pre-set
Well-known member
Let's leave "mothers" out of this, okay?
I've been polite and cordial (if a bit exasperated by your density) with you for the duration of this thread. I'd think it's only fair to expect the same courtesy from you.
How Al Gore justifies his energy useage - and why YOU can't!!!
- Thread starter pre-set
- Start date
Let's leave "mothers" out of this, okay?
I've been polite and cordial (if a bit exasperated by your density) with you for the duration of this thread. I'd think it's only fair to expect the same courtesy from you.
Baltimore Shooter
Well-known member
Pre-set,
What was your electric bill last year? Was it $0? This guy's was:
His energy bill is $0.00
By Jared Flesher, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Thu Mar 15, 4:00 AM ET
EAST AMWELL, N.J. - Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days.
Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates.
It sounds promising, even utopian: homemade, storable energy that doesn't contribute to global warming. But does Strizki's method – converting electricity generated from renewable sources into hydrogen – make sense for widespread adoption?
According to some renewable-energy experts, the answer is "no," at least not anytime soon. The system is too expensive, they say, and the process of creating hydrogen from clean sources is itself laced with inefficiency – the numbers just don't add up.
Strizki's response: "Nothing is as wildly expensive as destroying the whole planet."
Life free from the power grid
Strizki lives with his wife in a rural section of Central New Jersey. His 12-acre property is surrounded by trees and his gravel driveway leads to a winding country road. His 3,500-square-foot house has all the amenities, including a hot tub and a big-screen TV.
It was here, four years ago, that Strizki set out to do something that's never been done in this country – power his home completely through a combination of solar and hydrogen. "My motivation was, I saw what fossil fuels were doing to the environment," he says.
Strizki works for a company that installs solar panels. In previous jobs, he's helped integrate hydrogen fuel cells into cars, a boat, a fire truck, and an airplane. His latest project, the one involving his house, is an extension of that expertise.
The solar-hydrogen house took longer to complete than Strizki expected – a strict local zoning officer and the state permitting process caused delays, he says – but in October 2006, the system finally went online. The total cost, $500,000, was paid for in part with a $250,000 grant from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
This is how it works
On sunny days, solar panels on the roof of Strizki's detached garage generate more than enough electricity to power his home. The excess electricity powers a device inside the garage called an electrolyzer, which transforms a tank of water into its base elements – oxygen and hydrogen.
The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is stored in 10 1,000-gallon propane tanks on Strizki's property. In the winter, when the solar panels collect less energy than the home needs, that hydrogen is piped to an air-conditioner-size fuel cell, located just outside the garage, which generates electricity.
The final piece of the equation is "The New Jersey Genesis," a hydrogen fuel-cell car Strizki helped design and now maintains for the New Jersey Department of Transportation. He can fill up the Genesis with hydrogen from his electrolyzer and drive it pollution free.
Strizki understands that few people can afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for clean energy. Now that he's demonstrated his idea works, his goal is to make the system better and less expensive. (For example, the 10 propane tanks could be replaced by one high-pressure hydrogen tank buried underground.) With mass production, he believes he could get the price of the system, not including the solar panels, down to about $50,000. (A new solar panel system can cost as much as $80,000, Strizki says, but some states, including New Jersey, have offered rebates that cover up to 70 percent of the cost.) Strizki is seeking government grants and private donors for funding, and he's started a company, Renewable Energy International, which he hopes will one day market his product. He says he's already heard from potential customers: "We've been called by some A-list Hollywood types interested in powering their islands."
Hydrogen hurdles
Strizki's project proves that carbon-free living is possible right now, but renewable-energy experts are skeptical that hydrogen houses with hydrogen-run cars in the driveway will catch on anytime soon.
"There's no way your average person is going to want to buy five expensive pieces of hardware," says Joseph Romm, a former Department of Energy official who analyzed clean-energy technologies during the Clinton administration.
In addition to the high cost of the equipment, there's another huge hurdle that must be overcome if hydrogen is to become a viable clean energy: Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it doesn't exist alone in nature; you can't just bottle it up.
To get at hydrogen, it must be processed from another source, such as natural gas, oil, coal, or water. According to the National Hydrogen Association, 95 percent of the hydrogen produced in the United States is made through steam reforming natural gas – a process that releases greenhouse gases into the air.
Strizki's method for making hydrogen is totally clean, but suffers from a different problem: Electrolyzers are only 50 percent efficient. By the time the electricity from his solar panels is converted into hydrogen, and the hydrogen converted back into electricity in the fuel cell, half of the clean energy he started with is used up.
Mr. Romm thinks it's a waste. That electricity would do more good toward reducing pollution if it was sent into the main power grid to displace other energy, he says. "[Strizki's system] doesn't get you that much environmentally," he says.
Romm is an advocate for clean-energy use – in recent books and articles he advocates a sharp cut in greenhouse-gas emissions within 10 years – but he's characterized hydrogen as an overhyped distraction that isn't ready yet to help toward that goal. He supports continued hydrogen research, but other technologies that are more developed could help the Earth much more and much sooner, he says.
Not ready for prime time
Robert Boehm, director of the Center for Energy Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has studied renewable energy for the past 35 years. His reaction to Strizki's home project is tempered.
"Does it make sense in the present environment? Probably not. Does it make sense as a sustainable thing in the future? It very well could," Dr. Boehm says.
Boehm predicts that it will be at least a decade before hydrogen energy is ready for the mainstream, and then only if enough money is put into research and development.
"In any of these new technologies, they need a lot of government support," he says.
Boehm sees the most immediate potential for a system like Strizki's in places far from a power grid, where selling renewable energy back to a power company is not an option.
Strizki isn't dissuaded by criticisms that his system is too expensive or too inefficient to be practical. He's determined to push technology ahead toward an end goal – totally clean energy – and he sees renewable hydrogen as the best solution.
"It's the way that makes the most sense, and we have to start somewhere," he says. "If you look at it, no one has said what I'm doing doesn't work."
Link here - http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070315/ts_csm/chydro
-------------------------------------------
Warren
What was your electric bill last year? Was it $0? This guy's was:
His energy bill is $0.00
By Jared Flesher, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Thu Mar 15, 4:00 AM ET
EAST AMWELL, N.J. - Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days.
Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates.
It sounds promising, even utopian: homemade, storable energy that doesn't contribute to global warming. But does Strizki's method – converting electricity generated from renewable sources into hydrogen – make sense for widespread adoption?
According to some renewable-energy experts, the answer is "no," at least not anytime soon. The system is too expensive, they say, and the process of creating hydrogen from clean sources is itself laced with inefficiency – the numbers just don't add up.
Strizki's response: "Nothing is as wildly expensive as destroying the whole planet."
Life free from the power grid
Strizki lives with his wife in a rural section of Central New Jersey. His 12-acre property is surrounded by trees and his gravel driveway leads to a winding country road. His 3,500-square-foot house has all the amenities, including a hot tub and a big-screen TV.
It was here, four years ago, that Strizki set out to do something that's never been done in this country – power his home completely through a combination of solar and hydrogen. "My motivation was, I saw what fossil fuels were doing to the environment," he says.
Strizki works for a company that installs solar panels. In previous jobs, he's helped integrate hydrogen fuel cells into cars, a boat, a fire truck, and an airplane. His latest project, the one involving his house, is an extension of that expertise.
The solar-hydrogen house took longer to complete than Strizki expected – a strict local zoning officer and the state permitting process caused delays, he says – but in October 2006, the system finally went online. The total cost, $500,000, was paid for in part with a $250,000 grant from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
This is how it works
On sunny days, solar panels on the roof of Strizki's detached garage generate more than enough electricity to power his home. The excess electricity powers a device inside the garage called an electrolyzer, which transforms a tank of water into its base elements – oxygen and hydrogen.
The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is stored in 10 1,000-gallon propane tanks on Strizki's property. In the winter, when the solar panels collect less energy than the home needs, that hydrogen is piped to an air-conditioner-size fuel cell, located just outside the garage, which generates electricity.
The final piece of the equation is "The New Jersey Genesis," a hydrogen fuel-cell car Strizki helped design and now maintains for the New Jersey Department of Transportation. He can fill up the Genesis with hydrogen from his electrolyzer and drive it pollution free.
Strizki understands that few people can afford to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for clean energy. Now that he's demonstrated his idea works, his goal is to make the system better and less expensive. (For example, the 10 propane tanks could be replaced by one high-pressure hydrogen tank buried underground.) With mass production, he believes he could get the price of the system, not including the solar panels, down to about $50,000. (A new solar panel system can cost as much as $80,000, Strizki says, but some states, including New Jersey, have offered rebates that cover up to 70 percent of the cost.) Strizki is seeking government grants and private donors for funding, and he's started a company, Renewable Energy International, which he hopes will one day market his product. He says he's already heard from potential customers: "We've been called by some A-list Hollywood types interested in powering their islands."
Hydrogen hurdles
Strizki's project proves that carbon-free living is possible right now, but renewable-energy experts are skeptical that hydrogen houses with hydrogen-run cars in the driveway will catch on anytime soon.
"There's no way your average person is going to want to buy five expensive pieces of hardware," says Joseph Romm, a former Department of Energy official who analyzed clean-energy technologies during the Clinton administration.
In addition to the high cost of the equipment, there's another huge hurdle that must be overcome if hydrogen is to become a viable clean energy: Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it doesn't exist alone in nature; you can't just bottle it up.
To get at hydrogen, it must be processed from another source, such as natural gas, oil, coal, or water. According to the National Hydrogen Association, 95 percent of the hydrogen produced in the United States is made through steam reforming natural gas – a process that releases greenhouse gases into the air.
Strizki's method for making hydrogen is totally clean, but suffers from a different problem: Electrolyzers are only 50 percent efficient. By the time the electricity from his solar panels is converted into hydrogen, and the hydrogen converted back into electricity in the fuel cell, half of the clean energy he started with is used up.
Mr. Romm thinks it's a waste. That electricity would do more good toward reducing pollution if it was sent into the main power grid to displace other energy, he says. "[Strizki's system] doesn't get you that much environmentally," he says.
Romm is an advocate for clean-energy use – in recent books and articles he advocates a sharp cut in greenhouse-gas emissions within 10 years – but he's characterized hydrogen as an overhyped distraction that isn't ready yet to help toward that goal. He supports continued hydrogen research, but other technologies that are more developed could help the Earth much more and much sooner, he says.
Not ready for prime time
Robert Boehm, director of the Center for Energy Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has studied renewable energy for the past 35 years. His reaction to Strizki's home project is tempered.
"Does it make sense in the present environment? Probably not. Does it make sense as a sustainable thing in the future? It very well could," Dr. Boehm says.
Boehm predicts that it will be at least a decade before hydrogen energy is ready for the mainstream, and then only if enough money is put into research and development.
"In any of these new technologies, they need a lot of government support," he says.
Boehm sees the most immediate potential for a system like Strizki's in places far from a power grid, where selling renewable energy back to a power company is not an option.
Strizki isn't dissuaded by criticisms that his system is too expensive or too inefficient to be practical. He's determined to push technology ahead toward an end goal – totally clean energy – and he sees renewable hydrogen as the best solution.
"It's the way that makes the most sense, and we have to start somewhere," he says. "If you look at it, no one has said what I'm doing doesn't work."
Link here - http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070315/ts_csm/chydro
-------------------------------------------
Warren
shootercub
Well-known member
Whatever.. These politicians are all liars anyways.. Why get so worked up over it?
Al Gore is a liar.. He didn't invent the internet.
And there is NO SUCH THING as man-made global warming.
What about dealing with this war instead??
Al Gore is a liar.. He didn't invent the internet.
And there is NO SUCH THING as man-made global warming.
What about dealing with this war instead??
Baltimore Shooter
Well-known member
Dubbya isn't a "likeable guy" either.
Warren
Warren
Walter Graff
Member
Funny, I work half the week in Amherst, Mass. It has a number of universities in a 10 mile radius with some of the big scientists in many fields these days including climate. We have a Whole Foods that created an area at a checkout aisle which sells the Al Gore tape along with a TV playing it. One night I walked by and a man was on the phone complaining to someone about this thing and how erroneous it was. He seemed like a scientist type. A few weeks later the display was gone. I asked what happened. They said a group of scientists at the area universities complained to the company on the basis that Al Gore's hysteria had no scientific basis so they took it down.
And now Britains Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has not been broadcast by any U.S. networks, but is available on the Web. Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global-warming hysteria is. These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. The names of some were paraded on some of the global-warming publications that are being promoted in the media - but they state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them. One threatened to sue unless his name was removed.
While the public has been led to believe that "all" leading scientists buy the global-warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats - and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were "consulted," but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored. There is no question that the globe is warming - but it has warmed and cooled before, and is not as warm today as it was some centuries ago, before there was as much burning of fossil fuels as today. None of the dire things predicted today happened then.
The documentary goes into some of the many factors that have caused the Earth to warm and cool for centuries, including changes in activities on the Sun, 93 million miles away and wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Kyoto treaty. According to these climate scientists, human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds. These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models used to hype warming hysteria, showing that they're contradicted by hard evidence stretching back centuries. Much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes. One of the scientists interviewed in the documentary reported getting death threats.
In politics, even conservative Republicans seem to have taken the view that, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So have big corporations, which have joined the stampede. No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than they were a century ago. What the climate scientists in the British documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe. "Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.
And now Britains Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has not been broadcast by any U.S. networks, but is available on the Web. Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global-warming hysteria is. These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. The names of some were paraded on some of the global-warming publications that are being promoted in the media - but they state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them. One threatened to sue unless his name was removed.
While the public has been led to believe that "all" leading scientists buy the global-warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats - and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were "consulted," but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored. There is no question that the globe is warming - but it has warmed and cooled before, and is not as warm today as it was some centuries ago, before there was as much burning of fossil fuels as today. None of the dire things predicted today happened then.
The documentary goes into some of the many factors that have caused the Earth to warm and cool for centuries, including changes in activities on the Sun, 93 million miles away and wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Kyoto treaty. According to these climate scientists, human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds. These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models used to hype warming hysteria, showing that they're contradicted by hard evidence stretching back centuries. Much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes. One of the scientists interviewed in the documentary reported getting death threats.
In politics, even conservative Republicans seem to have taken the view that, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So have big corporations, which have joined the stampede. No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than they were a century ago. What the climate scientists in the British documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe. "Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.
itsjusttvnews
Member
Thank you, Walter Graff. Excellent post!
Alaska cameradude
Well-known member
Well looking at the 10 foot snowbank outside my house today and the back porch that needs to be shoveled and all I can say is....
GO GLOBAL WARMING!!!
GO GLOBAL WARMING!!!
pre-set
Well-known member
Walter, you are clearly an idiot. And possibly a dangerous one at that. If you continue to question the "fact" of human-caused global warming, you may find yourself being "dealt with" in uncourteous ways.
The truth simply isn't worth it my friend.
Drink the Kool-Aide.
It's available from lots of guys on this board....
The truth simply isn't worth it my friend.
Drink the Kool-Aide.
It's available from lots of guys on this board....
I suppose, in some alternate reality, that it would be possible to pour millions of tons of pollution into the air each day and not have any effect.
The fact that passenger pigeons were shot out of the air by the millions did not lead to their demise.
Oil tankers that spill into the oceans do not cause any adverse effect.
Strip mining does not harm the environment.
Let me get this straight.........
Things that man does does not affect the environment?
Is that what you are saying?
Talk about cool aid........
The fact that passenger pigeons were shot out of the air by the millions did not lead to their demise.
Oil tankers that spill into the oceans do not cause any adverse effect.
Strip mining does not harm the environment.
Let me get this straight.........
Things that man does does not affect the environment?
Is that what you are saying?
Talk about cool aid........
Frank McBride
Well-known member
For the sake of discussion, let's say industrial pollution and other emmissions are causing the climate to change.
Is this solely or even primarily the fault of the United States? No. But let's say we need to lead by example even though other countries do far worse than we do. Where do the politicians who won't even make the personal sacrifice themselves look for improvement? Will they limit emmissions from grandfathered refineries and power plants? Will they require foreign trucks and sea vessels to have cleaner output? No. They want the ordinary citizen to justify all their usage and make the sacrifices. Illegals, non-taxpayers and big businesses will get a pass as usual.
I am not at all moved to go buy energy offsets or fret over what may be happening to the planet when the worst offenders won't be held responsible. Eventually the actually productive people in this country are going to be pushed too far and either the well will go dry or there will be an uprising.
FMc
Is this solely or even primarily the fault of the United States? No. But let's say we need to lead by example even though other countries do far worse than we do. Where do the politicians who won't even make the personal sacrifice themselves look for improvement? Will they limit emmissions from grandfathered refineries and power plants? Will they require foreign trucks and sea vessels to have cleaner output? No. They want the ordinary citizen to justify all their usage and make the sacrifices. Illegals, non-taxpayers and big businesses will get a pass as usual.
I am not at all moved to go buy energy offsets or fret over what may be happening to the planet when the worst offenders won't be held responsible. Eventually the actually productive people in this country are going to be pushed too far and either the well will go dry or there will be an uprising.
FMc