Thursday April 3, 2008, 5:05 pm
MY HEAD IS SWIMMING

Thursday April 3, 2008, 5:12 pm
I agree with Sophia ...this is overwhelming..

Thursday April 3, 2008, 5:17 pm
Noted, we can send a man to the moon, we can send an email around the world in seconds but, our chemist cannot come up with an alternate fuel that will not pollute or destroy the planet? Something tells me that they have not had the help, push or goals to do so, maybe Big Oil/Government is keeping them down???

Thursday April 3, 2008, 5:18 pm
You cannot currently send a star to Gregory because you have done so within the last week.

Thursday April 3, 2008, 6:33 pm
NOTED TY

Thursday April 3, 2008, 7:29 pm
This fits with the Deep Underground Military Bases and the talk of the 2012 issue.

Can government and science be so stupid, greedy, arrogant and insane?

Evidently they are and our very existence will be compromised if this data is correct.

This is perhaps part of the mandate of the New World Order and the suggestion that world populations will decline by over 6 billion.

As the Georgia Guidestones state 'keep the world population to 500 million (http://thegeorgiaguidestones.com/stones.htm).'

Thursday April 3, 2008, 8:55 pm
Very well done. All the more reason for solutions and not government.
(o:

Geothermal heating and cooling is based on one simple fact: that 6 feet down in the ground the temperature is the same—between 50˚F and 60˚F- the whole year round. This means that it is relatively cool in the summer, and relatively warm in the winter. Geothermal heating is thus quite different from solar heating: solar heating works worst when you most need it--in the cold, cloudy, snowy conditions of winter; the source for geothermal heating and cooling is not affected by the weather.

For geothermal cooling, all one needs to do is to circulate water in a pipe through the ground to cool it, and use this cool water to cool the air pumped through the house in the heating ducts.

For heating, there is an extra wrinkle. Most of us prefer the temperature in the house in the winter to be nearer 70˚F then 60˚F, so we need to raise the temperature of the relatively warm air a little. For this we use the gas equation that you may remember from High School Physics: PV=RT. Here P is pressure, V is volume, T is absolute temperature, and R is a constant. If we keep the volume constant, we see that the Pressure is proportional to the Temperature. This means that if we want to raise the temperature of the air a little, then we should increase its pressure a little. To see how much, we must work in absolute temperature, which is 273˚+temperature in Celsius (centigrade) . Take an example: suppose the temperature of the water coming out of the ground were 50˚F; that is 10˚C or 273˚+10˚=283˚ absolute. We want to heat the air from 50˚F to say 68˚F. 68˚F is 20˚C or 273˚+20˚=293˚ absolute. Raising the temperature from 283˚ to 293˚, means that we raise it by (293-283)*100/283 percent, or 3.5 %. That small increase in pressure can easily be done by using a compressor.

That is the theory. Now the technology. First we have to build a trench in which to place the pipes carrying the water (actually they add some glycol to it, to improve the performance). For our installation we had 3 trenches each 300ft long, 5ft wide and 5ft deep. Each trench had four 4inch pvc pipes in it; 3600 ft in all. Typically the trenches are 5ft deep, rather than 6ft, because all kinds of safety regulations come into play in building a 6ft trench. The 4inch pipes are fed from one large pipe coming from the basement, and they are funnelled back into a large pipe as they return to the basement. The whole system is filled with water and sealed. There is a pump in the basement that circulates the water through the pipes, and brings the warm water back into the basement. The water then goes into a heat exchanger. A heat exchanger does just that: it takes the heat out of the water and heats air that runs through pipes through the water. A heat exchanger is rather like two clasped hands, with the fingers of one hand interleaved with the fingers of the other. One set of fingers carries the warm water, the other carries the air to be heated.

After being heated by the water, the air enters a compressor where it is warmed further, before feeding it into the air ducts. It is possible to have the pipes running deep down into the ground, rather than running horizontally 5ft down. If there is a lake or a deep river, then the pipes can run through the water, rather than through the ground.

Now the money matters. We live in the country. In the winter of 2004/5 we spent about $2,500 on oil for our oil furnace. If we had kept the furnace, then we would have spent about $3,000 in the winter of 2005/6. The geothermal system has four parts: the pump to move the water around the circuit, the compressor, the heat exchanger, and the fan to blow the air through the house; those cost $18,000. The trench and pipes cost $2,000, and the necessary changes to the electrical system in the house cost another $2,000. We received a rebate of $600 on the items from the Ontario Government, and another $1,400 from a government conservation initiative.

When the system is running at moderate strength it takes 1500 KWH, about the same as a single baseboard heater; when it is running at high, it uses 2200KWH, and when the fan alone is working, then it uses 500KWH. Our electrical bill has increased by about $150 per month for the winter months.

We did not have air conditioning before; the air conditioning is set to come on when the temperature in the house reaches 75˚F, which is not often. The biggest difference in the winter months is in the quality of the air inside the house. There is now no combustion, so no loss of oxygen, as there is with an oil furnace. As far as conservation is concerned, we save about 8 tons of carbon dioxide per year!

A few additional points. Obviously geothermal doesn’t work for everyone. My father has a luxury of a large backyard, so he could fit all that piping easily into shallow trenches. If you don’t have that much room, as he points out, you have to dig down—and that’s obviously more expensive. I’m not suggesting, in other words, that this is going to solve the energy crisis. But surely there are lots of lots of houses—as well as commercial buildings (like malls, with huge parking lots) that could easily install geothermal systems, and even a modest application of technologies like this could begin to make a real difference in our energy problems.

I think it is also worth noting how absurdly low-tech the system is. It is pvc pipes and a compressor. My father lives in Ontario, where the winters can be vicious, and has thrown out his furnace! The other noteworthy fact is how (relatively) inexpensive the system is. For an investment of $25,000, my father saves, conservatively, $2000 a year (remember; he wasn’t running air conditioning in the summer before this, so the financial benefits of his system are substantially understated.

One of the frustrating things about the current discussion over our dependence on imported oil is the persistent notion that real solutions will require some future technological breakthrough. I think we have a lot of the answers. We just haven’t made consumers and public officials aware of them.

Friday April 4, 2008, 5:30 am
Noted, thanks Greg

Friday April 4, 2008, 9:43 pm
I agree with Greg and Michael that scientists fail to work out alternative sources of clean energy. Scientific and technological progress depend very much on research funding from the government or industry. Politicians and government are short sighted, industry only cares for short-term return of investment, and many reseahers only focus on hot topics that have adequate funding support. Thanks Greg!

Saturday April 5, 2008, 1:41 am
Economists are trained to believe that we will never "run out" of a commodity. This is because as prices increase, we will use less-and-less of it, but there will always be some available at some finite price. Practically every economics textbook teaches this. But every economics textbook is wrong because "energy" is fundamentally different from every other commodity. There is no substitute for energy. Energy is the prerequisite for all other commodities, so if we "run out" of energy, we will "run out" of everything else too.

By definition, energy "sources" must produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks". By definition, energy sources have "run out" when they consume more energy than they produce. This universal energy law holds no matter how high the money price of energy goes. Economists completely overlook this basic energy law and have misled government regulators all over the world.

Here is part of an interview with Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (worth quoting at length because of his colossal stupidity):

Ravaioli: But there are many other environmental problems ...

Nobel Laureate Friedman: Of course. Take oil, for example. Everyone says it's a limited resource: physically it may be, but economically we don't know. Economically there is more oil today than there was a hundred years ago. When it was still under the ground and no one knew it was there, it wasn't economically available. When resources are really limited prices go up, but the price of oil has gone down and down. Suppose oil became scarce: the price would go up, and people would start using other energy sources. In a proper price system the market can take care of the problem.

Ravaioli: But we know that it takes millions of years to create an oil well, and we can't reproduce it. Relying on oil means living on our capital and not on the interest, which would be the sensible course. Don't you agree?

Nobel Laureate Friedman: If we were living on the capital, the market price would go up. The price of truly limited resources will rise over time. The price of oil has not been rising, so we're not living on the capital. When that is no longer true, the price system will give a signal and the price of oil will go up. As always happens with a truly limited resource.

Ravaioli: Of course the discovery of new oil wells has given the illusion of unlimited oil …

Nobel Laureate Friedman: Why an illusion?

Ravaioli: Because we know it’s a limited resource.

Nobel Laureate Friedman: Excuse me, it's not limited from an economic point of view. You have to separate the economic from the physical point of view. Many of the mistakes people make come from this. Like the stupid projections of the Club of Rome: they used a purely physical approach, without taking prices into account. There are many different sources of energy, some of which are too expensive to be exploited now. But if oil becomes scarce they will be exploited. But the market, which is fortunately capable of registering and using widely scattered knowledge and information from people all over the world, will take account of those changes. [[18]]

(In fact, none of the Club of Rome's predictions has failed. Economists like Friedman routinely misrepresent the study in order to further their global political agenda.)
http://www.dieoff.org/page185.htm


Excellent post Carol! Geo-thermal heat/cooling IS the answer! Now more than anytime in our history we need solutions to heating and cooling our homes/businesses which is sustainable and non-polluting; Geo-thermal ticks all the boxes in meeting this requirement.
All new contruction should be required to use this form of heating/cooling, the money saved is well worth the initial costs and the fact that Geo-thermal is carbon neutral makes it a 'no brainer'. However, will those in govt. give up their profit$ from fossel fuel$ so easily? Somehow I doubt it. :(

*noted with thanx Greg

Tuesday April 8, 2008, 3:26 pm
Noted, tnx Gregory

Saturday April 12, 2008, 5:50 am
I live in Phoenix, Az the valley of the sun and there is no excuse, exept for greed keeping phx from having a solar power plant, because we are PAYING for a solar plant to be built to power Nevada!!! The last power plant the Palo Verde Nuclear plant west of Phoenix, close to the Az/Ca border powers CA! The summer temps here are like 3months of triple digit heat, we MUST have climate control! water, swimming pools, the climate control is why the utility conglomerates APS/SRP do NOT want a solar power plant, or wind or water, because america is on a scam train and NWO enslavement to the corporate thugs whom got where they are because of us and this is the payment we get?? Traitors??
Kim