Noel's Green (make that SUSTAINABLE) Blog » Political and Economic stupidity

Distractions divert us from what is important

noel — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:36:48 +0000

Stephen Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says that getting to where we want to be requires focus on the “wildly” important. Covey said that it is all too easy to get off-focus from that. Instead, we get pulled off-course by the myriad of “urgent” demands in our every day lives. Covey notices that people who are successful or happy, do it by staying focussed on the “important.” Most of us get distracted from what is important.

Take this distraction: American politics.

We have this terrible engineering and environmental disaster going on as a result of BP Oil’s sloppiness and lack of foresight. They took chances in the Gulf of Mexico and sadly, lost.

Now theres a clip on the news, of a US representative from Texas, Joe Barton, apologizing to the chairman of BP Oil. Apologizing for President Obama making BP take full responsibility for the blowout and the damages.

Barton is acting the clown in a strange comedy of errors. The government never had much oversight over deep water rigs, and somehow, we never considered what might happen when something like this happened. The risk was ignored and there was a failure to plan or insure against it. It was an error to believe that big corporations are fully capable of regulating themselves, (i.e., covering their asses, AND OURS, at all times).

(The engineers at BP might have raised a flag, but no one paid them any mind.)

Now here comes a clown, apologizing to BP to help them feel better about ruining the Gulf of Mexico and the coastal environment for our children’s children. I am ashamed of so-called leaders like that guy. I am distracted from what is wildly important. The politicians in congress done have a clue as to what is important.

Dependence on oil has a BIG cost

noel — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:28:06 +0000

the common Oil slick

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too big price to pay for our dependency on oil. Now we have to re-evaluate our energy plans. FINALLY. The sustainable approach is to stop drilling and spend more money on energy conserving measures and renewables.
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In this months supplement to Engineered Systems magazine, there was an interesting editorial
The Way I See It: Saving Billions — One Customer At A Time by Randy Rawson, the President of the American Boiler Manufacturers Association. He said:

“The great unfathomable mystery of why commercial, institutional, and industrial upper management remains so averse to saving money and, where appropriate, increasing shareholder value through greater attention to their energy use continues to dog this industry, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

So why is industry dogged by an aversion to saving money? I am sure it is lack of proper education and understanding. Science and math have been battered and beaten down in the US. So many good brains have ended up playing on Wall Street. This is a case of lots of money and potential income streams “hiding in plain sight” due to lack of recognition by those in charge.

Imagine a mile long parade of armored cars, all filled to bursting with 100 dollar bills, passing by a board room during a meeting. The parade stops for a moment, and then returns to the bank. When the executives ask why the money was not delivered, the engineers tell them, “Sorry, you have to TAKE ACTION FIRST (replace the boilers), then you get the money, you monkeys!”

Sweet ending to a beautiful opera

noel — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:09:17 +0000

Finale to Les Miserables

“…we hold these truths to be self-evident, except…”

noel — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:43:03 +0000

It’s become a sad fact that politics in America has become polarized. Moderates and centrists are now squeezed into a hairline dividing the left and right. The media has a part in this, cable television and the Internet especially. Take Fox News, claiming to be “fair and balanced”, and an evident mouthpiece for extreme right wing Republicans. At almost any turn, they bash Democrats, moderates, and the middle.

Judging by FoxNews accounts, George Bush was an excellent president who hardly ever made a mistake. Now 14 months into Barack Obama’s first term, they are telling us that everything wrong with our economy is Obama’s fault. They use Reagan’s famous catch phrase that he is all about “tax and spend”. They never mention that Bush presided over the bailout of AIG, Fannie Mae, Citicorp, et al, using $1 trillion to “borrow and spend”.

FoxNews opposes health care reform effort in knee-jerk fashion. They did the same thing with the job stimulus bill(ARRA), the energy bill, the carbon cap and trade proposal, and almost every other proposal coming from the President. Facts are hard to come by at Fox. Instead of constructive and intelligent criticism, they bitch and whine – and have wasted a whole year doing so. FoxNews supports the Republicans, who are the party of “NO”!

Their polls are slanted (and the numbers are often “out of range” compared to polls by others). They seem to be merely entertaining their right wing viewers. They feature weird celebrities like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin to distract. They hire sensationalists like Glenn Beck

and Geraldo Rivera

to expouse a point of view focused on trivia. They invent fabricated issues like health care “death panels”, what kids wear, religious expression issues, et al, to avoid reporting on the reality.

The most popular pundit at Fox, Bill O’Reilly, continuously scoffs at the idea of global warming. Glenn Beck calls global warming a left-wing plot. Strange. Their ultimate boss, CEO and founder of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, believes that global warming is a serious problem. Murdoch has directed his company to fight global warming by becoming “carbon neutral”. Murdoch’s own employees are undermining his directions!

FoxNews doesn’t discuss the health insurance industry itself. They prefer to broadcast people who bitch and complain about the legislators, including majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, calling them all kinds of names. Medical costs and health care premiums have been skyrocketing for years. Fox News omits this critical fact, except to tell us our taxes will go up if the reforms “take over” the supposedly free insurance market. But this insurance market is hardly free. It is out of control.

Truth: I know someone shopping for individual health insurance at this time. He paid $250 a month at his last employer for his group plan. Now he is looking at costs close to $1200 a month because he needs an individual policy. The insurers tell him that regulations set these insurance rates anyway. So what is Fox News talking about?! We need health care reform to control these costs. FoxNews must be fighting it because they are actually lobbying hard for the insurance companies.

Glenn Beck plays on the fears of the right-wing by repeating the word socialism over and over in reference to health care and energy policy reform by the Democrats. Glenn Beck may tell you that he cares about American families. I highly doubt it. He has an agenda to help the interests of big health care, not to mentions big banks, big insurance, big oil, and so on.

Voters who represent the center, should call out Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News for this mixed-up news and commentary. Maybe this is beginning to happen.

Howell Raines, in this March 14th Washington Post commentary, Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News? says that Ailes is “using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history.“

He goes on to say “Fox [is] turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: ‘The American people do not want health-care reform.’… For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party…”

Last, but not least, Raines makes the point that “The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change.”

So, my question is, with truth out the window, “in whose back pocket is the News Corporation?”

Now about that $500 hearing aid tax credit …

Current Events: Cliches

noel — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:09:53 +0000

Here I will get on my high horse again.

A list of words being used too often, and thereby lose their true meaning.
In my opinion, these fit the definition of CLICHE. These words are currently being used in the media and opinion places online frequently and, in my opinion, incorrectly. English language students, take note.

Green
Leftist
Right wing
progressive
balanced (A FoxNews marketing buzzword)
Conservative
Christian (hope that doesn’t offend true believers)
Terrorist
liberalism
socialism
freedom
Republican
Democrat

This is an interesting web based application that analyzes text to discern political bias. I have only tested this post so far, but I will venture to guess that it is more sophisticated than most media pundits. It rates this post as neutral, by the way. I must be in the center, hmmm.

Food for thought and debate, if such a thing is still possible.

Global warming : just the facts, Ma’am

noel — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:20:03 +0000

Some people in communications, and in the real estate and investment arena, have been making assertions that green buildings have economic benefits not worth the trouble and expense. This is to imply that improving energy efficiency and measuring the results is not worth the trouble. I say B.S.

I am not interested in casting shame on anybody, but now I feel compelled to say something. We Americans have to have an opinion, even if we don’t have all the facts. We are watching too much news television and listening to too many talk radio shows: Take FoxNews and their talk shows. They work extra hard to convince us that scientific evidence is being manipulated for political reasons. They draw a specious connection between the Democratic Party, (supposedly led by Al Gore), and scientists as proof of a vast left wing conspiracy. These popular so-called news programs cast global warming warnings as a “plot”, to increase the size and power of government, raise taxes, and so on.

I am not convinced. It worries me that they are unable to present scientific evidence for what it is, EVIDENCE. They question scientific method at the same time. Why do these folks struggle with high school science concepts of data collection and drawing reasonable conclusions? (Bill O’Reilly is so dishonest on this score, it amazes me how many people watch him.)

We Americans have to have an opinion on everything and anything, whether we are knowledgable or not!

Back to reality and engineering. Here is a tidbit about engineering economics that would be construed as leftist by FoxNews. (Of course, they would attack it as propaganda because it is from the Washington Post. Not because they have the facts to contradict it).

quote from Washington Post January 1, 2010

Jack Beuttell, global sustainability manager with Hines (Partnership) , a property management firm that manages 10 buildings in the District, said that questions about a property’s energy consumption have become increasingly important to his company’s potential tenants.

Beuttell said that a building with a “95″ rating from the EPA’s “Energy Star” program, a rank that some of his company’s properties have earned, would typically save a tenant about $1.30 per square foot in annual energy bills over the national average for a similar building. That’s an “incredibly meaningful” figure to tenants, he said.

I like it. And not because I might benefit personally (Full disclosure: I helped engineer HVAC on a Hines project recently). It is just plain simple common sense to cut costs. It might even pump up your profits! Some left-wing conspiracy that is.

Attn Washington DC: Stop dithering on Energy !!!!!!

noel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:32:27 +0000

My previous post was a cute diversion from the horrific economic mess we have dug ourselves into. We have watching the policy monkeys in the Fed kick the can for 30 years. But this is not cute. I am sick and tired of the wait. Now they talk about a major, comprehensive energy bill getting through sometime on 2010. Yeah right.

Political paralysis :

Between the “Do-nothing, know-nothings crowd “, and the “Lets bail out Wall Street crowd” , we seem to be witnessing the death of common sense.

Why do we care about having the big banks still extant? Fire the execs and break the banks up!!!

Why is it in the public interest to encourage more drilling for oil?

What are we doing here in the USA?! We haven’t cleaned house yet! We still have to retro-commission what we already have, which is falling apart! Fixing and updating the many millions of old buildings with ORDINARY UPGRADES, will create more jobs and save us $30 billion year, easily. We are already falling behind and its getting worse day by day. And it has very little to do with the ridiculous comments about global warming.

Recommissioning is quite inexpensive (10-30 cents a square foot?). The so-called low hanging fruit can return up to 40% annual ROI , cash on cash!

Think about lighting occupancy sensors. Inexpensive and wireless now.

How about sealing leaky walls and windows and ductwork? Easy to detect with pressure testing, and infrared scanning in cold weather. Also scan your building in the summer, from the inside, shade the sunny windows, and so on.

Do the TV pundits (FoxNews, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN) know this? Do they and the politicians they talk to know much, if ANYTHING about SCIENTIFIC METHOD and the FACTS? No, they are too busy yacking with Sarah Palin. Heck, now they all want to jump on the nuclear generator bandwagon, when just a few years ago they were deathly afraid of them! Fuggedaboutit guys, scientific method will win in the long run, politicians go to the 7th circle of hell!

Add some ground-source heat pumps, simpler to use controls, a little more training for building owners, some heat recovery and we will be on our way. A new and improved, SUSTAINABLE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE.

And do not forget energy independence! We needed that 30 years ago and we are not waiting any longer.

Why is a BSME worth it and a BSCS not?

noel — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:21:13 +0000

Stymied by details of education again!
I have devoted 30 years… to this field and still the issue of education comes up again and again.

Certain states will not approve my application for licensure, citing my education not being adequate. I do not have a BSME (BS Mechanical Engineering), and my degrees are not both accredited by the correct (EAC) commission of ABET(Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). My first degree, a 1977 B.S. Environmental Design is not ABET. Ok, understood. On the other hand, my second degree, a 2000 B.S. Computer and Information Science, is ABET accredited, but by the OTHER [read: WRONG] commission (ABET/CAC), which someone decided, in a place far far away, a long time ago, was not an acceptable education for licensing a professional engineer.

NOT FAIR!

Being NCEES registered is not enough, to the surprise of many people.

Many companies need a professional engineer. I am available and ready sometime the question of location comes into play. 30 years of devotion to HVAC engineering counts for nothing in some states. Shame on them.

Here we see a big disconnect between the real world and the rules. The regulations and these firms that blindly follow, would rather have an individual with a BSME and 6 years of experience (to mess it up) than having one with (2) related science degrees and 30 years of directly relevant and professional engineering experience. Even with a superb resume.

Here I stand again, rejected one more time for this sorry excuse.

Winston Churchill had it right

noel — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:56:07 +0000

I am concerned about a terrible Lack of Confidence in our economy and society: We must keep our heads high and continue to strive. The terrible danger is fear. Fear is paralyzing.

I have spent many hours this month getting criticized and rejected for trying to get ‘er done. In times of economic hardship, its clearly sliding backwards to say NO. And these days its happening over and over. The economy declined because of irrational fear.

It is our duty as businesspeople to move past the nattering naysayers. It is our responsibility to thank them for their thoughts, take their garbage to the curb, and find a solution.

Winston Churchill said this well in 1940 when the Nazi Germans were dropping thousands of bombs on the innocent during the blitz.

“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation.

The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;

we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe,

this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

As a real estate investor, professional engineer, and creator of solutions for energy efficient buildings, this is basically analogous to where I stand today.

What if global warming is actually a hoax?

noel — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:24:56 +0000

What if? Energy independence, green jobs, deal with peak oil , have healthier children, cleaner air and water, save the rainforests….

A better world hoax