Prominent J'ca Architect Makes Case for SOLAR

Treasure Beach Forum: TB Runnin's: Prominent J'ca Architect Makes Case for SOLAR
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Zed on Monday, March 31, 2014 - 08:00 pm: Edit Post

Talk to a typical middle class Jamaican about why they haven't switched to Solar photovoltaics for their home electrical needs when equipment prices have dropped dramatically (witness all the solar warehouse listings in the newspapers), and the cost payback periods--when compared to projected JPS billings--have also shrunk. The main informed answer seems to be "a lack of low-cost, long term financing."

As analyzed by the esteemed Jamaican architect Marvin Goodman, the local banking system is not structured to offer favourable loans for applicants wishing to install alternative energy systems, as current practices add substantial fees to cover costs & insure profits. Furthermore, banks shy away from long term loans; have an insufficient wide customer base and very little expertise in the alternative energy sector.

Until larger solar enterprises come into existence offering leasing programs (as is done in California & elsewhere in the US), Marvin Goodman is offering some policy suggestions which ought to translate to his pioneering client base and a greater share of our homeowners & businesses.

• Instead of the commercial banks being the vehicle to make these loans, the Government should turn to existing organisations and entities that have very wide customer bases, and the knowledge and experience to make relatively small loans and ensure their repayment.

• These include the National Housing Trust (NHT), The Jamaica Public Service, National Water Commission and the National Insurance Fund.
They should be tasked with providing low-cost, long-term financing (of at least 15 years) directly to consumers. There is ample precedent for this worldwide.

• For housing especially, but other uses as well, photovoltaics should be included as part of the costs included in the mortgages, these usually have 20- to 40-year terms for repayment.
In the case of the NHT, costs and payments can be simply wrapped into the low-interest, long-term mortgages that are available to its customers.

In a study I prepared for a pending NHT project, such a system would put the homeowner ahead in year one and as the price of electricity continues to rise, the use of lighting and appliances would remain affordable.

• There is already a growing list of companies and professionals in Jamaica versed in the supply and installation of photovoltaics, wind energy and solar hot-water systems.

• If low-cost, long-term financing were available, this industry would flourish and provide a great number of non-outsourceable jobs in installation and maintenance.


Gleaner Link: Making Photovoltaics Work In Jamaica
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140331/business/business3.html

The FOLLY of relying on fossil fuels, and bequeathing a planet to future generations considerably affected by drastic climate change & rising seas:
Wouldn't a good start be to de-incentivize the fossil fuel corporations and shift those incentives to a Energy Renewables Infrastructure?

Will the US Lead by Example?:
In 2013 the big five fossil-fuel companies (BP, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil and Shell) got $2.4 billion in tax breaks. A Pew Research report found, "The subsidies that most increased CO2 emissions per U.S. government dollar spent include those for coal, oil and natural gas... if the subsidies that increased CO2 emissions were to be eliminated, U.S. government expenditures would have been, on average, $12 billion less per year... over the 2005 through 2009 period."
Meanwhile, incentives for renewables are languishing.


HuffPost Link: Accelerating Use of Renewable Energy
www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/accelerating-use-of-renew_b_5054842.html


Seven Generation Sustainability is an ecological concept that urges the current generation of humans to live sustainably and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future. It originated with the Iroquois - Great Law of the Iroquois - which holds appropriate to think seven generations ahead (about 140 years into the future) and decide whether the decisions they make today would benefit their children seven generations into the future.
"In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation... even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine."--from “The Constitution of the Iroquois Nations: The Great Binding Law.”

The original language:
In all of your deliberations in the Confederate Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion.
Cast not over your shoulder behind you the warnings of the nephews and nieces should they chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right.

Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation.
--Wiki


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By z on Tuesday, April 01, 2014 - 12:58 pm: Edit Post

With Rising Sea Levels (Miami-Florida now investing enormous amounts of funding on Seawalls)...Will the hills of Jamaica, someday, be our new coastlines???

Observer Editorial: Climate change--The night is dark and full of terrors
www.jamaicaobserver.com/pfversion/Climate-change--The-night-is-dark-and-full-of- terrors_16378886


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Archie on Tuesday, April 01, 2014 - 05:19 pm: Edit Post

Rising sea levels? Really? Where? {edited by TB.Net}


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By MikeyMike on Wednesday, April 02, 2014 - 11:14 am: Edit Post

Hey Archie
Here in Louisiana !
ONE LOVE !!
Mike


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Riser on Wednesday, April 02, 2014 - 11:21 am: Edit Post

Ask older people if the sea level has risen around TB.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Zed on Wednesday, April 02, 2014 - 05:57 pm: Edit Post

Archie...Have you heard the Question asked: "Are you going to accept empirical scientific data, or one's own lying eyes?"...Wasn't Miami-Florida Jamaica's quickest, hippest beach get-away, but its low lying topography endangers its future from rising sea levels.
Massive, high cost human engineering intrusions (defenses) can only go so far in diminishing the onslaught of Nature.

National Geography Video: Earth Under Water--Worldwide Flooding--Sea Level Rise
www.youtube.com/watch?v=baGrtqyWSRM

New Greenland Ice Melt Fuels Sea Level Rise Concerns
www.climatecentral.org/news/new-greenland-ice-melt-fuels-sea-level-rise-concerns -17187


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By goofie on Wednesday, April 09, 2014 - 09:39 pm: Edit Post

The article revealed that global warming will reduce fish population in the Tropics. Could it be that we in Treasure Beach are already experiencing evidence of this? Serious stuff folks.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Archie on Thursday, April 10, 2014 - 08:56 am: Edit Post

There is no empirical scientific data,either about global warming or rising sea-levels, and my eyes tell me that sea-level has not risen around TB. The reduction in the fish population is caused by over fishing and pollutants going into the sea. This plant was marvellously engineered and is self-regulating and undergoes cyclical fluctuations.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Z on Monday, April 14, 2014 - 10:28 am: Edit Post

OVERWHELMING FACTS ::The Imperative About Switching To Clean Energy NOW

Facing a potential climate catastrophe, the world’s governments agreed in 2009 to limit a global rise in mean temperature by the end of this century to avert the frightening effects of global warming.

But they face a huge task to meet that pledge, the world’s top climate scientists said Sunday, with data showing that efforts have fallen well short.

Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to “unprecedented levels” during the decade that ended in 2010, despite efforts to limit carbon from sources such as power plants and cement factories, as well as deforestation.

At a meeting in Berlin, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Sunday released a report that found that nations still have a chance to fulfill the goal but must aggressively turn away from relying largely on fossil fuels such as coal for energy and replace them with cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind power.
To reach their target of 3.6 degrees(2 degrees Celsius) over preindustrial levels, nations must work together to lower emissions “by 40 to 70 percent” of what they were in 2010, the report said.

Without such action before mid-century, scientists said, nations will start to face the most debilitating effects of global warming — rapidly melting arctic ice, significant sea-level rise, flooding and storms — by the end of the century.

“There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual,” said Ottmar Edenhofer of Germany, co-chairman of the group that produced the 2,000-page report.

In a week-long meeting riven with disagreements between developing and industrialized nations, there was little confidence that the challenge spelled out in the report can be met.

According to several news accounts from Berlin, battles erupted over how much blame should be shouldered by developing countries that have turned to coal and deforestation to power their growing economies, and by developed countries such China and the United States, the world’s biggest polluters.

As developing nations grew, greenhouse gas emissions increased more between 2000 and 2010 than in each of the previous three decades, the report said.
Nations such as India, Brazil and South Africa orchestrated what one climate scientist called “a renaissance of coal” as they joined the ranks of major emitters of carbon and other gases.

Saudi Arabia objected to language in the 500-page executive summary calling for the lowering of emissions by 40 to 70 percent, according to an Associated Press report from Berlin, fearing its impact on oil sales.

During a news conference Sunday, Rajendra K. Pachauri of India, another co-chairman, said that the goal of limiting a rise in global temperatures “cannot be achieved without cooperation.” He added, “What comes out very clearly from this report is that the high-speed mitigation train needs to leave the station soon, and all of global society needs to get on board.”

The findings are the latest in a series of major studies from the Fifth Assessment Report on climate change by the IPCC, comprising 800 scientists appointed by the United Nations from around the world, including U.S. agencies such as NASA.

Key findings in previous reports dating to September were that the planet is warming at an accelerated pace and that, with 95 percent certainty, humans are the cause. The past three decades have been the hottest since 1850.

Carbon concentrations in the atmosphere have increased 40 percent since then, and carbon, methane and nitrous oxide are at levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years.

For the first time, the panel offered a carbon budget of 1 trillion tons released into the atmosphere, to avoid the worst effects of climate change. More than half that amount has already been released. Up to 3 trillion tons are buried in the earth as fossil fuel.

The report lists 285 authors from 58 countries and 900 peer reviewers.
More than 35,000 comments were considered before the final draft. A tighter summary for policymakers is 30 pages, but some questioned whether it is too technical for people who are not scientists.

The report tries to convince government decision makers that lowering emissions can be achieved without significantly slowing economic growth.

Governments would shave less than half a percentage point from expected economic growth, the report said, by diverting billions of dollars from fossil fuels such as coal to renewable energy such as solar power.
In other words, the world saves little by doing nothing.

***The steps that need urgent attention — including deploying energy-efficient technologies, stopping deforestation, planting trees that absorb carbons, and more widely using instruments that capture and store carbon at cement factories and power plants so they do not reach the atmosphere — will only get more expensive if decision makers delay, the report said.

--Darryl Fears

Read More @ Washington Post Link:
www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-must-turn-from-fossil-fuels -to-cleaner-energy-to-avoid-climate-disaster-panel-says/2014/04/13/21bd2144-c273 -11e3-b574-f8748871856a_print.html


Burying your head in the sand:
•"...does not prevent the tide from coming in.” (KJ)

•" ...offers an engaging target." (Mabel A Keenan)

•"...does not make you invisible it only leads to suffocation.”
(Wayne Gerard Trotman)


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Bowl on Monday, April 14, 2014 - 05:42 pm: Edit Post

Global warming contribution to rising sea level don't happen overnight.
What is visible in TB or Calabash Bay beach to be more specific is massive erosion caused by recent hurricanes, and this gives the appearance of rising sea level.
All the hurricanes or storm surges we have had in recent time all came from the East. To see the beach/beaches rebuild themselves we have to have hurricanes coming in from the West.
Please don't laugh at me. I have been around a long time and have seen it happen.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Aspirant on Monday, April 28, 2014 - 02:46 pm: Edit Post

That is an intriguing notion Bowl, and I'm curious to hear more beaches rebuilding themselves. Can you share any more on that please? Have there been any storms from the west in recent history? Are there any other circumstances which tend to restore beaches naturally?

I was speaking with a neighbour recently and expressed the opinion that, over time, the natural cycles do tend to restore sand to beaches. He was skeptical, and I was short on evidence. Common sense tells me it must be true however, otherwise there would be no sand on any coasts which today have sandy beaches.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Archie on Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - 04:29 pm: Edit Post

So we are off 'climate change' and now back to 'global warming'. Well the ice in the Great Lakes have not melted as yet, as it usually does, so what does that say, 'global warming' or 'climate change'?
Let's collect the CO2 and send it into space.LOL.