Well, we all make resolutions this time of year but you might find ours just a bit MOOT!
I resolve to have answers to the following questions (many are carry overs from 2007,2006,2005…)
1- Why do we continue to create methanol from Corn?
It is very apparent that it is the least effective method for producing the alcohol we blend with gasoline while we continue to subsidize the industry that is most effective in producing methanol…. Sugar Cane. Solution is to quit giving handouts to farmers that only increase the cost of food as corn products are used in over 50% of any processed foods you now buy. Take away the subsidies to sugar cane producers and let them make Methanol. Win win for taxpayers!
Plus give subsidies/tax break to those who can produce BioButanol, as it is closest thing to gasoline itself and can be made from non-food products including sugar beets.
This would create new farmers and more home grown jobs and more small independent companies.
2- Why can’t I figure out how much anything actually costs in the store?
A- look for price… it’s not there, not stcker, no sign. It was suggested to take item to a scanner located at end of isle. Found getting price on first 5 items took 10 minutes.
B- look for price… price was listed for someone in a club that I do not think I am part of. Where is the price for anyone else? Clerk tells me fill out some forms and I can get the club price but the info seems kinda personal to me. I take pass and ask for prices.
c- I did my smart shopping and only bought the things that I could positively know what the price was and thought was a fair price and still surprised at the check-out. Reviewing the sales receipt at home I find the prices charged did not match the price I find on shelf on 20% of the items. I also find not all of my purchases were included when they were bagged. I also find some items were charged twice when I only bought 1. Boy did I $ave #&*!?
Determined to get this straight, I wait in line back at store for 25 min. and take 10 minutes to explain to the service desk clerk where now I seem to have a hard time to prove my point and spend 5 more minutes explaining to manager where I still have a hard time to prove the missing items and double charge for items. Well I get my $3.27 that was mis-charged me for items at the registar and have lost the cost for 2 missing items and 2 double charged items. What a bargain, I basically spent 30% more on the items that I did receive after the correction refund if you look at it that way and
I also find that nobody cares as prices still wrong and register still double ringing and I think nobody looks at sales slip and/or to lazy to get a correction. This problem is made bigger by this grocer having bought-out the more than 12 local grocers in the past 20 years and I have no where to go except a Big Box Mart and having had a similar experience there, I stopped going there 5 years earlier as a cost savings measure.
MOOT It Is !
3- Why do we not demand that US companies dis-invest the foreign assets they acquired in the last 12 years before getting a forced hand-out from the taxpayers credit line? Talk about a re-distribution of wealth, is this really MOOT!
4- Who shall prove “The Greenhouse Effect”?
All of our current thinking seems to be based on this theory that has yet to be more than just that… a theory. I say that as a true environmentalist!
Yes, I am NOT an activist (those are the folks who would tell you what you should do having no experience in it themselves). I have lived with a wind generator for 8 years, solar electric for 9 years and still working on my solar/geothermal heat system I designed in the late 1970’s while in High School.
Let me tell you this is not a cheap thing to do no matter the scale or if you are smart enough to do it yourself so I will not preach to you that you need to do it as you probably can not afford it and has little pay-off unless you have space for a larger scale and have some time to recover payback.
But everyone benefits when you find alternatives to pesticides and other toxins.
That my friends is being an environmentalist and not a activist. One who cares enough to actually do it as a matter of principle.
To get back to the MOOT point here, I have no doubt that the earth is warming ever so slowly and that the effects of that will still be a bit of theory but one can easily project that it is not a very rosy projection.
1st I guess, I should state just what the “greenhouse effect” is as not many that are touting it ever tell you what exactly it is. I ask those who use those words to explain it to me and 99% do not come close so here it is (short version).
Light/Heat energy from the sun passes through the atmosphere (carbon dioxide as well as nitrogen and oxygen), reflect from the earths surface and
then are somehow reflected by the carbon dioxide( CO2 ) that it just past on the way down in the atmosphere like a one way mirror, to the earths surface and lower atmosphere once again thereby adding to the heating of the atmosphere and creating “global warming” or atmospheric heating.
So now I will not continue to go into the aspects of the theory of “global warming” as they are all based on the “Greenhouse Effect” being a fact not theory. This way will not get to the root problem until we face up to the science facts and the Greenhouse Effect is not one of them.
Why don’t the scientist speak-up?
I can only think that one, it is now a political issue and research funding dollars are at stake and two, while many who may disagree with the cause, the root fixes that are being planned are good steps in the right direction anyway as some just hate the oil companies just like I do but I reduced handing my hard earned dollars to them some time ago as a matter of personal choice.
As far as increased carbon dioxide levels go, please see data about deforestation. When you have destroyed as much CO2 converting vegetation, I.E. rain forest etc, you not only are going to see higher CO2 levels but lower O2 levels (that is the stuff we breath).
One other point that needs to be made in this is that when you burn any fossil fuel (ie oil, coal, gas, methane, propane) one by-product is common to all and it is water. Yes, you may not see this when cooking with your natural gas or see it at your tailpipe, but it is there in the form of steam.
I can not understand why this seems so obvious, it has not been looked-at at-all! Increased levels of moisture. This makes more sense than the greenhouse effect as Mars is comprised more CO2 (95%) then we (earth) have Nitrogen (78%) and if this data were even close to correct, it would be a very warm planet, not 65 degrees on a hot day at its equator and so cold that the CO2 freezes at its poles. CO2 does not have a liquid state or Mars would have oceans of it. Mars does lack one thing… WATER, H2O.
Buy the way, is anyone taken to an idea that our Great Lakes continue to empty (lowering) to the ocean (raising ocean levels) and continue a 100,000 years of receding from the melting of former ice shelf/glacier that was once there that also has fossils of life in a tropical environment?
But in any case, it is a historical fact that the earth went through as many as 7 Ice Ages that we can tell and as many high temperate/tropical periods as well. The question is how fast is the current one progressing?
I can only think that the hurry-up mode of the fixes that have been plotted, all be it good, but expensive ideas that are improbable until oil is $200 or more a barrel and gas $7 a gallon. I do not think that anyone has done the math on just how much CO2 is created in the making of alternatives along with many other toxins that we are not ready to deal with just yet. But this is no reason not to proceed.
One could also project from the normal cycle data of the earths short term to intermediate temp cycle is set to decline soon (2012?) and anyone who supports this idea would like to be able to claim victory in getting some action before the next minor temporal cycle downward start to show.
Take some time to look at record highs and lows and you will find more record high temps created in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s than present day. But gee, we have not been recording temps that long.
It was just during WW2 that that Japan showed us they knew of the “JET STREAM” as we did not.
And was just in the 1980’s that science told us we were going through a “mini ice-age” (a dip in the short/intermediate cycle).
Science also just discovered “la-nina” and “el-nina” in the 1980’s
What other stuff do we not yet now of our planet?
I know of one that seems to be forgotten that I was taught in 8th grade science… 80% of the earths kinetic energy (heat energy) comes not from the sun, but from inside the earth. The Sun is the icing on the cake.
Don’t believe that… …then why is geothermal heat more reliable than solar ?
As it was once told to me ” if you do not like the weather, just wait, it will change”.
In saying all of this please believe that supporting alternatives is foremost a national security issue. But you can not do enough fast enough to make a real difference without making more impact on what you are trying to avoid.
Best and fastest solution is to start planting lots of vegetation now and stop the decline of what we now have if you believe CO2 is the Culprit or not you might worry about the oxygen supply that without the vegetation to convert the CO2 to O2 while we burn more O2 with every power plant, car ride, meal cooking and forest fire is a danger to our children. Its like taking out a loan on our grand kids credit.
I just want to slap someone when every major storm or forest fire is blamed on global warming and folks are buying it!
In any case you will have a much bigger problem to deal with than global warming soon….
… it is plastics…. more to come!
Forget the greenhouse, take care of the plants in it as you are only as healthy as they are, or are you as MOOT!
5- Why have all the Anti-Trust laws been ignored ?
Most of the current companies that now are failing, have been the largest to merge in the past 15 years. This would never have been allowed pre 1980 so where was the needed change to create the new allowance for this. Now that the small non-corporate independent retailers and banks are gone, where do I go for my needs when the new bigger merged company’s are sitting under chapter 11 or even worse. Their competition is now gone, I have no choices.
Please only ask yourself if you are willing to bail-out Wal-Mart with a tax increase should they fail.