Ted Clayton’s Recent Comments

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  I think what we really have going on here is more a case of King Canute's apocryphal folly, denying that we are subject to the forces of nature, than that nature is being provoked to heightened fury by human arrogance. We place ourselves in harm's way, build cities where they are especially vulnerable, put up sub-par houses in Florida, allow fuel-debris to accumulate in Santa Barbara, build our homes on floodplains & cliff-tops - and then, woe-is-me, play the victim-card when the predictable happens. Yeah, temperatures rose in the late 20th C, and physics tells us that should help (a smidgen) to drive weather & storm cycles. But that's not what really sets us up for the damages - that's mainly a matter of our own poor judgement. We could have better-prepared for all these storms ... and worse. New Orleans is built on the bed of an intermittent lake. Galveston is on a sandbar. Mudflat? That's the real story here, and it repeats all across the country.On Nature: Hurricanes ARE getting fiercer — and it’s going to get much worse posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago 1 Response

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  Price = Supply <> Demand

  Energy prices go up if demand rises while supply stays the same ... or if demand stays the same and supply falls.  (And vice-versa..)

  The key to getting a fee on carbon without committing political suicide, is to let the economy continue to crumble.

  That way, demand for combustion-based electricity will (continue to) fall, exerting downward pressure on energy-prices.  Then, there can be a new levy on CO2, without causing consumer prices to climb.

  Obama says his plan will turn the economy around, and you're free to believe that if you like ... bearing in mind that Obama is  saying a bunch of things...

  So ... bad economy causes energy price to fall, which is compensate by a carbon-fee without an apparant cost-hike.  The rub is, the economy has stay down for ... well, for sure longer than Obama says it's going to be ... but then, I was never overwhelmed by the evidence that his plan would revive the economy, anyway.  ;-)On Carbon pricing does not necessarily cause high energy prices posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 6 Responses

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  NHsolarguy,

  With your experience in elected office, how does it look on the political field?

  Obama's targets are weak - activists are bitting their tongue.  Congress is up to their butt in alligators - Copenhagen?  What's that?  Oh - that!  Uh, um...

  Polls show voters walking away from climate-concerns.  A lot of unusual cold weather in the news - some hot weather & fires - but a lot of untimely, unseasonable cold headlines parading in front of voters.

  The mainstream media has gone from panning anti-warming stories or burying them D-6, to actively seeking them out and working up the crowd with them.

  As a political campaign, what do you make of the trends & key junctures up-coming?On A look at the non-experts speaking at Heartland Institute's denialist sideshow posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 23 Responses

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  JMG,

  Yeah, well, so ya flipped out there for a minute and went to wackin' off in public.  Lot better than having an active interest in the 'blu pil' spam, eh?

  But hey - is that true what Amazing says, that you're some sort of atavist, agrarianist, paleo-tribalist or something, at heart?  A bit o' all the above, maybe?

  Because, ya know, you would not be exactly the A-Lone A-Ranger, or anything.

  'Course, it has been scientifically observed that there isn't really much of anything you can do to actually save Sodom & Gomorrah.

  You can wander the streets with a lantern for as long as your conscious says you must, but in the end all that can really be done is to knock the dust off your tires, hit the road heading outa town, and don't look back.

  Once we become convinced that the people of S & G are not going to wake up and see what they've become, recoil in horror and turn over a new leaf, all you can really do is leave them to their fate and make sure the consequences of their folly don't overtake you & yours.

  Although urbanization has led to blight and social degeneration, it directly affects only limited land-areas.  It's social tentacles, though unpleasant, are not all-encompassing.

  Though I acknowledge that the car-heads (using them as a proxy for wider problems) might indeed bring the temple down on their heads, it's not for-sure, and certainly not at any particular time.  It's even possible that urban culture could - as time & conditions shift & vary - pull it's head out of it's butt, though I'm certainly not holding my breath.

  In the end though, we each have to follow our own vision (regardless of uncertainties), and if what we see is The City going up in a gigantic mushroom cloud (due to whatever cause), then clearly we should gather up our marbles and go find a game that we have more confidence in.
  ===

  During the great Alaska Land Claims Settlement phase 30 years ago, I was greatly excited to see them create "Subsistence Provisions" - laws that would support & protect the practice of atavistic lifestyles.  Not just for Natives, but for any who take up residence in outa-the-way places where the 'cash-economy' is iffy.  

  Tok, for example, the first meaningful burg you come to on the highway into Alaska, is officially classed as "Remote & Isolated", qualifying it for 'subsistence provisions'.  Other podunk towns with roads, likewise.  (And of course, all the fly-in only villages, and off-in-the-brush homesteads & residences.)

  Well, though I was excited about the subsistence provisions, I was of little faith.  Opponents of this tantalizing if novel set of laws were strong, and vehement.  I figured it was only a matter of time, and it would be overthrown or degraded beyond recognition.

  Sometimes, though, I turn out to be wrong, and this was one of those cases.  Subsistence has met the challenges, and has persevered.  It is alive & well and highly valued in Alaska today.

  I am saving up my pennies and studying the map out of Sodom (actually, I live on the gorgeous Olympic Peninsula ... gradually being eaten by the greater Puget Sound megalopolis ... so I'm not running from horror, but from beauty being overwhelmed by horror).

  Alaska & it's subsistence is by no means the only hills into which one can flee from Sodom.  There are plausible contexts to be found all over the USA, and Europe has some interesting themes in the same vein.

  The key thing is, you can't save everybody - even doing what's right & best for yourself is tough enough, as Lot will attest.  And, you certainly can't save people from themselves.On CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 37 Responses

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  Robert Q. Riley Plans

  Robert Q. Riley has been building cars and selling the plans for decades.

  He has a striking new high-mileage plugin hybrid project called the XR3.
  ===

  My brother and his family fabricate wings and bodies and body-parts for amateur race cars.  They use a lot of carbon fiber ... but they also use non-carbon compositions.  Carbon is tops where maximum strength is needed ... but even in race cars, high strength is not required everywhere.

  Very light weights at surprisingly good strength can be had with lower-cost, easier-fabbed fiber-resin combinations than carbon.  Most body-panels are very lightly loaded, and do not call for 'rocket science' composites.

  We've now all seen canoes & kayaks that are almost transparent and are easily one-handed overhead (even one-fingered):  they're often not carbon.  Fibers come in a range of weights, and fiber pre-impregnated with resin makes a lighter composite than you can create by free-handing resin onto cloth.

  Homemade car-bodies are usually going to incorporate 3-D foam within the exterior shell, which is part of the integral construction, impact-absorption, vibration damping & sound insulation, and thermal insulation.  The importance & weight of the foam 'balances off' the significance of the minimal-achievable exterior composite skin weight ... since that's only part of the 'total engineering cost' of the body-panels (which can also include structural metal, metal fasteners, and other hardware).

  Factory bodies will use molds and pop out panel-skins, but even these will have some kind of 'body' to them - not just a sheer composition-sheet without backing & filler & gelcoat and so-on.

  Bro uses mainly pre-preg for challenging parts, which could be a great help for any private projects using any of the niftier new fibers.  For 'cooperative' parts they use a homemade vacuum bagging setup with manual fiber & resin lay-up .

  R. Q. Riley has a page up, One-Off Construction Using GRP/Urethane Foam Composite tutorial, "An Overview of How to Work With fiberglass Over Urethane Foam".  Traditional, very practical.  Not 'cutting edge', but that's not where the home-builder should start anyway.

  Commercial production has it's own pluses & minuses, but their key need is to keep things rolling right along.  Some of the good stuff you can do better by hand, they can't tolerate, while some of the plant-systems that make things fast & easy for them, you'll only dream about.

  There is a lot of good composites information & guidance on the web.On CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago 37 Responses