It'a fake. Not only is the guy's scale too small in comparison with the truck, you can also see some weird movement when he's on the rooftop, where his movement and the truck's don't match.

Shout it from the rooftops - "There are enough humans on planet earth."

We need to be discussing openly in every community and every country, how we can support family planning for lower populations, and how we can collectively survive this century when human population will reach its peak.

*eco *humanitarian

Hydrogen and oxygen...a bond not easily broken. I like this idea of using photovoltaic cells to power a form of electrolysis...but it is just so darned slow to make energy. Unless he knows something that I don't, your rooftop doesn't generate enough electricity to convert enough hydrogen and oxygen to run real time. We share the same dream though, of homes being their own power sources. I hope this solution has more weight that solutions of similar natures gone by.

Wow!

Wait, didn't he die on that rooftop, in the rain?

Sounds like someone is attempting to shift blame from the myriad of other problems. I can understand looking into this to see how it could have been handled better, but blaming anyone for possibly damaging/sinking a burning structure....and one that is so fully engulfed in flames that multiple boats aren't able to extinguish it in the process.....is nuts. Unless those people got on board this oil rig and started the fire in the first place, I don't see the point of trying to shift attention onto their efforts to put it out as a bad thing.

The alternative to let it burn itself out would have resulted and just as likely may have resulted in this rig sinking due to temperatures causing metals to fatigue/warp and other things just simply explode from having massive temperature changes due to the fueled fire taking place on much cooler water.

The only thing this investigation could possibly benefit from is that it may allow them to stand a chance to extinguish fires like this in the future, but it looks to me like there's a bit of a campaign here going to try to blame the Coast Guard for BPs failures to take the time to properly close off a well resulting in much more than just a burned up rig but the deaths of people, and the resulting oil spill killing off countless wildlife and creating potential (more likely than not in my opinion) long term health problems for everyone exposed.

And there is the underlying problem of the government regulations being too lax when it comes to oil drilling where as other countries require relief wells to be in place before disaster strikes. Non-existent oversight.......no requirement for oil cleanup R&D.......just a policy of make as much money as you can off government contracts and hope nothing goes wrong so people won't look at hard at all of us.

The coast guard is featured in a much better light on shows like "The Biggest Catch" where a boat has catastrophic failures and these guys have to go out to save their asses from a fiery, freezing, drowning, etc death. Or when they have their specials and show the coast guard and such rescuing people from rooftops after hurricane Katrina and developing new techniques on the spot to be taught as part of the training after it's all over.

Blaming the coast guard is just an attempt to shift blame off BP and regulations committees/politicians in bed with them. It's akin to blaming the police department for 9/11 or the fire department for being unable to deal with large radioactive contamination. Who expects some crazy bastards to create the conditions for catastrophic failures and not let anyone know what the hell they did before it's too late to act on it? Some do, but you'll run out of funds trying to prepare for everything and you'll go crazy trying to predict them all. So you do the best you can and punish the people who CAUSED the problem, not the people who were unawares of it until it's exploding in their face. That's just ass backwards.

Hey Winston,
Sorry a couple of points I was trying to make got a little muddled and mashed together in my last comment during editing before I rushed out to work. Including my math on 6x10.

What I told youabout my friends building a house and being off the grid is true. I know because they did it, and I've seen it. Their house is in Quebec, not some backhills somewhere. I've been there. They made me pizza.

Yeah, I'm sure that they're paying some interest on the loan they got to pay for it all up front, but they did it for less than $11,000. And fully installed by electricians. They're fully off the grid for electricity. They use a gas stove instead of electric, and they don't have a microwave, in order to cut down on power drain. But they have a fridge, lights, hot water, computers and everything else you would expect a family home to have.

I don't know where you got the rest of your figures. All I can tell you is what I've seen with my own eyes. And that the tomatoes on the pizza were grown in their vegetable garden, the pepperoni sausage came from the meat shop a 10 minute drive away, and it made for a memorable meal.



>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

600 square feet of panels is two 6'x5' panels on a rooftop--that isn't very big.
Elementary geometry says you need TWENTY 6'x5' panels to get 600 sq feet. Regardless, the issue is not the surface area per se but the COST to cover that much surface area. Photovolt panels are expensive, highly inefficient, and use toxic elements. They need maintainance, replacing, repair, and have a lifecycle. Same with the VERY expensive batteries you need to buy.
And it doesn't cost $50,000 per household.
Many estimates put the installation of a fully functional solar powered home at well over $50K. 660 sq ft costs $10,853 just for the panels using the cheapest product I could find. Then there is wiring, connectors, inverters, batteries, mounts, control panels, and monitors... The backhills of Alberta may be different, but in the U.S. it is highly illegal to install your own electrical system... You're looking at thousands in licensing, regulatory, and labor. $10K? Not on this planet.
But let's say you're super lucky and manage to get the whole shebang installed for only $25K somehow. [...]

600 square feet of panels is two 6'x5' panels on a rooftop--that isn't very big.

Elementary geometry says you need TWENTY 6'x5' panels to get 600 sq feet. Regardless, the issue is not the surface area per se but the COST to cover that much surface area. Photovolt panels are expensive, highly inefficient, and use toxic elements. They need maintainance, replacing, repair, and have a lifecycle. Same with the VERY expensive batteries you need to buy.

And it doesn't cost $50,000 per household.

Many estimates put the installation of a fully functional solar powered home at well over $50K. 660 sq ft costs $10,853 just for the panels using the cheapest product I could find. Then there is wiring, connectors, inverters, batteries, mounts, control panels, and monitors... The backhills of Alberta may be different, but in the U.S. it is highly illegal to install your own electrical system... You're looking at thousands in licensing, regulatory, and labor. $10K? Not on this planet.

But let's say you're super lucky and manage to get the whole shebang installed for only $25K somehow. That's about $150 a year in savings over 20 years versus fossil, or $13 a month. Is that worth it? Well, no. There's a reason people don't buy 20 years of food at once in order to save a few pennies a day. Same goes here.

Imagine you install your cool new solar system and 5 years later you lose your job. Unless you make up the cost in the sale of your house, you just lost $15K pal. Good luck selling your house when you're charging $15K more than the guy down the street... And get ready to pay ANOTHER $20K to install your new system in your next house... Oh nos! You need to move again in 3 years...? (Sad trombone...)

Solar is OK for heating water. It sucks for general purpose electrical needs. It is a pipe dream, because it can't be done in a way that makes sense because the technology is still too expensive. Yeah - people are 'doing' it... People are also 'doing' hydrogen fuel cells for cars but 99.99% of the population can't afford the $100,000 price tag.

Why do you have such a blind allegiance to the republican ideals?

I'm not a Republican, so I'm not even sure what you mean by this. This has nothing to do with politics. This is about common sense and what is actually possible with real-world physics and economics. I realize such things are problematic obstacles to people who are blinded by political blinders - but they still matter on planet Earth.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:


The average household uses 1,000kWh a month. This would require 666 sq ft of solar paneling. There were 105 million households in the US in 2000. This means to supply only the residential needs of the U.S. we would need 70 BILLION square feet of solar paneling every 20 years. Those facile with math will note this is 2,590 square miles...

...Or 1/2 the rooftops of New York, L.A. and Los Vegas.

600 square feet of panels is two 6'x5' panels on a rooftop--that isn't very big. I have some friends that are _completely off the grid_ using this much solar a small windmill. Land space is an invalid argument against solar power.

And it doesn't cost $50,000 per household. My friends, who have no bills for electricity or heating, had their system (including the windmill and battery storage system) installed for just over $10,000 (CDN.) To run powerlines to their house would have cost $15,000, and they would have still had to pay the electric company monthly fees for lights. Yes it was a small loan, but in 5 years that will be paid off, and there will be no more bills, save a little engine oil for the windmill. Whoever is quoting you numbers like $50k per home is misleading you.

It isn't a pipe dream. People are doing it.

Shooting the shit with Neil Degrasse Tyson on a rooftop patio bar on a clear night is my definition of paradise.

If you want to be a stick-in-the-mud about it...

There's a great patio at the Victory

Yet another is the awesome rooftop at The Pilot

And - believe it or not - this place has a great backyard patio with good grub.

From 1:55 to 3:30 he lays out a pretty good argument for never listening to anti-government revolutionaries. It's the only really persuasive argument he gives.

From the start to the 1:55 mark, he demonstrates why I often tune out libertarian writings/videos, since they seem to be unable to get to the point without making a litany of false assertions about the nature of the world they're in, and then building on those false assertions by declaring them obvious fact and that "everyone" already agrees with their point of view, they just don't know it yet.

He kicks off the remaining 4 and a half minutes by declaring that he's not about to describe a utopia. He then proceeds to say all the things utopians of all stripes say. Things like "only we understand human nature", "only we understand how to create a society that's moral", "only we know how to enforce the One True Moral Code without corruption", and the eternal utopian promise of happiness, freedom, piety, and plenty.

It's a pretty basic paradox libertarians need to deal with. To enforce your moral code you need a state, or a state-like actor (e.g. a private jurisprudence provider). All states (and state-like actors) are susceptible to corruption from within and without, especially if you define "corruption" as including giving in to popular demands for tax-funded welfare programs. Without any state, someone will eventually create one, or an existing neighbor state will assume control of the region to "help out".

If there's a solution to that dynamic, libertarians shouldn't play coy "buy my book" games with it, they should be shouting it from the rooftops.

>> ^rottenseed:
>> ^oxdottir:
I think you need quite a tall rooftop for this to be true.
>> ^rottenseed:
The harder thing to understand would be if I told you that if you fired a bullet from a rooftop straight down to the ground, or you fired it at an upward angle, due to the conservation of energy, both bullets would have to be travelling at the same velocity magnitude when they hit the ground (although direction at impact would be different, obviously).


nope...be it an inch or 100 stories
Ug + KE(initial) = KE(final) for both scenarios the potential energy do to being on a roof and the velocity of the bullet leaving the gun are the same. As long as the mass of the bullets are the same, it'll land with the same velocity. (Trust me when I first heard that I did the brute force kinematic equations to solve this problem and it is in fact the same velocity.)




No. The longer a bullet is in flight, the more air resistance has affected it. The one fired at the ground would get there quicker, thereby retaining more of the energy imparted on it by the exploding gunpowder.

>> ^rottenseed:
>> ^oxdottir:
I think you need quite a tall rooftop for this to be true.
>> ^rottenseed:
The harder thing to understand would be if I told you that if you fired a bullet from a rooftop straight down to the ground, or you fired it at an upward angle, due to the conservation of energy, both bullets would have to be travelling at the same velocity magnitude when they hit the ground (although direction at impact would be different, obviously).


nope...be it an inch or 100 stories
Ug + KE(initial) = KE(final) for both scenarios the potential energy do to being on a roof and the velocity of the bullet leaving the gun are the same. As long as the mass of the bullets are the same, it'll land with the same velocity. (Trust me when I first heard that I did the brute force kinematic equations to solve this problem and it is in fact the same velocity.)

If I'm not mistaken, this also holds true for a bullet fired at a downward angle as well. (Since the upward angle bullet eventually becomes an identical downward angle bullet once it crosses back beyond the level from which it was fired.)
Of course, the confusing thing in the problem, if I understand correctly, is that velocity magnitude at impact is identical, while downward velocity will be less for the angled bullet.

>> ^oxdottir:
I think you need quite a tall rooftop for this to be true.
>> ^rottenseed:
The harder thing to understand would be if I told you that if you fired a bullet from a rooftop straight down to the ground, or you fired it at an upward angle, due to the conservation of energy, both bullets would have to be travelling at the same velocity magnitude when they hit the ground (although direction at impact would be different, obviously).


nope...be it an inch or 100 stories

Ug + KE(initial) = KE(final) for both scenarios the potential energy do to being on a roof and the velocity of the bullet leaving the gun are the same. As long as the mass of the bullets are the same, it'll land with the same velocity. (Trust me when I first heard that I did the brute force kinematic equations to solve this problem and it is in fact the same velocity.)

I think you need quite a tall rooftop for this to be true.

>> ^rottenseed:
The harder thing to understand would be if I told you that if you fired a bullet from a rooftop straight down to the ground, or you fired it at an upward angle, due to the conservation of energy, both bullets would have to be travelling at the same velocity magnitude when they hit the ground (although direction at impact would be different, obviously).