Al Gore Explains 'Snowmageddon'

[Greg]

Yet, they keep trying...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opini ... ugman.html

In case anyone was unaware, that was Krugman. Which means that the actual truth is pretty much the direct opposite of what he says.

[308Mike]

Yet, they keep trying...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opini ... ugman.html

I find it interesting that they only mentioned ethanol ONCE, and they even said it consumes a lot of corn - but perhaps that shouldn't really impact the price of corn - oh no, not at all!!

It’s also true that agricultural raw materials, especially cotton, compete for land and other resources with food crops — as does the subsidized production of ethanol, which consumes a lot of corn.

[HTRN]

New York city, by population is the largest city in the US, second largest in North America(Mexico City has 600K more people) and 4th largest IN THE WORLD.

Brooklyn if it was an independent city, would be #4 in the US, behind Chicago, and ahead of Houston.

Large cities offer some very real advantages - employment, shopping, cultural institutions, first class medical care all exist and are close by. Greg mentioned power outages - the number of times power here has been off for more than 15 minutes I can count on one hand, with fingers left over. I think the longest was less than 36 hours.

[Termite]

.. a sizable portion of the population doesn't even have that much, they have pretty much no food in the house and either eat out or grab convenience food for every meal (paradoxically it's the poor who live this extravagantly, because in general in the US there is a strong correlation between poverty and simply having no clue how to live).

How very true. It has been that way forever. Even Jesus said that the poor would always be present.

City people are just *different*, in some ways they're spoiled and unprepared and fragile to a degree that most people here just can't comprehend.)

Don't think that just because someone is from a small city or town that they are prepared.....sometimes not even in the more rural areas, anymore.
As I told Junior Doughty over on Pawpaw's blog, where we were discussing being prepared for temporary power outages due to icing here in Cenla:

"I used to be amazed at the foolishness and total lack of preparation by some people who you would think are otherwise fairly intelligent. Years ago the wife and I had a neighbor/friend come by to borrow a flashlight during a power outage, because she and her husband didn't have one. Nor did she have a non-electric can opener. They(her family) were eating cereal.
She was stunned that we were having smothered pork chops over rice(cooked on our Coleman propane stove), while watching KALB TV 5 news on the 12 volt 9" TV/VCP that we used in the minivan for the kids(I hooked it up to the trolling motor battery).

What can you say about such people? Other than: "You're stupid. Here's your sign."......?"

[308Mike]

It's even better when you fire up the 4KW generator in the motorhome and run some extension cords into the house to keep the refrigerator and freezer running while using the microwave in the RV to reheat/cook food, and using the gas burner stove in the house (while the neighbor's was all electric). Otherwise, we'd have been using the BBQ to cook.

After we got the fridge and freezer cooled back down (the freezer is a chest model so it stays cold MUCH longer even if opened to remove stuff), we hooked-up the living room entertainment (moved the UPS wall plug from the wall to the power strip coming from the RV power) and powered up our evening's entertainment while most of the other houses were dark - unless they had their own generators (like my next-door neighbor), or fired up their RV gen-sets like I did our's, some of the larger ones the neighbors had were 7KW and 10KW.

I still want to pickup a little Honda generator (they're REAL quiet and put out a pure sine wave), but haven't settled on the i2000 or the i3000 model. The 2KW model meets the majority of our needs, but doesn't provide much overhead for growth or additional items (if we run an electric floor heater at full power, it's pulling 1500 watts, and the i2000 is only rated at 2000 watts for very short periods of time, NOT continuous use), and then there's the cost & noise factors.

As much as I'd like the 3000 watt model, it's significantly more money and is louder and doesn't run as long before refilling. The nice things about the Hondas is that like models can be daisy-chained to put out more power.

I'll have to do some serious research into this once I have a job again.