On Sun, 4 Jul 2010 06:28:05 -0700 (PDT), Larry G
Post by Larry Gre: recreation - are you talking about the Europeans who have 32hr
work weeks and take 6 weeks of vacation a year and still use 1/2 the
fuel that we do per capita?
Yeah - I dunno how they use that time, tho. Recreation, esp.
energy-intensive recreation? Remember they have good public
transport, transport that we can't build because the population
density here is too low to make it cheap enough for people to chooses
to ride.
Post by Larry GDo you think in the U.S. that the air conditioners in the South that
run 8 or 9 months a year use more energy per capita that the other
countries at the same latitude around the world?
Yes, they use more energy. Similar-latitude people don't use that air
conditioning. Is that a great way not to use energy? Want to live in
Florida WITHOUT air conditioning? Me either. That's the choice that
the envirowackos want us to make, tho - give up air conditioning, give
up heating in northern homes. THey're idiots, of course. The south
is hell without air conditioning, and the north is unlivable without
some sort of home heat. We used to use other fuels. Now its
electricity, gas, and oil, mostly. Take those away, and the country
will be denuded of forest, because people will chop down trees and
burn those.
Post by Larry GDo you think the other northern countries beyond Canada use more or
less energy per capita that U.S. folks who live well south of those
Countries?
I think they use less - You see pix of the Scandenavians with their
big sweaters on all the time. Dunno what temp they keep their places,
or how well insulated their houses are. Here, we could do a lot with
insulation, but not as much as if we used stone to build houses, which
we mostly don't. A new constructon method - insulated concrete forms
- is simulating building with stone like they do in some places in
Europe, but its not required, and is more expensive. Mostly, if
people can't get fuel to heat and cool, they're going to be miserable
and/or die prematurely.
Post by Larry GI don't think there is an easy way to wiggle out of this. The facts
are troublesome things sometimes.
Yep. But we are good at manufacturing efficiency, and are using a lot
of our energy for that, too.
Post by Larry GWe ARE more productive but if you measure us in terms or productivity
per energy unit - we are not so good.
Takes a lot of energy to make steel, draw wire, lots of industrial
processes. We are still a big manufacturer, and will be until the
income tax chases ALL the industrial jobs overseas. Hey, I was
watching a TV program on possible armageddon from a EMP attack, which
would blow out many large electrical transformers. The program just
casually mentioned that we don't make transformers like those in this
country any more. That sucks. That's the stuff we need to turn
around. The income taxes are strangling our heavy industry, and we
need to get rid of them. We need industries like those, and it would
seem to be something that should be easy to automate - build those
transformers with even bigger machines, using people in the rare
places where they're required. After that, expenses should be mostly
from the taxes. Yeah, you have to do some things about pollution,
too, but I think that is true in Europe and even Japan now.
I wonder if we could impose a "pollution tax" on imports from places
that don't do pollution control.
Post by Larry GIf the rest of the world used energy at the same per capita rate that
we do - how long would the world oil supplies last ? How long would
it be before the price of gasoline went to $5 or $10 a gallon or
higher?
Dunno. We'd likely have to shut down our heavy industry to do better
right away. I don't think we want to go there.
Post by Larry GDon't get me wrong - I'm not particularly sympathetic to the "we don't
like any kind of energy except solar" enviro-wackos... but OTOH -
their view that we are the most prolifigate consumers of energy in the
world by about twice as much per capita is true - right?
I don't know how much more it is, but I think that most things we can
do about it would result in immediate economic disaster. Those that
wouldn't create an economic disaster, such as stopping air
conditioning, would create hell on earth for a lot of people.