More tin foil, Crazy Joe. The government mind control beams are clearly addling your brain. Just sayin'.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
So a roaring fire is bad for the environment, and doesn't really warm up your house much if any. So what. On a cold and rainy day, tossing on some scrap wood (pieces of wooden pallet from work) and then sitting in front of it just feels right.
-- Badtux the Warm Penguin
Naw, it must be just a coincidence that independent researchers are being blocked from evaluating the effects of the Gulf blowout. Because the Obama administration is an eeeevil soshalist government thingy that hates big business, which is why they're making sure that nobody can independently refute BP and the U.S. government's claims about how peachy-keen everything in the Gulf is now that the well is capped...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
And in other news, apparently BP employees have been spotted stealing lollipops from toddlers.
Well, not yet. Just waitin' for it.
BTW, yes, a) the top hat is back, for whatever good it's going to do -- the blowout preventer is now leaning significantly, and if it breaks off the casing entirely, we have an oil volcano at the bottom of the sea, and b) the relief well is within 1,000 feet of being where it needs to be to shut down the gusher. Let's hope that the casing of the gusher is intact enough that it'll hold the mud and not let the mud ooze out into the surrounding rock formations, otherwise the only thing that'll stop the gusher is the final bleedout of the reservoir -- which BP at one time estimated to hold 2 billion barrels of oil.
- Badtux the Oily Penguin
Obama administration still approving drilling plans that promise to protect walruses in the Gulf of Mexico -- despite the fact that there hasn't been any walrus in the Gulf in over 2 million years.
If we had a President, rather than an empty suit making speeches, maybe there'd be a real moratorium on Gulf drilling until the industry could provide real response capabilities for dealing with blowouts -- the most important of which is the drilling of a relief well to bottom-kill depth *before* it's needed, rather than requiring 6 months to do the job *after* a blowout. Oh wait, that would cost money and be bad for business, thus can't be done, despite the fact that the Canadians and Norwegians require exactly that. So I guess we have to be satisfied with protecting the rare Gulf of Mexico walrus. Koo koo kachoo.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
If BP was responsible for cleaning up a coffee spill:
Siiiiiiiiigh!
Has someone else like, say, Halliburton or Schlumberger, been given a contract by the government to be prime contractor yet to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill, with BP being handed the bill? No?
Leadership. It's more than just giving good speech, President Obama. Just sayin'. SIIIIIIIIIGH!
-- Badtux the Bumfuddled Penguin
I was in school during the Iran embassy crisis. I mentioned the latest events of the day to a girl and she said "why should I care? It's got nothing to do with me." She went on to explain that it didn't affect her ability to go to the mall and shop, or go out on dates, or anything, so why should she care?
That's the attitude we're facing here. The average American simply doesn't care about anything unless the impact is felt personally, via money from his pocketbook or personal discomfort or both. America has become a land populated by narcissistic nihilists who believe nothing is important except themselves. And this isn't new -- that was, what, 1979?
Reagan/Bush/Bush II was a symptom, not a cause. And even after this, the average American will have no problem with "drill, baby, drill!" because the average American does *not* live on the Gulf Coast and thus this doesn't affect him personally. Dead zone on the Gulf Coast? Bummer for those who live there, but why should I care? Ah yes, America in a nutshell...
- Badtux the Cynical Penguin
Okay, the Toyota Prius costs around $25K and gets around 45mpg in real-world driving on California freeways. The Toyota Yaris costs around $15K and gets around 35mpg in real-world driving on California freeways. So how many hundreds of thousands of miles at $4 per gallon would you have to drive the Prius in order to make that $10K worthwhile? What price would gasoline have to be to make a Prius more cost-effective than a Yaris over the typical 150,000 mile timespan that most people have a car?
First of all: let's look at the fundamental equation. C=G*M/E+P That is, total costs is number of miles divided by mpg, multiplied times the cost per gallon, plus the purchase cost.
So for the first question at 4mpg, we can model it as a 2x2 linear equation and for simplicity set the purchase cost at 10k for the Prius and 0 for the Yaris.
Prius: C1=4*M/45+10000
Yaris: C2=4*M/35
C1=C2 at: 4*m/45+10000=4*m/35... 10000=4*m/35-4*m/45... 2500=m/35-m/45... 2500=45m/1575-35m/1575 ... 2500=10m/1575 ... 3937500 = 10m ... 393750 = m.
So, working the math, at $4 per gallon you would have to drive the Prius for 393,750 miles over the course of its lifetime to make up the $10K cost difference over a Yaris.
So now let's find out what the cost of gas would need to be in order to make the Prius pay off at 150,000 miles:
Prius: C1=G*150000/45+10000
Yaris: C2=G*150000/35
C1=C2 at: G*150000/45+10000=G*150000/35 ... G*150000/35 - G*1500000/45 = 10000 ... 45 * G * 150000 / 1575 - 35 * G * 150000 / 1575 = 10000 ... 10 * G * 150000 / 1575 = 10000 ... 10 * 150000 * G = 15750000 ... G = $10.50.
In other words, gasoline would need to sell for $10.50 per gallon to make the Prius pay off over the Yaris over the typical 150K miles that most people keep a new car after buying it.
The Prius has some slight advantages over the Yaris. It's roomier, and much quieter inside under typical city driving conditions. On the other hand it also has some significant disadvantages. I'm fairly tall for a penguin, so I get a good view of the top of the windshield bezel if I have the seat fairly upright so I can see well around me (darn those beady little penguin eyes!). The performance is absolutely awful in mountains, once you exhaust the batteries while heading uphill you're basically limited to 45mph or slower. The handling is reminiscent of an old Volkswagen Beetle, in that the weight of all those batteries in the ass end make it want to trade places with the front end and the skinny tires have all the traction of black ice. All in all, once you get pass the gee-whiz factor, there just isn't any compelling reason for a single penguin (who doesn't care about the back seat kneeroom) to buy a Toyota Prius rather than one of the small 3 or 5 door hatchbacks now available for $10K less on the U.S. market. Assuming that the numbers on the cost sheet are similar to the amount of energy needed to create the vehicle, even the environmental argument doesn't work -- if it cost $10K more in energy to build the freepin' thingy at current energy prices, you'll be over 400,000 miles before you'll recapture that energy due to lower fuel use, and who the hell keeps a car for that long anyhow? It'll be at the crushers long before then... well, except the battery pack, which will be at a toxic waste dump (huh!).
-- Badtux the Numbers Penguin
John Prine talks about it... in 1970. Nobody listened then. Still ain't listenin'.
-- Badtux the Listening Penguin
The problem with all technologies that harness wind, waves, currents is that they disrupt the normal flow of air or water. You are transferring energy from the air or water into electrical generators. What effect will that have on the weather, if there are wind farms all over slowing down the winds (for that is what wind farms do)? What effect will tidal generators have on ocean currents? Will these river current generators slow down the river so much that it increases salt intrusion into the oh-so-vital wetlands at the mouth of the river, thus causing environmental damage? I don't think people have thought this through enough, or even understand one of the fundamental laws of physics involved, the Law of Conservation of Energy (which applies to all non-nuclear energy transactions). Sure, the current small-scale experiments haven't done much bad other than kill a bunch of birds (eep!), but they're *small*...
One of the things I like about direct photovoltaics is that the only side effect they have during operation, assuming they're placed on rooftops and such rather than in giant farms out in the middle of usable land, is to reduce solar heating of the Earth's surface. This is is a Good Thing(tm) given that so many of man's modifications to the Earth increase solar heating of the Earth, such as all that black pavement in cities and all the CO2 we've belched into the atmosphere. The energy density is low, but the current energy usage of the average American is unsustainable anyhow so we're just going to have to learn to live with a lower energy usage. But some of these other technologies, my suspicion is that we'd have fewer effects on the environment from building nuclear power plants (eep!). Things that are "green" on the micro level aren't necessarily "green" on the macro level, and vice-versa...
-- Badtux the Energy Penguin
This shack was once a nice shack that a miner lived in. Then the U.S. government passed a law outlawing his mine and kicked him off his mining claim. There were once four buildings here, one of which was a nice home. They're all gone now except for this little shack and the little shed in the background, neither of which are now weathertight.
-- Badtux the Desert Penguin
Which is why there will likely be mandatory water rationing in the Silicon Valley next year.
Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The Hyperion Nuclear Power Generation Unit. This appears to be a small nuclear heat source that can be used to drive steam turbines. It uses a different fuel as compared to normal nuclear reactors so it's impossible for it to melt down, it self-damps (stops moderating neutrons, i.e., stops the reaction) when it gets above a certain temperature.
I've already noted that with oil and gas running out and the transition to a hydrogen infrastructure we're going to need not only a replacement for fuel oil and natural gas for home heating, but also a lot of energy to "crack" water into its hydrogen/oxygen components to use as fuel -- more energy than can be provided by wind and solar. There simply isn't enough energy density available in wind and solar to power a modern economy. Just ask Germany. They tried. They failed. Instead, Germany is now covered by a black cloud from coal-powered plants that are all that keeps Germany from sitting in the dark. Meanwhile, the skys are clear in France, where over 90% of their electricity comes from nuclear power. So for the near term, nuclear fission is "it" as an energy source for powering a modern economy. And as these small reactors prove, it *is* possible to create safe nuclear reactors.
The sad thing is that these new safe nuclear reactors are going to get installed in Eastern Europe long before they're installed here in America. The moron radical environmentalists would rather we all sit in the dark freezing, because sitting in the dark freezing is more "environmentally sound". Bah. Ideology wins over pragmatism once again. Environmentalism is yet another one of those "isms" like capitalism, socialism, and communism, all of which have some useful ideas, but when you turn them into an ideology what you get is poison.
-- Badtux the Nuclear Penguin
I'm taking about today's Murky News editorial by Todd J. Paglia, "executive director of ForestEthics, a forest and climate advocacy group". He said that the state's forests should not be clear-cut and replaced with mono-culture because, err, it "causes global warming".
Uhm, no. The carbon in those trees is going to stay in the lumber that builds houses and stuff. Unlike what this moron said, the carbon isn't going to get released back into the air, the vast majority of that lumber is *not* going to be used for firewood, it's going to go into homes and businesses. The tree plantations planted in place of the cut trees are going to suck up even more carbon, since they will be growing rapidly as vs. older trees which grow very slowly. So from a global warming perspective, we're talking about something that's good for the environment.
Of course, there's plenty of other arguments to be made against clear-cutting forests. It reduces species diversity, it causes erosion and sedimentation of streams, it harms wildlife, it's just plain ugly. This guy didn't make those arguments, though, because those arguments don't pay his bills, while the global warming argument does. What irritates me is when people just make sh*t up and don't care whether it's true or not, it pays their salary and that's all they care about, not truth. I seem to recall some feller sayin', "the truth shall set you free." I think his initials were "J.C." or somethin' like that. But that feller obviously didn't live in modern-day America or rely on telling lies for his living.
-- Badtux the Irritated Penguin
Remember that classic Hitchcock movie The Birds? Well, over in Arkansas they're doing an unintentional remake except with a different species. Call it... The Fish.
No, this wasn't a case of some bubba having a few too many cans of brew. Just call it another example of how man's tweaking of his environment has some crummy effects. In the meantime, if you're boatin' on Lake Chico in Arkansas, I suggest you bring your twenty gauge shotgun as well as your fishin' rod. 'Cause them fish be a flyin'...
-- Badtux the Fish-eatin' Penguin
You're killing the penguins. Global warming has caused rain to replace snow in Antarctica, and penguin chicks cannot survive rain because they have no feathers to shed rain.
This penguin is very sad :-(.
-- Badtux the soon-to-be-lonely Penguin
The penguin has been hacking and wheezing and his eyes have been watering for the past couple of days because the Silly Cone Valley is covered with smoke from all the fires. I can't even see the top of Mount Hamilton. Hell, I can't even see Mount Hamilton through the haze.
Global warming is a hoax, my ass...
-- Badtux the Wheezing Penguin
The mad raisin farmer of Modesto strikes again! Victor Davis Hanson calls himself a conservative? His latest column bemoans the fact that Americans aren't building gigantic government projects much anymore.
Wait. Let me get this straight. V.D. Hanson calls himself a "conservative". Traditionally conservatives were the small government party, right? So why is V.D. bemoaning the fact that, well, big government isn't doing much big governmentin' nowdays?
For other stupidity in that same article, V.D. Hanson bemoans the fact that the last oil refinery was built 30 years ago. Never mind that today's oil refineries don't have a single component on site that was on site 30 years ago -- they've basically been rebuilt in-place with vastly greater capacity than the refineries of 30 years ago, we have more refining capacity today than we've ever had -- facts are not necessary for V.D. to operate.
About the only thing he really strikes home with is his criticism of the fact that the U.S. hasn't built a new nuclear power plant in the past 30 years. River Bend in Louisiana, started in April 1977, was the last nuclear reactor to start construction in the United States. That's over thirty years ago. As I've noted in the past, nuclear energy is the only energy source we have left with the energy density to maintain technological society once the oil runs out. We could burn more coal, I suppose, but that has serious environmental effects both in its extraction and in its effects upon global warming, and the coal won't last forever either. There are enough radioactive isotopes on this planet to fulfill our energy needs for tens of thousands of years, and by that time hopefully we will have figured out some way of doing nuclear fusion -- or we won't exist anymore (most likely, alas).
So anyhow, out of a gigantic three-column article, V.D. Hanson gets exactly *one* thing right. Which is 100% better than he's done in the past, but still. Why do people keep paying this hack to write this drivel?
-- Badtux the
Less than 5% of the area of the United States and associated continental shelf remains to be explored and exploited for any underlying oil. At most only 5% of the oil that we extracted from the rest of the United States over the past 100 years can be pumped out from under there -- i.e., a 5 year supply of oil, at best. We cannot drill our way out of this oil crisis by drilling more oil wells in the United States, regardless of whether you open up ANWR and the Pacific and Florida coasts or not. Any significant finds remaining to be made are in foreign countries that haven't been explored and exploited to a fare-the-well the way that the United States has been. And most of those places either hate us or they're inaccessible (the Amazon basis) or they're a political nightmare (the Congo basin).
In short, we ain't drillin' our way out of this one, folks.
-- Badtux the Oil Penguin
