Comments hank has made

These are receptacles with one socket and a switch:

http://www.doityourself.com/icat/switchreceptcombo

One plea -- please recommend METAL power strip boxes, not plastic.

Here are some for example:

http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/product-series.cfm?txtSeriesID=366&EID=12

The small one has 3 outlets, in a metal box, with a switch.  That's the kind I've been putting in around our house.

And you can find similar ones with a switch for each outlet, also in metal cases.

Don't fail to look at the problem reports on fires:

http://www.google.com/search?q=home+electronics+fires+fire+marshal

Even the supposedly safe plastics actually burn.  And that would be assuming the manufacturers never spoofed the fire-safety tests by sending in specially crafted materials then selling the cheaper and more flammable materials once they got their UL stickers. 

The fire marshals page used to warn that this stuff usually burns up completely in home fires, so there's no evidence statistically to show. But they tested it and videotaped plastic cases on home electrical/electronics catching fire and supporting enough fire to fill a room.

A coworker had one catch fire at night a week ago, set the bedspread on fire -- a few minutes after she'd gotten up in the morning, luckily for her, rather than overnight.

> Roy Spencer even sent me email saying that he agrees.

I wish he'd publish that or give you permission to do so.  He's the last brick remaining from the wall for a lot of the people insisting there's no problem, and theyr'e still referring to his publication record.

Smokey and Anna nailed this one, I think.

Well put, Smokey.  

Repeating the bogosity only reinforces it in people's memories.

Got facts?  Cites?

And well said, Anna.  Agreeing with you:

[new] See Mashey on this

Best commentary on this so far: John Mashey's


On Beltway paper runs two of the dumbest stories of the decade on climate science posted 1 year ago 18 Responses

One thing missing

Notice the silence in the US candidate debates about the industry that's paying for them, the coal companies.  The big black rock with the electric cord plugged into it.

Has anyone drawn the line showing how much coal the industry wants to mine and sell, over the same time period, and how much of that has to be left unsold?

I recall back in the 1950s that there was a time when companies that held mining rights to areas with proved claims for uranium ore showed vast paper wealth on their books.  

The industry didn't develop to buy that.  It got written down in value.  (Or it's still on the books backing some loan as collateral, but don't go there...).

I don't know how much coal is on some private company's books as an asset, compared to being on government land as a mining right.

I'm starting to bang on people in business that there's as much illusion of value in the coal industry as there was in the home mortgage field, and that it's stupid to keep building bigger and fancier plants at high prices with longterm prospects that they won't ever run long enough to pay out the bonds or loans, and once the value plummets the owners will walk away.

Same problem -- big money's made up front on each step of the transaction creating these things as theoretical destinations for mined coal, supporting the book value of all that coal in the ground.

But the coal's going to stay in the ground and the plants will get closed before they pay out.

Who's got numbers on the overbuilding and overvaluing of the coal industry, the excess they'd have to burn above the sane level the science tells us could save the oceans?

Never mind 'global warming' -- watch ocean pH, changing predictably, simple chemistry, far less to understand to see a crash coming from excess CO2 in the oceans this century.

Blame coal.  Take the money and walk away.On The Bali meeting, and the lessons learned posted 1 year, 9 months ago 11 Responses

Related: utility transformer rules weak, clueless

Related -- California joining utility companies in pressing the Administration to require best available, rather than cheapest, transformers on power poles.  They all need to be replaced (I don't know why -- are they still full of PCBs?).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/ ...

-----excerpt, see link for full story------

Environmental groups and state Attorney General Jerry Brown have sued the Bush administration over the U.S. Energy Department's new efficiency standards for the 40 million electric transformers on utility poles around the nation, saying the rules are too weak and would allow pollution that contributes to global warming....

... the department declared that its standards "will achieve the maximum improvements in energy efficiency that are technologically feasible and economically justified." More stringent standards, the department said, would cause economic harm to the nation without significant environmental benefits.
...

... utility companies had joined environmental organizations in seeking stronger standards that would reduce energy waste - saving the companies $11.1 billion ....

If the department simply required new transformers to be as efficient as the best equipment already on the market, environmental organizations said, enough energy would be saved to eliminate the need for nearly 20 large power plants by 2038.

That would also reduce the annual output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide by 700 million tons, more than the amount emitted by all U.S. cars, the groups said.

The Energy Department has said ... there was no reliable way to measure the potential economic benefits from reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
...the Bush administration made the same argument in defense of its new miles-per-gallon standards for light trucks and SUVs.

An appeals court in San Francisco rejected those standards last month ...

-----end excerpt-------

Bush Administration:  oxymoron.
On A titillating* new column on corporate carbon reporting posted 1 year, 11 months ago 2 Responses

The 11th issue is also up now

Quote from that:

The US, Canada, Japan and Russia yesterday
shared top dishonour for relentlessly
blocking any reference to the 25-40 per
cent cuts by 2020 in the Bali roadmap.

The United States seized second place
for using its slot at this morning's high-level
roundtable on technology transfer to talk on
everything except transfer of technology....
...
Australia won a rare "dishonourable
mention" for claiming leadership on climate
change and yet staying silent as the US,
Canada, Japan, and Russia strip the Bali
road map of the emissions cut range of 25-
40 per cent by 2020 urged by IPCC...."On Second-to-last issue of the Bali ECO newsletter posted 1 year, 11 months ago 6 Responses

factor this into your calculations:

"... Key among the secular trends in China is the massive urbanization movement that has been promoted by the government and influences economic policy. As Table 1 below shows, developed countries tend to run  urbanization rates of between 65 percent and 90 percent, with Japan at the low end of this  range and Korea, the U.S. and the U.K. each above 80 percent. ..."

http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/E ...On Greenpeace India points out the obvious posted 1 year, 11 months ago 14 Responses

a musical accompaniment

Gordon Lightfoot:

"I'm gonna buy me a poor man's trouble
Yes Lord to help me home
I'm gonna buy me a poor man's trouble
Yes Lord to help me home
And when I get my trouble and woe
Then homeward I will go
I'm gonna get a little trouble and woe to get me home ...."

> it turns out that there are plenty of people
> within India who have emissions above, and
> sometimes far above, the sustainable global
> average.
> ...emissions classes here in the U.S. as well.

Yep.  Good pointer, big elephants.On Greenpeace India points out the obvious posted 1 year, 11 months ago 14 Responses

Exactly slides used for movie? Confirm please?

This was just pointed to by Russell Seitz posting in the comments at RealClimate.  Can you all confirm this collection matches the slides used in the movie?  I know one point of the movie was that Mr. Gore was changing his slideshow as he was shown doing on his laptop, between presentations.

Question arises because of the recent British court case referring to quote "errors" unquote.  Can this collection be used to accurately check what was actually in the movie?

As an aside, it'd also be wonderful to have a difference file, showing what's changed.  The movie is an old snapshot, yet it's being circulated as though it were the best available information.

Using the movie to teach from, without a difference file to update it, is falling into the "Founder" trap that's so attractive to those who, for example, attack "Darwinists" -- those who believe science can be argued with by pointing to some founder's early work and claiming everything else is based on some grand original.On Al Gore's slideshow posted 2 years, 1 month ago 1 Response

correcting a link at Capitalism 3.0 (Powell's page

The link is to the first part of a good review; the link at the bottom to "MORE at" is broken at the moment by extra spaces (I've emailed Powell's)

To see the whole review, it's here:
http://www.precaution.org/lib/06/prn_capitalism_3.0.06122 ...On It's all about raising the price of carbon posted 2 years, 2 months ago 9 Responses

Maybe

Thinking in terms of times like these?
 http://ic.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/eart120/readings/Schmitz_Pulj ...On Scientists weigh in posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses

"developmental equity" ecoequity

This (original PDF) is good from before that conference; did the conference experience suggest changes you'd make to this text?

Greenhouse Development Rights
www.ecoequity.org/GDRs/GDRs_Nairobi.pdf On The ethics of climate change posted 2 years, 6 months ago 8 Responses

"forever" as a restriction?

So, let's tie it to compensation.

Their income goes into an annuity; their waste products goes into sequestration.

As long as the stuff doesn't leak, they get small regular retirement checks.

If it leaks, they or their heirs lose their income.

Otherwise "forever" means only "until I cash the check and move out of your jurisdiction"On Coal Is the Enemy of the Human Race posted 2 years, 6 months ago 3 Responses

see RC for the full text

Did anyone besides Dr. Curry actually look at the document from which Dr. Peilke briefly quoted?  She points out (in the thread at RC) that Dr. Peilke, in his presentation, cherry-picked --- quoting only part of a paragraph out of the statement by the meteorologists.

As always, the real scientists teach the real lesson, which is --- trust, but verify.

He was sworn "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" so we must presume he tried his best. On Our old friend posted 2 years, 10 months ago 22 Responses

>"Trees don't grow in the sky"

Not yet.  One of the ISS astronauts said how he missed salad greens, in a recent interview.On Best movie of the year, hands down posted 2 years, 10 months ago 81 Responses

Observation ...

"Backcut" -- are you a logger?  I know one mark of a good sawyer is placing the backcut correctly (and I've seen good and bad work aplenty).

I'm watching one recovery area that burned in 1987 (first fire after 40 years of fire suppression, very hot).  So far the unsalvaged area that was already off limits has come back far better than the salvage-logged and replanted area that the FS came into with bulldozers, scraped and piled and burned after salvage-logging, and planted with Ponderosa pine.  There's something to be said for the layer of stuff that builds up in soil after a fire, at least compared to the loose dust left by a bulldozer -- both cause runoff, but I'd say the bulldozers do more to lose what's left of the soil than the waxy stuff in the soil left undisturbed.

Standing dead trees host woodpeckers and flickers and raptors, and tend to decay in place for some years before they fall.  Hardwoods will indeed burn again after standing dead and dry for years; fire-killed (or almost killed) conifers in my experience will rot in place, get punky and soft and full of living things and fall already coming apart.

You have to do the field study to say what happens after a fire over a period of years, but I've seen  enough salvage logging, compared to prescribed burns, to believe that the salvage logging isn't helping regenerate the forest, as it's been done to date.  On Discuss posted 2 years, 10 months ago 7 Responses

Sure, but ...

People who RV and tow don't drive that many miles, although in bigger and less efficient vehicles and trips.

How are they compared to commuters using the pretend-ORV vehicles? -- I'd bet all told the urban assault vehicles burn more fuel each year, and in the having of a whole lot less fun.  It's commuting we need less of.
On Really posted 2 years, 10 months ago 9 Responses