What part of "do not have a choice" do I not understand? How about the subject of the 'choice' you are denied. Now that you have clarified that you don't have a choice about how the electric company pays you, or how solar works, I'll reiterate, you still DO have a choice about how to use the power you generate. Making better use of that choice would serve you well, but you seem intent on claiming it's all out of your control (and that you're forced 'at gunpoint' to sell all your production cheap and buy it back expensive rather than find a way to use it directly). I'm intent on making the best use of the choices available to me (and I bet to you) in order to make intelligent choices about my energy, choices that have saved me thousands to date, and should save me tens of thousands in the long run, and save uncounted tons of CO2 from being produced. You have instead invested in a system that now serves your needs terribly, and now want to tell others how solar is not economically viable or green, both of which are absolutely backwards from my experience and research.

You were not kidnapped, you walked into that guys home and put his gun to your own head. I wonder if you've even investigated 'net metering' in your area, it could make your system work for even you.

OK, so energy cost VS energy produced is ALL you want to compare. Then you MUST include all energy costs to be reasonable, including the energy cost of cleanup of coal waste failures (that right there already totally tips any scale against coal, it can't come close to making the energy that cleanup takes), the energy used in upkeep of coal waste storage for centuries, the energy costs of habitat destruction/reconstruction by coal mining itself, the mining itself, transportation of the coal, power plant operation (construction, upgrading, and maintenance), and the cost of mitigating the 20-40 times the amount of CO2 pollution, health issues, loss of sunlight (solar dimming is real), etc. The list of energy costs goes on and on for coal, while the list for the energy cost of solar panel production and use in some cases is damn near zero (where it's made with leftover chip wafers in solar powered factories it barely takes any extra energy at all, but I do understand that most aren't made that way now).

Double return VS coal, because you get twice as many KWH per dollar with solar PV, or better.

Again with the 'spend more energy to produce one KWH of PV than with coal', show me some data. Everything I can find shows you're 100% wrong if you look at the lifespan of panels which become energy neutral in well under 3 years on average (some much sooner) and last 20-30 years, while coal continues to need more energy to produce more (filthy) energy. Perhaps in the extremely short term you have a point about cost/production, but any time period over 3 years puts PV ahead of coal in energy costs/energy produced, and in their 20-30 year lifetime they do much better.

Coal made power is NOT cheaper than solar made power. If it was, I would not save money with a solar system. I have already saved money with solar VS buying the same amount of coal produced power, therefore solar PV is cheaper than coal. Period. If it wasn't, our electric companies would not be 'farming solar' here as fast as possible, they would be building more coal plants.

Some people support coal because they have been misinformed about alternatives. That's why I have continued our discussion here, because your information is wrong based on my personal experience and research, and I fear you might convince someone to not even look into solar enough to see how wrong you are, how much money they could save (if they do it properly), and how much pollution they could not create.

Um...I DO grow my own vegetables in my backyard too. It's cheaper, and I get far better produce with zero carbon footprint. Another statement you've made that I take personal exception with. It's not a HUGE effort, but is some effort, but the returns are great and totally worth it. I think many people stopped subsistence farming because they're lazy, overworked, and/or live without any place to farm. I've been doing it since I was 12 and ate my first self grown corn, and I've never had reason to question that decision. I've read about people spending $50 to grow $5 in tomatoes...I'm not one of them. I spend $50 on manure to grow >$1000 in produce yearly, and have enough to give >1/2 of it away.

Not a single one of your examples are 'more viable' than PV in every situation, and private owned home solar doesn't take public dollars away from public power projects. I looked into wind-it's way more expensive for the same generation power along with numerous other issues, nuke-also far more expensive with other long term major issues, solar thermal-hardly working as hoped yet in the few, hyper expensive plants in existence, wave-not yet but fingers crossed, hydro-DISTEROUS for the environment and short lived. (You left out geothermal, which is excellent where it's possible.)
Also, most of your examples are not viable for residential use (what we're talking about here), as you said are more expensive (so are bad economic choices), and/or have other serious ecological issues that PV does not.

Money is the only reason to stick with coal or nuclear, and that's only because the companies that use it get away with not paying for most of the true long term costs, and even with that it's now FAR more expensive to buy that coal/nuke power than it is to make your own with PV, leaving NO real reason to stick with coal or nuclear....so what are you talking about?

OK, let's ignore the sideshow and get to the point. Yes, you make choices that do no harm and make you feel better unlike others (I'm looking at you, homeopathy). So did Kriss Kross but I still feel compelled to call wearing your pants backwards stupid. Your food trend isn't that much better.
I don't have to sift through the internet to know that. Do you like dessert?
I make a lot of dessert. A LOT! Even vegan. Vegan Vanillasauce. I have to replace milk and cream with soymilk and the eggyolks with some starch (usually corn, for the gluten-free asshats). The only original ingredients are sugar (healthy!) and vanillabean.
You see the problem?
I replace ingredients you object to to mimic a product you shouldn't want in the first place. All the fucking time. All the fucking time I see vegan recipes of dishes that normally contain eggs or milk or butter or even meatproducts. I know a cook who can make vegan Leberwurst. Go on, google 'Leberwurst' and explain to me how somebody who wants to eat that and be vegan isn't a tool.
I don't mind vegetarians at all. They have actually compelling reasons for that diet choice. I wouldn't make that choice ever but I can respect theirs and believe everybody should (a lot of people don't). I loose my respect for individual vegetarians the minute they start talking about Tofuschnitzel. You want Schnitzel? Maybe you should just go and have Schnitzel. You can still eat vegetarian the rest of the week. You're just 'mostly vegetarian' then. That's fine too.
Imagine a man who tells you all the time how he disapproves of the 'homosexual lifestyle' and thinks that kind of behaviour is immoral and wrong. Then that man goes home, tells his wife to get her strap-on and moans 'Channing!' repeatedly while she does him from behind.
That man is as much of a tool as the guy who walks in a restaurant and orders vegan creme brulee. Or any pie. Or pancakes. Or Lasagne. Or a milkshake. Or something with Cheese. Or with Honey. Or icecream. Sorbets are fine though. They're mostly fruit, sugar (healthy!) and water.
I don't hate you, I just call out the stupid thing you do. You want to improve the treatment of animals, make it more ethical? That's fine, I'm with you on that. I just don't see how not using butter can help.

Your video, A new way to make you puke up your corn dog, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

To think I was going to make a flippant comment about a fire at a water park... Isn't that stuff basically coloured corn starch powder? So yah, dust explosion.

Also, if you're spraying that stuff that thick isn't it gonna cause all kinds of respiratory problems regardless of whether it ignites?

Perhaps in some minor 'unknown' areas for unknown reasons that could be true, but overall it's far from true. The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap. You and they don't even mention the mechanism that traps methane at all, the methane being released is from bacteria eating thawed organic material.

EDIT: Actually, your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets"...it said "numerical simulations predict" they exist, "but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear." This means places where methane capture outpaces release, or happens at all, have not been found-'location unclear'.

OK, you did say 'if we magically remove all the CO2 we've ever produced' (ignoring methane and other greenhouse gasses) in your second post. I missed the 'magic removal' part. My mistake, but that makes it a silly argument since we can't do magic. If we could, there would be no problem....and if I crapped diamonds I would be rich.

Well, in the context of talking to a person from 1912, if you explained to them that the 'progress' (by which I guess you mean population explosion and technical advancements) of the last century comes at the cost of the environment, nature, and may destroy the planet over the next century (at least for human survival), I would bet anyone with an IQ of 90+ will say 'selling (or even gambling) our permanent future for temporary industrial progress is a terrible idea, no thanks'.

Well, you must see that some of that great 'food production' is actually corn and grain for livestock, bio fuels, palm oils, etc., not human food stuffs. In order to make that 'food', forests are destroyed, removing entire eco systems that provided 'bush taco' (natural foods) which wasn't included in the equations about overall food production. Food HARVESTS of natural foods have declined rapidly worldwide, just look at the ocean. It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates. Kill the base of the food web, and the web falls apart. It's a rare place today that can support a human population without industrial agriculture and food importation, both of which have failed to solve starvation issues to date.

You can only be ignoring that data about it being catastrophic. I referenced it earlier. Just to mention ONE way, by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage. In most cases, there's absolutely no way to fix this. For instance, Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade, and that rate is expected to continue to accelerate. With no water, industrial agriculture fails instantly, and people die in 3 days or so. There's NO solution for this disaster, not a plan, not an idea, nothing. There are already immigration problems worldwide, how to solve that when the immigration increases exponentially everywhere?

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions, and insistence that, contrary to all human history and all scientific evidence, this time humans will find and implement a working solution to the problem in time (already too late IMO) that's not worse than the problem was, and so we should not be bothered by the coming massive shortages and upheaval that comes with them, because somehow in that upheaval we'll find and implement massive global solutions to currently insurmountable issues. We can't even slow down the rate of increase in CO2 emissions, it's unbelievable to think we'll turn that to a negative number in 20-30 years even if the tech is invented (which still leaves us in Mad Max times at best, IMO), much more so to think we could erase 100 years of emissions in that time. EDIT:...and I find that kind of dangerous unrealistic suggestion insulting.

Wow.... that is ridiculous.

There is literally one excuse for this: if by some random chance, someone exactly matching his description (and no, I don't mean "black", I mean corn rows, jeans, black tshirt) had just committed a serious crime with an ar-15.

Somehow, I doubt that's the case.

See what happens when you don't use Gorilla glass from Corning..

My family owns and operates a farm, wheat and corn, in Kansas. We use Roundup herbicides sometimes.

Specifically, there is a GMO variant of field corn called "Roundup Ready" where the corn is genetically resistant to the herbicide. Plant a field of that corn, then after it emerges but well before harvesting (obviously) spray it with Roundup, diluted to an appropriate level. All of the pest plants in the field die. The corn looks a little wilted / harried for a few days after spraying, but bounces back and grows out just fine.

We use that specific kind (Roundup Ready) about 1 year out of every 4 or 5, only when pest plants are starting to become an issue. They'd love to sell it to farmers every year, but most only rotate it in when necessary, just like us, and use a small amount of normal seed (not GMO, just some of the normal corn we harvest) held in reserve from previous year(s) in the other years.

Before Roundup (and other major herbicides and pesticides), pest plants could be a major problem. From what my family says, corn can cross-pollinate or do some kind of hybridization with other crops like milo or sorghum or something, which results in a sterile cane-stalk plant like corn that produces no actual grain. Back 20+ years ago, that was a fairly major problem ... but it is very easily controlled nowadays with herbicides, and Roundup in particular.

Pure, concentrated Roundup is pretty nasty stuff. Then again, farmers still use or have used a lot of much nastier stuff during normal farm operations, like Malathion being sprinkled into grain bins to kill off insects and other small pests. I wouldn't want to chug down a glass full of any of that crap, BUT on the other hand I think we're way better as the human race off WITH all these things being used to control what can be or have been significantly damaging pests than how things would be WITHOUT them. Not to mention that all of these things are used in very very trace amounts compared to the actual amount of food produced itself, and usually a *really* long time before it becomes food. I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to detect any of them in the parts-per-multi-multi-billion scale by them time we eat them.


...That being said, the dude walked right in to this one. If his message was "this stuff is 100% safe and beneficial if used properly", I'd actually 100% agree with him. But when he's trying to oversell it by saying that it is perfectly safe to drink a glass of it ... of course somebody is going to call his bluff. Duh.

As an interesting parallel; my dog started losing his hair. I went online to figure out the cause and learned a lot of good information. Food sensitivity causes canine hair loss, corn based diets are bad for dogs, large inexpensive name brands use suspect ingredients...there were tons of forum discussions available with information. Pages of talk with people's experience trying to correct the problem. Inevitably, they fed the dog such and such terribly expensive food and the problem went away...then the manufacturer must have changed the formula because it came back...tried new ultra expensive dog food which fixed the problem....

Everyone obviously loved their dogs and they were doing everything they could to fix it. Same story over and over, tons of money spent.

Until I noticed one random comment that was different; "seasonal pattern baldness". Nothing you can do, it's incurable and comes and goes with the seasons.

So all the anecdotal experience, one food fixed it then the brand changed and it came back...all of it was random chance as the problem naturally came and went. But when the answer was provided, you can't fix the problem, it was completely ignored.

I believe people reject that they can't control things in life. Isnt this what makes people reject science and turn to naturalism and religion? The idea that you can reshape the world, in your own mind, into something you can control.

As someone originally from Kansas, I don't usually get to claim any superiority to Colorado. They've got mountains, skiing, sports, ...legalized weed. We've got ... um ... wheat, corn, cows, and statistically-flatter-than-a-pancake status.

But now, at least I can say that my state has better vaccination rates! Damn Colorado mountain hippies.

There aren't really many cattle ranchers in Kansas. We're more of a wheat and corn growing state.

That said, cow tipping is like snipe hunting...the target isn't the critter in the name of the activity.

I'm going to eat pop corn (literally, I am) and watch this conversation.....

Absolutely....it scares the hell out of the corn weevils!

Sugar is sucrose. Sucrose is glucose and fructose combined and it is immediately separated in the body by the saliva in your mouth. Glucose is fine for your body, it is the energy storage system that metabolizes into glycogen in the liver. Fructose, on the other hand, is a toxin that is metabolized in the body similarly to alcohol, as ChaosEngine said. Essentially it is treated as a toxin and turned into numerous by-products which do things like: delay your leptin response (you feel full later, thus making you eat more), increase your high-density lipo-protein (increasing your cholesterol and storing fat in your liver), and decreasing your sensitivity to insulin (leading to type-2 diabetes).

As to what artician said, high-fructose corn syrup and sugar are treated exactly the same in the human body. In fact, here is a list of all of the things that companies call sugar to hide it when it is the exact same thing: brown sugar, caster sugar, fruit sugar, organic sugar (in fact sometimes they just put organic in front of any of these things to make it seem better for you but trust me, it isn't), evaporated cane juice, evaporated cane syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, glucose-fructose, brown sugar, honey, molasses, golden syrup, high glucose corn syrup, agave/agave nectar, corn sweetener, fruit juice solids, cane syrup solids, fruit juice concentrate, invert sugar, maltodextrin and even fruit juice.

All of the studies done in the last 15 years have shown that sugar is sugar and calories are not calories. All of the kinds of sugar that have quantities of fructose are bad for you, except when they have fiber. This is why fruit is still good for you while fruit juice is the same thing as soda.

The only things that you do not have to avoid as a sugar are these: brown rice syrup, dextrose and glucose. All of these things are completely glucose, no fructose whatsoever. Therefore, they are largely safe. However, large quantities of glucose can give you a large liver because of the stored glycogen.

Some links if you don't believe me:

Comparison: http://www.foods4betterhealth.com/what-evaporated-cane-juice-sugar-vs-evaporated-cane-juice-8645

Aspartame: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4127 ; http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-artificial-sweeteners-safe/

HFCS vs Sugar: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157

Dangers of Fructose: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/high-fructose-corn-syrup/

High fructose corn sugar is about 55% fructose and 45% glucose.
"Table sugar" ie sucrose is about 50% fructose and 50% glucose.

Glucose is not fine. You gain the same amount of weight regardless of the type of sugar. Glucose can still kill you, but fructose is worse. It has shown some insulin resistance and also increased cholesterol levels.
http://www.webmd.com/heart/metabolic-syndrome/news/20090421/fresh-take-on-fructose-vs-glucose?page=2

HFCS is not much worse for you than table sugar, but it is worse than dextrose(ie d-glucose). Why don't more people use dextrose? It requires 3 times as much dextrose to achieve the same taste as HFCS. I'm still not sure which is worse.

PS: Both HFCS and dextrose are made from corn.