Category Archives: burning behavior

Metal Roofs – Do they save money?

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Well that depends on your perspective. Americans are so used to not calculating the energy that goes into making things that they act like they appear “by magic”. But they require a lot of energy to make and presented with that evidence people might forgo a bunch of “stuff”, objectives, the old material accumulations, valuable possessions and all that.

So with the Metal Roof you have to mine coal:

http://cleantalk.org/2008/08/surprising-facts-about-americas-dirty-energy-addiction/

1. Coal produces what percentage of America’s electricity?

50%. Coal is a dirty 19th century technology, yet still produces half of our electricity. France, in comparison, produces more than 80% of its electricity from carbon-free nuclear power.

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Mine the iron:

www.travelpod.com/…/iron_mine.jpg/tpod.html

5 Open Pit Iron Mine, Kirkenes, Norway
After visiting the border we were taken to the site of an abandoned open pit iron mine. With prices increasing, several companies are considering reopening the mine.

”

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Make the steel:

andywarholic.blogspot.com/2008/04/1984-steel-…

Steel Mill

Today, 1984, most of the steel mills in the United States have either phased out or merged with foreign steel mills. — A very sad state of affairs, and leaving millions of steel workers unemployed. — The steel mills exploited the immigrants when they came to this country. — The steel mills made their fortunes and failed to modernize their plants. — They phased them out and invested in foreign plants — exploited those workers and then dumped their steel into this country, and making another fortune. — Yes, I know that this is a free country, and corporations can do what they want with their money, but I always felt that there was a moral obligation on the part of the steel mills, (and other corporations) to re-invest in America.

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Make the roof:

www.internationalroofing.co.nz/

Produce various steel tiles from the same production

International Roofing - building, and Team Photo

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Transport the roof:

www.cranetruckservices.com.au/cranetrucks.html

Transport steel


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And build the roof:

www.whiteroofs.net/MetalRoofSystem/

Seal All Fasteners with Kwik Kaulk®
All fasteners are sealed with Kwik Kaulk®, Conklin’s acrylic caulking compound.

photo caulking

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I know this seems unfair BUT it is also real.

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Open Yucca Mountain – As an antinuke person the sooner we get rid

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of the hot garbage they produce, the quicker we get rid of them. Geologic storage is the only hope. I know I am supposed to be posting about gardening…but somethings I just gotta get off my chest..!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-nuclear-waste-11-mar11,0,5164994.story

Nuclear waste has no place to go

Obama budget kills Nevada storage site

for used radioactive fuel rods piling up near power plants

By Michael Hawthorne |Tribune reporter
March 11, 2009

In a pool of water just a football field away from Lake Michigan, about 1,000 tons of highly radioactive fuel from the scuttled Zion Nuclear Power Station is waiting for someplace else to spend a few thousand years.

The wait just got longer.

President Barack Obama‘s proposed budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain project, the controversial site where the U.S. nuclear industry’s spent fuel rods were supposed to end up in permanent storage deep below the Nevada desert. There are no other plans in the works, meaning the waste for now will remain next to Zion and 104 other reactors scattered across the country.

Obama has said too many questions remain about whether storing waste at Yucca Mountain is safe, and his decision fulfills a campaign promise. But it also renews nagging questions about what to do with the radioactive waste steadily accumulating in 35 states.

With seven nuclear plant sites, Illinois relies more heavily on nuclear power and has a larger stockpile of spent fuel than any other state. Besides Zion near Lake Michigan, plants storing waste are sited along the Illinois, Rock and Mississippi Rivers.Customers of ComEd and other nuclear utilities have shelled out $10 billion to develop the Yucca Mountain site in spare-change-size charges tacked on to electric bills. Most of that money will have been wasted, and experts forecast that billions more will be spent on damage suits from utilities that counted on the federal government to come up with a burial ground

Related links

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I’ll get back to gardening later today…

I Just Love These People – There are so many generational stereotypes out there

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But these young folks are so cool:

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/

Musings on CGI-U vs. Power Shift ‘09

Published by Morgan, February 19th, 2009 global warming 0 Comments

CLINTON CGI-ULast weekend, 1000 students convened in Austin Texas for the Clinton Global Initiative University for a conference geared towards solving the world’s big problems and empowering students to take action.

In 8 days, 10,000 young people will be in DC for Power Shift 2009 for a conference to demand action on climate change from our leaders and empowering students to push for change.

There is a fundamental difference between these two events:

At Power Shift we will hold our elected officials accountable to do their part in solving climate change. We know that we are all working together to solve one really big (and multi-faceted) problem. And we’re not leaving until they listen to us.

Clinton Global Initiative inspires individuals and small groups to solve a wide range of problems, and highlight the projects that are closest to a set of ideals: Do what you can to make the world a better place, and make this part of your life.’ CGI-U is top down, and Power Shift is bottom up.

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They run around with some cool folks:

http://blogs.williams.edu/sustainability/

January 20, 2009

On December 24th, the College began the experiment of setting back temperatures and turning off equipment in many buildings until just before the beginning of Winter Study on January 5th. This effort appears to have saved nearly $90,000 and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 287 metric tonnes, over 1 % of our annual total.

The financial savings were split evenly between electricity and heating oil. Fifty-five percent of the energy savings came from heating. We often think of electricity as having the most utilities impact, due to the visible lighting and plug load in a building. However, in colder climates like ours, heat energy accounts for a larger portion of both emissions and spending on energy.

We can’t report on heating savings per building due to a current lack of steam metering, but we do have real-time metering of electricity by building. From those meters, we learned, not surprisingly, that large, energy-intensive buildings saved the most electricity: Paresky (34,500 kWh), Sawyer (26,874 kWh), Chandler (20,274 kWh), Bronfman (15,124 kWh), Greylock Dining (15,124 kWh), and Jesup (14,202 kWh). On average building electricity use was down 40%; electricity use in dorms was down 47%.

[:=}

http://climatedenial.org/

Guest blogger Roman Krznaric argues for a revolution in empathy to tackle climate change.

‘We seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit – our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through those who are different from us.’ – Barack Obama

Occasionally – just occasionally – a mainstream politician says something that is both original and useful. This is the case with Barack Obama’s views on empathy. In a thousand speeches, and in his book The Audacity of Hope, he has put cultivating empathy – learning to see the world from the perspective of others – at the centre of his moral and political vision.

I am inclined to praise him because I believe we should view the problem of tackling climate change not as an environmental issue, or one concerning technology or social justice or markets, but primarily as a problem of empathy. We must learn to see the individuals behind the newspaper headlines about climate change, and imagine ourselves into the uniqueness of their lives, developing an understanding of their most important experiences, beliefs, fears and hopes.Sound far-fetched, wishy-washy or a little too sandals-and-carrot-juice for your liking? Let me explain myself.

The big question facing us is this: How can we close the gap between knowledge and action on climate change? Millions of people in rich countries know about the damaging effects of climate change and their own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet relatively few are willing to make substantive changes to how they live. They might change a few light bulbs but they do not cut back on flying abroad for their holidays nor do they want to pay higher taxes to confront global warming.

So far economic, moral or other arguments have not been enough to spur sufficient action. This is because a fundamental approach has been missing: empathy.

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 http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/

Dr. James Hansen Calls for Civil Disobedience at Capitol Coal Plant on March 2

New Video of Noted Scientist Call for Join Capitol Climate Action

18 Feb 09

 

hansen image.jpg

Dr. James Hansen, the internationally recoginized climatologist has released a public service announcment, calling on all of us to join the Capitol Climate Action, the largest civil disobedience against global warming in U.S. history.

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http://www.desmogblog.com/

18 February 09

Obama, Canada’s government

not worth its salt on global warming [pic]

Tags: , , , , , , ,

This full page ad by the grassroots group Avaaz appeared on page A3 of the Washington Post today in advance of Obama’s trip to Canada scheduled for tomorrow. (click to enlarge)

obama-canada-global-warming-avaaz

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Gasoline Prices Hit 4 $$$ A Gallon – We are all going to die

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OK I was wrong. I admit it so there. But I have to admit that I never thought the huge Oil Companies nor the Oil Producers nor the Huge Refiners would ever admit that there is absolutely no relationship between supply and demand either in the price of a barrel of oil, or in the price of gasoline, much less admit that there is no relationship BETWEEN THE TWO of them. But they did. So When I said that Oil would hit 120 or 130 $$$ per barrel next summer my thoughts were mainly on gasoline.  Yet in a world finally gone honest for reasons I do not understand…I must change my prediction about Oil and change it to Gasoline. Who knows what the price of Oil will be next Summer but I predict the Price of Gasoline will be over 3$$ a gallon, and easily could be around 4 $$$ a gallon. Boy would I love to be wrong. We should Tax Gasoline out of existence,

But enough about me:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29210445/

First heard here:

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=46258

Crude oil is getting cheaper — so why isn’t gas?

Energy market has turned upside-down amid U.S. recession

updated 4:50 p.m. CT, Sun., Feb. 15, 2009

NEW YORK – Crude oil prices have fallen to new lows for this year. So you’d think gas prices would sink right along with them.

Not so.

On Thursday, for example, crude oil closed just under $34 a barrel, its lowest point for 2009. But the national average price of a gallon of gas rose to $1.95 on the same day, its peak for the year. On Friday gas went a penny higher.

To drivers once again grimacing as they tank up, it sounds like a conspiracy. But it has more to do with an energy market turned upside-down that has left gas cut off from its usual economic moorings.

The price of gas is indeed tied to oil. It’s just a matter of which oil.

The benchmark for crude oil prices is West Texas Intermediate, drilled exactly where you would imagine. That’s the price, set at the New York Mercantile Exchange, that you see quoted on business channels and in the morning paper.

Right now, in an unusual market trend, West Texas crude is selling for much less than inferior grades of crude from other places around the world. A severe economic downturn has left U.S. storage facilities brimming with it, sending prices for the premium crude to five-year lows.

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Please read the entire article it is full of great information. If you ignore the idiocy above about “it depends on which oil you buy”, the fact is that oil storage is nearing its capacity because everyone is “saving” their oil “til the markets rise”. Yet at the same time there is this huge glut of oil, there is near scarcity and rising prices in gasoline. That is because the Refiners are not buying oil and restricting gasoline supplies to increase price. You then see the real wizard in the machine, or the magician behind the curtains, because as gas prices rise consumption already at market lows will fall further. The point: They can not raise gasoline prices fast enough to make money while they are concurrently scaring the bejeezes out of gasoline, diesel and kerasene (manly airlines and the airforce) users. Then there is the question of what to do with all that stored oil. More on that later! This in from Texas where they love their oil (that’s earl to you):

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/02/09/daily38.html

Friday, February 13, 2009

Gas prices rising throughout Texas

San Antonio Business Journal

The nation’s refiners are cutting back on the supply of gasoline in the market, leading to a steady increase in gasoline prices throughout the country, according to AAA Texas.

Retail prices nationwide are inching back toward the $2 mark. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline is now at $1.95.

In Texas, the average price of gas is currently $1.83 a gallon, an increase of nearly three cents over a week ago.

In San Antonio, average gas prices are also up three cents this week, to $1.80 a gallon.

“The higher gas prices come at a time when crude oil prices remain very sluggish and the Department of Energy and experts say supplies are abundant,” AAA Texas spokesman Dan Ronan says.

“Oil today has been trading on the NYMEX exchange around $35 a barrel, clearly in the lower range of the $30 to $50 pattern it’s been in for the past several weeks,” he says.

What’s driving higher retail gasoline prices are the reductions in capacity many refiners are taking to address a slow-down in demand for gasoline and the recession, Ronan says.

Americans currently are spending $671 million a day on gasoline. This is down from $1.12 billion spent daily on gasoline during January 2008.

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What set all this market transparency off (hahaha I never thought I would say that about an energy market) you might wonder? Well it has to be the speculators. I have always wondered about this concept “the smartest guys in the room”.  Echoed in the earlier movie, Wall Street, where Gecko says “Greed is Good”. Thieves are not very smart. Think about it. How smart do you have to be to take money from the weak and the helpless. I first heard this phrase applied to the “people” at Enron. But their business was just fraud…plain and simple. They did not make any money they just took other people’s money.  Even the Rich are starting to notice and they hardly ever do that:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gas-week-cents-2303144-county-prices

 

Monday, February 9, 2009

Slowly rising gasoline prices? Forget it

Prices at the pump not finished increasing.

By SERENA MARIA DANIELS

The Orange County Register

Comments 6 | Recommend 1

Orange County gas prices have jumped 10 cents in the past week, a reversal of the trend of slower, more gradual increases.

A gallon of regular unleaded goes for $2.17, up 10 cents since last week, and 27 cents higher than a month ago. Last week and the week previous, prices seemed to be leveling off at $2.07, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California and the Oil Price Information Service.

Prices are still 83 cents less than a year ago, and $2.43 cheaper than the June 19 record of $4.60.

In Los Angeles County, gas goes for $2.18, the Auto Club says.

Orangecountygasprices.com says that the cheapest gas in Orange County can be found for $1.98 at the 76 station at 1201 S. State College Blvd at Ball Road in Anaheim. The most expensive gas is at the Chevron at 26988 Ortega Highway at Del Obispo Street in San Juan Capistrano.

Contact the writer: 714-704-3795 or sdaniels@ocregister.com

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The smartest guys in the room got the ball rolling by creating the housing bubble. But when the big money pulled out of the market well before the crash it had to have “somewhere to go”. So the rocket scientists suggested commodities, in particular Oil. That destabilized what had been an incredibly stable market and the chicanery caused the weak regulatory system to collapse. The see-saws whipped the market and exposed the LIE that was the market justification. What are they going to do with all that oil? Pump it back into the ground, but more likely abandon it. Think about that?>! Yet some people want to live in the nicer world of the 1990s

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http://media.www.dailytoreador.com/media/storage/paper870/news/2009/01/09/News/Local.Gasoline.Prices.Rising.Crude.Oil.Prices.Falling-3582858.shtml

However, he said he would not speculate about the future prices of oil because it could turn into a “guessing game.”

Regular grade unleaded fuel in Amarillo sold for an average of $2.967 per gallon a year ago, according to AAA’s Web site. The same grade of gas was sold Thursday for $1.683 per gallon.

Peter Summers, an assistant professor in the Economics and Geography department, said he thinks most people are taking the increases “in stride.”

“As expensive as oil and gas got last summer, and to see such a huge reversal of that,” Summers said, “not many people were expecting it and maybe people got used to it.”

The increases could be affecting construction around campus, he said, because the increasing prices of petroleum could raise the price of asphalt.

Bolton said he does not feel like lower prices would be a long-term trend, but if prices could stabilize between $2 to $2.50 per gallon, people could afford gas and companies could still profit off gas sales.

The average price for regular grade unleaded fuel was $1.614 in the Austin-San Marcos area and $1.625 in the Dallas area. The national average for regular grade unleaded fuel was $1.762.

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Australia Feeling The Effects Of Global Warming – There is a reason they call it downunder

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In Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures.  Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat .  It’s just scorching.  And it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering.
 
Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked  onto  a  back porch looking for a bit of heat relief.   The woman filled up a bucket  for it and this is what happened!

bears.JPG

Kinda dark but:

bearss1.JPG

Getting better:

bears2.JPG

About right:

bears3.JPG

But see this is actually the effects of Global Warming. We are burning the animals and plants off this planet UP.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36900

australialsta_tmo_2009025.jpg

For those who track their local temperatures using the Celsius scale, 40 degrees is a daunting number. In early February 2009, residents of southeastern Australia were cringing at their weather forecasts, as predictions of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) meant that a blistering heat wave was continuing.

This map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008. Places where temperatures were warmer than average are red, places experiencing near-normal temperatures are white, and places where temperatures were cooler than average are blue. The data were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. While southern Australia was scorching, a similarly large area of northern and central Australia was several degrees cooler than it was in the previous nine years. The cool anomaly across that region is probably linked to the above-average rainfall the area has received during this year’s wet season.

Land surface temperature is how hot the surface of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. From a satellite’s point of view, the “surface” is whatever it sees when it looks through the atmosphere to the ground. That could be the sand on a beach, the grass on a lawn, the roof of a building, or a paved road. Thus, daytime land surface temperature is often much higher than the air temperature that is included in the daily weather report—a fact that anyone who has walked barefoot across a parking lot on a summer afternoon could verify.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) called this heat wave “exceptional,” not only for the high temperatures but for their duration. One-day records were broken in multiple cities, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In Kyancutta, South Australia, the temperature reached 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Many places also set records for the number of consecutive days with record-breaking heat.

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It will only get worse.

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EdenPure Nothing But A Fraud – As one lady said, “I wouldn’t give one of these to my worst enemy”

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Years of lawlessness have left us with a situation similar to the 1920s when it was legal to peddle snake oil. EndenPure should have been busted for Advertising Fraud and Consumer Fraud years ago, but because of deregulation they keep getting to peddle their crap.

http://www.edenpurestore.com/

As heard on the Paul Harvey Radio Show and television features across the nation. The EdenPure TM is a remarkable new advanced portable heater can cut your heating bill up to 50% and pay for itself in a matter of weeks!

 
A major cause of residential fires in the U.S. is due to portable heaters. The EdenPure TM uses a new advanced quartz infrared heating system that never reaches a temperature that can start a fire.

The outside of the EdenPure TM only gets warm to the touch, never hot… so its safe around children and pets. Children can play on it and pets can actually sleep on it while operating without harm!

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It makes me puke just to put their stuff up. BUYER BEWARE…Here is what actual purchasers had to say.

www.topnews.in

fraud-1.jpg

Are they reliable?:

 http://searchwarp.com/swa278556.htm

» left by disapointed from cleve, OH (6 days 19 hours ago.)
Reader Rating: 5 out of 5
My First Edenpure 500 just broke for the second time ! first time in warranty, pain in the butt to send back. Now, out of warranty, and only in my second ‘winter’ season. It was only used for about 4 to 4.5 months the first season, stored nicely, and taken care of…What a rip off. WAY TOO expensive. Cleveland, OH – cheaper to turn the GAS thermostat up for REAL and Quiet heat. Darn expensive lesson.

left by Craig in Washington from Vancouver (5 days 11 hours ago.)
Reader Rating: 4.5 out of 5
This article has convinced me NOT to purchase one of these.. much less three. I live in the Pacific NW and our power costs are very low compared to other parts of the country so the cost to operate is not the reason for my decision NOT to buy. It would be because overall.. it appears that the reliability is TRASH. Also, it appears the customer service is severly lacking.

Thank you all for exposing this for what it is… a non-performing, HIGH Cost Sham. I feel sorry for those who buy it without looking it up on the web to find out how badly it works in real life. There claims are not truthful. Just read these testimonials… and their ads… “Heats a large room in minutes with even heat wall to wall and floor to ceiling”.  WHAT A CROCK!

Thank you for your attention.

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gjha.org

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Does it save money?:

http://www.infomercialratings.com/product/edenpure_heater_reviews

Do Not buy electric bill up $100.00 first month

1/31/2009 – pam of western NY ~ West Almond, USA writes:

I purchased this unit after watching the infomercial, claiming how the unit would reduce my heating bill. We are using this to heat a 15 x 12 bedroom for extra heat only. We have a [] wood stove (best stove out there) to heat the rest of the house (it keeps it at 70 to 75 degrees and its been over 80 also. Keeping it on a low setting (3 bars) to heat the bedroom at 65-68 degrees has made our electric bill jump from $132 to $265 in one month. we even purchased a new [] refrigerator and got rid of my 1985 sub zero refrig the previous month. I would not get one of these for my worst enemy! What a waste of money! I am trying to retun this as I write the review.

Senior Citizens Scammed By Edenpure

1/31/2009 – Lark&Bertha of West Virginia, USA writes:

We purchased 6 Edenpure heaters: 2 for us, 2 for my stepdaughter, and 1 for each of my two other daughters. With the price of oil the way it was, this seemed the way to go for heat and economy. Well, all of our electric bills have more than doubled. My husband abd I are on Soc.Sec. fixed income and on a budget with the elec. company. I know that this winter has been really cold, but the elec. co. said that the Co. that makes Edenpure heaters lies to the public in their ads, that no way will the heaters cut your bills! I’m going to try to return the heaters, but since the 60-day return period is over, I don’t think we will have much success. Scammed? You bet we were. For what we paid for all 6 heaters, we could have bought oil for the winter! I guess the old saying is right: If it seems to be too good to be true, it is! Disappointed and cold in W. Va.

Electri bill tripled

1/29/2009 – Michelle of Mi., USA writes:

Bought the Edenpure Heater in Nov.2007. The electric bill was higher but assumed it was due to sub-zero temps. I had a problem with the heater in Nov.2008, returned item and was shipped a new one. Bill in Nov.$257.00, Bill in Dec. estimated $218.00. Bill in Jan. $593.40. We’ve had some very cold weather. But this was advertised to save on heating costs. It has cost me more. I now have to make payments bi-monthly just to chip away at this outrageous bill. I work, I feel real sorry for people who are in a tight financial bind.

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Could you ever save money?:

http://blogs.consumerreports.org/home/2008/11/edenpure-heater.html

According to the grand daddy of them all, Consumer Reports, IF YOU LOWER YOUR THERMOSTAT 17 DEGREES.

As I have said before it is not even a good space heater. I advise against space heaters. You could heat your own house with your body heat alone if it was properly insulated. But if you insist on buying one the EdenPure ain’t it:

http://www.wcpo.com/content/news/localshows/dontwasteyourmoney/story/EdenPure-Other-Space-Heaters-Tested/PdondT-tOkKTOuXc3gCxLw.cspx

Is the EdenPure Amazing?

The results of the test of the heavily advertised EdenPure were not promising.

The $400 EdenPure ended up at the bottom of the ratings. It was the worst performing of 20 space heaters tested.

Top Performing Heaters

Top rated: The Honeywell Electric heater HZ-519, for just $60.

It’s normally sold by Home Depot and Amazon.com, among other stores, but has been in very short supply, due to Consumer Reports’ review.

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The EdenPure people should be in jail…

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www.bestblogsite.org

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Why Are We Doing All This Home Improvement Anyway – Well to save money of course but..

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To save our grandchildren as well..

 http://www.livescience.com/environment/090121-antarctica-warming.html#comments

Antarctica Is Warming:

Climate Picture Clears Up

By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer

posted: 21 January 2009 01:04 pm ET

 

Warming temperatures in Antarctica
This illustration depicts the warming that scientists have determined has occurred in West Antarctica during the last 50 years, with the dark red showing the area that has warmed the most. Credit: NASA

The frozen desert interior of Antarctica was thought to be the lone holdout resisting the man-made warming affecting the rest of the globe, with some areas even showing signs of cooling.

Some global warming contrarians liked to point to inner Antarctica as a counter-example. But climate researchers have now turned this notion on its head, with the first study to show that the entire continent is warming, and has been for the past 50 years.

“Antarctica is warming, and it’s warming at the same rate as the rest of the planet,” said study co-author Michael Mann of Penn State University.

This finding, detailed in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Nature, has implications for estimating ice melt and sea level rise from the continent, which is almost entirely covered by ice that averages about a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick. The revelation also undermines the common use of Antarctica as an argument against global warming by contrarians, Mann said.

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For more see the rest of this article and:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/4307829/Antarctica-is-warming-faster-according-to-scientists.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50I4G520090120?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

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Never mind this:

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/01/21_seasons.shtml

Summer peak,

winter low temperatures now arrive 2 days earlier

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 21 January 2009

BERKELEY — Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University.

July
Map of average distribution of global temperatures for JulyFebuary
Map of average distribution of global temperatures for FebruaryThe average distribution of global temperatures for July and February. Because the sun is further north in July, the warm bulge of high temperatures is shifted into the northern hemisphere in that month. In the Northern Hemisphere, warm temperatures extend farther north on land than over ocean in the summer and cold temperatures extend farther south on land than on the ocean in the winter. (Image by Alexander R. Stine/UC Berkeley; data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia )

Just as human-generated greenhouse gases appear to the be the cause of global warming, human activity may also be the cause of the shift in the cycle of seasons, according to Alexander R. Stine, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science and first author of the report.”We see 100 years where there is a very natural pattern of variability, and then we see a large departure from that pattern at the same time as global mean temperatures start increasing, which makes us suspect that there’s a human role here,” he said.

Although the cause of this seasonal shift – which has occurred over land, but not the ocean – is unclear, the researchers say the shift appears to be related, in part, to a particular pattern of winds that also has been changing over the same time period. This pattern of atmospheric circulation, known as the Northern Annular Mode, is the most important wind pattern for controlling why one winter in the Northern Hemisphere is different from another. The researchers found that the mode also is important in controlling the arrival of the seasons each year.

Whatever the cause, Stine said, current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models do not predict this phase shift in the annual temperature cycle.

Details are published in the Jan. 22 issue of the journal Nature.

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Why Call Them Landfills? They are dumps, eyesores, middens and disgraces.

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 When has it been ok to urinate and defecate in a drinking water source. But Humans world wide do it every day. Some of us purify those byproducts before they actually get to the river or the lake or the aquifer, some of us don’t. When has it ever been OK to put food products let alone industrial products (lets take the buy out of byproduct) in a drinking water source yet we have done it for 200 years. What did we think? That there would be no results?

Yet we go further. We stack our garbage in the most inappropriate places like we are PROUD of it. Heh look our garbage pile is bigger than yours.  Like the garbage dump that you can see from SPACE.

http://gothamist.com/2003/09/30/fresh_killpark.php

Fresh Kill…Park?

Mayor Bloomberg announced the city’s plans to turn the closed Fresh Kills landkill into a park. The Times points out that the landfill is “a garbage dump site that is so large it can be seen from space,” which is why it’s a sensitive and important issue for Staten Islanders…especially Staten Islanders who can vote. Reporter Michel Cooper describes the city’s renderings of a Fresh Kills Park as “Monet using Photoshop” or Andrew Wyeth-like. Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro called the announcement was “the final nail in the heart of Dracula,” as people have been speculating the dump might reopen since it closed in 2001. The Post says the proposal from Field Operations, the landscape company that won the competition to transform Fresh Kills, includes “bird-nesting island, public roads, boardwalks, soccer and baseball fields, bridle paths and a 5,000-seat stadium.

Of course, all of this is also an effort to keep his approval numbers from slipping any further, although at this point, it’d be in the negative territory…people would just claim ignorance when asked about Mayor Bloomberg.

More information about Fresh Kills.

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What the heck have we ever been thinking?

 http://naturecalendar.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/fresh-kills-earning-back-its-name

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by Erik Baard

 

Not so many years ago, if you told people that you were getting up early on Saturday morning to rush over to Fresh Kills on Staten Island, they would have thought you were crazy or a highly-paid union worker. Today, a few savvy folks might peg you for a naturalist.

 

The world’s largest dump (actually, the world’s largest manmade structure, of sorts, in that it exceeded the volume of the Great Wall of China) is quietly transforming into the city’s second largest park, after Pelham Bay Park. You can witness the process yourself by signing up for a free tour now through November through this link. Don’t fret the competition to get a ticket – the tour I joined this weekend wasn’t booked up. Besides, you have, oh, a few more years of chances. The park officially opens in 2036.

 (the site has four large ones mounds, ranging between 140? and 200? tall)

At the moment the trash is being digested by microbes, which will actually cause the mounds to shrink a bit. But not before they’ve earned their keep! The methane (“natural gas” in daily parlance), organic chemicals, and carbon dioxide produced are tapped via long pipe networks (see the methane taps in the foreground of the above photo by Emmanuel). The natural gas is purified and sold to Keyspan (now part of National Grid), which in turn sells it to heat up to 10,000 homes at a time. I can imagine a “green” dry cleaner using the CO2 to spiff up designer suits for the local gentry.

 

Less immediately marketable is the leachate goo that landfills produce when water jazzes up microbial and fungal activity. That’s dried and shipped out to another landfill in West Virginia. As a side note, the five boroughs now send trash to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. Remember, the primary insight of environmentalism is that when things are thrown away, there is no “away.”

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Please read both articles if you have a strong stomach.

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Why We Throw Things Away? Everything has value.

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Isn’t throwing things away basically throwing money on the ground and walking away? Some people assert that discarding behavior originates in our time, historically, spent in the trees.  In other words a primate swinging in the trees with no pockets throws everything away, even if its valuable sometimes. In fact if it is valuable and it lands on the ground and there is a predator around it could be lost forever.

Other people say that our discarding behavior is based in our hunting techniques. Once we figured out that we could kill other meat sources by throwing rocks and sticks then it was a simple step to throw other things away as well. But middens are an archaeological constant.

Still other people have pointed out that discarding behavior was probably a fact of our nomadic lives. They argue that for us to retain “things” we would have had to carry them. So there would be a point where a thing, like a broken spear, or a pot would no longer possess enough value that would make it worth carrying on to the next campsite.

But will that explain all of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill

Landfill

A landfill, also known as a dump (and historically as a midden), is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment. Historically, landfills have been the most common methods of organized waste disposal and remain so in many places around the world.

Landfills may include internal waste disposal sites (where a producer of waste carries out their own waste disposal at the place of production) as well as sites used by many producers. Many landfills are also used for other waste management purposes, such as the temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or processing of waste material (sorting, treatment, or recycling).

A landfill also may refer to ground that has been filled in with soil and rocks instead of waste materials, so that it can be used for a specific purpose, such as for building houses. Unless they are stabilized, these areas may experience severe shaking or liquefaction of the ground in a large earthquake.

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That hill is a garbage dump on an island in Florida. Or is this worth it?:

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http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

The world’s rubbish dump:

a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden
Tuesday, 5 February 2008

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INDEPENDENT GRAPHICS

 

A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

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Please see this article…it is really really really scary.

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Archer Daniels Midland And Greenwash – They profess green but consistenly pollute

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We are going to trust these folks with our watershed?

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13646

Green Fuel’s Dirty Secret

by Sasha Lilley, Special to CorpWatch
June 1st, 2006

The town of Columbus, Nebraska, bills itself as a “City of Power and Progress.” If Archer Daniels Midland gets its way, that power will be partially generated by coal, one of the dirtiest forms of energy. When burned, it emits carcinogenic pollutants and high levels of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Ironically this coal will be used to generate ethanol, a plant-based petroleum substitute that has been hyped by both environmentalists and President George Bush as the green fuel of the future. The agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is the largest U.S. producer of ethanol, which it makes by distilling corn. ADM also operates coal-fired plants at its company base in Decatur, Illinois, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is currently adding another coal-powered facility at its Clinton, Iowa ethanol plant.

That’s not all. “[Ethanol] plants themselves – not even the part producing the energy – produce a lot of air pollution,” says Mike Ewall, director of the Energy Justice Network. “The EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has cracked down in recent years on a lot of Midwestern ethanol plants for excessive levels of carbon monoxide, methanol, toluene, and volatile organic compounds, some of which are known to cause cancer.”

A single ADM corn processing plant in Clinton, Iowa generated nearly 20,000 tons of pollutants including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds in 2004, according to federal records. The EPA considers an ethanol plant as a “major source” of pollution if it produces more than 100 tons of any one pollutant per year, although it has recently proposed increasing that cap to 250 tons.

Sulfur dioxide is classified by the EPA as a contributor to respiratory and heart disease and the generation of acid rain. Nitrogen oxides produce ozone and a wide variety of toxic chemicals as well as contributing to global warming, according to the EPA, while many volatile organic compounds are cancer-causing. Last year, Environmental Defense, a national environmental group, ranked the Clinton plant as the 26th largest emitter of carcinogenic compounds in the U.S.

For years, ADM promoted itself as the “supermarket to the world” on major U.S. radio and television networks like NPR, CBS, NBC, and PBS where it underwrites influential programs such as the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Now, as it actively promotes its ethanol business, ADM has rolled out its new eco-friendly slogan, “Resourceful by Nature” which “reinforces our role as an essential link between farmers and consumers.”

Despite the company’s attempts at green packaging, ADM is ranked as the tenth worst corporate air polluter, on the “Toxic 100” list of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency has charged the company with violations of the Clean Air Act in hundreds of processing units, covering 52 plants in 16 states. In 2003 the two agencies reached a $351 million settlement with the company. Three years earlier, ADM was fined $1.5 million by the Department of Justice and $1.1 million by the State of Illinois for pollution related to ethanol production and distribution. Currently, the corporation is involved in approximately 25 administrative and judicial proceedings connected to federal and state Superfund laws regarding the environmental clean-up of sites contaminated by ADM operations.

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