stonemarmot.com/rants

By Bruce of Stone Marmot
Galveston and New Orleans are two of a number of cities that have been fairly recently devastated by flood waters from hurricanes. We heard so much in the news about the number of homes that were damaged and destroyed by these events. But what about the businesses? [...]

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By Sammy of Stone Marmot
Apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed that the proper landscaping can help protect your home during hurricanes. I recently found a book entitled “Stormscaping – Landscaping to Minimize Wind Damage in Florida” by Pamela Crawford. It is Volume 3 of her “Florida Gardening Series” books. [...]

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By Bruce of Stone Marmot
When someone mentions reducing our oil consumption, the almost instantaneous response of many people would be that we have to get rid of SUVs, pickups trucks, and vans and get everyone driving small passenger vehicles. After all, these small passenger vehicles get much more miles per gallon of gas than [...]

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By Bruce of Stone Marmot
U. S. government flood insurance causes natural disasters.
How can I say that? Obviously flood insurance can’t cause hurricanes or make a river overflow its banks. But hurricanes and rivers overflowing their banks aren’t in themselves disasters. Only when people are very adversely affected by these events do most [...]

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By Sammy of Stone Marmot
A fairy tale: A 30 year old man has been working for the past twelve years, earning an average of about $40,000 a year and living fairly comfortably. He is reasonably happy. One day this man finds a treasure chest. He opens it and finds $10,000,000 in [...]

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By Sammy of Stone Marmot
Many people are complaining about the record oil company profits when gas prices are at record highs. If they stopped to think about it, this makes perfect sense, is to be expected, and there is nothing wrong with it. In fact, it shows our economic system is working.
Profits are [...]

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By Sammy of Stone Marmot
Global warming can’t be real!
How can I say that? With all the evidence showing long term trends for receding glaciers, increased average global temperature, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, melting Arctic ice, hundreds of square miles of the Antarctic ice shelves collapsing into the oceans, rapid melting of [...]

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By Bruce of Stone Marmot
The United States is often criticized for using a vastly disproportionate amount of the world’s available energy relative to its population. With less than 5 % of the world’s total population, the U. S. consumes about 40 % of the world’s total energy output. Part of the reason for [...]

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By Bruce of Stone Marmot
It is also amazing how many products, such as microwave ovens, regular ovens, televisions, and stereos, still are consuming power when they are assumed to be “turned off.” Many of the manufacturers of these products claim that the consumption of these “phantom loads” is negligible, but this isn’t true [...]

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By Sid of Stone Marmot
Why do the electric utilities have few solar power facilities? Why do they invest so little in solar power? Why will they probably never have major solar power facilities?
The simple answer is that they have great difficulty competing with homeowner sited solar power systems for the following reasons:

The [...]

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