Slashdot Mirror

You are comparing apples to oranges. The sulfur market was a teeny tiny market primarily between the companies putting out sulfur, and was therefor not nearly at risk of bubble blowing. With carbon credits you are talking about pretty much every single person on the planet and every single business being affected in one way or another, and Goldman Sachs is already in the game baby, yeah! So you can pretty much be guaranteed serious leeching and bubble blowing.

You see, I actually have a pretty simple rule: If it is good for Goldman Sachs it is fucking evil and should be avoided. GS is a fucking cancerous leech, a blight upon our world, and pretty much their entire history comes down to causing misery. So if GS is already in the game you can give it up buddy. In the end it will end up another Ponzi scheme just like the housing market, because GS is the fucking kings of deception and lies. Support that? NEVER!

Mark me troll ALL you want, but don't be surprised when those in favor of AGW get run out of congress on a rail in 2010. Mark my words, after AIG and TARP folks are sick of "enlightened self interests" making policies that take money out of their pockets, and with Goldman Sachs setting themselves up to make so much money off the "carbon credits" scam that robber barons would blush,

And with Al Gore paying himself carbon offsets from the company he is profiting from so he can blow whatever he wants? Well you might as well hand the republicans the keys to congress and the White House now. Don't forget to turn off the lights on your way out, wouldn't want to waste energy now.

According to actual research, you're wrong. eBook readers reduce net CO2 emissions.

http://earth2tech.com/2009/08/19/why-the-kindle-is-good-for-the-planet/

Or, what's the easiest way to get both right-of-way AND water rights? Uh huh, have the government condemn miles upon miles of land from everyone in the way.

This isn't some small scale local building installation we're talking about here. These are bought in bulk in a billion dollar installation. Your also assuming that panels are still prohibitively expensive due to the technology being relatively new, and the shortage of silicon.

Both are becoming non-issues.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20702/
http://earth2tech.com/2009/02/23/solar-prices-drop-deeper-discounts-expected/
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009478.html

Any new technology is expensive when it's new. As adoption increases, production costs go down as does the time it takes for return on investment.

Latest estimates show panel prices dropping by 40-50%. What was not cost effective in 2000 is easily becoming so in 2009.

I understand your view a lot better now. Dealing with the government regulators and regulations must have been miserable. Your whole business would be subject to the arbitrary whims of petty bureacrats, fat overweight people behind desks who would decide if the 'job was done' for an environmental cleanup.

Course, before making that decision, they would subject you to delays and stacks of paperwork. Their decision woudld determine whether you were even profitable, and if you cleaned up the same site twice, they would probably make a different decision each time.

Anyways, here's how you'd store all the power from these solar panels : http://www.vyconenergy.com/pages/flywheeltech.htm

It's $1 per watt-hour stored, off the shelf, 20 year lifespan (at least). Essentially 0 wear on the system.

    I calculate that it would be more cost effective if these flywheel systems were about 10 times cheaper, which is within the realm of plausibility. Notice that there are no rare elements of any sort used, just steel discs that could be mass produced in china and some commodity electronics. Quality would not be nearly as important for a large scale flywheel storage system because you would not care if a few modules failed prematurely. This is exactly the kind of product that China could make on a massive, commodity scale.

And here's what you make all the panels with : http://earth2tech.com/2008/06/18/nanosolar-prints-thin-film-solar-at-100-feet-per-minute/

That's what I meant all along : if nanosolar had about 10 of those machines, and there were about 5 other competitors in the market, solar power would be economical TODAY. Read some of the comments by the nanoscale CEO, who compared it to the DRAM market. Just LOOK at the machine : that's exactly the sort of product that mass production will make cheap, just like DRAM.

So, I rest my case. I argue that if you put, say, $100 billion dollars into plants to make thin film solar panels using the KNOWN process by nanosolar, and another $100 billion into plants to make flywheel storage devices, you would solve the energy problem almost entirely. The final step is fast charging lithium ion batteries, which you would charge up from electric gas station that would use underground flywheel storage reservoirs, in about 5 minutes.

And, guess what : here they are, ready to be purchased. http://www.altairnano.com/ Again, expensive : but nothing that mass production and time won't solve. Lithium ion battery costs have plummeted over the past decade, so further improvement follows logically.

Of course further R&D will help tremendously. But all of the pieces are here already.

what are their entirely specious or bizarre and untrue claims? sounds like you're just exhibiting a typical knee-jerk reaction to being told that something you use/enjoy is not perfect.

despite the inflammatory title on Gametrailers.com the Greenpeace commercial isn't railing against video games. in fact, they seem to be primarily trying to reach out to gamers and raise awareness about the environmental hazards involved in manufacturing electronics. the PTFE (teflon) and epoxy resin used in PCB manufacturing, and various dopants and other chemicals used in IC fabrication are in fact toxic and can be bad for the environment.

that doesn't mean you have to give up video games or throw away your computer, but disseminating such information encourages consumers to make more environmentally conscious decisions. and it's not just Greenpeace that's pushing for more sustainable development in the electronics industry. green computing is increasingly attracting the attention of more and more computer manufacturers.

thanks to Greenpeace, a lot of companies like Apple are starting to clean up their act and even taking the initiative to encourage more corporate responsibility regarding sustainable development.

but in the end, it's the consumers who have the most influence on manufacturers. it's only because consumers are demanding greener computers now that manufacturers are starting to pay attention to their environmental impact. so what's wrong with Greenpeace trying to encourage gamers to do the same? modern consoles are just very specialized gaming/media PCs. and pushing console manufacturers to be a little more environmentally conscious can only be a good thing.

In the same week, a group of New Mexico utilities have announced a RFP for a new solar project. This is interesting since a significant amount of land in rural New Mexico is Federally controlled, either by the BLM or military.

Sorry, I missed your message. You spoke to the wrong person at Naonsolar. Check with a guy names Roscheisen: http://earth2tech.com/2007/07/30/10-questions-for-nanosolar-ceo-martin-roscheisen/. You seem to be so deep in the nuclear industry FUD, that I'll just wait for you to come up for air on the rest of it.

This interview with Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen (coming on line this year at $1/watt wholesale price) http://earth2tech.com/2007/07/30/10-questions-for-nanosolar-ceo-martin-roscheisen/ says that he feels that vacuum based processes are not going to be competitive. Doubt he's getting 13% efficiency though.