Being in the construction trade, I can tell you that “green energy” is way over hyped. It is cost prohibitive for any but the extremely well off to afford and the payoff is many years down the road, if at all. Solar panels have a ten or fifteen year lifespan and storage batteries have less than that, plus the maintenance issues. Even “passive solar energy” is costly in materials and depends on site location and orientation of the dwelling.

As far as wind power goes…again cost is a factor and site location as well as average daily wind speed. If you don’t live in an area with a ADWS of 10MPH and very little to no trees blocking the wind, forget about it.

Lets see, what other kinds of green energy do we have? Geothermal…again, high cost, you have to drill a bunch of holes in the ground and run pipes, ect….hydroelectric…high cost plus you have to have a stream close at hand with plenty of fall.

I’m just sayin’.

It was a scam when it first began back in the early 1980′s.  My father and I were State Certified Energy Auditors, so we studied all the available technologies.  The payback on anything other than insulation and other low-tech solutions was not economically viable.  The same is pretty much true today.

If all the layers are peeled back on this administrations dealings,
there will be felons turned out to make room for the gaggle.

There is a reason the market stopped using flowing water, the sun and the wind for energy 150 years ago – it’s not cost efficient.   They can put as much lipstick on it as they want, but green energy is just a resource hog.

Actually, flowing water is very efficient… so naturally, envirowhackos want to demolish the dams.

There is a common factor which is directly proportional to the life expectancy and quality of life for a country’s population and the country’s environmental efforts.  That is per capita wealth.

Economic growth is crucial for the environment and for the populace.  We’re better off growing faster with coal now so we discover new technologies faster with our new wealth, than by trying to “go green” and slowing economic growth.  It’s worse for the environment to be “green.”

Many of the enviro-wackos understand this, at least the leadership.  They don’t care because the environment is just a front anyway.  The idea is to grab control of the economy by the back door.

It needs to be rolled back, soon, and hard.

One thing I am liking that actually looks like it works is Stirling systems. Mirror covered satellite dish. A Stirling engine (an 1800′s invention that uses temperature differential to run). Computer program to follow the Sun rather than just sit there waiting on it to come over.

Hydropower is indeed extremely efficient, and nearly 100% “green” (aside from blocking water flow and fish passage).  The sun does all of the heavy work. 

God bless the hydrologic cycle.

Geothermal might be good, at least to a limited extent. Its supposed to recycle underground temperature to your house. Underground temperature is constant, which is why if you have a basement you rarely need air-conditioning. Geothermal pumps the air out of your house and replaces it with the recycled subterranean temperature. It’s supposedly cleaner than fossil fuel derived heat or air, but I don’t know how cost efficient it is. I know it costs somewhere north of nine thousand dollars to install a system on the average and I think it cuts at least a third off your heating/air-conditioning bills.

Heh!  I use Tim’s story as an example of why to not trust the judgement of envirotards.  But I didn’t know about this article.  Thanks!

So hows that solar powered Ham station working out?
n6cid

Back then the best you could get was a tax break – there was no Department of Giving You Green Money.   While we listed the savings on the tax breaks in our reports, we never counted it as part of the payback.  It was a one-off thing in most cases.

The key in these things is will the investment in energy saving devices and actions give you a return on it within three to five years.  We also factored in replacement and maintenance costs.  Solar devices were especially bad at payback.  Weather-stripping,  insulation, and new windows were the best.

It’s all about reducing us to an early 19th-century standard of living so we’ll be easier to dominate.

I’ve only had one contract documents for one %100 Leeds designed building and that project was cancelled by Sara Lee’s stockholders.
 
The design required the 500,000 square feet to be divided into five wings rather than one rectangle because the heating/cooling scheme required an inordinate amount of window surface. The floor framing plan was ridiculously complicated because the entire length of each side had plenums incorporated in to the concrete floors. At each floor and ceiling there would have been computer controlled transom like windows that would allow air in at the bottom or out at the top. In short structural design was totally subservient to what would ordinarily be the functions of the HVAC design and equipment.
 
I don’t know what the total contract costs were but guesstimate it must have been double a conventional design and would probably be more like 30 years to recover the difference between the Leeds design and a conventional one. That’s a pretty high expense hurdle even for an owner financed and occupied building. An impossibly high hurdle for a spec office building.
 
Most Leeds design features are at the margins like certified recycling of construction waste, as much as possible paperless contract documents and use of “sustainable” materials like tree-farm grown 2x4s.

Only relatively wealthy societies can afford the luxury of diverting wealth for the environment. The poorer the country the greater the environmental destruction, case in point Haiti.

Where did all the money from TARP, Stimulus I and II, along with all the social/discretionary programs go?

Why was the first act of the White House to fire/bring to heel all of the Inspectors General?

Why won’t the GOP establishment elites call for a full audit, with prosecution in those cases warrenting it?

That’s in the regional news, TPT (I live in Washington State), and many people want to take a horsewhip to those Federal nincompoops. 

Bears are no joke.  The man did what was needed, and should be thanked, not prosecuted.

Its similar to something that happened in KY. A man killed a black bear that tried to break into his house, and he was arraigned for prosecution. There was an uproar, and suddenly the local news stopped covering the story, just dropped it. To this day, you will look in vain for any news about the matter. There are so many black bears in Kentucky now, the state relented and agreed to a bear hunt. The environazis went nuts until the state imposed restrictions on the kinds of weapons you could use for the hunt, which was for one day, in the dead of winter, which of course is when bears hibernate. There was a big snow on during the hunt, and not one bear was seen, let alone killed. These people want as many bears in my state as they can possibly have. Me, I want them all wiped out, and make no bones about it. The environment has managed to thrive without the dinosaur and the dodo bird, I’m reasonably sure it can make it just find without a bunch of vicious bears mauling everything in sight.