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New Wyoming Bill Penalizes Utilities Using Renewable Energy (csmonitor.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a Christian Science Monitor report on "a bill that would essentially ban large-scale renewable energy" in Wyoming. The new Wyoming bill would forbid utilities from using solar or wind sources for their electricity by 2019, according to Inside Climate News... The bill would require utilities to use "eligible resources" to meet 95 percent of Wyoming's electricity needs in 2018, and all of its electricity needs in 2019. Those "eligible resources" are defined solely as coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and individual net metering... Utility-scale wind and solar farms are not included in the bill's list of "eligible resources," making it illegal for Wyoming utilities to use them in any way if the legislation passes. The bill calls for a fine of $10 per megawatt-hour of electricity from a renewable source to be slapped on Wyoming utilities that provide power from unapproved sources to in-state customers.
The bill also prohibits utilities from raising rates to cover the cost of those penalties, though utilities wouldn't be penalized if they exported that energy to other states. But one local activist described it as 'talking-point' legislation, and even the bill's sponsor gives it only a 50% chance of passing.

502 comments

  1. Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wind murders countless migratory birds every year, and the environmental impact of Chinese solar panels is similarly out of this world. There are no environmental regulations in China.

    This is a good move by WY to help save the environment.

    1. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anaerin · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not "Countless". Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually - a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats. So if it's really migratory birds you're so worried about, you'd better ditch your cellphone. And/or kill your cat.

    2. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Luthair · · Score: 1

      Don't forget birds also have issues with office buildings.

    3. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 4, Funny

      So, the take-away is that birds are mostly blind?
      I've had them miss my car by an inch and I think what saved them was the slipstream created by the car.
      Maybe they're just distracted... check their bodies for tiny smart phones...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    4. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by whoever57 · · Score: 2

      Also, the newer, larger turbines kill far fewer birds.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    5. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by transami · · Score: 1

      Dumbest
      Comment
      Ever

      --
      :T:R:A:N:S:
    6. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So, the take-away is that birds are mostly blind?

      No. The take-away is that birds evolved before there were large obstacles moving at 70 mph, and large transparent areas on cliff faces. They rarely run into parked cars, or windowless buildings.

    7. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      Also, the newer, larger turbines kill far fewer birds.

      The big reason for this is that they are higher off the ground, where winds are stronger and more reliable. Most local birds fly low, and most migrating birds fly even higher than than the big turbines.

      The "bird" objection to wind turbines has always been stupid and disingenuous (the people making it don't really give a crap about the birds), but it has become even stupider as turbines improve.

    8. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      If only we could harness the wind power of that WHOOSH

    9. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't worry, evolution is fixing this issue right now.

    10. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Sir+Holo · · Score: 0, Troll

      It's not "Countless". Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually - a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats. So if it's really migratory birds you're so worried about, you'd better ditch your cellphone. And/or kill your cat.

      Weak-sauce FUD, bro.

      The national power distribution grid (lines, etc.) kills far more, but we don't tend to see those as critters eat them up.

      Local solar and wind power do not require massive distribution networks.

      And you cat citation doesn't help your case. 10,000x more birds are killed by cats than by solar (?!?) and wind? Can you provide a citation for that? I'd like to use it in shutting-up idiots in the future (if true).

    11. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or, you know, keep your cats indoors. People who let them out to roam are the problem.

    12. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      did you forget the deaths by clean windows?

    13. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-mammals-study/1873871/

    14. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's not "Countless". Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually - a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats. So if it's really migratory birds you're so worried about, you'd better ditch your cellphone. And/or kill your cat.

      THat FIgur Iz a lIE! FRom tHE CeLLPhonE CompANieS. SiGNed: thE CaTT!!!!

    15. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by blindseer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, birds just run into things. I remember a study where someone tried to figure out why birds ran into windows so often. They found out that birds just run into things, like trees. I grew up on a farm where the birds liked to run into the farmhouse quite often. We'd hear them thump against the wall. Living in the suburbs now I still hear them thump, just not as often. This has probably less to do with where I live and more to do with the thicker walls on my current house compared to the house I grew up in.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    16. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realize that burning coal kills more birds (among other issues like killing more than birds), right?

    17. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is about the Bakken oil fields that run through Wyoming.

      The US has a fossil fuel glut and renewable energy is not going to help that.

      I helped litigate Big Tobacco and fossil fuel is the back story here.

      They stab it with their steely knives
      But they just can't kill the beast

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    18. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Actually, they regularly run into things like parked cars and windowless buildings. Did you have data to back up your claim, or were you just lying and hoping nobody would contradict you? The reason they hit the windows in houses, not the house, is that they hit the house, and you don't notice, but when they hit the window, you notice.

    19. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They stab it with their steely knives But they just can't kill the beast

      I thought we were talking about the fossil fuel industry. When did we switch the conversation to the hotel industry?

    20. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm, unlike dogs, cats aren't fully domesticated. Some cats are outdoor type that only come in for warmth, protection, and regular food. It would be cruel to lock them in.

    21. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      Once solar power is cheaper than coal it won't matter, the utilities will pay to have the law changed just like the oil companies did.

    22. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Wycliffe · · Score: 2

      Actually, they regularly run into things like parked cars and windowless buildings. Did you have data to back up your claim, or were you just lying and hoping nobody would contradict you? The reason they hit the windows in houses, not the house, is that they hit the house, and you don't notice, but when they hit the window, you notice.

      The reason they hit windows is because of the reflection and the transparency. A window sometimes works like a mirror and many times will reflect a second tree that they are trying to get to. They don't just randomly run into things they can see. Zoos have a solution for this. Instead of using glass which is both reflective and see thru, they use little very thin vertical wire which would probably be worse for the birds if the birds ran into it but the birds don't because they see it just fine.

    23. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by sphealey · · Score: 4, Informative

      Gas turbine power plants are not exactly friendly to birds. I've walked across parking lots in the morning that looked like the dumpster at the rotisserie chicken place had been knocked over.

      sPh

      (insects are drawn to the warmth radiating from the exhaust stack wall. Birds dive after the insects, and if they dive through the exhaust, toasted bird)

    24. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't about the minutae, this is about pointing out that the justification for what Wyoming is doing is fucking stupid.

      Fuck off, comrade.

    25. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      On a farm you need a few cats to keep the rodent popilation down, but it also means that a few birds are at risk.

      Then the issue of birds dying - they may either be unhealthy or inexperienced. That's just part of nature.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    26. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by ragahast · · Score: 5, Interesting

      10,000x more birds are killed by cats than by solar (?!?) and wind? Can you provide a citation for that? I'd like to use it in shutting-up idiots in the future (if true).

      Oh, it's quite true. See this recent study for the numbers on wind turbines, and this one for cats*. This report ranks various energy sources; perhaps unsurprisingly coal actually kills the most birds.

      It turns out cats kill a lot of animals, making them "the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals." According to that second study, though, most of the deaths are attributable to un-owned cats. The actual numbers from the studies are exactly those quoted by Anaerin above.

      * Nature isn't open access but...

      --
      .:Semper Absurda:.
    27. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      You can check out any time you want but you can't leave.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    28. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by William+Baric · · Score: 1

      Birds "run" into things" Are you sure about that?

    29. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, I hope they drown in the flood and avalanche they cause. Maybe add some forest wildfire.

    30. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Yep. Had a turkey run into my truck just last summer. If you look real close you can still see the dent.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    31. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by blindseer · · Score: 1

      What should we do until solar power is cheaper than coal? Sit in the dark? I think we should invest in nuclear power.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    32. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I agree.

      Big Renewable is a force equal to Big Oil ... it just isn't there, yet.

      Tobacco was a bitch for two main reasons:

      1.) It made a shit load of money

      2.) It provided a shit load of jobs

      The first funds the politician's war chest and the second gets out the votes.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    33. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by guises · · Score: 2

      You could have made an argument for nuclear ten years ago, but at this point it's just a bad investment. Solar has dropped by 92% since 2008 and is still going down. It's now only a little more expensive than nuclear, and has none of the huge upfront cost or multiple-decades commitment. Wind is cheaper than coal, nuclear, or anything else except for natural gas (basically tied with wind) and geothermal (cheapest option).

    34. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      perhaps unsurprisingly coal actually kills the most birds.

      Huge numbers of birds, roughly 7.9 million, may be killed by coal, according to analysis by Benjamin K. Sovacool, director of the Danish Center for Energy Technologies. His estimate, however, included everything from mining to production and climate change, which together amounted to about five birds per gigawatt-hour of energy generated by coal.

      ROFL

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    35. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Chuck+Messenger · · Score: 1

      Nice try. But how do you explain away the ban on solar?

    36. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by queazocotal · · Score: 0

      Solar and wind also don't work so well at night, or when it's calm.
      If we had cheap energy storage, it's great, and all we need.
      Otherwise, at the very least, solar and wind need massive continent-scale power shifting - which is not budgeted for in the USA to avoid local dips, or night.

    37. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Solar power will probably be cheaper in some sunny places like California, Arizona, and Nevada. Other places are too far north or have cloud cover. Solar may never work in those places.

    38. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by ixidor · · Score: 1

      yeah its called solar+thermal + some salt. heat the salt all day with excess solar. use heat at night to generate electricity. much better than a battery.

    39. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the last week alone I've had two birds fly into my back window. Clearly windows must be banned now before it's too late.

    40. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by skullandbones99 · · Score: 1

      The next disruptive technology that is imminent is on-grid energy storage such as batteries. This will allow excess renewable energy to be stored in on-grid energy storage. Therefore, it will mitigate against the dark and calm winds.

      Also domestic energy storage is now available in lithium-ion batteries so that solar power from your house can be stored for use during the night.

      Live the dream!

    41. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by skullandbones99 · · Score: 1

      Solar power will probably be cheaper in some sunny places like California, Arizona, and Nevada. Other places are too far north or have cloud cover. Solar may never work in those places.

      Old technology solar panels worked at specific light frequencies and these frequencies can be blocked by clouds, Modern solar panel technology is moving towards working with a spectrum of light frequencies. Clouds do not block all the light from the sun and therefore modern solar panels are being designed to work in cloudy conditions.

      Also the efficiency of solar panels are steadily increasing as the technology improves. This means that the size of the solar panels will reduce to get the same power rating as the old panels. Therefore, for a given area of land, the power capacity of a solar farm will increase as the technology improves. Meaning the overall costs will reduce and more power is produced.

      In other words, even in cloudy conditions, solar installations can be viable.

    42. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by queazocotal · · Score: 2

      Also very, very expensive.Solar-thermal also only works in locations with close to no cloud cover - it works not at all in diffuse light, whereas solar-pv does.

    43. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by queazocotal · · Score: 1

      'available' - well - yes - but the price is dramatically higher, even with free energy than grid in nearly all places.

    44. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      The problem is that decommissioning nuclear power plants is coming in at 10 times more expensive than estimated 30 years ago. And since private companies can't afford those costs, you end up paying them in higher rates or higher taxes.

      We also need at least one breeder reactor which would reduce nuclear waste to 1% the volume AND also simultaneously reduces the lifespan of the radioactive waste significantly

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      " removing the transuranics from the waste eliminates much of the long-term radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel.["

      Such a reactor would need very high security (perhaps to the extent of being run by the government and on a large military base because plutonium is one output. You can make nuclear weapons from that. BUT, you could also shuttle it off the planet to fuel long range space exploration as fast as we make it to reduce that risk.

      On your other point...

      Solar is now cheaper than wind.
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

      And...
      Solar is closing in on price parity with the likes of coal â" with full-cycle, unsubsidized costs of about 13 cents per kilowatthour, versus 12 cents for advanced coal plants.

      But there will be cases where we need Coal (with proper scrubbing which didn't start for many plants until 2015 and which may be backed out now) until we get very good batteries. And lots of them. If every consumer has a "power wall" of some kind with 8 hours of electrical storage, and when power companies have lots of molten salt (or whatever) to store power for night time and cloudy days, then we'll need no coal. But until then, we'll need some coal.

      But less.

      And the price for coal (and oil) is set by the most expensive coal to mine (or oil to pump).
      Say you can mine 90% of coal for 36 dollars a ton and the last 10% for 46 dollars a ton. Then the price of coal will be $46 dollars a ton. So if you can just eliminate 10% of demand for coal, then the price of coal (and your electric cost ber kwh) will drop about 22%.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    45. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Solar is now cheaper than wind. https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

      Man, that article is for investors. It tells how much it costs them to invest into a new power plant. It does not include cost externalized to others. E.g. it will include dotation (if any), but it will not include cost of a beefier grid and power storage. It probably will include carbon trading payments (if any).

    46. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The cost of dismantling the nuclear-powerplants.... Please don't just spew out those things..
      http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

      Cost of decommissioning is anywhere from a few hundred million USD up to a few billion... If you take the nuclear-specific tax we have on the plants it has more than fully covered the cost even if the government would do the full job.. Feel free to educate yourself with a bit more information from the following link.
      http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

      And you have many places in the world where 8 hours would be far too small..

      Say if you go with just solar-cells... 6 hours of sun per day, and that's not too far north, you would need a minimum of 18 hours and enough solar-cells to charge those batteries during those 6 hours of sun...
      This does not take days without any sunlight into account....

      About a breeder-reactor... You would not get weapons-grade plutonium out of those.. A big, and expensive, refinement process is required to get that...

      I do like solar / wind / hydro / geothermal but they all do have big issues in terms of scaling it out at the moment... Until they are a viable replacement spewing out crap about nuclear just makes all renewable-advocates look like crazy hippies...

      Right now we have access to a few technologies... Lets use them in the best possible way.....

      To start with... Lets replace coal, oil, gas with nuclear/solar/wind/hydro/geothermal to reduce the pollution..... where appropriate..

    47. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We only have 6 hours of total sunlight, during the shortest days, where i live...

    48. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nice... free lunch for all the employees.

    49. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by skullandbones99 · · Score: 2

      Today, the electric car revolution is bringing in cheaper and cheaper high energy density lithium-ion batteries. These batteries will be used in on-grid and off-grid energy storage units.

      This disruptive revolution has already started. I think even Trump will have difficulty in suppressing this American technology and the thousands of American jobs that go with it.

      It is only a matter of time. Probably in 10 to 20 years, and coal will be dead worldwide as being too expensive (and too environmentally damaging).

      Live the dream!

    50. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I could not live anywhere near a wind turbine. The low frequency noise/vibration literally makes me insane with anxiety. Many animals also have this problem. It's an instinctual/subconscious reaction.

      Solar could theoretically damage the environment by capturing too much energy from the sun. A very large portion of the earth's natural systems are powered by the sun. With that said, we have a long ways to go before that would be a problem. However, the current solar technology is also very inefficient and produces a lot of waste.

    51. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      http://thebulletin.org/rising-...

      âoeThe most reliable estimate of the cost of decommissioning [a nuclear power plant] is 10-15 percent of the construction cost, contrary to some highly inflated estimates ... Modern serious studies of the disposal problem indicate that satisfactory isolation is technologically feasible, even for the long term.â So wrote MIT nuclear engineering professor David Rose in the November 1985 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

      How misguided that view seems now, with the advantage of decades of experience. The Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Massachusetts, took 15 years to decommissionâ"or five times longer than was needed to build it. And decommissioning the plantâ"constructed early in the 1960s for $39 millionâ"cost $608 million. The plantâ(TM)s spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in.

      ---

      Look, it's late and I'm tired but I've had this exact conversation many many times. I'm not just "spewing" out random crap.

      That plant was suppose to cost 6 million to decommission. Adjusting for inflation, it would have cost 39million (the same as it cost to build it but with inflated dollars so really just a nice coincidence). That's $560 million more than estimated and paid for in utility bills along the way.

      ---

      https://www.theguardian.com/en...

      The company wants to try out the idea for the first time on the northwest coast of England, at the notorious nuclear dumping ground at Sellafield, which holds the world's largest stock of civilian plutonium. At close to 120 tons, it stores more plutonium from reactors than the U.S. and Russia combined.

      While most of the world's civilian plutonium waste is still trapped inside highly radioactive spent fuel, much of that British plutonium is in the form of plutonium dioxide powder. It has been extracted from spent fuel with the intention of using it to power an earlier generation of fast reactors that were never built. This makes it much more vulnerable to theft and use in nuclear weapons than plutonium still held inside spent fuel, as most of the U.S. stockpile is.

      ---

      By 2025, Germany is to have no more than 45 percent renewable power. The U.S. should too.
      It has a quarter of our population but total US GDP is 16.77 trillion dollars while germany is only 3.77 trillion dollars.
      We can do this and almost permanently cap the price of coal and oil.

      ---

      Really we are quibbling.

      I think we both agree a smart mix of alternative energy, nuclear energy, and even coal makes sense for the near future (say 2045) and that increasing the percentage of alternative energy will reduce consumption and prices of fossil fuels.

      I showed that breeder reactors produce plutonium dioxide which must be secured against terrorists and backed that up with the actual experience of a breeder reactor in England.
      I also showed that decommissioning costs for nuclear plants are underestimated by over and order of magnitude.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    52. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      Well, that's pretty unusual for a utility scale gas turbine plant, since it's a massive waste of energy and therefore money to dump out air hot enough to toast a bird. The plants tend to be built as combined cycle, with a gas turbine at the top (high peak temperature, medium rejection temperature) and a Rankine cycle (medium peak temperature, low rejection temperature) at the bottom of the theremodynamic cycle.

      That gives you a much larger temperature differential than it's practical to achieve with either cycle independently and so gives you a much more efficient plant, about 60% versus 30% for a gas turbine and 40% for a Rankine cycle.

      Interestingly, even the new generation of coal plants are now built this way, with a gasifier to turn the coal into gas, running that through a gas turbine, then using the outlet heat to drive a Rankine cycle. I imagine they use the solid residue to power the gasifier and probably an inter stage reheat on the Rankine cycle as well.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    53. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gtall · · Score: 1

      Yeah, like Germany.

    54. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it's past 20 (21 for males) it's countless by any modern journo.

    55. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But coal and nuclear are sooooo much better for the environment? I do not disagree with your arguments, but at least for solar there is a solution at hand. Buffalo, NY has the largest solar panel plant in the US that will go online this year. It is run by Tesla and Panasonic and falls under the environmental protection regulations of the US and New York State...which are not the best in the world, but by far better than those in China.

    56. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Sigma+7 · · Score: 2

      Birds "run" into things"

      They see a rival on the other side of the window, and take the aggressive approach to remove them. Naturally, the rival male likewise takes an equally aggressive response, thus the bird either has to abort (and thus has to "compete" for food later) or use full force to drive out the rival.

      They especially do this during mating season.

    57. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Cats kill songbirds. Turbines kill raptors. Huge population differences. That's like comparing mice to wolves.

    58. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do not have to kill your cat, only keep her inside the house or in a screened in outside space or on a leash.

    59. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what it takes to toast a bird, but I do know that it's not necessarily cost-effective to extract the last little bit of heat from something.

      That is, it's really profitable to reduce your 1000C exhaust to 100C. I don't know how much value there is in reducing 100C exhaust to 50C, but I'm guessing it's not profitable at most plants.

      Since 100C exhaust will toast a bird reasonably quickly it's probably more common than you think.

      dom

    60. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cats kill songbirds. Turbines kill raptors. Huge population differences. That's like comparing mice to wolves.

      That's right. Wind farms get government waivers that allows them to kill raptors. The same government will charge me with a felony for picking up a feather I find on my property.

    61. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Solar could theoretically damage the environment by capturing too much energy from the sun. A very large portion of the earth's natural systems are powered by the sun.

      It won't be long before some Progressive sect latches on to this and complains/protests bitterly to ban solar/wind. Will occur sooner if Trump embraces these renewables.

    62. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But so much more during the longest

    63. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by mnemotronic · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, even the new generation of coal plants are now built this way, with a gasifier to turn the coal into gas, running that through a gas turbine, then using the outlet heat to drive a Rankine cycle. I imagine they use the solid residue to power the gasifier and probably an inter stage reheat on the Rankine cycle as well.

      Any idea if one of these re-tooled coal plants be "easily" converted to run on natural gas, or back again? "Easily" meaning "cheaper than building a new plant from scratch".

      --
      The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
    64. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Any idea if one of these re-tooled coal plants be "easily" converted to run on natural gas, or back again? "Easily" meaning "cheaper than building a new plant from scratch".

      Not a clue. Maybe? The difficult bit would be the turbine. You could probably run a gas turbine designed for syngas off methane, but unless it's designed for it, it might not work as well. You couldprobably replace the gas turbines, which would be cheaper than that plus the entire steam set I suppose.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    65. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with wind turbines is that a disproportionate number of the birds killed are RAPTORS, which are already having a hard time. Nobody would cry at Canadian geese or pigeons getting mowed down by the thousands.

    66. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Immerman · · Score: 0

      And people who sentence animals they claim to love to a lifetime of imprisonment are monsters.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    67. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Type44Q · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Since 100C exhaust will toast a bird reasonably quickly

      You failed science and they didn't offer Home Ec?

    68. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by sphealey · · Score: 1

      There are a few combined cycle GT power plants in the US (more in Europe), but the vast majority of gas turbines are used for cycling and summer/winter peak power. It is not cost efficient to use a recovery boiler in that type of service.

      And in the US at least combined cycle GT plants have proved operationally difficult, with turndown and stability problems often requiring the use of duct burners to keep the boiler side stable (there goes the efficiency) and high forced outage rates on the boiler. I've seen a lot of large GT plants (50 - 150 MW) with space on the layout drawings for "future HRSG". That's where you park your truck.

      sPh

    69. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Frankzy · · Score: 1

      Our neighbours has a giant solar installation on the roof and we live in northern Sweden, 2 hours of sunlight at worst.. On the other hand it never stops producing during the summers.

    70. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Natales · · Score: 1

      There has been quite a bit of innovation in turbines in recent years to try to mitigate this. I personally find the Vortex bladeless technology to be the most interesting new development in this field, and has the potential to eliminate the problem altogether.

    71. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      You failed science and they didn't offer Home Ec?

      Burn! but not, ironically, the exhaust.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    72. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 1

      They can be a threat for things like eagles that are already threatened and reproduce slowly, but wind turbines otherwise just don't kill enough birdies to matter, compared to, say, cats. Cats kill about a hundred times more birds, because they're good at it, and there's so many more of them than wind turbines.

      --

      -WolfWithoutAClause

      "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
    73. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by modmans2ndcoming · · Score: 1

      #alternativefacts

    74. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by blindseer · · Score: 1

      You do that and solar power isn't cheaper than nuclear any more. Also, for almost any storage technology you can think of to add to solar it can be added to nuclear too. This is especially true with high temperature reactors that get as hot as any solar thermal system. Nuclear power can heat up that salt too, and do it all day and night, meaning less mass of salt needed since the reactor runs as base load all the time and the sun shines only a few hours in the day. When it comes to reactor down time the utilities figured this out already, they put three or four reactors on a single site so that for scheduled and unscheduled shutdowns there is a high probability of power staying up.

      Storage doesn't make solar power look better, it makes it look worse.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    75. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by aXis100 · · Score: 2

      Solar could theoretically damage the environment by capturing too much energy from the sun.

      Wow! That is staggeringly, breathtakingly wrong on so many levels. Do you even science, bro?

    76. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by BoogieChile · · Score: 1

      I have seen this in action.

      One bird chasing another bird. An intruder into its territory, a male chasing a female, the one that didn't get the early worm chasing the one who did, who knows, but they were going flat out. They came to a river of peak hour traffic. The one in front flies up and over the streaming vehicles. The one behind tries to cut the corner...straight under the wheels of about half a dozen cars. By the time my car rolled over that spot, there was nothing left but a cloud of feathers.

      Survival of the fittest right there.

    77. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Then why do so many hit large solid and visible objects like cell towers (and windmills that are off and locked)? If they can see the wires in zoos, why can't they see them as guy wires for antennas? The whole story about windmills killing birds at such an extraordinary rate doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny.

    78. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've seen a bird get hit by a wind turbine before (just once, mind you). Even I was pretty surprised. I thought it had plenty of room to get through. The problem is that while the angular speed is not that high, the velocity at the tip of the blade is very high. So the bird was kind of lazily flying around and by the time it saw the blade, there was nowhere near enough time to get out of the way. I am convinced that had it flown closer to the centre, it would have had no trouble navigating the turbine at all.

      I live near wind turbines, though, and like I said I've only ever seen one bird hit. Most birds seem to have no trouble.

    79. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      They can be a threat for things like eagles that are already threatened and reproduce slowly, but wind turbines otherwise just don't kill enough birdies to matter, compared to, say, cats. Cats kill about a hundred times more birds, because they're good at it, and there's so many more of them than wind turbines.

      There are not too many cats that can, or are dumb enough, to go after an eagle!
      Maybe a coon cat..

    80. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Ummm, unlike dogs, cats aren't fully domesticated. Some cats are outdoor type that only come in for warmth, protection, and regular food. It would be cruel to lock them in.

      All cats -can- be indoor cats, but have to be kept indoors from birth. Once they start getting outside, then they're indoor/outdoor cats that you hold indoors.

    81. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Cats kill songbirds. Turbines kill raptors. Huge population differences. That's like comparing mice to wolves.

      That's right. Wind farms get government waivers that allows them to kill raptors. The same government will charge me with a felony for picking up a feather I find on my property.

      Unless you're a Native American, and then still not in every circumstance.

    82. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by jandersen · · Score: 1

      This has probably less to do with where I live and more to do with the thicker walls on my current house compared to the house I grew up in.

      So, given that we don't see any citations around, let's pit anecdotes against each other. In my experience, birds only ever fly into stationary, opaque objects, if they are ill or so young that they still haven't mastered all the details of landing on a twig. I have lived in the countryside for a few decades as well as in the city, I have spent a fair bit of time outdoors and I have had bird hit my windows from time to time. Of course, in Europe we tend to build farms out of stone or bricks, so it would have to be an ostrich for us to hear it, but even so, you would expect to find them occasionally. I suspect, if you have been hearing something go bump against your farm house, it might just easily have been something else, such as a rat making a noise on the roof or whatever - if it happened all that often, people probably wouldn't come running outside every time to make sure that this was in fact a bird. The thing is - if you sit inside what is effectively a big wooden box, then it is quite hard to tell exactly where a noise comes from, but it makes for a good anecdote to decide it's a bird: "Oh those birds out here, its like a hail storm".

    83. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is that supposed to solve anything?

    84. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by TimothyHollins · · Score: 1

      Ahh, so that's why it's called a catapult...

    85. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by TheReal_sabret00the · · Score: 1

      Are the Vortex Bladeless Turbines in use anywhere?

    86. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Also, having lungs, birds have certain issues with coal plant emissions.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    87. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      I am in favor of Wyoming banning any shortsighted effort to generate electricity by large scale harnessing of cats. http://www.catpowermusic.com/

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    88. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Alternately, people who let wild birds into their houses.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    89. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gzuckier · · Score: 1
      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    90. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Sustainable electricity produced by burning tobacco. Everybody happy.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    91. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Fuck that.

      Let's change that to pot and patent it.

      No losers there.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    92. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Others have answered the bird issue. As for the Chinese environment, as any US coal miner would say, who are you to dictate that I can't spoil my local environment to make a living? Would you deny them that?

    93. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Actually it's more likely about coal, since coal and gas are the big fuels for power production.

    94. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Done and done

    95. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by suutar · · Score: 1

      and of course today I have no mod points. Thanks for the link!

    96. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by hucker75 · · Score: 0

      Maybe you should try using the brakes.

    97. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to ignore what damage climate change will do to bird populations.

    98. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Unless they ran the fuel balls out, for a short time, the plutonium waste is mixture of isotopes and not suitable for weapons unless run through isotope separation. Which could have been done on the Uranium safer and cheaper.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    99. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Germans like solar because the alternative is supply money to Russia buying gas.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    100. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      They also like to cogen and use the waste heat from a CT to warm a mall, office building or greenhouses.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    101. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Everybody very happy. Birds fall from sky, lie on their backs giggling.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    102. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      I understand that plutonium oxide from a breeder isn't as dangerous (one reason a breeder reactor would be a good thing) but don't you agree that it's still dangerous enough that you need to protect it well?

      Are you advocating no or low security (like "Joe the unarmed security guard"?)

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    103. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by eric_harris_76 · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, evolution is fixing this issue right now.

      Come to think of it, that's the answer to a lot of supposed problems that people worry about for no good reason.

      So is Herbert Stein's Law. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=herbe...

      --
      There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
    104. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by CByrd17 · · Score: 1

      Not to mention all those canaries...

    105. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      I'm saying that you are flat wrong that it's useful in nuclear weapons. Fast breeder or not isn't the issue. To make weapons grade plutonium you have to run the fuel for a very short cycle then chemically extract the plutonium, if you run it for any length of time (as in all power applications) you get a mix of isotopes that aren't useful to make bombs.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    106. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 1

      Nuclear is so much better. It pollutes less than coal, emits almost no CO2 (thus better than oil, natural gas, and coal), requires less mining than solar or wind, and takes up much, much less space than either of those as well. The smaller the footprint we use, the better the environment (all other things being equal).

      --
      Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
    107. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats right thank God Pruitt was approved. Now he can start the important work of protecting us from the enviroment

    108. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      You misunderstood my point. It's still radioactive and could be used as a terrorist weapon even tho the fatality rate is low (I think under 100 since 1950). It doesn't have to be at instant death levels to pollute areas so throughly that they are considered uninhabitable. So you have to protect storage well.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    109. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lying coward, die in a fire.

    110. Re: Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      I've had them miss my car by an inch and I think what saved them was the slipstream created by the car.

      Disregarding what you think happened, your observation is also compatible with the idea that birds are actually very good at judging distances and closing speeds and left themselves with whole inches of spare room when they only needed centimetres.

      Let's put you and you your car into a comparable situation to a bird flying in a forest. Your car sprouts a wing about 5 times it's width (around 10 metres). The wing flaps up and down, so you need situational awareness of other vehicles, trees, branches and power lines overhead. Now drive through town at 30-50 km/hr. How far do you think you'd get before hitting something - and we haven't even added the issues of managing your aerodynamics to the mix. Or, indeed, of hunting for food. Or sex. Or food and sex. And then there are the predators - they really do want to eat your head. Or at least, your muscles.

      Really, the number of birds that do get hit by traffic is remarkably low. The carnage that would result from humans taking to their flying cars in large numbers without some really powerful computer assistance would be hugely higher. Even without the predators. (Looks for story online ... doesn't seem to be online, but there is this review.)

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    111. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by indi0144 · · Score: 1

      The sun is older than 5000 years so it does not exist, it's some pagan shit from pre-Columbian peoples, how are you going to produce energy from a mith? uh?

    112. Re:Wind and Solar are Environmental Disasters by EmptyHead · · Score: 1

      He's just making stuff up, don't take him seriously. They make stuff up to alarm their buddies and elicit conformist nods. Wyoming has the cleanest coal in the world and monitors its use in power plants quite effectively. When I was going through electronics in college in the 90s there, a couple of our instructors were involved in installing and maintaining environmental sensors. Standards were pretty high even back then. Oil refineries were the environmental mess of that era.

  2. Wyoming = big coal country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They just are trying to protect their coal industry so that it doesn't wind up the West Virginia of the western US.

    1. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by jwhyche · · Score: 1

      This news is simply ... stunning.

      Consult the Hackers Jargon file if you don't understand my comment.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    2. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      They just are trying to protect their coal industry so that it doesn't wind up the West Virginia of the western US.

      That is short sighted. Wyoming has a lot of wind resources, and they could build UHVDC lines to export the power. Oklahoma and Texas are doing well with wind.

    3. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wow, you're not kidding. At least from the numbers I'm looking for states in order of coal production they produce more coal than the next 4 states combined (West Virginia: 112.2 (11%) Kentucky: 77.3 (8%) Pennsylvania: 60.9 (6%) Illinois: 58.0 (6%)). They produce around 40% of the nations coal. Still its pretty idiotic, it would be like a city where lead based paint/piping/fuel additives was produced putting a law in place requiring people use those products despite the danger. A better response would be to retool for the future, not blindly cling to the past. Wyoming has some pretty good wind generation potential, they also have more than a little hydroelectric potential.

    4. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wind power in particular could also be a great way to ensure that grazing rights on lands are maintained, since there's no reason why a wind farm and ranching would have to be incompatible, and with the land already being several stages away from being pristine, no reason not to continue to leave grazing rights.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    5. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's pretty obvious. Coal miners are voters, windmills are not.

    6. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by hierofalcon · · Score: 2

      11% of electricity produced in WY does come from wind. Around 2/3 of generated electricity is already exported according to google searches. The biggest objection to wind farms is disruption of scenic views. The biggest problem with export is again building infrastructure to export the electricity and again scenic views.

      People probably wouldn't object as much to the wind farms if the power was needed by the state's residents. When there is a large oversupply, it's a fair argument to not reduce our quality of life by building ugly wind farms. There has been particular resistance in the SW corner. FWIW we now have a wind farm north of town and it really isn't that nice to look at. Another consideration is that wildfires can put a wind farm out of commission for quite a while whereas power plants with a smaller footprint can be better protected. With increasing drought, that's a real concern.

    7. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by JabrTheHut · · Score: 1

      Oh the delicious irony of arguing against renewable energy production because climate change will cause more damage to production more often...

      --
      Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
    8. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by hierofalcon · · Score: 1

      Ironical - yes, but the wind farm north of town was shut down for an extended period for just this reason while they checked all the infrastructure involved to make sure it hadn't been damaged.

    9. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This way the congressman can tell his constituents that he tried to keep their jobs, but the rest of the state wouldn't go along with it.

    10. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They just are trying to protect their coal industry so that it doesn't wind up the West Virginia of the western US.

      Too late.

    11. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If that's the case, why do they include hydropower as one of their allowable sources? I'm not too familiar with Wyoming geography - is hydropower just untenable there, and therefore no risk to allow?

    12. Re:Wyoming = big coal country by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      there's no reason why a wind farm and ranching would have to be incompatible,

      I have a mental image of a cowboy swinging his lasso ... and it getting caught on a turbine blade, taking him for the (last) ride of his life.

      [SELF - fires up braincell. Let's look at a 50m turbine blade (large but not gigantic) on a 60m tower ; if the blades woosh at 0.5Hz (every 2 seconds, then a 3-blade turbine will be doing 10 RPM. In which case, the blade tip will be experiencing -5.6 g. So an 80kg man would need to hold 450kg on thin (7-8mm) line for 6 seconds to get back to ground level - which he'd hit at about 190 km/hr. Yes, I think it'd be the last ride of his life, unless the ambulance gets there really quickly.]

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  3. Huh by barrywalker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The retards have really taken over, alright.

    If we don't burn ourselves up, we're headed for a really nice repeat of the dark ages.

    1. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But I thought Republitards were all about government getting out of regulating businesses? Magic of the free market and all?

      Oh, they are just hypocritical? I guess whatever makes America great again.

    2. Re:Huh by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Funny

      I guess whatever makes America great again.

      whatever, n. The je ne sais quoi that makes America great again.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    3. Re:Huh by transami · · Score: 1

      Your knowledge of history is absolutely amazing ... at just how distorted it is.

      --
      :T:R:A:N:S:
    4. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Eh? What solar and hydroelectric power did they have. Sure, the sun fueled growing crops and the trees that was burned in the stove to get heat. Water and wind was used for mechanical power. But electric?

      So not only are you a bad troll, you are an uninformed one as well. Begone!

    5. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Jan 21, 2019 headline: Democrat super-majority in US House and Senate pass historic legislation requiring states to generate 50% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      Jan 21, 2021 headline: President Sanders signs historic Constitutional Amendment requiring states to generate 75% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      Checkmate, Wyoming.

    6. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 0

      In other words:

      People of Wyoming, we hate you and hold you in utter contempt. Now please adopt our preference for your state's energy policy over your own.

    7. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      Jan 21, 2021 headline: President Elizabeth Warren signs historic Constitutional Amendment requiring states to generate 75% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      FTFY - With Hillary swept to the dustbin of history, Elizabeth Warren has a better shot at POTUS in 2020.

    8. Re:Huh by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not sure how this would be legal. You can't dictate that a company can't sell a legal product. So how would a wind only operate? Sounds like Republicans for Excessive and Unnecessary Regulation. Doncha love a party that sticks to its ideals instead of pandering to big business interests?

    9. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wyoming has less inhabitants than the very tiny Luxembourg but it's many times larger. It's one of the richest states (in GDP per person) of the US because of its mines. If the government chose to ban fossil fuels, the only meaningful industry left would be tourism. Tourism alone is not enough to keep the people among the richest of the US. Do you think that the half million people in such a large state would vote for their own demise? That would be the same as the people in California voting for a government that bans irrigation to protect the ground water levels.

    10. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We did not move away from fossil fuels quickly enough... We need to buy some time so geoengineering here we come. We can add reflective particles to the atmosphere and or dump iron and calcium into the oceans to help absorb co2. After 4 more years of drill baby drill we likely won't have a choice.

    11. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Jan 21, 2019 headline: Democrat super-majority in US House and Senate pass historic legislation requiring states to generate 50% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      Jan 21, 2021 headline: President Sanders signs historic Constitutional Amendment requiring states to generate 75% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      Checkmate, Wyoming.

      Wow.

      What temperature is the cosmic background radiation in your universe? It's about 2.7K in this universe.

      As long as Democrats remain the party of urban elites and write off the rest of the country, they might win some Presidential elections but they'll never regain the House or Senate. So what if the Democrats run up big popular vote totals in the huge cities of California and New York. Hell, the Democrats can't even win Pennsylvania with all the help from Philadelphia, or Michigan even with the help of "more votes than registered voters" fraud in Detroit.

      The fact that you mentioned "President Sanders" - who isn't a Democrat at all as he's officially a Socialist - means you don't realize that at all.

    12. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like Wyoming is a liberal state. LMAO.

    13. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 1

      These are very persuasive sentiments. I wonder why the people of Wyoming don't listen to kind-hearted entreaties such as this?

    14. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jan 21, 2021 headline: President Elizabeth Warren signs historic Constitutional Amendment requiring states to generate 75% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      FTFY - With Hillary swept to the dustbin of history, Elizabeth Warren has a better shot at POTUS in 2020.

      With the Clintons out, the Democratic Party will likely develop national-level candidates with leadership and competence - the Clintons made sure to squash any that threatened to emerge between 1992 and 2016. Somehow Obama managed to survive everything the Clintons threw at him.

      Don't think the Clintons did that? Look at the ages of today's Democrat leaders with national name recognition.

      If HIllary can't win - twice! - even with the entire field swept clean and effectively the entire media pulling for her, what the hell makes you believe Warren stands a chance? Hillary lost to an upstart backbencher first-term Senator in 2008, and to an obnoxious blowhard in 2016 - after almost losing the Democratic nomination to a non-Democrat - yep, Bernie Sanders is not officially a Democrat, he's officially a member of the Socialist Party.

      The fact that you consider an ancient 1%er lawyer-to-huge-corporations like Warren a legitimate Democrat candidate shows just how bereft of leadership the Clintons have left the Democratic Party.

      Warren is Hillary without Bill to help.

    15. Re: Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your math is wrong... Trump's third term won't end until 2029.

    16. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      The fact that you consider an ancient 1%er lawyer-to-huge-corporations like Warren a legitimate Democrat candidate shows just how bereft of leadership the Clintons have left the Democratic Party.

      The problem with national politics today is that there are too many old fucks in office. Sadly, Hillary and Trump were the best old fucks that the parties could come up with in 2016.

    17. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup, Wyoming is a democratic stronghold.

      numbnuts

    18. Re:Huh by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Michelle Obama has a better chance of winning than Trump's reelection.

    19. Re:Huh by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or at least Trump goes around telling people he's the best fuck.
      I thought "Idoicracy" was supposed to be a satire.

    20. Re: Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They are probably locked in their own echo chamber anyway. Life is so much better when you put up walls and keep the things you fear outside.

    21. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      I thought "Idoicracy" was supposed to be a satire.

      Read "Mission Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard (ten books). That's supposed to be satire. I can't but help wonder if Trump read it and thought it was non-fiction.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Earth_(novel)

    22. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Michelle Obama has a better chance of winning than Trump's reelection.

      I think Michelle should follow Hillary's example by going home, getting elected to Congress, build up her political credentials as a senator or representative, and then run for president. We just had eight years of Obama. Although four years of Trump could make Michelle a shoo-in for 2020.

    23. Re:Huh by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      It's often called Communism when the government micro-manages the economy to achieve specific results. Note that most Americans wouldn't recognize Communism if it grabbed their wallet and gave it to poor people.

    24. Re:Huh by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Read "Mission Earth" by L. Ron Hubbard

      I've already had the misfortune of reading some Rand after people on this site went on about it so I'd probably rather chew my own arm off before reading more SF written to push an ideology.
      I'll take your word for it.

    25. Re:Huh by meglon · · Score: 0, Troll

      That's easy... they're made up of complete fucking morons like you. You fucking "small government" conservatives are all about making government small by destroying it, along with the country, for no other reason than your one true god - money. Fucking fascist hypocritical pieces of shit is what the GOP is.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    26. Re:Huh by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For each party's pet causes, the only difference that I see is that the Democrats don't pretend that they're not picking and choosing when to intrude. The Republicans seem to intrude just as much while claiming that they're not intruding.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    27. Re:Huh by amiga3D · · Score: 2

      If the bill had a snowball's chance in hell of passing I'd agree with you. The fact that the mental midget that proposed it thinks it only has a 50 percent chance of passing means it's already dead.

    28. Re:Huh by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      It's libertarians who hate regulations. Republicans and Democrats just like opposing types of regulations.

    29. Re:Huh by Wycliffe · · Score: 0

      That would be the same as the people in California voting for a government that bans irrigation to protect the ground water levels.

      You make it sound like this could never happen. I could easily see this happen. The percentage of farmers in California is small compared to city dwellers. What do the city dwellers care about irrigation. California recently passed something similar where they are basically going to cause all the dairy farmers to leave (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/29/california-passes-a-new-climate-law-to-regulate-cow-farts/) and many of their other regulations have likewise hurt their own companies.

    30. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      funny or insightful, hard to decide

    31. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      from a state that voted over 68% for our new moron-in-chief.

      i fully expect indiana and/or texas to adopt 'the bible' as their state's official science textbook in k12 education.

      expect more of the same from others, as well as from washington, d.c. itself.

    32. Re:Huh by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These are very persuasive sentiments. I wonder why the people of Wyoming don't listen to kind-hearted entreaties such as this?

      We should lie to the special snowflakes and not call out their stupidity?

      That's the new normal? Politicians in a state propose a stupid law and we should just praise the people who elected them because otherwise they might get upset?

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    33. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that she seems to hate the spotlight despite a talent for oration.

    34. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bernie has never been a member of the Socialist party. He was an independent for the last 30 years and recently registered as a Democrat as he realize it was the only way to effect true change.

    35. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 0

      Seems like you want something from them and they don't want anything from you. How are you going to get what you want? Being your usual nasty selves probably isn't going to work.

    36. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Very persuasive.

    37. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck Wyoming and all those pissant soon to be starved to death states full of sub-70 IQ white trash retards.

      Zero fucks worth of sympathy for them.

    38. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No "small government" conservative would back legislation mandating the use or non-use of any particular power source unless that source were shown to be immediately injurious to humans on property not owned by the power company using said source.

      True American conservatives are quite rare. Crony capitalists, on the other hand . . .

    39. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Except that she seems to hate the spotlight despite a talent for oration.

      That's a problem for any aspiring leader.

    40. Re:Huh by Z80a · · Score: 1

      Yes, because king Trump will do everything he wants without any sort of opposition due his magical wizard powers.

    41. Re:Huh by Z80a · · Score: 0

      If you get your shit together, stop clinton from competing, toss away the retarded spoiled rich brats that don't understand shit about your position and distort everything just to mindlessly gain power, burn social justice to the ground and go back to defending the working class, yes, you will have a great shot.

      Meanwhile, you guys should go back to occupy the frakking wallstreet, because their social justice distraction worked too fucking well.

    42. Re:Huh by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Well sure, ask any red white and blue blooded conservative and they'll tell you that Communism means atheist immigrants who want to raise your taxes!

    43. Re:Huh by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Seems like you want something from them and they don't want anything from you. How are you going to get what you want?

      I am just going to wait for the squeals of pain when snowflakes like you realize that you have voted in someone who doesn't give a shit for anyone except his wealthy buddies.

      It's going to be hilarious.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    44. Re:Huh by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Now please adopt our preference for your state's energy policy over your own.

      Not all preferences are equally valid. In matters of taste, sure. But this isn't a matter of taste.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    45. Re:Huh by KermodeBear · · Score: 0

      Sadly, the Republican party has become full of big government progressives, just like the Democrats. They're basically the same party - both want to increase the size of government, both want to use it to rule your life, both don't give a shit about you until election day.

      --
      Love sees no species.
    46. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Wyoming people decide whether their state's energy policy is sufficiently "valid".

    47. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 0

      Another super persuasive argument.

      I am just going to wait for the squeals of pain when snowflakes like you realize that you have voted in someone who doesn't give a shit for anyone except his wealthy buddies.

      It's going to be hilarious.

      You know that doesn't actually happen, right? When Obama turned into President Dronestrike and then later became the guy overseeing NSA Spying on everyone, it took like 2 hours for his supporters to decide the shit they protested against didn't matter very much and Obama was just a bystander, powerless to do anything despite his transcendent greatness. Or they'd just change the subject and turn a blind eye.

      Trump fans will do the same. (Not me though. I never liked Trump -- because he's a celebrity and celebrities seem to mostly be complete douchebags. But his cabinet picks and some of his policy statements are much better than I expected so far.)

    48. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'm sure people in farming states will starve to death.

    49. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Note that your image of communism is also incorrect.
      If it were a communism, you would own your share of the economy and you would be a part of the governing body, since communism is, well, a classless ideology. No one owns the economy, everyone owns it.

      PS. We've never seen an actual communistic country. All "Communistic" countries are class-based with a leading class micro-managing the economy. Note, leading class makes the country automatically fail the "Is this communism?" question. It's called "planned economy" when the government dictates what to produce and how much.

    50. Re:Huh by AaronW · · Score: 1

      This is the same guy who invented Scientology. I've read part of it... and put the books in my recycle bin.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
    51. Re:Huh by Mashiki · · Score: 0

      Why don't you try the bullshit that was foisted upon the voters of Ontario by the Liberal party. By a government that knew it was going to increase electricity rates. That didn't care it would put people into the position of making the choices of "roof over head or heating." That's driving businesses out of the province, to really anywhere. That has big "clean" businesses like data centers and so on looking at moving out of the province. Yes, green energy does wonders at killing your economy when you pay them 0.50-1.50kWh to produce electricity and it jacks the peak-demand price from 0.8kWh to 0.18kWh in less then 8 years..

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    52. Re:Huh by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Republicans often pretend to be libertarians, but their talk on that subject seldom translates into action. Sometimes it happens to align with another agenda, and then they proclaim libertarian ideals loudly.

    53. Re:Huh by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      The retards have really taken over, alright

      s/al/the /

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    54. Re:Huh by gtall · · Score: 2

      runaway warming will jack with the economy a lot more than green initiatives. Oh, but that's 30 years down the road, you don't need to worry your little head over it.

    55. Re:Huh by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In my experience they often propose a stupid, draconian or simply abusive law in the full expectation that it will get shot down. They can then claim they were stifled and shift blame to someone else, or introduce a lesser but still basically evil "compromise" bill that does get through. That latter one is a favourite technique for the current UK government.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    56. Re:Huh by Imrik · · Score: 1

      Strings attached to federal aid must be related to what the federal aid is funding. In this case, only federal energy subsidies would be able to be restricted.

    57. Re: Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you sleep in the park?

    58. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We should lie to the special snowflakes and not call out their stupidity?

      There's a difference between being honest to people, straightforwardly laying out the truth, and calling them idiots and threating to give their kids cancer. You can be a straight shooter, informing them of their mistakes and laying out exactly why they have things wrong, without being condescending and insulting.

      Or are you such a coddled imbecile that you have your head up your ass and can't grasp the distinction, you blithering idiot?

    59. Re: Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Republicans hate the government, except when it's used to legislate things that make them money.

    60. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jan 21, 2021 headline: President Sanders signs historic Constitutional Amendment requiring states to generate 75% of their power from renewable energy sources to qualify for any federal aid.

      Checkmate, Wyoming.

      Sorry to burst your Progressive fantasy, but the President does not have a constitutional role in the amendment process.

      My fantasy, which is closer to reality than yours, is that a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures adds two amendments: federal balanced budget and congressional term limits.

    61. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes they certainly have taken over - California and New York.

    62. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you fail out of highschool, or are you not in highschool yet? Your statement is astoundingly clueless about food production on SO many levels, it would take a year to unfuck your mind. Go read the Grapes of Wrath and study the dust bowl, Oakies, and the great depression. Then learn about monoculture and how some states produce ONE kind of crop (corn). Then learn about the penalties for storing seed, the subsidies for distribution logistics, and the fact that 1% of farmers own their farms.

      Oh wait, you're too fucking stupid. Even if you read all this it would be like a dog watching TV. You're just utterly clueless biomass that I have to pay for through my taxes. Go kill yourself.

    63. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      [...] your shit [...]

      [...] you guys [...]

      Whom are you addressing here?

    64. Re:Huh by Desler · · Score: 2

      The Republican party was never small government party. Not a single moment since Abe Lincoln. Anyone who believes that rhetoric is an idiot. Even their god Ronald Reagan is the president who turned the US into the world's largest debtor through his administrations massive deficit spending.

    65. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best that the Democrats were willing to allow to be nominated.
      Stupid dems couldn't realize that when your chosen candidate was soundly beat in Wisconsin, you can take it for granted. Fools

    66. Re:Huh by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      It's hilarious how the Trump supporters, after all the abuse they dished out and telling liberals to deal with the criticism are now the special snowflakes, who cannot be criticized.

      Grow up, and grow a pair!

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    67. Re:Huh by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      I always tend to side with Republicans more than Democrats but really I'd like the Federal government to be reduced by about half or more. So much of what they've taken control of was never meant to be. The worst thing about Republicans was their failure to stand up for the 4th Amendment under both the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations. The one hope I had when Obama was elected was that we'd get rid of that hideous "Patriot" Act. It's an abomination and the name particularly is offensive. It's like the "People's" Republic of China. Calling something by a name which is inherently the opposite of what it stands for. There is nothing Patriotic about pissing all over the US Constitution and the fact that it has endured with bi-partisan support for so long is especially disturbing.

    68. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      This is the same guy who invented Scientology.

      Not sure about the Scientology aspect of L. Ron Hubbard. But I enjoyed reading "Battlefield Earth" as a fun SF romp and "Mission Earth" is more of the same. He was a pulp writer long before he became a figurehead for a religious movement.

    69. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      The best that the Democrats were willing to allow to be nominated.

      As a moderate conservative, I could live with Hillary being in the White House. Trump was neither a conservative nor a Republican, and, until a few years ago, a Clinton Democrat. If you're going to have a Clinton Democrat in the White House, might as well vote for the real thing.

      Stupid dems couldn't realize that when your chosen candidate was soundly beat in Wisconsin, you can take it for granted. Fools

      Polling data at the time indicated that Wisconsin was solidly blue and it encouraged Democrats to talk about expanding the electoral map into Arizona and Texas. Based on the reports I've read, polling data didn't capture the last minute turn for Trump. Hence, 46% of Americans elected a candidate that 54% of Americans didn't want.

    70. Re:Huh by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately parties often come as a package. If you want the 'small government' Republicans, you find that there is a very large overlap with the 'climate change is a chinese hoax' Republicans and the 'public officials have a right to refuse to serve homosexuals' Republicans.

      The Democrats have their lunatic fringe too - the excesses of the Social Justice movement. But they are still only a fringe, seldom seen outside of college campuses, while the crazies seem to have taken over the Republicans.

    71. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >dictate that a company can't sell a legal product...

      Certainly you can! Simply change the rules of the market so REGULATED utilities can't use that product. They're regulated, remember? The regulation simply redefines something that's currently legal to not be. End of panic.

      As for Republicans and Regulation - they're only against regulations that might impact the profitability and monopolies of the big businesses that fund the Party. All others must be regulated to support the big businesses.

    72. Re:Huh by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Would that be the same runaway warming that they've been predicting since the 1970's between a new ice age is coming, we'll be running out of oil and natural gas by 1985? Or that there will be no snowfall by 2010? Mostly published in the UK, though there was media in Canada pushing the same BS. Maybe you should be wondering why people aren't believing this as anything but bullshit after ~40 years of the same "sky is falling" no REALLY the sky is falling now.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    73. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know that doesn't actually happen, right?

      Yes, we know from your own conduct, that you will close your eyes tightly, cover your ears, and scream in the fetal position as the fruits of your own sowing are harvested.

      But his cabinet picks and some of his policy statements are much better than I expected so far.)

      His actual conduct, meanwhile, is presenting "alternative facts" so enjoy the fruits of supporting a complete douchebag as you call him.

      But go ahead, pretend you're not praising him for pissing in your face.

      Your arguments continue to be rather unpersuasive, Kohath, as usual. It's probably because only the most naive are fooled by your dishonesty, the only people who play along are your fellow trolls, whose own conduct is also obvious.

    74. Re:Huh by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      And Mississippi's legislature once defined pi as 3. The legal framework being followed means the law is valid, not that it is right.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    75. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Why do you think anyone is interested in whether you approve of Wyoming's choices?

    76. Re:Huh by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Not sure who you're talking about. I never supported Trump. I'm starting to wish I had though, because the things he's doing are better than expected. He's been the opposite of a disappointment so far.

    77. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not sure who you're talking about. I never supported Trump.

      You've announced your desire to do so, repeated it even, so again, enjoy the fruits of supporting a complete douche-bag as you call him.

    78. Re:Huh by houghi · · Score: 1

      Please keep up and read your new newspeak book. It isn't a lie, it is an alternative truth.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    79. Re:Huh by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      The Republican party changed dramatically around 1980. It used to be fiscally conservative, interested in states' rights, and reluctant to make major changes. There hasn't been a conservative party in over 35 years.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    80. Re:Huh by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Cause we're here on /. talking about it? I mean, why does anyone care why anyone thinks about anything?

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    81. Re:Huh by MooseMiester · · Score: 1

      If this was reality it would have happened in 2009.

      --
      Murphy was an optimist
    82. Re:Huh by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Actually they do. They just say 'it's common sense.'

    83. Re:Huh by cwsumner · · Score: 1

      Hubbard made Scientology on a bet, after he claimed he could make a better religion. It sort of "got away from him"... ;-)

    84. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that's the problem! When the cycle goes around, pretend-libertarian policies get blamed for everything that's messed up, and nobody wizens up that both Democrats and Republicans want more control. Maybe 4 years is too long since we forget too quickly why we ended up on this side of the grass.
      Yes. I voted for Gary Johnson.

    85. Re:Huh by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      I knew years ahead of time the DNC was going to try to shove Hilliary "It's my turn" Clinton at us. I also knew that unless the Republicans ran Adolph Hitler's clone I was going to probably end up voting Republican. God what a shitty election. I'm still not entirely sure if Trump is crazy or just running a new reality show.

    86. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they are wrong in their idiocy they should be called on it, publicly.

    87. Re:Huh by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      For anybody considering taking his advice. The movie 'Battlefield Earth' is much, much better than the book. If you've seen the movie you'll realize just how bad the book is.

      I bought it when it was first released, having previously read most of the 'golden age of scifi' authors, I was fooled by the Scientology lies. Just don't do it. If you do, at about page 10 you will start thinking 'this HAS to get better'...it doesn't.

      I've never read any of 'Mission Earth', but much of it was ghost written by SeaOrg members after LRH 'jettisoned his body'.

      LRH was a prolific writer, because he did speed, never did a second draft, lived in a echo chamber and allowed no edits. You can tell.

      For quality, speed influenced scifi, you want PKD not LRH. Sure PKD has a lot of stories with no ending, but LRH's shit seems endless.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    88. Re:Huh by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      He's also never held an honest job in his life, on record 'supporting Castro' and went to the USSR for his honeymoon.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    89. Re:Huh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Hubbard made Scientology on a bet, after he claimed he could make a better religion. It sort of "got away from him"... ;-)

      Could be worse. I've known some "Jedi Christians" who put Yoda on the cross and worshipped him as a savior. They were a weird bunch in college.

    90. Re:Huh by cwsumner · · Score: 1

      Could be worse. I've known some "Jedi Christians" who put Yoda on the cross and worshipped him as a savior. They were a weird bunch in college.

      8-)

    91. Re:Huh by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the laugh!

      --
      Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
    92. Re:Huh by Anonymous+Cow+Ward · · Score: 1

      I don't think Congressional term limits will ever really happen, as both parties kind of like the current system. A federal balanced budget... unlikely, but possible, given the sheer number of GOP-controlled state legislatures. If (and it's a big if) they decide they actually want to remain consistent with the complaints they've been throwing out the last eight years.

      --
      Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
  4. Interstate commerce? by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Surely, there is interstate commerce going on here, which would take the issue out of the hands of local politicians?

    Also, it's anti-employment, anti-business. Renewable energy employs more people than coal. The only people to benefit are a small number of miners and a tiny special interest group (coal mine owners).

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    1. Re: Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think it's an interstate commerce issue, because the legislation places no restriction on the forms of energy that Wyoming utilities can export to other states. It soes, however, restrict how Wyoming utilities can generate power that is used within Wyoming. I don't think it is an interstate commerce issue, because of the very specific way the legislation was crafted.

    2. Re:Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That depends. Take Texas for example. They do not have much in the way of out of state electricity.

      Also the best way to handle this is to get the law struck down. Find a group of your neighbors and start knocking on doors. Show up with a pre-written bill and and 200k in sigs sends a big message.

    3. Re:Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      The state government is funded by mineral extraction taxes. There are no taxes on wind & sun. Understand that and you understand why the mindset out here is "Obama to Wyoming, Drop Dead." (Direct quote from a WY resident last year on NPR)

      The wind farms will still be built, CO will happily buy every last watt.

    4. Re:Interstate commerce? by negRo_slim · · Score: 1

      Also the best way to handle this is to get the law struck down. Find a group of your neighbors and start knocking on doors. Show up with a pre-written bill and and 200k in sigs sends a big message.

      That easy huh?

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    5. Re: Interstate commerce? by Cheviot · · Score: 1

      They're trying not to make it an interstate commerce issue by stating it this way. However, by forbidding solar and wind power, it would require the use of oil, coal or gas, which can be imported from other states. That makes it an interstate commerce issue. They have to use more of an fuel that can be bought from another state than they would if they allowed renewables.

    6. Re: Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since Wickard v. Filburn, there is almost nothing that is not an interstate commerce issue.

    7. Re:Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's an example of the free market at work. Government policy determined by the highest bidder.

    8. Re:Interstate commerce? by supremebob · · Score: 1

      In other words, this insane bill is more of a hardball negotiation tactic to increase taxes on wind and solar installations... or else.

      Put in that light, it almost makes sense.

    9. Re:Interstate commerce? by supremebob · · Score: 1

      This is Wyoming we're talking about, not New Jersey or Connecticut. You're going to be doing a lot more driving to get those 200,000 signatures.

    10. Re: Interstate commerce? by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      That probably wouldn't work if someone generated 5MW in wind in OR and "exported" 5MW and "imported" 5MW and claimed no power they supplied was wind. The moment they try to enforce it, the company can file for a dismissal for improper jurisdiction. And probably granted.

    11. Re:Interstate commerce? by hwolfe · · Score: 1

      Are there even 200,000 registered voters in Wyoming to sign the petition?

    12. Re:Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      500k residents so it'd be around half of the possible voters or everyone who actually votes.

    13. Re: Interstate commerce? by sphealey · · Score: 1

      = = = http://www.powermag.com/ferc-b...
      Throwing yet another twist into a long-running saga, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on April 27 blocked a pair of power purchase agreements (PPAs) that would have supported continued operation of FirstEnergy’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant and several aging coal-fired plants belonging to FirstEnergy and AEP.

      The Pubic Utilities Commission of Ohio approved the PPAs on March 31 over strident objections from ratepayer groups and rival generators. FirstEnergy and AEP say the PPAs are necessary to keep the plants operating, and that their closure would imperil reliability in the state. Consumer groups charge that the deals, which would have allowed the utilities’ distribution units to purchase power from the plants at guaranteed, above-market rates for eight years, amounted to corporate welfare.

      On April 27, in a pair of rulings, FERC agreed with the groups challenging the PPAs, rescinding previous waivers it had issued to FirstEnergy and AEP allowing them to purchase power from their affiliate generators. Loss of the waivers effectively blocks the utilities from purchasing power under the PPAs until FERC has had a chance to review them.

      “While it is true that Ohio ratepayers will continue to have a statutory right to choose one retail supplier over another, we conclude, based on the record, that [Ohio ratepayers] are nonetheless captive in that they have no choice as to payment of the non-bypassable generation-related charges incurred under the Affiliate PPA,” the FERC ruling said. “These non-bypassable charges present the ‘potential for the inappropriate transfer of benefits from [captive] customers to the shareholders of the franchised public utility,’ and, thus, could undermine the goal of the Commission’s affiliate restrictions.”= = =

      You need to read up a bit on the FERC, federal primacy in interstate power markets, and how the bulk electric system works.

      sPh

    14. Re: Interstate commerce? by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Just bus in a few from NY, Chicago and LA to solve the problem.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    15. Re:Interstate commerce? by gtall · · Score: 1

      I did a brief check, there's about 5,000 mine jobs in Wyoming and about 15,000 others in the associated businesses. Wyoming's pop. is roughly 600,000 which puts it behind Alaska (about 750,00) and Montana (about 1,000,000). My guess is that the mining industry is so entrenched that other options that should have been pursued years ago on diversifying their economy were never considered. As coal started being eaten by natural gas, the coal industry doubled down.

      The result was the people got screwed yet one more time by industry and government who couldn't get out of their ruts to diversify Wyoming's economy. Now the choices are much harder and more expensive. The state never did seem to consider education a valued notion. So their choices are very much constrained to manual labor intensive industries.

    16. Re: Interstate commerce? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      Just to be accurate. they are excluding commercial solar and wind. But via the Net Metering item they are specifically including residential/consumer solar, and residential/consumer wind.

      I'm not defending the law, it makes no sense to me, but just pointing out this detail that appears to be overlooked.

    17. Re: Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can they even read the petition?

    18. Re:Interstate commerce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other words, this insane bill is more of a hardball negotiation tactic to increase taxes on wind and solar installations... or else.

      Put in that light, it almost makes sense.

      Nah, they'll simply sell the electricity to other states, enhancing Wyoming's revenue stream (for separation purposes, the electrons/phonons look like little suns and puffing zephyrs).

  5. duh by dougdonovan · · Score: 0

    the gov of wyo...get a clue...dont pentalize...help pay for it unless u r not into recycling.

  6. Another Trump Victory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Letting big businesses get back to work without all those pesky environmental regulations. It is such a relief to know climate change was fixed yesterday.

  7. Ah, yes. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If this bill's author has had the temerity to claim to be in favor of 'freedom' or 'free markets'; and then pushes this nonsense, somebody needs to feed him to a wood chipper.

    1. Re:Ah, yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's just suggesting a useful alternative energy source -- biofuel.

    2. Re:Ah, yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Passing a bill restricting others market freedom or freedom in general is not "speaking your mind". It is using force and stealing from people. That is certainly worthy of jail or death.

    3. Re:Ah, yes. by meglon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sure, lets end those subsidies... then end all the oil and gas subsidies, then go reclaim the past 110 years of subsidies we gave to oil companies. The author isn't speaking his mind... he's too fucking stupid to have a mind, and he's put on a pedestal for being a fucking idiot by other fucking idiots like you.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    4. Re:Ah, yes. by Uberbah · · Score: 4, Informative

      Coal is killing the planet, wind and solar are not. Your dad probably complained about when asbestos and lead paint were being phased out, too.

    5. Re:Ah, yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The wood chipper is reserved for liars, not for opinionated blowhards.

      We need more wood chippers. And this nitwit from Wyoming should still be first in line.

    6. Re:Ah, yes. by sacrilicious · · Score: 1

      If this bill's author has had the temerity to claim to be in favor of 'freedom' or 'free markets'; and then pushes this nonsense, somebody needs to feed him to a wood chipper.

      Should that chipper be wind-powered or gas-powered? Wind would be good for the planet, but gas would have a sweet and irreplaceable irony to it...

      --
      - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
    7. Re:Ah, yes. by coinreturn · · Score: 2

      Coal is killing the planet, wind and solar are not. Your dad probably complained about when asbestos and lead paint were being phased out, too.

      He doesn't remember. He ate all that lead paint.

  8. How insane can you get? by rstanley · · Score: 1

    I know politicians are not very bright, and some, if not many, are corrupt, but how can they allow this to pass, especially when the alternative is coal powered power plants! Hopefully the governor has more intelligence and veto this bill if passed.

    Time to close at least some of the coal mines and find alternative jobs for the workers, in alternative, more environmentally friendly energy.

    1. Re:How insane can you get? by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

      I know politicians are not very bright, and some, if not many, are corrupt, but how can they allow this to pass, especially when the alternative is coal powered power plants!

      Wyoming is a major coal-producing state.

      In the view of politicians, when you say "the alternative is coal powered power plants"-- that's exactly why they want to pass the bill.

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  9. Congrats Wyoming! by Notabadguy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now if we could just get Wyoming to also pass a bill to put up a wall around the state, then send the bill Colorado. Then they could put a dome on the wall and send the bill for that to Utah.

    No walls, no gates, no windows. Must contain the tard.

    1. Re:Congrats Wyoming! by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Didn't George Carlin propose something like this? There were gates though, so that all the degenerates could be tossed in from the rest of the country, creating an free range prison. Had to choose a rectangular state, to save on fencing costs of course.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    2. Re:Congrats Wyoming! by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure about Carlin, but Robert Heinlein suggested exactly this in some of the stories in his "future history" series. Basically, his theory was thus:

      Justice systems based on notions of "justice" nearly always degenerate into systems that are, in reality, based on revenge. So forget about justice, and focus on preventing recidivism and further harm to society. Criminals are therefore given a choice. Submit to psychological therapy to identify and correct whatever defect in their psyche that led to their criminality; or be exiled to Coventry. Coventry was a rather largish chunk of the midwest; with plenty of fertile land, water, and a controlled climate to make it ideal for agriculture. A force field surrounded it and a no-fly zone was strictly enforced. And criminals who refused treatment, thus rejecting society, would be exiled to Coventry and could live their life by whatever rules they made amongst themselves. There were gates and call-boxes, and if someone decided exile wasn't for them, they could accept treatment and be re-admitted to outside society.

      --
      Imagine all the people...
    3. Re:Congrats Wyoming! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      then send the bill Colorado. Then they could put a dome on the wall and send the bill for that to Utah.

      That smells like interstate tax evasion! IRS will notice the Justice Department and the state is converted to prison by posting guards around the wall, you know, for tax evasion. EU will help paying for the guards as Washington is suffering from the lack of toilet paper.

  10. 50% chance by Sebby · · Score: 1

    and even the bill's sponsor gives it only a 50% chance of passing

    ... and a 100% chance of being a completely retarded idea!

    --

    AC comments get piped to /dev/null
  11. WY is a good place to be from by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was raised and educated in Wyoming, it was a relatively decent place to grow up. However, most of the people I grew up with could not wait to get the hell out of there. The current people in charge there really want to make it a hole in the ground, very few want to stay there. Once they are to a point where they can, they move out and leave that place.

    This is what happens when you have Republicans run the place since Johnson was president. Dig it all up, cut (what few trees there are) down anything green, when the wind stops all the buildings fall over (Neb. sucks and Utah blows) then move to Arizona - that's what you do.

    1. Re: WY is a good place to be from by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, because Democrats have done a bang up job in cities/states they have had a stronghold on for decades...

    2. Re: WY is a good place to be from by meglon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Might try comparing say... California... to shitholes like Kansas, idiot. Red states are predominantly leeches on blue states, and they still rank the shittiest states on pretty much any quality of living/prepping for the future index. I do understand though, fucking idiots like you can't be bothered with reality.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    3. Re: WY is a good place to be from by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe if those non-shit holes stopped cutting the programs designed to help the shit holes then those shit holes would get better. In some of the shittest shit holes you can't even buy fresh fruit and the only veggies they get are the ones people grow in their gardens. The towns are too far away from the primary shipping interstates routes to be worth the trouble for the larger companies to bother stopping by and delivering food to the local grocery stores. It's not profitable enough to serve small towns. Those companies are run out of your cities (which are decaying, if you bother to open your eyes to see it), so if you want the country to improve then stop shitting on poorer states.

    4. Re: WY is a good place to be from by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      See how long your California stays in the blue after productive people like me all leave for, say, Texas. I give it about 5-6 more years.
      After you have nobody left to tax, you'll just have one big circle-jerk of illegals/gangs abusing "disability" poets/dog-walkers.

      I am not glad it will happen, but I frankly don't see a solution; I am just tired of paying for the single moms, the surfer bums that "just need a break, man," the community organizers, the social justice warriors... Hollywood might still be making money for a couple more years, so you can keep that.

    5. Re: WY is a good place to be from by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Original AC here.
      Fuck California. Your analogy is pure shit.
      California gives more money in taxes to the Federal Government than it gets back.
      Wyoming on the other hand, sucks Federal money like you suck dick.
      Wyoming's Government is very depended on Federal handouts and resources from Federal land. (Coal leases are far lower than they should be - but that is part of the "dig it up" mentality) It has more sheep than people, more guns than people (I sold guns working in a grocery store after getting out of college), the most common cause of death in you males is single car roll over (with alcohol) and suicide buy ----- wait for it ---- guns. (See 2nd point) The highest paid state official is the football coach at the only 4 year University (I am a alumni). Look it up, how has that "investment" paid off --- NOT.
      All run by Republicans selling off their natural resources as fast as they can.

    6. Re: WY is a good place to be from by coinreturn · · Score: 1

      See how long your California stays in the blue after productive people like me all leave for, say, Texas. I give it about 5-6 more years. After you have nobody left to tax, you'll just have one big circle-jerk of illegals/gangs abusing "disability" poets/dog-walkers.

      I am not glad it will happen, but I frankly don't see a solution; I am just tired of paying for the single moms, the surfer bums that "just need a break, man," the community organizers, the social justice warriors... Hollywood might still be making money for a couple more years, so you can keep that.

      LOL. In case you didn't know, California population has been on the increase for over 100 years: https://www.google.com/search?...

    7. Re: WY is a good place to be from by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, and we had adults run it for most of that time. Remember that know Reagan was a governor of Cali?
      The state started to turn to shit in the 90's. It accelerated in the last decade.
      I personally left in 2011 as most of my income was going to the taxes and housing. No more!
      And each time I visit, I am sad to see it get just a little bit worse, even relatively to my current state. Hard working people can't afford to survive, while the bums and thugs roll in dough. I love Cali, I love my people. I am truly sad to watch it ruined by the fucking pelosies.

  12. Electrons by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    So how does this work? Is a domestic consumer is given an electron which has passed through a wind generator, there is going to be hell to pay, but a different pool of electrons must be used to export power from the state.

    And sure, with a mix of energy sources, local consumption can be less than generation from coal.

    1. Re:Electrons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The US uses alternating current.
      It's unlikely that any electron in a consumers house has passed through any kind of generating device.

    2. Re:Electrons by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Yeah in fact the electrons in the low voltage AC circuit can't have passed through a generator, so breaking the law seems impossible.

    3. Re:Electrons by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      So how does this work? Is a domestic consumer is given an electron which has passed through a wind generator, there is going to be hell to pay, but a different pool of electrons must be used to export power from the state.

      And sure, with a mix of energy sources, local consumption can be less than generation from coal.

      True, electrons are not fungible in the sense that money is – at least according to quantum mechanics. But in this application, the energy transmitted by the AC current of electrons in the power lines makes the point moot.

      And anyways, selling energy to another state at location B, but that was generated at location A, is not technologically feasible. And so, we are back to treating things in the aggregate if this bill passes. It won't.

  13. It's a tax by tomhath · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.

    1. Re:It's a tax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.

      If that were the case, they'd be fining utilities for the costs of their pollution-generating injury-causing facilities that we are subsidizing by treating in hospitals instead.

      They'd also apply a dollar charge for every barrel of oil that requires the Wyoming Navy to defend. Aircraft carriers don't come cheap.

    2. Re:It's a tax by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.

      It's a middle finger to progressives.

      This is the problem with the political right at the moment. They're not trying to correct the market or protect local jobs, they're trying to rile up their base by pissing off people concerned about global warming.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    3. Re:It's a tax by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.

      Or perhaps, a subsidy for coal, oil, gas, nuke, and geothermal energy at the cost of solar and wind energy.

    4. Re:It's a tax by Kohath · · Score: 1

      by pissing off people concerned about global warming.

      Why shouldn't they? When have "people concerned about global warming" shown them anything but hatred and contempt and enmity?

    5. Re:It's a tax by quantaman · · Score: 1

      by pissing off people concerned about global warming.

      Why shouldn't they? When have "people concerned about global warming" shown them anything but hatred and contempt and enmity?

      Simply put the left is yelling at the right because the right is refusing to accept AGW and reduce emissions.

      The right is yelling at the left because they got yelled at.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    6. Re:It's a tax by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      The subsidies for fossil fuels are still orders of magnitude higher than renewables.

  14. Irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The 4500 people who live in Wyoming can be served by a few laptop batteries arranges in series. Who gives a shit if they want to burn a cord or two of wood or whatever annually to keep their CB radios running.

    I literally couldn't give two shits what happens in Wyoming, as long as their backward stupidity doesn't bleed out into the rest of the country. Wyoming is the poster child for describing what's wrong with national government in the US: 5 people in Wyoming have more voting power than hundreds or thousands in other states.

    DIA(coal)F

    1. Re:Irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then the US should propose if Wyoming wants to regain its independence. Maybe the US can choose to let federation go and go the way of confederation? Oh yeah, that's not going to happen because that's what the civil war was all about. The unionist won, but gave away power to the less populated states when voting a president. If you want to undo that agreement, you'll have to return independence to the states first and ask if they want to join the union without any political power.

    2. Re:Irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem is it has infected the rest of the country. Other states will pass laws similar to this if it passes.

      The big problem is that wind turbines, solar panels on roofs, and a few utility sized solar arrays with solar thermal molten salt would power the entire state. They don't want to be seen as helping the evil environmentalists that believe in clean air and water.

    3. Re: Irrelevant by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

      It's sad and ironic that the people of Wyoming, which has amazingly beautiful nature and environment, wouldn't care more about preserving it.

    4. Re: Irrelevant by hierofalcon · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure we do. Wind farms aren't pretty to look at. Reclaimed coal mines don't look any different than the prairie did before they dug the coal out. I don't know about all the power plants in WY, but the one near us has pretty good scrubbers to help with pollution controls. The wind farm, however, is right next to town and we get to enjoy all the tower's red aviation warning lights on the horizon all the time.

  15. I'M OUTRAGED!! Oh wait, no I'm not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Are we going to light our hair on fire now every time some random conservative state legislator anywhere in the country introduces a bill we don't like? Is this how the Trump years are going to be?

    Basically every article about this seems to be from ecozealot websites, so I can't even find an unbiased presentation of the bill's sponsors' motivations to evaluate them. An article on the Wyoming Public Radio site says no one thinks the bill is going anywhere anyway.

    1. Re:I'M OUTRAGED!! Oh wait, no I'm not. by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

      This is Slashdot. We light hair on fire every time anybody sneezes in a way we don't like. Of course, you could always read the bill itself.

      It actually does look pretty bad for renewable fuel efforts. I don't see any obvious loopholes, and it effectively imposes a tax on renewable energy by 1 cent per kWh, that the utilities can't pass on to customers. Pretty much, the only way to run a renewable energy installation in Wyoming is to pay for a nonrenewable energy facility somewhere outside the state, or make sure all of your energy is going out of the state.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re:I'M OUTRAGED!! Oh wait, no I'm not. by Jumperalex · · Score: 2

      Actually yes we are and should.

      What is the alternative? Sit back and do nothing and then act shocked when it passes? How do you think stupid laws get passed? Conversely how do you think stupid laws get don't get stopped? The answer to both question is, by doing nothing.

      As for the sources and motivations ... again ... without some level of "hair on fire"-ness no one will even know or be motivated to dig deeper and mobilize if needed.

      Also, motivations don't really matter, execution does, so the only thing you need to "find" that is "unbiased" is the language of the proposed law. The actual text. That should be easy enough to find. Here you go http://legisweb.state.wy.us/20... One google search for "wyoming bill bans solcar" including the typo led me to the first link by for the Billings Gazette article in which the second sentence had the words "Senate File 71", A google search of that leads to the very first link pasted above.

      There you go, there is your unbiased source of information.

      You want to know why this matters even if "no one thinks the bill is going anywhere anyway"? Because it even exists at all !!! Legislators that waste time writing, proposing, and making others have to work and vote against it are bad legislators that should be doing actual work vice wasting theirs and everyone else's time.

      --
      If you can't be good, be good at it!
    3. Re:I'M OUTRAGED!! Oh wait, no I'm not. by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      You want to know why this matters even if "no one thinks the bill is going anywhere anyway"? Because it even exists at all !!! Legislators that waste time writing, proposing, and making others have to work and vote against it are bad legislators that should be doing actual work vice wasting theirs and everyone else's time.

      They're not wasting time. They're doing as they are told. The national party uses state legislatures as test beds for potential policies, and as back chatter to set a stage. They have some state congresscritter propose some outrageous bill, and then they watch the results. Who noticed, who objected and how loudly, who supported and how loudly, and what arguments were brought to bear against it.

      Then they can propose the legislation that they want, which isn't as extreme as the one the state ran up the flagpole, but is still quite extreme. The "market research" from the reaction to the state bill has been used to formulate strategy to support the bill they actually want, plus the state bill's very existence serves a function in getting something else passed. It can be pointed to both negatively ("this bill isn't nearly as bad as that one") and positively ("that bill was proposed, so there must be some demand for this sort of thing among the populace").

      You're just seeing a part of the sausage-making process. This is the part where they grind up the cow anuses.

  16. I'm ok with this... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    as long as the CO2 from Wyoming is contained within Wyoming. They can build a dome and then suffocate if they like.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:I'm ok with this... by Kohath · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Are you planning a military invasion of Wyoming? If not, why should anyone in Wyoming care about your preferences?

    2. Re:I'm ok with this... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      why should anyone in Wyoming care about your preferences?

      Why don't you ask North Carolina why they suddenly started caring? ;)

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    3. Re:I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you planning a military invasion of Wyoming? If not, why should anyone in Wyoming care about your preferences?

      No need! I can pay 100,000 people to move to Wyoming, and rename the state BillGatesisAwesome, and not even impact my monthly statement.

      Yes, that state is THAT desolate and depopulated, and for good reason, it sucks.

      Fortunately, I can buy them high-speed internet so they think they're elsewhere.

      Signed, Bill Gates, Lord Protector of the State Formerly Known as Wyoming.

    4. Re:I'm ok with this... by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Did they?

    5. Re:I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about you put a bag over your head and breath some of that CO2 in. Moron.

    6. Re:I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. They sued EVERYBODY upwind of them.

    7. Re:I'm ok with this... by meglon · · Score: 2

      Maybe if we take away all their benefits of being part of the US, they'll start giving a shit and living up to some of their responsibilities. I know, it's a concept conservatives can't understand... that with rights and benefits come responsibilities... but too fucking bad. Maybe it's time for the conservative little bitches to grow up.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    8. Re:I'm ok with this... by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Who is "we"? Keep saying what you think the people in power should do to the people out of power.

    9. Re:I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      as long as the CO2 from Wyoming is contained within Wyoming. They can build a dome and then suffocate if they like.

      Or a $100,000/ton of CO2 exported tariff. Any CO2 not explicitly proven to be captured is to be considered exported.

    10. Re:I'm ok with this... by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Maybe if we take away all their benefits of being part of the US, they'll start giving a shit and living up to some of their responsibilities. I know, it's a concept conservatives can't understand...

      Actually, that is the concept conservatives want: a small federal government that limits itself to national defense, protecting our borders, and international treaties, and otherwise doesn't hand out any benefits.

    11. Re:I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that with rights and benefits come responsibilities

      Tell that to the feminists.

    12. Re: I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you retarded? Have no dog in this fight but I know your side has pretty much lost all power and appears unlikely to gain any power in the next couple of generations. It is going to be generations before you have any power approximating that which the right now holds.

      Why? Read what you wrote, again. Read it objectively.

    13. Re:I'm ok with this... by Solandri · · Score: 1

      They'd probably be just fine with a dome over their state. Wyoming only has 586,000 people. Its population density is 1/27th that of New York, 1/16 that of California, and 1/6th the world average. In contrast, their forested area is 1/6th that of New York, 1/2 that of California, and 1/3 the world average. If you put a dome over their state, they could emit roughly 2x more CO2 per capita than the world and New York average, 8x more than California's average, and their air's CO2 concentration would still be lower due to their forests scrubbing it out.

      I didn't vote for Trump and am horrified at the thought of what his Presidency could bring. But your mistaken assumption legitimzes what Trump's supporters have been saying about the election results - that the people living in the 2% of U.S. counties which voted for Clinton simply don't understand the problems and living conditions faced by people living in the 98% of the U.S. counties which voted for Trump. In fact if we took your dome idea and applied it across the country, and you added up net CO2 generation minus absorption by vegetation, you'd probably find the Clinton voter counties are net CO2 producers while Trump voter counties are net CO2 reducers by a massive margin. It's the urban areas and the trendy environmentalists which would suffocate first. The rural areas and real environmentalists trying to live sustainably off the land would be just fine.

    14. Re:I'm ok with this... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      their air's CO2 concentration would still be lower due to their forests scrubbing it out.

      Trees act like a respiration system for the planet in that they absorb CO2 part of the year then shed their leaves which then generate CO2. The amount of oxygen used by most animals is marginal which is why we can exist. What this means is that if they were in a dome, there would be a rapid buildup of CO2 and they will suffocate if it didn't become scorching hot before that point.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    15. Re:I'm ok with this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hello green fanatic. Please build a big wall around Wyoming, we're self-sufficient and don't need to worry about the concerns of the blue maggot piles you call cities.

  17. 'America's Smokestack' ! by swell · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wyoming is 'America's Smokestack' - a proud title to compete with India and Northern China for honors. Sure, tourism might take a hit, but the coal dollars will continue to roll in. Another slogan they like- Coal=Jobs; well how many jobs? You've seen those huge machines digging, transporting, processing the coal ... how many humans are actually working there? In almost every case, the employers bragging about jobs or potential jobs are lying and thinking about profits and potential profits for themselves.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
    1. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Even the stupidest lawmaker has to know we can't go back to the fifties. Coal is not going to be a big job maker ever again. Even if coal use goes up it does not mean we are going to get lots of jobs again. This is anti-conservative. The biggest conservationists I know are western conservatives who like unspoiled nature. Instead this is all about coal companies buying politicians.

    2. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wyoming employs large numbers of people to mine coal and iron ore, to make steel, to make big machines, to mine coal and iron ore.

    3. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      how many humans are actually working there?

      Apparently, 6,673 people. Add another 1,110 at coal-fired plants, as that's sort of related to the issue.

      It's telling that I had to get these numbers from sourcewatch (a progressive / left-leaning group), because I first looked at industry websites and couldn't find employment numbers. Given these numbers, I can see why they don't exactly trumpet them. Coal is not actually a huge employer these days. It's more likely that they have a disproportional lobbying influence, especially since their industry is more or less under attack by environmental concerns, and has historically been an economic driver for Wyoming.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    4. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many humans are actually working there?

      They have been trying to robotize the equipment, so fewer and fewer people working.

    5. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair, You need people to build those machines.

    6. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wyoming is the least populous state (50/50) with an entire population less than Oklahoma City.

    7. Re:'America's Smokestack' ! by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Wyoming is the least populous state (50/50) with an entire population less than Oklahoma City.

      Good point. Apparently, over half a million people live in Wyoming, meaning 1.3 percent of the population work in coal-related industries. If you extrapolate that out to families and dependents, as well as supporting industries, it could very well be as much as 5 percent of the state's population relies on the coal-mining industry.

      Anyhow, apparently, this is not exactly a new thing: http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/...

      It's kind of a shame, because apparently the wind conditions are quite ideal for power generation, but are obviously being blocked for political reasons. Still, I guess Wyoming has the right to choose the power they want, just like other states. It sure seems like they'd be a bit interested in diversifying, though, given the trends that are pretty obvious to most of us.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  18. Republicans are morons. This is not Conservatism. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is coal-fired anti-intellectual cowardice and pandering to billionaires. GOP SOP.

  19. Drumpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get used to all kinds of this shit in the next four years. Everything Obama has accomplished will be completely rolled back.

    1. Re:Drumpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hope so.
      Started 3 or 4 wars.
      Locked up reporters.
      Got rid of habeas corpus.
      And now people are scared of what Trump is going to do? Please.
      If you cared about these things you would have been bitching and moaning about obama for the last 8 years.

    2. Re:Drumpf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Math was never a Republican's strong suit. In fact the only suit they have left is full of shit.

    3. Re:Drumpf by meglon · · Score: 0

      Poor little fucking moron... did reality drop you on your pinhead when you were just a baby.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  20. Pot calline keetle black by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So all the other states that by the same logic punish the use of fossil fuels get know mention, do to the inherent liberal bias of modern media.

    They are just protecting their own economy which is heavily dependent on dead things decomposing in the ground for millions of years. Protecting and looking after the interests of the governed is what government is supposed to do.

    When the USA is divided up between Russia, China and Mexico you can all give yourselves a pat on the back and congratulate yourselves for a job well done.
    ,

    1. Re:Pot calline keetle black by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Do let us know when wind mills are a prime source of CO2 emissions, or when solar panels start poisoning ground water while creating earthquakes.

  21. Tables are turning by transporter_ii · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems like paid shills are posting under every renewable energy article about renewables not being viable without government subsidies. Well here you go. It seems that coal is now the one in need of government hand outs.

    --
    Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
    1. Re:Tables are turning by ooloorie · · Score: 0, Troll

      It seems like paid shills are posting under every renewable energy article about how renewables are cost competitive without subsidies.

    2. Re:Tables are turning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do we know you're not a paid shill for the renewable industry?

      It's turtles all the way down. You don't know, I don't know, so make blatantly false assertions and call it good.

    3. Re:Tables are turning by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Except they are, of course. And that's letting the coal and natural gas industries getting away with externalizing most of their costs - pollution and environmental damage.

    4. Re:Tables are turning by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And what would you call this proposed bill in Wyoming? It's an unapologetic subsidy to the coal industyr, because clearly the Wyoming government believes that the Wyoming coal industry will not be able to compete with renewables. Now maybe the justification boils down to "we get more taxes from coal than wind", but whatever that justification is, the intention is clear, Wyoming coal is seen as being at a competitive disadvantage, and therefore it will be subsidized by making renewable energy sources more expensive.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:Tables are turning by pipingguy · · Score: 2

      There's no way to correctly assess "pollution and environmental" external costs. They are made up numbers and nebulous. It's astounding that some people claim that renewable energy is cost competitive without subsidies, but hey, taxpayer money is the best kind of money and the whole renewables industry is politically-driven. Hundreds of billions of dollars per year of government money can easily pay for lots of propaganda, PR firms, "science" journalism, lawyers, whatever's needed to keep the money flowing.

    6. Re:Tables are turning by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      And what would you call this proposed bill in Wyoming? It's an unapologetic subsidy to the coal industyr, because clearly the Wyoming government believes that the Wyoming coal industry will not be able to compete with renewables.

      It is. And in a free market, this couldn't happen.

    7. Re:Tables are turning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing won't pass. It's simply a big fuck you to all the renewable subsidies zealots. The tree huggers are going to lose their shit, everyone else will giggle about it and will move on.

    8. Re:Tables are turning by toadlife · · Score: 1

      A free market can't happen. What can or can't happen in a world that will never be has no bearing on real-world policy discussions.

      --
      I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
    9. Re:Tables are turning by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      And meanwhile the high Arctic spent weeks being 30 degrees warmer than the seasonal norm. Have you pondered that the universe doesn't care about Wyoming, Donald Trump or ideology and politics, and the laws of physics are what they are?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    10. Re:Tables are turning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stay on earth and grounded in reality and you will have a easier time trying to convince your fellow apes to not burn fossil fuel.

      Also, the 'universe' doesn't care about you or your climate change hysteria. IMO, just let nature run its course.

    11. Re:Tables are turning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Subsidies for non-renewable energy are 10X those for renewables at the moment, approximately 1/2 of a trillion dollars per year, that's nearly a bank bailout every year for poisoning ourselves into oblivion. Nothing new, been going on for decades.

    12. Re:Tables are turning by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Geez, how economically illiterate can you be? There are plenty of free markets in existence today.

    13. Re:Tables are turning by Solandri · · Score: 1

      Actually, a fine of $10 per MWh almost exactly eliminates the disparity in Federal subsidies for renewables (excluding biomass aka burning wood) vs fossil fuels. (Table ES2 divided by Table ES3 to get subsidy dollars per BTU, divide by 293071 to convert trillion BTUs to MWh.)

      Coal = $1085 million subsidy / 5923 MWh = $0.18 per MWh
      Gas = $2346 million subsidy / 8309 MWh = $0.28 per MWh
      Nuclear = $1600 million subsidy / 2379 MWh = $0.70 per MWh
      Biomass = $629 million subsidy / 1317 MWh = $0.48 per MWh

      Hydro = $395 million subsidy / 756 MWh = $0.52 per MWh
      Geothermal = $345 million subsidy / 64.5 MWh = $5.35 per MWh
      Wind = $5936 million subsidy / 454 MWh = $13.07 per MWh
      Solar = $5328 million subsidy / 83.8 MWh = $65.57 per MWh
      Total of above four = $12004 million subsidy / 1358 MWh = $8.84 per MWh

      So it's not really an unapologetic subsidy for the coal industry. It's a leveling of the playing field.

    14. Re:Tables are turning by toadlife · · Score: 1

      Apparently much less economically illiterate than you.

      --
      I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
    15. Re:Tables are turning by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Ah, Dunning-Kruger too.

    16. Re:Tables are turning by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      What hysteria? The arctic was 30 degrees above seasonal norms this winter. The fact is that CO2 has the properties it has, and that means you increase PPM of CO2 you trap more energy in the lower atmosphere. The universe doesn't care about your desire to declare anyone who says anything that makes you feel uncomfortable a "hysteric". AGW is an inevitable consequence of physical laws, and not the state of Wyoming or Donald Trump can do even the tiniest thing to alter those physical laws. Don't want to totally fuck up the Earth's climate by 2100, then stop burning fossil fuels.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    17. Re:Tables are turning by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      There's no way to correctly assess "pollution and environmental" external costs.

      Hand waiving. The costs of reclamation after mining are quantifiable, as are black lung, slurry spills, CO2 emissions, etc.

      It's astounding that some people claim that renewable energy is cost competitive without subsidies, but hey, taxpayer money is the best kind of money and the whole renewables industry is politically-driven.

      An astounding lack of self-awareness. You know this is a story about reps in a state government trying to assign a "sin tax" to solar power, yes?

      Hundreds of billions of dollars per year of government

      You mean the same government that has an enormous bias towards fossil fuels, yes? You know that the U.S. military is the single largest user of fossil fuels and has overthrown democracies to keep oil flowing in petrodollars, yes? Where all the lobbying money from all green energy moneys combined could be found in couches of the Exxon Mobile foyer?

  22. Win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This may sound so immature, but seriously, win. Your post was spot on.

  23. At long last by sjames · · Score: 2

    Many decades ago, Groucho Marx posed the question "Why not Oming?". Finally we have an answer.

  24. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by DogDude · · Score: 1

    ... and if you leave them with the "free market", they are subject to profiteering. In the US today, electricity (public utility) is much *more* reliable, and affordable than Internet connectivity (private) is. So, I'm sorry, but your ideas don't really hold up in reality.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  25. Not how you MAGA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just saying

  26. Welcome to Trump America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where the entire country is now filled with complete morons. IE nothing new. So glad I don't live in that sh*t hole.

  27. This is how the market decides! by Black+Parrot · · Score: 2

    The currently profitable companies buy a legislature to outlaw competition.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  28. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

    If you transfer functions to government, they become subject to politics. So, public utilities may be forced to use coal, public schools may be forced to teach creationism, etc. You don't like that? Don't transfer these functions to the government.

    Please read a high-school level Civics book, Tea Party troll.

    Unless you have the time and skill to generate your own utilities (water, electricity, telephone, internet) – and to home-school your children, then you NEED to have a governing power of some kind. There is your traditional "Government," but alternatively also a private provider (profit-motivated), or a neighborhood association (AKA government). Unless you are the king and own everything, that is how it is everywhere on this planet.

  29. All about the fight by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Or more accurately, a backlash against subsidies - $10 per megawatt hour.

    It's a middle finger to progressives.

    This is the problem with the political right at the moment. They're not trying to correct the market or protect local jobs, they're trying to rile up their base by pissing off people concerned about global warming.

    And the problem with the left is that they can't compromise and won't evolve.

    I was just listening to Bill Maher from last night, and all the liberals encouraging the audience to fight, disrupt, oppose, insult(*), and combat everything the right wants to do.

    Nowhere did anyone say "we have to become better". Nothing about making better policies, making more intelligent arguments, doing things voters want, making the country better, or anything that could be considered noble.

    The fundamental difference between the left and the right, through the campaign and after, is that the right has tried to make themselves the better option, while the left tried to make the *other side* the worse option. Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive, saying essentially "we're in this together, we can win, we can do better". Clinton's speeches, delivered by others during campaign rallies, were essentially throwing insults at the other side.

    I don't think anyone on the left has a clue how ineffective their campaign of crying, whining, and insulting is. Their actions are not turning minds and swaying the voters they will need if they want to win future elections.

    I have no idea how they can continue with this ludicrous behaviour, but I'm sure the right will continue to laugh at them while they do it.

    (*) One of the panel members was saying "always call racism".

    1. Re:All about the fight by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the problem with the left is that they can't compromise

      Often the "compromise" wanted is complete capitulation so the people who see themselves firmly on the "right" can appear "strong".
      Stupid fucking games instead of trying to run something properly. Edge cases on minor issues getting attention just to deliberately start a fight instead of actual governance.
      In a lot of cases it's not "left" or "right" but huge fucking egos trying to turkey slap everyone just to prove they have balls.

    2. Re:All about the fight by dbIII · · Score: 2

      I used quotes on "right" about because there are so many people that label themselves that way who are not really advocating for anything, they just oppose whatever they see another group doing. They are the ones pushing capitulation instead of compromise while an actual conservative is typically more interested in results than stupid fucking ego games. A conservative would allow an abortion in the case where a doctor says that otherwise both mother and baby would die, but a reactionary who is nothing but against the "left" would say "rules is rules - both die".

    3. Re:All about the fight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive

      Were we watching the same speeches? Trumps were divisive and insulting to many people. Is that what you would call warm?

    4. Re:All about the fight by meglon · · Score: 0, Troll

      You are a fucking idiot. The problem is people like you who have no fucking clue about reality, but seem to think your worthless fucked in the head opinion means something. The problem with the right is their base is the most gullible, uneducated, self serving, anti-American, anti-Christian pieces of shit around.... and their politicians are all lying sacks of shit.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    5. Re:All about the fight by sphealey · · Score: 2

      = = = Often the "compromise" wanted is complete capitulation so the people who see themselves firmly on the "right" can appear "strong". = = =

      Otherwise known as a "Mitch McConnell compromise". You give us everything we want, plus the transfer fee for the gaming license, and we get to go on TV and explain to our base that you capitulated.

      sPh

    6. Re:All about the fight by sphealey · · Score: 1

      = = = http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
      WASHINGTON — As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.

      The event — which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured — serves as the prologue of Robert Draper’s much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, “Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.”

      According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) — who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

      For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama’s legislative platform.

      “If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. “We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.”= = =

    7. Re:All about the fight by pipingguy · · Score: 2

      Groupthink is rampant on the left (them being collectivists and all) and of course they brand themselves as "the caring, compassionate ones", so naturally their opponents must be evil. And when stamping out evil, well, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do... whatever it takes, you know?

    8. Re:All about the fight by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the problem with the left is that they can't compromise and won't evolve.

      Have you been sleeping the past 8 years? The right refused compromise on principle.

      I was just listening to Bill Maher from last night, and all the liberals encouraging the audience to fight, disrupt, oppose, insult(*), and combat everything the right wants to do.

      I didn't see the segment in question, but I'm pretty sure he was talking about Trump, a character so dangerous the GOP spent most of the primary desperately trying to stop him.

      Nowhere did anyone say "we have to become better". Nothing about making better policies, making more intelligent arguments, doing things voters want, making the country better, or anything that could be considered noble.

      The left talks about that constantly, a huge part of the post-election conversation is trying to understand why the left lost touch with the white working class.

      But as to "better policies" and "intelligent arguments", a huge part of the criticism of Sanders was that his policies weren't robust. The right has spent the last few year using high deductibles as a major criticism of Obamacare, all the while selling high deductible coverage as their replacement.

      Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive, saying essentially "we're in this together, we can win, we can do better".

      "Warm and inclusive" is an odd description of mass deportation, immigration bans based on religion, promises to imprison your rival, and the constant demonization of the media.

      I don't think anyone on the left has a clue how ineffective their campaign of crying, whining, and insulting is.

      It can be very effective, whiny insulting campaign speeches won Trump the election.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    9. Re:All about the fight by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Clinton's speeches, delivered by others during campaign rallies, were essentially throwing insults at the other side.

      That's the iceberg that punched a hole in your titanic rant against progressives: Hillary is a right wing warmonger who hates the left.

    10. Re:All about the fight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And the problem with the left is that they can't compromise and won't evolve.

      Obama is widely known for both compromising and evolving.

      I was just listening to Bill Maher from last night, and all the liberals encouraging the audience to fight, disrupt, oppose, insult(*), and combat everything the right wants to do.

      Good for him. Intransigence is exactly what is appropriate at this time, since it was EXACTLY what the GOP did in 2008.

      Force them to struggle for everything, and let them go off on a rocker.

      Nowhere did anyone say "we have to become better". Nothing about making better policies, making more intelligent arguments, doing things voters want, making the country better, or anything that could be considered noble.

      That's because the left already has those better ideas and policies, with much better arguments, and does things that the voters really want, and makes the country better, but through hook and crook, the GOP has sneaked its way into power through illegitimate means, therefore, they must be opposed.

      You see, that's because the left HAS acted nobly, instead of doing the right thing, which would be to execute the traitorous and criminal Republicans as they deserve. The Right-Wing is one step away from Civil War, and you can bet if Trump thinks he can, he'll reject his rejection in the next election.

      He'll lose, but he's dumb enough to try.

      The fundamental difference between the left and the right, through the campaign and after, is that the right has tried to make themselves the better option, while the left tried to make the *other side* the worse option.

      No, it's the right that has done its own job of making itself the worst option. They've opposed compromise, they've demanded obedience, they've rejected tolerance. See their stance on same-sex marriage, healthcare reform, and more. See Judge Roy Moore. See Donald Trump. See HB 4. See Indiana. See Kansas.

      Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive, saying essentially "we're in this together, we can win, we can do better". Clinton's speeches, delivered by others during campaign rallies, were essentially throwing insults at the other side.

      Wait, a second, you're delusional enough to believe the belittler-in-chief wasn't throwing insults continuously?

      Why? Or are we supposed to be dumb, do you think we're dumb, Okian Warrior? He made up insults about Cruz and Rubio, let alone Clinton and Obama.

      He spent six years birthering and mongering himself.

      I don't think anyone on the left has a clue how ineffective their campaign of crying, whining, and insulting is. Their actions are not turning minds and swaying the voters they will need if they want to win future elections.

      3 million voters more for Hillary than Trump. Only chance gave him the win. And the illegal manipulations in Wisconsin and Michigan by GOP governments. Oh sure, he wants to believe he won in a landslide, but he also wants us to believe his inauguration was well-attended. You know what's got people out? The protest against him. Still ongoing.

      That should tell even a fraudulent idiot such as yourself something. Trump is DEAD in the water. He's going to be lucky if the CIA doesn't poison him just to get him out of the way.

      I have no idea how they can continue with this ludicrous behaviour, but I'm sure the right will continue to laugh at them while they do it.

      The right's going to laugh its way into a revolution fomented by its own incompetence. They already fucked up badly in North Carolina, the governor there now has a good way to blister them down,

    11. Re:All about the fight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fundamental difference between the left and the right, through the campaign and after, is that the right has tried to make themselves the better option, while the left tried to make the *other side* the worse option.

      Wait - the same right that has spent the last 8 years saying "no"? I don't think I saw much in the way of compromise from Republican politicians.

    12. Re:All about the fight by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Trump's speeches were warm and inclusive, saying essentially "we're in this together, we can win, we can do better".

      LOLWHUT?? Only if you're a WASP who wants to ignore/shut out anyone who isn't.

      (Disclaimer: I certainly qualify as a WASP. But I'm not so blind as to fail to recognise that a very large proportion of the rest of the world isn't.)

      I don't think anyone on the left has a clue how ineffective their campaign of crying, whining, and insulting is.

      I think a very large proportion of Americans have been conditioned to regard any facts that they don't care for as "lies" and/or "insults".

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    13. Re:All about the fight by dwpro · · Score: 1

      a huge part of the post-election conversation is trying to understand why the left lost touch with the white working class.

      I hope you're right. I have seen very little in terms of tone change since the election. In fact, I've heard the opposite stated a few times, that it would be akin to giving in to racist coercion to have a more straight-up populist message with less of the identity politics.

      It seems to me from the voter turnout perspective, it wasn't so much that Trump and Republicans turned out huge numbers, but that Hillary and the democrats failed to turn out the Obama coalition and didn't woo a significant number of new Latino voters. I think it speaks more to lacking a charismatic leader at the top or perhaps hubris by democrats due to all the expectation that the election was in the bag.

      --
      Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
    14. Re:All about the fight by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      turkey slap

      Side note, are you Australian?

    15. Re:All about the fight by quantaman · · Score: 1

      a huge part of the post-election conversation is trying to understand why the left lost touch with the white working class.

      I hope you're right. I have seen very little in terms of tone change since the election. In fact, I've heard the opposite stated a few times, that it would be akin to giving in to racist coercion to have a more straight-up populist message with less of the identity politics.

      It seems to me from the voter turnout perspective, it wasn't so much that Trump and Republicans turned out huge numbers, but that Hillary and the democrats failed to turn out the Obama coalition and didn't woo a significant number of new Latino voters. I think it speaks more to lacking a charismatic leader at the top or perhaps hubris by democrats due to all the expectation that the election was in the bag.

      I think a big factor this time was Sanders playing the populist card to capture a majority of the most outspoken progressive voters.

      Even when he conceded he couldn't reverse the damage to Clinton's brand, and even though those voters still supported Clinton they did so grudgingly and didn't really defend her against attacks. And that's what let the stream of scandals bring her popularity down to the point where the EC and a poorly timed FBI announcement could swing the election.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    16. Re:All about the fight by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      It's exactly the same on the right. It's not a political thing, it's a human thing.

    17. Re:All about the fight by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      I maintain that it's much more prevalent on the left because of their collectivist nature. It results in less independent thinking. Look at so-called political correctness, it enforces certain (public) positions as approved by the thought leaders. And the left is famous for politicizing every issue.

    18. Re:All about the fight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I was just listening to Bill Maher from last night, and all the liberals encouraging the audience to fight, disrupt, oppose, insult(*), and combat everything the right wants to do.

      I didn't see the segment in question, but I'm pretty sure he was talking about Trump, a character so dangerous the GOP spent most of the primary desperately trying to stop him.

      As you also said, this also ignores history, as that's *exactly* the same sort of things that the Republicans were saying 8 years ago when Obama was elected. There quite vocal calls then to oppose everything Obama did - not because there was any policy disagreements, but simply because Obama wanted it.

      It also ignores the dynamic that has sprung up when Democrats *have* tried to compromise. Obamacare is a good example. Obamacare doesn't really look anything like what the Democrats originally wanted for a health care act. What they actually wanted was viciously opposed by the Republicans (and the health insurance industry). So, knowing that the Republicans would never go for it, they compromised, incorporating many suggestions from Republicans. (To the point that it's almost a copy of a state-run plan by a certain Republican governor.) -- No luck, not only do Republicans viciously oppose the new "compromise" legislation, a large part of their criticisms are actually directed at the very provisions that Democrats included at Republicans' urging.

    19. Re: All about the fight by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

      Haha, yeah, except the right is the side with all the mindless religious drones who believe anything written in an old dusty book written thousands of years ago by random desert dwellers claiming to talk to God because their parents or pastor told them to. The same group of people who think climate change is a hoax. Or that the planet is doing fine. Or that evolution is a lie. Yeah, there's a whole lot of independent thought going on on the right.

    20. Re:All about the fight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes, this is the way it has to be. you can not win the race to the bottom by taking the high road, unfortunately. there is no room for civility. republicans invited this and its going to be a nasty shit show. progressives who unilaterally disarm or step down will lose., if fact, they have to escalate or lose.

    21. Re:All about the fight by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Why does it matter? The American kids like that slang so that's why I used it.

    22. Re: All about the fight by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      Well, environmentalism is the new religion and I think you'll find that most people who are not "progressives" are not necessarily adherents to any particular traditional religion. Nice caricature though.

    23. Re:All about the fight by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Just general interest. I never though about turkey slap being an Australian term. That was until I misspoke in the Netherlands. I wanted to say zwavel (sulfur), instead I said zwaffel (turkey slap) only to be laughed at. Then someone explained it to me along with "This Dutch word has no English equivalent!" My reply was, "Isn't that a Turkey Slap?" and then after 10min on Wikipedia it turns out that it is very much an Australian term. Strewth!

      So far none of the Australians I've told this to have realised that most people have no idea what a turkey slap is.

      Mind you I did explain bin chicken to someone today as well :-)

    24. Re:All about the fight by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Another poster, crashsomething, has been pointing out that I'm Australian as if that somehow makes my comments on engineering, IT and international affairs as if that somehow makes all my comments invalid so I was reluctant to answer, but yes, I am an Australian currently living in Australia and wishing it was not so fucking hot at the moment.
      I've heard Americans use the term and we don't have a lot of turkeys (outside of politics anyway) so I think it's something we've picked up in only the last decade or so. I could be wrong about where it came from but it's definitely used in the US now.

    25. Re:All about the fight by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I'll let the local Dutch know to update their conceptions on language.

      And no being Australian is in no way negative (he'll I'd go so far as to say the opposite given what's going on in the rest of the fucking world right now), just a side note based on what happened to me in the last few weeks. I get daily posts on Facebook complaining about the heat, so I send all the Brisbanites pictures of the -4C my car is displaying every morning when I drive to work to make them feel better :-)

    26. Re:All about the fight by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I'll let the local Dutch know to update their conceptions on language

      The could be more correct than I but I first had the term explained to me by an American some time before I heard it here.
      I'll have to make sure in the depths of winter to complain about how it's so cold that I have to close half the windows and put a shirt on.

    27. Re:All about the fight by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Not to mention wear socks with your thongs :-)

    28. Re:All about the fight by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      I maintain that it's much more prevalent on the left because of their collectivist nature. It results in less independent thinking.

      I've found exactly the opposite. Gun owners instantly bond over their collective suffering at the hands of "tough on crime" politicians.

  30. The real headline by hackwrench · · Score: 3, Funny

    President Col. Sanders, beloved mascot of KFC passes an ordinary bill mandating the purchase of KFC chicken once a week. People will rejoice at this yet another natural outcome of the amendment passed during the Trump administration that relinquished the vote of the common people to the companies that are responsible for them.

    1. Re:The real headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd rather be forced to buy a bucket of tasty chicken than have to buy health insurance I can't afford to use.

    2. Re:The real headline by Wisp · · Score: 1

      So *that's* the universal coverage plan!

  31. I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm not a fan of solar power. It's expensive, unreliable, and lacking any kind of storage or backup power it is pretty much useless. If given enough cheap storage then any energy source looks good. Which is one thing that boggles me about those that say, "Just you wait, when we get good batteries any day now then you'll love solar power." If we had this magical battery technology then why would we bother using solar power to charge it? Wind, nuclear, and even natural gas would be better choices. They are cheaper than solar, and with a battery for load balancing they'd meet every need for power without expensive and dirty peak power plants.

    I'm okay with wind. It's generally cheap when put in the right places. The problem is that with government subsidies they are not put in the right places. The subsidies are made to subsidize capacity, not necessarily output. So what happens is that windmills are put close to natural gas lines, so that the backup generators have fuel and they don't have to run a power line that isn't carrying power.

    Nuclear is good. It's the safest energy source we know of, based on deaths and injuries per MWh produced. It's got the lowest carbon output, if one believes that is even a problem. It's cheap, reliable, and domestically sourced. Any law that makes building nuclear power sounds good to me.

    A big problem for me though is that this messes with the free market. People should be able to choose where their energy comes from on their own. That means that not only is this bill a bad idea but so is those laws that made this bill necessary in the first place. Had they taken a gentler hand on this, by merely cancelling out the federal subsidies on these energy sources, then I could probably support it. They took it a bit far with these punitive taxes. But then this makes nuclear power look good.

    I'm torn on this one.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    1. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Posting anon because I work in solar.

      Solar is inexpensive enough that it can be installed in many places and financed over time so that the homeowner can save money and the company financing can make money.

      The power output from solar is very predictable over time - just not minute by minute.

      For most consumers, the grid is your battery. In the next couple of years batteries will become normal for balancing supply/demand.

      If you doubt any of this, you have to ask yourself: why does Wyoming need a law that discourages solar? Why not just let the market decide? This is the coal industry fighting for its life.

    2. Re:I'm conflicted on this by dbIII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Good point - the free market is biased between the quick solutions whether they are better in the long run or not, plus it tends to concentrate in places where profit is highest. Without government involvement we wouldn't have nukes and just about every farm and small town would still be dark just as it was more than fifty years after Edison lit up a profitable part of New York.

    3. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Uberbah · · Score: 0

      I'm not a fan of solar power. It's expensive, unreliable, and lacking any kind of storage or backup power it is pretty much useless.

      And without incredibly numerous and expensive lines of transmission, coal and nuclear plants are useless. Useless I tell you!

      /equivilanthandwaiving

      If we had this magical battery technology

      Says a fan of nuclear power, which requires magical vaporware to deal with the waste to make it something less than obscene corporate welfare. This isn't rocket science for solar: energy demands are greatest on hot sunny days, and cold windy nights. Solar takes care of the former, and wind power takes care of the latter. Generating capacity can be spaced across the grid, and excess power can be used to power up hydrostatic batteries - i.e. pumping water into a reservoir and letting a turbine generate electricity when it runs out. Which is what phancy pants nuclear power plants do - use water to move a turbine.

      Nuclear is good.

      Lets engage in magical thinking, and assume there would never be another Fukushima or Chernobyl type disaster - which would be a given if more nuke plants were built to replace coal, as more plants would be hit by natural disasters and the profit motive. Nuclear power would still be unjustifiable, based on the cost alone. It could not exist without massive government underwriting, as no plant rolls the full cost of mining, construction, security, operation, disaster preparedness, decomissioning, or future waste storage into the rates it charges to customers.

    4. Re:I'm conflicted on this by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      Solar power is cheaper than coal during the day when people want the most power (no batteries needed), nuclear power is the most expensive power in common use (reactors only built to make weapons, thorium is much cheaper, fuel imported), wind is good (only in certain places, limited total capacity), people can't afford to let the "free market" plan the energy market as shortages and brownouts are good for business but bad for the country.

    5. Re:I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 1, Informative

      Nuclear power is currently cheaper than solar thermal with storage. Cite:
      https://www.lazard.com/media/2...

      The cost of PV solar is cheaper than nuclear only when built up at utility scale in high insolation areas. Not much help for a lot of the population. Running wires to places that have sun to places with people would get the power to where it is needed but this adds to the cost.

      Claiming that solar is cheap when people need it most is just outright provably false. Go look at demand curves for once and you will see what I mean. Demand peaks at dusk, when there isn't enough sun left to matter. At noon power demand tends to dip a little actually, probably due to people stopping work for lunch.

      Also, no civil power reactor is used to make weapons. The people building these things are bound by law to make sure that such a use is impossible. The last dual use reactor blew its lid in the 1980s, and that is only one of many reasons why all similar reactors have been dismantled long ago.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    6. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Typical FUD BS.

      I'm not a fan of solar power. It's expensive

      Solar power is now cheaper than coal in some parts of the world. In less than a decade, it’s likely to be the lowest-cost option almost everywhere. http://www.nasdaq.com/article/solar-could-be-a-cheaper-power-source-than-coal-within-a-decade-cm735835

      unreliable

      Solar is no more unreliable than any other power generation method. Oregon's Trojan nuclear plant was down for repairs almost as much as it operated, and was shut down and demolished after only 16 years (of a 35-year operating license) because the steam generation system was falling apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

      and lacking any kind of storage or backup power it is pretty much useless.

      I will admit this is a problem for large scale implementations, but Elon Musk's new battery giga-factory might have something to say about that.

    7. Re:I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Solar is inexpensive enough that it can be installed in many places and financed over time so that the homeowner can save money and the company financing can make money.

      True only if the current government subsidies continue. Let's assume that government subsides didn't make the difference, that solar was considered inexpensive even if unsubsidized, then there is still the problem of placement. There's a lot of people that live in not so sunny areas. Rooftop solar might work in Sacramento but I doubt it will in Seattle.

      If you doubt any of this, you have to ask yourself: why does Wyoming need a law that discourages solar? Why not just let the market decide?

      I'm all for letting the market decide. This means ending those solar subsidies. This, at least IMHO, should mean ending residential backfeeding unless the utility actually asked for it. Laws requiring the utility to act as a battery for solar equipped homes is a subsidy in disguise.

      This is the coal industry fighting for its life.

      No doubt. It could also be the utilities getting fed up with having to accommodate the residential solar backfeeding to the grid. This back feeding is dangerous to line crews, a headache for demand planning, and a means to divert funds from those that can afford to buy solar power kit (the wealthy) on the backs of those that cannot (the poor).

      Part of the problem here is that the utilities are rarely ever asked if they want solar power on their grid. Laws require them to buy this power even if they don't want it. Let's bring this free market, I expect solar power to lose, and badly.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    8. Re:I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Solar power is now cheaper than coal in some parts of the world. In less than a decade, itâ(TM)s likely to be the lowest-cost option almost everywhere

      When or if that happens then let me know, at that point expect me to be a supporter of solar power. As it is right now, today, even the most expensive nuclear power is cheaper than solar in many places of the world. As Dr. Dewan from TransAtomic said, "If it's not cheaper than coal then why bother?" She was speaking of nuclear power but the same applies to solar. If it's not cheaper than coal then it's not worth it.

      Also, what are we supposed to do until solar is cheaper than coal? I say we build nuclear power. Right now it's nuclear, coal, or it gets real dark and cold.

      Solar is no more unreliable than any other power generation method. Oregon's Trojan nuclear plant was down for repairs almost as much as it operated, and was shut down and demolished after only 16 years (of a 35-year operating license) because the steam generation system was falling apart.

      Sure, point out the one failure and hold that up as an example of all nuclear. I can point out a number of solar power plants that set themselves on fire too if you want to play that game. As it is right now in the USA we have about 80 nuclear power plants with better than 80% uptime, and are expected to do so for 80 years since they first went critical. Oh, and nuclear power is a lot safer too. When Homer Simpson trips and falls that's called a "nuclear accident" which is put on the front page above the fold, but when a solar power worker falls off a roof that's an "industrial accident" and might be seen in the obits. Turns out that a lot more people die from solar power accidents than in nuclear power, when compared to energy produced.

      I will admit this is a problem for large scale implementations, but Elon Musk's new battery giga-factory might have something to say about that.

      How long do we have to wait for that to get to a price someone other than a Tesla driver can afford? What do we do until then? Sit in the dark? I say we build nuclear power plants.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    9. Re: I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This, at least IMHO, should mean ending residential backfeeding unless the utility actually asked for it.

      Not until every utility gives up its government forced right-of-ways, and the regulations preventing me from supplying power.

      Not to mention, they start paying for every bit of harm they cause.

      Oh, they aren't? Then they can live with being regulated. That includes accommodation of feed-in.

    10. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True only if the current government subsidies continue. Let's assume that government subsides didn't make the difference, that solar was considered inexpensive even if unsubsidized, then there is still the problem of placement. There's a lot of people that live in not so sunny areas. Rooftop solar might work in Sacramento but I doubt it will in Seattle.

      Both your statements are partially true. Subsidies make things more profitable for solar companies - but there are many places where it would continue to be profitable without. And the more sun there is, the more profitable solar is - but solar works anywhere the sun shines. Disproportionately, that's also where people tend to live.

      I'm all for letting the market decide. This means ending those solar subsidies. This, at least IMHO, should mean ending residential backfeeding unless the utility actually asked for it. Laws requiring the utility to act as a battery for solar equipped homes is a subsidy in disguise.

      If we're going to end solar subsidies, then maybe we could start with coal and move to solar after?
      http://ieefa.org/u-s-coal-subs...

      I agree with another poster that forcing utilities to accept backfeeding is a reasonable thing to do with monopolies - though there are *very few* places where that can become a problem. Hawaii is one of those, but I expect that issue to be tackled from another angle in the medium future (probably with battery farms).

      No doubt. It could also be the utilities getting fed up with having to accommodate the residential solar backfeeding to the grid. This back feeding is dangerous to line crews, a headache for demand planning, and a means to divert funds from those that can afford to buy solar power kit (the wealthy) on the backs of those that cannot (the poor).

      * Back feeding of professionally installed solar is not a problem to line crews, as it cuts out when power cuts out.
      * Utilities are fully capable of planning for the changes that solar creates.
      * In many many cases, it is just as easy for poor to install solar as wealth, as it is done $0 down and reduces power payments.

      Part of the problem here is that the utilities are rarely ever asked if they want solar power on their grid. Laws require them to buy this power even if they don't want it.

      No consumer is asked if they want coal/nuclear/hydro/hamster wheel. They get whatever the local sanctioned monopoly provides. You're suggesting that a free market means consumers should get less choice than the locally sanctioned monopoly. I disagree.

      This law, in particular, would impose further fines on the power companies for choosing a source that is becoming cheaper than coal.

      Let's bring this free market, I expect solar power to lose, and badly.

      I'll take that bet. In fact, I probably have - given the new administration. The price of solar continues to drop. The price of coal does not. That only ends one way.

    11. Re:I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 1

      I'll take that bet. In fact, I probably have - given the new administration. The price of solar continues to drop. The price of coal does not. That only ends one way.

      There are more energy sources than coal and solar.

      Now that the NRC has found their ball( pen)s they've started to sign off on construction/operation permits. The price of nuclear in the USA has been effectively infinite because no one could get a permit to build a power reactor. I expect the new administration to be much happier to grant permits than any in the past 40 years.

      Natural gas prices seem to continue to drop. Due to the difficulty to export it by anything other than a pipeline the market is not a world wide one, so we can expect North American energy to stay low. Even though the administration is looking to grow American exports the cheap natural gas we have will not be one of those exports.

      There's also wind and hydro. Solar prices might be dropping but I expect so will wind, natural gas, and nuclear. Solar can't beat them all when the sun only shines a few hours per day. Adding storage systems adds to the cost, and those storage systems work for nuclear and wind too.

      Think about it. If a utility had to choose between a solar power plant that had a 30% capacity factor, and a nuclear power plant with a 90% capacity factor, which would they choose to charge up their expensive battery pack with? Solar power needs more than being the same price as nuclear, it needs to be 1/3 or even 1/10 the price to compete.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    12. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I"m a fan of nuclear. I'm less of a fan of gas, but I prefer it to coal. And I'm a fan of hydro and wind.

      That said, nuclear is dangerous, has long lead times, and is very expensive to start up. Solar has virtually no lead time, is safe, and very clean.

      Yes, nuclear done well is safe, but no matter how well you're doing it, you're still talking about radioactive materials. It's more dangerous than slapping panels on roofs. And then there's disposal/storage - which I think is stupid and a case of chronic NIMBYism - but we still have it.

      ... If a utility had to choose between a solar power plant that had a 30% capacity factor, and a nuclear power plant with a 90% capacity factor, which would they choose to charge up their expensive battery pack with? Solar power needs more than being the same price as nuclear, it needs to be 1/3 or even 1/10 the price to compete.

      That statement just doesn't make sense to me. A kilowatt-hour is a kilowatt-hour. If we can avoid the construction of more burning power plants by using panels, that just makes sense.

      And this bill does not.

    13. Re:I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 1

      That said, nuclear is dangerous, has long lead times, and is very expensive to start up. Solar has virtually no lead time, is safe, and very clean.

      Prove it. You can claim nuclear power is dangerous but that does not make it true. I have access to Google like you do and when I search on the number of deaths per MWh produced nothing is as safe as nuclear power.

      Solar power isn't all that clean either. If we assume CO2 is a pollutant like some try to argue then solar power loses. When it comes to poisonous chemicals in the environment we find that solar power isn't so great there either.

      The lead times and expense are government imposed, not inherent to nuclear power at all. We've seen nuclear power plants built in months before, and in some pretty hard to reach places too. The US Navy builds them on about a 2 year schedule regularly, and those are safe enough for a hundreds of sailors to live in close proximity for months at a time. Since the Navy doesn't have to ask the NRC for permission to build a nuclear reactor they can get them built on time and budget regularly. If the contractors don't deliver then they'll find someone that can.

      That statement just doesn't make sense to me. A kilowatt-hour is a kilowatt-hour. If we can avoid the construction of more burning power plants by using panels, that just makes sense.

      The costs of power given for solar power rarely include the means to provide storage for use through the night, when that cost is included it pushes up the cost by double or triple. If the costs are added in for things like poor location (needing to run lines from where the sun shines to where the people are) then the costs can double or triple again.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    14. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That said, nuclear is dangerous, has long lead times, and is very expensive to start up. Solar has virtually no lead time, is safe, and very clean.

      Prove it. You can claim nuclear power is dangerous but that does not make it true. I have access to Google like you do and when I search on the number of deaths per MWh produced nothing is as safe as nuclear power.

      Solar power isn't all that clean either. If we assume CO2 is a pollutant like some try to argue then solar power loses. When it comes to poisonous chemicals in the environment we find that solar power isn't so great there either.

      The lead times and expense are government imposed, not inherent to nuclear power at all. We've seen nuclear power plants built in months before, and in some pretty hard to reach places too. The US Navy builds them on about a 2 year schedule regularly, and those are safe enough for a hundreds of sailors to live in close proximity for months at a time. Since the Navy doesn't have to ask the NRC for permission to build a nuclear reactor they can get them built on time and budget regularly. If the contractors don't deliver then they'll find someone that can.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      You can look at the numbers any way you want. The bottom line is that nuclear power is dangerous. Again, I'm a fan of nuclear [done right]. But I think it's irresponsible to to argue it's not dangerous.

      2 years is what I call a long lead time.

      That statement just doesn't make sense to me. A kilowatt-hour is a kilowatt-hour. If we can avoid the construction of more burning power plants by using panels, that just makes sense.

      The costs of power given for solar power rarely include the means to provide storage for use through the night, when that cost is included it pushes up the cost by double or triple. If the costs are added in for things like poor location (needing to run lines from where the sun shines to where the people are) then the costs can double or triple again.

      I don't think that batteries double cost - but I don't have the number to back anything beyond residential - which is what I'm most familiar with. I know that if I installed batteries, today, that it would add about 20-30% to the total cost and I could disconnect from the grid and not notice - until I get an electric vehicle. When I installed - just 2-3 years ago, it would have been much more. In another 2-3 years I believe it will be substantially less.

      As for running lines from places that have lots of sun to those that don't - I'm not arguing for that. All I'm saying is that adding a tax for solar is ass backwards.

    15. Re:I'm conflicted on this by blindseer · · Score: 1

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll
      You can look at the numbers any way you want. The bottom line is that nuclear power is dangerous. Again, I'm a fan of nuclear [done right]. But I think it's irresponsible to to argue it's not dangerous.

      I can link to a list of airplane accidents and call flying unsafe but that does not make it true. Try again.
      Here's some help:
      http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
      http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2...

      If solar power is "safe" then nuclear power is "safer" or "safest". Also, a large portion of those nuclear accidents in the Wikipedia article are from Soviet military reactors. That's demonstrative of how willing they are to kill their own warriors in the defense of the "fatherland" than anything inherently wrong with nuclear power. Here's a hint, don't put murderous bastards in charge of running a nuclear reactor.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    16. Re:I'm conflicted on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://www.lazard.com/perspec...

      and

      https://www.lazard.com/media/4...

      The levelized cost of rooftop (both residential and commercial/industrial) solar PV has declined significantly over recent years, driven by more efficient installation techniques and improved supply chains. While rooftop technologies are likely inherently higher cost than utility-scale technologies (as a result of small scale, installation complexity, etc.), the value associated with certain uses of rooftop solar PV by sophisticated commercial/industrial users (e.g., demand charge management, etc.) may exceed, under some circumstances, even this relatively elevated cost profile. Recent investment by incumbent utilities in the suite of technologies that could potentially capture these value streams weighs in favor of such an interpretation.

      This cost will continue to drop.

      Very large-scale conventional and renewable generation projects (e.g., IGCC, nuclear, solar thermal, etc.) continue to face a number of challenges, including significant cost contingencies, high absolute costs, competition from relatively cheap natural gas in some geographies, operating difficulties and policy uncertainty.

      These costs won't.

  32. Re:people's preference by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Because voter turnout is so high?

  33. Turns Out Legislators Can Do Dumb Shit by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

    You can't dictate that a company can't sell a legal product.

    Yes you can. It turns out that legislators can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. They could ban peanut butter tomorrow if they felt like it. They could even pass laws that violate the constitution and police can happily enforce those laws until a judge explicitly tells them to cut it out, with no punishment whatsoever.

    This is one of the many, many reasons why the world's democracies often seem dysfunctional. And it's part of the reason why the emergency $700 billion bailout in 2008 included a tax break for a company that makes wooden archery arrows for kids (of the sort commonly used in summer camps or scouting groups.)[1]

    It would be very interesting to create a constitution for a country or state/municipality that says you may only pass laws for XYZ reasons, you have to give the justification for every law you pass, and if the justification given for that law is ever found to be invalid then the courts can strike it down. And you aren't allowed to invent a new justification after the law has been passed. That is what "draining the swamp" would truly look like. That, plus figuring out a way for politicians to run campaigns that doesn't involve legalized bribery.


    1. This is just too precious to not include:

    "Kids' arrows costing 30 cents to make had an additional 43 cents tacked on through the federal excise tax. The extra cost proved too much for low-budget archery programs offered by schools, clubs and Boyâ(TM)s and Girl Scouts around the country, who quickly canceled orders," Dishion said.

    Yeah, I'm sure the extra ~$3 per archery station for something that doesn't wear out quickly was the straw that broke the camel's back. It's definitely not the cost of the bows or target backstops or liability insurance or anything.

    1. Re:Turns Out Legislators Can Do Dumb Shit by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      Have a mandatory Constitutional review before they vote on a new law. If it fails then those who vote for it would be financially liable if the courts later overturn that law. The politicians can still vote as they want, if they are willing to take the financial risk.

    2. Re:Turns Out Legislators Can Do Dumb Shit by Shane_Optima · · Score: 1

      Have a mandatory Constitutional review before they vote on a new law. If it fails then those who vote for it would be financially liable if the courts later overturn that law. The politicians can still vote as they want, if they are willing to take the financial risk.

      That's a fun idea, if a bit less realistic.

      A related idea was proposed ~30 years ago on an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister": Failure Standards. Programs and laws that aim to achieve some goal have to give hard numbers (deadlines, target crime statistics, whatever) and if the law fails to achieve the specified result, it will be deemed a failure.

      Now maybe that failure could automatically cause the law to expire, but even if it didn't you still have the powerful political effects seen in the advertisements: "Senator so-and-so voted for 20 new suchandsuch programs over the past 10 years... [scary voice] and 17 of them were FAILURES."

      The fact that it's an incredibly radical concept to talk about designing a system that is self-aware of failure, or makes it hard for politicians to insert pork or various dumb riders, or is at all resistant to capriciousness and incompetence, is very telling. The foxes have been guarding the henhouse for so long that any sane system will necessarily sound like an idle pipe dream at best, and the ravings of a fringe extremist at worst.

    3. Re:Turns Out Legislators Can Do Dumb Shit by coinreturn · · Score: 1

      Have a mandatory Constitutional review before they vote on a new law. If it fails then those who vote for it would be financially liable if the courts later overturn that law. The politicians can still vote as they want, if they are willing to take the financial risk.

      Great idea, let's implement it. Oh, wait the people most at risk have to write this into law. Good luck with that.

  34. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Tea Party troll

    He's not that. He's an anarchist who goes as far as saying you should be able to break any contract so long as it's to your advantage. Government of any kind expects people to play by rules so is automatically his enemy so you are not going to convince him.

  35. Typo should be "biased towards" by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Typo should be "biased towards"

  36. This is the wrong idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The government should levy a fee on Wind power, and to a much lesser extent solar power, to pay for the cost of the unreliability of the wind generation and the extra infrastructure that needs to be constructed to compensate for when the wind generation system fails to generate power in a timely fashion. I'm not making this up South Australia has a lot of trouble generating wind electricity so much so that it went into a statewide blackout for several hours.

    1. Re:This is the wrong idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      South Australia had to contend with the coal industry blocking infrastructure improvements that would have prevented such blackouts.

    2. Re:This is the wrong idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .you are naking shit up, imam livng in SA, and the blackout was due to huge pylons falling over and cutting off supply.its simply a lie that wind was a major part of the problem, stop reading Murdochs bullshit and live in the real world dumbfuck.

  37. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    This is regulation of regular privately owned utilities. They're called "Public Utilities" because they provide utility services to the public, not because they're government owned.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  38. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by currently_awake · · Score: 1

    Government run stuff is subject to voter interference, private stuff is only subject to rich white man interference.

  39. FERC by sphealey · · Score: 2

    The Wyoming State Legislature will soon make the acquaintance of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And after that, possibly the Justice Dept. Essentially all bulk energy transfers fall under federal, not state, jurisdiction.

    sPh

    1. Re:FERC by TimothyHollins · · Score: 1

      Except Trump will close down anything federal with the words 'regulatory' or 'justice' in it.

    2. Re:FERC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And they'll all party like it's 1899?

      You do realize that The Bigly Orange One was elected by promising to restore lower middle class jobs by, in part, getting rid of all those commie environmental regulations that leftists use to keep the white man down, don't you? He's going to reward Wyoming for this, not punish it.

  40. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    Government run stuff is subject to voter interference, private stuff is only subject to rich white man interference.

    Nonsense; rich white men can't afford to run private companies at a loss. What private companies do is primarily determined by customers, and that's far more democratic than voting.

  41. Why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are the tea turds so gay?

  42. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    They're called "Public Utilities" because they provide utility services to the public,

    That's not all: they are also heavily regulated even if there is some degree of private ownership.

    What they are not is independent, private, for-profit companies, and that's the problem.

  43. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by meglon · · Score: 0

    Do the world a favor and go fuck yourself. You don't like living in society? I see a couple options for you... both of which will put you on the wrong end of a weapon in short order. Ungrateful little bitch.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  44. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    Unless you have the time and skill to generate your own utilities (water, electricity, telephone, internet) – and to home-school your children, then you NEED to have a governing power of some kind.

    That "governing power" can be a simple private corporation or association. That means that the people making the decisions are the owners on the one hand, and the customers on the other.

    When you open up governance to political processes and have the government grant monopolies, that is precisely when you get these problems, because then fossil fuel companies (or solar or whatever companies) will push through legislation by which they can enrich themselves.

  45. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    He's an anarchist

    Actually, I'm a minarchist.

    who goes as far as saying you should be able to break any contract so long as it's to your advantage.

    No, I'm simply stating a fact: contracts define actions and consequences, and people behave accordingly.

    Government of any kind expects people to play by rules so is automatically his enemy so you are not going to convince him.

    Government is the enemy because it isn't bound by contracts but can instead take your property, your liberty, or your life with no recourse.

    Of course, you, being a totalitarian, aren't bothered by that.

  46. Higher Prices by r6_jason · · Score: 1

    Let them do it, this will lead to higher prices for Wyoming consumers.

  47. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    and if you leave them with the "free market", they are subject to profiteering

    No, in a free market, competition keeps prices down. In fact, European countries have deregulated their electricity markets and simply give customers a choice between fossil fuel and renewable energy sources.

    In the US today, electricity (public utility) is much *more* reliable, and affordable than Internet connectivity (private) is

    That statement is wrong in many ways. Seriously, do some background research.

  48. Okay, I'm a big nuke proponent but by Chas · · Score: 1

    Simply BANNING renewable energy?
    DUMB!

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
    1. Re:Okay, I'm a big nuke proponent but by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Simply BANNING renewable energy? DUMB!

      Must be some powerful stuff that they have to do that.

      regardless, you and I are in a minority now, so we must put up with it, and embrace coal, the clean energy source of the 21st century, which is ironically, the dirty energy source of the 19th century.

      This is what the minority who rule the country wants, so who are you and I to disrespect that?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  49. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    I already exercised my "options" by coming to the US. And I don't want the US to turn into the kind of stagnant, oppressive system that I came from, where ending up "at the wrong end of a weapon" was an actual possibility.

    I'm sorry if some pampered, privileged, ignorant Americans like you may not understand. Fortunately, as the election shows, not all Americans share in your delusions.

  50. Re:people's preference by Kohath · · Score: 1

    Non voters preferences literally don't count.

  51. Re:Crybaby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobod is complaining about Hillary losing, they are complaining about having an orange moron babbon as president, so fuck off right wing snowflake, and watch every promise Trump made come to nothing, just what the deplorable scum that are his suppporters desevrve.
    Watching and laughing from another country as American fucks itself up the arse. LMAO, what a bunch of dumb cunts.

  52. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please read a high-school level Civics book, Tea Party troll.

    Perhaps you should take your own advice. A great many of our problems today stem at least in part from a general failure to imagine what the people on the other side of an issue are thinking and why. Instead, we ascribe to them an epithet and write them off as irredeemable or deplorable when in fact it's our own failure to imagine and understand that prevents meaningful dialog from occurring.

  53. The Eco terrorist squirrels got yo back by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1

    More power disruptions are caused by squirrels than any other entity. Website with mapped out known attacks: http://cybersquirrel1.com/

    1. Re:The Eco terrorist squirrels got yo back by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      More power disruptions are caused by squirrels than any other entity. Website with mapped out known attacks: http://cybersquirrel1.com/

      But what a way to go! I saw one once meandering around a substation. A flash of light, and the freaking thing was vaporized. The whole thing took maybe a tenth of a second. The aftermath took a while though.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  54. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Of course, you, being a totalitarian, aren't bothered by that.

    Supporting the idea of a Republic where people get to vote makes me that? Good to know.
    Don't go writing any dictionaries.

  55. Re:people's preference by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    They may not count, but that is not the same as without significance.

  56. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Actually, I'm a minarchist.

    If you see any form of government as you enemy you are clearly not.

    because it isn't bound by contracts

    But neither are you from that long discussion earlier.

  57. Here's a good example by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 0

    You are a fucking idiot. The problem is people like you who have no fucking clue about reality, but seem to think your worthless fucked in the head opinion means something. The problem with the right is their base is the most gullible, uneducated, self serving, anti-American, anti-Christian pieces of shit around.... and their politicians are all lying sacks of shit.

    Here's a good example of my point. This post adds nothing to the conversation, it's simply a leftist vomiting insults at the other side.

    Look, I want there to be competition among politicians. I want the left and the right to compete against each other for best policies, best governance, and best leadership.

    I'm an independent, so I'm free to vote for whichever side I want in any election. The left has several positions I agree with, such as abortion rights for women, universal health care, and social safety net (and others).

    I'd really *really* like to support your side, and have sided with these issues in the past, but your group is just so toxic right now that no one wants to have anything to do with you.

    A recent poll showed that about 5% of Trump voters regret voting for him, but almost twice as many (9%) Clinton voters now regret voting for her(*).

    Your group is protesting the outcome of fair elections that you participated in, it's whining and cursing about unfair rules that everyone agreed to. Your group is breaking windows, smashing cars, and lighting things on fire. And because of it, people are regretting having supported you.

    You lefties just don't get it. You could get your way by earning respect, being smarter and better than your opponents.

    You don't look to yourselves as a way to succeed, your only action is to make other people look worse.

    (*) Which, BTW, erases and reverses the popular vote that Clinton won.

    1. Re:Here's a good example by Kohath · · Score: 1

      This post adds nothing to the conversation, it's simply a leftist vomiting insults at the other side....your group is just so toxic right now...

      It's not just right now. It's been many years -- at least since 2010.

    2. Re: Here's a good example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You just don't get it, Okian Warrior, we know you're nothing but a right-wing troll, so every lie you tell just confirms your character.

      Which you're too afraid to admit. So not only are you a liar, you're a cowardly one.

    3. Re: Here's a good example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh, I just love the lamenting of whiny Progressives in the morning.

    4. Re:Here's a good example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You, Okian Warrior, just don't get it. You could get your way by earning respect, being smarter and better, by being more honest.

      You don't look to yourself as a way to succeed, your only action is to try to make other people look worse. Too bad you fail. Take a look at your past dozen posts, nothing but partisan trolling, as you aren't an independent, but a sycophant carrying water for the right-wing. Just as bad as say, Archangel Michael, who like yourself, lies about being independent, but consistently and repetitively repeats right-wing memes as a holy gospel.

      That is why you remain a fucking idiot, with no clue about reality, but seem to think your worthless fucked in the head opinion means something, when you are demonstrably a self-serving, lying sack of shit.

      Probably what upsets you most is that people around here know that. We're kinda clued into you.

      Of course, if you really are a stalking horse, making the right look bad, maybe that's your plan. They have lost on every issue in the past few decades.

    5. Re:Here's a good example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This post adds nothing to the conversation, it's simply a leftist vomiting insults at the other side....your group is just so toxic right now...

      It's not just right now. It's been many years -- at least since 2010.

      Says the guy who is ignoring the newly sworn-in abuser-in-chief who was so discomfited that more people didn't go to his inauguration, that he lied about the numbers of attendees AND regurgitated his usual toxic bile at the media for reporting the truth.

      Huh. You're straining your credibility there, Kohath. No wonder you're sucking up to self-confessed right-wing trolls.

  58. And so this is the way by pjv936 · · Score: 1

    Trump America starts.

    1. Re:And so this is the way by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Trump America starts.

      I had noted for months now that if we are going to put coal miners back to work mining coal - one of the core promises of Sunset in America - we will have to force other energy supplies out of the market. A communist level of forced coal subsidy.

      Not that this will work. All it does is encourage people to move off-grid. And they won't be using coal to do it. Unless we make renewables completely illegal. Because for all of the punishment of Tesla by republicans it hasn't stopped Tesla, merely exposed the owners.

      Trying to turn back the clocks to 1950 will not work in a world that is living in the 21st century.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  59. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    If you see any form of government as you enemy you are clearly not.

    Not at all; minimal government is simply a "necessary evil".

    But neither are you from that long discussion earlier.

    You say that because you live under the delusion that the term "bound by a contract" has a meaning beyond the consequences of breaking the contract. There are no consequences to government for breaking a contract, and the consequences for you breaking a contract with the government can be arbitrarily dire.

  60. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    Supporting the idea of a Republic where people get to vote makes me that? Good to know.

    You seem to believe that voters can impose whatever they like through voting. That makes you a totalitarian.

    I believe in limited government with enumerated powers, where voters can only make decisions within those enumerated powers.

  61. Re:people's preference by Kohath · · Score: 1

    How not?

  62. Slashdot falls for it again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Always quick to take the bait when inconsequential politicos or would-be politicos want to grab some media coverage by doing something out of the ordinary, slashdot continues to lower the level of discourse by stupidly humoring them in search of clicks.

  63. Relax everybody, there's a valid reason for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I get it that there is a significant fetish for "renewables" in geeky circles, but responsible state leaders need to have other more-practical concerns... chiefly among them: keeping the lights on. Voters might like the sound of "renewables"in the abstract, but those same voters get REALLY angry when the power goes out.

    The simple fact is that most of the renewables often cited (wind, solar, etc) are [a] not consistently reliable and [b] cannot provide any surge to meet upticks in demand or to cover for the dips power production. If the grid is half solar and half wind and then the wind slows at night there's a BIG problem. If consumers all suddenly increase their power usage (like by nuking snacks and popping popcorn during a SuperBowl) the grid needs to be able to instantly ramp-up the available energy or we get blackouts/brownouts. When traditional power sources energize a power grid and there's a sudden surge in demand or a power plant needs to go offline, the plants hooked to the grid can simply increase their output. Solar and Wind simply cannot do this basic function. It would be supremely irresponsible of lawmakers to support power companies energizing the grid with these fashionable, expensive, boutique energy sources that are incapable of doing one of the most-basic functions of a power plant.

    I for one would be extemely pissed if the hospital caring for a family member had a brownout because some idiot politician needed Tom Steyer's and George Soros' money and therefore legislated that the power grid could be composed of "green" energy sources.

  64. Why are you guys so blind? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh the HUMANITY! A corporation is making a PROFIT!!!! It's EVIL for somebody to enrich himself providing somebody else with a product or service!!!!

    It all sounds so very good... until you think it through...

    Don't you notice all the politicians who spend millions of dollars campaigning for a 150K per year job and then, having won that job manage, to become multimillionaires? Don't you notice all the unionized government workers who are virtually un-fireable and have exorbitant pensions? Don't you see how massively Washington DC and all the surrounding counties have grown and how much property values and rents there have skyrocketed? Government and its workers profit enourmously fromeverything they mess with. Government and politicians are just as bad as corporations and are profiting VERY handsomely from all your left-leaning benevolence.

    Why is it that you guys on the left think people cannot be trusted with guns... unless you put them into government uniforms and then they are supremely trustworthy?

    Why is it that you guys on the left thinkg people cannot be trusted to raise their kids... but if you stuff those people into suits and give them government credentials they are suddenlysupremely qualified to grab other people's kids away from them and raise them?

    Why do you lefties think it's dangerous to let people operate businesses without supervision and approvals... but you see no irony in the idea that it's otherwise dangerous and untrustworthy human beings who take jobs in government supervising and approving business people.

    Why do you people suddenly invert your view of a person's basic human nature based on whether that person is an individual citizen, or a government employee? Do you truly believe that being a government employee completely changes a person and makes him/her perfect? Perhaps rather than having government officials oversee everyone, we should just make everyone a government employee and then let them all self-regulate?

    In reality, there's NOTHING that makes government employees any more humane, rational, selfless, intelligent, etc than private sector employees, and NOTHING that makes a politician or career bureaucrat superior in ANY way to a corporate executive. The only differences are that government people have the legal power to incarcerate and/or kill you and they are far less accountable than corporate people. Government people can hold corporate people to account,but corporate people cannot hold government people to account. The individual has NO recourse when wronged by government, but can turn to government for recourse when wronged by a corporation.

    1. Re:Why are you guys so blind? by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Oh, stupid AC never took a civics class....

      The goal of a business is to make a PROFIT. The goal of a government is to make sure people have FAIR and EQUAL access.

      Uneducated, uninformed people like are why our president is a moron.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
  65. In the name of God.... WHY?!?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is NO EXCUSE for this. This is some mindless bullshit or the summary does not reflect accurately the whole story. Or both, but if that's what they're saying and that is the situation, that's fucking insanity.

  66. apparently by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...the only high-school level civics-related book you read was socialist Howard Zinn's disgusting anti-American screen "A People's History of the United States" which left-leaning educators have used as propaganda for a number of years now.

    Our nation's founders placed NONE of the activities you are arguing about into the government sphere. They are simply not the business of the federal government. If people want schools to raise and educate their kids, then they are free, along with their neighbors, to create schools within their communities and to hire teachers. If the people want to, they can even create structures for school systems at the state level, but this is NONE of the federal government's business. Same thing for telephones, electricity, the internet, water, gas, transit busses, etc. These things belong to the people themselves and the state governments the people create.

    The federal role in all this is mostly just to keep states from fighting each other and favoring/disfavoring certain other states.... in other words to keep commerce between the states REGULAR. The commerce clause hase been mutated severely over the past 7 decades... when the commerce clause of the Constitution was written "regulate" meant "to make regular" NOT "have armies of government workers dictate rules and regulations for everything".

    There's no magic that makes these things automatically superior if government is involved in them; indeed when government is involved, things slow down and get burdened by rules and bureaucrats. The internet is a great example: yes, it was initially sponsored as a government research project but it was at that point largely unregulated and mostly ignored by government. The internet grew at an insane rate and the innovation was so fast it was hard to keep up with while government was mostly uninvolved in it. Had it been run by the government and overseen by a federal Department of the Internet, the specs for a web browser and HTML would still be under development in Washington. Lobbyists for Microsoft and Apple would be competing behined closed doors, in an unofficial auction with campaign funds, to get their proprietary stuff locked-into the specs and required-by-law. WooHoo! Licensing fees galore!!!! Regulatory capture, crony capitalism and actual fascism all rolled into one big nasty ball.

  67. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And this bill would prevent the customers to feed back to the grid from their own private solar installations as that would amount to illegally distributing solar energy. "You wouldn't shine some power into the net, would you?" is the new FBI slogan of the coming ages. As a result, people will turn to dark nets for their solar energy needs.

  68. Your ignorance and obnoxious attiude are exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why Trump won and Hillary lost.

    People in "fly over country" are tired of your snobbery and hatred.

    Your bile has nothing to do with "inclusiveness" or "open mindedness" - you are simply shovelling heaping stinking piles of hatred and apparently lack any sense of introspection or even irony. Congrats! You are the posterchild for progressivism and I eagerly await your YouTube video calling for people you do not like to be gassed to death.

    Go to YouTube and look for famous progressive hero George Bernard Shaw cheerfully calling for people to be required to justify their existence to government panels annually and to be "humanely" gassed to death if they cannot justify their existence... the idea took off in Germany and thus progressivism became a bad word in the western world for decades until Hillary ressurected it a few years ago.

  69. Fake News by BradMajors · · Score: 0, Troll

    If anyone bothered to read the actual bill... this article is Fake News. The bill in no way prohibits wind or solar energy.

    1. Re: Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      We will examine whether the article is, beyond reasonable doubt, Fake News, to wit disinformation based either wholly on invented "facts" or upon facts which knowingly and deliberately have been constructed out of context so as to mislead or deceive the reasonable reader.

      If anyone bothered to read the actual bill...

      ... they would find that it requires that by 2018 "each electric utility shall procure a minimum of ninety five percent (95%) of its sales of electricity in Wyoming from eligible generating resources." and that by 2019, "r 2019, each electric utility shall procure a minimum of one hundred percent (100%) of its sales of electricity in Wyoming from eligible generating resources." Eligible generating resources are defined to include (with limitation) : "Coal; Hydroelectric; Natural g
      as; Net metering system, as defined by W.S. 37-16-101(a)(viii); Nuclear;
      [and]Oil.."

      TFA claims by the headline that the Bill "forbids utilities from using renewables" which is incorrect both because hydroelectric power is properly classed as a "renewable" and because the inclusion of 'Net metering systems' does permit at least limited use of solar (and perhaps even wind) power. The text of the article below, however, makes clear that the actual claim being made is that utilities are prohibited from selling energy generated in utility-scale wind and solar farms in the state and face a $10/KWh fine should they do so.

      The bill would require utilities to use "eligible resources" to meet 95 percent of Wyoming's electricity needs in 2018, and all of its electricity needs in 2019.

      [I] ndividual net metering ... includes home solar or wind installations in which the owner feeds excess electricity back into the grid, and is paid a predetermined, fixed fee for the power. But these small-scale sources of renewable energy are meant for private use. They just happen to produce extra power that can be utilized by the grid.

      Utility-scale wind and solar farms are not included in the bill's list of "eligible resources," making it illegal for Wyoming utilities to use them in any way if the legislation passes. [Emphasis added]

      These claims accurately describe the content of the Bill

      We find that the headline, taken by itself, was liable to mislead as concerns the limited use of personally generated renewable power returned to the grid. Though it is not necessary to consider the question here and despite this being a relatively minor factor, it remains possible that a charge of "clickbaityness" might be sustained against the subeditor responsible for the headline. It remains, we must note, far from what might justifiable attract the appellation of "fake news."

      OTOH the journalist's text below provides a fair and accurate description of the effect of the Bill under discussion.

      We find the accusation of "fake news" cannot be maintained against the article in question and would dismiss the action.

    2. Re: Fake News by suutar · · Score: 1

      *applause*

  70. Nuclear power doesn't work 40% of the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They're out of commission for maintenance, which doesn't happen to an entire solar or wind farm installation across acres. What do you do when nukes are offline??? I guess we can't use nuclear, either then, eh?

    1. Re:Nuclear power doesn't work 40% of the time by queazocotal · · Score: 1

      Nuclear has planned maintenance windows in general, and it's rarely the only baseload power supply.

  71. How the left fights by tomhath · · Score: 1

    Stupid fucking games instead of trying to run something properly

    Take a look at the moderation in this conversation. Screaming, swearing insults and personal attacks in support of the left are modded up to 4 and 5 as "insightful" or "interesting", those arguing on the right (without swearing or personal attacks) are modded down "offtopic" or or "overrated".

    You shouldn't expect to be taken seriously if you don't behave like someone who should be taken seriously.

    1. Re: How the left fights by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

      And people, who ignore all the red flags and elect as the most powerful man in the world an orange reality game show host with no political experience whatsoever and massive financial conflicts of interest, should be taken seriously? You don't even seem to understand why the left is so upset. It's not because the right won. That has happened many times, and never with this result. It's because you gave the keys to the kingdom to a egotistical con man with deplorable ideology and zero record of any public service or ever doing anything for the benefit of America in his entire life. Name one positive thing that Trump's administration will do for the nation or the planet that doesn't involve people getting more money for themselves or furthering religious or alienating ideology.

    2. Re:How the left fights by dbIII · · Score: 1

      There was an article on profanity here just in the last week. Sometimes it is the thing you have to use to be taken seriously.
      Doesn't the line you quoted more accurately convey complete and utter contempt than a polite phrase?

    3. Re: How the left fights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe not, but I'll definitely take someone named "PoopJuggler" seriously.

  72. HuffPost = = = Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Always have been fake, always will be fake.

    1. Re: HuffPost = = = Fake News by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

      Calling everything "fake news" is now just a way for people to even further ignore reality. Lalalalala I'm not listening. Lalalalala.

    2. Re:HuffPost = = = Fake News by sphealey · · Score: 1

      I'm sure Time is fake news too. As is the Washington Post, MSNBC, and the 124 various other sources that reported on the 2009 McConnell obstruction meeting

      http://swampland.time.com/2012...

  73. Now I get a list... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, they wanted a list of everyone in the gov working on climate change. Soon we will have a list of politicians that we can target with funding their opponents all over the country. Let me see... It is legal for a superpac to fund local, and state canidates, right?

  74. Hmmmm.... by Ferretman · · Score: 1

    I'm not a huge fan of renewables for large scale use but this seems kinda petulant to me.

    Better to have no subsidies or penalties, either way, on any energy production method. The market will work it out; just don't put a hand on the scale.

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
    1. Re:Hmmmm.... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I'm not a huge fan of renewables for large scale use but this seems kinda petulant to me.

      It protects coal, and coal is a part of the future of America.

      Better to have no subsidies or penalties, either way, on any energy production method. The market will work it out; just don't put a hand on the scale.

      In some idealized world maybe. But we have that little problem with the owners of the politicians who run the country. They do not want the competition with renewables, period. Coal and gas and petrochemicals all have their subsidies. Which goes completely against the whole idea of subsidies in this arena, that being to promote worthy new technologies that won't just appear fully formed like Venus from the ocean, so need a bit of a boost. The problem is that other countries understand that, while we are either antagonistic or not allowed to think that way.

      So some of the owners of the US are frightened of the new technology are so frightened of it that they not only do not want it subsidized, but they want it anti-subsidized? Using the force of law to punish it? Must be some powerful stuff.

      Meanwhile, it appears that the US is working it's inexorable way towards surrendering it's technology lead to other countries. We'll let China develop new technology, we're too busy selling our hats to each other.

      My only wish is that people who think that the free market is the solution to everything show the courage of their convictions and refuse to use anything anywhere that ever had a government subsidy of any amount. That would be exceptionally interesting. Probably would look like "The legend of Mick Dodge" http://channel.nationalgeograp...

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  75. Then by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2
    They fight you.

    We all know what the next step is. If renewable energy is not a threat to coal powered energy, it would just die out, and we would be using coal.

    But if you have to go out of your way to punish the users, you are just admitting that competing with them is not winning.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  76. Re: Crybaby by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you weren't so hung up on and blinded by your stupid childish anti-Hillary or anti-liberal or anti-whatever mindset you have, you might actually stop and think and see that Trump and his administration are pretty deplorable people with no interest other than gaining wealth for themselves and their friends, and pushing their own religious ideology via legislation. None of them care about America and fixing its real problems.

  77. America is increasingly becoming the world's idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It defies belief that anyone would actually propose such nonsense legislation.
    What is more worrying, is that it comes from politicians in nuclear armed state, with a moronic president, and a long and rich history of militaristic and expansionist tendencies. Not that I'm saying the sociopath Hillary would have been any better.
    It all seems to be extreme (or should I say extremist?) embarrassment and humiliation for America these days...

  78. another lying envrionmentalist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    typical environmentalist. Such a blinding ignorance that they really believe their lies.

  79. Law != Bill by s.petry · · Score: 1

    Bills like this are actually pretty common. The James Taggart's and Orren Boyle's of the world have to feel important and look busy somehow. Fortunately enough, these types of bills are not often passed and if they do it's usually lacking support from the public. Meaning they don't tend to last long.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  80. Wyoming is just doing what all leftists want by mpercy · · Score: 0

    Taxing the crap out of each and every industry they can. Why should wind and solar be special? You know, those are big evil corporations building those plants, and selling that electricity!

    The people running wind and solar seem to think they should never be taxed on their very profitable business...

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/...

    In the four years since Wyoming began taxing power generated by wind turbines, it has collected a little less than $15 million in revenue.

    No, that is not much money in a resource state rocked by the simultaneous decline in the prices of coal, oil and natural gas, a state trying to close a budget gap that could reach $500 million.

    But now, as one of the world’s largest wind farms is about to begin construction here on a project aimed at providing clean electricity to nearly a million homes in California and the Southwest — potentially transforming this fossil fuel state into a major player in renewables — some powerful state lawmakers are looking to raise those taxes.

    And some in the wind industry, which has long benefited from incentives and subsidies, say they are worried. The company that has spent nine years trying to build the wind project says higher taxes could further delay or even halt the plan.

    “Just about every legislator we’ve met with asks us, ‘You tell us how much we can tax you before we put you out of business,’” said Bill Miller, chief executive of the Power Co. of Wyoming, which is planning the wind farm. “I just shake my head and say, ‘Zero.’”

    1. Re:Wyoming is just doing what all leftists want by mpercy · · Score: 2

      In their view, the tax increase is more about politics — Wyoming lashing out at clean energy as payback for federal policy aimed at scaling back the coal industry on which the state has always relied.

      Supporters of the tax increase say that the company is posturing — that Wyoming’s abundant winds are the renewable equivalent of its high-quality Powder River Basin coal. They point to studies showing that Wyoming eventually could provide half of the wind power in the nation, but they also emphasize that it likely will not provide anywhere near the jobs and other benefits fossil fuels have. Fully built out, the project called the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre would create fewer than 150 jobs.

      They also say Wyoming doesn’t necessarily need clean energy, much less the turbines that harness it. Giant towers would line the horizon for decades to come, altering the state’s wide-open spaces more fundamentally than drilling rigs or even vast surface coal mines.

      “The benefits of wind are disproportionately on the West Coast, and the costs of wind are disproportionately in Wyoming — and I mean the social costs,” said Cale Case, a state senator and economist who serves on the Legislature’s revenue committee. “This tiny reflection of the impacts back here, I think it’s just kind of a fair trade.”

    2. Re:Wyoming is just doing what all leftists want by mpercy · · Score: 2

      Not long after it became clear that the robust winds that blow down from the Rocky Mountains and across the sea of sagebrush here could produce plenty of profit in a world that wants more renewable energy, some of the more expansive minds in the Wyoming Legislature began entertaining a lofty question:

      Who owns all of that wind?

      They concluded, quickly and conveniently, that Wyoming did.

      Then, with great efficiency for a conservative state not traditionally tilted toward burdening the energy industry, they did something no other state has done, before or since: They taxed it.

  81. Re:Cats are Environmental Disasters by mnemotronic · · Score: 1

    I propose that Wyoming add "cats" to it's list of energy fuels along with nuke, oil, coal, wood and them libral east-coast democrats and californicatin commie pinko faggots. yee-ha.

    Too bad about wind. It definitely blows up there. Really really blows.

    --
    The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
  82. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by DogDude · · Score: 1

    No, in a free market, competition keeps prices down.

    Nope. Average price in Europe in 2015 was $0.20/KW. It was $0.12/KW in the US.

    Seriously, do some background research.

    I can't find any research that shows that Internet connectivity in the US is more reliable or relatively cheaper than electricity. If you have some research that you'd like to share.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  83. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    Nope. Average price in Europe in 2015 was $0.20/KW. It was $0.12/KW in the US.

    Are you so stupid that you think that's an argument?

    I can't find any research that shows that Internet connectivity in the US is more reliable or relatively cheaper than electricity.

    So why are you making stupid claims about the relative reliability of Internet connectivity and electricity in the US?

  84. The bill itself seems to disagree by Teekin · · Score: 1

    Fact-checking should be a sport. Now, I'm not sure that this bill is benign. But I've done a little bit of fact-checking, and I think the story is incorrect. My understanding of the bill is that wind and solar will continue to remain eligible generating resources, as defined by the bill. Following links and looking around Wyoming's legislative website, I've found two documents: 1. A PDF of the bill in question. See page 3 for a definition of "Eligible generating resource": http://legisweb.state.wy.us/20... 2. Title 37: Public utilities: http://legisweb.state.wy.us/LS... (scroll down to find Title 37). Now, note that on page 3 in the bill, it lists coal, oil and those sorts of things. Okay, you won't find solar and wind in there... but, in (D), this is included "Net metering system, as defined by W.S.37-16-101(a)(viii)". Now, here's something for news hunters to realize. A lot of well-meaning reporters jump to conclusions like the rest of us. Even though that may seem like an intimidating thing, it's actually quite simple. Those numbers mean something. They're an address. They will help you find more information. Now, the 37 clearly means Title 37. So grab Title 37, which is distributed in .docx format, and see that at the top, you have the string "371101". Now, look for "3716101" (37-16-101 without dashes), it'll be called: "Definitions." - interesting, right? You'll find (a) right below, which lists a bunch of things, so find (viii) as per the reference in the bill. It'll say: "(viii)"Net metering system" means a facility for the production of electrical energy that: (A)Uses as its fuel either solar, wind, biomass or hydropower; (B)Has a generating capacity of not more than twentyfive (25) kilowatts; (C)Is located on the customergenerator's premises; (D)Operates in parallel with the electric utility's transmission and distribution facilities; and (E)Is intended primarily to offset part or all of the customergenerator's requirements for electricity." Note that (A) says: "Uses as its fuel either solar, wind, biomass or hydropower;" Now, I don't know enough about the subject matter to really give an opinion on B-E, but it seems clear to me that solar and wind power, as defined in existing Wyoming law, IS INCLUDED in the definition of an eligible generating resource in this new bill which the story revolves around.

    1. Re:The bill itself seems to disagree by Geodesy99 · · Score: 1

      The passages you quote verify the article: (C) Is located on the customer generator's premises; (D) Operates in parallel with the electric utility's transmission and distribution facilities; and (E) Is intended primarily to offset part or all of the customer generator's requirements for electricity. i.e. 'Customer Generator's are the end points, as distinguished from "electric utility's transmission and distribution facilities" - in contrast to our state: "In November 2006, 52 percent of Washington voters approved ballot initiative 937.The initiative requires large utilities to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from new renewable resources (excluding existing hydropower) by 2020 with incremental steps of 3 percent by 2012 and 9 percent by 2016, along with undertaking cost-effective energy conservation programs."

  85. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by DogDude · · Score: 1

    It's like trying to talk to a rock. Have a nice life, rock!

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  86. The take-away is that there are a lot of birds. by Brannon · · Score: 1

    And now there are *slightly* fewer.

  87. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

    Unless you have the time and skill to generate your own utilities (water, electricity, telephone, internet) – and to home-school your children, then you NEED to have a governing power of some kind.

    That "governing power" can be a simple private corporation or association. That means that the people making the decisions are the owners on the one hand, and the customers on the other.

    HOA's have plenty of politics going on in them. . . to the point of some individuals trying to exert monopoly-like influence to their own personal ends. Strong President + weak res-of-board invites abuse. It happens all the time.

    Give anyone or any sub-group power, and they will be in a position to abuse it – unless a system of checks and balances are put in place.

    It is basic human nature. If you learn how to escape the effects of being an individual among a group of co-equals, then I and many philosophers, political scientists, and people in general will be delighted to hear it.

  88. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    HOA's have plenty of politics going on in them

    So? Did I claim anywhere that HOAs were apolitical or functioned perfectly? Private associations and corporations have most of the problems of regular government; but the one problem they eliminate is that people with no skin in the game enrich themselves through political ends.

    If you learn how to escape the effects of being an individual among a group of co-equals, then I and many philosophers, political scientists, and people in general will be delighted to hear it.

    I don't have an answer to that problem, but that's not the problem private associations answer. Private associations, rather, ensure that you are at least an individual among co-equals, as opposed to an individual subject to arbitrary outside force.

  89. Re:people's preference by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Because the reason the opinions matter in the first place is because it is the people matter, not the built-in limitations of the choices they've been given. By the logic as currently expressed, once the representative has been chosen, the people are no longer voting, and the preferences being expressed are no longer of the people and your original expression that the "your own" is of the People of Wyoming does not make sense. Two degrees of meaning have been removed from the conventional meaning of "the preferences of the people of Wyoming", first the people who did not vote for a representative, then the people who did vote for a representative, because then it is the preferences of the representative and not the people.

  90. Re:people's preference by Kohath · · Score: 1

    So your point is that representative government imperfectly represents the will of the people, even in a very small state like Wyoming. Ok, thanks for that.

    Why would we think non-voters would prefer something different than voters?

  91. The Same BS by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    I think the line was that snowfall in South England would be rare by 2010, and focusing on the claims in the popular press rather than the scientific evidence is not a wise idea. What exactly about the properties of CO2 has been fixed incorrectly? CO2-based warming was discredited entirely up until at least the mid-1950s, and the opinions of climate researchers shifted rather suddenly with better information about the upper atmosphere. Do you know what that evidence was, and do you have any reason to dispute it? I'll give you a hint, the answer has nothing to do with global climate models.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    1. Re:The Same BS by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      No the line was that there would be no snow by 2010. You can dig up the PDF archived version and read it for yourself if you want. I'll give you a tip: These same theories were the same ones used in the 1920's, the only real difference is that they're using computer modeling instead of doing it by long hand.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:The Same BS by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      No the line was that there would be no snow by 2010

      The most often quoted line I've seen would be from David Viner, of the University of East Anglia, quoted in the U.K. newspaper The Independent on 20 March 2000 with the headline 'Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past', and as far as I know he was referring to the south of England only. No peer reviewed source has ever made any such claims, about either England or anywhere else, but here's a nice recent review article of snowfall patterns in England. It does show a reduction in the frequency and extent of snow-lying days.

      These same theories were the same ones used in the 1920's, the only real difference is that they're using computer modeling instead of doing it by long hand.

      This is categorically untrue. In the 1920s the closest thing to a GCM would be Arrhenius, but he was discredited, and the early computer modeling used very different strategies. But whether they're old or new models is irrelevant. Again, models are not empirical evidence and do not either support or refute AGW.

      I must note that you did not reply to any of the questions I asked. What specifically about our knowledge of CO2 do you feel is incomplete or incorrect? Do you know why the consensus against AGW was overturned, and if so do you feel that was insufficently well supported by observation? Do answer as rigorously as you can.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  92. Stability issues in politicalese... by MercTech · · Score: 1

    The way the bill is worded; it sounds like a politicians attempt to codify an engineer's take that "base load calculations should be made with controllable consistent generation mechanisms".
          Wind and solar are geographically limited and intermittent sources of electrical power. I would not expect them to be included in "base load" calculations which justify a continued area monopoly to a public utilities commission. Nothing wrong with Wyoming wanting to require a utility company to certify 95% of their capacity is actually there when required. And nothing to say that when a solar or wind farm is actually producing they can idle a base load plant to save some bucks. Only that they have to have RELIABLE 95% load capability.

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    NRRPT/RCT
  93. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  94. It's good to see by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    That now that we have entered alternate reality days, that the Good Republicans, those doyens of the free market, and suckling at the teat of Ayn Rand, have enabled the Time honored principle of if you can't beat it, makie it illegal.

    Brings back the heady days of when indy racing couldn't compete with turbine cars, so they outlawed them. Freedom!

    Keep those post reality laws coming! I've heard that scientists have a big machine tht keeps humans fmor flying - but it only works if a few try, so if all deniers and anti-competitive true citizens just jump off a cliff at once, the machine will over load and we will reach our greatest potential. You will soar with the birds!

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  95. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

    If you learn how to escape the effects of being an individual among a group of co-equals, then I and many philosophers, political scientists, and people in general will be delighted to hear it.

    I don't have an answer to that problem, but that's not the problem private associations answer. Private associations, rather, ensure that you are at least an individual among co-equals, as opposed to an individual subject to arbitrary outside force.

    Fair enough. You seem to be saying, effectively, that the US (for example) has strayed far from the "... all men having been created equal ..." part of the US Constitution. Yes. Yes we have.

    The US is a (doubly) Representative Republic which is likely on the cusp of diving sharply into fascism, towards which we leaned anyway. All this "free market" and "the market is the most important thing" and "growth must be sustained" are all in essence statements used frequently to justify political actions – self-serving or segment-serving ones – which are at-root fascist in holding the markets as more important than the people.

  96. Re:welcome to *public* utilities by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    All this "free market" and "the market is the most important thing" and "growth must be sustained" are all in essence statements used frequently to justify political actions – self-serving or segment-serving ones – which are at-root fascist in holding the markets as more important than the people.

    Sounds like you are just as much of an "anti-fascist" as the guys who said this:

    we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.

    The US is a (doubly) Representative Republic which is likely on the cusp of diving sharply into fascism, towards which we leaned anyway.

    True; but by kicking both Hillary and Sanders to the curb, we have avoided that fate... for now.