Climategate in the Popular Media

Because I would rather enrich our Canadian friends (even Patrick :lol:) than Hugo Chavez or the Saudis. Also, to be legalistic we have a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. OPEC is a cartel openly committed to price fixing. It can't possibly violate any trade agreement to put an import tax on a price-fixing cartel's product.
 
Tony Crocker":3gla11pe said:
Because I would rather enrich our Canadian friends (even Patrick :lol:) than Hugo Chavez or the Saudis. Also, to be legalistic we have a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. OPEC is a cartel openly committed to price fixing. It can't possibly violate any trade agreement to put an import tax on a price-fixing cartel's product.

All Oil isn't created equal. Alberta's Oil Sands is probably the least green of all.
 
Tony Crocker":2mc5p62g said:
I'm sure my carbon footprint is still obscene from all the plane travel.
How does one calculate non-automobile travel in the carbon footprint? Obviously, people in large metro areas like NY, Chicago, Boston get a pat on the back for using subways/commuter trains a good portion of the time.

Question: Flying in a plane must be better than driving a car on a certain level (?), but are we saying that buying a plane ticket creates a market for an environmentally unfriendly mode of transportation? I guess if enough people stop flying to a certain destination, the airlines will react to market forces and eliminate/consolidate flights, thus creating less of a carbon footprint.

Sorry if it's a dumb question; I usually stay out of this conversation.
 
Patrick":bh7t6yed said:
...the reason why China and other developing countries aren't going anything is the same reason why the US isn't moving. "We are not willing to sacrifice our growth or economy" .....(*,)

As the study financed by the GW-antagonist Koch brother's finds "Humans are driving global warming and the effect is real."

The Chinese are playing this whole game shrewdly. Although the country opens a new coal mine every month to fire its new power plants, it is also investing heavily in alternate energy companies. In the long run this strategy will likely place them as the leading manufacturer for the low-impact energy industry--mainly solar and wind.

The difference between the USA and China is the long term planning. Since 1973 when our country was caught short in the supply-demand market, our country has developed neither a national energy policy nor any contingency energy policies. But I believe that those countries with poor environmental policies will eventually be caught in international trade restrictions. China is anticipating this event and will likely drop its coal mines as a bargaining chip, as it sells alternate energy devices hand over fist. China might become the future OPEC.

But I don't see much actionable information here that allows me to plan my next ski season. To minimize my travel energy footprint this season, I plan to travel to ski areas accessed via Mississippi barge.
 
jamesdeluxe":1845a9u0 said:
Question: Flying in a plane must be better than driving a car on a certain level (?), but are we saying that buying a plane ticket creates a market for an environmentally unfriendly mode of transportation? I guess if enough people stop flying to a certain destination, the airlines will react to market forces and eliminate/consolidate flights, thus creating less of a carbon footprint.

A totally full 737-300 (what I usually get stuck on flying Southwest) burns 5500 pounds of Jet A per hour at cruise. At 6.84 pounds per gallon, that's 804 gallons per hour. Assume 130 passengers and Mach 0.8 and you get about 6 gallons per passenger per hour.

In terms of miles per gallon, the numbers look a little better. If the flight is 100% full and there isn't a big head wind, you see about 50 miles per gallon per seat. About the same as a family of 4 in a full size SUV on a ski trip. The problem is that with the SUV, you're likely only driving 100 to 200 miles. On the airplane, you're flying 1000 to 2000 miles so your carbon footprint is about 10x worse.
 
lookn4powder":18tq6ydo said:
Patrick":18tq6ydo said:
...the reason why China and other developing countries aren't going anything is the same reason why the US isn't moving. "We are not willing to sacrifice our growth or economy" .....(*,)

As the study financed by the GW-antagonist Koch brother's finds "Humans are driving global warming and the effect is real."

The Chinese are playing this whole game shrewdly. Although the country opens a new coal mine every month to fire its new power plants, it is also investing heavily in alternate energy companies. In the long run this strategy will likely place them as the leading manufacturer for the low-impact energy industry--mainly solar and wind.

The difference between the USA and China is the long term planning. Since 1973 when our country was caught short in the supply-demand market, our country has developed neither a national energy policy nor any contingency energy policies. But I believe that those countries with poor environmental policies will eventually be caught in international trade restrictions. China is anticipating this event and will likely drop its coal mines as a bargaining chip, as it sells alternate energy devices hand over fist. China might become the future OPEC.

But I don't see much actionable information here that allows me to plan my next ski season. To minimize my travel energy footprint this season, I plan to travel to ski areas accessed via Mississippi barge.
This is spot on. China may be belching out coal plants as fast as anyone, but they are also throwing more money at renewable/clean research than anyone else. A good example is molten salt thorium fission which the US first developed in the 1950's but abandoned in favor of uranium because the thorium fuel cycle can't be weaponized. It also happens to be more efficient, cleaner, and safer than uranium. China is also spending as much or more as anyone else on solar (both thermal & pv).

The US could very well find itself importing all this technology from China in 10 years.
 
jasoncapecod":29ua0lea said:
I flipped over to LED lighting for the lights that are used most often. I'm happy with the light from the new Philips bulbs. 12 watts vs 60 watts makes

Those bulbs are $40 each :shock:

No they're not. A non-dimmable Philips 60w equivalent LED A19 bulb is $14.97 at Home Depot. They were about $20.00 this summer and the price is dropping quickly. The dimmable ones are still $40-something.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R ... ogId=10053
 
Geoff":8jimyfwb said:
No they're not. A non-dimmable Philips 60w equivalent LED A19 bulb is $14.97 at Home Depot. They were about $20.00 this summer and the price is dropping quickly. The dimmable ones are still $40-something.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R ... ogId=10053

Geoff, your link says they are $24.97 at the moment... Which I would think is still outside of economic payback not to mention the upfront cost compared to a CFL... Though prices are dropping fairly quickly and, I'd wager, they will be at a point of economic payback vs incandescent somewhere in the next 12-18 months. Vs CFL is tougher since those bulbs are now so cheap to buy and these LED's are only a bit more efficient than CFL's (16 watts -CFL vs 12 watts -LED vs 60 watts -incandescent).

No mercury and instant-on is a big plus for LED. Color Temperature of the light is still a negative for LED from what I have seen thus far (though improving).
 
EMSC":8gwc7emx said:
Geoff":8gwc7emx said:
No they're not. A non-dimmable Philips 60w equivalent LED A19 bulb is $14.97 at Home Depot. They were about $20.00 this summer and the price is dropping quickly. The dimmable ones are still $40-something.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R ... ogId=10053

Geoff, your link says they are $24.97 at the moment... Which I would think is still outside of economic payback not to mention the upfront cost compared to a CFL... Though prices are dropping fairly quickly and, I'd wager, they will be at a point of economic payback vs incandescent somewhere in the next 12-18 months. Vs CFL is tougher since those bulbs are now so cheap to buy and these LED's are only a bit more efficient than CFL's (16 watts -CFL vs 12 watts -LED vs 60 watts -incandescent).

No mercury and instant-on is a big plus for LED. Color Temperature of the light is still a negative for LED from what I have seen thus far (though improving).

Still clicks through as $14.97 here. Home Depot must be location-sensitive based on IP address.

I can't stand the monochromatic light out of CFL. I tried CFL in my summer house for 1 day and swapped it back out for incandescent. I now use those CFL bulbs in applications where I don't care about the light quality. Closets, cellar, porch light, etc. I bought a couple of LED bulbs as an experiment to see whether I wanted to start hoarding incandescent bulbs. I can live with the light from a Philips A19 LED bulb. The Philips LED bulbs use three different colored LEDs in a matrix so they do a pretty good job approximating incandescent lighting.

If you look at the technology, there's no reason why an LED bulb can't cost $1.00 eventually. It's a cheap switching power supply and an LED matrix.

...anyways, I'm not going to be buying any more LED bulbs until they get a lot cheaper. ...but I'm also not filling a closet with incandescent bulbs before they stop selling them.
 
EMSC":2xnf3ss4 said:
Color Temperature of the light is still a negative for LED from what I have seen thus far (though improving).
There is no technical reason for this, just a manufacturing choice. Some indeed have a warmer color temperature than others. If they use an RGB matrix, then theoretically they can produce anywhere from 512 to 16M colors, depending on the number of intensity levels for each LED. For example, most of the lights in this shot of RUSH are LED based and the live video image backdrop is produced with a huge LED array:

5092438412_c298f1df11_z.jpg
 
Marc_C":179agf92 said:
There is no technical reason for this, just a manufacturing choice.

I don't think it's quite that simple. There are significant technical considerations given the small packaging of consumer bulb designs (primarily heat dissipation and broad spread of the light - LED sources are nearly point sources of light). Not to mention the costs of the various colors, manufacturing and packaging that are required to get to a more 'normal' wide distribution in color such as incandescent gives off. So there are big technical impacts due to cost constraints as well for us 'cheap' focused consumers.

A stage light show has few constraints on packaging size nor on initial cost of purchase relative to general consumer products.
 
EMSC":2swv0yod said:
Marc_C":2swv0yod said:
There is no technical reason for this, just a manufacturing choice.

I don't think it's quite that simple. There are significant technical considerations given the small packaging of consumer bulb designs (primarily heat dissipation and broad spread of the light - LED sources are nearly point sources of light). Not to mention the costs of the various colors, manufacturing and packaging that are required to get to a more 'normal' wide distribution in color such as incandescent gives off. So there are big technical impacts due to cost constraints as well for us 'cheap' focused consumers.

A stage light show has few constraints on packaging size nor on initial cost of purchase relative to general consumer products.

It's not "simple" but LED technology is very well understood and is dirt-cheap to manufacture when you scale it up. The whole point of using LED technology is that it generates a whole lot of light for the amount of power (heat) consumed). The expense in the light bulb is the power supply, not the microelectronics. ...and yeah, I do this stuff for a living.
 
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