More snow coming. Temps below 20F for days.

Flip me some coins!

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

That's one way to kill a business -- price the commodity that it sells into the stratosphere and make it impossible for most people to buy it. Businesses lose customers that way. People find alternatives -- like wintering elsewhere.

The way this 4T is going, a mass migration to south of the border may occur. Mexico better than the US, corruption and drug cartels, and all...

There are numerous issues underlying the use and extraction of fossil fuel. For instance, fracking and oil extraction is competing for water in our country. Fracking is actually depleting water in drought ridden areas like Texas and California.

A number of small communities in Texas oil and gas country have already run out of water or are in danger of running out of water in days, pushed to the brink by a combination of drought and high demand for water for fracking.

Twenty-nine communities across Texas could run out of water in 90 days, according to the Texas commission on environmental quality. Many reservoirs in west Texas are at only 25% capacity.

Nearly all of the wells in Colorado (97%) were located in areas where most of the ground and surface water is already stretched between farming and cities, the report said. It said water demand for fracking in the state was expected to double to 6bn gallons by 2015 – or about twice as much as the entire city of Boulder uses in a year.

In California, where a drought emergency was declared last month, 96% of new oil and gas wells were located in areas where there was already fierce competition for water.

http://www.theguardian.com/environme...rought-oil-gas

Here is another major issue:

How the U.S. Exports Global Warming

While Obama talks of putting America on the path to a clean, green future, we're flooding world markets with cheap, high carbon fuels

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz2sYbaRSqL

Originally Posted by Annapurna1

relax...chicago and milwaukee will get colder..not warmer ..

Not necessarily. We have been there before. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930's the Midwest had an exceptionally brutal winter in 1935-36. Yet the remaining winters of that decade, both before and after this one, had above average temperature and for the most part below normal snowfall.

India to Build World's Largest Solar Power Plant

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...medium=twitter

…"India has pledged to build the world’s most powerful solar plant. With a nominal capacity of 4,000 megawatts, comparable to that of four full-size nuclear reactors, the ‘ultra mega' project will be more than ten times larger than any other solar project built so far, and it will spread over 77 square kilometers of land — greater than the island of Manhattan.”...

Originally Posted by radind

India to Build World's Largest Solar Power Plant

Thanks for the good news. I could use some about now. I guess we have to look across the seas for it.

Originally Posted by radind

India to Build World's Largest Solar Power Plant

India is likely to be the country with the fastest rise in energy consumption in absolute terms. China will need to conserve energy just to prevent environmental degradation.

India has some extremely hot, dry deserts. Maybe high temperatures aren't that important, but continued sunlight is. Just think of the countries that could solve their energy problems by putting giant solar cells in arid wastelands. Australia is obvious enough, and if global warming takes its course, the country may need solar power just to desalinate sea water. Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia suggest themselves. Just think of all the deserts of western China... cleaner energy than the coal that China uses.

When countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia run out of oil, then they too can remain huge exporters of energy.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

India is likely to be the country with the fastest rise in energy consumption in absolute terms. China will need to conserve energy just to prevent environmental degradation.

India has some extremely hot, dry deserts. Maybe high temperatures aren't that important, but continued sunlight is. Just think of the countries that could solve their energy problems by putting giant solar cells in arid wastelands. Australia is obvious enough, and if global warming takes its course, the country may need solar power just to desalinate sea water. Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia suggest themselves. Just think of all the deserts of western China... cleaner energy than the coal that China uses.

When countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia run out of oil, then they too can remain huge exporters of energy.

Electrical energy doesn't export as easily (efficiently) as chemical energy does.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Electrical energy doesn't export as easily (efficiently) as chemical energy does.

True -- but solar energy can be transformed into chemical energy. Photosynthesis does that. Unfortunately that is tricky in places with little water.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Electrical energy doesn't export as easily (efficiently) as chemical energy does.

Biobatteries may be the cross-over that marries the two concepts. Actually, the term "battery" is a misnomer. These are more accurately called fuel cells. They vent water and typically need to be restored when they are recharged. So far, this is a concept without a practical model. Working models are reputed to be close, though.

The math indicates that biobatteries can have an energy storage capacity close to that of gasoline. We'll have to wait for more developments before we'll know just how good a solution they are.

STOP DIRTY FUELS: TAR SANDS

In Canada, the oil industry is transforming one of the world's last remaining intact ecosystems into America's gas tank.

Alberta's boreal forest and wetlands are home to a diverse range of animals, including lynx, caribou and grizzly bears, and serve as critical breeding grounds for many North American songbirds and waterfowl. Oil companies are scraping up hundreds of thousands of acres of this wildlife haven to mine tar sands -- silty deposits that contain small amounts of crude bitumen.

Extracting tar sands, and turning bitumen into crude oil, uses vast amounts of energy and water, and causes significant air and water pollution, and three times the global warming pollution of conventional crude production. The rush to strip-mine and drill tar sands in the boreal will destroy and fragment millions of acres of this wild forest for low-grade petroleum fuel.

Click to see the map

TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be the third new dedicated tar sands pipeline, and would lock the United States into a dependence on hard-to-extract oil and generate a massive expansion of the destructive tar sands oil operations in Canada in coming decades.

Tar sands developments are already wreaking havoc on both people and wildlife in the region. For aboriginal peoples, the mining reduces local water supplies and increases exposure to toxic substances. Expanding tar sands operations also heightens the risk for NRDC's Peace-Athabasca Delta BioGem -- just downstream from these developments.

In addition to the extraction impacts, the proposed pipeline would stretch 2000 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas, threatening to contaminate freshwater supplies in America's agricultural heartland and increase refinery emissions in already-polluted communities of the U.S. Gulf Coast.

At a time when we must embrace a clean energy future, tar sands take us far in the wrong direction. The United States should instead implement a comprehensive oil savings plan and reduce oil consumption by increasing fuel efficiency standards, hybrid cars, renewable energy, environmentally sustainable biofuels, and smart growth to meet our transportation needs.

http://www.nrdc.org/energy/dirtyfuels_tar.asp

Keystone pipleine climate impacts:
http://www.nrdc.org/energy/keystone-...te-impacts.asp

Add Your Voice

The public comment period for the Keystone XL Pipeline began on February 5, 2014 and will end on March 7, 2014. Comments can be posted electronically to the State Department or by mailing letters, postmarked no later than Friday, March 7, to: Bureau of Energy Resources, Room 4843, Attn: Keystone XL Public Comments, U.S. Department of State, 2201 C St. NW., Washington, DC 20520.

Keystone XL Pipeline to America: Bend Over and Take It
Thursday, 06 February 2014 14:06
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21...er-and-take-it

Clayton Williams, the 1990 Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas, once said about rape that, "as long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

Obviously, that was an incredibly insane and ignorant comment.

Fast-forward 24 years, and people are using that same insane rationale with the Keystone XL pipeline.

They're saying that as long as it's inevitable, we should just accept it and learn to love it.
And they're also saying that America is a fossil fuel dependent nation and that the Keystone pipeline will help lower gas prices in America and make us more energy independent.

But the Keystone XL pipeline is not inevitable, America doesn't have to be a fossil fuel dependent nation, and the oil from the Keystone pipeline won't do anything to help gas prices in this country.

Big Oil supporters and pundits across the media have been saying that the use of tar sands oil from Canada and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline are inevitable, but that's simply not the case.

On Monday's episode of The Big Picture, I spoke with Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of the International Program with the Natural Resources Defense Council, about the State Department's report on the Keystone XL pipeline that was released last week. I asked her if the report said that extracting tar sands oil from Canada was an inevitable process. She said that tar sands oil development is not inevitable, no matter what pundits and Big Oil supporters will try to tell you. And she pointed out that some people have said that even if we don't build the Keystone XL pipeline, dirty and toxic tar sands oil will still be transported through the U.S. via rail. But due to its complex nature, tar sands oil isn't well equipped to travel by train, and it's also more expensive to transport by rail. So that's not a viable option.

Either way you slice it, the use of tar sands oil isn't inevitable. We don't have to extract that toxic, dirty, and dangerous stuff from the ground.

Now, what about the talking point that America is a fossil fuel dependent nation and is going to be for the foreseeable future and that because of that, building the Keystone XL pipeline makes sense. Well, America is becoming less and less of a fossil fuel dependent nation.

The U.S. solar industry had its second largest quarter ever during the third quarter of 2013. And, residential solar power installations were up 45% in 2013 from 2012. In Texas alone, covering half of a roof with solar panels is enough to generate all of the electricity used by an average family in the Lone Star State. Thanks to the boom in solar power use in America last year, the U.S. outpaced Germany in solar power installations for the first time in 15 years.

But solar power isn't the only clean and green form of energy on the rise. Wind power is also gaining traction.
Wind power accounted for 42% of new energy generating capacity in 2012, making it the number one source of new energy capacity that year. In Iowa alone, wind power generated nearly 25% of that state's energy in 2012. And in Texas, it accounted for nearly 10% of energy generated.

Finally, what about the arguments that oil from the Keystone XL pipeline will help reduce gas prices across the nation and make us more energy independent?

Well, even TransCanada has said that oil from the Keystone XL pipeline isn't guaranteed to stay in America. Back in 2012, during a Congressional hearing on the pipeline project, Alex Pourbaix, the head of TransCanada's pipeline division, was asked if he would support legislation requiring Canadian tar sands oil and its byproducts to be sold only in the U.S. He replied, "No, I can't do that."

And numerous other studies have found that much of the oil transported through the Keystone XL pipeline will be exported from the Gulf of Mexico.

We won't see a drop of that toxic, dirty and dangerous tar sands oil, unless of course we're forced to deal with a tar sands oil spill disaster.

And the Keystone XL pipeline will cause gas prices to rise, not fall.

A report by Consumer Watchdog found that if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, Americans, especially in the Midwest, will see higher gas prices, adding up to an addition $3-4 billion each year. That's roughly a 20-40 cent increase on a gallon of gas in the Midwest, and a few cents increase everywhere else.

We've fought hard to make our voices heard about the Keystone XL pipeline over the past several months, and finally, the government is beginning to realize the grave effects that the Keystone XL pipeline could have on our climate.

But our fight is not over.

We can't let those who think that the pipeline is inevitable, or that America is always going to be a fossil fuel dependent nation, erase the progress that we've made.

Most importantly, we need to make it clear to Big Oil, the Obama administration, and their supporters that we aren't just going to "lie back and enjoy" the Keystone XL pipeline and the toxic, dirty and dangerous oil that it would be transporting.

It's time to stop the environmental rape of America and our planet once and for all.

This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.

The most dangerous thing happening in America today is the oil and gas boom.

Please sign my petition to the White House
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pet...imate/kCBkMHqD

Why is it dangerous?

Because unless we stop burning fossil fuels, we will cook the planet and make it uninhabitable, and we have less than 10 years to change before global warming is irreversible.

And because people like the pundits and politicians on the Charlie Rose show think that the oil and gas boom is "good for our economy" and makes us an energy rich nation; one that can also export fossil fuels to other countries and thus keep cooking the planet.

And because this boom is itself based on fracking, which pollutes the air and water and releases greenhouse gases like methane.

And because it still keeps us dependent on fossil fuels and delays renewable energy development, which needs to have already been done.

We need to stop fracking unless it is changed to make it safe, which it probably can't be. And even if it is safe for nearby residents, using fossil fuels is not safe for the planet. Therefore it needs to be stopped even if it is safe, although natural gas could be a bridge fuel for a short while-- again, only if that portion of it mined by fracking is proven safe or made safe from pollution and greenhouse gases, which is probably not possible.

We need to stop the keystone oil pipeline, which pollutes Canada, the American plains and the climate, and raises gas prices.

We need to stop offshore oil drilling, because it causes disasters like the one by BP in the Gulf in 2010, from which we learned nothing.

We need to switch to solar and wind and other renewables as soon as is practical. But we can't as long as people think they can make good money from fracking.

Our president makes speeches on climate change to California farmers, and our Sec. of State preaches the need to reduce climate change to Indonesia. Yet rumors persist that they will approve the Keystone Pipeline and fracking. If they think climate change is so important, then THEY need to act and take the lead by stopping keystone and restricting fracking.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

We need to switch to solar and wind and other renewables as soon as is practical. But we can't as long as people think they can make good money from fracking.

I suppose that all the things that you want to "stop" instantly make some sort of Utopian sense. In the quote I pulled from your post, you use the words "as soon as practical." That seems to me to be the real issue.

If we did everything you said that we need to stop, our country would grind to a halt overnight. The gap between where we are and where we need to be someday (soon?) is very large and will require a great deal of consensus and a great deal of investment and a great deal of hard work.

Sure, we could do a huge amount of switching over, and it probably wouldn't take more than ten or twenty years. So what is the real problem? I'd say that there are stupendously large obstacles in the form of people who have financial interests in keeping the status quo. And large obstacles in the form of regular folks who will be negatively impacted by change itself. And regular folks who will suddenly have to spend money on new technology, money they don't necessarily have.

You're preaching to the choir, Eric. How do you propose that the obstacles be overcome?

Originally Posted by TnT

I suppose that all the things that you want to "stop" instantly make some sort of Utopian sense. In the quote I pulled from your post, you use the words "as soon as practical." That seems to me to be the real issue.

I guess maybe Deb and some of my other fellow environmentalists and radicals think burning fossil fuels can be stopped "instantly." Obviously it will take a certain amount of time. Two things should be said about THAT however. 1. We're talking about doing something that should have been done decades ago (the process was started in the late 1970s and stopped in its tracks by the Reagan-Republican ascendancy) and 2. how fast the conversion takes place is much more a political question than a technical one, especially given how bullish people in places like North Dakota and Texas are about fracking and all the money it's bringing in. That's why I said the oil and gas boom is so dangerous, and why I decided to try the petition to the White House. I got one email back saying my statement is in effect too moderate; as if fracking were safe at all. No, he said, implying that he would not sign. It's as bad as the idea of "clean coal."

If we did everything you said that we need to stop, our country would grind to a halt overnight. The gap between where we are and where we need to be someday (soon?) is very large and will require a great deal of consensus and a great deal of investment and a great deal of hard work.

I agree we can't stop this stuff overnight. The point is we need to stop. It should be obvious from my statement that I meant as soon as is practical. But again, the main obstacle is the momentum of oil, gas and coal now; not the technology of alternative green energy sources.

Sure, we could do a huge amount of switching over, and it probably wouldn't take more than ten or twenty years. So what is the real problem? I'd say that there are stupendously large obstacles in the form of people who have financial interests in keeping the status quo. And large obstacles in the form of regular folks who will be negatively impacted by change itself. And regular folks who will suddenly have to spend money on new technology, money they don't necessarily have.

You're preaching to the choir, Eric. How do you propose that the obstacles be overcome?

Did you sign my petition? That would be a start.

I'm not entirely preaching to the choir, if you think regular folks would be "negatively impacted by change." Maybe that applies to some oil workers and other folks benefitting from fracking. That's why my petition implies that IF fracking can be made safe, natural gas is at least a bridge fuel during the transition. But that's the big IF. If fracking proves to be dangerous, as so far it is proving to be, including to people who live nearby the fracking sites, then this is a reason for it to stop. This oil and gas fracking "boom" is only a few years old, at most. If fracking is dangerous, then the people can stop it in a few years. I think when politics improves in the 2020s, we'll have a chance to do things through politics that cannot be done now because of the Republican block.

Of course I hasten to add, stopping the keystone pipeline is something that can happen "instantly." All it takes is for Kerry and Obama to act on what they preach.

The only people that would be "negatively impacted by the change itself," are the "people who have financial interests in keeping the status quo." They are the same people. Solar and wind work, and may even be cheaper, if not now, then within a few years. They provide all the power that we need. Obviously it takes time to build it, and the economic incentives and some of Obama's policies have already gotten it going. But most of any delay is political, mainly from "climate science deniers." And the reason they deny global warming, is in turn entirely due to their free market ideology. The fear is that if government takes action on this, it will raise their taxes and/or cause more regulations on their beloved corporate/capitalist business establishment-- and knock their beloved Ronnie and his ideology off his pedestal. We can't stand for that, say the tea partiers.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I The only people that would be "negatively impacted by the change itself," are the "people who have financial interests in keeping the status quo." They are the same people. Solar and wind work, and may even be cheaper, if not now, then within a few years. They provide all the power that we need. Obviously it takes time to build it, and the economic incentives and some of Obama's policies have already gotten it going.

I don't believe that's true at all. Take for instance the folks at the bottom of our economic system. They are the ones driving around in 20-year old heaps. If, suddenly, you stop producing gasoline, how do these folks convert over from 1994 Chevies and Fords to all-electric Priuses or whatever?

If their little flat-roofed house in the "war zone" in Albuquerque is burning gas for heat and gas for cooking, what do they do if you turn off their natural gas tap? Where do they get the money?

"Should have been done decades ago?" Well ... shoulda coulda woulda ... geez

Change always brings impacts. You just can't change fundamental systems over, overnight.

Another thing you might want to do in your spare time, since you advocate all this ... do some calculations around the amount of energy that is generated by various methods, the amount of energy that we need to have, and the amount of investment needed to produce each kind, AND the environmental impact of doing all that.

Originally Posted by TnT

I don't believe that's true at all. Take for instance the folks at the bottom of our economic system. They are the ones driving around in 20-year old heaps. If, suddenly, you stop producing gasoline, how do these folks convert over from 1994 Chevies and Fords to all-electric Priuses or whatever?

High-cost technological innovation requires economic growth to make it possible. Television (and it was an expensive technology around 1950) would have never taken off in America when it did had America not had a large mass of well-paid blue-collar workers. Yes, it is ironic -- television was more likely to appear in the house of a prole like "Ralph Kramden" than in that of a middle-class "Ward Cleaver" -- because the middle class had such entertainment as live theater available at modest cost and might even attend the symphony, opera, or ballet that the working class usually found inaccessible. Maybe the innovation can itself push the needed economic growth.

People with 1994 vehicles will eventually replace them with 1999, 2004, and 2009 gasoline-powered cars... and eventually they are going to find themselves with 2019 vehicles that are now the newfangled all-electric vehicles because the gasoline-powered vehicles might be all that is easily available. (I suspect that people might keep their last gasoline-powered vehicle for winter journeys between the Great Lakes States and the southernmost parts of the US... or for other drives out of the range of electric power for a vehicle. If the range for a Prius before it needs to be charged is only 300 miles, then one might be tempted to use the old gasoline-powered car to go from Detroit to Atlanta in one day. 300 miles will barely get one from Detroit to Cincinnati.

OK -- maybe one rents a car for such use, or relies upon air travel followed by the rental of an all-electric car at the airport. Just think of how I would go to from Michigan to Grand Canyon National Park -- take a cheap flight to Vegas, get quickly away from the neon jungle, and drive off to the amazing views

If their little flat-roofed house in the "war zone" in Albuquerque is burning gas for heat and gas for cooking, what do they do if you turn off their natural gas tap? Where do they get the money?

I hope -- the better-paying jobs that did not materialize between 1980 and now. We have done an execrable job of sharing the bounty of increased productivity and technological innovation. When solar panels get dirt-cheap, those panels will cover the flat roofs of houses in sunny Albuquerque. Of course I assume that the feudal inequity 'progressing' in America (in the sense that a metastasizing cancer is 'progressing') since the early 1980s will be repudiated in politics and in economic practice alike.

"Should have been done decades ago?" Well ... shoulda coulda woulda ... geez

Change always brings impacts. You just can't change fundamental systems over, overnight.

America would have been wise to follow the British example and abolish slavery about 20 years before the American Civil War in fact happened. I suspect that such was what Abraham Lincoln had in mind, but cooler heads like his did not prevail in 1860. Maybe America would be different had female suffrage been the norm fifty years earlier. That's before I even discuss the pitiable anachronism of Jim Crow politics in the South.

Another thing you might want to do in your spare time, since you advocate all this ... do some calculations around the amount of energy that is generated by various methods, the amount of energy that we need to have, and the amount of investment needed to produce each kind, AND the environmental impact of doing all that.

Financial analysis is the ticket to understand spending that does not involve any identifiable fun.

Originally Posted by TnT

I don't believe that's true at all. Take for instance the folks at the bottom of our economic system. They are the ones driving around in 20-year old heaps. If, suddenly, you stop producing gasoline, how do these folks convert over from 1994 Chevies and Fords to all-electric Priuses or whatever?

I once asked my congressman to help establish centers for car conversion, subsidized by taxes or whatever. That would be my suggestion. That doesn't seem likely, with our government, but meanwhile, isn't it obvious that what is keeping gas prices so high already for the poor is the lack of competition from electric cars? If we sped up that conversion, then gas prices would fall. Gas stations would become gas and electric-charging stations.

If their little flat-roofed house in the "war zone" in Albuquerque is burning gas for heat and gas for cooking, what do they do if you turn off their natural gas tap? Where do they get the money?

Are they connected to the grid? If not, that's their own fault. If they are, there's no need to be concerned; except about the climate that's going to burn them up soon, and take away all their food and water. I know, it takes a little bit of intelligence to see things that are a bit farther from your view than the stove. Are we homo sapiens, or homo stupidos? We're gonna find out soon, aren't we!

"Should have been done decades ago?" Well ... shoulda coulda woulda ... geez

well, geez indeed. Considering how very late we are in getting started with this, there's no excuse for delay! That deserves 100,000 "well, geez'es" !!!! Well, geez indeed!

Change always brings impacts. You just can't change fundamental systems over, overnight.

That's why I said it wouldn't happen. Did you read what I posted?

Another thing you might want to do in your spare time, since you advocate all this ... do some calculations around the amount of energy that is generated by various methods, the amount of energy that we need to have, and the amount of investment needed to produce each kind, AND the environmental impact of doing all that.

Lots of people have done that already. I have posted on that stuff. The bottom line is that fossil fuels are getting more expensive, and renewables are getting cheaper. There's a veritable revolution already in Europe. People there are smarter than hicks in America. If you don't want people to call you that, then get your ass out of the muck and do what's right for a change! Prove me wrong. It is well known that 100 sq miles of solar energy plants would fill all US needs (600 for the world). Imagine if everyone had solar on their roof too, with financial help to get it done. We'd be exporting solar energy! I guess you didn't watch the doc I posted here. Not my fault, if people ignore what I post. A big problem around here for me.

I only have 13 signatures for my anti-fracking petition. I wonder if any poster here has signed it. You and others say I am preaching to the choir. Others have posted things about fracking. Just discussing things is one thing. But unless we want to go Justin's route and just dispense with government altogether, a democracy requires that we participate, if we don't want tyranny instead. People in places like Ukraine care; we in the land that started it all don't anymore. We vote for cuckoos, or stay home and pout. I don't know which Susan it was, but I don't see the initials S.B. as one of the 13 signers. But here's what this "Susan" wrote back and said,

Acting on what disturbs us is what separates the people who may or do get something accomplished from those who let others / outcomes decide on their own. I applaud your activism. Susan

That goes for anyone who signs. It is amazing how easy it is to vote correctly, or to sign a petition, and yet how hard it is to get people to do it. And how many arguments people raise against obvious truths and facts. Just Amazing. But it's OK I guess, arguments are fun, and I get to at least test my skills at explaining the obvious to people who should know better. I need a lot of training at that, it appears!

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I once asked my congressman to help establish centers for car conversion, subsidized by taxes or whatever. That would be my suggestion. That doesn't seem likely, with our government, but meanwhile, isn't it obvious that what is keeping gas prices so high already for the poor is the lack of competition from electric cars? If we sped up that conversion, then gas prices would fall. Gas stations would become gas and electric-charging stations.

Big Oil is extremely powerful, and it well funds any politician who promises total subordination. If Big Oil fully got its way it would set all policies of energy and transportation.

Are they connected to the grid? If not, that's their own fault. If they are, there's no need to be concerned; except about the climate that's going to burn them up soon, and take away all their food and water. I know, it takes a little bit of intelligence to see things that are a bit farther from your view than the stove. Are we homo sapiens, or homo stupidos? We're gonna find out soon, aren't we!

Some of the most egregious stooges of Big Oil are in places most vulnerable to global warming -- like Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Lots of people have done that already. I have posted on that stuff. The bottom line is that fossil fuels are getting more expensive, and renewables are getting cheaper. There's a veritable revolution already in Europe. People there are smarter than hicks in America. If you don't want people to call you that, then get your ass out of the muck and do what's right for a change! Prove me wrong. It is well known that 100 sq miles of solar energy plants would fill all US needs (600 for the world). Imagine if everyone had solar on their roof too, with financial help to get it done. We'd be exporting solar energy! I guess you didn't watch the doc I posted here. Not my fault, if people ignore what I post. A big problem around here for me.

Environmentalists are well advised to learn mathematics, the sciences, and business. Such a tool as financial analysis can do more to promote environmentally-sound practices than all the theatrical tree-hugging. When people see that global warming creates unpleasant lives, they will start to think.

I only have 13 signatures for my anti-fracking petition. I wonder if any poster here has signed it. You and others say I am preaching to the choir. Others have posted things about fracking. Just discussing things is one thing. But unless we want to go Justin's route and just dispense with government altogether, a democracy requires that we participate, if we don't want tyranny instead. People in places like Ukraine care; we in the land that started it all don't anymore. We vote for cuckoos, or stay home and pout. I don't know which Susan it was, but I don't see the initials S.B. as one of the 13 signers. ...

The most powerful figures in America want acquiescence in their politics -- not participation that the elites find disobedient. America has much more prosperity than Ukraine due to the log period of economic growth in which most Americans were still in the cottage-industry and yeoman-farmer stage of activity. As tycoons and big landowners increasingly dominate ownership and dictate what sort of production is possible and the terms of work -- and a bureaucratic elite that eventually becomes a New Aristocracy, likely hereditary -- America will go very bad very fast. The sorts of elites that have underpinned fascism elsewhere (Ukraine is not and has never been 'fascist' except under Nazi occupation) will impose a brutal order that gives people no choice and no means of opposition. The American Right often seeks to cull the electorate until it is 'reliable'... and with the right set of voters a government can be re-elected indefinitely no matter how badly it treats people.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I guess maybe Deb and some of my other fellow environmentalists and radicals think burning fossil fuels can be stopped "instantly."

"This" is what we environmentalists are trying to do:

"All of our work leverages people power to dismantle the influence and infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry, and to develop people-centric solutions to the climate crisis." ... Bill McKibben

Nothing is expected to be an immediate solution. When any system is entrenched, it takes awhile to loosen the grip. But to not challenge the fossil fuel industry, and the politicians who are in it's pocket, is to ignore a large piece of the puzzle. The other piece toward a sustainable environment is to promote alternatives to carbon producing fuels. This will require a weaning off of our addiction to oil and pushing for more money toward alternative fuels, instead of feeding the insatiable fossil fuel giants.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Such a tool as financial analysis can do more to promote environmentally-sound practices than all the theatrical tree-hugging. When people see that global warming creates unpleasant lives, they will start to think.

Just a nit pic... Whenever we use the phrase "tree huggers," we have bought into the frame that the fossil fuel created for anyone who stands in the way of their for profit destruction of our planet. Just saying. It's right up there with the frame "radical" or extremists." The image they want to portray is some stringy long haired person with a crazed look in their eye.

This is a photo of me and my grandchildren. Do I look like the frame of a radical that the PTB want you to see?

This is a piece about how education by activists, and awareness through being personally impacted, influenced a conservative Governor to move toward a more sustainable environment.

Moench’s group, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, has spent the last seven years educating policy makers and the public on the serious health impacts of particulate pollution — a situation that, in his words, is far more than “an annoyance, an aesthetic issue.”

How Ultra-Conservative Utah Became An Unlikely Bastion Of Environmental Activism

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...air-pollution/

Originally Posted by Deb C

This is a photo of me and my grandchildren. Do I look like the frame of a radical that the PTB want you to see?[/IMG]

I'd watch the one in the middle. She seems to have accepted a petroleum based artificial device designed to keep her complacent and silent. Beware evil conspiracies!

Originally Posted by B Butler

I'd watch the one in the middle. She seems to have accepted a petroleum based artificial device designed to keep her complacent and silent. Beware evil conspiracies!

The binky is BPA free. And, it has nothing to do with keeping her silent and complacent. I guess your an expert on parenting and binkies? Please do tell.

Instead of a diversion tactic that points out a baby's binky, and making assumptions as to why she has it, why not focus on the topic of global warming?

PS: My grand-daughter has terrible ear infections and chewing on a binky helps relieve the pain. So there you have it, Mr. Assumption.