Green Green Business

I am neither a republican or democrat, I tend to lean conservative, but vote for whatever candidate I believe is best, regardless of party.

That being said, how many of you feel that none of the candidates we have this year can fix America?

Both McCain and Obama are soft on the boders and illegal aliens.

McCain and Obama support Lieberman’s bill that would tax energy to reduce green house gases. This bill would not only cripple the economy, but it will also eliminate roughly 9% of America’s remaining factory jobs. Thus creating us to depend even more on consuming to support our economy.

After doing research on both candidates, I really hope there is a viable third party candidate.

Does anyone else feel this way?
I don’t think you can classify Bush as a true conservative.

His policy has been to spend to make government bigger, that’s not what a true conservative is.

A true conservative is someone that believes in small government with minimal taxes and states rights to decide over the federal government.

I know it does not produce green house gases.
But it does produce nuclear waste. And after 40 years of producing nuclear waste we still do not have a place to store it for the next 40,000 years that it will take to degrade into something non-toxic. Lets get real here.
Don’t you think it would be awefully short sighted of us to push waste on countless generations of our ancestors just so we are "comfortable". I think it would be better if we bit the bullet now and stopped driving SUV’s to work and leaving our air conditioners on so our house is comfortable when we get home.

do ya think it would be less of a pollutant, or would all those burning souls let off even worse green house gases?
wasn’t sure if where this question should go… science & technology or here… but i figured here cuz it would be close to creationism, yes? and that doesn’t believe in science…

Ethanol has caused world hunger and is a net .02 loss per gallon. It takes 1 gallon of gasoline to create 1.23 gallons of Ethanol, but Ethanol only get 75% of the same energy. Your car goes 20 mpg with Gas and only 15mpg with Ethanol. So do the math and you get .98 energy per 1 unit of energy. Corn ethanol is a net loss in energy and is causing world hunger as supplies are used in our cars and not in the third world stomachs.

Hydrogen is retrieved from Natural Gas causing a release of Green house gases.

A mass produced viable electric car is not being produced.

All in all it will take decades to transform our economy from oil to alternatives. So we need to drill now, drill here and get the energy our economy and our cars need now. Ethanol from corn and food crops needs to be abandon, only sugar is able to get a 6 gallons per gallon of gas ratio. Guess what senators are against sugar and for corn???
The Democrats in 1981 prohibited offshore drilling in all except western Gulf of Mexico. The Democrats last year add prohibition on drilling "shale oil" on federal lands. This is years of building walls to stop the nations oil exploration and expansion. This didn’t come in the last 7 years.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago, we always get philosophical when we discuss. We end up talking about energy consumption and what we should do about our CO2 problem.

My vote was on Nuclear energy. Its clean, its effective, and its safe. (explanation will follow for the ones who doesn’t know)

My friends first reply was: Chernobyl.

I spend 1½ hour trying to explain to the guy that Chernobyl was made and run by a state who was in money problems, and who’s philosophy was: Quantity over Quality. Needless to say he didn’t take it to heart.

I talked to a few other people since then, and it always comes down to people being afraid of irrational things when it comes to nuclear energy. So are just against it cause they don’t know any better.

We all know the problems with CO2, but only very few actually knows the truth of nuclear energy.

Building the reactor is actually relatively cheap (relatively).

Running it is so cheap you wouldn’t believe it.

It provides way more energy the any other correct method of energy extraction, compared to price/space required to run and build.

It has ZERO and I repeat, just to be sure you noticed. ZERO emissions. No CO2, not green house gases, no NOTHING. The big towers you see with all the smoke coming out of it, is WATER vapor. And no it doesn’t become contaminated.

The nuclear waste that is produced by the power planets, is relatively small. Atm they are building a repository for long term storage in several countries, most noticeably the U.S.A’s nevada facility. Once completed it will be able to store the waste SAFELY indefinitely, and can store so much of it, that U.S.A won’t have a problem with their waste for another 500 years (if I recall correctly). That means the next 500 years, we can run the current power planets without having to think about the waste. Once those 500 years has passed, and the place is filled, we close the gates, and leave it there for the 10.000 years it’ll take for it to become safe. More over, its estimated to take about another 50-80 years to make fusion a viable energy source. Once that happens, we won’t need fission, as fusion will produce anywhere from 25-50 times the energy a fission plant produces.

And the best thing, fusion will only require helium, and the waste product will be hydrogen.

Personally I’ll take a cavern full nuclear waste while we get fusion/geothermal energy viable, then a very bad case of global warming resulting in a lot of lost land mass (to the sea), and with several places on the planet, where the environment is uninhabitable.

Whats your opinion?

P.S. excuse any spell mistakes (missing words, repeated sentences), its a problem of mine, and I can’t correct them until I have forgotten what I have writen.
Starship Captain: You understanding of CO2 as not being harmful is nonesense.

Have a look at Venus. That planet is PROOF that too much CO2 makes a planet warmer. Warmer planet = more violent weather, ice melting, bad for animal life, and I could go on.

However, we humans will have died off long before we can do anything even remotely close to Venus of course, but its still proof.

CO2 = Green house gas. saying anything but is laughable as best
Dana: I didn’t know that :O

However I’d still say that it makes more sense to spend some more until we have viable options, then contiue as we do.

Nick: As for storage, i think I cover that as well I could. Its not a problem.

As for terror attacks. Well we can’t live our lives and thinking about terrorism all the time. It is a very real threat, but that shouldn’t be enough of a reason to contiue on a path that will hurt the world, and humanity in ways you probably can’t even comprehend.

Furthermore, the french has such sophisticated nuclear power planets, that if you aimed a plane at it, blow a bomb, or someone hit the emergency buttom (I assume that have that), the computer controlling the fission will keep the reaction stable, while dumping the core into a hurt chamber, where nothing short of a tomahawk could get to it.

I have only been able to find information on this on the discovery channel, so if it isn’t holding water, I apologize for giving false information.

The new energy bill does nothing to increase competition against oil and coal, instead protects these industries from competition while giving Wal-Mart a financial shot in the arm.

This bill does nothing to reduce green house gases. Oil and coal will still reign as kings of energy for many years to come.

If congress pushed nuclear power, then we could actually reduce ghg’s no matter how many incandescent light bulbs were used.

Instead congress places the burden on the user rather than the producer while at the same time not giving us the option to choose a cleaner burning source of power.

Which proves my point. Global warming is not about the reduction of ghg’s, as politicians will always need polluters so they can maintain a source of power.

The people will be the ones to feel the abuse of power from the politicians.

First it’s the light bulbs, then it will be the SUV’s, then bottled water.

Meanwhile we will still be building coal generators.

Anyone else agree?

Does anyone know the risk of using cfl’s? They contain mercury and how toxic are they if one breaks? At this time I am hesitant to buy them because of how toxic mercury is and how costly a clean up will be. Understand it cuts energy use and green house gases, but not willing to poison my family.

We’ll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment get people and animals sick, and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

Electric and Hybrid cars = Battery pollution (millions of acid base and harmful chemicals that are NOT recyclable) .

The government makes it sound as if they cared about the environment but it is all a big green lie to get our votes.
In Quebec (Canada), they want us to use CFLs so they can save energy and presumably produce less green house gases. What green house gases? We produce hydroelectric electricity. We produce one of the largest quantities of hydro-electric power in the world (No green house emissions) and we have enough to use and also sell to New-York state and Ontario. I guess they want to sell more and make more profit.
If they really wanted cleaner cars, they should go for Hydrogen combustion engine cars.
They have 0 emissions and no batteries to throw out.
But I guess they would loose lots of money if everyone uses water to run their cars.
The world economy is based on oil consumption and they want us to consume something. They are simply trying to replace the sale of oil with something else (selling batteries and other fuels) and maximize their profits.
There are far less cole factories than in the 30s and 50s therefore less harmful chemicals in the air. Needless to remind you that we all exhale CO2 emissions. This wouldn’t be a problem if they stopped cutting down forests. The trees can take care of the CO2, that is what they do.
One more thing CFLs are made from plastic (Oil based product) and also contain electronic circuits (led). If people start throwing them out just like they do with other electronic products, we are all in deep Sh_t. Regular light balbs are completely biodegradable and if used wisely with dimmers they are a better choice.
Hydrogen fueled car is very much feasible. BMW came out with one and the Hydrogen is produced by solar power: http://www.bmwworld.com/hydrogen/

how do we get energy in our homes? do we get energy in our homes by burrning coals?

i know carbon dioxide and other green house gases causes global warming, but what KIND of ACTIVITIES CAUSES global warming?

One of the biggest problems is jet traffic. Jets produce large amounts of green house gases in addition to the dumping of excess fuels usually over open waters. What, if anything, is being done to make air travel more environmentally friendly?
WHSGREENMOM: Perhaps it is more accurate to say the discussion in the media is on alternative energies,

1. I'm interested in knowing how much savings on your energy bill… insignificant or quite noticeable.
2. Have you experienced anything negative in comparison to the regular light bulbs?
3. What were your reasons for buying the light bulbs? Cheaper energy bill? Reduce green house gases causing global warming? or Trendy?

Would this help steer things in the right direction without harming the economy or costing any jobs? They could use some of it on job retraining to switch from oil jobs to green energy jobs and some on research, some on devolopment, some on advertising and the rest on producing green energy for new demand and to replace dirty energy production which would HAVE to be phased out in order to prevent the damage to the climate from the green house gases they would emit if they weren't replaced.

What is the best kind of energy to reduce green house gases? And why would it be considered sustainable.