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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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Science

Sunday, December 06, 2009

WHAT UNDER THE SUN IS “CLIMATEGATE”?  UPDATED, UPDATED AGAIN!

I’ve posted several times about Global Warming (click on Environment in the list to the left), and will do so again.  But a major development occurred a couple of weeks ago, and the major news outlets in the United States are not doing a very good job of informing the public about it (surprise, suprise!) 

Some background:  I have long been a skeptic of Al Gore’s campaign to scare us into doing economically damaging things in order to avoid the CLIMATE CATASTROPHE that he INSISTS IS IMMINENT. 
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Part of my skepticism is that the actual source of heat for our earth, the sun, is pretty much being ignored….while great emphasis is placed on a minor fraction of the gases known to be trapping heat, a service that is preventing us from turning into a giant ice-ball.  And that fraction is carbon dioxide, a gas essential to plant growth, that just happens(?) to be produced by automobiles, power plants, and other things that Al has been preaching against for decades.  The fact that Mr. Gore is getting immensely wealthy off his campaign doesn’t increase my tendency to trust him.

HERE IS THE BEST SUMMARY currently available of what has happened, and what it may mean.  Just to whet your appetite, I’ll give you some samples:

...And now the climate campaign is having its Emperor’s New Clothes moment.

In mid-November a large cache of emails and technical documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain were made available on a number of Internet file-servers for download by the public—either the work of a hacker or a leak from a whistleblower on the inside. The emails—more than 1,000 of them—reveal a small cabal of scientists who, in the words of MIT’s Michael Schrage, engaged in “malice, mischief and Machiavellian maneuverings.“ In an ironic twist, one of the frequent correspondents in this long e‑trail (University of Arizona scientist Jonathan Overpeck) warned several of his colleagues in September, “Please write all emails as though they will be made public.“ Small wonder why. It’s being called Climategate, but more than one wit is calling them “the CRUtape Letters.“

Continue reading

Posted by Earl on 12/06 at 02:22 AM
Science • Environment • News • Politics • International •

Thursday, January 29, 2009

THE OLD STORY IS THAT THE AUTO COMPANIES KILLED THE ELECTRIC TRAMS ALL OVER THE U.S…...

....and now, guess what?  The electric automobile is being KILLED IN CALIFORNIA, and guess who the murderer is, this time? 

Would you believe….?  It’s the CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD.  On the surface, this really seems bizarre, doesn’t it?  I mean….electric cars will take gasoline-powered vehicles off the road…..and plug-in electrics can supplant the WORST-polluting type of driving that exists - the daily commute.  So, what’s the deal?

Continue reading

Posted by Earl on 01/29 at 09:29 PM
Science • Environment • Politics • Domestic • Government Outrage • (0) Comments •

Thursday, November 06, 2008

READY FOR A CAR FUELED BY *AIR*.......?

Well, OK…...the “fuel” isn’t air, of course.  The power source is an engine that uses compressed air to drive the pistons…..but the energy to compress the air is produced by some more conventional power source.  Central generation of electricity is more efficient than burning hydrocarbons in individual cars, they tell us - so these cars qualify as “green”, even when they come in other colors…...
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Nègre and company assert the AirPod can hit 43 mph, by way of MDI’s 5.45 hp compressed-air motor with traditional pistons like an internal combustion engine. At 15-20 miles per hour, they say, the AirPod has a range of 130+ miles per tankful. Sporting a body of plastic composite, the AirPod is just 82 inches long, 63 inches wide and 79 inches high, and expected to come in passenger and cargo versions, each weighing under 500 pounds.

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This particular one is a replacement for the golf cart in many applications, it seems to me.  But larger and more powerful ones are promised.  Many questions remain…..

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Posted by Earl on 11/06 at 10:23 AM
Science • Environment • Miscellany • Funny (strange?) Stuff • (0) Comments •

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

GOING GREEN?  SAM’s CLUB MAY NOT BE THE FIRST PLACE YOU THINK OF…..

But, they’re about to begin selling an electric car…...

THIS electric car:
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READ ALL ABOUT IT

Posted by Earl on 11/04 at 09:39 PM
Science • Environment • Miscellany • Funny (strange?) Stuff • (0) Comments •

Thursday, October 23, 2008

IN AN AGE OF “BAILOUTS”, WHAT’S ONE MORE…..BUT ETHANOL?!?

Remember…...the federal government has a tariff on imported sugar in order to protect the cane farmers in Florida (and the campaign contributions they supply to incumbents in Congress). 
. Furthermore, the replacement for cheap sugar from the Caribbean is high-fructose corn syrup, produced by (perhaps) the MOST subsidized agricultural corporations in the United States - corn farmers like ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND (ADM).  This stupid policy (not stupid for the Congress-critters, of course, who get massive campaign contributions from corn producers) not only costs the taxpayers billions of dollars, distorts the market, and feeds the epidemics of diabetes and obesity, it is also an environmental disaster, creating a massive DEAD ZONE off the coast of Louisiana, where excess nitrogen fertilizer stimulates algal blooms than then die and suck the oxygen out of the water column.  AND, to top it all off, 15% of Iowa’s carbon dioxide emissions are being spewed into the air by the state’s ethanol plants.

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Posted by Earl on 10/23 at 08:40 PM
Science • Environment • Miscellany • Food • Politics • Domestic • Economics • (0) Comments •

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

PORTABLE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS…..?

Is that a dream…..or a nightmare?

I’m thinking the former…...

The Hyperion Power Generation uranium hydride reactor will weigh fifteen to 20 tons…designed to fit on the back of a flatbed truck because most of our customers are not going to have rail….It will generate 27-30 Megawatts of electrical power from 70 MW of thermal power….Here is a comparison to help put the system’s potential into perspective. A single truck can deliver the HPM heat source to a site. The device is supposed to be able to produce 70 MW of thermal energy for 5 years. That means that the truck will be delivering about 10.5 trillion BTU’s to the site. Natural gas costs about $7 per million BTU which would would cost $73 million….about 3 times as much as the announced selling price for an HPM…(but), it would be better to compare the HPM to diesel fuel, which currently costs about 2 times as much per unit of useful heat as natural gas and still requires some form of delivery for remote locations. In some places, fuel transportation costs are two or three times as much as the cost of the fuel from the central supply points.

Wouldn’t THIS be incredible?  READ THE WHOLE THING

Posted by Earl on 10/08 at 06:09 PM
Science • News • Politics • Economics • (0) Comments •

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

WANT MORE OIL PRODUCTION….?  TELL YOUR CONGRESS-CRITTERS TO VOTE *AGAINST* THE NEW “DRILLING PLAN”

It’s a fraud.  Among other things, it will
.   *    Permanently ban access to about 97 percent of the undersea oil lying within 50 miles of the California coast.
  *    Continue the ban on energy production in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
  *    Impose a brand-new ban on oil and gas leases in Alaska’s coastal waters out to 50 miles.
  *    Not allow states that approve new leases beyond 50 miles to share royalties with the federal government, thus stripping any financial incentive for states to stand up to environmental pressure groups, who will continue to agitate against any new oil and gas
            operations offshore.

Continue reading

Posted by Earl on 09/16 at 11:59 AM
Science • Environment • Politics • Domestic • (0) Comments •
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