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The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com)
New submitter TheCoroner writes: A paper in Nature Energy suggests that the benefits we receive from moving to renewables like wind and solar that reduce air pollution exceed the cost of the subsidies required to make them competitive with traditional fossil fuels. Ars Technica reports: "Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein and his colleagues estimate that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion. The benefits from wind work out to be more than 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is more than unsubsidized wind energy generally costs.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
But what if we make the world better for no reason?
But what about the health benefits of me driving a '69 Charger Hemi R/T? It's great for my stress level and has cured my erectile dysfunction.
You are welcome on my lawn.
is it just me or when you read an article like this one does your "This is a crock of sh*t" alarm go off?
Seems like about 1 million assumptions and taking estimates into facts and global averages into local and assuming 100 utilization of generation and zero pollution cost of manufacture and disposal of generation equipment. Plus probably more. I mean I love renewable energy but this article just smells bad despite all the clean renewable air.
$30B / 3k people = $10 million per person. That's a heck of a lot of economic benefit per person.
Indeed. It seems silly to say that preventing the premature death of some random person would bring $10M in economic benefit. That is far more than most people earn in a lifetime. It seems more reasonable to assume that most of the people dying from air pollution are sick or elderly, and would otherwise be an economic burden on society. So keeping them alive would be a cost not a savings.
Of course, it has long been known that if the negative externalities of coal generation were factored in it would be way more expensive than other generation forms. Did they also count the concerns about coal ash storage, which has caused drinking water problems and even a flood of radioactive, toxic sludge in the case of the Tennessee Valley?
$30B / 3k people = $10 million per person. That's a heck of a lot of economic benefit per person.
What's the GDP of the US? What does it work out to per person?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
But if all those people don't die early, the rest of us will have to share the cost of their social security payments.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It should come as a no surprise that the stuff that comes out of tailpipes is not good for you to breathe. It can and does kill people. People who want to kill themselves quickly, breathe a lot of it in a short amount of time. The rest of us are doing it over a longer period of time.
The sooner we switch away from a gas burning engine, the better.
and we create a better world for nothing?
Jokes aside, at least in the US nothing's going to change unless our electoral system does. Right now about 55,000 coal miners in swing states are holding our national elections hostage trying to hold onto jobs made increasingly irrelevant by fracking and cheap natural gas... With our electoral system it doesn't matter how you vote because we don't weigh each person's vote equally. Which was after all the entire point. It keeps change to a minimum and protects landowner's interests.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Even including the deaths from Chernobyl nuclear power has an impressive safety record. More people died from windmill and solar accidents per energy produced than nuclear.
Sure, there were a lot of accidental deaths in the early days of nuclear power but it's making a lot of safe energy now. Wind and solar combined make very little energy, and you compare that to worker deaths from electrocutions and falls and nuclear has them beat by an order of magnitude on safety. Nuclear is better for the environment too, less carbon produced per energy than wind or solar. Pretty sure nuclear kills fewer birds and bats too.
I just heard on the radio today of the health effects of the sound made by windmills. I think they called it "infrasound", it's the low frequency hum made by windmills that cause headaches, hearing loss, and all kinds of crazy stuff. Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know.
I see a lot of comparisons of wind and solar to coal and natural gas. Why not compare it to nuclear? I know why. By comparison wind and solar is expensive, dirty, deadly, and did I mention expensive?
If these articles want to convince me that I need wind and solar power then they need to compare it to nuclear too. But they don't. Again, I know why.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The story isn't about nuclear because the study examined the health costs of fossil fuel emissions, not the health costs of radioactive emissions.
If a similar study were made about nuclear, it would have to factor in the health costs of radioactivity leakage, nuclear accidents, and nuclear waste disposal, which nuclear advocates never factor in because they always leave that problem for future generations to solve. Such a study should certainly be done.
If you're going to account for costs like that, you also need to account for opportunity costs. How about it?
Usually these type of things (overall cost for minor safety reduction across large population) use a number based on human behavior.
Does someone pay $100 to avoid a one in 100,000 risk?
I'm not saying that's a valid way to do this or not, and the number seems a touch high (I've heard 6 million), but it's not total BS either.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Economist here, people are generally considered to have an intrinsic value. It's how we decide if we should put up a barrier on the edge of a road or not.
In other news, people live more than one year and have intrinsic value.
I don't know if you have seen one, but windmills take up about as much land as a cell tower. It's just the footprint.
I'm guessing they included the economic benefit from people who wouldn't have died, but would have taken sick days or been hospitalized or the like. That's probably a lot more than the number of lives saved.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
http://news.stanford.edu/news/...
Here's TFA:
"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.
So basically, to make Nuclear just fall off his chart, he assumes that building more powerplants will lead to nuclear war, and calculates how much stuff that will burn. Is that not completely absurd?
Basically, the gist of what he's saying about Nuclear is this: "We have to pretend like it's a bad idea, because if we don't, other countries will want to do it, and then they might build bombs. So, say it with me: Nuclear is a baad idea."
Does somebody want to break it to the guy that Iran and other states will pursue weapons programs no matter what sort of powerplants we build in the US? And besides, what's more likely to cause war: Clean and cost-effective nuclear powerplants that the rest of the world will want to copy, or an energy shortage which sends us looking to secure fossil fuels? I think the latter.
Anyway, this calculating methodology is so incredibly bizarre that I suspect it's bought.
So I'm always hearing about how the climate science community is rigorous and weeds out bad work, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but it's been eight years and AFAICT this study was never retracted nor the lead scientist (Mark Z. Jacobson) confronted over it.
You can't have people living near a windmill, so that may cut down the value of the land. Also, huge gobs of concrete are used to stabilize them. Well, everything has some negative consequences, it's all a matter of what you prefer.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
In any case as the old saying goes one in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. They have a very clear moral argument that less pollution means better health for you and your children, why muddy the whole thing up with macroeconomics
I'm guessing they included the economic benefit from people who wouldn't have died, but would have taken sick days or been hospitalized or the like.
Nope. From TFA: "that’s just the estimated economic benefits of the averted 3,000 to 12,000 premature deaths—it doesn't count things like sub-lethal medical issues and lost productivity"
It's estimated that there are 200,000 early deaths from air pollution a year just in the US. So it makes sense that fossil fuels would actually be the most expensive once health is factored in.
http://news.mit.edu/2013/study...
Value over lifetime... But you can't make that math that simple... There are other costs.
Nor is it entirely about costs, we spend lots of money trying to make people live longer... If this is a cheaper way to do so, it's definitely worth pursuing.
Also note: if you're only counting deaths you're not counting all the money spent on astma medicin..
The cost of Fukushima alone is 187 billion dollars US. Where's that factor into the tired "Nuclear power forever!" rhetoric? Or the fact that one of the only remaining power companies with nuclear ambitions in the US has gone bankrupt for cost overruns. Or the fact that solar power can still improve dramatically for cost, and should able to beat the, entirely theoretical, ROI on nuclear within a decade. While the new "safe" nuclear power plants won't be even theoretically ready until then; and would actually be up and running years after that. Not too mention all the hundreds of millions needed in R&D for them could easily be spent elsewhere.
"Nuclear!" is just a fantasy people with a bad case of Dunning-Kruger effect concerning energy utilities yell to make themselves feel superior.
He fought against wind but wanted to force it on the rest of us.
Luckily, none of us were stuck in an elevator with him.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Since nuclear has such a wildly greater EROEI than wind and solar,
No, you're wrong. Here is the science. Short answer negative EROEI on nuclear.
why isn't this story about the trillions of lives and quintillions of dollars saved by nuclear over the last 50 years?
Because there isn't any story to tell.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
why isn't this story about the trillions of lives
Assuming you mean humans, there are only billions on the planet, not trillions.
The live cost of Chernobyl is estimated to be up to a million.
and quintillions of dollars saved by nuclear over the last 50 years?
Because nuclear power is the most expensive power we have? And always was?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicles emit pollution that weighs roughly as much as the vehicle- every single year.
Electric cars emit tire rubber dust (same as ICE) and brake dust (but only 1/10th as much).
That's it. No micro particulates, no unburnt hydrocarbons, no leaing fluids, no CO2, CO, or Sulphur.
Any pollution created by the cars manufacture is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable.
Any pollution created by electrical generation is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable (even coal).
If your town has 1 million ICE vehicles in it on a given day, replacing them would remove 4 billion pounds of pollution per year from your town.
That's going to help many over 65, and anyone with breathing problems, probably cut cancer noticeably due to the reduction of PM10 combustion emissions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And just think! All those power subsidies (and ethanol in petrol) will make food more expensive, which means millions more children will starve, which will keep the population down, which will further reduce pollution.
Its WIN-WIN
I dunno, you could probably make some sort of counter-force generator out of the Fascists and Antifas right about now with all of those Olympic gold mental gymnastics they're pulling right now, and probably make this whole planet explode from the sheer release of energy. Similar to a cat with buttered bread strapped butter side up to its back and tossed off a building, except much, MUCH more volatile.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion."
So, averting one premature death costs the economy $10M? Not sure why the benefit goes down per person if more deaths are averted, but where on earth are they getting anywhere near $10M per person?
Because if we don't make it a better place before, nobody will be around to blow up in a nuclear holocaust anyway...
The so called Liquidators alone are more or less all dead:
At the peak of the cleanup, an estimated 600,000 workers were involved in tasks such as building waste repositories, water filtration systems, and the "sarcophagus" that entombs the rubble of Chernobyl
One advocacy group, the Chernobyl Union, says 90,000 of the 200,000 surviving liquidators have major long-term health problems.
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Sorry, no idea where you have your numbers from, but I saw several thousand dead bodies myself.
Keep in mind: the Liquidators where 17 - 19 year old recruits of the soviet army, they should be about 50 now, more than 2/3rds are dead.
And that does not even include the civil persons that died in the area around the plant.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The worst nuclear accident in history may have killed "up to" a million. Coal kills a million every year (air pollution in general kills 5.5M a year) in normal operation without an accident (and also has numerous accidents that kill thousands every year).
Coal only kills about 13,000 Americans a year these days, but is much worse in most of the world. For example, "researchers found that coal use shaves off 5.5 years of the average lifespan of a person living in northern China compared to the someone in the south." (source) In China alone Coal kills 670,000 a year.
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Your kind is obsolete.
aaaaaaa
Tell that to the Monju reactor operators.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
No, not gobs of concrete. And they don't build wind towers in cities, so natch on the "you can't live near it". Cows couldn't give a rats ass about living near a wind turbine.
No, not really. You see, elderly people who're most at risk of dying due to the increased pollution are those with pre-existing respitory conditions that by themselves are already expensive to treat.. What do yu think is one of the driving factors of causing those people to have said conditions? Pollution. So by cutting down pollution, you reduce the amount of elderly people in need of care, thereby decreasing costs. And it's not as if only young people fall to these illnesses. They're at a heightened risk obviously, but inhaling pollutants does increase mortality risk in all age-groups.
Take London during the industrialization for example with its massive amounts of coal-smoke. There too, the vast majority of people outside factory and mine-workers that suffered and died of smog-induced illnesses were older people. By your logic it should have been fine to leave London covered in smog, because 'nah, it really just kills older folks they're going to die anyway'.
Or look at modern day Chinese megacities with pollution so bad, that in certain areas just going outside to breathe the air is equivalent to smoking 1-2 packs of cigarettes a day.. You think the chinese are interested in cutting down pollution en masse just because they wanna appear green, or because they've done that math and figured out that having an explosion of respitory illnesses will cost them a metric fuckton in lost years of employment as well as treatment costs?
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
If you believe in any form of government then you believe in re-distributive taxation. The question from there is not the morality of such a thing, anyone who has agreed that government is necessary has already agreed to that. The real question is what money should be spent on.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Woops, meant to say 'old' there.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
The last German auction for needed subsidies for coastal Wind-generators the winner asked for exactly 0€ subsidies.
They don't need that anymore.
Wind is a health DETRIMENT if near population. There have been studies done, mostly in Europe, about the low frequency noise generated by wind turbines. It causes major mental health issues in animals (including humans).
Just in case we don't...
According to NextEra, 800 tons of concrete per windmill. A quick look shows ranges from 200 tons to 1000 tons per windmill. I'd call that gobs. Their are a lot of abandoned wind farms that no one wants to clean up, too. A clean-up deposit should be required to build them.
I don't know what cows care about, but if you can't build near it the value of the land will decrease. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
No, the real question is, how much is actually necessary?
Again and again I see the argument made that if you do not agree that unlimited government is necessary then you must be in favor of no government.
So, to state the real question again, how much say in how you live your life should the government have?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Nukes are base load.
Gas turbines, wind, solar etc fill the gaps instead of directly competing with nukes.
The nuke advocates that see solar and wind as a threat are just idiots charging at windmills who have forgotten that almost nothing has been spent on new nukes since long before wind and solar became viable on the grid.
Except that studies of the healthcare costs of tobacco use have shown that not to be the case. As people get older, they need ever increasing levels of care. Anything which shortens people's expected life span reduces healthcare costs.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
But what if we make the world better for no reason?
7 million dollars per death ? come on really?
Somewhere I recall a government designed around minimizing such things rather than maximizing them... But perhaps it was just a fantasy.
That's acceptable when dealing with very broad groups, but surely economists assign different values for subgroups? The people who use a given road are much more diverse than the people at risk for death due to air quality, I would think.
Of course, for some parties that value is $0.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And of course it has a constant obvious figure the same for all individuals and unaffected by ageism like "are they 3 or are they 80?"
If you don't like the subsidies for renewables, please also fight the subsidies for fossil fuels, such as free waste disposal. We're losing hundreds of billions a year just to health problems caused by fossil fuel pollution. Problems caused by climate change will just add to that hidden fee. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of my wealth being transferred to clean up someone else's problem, especially since they got -- and still are -- rich from making the problem in the first place.
So why is there an intrinsic assumption preventing death saves money for the society?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Let's step away from Chernobyl for a second and get back to the implicit question: is nuclear power "safe"?
I think that is "begging the question". Before we ask whether nuclear technology is safe, we need to know whether its the technology we have to be worrying about or the organizations that are using it that are the problem.
I think it's the organizations that are using the technology that are the danger. That's a bit like the way everyone thinks they're a better than average driver; they are, on their best days. And that's how we judge ourselves, by how we are when we're at our best. But when you're talking about safety, you have to judge yourself by how you are on a bad day.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were old reactor designs that would be considered unacceptable by modern standards. And yet, in both cases the catastrophic failure can ultimately be traced to failures in organizational decision-making. Chernobyl failed because of a safety test that was compromise by pressure to minimize power delivery disruptions that eventually put a reactor that was outside its normal operating envelope in the hands of an operations shift that didn't have the expertise to handle it. Fukushima's failure can be traced to TEPCO's failure to respond to the information that the tsunami statistics under which the plant was designed grossly underestimated a hundred year tsunami; all they had to do was to stage portable power generation equipment on the high ground surrounding the plant, but instead they raised the on-site backup generators by a few inches -- in effect they made a token response, which showed they got the message but didn't take it seriously.
Look around at the crappy, semi-competent or corrupt companies you have to deal with. In a world with only a few reactors, you have some chance of making sure none of the companies running them would be like those. In a world where nuclear reactors are ubiquitous, you have to design them so you'd be comfortable with companies like Comcast or Wells-Fargo running them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> Wow - waving a sign causes a leak?
No, as the parent just said, politically blocking necessary upgrades and maintenance could cause leaks (or worse).
In other breaking news: Decisions have consequences.
Assuming anything has intrinsic value makes your economics go to shit. Sucking down productivity for feel-good reasons reduces actual wealth, which causes a spread of poverty and human suffering.
Fortunately, we're at a stage of economic development where we can finally buff that out for good.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Hey, a low UID! That guy's got to have some money!
Can I interest you in saving social security from insolvency today?
(It's too early, I'm bored, and my brain needs a break from trying to learn2politics)
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That would be a waste of reusable resources.
Ezekiel 23:20
Considering that health care and a focus on environmental regulations to reduce pollution have been helping environmental quality by itself, the idea that wind/solar energy is the reason for the improved health/reduced death rates is flawed. New filters and methods of using coal/oil to generate power could also do the same thing in theory.
With that said, we should not downplay the benefit of moving away from oil to generate power, since it would eliminate the power of the oil producers in the Middle East, and we could just leave that region alone fully. Also, it is a good thing to look for power generation that does not require additional materials to produce, such as radioactive materials in the case of nuclear power.
There is also the benefit of not producing as any greenhouse gasses via "burning" of materials to generate power.
Keep in mind: the Liquidators where 17 - 19 year old recruits of the soviet army, they should be about 50 now, more than 2/3rds are dead.
The average lifespan of a Ukrainian male is about 65 years. Men in that country have a history of smoking, alcohol abuse, industrial accidents, and bad diet. Their problem is not being Liquidators, it's living in Ukraine.
Economic factors play into this of course. People with more money are less likely to fall into bad habits of smoking and drinking, and probably not working in a dangerous factory. Access to better food and health care helps. I doubt the Ukrainian military has a great retirement plan so it's unlikely these men are living the high life. Statistically speaking, roughly 2/3rds of them should be dead by now.
This is not a new problem either. The short lifespan of Ukrainian men has been a recognized problem since long before Chernobyl was built.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I was not talking about solely about end-of-life care costs, although I could have worded it better, I was talking about the total aggregate cost to the societies. While more people dying sooner will reduce end-of-life care costs, increased pollution also affects working age people, which causes you to lose tax-revenue by losing workers, and generally is a negative for the entire economy.
Looking at this from solely the angle of health care cost leaves a massive amount of alternative costs hidden and gives a totally skewed picture of the situation. You might as well argue that as a cost saving measure it's sensible to stop all form of health care because that way a lot of money is saved, but again, the net effect on the entire economy would be negative.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
That's the EPA's standard figure based on the average total contribution a person makes to the economy over the course of an entire lifetime. It's not just how much you pay him to drive the bus - it's all the money every business loses if he doesn't show up to drive the bus because their workers can't get to the factory.
And if there's a problem with that figure, it's that it's way out of date and hasn't been inflation adjusted since the study that produced it was done in the 1990s - the real figure from the same study would be a LOT higher now. But it remains the best studied, and most comprehensively an accurately calculated average financial value of a human life that exists in all of science.
There's another problem with it though - it doesn't calculate the emotional loss to family members when you die, the lost productivity to the economy for your funeral and the reduced productivity as they deal with the many difficulties of grieving, the bad impacts when a primary breadwinner dies and a formerly self-sufficient family is forced to use welfare to make ends meet or any of those things.
If you were to put a number on those losses, then even without inflation adjustment the number is probably low-balling it by at least 30%.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
That's easy.
Does the thing you're doing right now affect other people ? If so, does it have the potential to harm them ?
Then this thing needs 100% and absolute goverment control to ensure that harm is kept to the minimum or, if possible, completely eradicated.
Does any of those conditions NOT hold ?
Then government involvement should be zero.
So why the fuck is it that your rightwingers always get that shit backwards ? A gay couple or a woman having an abortion has literally ZERO impact on the rest of the population, none whatsofuckingever so government should stay the complete and absolute fuck out of those things. Zero government involvement allowed and anything that EVERYBODY deals with (permits and licenses and such) there is zero reason to treat them any differently.
How much fucking poison you put in the air DOES however affect everybody else, and harms people, so we have the fucking right through our government to regulate that shit as much as we want to. Because it affects other people - in harmful ways- government involvement should be absolute. Government should set an upper maximum level of toxins your car can spew and prosecute the living fuck out of anybody who goes above it.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
That's the point of AGW; it'll offset nuclear winter and things will be peachy.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The $30 billion is the total economic benefit, and the 3,000 is number of deaths only.
Cal State Fullerton came up with a much more conservative estimate of a pollution cost of $1,600 per person per year in health costs, lost income and so on in the San Joaquin Valley.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
If you believe in any form of government then you believe in re-distributive taxation. The question from there is not the morality of such a thing, anyone who has agreed that government is necessary has already agreed to that. The real question is what money should be spent on.
But it doesn't have to all or nothing. For me the real question is how much money must be taken from those who work.
Even if a totalitarian State could theoretically direct my life better than I can (and all adults know it can't), I still don't want one.
I had a mommy and daddy when I was a child. I don't want that now. Many people want a totalitarian State to direct their lives, I don't.
That's not the same thing as some Mad Max Sudan. I just happen to think that the best government is the the one that provides for the LEAST amount of structure that helps us to live and work together, not the one that strives to tax and re-distribute as much as possible without an armed insurrection.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Followed your link, searched for EROEI (from your post), found this:
The energy return on energy investment (EROEI) is here defined as the ratio of the energy delivered to grid over the energy investments, both measured over the full cradle-to-grave (c2g) period. The energy return on energy investments of the world averaged nuclear energy systems are EROEI = 2-3 under the current conditions, but will decline over time when leaner uranium ores are to be exploited
https://www.stormsmith.nl/i12.html
Now, 2-3x isn't great, but it is more than 1.
Also, a chart from that source indicates that EROEIs of greater than 1 will last until after 2070.
https://www.stormsmith.nl/Resources/eroeitime070v2.jpeg
Perhaps I read the wrong part of your article, but it is also possible you were just hoping no one would follow your link.
Well you've definitely reduced the paper to where you can understand it, but now you've fallen below the level of intelligence required for this discussion. Reddit seems more your style.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Again and again I see the argument made that if you do not agree that unlimited government is necessary then you must be in favor of no government.
In a country that still pees itself a little whenever the word 'socialism' is uttered, the fuck you do.
What we do get, over and over again, is how the slightest touch of democratic government is 'immoral', which is the exact opposite.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
What exactly makes you think that the liquidators were predominantly Ukrainians? Most of them were Soviet army conscripts and could come from anywhere.
And even then there is a fucking huge difference between dying when 65 and dying when 50.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Sure, electric cars save a lot of money...if gasoline costs $5 a gallon. This isn't that much different. The math only works because the cost of health care has gotten way out of control.
Libertarianism is just rationalized recalcitrance. "I don't want to be told what to do." Too bad. You grew up into an adult, not a royal sovereign. If you want to start an armed insurrection, please do so, and assuming you survive do let us know when your trial date is.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This calculation is absolutely wrong. It vastly over-estimates the costs of Uranium mining and the energy cost of nuclear enrichment. You have to dig into a whole pile of stupid formulas to find it. This is forms a part of the anti-nuclear echo chamber.
Consider the crappy solar lights that are so common. They're basically throwaway, replacing the rechargeable battery costs more then replacing the light, besides needing a screwdriver and in my experience, as often as not, the switch fails.
I doubt that many of these are recycled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
First, the male lifespan of any Eastern European nation is bad. Take your pick. It's not just that life expectancy in general is bad, women will live 5, 6, or 7 years longer than the men. In much of the West both men and women can expect to live to 80, with women living only a year or 3 longer.
Yes, I understand that 50 is different than 65. I addressed this earlier. Those with an education, a nice job, and some money, can expect to live as long as those in the West. The rest will tend to drink, smoke, and work themselves to death. For an average lifespan of 65 in a nation with well to do people living to 80 means the poor and much of the middle class die at 50.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Are you arguing that the people that worked in the disaster area were not predominately, or exclusively, male?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I do not believe that the pollution level in any first world country is high enough to significantly impact the health of people during their productive years (there may be a few localized exceptions to that).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
800 tons would be a cube of edge length of ~23 ft, or ~7 meters. Concrete is heavy; anything actually made of concrete will get into the hundreds-of-tons range pretty quickly. Concrete is one of the most widely used materials in the world, with over 2 billion tonnes produced annually. By the time you're complaining about the concrete usage of wind turbines you're pretty far into flimsy rationalizations.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
EVERYTHING you do affects other people and it has the potential to harm them. Is it likely to harm them? Maybe, maybe not. I will note that you cannot harm someone in a way any greater than by aborting them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I just responded to a person who said that if you think the government is necessary then you have agreed to unlimited government and the only question is what regulations the government will implement.
Here on slashdot, EVERY time someone suggests that government regulations are excessive, someone responds with, "Well, if you don't like government why don't you try living in Somalia?"
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein" due to his presumed bias!
That's not what he said. what he said was basically a variation on this:
Beaverbrook asked the lady: Would you live with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds? She said she would. And if be paid you five pounds? The irate lady fumed: Five pounds. What do you think I am? Beaverbrook replied: Weâ(TM)ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.
The point being, we've heard, over and over again about the "evils" of government from conservatives for decades now. But the thing is, apart from some real fringey types, everybody agrees there needs to be some sort of central authority that reflects the will of the people. The only difference then between a liberal and a conservative, is how much. So, when you start using black and white language (like 'evil') to describe the difference between you and those who believe in a more proactive government, you're either being disingenuous or stupid.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
And of course the economic impact of runaway global warming should taken into consideration.
It should not. Runaway warming situations are generally not possible on Earth, at least not until the Sun expands and the oceans boil off. The stratosphere is too cold for H2O to accumulate; you may have even noticed its tendency to precipitate out of solution. Carbon sensitivity is at the wild extremes 5-6 degrees per doubling. Burning all the coal reserves would make the poles tropical and the tropics uninhabitable, but we can't actually go full-on Venus. And of course, given that the Earth has been much warmer in the past, if runaway warming were possible we wouldn't be here to discuss it. We can make things seriously unpleasant for the next 10k-100k years, but some part of that was probably projected to be an Ice Age anyway. In the long run, the planet will be fine, and humanity is quite likely to survive.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Sustainable birth rates are actually very important to society for many reasons, economics being a major one.
Funny thing about "affecting other people," if you think abstractly enough, everything you do affects someone else.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I believe that government is both necessary and evil. That means it needs to be severely restricted. Those who believe in a proactive government are either naive, or evil.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Ahem... as I said..
I'm not a big fan of Nuclear Energy + Idiot Cost Saving, Risk Ignoring Humans.
But your number is grossly overstated.
From Chernobyl... 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers and nine children with thyroid cancer) resulted from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and it is estimated that there may eventually be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.
4056 deaths is no where near 1 million deaths.
And some of those cancers will only cost people a year or two of their lives (old people).
But solar, wind, etc. are better already and getting better every day. And when a wind tower falls over, it doesn't render 525 square miles of prime real estate uninhabitable for 300-600 years.
--
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
*could* *could* *could* reach 4,000 deaths.
The publications quoting a million are all fairly extreme, small, and disputed.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In both cases, it was human failure to recognize danger which made nuclear power unsafe.
The only safe nuclear power is completely automated nuclear power. And probably small scale (5,000 houses).
Plus while solar converts incoming energy to power, nuclear releases stored stored power so it's going to increase the heat in the system faster. Also, nucleer power still has little leaks and releases- increasing radioactivity in the environment over time.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It doesn't suit extremists to admit there's a middle ground, that government can exist without excessive regulations that infringe on personal rights and freedoms and have negative impacts on society.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Sadly that sort of government depends on politicians with scruples and integrity (and also possibly unicorns).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Agreed, and want to also suggest that the majority of governance should be coming from the local levels because that gives the individual a lot more say in how the government affects their lives. Some things belong at the federal level, but most things should be pushed down, not up the chain.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The $30 billion is the total economic benefit, and the 3,000 is number of deaths only.
No. RTFA. The $30B is only the benefit of avoiding the 3000 deaths.
I agree 100%. If those fossil fuel producers need to charge more for proper disposal (for one thing), then so be it - then the people that are using it more are paying the costs. That's "fair." Your example pretty much describes just about how EVERY subsidy is unfair to tax payers AND other players/competitors in the field.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Thanks for illustrating my point. You're a pal.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
No one is suggestion a world like Logan's Run here, just pointing out how their "estimates" are absolutely wrong.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I believe human beings give life intrinsic value, but I don't think that's what economists do. Certainly the government does things out of safety, but only because government generally represents the will of the people (in some small way, sadly, despite the fact it should be the majority of what government concerns itself with). But what these people are doing is placing an explicit (and wrong) monetary value on a human being's life. Even if someone, over their lifetime, contributes that kind of value to society, they largely do so up until retirement age, at which they largely become net negatives. That retirement age is around the time the effects of the environment are catching up to most people. It's not that I don't support green energy (I certainly do), it's that this "report" is f#@ked up.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Fact: Windmills can potentially have impacts on birds through collisions and habitat disruption. However, the impact is very small, and dramatically less than that of urban sprawl, buildings, house cats or climate change. For example, one study notes that for every 10,000 birds killed by human activities including fatalities by collisions with man made structures, less than one death is caused by a wind turbine. For every 1 bird death caused by a wind turbine, 1,000 to 2,000 bird deaths are caused by cats. Even the National Audubon Society strongly supports wind power as a clean alternative energy source that reduces the threat of global warming.
http://www.torontoenvironment.org/windmills/myths#birds
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Does not change the fact that Chernobyl killed more than the parent suggested.
Or the official numbers suggest.
I don't care about coal death. My country is cleaning the exhaust of coal plant, like any 1st world country and is phasing coal out.
Changing the coal usage in China is out of our control, so thanx for your concern.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What have soviet recruits, conscripted soldiers, to do with Ukrainians?
Nothing!
Why don't you simply ask an Ukrainian, how many died? Hu? I know dozens in person, and they all claim the same: besides the liquidators, easily more than a million died around Chernobyl. And who else died in Poland, Germany, Sweden etc.: we simply don't know as we can not pinpoint the cause.
Anyway, the liquidators alone are easily 400,000 if not more dead soldiers. Instead of watching your stupid american TV shows I suggest to read some world news. BBC would be a start. It is in english, you know. You might mind the accent, but the news is usually accurate.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You do know what the word "average" means?
Let me explain it in simple words to you: The average person is quite dumb! Now consider how many people are even dumber. And now guess in which group you belong?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
And nuclear power has been estimated to have saved 1.8 million lives, but it doesn't stop the anti-nuclear folks from complaining about the horrible subsidy of government-underwritten insurance (which hasn't actually cost us anything).
By the way, you want to take renewables-enthusiasts with a grain of salt.
If I do not have enough money to buy food how am I going to buy solar panels?
Still, its getting to the point where the subsidies are hardly even necessary. Panels are shockingly cheap now. Wal-Mart is selling them for roughly a Dollar a Watt. I tried doing the math a few weeks back, and if I'd bought enough panels to cover my summer bills here in Oklahoma at the beginning of May, they would have been paid off by the end of this month vs. the money I sent to the Electric company this summer. More to the point, I could wait for the summer crunch to end, then just buy $100 (100Watts more) a month. My summer electricity bill is 5 times that. Easy enough to swing within that budget one month at a time.
But of course it doesn't quite work like that. The inverter required to handle that much juice still runs about $10k, and you also need batteries so the power doesn't go out at night, etc. That's where those of us not named "Rockefeller" start to have trouble. Still, its at the point now where it would be sensible to build any new house with a solar system. And the prices on those other components are bound to be coming down too as mass production of them picks up.
Non sequitur. I do accept the need to maintain military and police — none of this re-distributive.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I do know what "average" means. Do you realize that those workers at Chernobyl were 18 years old on the low end? There were plenty in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. That was three decades ago. They are 50 years old now at a minimum.
What's the average age of a NCO? They'd have to be serving for something like six years to make that rank, so 25 to 35 years old, right? What's a typical age of an officer? Even a junior officer fresh out of the academy? 21? 23? There were no Majors or Captains there? Pretty sure there were, they'd be in their 30s then and, if they are still alive, in their mid-60s now.
All those men at Chernobyl weren't pimply faced recruits just out of boot camp. I don't know this for sure, but just statistically speaking they are going to be, on average, somewhere in their 20s. Soldiers smoke, a LOT, all around the world. They've been known to drink too. A lot of them after the military go to do manual labor, where accidents happen.
Tell me that 2/3rds of them are dead now? I say, that sounds about right. Might be a bit high, even for Ukraine, but not significantly so. They weren't schoolteachers, they were soldiers. After the military they'd go to be farmers, construction workers, police officers, and so on. They'd also keep smoking, drinking, and eating bad food.
Oh, and the claim of them having long term health problems? Show me a veteran in their 50s and 60s, from anywhere in the world, without some sort of long term health problem and I'll be shocked.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Chernobyl failed because of a safety test that was compromise by pressure to minimize power delivery disruptions that eventually put a reactor that was outside its normal operating envelope in the hands of an operations shift that didn't have the expertise to handle it.
Chernobyl had nothing to do with technical expertise: it was classical ambitious PHB bullshit. The closest thing they had to 'not having the expertise to handle it' was an engineer who knew better, but was a recent graduate who was more worried about being sent to Siberia for insubordination. Dead is dead, and (massive) radiation is quicker than starvation.
The head of the plant had zero experience or knowledge about anything nuclear, and concocted an asinine scenario to "mitigate." It wasn't a safety test; it didn't have any vetting outside of the PHB's ambitious, but otherwise empty skull. He thought he was being clever and would get a promotion for concocting a new "emergency" procedure.
Grigoriy Medvedev, the guy who literally wrote the book on the Chernobyl disaster, was quite clear on that point: The Soviets had been putting people with absolutely no knowledge or training in Nuclear energy in charge of Nuclear plants. Had the plant manager did what he was required to do -- and send the "procedure" to their equivalent of the NRC, it would have been rejected outright. The PHB took it upon himself to ignore or bypass every safety rule he could find.
The PHB's even had security guards physically disable all of the reactor's failsafes, then lock & chain the doors so they couldn't be turned back on.
Then when the reactor exploded, the PHB's went about screaming that the reactor was fine, that nothing could have possibly gone wrong. They had eyewitnesses, instruments, alarms, firemen, and his own engineers telling them that the core had exploded, and they couldn't believe it, and that the test should continue, blaming his "incompetent" staff.
What can man do against such madness?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The cost of Fukushima alone is 187 billion dollars US. Where's that factor into the tired "Nuclear power forever!" rhetoric?
The same way a construction worker falling to his death from a windmill tower would be factored into wind power. Or a failed bearing on a windmill starting a forest fire. We don't use a single incident to define the industry. When did Fukushima have its meltdown? Six years ago? How many nuclear reactors have been operating safely since? Not only that, how many people died from the Fukushima meltdown? Last I checked it was zero.
You also talk of the one nuclear power plant that is over budget. How many of the dozens being constructed now are on time and budget? I honestly don't know because no one seems to talk about them. No news is good news, no? Also, how much of the troubles of new nuclear construction in the USA is because of government meddling? The government has a nasty habit of changing the rules during construction. I believe nuclear power would thrive if the government would just let it.
Or the fact that solar power can still improve dramatically for cost, and should able to beat the, entirely theoretical, ROI on nuclear within a decade.
I keep hearing this, solar will be the best... in a decade. You believe nuclear power cannot improve? if so, why? If solar can be half the price and twice as efficient if only we dump some money in it then can't the same be said of nuclear?
Here's where solar power fails and will always fail, it doesn't work at night. There's lots of places with lots of people where the sun can shine for only a few hours in the day. Batteries you say? Why can't we use those batteries on a nuclear power plant? Nuclear power is only base load, is the common complaint. Well, put some batteries next to that nuclear power plant and it's no longer just base load now, right?
You complain of the theoretical ROI of nuclear at the same time claiming solar will, in theory, have a better ROI.
"Nuclear!" is just a fantasy people with a bad case of Dunning-Kruger effect concerning energy utilities yell to make themselves feel superior.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You cannot harm a somebody through abortion because abortion is not done to people. A fetus is not a person.
Even if it was though there is another principle at stake: that of body ownership.
This is such a fundamental right we even respect it after you are dead. It's literally the only right so important that we let dead people have it. We will not use your organs to save a life if you didn't consent before you died. You can never be expected to give up body ownership for the sake of somebody else's life. Not even when you are dead.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There is difference between affecting people who consented to the activity and affecting everybody without asking for consent.
We never allow the latter. It would make you personally a king. Consent is needed and when given it comes with conditions. Those conditions are known as regulations. Sometimes it's withheld. That happens when we the people, through our government, makes the activity illegal.
We live in the free world. Government is not some malicious force you need to fear. Government is our employee. Government works FOR us. The president is not a king. We are His bosses not him ours.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
a win win study, hmmm. alternative energy...."Berkeley environmental engineer..".
Dammit! Nevermind.
Right! Get the government out of my bedroom! Get the government out of women's wombs! Get the government out of my health care! MY BODY, MY CHOICE! I should be able to choose what physician I see, when, and where. I should be able to shop for the best care at a price I can afford. I should be able to buy health insurance from any state. Also, I shouldn't have to petition the government for use of an experimental drug. MY BODY, MY CHOICE!
I should be able to choose who I get to serve in my shop. If I don't want Nazis buying my cakes then I shouldn't be forced by the government to sell to them, right? If a gay couple wants my cakes then I should be able to refuse them as well, right? CHOICE!
Left wingers don't want people to be free to choose, because then they might choose to not think like the left wingers.
Just last semester I saw an opinion article about how a "right winger" was denied the ability to speak on campus and the guy thought this was a "win" for free speech. I read it and the guy had to go through some real mental gymnastics to "prove" his point but I just had to roll my eyes. "We can't have this 'hate speech' on campus!" Isn't telling these people they aren't welcome to speak freely also "hate speech"?
No wonder the left is eating it's own right now. Their "logic" is contradictory and when the logic of one "left" group meets that of another "left" group then things get ugly real quick.
You keep shouting "CHOICE!" all you like, I've become numb to it now. It's people like you that want people to have the freedom to choose only so long as they choose to think as you do.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The organization had the expertise to understand reactor poisoning. It just wasn't on duty while the reactor was being operated outside its normal operating envelope.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The Soviet reports clearly say otherwise: they had staff who knew at the console, but brow beat them into submission (threatening he gulag can do that).
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Still, we both agree that we need some form of taxation and government. We also agree that the government shouldn't control everything. We've now eliminated both all and nothing. Everything in between is a matter of degree.
How much the taxes should be can't be answered as it stands. We need to decide what the government should be doing and how valuable it is before that, and lots of us have widely varying opinions at that level.
I haven't met anybody who wants more government than necessary, or wants government to tax as much as possible. There's a large amount of variation in what people expect out of government and what they think necessary. You might call me a big-government advocate, but it's not because I want more government per se. It's because I want government to do more things than you want government to do. We probably differ a lot on exactly what is the least amount of structure that helps us to live and work together.
The amount of trust to place in government frequently comes up in this conversation. I'm very comfortable financially, but as far as power goes, I'm one of the little guys. I don't particularly trust any power center, and prefer to have several of them around to kind of balance each other out. Some people seem to distrust government and trust business, and I think that misguided.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Subsidies serve two purposes. They can help useful industries get going, and they can balance out market externalities. It's really not possible to eliminate externalities, and trying to directly internalize them, and the administrative cost of allotting them can be excessive, not to mention some people will always accuse the allotments of being wrong and biased. TFA is saying that renewable energy subsidies aren't high enough to quite balance out the externalities of fossil fuel. I don't know whether it's accurate or not, but if so the subsidies go some way to make the market work better.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hell no, I enjoy being hated. It warms the cockles of my heart to know that some ppl feel strongly enough about me to wish me ill. I can't think of anyone I actually hate. Most I don't even think of, they aren't worth the effort. Occasionally I like to jerk their chain and listen to them howl as it's amusing.
For statistical analysis, assuming a uniform value makes sense.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Kind of a win-win. Plus over population will cease to be a thing.
Modern economies lose quite a bit of wealth due to worker sickness. If a good amount of the sickness is due to pollution, it would have a significant economic impact.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I was interested until you fomented the concept that regulation is the will of the people.
Regularly, it is not, and has rarely ever been. Consider the not-so-famous words of Fiorello La Guardia, in reference to the federal government criminalizing marijuana in the 1930's:
"A law that the people do not want enforced, cannot be enforced."
Yet, that's exactly what anti-drug legislation has been doing for almost 100 years now - holding Americans to a legal standard that we never agreed to.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That is a feature of consumer electronics in general, not of solar power in particular, especially at larger scale.
Ezekiel 23:20
There aren't parts of our society that benefit far more from our military policies then others? Likewise with police? I would suggest that the taxes we all pay for these things disproportionately benefit the affluent.
Just because it doesnt follow left wing patterns of redistribution doesn't mean it isn't doing as such.
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So basically, like I said "The real question is what money should be spent on."
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So exactly like I said, "The real question is what money should be spent on"
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You keep coming up with these half cocked ideas. I'm sure you believe them, even apply some sort of logic to them.
That's the frightening part.
I'd argue anyone advocating total government, or total absence of government, is pretty damn evil.
So, which are you? Naive? or Evil?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So, when does an child become a person? Biologically, it is a separate individual at the moment of conception. So, what is your definition based on?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Except that I do not believe that "a good amount of sickness" is due to pollution in first world countries. I do not believe that a significant amount of sickness among the working age population is due to pollution.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Once more, I will disagree. The question is who gets to decide how the money is spent?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Perhaps I read the wrong part of your article, but it is also possible you were just hoping no one would follow your link.
Not at all, they are all parts of a larger whole, I'm glad someone got something out of it. There are other aspects including the energetic cost of building and disposing of the reactors as well which have to be figured into the overall calculation of EROEI. It is a reasonably large piece of work so I wouldn't expect people to absorb it all in one go.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This calculation is absolutely wrong. It vastly over-estimates the costs of Uranium mining and the energy cost of nuclear enrichment.
Citation, please. I already did to know both sides of this argument so I'll be interested in what you present, however I doubt you will be able to present anything to back up this claim. There is one avenue that you may find, however when you do, you'll find it's much worse than energetic expenditure.
You have to dig into a whole pile of stupid formulas to find it. This is forms a part of the anti-nuclear echo chamber.
Well you're welcome to provide some fact to back that assertion up however while you obsess over pro- and anti- nuclear there are a bunch of people, including me, who would just like to understand what the truth is beyond all of the PR BS that comes from the nuclear industry. They were the ones who polarized this debate so that instead of people being able to evaluate factual information about the nuclear industry, we are left to squabble of relative ideologies.
If you were able to present some fact to back up your claim, maybe you could say that and point to why however since you can't what your saying sounds like part of the pro-nuclear echo chamber that has really become an irrelevant obstacle to uncovering facts about the nuclear industry. Fortunately wind and solar power are slowly removing the need for nuclear power.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
True, but how many crappy consumer products end up in the landfill. Solar lights with an AA battery made from nickel cadmium or better, phones etc. It is still a bleeding of valuable resources.
Not arguing with the idea that moving to renewables is wrong, just not as perfect as you assume. Of course to expect perfect means not doing anything which is worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yes, Yes - it was dressed up with some distracting handwaving to look far less ridiculous than the argument really is.
Those hairy hippies didn't have the vast political power the above poster pretends they had to stop the gulf war so how did they stop nukes? The entire argument is a transparent effort to shift blame - "politically blocking necessary upgrades and maintenance" never happened.
Well there's a constitution that literally spells that out in this country....
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Except that our government long ago stopped being limited by that.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Here you go.
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclear...
The site is way out of date but the critique of Storm and Smith is valid. Sorry for being grumpy.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the entire free world has come up with that same idea.
In fact the only exception is France which, just last year, decided that dead people don't have rights - not even body ownership rights, and everybody's organs can be used to save lives.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
And as you may have noticed - that law has to this day never been successfully enforced.
More critically - that one falls squarely in the "things that can't harm anybody else" category - where the people had no right to intrude in the first place.
But when we 'burden small business' by telling them they *must* have enough fire escapes and fire extinguishers we're not just being callous. Sure they don't expect to burn down - but if a fire happens, wishful thinking won't save the lives of their employees - but following those regulations will. We make those rules because when they aren't there (or aren't enforced) you get the great garmet factory fire of New York - and hundreds of people die for no good reason.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Being more than a clump of cells - something sentient.
But it's interesting that the 'moment of conception' thing is much more a religious position than scientific one - specifically it's a Christian position. Jews on the other hand read in Genesis that God "breathed the breath of life into Adam" - to them the soul enters the body with the first breath and a baby isn't a person until that first breath - so Jews have never had a problem with abortion.
Ironically though - it doesn't much matter to me which end of the scale you choose or if, like most scientists, you believe this is a process happening gradually over time with no specific, recognizable point where X switches to Y - yet clearly one side is X and the other side is Y. Because it doesn't change the ultimate conclusion. This is because of that second problem.
The state cannot violate one person's body ownership to save the life of another person - no such legal obligation is remotely tenable. If we can't use a dead guy's heart to save a life without the dead guy's consent, why do you think we can forcibly use a live woman's womb to save a life without HER consent ?
Especially when you will subsequently demand that, still without her consent, she must feed, clothe, school and shelter that life.
You're not just taking away her right to own her own body - you're also subsequently enslaving her.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I get it, you don't like the modern scope of government. That still doesnt mean that congress doesnt control the purse strings.
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Only a minority was over 20 - mostly professional firefighters and helicopter pilots. Most liquidators were conscripts, 18 is about the right age for the majority. Those who were conscripted after the university are in their early twenties.
We are talking about the Soviet army here, not American army. In the Soviet army soldiers had a two year conscription. After the first year, the better performing recruits would be appointed as NCOs. Junior lieutenant got their rank very quickly as well - either automatically if they minored in officer training at the university, or if they served as cadets at conscription, in that case it was three years instead of two, if I remember correctly.
Even some colonels were there, but they weren't hands-on at the site and they generally left the site after getting their maximum permissable dose of radiation.
Yep, that is the problem with you. You don't know for sure about many things, but you behave as if you do.
All able-bodied male Soviet citizen were soldiers, you dumbass. USSR had a general conscription. This is why them dying 15 years earlier than average is absolutely significant.
So you basically saying that a nuclear reactor is as dangerous as a war?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I wasn't exactly complaining. As I said, everything has its downsides. Making concrete releases carbon dioxide, so finding a replacement eventually is important. It also clutters up old sites and once a company goes bankrupt there's no one to clean them up. I'm in no particular hurry, though.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Sorry for being grumpy.
It is a polarized issue so your manners are appreciated.
Here you go.
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclear...
Thank you, so often people make statements and can't back up their claim. I will read and analyze this information as I have only gisted it for now.
The site is way out of date but the critique of Storm and Smith is valid.
They reference the Vattenfall work that the IPCC used in its estimates however the Vattenfall worked wasn't peer reviewed and is out of date the last time I found it. In this work it is also out of date and the link to the VattenFall work in this paper is broken. I've read the Vattenfall work, which was originally produced as a critique to Storm and Smith work and read like a product safety advisory. I have been looking for a copy of it so if you come across it please send it on. Many who cite the Vattenfall work aren't aware of this.
The energy expenditure looks the same as In Situ Leach Mining, that explained some time ago. It is illegal in the US and Russia - for good reason.
Thanks again for the link - I'll go through it completely over the next week or so.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Wow - waving a sign causes a leak?
It did, in Canada. Read up on the Chalk River reactor leak. Where a leak of radioactive tritium was caused by upgrades being held up in courts.
On top of that, Chalk River was one of 4 reactors that produce medical isotopes with a very brief halflife. Under 120hrs, used in medical testing. Environmental protests stopped the construction of a newer and safer reactor, leading to massive cost overruns and medical isotope shortages.
Om, nomnomnom...
Shortages due to delays on something with around a ten year lead time to build? Really? If a supply chain is that fragile then a protest isn't really the problem is it - that's if the delay really happened and it's not just words excreted by a lobbyist or PR folks.
Nope, not at all.
You'd be wrong to suggest it. Law and order benefits us all — indeed, the poor benefit most. The rich can (and do) afford private security, doormen, body guards, and armored cars...
No, not because of that.
Taxing Paul to defend Peter is Ok. Taxing Paul to support — feed, cloth, shelter, educate — Peter is wrong.
But the absolute worst is taxing Acme, Inc. to subsidize Widgets, Inc. — it is Crony Capitalism and, dare I refer to our earlier discussion, Fascism.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Being more than a clump of cells - something sentient.
So, basically it is a subjective thing. A child is not a person until you say it is.
The fact is that if you do not consider conception to be the point at which someone becomes an individual with human rights, there is NO scientific basis for setting the dividing line. There can be no objective judgment of when someone becomes an individual with human rights. The problem with that is that once you decide there is no objective definition of what makes someone human there is no longer a convincing argument against those who define "human" as "those who look like me", because that is what you have done. You, at best, are just using a broader definition of "look like me".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Under the "risk corridor" provision of the ACA insurance companies which lose money following parts of the law are to have their losses covered by money from a particular fund. Insurance companies which make greater than a certain profit are to pay into that fund. Congress, in another law, wrote that the risk corridor payments must be revenue neutral (that is, the payments for losses must come only out of revenue received from companies which made profits). Unfortunately, there is not enough revenue from profitable insurance companies to cover the loses of those insurance companies which lost money, but courts have ruled the government must cover those losses anyway. That does not sound like Congress controls the purse strings to me.
This is not the only time in which courts have ruled that the government must spend money which Congress refused to appropriate.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There is no dividing line. Dividing lines are human abstractions - they don't exist in reality. The real world is one of processes where things gradually become other things - at one end of the process it's clearly thing A and at the other end of the process it's clearly thing B. But there is no specific point in between where it switches from one to the other at every point it is just slightly less A and slightly more B.
A baby is definitely a human being with rights. A freshly conceived ovum is clearly not. If you seriously want to argue it is - then you have a problem because every sexually active woman (not on the pill -which prevents this), on average, has about 3 fertilised eggs every month that get flushed out naturally. All natural abortions 3 times a month. If you seriously want to argue that fertilized eggs are people then you are morally compelled to demand the government provides every woman between puberty and menopause with the pill to ensure they all get it and stop those natural abortions which outnumber medically induced ones by about a million times over, clearly that's the bigger priority and conveniently if you try to fix it no liberal would try to stop you - we've been trying to get that done (for different reasons) for years !
Simply put - there is no dividing line whatsoever. But there is also definitely a difference between one end of the process and the other. So the smart thing is to set the limit in law fairly early in the process - where you're still very, very much "thing A" and no semblence of thing B is discernible yet. Which, by the way, is exactly where the law has been set.
And you still haven't addressed the issue of body ownership which frankly makes all this academic because it means whether a fetus is a person or not you CANNOT force a mother to carry one to term because nobody can be obligated to sacrifice control of their own bodies to save the life of another. You cannot argue that abortion should be illegal without ALSO arguing that organ donation must be mandatory ! Unless you seriously think living women should have less rights than even DEAD men!
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Hey, it's you again. Sorry but reality means there are people that that benefit more from our military spending than others. Don't think so? Then why do we spend billions on the Middle east but spend almost nothing on the violence in Africa?
Or how about military spending out of line with what voters want or even what the military wants?
http://time.com/4253842/defens...
http://www.military.com/daily-...
Then you suggest as a counter argument that policing isn't re-distributive to the wealthy. You are correct in some ways and I even realized that prior to hitting submit but didn't change my own text because I wanted to get your response. You're response literally stated that policing funds are sometimes re distributive to the poor thus confirming more core point. Thanks for that.
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So the courts are holding those who control the purse strings accountable for their actions. Sounds like the system is working fine to me.
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Sure, just search MDS, MAPLE, and the court challenges surrounding them. Also check the protests against the AECL, by environmental groups.
Oh and where the 2009 shutdown caused a worldwide shortage of medical isotopes. Enjoy. But I'll post that one because I've got it bookmarked on my cell.
Om, nomnomnom...
So, since no one can be obligated to sacrifice control over their own bodies to save the life of another, it should be perfectly legal for a mother to abandon her baby in the open somewhere. I am sorry, your logic does not hold up. By your logic, parents have no obligation to care for their children.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It also means that the COURTS control the purse strings, not Congress.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Irrelevant.
False. You use different semantics for "redistributive". I object to government subsidizing people and corporations — at the expense of other people and corporations.
You claim, law and order and military are the same "redistribution", because some people get more protection than others. Whether that's even true or not, it is irrelevant — police protection is not a subsidy. Indeed, if it were, government protecting demonstrations of assholes with Hitler or Che Guevara on their T-shirts from the rest of us would be subsidizing them.
So your point is entirely invalid and mine stands. Have a nice day.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You might as well say the president does because they veto a spending bill. The system is all intertwined and is currently working just fine. Congress does indeed control the bulk of our country's spending however
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Sadly for you things just arent irrellevant because you say they are. Also, changing your wording from prior posts from redistribution to subsidation wont fly with me.
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No, you're being an idiot. Feeding and clothing a baby does not involve sacrificing control over your body. Hell in this day and age you don't even need to let it near your boobs to fullfill your responsibilities. You don't even have to feed and clothe a baby to avoid abandoning it - we do have adoption services.
It takes seriously unimaginable levels of stupid to think that "caring for children" involves sacrificing bodily autonomy. There is NOTHING that can EVER justify sacrificing bodily autonomy without consent - but bodily autonomy doesn't go nearly as far as you imagine. It involves who can use your body and for what. And the limits it sets are very simple: nobody for anything without your consent - anybody for anything WITH your consent.
Nothing else.
Caring for a child does not involve the child "using your body". The only part that could come close (breastfeeding) is optional.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Have you ever cared for a baby? I am going to guess not. What exactly is being used in the care for that child if not your body? Are you trying to say that you do not have to sacrifice sleep to care for a baby? You set arbitrary distinctions and then call me stupid for not seeing them as absolutes.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yes, I have actually, I have a three year old and I'm one of those wishy-washy liberals who think 50% of ALL parenting must be done by the dad.
And sorry, but legally - nothing you do in caring for a baby counts as "sacrificing your bodily autonomy".
By your bizarre definition we should outlaw all employment because you seem to think doing something with your body counts as 'sacrificing bodily autonomy' - no it doesn't, it requires SOMEBODY ELSE to use your body WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
If either is missing - then the right in question does not apply.
In caring for a baby - BOTH are missing.
You chose not to have an abortion before it was a baby - that means your consented to the responsibility of caring for it.
The baby isn't using your body - YOU are using it for the baby,.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
NO, you are the one who thinks there is a problem with sacrificing your bodily autonomy.
However, how does caring for a child not require you to sacrifice your body without your consent, when you do not, legally, have the option to just walk away?
Even putting the child up for adoption requires you to take some actions. BTW, even if there is a categorical difference relative to sacrificing bodily autonomy before and after a child is born, the time to make that decision is BEFORE the child is conceived.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You don't get to make up new definitions for things and then insist I am arguing for whatever your definition has added.
That is a strawman fallacy and a particularly stupid one at that.
I argued for bodily autonomy as the well defined concept it is. Not whatever bullshit you decide it should be.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You are complaining about crappy, cheap toy lights, made to absorb the consumer's wallet, not the best that the real technology produces. Of course, a capitalist is free to produce whatever cheap crap that they think they can sell quickly, and the American consumer is always ready to buy the latest in this throw-away garbage if it comes with enough manufactured hype from a frivolous social media marketing campaign: It's what the marketers have been training the consumer to do for decades: acceptance of the flashy and cheap with the full understanding that none of it will last out the year.
People revel in their self-administered stupidity and willingly waste their shrinking paychecks on whatever the next flashy TV ad is pushing. It is what drives the consumer's dollars towards filling the bank accounts of the international global corporations and ultimately what is causing the huge gap in wealth inequality.
Why do you suppose the GNP keeps rising? It's because people have been convinced to keep buying flashy trinkets that become trash before the year is out. The producers of this crap have no care for the mountains of garbage this creates in our landfills: they do not have to pay for the trash collection and waste disposal. They are already laughing at them all the way to the bank while coming up with the next campaign for removing fools from their money.Consumers are the most ignorant of all sheep.
Except for Trump supporters, who are just as undereducated and willfully misinformed as their sociopathic orange-man leader.
PlaynBass