Oil taxes create problems for the countries that levy them. It's very difficult, for example, to be an entrepeneur in Norway. The North Sea money isn't all of the problem, but it's a lot of it. And Amerind Indian tribes frequently end up as defacto kleptocracies when oil revenue is involved. It can be done, but it's not easy.
What should happen first is that all subsidies to oil producers be stopped, give the markets time to adjust, then see what things look like. That really should produce an optimal arrangement.
No wonder you are so worried about bad government if they cannot even get the basics right.
But are they not private companies flogging their wares? And in a country with as far as I can tell no advertising standards you can't actually trust a word they say.
In the UK the feedin tariff to encourage uptake of PV technology actually makes the investment financially worthwhile if you have a suitable roofspace. Guaranteed 8% tax free on £20k for 25 years (assuming they don't renege on the contract). I know that this is completely insane at my latitude.
Insulating the loft and cavity walls is relatively easy and has a very rapid payback of 2-3 years. Changing windows has very slow payback, but installing much cheaper secondary glazing is worthwhile. There are fairly cheap water clear cast acrylic variants that are easy DIY.
You can bet your bottom dollar that some of the products are gaming the energy efficiency tests.
I agree, but in a country where oversize everything is in fashion you will have an uphill struggle trying to persuade them to change. That is sort of what you have governments for to decide on long term strategies.
It won't, but that isn't an excuse not to save energy.
What are they doing? Running a pottery kiln or something?
OK. I apologise. I am just so used to this trash the planet and let the kids sort it out tomorrow attitude that is so prevalent in the USA.
PV is tremendously disappointing. I have never been able to find a design justification for using it. I do have a couple of solar powered calculators and a solar powered battery charger that just about work.
The AGW science case is much stronger than you think. You have been reading too many paranoid right wing websites.
There are several sorts of models involved. You discount them only because you don't like the answers they are giving.
The extent of the variation of solar flux with the Hale cycle is quite small amplitude about 2-3W/m^2 on 1360W/m^2. I am still a bit doubtful that the new paper has really demonstrated what they claim. The amount of periodic climate change with 11/22 year period in the CRU temperature record is tiny and on the borderline of detection. It is only because of satellite monitoring that we know how the TSI varies.
I don't believe in simple doomsday positive feedback. I was given the opportunity to try and break one of the models once. I injected about 5% of CO2 in a single shot - it was still habitable at the poles although there was a lot less land above sea level and very little ice.
I am not calling for draconian cuts. I don't think that is politically feasible. I am calling for the no regrets energy saving measures that will shave perhaps 10-20% of total energy use fairly quickly.
We have the option of nuclear. UK has finally announced a new build program (guess what - on sites that already have a nuclear reactor).
Geoengineering may be the only solution that will work ultimately. Provoking the Yellowstone supervolcano would be one way to bring the temperature down but it would come at a *very* high price to the USA.
Agreed. We should be on the same side.
No-one will ever vote for a new tax. UK government lost its nerve with the fuel escalator tax but at least they have done something. So long as fuel is dirt cheap there is no incentive to become more efficient.
How does the guy spending $2,000 waste the power? Does he have a heated swimming pool or A/C? What rates do you pay per KWH? Out here in California, we pay (or I pay) .0987 per KWH plus $3.06 charge to read the meter. My total last month was 212 KWH for a total charge of $25.23 including some other little fees. I'm starting to use the space heater now since the temp is dropping below 68F. It gets cold at
How does the guy spending $2,000 waste the power? Does he have a heated swimming pool or A/C? What rates do you pay per KWH? Out here in California, we pay (or I pay) .0987 per KWH plus $3.06 charge to read the meter. My total last month was 212 KWH for a total charge of $25.23 including some other little fees. I'm starting to use the space heater now since the temp is dropping below 68F. It gets cold at
Everybody did/does it, including Code Warriors, Watcom, Borland, DEC, IBM, Sun, Wang, Apple, and all the rest. Intel is not unique by any means. It has been done in every programming language and for every hardware platform since benchmarks began.
No, I'm speaking of benefits promised, for example, by California's going-solar website.
Right--you guys would be better served by super insulation--Passiv Haus--than PV solar.
I'll have to rip out all my walls, insulate, then replace to save roughly $200 a year in electrical costs. Increased home value =3D 0. Payback time =3D never. OTOH I could burn wood, which here is free for the taking, except I just don't like the idea of sooting the air.
Air conditioning. It's costly in a humid climate--dry air holds a lot less heat.
You're most gracious. I'm not an energy pig--that's not a given!
I discount them because I've examined their methods and found them full of absurd assumptions. I've pointed some out a few times here.
Through a friend I knew one of the guys who actually worked on one of the models, and he said pretty much the same thing: they're good for short term predictions only, then diverge hopelessly from reality.
This friend related that the models' original problem was instability, that to the modeler's chagrin the models would rail, running away until either they'd freeze atmosphere or melt lead.
The solution derived not from a more accurate model reflecting greater physical understanding of the underlying mechanisms, but from empirically tweaking the various coefficients until the desired result was achieved. That is, tweaking until the model could reasonably correctly reproduce historical temperature data. Curve-fitting.
He SAID that. And I find exactly that in the published literature, and see plenty of evidence that modelers responsible for different models look to other models and adjust their coefficients accordingly. That is, the models can not be thought of as independently confirming one another, they've cross-contaminated each other.
Yes, I understand that, but that's nearly 1/2 the proposed human contribution right there, up in smoke (so to speak), and no one bothered checking or thinking about it.
An even greater uncertainty is clouds: their influence is huge, yet they're poorly understood. It's entirely possible hotter =3D=3D> more clouds =3D=3D> equilibrium at a much lower temperature than the IPCC's naive 1rst order assumptions predict.
Certainly. America's doing that. The increase in our energy use now greatly lags our increases in production, exactly because we're improving efficiency.
a) She, you sexist(!), and b) Every possible way--a/c, lighting, appliances, 24/7.
That's $0.12 per KWhr overall, but that's massively manipulated and arbitrary in CA. When I calculated my mom's rates just north of you, it came to $0.25 / KWhr for her building because the association is considered a business, ergo evil, etc.
I paid $0.14/KWhr in CA, and $0.09 since leaving until recently. Karma bit me for gloating though--rates here have just jumped to $0.14.
Down below freezing here at night, but I've not yet used the heater, not yet. I was going to try roughing it last winter, but the pipes would've frozen in December, and that's when it was still warm!
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