Children can be sold on all sorts of silly ideas - religion depends on it. Really stupid men do burn things - Exxon-Mobil woould be a prime example - and you seem to share their prejudices
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You really do need a remedial reading course. The Mongol invasion is a trivial solution - any fool can eliminate anthropogoenic global warming by eliminating the anthropogenic apes that are doing the warming. It is an effective solution, but not one that anybody in their right mind would contemplate, let alone recommend.
The US supported the Shah in Persia, Saddam Hussein in Irak and Mubarak in Egypt. One of these days your diplomatic service may learn how to pick out sustainable administrations, but it seems that your guys will have to work through a few more examples before you get the idea that multiparty democracies tend to be more stable than one party states.
Who knows, you might even adopt the idea in the US.
Most trade is in dollars? It was a popular currency, until it's exchnage rate started to slide. And there's a lot less international trade than there is within single currency areas.
They shouldn't these days unless very badly designed. There is a problem sometimes of wind shear causing the tip turbulence wake to hit the ground some 500-1500m downwind and stream noise along it. That is one reason why there should be a prohibition of putting them too close to established habitation. No such rule exists in the UK. This is causing a lot of friction - there is a completely insane proposal for a village near to me that would site 2MW units 200m from the edge of the village on the wrong side so they would get all the noise from it!
Although since 1910 is probably a more honest assessment. The press are inclined to exaggerate things when we have a bit of cold weather.
You might like to add your vote to the following Economist poll on natural gas vs the wind farm industry. Whilst I don't particularly like the oil man I still think his argument is basically sound and have voted accordingly. For the moment natural gas is a better bet at reducing immediate carbon emissions than any amount of token windmills. The wind farm industry have distorted the market so they get paid mostly for installed capacity and not for annual output yield.
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You do have to be careful though. That wind farms may sometimes be becalmed isn't necessarily a bad thing if they have been sited based on a mean annual windspeed criterion. To take an extreme example of steady state wind always V against 50:50 duty cycle of 2V or 0.
Steady wind V : power V^3 Half time 2V : power 1/2 (2V)^3 = 4V^3
The cubic dependence means that windturbine location should be placed according the a filter based on the cube of windspeed (subject to a safety cutoff to avoid locating them where damaging gusts are frequent).
There are far too many wind turbines in the UK at locations where the windspeed is too low to be worthwile. And the maintenance practices of some installers are extremely dubious some of my local ones are 2/3 dead in the water most days (even when the wind is blowing).
It is mildly annoying that UK winter weather is typically at its coldest when there is little or no wind and an arctic clear air high.
Wind is still useful - the problem is that you have to keep fast backup powerplant capable of taking on the load (usually gas and hydro). Pumped storage is really only practical in a handful of locations - but it is good for handling extreme peaks like everyone going and putting the kettle on at half time on cup final day or Wimbledon finals.
The UK has an enormous tidal range and we should be able to extract some power out of it. But you do have to be careful or the whole thing will silt up making even biger tidal flats...
On this we are in full agreement. The low hanging fruit here are the no regrets improved energy efficiency and better insulated houses.
I'm speaking of a wind farm I passed in California. Stentorian. So much so that, even from a great distance, you can't hear yourself think.
I point back to conservation, which is slightly different--as a first step it takes no retrofits, no technology, and no construction.
My place is hugely energy *in*efficient--mean insulation value of perhaps R-8, with lots of air leaks. Yet, with simple strategies, I use less in a year than Bill's annual junket.
Next, I'll fix the leaks. Then, maybe insulate. Those are the things that make sense. Technology is all well and good, but it's no substitute for common sense.
No, silly. They're rioting over food. Your Keynesian heroes in the US, by printing money, have driven up the cost of food some 40% since B&B (Barack & Ben) started QE2. Meanwhile AGW policy, diverting farmers from wheat to corn for the ethanol subsidies, is limiting the world supply of food.
Egyptians live off imported wheat--bread is their staple. They're rioting for fear of starving.
It's a perfect storm of unintended consequences, from people running the world as you see fit. Keynesian socialism in the US is destabilizing the world.
The 2MW units over here are normally quiet enough that you can stand directly under one and hold a normal conversation without having to raise your voice. That is one of the standard demos. Problems only arise where the vortex wake touches down on the downwind side. Some of the early designs had the rotor on the downwind side of the supporting pillar and they made a really violent click each time the blade tip cut into the established vortex pattern behind the pillar. A former UK astronomer royal developed an interest in harnessing wind power after the 1970's oil shock. Some of the early research prototypes were incredibly noisy in a high wind.
I reckon under normal conditions a big modern wind turbine is all but inaudible at 700m from the base in all directions except downwind. That is the noise of wind in the trees will swamp the turbine noise.
The problem is that you live in a society where driving cars that barely manage double figure mpg fuel efficiency is the norm and a population that is adicted to dirt cheap oil. Profligate waste of energy is still the order of the day in America. This could be very serious if other gulf states follow Tunisia and Egypt into the abyss.
If you have an open fire or a stove then a certain amount of external ventilation is mandatory. But having bogus cold drafts makes no sense.
It is actually hard to justify double glazing unless you intend to live there long enough to recoup the high install costs. Not so for glass wool or even lambs wool loft insulation which pays back very quickly.
Large modern units have modern air-foil design. I've spent enough time around the Wyoming Vestas to know they can't be heard above ambient, no matter where you stand. Anyone who has worked around them for any length of time knows the difference between modern units and the older, smaller designs such as at Altamont Pass. Also, I've never seen a dead bird under any wind turbine with a tubular tower.
Average fuel consumption is in the 20's of mpg, IIRC.
But, the fact that we use a lot is actually an opportunity--it makes it all the easier to achieve substantial savings with simple, voluntary, common sense approaches.
That abyss is sprung wide open by America being fiscally profligate. The gov't is living far beyond its means, and printing money to pay for it. The fiscal fruit of their mortgage-meddling program was recently was felt around the world. Just imagine what's to come when we default.
Drafts make no sense, but there they are...
Numbers: I'll spend about $50 on heating this winter[*]. My neighbors will spend about $550. Proper insulation and windows will cost about $10,000.
[*](Maybe $60--there's another massive snow storm on the way.)
That makes a 50 year old moblie home sound spacious. The smallest you're allowed to build around here is 500 square feet. Even then, they may reject a design.
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You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.
Precisely. That's the way to keep peace: Make sure people have enough value about them that they don't want to risk losing it. Do they teach that to dictators?
The US used to be a large exporter of subsidised farm products. Now your politicians have found another way of buying the rural vote. There's nothing Keynesian in this.
Ethanol subisidies have nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming - Dubbya may have been stupid enough to think that he could justify his attempt to buy more farming votes in terms of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, but we all know that so much fossil carbon is burnt producing the corn that's fermented to ethanol that the whole idea is a nonsense.
The last source of high wheat prices was "the severe drought in Western Russian and surrounding region". The recent floods in Australia may boost their wheat crop to record levels, probably too late to save the US client regime in Egypt.
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Nobody seems to be mentioning Keynsian economists within the US administration.
Not so much unintended as imagined. You haven't exactly established the connection between converting US corn into ethanal and the high price of wheat in Egypt - corn (maize) is not wheat.
Keynes wasn't a socialist - he was interested in making capitalism work better by getting governments to intervene to correct the occasional idiocies of the free market. This hasn't stopped a bunch of particularly moronic economists from carrying on as if free markets could be perfect, and human traders perfectly rational, and these happen to be the people whose opinions you seem to take seriously.
The US enthusiasm for dictatorial regimes that will do what US businesses want is rather more effective at destabilising the world than any "socialist" policies that you may imagine to be affecting the US at the moment.
Techically speaking, Egypt and Tunisia are African countries, so this isn't so much a prediction as an observation. Which African country do you see as next in line for wide-spread demonstrations? And why?
I certainly don't expect that your prediction will have much to do with the real world, but your blaming the riots on Egypt on the US scheme for turning corn into ethanol was magnificently comic, and I'm hoping that you can be just as funny again.
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