The environment thread

[Jenksismyhero]

I can't say whether it would be an interesting twist. I'm half procrastinating right now so I've been reading up on his work, and again, still can't get that journal to load, but the idea that data from this satellite show an incorrect response to short term heating events is something he's published before.

 

The first, and probably the most important thing to remember is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary levels of proof. It's a little bit bothersome to most scientists to see a new piece of data come in and have the response be "This clearly disproves 30 years of work" if the data doesn't show that. Especially when that is written in the popular press...be concerned, because that usually means someone has taken a few liberties to make their case.

 

The actual author of the paper believes that most of climate science is wrong and that modern day warming is just an effect of changes in cloud cover. I did manage to get a quote or two from him via the U-Alabama-Huntsville press release, and there were some bothersome details in it.

Now, the bolded part there is just not true. Increasing cloud cover is generally a negative feedback, in fact its a pretty strong one (clouds reflect solar energy back), and he can get away with this in no small part because cloud formation was as of the last IPCC report a very active area of study. Dissolved water vapor in the air detached from clouds is a very different story; that should be a positive forcing (the water vapor absorbs extra energy reflected up from the ground).. In the press release text that has been mixed up, probably for a good reason.

I'm not quite sure this makes intuitive sense either, and I wonder about the employment of the model here. One example might be summer. The most sunlight hits the northern hemisphere on June 21, but most of the Northern Hemisphere is hottest a month or two later (July/August are the hottest months). I don't see any reason why in a short term hot spell, the maximum in heating should happen at the same time as the maximum temperature; same reason as the maximum temperature doesn't happen on June 21. A warm front can keep getting warmer even if it has started shedding its energy already, it just needs to be taking in slightly more energy than it is shedding, and if you measure the energy output, you'll only see 1/2 of that story.

 

I'm sure I'll be able to find more work on this subject as the coming months happen, but intuitively and based on what people have challenged the author on before, this doesn't seem to be an atmosphere-shaking data point. Might be some interesting science, but it's hard to believe this will be an "A-ha, the Earth is actually cooling!" moment.

 

Yeah, that's kinda what I figured.

[StrangeSox]

The guy's previous work has been taken apart pretty thoroughly:

 

http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/dessler10b.pdf

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...e-easy-lessons/

 

my favorite is this signed declaration by spencer:

 

"We believe Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth's climate system is no exception."

[Balta1701]

The guy's previous work has been taken apart pretty thoroughly:

 

http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/dessler10b.pdf

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...e-easy-lessons/

 

my favorite is this signed declaration by spencer:

 

"We believe Earth and its ecosystems — created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence — are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth's climate system is no exception."

I was trying to avoid going after him personally and just stick to what I could get of the science. Yeah, the creationist stuff did bother me a bit.

[StrangeSox]

Well it's not his creationist position on evolution but that he's got some "god made it perfect" position on the climate. It's an ideological pledge that man cannot cause climate change, period. It really calls into question any supposed objectivity in his work.

[Balta1701]

Well it's not his creationist position on evolution but that he's got some "god made it perfect" position on the climate. It's an ideological pledge that man cannot cause climate change, period. It really calls into question any supposed objectivity in his work.

That doesn't on principle mean he has to be wrong though. Especially if the paper(s) passed a legit peer review (again, I don't know the journal and couldn't get there earlier)

[StrangeSox]

That doesn't on principle mean he has to be wrong though. Especially if the paper(s) passed a legit peer review (again, I don't know the journal and couldn't get there earlier)

 

A fair point.

 

But, as that realclimate link points out, what frequently happens with denialists is that relatively uncontroversial work will get published, but the media statements made about the work far outreach what's supported in their papers.

[Balta1701]

Finally got the paper this morning. It looks like they've mostly repeated analyses from their previous papers. One interesting note...usually even if you have an anonymous reviewer, you thank the anonymous reviewer for their assistance in the acknowledgments. No reviewers are mentioned in this paper.

 

Don't have time to actually go through it this morning.

[southsider2k5]

Finally got the paper this morning. It looks like they've mostly repeated analyses from their previous papers. One interesting note...usually even if you have an anonymous reviewer, you thank the anonymous reviewer for their assistance in the acknowledgments. No reviewers are mentioned in this paper.

 

Don't have time to actually go through it this morning.

 

No blogs yet?

[StrangeSox]

Should this go in financial or enviro thread?

 

We have the answer to our economic woes, it's all the fault of the EPA! Damn you clean air and water!!!

Although inserting policy changes into appropriations bills is a common strategy when government is divided as it is now, no one can remember such an aggressive use of the tactic against natural resources.…The unusual breadth of the attack, explained Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), is a measure of his party’s intense frustration over cumbersome environmental rules.

 

“Many of us think that the overregulation from EPA is at the heart of our stalled economy,” Mr. Simpson said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency.

[Balta1701]

It's not a blog, so 2k5 is compelled to believe it.

"It is not newsworthy," Daniel Murphy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cloud researcher, wrote in an email to LiveScience.

 

The study, published July 26 in the open-access online journal Remote Sensing, got public attention when a writer for The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think-tank that promotes climate change skepticism, wrote for Forbes magazine that the study disproved the global warming worries of climate change "alarmists." However, mainstream climate scientists say that the argument advanced in the paper is neither new nor correct. The paper's author, University of Alabama, Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, is a climate change skeptic and controversial figure within the climate research community.

 

"He's taken an incorrect model, he's tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct," Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, said of Spencer's new study.

 

Cloud chaos

 

Spencer's research hinges on the role of clouds in climate change. Mainstream climate researchers agree that climate change happens when carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun in the atmosphere, much in the same way that a windshield traps solar heat in a car on a sunny afternoon. As the planet warms, a side effect is more water vapor in the atmosphere. This water vapor, known to most of us as clouds, traps more heat, creating a viscous loop. [Earth in Balance: 7 Crucial Tipping Points]

 

Spencer sees it differently. He thinks that the whole cycle starts with the clouds. In other words, random increases in cloud cover cause climate warming. The cloud changes are caused by "chaos in the climate system," Spencer told LiveScience.

 

In the new paper, Spencer looked at satellite data from 2000 to 2010 to compare cloud cover and surface temperatures. Using a simple model, he linked the two, finding, he said, that clouds drive warming. His comparisons of his data with six Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models showed, he said, that the models are too sensitive (meaning some variables, such as warming, increase at the slightest change in other factors) and that carbon dioxide is not likely to cause much warming at all. [image Gallery: Curious Clouds]

 

Disagreements

 

However, no climate scientist contacted by LiveScience agreed.

 

The study finds a mismatch between the month-to-month variations in temperature and cloud cover in models versus the real world over the past 10 years, said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA Goddard climatologist. "What this mismatch is due to — data processing, errors in the data or real problems in the models — is completely unclear."

 

Other researchers pointed to flaws in Spencer's paper, including an "unrealistic" model placing clouds as the driver of warming and a lack of information about the statistical significance of the observed temperature changes. Statistical significance is the likelihood of results being real, as opposed to chance fluctuations unrelated to the other variables in the experiment.

 

"I cannot believe it got published," said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

 

Several researchers expressed frustration that the study was attracting media attention.

 

"If you want to do a story then write one pointing to the ridiculousness of people jumping onto every random press release as if well-established science gets dismissed on a dime," Schmidt said. "Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data, but rather the paleoclimate record."

 

Spencer agreed that his work could not disprove the existence of manmade global warming. But he dismissed research on the ancient climate, calling it a "gray science."

[Balta1701]

To understand this paper, you have to understand the difference, between a “forcing” and a “feedback.” Forcings are imposed changes to, the climate, while feedbacks are processes that respond to changes in, the climate and amplify or ameliorate them. So the addition of carbon, dioxide to the atmosphere by humans is a forcing—it is simply an, imposition on the climate. Water vapor, on the other hand, is a, feedback because the amount of water vapor is set by the surface, temperature of the planet. As the planet warms, you get more water, vapor in the atmosphere, and since water vapor is itself a greenhouse, gas, this leads to additional warming.

 

The canonical way to think about clouds is that they are a feedback—as, the climate warms, clouds will change in response and either amplify, (positive cloud feedback) or ameliorate (negative cloud feedback) the, initial change.

 

What this new paper is arguing is that clouds are forcing the climate, rather than the more traditional way of thinking of them as a, feedback. This is not, in fact, a new argument. Spencer’s 2010 JGR, paper as well as the new Lindzen and Choi 2011 paper both make this, argument.

 

Overall, the argument made in all of these papers to support the, conjecture that clouds are forcing the climate (rather than a feedback) is extremely weak. What they do is show some data, then they, show a very simple model with some free parameters that they tweak, until they fit the data. They then conclude that their model is right., However, if the underlying model is wrong, then the agreement between, the model and data proves nothing.

 

I am working on a paper that will show that, if you look carefully at, the magnitudes of the individual terms of their model, the model is, obviously wrong. In fact, if Spencer were right, then clouds would be, a major cause of El Niño cycles—which we know is not correct. Talk to, any ENSO expert and tell them that clouds cause ENSO and they’ll laugh, at you.

 

Finally, the best way to put Roy’s paper into context it is to recognize how Roy views his job: “I would wager that my job has helped save our economy from the economic ravages of out-of-control environmental extremism. I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.” (he wrote that on his blog).

 

Thus, his paper is not really intended for other scientists, since they do not take him seriously anymore (he’s been wrong too many times). Rather, he’s writing his papers for Fox News, the editorial board of the Wall St. Journal, Congressional staffers, and the blogs. These are his audience and the people for whom this research is actually useful — in stopping policies to reduce GHG emissions — which is what Roy wants.

[StrangeSox]

RealClimate's got some brief commentary

[southsider2k5]

It's not a blog, so 2k5 is compelled to believe it.

 

There you go, now you can talk about it!

[StrangeSox]

RealClimate's got some more thorough commentary now

[StrangeSox]

“If you’re younger than 26, you have never seen a month where the global mean was as cold as the 161 year average. ... If you’re 35 or younger, you have never seen a global mean below climate’s real normal.”

[StrangeSox]

The carbon cost of Germany's nuclear 'Nein danke!'

[BigSqwert]

Supporting Farmers Markets Creates Thousands of Jobs: Union of Concerned Scientists

"What's holding farmers markets back?" That's the question behind a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which determined the culprit to be federal policies that favor industrial agriculture over small and local farms. Change those policies, though, and you get a quick turnaround.

 

According to the report, just a little public funding for 100 to 500 farmers markets a year could create up to 13,500 jobs within five years.

 

"On the whole, farmers markets have seen exceptional growth, providing local communities with fresh food direct from the farm," said Jeffrey O'Hara, a UCS economist and author of the report, Market Forces: Creating Jobs through Public Investment in Local and Regional Food Systems. "If the U.S. government diverted just a small amount of the massive subsidies it lavishes on industrial agriculture to support these markets and small local farmers, it would not only improve American diets, it would generate tens of thousands of new jobs."

 

An example of how, from the report:

when greater con

s

umption of fre

s

h fruit

s

and vegetable

s

draw

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on produce

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upplied locally or regionally.

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tudie

s

have

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ugge

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ted that thi

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phenomenon could lead to thou

s

and

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more job

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in the Midwe

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t alone, even if land allocated to fruit

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and vegetable

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di

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placed

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ome production of corn and

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oybean

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.

The report highlights the importance of developing direct marketing channels. So many farmers markets right now are community-based and rely on volunteer labor, which almost inevitably stunts their growth. But, says the report, "modest public funding for 100 to 500 otherwise-unsuccessful farmers markets a year could create as many as 13,500 jobs over a five-year period."

 

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, direct agricultural product sales amounted to a $1.2 billion-a-year business in 2007 (the most recent USDA figure), and most of that money recirculates locally. "The fact that farmers are selling directly to the people who live nearby means that sales revenue stays local," O'Hara said. "That helps stabilize local economies."

 

If you don't believe it, the report provides a few examples:

•

34 farmer

s

mar

k

et

s

in We

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t Virginia led to a gro

s

s

increa

s

e of 119 job

s

(net increa

s

e of 82 job

s

), a gro

s

s

increa

s

e of $2.4 million in output (net increa

s

e of $1.1 million), and a gro

s

s

increa

s

e in per

s

onal income of $0.7 million (net increa

s

e of $0.2 million).

 

•

21 farmer

s

mar

k

et

s

in O

k

lahoma led to a gro

s

s

increa

s

e of 113 job

s

, $5.9 million in output (with a multiplier of 1.78), and a $2.2 million increa

s

e in income.

 

•

152 farmer

s

mar

k

et

s

in Iowa led to a gro

s

s

increa

s

e of 576 job

s

, a $59.4 million increa

s

e in output (with a multiplier of 1.55), and a $17.8 million increa

s

e in income.

 

•

26 farmer

s

mar

k

et

s

in Mi

s

s

i

s

s

ippi led to a gro

s

s

increa

s

e of 16 job

s

, a $1.6 million increa

s

e in output (with a multiplier of 1.7), and a $0.2 million increa

s

e in income.

Some Progress Has Been Made, But There's Plenty More to Do

Local food systems have no doubt seen a boost in recent years: the number of farmers markets has jumped nationwide from 2,863 in 2000 to 6,132 in 2010.That might lead some people to question why farmers markets need public support. But there are major economic and political barriers that stump the growth of these markets and food systems. And the government helps agricultural giants that have already surpassed their potential, while in comparison almost ignores the little folks.

 

The USDA gave $13.725 billion last year in commodity, crop insurance, and supplemental disaster assistance to primarily large industrial farms. In the same year, the same agency spent less than $100 million to support local and regional food system farmers.

 

The Way Forward

To address these barriers, the report calls on Congress to:

•

s

upport the development of local food mar

k

et

s

, including farmer

s

mar

k

et

s

and farm-to-

s

chool program

s

, which can

s

tabilize community-

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upported mar

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et

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and create permanent job

s

. For example, the report found that the Farmer

s

Mar

k

et Promotion Program could create a

s

many a

s

13,500 job

s

nationally over a five-year period, if reauthorized, by providing mode

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t funding for 100 to 500 farmer

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mar

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et

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per year.

 

•

level the playing field for farmer

s

in rural region

s

by inve

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ting in infra

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tructure,

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uch a

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meat-proce

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ing or dairy-bottling facilitie

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, which would help meat, dairy and other farmer

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produce and mar

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et their product

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to con

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umer

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more efficiently. The

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e inve

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tment

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could fo

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ter competition in food mar

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et

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, increa

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e product choice for con

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umer

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, and generate job

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in the community.

 

•

allow low-income re

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ident

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to redeem food nutrition

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ub

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idie

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at local food mar

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et

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to help them afford fre

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h fruit

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and vegetable

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. Currently, not all mar

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et

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are able to accept

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upplemental Nutrition A

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s

i

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tance Program benefit

s

.

"Farmers at local markets are a new variety of innovative entrepreneurs, and we need to nurture them," said O'Hara. "Supporting these farmers should be a Farm Bill priority."

 

The report was released just a few days ahead of the USDA's 12th annual National Farmers Market Week, which starts this Sunday, August 7.

[StrangeSox]

The farmers markets in Downers Grove (sat. mornings) and in Bolingbrook at the Promenade mall (thurs. evenings) are both pretty good. We try to make it to one every few weeks. There's also a farmstand at 63rd and I think Cass that has a bunch of fruits and vegetables.

[StrangeSox]

The EPA is rolling out new regulations that will lead to the shutdown of the nation's worst coal-fired plants. ALEC and the power companies have been shouting that this will lead to billions in losses and shutting down as much as 20% of coal-plants, and that energy prices will skyrocket and destroy the economy. Environmentalists were saying their claims were overblown.

 

The Congressional Research Service issued its non-partisan report today. Yes, this will force the closure of some of the oldest, worst-polluting coal plants in the nation that were grandfathered in under the CAA. Yes, new emissions controls equipment or new plants will cost money. As much as $2.8B. But that pales in comparison to the estimated $290B saved in healthcare costs by 2014.

 

[Balta1701]

The IAEA and Japanese Nuclear industry are pushing back heavily against this and all of the key details in this report is based on anonymous sources, but well, I'm sharing it anyway. The Independent arguing that the Earthquake itself was sufficient to cause meltdown level damage at the Fukushima plant, and that the meltdowns would have happened even without the tsunamis because the quake did so much damage to the pipes throughout the facility that the backup pumps would have done nothing.

The Independent has spoken to several workers at the plant who recite the same story: serious damage, to piping and at least one of the reactors, occurred before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because they are still working at or connected with the stricken plant. Worker A, a maintenance engineer who was at the Fukushima complex on the day of the disaster, recalls hissing, leaking pipes.

 

"I personally saw pipes that had come apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There's no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant... I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for reactor one had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor."

 

The reactor walls are quite fragile, he notes: "If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside... it can damage the equipment inside so it needs to be allowed to escape. It's designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it's common sense." Worker B, a technician in his late 30s who was also on site at the time of the earthquake, recalls: "It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall...

 

"Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn't get to the reactor core. If you can't sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don't have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out." As he was heading to his car, he could see that the walls of the reactor one building had started to collapse. "There were holes in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival."

 

The suspicion that the earthquake caused severe damage to the reactors is strengthened by reports that radiation leaked from the plant minutes later. The Bloomberg news agency has reported that a radiation alarm went off about a mile from the plant at 3.29pm, before the tsunami hit.

 

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of Tepco: The Dark Empire, explains it this way: A government or industry admission "raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping." Earthquakes, of course, are commonplace in Japan.

 

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former nuclear plant designer, describes what occurred on 11 March as a loss-of-coolant accident. "The data that Tepco has made public shows a huge loss of coolant within the first few hours of the earthquake. It can't be accounted for by the loss of electrical power. There was already so much damage to the cooling system that a meltdown was inevitable long before the tsunami came."

 

He says the released data shows that at 2.52pm, just after the quake, the emergency circulation equipment of both the A and B systems automatically started up. "This only happens when there is a loss of coolant." Between 3.04 and 3.11pm, the water sprayer inside the containment vessel was turned on. Mr Tanaka says that it is an emergency measure only done when other cooling systems have failed. By the time the tsunami arrived and knocked out all the electrical systems, at about 3.37pm, the plant was already on its way to melting down.

[mr_genius]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/us/19bcg...amp;ref=economy

 

so much for the 'Green Jobs' hype.

[EvilMonkey]

NY Times editorial staff wants to stop the Canadian XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Why? "We have two main concerns: the risk of oil spills along the pipeline, which would traverse highly sensitive terrain, and the fact that the extraction of petroleum from the tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production does. "

 

So, Canada is going to produce this stuff regardless of whatever enviro concerns you, me or the NY Times editorial staff has. If we block it, they can just sell to our Chinese overlords, and kiss goodbye the thousands of jobs it would create directly and indirectly. And we would continue to pay more for oil from other sources.

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/opinion/...mbers.html?_r=1

[NorthSideSox72]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/us/19bcg...amp;ref=economy

 

so much for the 'Green Jobs' hype.

 

Articles like that crack me up. There are all sorts of good points they can make, and do - like the fact that government promise X number of jobs, but it doesn't happen... or the fact that the actual manufacturing is not just going overseas later, but right away, because we got behind the curve on this... the fact that the tax incentives and programs meant to spur growth in this area weren't well thought-out. Those are all major reasons why there aren't more green, jobs, and the author does look at some of them.

 

But then, apparently because they don't feel their arguments are strong enough, they add in a bunch of obviously ridiculous stuff. My favorite was " clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide", which is apparently meant to make me think it is a small number. But of course, 2% of all US job, in a field that was virtually non-existant 15 years ago, is a HUGE number, and makes me feel better than I did about it. Then there is the creative use of grammar to hide truths, like " Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter" (LOL, see what they did there?).

 

And of course, they full-on ignore the biggest reason, by far, that these programs haven't taken off as much as we'd want - just as energy costs started to balloon, the economy went in the s***ter. Well duh.

 

I see this a lot lately, and its not a left or right thing, because I see it from both sides. People who write these articles have apparently given up on making rock solid arguments or points that would withstand some scrutiny - they have decided that their readers are so dumb, they can mix in fact with fiction and exaggeration and get away with it. I feel insulted.

 

[southsider2k5]

Articles like that crack me up. There are all sorts of good points they can make, and do - like the fact that government promise X number of jobs, but it doesn't happen... or the fact that the actual manufacturing is not just going overseas later, but right away, because we got behind the curve on this... the fact that the tax incentives and programs meant to spur growth in this area weren't well thought-out. Those are all major reasons why there aren't more green, jobs, and the author does look at some of them.

 

But then, apparently because they don't feel their arguments are strong enough, they add in a bunch of obviously ridiculous stuff. My favorite was " clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide", which is apparently meant to make me think it is a small number. But of course, 2% of all US job, in a field that was virtually non-existant 15 years ago, is a HUGE number, and makes me feel better than I did about it. Then there is the creative use of grammar to hide truths, like " Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter" (LOL, see what they did there?).

 

And of course, they full-on ignore the biggest reason, by far, that these programs haven't taken off as much as we'd want - just as energy costs started to balloon, the economy went in the s***ter. Well duh.

 

I see this a lot lately, and its not a left or right thing, because I see it from both sides. People who write these articles have apparently given up on making rock solid arguments or points that would withstand some scrutiny - they have decided that their readers are so dumb, they can mix in fact with fiction and exaggeration and get away with it. I feel insulted.

 

With energy costs up as high as they are, these jobs should be booming. If they are going to be accepted and invested in, it is going to be when gas is $3.50 to $4 a gallon. That is when people are going to see profit in this stuff.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

With energy costs up as high as they are, these jobs should be booming. If they are going to be accepted and invested in, it is going to be when gas is $3.50 to $4 a gallon. That is when people are going to see profit in this stuff.

That is when profits would be higher - but demand is lower. We are in a circumstance where, just as these industries were starting to see decent growth in purchasing equipment, the recession hit. Not just any recession, but the worst since the Great Depression. So even though the products are generating even greater returns, consumers and governments don't have the cash to outlay.

 

Which is one of the reasons why I argued that, in this particular type of recession with high energy costs, now is the perfect time to invest in this stuff.... but, we wasted the "stimulus" bill on short term garbage instead. If we had done more investing in this field, then when the recovery eventually begins (whenever that is), you will have cheaper products ready for consumers just as they start being able to spend (and as energy prices go up even further, which they likely will as a global recovery takes foot).

 

We have really lost some opportunities with this, we f***ed it up.