Your Questions About Green Living

Will there be an increase of engineering jobs in the near future?

“WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama, who is set to announce his economic team, promoted an economic plan Saturday he said would create or save 2.5 million jobs by spending billions of dollars to rebuild roads and bridges and modernize schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient cars.”

“‘We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels,” Obama said. He also made a commitment to fuel-efficient cars and alternative energy technologies “that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.'”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081123/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_economy;_ylt=AnMo1MRxepxos_Wx5UhcuzehOrgF

Is this why you voted democrat? We needed to save the economy and the planet. Stimulus and Green jobs …?

… that is what it was all about in late 2008. We were ruining our environment and we were in a melt down in our economy so Obama’s solution seemed like a no brainer. We need to create jobs and while we are at it lets make them Green jobs. Like alternative energy wind plants, solar cells, geothermal, etc etc.

Now what happened as a result of us voting in Obama and the super majority Democrat Congress?

Here’s an ABC news link in case you would like to check out how it all worked out.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/green-stimulus-jobs-china-9791423
btw… I am all for alternative energy. In fact I make my own bio fuel which I burn in my truck and I save 1000’s of trees every year but I take issue with sending our stimulus money to China. It was supposed to stimulate our economy, not China’s. Are the Democrats in power really that poor at thinking things through or do they just not care?
edit to Brandon S…
I looked at your first link and did not see a chart anywhere.
I looked at your second link which was a choice for a bunch of other links and one of them said in the first paragraph that Bush was the first president since H. Hoover to preside over a decline in employment. I guess they forgot to look at the presidency of Jimmy Carter. I think there were also a few others inbetween Hoover and Bush to see employment decline. Where do you get these sources.
one more comment.
did you check out the link? This was from ABC news, not Fox or some Conservative Blog. But it seems only one or two watched the report anchored by Diane Sawyer, also not a Conservative pundint by any means.

Is there an energy-alternative for a city’s mobile Diesel Sidewalk Cleaner?

My city uses a horizontal portable diesel-fired hot high pressure washer unit to clean the sidewalks downtown. Is there an alternative–energy unit that I can suggest to the city public works dept. that would (a) not use fossil fuel; and (b) give them the hot water & pressure needed to do the job? Two men operate the present unit, rolling it up and down main street twice a week, emitting a lot of fumes. This is a big tourist city, so a clean downtown is very important.
Present unit looks like http://www.dcs1.com/del/pressure-washers/4020peo.html
At this time I’m not seeking zero carbon emissions, but a lowered emission amount.
Electric motors to steam-clean sidewalks two miles long in a downtown city? No cord is that long. The machine is used by city personnel. Come on…please help me think up a better, realistic, energy-efficient alternative available now !

Chem + Envir Minor Good for Alternative Energy?

Hi folks. I am currently a freshman at Boston College, and I am majoring in Biochemistry. It’s EXTREMELY difficult / super heavy workload. I am interested in working on alternative energy source development or just global warming issues all around, and I was wondering if majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Environmental Studies would be enough to land a good job or at least set myself up for a career in that kind of field. I am stressing so much over this because the course-load for a Biochem major at BC is over the top with one year having 3 sciences and 3 labs all in one, and other years pretty much similar. Please help! Thanks a lot in advance.
Hi nothingconstant. Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I definitely agree with you. It’s just that there is no engineering program here at Boston College, and I don’t think I want to transfer out of here. I was thinking that in four years, it might be a little bit better than now, meaning more opportunities in the specified field / companies. So, I’m majoring in Biochemistry right now because I think if there were a company just for alternative energy, it wouldn’t just hire engineers (chemical or whichever). What do you think?

Honest question about oil consumption and alternative energy?

Admittedly, I don’t know much about how the oil industry works apart from the fact that they’re banking huge profits and have very well paid lobbyists to protect their interests. What I I do know about alternative fuel is that we have done very little, comparatively, to wean ourselves off pf oil and we have not invested much, again, comparatively in finding viable renewable sources and are lagging far behind many of our European neighbors. There is no way that we could substantively decrease our dependance overnight, I understand this, so I would think that would mean that investing in these alternative sources wouldn’t make any noticeable difference in the profit margins of the oil companies for decades. By investing in other sources, we would expand new industries and create new jobs which would help the economy. Am I understanding this correctly? If so, why aren’t we working harder to walk down this path?
As I said, I know that we cannot stop using oil tomorrow. When I say wean, I mean gradually decrease our dependance over a period of time. Other developed countries have done it and are still doing it. Anyway you look at it, numerically or per capita, the US uses far more oil than any other country in the world. One thing that we can all agree on is that oil is a finite resource – it’s not going to last forever. Why not be prepared rather than waiting for everything to hit the fan and expecting later generations to clean up our mess?