Linked at Photon Courier

Thanks so much!

"Composting releases methane," said Lungren's spokesman, Brian Kaveney, and methane gas, as even the most warming-conscious among us have to admit, traps atmospheric heat far more efficiently than carbon dioxide, the usual bugaboo of the climate-change crowd.
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Yes, and "composting" is just a fancy word for "rotting" which happens in nature all the time.

So can we stop talking about "greenhouse gases" since the concept is meaningless?

It's my understanding that it is ultimately more energy friendly to use re-usable plates and flatware and wash them than it is to create, transport, and use either 'compostable' flatware or plasticware (especially when, as the article points out, you are not composting onsite and have to transport it). That's the problem with a lot of 'green' initiatives--they don't take into account the incidentals.

It's like electric cars--great idea but if you factor in the fact that they are actually coal-driven since the electricity to power them up has to come from somewhere (and factor in the power loss through the lines etc.) then you've lost any advantage you might have had. Plus there's the infrastructure cost to put in the plugs all over the place which would lead to higher taxes to pay for them, etc. etc. etc.

Midwest Chick...the big advantage of electric cars (when/if they can be made practical) is that their fuel source is "omnivorous"....the electricity can come from coal, natural gas, nuclear, or hydro, whereas internal-combustion engines are restricted to oil. Also, modern gas-fired turbines are much more efficient than car engines, so that even with losses in the lines, etc, the electric approach still comes out ahead on pure efficiency.

For those who care about CO2, though, an electric car powered by a coal plant may well be worse than an IC car powered by an efficient gas or diesel engine.

So, the party of the ordinary guy, the ones looking out for Joe Six Pack, replaced the salad bar with an arugula-strewn panzanella station. Why are these people always pushing arugula on us? What do they have against iceberg lettuce?

Out with the fried chicken and in with the turkey escabeche.

And up with the prices!

Off topic greenwise, but completely on topic governmentassholery wise, is the new 3.8% Real Estate Sales Tax, hidden in the Obabacare bill, slated to go into effect in 2013, AFTER the election. Amy, I just sent you an email about it.

Check this out from "Truth or Fiction"
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/h/health-plan.htm

HR-3590 eRumors:

Real estate sales will be taxed 3.8%- Truth!
Congressman Mark Kirk of Illinois released a statement on March 21, 2010 on HR-3590 saying that the health care bill will increase taxes "by imposing a new 3.8% tax on capital gains."

Taxes and surcharges could be imposed on income over $250,000 for single tax filers and $500,000 for married couples filing together.

The actual tax increases may be generated by the HR-4872 Reconciliation Act according a March 21, 2010 article by Life and Health News Insurance News.

This is also confirmed in a March 25, 2010 article by CNNMoney.com that said, "couples making $500,000 in wages will pay an additional $2,250. If they made $1 million, they would pay an additional $6,750. In addition, high-income households would also be subject to a new 3.8% Medicare tax on investment income starting in 2013."

As I said in my email, it's enough to make me vomit.

And someone ELSE just sent me this (regarding the above):

"This is bullshit. Just another distortion of the facts from the conservative media.

Here it is on snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/realestate.asp

Fact of the matter is, unless you sell your home and profit over $500,000 you won't pay any 3.8% tax which is an investment tax proposed in the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act.

Get the facts right. If you are sending this stuff out your part of the problem not the solution. Either way leave me out of it."

And either way, the government is getting to nosy and too far into our private business. I'm still nauseous about it all.

I'll step away from commenting on the idiocy of collecting a tax for a totally unrelated activity - the real cause of tax problems - to address something else.

You guys looking at cars need to look here first. I've had to explain this a lot.

No, the advantage of electric propulsion is NOT offset by increased complexity of and demand on electric power grids. Electric cars need no transmissions and radiate far less waste heat. Whatever you do, don't miss the fact that your compact burns 94HP worth of gasoline to net just 20HP of thrust.

Spare me the macho stuff.

"It's my understanding that it is ultimately more energy friendly to use re-usable plates and flatware and wash them than it is to create, transport, and use either 'compostable' flatware or plasticware"

Often true, yes. This whole thing reminds me of the greenies arm-twisting on McDonald's about 20 years ago: they made McDonald's stop using those nifty polystyrene hamburger boxes and go back to wax paper instead. Because wax paper is more "natural". Well, as it turns out, polystyrene food containers (besides doing much better at keeping your hamburger warm) can be washed, melted, and made into new containers. Whereas wax paper, once it's been in contact with food, can only go to the landfill.

From the L.A. Times piece:

"In Pelosi's home territory, the city of San Francisco, composting is mandatory for householders, who face a fine if they throw orange peels into the trash rather than into their city-provided composting bins. Plastic bags are against the law in large-chain stores, and plastic water bottles are against the law in City Hall. In the name of health you can't buy a soft drink on public property in San Francisco, and soon you won't be able to buy a Happy Meal with a toy at McDonald's for your kid."

And the left wonders why the right calls them Socialists...

Oh, Gods... Microsoft has put compostable cutlery (and, boy, I use the term loosely), in all of the cafeterias and kitchenettes. If you put a spoon in soup, the spoon melts. So they also have balsa-wood spoons for soup. Nothing like eating your soup with a lovely aftertaste of the forest.

If you use the "knife" on a piece of meat, the serrations melt away. If you leave your fork too long in a baked potato, the tines bend. Salad -- it all works in salad.

The one benefit, at least for one co-worker, is that he eats the cornstarch spoons while he is thinking about hard problems -- he likes the crunch and the spoons are free, unlike the vending machine snacks.

No, I am not making this up.

I had an interview at Microsoft in Redmond and they bought me lunch in their cafeteria. I had roast chicken and the "silverware" worked as good as any non-metal ones. I was actually pretty impressed for compostable items and the food was really good for cafeteria food.

I love it, another Amyism! Sheeple! Not to take away from the subject of the article, but that was the first thing that caught my eye, LOL

"It's my understanding that it is ultimately more energy friendly to use re-usable plates and flatware and wash them"
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Depends - here in Israel, that wash-water is a precious resource. And the fuel to heat it.

It also takes a lot more energy to mine, process, and cast/fire metal, glass, and ceramic utensils than it does to process wood and plant fibers.

As in all engineering problems - the energy calculation depends on how you draw the line around the "system" you are analyzing.

foster:
"the big advantage of electric cars (when/if they can be made practical) is that their fuel source is "omnivorous".... even with losses in the lines, etc, the electric approach still comes out ahead on pure efficiency"
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This has not yet been proven - there are no purely electric "juice from the wall" vehicles that are not propped up by subsidies. In addition, electrical generation is often a virtual monopoly with rigged/subsidized prices - further bedeviling calculations of "efficiency".

Gas and other petrochems remain very concentrated and portable sources of energy. And after a century of development, internal combustion engines are approaching the theoretical limits of efficiency - a new generation of ceramic materials and injection technologies should get us there within a decade.

Electrical engines and batteries are, by comparison, in their infancy. Current battery technology still involves heavy metals and other pollutants that must be handled and disposed of.

Again, it's a question of how you define the system you are analyzing.

Ben David...agree that electric vehicles have not yet established unsubsidized economic viability (except perhaps for a few niche applications like local delivery)....my point is that the purely technical efficiency of the fuel-to-motion cycle is higher for electric vehicles that ICUs, despite the line losses, and that if other problems can be fixed, the ability to use multiple fuels should have both economic and national-security benefits.

OTOH, you say "Electrical engines and batteries are, by comparison, in their infancy"....but we have had storage batteries and electric motors for over a century, and there have been plenty of organizations that have had a strong financial incentive to make them better. (Electric motors *are* quite efficient, the problem is the batteries.) There have been many government dollars allocated to battery research, as well as the corporate dollars, ever since the Carter administration. There's no guarantee that battery technology will *ever* reach the levels needed to make pure-electrics economical, unless there are huge increases in oil prices.

All this "green" shit is just a ploy to separate the gullible from their money. My dishwasher uses less than 6 gallons of water to do a full load of dishes. It takes three times that (or more) for me to do the same dishes by hand.

As far as electric cars go, until the problem of batteries losing their power in extreme cold is solved they just aren't feasible for more than half of the country for half of the year.

Hell, I left my car unstarted for a few days here in CT when it was in the single digits, and I had to get the thing jump-started because there wasn't enough power in the battery to engage the starter motor.

Well, you guys have some catching up to do.

Not to take anything from Amy, but the term, "sheeple" has been out for at least 15 years; that's how long I've seen it in arguments about firearms possession.

On batteries, at least one company has lithium-ion cells out for automotive use - and yes, there's a solution for low temperatures, it's called insulation - and you can go to Home Depot and get heat tracing: wire specifically built to heat tings in contact with it.

Chemical reactions are slowed in lead-acid batteries by more than a simple ratio; when the cell freezes, convection ceases and ion replenishment at the plates halts.

Here's the Lithium Ion battery.

I am pretty sure I just got selected to be on Big Brother and I just had to tell someone. I am so fired up about this. I have been applying every season, looks like this is my year. :)