Slashdot Mirror

If you are really look here or or maybe here.

If reading information-dense articles are too much for you here is one money-quote pulled from the second link above:

All told, nearly 1 million Americans are working near- or full-time in the energy efficiency, solar, wind, and alternative vehicles sectors. This is almost five times the current employment in the fossil fuel electric industry, which includes coal, gas, and oil workers.

cities, I was told that most of the older houses and apartments had neither air conditioning nor heating until the last few years. In this region, people were accustomed to apartments that were âoehot in summer; cold in winter.â Their drafty homesâ"built with leaky window and no insulationâ"pretty much reflected the temperature outside. But lately, almost all the residents of these older buildings have installed window units that provide both heating and cooling. I asked my Chinese colleagues if they were less efficient than central AC or heat. In terms of mechanics, of course, these smaller units are less efficient. China is horrible with efficiency and I showed it last time that you were a liar.

I don't know if you read German but this report, on page 2 has the graph comparing total costs per kWh by energy source. Solar PV and wind turbines achieved lower cost than all of the non-renewable resources. Even cheaper than lignite brown coal. On the issue of reliability, assuming you know power engineering, this document provides a good summary, again on page 2.

This is some good info for you: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/def...

Hint: None of it is cheap, but cheaper than other pollution control measures. (for things like NOx, particulates, etc) I've personally worked on one that was utilizing activated carbon injected into the flue gas prior to the ESP (Electrostatic Precipitator, particulate control). I don't, however, know how effective it actually proved to be. I left the company before they were able to study the results.

OK, but we need very little uranium, in comparison to other ways of generating electricity.

I'd say nuclear power uses quite a lot more Uranium in comparison to other ways of generating electricity, considering those other ways don't use any Uranium at all...

According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power consumes about 200 tons of Uranium oxide per GWe per year.

I now wonder what is the comparison with mining the raw materials to make all those wind turbine blades and solar panels, as well as the fossil fuel it takes to ship / truck them all over the place for their installation?

Probably not nearly as much as the environmental impact of uranium mining and enrichment. Mining uranium is an ongoing process that produces thousands of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste in the form of mine tailings before it even gets to the enrichment plant.

Solar panels are made primarily from silicon, which is refined from sand and quartz rock. While not all sources of quartz are created equal, it's not exactly hard to come by. Right now there is no method of recycling solar PV panels since there is no economic benefit to figuring out how, and there's not a lot of scrapped PV panels piling up causing a problem: Panels installed decades ago are only recently reaching their natural end of life, and panels produced today have output warranties of 30+ years... so in practical terms they will probably outlive the people who bought them.

For wind turbines, the blades are typically made of carbon and/or glass fiber composites. (Carbon fiber is potentially renewable though AFAIK current industrial scale production relies on petroleum.) The pillars are steel, and the bases are steel and concrete.

Then there is an army of techs necessary to climb those towers and maintain the equipment in the generator room of those wind turbines, and those guys burn gasoline to get to those wind machines.

Unless they use electric vehicles, which would make a lot of sense since they would literally be surrounded by renewable energy sources. And as far as I know, there is no legal limit on how much exposure to a wind turbine nacelle you're allowed in a year.

Solar is probably less maintenance intensive, but can only generate a limited number of hours per day. Right now we have few ways to store generated power, so that situation isn't ideal either.

The "baseload power" argument has been bunk for almost a decade now. Turns out that utility companies from all over the world, who are responsible for maintaining the stability and reliability of the electrical grids within and between their jurisdictions, are keenly aware that renewable energy is going to continue to grow. They're planning for it. They're doing studies and analysis. Those studies keep showing that "baseload" power like coal and nuclear are just not necessary even without storage.

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/k...

Storage is just extra gravy on the side, and since it will take decades to fully transition there's plenty of time to build that, too.
=Smidge=

As of 2016, it was down to 2/3rds. Like everywhere else, China's grid is changing fast.

That is a lie...

I got about half a page into that before I was overwhelmed by the stench of bullshit. There *are* valid arguments against baseload power - you can reasonably combine renewable sources (which produce power when they want to) with peaker sources like natural-gas plants (which produce power when you want them to) - but that site is pure A-grade bullshit from beginning to end.

I mean, just look at their second plot, which shows wind power conveniently peaking up during the night, when solar power stops. How likely do you think that is to happen? How would you like to *depend* on that happening?

As a rule of thumb, I suggest ignoring any site that uses a "Myth: X ... Fact: Y" structure. My experience is that they are almost uniformly content-free propaganda.

Wind and solar are at #1 because both require a base load.

That is a lie...

Believe it or not, I am open to learning new things, and I don't like pollution, or poverty.

But right in that conceptual mix graph on that report you linked, it shows

      hydro + wind + gas

in roughly equal thirds.

And recently I am hearing news that "gas" is a fossil fuel which should be phased out.

To me, "base load" just means, generate enough energy for what's needed. Yes you can make it up in any proportion you can manage, if you can manage it. That conceptual graph still shows gas as one third of the mix at night time. Call it base load, call it demand. But it is still conceptually the same as saying

1. fossil + whatever renewables like wind / solar / hydro

Wind and solar are at #1 because both require a base load.

That is a lie...

If you exclude nuclear, then you're left with fossil fuels.

...and you are a liar.

Here we go: https://www.nrdc.org/trump-wat...

What they are doing was already done in Canada by Stephen Harper. It was the major reason why he and his so called Conservatives got their ass handed to them on a plater in the last election. What they did was try to muzzle and pre-screen scientific data findings coming out of all scientists hired by the government of Canada. HOWEVER the Canadian public saw exactly what the assholes were up to and turfed their collective asses out of Ottawa. What happened afterwards was a purging of most the right wing nut jobs in the conservative party and some positive changes to bring some sanity back into the party.

Let us hope that the US does the same thing to Mr Trump next year by cutting the balls off the Republican controlled house and senate and turning Mr Trump into a yellow headed toupee sporting lame duck for the remainder of his term in office. I doubt that he is stupid enough to do something to cause his impeachment or that the whole Russian thing will bring down his castle, but trying to muzzle and castrate scientists could and should be an issue that will make enough intelligent Americans hand him his ass on a platter in 2018.

Here we go:
https://www.nrdc.org/trump-wat...

TFS & TFA are light on details, but here gives a little more info:
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/p...

The new proposed standards require that desktop computers reduce power draw by half when idle (with no user activity), and establishes more modest power reductions for notebooks/laptops, which already are much more efficient when operating on battery mode, but that is not always the case when they are plugged in.

Your link doesn't really back up your claim. . .

Someone who has learned enough economics to use terms like "diminishing return" should also have been taught that knowledge capital does not apply. Does lighting someone else's candle diminish your own lit candle? It is as if you are saying that water boils at 100 C, so evaporation can only occur at 100 C. I could go to the trouble to explain/prove everything myself, or I could just point you to the textbook ("Authority") saying otherwise for brevity. At the end of the day, the onerous is on you to prove that generally accepted facts and theories are wrong.

If you could go back in time and ask people in the early 20th century what the early 21st century would be like I think they'd be surprised not by all of the technology that looks like magic to them, but with how little has really changed.

Thanks, this goes back to my point of, "If they are so advanced, then where are their giant horses!?" Technological advances have occurred in the most important areas for them to occur. That people have failed to realize where these were going to be in the past is merely a testament of their limited knowledge/foresight and says nothing of the technological progress that has taken place. Your comment here says more about yourself than anything else.

Some technologies (like nuclear) are extremely centralized, government regulated, and monopolistic. Then there are technologies that are on the opposite spectrum. The latter is improving exponentially .

Yes, necessarily. Show me a weapon that's been built but never used and I'll show you a weapon that some General or battlefield yo-yo is itching to use.

Ah, yes, the old "General Ripper" fallacy. Everyone in the military is just a knuckle-dragging ape who thinks with the wrong head and is looking to shove other nations into the lockers during passing time every chance they get. I'm tired of hearing such juvenile reductions of career military officers and fail to see why anyone should take them as serious arguments.

And thus, they won't fucking be used as air-burst weapons.

You are aware that modern-day nuclear testing is carried out underground for a reason, right?

Any use of nukes is going to fuck shit up, and once we start using them then other nuclear powers will see that as an excuse to unlimber their nukes. "Well the US blew one up in Whatchamacallitstan, so why can't we set off one in Whoositville?"

This is my point. The addition of precision guidance to existing nuclear weapons is simply to increase their effectiveness in their existing role - not to give them new ones. Nukes are expensive to maintain, cause serious and lasting problems for the employing forces once they move to occupy the struck area and are generally just a bitch to use. It's hard to call anything "tactical" when at the very least it can wipe a few companies off the map in a single hit. Once you freely employ tactical nukes to degrade an enemies conventional defenses, all they have left is, well, their own tactical nukes (which then erode your own conventional forces) and then you're both left with just your strategic nuclear weapons, which exist purely to ensure the survival of your state in the event of a complete destruction of your conventional forces. This is precisely why tactical nukes in the cold war always existed as a kind of retroactive thing - only to be used when the strategic weapons were in the air anyways. As you so accurately observed, a nuke is a fucking nuke - a JDAM kit doens't change that, and I highly doubt there's anyone in the upper echelons of the US Military stupid enough to think it does.

Except that politicians and Generals really don't give a flying fuck about civilian casualties...in most cases they come under the heading of "collateral damage" and we all know that shit happens in war, right?

They sure do give a fuck if its THEIR civilians - their entire job is to protect those people. And that gets kind of hard if you instigate a nuclear exchange. For instance, take this analysis (by an anti-nuke group) of the likely targeting priorities in America's current nuclear attack plan against Russia: http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/wa... You will note how in a strict counter-force attack (only targeting enemy offensive nuclear weapons) the civilian casualties still number in the millions due to fallout. You will also note the limitations on just how many of those weapons they can locate and destroy - the road-mobile missiles are written off as impossible to fully engage. Even with a theoretically fully functional National Missile Defense system, the chances of the United States emerging from a nuclear war without taking a single strike are ludicrous, and even a single strike will result in at least a million people dead or dying (note that the Russian nuclear strategy is typically a counter-value one, i.e. targeting cities exclusively. There is no possible pre-emptive strike on Russia that won't inflict casualties serious enough to warrant an angry and vengeful counter-value strike.)

I have never understood the insistence of anti-nuke activists that this weapon or that system will somehow make nuclear war more appealing to the military high command. Even if the score is light by nuclear war standards, it's still catastrophic by normal ones - a

And... The U.S. has probably the worst human rail transit system in the developed world. The best are all backed by the governments.

True, because they have to be: human rail transport makes little sense. Germany tried to privatize it, but it didn't work out financially. And it doesn't work out financially because people don't actually want to travel by rail if they see the full cost. So the cost gets hidden in taxes.

Note that the US has the world's largest rail system, and it is nearly 100% utilized and extremely efficient. It is used what rail is actually good for: freight.

When you look at public transit use by country, the US comes in last, but that generally simply reflects wealth: people avoid public transit if they can:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/bl...

OK, don't print little pirate treasure chests for zebra-fish aquaria, got it.

Who cares? The problems with chemical stupidity are not just about one species of fish. Unfortunately a large portion of our population relies upon the riches of the sea. If we keep screwing up the oceans with out industrial waste, especially discarded by products and plastic garbage we will see a rapid collapse of the entire ocean biosphere. It will mean starvation on a huge scale. Your statement bespeaks volumes about the utter public ignorance of key biological systems that have given us life. You can claim ignorance because most people do not even care about what is happening because of unrestrained garbage in our oceans, those who know the truth about the unregulated dumping of toxic plastic garbage that is causing the garbage patches do not have the luxury of ignorance that you enjoy.

As you bury your head in the beach sand it is almost certain that you will also be covered in little pieces of plastic that are starting to kill fish on a global scale. large plastics the big pictureabout how and why plastics are killing more and more marine life as they break down into smaller and smaller pieces and are eaten by smaller and smaller organisms.

With the oil and plastic industry now dictating our future it is entirely possible that our chemical stupidity will cause global starvation in the next century. Either we pay attention to the environment on a global scale or we will suffer the consequences of shitting in our own nest to the extent that our environment will simply kill us off. Here is hoping that eventually we can create closed systems with the plastic industry but right now the recycling of plastics and the science to stop the toxic destruction of our world is not a priority, within the next 40 years we either stop putting toxins in the ocean or we will not survive as a species. End of story.

My understanding is that not every type of sonar is damaging to whales, just some types.

I have never heard about "types" of navy sonar. All I am aware of is that the navy has jacked up the volume of their sonar to catch those stealthy Russian subs that don't exist any more.

As this page explains, they use ultra LOUD sonar. 235 decibels...with every 10 dB being ten times louder...and 120dB being a jet taking off. Let's say a trillion times as much sound energy (per area) as a jet taking off. Yeah, that might be a tad more than whales would prefer to hear.

Puns aside about consoles insomnia. Wasting $100s of dollars of you power bill every year is not a serious concern for the video game industry. In 2008 the NRDC, the US EPA with their EnergyStarWalmart beat the console industry about the head and neck and the video game industry managed to sandbag any regulation that even a GE or Sylvania could not for lighting. The reason is simple sloth and incompetence. Simply put the problem is not energy used during game play , but the lack of a meaningful sleep mode. This lack of sleep mode is driven by poor APIs to book mark game status and put the console into sleep mode. The other energy driver is the console companies instant on collecting detailed data of how you use your device and uploading it when you are not playing plus forcing add and other "content" down to your console when it should be sleeping.

Sure:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

Though I'll note that I was thinking of generation cost(~$0.05) for coal, not retail. Remember, that $0.10 per kWh includes transportation, electricity from the natural gas plant next door and the nuclear plant down the road, as well as the coal generation.

Also, the following article give some insight to the high energy usage by at least hospitals:

Yes, hospitals use a lot of electricity, but consider that everything else about hospitals are more expensive than average commercial buildings as well. After all, you're paying a lot of wages for doctors and nurses with masters degrees, using expensive drugs and equipment, etc....

As for your anecdotal 'evidence', keep in mind that I'm mostly talking about averages - you get lucky and don't have any upper respiratory track illnesses, but you're also 50 miles away. 30% of asthma cases are blamed on poor air quality.

Relative to coal, Natural gas isn't a problem at all, and nuclear, well, I want to see more of it. Remember, I wasn't putting down nuclear, just mentioning that worrying about the CO2 production from the concrete that goes into building the plant isn't actually that big of a deal in the face of the sheer amount of power the plant will produce over it's operational lifespan.

(Don't give me any garbage about how everyone should live in cities -- what a drab, sad world that would be.)

Yes, what a drab, sad world it would be if people lived where they weren't an economic burden on others.

I'm pretty certain the linked article's numbers are simply wrong.

And even more is due to it being purchased and left to slowly decompose, or part of a massive meal which is thrown out when only half-eaten. You can read more here.

They are 'green plants' because they clean the exhaust.
And no they don't burn biomass. How retarded can you be that you believe anyone is burning freshly cut trees, anyway?

The real question is "How retarded can you be that you make a statement like that without researching reality first?"

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/bl...

"First, just like fossil fuels, when trees are burned in power plants, the carbon they have accumulated is released into the atmosphere. However, because freshly cut wood is nearly half water by weight, a lot of energy is required to boil off this water before useful energy can be generated. This makes biomass facilities far less efficient than fossil fuel."

They're even using your exact nomenclature.

Another:

http://www.garp.org/risk-news-...

Yes, the idea has been out there for awhile - that you haven't heard of it isn't surprising. But that you make an ass of yourself over it says a lot about you.

When sonar is used, it can create sound pressure levels of 140dB 300 miles from the source . The sound is so excruciating that whales will surface too fast and get the bends, and/or beach themselves, just to escape the sound.

Yup, let's rape our irreplaceable planet some more while torturing innocent, intelligent creatures. After all, they aren't human, and our comfort, convenience, and entertainment are so much more important than their lives.

Not sure why dedicated lane posts are being marked troll, but that's the safest option considering the difference in speed and the relative fragility of bikes. As shown in this article, extra space (as opposed to the current 6 inches space) between bike and car lanes is crucial for safety.

An even better solution is a protected and dedicated bike lane where there are concrete barriers preventing cars from entering bike lanes. Of course, all this requires a lot of city planning.

Being a person who was born and raised on the Los Angeles ares, I came to know the awful smog that once existed there. People sometimes would wear gas masks when the sky was very black. It's interesting how the Chinese have failed to learn from history. The air in Los Angeles is wonderful these day. It's still polluted, of course, to a certain extent but nothing like like it was in the 1950-1980 period and nothing like what you see in China now.

in fact, the cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan have considerably more explosive power than tactical nuclear weapons.

There is no sensible need to have tactical nuclear weapons. They do nothing for MAD, since they are not all that destructive, and they just encourage proliferation.

Your position differs with that of some of the best games theorists and strategic thinkers on the planet:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/med...
http://www.brookings.edu/~/med...
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/fi...

I'll trust them, until I see your equivalent credentials.

Thanks for the informative reply. On livestock, sadly with so many Confined Animal Feeding Operations, it seems their waste from CAFOs will go to "waste" in huge lagoons? But I'm not sure if that is just manure or whether the urine goes into such lagoons too. From:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.nrdc.org/water/poll...
"According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit environmental advocacy group, these lagoons often break, leak or overflow, allowing microbes from animal waste to seep into the ground and contaminate air and water supplies."

I've read half the water in the USA is polluted by livestock production (not sure if that is true).

Good old greenies are at it again. If you force taxpayers to subsidise solar power installations for people well off to afford them (e.g. most greenies) you are contributing to wealth inequality. At least if you want to do this it would make sense to use a more efficient means of power production. You have to wonder how we might be better off if instead research and development was not cut off from nuclear power technologies by these various rich greenie groups that often bring in 100 million a year in revenue or are endowed with large trust funds.

You fucking retard, you think oil & gas, plus nuclear does not get subsidies?

How fucking stupid can one person be? Oh, I see... very.

Good old greenies are at it again. If you force taxpayers to subsidise solar power installations for people well off to afford them (e.g. most greenies) you are contributing to wealth inequality. At least if you want to do this it would make sense to use a more efficient means of power production. You have to wonder how we might be better off if instead research and development was not cut off from nuclear power technologies by these various rich greenie groups that often bring in 100 million a year in revenue or are endowed with large trust funds.

Here's what I mean: http://www.nrdc.org/international/cleanbydesign/images/cbdtranspo_fig1.png

I'm pretty sure, that chart refers to traditional fuel-powered aircraft — one with provisions for a human crew (and its safety with all the redundancies), etc. The drones discussed will be very light and, possibly, electrical (their fuel cells recharged off of cleaner and more efficient power plants). They would still pollute more per mile, but, traveling by straight line, they'll travel many fewer miles. They will also not be idling at each house nor at red-lights, and not slowing down other vehicles (causing them to pollute more).

Assuming 3kg/package, and average truck net weight of 20,000kg (I work in shipping), that'd be 6,700 quadcopters per truck.

Its misses the point entirely though. The use of trucks is fuel economy, ease of transportation, and economies of scale. Aerial delivery will always be a niche product because its so inefficient.

Here's what I mean: http://www.nrdc.org/international/cleanbydesign/images/cbdtranspo_fig1.png

To me, why not just use a natural gas or propane fuel cell?

I know nothing of propane fuel cells, but I do know that the method which is used to extract natural gas is absolutely horrendous for the environment; it destroys huge swaths of land and makes taking drinking water from anywhere around it completely unusable.

http://www.nrdc.org/energy/gasdrilling/
freaking fracking

Wind turbines produces little steady electrical current, and even if you go with peak energy production from these things and couple with solar there is a cost to the environment. A large wind farm that produces any sort of useful amount of electricity for private or industrial consumption takes the wind out of the environment as a system in the same way that damming a river takes the water out. You have a "dead zone" where there is little wind and above you have a much higher flow of wind, which can only lead to the wind above pushing down over some distance from the wind farm to fill the void and dumping down inland (because if you put the things too far out you would need really long cables). This would increase the temperature inland and has the potential to change weather patterns close to the surface of the earth (where is of course most important to us living there). Here's a video in the crazy greenie sinister tone, but might be what future environmentalists have to deal with.

The environmental impacts of large scale wind energy production are pretty much completely untested for and could potentially be very bad. There has been little actual scientific research, and this has been almost entirely due to moneyed "greenie" groups (a single group in the US brings in yearly 100m dollars in income!) opposition to performing basic research in a proper scientific study.

It's not even close to being an issue, check out the graph in this link.

I think this is a decent milestone. While the reactor design itself is unlikely to ever break even, hopefully they're at least learning enough about efficiently triggering a fusion reaction that they can apply it to more productive designs

This achievement opens the door for future designs. Inertial confinement works; it needs improvement, but we're no longer debating whether it's possible to maintain symmetry or any of the other many doubts the detractors dwelled on.

The haters of NIF — and there are many — won't permit followup; they'll have it shut no matter what. For them, the whole idea of seeking energy sources that don't demand energy poverty is inherently illegitimate, and they run the show now. But the work and the results won't die at LLNL; there are other people and other nations that haven't decided to turn themselves into a windmill powered nature preserve.

So we'll have to let them take the ball and run with it. At least it will continue, now perhaps with far more enthusiasm.

With well over 10,000 warheads for over 20 years, I think the number of accidental detonations was zero.

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab19.asp says the number of US/SU/UK/FR/CH nuclear weapons reached a maximum of 65,056 in 1986.

AFAIK, zero accidental detonations since 1945.

Actually after doing a little research, it looks like you're wrong:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lsuatoni/can_we_keep_discussions_about.html

For instance, he plays unproductive semantic games, arguing that because ocean pH is not predicted to fall below the ‘neutral point’ of 7.0, the term ‘ocean acidification’ is a misnomer. This ignores the fact that scientists refer to a drop in pH as ‘acidification’, regardless of where you are on the scale. The term is simply used to describe the direction of change.

Al Gore is the face of the climate disaster movement.

Billionaire Tom Steyer supports the fanatics with such drivel as, '"The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people. We want a smashing victory,” Steyer said of candidates he judges to be on the wrong side of the climate change debate.'

And these 18 outstanding nonprofits have actually quite a lot of profits to be spending on their attacks.

You believe the people who support your side of the debate are some sort of snow-white doves, unable to cast a harmful puff of smoke. Too bad you're already a shill for the machine, and too much of a fanatic to realize otherwise.

"We sent men to the moon as a cover for developing intercontinental ballistic missiles."

Of all the bits of revisionist or mis-stated partial histories so far in this thread I can't let that one go.

We needed no cover for developing ICBMs. We, the Sovs, and others did quite nicely developing them openly. We already had ICBMs and were developing others and continued to do so well into the '80s. See:

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab3.asp for land-based, historical and current, and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_missile for submarine-based ICBMs in current inventory;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICBM gives an overview and history.

You will note that Saturn was entirely separate from ICBM development, started by Eisenhower who favored solid fuels for ICBMs as in Minuteman, Polaris, and on.

Name me one ICBM derived from the Saturn stack.

Perhaps. But let me first talk about the fire that destroyed parked Karmas after they were flooded by a hurricane [foxnews.com]. They burned up because a short in the system, caused by conductive seawater. The ICE was not involved in that fire.

Don't you love it when people bring up things that you know about already? Yes, I know about the lot of karmas that all burned. I'll note that they burned AFTER they were submerged and the water subsequently receded. Plus, well, it seems to be a Karma thing. I thought about mentioning the hurricane. You also had a volt that caught fire a week or two after being used in an accident test; they failed to follow protocol with the battery and just left it there.

You can say that it's an outcome of a bad design, done by people who don't know a thing about making cars.

Again, new car company, radical new design, The sheer number of them isn't a good thing, but whether or not they 'know a thing' about making cars, they were stretching with the design. Tesla was to, which is why it looks like the "S" is a much better car than the roadster.

Per the evidence, it was lost. Tesla support people *thought* it was underreported, but all that the reporter did, per Tesla's advice, only led to further depletion of the battery. In the end, the car ended up on a flatbed. In hindsight, there was probably something that the reporter could do - like driving back to the supercharger right from the hotel. But he was advised to act differently.

Did you read the whole story? I did back when. He charged it several times between the hotel incident and the final stopping. Given that it made it further than expected at several points, I'd say the charge DID come back, at least partially. It just wasn't happening right then in the morning, which would be expected - to get the capacity back you have to warm the battery up. Which happens in use, driving or charging it.

Water in rivers and ponds is quite conductive because it contains lots of salts that are leeched out of the soil.

Again, you're assuming I don't know things. I'll admit 'that conductive' is a fairly vague measure, but what I was trying to say is that I doubt that the shortage, even from seawater, would be enough to cause the various problems you describe.

Then you propose Tantalum capacitors, and while I have no problems seeing them in EVs, they'd be drained by the water as well.

There is very little of those other liquids, and many of them are alcohol-based, perfectly soluble in water. Only the gasoline has potential to harm the ecology. But when a car falls into a water, it's usually not damaged, so the gas tank will remain intact. Damage to fuel pipes will not result in pollution because the fuel pump is not running.

Now this tells me that you have some ignorance with respect to IC Engines. Unless you meant 'oil based', not alcohol. Let's see:
1. Lubricating oil. Not alcohol based, normally about 5 quarts of it. 1.25 gallons
2. Coolant. 50/50 mix of water and ethylene glycol or maybe propylene. Anther 4-5 quarts of the stuff. Also not alcohol based. Ethylene is highly toxic.
3. Transmission fluid - More oil.

A single quart of used motor oil can pollute 250k gallons of drinking water. So a single car into a lake can pollute well over a million gallons, maybe up to 2.

DC is just as dangerous [control.com] as AC, on average. At those voltages (375V) the contact will result in 3rd degree burns (if you are lucky and the path doesn't go through the heart) or ... well, then you don't care anymore.

I'm not going to rate control.com as a reputable source. Besides, you wouldn't be getting the full 375V, that's only if you touch both the positive and negative terminals somewhere. There's going

Coal can be clean and safe too http://www.coalcares.org/cleanenergy.html

How is Mountaintop removal clean? How is coal mining safe? Ops, that's in China. 19 killed in coal mine accidents in U.S. in 2012. Now how many have been killed by solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources?

Falcon

A quick census of my kitchen and fridge would imply that I have been to Ecuador, (where my bananas came from,) France, (where most of the water I drink was bottled,) Spain, (where the grapes in my Sangria were grown,)

That census of your fridge can expose your income, cultural, ethnic and religious background, age, health and dietary restrictions or preferences of every sort.

It costs from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon to purchase bottled water than it does to purchase a gallon of average tap water. In California average tap water costs about one tenth of a cent per gallon, while it bottled water costs about $0.90 per gallon -- a 560-fold difference. Expensive imported water sold in smaller bottles can cost several thousand times more than tap water: That $1.50 half-liter bottle of imported water may be costing you 10,000 times more per gallon than your tap water.

Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype? [2010]

The geek tends to build his defenses around extravagant and implausible conceits and ignores the mundane.

The jury won't much care where the killer purchased his custom tailored suits, rare and pricey vintage wines, liquors and Cuban cigars. They will care if the defendant shares the same expensive tastes.

The environmental toll of hog farming is massive.

Flammable tap water is normal in some places because methane in groundwater is normal in some places. Oil and gas seeping out at the surface from the ground is also normal for some parts of the world. As is radioactive ground water (usually this is from radon gas). And groundwater can be full of poisonous materials such as arsenic. This is why not every well is suitable for drinking water, especially without treatment. All of these issues existed before oil and gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing. And water wells *do* change over time regardless of whether or not oil companies are drilling exploration wells in the area, particularly because the process of extracting groundwater does change the subsurface environment. This is why wells that didn't originally have problems with methane can subsequently develop them (this is especially true in areas with coal beds, because extraction of groundwater releases methane trapped in the coal).

But put an oil and gas well anywhere in the vicinity, and all problems are because of the oil companies. At least, that's what the lawyers will claim when the landowners sue those companies for big money.

The point is, without a baseline, blaming oil and gas exploration is not justified, and automatically assuming that any of these problems are caused by the petroleum industry is false. That doesn't mean there aren't real problems caused by the oil and gas industry -- there are -- but you have to look at the details. A lot of groundwater is naturally unsuitable for human consumption.

A very simple thing you can do to get the attention of the console makers is to call them and ask them how much power your particular system draws when playing and when sleeping, how this will cost you where you live, what you can do reduce the power usage, how to enable deep sleep mode and when they will come out with a reduced power model. Also let the game makers know that you want them to support auto power down.

BTW, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is really an amazing environmental group. They are just the environmental group that shows up at those deadly dull EnergyStar standards meetings and they do it with a full time electrical engineers. The NRDC engineering team is very bright and well informed. Very much worthy of your support.

A very simple thing you can do to get the attention of the console makers is to call them and ask them how much power your particular system draws when playing and when sleeping, how this will cost you where you live, what you can do reduce the power usage, how to enable deep sleep mode and when they will come out with a reduced power model. Also let the game makers know that you want them to support auto power down.

BTW, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is really an amazing environmental group. They are just the environmental group that shows up at those deadly dull EnergyStar standards meetings and they do it with a full time electrical engineers. The NRDC engineering team is very bright and well informed. Very much worthy of your support.

Personally I'm giving it up to another 5 years, but if things haven't dramatically changed by then, there's going to be little hope of finding somewhere safe and freedom loving to move

- Yeah, good luck with that in 5 years.

In case you missed it, IRS wants the right to seize your passport.

That's right, IRS wants to be able to prevent you from getting a passport and even to be able to stop you from getting out of the country. Imagine: you come to the airport or maybe you drive towards Mexican or Canadian border and you have to go through the border patrol. All of a sudden you find out that your passport has been revoked.

Apparently you could be stopped this way before if you owed more than $2500 in child support payments, but now IRS wants to extend that to anybody who owes an amount in taxes that is 50K or above.

QUOTE:

It all started last fall, when Senator Barbara Boxer introduced the "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act" (or "MAP-21" as it's now called), to reauthorize funds for federal highway and transportation programs. While that doesn't sound like anything having to do with your taxes, the bill includes a little-noticed section that allows the State Department to "deny, revoke or limit" passport rights for any taxpayers with "serious delinquencies."

Here's how it would work. If someone owed more than $50,000 in back taxes, the IRS would be able to send their name over to the passport office for suspension, provided that the IRS already either filed a public lien or a assessed a levy for the outstanding balance. The bill does provide a few exceptions though. For example, if a person has set up a payment plan (that they're paying in a timely manner), is legitimately disputing the debt, or has an emergency situation or humanitarian reason and must travel internationally, they may be able to leave for a limited time despite their unpaid taxes.

Oh, by the way, MAP-21 HAS PASSED. IRS now owns you, citizen.

--

Also just a little while back they increased the payment that one needed to make to get a renunciation of citizenship form. It used to cost exactly 0.

Now it costs 450USD to submit that form.

So think about it:

1. Right now the cost of that form is 450USD.
2. It's 50K in tax debt that would prevent you from getting a passport.

BUT... when did government ever STOP with something, once the nose of the camel made it under the tent?

The cost of that citizen revocation form can climb to an amount that in principle can easily be EQUAL TO YOUR SHARE OF NATIONAL DEBT.

That's right. You are born into this national debt (after all, your ancestors have voted themselves a little something known as 'social contract', which made YOU their slave).

So you are born into this 'social contract', and it's basically your share of national debt + WHATEVER ELSE. "Whatever else" can be any amount of taxes that the federal government may deem you be liable for, so they can say: we cannot allow you to leave the country, citizen, until you give us enough money to cover your portion of 'social contract', never mind the national debt.

You think in a totalitarian society you'll ever be able to make that kind of money?

Also: that citizen renunciation form - unless you are cool with filing your US taxes forever, even if you don't live in the USA, you'll want to get rid of that burden. Why is it a burden? Nobody wants to do business with you outside of USA, that's why. You won't be able even to have a bank account, nobody wants the hustle of dealing with your government.

But to prevent you from getting that form, the amount you may have to shell out for it may again rise over and over again, totally indefinitely, to

Nuclear testing is done far away from where people live or intend to live.

Myth. Wrong. The primary US nuclear testing facilities (NTS) were (are) located 65 miles from Las Vegas.

Also it is contained underground most of the time, *that* is why the radiation from testing has not been a big problem.

Myth: Still wrong. here's a graph of aboveground test yields. Here is data that breaks out aboveground tests from belowground tests. If you're too lazy to read, then I'll just tell you: The vast majority of tests prior to 1962 were aboveground, and there were a shitload of them.

At least half of the casualties of the bombing of Hiroshima were from the effects of radiation long after the war ended

Yes, of course, we dropped a nuclear weapon on them! Good grief, it's like shooting a rabbit for dinner and then complaining because you found a hole in it! How many soldiers and civilians died during and after the war because they had only one lung, or spinal injuries, or brain damage, or whatever? Get this through your head: When you fire off a weapon at someone and you don't miss, you're going to hurt them. They may die immediately, they may be severely injured and die some amount of time later, or they may linger on, or they may heal. That's what weapons do. That's the point!

What you're talking about here isn't about "fallout", it's a primary weapons effect. You haven't just moved the goalposts, you changed fields entirely here. I am perfectly ready to stipulate that if you drop a nuke on someone, there will be deleterious effects. lol!

But I'm the "cluetard", whatever.

No, I think that was far too kind, actually. You're clearly an idiot.

The rest of your post is either equally ignorant or sociophathic(sic), so I won't bother to continue.

lol. Yeah, well, given your success rate - zero - maybe it's time to hang up your debating hat anyway. Calling me ignorant for pushing the facts in your face is pretty funny too. But you get on with your bad self. On the Internet, you're a superhero. A legend in your own lunchtime.

It is good that some people are starting to realize that the toxic tailing ponds need to be cleaned up but it looks like this will be a huge problem.

http://notquiteunhinged.blogspot.com/2008/04/alberta-tar-sands-tailing-ponds-fast.html

And here's the current state of "cleanup":

"The tar sands tailings ponds currently contain around 190 billion gallons of waste water from strip-mining the Boreal forest for the bitumen that is eventually turned into fuels for our cars, trucks and airplanes. In melting the bitumen from the soil, tar sands producers are left with water mixed with naphthenic acids, ammonia, benzene, cyanide, oil and grease, phenols, toluene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, arsenic, copper and iron. "

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sclefkowitz/clearing_the_waters_on_tar_san.html

"Canada keeps saying it wants better environmental management in the tar sands, yet it is failing to enforce laws already on the books that could make this happen. If Canada is sincere and wants to deal with tar sands pollution, it should put the focus and resources it currently dedicates to green-washing the tar sands into enforcing its existing laws at home to limit some of the worst pollution impacts. "