What upsets me is that none of the "go green" hype is really solving the root of the problem. I'm a little dismayed at how advertising and broadcasting companies are spinning their products to look green instead of it actually being green. It's doing the same thing but calling it different, or at best causing only marginal changes. If anybody saw the John Stuart show yesterday, the "moment of zen" was when a magician turned Elmo green with the wave of a wand, as if painting yourself green is all it takes to improve our environment. Some examples:

1. 'clean coal' would be better described as 'just slightly less than dirty coal'.
2. new car commercials are conveying the message "our car is the green car of the future" even though it's the same crap. The new Honda slogan is "finally, it's here" implying that it's pollutant-free
3. someone who separates their trash to recycle, thinking that will make a difference.

On top of that, I saw some Earth Day report by a CNN correspondent about what you can do, and it was all a bunch of weak-sauce baloney just like the tech correspondent. One of his suggestions was "get a glass cup and wash it instead of using plastic cups."

Really. REALLY!??

The whole thing is making me upset, and causes me to ask "is there anything that we can really do?"

Of course there are things we can do. The problem is that no one wants to spend the money to do them.

We'll continue the way we're going until it becomes profitable to go another way. Hopefully someone will realize that it's profitable to not all die and decide to spend the money necessary to keep the Earth in a state that can support human life.

It's like Mr. Smith said in the Matrix. WE (the humans) are the virus destroying the world.
The only thing we can really do is to go away.

Why won't it?

Now isn't that an egocentric view. As if we've done anything to threaten the existence of the world. We've merely threatened our own existence, along with most of the rest of life on Earth. The planet will still be here no matter what we do.

My understanding is that the benefits are incredibly marginal. Even if everyone in the entire world did it.

Every little bit helps. Recycling alone may not do much, but it may turn out to be that one tiny little snowflake that starts the avalanche of us not all dying.

EDIT:

Stop editing while I'm responding to you, dammit!

Yea. The planet will still be here. Some species more or less makes no diffrences

sorry. I'm a bit of a re-re-re-edit type personality.

I get that way sometimes, too. That's why I always make sure to mark my edits, because I know how confusing it can be if someone's response doesn't match my post.

I'm saying we're not talking about the mountain.

And I'm saying don't dis the snowflake.

No, no it doesn't. It's like premature optimization; it doesn't help to reduce the time your rendering function takes by 1ms if you have a blocking call in your networking code. (this analogy assumes a single threaded approach, of course)

And thus it fails.

It is wrong if all we do is recycle. But it is not wrong to recycle as a small part of a much larger effort.

Uhm... yeah. You can do all the small things that are within your control. Oh wait? Do you think that each individual can solve the problem from the very top? Or do you think there's some person at the top that needs to do it for you?

Probably the most impact you can have as an individual is to lobby local body and national government to introduce legislation to stop industry from causing so much damage. There are hundreds of thousands of companies that throw away more recyclable goods in a day than what an individual could recycle in a month.

Likewise, residential pollution is insignificant compared to industrial pollution. Probably the biggest obstacle to overcome with this however is the governments of developing nations who are happy to have their environment destroyed if it means they can entice corporations to move their manufacturing base there.

But for comapnies that can't do that, the best way to get them to shape up is to make it cheaper for them to operate cleanly than to act wastefully, and that requires hitting them with hefty fines for environmental infractions.

As Dr. House would say, "People don't change." Hopefully, the "Going Green" trend will at least be a start in opening people's eyes to the changes we're going to have to make eventually, even if it isn't really changing anything now. Actually, Al Gore is the real start.

Those asteroid strikes (that are down to every few million years by now) and other stuff such as the Yellowstone supervolcano make our puny efforts to ruin the ecology look lame, we're just taking ourselves too seriously.
OTOH, if we want everything to stay exactly the same... naw, won't happen.

http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Comets-and-Asteroids/When-Comets-and-Asteroids-Strike-Earth.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

That depends entirely on the trash. Some things make a huge difference^[1], some not at all. It also depends on the waste infrastructure already in place. For example, everything that's even remotely combustible^[2] goes right in the trash for me, since I get it back in the form of remote heating (my city runs both a remote heating plant and a biogas plant entirely on garbage).

You also have to keep in mind that recycling is about saving on two^[3] different things: resources and energy. You have to look at the benefits of both to decide if it's worth it or not - nowadays, people have a tendency to be so CO₂ fixated that they forget all about resource usage.

My cynical side tends to think that this is merely a way for people to feel good about themselves. After all, what's the alternative? Tell people that there's really nothing useful they can do? Sure, go save the world. Why not?

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I definitely get that feeling a lot too (especially when it comes to some recycling).

I completely with Mark's sentiment about the media's effort to try and capitalize on the whole Earth day thing to improve their image. On a side note, I find it interesting how The Daily Show seems to have been changing from satirizing politics to satirizing the media lately. I actually really like the way they're doing it, and it seems so easy...most of the time all they need to do to make a joke is show a clip from any of the cable news networks because they crap they say sometimes is so ridiculous.

I've decided my life has immense meaning and that I am so important that I must act now to save the world from destruction!!!!

... or was that just the 007 film I watched?

I don't care. I wont be here century.

[edit]
A few hours later I notice I missed a "next" there. Next century of course.

I like to use EXTRA energy just to make somebody's hour worthless.

No, I'm kidding, but I wouldn't hold it against somebody that did. I think I'm relatively energy conservative as is. I don't make sacrifices, but I try to be careful not to waste resources. Most people don't so their hour doesn't compare to the countless resources they waste the rest of the year. I don't practice Earth Day.

I don't 'practice' Earth Day. I recycle, and that's it.

Rainbow Six anyone?

But don't you realize that if we all turn off our lights that day will save billions of units of energy!! Thats a lot!! Turn them off and you'll be important like me

This kind of stuff upsets me as well. I've been complaining to everyone I know about this for about a year. I reckon Clean Coal(TM) is one of the worst parts of it.

Just build some nuke plants and call it a day. I still say they are by far the cleanest source we have right now with the least environmental impact. Hell, even hydro and wind power can have serious consequences.

Not as serious as nuclear energy though. We still don't know where to leave all that radioactive waste.

The thing that pisses me off the most lately is "CO₂ compensation" programs. The idea is simple: You do something that releases CO₂ into the atmosphere, and to compensate for that, you pay someone to plant some trees for you; trees turn CO₂ into C and O₂, thereby reversing the harm you have done. Sounds great, but isn't: The carbon bound by the tree is turned into organic matter, wood mainly; and that wood remains in the system. At some point, the wood will be turned into something else - firewood, furniture (which at some point breaks, and gets burned or rots away), bio fuel, whatever. And guess what: In pretty much every single scenario, the wood eventually gets burned or otherwise turned into CO₂ and a few other largely irrelevant substances. Even if the forest is left alone, the tree will eventually rot (which fuels other non-photosynthesizing organisms, which in turn produces CO₂). The CO₂ thus achieved is exactly zero.

The only way to really remove that carbon from the system is to take the tree, turn it into oil and pump it back into the ground. That, or remove it from the planet (but this in turn requires fossile fuels until we are able to build solar-powered space elevators).

I don't think you're entirely fair in your story, Tobias. Because a tree is still (momentarily) a retainer for CO₂. That said, I also think CO₂ neutral is bullocks.

No, it's a very good way to make some other people feel good about themselves.
Sometimes I get the feeling, the calculation has already been made, that says: "we're fucked anyways". Either the world's governments suck at environmental preservation or they just don't care. I suspect the latter.
What annoys me the most is that I know that even if I do everything I can personally including ending my life prematurely, there are people/industries more than negating all that effort. And the ones who know what people that are, are averting the attention. And in the end someone is pointing at us and says: "you should spend less energy".
END_OF_RANT()

Nuclear doesn't have serious environmental consequences, but it has the most severe political consequence, other than perhaps harvesting energy by burning unwanted humans (as a kind of death penalty)...

I wasn't going to contribute to this thread, but today at the grocery store I was faced with an interesting conundrum related to the whole "green" hype.

Basically, once my total passed the $60 mark, the cashier said that any purchase over $60 earned a free green bin... yeah... a big, green, plastic bin to hold about 1/3 of my groceries in.

The very first thing that came to mind was, "THAT'S your company's solution?? Offer plastic bins which leave a much larger carbon footprint to produce than simply sticking with plastic bags?" Each one of these bins probably has at least 50 times as much plastic in it as a bag, and in order to provide them for free to customers you'd have to produce a ton of them.

And of course, they started charging 5 cents for each plastic bag... which means now the bags themselves are bigger, thicker, and the cashiers try to stuff more into each one. (Which probably just makes them that much more likely to tear through, regardless of the fraction of a mm thicker they are.)

Though I suppose what bothers me the most is that, these bags are nothing more than #4 plastic, yet the city I'm in won't recycle plastic bags for some curious reason. (They recycle anything ELSE made of #4 plastic.)

Oh yeah, earlier someone mentioned how recycling isn't much of a solution, to which I would remind anyone who says that: Recycling isn't meant to reduce the amount of energy it takes to make something, it's meant to reduce the amount of new material which needs to be unearthed in order to make new things and to reduce the amount of stuff which needs to go to landfills and such.

So... yeah, that's all I have to add.

As long as we dig and pump up a lot of C from inside Earth, we won't get rid of the CO2, if we don't raise the biomass on Earth, where C is tied up. We could also put the C back in caves, but that would be meaningless.

I think we need to upgrade to C++02.

My understanding of the problem is that the excess CO2 of the Paleozoic age (lots of tropical ferns & such) is tied up in coal and oil deposits, which we are releasing to the atmosphere to get energy. There is also release of the CO2 stored in the permafrost of arctic regions, which is now thawing and rotting (releasing methane).

So if we can reallocate resources to Paleozoic conditions, we'll do fine (easier said than done)

The problem is the way recycling is done today: Everyone sorts their trash, then a second separate set of diesel-powered trucks come around and pick up the recyclables, which are then sent to a separate location for processing.

Division of labor would solve those problems:
- Have specialized people sort through trash for you. At first, it will be done by hand, but eventual capital investments will result in machines processing trash.
- Trash goes to a single location, eliminating the waste and redundancy.
- Recycling will naturally only occur on products that are worth recycling; where the marginal cost of recycling is lower than the marginal cost of extraction.

Besides, it's really hard to "use up" non-combustible materials. When they end up in landfills, they're still easier to extract back than the mining operation that originally generated them.

Ultimately, price will determine if it's better to throw away something or to reuse it.

Have you missed our recent threads on it? It's not that huge of a problem. Whereas dams for hydro power can seriously screw with the ecosystem, and the wind turbines sap energy from the wind causing who knows what weather issues.

I thought we were trying to save the earth? Less energy = generally better, so by wasting energy recycling we're doing more harm.

probably noting worse than a treeline or set of buildings

And nature has ways of getting revenge

http://www.weather.com/multimedia/videoplayer.html?clip=14115

No. We are in no danger of problematically slowing down the wind. AFAIK, the bigger problems with wind turbines is that they act as giant bird guillotines.

Wind farms are going up all around my home town. Free energy for all!

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Picture taken just a stone's throw away from the house.

How do you know the effects of wind turbines on the wind isn't problematic?

Because it's just an obstruction. They exist everywhere. And we're not lacking for wind speed.

That doesn't mean there is no effect.

BAF is Mr. Green. He won't even plant a tree because it might make the wind angry.

I even participated IIRC. And it is quite a problem; not now, but the only thing we have come up with so far is "bury it somewhere deep down and pray nothing leaks".

To my knowledge, no serious research done about this so far has been able to show any significant effect. Sure, we don't know for sure yet, but considering that the effect of a nuclear power plant heating up water has been shown to negatively influence local ecosystems, I'd say wind farms form a lesser evil.

I vaguely remember having read that recent research has shown that bird populations around wind farms adapt quite quickly, and avoid the turbines. The mortality rate is far below the critical mark even for endangered bird species.

A bigger problem is that there is hardly enough suitable space to place them, at least here in the Netherlands - to put up a wind farm, you need to make sure that:
- no residential areas are nearby where residents could be offended by the sight, or the noise
- the area is not used by the military (which, apparently, is a huge problem especially with off-shore wind farms)
- the wind farm will not obstruct air or sea traffic
- the landscape is not protected in any way (which, again, is a huge problem off-shore)
- and quite a few more
Which leaves very little options; as it is now, pretty much every single suitable spot is already occupied.

In the end, it all seems to come down to one thing - we need to actually reduce our resource usage. Using 'different' energy won't cut it - we'll have to do with significantly less.

On a side note: If 20% of the Earth's population use 80% of its resources, then that means if we get rid of those 20% (which unfortunately includes me and everyone I personally know), the planet could take four times the number of people it holds now at the same level of resource usage, or twice as many at half the usage.

They say a butterfly can make a hurricane on the other side of the world, and the inverse is also possible, that a butterfly's wing beats alter wind currents to prevent a hurricane on the other side of the world. Who's to say these wind turbines weren't responsible for preventing the Mother of All Hurricanes?

It's true that microlevel events can trigger macrolevel events. But it's useless to focus on the microlevel things if one wants to prevent hurricanes. Global warming is a macrolevel thing that might have to do with hurricanes. A wind turbine is nothing but a huge microlevel thing. And, according to someone, it's more likely that a bird will explode or implode in the near presence of the wings, than actually get cut in two. Due to drastic pressure change.

Let me guess... by windmills?

Then let's go squash all butterflies. Or let's go make more butterflies. Seriously, this is silly and doesn't help arguing either direction. If the consequences of turbines are unpredictable, then the consequences of not installing them are equally unpredictable, which in turn means it doesn't matter whether they're there or not.

It's the other way around. Most of the windmills here aren't for making flour, they're wind-powered pumps to keep the artificially-created land below sea level dry (why else would Holland have needed more mills than other countries?). Today, they use electric pumps, so the mills are mainly decorative, but without them, the land wouldn't have existed in the first place. And many of the wind turbines here are situated near a historic windmill, because the artificial land has less of a visual appeal and isn't as densely populated as the naturally-grown land. The problem with this country is simply that it is so crowded (24th on the population density list at wikipedia, and not very evenly distributed).

Or build a relatively small secured storage facility and have it last for a long time.

I say go nuke all the way.

My father recently mentioned a news article he read/heard about where some people who lived close to power generating windmills were complaining about getting headaches; a result of either the noise generated by the motion of the blades or the large quantity of electricity being produced.

It seems like almost every kind of method to produce electricity on the face of the planet causes some kind of harm or another, regardless of how minor it is. Maybe we she should just destroy all the power plants and go back to the dark ages? Who needs electricity?!

Headaches from large quantities of electricity being produced? Where'd he read that, the National Enquirer?

Under certain circumstances, I can hear electricity, but most of the time I can't. Go ahead and call me a liar, I'm used to people not believing me when I mention this. (I am more than capable of proving it in person.)

I generally don't realize I'm hearing electricity unless it suddenly goes out, with the exception of high-drain devices like CRTs, which I can usually hear from several feet away, sometimes more. I recall that one of my grandmothers had a TV in a condo of hers that I could hear while it was OFF for some mysterious reason. When I unplugged it, I stopped hearing it.

Considering my sensitivity is minor, I don't doubt there could be people who would be much more sensitive to it.

The noise concern could actually be quite real. The electricity thing? No.

Once again, no you don't.

I'm not going to call you a liar; I'm going to call you stubbornly misguided.

(Post written while listening to the flyback transformer whine from two separate CRTs)

Lots of TV's have an "instant on" feature that uses electricity to keep the cathodes near operating temperature.

The only time I've heard of people "hearing electricity" is the humming of 5000 volt lines (I've heard that myself, and it's louder if you put your ear onto the pole to hear the conducted sound) but IMO it's the vibration resulting from magnetic effects of two wires that are sufficiently close to attract/repel each other.

Scrolling a webpage on my old 486 with a very old CRT screen used to generate interferences in my FM radio's sound (4 meters away)

I'm not stubbornly misguided, I'm not guided at all. I have to believe it's the electricity itself I can hear because I don't know what all the different things I can sometimes hear have in common, nor has anyone given me any rational explanations.

The things I can hear sometimes include:

• CRTs (ALL of them, never met a CRT I couldn't hear)

• LCDs (Only been able to hear a couple so far...)

• Incandescent Light Bulbs

• Fluorescent Light Bulbs

• Dimmer Switches

• Cars in Battery-Only Mode (Inside or outside the vehicle)

• Power Transformers (Not just one or a couple but ALL of them)

Not to mention the curious sensation I get whenever the power goes out...

Or hey, perhaps none of those things have anything in common and I can hear power flowing through them for completely different reasons for each. The thing is, most people I've encountered in my life, they can hear maybe one or a couple of those things, but never everything in that list.

If there's more rational explanations than hearing the flow of electricity through these things, I'm listening. Teach me why I can hear them all!

There was a guy on TV earlier today who said he could hear God.

It shouldn't be too hard to set up a double-blind experiment to see if Kris can actually hear electricity or not.

Just think of all the fame and fortune headed his way!

Magnetostriction, electrostriction, "regular" electromagnetically induced vibration (changing magnetic field + not perfectly seated or rigid ferromagnetic component = vibration), and even thermally induced vibration.

Transformers (in particular, the infamously noisy flyback transformers) as well as large electromagnets.

Transformers, inverters (CCFLs are a popular choice for backlights).

Hum when fed switched power, e.g. from a dimmer.

Ballasts.

Switching regulators. Not only can the units themselves hum or whine, they induce the same in the bulbs they regulate.

Take your pick of noisy components; they're probably all in there in one form of another.

See the first couple of links.

Wow... they do all have something in common then... they all have components which potentially make buzzes/hums when fed power.

The thing is, as Arthur demonstrated with his replies, a vast majority of people don't believe me when I say I can hear these things, and I always figured the only thing they had in common was electricity. As such, no one had ever offered me any information on why I could hear these things; I never had any idea what to even attempt to research.

I'll have to look more into this when I get a chance... but I guess I'm gonna have to change what I say from, "I can hear electricity", to, "I can hear a number of electrical devices most people can't".

Thanks, Gnolam!

... I take the stubbornness comment back.

Glad to have helped then.

Try to recognise the frequency you hear. I bet a lot of them are multiples to your net frequency (50 Hz or 60 Hz). Or maybe to the frame rate f.

To get the frequency, you have to find the corresponding tone on your piano. Middle A is about 440 Hz. Double the frequency when you go to the next A higher (and halve when you go to the lower). There are 12 steps to the next A, so for each step you multiply the frequency with 2^1/12. Or divide, if you go lower.

The net hum in Finland is 50 Hz. It's a G-ish tone. The A above would be 55 Hz. G is two steps below A.
55 / 2^1/12 / 2^1/12 would be 48.999, so the hum is a bit higher than G.

Solar power is relatively harmless, but still horribly inefficient for producing electricity. So yes, every energy source has a downside, which means that the road to success is twofold: 1, reduce energy usage wherever possible, and 2, produce the energy we absolutely need using a technology that has the smallest long-term impacts.

How secure? How long? And what happens when we're out of uranium / plutonium?

Yeah when my work first bought Ikea lamps with a dimmer I first claimed that they were all defective. Then older people in their 40s/50s told me they couldn't hear anything It looks like it's tied with age to me, and I was also told that all dimmers produce that buzz.

Anyway, the sound drives me crazy so I cant work next to a dimmed light (it's always on full at work anyway, where it doesn't make any noise)

Don't use dimmers on fluorescent lamps. Only on tungsten lamps. Edison lamps. Whatever they are called. The tungsten lamp is silent, but the dimmer itself might keep noise.

Fluorescent lights flicker. When you dim them, the flickering tends to increase, as if they would drop every second phase. Meanwhile the noise increases, even to the extent that others than Kris can hear it.

It was only for halogen lamps in my case, and the bulb doesn't emit any sound as far as I can tell, only the dimmer.

Doesn't have to be too secure. I think the figure was like 100 years or so. By the time we run out of fuel for that, we should have a new energy source. Nuclear would be used to hold us over, not as the next big thing.

Woa. I need to get some sleep. I read "BAF" as "BARF"

What new fuel are we expecting? A solar infrastructure? A massive swine flu fuel culture?

If you think the supply of fissionables is limited^[1], it's nothing compared to the rare metals that go into solar panels...

I thought everyone did

I don't think those newer flexible solar cell "rolls" use the same rare metals.

I'm 51, and can't hear quiet high frequencies (ringing in my ears drowns them out)

I'm also a cab driver, and last night once again a hot young thing seemed rather annoyed at me. She rambled on in a quiet, high pitched voice, and whenever the pitch rose, I assumed it was a question, so I'd say "Uh-huh".
I imagine it went something like this...

Her: So my husband is deployed in Iraq, and I'm so lonely I could scream. What do you think I should do?
Me: Uh-huh.
Her: You don't have a girlfriend, do you?
Me: Uh-huh.
Her: Could you help me carry this stuff inside when I get home?
Me: Uh-huh.
Her: Would you be able to stay awhile?
Me: Uh-huh
Her: You don't sound like that's a good idea. Do you think I'm ugly?
Me: Uh-huh.
Her: You're just agreeing with whatever I'm saying because you're a moron, aren't you?
Me: Uh-huh.

Absolutely true.. but with solar power you can build the panels and then get power indefinitely. The rare metals don't supply the energy, they kind of supply the power. Sure, the panels might break or something, but the rare metals aren't going to disappear. We can essentially use them for as long as there is sunshine. --- but maybe we will want more panels than their are resources to build them.

What I'm expecting is that (if the human race lives long enough) we will eventually have fusion power. Fusion also uses limited resources, but those resources are much more plentiful(*). It's also likely that we'll improve solar power and energy storage so that solar could be used for everything. It's worth noting that there are already types of solar panels which don't use the rare metals we were talking about earlier - but those solar panels are less efficient at converting the sun's photons into electricity. So my guess is one or both of those options, but there are others.

(Note *: Really, all resources are limited. It just depends on what kind of timeframe you are looking at. Eventually the sun will burn out or explode or whatever, and everything we currently call "renewable" will run out. .. my point is just that although fusion does not use 'renewable' resources it really could see us through to the end of our days as a species, if it works as advertised. )

10 to 20 years at most is the lifetime of a solar panel, and of course the older they become the less effective they are. Though I don't know if the metal can be recovered and recycled afterward.

There is no doubt in my mind that the metals can be recovered to build new panels. -- but I don't know how difficult it is or how much energy it would cost. Obviously if takes more energy to recover the metal and build new panels than the panels actually capture from the sun then the whole thing is screwed, but I don't think that will be the case.

I think the biggest problems with solar panels are:
- A relatively large area is needed to produce substantial amounts of energy
- Suitable areas for solar panels (deserts and such) are generally far away from the places where the energy is needed (urban areas), making energy distribution problematic
- Maintenance is somewhat impractical because huge solar farms would cover large, remote areas in countries with little infrastructure
- Solar panels lend themselves for decentralized energy networks, but virtually all current networks are tailor-made for large central power plants servicing a wide area; using this local approach however raises the issue that the production peaks in the summer, while usage peaks 6 months later.

We don't know when that will be, and we might even hit obstacles that make the whole thing completely impractical no matter how much science we throw at it. For now, it's a nice dream.

That is crazy, you can't get something indefinitely. I'd say you get 5 years before the government starts taxing it (Free energy for all ^politicans).

A better form of solar power is using reflectors to heat water which then drives turbines. Its starting to be used all over the place. And all you need is some shiny metal, and pipes.

Yeah, AFAIK that's more efficient than PV. Also, it's more versatile--if you just want hot water, which is a common use, you have it.

Some Finn, who thought he was clever, invented a heating oven which you could load with wet and snowy wood. It was kind of a clever invention, the heat of the dry burning wood melted and dried the snowy wood before it got loaded in turn. I don't remember if it needed electricity for the conveying, or if the heat produced also the needed motion somehow. Anyway, you could go to the forest, get something to burn, chop it and load it, in the middle of the winter. But I bet most of the energy in the wood goes to the melting and drying. IIRC to melt 0° ice to 0° water needs as much energy as warming 0° water to 72°. And you need even more energy to vaporize it.

The clever thing to do is the usual way of storing the snowy wet wood and let the sun dry it during summer and burn it next winter. This is kind of solar power, used for centuries.

Well the burning of the wood itself is "unwinding" the sunbeams of years past that fell on the trees leaves

I have a uni work mate that is building a house (Melbourne, Australia), by law, he is required to install solar hot water heating, that uses gas or electricity back up. It will be gas, as Australia has access to large amounts of it, so its cheap. But the Australian government is putting things on the people, so that the industry doesn't have to cut back so much.

The point was that you first need energy to make the wood burn at all. Good story

Was it mentioned on this thread that we could just drill holes a couple of km deep (or less)?

Look, all I was saying was solar power won't "run out" due to the limited supply in rare metals. I certainly didn't say anything about it being free, at all. Tax has absolutely nothing to do with what I was talking about.