Easy Being Green...& Your Job

[fizzissist]

There's a new movement taking shape called 18Seconds. Thats the time it takes to change a lightbulb.

The idea is to get us all to convert from incandescent to fluorescent bulbs in an effort to save the planet. If every American converted to just one bulb, the savings would amount to $8Billion in energy costs and save the equivalent of 2 million cars worth of greenhouse gasses, according to an AP article.

At the helm of this campaign is the EPA, DOE, Yahoo, and Wal Mart, along with mayors, other retailers, religious and conservation groups.

http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dl...EWS09/70221045

What's this got to do with us, much less CNC????? Legislators in California and New Jersey want to mandate fluorescent bulbs, and, much to MY surprise, Wal Mart is going to be happy to sell 100 Million bulbs.

If you make tooling, machinery, or are involved in the domestic production of light bulbs, you might want to consider this.....

I went to my closet and looked at my collection of spares. My incandescents were made in Ohio. The fluorescent screw-type bulbs were all made in China.

You just might be 'greening' yourself right out of a job.

[fizzissist]

"....The improvement that can be obtained by spending just $31 million on incinerators could cost developed nations as much as 750 million euros ($986 million) through the elaborate trading mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, and even then only two-thirds of the problem would go away, Wara estimates.

China and India are getting a prize for producing lots of hydrofluorocarbon-23, one of the six greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol. One ton of it is considered the equivalent of 11,700 tons of carbon dioxide.

Six Chinese companies have consented to be paid to destroy this toxic byproduct of a gas used as a common refrigerant and a Teflon feedstock. Their total commitment is more than 43 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum. India, with two registered projects, is second with about 7 million tons. Thus, barely eight chemical plants in China and India control about 44 percent of the existing annual supply of emission credits...."

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...d=a6JuMPizIG6o

HCFC-22 is next.....wait till you read what's in my next post...

[fizzissist]

HCFC-22 is the next target of the Green movement, but it's going to hit YOU and your wallet....and maybe YOUR job long before China and India feel the pinch.

".....HCFC-22 is cheaper to install than the latest ozone-safe chemicals, which are harder and more expensive to manufacture. Lambert Kuijpers, one of three co-chairmen of the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel of the Montreal Protocol, said that production of the ozone-damaging gas in the developing world is on track to increase more than fivefold in the current decade.

An accelerated phaseout of HCFC-22 “is the most important” item on the agenda, he said...
....In China, ownership soared to 87.2 air-conditioners per 100 urban households in September, from 24.4 seven years earlier. The countryside, home to two-thirds of the nation’s population, is poised for even greater growth. In 2005, there were 6.4 air-conditioners per 100 rural households, a 35-fold increase from a decade earlier.

Developing countries like China and India enjoy exemptions from global environmental standards. The Kyoto Protocol, which governs emissions of global-warming gases, is also lenient toward them, on the grounds that industrialized countries have released the great bulk of the offending gases and poorer countries should be allowed to catch up economically before taking on additional environmental costs.......

.........Nilesh Bothelo, the manager of a repair shop in downtown Mumbai, said that a chlorofluorocarbon-based system was so much simpler and easier to install that he charges just $600 for it. He charges twice as much for a system using the modern refrigerant.

Indian chemical companies are happy to ship as much chlorofluorocarbons as needed, Mr. Bothelo said. When asked what the chemical looks like, he abruptly had a mechanic pour a little out of a battered metal tank onto the oil-stained ground. The milky gas flowed toward the dirt, bounced and then faded away, vanishing into the air.

“If it were something so bad,” Mr. Bothelo said, “they would not legally sell it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/bu...ce&oref=slogin

If you read the whole article, you'll see that it's you and me that are going to be subsidizing the rest of the world's air conditioning, but with no real environmental gain. At the same time, AlGore's efforts are going to result in more restrictive standards for us, resulting in more expensive air conditioning products here....and because we all shop at Wal Mart, US manufacturing will go east where costs are lower.

What irony....because as we're trying to save the planet, the people we give an exemption to will get our jobs and make the profits.....and continue polluting.

See if any of the companies in the link below are ones you work for, or ones that your job is related to..They're going to be feeling a big financial pinch!
http://www.scorecard.org/chemical-pr...s&how_many=100

[fizzissist]

"...But how Gore buys his "carbon offsets," as revealed by The Tennessean raises serious questions. According to the newspaper's report, Gore buys his carbon offsets through Generation Investment Management:

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe . . .

Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he "buys" his "carbon offsets" from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn't buy "carbon offsets" through Generation Investment Management--he buys stocks. . . .

Meanwhile, Gore runs around the country and the world trumpeting "climate crisis" and blaming man's use of carbon-based energy--burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel as he goes. His efforts have served to put climate change at the top of the national and even global agenda, driving up the value of the stocks and companies viewed as "green" or environmentally friendly. Companies like those his investment management firm invest his own and other peoples' [sic] money in. (You can see a list of Generation Investment Management's holdings here(URL found at bottom of page), courtesy of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.).."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?...jrss=frontpage

Generation Investment Management????? Gore's OWN company???? He 'pays' carbon credits to his own company, which in turn invests in other companies??? Pretty grand shell game we got goin' here, huh???

It gets better....look at the companies......
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...-07-000053.txt

[Mariss Freimanis]

An "Inconvenient Question" (sorry AlGore). Why is this forum named "Stop Global Warming"? That name already presupposes it:

1) Exists
2) Is bad
3) Is caused by us
4) Is in our power to change

Let's not skew this debate by weasel-wording the forum title.:-)

Mariss

[Rekd]

An "Inconvenient Question" (sorry AlGore). Why is this forum named "Stop Global Warming"? That name already presupposes it:

1) Exists
2) Is bad
3) Is caused by us
4) Is in our power to change

Let's not skew this debate by weasel-wording the forum title.:-)

Mariss

This has already been discussed.

[Mariss Freimanis]

Got it. Will not mention it again.

Mariss

[Rekd]

Got it. Will not mention it again.

Mariss

Feel free to debate the topic of global warming. Just don't expect the forum's title to be changed.

[fizzissist]

Another Inconvenient Truth

Behind the feel-good hype of carbon offsets, some of the deals don't deliver

"...Still, this kind of secretiveness provokes skepticism. "If neither a seller of RECs nor the buyer will provide any details of how, exactly, their transaction is reducing carbon emissions, I would suspect it's vaporware," says Randy Udall, director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, an Aspen (Colo.) nonprofit that promotes renewable energy....

.....More broadly, the proliferation of suspect RECs and offsets may persuade consumers and businesses that preventing climate change comes cheap, says Anja S. Kollmuss, outreach coordinator of the Tufts Climate Initiative, an advocacy group affiliated with Tufts University. "We cannot solve the climate crisis by buying offsets and claiming to be climate-neutral," she adds. "Nature does not fall for accounting schemes."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3/b4027057.htm

Discussed here in a Business Week article is Waste Management, Starbucks, Vail Resorts, and a Seattle power company.....and a lot of smoke and mirrors!

[Geof]

Another Inconvenient Truth

Behind the feel-good hype of carbon offsets, some of the deals don't deliver

Only some?

[fizzissist]

Geof...my answer would have been damned near all...but they won't let me write for 'em....

This just in....hold on to your investment dollar-socks!

NEW YORK - Joining a rising corporate chorus itching to sink money into clean energy projects, big investors will press the US Congress Monday to pass laws attempting to tackle global warming.


The dozens of investors include Merrill Lynch, The Capital Group, which manages US$850 billion in mutual funds, and the California Public Employees Retirement System, the largest US pension fund, said a source at Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmentalists.
"Investors are seeking strong legislation with tangible greenhouse gas reduction targets," said the source.

The United States is the world's top emitter of gases from smokestacks and tailpipes that scientists link to global warming. Mandatory emissions cuts could give investors confidence to put more money in low-carbon alternative energy, like wind and solar power, and other technologies.

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsst...0926/story.htm

[fizzissist]

Prof. Kondratyev at the Moscow World Conference on Climate Change (29 September to 3 October 2003)

"....In concluding his brief report, Prof. Kondratyev says "Andrei Illarionov warned that 'the Kyoto Protocol will stymie economic growth; it will doom Russia to poverty, weakness and backwardness.' His words echoed the statement in 1998 by the great British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, that implementing restrictions in CO2 emissions would be 'ruining the world's industries and … returning us all to the Dark Ages.' It is my opinion that the only people who would be affected by abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol would be several thousand people who made a living attending, in attractive places, conferences on global warming."

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Ko...ndratyev1.html