On climate change

eh. that is right. I think they set up assembly in canada to get around the tariffs.

They buy them by the pallet so it is far easier and cheaper just to forward the whole pallet, rather then counting and repackaging them. most places give a serious discount for the pallet. If a panel is 22, and you need 20. It might be the same price just to buy a pallet load. I would email and ask them how many per pallet at the very least.

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The Canadian Solar panels I installed about 5 years ago were marked made in China. I would hope Canadian Solar specked them to last. No trouble so far and they have a 25 year guaranty.

24 per pallet and I need 28 I already did check. Before I order anything I will probably go down and talk it over in person I like sitting down with someone. I figure I will probably just take my truck and trailer down and haul it all up to save shipping it will save a ton. My aunt and uncle in law live down there and he knows the entire area I am sure I can meet up with him so I donā€™t get lostā€¦

I would email them first. They might not have what you want in stock to be picked up. They might also give you a better price if you are more flexible with your delivery dates. IE kind of like getting a discount for being bumped on a plane.

Good point I will do that. I sort of figured I would end up changing my plans some after I talk to them. I want to discuss it with someone who designs systems to make sure I have all the Ducks in a row anyway there are always a million little things you can over look. For starters I need a new roof anyway and want to make sure I donā€™t pick a type which makes the panels harder.

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I really donā€™t like the title of this post. I think because itā€™s label comes from political parties pushing an agenda that lines their pockets. Scientists were used to back up their claim, then the other side find scientist to debunk those claims.
This post has evolved into our wasteful society and what we can do to change it. This is what I love about this group. It keeps things in perspective my little brain can comprehend. Personal responsibility and changing by example. More effective than walking around with cardboard attached to a stick.
When I had a job and money, I had all the toys. Atvā€™s, snowmobiles, boats and vehicles to play with. A company gas card allowed me to play with my toys without direct consequences to my wallet. I jumped on a jet to find 80 degree weather during winter months. Confession timeā€¦ I still have these toys and more. I added a tractor and a bunch of generators. Since my transition from city life to living in the middle of the woods, my toys have turned into practical tools. I use my snowmobile to haul logs from the woods to home. I hook up a dogsled to bring 5 gallon buckets of sap home from the woods. My atv does the same thing when there isnā€™t snow but has a plow on in the winter months to remove snow around the house. I donā€™t need to jet off to far away places because I now live in paradise. I live in a wood gas oil field, 80 acres of it.
My hiatus from wood gassing has been painful for me. Building a place to live is an essential part of the bigger picture. All the cylinders I now own, have the capability of being powered by wood and I canā€™t wait for the time I have the chance to figure out how to make it happen.
I donā€™t have garbage pickup anymore with a 50 gallon receptacle. Our weekly garbage can fit in a plastic grocery bag. My wife and I are learning to become stewards of our land. Itā€™s not easy when we were programmed completely different. I donā€™t need to drive an hour and a half near as often to go to Home Depot because I am finding different way of doing things and found locals who have sawmills and junk yards. In the city, I couldnā€™t buy scrap.
Is there climate change? I believe it has been since the ice age. I choose not to debate whether us humans are making it worse with our carbon footprint because I feel our waste is a bigger problem. We post our lifestyle change to all those people we knew in the city to show how to do some things differently. Some are intrigued and some think weā€™re crazy but I can walk out my doors and not hear one siren or any of the other noise pollution sounds of the city. Productive thoughts of solutions to what I can do are quicker to pop in my head out here.
Climate change of serenity is real.

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Well said and put into words Bill. I could have not said it better.
Enjoy what you have, it is good. You are very close to being there, with DOW. Build some Simple Fire charcoal gasifiers and you are DOW with the smaller engine vehicles. Then build a WK gasifiers, for the bigger engines you need to power. You are living the good life. Congratulations from me and others Iā€™m sure.
Bob

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But there will be a problem Bill when you get the WK gasifier going and get an adequate supply of dry wood chunks

You find yourself looking for excuses to DOW!

I sometimes have noticed Wayne doing this and I know that I am also guilty
I just got back from a 10 mile trip to the airport and a 130 mile flight for a $10 breakfast!

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Last 2days here mid 70ā€™SF. Overnight lows should be 15-25F been round mids 30F.
Lots of geese and ducks headed north. Yesterday saw a hawk carrying a snake. Not typical February weather here.

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20C above average temperatures here, water running down the streets, puddles, very hard to believe for this country in mid February. Significant rain forecast for Monday, instead of the snowstorm that it should have been.

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Which is really most of what fighting climate change is about. Reduce, reuse, recycle, can easily be restated as the business term efficiency or sustainability. The trick is to make it cost effective for everyone, which it is just a long process.

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Sean what you discribed could also be called a permaculture design approach. I will add another book to my topic of books to read by your wood stove. That explains what I mean. But originally permaculture wasnā€™t just about plants. It was started as an engineering design approach where you try to incorporate natural systems into your design to do things you need done. Like having a cattail marsh to help filter waste water.

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Permaculture is a subset. It is just far broader. It includes everything from robotics and nanotech to intensive grazing. There are several different approaches people are trying with wastewater processing as it is expensive and energy intensive. But you have to find things that donā€™t just work, they have to be cost effective.

I run up against the words cost effective more and more these days.
I understand that word to mean "Its better to do nothing than something that might be costly ".

I am not poking a finger in Sean Omalleyā€™s eye with that comment I am simply stating my opinion of a phrase that is used to shoot down most of my moral and ethical considerations or logical statements to for example my employer.
I read it in the news papers when they tell me why things are not done ( like building proper roads )
Cost effective has become the prime consideration in everything today.
If the right idea is not cost effective then it just does not get doneā€¦
When did it become more important to do the cost effective things than to do the right things?

I am having a terrible time with this ā€œcost effectiveness trumps all other considerationsā€ philosophy of today.
It troubles me and it costs me sleep because I think everything made by man ( including money ) should serve society and be used in the best interest of of people. ( by everything I think I mean economy, infrastructure and all those things out there that take for granted like clean water fresh air and healthy forests )
But I observe the opposite, society exists to serve money and it must of course all must be cost effective.

I brought four capacitors back to the shop yesterday.
They contained PCBs one was leaking and dripped on my boot and pant leg.
Showed the boss and he said I should clean that up and I asked what to do with the contaminated boot and pants ( my own )
He said you can fill in the paper work if you want or leave it at that.

Like so many things these days I am too tired to do the right thing.
So I sanitized the situation and will wear the boot, dump the pants in the laundry chute.
It was the most cost effective solution I guess ( less mentally taxing for me too)
Its easy to justify as well.
I am already full of asbestos and I know my fat is full of chemicals ( if I were a fish I would probably be unfit for human consumption or at least you would be restricted to eating less than one of me a week HA HA ).

How did I end up here?
It was not cost effective to use something more expensive than Inertene in that cap in 1965.
In was likely very profitable for Monsantoā€™s predecessor to market the stuff as a fire retardant.
You could not make as much money using ethanol as a octane booster than TEL so GM put lead in our fuel and told us it was a good thingā€¦

So many choices made grounds of cost effectiveness and good business sense and so many really really bad outcomes for society as a whole.
Cost effective I think it means it wonā€™t be until the last resource is extracted, the last drop of water fouled, the last gasp of clean air and the last bloody fight over fist full of food that we will learn what things are really worth.

And last night I read in the News PM Trudeau addressed the EU parliament and said he thinks the middle class is stressed and unhappy.
NO SHIT.
We discovered on some level living a decent productive life is not cost effective.

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Back in the 80s a man who sold chainsaws tried to sell pcb oil from old transformers as bar oil. I never bought another saw from him and after I put the word out not as many others did either. Fred

You can poke at me. I have been online for decades. I donā€™t take it personally. :slight_smile:

It is far easier to convince people to do the right thing if the right thing is going to save them money that is why it needs to be cost effective. It is an avalanche effect. The closer it gets to parity the easier it is to justify. If it is cheaper, then it becomes a no-brainer.

Just the same I am not attacking your position on anything.
Only the turn of phrase used to justify so much as gone wrong in this world.

I stand firm on my position that cost is not the problem.
We make money out of thin air, but we can not make air.

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Good Grief! That is nuts!!

The crazy part is that most people didnā€™t know what it was or how it would effect them and though a savings of a few dollars per gallon was great. The really crazy part was a few kept using it after they were told.

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PCBs were used in many products because they fortified the oil against thermal breakdown and also acted as a fire retardant.
People were reluctant to give them up because they were very cheap and effective.

When the oil was no longer needed it was used for many things.
Transformer oil is very thin and makes a good parts washing fluid.
Used it was free to take and used to suppress dust on dirt roads.
It would burn and if you mixed it with some fuel oil it would run a furnace.

Askeral has a smell ( trade name for the blended oil used in transformers ) that I can pick out.
Inerteen is a little hard to be sure of, its a much thicker dielectric oil like very heavy gear oil but not with the sulphur smell.
I can not describe a chemical smellā€¦

I recall the last new equipment I saw with it were some Leapper transformers ( made in east Germany ).
The name plate is still as clear enough in my memory, the date of manufacture was the mid 70s and they were installed in the vaults around 76-77.
Its clearly burned into my memory because I pumped them out about 10-15 years ago for safe disposal.
At that point we declared our company clean and free of the stuff ( big lie )

We kept buying the stuff long after we knew we should not have been because it was cheap.

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