^ Not while the friends of the machine stop treating corn-cronies to massive subsidies to keep polluting our gasoline with ethanol-What is saves in pollutant emissions it makes up for by destroying fuel systems and anything rubber in your car's engine.

You think that those who stand to gain the most money from marijuana and hemp laws remaining retarded would allow what's good for the United States and her people to become educated, involved, and effectual?? Fat fucking chance. Obama won't sign dick that gets the country any closer to sanity.

Hooray for Washington and Colorado. I've lived in both states. My children live in Seattle. I hope they will see an end to prohibition in their lifetime. We all remember how well prohibition in the early part of the 20th century to trade one form of organized crime for another one, eh?

Illegal marijuana puts more military-tech and bulletproof vests into hands and on the asses of more developmentally-disabled hooligans every year. The same hooligans who are the enforcement and surveillance arm of the thugs who offered up the choices of douche or turd for president this farcical election cycle....ONE AFTER ANOTHER!!!

Coincidentally they were talking about the candidates' climate change positions on NPR yesterday. Obama himself is very quiet about it this election, too. And Romney said he agreed with scientific consensus (and even took methods to restrict carbon emissions) when he was guv in MA... funny how running for president suddenly changes everything.

>> ^VoodooV:

It's less dirty coal, but it's still dirty, yet they get to call it CLEAN for some reason.
cold fusion, solar, hydrogen fuel cells or GTFO


Name 3 things that won't work in time for it to matter!

Go gen4 reactors, lots of them, and now! I recommend David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" as to why I believe this. Available for free at http://www.withouthotair.com/

Video reference here:

http://videosift.com/video/TEDxWarwick-Physics-Constrain-Sustainable-Energy-Options


But ya, coal needs to go, but you have to remember, 2 billion people live in abject poverty. They try to bridge the gap using as cheap a source of energy they can...like coal. Until you make energy cheaper than coal, your never going to displace the use of dino fuels around the world. The physics on fusion, solar, and hydrogen can't answer that call for quite awhile (we have been trying to make fusion work for decades, same with solar, and fuel cells are just terrible right now and only work for transportation fuels not baseload power generation). I do think we can answer a large number of these problems with new generations of nuclear power, with passive safety and no emissions, gen4 reactors have a lot of great points if people give them a chance!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

In relation to the direct content of the video, your NEVER going to get China and India on board with giving up cheap energy...they are BOTH x3 the population of the US, they have to care about cheap energy WAAAAY more than us, for population and standard of living issues. The only way to win this isn't through regulation, it is through technological innovation...and China has been buying up our AP1000 Gen3 for all the reasons I just mentioned.

To say that dino fuels are "Destroying us" is a little bit of a misnomer, you don't get food without hydrocarbons, you don't have refrigeration without hydrocarbons, you don't get heating and cooling without hydrocarbons. Energy isn't the enemy, any attempts to price out energy will only hurt the most reliant on its low price...if you doubled the price of gas via taxation, you aren't helping the little man. Cheap energy prices, even if they are oil based, aren't the devil, any attempts to make them so is a misunderstanding of the energy crisis. More oil drilling isn't even going to lower costs, at best, it will keep them the same, but peak oil in the US has already come, more drilling in more exotic places is just going to tow the line...and it isn't even going to do that.

Talking about clean coal is just so "we" can talk about how much we need cheap energy without talking about the health effects. Coal does kill, without a doubt, but so does electricity so costly you can't afford heating or cooling. You can't call for an elimination of coal without talking about what is going to replace it, and at what cost. This is even MORE relevant with the recent spout of weather, imagine if that area was packed full of solar and wind...it most likely be completely destroyed, and those are already very cost heavy forms of energy.

Anyway, I will end the rant. I really recommend the book above if you wish to delve down the rabbit hole of energy solutions. It isn't as easy as you think, it is why we are still using dino fuels. Any path you choose is challenging, and VERY capital and R&D intensive. Were are talking multiple trillion dollars to role out replacements on a national scale. Now, oil does a trillion a year, so this isn't outside the realm of possibility, but it is going to take a technical answer to solve, not a political one.

@Sagemind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal "Historically, the term has been used to refer to technologies for reducing emissions of ash, sulfur, and heavy metals from coal combustion."

Tired of that $2.6 Million Program that Teaches Chinese Prostitutes to Drink?

by John Ransom


Liberty is about a lot of things; it’s a deep topic. But at its core liberty can be summed up in one simple and reciprocal concept. That concept is respect.

You know the 2010 last election was about many things, but it was mostly about respect.

It was about starting to restore the respect that people have in government, by getting the government to restore the respect that they show to you…by taking liberty seriously.

If you are like me, you think that many of our elected officials from both the right and the left truly believe that what they think of you is much more important than what you think of them.

If you’re like me you’re tired of a trillion dollars in so-called stimulus spending that went to mob-connected asphalt contractors rather than the pockets of working families who own businesses and pay taxes and do all the working and dreaming in this country.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of a $2.6 million program that teaches Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly while unemployment soars across the country.

If you’re like me, you're tired of an arrogant federal government which pays out $47 billion in fraudulent claims in Medicare every year while they lecture the rest of us about healthcare economics.

If you are like me, you’re tired of the US Postal service wasting $30 million on a program that pays 1100 employees to do nothing. Yes, today, the US Post Office sat 1100 employees in empty rooms, as they do every day, and literally paid them to do nothing. They can’t play cards; they can’t watch TV, in fact they can’t do anything at all. To the tune of $30 million per year.


Yet this very same federal government comes to us now and proposes to manage our healthcare, our retirement, the education of our children, the auto industry, the oil industry, pharmaceuticals, the mortgage industry and lectures the American people that they are under-regulated.

If you’re a middle American like me, from the grassroots, I bet you know someone who owns their own business; if you’re like me you probably know someone who has paid employees of that business on time every week, but hasn’t been able to pay themselves a dime. Yet these very same people who provide half the new jobs in our economy, who have lost money over the last few years, still owe the government tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year. People wonder where our jobs have gone? They’ve been crushed by a system that doesn’t honor job creation; by a system that doesn’t honor liberty; a system that gives no respect.

And if you are like most of the voters I speak to, you are tired of insiders from Washington and Wall Street on both sides of the aisle, and their wasteful spending schemes that don’t even propose to solve the very issues facing Main Street and working families.

Let’s suppose global warming is real; I don’t think it is, but let’s say it's so for the sake of argument. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard-- which will cost American families $1800 per year-- please show me how it’s going to lower the earth’s temperature. They can’t because the Renewable Electricity Standard wasn’t created to combat global warming and it won’t lower the earth’s temperature.

Ok, so let’s suppose the issue is carbon emission; that carbon is really bad and we have to get it out of our atmosphere. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard is going to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. They can’t. It wasn’t designed to do that and it won’t do that.

The government doesn't write legislation with solutions in mind, but rather with power and control of your very lives. And it is inside of your lives where you will wrestle back that control.

I’m often reminded that it’s with readers just like you where many of the seminal events of our country happened. It’s in rooms just like you’re in right now that a small group of patriots in Massachusetts planned the Boston Tea Party; it’s in groups just like you are a part of today that was born the Mayflower Compact; it’s in the free association of our citizens, for the common good and with common respect, that the greatness and goodness of our country will always be found.

And as long as people like you, freely associate for the common good and meet in respect, our country will always remain both great and good.

But ordinary people are paying attention, actually reading the Constitution; people are actually asking questions about the 10th Amendment, asking: What kind of power does Washington really have over us?

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people who have been awakened to that yet, that’s why readers like you are so important. Each individual reading this is so incredibly important because the job you have this year as a citizen has never, ever, ever been more important. The 2012 election is going to determine what it’s like to live in this country for a long time. It’s going to be people just like you, having conversation just like this, in rooms across America that are going to make a difference.

This is the chance to turn the tide. The chance we have today is to bury that last vestiges of big government in our country; to reclaim our liberty from a new deal and replace it with a true deal.

I’ve been very fortunate because over the last half dozen years I’ve been able to travel all around the country working with grassroots activists just like you. I understand, I think, better than elected officials, what makes the grassroots so special. It's you and your ability to communicate.

We have all these new tools available for citizens to communicate that just a few years ago we didn’t have. A few years ago readers wouldn’t have been as energized and as informed because we didn’t have the ability to communicate as we do now. We have been so fractured and fragmented all around the country and around the nation that we feel like we can’t do anything, that Washington is so big and out of touch that we can’t do anything.

In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Now is the time we really do have the opportunity. For the first time in our history ordinary citizens have the ability to communicate with one another over the heads of the media in publications like Townhall. We are networked on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter that expose us to thousands of people for free.

But when I was growing up there were three TV stations and two newspapers in every town that decided what the news was. There were probably a dozen people in any town that picked our news for us.

Those days are over.

This election isn’t about voting for the next person standing in a long line of elites who will rule over us; it’s about what kind of country we want to be in the future.

It’s about preserving the American dream right here right now. Because when they mess with our liberty, they really mess with our ability to dream.

I believe that the ability to dream is worth handing down to our kids.

I believe that it’s our dreams that makes us the most dynamic country in the world.

It’s the dream that brings jobs and prosperity to the US.

It’s a dream that treats promises like they really matter.

And it’s the dreams that are the promise of America.

Because when politicians treat the promises they campaign on like they matter, when they are held accountable to those pledges-- by us-- we will restore the respect they owe us.

So it seems like the big question is, assuming humans could reduce CO₂ and other green house gas emissions to (a) zero tomorrow, what happens to the climate/atmosphere over the next century? What is the effect if we reduce them to (b) 50% current output? What is the effect at (c) 85% output?

Assuming (a), are we already past a point at which extreme weather, sea level rise, etc. will disrupt human activity for at least 20 years? Would that be the case assuming (b) or (c)? The question we really need an answer to is how do we optimize, over time, the economically relevant weather extremities against energy generation and consumption.
In reply to this comment by DerHasisttot:
FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Also: "Global warming is the current rise in the average temperature....

>> ^PancakeMaster:

> But just how much can you realistically reduce your emissions by through changed behaviour?
More than you can by buying a new car and continuing your status quo.


You'd be surprised. People have to eat and work. Most of their emissions are from food, and getting to work and back. You can't take a city like New York and just get them to start buying their produce locally, unless you want them to starve, it's gonna take more than the surrounding 100 miles to grow the food they need.

Buying a new electric car and having your produce delivered by electric truck or train would do more. Producing that electricity from nuclear would be radically more.

Large urban centers just aren't able to cut emissions in any of the ways you previously mentioned, it just doesn't work without transporting food a long ways, and the only way to get that off oil is electricity right now.

> But just how much can you realistically reduce your emissions by through changed behaviour?

More than you can by buying a new car and continuing your status quo.

>> ^PancakeMaster:

So the land development, building and fueling/mining of a nuclear power plant is free of emissions? What about waste disposal and decommissioning? Bremnet speaks the truth, albeit in a markedly sarcastic way. Car emissions come from energy production. Electric cars simply have their energy production out-sourced. Things become interesting at a local level with electric transport because you can potentially choose how your energy is produced. But you'd better believe that coal and oil is still powering all things electric in the majority of households, including recharging batteries.
I am a huge proponent of nuclear power, though I really wish LFTR's would come into production especially considering it's organic safety features and relative fuel abundance.
Since we're on the subject of electric cars, don't forget that the production of batteries and electric motors is very expensive. I'm not necessarily talking about monetary costs, but rather cost in resources and energy. Again, I support the development and usage of electric vehicles but dare not ignore their true cost.
>It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits.
You have so much more power to control your resource usage than the government. Don't rely on them for a solution. You can choose what you eat (agriculture is a huge resource spender), how you travel (walk or take public transport), what and why you buy (industry is another big spender), and your home resource usage. Don't pass the buck and blindly empower the government when it's our responsibility.
Now if only the planet was run on pancake power. Then, surely, I would be the true master of Earth.
edit
BTW, great video and awesome car. Would love to give it a go (as with all Audi Rx cars
>> ^bcglorf:
Well, nuclear is there to make electricity and vehicles emission free. If the greens hadn't worked so hard to ensure that nuclear power was stopped the 41% for electricity and whatever chunk of transportation is vehicles would all be gone.
But fine, is you wanna be sarcastic how about you chime in with a better solution. You hear plenty of chicken little's running around crying it's time to panic. You hear plenty of talk about reducing our emissions. You don't hear nearly so much about how to do that. It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits. Without nuclear power for electricity production and switching large parts of transportation over to electricity, what is left? Are we just to stop using transportation and electricity all together I suppose?
>> ^bremnet:
Yes, so true. Just look at all of the countries signing up for new nuclear power plants. Oh, and of course, those who generate their electricity today with that peskily cheaper natural gas from shale gas will likely just shut that down. Forgot to ask, how do we generate the electricity to charge our batteries? If you say anything that involves rubbing balloons in ones hair, well that's just too clever! Let's see - in 2009, 41% of global CO2 emissions were from the generation of electricity and heat, and only 23% for transport per the IEA report (that's all transport - cars, trucks, buses, seagoing vessels, trains, planes) so let's call your 30% a rounding error. By 2015, it is estimated that the total CO2 emissions from seagoing vessels will surpass that for all land based automobiles, so can we get a video of an electric cargo ship instead of this car? Pretty sure they have those, right? If we have electric vehicles, and have to generate more electricity ummm... (head explodes). Top marks for enthusiasm, but I'm afraid we're going to have to keep you back for another year to re-teach math and energy balance.




But just how much can you realistically reduce your emissions by through changed behaviour? I doubt even 50% is realistic. Now, how about getting our entire society to do the same, are people gonna voluntarily give up everything they need to drop 50%? Not a chance.

If electric cars can be improved enough to be desirable over gas, then a switch over to nuclear for electricity production can drop emissions nearly 50%. More importantly, it happens by consumers buying something new because they simply want to, and government/corporations making money off selling nuclear energy to run everyone's new cars.

Short of putting guns to peoples heads and telling them what they can and can not eat, how far they are allowed to travel in a year, and enforcing that across the globe, emissions ARE NOT going to be lowered. Electric cars and nuclear power are the only viable options out there and they are either ready now(nuclear) or will be very, very soon(electric cars).

So the land development, building and fueling/mining of a nuclear power plant is free of emissions? What about waste disposal and decommissioning? Bremnet speaks the truth, albeit in a markedly sarcastic way. Car emissions come from energy production. Electric cars simply have their energy production out-sourced. Things become interesting at a local level with electric transport because you can potentially choose how your energy is produced. But you'd better believe that coal and oil is still powering all things electric in the majority of households, including recharging batteries.

I am a huge proponent of nuclear power, though I really wish LFTR's would come into production especially considering it's organic safety features and relative fuel abundance.

Since we're on the subject of electric cars, don't forget that the production of batteries and electric motors is very expensive. I'm not necessarily talking about monetary costs, but rather cost in resources and energy. Again, I support the development and usage of electric vehicles but dare not ignore their true cost.

>It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits.

You have so much more power to control your resource usage than the government. Don't rely on them for a solution. You can choose what you eat (agriculture is a huge resource spender), how you travel (walk or take public transport), what and why you buy (industry is another big spender), and your home resource usage. Don't pass the buck and blindly empower the government when it's our responsibility.

Now if only the planet was run on pancake power. Then, surely, I would be the true master of Earth.

*edit*

BTW, great video and awesome car. Would love to give it a go (as with all Audi Rx cars

>> ^bcglorf:

Well, nuclear is there to make electricity and vehicles emission free. If the greens hadn't worked so hard to ensure that nuclear power was stopped the 41% for electricity and whatever chunk of transportation is vehicles would all be gone.
But fine, is you wanna be sarcastic how about you chime in with a better solution. You hear plenty of chicken little's running around crying it's time to panic. You hear plenty of talk about reducing our emissions. You don't hear nearly so much about how to do that. It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits. Without nuclear power for electricity production and switching large parts of transportation over to electricity, what is left? Are we just to stop using transportation and electricity all together I suppose?

>> ^bremnet:
Yes, so true. Just look at all of the countries signing up for new nuclear power plants. Oh, and of course, those who generate their electricity today with that peskily cheaper natural gas from shale gas will likely just shut that down. Forgot to ask, how do we generate the electricity to charge our batteries? If you say anything that involves rubbing balloons in ones hair, well that's just too clever! Let's see - in 2009, 41% of global CO2 emissions were from the generation of electricity and heat, and only 23% for transport per the IEA report (that's all transport - cars, trucks, buses, seagoing vessels, trains, planes) so let's call your 30% a rounding error. By 2015, it is estimated that the total CO2 emissions from seagoing vessels will surpass that for all land based automobiles, so can we get a video of an electric cargo ship instead of this car? Pretty sure they have those, right? If we have electric vehicles, and have to generate more electricity ummm... (head explodes). Top marks for enthusiasm, but I'm afraid we're going to have to keep you back for another year to re-teach math and energy balance.

Well, nuclear is there to make electricity and vehicles emission free. If the greens hadn't worked so hard to ensure that nuclear power was stopped the 41% for electricity and whatever chunk of transportation is vehicles would all be gone.

But fine, is you wanna be sarcastic how about you chime in with a better solution. You hear plenty of chicken little's running around crying it's time to panic. You hear plenty of talk about reducing our emissions. You don't hear nearly so much about how to do that. It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits. Without nuclear power for electricity production and switching large parts of transportation over to electricity, what is left? Are we just to stop using transportation and electricity all together I suppose?


>> ^bremnet:

Yes, so true. Just look at all of the countries signing up for new nuclear power plants. Oh, and of course, those who generate their electricity today with that peskily cheaper natural gas from shale gas will likely just shut that down. Forgot to ask, how do we generate the electricity to charge our batteries? If you say anything that involves rubbing balloons in ones hair, well that's just too clever! Let's see - in 2009, 41% of global CO2 emissions were from the generation of electricity and heat, and only 23% for transport per the IEA report (that's all transport - cars, trucks, buses, seagoing vessels, trains, planes) so let's call your 30% a rounding error. By 2015, it is estimated that the total CO2 emissions from seagoing vessels will surpass that for all land based automobiles, so can we get a video of an electric cargo ship instead of this car? Pretty sure they have those, right? If we have electric vehicles, and have to generate more electricity ummm... (head explodes). Top marks for enthusiasm, but I'm afraid we're going to have to keep you back for another year to re-teach math and energy balance.

Good news everyone. The climate change problem has been solved!

Seriously, with electric cars so near to eclipsing gas we are very close to a landslide change of technology. Batteries are getting good enough that electric cars will very soon be better than gas in every way. Once that happens, gas and therefore oil, consumption will drop near to zero. Human CO2 emissions will drop by almost 30%, and for no other reason than people buying that new car they want. Any nation willing to adopt nuclear can at any moment drop off another 80% of what is left.

The technology stop human CO2 emissions is coming or already here, and people will adopt it without needing to frighten, scare or coerce them into it.

Also, the claim about CO emission might be correct if you consider the entire life-cycle of getting the fuel to the stove. The gas needed to be extracted, likely purified through a process requiring energy, somehow packaged in materials requiring energy to create and at pressure which would require further energy. Then it needs to be distributed as well. The sticks you just pick up, and before they fell they had a negative carbon footprint.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@spawnflagger and @bmacs27
This wiki is one of the things I consult often.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Common_energy_densities


Regardless of how effective you make burning wood, it will NEVER be as energetic as the same volume of gas or petrol. And if gas/petrol/coal engines are out of reach financially, burning wood for electricity most likely will be as well. Though, spawn pointed out perhaps it supplying a regular stream of electricity of very little energy makes up for the lack of conductivity of poor communities. I don't tend to share that opinion and think that their standard of living will only be greatly improved with access to very large amounts of cheap energy; the difference between starting up a camp fire and an actual power plant. Helping a poor society charge connected devices isn't what catapults counties into the first world, having an infrastructure of energy is.
And ya, they are using a TEGs for electrical generation. It provides the lion share of energy to the fan that is helping aid complete combustion for the smoke reduction. This is why it is such a poor electrical device, TEGs are horrible in the efficiency department. You could get far more electrical output via some type of steam device burning wood than this; which would more than likely benefit an entire town via its considerable electrical output (for the third world). But it should be known before hand that wood burning is dirty business. Even if you engaged in catalytic conversion of carbon monoxide, burning wood on a large scale for electrical generation would have similar effects to the health of a community as a coal fire plant; perhaps worse because it would be located much closer to the population than coal fire plants usually are.
And to be fair to this thing, I think it is pretty cool...but for the first world. Unless they are literally handing these out in the third world, it will do them no benefit, and the money they spend handing these out...they could be installing a power distribution system with an actual power plant and improve their well being by orders of magnitude.


Now this I disagree with. They are right that most third world countries are using wood cooking fires anyway. So simply the smoke and emission savings over that are worthwhile. The electrical generation is a nice side benefit, and many of those countries are seeing the proliferation of small electrical devices, e.g. cell phones and leds. I think it's a device that could greatly improve the lives of people in less developed communities (especially the home stove version).