[Keith_McClary]

I don't have this graph, which is why I am interested to see it.

Try a Google Image search for:
chart total electrical consumption USA

[kublikhan]

h2, thanks for the clarifications. I should also clarify that when I said tapping into the solar flux I was talking about all forms of renewable energy that the sun ultimately drives, not just solar pv panels. This category includes not only solar pv but also wind, solar thermal, CSP, hydro, solar heating, etc. Solar hot water is an economical way to heat water. Passive solar heating of a house is a great way to heat a house and keep energy bills low. You need not build expensive solar pv panels to tap into this resource.

On the topic of Solar PVs, I have no problem with utility scale installations. Utilities can leverage economies of scale benefits not just for the panels, but the inverters, surge arrestors, installation, maintenance, finance, anti-theft protection, etc. Personally I'd rather leave the power company deal with the myriad of issues that comes with solar pv installation than do it myself. Still, I like that solar pv has the option of end use installation. I am not as optimistic on CSP as I once was. Like all other thermoelectric power plants, it consumes a large amount of water for cooling. Wind/Solar PV not only address renewable issues of power generation, but water consumption issues as well. Although the fact that most CSP designs in the pipe are using dry cooling(with a reduction of up to 90% water usage) keeps me generally positive on this technology.

I agree with you we can drop energy consumption a lot just by altering some behaviors. So much potential out there to radically reduce our energy use while still maintaining a high standard of living. As a child, I remember staring at our hot water heater(natural gas tank variety) and thinking what a waste of energy it is to keep 40 gallons of water hot 24/7. Yet you get things like this during abundant and cheap energy. Still, many regions of the world dispense of this wasteful method and have more economical methods of heating water: tankless, district heating, solar hot water, etc.

I'm glad to see a fellow poster share my concerns over water. Not just used during fracking, but most energy generation methods as well(wind and solar pv are among the few exceptions). Nearly half of all water use in the US is for power generation. Over a third is used for irrigation, much of which is exported. One source said exporting food is like exporting fresh water since so much water is used to grow food. The us enjoys a bounty of natural resources including fossil fuels and water and is able to feed much of the world with these resources. If drought, aquifer depletion, peak oil, topsoil depletion, etc all start to make a major dent in the U.S. food exports, how will all those countries who depend on imports of US food fare? Feeding our crops to machines(Ethanol, Thermal depolymerization, etc) only exacerbates the situation.

Earlier you were talking about watching how well Germany incorporates large amounts of renewable energy into it's grid without creating reliability issues. I am also interested in watching how this unfolds. My first thought was they would need a huge national battery to smooth out low power periods. However such a national battery is impractical for cost reasons. Although other grid storage methods like pumped hydro or compressed air can be used on a small scale. My next thought was to use fossil fuel plants as backup power. This is already being done to some extent, but I thought it would have to be ramped up as renewables make up an increasing percentage of the grid. However I underestimated how well solar PV matches the demand curve, supplying maximum power when demand is at maximum. Demand for expensive new peaker plants has actually gone down. Still, it seems like Germany will need a substantial amount of fossil fueled plants on standby as it continues on towards it's goal of 80% renewables by 2050, especially since it is also mothballing it's nuke plants. Smart grid technology should help as well.

With the sun beaming overhead and the nation hard at work, Germany turned to solar like never before last Friday and Saturday as the nation's PV installations fed 22 gigawatts of electricity into the grid at one point, providing nearly half of the country's energy needs.

In doing so, Germany answered some critical questions as it reshapes its policy away from nuclear power and toward renewable sources like solar, wind and biomass. Chief among the concerns is how much intermittent solar Germany can seamlessly integrate into its grid without causing major disruptions.

"It is often underestimated that the sun brings significant power if and when it is needed most. In the peak time for lunch," said institute director Norbert Allnoch. Because of this, the group says that expensive peak load power plants are increasingly rare or no longer used.

Germany's Day in the Sun: Solar Hits 22 GW Mark

I don't want to go too far off topic by discussing debt, poverty, outsourcing to China, etc, but we discuss these issues frequently in our ongoing economic thread: Here Comes The Double Dip. You might want to stop by as DP and Oily frequently post about our economic situation with vastly different perspectives.

[ROCKMAN]

k - Get after it…don’t be shy. LOL. That's why I tossed out the POD in the first place: in my thoughts it encompasses just about everything. In the end it’s all interconnected: AGW, PO, alts, politics, oil shale, economic growth, LNG exports, military adventures, energy price induced poverty, etc. The challenge isn’t finding what comes under the POD but finding something that doesn’t IMHO.

[kublikhan]

Ok Rockman let me share some of my financial thoughts:
I feel the US has increasing levels of inequality and social stratification. The middle class is shrinking and growing poorer. Increasing amounts of this nation's wealth are being concentrated into fewer hands. Over the last several decades, the US has seen large increases in productivity. However the middle class was largely denied the fruits of this increase as most of the new wealth went to the top. I find myself thinking we would be better off with a model closer to what h2 was posting about earlier with the Swedish politician saying they were trying to erase poverty. Not only is this more just from a social point of view, I think it is more sound from an economical point of view as well. Capitialism/consumerism relies on customers having a large amount of disposable income to spend(a large middle class). With the wealth of the middle class shrinking, their is less wealth available to purchase new goods and services in the market. So it might be nice in the short term that the rich have greatly increased their profits, but in the long term they are slowly destroying the market for their goods. The middle class tried to maintain the illusion of the prosperity they once had by going into debt. But as we saw with the recent financial implosion, this was not a very good long term strategy. I don't think this bodes well for the future.

However despite the problems listed above, the raw wealth of the US is still staggering. I think this wealth will help to cushion it's citizens from a decline in the abundance of cheap energy/food. As sad as it is to say, I think it is the poorest nations who will suffer the most due to resource shortages. US consumers grumbling about the cost of $5 a gallon gas to fuel up their SUVs is nothing compared to the daily struggles of those in poor nations as they are forced to contend to with rising fuel and food costs. Like what you were talking about in the initial post of this thread with The US and China consuming a large share of resources and there is not enough left over for poorer nations. Did you know that China, Korea, many rich gulf states, etc are all buying up land and water resources in poor countries and using the land to export crops back home? This does not bode well for legions of poor starving while crops grown in their own country are exported to foreigners.

Low- and middle-income earners across eastern and central Africa are reeling from the mounting cost of living brought on by a sharp increase in commodity prices in the past few months.

Protests and demonstrations against the rising cost of food and fuel have swept across several towns in Kenya and Uganda; violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces have been reported on several occasions in Uganda. At least four Ugandans have been killed in countrywide demonstrations, while hundreds have been arrested and several hospitalized with gunshot wounds and the effects of teargas.

Uganda
Robinnah Nakuya, a charcoal vendor in a Kampala market, said: "A bag of charcoal, which I used to buy at 15,000 shillings [about US$6], is now 30,000 shillings [$12]. I am a single mother of three children and I must feed them. Let the government reduce prices so that we can afford them. We cannot afford salt and soap because prices have gone up."

According to a recent World Bank report, the wholesale price of maize in Uganda has risen by 114 percent over the past year.

Kenya
In Kenya, despite an announcement by Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta on 18 April that the government had reduced taxes on diesel and kerosene, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of several major towns on 19 April.

Earnest Mogire, a trader at Wakulima wholesale market in Nakuru, a large town in the Rift Valley province, told IRIN his customers were reluctant to buy the cabbages he had just offloaded because of the new high prices.

"Transporting the produce from farms has become too expensive, forcing me to adjust my selling prices," Mogire said. "In January, it used to cost me between KSh12,000 [$150] and KSh13,000 [$163] to transport the produce from Nyeri [in central Kenya], my main source. But the price has since risen to between KSh17,000 [$213) and KSh18,000 [$225], forcing me to pass on the burden to my customers."

"In November 2010, the fare to the office was KSh20 [$0.16] but it has since escalated to KSh30 [$0.38] which I find too expensive," Karanja said. "I earn 4,000 shillings [$50] per month and KSh1,560 [$19.50] would be too much for transport yet I still have to pay rent and feed my two children."

In the coastal town of Mombasa, retailers have raised the prices of many commodities, especially foodstuffs such as maize flour, cooking oil and vegetables.

Ethiopia
In Ethiopia, memories of 2008, when the country's cost of living was second only to then hyper-inflated Zimbabwe, are returning to many residents of the capital, Addis Ababa. Headlines of local newspapers at the weekend all had a common theme: rising inflation.

"The things we pay for daily, like sugar, [cooking] oil and transportation costs have increased dramatically in the last two, three months; I don't know how we will be able to survive if it keeps this way,” Etifwork Nigatu, a city resident, who makes 570 Ethiopian birr a month [$34], said.

EASTERN AFRICA: Consumers, traders feel the burn as prices skyrocket

The world’s population is soaring past 7 billion. Food prices keep spiking every few years. Freshwater supplies in plenty of areas are dwindling.

And so, in response, a slew of countries and investors — from Chinese state corporations to Gulf sheiks to Wall Street firms — have started buying up farmland overseas, in an apparent attempt to acquire as much precious soil and water as possible. This phenomenon is known as “land grabbing,” and it has been accelerating ever since the massive surge in grain prices back in 2007.

So how much land and water is actually being grabbed? Quite a lot, according to a big new study published in the “Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences” this week. The authors find that somewhere between 0.7 percent and 1.75 percent of the world’s agricultural land is being transferred to foreign investors from local landholders. That’s an area bigger than France and Germany combined.

Big purchasers of foreign farmland include Britain, the United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, South Africa, Israel, India and Egypt. They’re mostly seeking out land in Africa and Asia, particularly in countries such as Congo, Sudan, Indonesia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ethiopia and even Australia.

The study found that foreign investors frequently buy tracts of land that have plenty of freshwater, either from local rainfall or underground aquifers. That’s the key commodity here.

After the land is bought up, large commercial farms will move in and boost production to grow their own crops. One 2010 study from the World Bank found that about 37 percent of this “grabbed” land is used to grow food crops, 21 percent to grow cash crops and 21 percent to grow biofuels. (For instance, some 27,400 square miles of land land have been snatched up in Indonesia, largely to grow palm oil, which can be turned into biodiesel.)

Last year, for instance, Human Rights Watch released a report alleging that the Ethiopian government was forcibly relocating tens of thousands of people in order to lease land to foreign investors from China and he Gulf States. “The first round of forced relocations occurred at the worst possible time of year — the beginning of the harvest,” the report said. “Government failure to provide food assistance for relocated people has caused endemic hunger and cases of starvation.”

D’Odorico points out that a great deal of land and fresh water is also being bought up from poorer countries that are struggling to feed themselves, such as Tanzania. “If the food being produced on this land was going to locals instead of foreigners,” he points out, “it would be possible for countries like Tanzania to cut down substantially on malnourishment.”

Another example: The PNAS study notes that Sudan is leasing much of its prime farmland on the banks of the Blue Nile to foreign investors who are exporting food out of the country. Meanwhile, the rest of the people in this otherwise arid country have become increasingly dependent on food aid and subsidies.

What is likely, however, is that land grabbing will become more popular in the years ahead — especially if more governments start getting nervous about securing food supplies. “The net result is that poor farmers and cattle herders across the world are being thrown off their land. Land grabbing is having more of an impact on the lives of poor people than climate change.”

Chinese firms and Gulf sheiks are snatching up farmland worldwide. Why?

[kublikhan]

I think land grabbing is one of the more visible and quantifiable signs of MADOR.

Over the last decade (and especially during the last four years) wealthy nations have increasingly brokered deals for huge swathes of agricultural land at bargain prices in developing countries, installed industrial-scale farms, and exported the resulting bounty for profit. According to the anti-hunger group Oxfam International, more than 60 percent of these "land grabs" occur in regions with serious hunger problems. Two-thirds of the investors plan to ship all the commodities they produce out of the country to the global market. And droughts, spikes in food and oil prices, and a growing global population have only made the quest for arable land more urgent, and the investments that much more alluring.

According to the PNAS study, the land grabbing phenomenon has already claimed some 203 million acres, or about .7 to 1.75 percent of the world's total farmland, since 2002, with the majority of acquisitions after 2008. Out of 41 land grabbing speculators, the US ranks second, with 9.14 million acres grabbed, an area larger than the country of Qatar.
chart: Top 5 Land grabbing nations

CHARTS: The Top 5 Land-Grabbing Countries

[h2]

Rockman, here's one that doesn't fall under POD except very indirectly. I found this when doing as suggested, googling images:

Water Use in the United States



That's a pretty sobering graph. It certainly makes the issue of First World attempts to take over farm land in the Second/Third world make more sense, you can't farm without water in most cases. So anything that is projected to dramatically increase water use over time, particularly in dry areas, like fracking, has to be considered highly suspect as a long range plan. Unfortunately, as we can see there, water use peaked in about 1985, the exact year the Club of Rome marked as the tipping point for resource availability, the same rough year we'll recall that oil discoveries for the first time were lower than oil production.

kublikhan, I don't find much to argue with in what you say, people here are mostly making sense, which is very refreshing, so I'm just going to investigate some of these numbers to see what's actually up.

The more I dip into the numbers for renewables the more grim it looks to me. Energy in the United States.

Drilling into it, 2000-2010 numbers are very bad: for only electricity: Yearly Electric Energy (B kWh (or Twh) per year) by Fuel Source table:

2000-3,836 twh total-318.7 twh renewable
2010-4,151.0 twh total-427 twh renewable

This is scary. An increase in 10 years of 315twh consumption, an increase of 108.3 renewable. That is not how you transition to renewables, sad to say, that is merely taking the edge off of the rate of growth.

No drop in baseline ff consumption at all, except for a switch to low priced gas.

Energy in the United States table has total energy used, and these numbers likewise look very very bad, annoyingly, a different time scale on that table, starts at 2004, but the idea is clear enough. Renewables are only chipping in electrical consumption, yet:

2004-27,050 twh total energy-3,921 electricity
2010-25,776 twh total energy-4,143 electricity

Consumption by source table shows more, although only from 2006, but I doubt the numbers change that much except for the dip from our 2mbpd oil import drop:

In 2006, non hydro renewables formed 0.95 out of 29.26 total petawatts US consumption, or 3%. With hydro, 6%. With increase in wind, that's probably 7-8% of total in 2012?

Moving to EIA, we get these numbers:

2011: 9.1% renewable. Transportation: 27%, that's not going to be electric any time soon. When you consider that hydro, wood, and geothermal are basically static, no real growth over 10 years, that means it all comes down to solar/wind to add capacity.

2011: solar: 1.8 twh; wind: 120.2 twh, out of a total electrical consumption of: 4,138.7

I knew the US was doing very poorly in this area, but I did not realize just how bad. Germans and a few other European countries can accept sacrifice and change of lifestyle for the greater common good, particularly and even more so now after the 'once in 500 years floods' they suffered, which are really highlighting the costs to be expected from climate change. Hurricane Sandy was supposed to do a similar thing here but it doesn't seem to be working in terms of proper motivation to fundamentally change energy production, it's that cheap gas from fracked wells I believe that makes people ignore such issues.

As with these US numbers, I suggest you drill into the german numbers (wikipedia is making this too easy, lol) and see how those look if you start at 1980 or 1990 in absolute twh produced. That link doesn't show that.

Maintaining current levels of consumption of ff to power transport/electricity isn't going to cut it as the POD really starts to kick in, that's not a plan.

The USA is looking very very bad, if they don't start taking this issue more seriously they are going to have major problems, the fracking gas boom may turn out to be one of the worst things that could have happened.

This is already visible in the non first world, where access to always on power is growing increasingly rare, we just don't realize that they are the canary in the coal mine, we should pay a little bit more attention I think to the base numbers.

Denmark and Germany are definitely the most interesting, along with Spain in this area, but the US numbers are terrible in absolute terms, far far worse than I'd imagined, though I did suspect that the US was not even meeting the growth in consumption with renewables, that suspicion appears to be right.

Germany I did note had an actual drop in consumption, not a big one, but a real drop, and that's a key to the overall renewable percentages, chipping away a few percent yearly of the total works if you don't increase the baseline consumption numbers.

On a strategic level, it's obvious that the larger percent of your overall power is generated via renewables, the better off the country will be, but that requires a government that can enact such policies without too much obstruction. That does not describe the US government, sad to say.

The next few years are also going to show what actually happens to the economic and social systems in Germany and Denmark as they switch to slightly higher priced electricity sources, the real question remains: what percent of a modern industrial state's income can be spent on energy before the numbers fail to add up.

[ROCKMAN]

Ag land acquisition…yep. Pointed out China’s efforts on another thread and offered that angle as a potential component of MADOR: the US is still a major producer of food. China appears to understand the need to supplement calories as the their economy grows. So not only may China be taking an amount of ag land off the market but potentially able to trade energy that it’s amassing to the US for ag products that we now ship to other countries.

As pointed out there may be just two initial winners under MADOR and the rest of the world’s economies losers to different degrees.

Water…yep…a little more convoluted to connect directly to the POD but could be done. Maybe we just need one more acronym: PCD…Peak Commodity Dynamic. Covers energy, water, food, minerals, etc. And the worse tragedy of all: PBBIC. I could handle a shortage of motor fuel, etc. But a shortage of Blue Bell Ice Cream!!! Life would not be worth living. BTW: on The Oil Drum I occasionally was offered BBIC vouchers for particularly useful research. Hint.

But in the end commodities will be controlled either financially or by military power…pretty much as it has always worked. Ignoring the military angle those with capital will acquire what they need. Those without won’t. If one doesn’t not have the energy to help their economy prosper they’ll lack the wealth and thus lack the other commodities they require. IOW if you got the money you won’t go thirsty. Peak Water is only a problem for those who can’t buy what water is available. Pretty much the same for PO.

[kublikhan]

h2, I guess we just have different perspectives on the US growth numbers for wind & solar. I see 2 nascent technologies with rapid growth. Wind alone increased 14 fold between 2000 and 2009 and now provides over 3% of US electricity needs. A decade ago they contributed virtually nothing to our electrical needs. Total renewables now provide over 12%. Fossil fueled energy generation also went through it's nascent period of rapid growth and low initial numbers. Renewables are no different.

This is all the more remarkable considering how low natural gas prices are over here. I agree with your analysis that cheap gas is acting as disincentive to build renewable power in the US. Power companies don't have much incentive to build out renewable power with gas this cheap, other than to meet renewable energy targets. But this natural gas glut will not last forever. Eventually natural gas prices will rise and act as a strong incentive to build out more renewable power.

I wouldn't be so quick to praise Germany nor call their electricity rates "slightly" higher either. Electricity rates in Germany are already triple what they are in the US and double what they were in 2000. Prices are expected to go up another 30-50% in the next 10 years. Industries are already squealing over the higher electricity rates in Germany and are pulling up shop and moving to countries with cheaper energy. Pushing out high energy industries to other countries does not seem very "green" to me. More like a kid moving the vegetables around his plate to make it seem like he ate them.

Last spring, Chancellor Angela Merkel set Germany on course to eliminate nuclear power in favor of renewable energy sources. Now, though, several industries are suffering as electricity prices rapidly rise. Many companies are having to close factories or move abroad. Since Chancellor Angela Merkel's government abruptly decided to phase out nuclear energy last spring in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the situation for industries that consume a lot of electricity has become much more tenuous. Energy prices are rising and the risk of power outages is growing.

In macroeconomic terms, the impending demise of heavy industry is all the more worrying, because the job losses will not be offset elsewhere. There is no sign yet of the green economic miracle that the federal government promised would accompany Germany's new energy strategy. On the contrary, many manufacturers of wind turbines and solar panels complain that business is bad and are cutting jobs. Some solar companies have already gone out of business. The environmental sector faces a number of problems, especially -- and ironically -- those stemming from high energy prices.

"Berlin's energy policy affects all classic industrial sectors, from the steel and aluminum industry to paper and cement manufacturers, as well as the chemical industry. The metal industry, long an important sector in Germany, is already migrating to countries with cheaper electricity."

ThyssenKrupp: "Some 5,000 jobs are in jeopardy within our company alone, because an irresponsible energy policy is being pursued in Düsseldorf and Berlin."

"Electricity makes up a fifth of the mill's total costs, says Harald Behmenburg, the plant manager." "The price of electricity is moving in only one direction: steeply up. For the Krefeld plant, the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity has tripled since 2000."

"According to a recent survey by the DIHK, almost one in five industrial companies plans to shift capacities abroad -- or has already done so. The study also finds that almost 60 percent fear power outages or voltage fluctuations in the power grid, because wind and solar power are still too unreliable."

"...there have already been some serious problems caused by split-second power outages, which ordinary consumers don't even notice, but that create difficulties for industry, with its highly complex production processes. Since Merkel's new energy policy was introduced, aluminum manufacturer Norsk Hydro has registered half a million euros in losses at its German plants because of power fluctuations. Even minimal power outages can cause the company's sensitive rollers to seize up."

"Electricity and CO2-emissions costs are so high that the energy-intensive processes in the aluminum smelters is no longer profitable. Energy eats up about 50 percent of costs."

Merkel's Switch to Renewables: Rising Energy Prices Endanger German Industry

[Keith_McClary]

In the end it’s all interconnected: AGW, PO, alts, politics, oil shale, economic growth, LNG exports, military adventures, energy price induced poverty, etc.

Here you go:
Colonialism, Mining and Oil Shale: Don't Let the Genie Out of the Bottle
Mongolia, Canada, Israel & the United States
by MACDONALD STAINSBY

...
The flashers went off in my mind upon hearing that the proposed experimental, non-commercially operating technology developed in the United States and almost under way in an area some 12 kilometres from Jerusalem on pastoral vineyard lands that religious folks will tell you was where David slew Goliath. Why would Genie– upon whose board sit Rupert Murdoch, Howard Jonas, Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Lord Jacobs Rothschild and others– want to come to Mongolia? These open Zionists and militarists have made clear their goal is to make Israel an oil superpower– They even hired Israel “Relik” Shafir, a pilot who flew the sorties attacking the Osirak Nuclear Reactor in Iraq back in 1981– to be their CEO. He publicly likes to reference his time in the Israeli air force as having taught him the importance of energy self-sufficiency.
...
The technology, if applied, has been promoted as safe to water tables. But you can be the judge; the essential component to this idea that is even more deadly to the climate than tar sands operations of any type, is the extension of long, heating coils that would be inserted into the deposit hundreds of meters into the ground. This would then use a local power source (and in Mongolia, that would be coal) to basically cook the ground at 650 degrees F. This would last many months, some estimates are of 15 of them. Then kerogen, which is not oil, starts to “bleed” out of the rock, like condensation on a cold glass of water on a hot day.

Then all of the other extremes of tar sands and other oil shale facilities are needed– the plant and upgraders, transport to a refinery that can handle the product (if no such place exists in Mongolia now or in the future, then the kerogen pre-crude product must be exported– so any talk of reducing imports is a farce). However, the Genie facility– with unproven technology, let us repeat– would operate only 60km’s or so from UB. With that being the case, one wonders if Genie has come to Mongolia as a round about way to demonstrate the viability of their Israeli project, which in turn could help their hand in opening up the largest single oil deposit in the world?

The Green River Formation is the most well known of the oil shale basins in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Conservative estimates are that if it were given the go-ahead for development then that would be a deposit with over 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Almost five times that of Canada’s tar sands. And at a higher environmental and climate cost as well.
...
So is Genie trying to use Mongolia as a laboratory for the worst form of the worst form of extreme oil extraction left on the planet? Would that be to hand off the shaleball to Genie in Israel, to destroy the climate while trying to make a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement irrelevant? If Israel commercially can produce their estimated over 200 billion barrels of oil shale, that would be economically the single greatest apartheid wall for the BDS movement to scale. And even then, God’s work is not done. At this point it is time to take this tech developed in Colorado in the first place, back home. Some of the driest parts of the American west, where water is already at threat from climate change that hasn’t been fed oil shale carbon on a large scale yet.

[ROCKMAN]

Keith - Very interesting...thanks. Just one more component of the POD cancer.

[John_A]

Keith - Very interesting...thanks. Just one more component of the POD cancer.

Cancer tends to kill those it afflicts. So perhaps...the species has been suffering from cancer for a long, long time now, or maybe, we have a cure!

[ROCKMAN]

MADER – Actually that’s not bad IMHO. A little different context than MADOR but still pretty good. Good enough I might have to steal it for my own. But I would modify a bit: MADDER - mutually assured desperate depletion of exploitable resources. More in keeping with your tone. And then we can all say: We’re MADDER than hell and aren’t going to take it anymore!!!

[ROCKMAN]

S - Welcome aboard. Yes...different. Took a while to get use to it but once you accept that you don't have follow every thread it works very well. A topic comes up that you and others have the desire to beat to death you can have at it. No one will cut you off. Other folks who aren't interested just don't go there. I've started threads that I didn't think would go very far and they've run many weeks with a lot of interesting comments along with a 1,000+ reads. And even when the thread dies it's not dead. Something appropriate comes up months later anyone is free to update and bring it to the top of the list. You'll might notice some of these threads are years old and still occasionally become relevant again.