Who needs a constitution or congress when you alone know what’s good for the American people?![jasonseiler1[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/jasonseiler11.jpg?w=228&resize=228%2C300)
New EPA boss promises dictatorial action on global warming
While speaking at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Gina McCarthy, the new head of the EPA, said Wednesday the administration is finished waiting on Congress and is set to take unilateral action on measures aimed at global warming, the Washington Times reported.
In June, Obama gave “what I really think is a most remarkable speech by a president of the United States,” she said.
“Essentially, he said that it is time to act,” she said. “And he said he wasn’t going to wait for Congress, but that he had administrative authorities and that it was time to start utilizing those more effectively and in a more concerted way.”
McCarthy insisted the administration could reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions without harming economic growth, and could do it without any congressional approval.
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-epa-boss-promises-dictatorial-action-on-global-warming
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Controlled Tornadoes Create Renewable Energy
Waste heat from power plants could be twisted into a nonpolluting source of energy.
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/september/08-tornado-tech
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Replication may be possible some day in the distant future. Of course if Cook acted like a scientist rather than a propagandist with Nazi fantasies, Tol could have all the data and do it now.
As predicted, John Cook releases a bit more data, but not all data, making sure that data quality and results cannot be checked.
— Richard Tol (@RichardTol) August 16, 2013
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The chill goes deep:
Atlanta breaks a century-old temperature record – CBS Atlanta 46 http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/23151205/atlanta-breaks-a-century-old-temperature-record
Record low set in Wilmington | StarNewsOnline.com
Thursday’s 71-degree high temperature was the area’s lowest for an Aug. 15 and the seventh-coldest in August since records began to be kept in 1874, according to the National Weather Service.
Chilly temperatures set new record lows | Ohio – wkyc.com
The temperature at Mansfield’s Lahm Airport fell to 46 degrees at 7:00 a.m. and tied a record low set in 1979.
Snow already falling in China – in August!
“Rare summer snowfall in Xinjiang,” reads the headline.
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Windows XP, the next climate forcing?
Stacey writes in tips and notes:
Next Year Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP. Many companies will need to purchase new computers to run Windows 8. This will result in millions of perfectly working older machines being trashed.
Part of Microsoft’s statement on Climate Change follows, the irony is obvious:-
Climate change is a serious challenge that requires a comprehensive and global response from all sectors of society. To address it, Microsoft is committed to measuring, transparently reporting, and reducing the carbon footprint of our own operations. We are also pursuing opportunities with our partners to increase the energy efficiency of computing.
While energy efficiency is important, long-term solutions to climate change will require dramatic innovations to transition the world to a sustainable low-carbon economy while expanding substantially the number of people who have access to electricity. Software will play a key role in enabling this transformation. Microsoft is working to apply information technology innovation to help people and businesses around the world address climate change. We are also supporting research efforts on this topic being conducted by leading environmental groups, scientists, and governments around the world.
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Mike Jowsey says in Tips and Notes
Quote of The Week contender:
In its article, Spiegel calls the growing disagreement between model results and measured observations “the wound of climate science“.
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Gee, apparently farming practices, demand, availability, and selective breeding to make better crops had nothing to do with our crops of today, it was all the unseen guiding hand of climate change wot did it:
Ancient climate change picked the crops we eat today – environment – 15 August 2013 – New Scientist
Thank climate change for our daily bread. High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after the last ice age drove us to cultivate wheat.
…
All the plants grew larger under high levels of CO2, but the relatives of wheat and barley grew twice as large and produced double the seeds. This suggests the species are especially sensitive to high levels of CO2, Frenck says, making them the best choice for cultivation after the last ice age.
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Busted! Green Hypocrisy Marks a New Low | Power Line
The four-minute video below shows brave anti-coal folks protesting . . . with gourmet food on a luxury yacht.
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Letter to the Editor – Watts Up With That? 16th August 2013
Green Energy is Part of the Past, not Fuel for the Future
The growing failure of green energy in Europe should warn Australia to abandon its bi-partisan policies dictating targets, mandates and subsidies for “green” energy.
I grew up at the end of the last green energy era – solar energy powered our growing crops and dried the washing, but it was weak in winter and ceased under clouds and at night; wind energy pumped water, but only when the wind blew; draft horses powered farm machinery, but they had to be fed whether they were working or not; wood gave us home heating and cooking, but it consumed energy to collect and chop it up; kids walked to school or rode bikes or ponies and ladies took the horse and sulky.
Our only help from carbon energy was kerosene for the kitchen lamp and coke used in smelters and forges to produce our metal tools and machinery.
We also practiced “sustainability” – we purchased little, and most of the farm produce was consumed on the farm by family, farm labourers and draft horses.
We were rescued from this life of hard labour by carbon energy – a kerosene-powered tractor, a petrol-powered truck, and coal-powered electricity for lighting, heating, cooking, refrigeration, milking machines and pumps. The horses and farm labour were no longer needed and, at last, the farms produced a decent surplus of food for the growing cities.
Wind, solar, wood and muscle power are tools of the past and they work no better now than they did then. Forcing people to use these ancient technologies will just return us to laborious poverty on the farms and hunger in the cities.
Green energy should not be forced on consumers – those who want it should pay for it.
Green energy will eventually be abandoned, but the cost rises for each day’s delay
Viv Forbes, Rosewood Qld Australia
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Ed Mertin says:
August 17, 2013 at 2:50 am
Why is it that no country on this planet ever tried to be true Libertarian if it’s so plausible?
Minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That was the USA up until 1913 when a bunch of bankers, with a European banker, Paul Warburg to, lead, them came up with the Federal Reserve Act 0f 1913. In that same year two amendments to the Constitution were passed. One gave the USA an Income Tax to repay the fiat money the bankers created and then loaned to the US government with the wealth of the citizens, the other made the election of senators by popular vote instead of selected by the legislature of the state..
These two amendments and the Federal Reserve Act were what was needed to take the power of the states away from them and to grow the Federal government to the size it is today. Originally the Senate was supposed to represent the will of the STATES and act as a check on the power of the federal government, while the House was supposed to represent the will of the people. This was done to keep the USA from becoming a Democracy.
The founding fathers were well aware of the problems inherent in a Democracy:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.
Now the citizens of a state are taxed directly by the Federal Government and some of that money is then used to ‘bribe’ the States into doing the will of the Federal Government. Around 50% of tax revenue for a state comes from the Federal government. The threat to withhold funds is how the US government got the states to lower the speed limit to 55 MPH for example.
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
Thankyou for your post at August 17, 2013 at 3:58 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/16/the-wuwt-hot-sheet-for-august-16th-2013/#comment-1393050
Firstly, as you say, the proposed system requires a heat exchanger. However, this need not be a cooling tower.
Large devices for forced-air water-to-air heat exchange are commercially available. Such a device would be much smaller and have lower capital cost than a cooling tower. It would heat the air (as is required). And it would accelerate the air for injection into the proposed ‘tornado’ device. Yes, a forced-air heat exchanger would reduce overall system efficiency because the fan would need to be powered to force the air, but I don’t see this as a significant thermodynamic or economic loss to the overall system.
Secondly, as you also say, a cooling tower could be used as a chimney, then the kinetic energy of the air rising in the chimney could be extracted. If useful energy collection from a modified cooling tower were possible then it would be done. But the air speed achievable in such a chimney is too low for efficient energy collection from the air rising in it.
Collection efficiency for the energy increases with the air speed. This is because the energy of ‘wind’ increases as the cube of the air speed. Indeed, no energy would be collected from low air speeds up the chimney (for the same reasons that windfarms provide no electricity unless the wind is strong enough).
But very high energy collection is obtainable from high air speeds. The proposed device ‘spins-up’ the air for high energy collection efficiency. Indeed, that is the clear purpose of the device. And it says the spin would be initiated by the injection angle of the air into the device. (This is not dissimilar to the ‘spin speed’ of the fluid in a cyclone filter being higher than the speed of the fluid in the cyclone’s injection and extraction ports). The kinetic energy to accelerate the air would be obtained from the thermal energy of that air.
Thus, the proposed device would have low capital cost and high energy collection efficiency.
Would this work practically, financially and economically?
I don’t know, but I can see no obvious reason why it would not.
However, your proposed modified cooling tower cannot work because it provides air speeds which are too low for efficient energy extraction from the air.
Hence, and in the light of the potential benefits, I would like investigation to determine the feasibility of the proposed ‘tornado’ device.
Richard
Faith Morgan, wanting to do good, and even trying to do good, isn’t the same thing as actually doing good. You’ve heard the term “unintended consequences,” I’m sure. The story of Spain’s foray into large scale solar electrical generation is almost completely unintended, and has already failed as public policy. The sad thing is, Spain’s financial losses and generating failures could have easily been avoided, had Spanish power authorities listened to skeptical voices and power industry professionals, rather than Green utopians. Please check out these links, and then please, please do a little more open-minded digging on your own. Don’t add your voice to the irrational political force that pushes green, eco-delusions onto national governments and public utilities.
http://rt.com/business/spain-solar-energy-bankruptcy-451/
http://www.sott.net/article/264544-Spain-privatizes-the-sun-by-levying-consumption-tax-on-solar-power
oh, like back when we kinda used to resemble Zimbabwe, less government and more national insecurity, more crime, more illiteracy, more infant and maternal mortality and way lower life expectancy among other things.
Two years ago I bought an HP laptop with microsoft os on it. This year I bought an Android tablet. Most of the family uses Macs. My infrastructure is Linux. Next year the laptop gets an os upgrade to linux. Microsoft will be irrelevant to me then. Android, Mac and linux is all it takes.
Chad Wozniak says:
August 16, 2013 at 7:48 pm
@rw –
I would caution anyone not to think these people have the will to act out their intentions and destroy science, freedom and the economy. We should be prepared for them to cling to AGW and to their claims of authority outside of the Constitution to the bitter end, and they can do tremendous damage before they are finally stopped. . They will do that until physically compelled to stop.
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I’m not saying there aren’t some ominous trends (such as the militarization of the police, and the PC’ing of the military). But Lois Lerner and Doug Schulman aren’t Hermann Goering and Ernst Roehm. What happened in Germany involved tens of thousands of lower echelon officers who had battle experience in WWI and then learned to kill their political opponents in the 1918-23 period (see K. Heiden’s The Fuehrer). They weren’t like our contemporary wine-and-cheese types, and they had a very different ‘reinforcement history’ – and that makes a big difference.
Another way of putting this is that we really do live in a world of cause and effect.
When standing on the shoulders of giants, it is best not to fall off.
Pamela Gray says:
August 16, 2013 at 10:22 am
I also have Windows 8. HORRIBLE product!!! My new hp extended keyboard notebook has a large mouse pad. Great idea for a mouse pad on a computer used for data analysis and report writing, but bad if you have windows 8. Windows 8 is actually made for a touch screen. Which I do not have. But when I rest my wrists below the keyboard as I am typing they connect with the mouse pad and the Windows 8 “finger sweep” functions start playing with my imagination, making me think my software has a poltergeist.
Pamela, on an HP laptop with W8 there is a small indent on the mouse, top left, when pressed this shuts of the mouse for ease of typing – double tap to close and double tap to activate again, maybe it is the same for the notebook.