some attention elsewhere in the media, it becomes much more difficult to try to elevate it on one’s own.
Kenner says that he decided to make the film after finishing up his previous effort, Food, Inc., because he “kept bumping into groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom that were doing everything in their power to keep us from knowing what’s in our food—it was Orwellian.” Though it claims to represent consumers, the center is financed by fast-food companies. Kenner found himself wondering just how many of these groups there are and how deep their influence runs. That’s when he discovered Merchants of Doubt.
The book is a first-rate piece of journalistic investigation and scientific inquiry. But we live in a culture in which the influence of books pales in comparison with that of cinema (to say nothing of television or even video games). Naomi Oreskes, who appears extensively in the film, told me that, yes, “the technical content is greatly simplified…. In the book, we had extensive but (hopefully) clear explanations of the science, including how and when scientists had come to understand the threats represented by acid rain, ozone depletion, climate change, etc. The film, however, has greater emotional impact. It’s less intellectual, but more visceral.”
The pioneers in the field are not only the liars for hire employed by the tobacco industry for so many decades, but also Cold War scientists like Robert Jastrow, Fred Seitz and William Nierenberg, who initially founded the George C. Marshall Institute to promote Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars boondoggle and then switched gears to lie about climate change—a task in which they’ve been joined by scientist/snake-oil salesman Fred Singer, who also cares more about opposing all forms of corporate regulation than he does about truth. But the star of this show is the astonishingly charming rogue Marc Morano, a frequent cable-television guest who admits, “I’m not a scientist, but I do play one on TV.” Morano, the founder of ClimateDepot.com, not only spouts his nefarious nonsense about science everywhere he goes but is also in the business of ensuring the mau-mauing of genuine scientific researchers who have felt a responsibility to go public with the dangers we face. “We went after James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer and had a lot of fun with it…we mocked and ridiculed,” Morano brags. He has also published their private e-mails, both as a means of harassment and as a warning to other scientists who might be considering doing the same thing.
The experience of former South Carolina Republican Congressman Bob Inglis also serves as a powerful cautionary tale. Inglis is an extreme right-winger, but he is also an honest man. After traveling to Antarctica to witness firsthand the damage being done to the polar ice cap by global warming, he became a convert to the fight against climate change. As a result, he was trounced by a Tea Party challenger in his next primary; he now drives around the West, where, as we see in the film, he is insulted by idiotic right-wing talk-radio hosts who don’t know anything except how to shut people up who are smarter than they are.
Where are the media in all of this? As Oreskes explains, “It was an explicit part of the strategy of merchandising doubt to use the media to create the impression of controversy. If the media are not pulled in, the strategy fails. So a large part of the story is industry courting and, where necessary, pressuring the media to give ‘equal time’ to its views. Interestingly, what we found was that overt pressure was fairly rare. The media didn’t need to be pressured.”
They just needed to be lied to.


Fred Singer is, of course, Isobars go to guy that Mike can't even quote correctly.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm sure this is good news for those in the oil business:

Quote:
Rooftop Solar Cost Competitive with the Grid in Much of the U.S.
Can solar power compete with fossil fuels?
December 1, 2014
residential rooftop solar panels


The cost of electricity derived from residential rooftop solar panels could achieve "price parity" with fossil-fuel-based grid power in 47 U.S. states by 2016 according to a new report from Deutsche Bank.
C
Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that the price of getting solar panels installed on a home is lower than ever, but has it gotten to the point anywhere in the U.S. where it’s actually cheaper than traditional grid power yet? --Lester Milstein, Boston, MA

Rooftop solar panels on have always been the province of well-to-do, eco-friendly folks willing to shell out extra bucks to be green, but that is all starting to change. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the cost of putting solar panels on a typical American house has fallen by some 70 percent over the last decade and a half. And a recent report from Deutsche Bank shows that solar has already achieved so-called “price parity” with fossil fuel-based grid power in 10 U.S. states. Deutsche Bank goes on to say that solar electricity is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices in all but three states by 2016—assuming,that is, that the federal government maintains the 30 percent solar investment tax credit it currently offers homeowners on installation and equipment costs.

But therein could lie the rub. The federal tax credit for residential solar installations expires in 2016, and it’s anybody’s guess whether and to what extent the Republican-dominated Congress will renew it. Legislative analysts report that while Congress is unlikely to abandon the program entirely, big cutbacks could be on the way. But Deutsche Bank maintains that even if the credit is reduced to 10 percent, solar power would still achieve price parity with conventional electricity in some 36 states by 2016.

Meanwhile, homeowners in states where additional local incentives are available and there’s lots of sunshine—such as across the Southwest—may in fact already be able to power their homes cheaper with the sun than from the grid. Homeowners looking to go solar should check out the Database of State Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency (DSIRE), a free online database of all the different state and local incentives for solar and other forms of renewable energy.

And prices for solar are expected to keep falling as technologies improve and financing becomes more affordable. Solar leasing has helped hundreds of thousands of Americans realize the dream of going solar without breaking the bank. The companies behind such programs—SolarCity, SunRun and others—take care of installation, maintenance and upgrades while the customer ends up paying about as much for clean, green power as for grid power from coal or other fossil fuels.

Of course, solar is still a bit player in the scheme of things in terms of U.S. and global electricity production. But with costs coming down, we can expect to see a lot more solar panels going up on rooftops across the land in the coming decade. Environmentalists concerned about our changing climate say the sooner the better, as our dependency on coal and other fossil fuels for electricity is a big contributor to global warming.


But then the source is not the Koch's. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rooftop-solar-cost-competitive-with-the-grid-in-much-of-the-u-s/
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17736
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not news to those who accept science:

Quote:
In his strongest declaration yet about climate change, Pope Francis said Thursday he is convinced that global warming is "mostly" man-made.


http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0115/Does-the-Pope-believe-in-global-warming

Hardly a left wing source. Do you think that Catholics who have been involved in the dishonest climate change disinformation business will accept the guidance from their spiritual leader> Don't hold your breath.
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boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9110
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Speaking of Pope Francis, he also made news this week by opining on free speech...saying its not OK, when insulting one's religious beliefs. I wonder what Sam Alito and other defenders of the first amendment think of the one exception to speaking freely.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 1:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those that go solar - good for them, but it's not for everyone, even if you are in an area that has plenty of sun.

From: http://solarpowerauthority.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-install-solar-on-an-average-us-house/
Quote:
For example: A system that costs $18,000 has a payback period of about 20 years. The cost of a solar panel today is around $3 per watt, and the extra cost of installation brings costs up to $5- $6 per watt. Note: Installation costs for PV systems include both labor and the electronics needed to tie the solar array into your existing electrical system.


I also found that average systems are more in the $30K range for cost, but that depends on the size of the house and system, which would suggest a longer pay back time. Your utility rates where you live also plays a key roll in the decision making.

Then there is the issue of how long one will be living the house. From looking at various sources, it seems that 9 years is the average. Now there are lots of variables in this whole story, so my point here is that for the average joe, solar is an expensive way to go. For a few it's wonderful, but not for the masses, at least not yet.
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