ecological footprint of solar panels

[cat man do]

I agree Sean that some of that Chinese stuff is crap, but some is sensational value for money, like this that I put in another post.

Also love my GMC battery drills. Have had Bosch and Metabo ones before and they clogg up with epoxy just as easily as the GMC stuff.

The 2 year warranty on GMC is great, got about a year and a half out of one of my batteries and they replaced it for free.

When the next one of the originals started to die after nearly 2 years they just gave me a whole new 18 volt drill with 2 batts and charger for free, and let me keep the old drill as well.

A lot of my stuff is getting replaced as it dies with this stuff, but not all.

Dave

[Alan Wheeler]

Yeap it is really important to understand, Cheap is made to be cheap. You can buy quality and cheap garbage from China or any country for that matter.
The culprits are not the Chinese, but the importers that bring in cheap garbage, but sell it to us with clever marketing and lies about how good it is.
Now one tool I bought not long ago that you guy's may be able to help me with. Millar Falls. I bought two 6" angle grinders. Both lasted a week if that. Not exagertaing. The company that sold them to me said they were great quality made in Canada. It has Made in Canada on them even. But I have never seen such poor quality and material. I didn't go back to the seller as I had issues with him on a another piece of crap he sold me. So I no longer deal with him.
Anyways, anyone actually heard of this gear and is it made in Canada?? Cause Canadians aught to be really ashamed of the crap being exported over seas.

[mudnut]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Mudnut, he raises a practical point. Consider if you will, the "second world" and the "first world" both clearcut huge forests in order to get fuel and timber and advance themselves. But here we are, telling the "third" world, especially Brazil, not to deforest themselves, not to advance themselves, but to save the jungles so we can breath. Hmmmm....
And we offer them nothing in return, for behaving better than we did while they save they world? (With the rare and NGO exception of buying up forests and "parking" them.)
Environmental issues are one of the many where being a nie guy and doing the right thing only places you at the back of the pack, while the carnivores enrich themselves and come out ahead--at your suffering AND with your help. This is not a way to encourage folks to step up to the task. Multiply that by the problem of sovereign governments (i.e. who is going to tell China to stop burning coal and not join the world economy? And why should they?) and I confess, I don't see any solution other than "grab it while you can". I don't LIKE that solution, but I don't see any other alternative except "do the right thing and be a loser."
You see a better way? A different outcome? A way to confiscate SUVs and allow China and Brazil to join the "first world" at the same time?

hellosailor,I myself dont have children.This topic can be discussed in the macro or the micro.But the thing that cannot be debated is the quallity that our offspring will inherit.Like I said befor,It's a personal thing,Do it or dont do it.Most humans probably think they would be losers if they did the "Right thing"Hey at the best we only live 70 good years.The real losers are your children and their children and so on.Hell,lets have a ball while we're here,our ancesters screwed us,in hindsight,so even know we realize their mistakes is it right to keep the "Hear no,see no " attitude alive.Doing what we can,singulary or collectivly,is what I would call practical to the solution.You want me to consider the 1st world 2nd world theory,funny enough we all live on the same planet,we are all human,and matey if you haven't realised,there is no place else to go.Especialy if we don't survive long enough to get there.I don't think doing our little bit is "Pissing in the wind"I would like to think that it is more of"Blowing in the wind(Bob Dylan)of adversity.Mudnut.

[GordMay]

Wheels:
Your Millers Falls grinder was likely made anywhere, and illegally branded “Millers Falls”.

Millers Falls tools were originally made in Massachusetts, never in Canada.

In 1982, Ingersoll-Rand sold the Millers Falls business to the newly-created Millers Falls Tool Co., headquartered in Alpha, NJ. The last purchase of the Millers Falls Tool Company was made by the Gorilla Glue Company which bought all remaining stock and ceased operations on the production of all Millers Falls tools which are no longer being made today.

http://www.oldtoolheaven.com/
http://www.roseantiquetools.com/id82.html

[hellosailor]

Sean, "but everything they make over there that's metal is made of this flaky, inferior stuff " What we used to simply call "pot metal". Whatever they threw in the pot and melted down, often cheap zinc because it melted easily.

Wheels, there have been some interesting recent comments about the growth in both India and China and of course the things that "the west" (Can I include Oz in that term??) doesn't notice much. Like the way powerlines can't be strung in parts of India because bandits steal them for copper. Or people can't even pump water on their own lands from their own wells--because their town or state sold off the groundwater rights to a corporation sucking it all out. And the Ganges is either going to clog up from all the junk, or be sucked dry, just depending on who gets to it first. I've heard that India may have already peaked because of substructure issues they can't deal with, like this. Especially now that others (like the Chinese) are willing to steal the markets that the Indians were stealing with outsourcing.
Or course then there's Pakistan and their "outlaw territories", same problem really.
China...different problems but not so different. Things will be "interesting" to watch there too.

Mudnut, if you look at the parents AND children now indulging in leased SUVs and huge credit card debts, and guzzling bottled water in throw-away non-recycled plastic bottles instead of going out there and recycling...I suspect that thinking about the children and the future is largely passe.

I promised someone I know that if I outlive them, they'll get a PLASTIC headstone that says "He forced me to recycle, at last."

[yotphix]

Just an odd story on the topic of Chinese nuclear power. In 1999 I was at a metal fab shop in suburban Toronto picking up a part they had made for me and a scruffy guy pulled up in a Hyundai Pony. He picked up a bunch of very complicated looking Titanium manifolds from a neat stack on a pallet and tossed them in the hatchback of the pony and left. I asked the welder what the parts were for and he said - no joke - they are nuclear plumbing bits for a reactor in china, and that was the contracted courier! Eeeek!

[hellosailor]

Not to worry, that's part of the system the Chinese government has set up to provide effective street lighting in the rural areas at night. "All villagers WILL glow in the dark!"

Apparently the glow dims after fifty years, but by then the villagers need to be replaced anyway.<G>

[mudnut]

hellowsailor.Point taken. Mudnut.