How Much CO2 Does Electic Use Produce?

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

And it really made me think. What guests are really lurking in the shadows, and is Tom really who he says he is?????

*urds of wisdom from Larry

Funny, I don't ever remember saying who I was in the first place...

It would be nice to think that someone actually does pay attention to our rantings here, we being a group of generally conservative, grassroots kinda people. It would do the government good to review the posts in "Way, Way, Way Off Topic" in an effort to keep their fingers on the pulse of "everyday folks" like us.

I think that Mr. President has merely taken his head out of the sand on this issue, much as I have recently done. One thing that scares me, though, is that Mr. President only addresses things when he absolutely has to. This makes me wary that he is being advised that things are as bad as I'm afraid they are. The logic to this is that he does not wish to be seen by posterity as "the one who knew the truth, but did nothing."

I think that if he is able to streamline the NRC and the DOE enough to make the process of nuclear power plant licensure "cheap and easy", it will be sufficient to draw investment into this industry once again. The UK is putting its faith in nuclear power to get itself out of their CO2 pollution problem, and, where the UK goes, the US is seldom far behind. France already produces most of its power by Nuclear plant. Germany has decided to scrap its nuclear power program, for various reasons, most of which have to do with the bulk of the plants being of Pre-Cold-War East German design. Germany has a lot of its own demons to contend with, and I don't envy them one bit, in fact. Now, with an East-German-born, Catholic, female chancellor (a first for all three of those qualities), I'm sure that things will be viewed from a different perspective, at least.

As far as any connection to Mr. Bush, I can truthfully say that I have none. In fact, my most recent connection to any seated president was with Martin Van Buren, a distant relative. His being dead the last 1 1/2 Centuries provides me with some clarity of conscience.

[Rudi]

Tom:

You do raise interesting points to ponder, many which have been favourites of mine for a lifetime.. I hope this doesn't get me in pooh, but yust meine opinion..

Germany has decided to scrap its nuclear power program, for various reasons, most of which have to do with the bulk of the plants being of Pre-Cold-War East German design. Germany has a lot of its own demons to contend with, and I don't envy them one bit, in fact. Now, with an East-German-born, Catholic, female chancellor (a first for all three of those qualities), I'm sure that things will be viewed from a different perspective, at least.

First point - it is scrapping it's Soviet designed and built plants as they are even less reliable than the Chernobyl reactor and they are practically just implosions waiting to happen... this is a sound move... The German designed plants are as safe as a GE plant in the US, a Candu plant in Canada and around the world, a UK or a French plant.

Second point - Demons yup.. they got the Greens and other nudninks who haven't got a clue about what the real world is...

Third point, no such thing as East German.. that was just a political differentation which was an artificial creation of the Allied Dysfunctional Ego Power Trip in 1945... East German/West German, Communist/Socialist same as a Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative ... just a political stripe.

Foruth point - Females can and have been good Prime Ministers, so why not Chancellors -- Maggie Thatcher was a good one, even our own Kim Campbell couldn't screw it up as bad as say Nixon did.... some day even POTUS may be female... ooooh radical !

Fifth point - Catholic... well 90% of Germany who declare their faith are catholic... you have Evangelical Catholics which are Lutherans and you have Roman Catholics... which are just a branch of the catholic (universal) Church..

Quick trivia facts:

catholics are :

1. Evangelical
2. Roman (Pope is the Bishop of Rome -- equal to the other Bishops such as the Bishop of Constantinople, the Bishop of Damascus, the Bishop os Cyrenica and a couple others I cannot remember off-hand)
3. Orthodox (includes, Greek, Ukrainian and Russian branches)
4. Anglican and in the US - Episcopalians (that way they get to be Church of England without using the Anglican term.... post 1776 change of term)

are all catholics. Calling all catholics Roman is incorrect.

Protestants are a mis-nomer when discussing Evangelicals. Luther protested the abuses in the Church, he did not invent Protestantism.. if one is to get the credit for that, then it should most likely devolve to Zwingli and Calvin (both Swiss catholics who disagreed with Rome btw)...

And for clarity, this is not to foment any argument on faith, this is just clarification of definitions.. period. Faith is good, faith is personal, faith belongs to each one individually, no matter what that faith is... be it in Creationism, Evolution, or any other form...

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

Tom:


First point - it is scrapping it's Soviet designed and built plants as they are even less reliable than the Chernobyl reactor and they are practically just implosions waiting to happen... this is a sound move... The German designed plants are as safe as a GE plant in the US, a Candu plant in Canada and around the world, a UK or a French plant.

Second point - Demons yup.. they got the Greens and other nudninks who haven't got a clue about what the real world is...

Third point, no such thing as East German.. that was just a political differentation which was an artificial creation of the Allied Dysfunctional Ego Power Trip in 1945... East German/West German, Communist/Socialist same as a Republican/Democrat, Liberal/Conservative ... just a political stripe.

Foruth point - Females can and have been good Prime Ministers, so why not Chancellors -- Maggie Thatcher was a good one, even our own Kim Campbell couldn't screw it up as bad as say Nixon did.... some day even POTUS may be female... ooooh radical !

Fifth point - Catholic... well 90% of Germany who declare their faith are catholic... you have Evangelical Catholics which are Lutherans and you have Roman Catholics... which are just a branch of the catholic (universal) Church..

Quick trivia facts:

catholics are :

1. Evangelical
2. Roman (Pope is the Bishop of Rome -- equal to the other Bishops such as the Bishop of Constantinople, the Bishop of Damascus, the Bishop os Cyrenica and a couple others I cannot remember off-hand)
3. Orthodox (includes, Greek, Ukrainian and Russian branches)
4. Anglican and in the US - Episcopalians (that way they get to be Church of England without using the Anglican term.... post 1776 change of term)

are all catholics. Calling all catholics Roman is incorrect.

Protestants are a mis-nomer when discussing Evangelicals. Luther protested the abuses in the Church, he did not invent Protestantism.. if one is to get the credit for that, then it should most likely devolve to Zwingli and Calvin (both Swiss catholics who disagreed with Rome btw)...

And for clarity, this is not to foment any argument on faith, this is just clarification of definitions.. period. Faith is good, faith is personal, faith belongs to each one individually, no matter what that faith is... be it in Creationism, Evolution, or any other form...

Rudi,

To someone of primarlily German Heritage, and raised Lutheran, the differences are more black and white.

catholic, with a small c is a term for universal church. Catholic with a Big C is used exclusively in reference to Roman, Eastern, Greek, Russian, or Ethiopian Catholic Churches. Basically any church that came before the reformation.

Yes, I agree that Luther did not aim to begin protestantism, but between him, and Henry VIII, they did start the reformation on national levels. Calvin was a contemporary of Luther. He had very little to do, however with the reformation in Germany, but more greatly influenced France, Belgium, and Holland. The German reformation is a purely Lutheran matter, just as the English reformation is a purely Henrician matter.

Despite having ruled the Holy Roman Empire in the name of Roman Catholicism for a century and a half 400 years before, my family fled to Pennsylvania in the 1690's during the first wave of German emmigration to the colonies that would become the US, fleeing religious persecution by the Catholic (Big C) Church. Enough of my ancestors have been burned at the stake that I have some lingering distaste at the thoughts of Lutherans being called Catholics, although, in all honesty, I am not really a Lutheran anymore.

Likewise, to the 3 Generations born in the German Democratic Republic, they very much considered their identity to be East German. I realize that it was a political partition, but it was an Iron clad one, at that, with industries being divided, and the East German Economy being "Sovietized". It has taken many years for the East Germans to consider themselves Germans again. Only a handfull of the very oldest citizens remember what it was like to be a unified nation, and then, the memories are not good. Any German in the world will tell you that re-unification was a dream of all Germans, but not necessarily a good one.

Let me relate a little story to you about the Carl Zeiss Works, in Jena (part of East German Prussia):

Immediately following the soviet occupation of Prussia, the Zeiss-Ikon camera works, and the Carl Zeiss optical works, at that time, the most advanced in the world, were packed up onto railroad cars, and shipped to Kiev Ukraine. After 2 years of unsuccessfully being able to reassemble the production lines, they were returned to Jena, to be reassembled by the surviving employees of Carl Zeiss. 4 Years later, cameras began coming off the production lines, but the Soviet-supervised production failed to keep quality control at pre-war levels, and the products soon gained international renown for being mechanically inept. The Soviets, having learned the method for making coated lenses from Carl Zeiss Scientists, began producing coated lenses based on Zeiss technology at the optical works in Kiev, where they became immediately accepted worldwide for their quality, while the true owners of this technology, in East Germany, continued to produce inferior products through the 1980's.


A sister company in West Germany, Zeiss Ikon Stuttgart also produced cameras and lenses, but while the quality was supreme in the world, through the 1950's and 60's, it was often lagging in technological breakthroughs, due to limited finances.

My point here being, that you can say that nuclear power plants were designed by the soviets, but, as with most high-technology, it came to the soviets onboard trains heading out of Germany during the occupation, just as we took missile scientists like Werner Von Braun, whom my father worked with extensively at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The soviets may have decided when it was "safe enough for production", but the designs came from Germany (dare I say East?) to be sure.

By whatever label you wish to call it, East Germany WAS East Germany, although not sovereign, and subject to heavy soviet influence, it certainly was not West Germany during those years.

I would never imply that a woman head of state was inferior, Rudi. I was simply implying that a different viewpoint would have to be taken by the first female chancellor of the German State.

So, in case my previous statement had misled anyone, let me clarify it:
Angela Merkel, by being the first female Chancellor of the German state, is also the first Roman Catholic Chancellor of the German State since the Chancellory was created in the 1880's by Wilhelm I, the first Chancellor being Otto Von Bismarck, A Prussian Lutheran. Ms. Merkel is also the first Chancellor of the German State to be born in what WAS the German Democratic Republic, during the late cold war, as opposed to having been born in the Pre-War German State, or the Federal German Republic, as her recent predecessors have. These three firsts should give her a unique, and by no means do I imply by that any negativity whatsoever, outlook upon her own nation, and the matter of international relations.

I hope this clarifies things somewhat.

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

As an addendum to previous post:

It occurs to me that perhaps recent concillatory measures between the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church have blurred the line between the two, somewhat. I am aware of the growing cooperation between the two, just as Rome has been making Concilliatory gestures towards Byzantine Catholicism.

This, however, does not lend credence to calling Evangelical Lutheran churches Evangelical Catholic, as the phrase in the Lutheran Creed : "Holy catholic Church" is spelled with the small c, and is, on occaision, for those congregations who are weak of heart, replaced with the phrase "Holy Church of God" As long as catholic retains it's lowercase spelling, there are no crucifixes, and "Luther's small Catechism" is still used, I will continue to recognize the difference, for the memory of the thousands who died for that very (albeit small by today's standards) difference.

As for Luther, he aimed at having the Mass read in German, as he felt the peasants who were his congregation had a poor concept of their faith. He wanted to read both scripture and gospel in German as well. His goal was to do this within the arms of the mother church. Of course, this was not possible, as the latin Mass was read until the 1960's. After being excommunicated, he tried to reconcile with Rome, however, his peasant followers didn't want it. They started the peasant uprisings that spread throughout Northern Germany, particularly in the Prussian state. Rome began a program of hunting down the heretics at hand that lasted for 3 centuries, until the Prussian nobility accepted the reformation themselves, and put an end to this particular chapter of the tyranny of Rome.

Most of the Roman Catholic world now looks upon Lutherans as "Catholic Lite" -- half the calories, all of the taste. It remains, however, in German-American areas like the valley I live in, a simple faith for simple people.

[Rudi]

Tom:

Ohhh boy... I guess I inadvertantly opened a can of worms... yes.. there is a twist there and it is related to the split cross in Worms that is blood red...

Anyways... this topic I shall continue to discourse with you if you wish, but it will be private as this is not the forum for this continued discussion.

I did not mean to attempt to foment any long debate on this, but just clarify some stuff.. and there are differences.. (see email)....

I understand clearly what you meant in your original post, and I did not mean to correct or anything, just clarify a few thoughts... I find you posts interesting and of use...

So, I shall put this one to bed publicly and continue this extremely interesting topic in private.


Prost

[Rudi]

I have pondered on this a bit.. and have come to a conclusion...

!. Discussion of any topic is a valuable and viable tool in a free democratic environment.
2. Discussion of any topic is a right and a priviledge for those of us blessed to live in a democratic environment.
3. Sometimes in the course of enjoying our hobbies, we share ideas, thoughts and beliefs. This is a good thing. However, sometimes we can get carried away and all of a sudden what was an innocent topic, can become heated and hurtful - - I do not want that to happen at all.

To that end, I chose to continue my very stimulating and interesting discussion with Tom in a more private venue. And to ensure that the topic cannot slip accidentally into something no one wants to see occur, I have chosen to LOCK this thread.

I do hope locking it does not offend anyone. If I have, then I immediately plead Mea Culpa and beg your forgiveness.....