My message to the EPA

The We Campaign is urging people to contact the

http://www.repoweramerica.org/page/s/epa


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Dear Administrator Johnson and EPA staff:

It is very unfortunate that Big Oil, Big Coal and more embarrassingly the US Government itself, are trying to make the US public think that there is still an ongoing debate about what humans are doing to the world climate. The effects are not subject to opinion, but have been tested by scientific rigor and investigative reporting.

No one questions whether an oil spill kills wildlife. You can see the deforestation in Brazil in satellite photos on Google Maps for yourself. Marine biologists have shown us that the late breeding age of Tuna combined with it being caught in early life has brought several of its species' populations down drastically.

Though not as easy to verify by a lay person, techniques do exist in the scientific community to see the impact of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases. After researchers have shown us how the global climate is changing, it is easy for anyone to estimate just how much carbon dioxide people are emitting into the atmosphere each day.

Garbage dumps are filling up in New Jersey and the air in the unregulated Beijing air now showed the entire world, during the 2008 Olympics, just how bad carbon dioxide emission can get.

The Clean Air Act has been one of the good first steps, but we now have an opportunity to do so much more to force corporations as well as the federal government to reduce emissions for the sake of our children and ours.

Please do not continue to let opponents pretend that the climate crisis is imaginary. We need action.

Thanks

My Response to the Obama Transition Team change.gov call for Climate Change

I sent my thoughts about transparency and the public involvement to the Obama Transition Team, when it comes to the Climate:



- First of all, publish the thoughts/comments that you get, so the appearance of change.gov as a 'black hole' goes away.

- If you want me to write a program that automatically flags posts as disruptive or malicious and others as even unclear, I will do it, no problem.

- You could also use a 'smart' categorization system that then puts related 'ideas' together and makes them easier for YOU and the PUBLIC to cull through.

( If you want, I can write something that will do that too! )

- Speaking of transparency, I think people would like to see all of the energy companies and lobby groups that you believe are involved classified by willingness to reform their ways. That way, efforts can be concentrated on making the public most aware of those companies/lobbyists that are holding things up the most.

- And awareness is key. As the issue stands today, The numbers have shown that Americans are not yet educated about the climate enough. I think similar call banking and canvassing efforts that worked in the election can be used to get people up to speed on the issues. We can separate people into less and more enthusiastic about helping the cause.

Al Gore's Oct 29 We Campaign Webcast

I RSVPed to the webcast : http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/s/gorepowervote .

Here are some of the questions I submitted. ( I hope they get asked ).

- Do you think that developing China and India, as they are entering booms that America has experienced decades back, emitting a great share of the world's carbon, should be held to the same standards as the US today, or should they be allowed the same number of decades as the U.S. to stabilize its emissions as must soon start to?

- How should America react to OPEC cutting down on oil production when prices started to fall?

- Some estimates say that a hundred square miles of solar panels in high sun intensity areas such as Arizona could offset most of America's home and business energy needs when technology reduces energy lost during transportation. How do you foresee America's Big Coal and Big Oil giants letting go of their Helm?

- Both of the Presidential candidates have agreed to support off shore drilling. Obama does however argue that this is a transitional compromise that needs to be attached to a decision that adds more dependence on renewables. Do you think this is a wise compromise?

This American Life Explaining Wall Street crumblings in narrative form

If you don't know Chicago Public Radio's This American Life and you want to learn about our American economy, then hey, this podcast episode is a one a two a one to three for you!

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1263

I got to learn about Credit Default Swaps and Netting and Commercial Paper and how it affects you ( um excuse me I mean 'me', heh. well you too, okay ).

My own 2 cents on a comparison of 'money' in our economies with the Internets and their linking inklings
So one thing I learned from this podcast is that because Credit Default Swaps weren't regulated ( I can't cite the law, but they referred to 1998 or 2000 legislation ), financiers were NOT required to hold reserves on them. So several hedgies ( affectionately speaking ) formed a non-transparent chain ( its members could only see one lender deep along this chain ), in which each bough Credit Default Swaps from one and sold off the risk to another. So the This American Life people made it sound dramatic, but talk about transfer of fluff and making money off of thin air!

Okay, now here's the comparison to the 'world wide web': So the gosh darn truth is that not all content on the 'net' is original. Many many blogs and even newspapers basically link off to sources and write their 2 cents about it, without really adding what they think ( yes I do that too sometimes but I try not to ). There are even some websites which are created purely to add page rank to target websites. ( Yes, when a search engine crawls/trawls the web, those sites with more 'in-links' pointing to them have 'relatively' higher Page Rank scores, hence google bombs

And there was this really complex plagiarism reported on On The Media, where Jody Rosen, a music critic at slate.com 's work was almost completely copied by a newspaper in Texas that had been copying for a while. Listen to a snippet if ye likes:



So on to my point! Isn't news aggregation so similar to the transfer of money between our banking institutions ? It's all fluff. Real estate deals re-packaging homes for other buyers to make a quick coupl'a thou? Fluff dunk. So, Goldman Sachs is supposed to become a 'non-financial' bank now right? So, yea, what exactly happens to all the asset shufflers ( selling things they don't own ) ( pardon the half-reference to Fight Club's 'buying things we don't need' but it applies t00 ). We need to get back to an economy based on stuff. And interestingly enough 'stuff' is actually a word which doesn't mean anything, contradicting the meaning here. So, we need an economy that 's based on manufactured goods, real services and advice and arts and crafts.

Gambling? Yep that's fluff too.

Strange how this Google CSRF story wasn't picked up earlier

Here's the link: http://digg.com/security/Google_CSRF_exploit.

I didn't search Digg enough I guess; maybe someone had dugg this before. The only thing anywhere close to this was from Google owns the world! Worth1k, amazing! @news-world.us.

Here's an example of what's in that 'second' link:



Check out the story at digg for more.

My message to ABC on Behalf of wecansolveit.org

When you finish reading what I wrote, please help pressure ABC to air ads other than for Big Oil, go to http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/s/ABC .

So if you saw recent Belmont University-hosted Presidential Debate recently and if you saw it on ABC, CBS or CNN, you would see commercials for Chevron, Exxon and those lobbying for Coal. Well, wecansolveit.org tried to push for a green energy ad to ABC, but it wouldn't budge.

Even though the ad isn't exceptionally great ( read next paragraph ), day time television needs to give opponents of Big Oil and Big Coal a chance. Otherwise, they really do people a disservice. Yes, unfortunately many people get educated by the TV these days and those ads make up some part of what people "know". That's sad, I know.



Well, I think the ad is only 30 seconds, sure, and it doesn't do enough of a service to showcase green energy. I don't think Wind and Solar by themselves are enough by themselves ( especially since Wind => coastal and the further energy is transported, the more if it is lost ) . Though, solar technology has gotten cheaper recently. Check out powerfilmsolar.com . One of their resellers, Jameco.com, offers their paper-thin and roll-able material for roughly around $100/ square foot. ( Of course you need to spend money on collecting and connecting the energy to your home's grid ). What's the power output you ask? ( if you have an 550 sq ft roof and live in NY, then I think you can get around 4 Peak Sun Hours a day and about 7kWh of energy on an average day. These people say the average home needs 8900 kWh a year, so this roof contraption can give you maybe 25-28% of your power needs? I'm using Jameco's $100/sq foot @3W panels in the numbers by the way. So yea, spend $ 55K on panels plus. And solar4power.com says even 25% of power can be lost through transfer/storage, so hmm, that 25-28% I gave may turn out to be 19% instead )

Here's what I sent ABC by the way:

To Whom it May Concern @ABC

You agree to air the Debate for as serious position as the Office of the President of the United States, where the issues surrounding how America will fulfill its Energy needs are discussed. Both Candidates plan to support Alternative Energy sources, but YOU, ABC, have decided to block the Alliance for Climate Protection's Repower America ad and instead gave BIG OIL the Spotlight.

You don't deserve to showcase another debate unless you support this ad.
-Michal

28 Days Later: Why anarchy flows to authoritarianism ( don't read before you see movie!! )

(tried to put this on hulu.com too )

I just happened to be reading about the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s this week, where the government was overthrown. I don't know too many of the details, though strict control followed right after the take over. I think you could say this movie may help offer why authoritarian rule takes place after overthrow of government.

In 28, there's no more 'order', but the military has its own established order which survives the end of politics. Yea they get killed off by three survivors, okay, but that doesn't usually happen, so maybe the authoritarianism of the army becomes the new Law of the Land.

That's basically all I have to add. Spain has elected leaders today, but it was a dictatorship for I don't know how long, so the other question is how did 'that' happen?

Some Oil Math

I really don't like deceptive political math. I just have one number to talk about that I saw on John McCain's website within the area where the Lexington Project is discussed. Though it's not exactly clear how much oil we have in US territory from the numbers presented, one is given.

We have trillions of dollars worth of oil and gas reserves in the U.S. at a time we are exporting hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to buy energy.

If we use $4 / gallon, with 31 US gallons / oil barrel , 3 trillion dollars, say, is around 24 billion barrels of oil. $2 / gallon gives 48 billion barrels. How many billion barrels does the US consume every year you ask? Well in 1971 the US produced around 14 billion barrels ( according to hubbertpeak.com ) And the world production has been leveling off around 60 billion bbl / year over the past few decades. And by "produced", I believe I also mean "used", since country reserves are not what's being raised, the consumption is rising. So our reserves aren't all that much. Do they even give us a full year?



So why are these numbers selectively not provided(?) :
- how much oil in the untapped Alaskan land ?

- what about off the coast of Florida ?

- or the Gulf of Mexico ?



Anyway, of course the hubbertpeak.com numbers should be confirmed. But If you look there, you'll see that M. King Hubbert's numbers about oil production have been accurate in the past as far as prediction matching verification.

You know what, I forgot to reference Dr. Albert A. Bartlett from the University of Colorado at Boulder 's presentation on oil math, as seen on wonderingmind42 's YouTube page.

why is Conversation Difficult? Can We Find the Perfect Thing to Talk About to Make Everyone Happy?

I've been thinking that probably like many others, I have two kinds of problems when connecting with people: talking to those who love themselves and talking to people with whom you just can't find a common topic of interest. The first challenge is easy to describe but difficult to explain. There are people out there who love nothing other than talking about who they are and what they do. You meet them and if you happen to work or go to school with them, you soon begin to realize that they will either never ask anything about you or if they do, they'll interrupt your answer to talk about themselves again. If you're reading this, maybe you'll think that I feel this way because I have nothing interesting anyone would want to ask about me, but I'll just say that simply when I talk to anyone else, I'll almost always get a reciprocal conversation. The difficulty is wondering why. I've discussed this with another friend, so we don't have much research, but we've found that very often only sons or only daughters tend to be these types of people--attention seeking and self-oriented. But of course I've met some people who do have brothers/sisters and also like to talk about themselves and I know those without siblings who are less self-centered. So it's just a personal observation.

But who cares anyway? So I've been wondering if the near opposite of this is true. That is, maybe some people including myself just find it tough to talk to some people because of the second problem I stated: it's tough to find a common ground. Or without being that extreme, what if we acknowledge that some people love themselves, but maybe you can still find some topic out there that you can still enjoy talking about. Maybe briefly. Maybe not.

But on to the other point and more specifically, do we find talking to some people a waste of time? I've found in life, that I like talking to basically everyone as long as it's eventually in my information gaining interest. To me, more information is good and the more sources of information is all the more useful, so your perspective increases with the more types of opinions you become aware of. But if for one of two reasons I don't get heard, I can't talk to that person anymore. One, if they talk about themselves too much or two, too little. When people throw words at you without listening to your feedback, there's no satisfaction, because it's as if you're talking to ... a talking wall. But if someone is so secretive that they don't want to tell you anything personal or similarly they only ask you questions without answering the ones you pose, then you gain nothing. So there has to be a balance.

I once read a long time ago that the three golden rules to conversations are to 1. Ask questions 2. Listen and 3. Listen. I think that so far this has worked. If both people follow this method, you won't just be giving an interview, because you'll get asked about your opinions too: finally a balanced conversation. But not everyone follows this protocol. Does that mean stop talking to those people? Maybe some will. Well, I don't really have a solution to that so I'm just going to have to hope I meet someone who does.