Interesting Weather Record Set Today

[jeb]

The government, if they could wake up, should helping people directly to get a better bang for the buck and more citizen involvement. Individual solar generation and heating, underground air ducting are all viable and modern technology can make them even more widespread and useful. We don't however see anything being done that actually makes the average citizen believe he will benefit. Drop his electrical bill by putting solar on his roof and allow him to buy $1.50 a gallon NG for his truck and you'll not only get his attention, he'll ask for more.

But the cost of installing those systems is high. So unless you're going to be living in that house for enough years to make it pay, they are not cost effective. And there's a lot of discussion about the net gain of solar panels too, from a dust to dust impact on the environment, if that's your concern rather than just saving a little on the electric bill.

I think that's a better idea than a hybrid car burning $3.50 a gallon gas or an all electric that actually uses a fuel that is just as polluting as gas is once the process is totaled.

Agreed. At least it's technology we know works.

[Quillback]

You always have to look out for unintended consequnces. We're shutting down coal fired electric plants as the EPA is tightening down on emissions regulations. What happens? We're now shipping coal to China where they're happy to burn it. And I doubt they are very concerned about emission levels.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-coal-idUSBRE83I0AK20120419

[Wayne SW/MO]

But the cost of installing those systems is high. So unless you're going to be living in that house for enough years to make it pay, they are not cost effective. And there's a lot of discussion about the net gain of solar panels too, from a dust to dust impact on the environment, if that's your concern rather than just saving a little on the electric bill.

Installation costs are high, but ,IMO, that would be a better place to put what the feds consider their money. Not only does the home owner gets involved, he adds value to his property, saves on his electric bill, and recoups some of his taxes in a positive way. The savings in transmission losses would in itself be worthy.

That has to be a better option than the roughly 750 billion wasted on 2 companies.

I don't follow what you mean about the net gain of solar panels? As far as the environment goes the only negative would seem to be in the placement of them on solar farms. They're even less attractive than windmills in that setting.

There's a big push to get everyone into an electric car, which is ahead of the game and not really much of a gain, if any, as far as CO2 emissions and too expensive for the majority of people int this country. A solar panel can be built at home for $100-$150, so it's hard to see why mass production wouldn't make them very reasonable. Installation doesn't seem to be a deal breaker, I would estimate 2-3K$ and if I even cut my bill in half I would recoup in less than 4 years a $7000 cost.

[Quillback]

Speaking of subsidies, the Senate killed an amendment to end government buying of "excess" sugar produced by American farmers. This excess sugar is bought by the government and then sold at a loss to ethanol producers.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I think ethanol may be headed for some rough going. If this weather pattern turns into a real drought, and it's certainly headed that way, the water used and the fact that most are geared up to only use corn may become a real problem.

[Al Agnew]

If, like a couple on here, you think that there's nothing to be alarmed about with continuing to use fossil fuels, then I can understand the mindset of letting the alternatives prove themselves in the marketplace without any help. But geez, get real. There is a HECK of a lot wrong with using fossil fuels. They are cleaner than they used to be, but still polluting, including mercury from coal fired power plants along with the CO2. And getting them out of the ground still involves huge real and potential environmental problems. If you think that it's fine for Canada to screw up vast amounts of wild land to get oil out of the tar sands, wait until it starts happening someplace close to where you live. Fly over vast areas of Wyoming right now and look down and you can see all the drilling pads, totally changing the landscape. Ask how the people of the ranches and little towns like the huge changes that came with the oil boom in the Bakken shale in the Dakotas--the ones that aren't directly profiting from it. The ones directly profiting are taking the money and running to someplace a little less unspoiled...one of them bought our cabin in Montana and moved there after making a mint on royalties from his Dakota ranch. Oh yeah... and what about that mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachians, and a lot of other strip mining that messes up large swathes of countryside?

And even if you don't care about that stuff, look at the economics. Get it through your head, gas is never gonna be cheap anymore. The easy oil is gone. What's left, even though there's a lot more of it than what we thought, is either in countries that don't like us or is very expensive to get out of the ground. Right now oil is trading at about $80 a barrel, as cheap as it's been in a while and the last time I filled up gas was $3.20 a gallon. I don't expect it to get much cheaper than that and I don't expect it to stay that cheap for very long. And like I said before, as soon as it goes up, the economy drops. That would not happen with energy sources that are renewable and self sustaining, because we wouldn't be competing with other countries to get the energy like we are and will continue to be with oil, and because a viable energy source will be consistently available at a consistent price. This country developed the way it has because of cheap, plentiful oil and coal. Our whole economy is based upon cheap, available energy. And oil ain't cheap anymore and ain't easy. We either muddle along with what brung us, and we won't do more than muddle along, or we change with the times.

Wayne has it right...probably the very best solution is individualizing our energy production. Instead of putting all our energy eggs in the baskets of the big industries, expecting to get all our electric power from a regional electric company grid, we should be working toward making everybody more or less responsible for their own energy production. Make solar and/or wind or something else easy and affordable for the homeowner to install, or the industrial plant to install, or the municipality to install. Keep the existing grid, but make it more a backup system. Have everybody's individual electric production tied into the grid, "selling" their excess power to the grid in time of plenty, taking out power from the grid in times when it's necessary. This would be a relatively easy transition without a lot of new infrastructure, and would have a lot of added benefits, like a lot of business for companies, producing, installing, and servicing the individual systems. Like not needing to spend vast amounts of tax money on new huge power plants. Like not being so dependent upon huge power plants that are susceptible to terrorism and sabotage. If a terrorist hacks into the power company and shuts down half the Midwest it's a real big deal. If he hacks into my home computer system and wrecks my solar panel connections, who cares except me?

[Al Agnew]

A few other things...electric cars have their problems, but there isn't any widespread agreement that their use isn't an overall net gain in energy use. Like any relatively new technology, they are a little more expensive and a little less efficient to manufacture and use, but there have been a lot of improvements in the technology. They are not the final answer, and right now the all electrics like the Volt are of limited use outside of the major cities and will be until there's a leap in battery technology. We can debate for a long time whether the government should have bailed out General Motors and whether GM should be putting so much into the Volt, but nobody is forcing anybody to buy electric vehicles. (And in the interest of full disclosure, we own a Prius, which has been completely trouble free for 80,000 miles and gets 50 mpg overall...and with gas at over $3 a gallon we figure we paid off the extra cost over a comparable size non-hybrid vehicle about 20,000 miles ago. We had a hybrid SUV, a Toyota Highlander, that we really liked, but when it came time to trade it in we found that Toyota had changed the body size, making it much heavier and cutting down the gas mileage to where it didn't make sense to pay the extra $4000 for just a couple more mpg on the highway over a conventional Highlander.)

No thinking person should believe that corn ethanol is any kind of answer. Switchgrass might be a lot better. Or maybe the algae experiments will pan out. The nice thing is that autos are manufactured right now to use ethanol, so it doesn't require a lot of new infrastructure, but ethanol will never be anything but a supplemental fuel source until we eventually get changed over to not using the conventional internal combustion engine.

[Quillback]

Yep oil is expensive and getting it out of the ground is causing environmental damage. But I still haven't seen any realistic plans to get us out of our carbon burning lifestyle. First off, government can't underwrite the expense, we're 15 trillion in debt and adding a trillion a year. You can say future economic growth based on alternative fuel will help our debt problem, but first that's a leap of faith to assume that growth will be there, and it will take too long to happen if in fact it does happen, we have to tackle our debt and spending problems NOW before we can even make any plans to spend who knows how much to convert us to a greener energy lifestyle.

And you can't ignore the fact that any carbon based fuels that we save here will be used by the developing world instead of us. We're in a global economy, the Chinese are eating our lunch and will continue to do so, they're more than happy to burn oil and coal even at the higher prices we're now seeing.

And don't forget oil is priced in dollars, part of the price increase in oil is due to a weaker dollar, weaker because of our debt and spending problems.

[Quillback]

Speaking of gas prices, gas just jumped about 20 cents/gallon in this area last weekend. DId a refinery blow up somewhere? What the heck is the reason? OIl and wholesale gas prices didn't move up, in fact they have dropped the last few days.

[eric1978]

First off, government can't underwrite the expense, we're 15 trillion in debt and adding a trillion a year.

If we brought back the Reagan tax rates and got out of these wars, we'd be out of debt lickety-split. It's only so bad because we've made selfish and short-sighted policy decisions.

We have to invest in ourselves in order to prosper. Ask Robert Kiyosaki or any other finance guru. Always pay yourself first...that's what they say. The right kind of debt can and often does bring prosperity. Problem is we've chosen the wrong kind of debt.