Environmentalists aren’t afraid to use exaggeration. For example, check out this page. The subtitle is “Will we soon be going to war over our most precious natural resource.” Two of the “hot spots” are in the U.S.—the southeast and southwest. The U.S. and Mexico will have some tensions over the Colorado River, but there will never be a war over it. Suggesting that is just silly.
Just one more reason not to trust environmentalists.
Loyd Case, the editor of the soon-to-be shuttered computer-enthusiast website Extreme Tech, recently wrote up his experience “going solar” one year into his experience. He spent around $38,000 to saves $3,000 a year in electricity costs. He mistakenly concludes that this the payback period is 12.5 years. That’s because he doesn’t include the the time value of his money.
If instead of paying for the solar panel up front, financed them with a loan, making payments of $250 a month, it would take 20 years at 5% interest to pay back his loan (if electricity costs and use remain constant). That is a long payback period, especially because solar panels will reduce in efficiency in the future.
Also, Case received a California rebate and Federal Tax Credit because he installed these solar panels. The California rebate probably amounted to $10,000. The real cost of his solar panels were nearly $50,000, making the investment in solar panel a bad deal.
I don’t know. I’m just asking if the new head of GM should know something about cars. He admits, “I don’t know anything about cars”.
I don’t doubt he knows business well and can do a good job, but it’s a strange pick and makes me wonder how many billions of dollars the American taxpayer will have to flush down the toilet to see GM make a profit.
All the world needs is Yoga apparently:
How can Yoga change the world?
If we can just find ways to be at peace in our own bodies, that eliminates a lot of the aggression. It eliminates a lot of the dominating parts of the human spirit that unfortunately lead to warlike civilizations, that lead to people doing unjustifiable things such as invading countries that they have no business invading, creating economic policy and trade policy that exploits other counties, and making bad decisions about how we interact with our planet Earth.
–Lacy MacAuley, full-time activist who is helping to organize the Sacred DC festival.
So how do we get Obama and Kim Jong-il to do some Yoga together?
Anytime a politician tells you that their plan will save money, you have to ask—if this plan makes so much economic sense, why aren’t private parties doing it already? This is especially true with something like hurricane and disaster insurance. From ClimateWire:
U.S. Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) reintroduced the Homeowners Defense Act, which would make the Treasury Department a reinsurer during massive events that have a half a percent chance of occurring in any given year.
Washington would be liable for up to $200 billion under the measure. But Klein says premiums paid into the fund would cover those costs and free taxpayers from financial burdens, like emergency spending, sparked by natural calamities.
"Isn’t it better to have an obligation to pay the federal government?" he said in an interview.
It’s better for Florida homeowners, but obviously worse for the rest of us taxpayer who will likely lose out under this plan. If it made economic sense, there would be no need for the Feds to get involved.
The article also says that Klein’s “opponents, he says, are wrong to say the bill provides subsidies — and, in turn, encouragement to develop still more vulnerable coastlines.” Klein is obviously wrong. If this were not a subsidy, there would be no need to do it.
President Obama’s automobile choice shows that he cares about features other than fuel economy, so why is he forcing the American people to choose fuel economy first and foremost?
When President Obama took office, he got a new car—a 8 mile-per-gallon custom Cadillac limousine. The reason the car gets such poor fuel economy is that it is designed to protect the Commander-in-Chief from many threats. The limo’s body is composed of sophisticated titanium, steel, ceramic and aluminum armor to stop projectiles. The armored doors are 8-inches thick and there is a 5-inch thick reinforced steel plate under the car to protect against bombs. The car is equipped with night vision cameras and Obama’s seat features a foldaway desk, laptop, and satellite phone so he can conduct business on the go. Because the car’s armor and accessories weigh so much, the car is powered by a 6.5 liter diesel engine.
President Obama, however, is proposing to limit Americans’ automobile choices and force Americans to buy more fuel economy than they would choose on their own. He is proposing a fuel-economy mandate that cars in 2016 model cars will have to get at least 42 miles per gallon.
Currently there are only three cars that get 35 miles per gallon or better, the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic hybrid, and the Ford Fusion hybrid. In just over 6 years, automakers need to improve the fuel economy of the entire fleet by 40 percent. This is possible, but it will be costly, limit American’s car choice, and it will be deadly.
A 2002 study from the National Research Council found that the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy mandate contributed to 2,000 deaths per year. The reason for this death tool is that frequently there is a tradeoff between the size of a car and safety. Cars have become safer, but today’s small, fuel efficient cars are still more dangerous than other cars in two-car frontal offset collisions, even again medium sized cars.
President Obama didn’t have to choose between safety and fuel economy when it came to his limo. He shouldn’t force the American people to be forced to choose smaller, more fuel efficient and less-safe cars.
I love this rant by Nick Gillespie of Reason. It sounds like at some point he had some hope in Obama, but that hope is now dashed.
Gillespie is beside himself with Obama’s silly yammering about high speed rail. Gillespie is correct to point out that high speed rail has almost nothing to do with traffic congestion. High speed rail moves people between cities, but traffic is centered in and around cities. The traffic I drive though in Washington, D.C. is almost exclusively caused by people trying to get from one part of the D.C. metro area to another. When I get in a traffic jam on Sunday afternoon on I-66, it isn’t caused by people who could be taking high speed rail to the sprawling metropolis of Front Royal, VA.
Wasting billions on high speed rail is silly. It can’t be defended. America’s rail transport system is actually pretty good. But unlike Europe’s, which almost exclusively carries passengers, America’s almost exclusively carries freight.
This is my luxury of living in the minority. I get to criticize the Democrats and the Republicans.
I don’t think most environmentalists actually hate the poor, but in their desire to “save the planet” or scare people into giving them donations, they seldom consider the outcome of their policies or the effect of those policies on poor and middle income families. For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council #1 accomplishment during 2008 was that “NRDC was instrumental in the passage of federal legislation that bans six widely used phthalates from children’s toys.”
Like most policies environmental groups promote, this doesn’t sound like a problem (actually the ban on phthalates is non-scientific, but that’s beside the point), but in the real world, if this law is not changed many small business will go out of business and many thrift stores will either close or stop selling children’s toys and clothes. According to the LA Times:
Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children’s clothing.The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger — including clothing — be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven’t been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.
“They’ll all have to go to the landfill,” said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.…Among the most vocal critics to emerge in recent weeks are U.S.-based makers of handcrafted toys and handmade clothes, as well as thrift and consignment shops that sell children’s clothing.“We will have to lock our doors and file for bankruptcy,” said Shauna Sloan, founder of Salt Lake City-based franchise Kid to Kid, which sells used children’s clothing in 75 stores across the country and had planned to open a store in Santa Clara, Calif., this year.
…But exempting natural materials does not go far enough, said Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel and Footwear Assn. Clothes made of cotton but with dyes or non-cotton yarn, for example, might still have to be tested, as would clothes that are cotton-polyester blends, he said.“The law introduces an extraordinarily large number of testing requirements for products for which everyone knows there’s no lead,” he said.
When rational person watch this video, they come to two conclusions 1) there must be some kind of climate crisis and 2) this guy is bat sh*t insane.
Number 2 is undoubtedly correct–Al Gore is nuts. But we are not in a “climate crisis” we should see some serious increase in temperature. Here’s a temperature chart from the satellite data for the past 12 years:
Looking at the graph you notice that there has only been a slight increase in temperature for the past 12 years. So where’s the crisis? There was only a slight increase in global temperature (and decrease since 1998) even though worldwide carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 30%.
Al Gore wants us to ignore our domestic energy supplies because of a crisis that doesn’t exist. That doesn’t make a ton of sense.