Your Questions About Green Living

Do you think your MONEY has been wasted on the Stimulus?

This is what “SOME” of your money that will be paid by your GREAT, GREAT Grand children will be paying for.

2050:
Grandpa…..what the HELL am I paying for that your generation did back in 2009

$650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $525 million for the Washington DC sewer system.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.”
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.
• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
• $650 million for wild land fire management on forest service lands.
• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.
• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.
• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.
• $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.
• $850 million for Amtrak.
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.
• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations

That’s over 124 BILLION dollars in pork.

I’m especially fond of the 75 million to pay for salaries in the FBI. Were their projections so bad that they are already out of money, or is this evidence of Obama re-instating the failed Clinton policy of treating the Global War on Terror as a police activity?

How about another 650 billion to allow people to buy TV converters for the switch to digital. I never spent my expired coupons- how many other people ordered them and didn’t spend them? How much money has fallen through the cracks on this already?

400 million to prevent STD’s. I have one comment- zip up your fly- it’ll save us 400 million dollars.

Lastly 2 BILLION DOLLARS to fund a clean coal plant that has already been deemed a failure.

3 Million for the First Lady’s closet re-do

Are you starting to realize the Economy is the issue to dump the Republican Mantra?

It’s a matter of pay now or pay letter. Republicans are all for lower taxes and smaller government except when their greed gets them in financial trouble.

Here is the issue that you are dealing with… Since the Stock Market collapse of 1929 a system of checks and balances was instituted as the economy grew to keep greed in check. However, after Ronald Reagan took office and developed the theory of Trickle Down economics, They began to chip away at several levels of checks and balances. One of the first levels that they attacked were the Unions. Unions offered a level that reported abuses in the labor market. Second was deregulation where they actually removed regulation by allowing business to move off shore where inspection and over sight where non-existent… then they moved to gut the budgets of regulatory agencies that were left, to stop over-site. Usury laws were thrown to the wind and bankruptcy laws were changed to protect the rich. (Look up Usury Laws)

Example: There are only 8 inspectors for all the livestock sold for food in California. Providing 30 percent of all the meat eaten in the United States and exported.

The result is that you have lead painted toys for your children to play with, food is polluted with chemicals and Salmonella and Wall Street Collapses in a heap and your 401K falls through the floor while Oil prices shoot threw the roof because they changed the rules to allow speculation in the Oil market and fought alternative energy. All the while the Republicans keep claiming your taxes are to high and the reason is it’s Ear Marks were causing it which equal less than 1 percent of the US budget .

We need to start thinking smarter and get back to enforcement of good sound banking rules and reduce greed out of the equation. We need over sight at all levels of both government and business. We need to pay those taxes necessary to enforce regulation and stop investing billions in “Wars to No Where”. Think where we would have been financially if we had not swallowed “Georges War to No
Where” based on a lie.

Wake up America!!! Obama for President

Do we have scientific or economic/political differences of opinion here?

Let’s assume a new study (or hopefully several) came out that proved conclusively that CO2 was directly responsible for 90% of recent observed warming and 10% to natural causes.

From my perspective, before rushing to sign any Copenhagen treaty or instituting various cap and trade or carbon taxes, I’d want to look a little further into the impacts.

The first thing I’d start with is to project CO2 levels into the future, predict the corresponding warming effect of those future levels and then reconcile that with the predicted natural trend to get a future climate forecast. Then I’d want to look much more closely at the impact of that projected climate in the especially big areas like sea level rise and drought/flood predictions.

Second, I’d want to look at new technologies to assist this problem like carbon capture/sequester and geo engineering to produce an offset cooling. Who knows, maybe those technological solutions could prove cost effective. We’d also of course have to look at various CO2 reduction strategies and costs and effects on man of those.

In other words, we would have the largest and most complex risk management analysis in the history of mankind.

Yet, here we are today. Even the IPCC has not stated that CO2 is responsible beyond all doubt. Research into the effects of a warming world is sketchy. Sea levels have not been rising as predicted; hurricane activity has not been devastating, etc. Geo-engineering and carbon sequestering have generally been tossed aside without much thought or study. And most importantly, the cost and consequences of a treaty like Copenhagen are not fully transparent. That just might mean they aren’t known.

Sorry, I just don’t understand all this and how some people think it is clear how proceed based on what we know today. The only reasons I can think of are: well you give me some.

If you think cap and trade and Copenhagen are needed right now, tell me why to help me understand. Is it to reduce pollution anyways? We are running out of oil so this will force the research in alternative energy? Is a global governance needed to get control of runaway “Westernism”? Or is just “we need to save the planet and all costs”?
I gotta say Dr. Blob, you win some sort of special award for the longest post without actually saying anything. Perhaps you could expand a bit by explaining what “current approach is not working” (that’s just one of about ten).

And what the hell does this mean? “All who would use or transform resources should have to show how their activity can be sustained for the long term before being allowed to commence.” Does that mean you would vote for a leader who said this? And actually had some plan to implement it?

WHAT ARE YOUR REACTIONS Of this ?Synthetic Cells Shed Biological Insights While Delivering Battery Power?

Trying to understand the complex workings of a biological cell by teasing out the function of every molecule within it is a daunting task. But by making synthetic cells that include just a few chemical processes, researchers can study cellular machinery one manageable piece at a time. A new paper from researchers at Yale University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describes a highly simplified model cell that not only sheds light on the way certain real cells generate electric voltages, but also acts as a tiny battery that could offer a practical alternative to conventional solid-state energy-generating devices.
Each synthetic cell built by NI-ST engineer David LaVan and his colleagues has a droplet of a water-based solution containing a salt — potassium and chloride ions — enclosed within a wall made of a lipid, a molecule with one end that is attracted to water molecules while the other end repels them. When two of these “cells” come into contact, the water-repelling lipid ends that form their outsides touch, creating a stable double bi-layer that separates the two cells’ interiors, just as actual cell membranes do.
If the researchers only did that much, nothing interesting would happen, but they also inserted into the bi layer a modified form of a protein, , made by the bacterium Staphylococcus Ayres. These embedded proteins create pores that act as channels for ions, mimicking the pores in a biological cell. “This preferentially allows either positive or negative ions to pass through the bi layer and creates a voltage across it,” La Van says. “We can harness this voltage to generate electric current.”
If the solutions in the two cells start with different salt concentrations, then poking thin metal electrodes into the droplets creates a small battery: electrons will flow through a circuit connected to the electrodes, counterbalancing the ion flow through the channels. As this happens, the ion concentrations in the droplets eventually equalize as the system discharges its electric potential.
Building synthetic versions of complex real cells-such as those that enable an electric eel to zap its prey-is far too difficult a task for now, says La Van. So the researchers instead created this far simpler system whose performance they could understand in terms a handful of basic properties, including the size of the droplets, the concentration of the aqueous solutions, and the number of ion channels in the barrier between the two cells.
A tiny battery with two droplets, each containing just 200 nanometers of solution, could deliver electricity for almost 10 minutes. A bigger system, with a total volume of almost 11 micro liters, lasted more than four hours. In terms of the energy it can deliver for a given volume, the biological battery is only about one-twentieth as effective as a conventional lead-acid battery. But in its ability to convert chemical into electrical energy, the synthetic cell has an efficiency of about 10 per cent, which compares well with solid-state devices that generate electricity from heat, light, or mechanical stress-so that synthetic cells may one day take their place in the nanotechnology toolbox.

Can someone summarize this yahoo! article?

By Mary Milliken September 13, 2006
SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – A leading U.S.

climate researcher said on Wednesday the world

has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive

action on global warming and avert a weather

catastrophe.

NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered

the doyen of American climate researchers, said

governments must adopt an alternative scenario to

keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and

limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree

Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
“I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to

deal with climate change … no longer than a decade,

at the most,” Hansen said at the Climate Change

Research Conference in California’s state capital.
If the world continues with a “business as usual”

scenario, Hansen said temperatures will rise by 2 to

3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees F) and “we will

be producing a different planet.”
On that warmer planet, ice sheets would melt quickly,

causing a rise in sea levels that would put most of

Manhattan under water. The world would see more

prolonged droughts and heat waves, powerful

hurricanes in new areas and the likely extinction of

50 percent of species.
Hansen, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for

Space Studies, has made waves before by saying

that

President George W. Bush’s administration tried to

silence him and heavily edited his and other

scientists’ findings on a warmer world.
He reiterated that the United States “has passed up

the opportunity” to influence the world on global

warming.
The United States is the largest emitter of

greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide. But

Bush pulled the country out of the 160-nation Kyoto

Protocol in 2001, arguing that the treaty’s mandatory

curbs on emissions would harm the economy.
Hansen praised California for taking the

“courageous” step of passing legislation on global

warming last month that will make it the first U.S.

state to place caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
He said the alternative scenario he advocates

involves promoting energy efficiency and reducing

dependence on carbon burning fuels.
“We cannot burn off all the fossil fuels that are

readily available without causing dramatic climate

change,” Hansen said. “This is not something that is

a theory. We understand the carbon cycle well

enough to say that.”