ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

"...as well as Carol Miller, the Mayor of Ojai."

I'm sure you meant to say "Carol Smith."

Does the Ojai Valley Green Coalition know about this event? Will check out the
Step It Up! site. Thanks!

Thanks for the correction...

Green finger? Sounds like a marketing gimick that is trying to copy the Purple fingers of the Iraqi people that finally got to vote.

At least they are trying to shut down the coal burning plants, that is one good thing, but with nothing viable to take it's place it will be a recipe for economic collapse.

These doomsdayers are really playing the fear card but I don't think most intelligent people are buying it. If they are successful in driving energy prices extremely high I think you will see a big backlash.
It's too bad that a lot of kids will grow up with this fear that the sea level is going to swallow them up.

Brian

Brian, I think you need to get laid.

I'm not offering; just making an observation.

Sorry, it's my job to bring some balance to some of these issues. Somebody has to do it !

Ed's not here anymore !

"...but with nothing viable to take it's place it will be a recipe for economic collapse." & in the same comment Brian also says: "These doomsdayers are really playing the fear card... "

Do you know what you are saying?

Brian: You are the doomsayer. It's either your way or society collapses. Sadly, I suspect you will be disappointed when the human race survives and thrives during and after this transition away from centalized energy monopolies.

You say balance, I say bal movement. Both are necessary but only one smells.

Fortunately most people are seeing that nuclear power is a clean safe source of energy and we are starting to move in that direction. Solar energy can help too but only for the very rich. I don't see the human race thriving using just solar energy as a power source. If you look at the numbers, as far as what solar energy can realistically provide, you would have to come to the conclusion that is is very limited.

The interdependent web of life we all rely on
has reached it's threshhold from contamination,
witnessed by the number of super storm systems we are
seeing and increasingly helpless to react to, like the
fires

I don't see the human race thriving using just solar energy as a power source.

Oh, Brian...all life on this planet has evolved to this very point in time using almost nothing BUT solar energy. It's just now that we are finally learning to use it in different ways, and we are like children taking baby steps. Soon we will be walking, and then running. However, if we all ascribed to your way of thinking we'd be crawling around the nursery until the end of time. As with the solution to many problems, the answer has always been here, and it has always been all around us. Unfortunately, people like you have chosen to become blinded by the very light that could save them. Quit staring into the sun while shaking your fist, Brian, and start thinking about what the sun is is, what it does, how it does it, and how we might make use of it. You might learn something. Better, you might actually become part of the effort to use this free source of energy.

You could stay in your cave if you wished, my pale little salamander, but if you do you'll probably need nuclear power or some other artificially and perilously created form of energy that we have to literally rip out of the fabric of the universe at enormous cost. (Talk about energy for rich folk!) The rest of us will continue to figure out how to use the stuff that has been falling on the face of the planet for free since the beginning of the days of life on Earth. (And, we'll get better at it with each passing day.)

How 'bout Brian and solar energy expert Michael Lind sit down and have a chat about all this? Maybe Michael would invite Brian for a visit to his his solar-powered home in Ojai.

Michael's contact info is on his Ojai Post author site:

(805) 302-6005
mlind@recsolar.com

http://www.recsolar.com/

Brian says: "Solar energy can help too but only for the very rich."

Really?

A UCSB Environmental Sciences professor emeritus (I forget his name - Holswell? something like that) ran a calculation last year and determined, based on the money Bush had spent on the Iraq war up to that point, that every home and business in the U.S. could have been fitted with a solar array (installation costs included) for the same sum.

Imagine. Real jobs here at home supported, and a long term reduction in reliance on fossil fuels... Brian, you have been a big time supporter of the Iraq war. Perhaps you can elucidate for us why it was better to spend the money as Bush has spent it, rather than on outfitting us all with solar arrays. (Or myriad other solutions.)

Brian, I also am wondering: If we as a country took your advice and embraced more nuclear energy, would that turn out as well for us as your other big policy prescription - the Iraq war - has?

The main function of government is to provide a military to protect the country. We are now in a advantagous situation in the middle east in that we are sitting on Iran's door step and they now know that we are not bluffing when tell them that we will not tolerate them developing weapons of mass destruction. It was about time we shook up those murdering Al Quada ragheads anyway after years and years of them attacking and killing us. If we had done nothing and had let Sadam continue in power we would now be looking at a nuclear arms race between Iraq and Iran. But now instead of that we have an allie in the Iraqi people who we have been helping build hospitals and schools and who are, for the most part, glad that we are there. There was bad missteps after we first went in but it seems that the new strategy is working. So we would have to spend money using our military one way or another, with Iraq and Iran both supplying terrorist with nuclear weapons I think we would be in a very bad place had we not gone in there.

Solar is simply not a viable solution to our overall energy needs. Just do the math. Other myriad of solutions? Like what ? Wind? (It's a better economic choice than solar BTW) geothermal? Bio fuel? Ethanol? Hamsters on treadwheels?

The 106 nuclear power plants that we have in this country have been quitely producing clean energy 24/7 for the past 30 years or more. If we increased the percentage of nuclear power generation we could cut our dependence on foriegn oil and start to produce hydrogen also.

Hey Brian:

As usual, most of your post almosts makes my head explode. But let me just address one point - Saddam Hussein, as brutal of a dictator that he was, was a secularist. He was not a jihadist and not a terrorist. He hunted down and killed terrorists. And unlike our own moronic disaster in the White House, he was cognizant of the 1,000 years of history that shaped his country. He understood all the factions and rivalries that we are now witnessing in this total and never ending cluster-fuck that this administration has so naively and cavalierly unleashed. And no matter how you and the other few remaining supporters want to whitewash over it, this administration has the blood of well over half a million people on its hands!! Though it might be comforting to you (rather than admit you were blinded and then betrayed by these criminals) there is absolutely no moral ground to argue otherwise.

Sadam was a real sweetheart. He paid families $30,000.00 each for thier kids to blow themselves up in crowded Israli streets. He harbored and aided terrorist. He murdered and tortured his own people, give me a break. He caused incredible environmental damage by burning all the oil wells in Kuwiat.
Maybe he was able to keep a lid on all the whack jobs over there but that hardly qualifies him as Presidente of the year.

If it is any consolation my head explodes from your posts as well.

Hey, brian:

I actually went to the rally on the beach near the Harbor. You should have gone, too. Time to put your money where your mouth is, boy.

As far as "doing the math", why don't you show us this math you're talking about? Right here. No links. Just the math. How about it?

A standard system of 1 kw (100 sq ft; 10 watts/sq ft)for a house costs you about $20,000.00

$20,000 / 1000 watts = $20/watt

Solar's not free

"If it is any consolation my head explodes from your posts as well."

Glad I can be of service, Brian.

With respect to Kit and the line of this thread, I will opt out of continuing a discussion about the war, Saddam Hussein, etc.

See you on another thread.

Brain, every one of your talking points has been proven to be drivel. You are proving to be a worthy successor to your hero, Ed, by revealing an inability to carry on a discussion. It seems as though you can only stand on your delusionary pulpit preaching the gospel of Fox News like a good fundamentalist automation. One day you will learn to think for your self. Don't give up.

Brian:

If people who thought the way you think had been allowed a say-so, way back when, as to whether or not personal computers were going to be allowed to go forward -- said decision being based on the kind of economic logic you have presented here -- we would not be having this conversation at all. There would be no such thing as PCs and Macs; no such thing as the Internet, and no such thing as blogs.

You believe that your tenacious conviction regarding the propriety and efficacy of nuclear power identifies you as an on-the-cutting-edge kind of guy, but I think that it actually makes you look like a Luddite

LTOR:

About the rally today: it was good, if a bit under-attended. I counted about 115 people, and recognized a few Ojai faces.

Bill Fulton spoke, as did Steve Bennett, a spokeswoman for Lois Capps (Lisa Hernandez), a teacher from VCC whose name I could not hear, Dennis O'Leary of the Oxnard Unified School District (who was environmentally on the same page as everyone else, but who was also quite obviously campaigning against John Flynn for a County supervisor's position), and a woman & son whose name I also did not hear. A man named Reed Smith also spoke, and I found out later that he was the Science Chairperson for Ventura County Audubon and the man responsible for protecting the native wildlife on the local beaches each year during the annual dredging operation.

The sound system was a boombox & microphone combo, and was not beefy enough to overpower all of the normal sounds of a beach & 100+ people. John Flynn was a no-show, as was Carol Smith. Fran Pavely was attending a conference on global warming elsewhere, but sent a statement which was read by the president of Ventura County Audubon. I recognized Kate and Bill Faulkner, National Park Service Rangers for Channel Islands National Park, but they were attendees only and did not speak.

There were dogs and babies and families and senior citizens and handouts and petition cards and free reusable market bags from Von's/Safeway and Trader Joe's. It all went on for a little over 2 hours, and Steve Bennett stayed until the end -- sitting on the sand in his suit with everyone else -- having arrived about 20 minutes into the event, just before his scheduled speaking time. The weather was great, according to my tastes; slightly foggy & overcast with occasional sun, and a steady mild onshore breeze. It was a real shock to the system to return to Ojai and near 90° temperatures.

There were no hecklers, although a grumpy looking man hustled his kids off the beach before the event started. They were there to fish, but I suspect that there may have been some ideological friction at play as well; I said "hi" to him as he was leaving and he glared at me.

Only one Latino family attended, and that made me a bit sad. The father explained everything very well to his kids, though, and that made me feel good.

Mostly, this event was preaching to the choir, but it was a nice choir and the preachers were sincere. I had misgivings about this rally when I first heard about it -- I am not an in-your-face kind of person when it comes to trying to educate people about things like global warming, and I don't want anyone to get in my face, either -- but this was not an in-your-face kind of rally. My time their was well spent, and I'm glad I went.

You know, I've tried to present facts in all my arguments for the increased use of nuclear power generation but I can see that I'm just wasting my time. It really comes down to using your brain. If you haven't figured out by now the logistics and economics of energy production you never will. All the pertinent facts are out there on the internet and other resources, it's up to the individual to determine for themselves how the numbers work out. If people want to fool themselves into believing that a horribly inefficient method of producing electricity is the only way then be my guest, but I can't help but think that the people selling this lie know the real score, and are playing all the sheep for a bunch of suckers. Hope you don't all lose your shirts. I'm done.

I'm done.

I doubt it.

Thank you, phalarope, for your lively description of the rally! Have you thought about being an Ojai Post Author? Or, for the future, longer items like this can be submitted to Tyler or one of the authors such as myself for consideration to post as an article. Since many of us in Ojai could not attend, you might send a copy to the OVN's as a Letter. (But I suggest deleting the part about Carol not showing up. She tries! I know how hard it is to go to all the events she gets invited to as mayor. But, still, it would have been nice if she'd beeen there!)

PS If you click on the author who Posted the original article at the top of this page, Kit Stolz, it takes you to his blog, which has some great stuff:

http://www.achangeinthewind.com/

Thanks, Suza, and thanks to Phalarope for an accurate, insightful report on the Step It Up rally. I suspect Phalarope may be speaking for a lot of thoughtful people who are concerned about climate change but who are understandably wary of fanatics -- of all stripes.

Thanks to your (Kit)blog, I discovered "No Impact Man!"
and other fun, inspiring items!

http://achangeinthewind.typepad.com/achangeinthewind/2007/10/no-impact-man-m.html

Suza:

Only a second to write, and then I have to head out. I'm not looking to become an author, but perhaps if I ever again report on an event I will submit it to you or Tyler. A correction: I reported that Lois Capps' representative's name was Lisa Hernandez, and it's Vanessa Hernandez. (I discovered this at the Step it Up website.) As I said, it was not the best sound system, and perhaps I don't have the best ears.

I doubt I'll ever be submitting anything to the OVN, but if I did I would never purposely embarrass anyone because they were unable to attend an event -- the only reason I mentioned Carol Smith and John Flynn as no-shows was because it was mentioned in the thread that they were going to be there. My statement was not intended to be critical or judgemental

Kit:

You're welcome. Thanks for posting the thread in the first place. Next time this group hosts an event, I'll be less wary.

Phalarope, thanks for taking a moment to respond. I just want to assure you that I did not for one second think you intended to purposely embarrass anyone. But I think it's very nice of you to clarify this.

A 1,000 watt solar system (1 kW)costs about $9,500, the Edison rebate is about $2,500 and the federal tax credit is $2,000. The net cost of a 1 kW system is only $5,000. Over the gurarenteed life of the solar panels that equates to about .13 cents a kWh. Edison now charges from .12 to .30 cents per kWh. Is solar really expensive? I think not...Brian I'll be happy to expand your horizons, but first I want to look at YOUR electric bills!!!!

everyone's done marvelously! i'll draw a little fire now:
Brian said "The main function of government is to provide a military to protect the country."

i feel fairly certain that there's a good deal more to government than that (at least, i expect quite a bit more than that). perhaps a look at the Constitution would be helpful. at any rate, your premise seems way off. with that as the beginning sentence, nothing that follows bears reading at all.

Michael,
We use about 600kw a month.

The past has clearly shown that nuclear power is not 100% save. And if something goes wrong it can be devastating for the environment for the present and a long time to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

Solar energy is part of the future. Other countries with much less sun time are way ahead of California. Why?

Michael,
Would I be able to run my toaster with that 1kw system?

While we chat, Dick Cheney has been performing yet another end-run around the public comment process: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110507A.shtml