Community Chat

[gardenman]

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@CrazyDaisy wrote:

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@happycat wrote:

@Noel7, I think you are right. I think a lot of the folks who do this don't like to be around people. On one of the shows, they said there are more wild animals than humans in the area, and showed a grizzly bear.

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There are many parts of this country where there are more wild animals than people.  Just because a person may live in a rural area will not necessarily mean they do not like to be around other people.

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If you include pigeons, squirrels, rats, mice, and insects there are more wild animals living in American cities than people and it's not even close. You could probably make a reasonable argument that there's more widllife per square mile in a big city than in the wild as food is vastly more abundant in the big cities in dumpsters, trash bins and the like. In the wild, food's a lot less abundant much of the year vastly limiting the animal population. Big cities are literally awash in food for wildlife with lots of shelter for smaller creatures to hide in and find safety with fewer predators. If I was betting, I'd bet that any square mile of a major city has more widllife than any square mile of our best, most pristine national parks. There's just a lot more food and shelter in a big city than in the wild. 

Now you don't have bears or mountain lions typically roaming around NYC, but there are tons of smaller forms of wildlife there. (Oddly enough coyotes now live in many of the bigger cities, so I wouldn't rule out larger predators moving in over time.) If you think humans outnumber wildlife in any part of the country, you're probably mistaken. If anything those in the country probably come closer to outnumbering the wildlife than those in the big cities. There are more predators, less food and less shelter for wildlife in the wild and that all keeps the wildlife population numbers low.

[Lorelei1123]

I try my very best to be friendly to our environment, but there are limits.  Sorry, but I need certain conveniences. 

Some programs that I have watched (I believe they were on HGTV) highlighted things like compost toilets and other "green" home systems.  Give me standard plumbing!!!

Also, if I had to "live off the land" and grow my own food, I'd be stuck (based on my below- average gardening skills).  And as already mentioned, I too am an animal lover and would keep every one of them as pets, not for consumption.

[Kalli]

@gardenman, DH and I priced solar panels ... how much would it take to make our house completely self-sufficient with regard to electricity and make us able to sell some back?  We'd have to put the units in the back yard which is large enough but...  we were told $42,000.   

I'd love to do it even though it's so expensive but DH was in the No Way camp.  hahah    

[QueenDanceALot]

He!! no.

[Noel7]

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@CrazyDaisy wrote:

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@happycat wrote:

@Noel7, I think you are right. I think a lot of the folks who do this don't like to be around people. On one of the shows, they said there are more wild animals than humans in the area, and showed a grizzly bear.

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There are many parts of this country where there are more wild animals than people.  Just because a person may live in a rural area will not necessarily mean they do not like to be around other people.

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No one said all those living in a rural area don't like to be around other people by definition.  It's so unnecessary to ascribe your words to others.

But there are certainly loners and militia groups that do like it that way.

[gardenman]

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@Kalli wrote:

@gardenman, DH and I priced solar panels ... how much would it take to make our house completely self-sufficient with regard to electricity and make us able to sell some back?  We'd have to put the units in the back yard which is large enough but...  we were told $42,000.   

I'd love to do it even though it's so expensive but DH was in the No Way camp.  hahah    

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Yeah, it's not cheap and truth be told, right now, you're doing nothing for the environment by using solar panels as every watt of power they make is backed up by conventional power plants chugging away as if they were generating power, so there's no real environmental benefit to going solar at this time.

Conventional power plants generate electricity by heating massive quantities of water to steam in a pressure vessel and then using that high pressure steam to turn a turbine which then turns a generator before the steam gets vented into a low pressure condensing area to cool, turn back to water and repeat the cycle. Spinning reserve is required to be available on short notice and you just can't heat massive quantities of water to steam in short order, so conventional power plants are kept up and running just as though they were generating power. I've said this before, but it's like buying and driving an electric car, but then being followed everywhere you go by a gas powered car in case the electric car breaks down or loses its charge.

At some point sane people in the government will realize that all of the tax credits and subsidies for solar photovoltaic isn't really achieving anything, and those tax credits and subsidies will disappear and photovoltaic solar will largely disappear.

Passive solar to help heat houses is actually a very viable way to limit greenhouse gas emissions. There is no spinning reserve when it comes to heating homes. Every  btu of heat provided by passive solar is one less btu of heat a homeowner has to create by burning, wood, coal, natural gas or oil. The powers that be largely ignore passive solar these days however and focus almost exclusively on photovoltaic which truthfully isn't effective at limiting greenhouse gas emissions. As long as spinning reserve is required, those solar panles and the windmills are little more than large lawn ornaments for their impact on the levels of greenhouse gases. Passive solar, either in new home design or hang on collectors for temporary use really do work, but are largely ignored.