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More Than 40 Percent of World Coal Plants Are Unprofitable, Says Report (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: More than 40 percent of the world's coal plants are operating at a loss due to high fuel costs and that proportion could to rise to nearly 75 percent by 2040, a report by environmental think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Friday. London-based Carbon Tracker analyzed the profitability of 6,685 coal plants around the world, representing 95 percent of operating capacity and 90 percent of capacity under construction. It found that 42 percent of global coal capacity is already unprofitable. From 2019 onwards, it expects falling renewable energy costs, air pollution regulations and carbon pricing to result in further cost pressures and make around 72 percent of the fleet cashflow negative by 2040. In addition, by 2030, new wind and solar will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96 percent of today's existing and planned coal plants, the report said.
Something smells fishy. TFAs first two paragraphs seem to contradict each other. Thereâ(TM)s no source information available. And I can guarantee you oil investors/producers arenâ(TM)t stupid. They wouldnt/couldnt continue operating at a loss...that premise is ridiculous.
Id leave some room for the possibility of it being true lately (only recently in the last couple of weeks) as oil prices have fallen...but that is only a temporary condition until if/when prices recovery and/or adjustments are made to production/supply to bring the price back up.
This seems more like some propaganda piece aimed at convincing people âoeoil bad - alternative energy good - save the trees - climate change - yada yada yada.â
Natural Gas has depressed prices so much, coal can't compete. Intentionally reduced capacity factors, using more gas instead, makes it even harder for coal.
I guess these coal plants are stuck in a fixed-rate contract. When the rates can be renegotiated, the plants will become profitable again (unless the electricity demand is less than the offer without coal, but I doubt it).
Ah, the first random brainfart that entered the tiny mind of an internet dweeb. Yes, I'm sure it does. Detailed studies tend to account for far more than your feels.
However, I was impressed by raising the base load myth without saying it directly. The problem with your idea is that existing non-renewable sources are already variable and unreliable, so the grid is already designed to cope with it. Even more hilariously, coal power plants are incredibly inflexible compared to wind and solar. Coal power plants can take up to 8 hours to reach peak operation from a warm start, and have suffer from large cycle stress that reduces their lifetime considerably. They are, ironically, fossils of a bygone era.
Hopefully this will lead to increased adoption of cleaner power production - that is not so bad for the environment.
I am not saying that all clean power is cheaper but the more of it that gets used the cheaper that it will become.
Never trust these "independent think tanks". These are the lobbyists that everyone complains about. They are bought and paid for.
Nice propaganda. You are lying by presenting facts in a deliberately deceptive manner. Warm start. Right. No, jackass, coal and nuclear stabilize inside inner cycle with a large roasting mass.
Yes, coal is expensive when sabotaged and renewable cheaper when subsidized. You see any funds for decommissioning the suing wrong farms? Nuclear is fully funded and coal is over most of they production cycle.
Take into account artificial taxes like CO2 emission tax, excise tax etc.
Stop enforcing emission tax alone and profitability will go up immediately.
How profitable are they if you only count the ones that are actually operating.
In the real world a building under construction is usually not making much money.
Electricity producers have the incentive to claim that they are losing money so that they can lobby the regional regulators to increase the cost for customers. Eventually the kWh price increases, and boom, the coal plants are again profitable... at least for a while.
Donâ(TM)t get me wrong, renewables will be an important component for some of our electricity usage. However fossil fuels and nuclear will remain a 35-75% component of the mix.
yeah, facts are liberal biased!
I wasn't planning on starting a coal business anyway.
Coal isn't being "sabotaged" by regulations. The environmental costs are being incorporated into its usage. And coal does get a lot of subsidies, from mining, usage, and disposal.
And coal plant designs are of a long gone era. Even the latest approved nuclear plants are 2-3 core design versions past current operations. This isn't true for coal. Of course renewables are all new. The only thing as old as coal is hydro.
Along with deaths from respiratory disease! Yay!
No. Wind is as old as hydro. The designs just were different. Kind of like hydro. Passive solar has a long history too.
Utilities are one of the most regulated and subsidized industries in the world. Additionally, in some places, generating capacity is government-owned, and public enterprises frequently operate at a loss. So the real question is: how much of all generating capacity is unprofitable?
Coal will die, but saying that plants are currently unprofitable isn't necessarily an indication of anything. It needs to be compared on a relative basis to alternatives.
The stated source is "a report by environmental think-tank Carbon Tracker". So people whose full-time job is literally energy propaganda.
In other news, Coke tastes bad, according to a report by Pepsi. Linux sucks, according to Microsoft
The only thing suprising here is how many Slahdotters let BeauHD get away with posting this crap.
In any competitive field at any given time near half the companies are losing money or barely make it into black. Of course this is also true for power generation. It's just the default state in any stabilized market.
Solar and wind still aren't good for baseload generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
Storage needs to increase greatly.
If I had mod points youâ(TM)d get "+insightful."
Along with deaths from respiratory disease! Yay!
The original post says nothing about relaxing emissions of anything but CO2, so you are wrong nobody's lungs would be harmed by this. The original post was right, the problem with coal has been the artificial raising of their fuel costs, specifically tied to CO2 emissions.
so long as coal miners can decide our presidential elections by swinging Ohio and Virginia. That said, I've yet to hear anyone from the left give those workers a viable alternative to working in the mines. So far the answer has been "Time to reskill". Those guys know coal mining is a dying thing. They'd reskill if they could.
What we really need is a federal jobs guarantee like they did in the 30s. But nobody wants to pay for that. So expect more political distortions.
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Take into account artificial taxes like CO2 emission tax, excise tax etc. Stop enforcing emission tax alone and profitability will go up immediately.
Artificial? Since when does burning coal causes no CO2 emissions? Perhaps we should also start taxing those mountain hating coal mining companies for the toxic runoff from their mines that ruins the land of people down hill from their strip mining operation? ... and if you think that toxic runoff is some kind of 'artificial construct' like CO2 emissions I can introduce you to some very angry Appalachian Hillbillies who are ready willing and able to let you bathe in a pond of your choosing full of toxic coal mine runoff.
Tragedy of the Commons illustrates the fallacy of the "free market" and everyone acting in their own best interest being good for all, including the participants. Regulatory forces are societies way of guiding people's behavior in directed ways, that they may not perceive as being in their own best interest, but in the long term is.
Most of the new coal plant will have an hard time paying for their bonds especially in the later years as renewable power keep them off. If dispatching of power is base on increment cost then renewable will always be dispatched first since there incremental cost is much lower. Many of these coal power plant will be idled.
I think wind mills have been used more than two thousand years longer than coal.
What will happen if the solar power systems use up all the sunlight???
trump promised me a job with coal. dey tuk er jerbs!
Artificial? Since when does burning coal causes no CO2 emissions? Perhaps we should also start taxing those mountain hating coal mining companies for the toxic runoff from their mines that ruins the land of people down hill from their strip mining operation? ... and if you think that toxic runoff is some kind of 'artificial construct' like CO2 emissions I can introduce you to some very angry Appalachian Hillbillies who are ready willing and able to let you bathe in a pond of your choosing full of toxic coal mine runoff.
And how! Not too far away from me is land that was destroyed by coal mining, and before the companies had to restore the land.
I've thought of having tours of the area to show off what has been done. And as a twist, play down he obvious environmental impact, and play up the money lost.
Streams - once highly profitable tourist fishing destinations with almost no cost of doing business, and with high earning tourists who fish and stay in hotels and eat in restaurants. Millions lost every year (adjusted for inflation)
Deforestation. The trees - if any grow after the area is strip mined - are worthless. Usless for providing profit and jobs for logging. Untold millions lost.
Real Estate. The highwalls and tailing piles look like Mars, and are a profit opportunity lost. The modern trend of building communities 10 -15 miles out of town isn't going to work. The land is destroyed,
I reckon I'll have the human Ferengi bawling like babies in no time.
That's only slightly tongue in cheek. How we could ever allow one group - the mining interests, to permanently destroy land that could be useful for many purposes both profitable, providing entertainment, and ecologically sustaining is so short sighted.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
From Wikipedia: "Archeological evidence in China indicates surface mining of coal and household usage after approximately 3490 BC."
We aren't building wind mills today. Wind mills are used to grind small things into a powder, known as milling. We're putting up wind turbines which generate electricity. The technology in those ranges from thousands of years ago to today as the turbine itself and the blades are always being updated.
I guess they are or are not thanking the accountants for their habit of writing numbers down and keeping a ledger
We need to limit wind/solar and instead have a matrix of clean energy. Basically, we need to include hydro, Geothermal, and nukes.
Did you and blindseer issue from the same malignant vagina? We don't need nukes. Batteries are already good enough and almost already cheap enough to do that job better than nuclear ever could. Nuclear doesn't ramp up and down when you need it, but battery storage systems are immediate. Base load is a stupid myth and by the way, the wind is always blowing somewhere. That's what power distribution is for. Aren't your lips chapped from all the time you spend fellating nuclear power? There's billions in that industry already, your suction can make no practical difference.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Coal is the best. We need to use more coal. Real news says so.
Just don't look into the Nuclear One deal. Real news doesn't want to talk about the Nuclear One deal even though it helped Russia meddle.
"Coal isn't being "sabotaged" by regulations. A tiny portion of the environmental costs are being incorporated into its usage."
There, FTFY. Coal would have been gone long since if it had to pay anything like its full costs... which are arguably infinite, since we literally can't clean up after it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Natural gas power plants also spin up and spin down more quickly than old coal plants, allowing them to track the short-term changes in the demand curve better.
Here's a graph. Notice that the drop in coal is mirrored by a rise in gas. https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl...
Ah, the first random brainfart that entered the tiny mind of an internet dweeb. Yes, I'm sure it does.
What's needed is a thing called "storage". Tesla has been busy providing solutions to that:
https://electrek.co/2018/01/23...
Of course now you're going to say "what if there's no wind or sun for a whole month?"
Haters gonna hate.
No sig today...
There's this thing called a battery. You may have heard of it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We are conditioned to think in terms of profitability. Yet at the societal level it is "the whole" that must be profitable, rather than "the parts". If you were marooned on an island you would first make a weapon, hunt to eat, and find shelter/build a house. None of these activities can be analyzed in terms of profitability because they are a required for survival. Economic activity and its concepts come after the basics of life are in place.
Then you literally need to walk to the hardware store and literally say âoewe need this kind of broom to perform such and such task. Do you have one and How much is it?â
Bingo! I got bingo! Whereâ(TM)s my prize!?
The assignment of costs to coal plants versus solar plants makes coal unprofitable and solar profitable. But this is just a bookkeeping slight of hand.
If you are a power company then you can't just sell solar. It doesn't shine all the time. You have to have back up power. Yet you charge one rate to your customers not different rates depending on where their power is coming from. (actually i pay a premium to get renewables but that's a different rationale. I do pay the exact same per kilowatt hour no matter what).
Thus if you don't assign the cost of keeping a coal plant boiler spooled up to to solar power then the coal plant costs are higher than the price paid for the electricity.
But that's just bookkeeping assignment not actual total costs of providing power to a customer.
On top of this, it's cute to say they are losing money but that just depends on how you are paying the mortgage. If you had expected to pay off the mortgage in ten years (say a ten year bond issue) then you are paying a high rate to pay that for ten years. If your bond was 50 years then you would be paying less every year. And then coal would be profitable. Either way after 50 years you have the land and coal plant, and a paid off bond. It's just a matter of which year you booked the costs in
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Broom will literally clean up heavy metals and acid rain? Literally allow you to sweep from one coal slurry pond into another? Tool.
Six years of Obama administration stonewalling all repair and construction permits is most certainly "sabotage".
Stop lying.
Yup. There are all sorts of brooms. Leave the bathroom once in a while
Bent get you
The US has 10 GW of nuclear production; if we dedicated 100% of the output from the Gigafactory we'd have enough storage to run for 2 hours. Hope you don't need 3 hours, because there goes 60% of your electricity capacity! So how many years do we dedicate 100% output of the Gigafactory, to replace that nuclear? Six years, for a 12 hour buffer? Twelve years for a 24 hour buffer? Go for the typical recommendation of 48 hours of reserve, meaning 24 years of production, dedicated to nothing but batteries for the power grid?
Yes, folks, it's a thing and it's happening right under your snooty nose.
Haters gonna hate.
The common bromide of a cult member.
Before you can collect a prize you need to fix the bug in your auto-correct entry system.
A broad mix is something nobody wants, but it's absolutely essential. Solar systems are going to be overtaxed if there's another really big volcanic eruption. Not that we won't have lots of other problems as well, but without power, it'll just be much worse. One volcanic eruption at a time is bad enough - Laki, Tambora, Krakatoa, to say nothing of the super volcanoes. Get several in a single year and it would be bad. Wildfires don't help either but are more localized. Solar is great - as long as the sunshine can reliably hit the collectors.
You use the surplus energy generated from your renewal systems to push water uphill (potential energy), or to charge up batteries (electrical energy), spin up flywheels (kinetic energy), compress gas (kinetic energy), charge up hydrogen fuel cells (chemical energy). Then you release energy from these sources when you need it.
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I have a smart meter and I pay different rates depending on the availability of electricity.
I also have a compressor cut off on my AC that automatically turns it off with a signal from the power company if there is a power shortage, in return for a discount on my power bill.
They had vertical windmills - an S shaped sail that sat on top of a millstone. Using just wind power alone, the natives could ease themselves from the tedious task of milling grain by hand.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Republicans had majority...
From: https://www.merriam-webster.co...
windmill noun
windÂâmill | \Ëwin(d)-ËOEmil \
Definition of windmill
(Entry 1 of 2)
1a : a mill or machine operated by the wind usually acting on oblique vanes or sails that radiate from a horizontal shaft especially : a wind-driven water pump or electric generator
b : the wind-driven wheel of a windmill
2 : something that resembles or suggests a windmill especially : a calisthenic exercise that involves alternately lowering each outstretched hand to touch the toes of the opposite foot
3 [ from the episode in Don Quixote by Cervantes in which the hero attacks windmills under the illusion that they are giants ] : an imaginary wrong, evil, or opponent â"usually used in the phrase to tilt at windmills
It's a fucking windmill and so I'm going to call it a windmill.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So build some more battery factories... and look into all the other storage systems as well... Both are cheaper and more sensible than nukes
Cutting US electricity demand down to EU levels would help too. (you are very wasteful)
What's needed is a thing called "storage".
That is part of the solution. But there are two other solutions: 1) Wider grids. 2) Differential pricing.
Charge more when power is scarce, and less when it is plentiful. "Smart meters" are already installed in many areas, and people quickly find a way to change their usage patterns.
Of course now you're going to say "what if there's no wind or sun for a whole month?"
The total amount of wind / clouds is nearly constant. So if the wind isn't blowing in Nebraska, there is extra wind in Oklahoma. This is actually a benefit since wind power goes up as the cube of the wind speed. So double the wind concentrated in one area is much better than the same wind volume spread out.
We just need wider grids so the power can be moved from windy/sunny areas to becalmed and be-clouded areas. Even better if these grids are expanded east-west, so we can get a time shift as well. Arizona sunshine can power ACs in Florida after sunset.
There's this thing called a battery. You may have heard of it.
Yes, I have heard of it. That's what the lawyer said I did when that treehugger got in my face and wouldn't stop screaming about how I'm ruining the planet for driving my truck.
The judge let me go. It turns out that you can't scream in someone's ear and think they can't push you out of their way.
If you want to see wind power displace coal then go buy yourself some windmills, sell electricity, and if you can stay in business doing this then coal plants will go away out of a free market competition. Using the force of government to prop up wind power only means that in the end we will see government prop up coal power to keep the lights on. Get rid of the subsidies, all of them. Taxes on carbon is likely to result in more charges of battery as people riot, as is happening in France. Government cannot solve this problem, only business and technology. If the wind power industry can't compete on an open market, such as producing electricity at a low enough cost to cover the expense of storage for when the wind does not blow, then it does not deserve to stay in business.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm afraid that the updates are modest efficiency and cost improvements. Even if the hardware is free, yapping significant more wind energy, without significantly altering local ecologies and weather, sets physical limits on how much wind energy is available. Similar though not identical limitations exist for every energy resource. My concern for these renewable energy sources is that they have maximum limits within reach of our existing energy economy. Being natural, or "free" does not mean it's unlimited, and that is easy to lose track of.
Don't worry- Donald's new Space Force will use rocket ships powered exclusively by clean coal.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Both heavy metal emissions and SO2/NOx (substances that cause acid rain) problems have been solved in coal burning in larger plants quite a while ago. The problem that we cannot solve is CO2 emissions per power generated. It's too high.
https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12520486&cid=57184660 Nazi Homosexual RAY MORRIS pushing debunked white supremacist propaganda after directly corrected, HANG THIS FAGGOT NAZI DEAD
"Smart meters" are already installed in many areas, and people quickly find a way to change their usage patterns..
Sure. I'm going to wear a sweater in my house in the winter. And I'll turn off the AC and be uncomfortable with just a fan in the summer.
Fuck that. I actually like living in the First World.
Not saying it doesn't mean their findings shouldn't be looked at more closely since they clearly have an agenda. But it's in line with the coal plant closings we're seeing. Can you site a study where coal plants _are_ profitable in aggregate?
/. is just an excuse to talk about a trend that seems pretty obvious. If Coal wasn't losing ground Trump wouldn't have been able to capitalize on out of work miners. The market would have those folks well employed.
Put another way, here's the left wing bastion of Forbes discussion the same thing.
Posting this particular study on
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There's this thing called a battery. You may have heard of it.
Yup. I'm replacing them all the time.
Of course there are. But the problem has been solved for those who are willing to buy the tech. So it is in fact solved.
P.S. In your desperate anti-science dogma, you keep conflating microplastics with plastic garbage. Reminder: we are quite full of microplastics, and we don't eat them. We drink them. And as far as we know, and as people who found them kept reminding us in their study, they are in fact biologically inert and too small to cause mechanical damage. So I'll be fine.
You on the other hand really should stop shoving green anti-science dogma in your head. It's unhealthy.
The highwalls and tailing piles look like Mars, and are a profit opportunity lost.
Uh, does Elon know about this?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Absence of taxes is not the same thing as presence of subsidies.
In other words, you have lowered your standard of living to accept less cooling on a schedule convenient for renewable power suppliers, and you have accepted variable rates on your costs. I think you just demonstrated two key disadvantages for energy produced by solar.
https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12520486&cid=57184660 Nazi Homosexual RAY MORRIS pushing debunked white supremacist propaganda after directly corrected, HANG THIS FAGGOT NAZI !!!
Are you, by chance, Don Quixote?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Good Clean Coal and Oil is the Future.
regards,
TheRealDonaldTrump
Nuclear doesn't ramp up and down when you need it, but battery storage systems are immediate.
You wrote that but didn't see the obvious (to me at least) implications. What if we mate a large battery with a nuclear power plant? That means we have a means to get power, rain or shine, day or night, and still be able to load follow.
Aren't your lips chapped from all the time you spend fellating nuclear power?
As oppose to your lips and wind power?
IMHO, batteries won't save wind and solar power. I suspect that in fact they will lead to their death. If we can charge a battery from coal or nuclear power, and let the battery handle the minute by minute shift in demand, then we don't have to worry about where or when the wind blows.
With a fleet of nuclear power plants, to have a sufficient overcapacity for maintenance periods and unscheduled outages, and a fleet of batteries, then we can have a 100% nuclear powered world. Just like we could have a 100% wind and solar powered world with enough batteries backing up wind and solar. I don't believe either world is realistic, and neither should you.
There's billions in that industry already, your suction can make no practical difference.
There's billions of dollars, likely trillions in fact, riding on who can build the better energy source. Batteries alone cannot save wind power from competition from nuclear power. There's billions of dollars in nuclear power too. Some of that from the military because it turns out we abandoned wind powered ships a long time ago. Nuclear power makes the navies of the world move now. That means technology in nuclear power will improve if only to make warships move faster. That technology will find its way into the commercial designs and the result will mean cheaper nuclear power in the future.
Nuclear power is not dead. It will not die at the hands of wind and solar so long as there are aircraft carriers at sea. Because nuclear power is so safe, clean, energy dense, low CO2, plentiful, and reliable, it will find its way into the commercial electrical generation market. Again, this might be only to keep nuclear engineers employed so the navies of the world can keep warships moving at sea.
We need "nukes". The level of vacuum you can create will not change this unless you can find a way to make an aircraft carrier move by wind and solar power at a performance that exceeds nuclear power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Just a thought, but they might be profitable if they switched from internal combustion engine-driven vehicles and tools to plug-in electrics recharged from renewable sources and nuclear power.. oh, wait..
Well, see, fossil fuels are clearly and objectively shitty, though, and everyone should understand that by now. ;-)
That's fine for large nations like the USA, what about Japan?
Oh, I know the answer. Japan is restarting many of their shuttered nuclear power plants, and has plans to build more.
Then think of all the other inhabited islands spread around the world. They can't spread out their electrical grid like you propose. This is especially true in places that are subject to hurricanes and such. A nuclear power plant in Florida kept running during a hurricane because under that large concrete dome they don't much care about how much sun and wind they get. With proper design earthquakes can be managed too. Fukushima didn't melt down because of the quake, it melted down because it was a design older than Chernobyl and lost the power needed to keep cool. A newer design would not do this.
Maybe an island nation like Japan could in the future rely on sun, wind, and storage for their power needs. Perhaps on an island differential pricing will help as well. What they can't do is widen their grid to gather more of the intermittent sun and wind.
Oh, and I'm sure someone will want to bring up tidal power or some other undersea power source. When that starts to be profitable then let me know. Until then Japan, Hawaii, and other islands will need oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power to keep the lights on.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
How we could ever allow one group - the mining interests, to permanently destroy land that could be useful for many purposes both profitable, providing entertainment, and ecologically sustaining is so short sighted.
This is the sort of thing I'm referring to when I say "Capitalism gone bad" or "Out-of-control capitalism"; there was a time, dim in our memories now (and absent completely in the memories of some too young or too unaware of history to know it) when 'capitalism' operated differently, operated with more regard for the needs of society, i.e. capitalism that had more of a conscience. A good way for me to illustrate this, maybe, is it's like a certain yeast-like micro-organism that naturally exists in the human body: when it's not over-fed with sugars, it exists in a symbiotic role, helping regulate the natural balance of your body, but when it's fed too much sugar, it changes it's nature entirely, goes into a spore-like mode, over-reproducing, and actually causes harm. That's the road capitalism seems to have gone down, causing all the harm you mentioned in it's mad rush for more, more, more profit. Note that I'm not saying capitalism is bad; it's not, but there needs to be a sense of scale observed, to keep it from running mad and destroying everything in it's wake.
FWIW, you're right about nuclear reactor/power plant design; but the NIMBYs and others who have been scared off of nuclear are standing in the way of it saving us from ourselves -- and being someone who voted for Rancho Seco to be shut down back in the 80's, I feel I have a right to admit we were both right for all the wrong reasons, and wrong for all the right reasons, if you catch my drift. There are now, in fact, much safer fission reactor designs that are not the 'high pressure' types currently in use, and that are inherently safer, theoretically meltdown-proof, but trying to get the DoE to allow them to be built, getting funding to build them, and getting people within the affected area to sign off on them being built, has prevented any of them from moving forward. We've got to get past this fear of the nuclear boogeyman though. Fission isn't as good as fusion will be once we get the details of it ironed out, but we need time to do that, and meanwhile we need to stop dumping the last several million years worth of natural carbon sequestration back into the atmosphere.
Solved in the sense the clean tech then makes coal more expensive than cleaner alternatives?
No, it does not ... there is no scalable TWh storage technology to carry any significant power across a Dunkelflaute. The German's way to deal with the problem for instance as they were turning off coal and nuclear has been to just borrow power from their neighbours when there's shortage. except everyone is doing the same thing and excess generating capacity is disappearing fast.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/0...
As long as solar and wind are not cheaper than fueling the backup plants, or we get cheap scalable TWh scale storage, it is being subsidized. Merely being able to be cheaper than wholesale pricing at a given point in time is not enough. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with it needing subsidy, but the lies about it being profitable without it are dangerous. Politicians aren't very smart, they are prone to drinking their own koolaid. Then suddenly you'll get rolling blackouts.
Thorium plants will cost less to build than Coal, and has none of the problems of Light Water Reactors.
The cost of coal, gas, and oil does not include climate change. Once the cost of fucking up the planet is include in Hydrocarbon fuels anything is lower cost.
Thorium Liquid Salt reactor has no parallel to Light water reactors. Any argument put forth discussing Thorium Liquid salt is null and void. Inapplicable.
(heavy water reactors are not much different than LWR in safety)
No melt downs, no hydrogen explosions, no proliferation, no waste, much smaller size, lower cost pre-fabricated off site in factories, no water needed for cooling waste heat, (yes typical steam turbines use 30% of available heat, the rest warms up bodies of water, applies to all power plants.), air works fine due to higher process temps. Carbon dioxide can be used for driving turbines with massive size reduction and efficiency gain (+50%).
Thorium cycle breeds new fuel, and waste products are reprocessed in line. By contrast typical solid fuel rods are very expensive to reprocess and store, and remains "hot" for 10,000 years. The solid fuel waste disposal problem have not been solved, the can is just kicked down the road. Only 0.7% of the fuel in those rods are used as the contaminants are toxic to the power generation process, i.e. eats neutrons.
Why has not Thorium been used so far? Political decisions in the Nixon era by propellerheads who wanted to explore Sodium Breeder Reactors, which failed, killed the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment run by Alvin Weinberg, the inventor of both the the MSR and the LWR. A political decision.
The current regulatory environment is not yet adapted to Liquid Thorium Salt Reactors, there are very few parallels in the safety aspects, mainly because MSR are made to be intrinsically safe, it has no 2,000 psi water pressure, 10" thick reactor humongous forged steel vessels, etc. As was seen in Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, loss of cooling is a disaster for Water cooled reactors. (Chernobyl did not even have a containment building.)
The historically short era of the industrial revolution is built on availability of massive amounts of cheap energy, without it we could regress into the 18th century lifestyle in a heartbeat.
Any discussion of fear against nuclear power serves only to help the Hydrocarbon industry and will fuck up the planet.
Solar power without storage is a non-starter. Wind power without storage is also stupid. Do the math, add the cost of requisite energy storage to the calculation. (Repairing wind generator is neither fun nor easy.) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=burning+wind+generator
The weather is not always favorable to these either. Wind generators are not environmentally friendly either.
Liquid Salt Thorium reactor can be deployed in current power stations, with existing distribution network, will be much cheaper, safer, and have gobs of power, and are scalable.
Are you really going to power a steel or cement plant with wind or solar?
Not in the administration.
Trump's opponent said "we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of work". OF COURSE he capitalized on that when speaking in coal country.
Things don't have to already be really bad for you to dislike a politician who says she's going to try to make you unemployed.
If a politician said "I'm going to put a lot of security experts out of work", and was actually trying to do exactly that, Bruce and I are going to vote for their opponent - even though we both have good jobs at the moment.
Isn't criticizing Trump just a reverse argument from Authority?
Can you cite a study that proves coal power plants aren't being treated unequally by regulators, laws, and markets?
The slashdot crowd becomes less educated and more out of touch with reality every day.
Numerous studies have uncovered they myth of baseload and shown that renewables can easily cover 100% of energy needs.
Here's one.
https://physicsworld.com/a/100...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
First of all, I have to congratulate the German people for having invented such a tremendous word "Dunkelflaute".
Second, a centralized large-scale hydrogen storage facility with fuel cells is indeed a scalable energy storage solution.
It can only be made with 40% round-trip energy efficiency, but just compensate for that by doubling or so the amount of wind and solar, which is relatively cheap and feasible.
Remember that right now, a lot of wind farms are being paid to not generate during times of surplus wind and low demand. Storing that energy at 40% efficiency is obviously much better than that.
Or do some research & development to improve adiabatic compressed air storage, which should achieve 70% round-trip energy efficiency.
These technologies, plus lithium batteries at the grid edge, can easily be a scalable energy storage solution.
We are also overlooking deep geothermal power generation. Current oil-drilling technology is good enough to take advantage of a lot of that resource. And geothermal can generate 24/7 with no GHG emissions.
The reason that this stuff, all well within our short term technological reach, is not done, comes down to that in the short term it would be more expensive, because of the artificial "free pollution" pass given to the fossil fuel energy industry. Slap a decent carbon tax on, one that would still be much less than the remediation costs of adapting to fossil-fuel-caused global warming and climate change, and these new energy technologies would be cost-competitive or superior immediately.
It's all down to lack of political will to make the needed changes. If you don't like more tax, a carbon fee and dividend works almost just as well at speeding the change and leveling the economic playing field for clean energy technology, while remaining revenue neutral for governments.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
>_ A newer design would not do this.
Dude, that phrase has been used a million times -- every time after a new nuclear accident happens.
Please, if you're going to be delusional:
a) don't assume we're gonna follow you and
b) do come up with a new argument -- buy one if you need, but no more BS like that.
Pretty please.
Of course now you're going to say "what if there's no wind or sun for a whole month?"
Nuclear Winter. Trump's ultimate "bring back coal"
This.
That was putting them out of work. Coal plants would be profitable if they could run like they did before the EPA and mine safety. But on that other hand we'd miners dying left and right and cancer villages.
Hillary's problem wasn't the message, it was how she said it and more importantly her complete lack of leadership when it came to finding real solutions for out of work coal miners.
Bernie has the solution, which is a federal jobs guarantee. Put those coal miners to work but building solar panels. Time will tell if he gets a chance to do it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, that's a good start.
We need to be off them altogether, right around, oh, let's see, now.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Drinkypoo, don't you get tired of pushing nothing but solar/wind? And now, you are trolling. Even now, Denmark, Portugal and Germany have spent the most money on solar/wind and still can not come close to doing 100% of their energy. And if hit by multiple volcanos, they will lose a lot of their power. You sit here and speak out about AGW, but then speak against real solutions for it. The only solution that will work is 'all of the above' of clean energy. And yes, that includes, not just nukes, but Geothermal as well. Ask Indonesia, costa Rica, and Iceland about it. Back in America, Wind and solar are nice, but both depend heavily on the sun. Yellowstone WILL erupt at some time. When it does the last thing we need is to not have the energy to drive our cars, our hospitals, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My word. You're a fine example of a fucking retard, aren't you?
we don't eat them. We drink them.
As the food chain is entirely contaminated with microplastics, we do of course also eat them.
biologically inert and too small to cause mechanical damage
Real scientific research, conducted before the issue gained widespread publicity, disagrees with your feels.
...stop shoving green anti-science dogma in your head. It's unhealthy.
There only appears to be one anti-science person here, and it's you.
What's your magical CO2 emitting fuel that doesn't also release particulates and NOx? You should get a patent for it right away.
There are plenty of roofs in Japan to put solar panels. There are plenty of mountains for wind turbines. I visited Japan recently and saw none of either.
There are plenty of roofs in Japan to put solar panels. There are plenty of mountains for wind turbines. I visited Japan recently and saw none of either.
Japan is really dragging their feet on renewables. There is plenty of wind capacity in Hokkaido (firmly in the "roaring forties") and northern Honshu. With electricity prices of 20 cents (22 yen) / kwh, wind turbines would easily be profitable. All they need to do is lay down some transmission infrastructure and remove the bureaucratic red tape.
In other words, you have lowered your standard of living
Not at all. PG&E pays me to conserve peak power, and I then have that money to spend on more important things, thus RAISING my standard of living.
The highwalls and tailing piles look like Mars, and are a profit opportunity lost.
Uh, does Elon know about this?
Never thought of that! Could be a great place to train.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
sandwiches? Because that all Americans need to fuel the miners who are returning to the mines in droves to aid our exalted leader's plan to Make America Great Again.
Trump casinos!
>_ A newer design would not do this.
Dude, that phrase has been used a million times -- every time after a new nuclear accident happens.
Please, if you're going to be delusional:
a) don't assume we're gonna follow you and
b) do come up with a new argument -- buy one if you need, but no more BS like that.
Pretty please.
In other words...
"I don't have an argument against nuclear power except that of telling people on how 1970s era reactors were poorly designed."
Sound about right? It does to me. That's like saying we shouldn't be flying a Boeing 787 because the de Havilland Comet was falling from the sky.
If you want to argue against new nuclear power plants then make an argument that is relevant against new nuclear reactors. Don't expect me to take you seriously when you bring up Chernobyl when discussing a new reactor built in Alabama. Three Mile Island isn't even a good example of the dangers of nuclear power. Nobody died from that and I heard on good authority that the reactor was still functional, and could have been safely restarted.
Don't tell me I should just spread out my solar panels and windmills when I live on an island. I can't do that. I need power and I need it 24/7. I know I can get that from nuclear power. If you want to stop me from getting it then you need to provide something that keeps my lights on, not an argument that was out of date 20 years ago.
we need to subsidize coal, so they can continue to pollute.
How we could ever allow one group - the mining interests, to permanently destroy land that could be useful for many purposes both profitable, providing entertainment, and ecologically sustaining is so short sighted.
This is the sort of thing I'm referring to when I say "Capitalism gone bad".
Capitalism without any sort or moral structure destroys itself.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You use the surplus energy generated from your renewal systems to push water uphill (potential energy), or to charge up batteries (electrical energy), spin up flywheels (kinetic energy), compress gas (kinetic energy), charge up hydrogen fuel cells (chemical energy). Then you release energy from these sources when you need it.
When you can make that happen cheaper than coal and nuclear power then I can expect you to make gobs of money and likely win a Nobel prize. More than 40% of coal plants are not making a profit, which tells me that more than 50% of coal plants are profitable.
What's keeping these unprofitable coal plants operating? I'm guessing it's the utilities putting up windmills to get a piece of the government subsidies. The utilities don't much care if one coal plant doesn't make a profit so long as the total balance sheet is in the black. Wind subsidies are coal subsidies. That's because the utilities own both and they will take government money if it keeps them in business. The politicians don't seem to care much either since the laws often specify subsidies on wind generating capacity instead of actual production.
If the coal plants don't make money then someone is paying to keep them running. My guess is it is governments. If you want to make that stop then ALL energy subsidies need to stop. That's because, again, the utilities will just take the wind subsidies to stay in business.
As much as this news pleases me, I simply can't trust anything coming from a think tank. Their sole purpose of existence is to circumvent peer-review and declaring conflicts of interest. I believe it when I read it in a reputable scientific journal.
1. Coal is heavily subsidized in the US
2. Coal is not made to bear external costs.
3. Despite this, coal _is_ losing in the marketplace, in the sense that its absolute use and relative use in energy consumption are decreasing.
So what are you talking about?
most coal plants that are closing are closing due to age/end of life, As a power plant ages the maintenance costs go way up to the point where they become unprofitable to run, however that has nothing to do with the financial viability of coal.
Permits are a function of the executive branch, not the legislative.
What about when an asteroid hits a nuke plant and spreads radiation around the globe? You can only wish you had nice clean solar and wind instead. Another one WILL hit at some time.
I guess facts and scientific studies are now counted as "trolling".
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Long before fracking and renewables, huge numbers of coal mines were operating at a loss for political reasons.
The same reason that motor vehicle factories and agriculture in so many countries (including US and EU) are surviving only with government subsidies.
The question is not "why are they losing money?" - all mines have a limited lifetime before becoming unviable.
The question should be "Why are they still operating?"
Ah the age old attacks on intelligence without really engaging in conversation.
Most of the coal fired plants are very old and tend to produce fewer wattage than newer gen plants. The story is simply a reprint of what we have known for years. Consumption and load will ultimately define how we power the future. LED lighting is an example of smart and good progress in reducing one aspect f our overall consumption. I look forward to more progress.
Please stay away from your divisive rhetoric. You are just perpetuating the belief that progs are merely assholes.
Once you have the batteries it doesn't matter how you charge them "base load nonsense" is already false and will become even more imaginary with storage solutions.
To not refute, but make fun of an opposing and disliked viewpoint, is the common bromide of a loser. Your response is what was to be your response AFTER you argued "what if there's no wind or sun for a whole month?". Joce just cut you the fuck off and got to the nitty gritty.
Haters, indeed, gonna hate and you're hatin' hard. Git gud n00b.
In other words, you have lowered your standard of living
Not at all. PG&E pays me to conserve peak power, and I then have that money to spend on more important things, thus RAISING my standard of living.
No, you have traded a higher standard of living in exchange for a small discount on your expenses. I consider allowing others to remotely disable my air conditioning at arbitrary times to be seriously lowering my standard of living. I would easily trade a few dollars for the luxury of being adequately cool during peak load times.
When the option of staying cool on my terms is no longer available due to the elimination of adequate power delivery capacity, you may be happy, but there are a lot of us that will not be.
1. Coal is heavily subsidized in the US
No, it's not. Not on a per kWh basis. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
2. Coal is not made to bear external costs.
Nothing is going to change that. Carbon taxes won't fix that because the people that sell the carbon based fuels just pass that cost on to the people buying the fuel. The people buying the fuel bear this external cost in whatever form that takes, be it global warming or air pollution. The only way to fix that is to use an alternative that is cheaper and cleaner than coal, that's nuclear power. Nuclear power has it's own external cost but that's far lower than anything else.
3. Despite this, coal _is_ losing in the marketplace, in the sense that its absolute use and relative use in energy consumption are decreasing.
Coal is losing to natural gas and nothing else. This is a good thing.
So what are you talking about?
I'm tired of the lies. I'm tired of promises of future technologies that never come to be.
Wind and solar cannot displace coal, at least not any time soon. This might change in the future with the batteries that keep getting promised so we need something that works today. Nuclear works today. Most everything I hear against nuclear power is a lie or a political construct. Most everything I hear in favor of wind and solar is also a lie. Maybe it's true that wind, solar, and batteries are the future but that's not helpful today. What can you offer *TODAY* as a solution? Batteries are not a solution today, therefore wind and solar are not a solution today. What works today is nuclear power, as proven by hundreds of operational nuclear power plants all over the world.
Here's an idea, let's not put our eggs in one basket. I keep hearing that nuclear power is not helpful because it takes ten years to finish a single nuclear power plant. That's a lie but let's go with it. Another lie I keep hearing is that in ten years we will have solved the problems of making batteries big enough and cheap enough so that wind and solar power can replace all the coal. Okay then, let's start building those nuclear power plants, and work on those batteries. In a decade from now let's see who cleans up the air and water first.
Here's the neat part about that nuclear power, they aren't asking for money from the government, they ask only for permission. Give them permission and nuclear power plants will get built. If you say they can't get built without a government loan then I say fine, don't give them a loan. I'm still quite certain that they get built. They need a permit though, but the government has issued maybe a half dozen in the last 50 years. They'll have to issue a dozen every year if we are going to solve the problems of global warming, pollution, and so on. That's not growth by the way, that's just replacing the existing coal power plants being shut down. If you want to see natural gas get replaced too then that means 24 new gigawatt sized nuclear power plants every year, or more likely half nuclear and half wind/solar/batteries/whatever.
If we don't see nuclear power plant permits then we will just see more natural gas. I'm fine with that too, because I'm not convinced global warming is a real problem. If you think it is then we can't wait for battery technology to save us, we need a solution *TODAY*. If the global warming alarmists can't agree on more nuclear power to solve this problem then I have to wonder just how seriously they take this problem.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
All of your arguments are wrong. Your facts are outdated. This is getting old.
coal and nuclear stabilize inside inner cycle with a large roasting mass.
What?
Yes, coal is expensive when sabotaged and renewable cheaper when subsidized.
Except that today, coal is subsidized (by healthcare), whereas renewables stand on their own legs. And boy, will your brain vessels rupture when you learn about the carbon tax initiatives... :-p
You see any funds for decommissioning the suing wrong farms? Nuclear is fully funded and coal is over most of they production cycle.
Again, what?
Ezekiel 23:20
Solved, my ass
Ezekiel 23:20
And one day, you might even learn that heat and cold are very easy to store, thus completely eliminating your tiny problem!
Math be hard yo. But I'll give you some hints. Find out the total square footage of all occupied roofing real estate in Japan.
Then find out how many square feet miles kilometers whatever you want would be required for photovoltaic to be able to meet the power demands of Japan. Then compare the two.
They are only restarting their nuclear plants because we have about another 50 years for the market to catch up.
By 2080 this conversation is going to seem like it's a bunch of foolish people because the math clearly shows the entire worlds energy needs that are currently being met by non-renewables will be able to be met just by photovoltaics alone.
What will be needed will be high capacity power lines and pumped storage.
And one day, you might even learn that heat and cold are very easy to store, thus completely eliminating your tiny problem!
And one day you may learn that this was one example of a problem not limited to climate control. Every generation has their religious zealots that want nothing more than to exert control over their peers. These days there are many factions fighting for that privilege, everyone from the clean energy priests to the perpetually outraged culture warrior religious orders to the #MeToo grand inquisitors. And their efforts are always for our benefit but we are always too feeble minded to recognize it. Only a blasphemer heretic would oppose their benevolent help and as such should be called out and publicly shamed and punished.
That is a story of improper disposal of coal ash. How is it in any way relevant to my statement of:
>Both heavy metal emissions and SO2/NOx (substances that cause acid rain) problems have been solved in coal burning in larger plants quite a while ago. The problem that we cannot solve is CO2 emissions per power generated. It's too high.
Of course now you're going to say "what if there's no wind or sun for a whole month?"
Like a _decade_ ago I read a report from an engineer in the UK about renewable energy vs "standard" energy. He was just a guy doing his own research (I don't believe he was astroturfing or Funded by Big Whatever).
:-)
This was a decade ago before the BatteryWall. But he was looking at solar (50% utilization because: night), wind, hydro, coal, gas, etc. One of the surprising things HE came up with was that like you said, wind stops sometimes. Guessing here, I think that in the UK / Europe every decade or so wind stops for up to two weeks, so needs some kind of a backup. Also, the cost of having a coal/oil/NatGas plant in stand-by mode was nearly the normal operating costs of the plant.
Not hating here, but: the sun goes down / wind stops occasionally / dry spells happen / oil rigs run dry / nuke rods expend / etc. How DO you always keep the base load powered -- no excuses -- never mind handling peaks or growth? And remember: "I didn't think a solar eclipse could last for a month" isn't an excuse.
Other power storage systems are: pumping water uphill, moving heavy trains uphill, compressing gas, speeding up a spinning flywheel. Notice that all of those end up power a generator, Tesla is at least bypassing that. But how expensive it is to replace the batteries and controlling assembly once exhausted, never mind the resources used in creating new ones? (That same question can be asked of ALL of them, not just the PowerWall. Tesla's the new kid on the block, so he's got some long term 'splainin to do besides New! Shiny! Pretty!)
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Enforcement is, not definition and parameters.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's wrong. It's far more likely that we discovered the black rocks that burn real good before we managed to build anything as complicated as a windmill.. or built boats for that matter..
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
You're a cunt
A tiny portion of the environmental costs are being incorporated into its usage.".
Dear complaining liberal,
Nature made coal for us to burn and be happy.. It has no other use than to catch fire. If we don't burn coal we make nature sad that we are rejecting her gift.
Please, think of nature. Make her happy by burning coal.
You mean the good old days like a couple hundred years ago, when you could buy and sell shares in companies that bought and sold human beings in the slave trade?
All of the FUD around wind and solar power can be addressed with infrastructure that has been used to back up nuclear power, like pumped storage.
"Smart meters" are already installed in many areas, and people quickly find a way to change their usage patterns..
Sure. I'm going to wear a sweater in my house in the winter. And I'll turn off the AC and be uncomfortable with just a fan in the summer.
Fuck that. I actually like living in the First World.
Your thinking skills are mirrored in your quoting ones.
The problem having been solved would have made this event imposible. Hence this event having happened refutes the existence of a solution.
Ezekiel 23:20
Takes one to know one.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Both heavy metal emissions and SO2/NOx (substances that cause acid rain) problems have been solved in coal burning in larger plants quite a while ago.
We can literally find power plants and other industrial polluters emitting in excess of their permit as rapidly as we can pay people to climb smokestacks. Source: a guy who used to actually do that for the government. And this was before Trump, you can bet your ass it's worse now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you'll accept Merriam-Webster adopting such lazy usage. After all, the English language has no formal gatekeeper and any word usage that becomes common gets in the book, whether stupid or not. Just don't pull out the pitchforks when they update the definition of "modem" to include a desktop computer tower.
There are relatively few places where coal could have been found near the surface. And how likely do you really think it is that anyone is going to keep trying to burn rocks after granite and quartz fails?
Since OPs premise is that you can't clean up after it, it's not really relevant if done small portion are willing to spend money cleaning up during. Nothing really solved.
There are relatively few places where coal could have been found near the surface. And how likely do you really think it is that anyone is going to keep trying to burn rocks after granite and quartz fails?
We discovered marijuana didn't we? How many plants you think they had to go through before they figured that one out? It only takes one person to discover it, you shortsighted.... sheesh.. Did you invent the wheel? Well then how the fuck do you know about them?
I'll take one for the team.. Fine, I'm a cunt.. And I spot one.. You
So in your view, literally none of the problems humans had in primeval times have been solved, because there can be mistakes which lead to improper handling of the solution, which result in disastrous consequences?
In what world is that a sane view to hold?
As someone who has family working in building various burners, I've no idea when you did what you claim to do, or if you ever did that. I do know for a fact that in US today, as well as EU the norms are overwhelmingly strictly enforced, and typically followed because there are economic incentives to hit certain targets on emissions in most developed countries over long period of time. Benefits that in some cases are so great that when fuel is below certain thresholds forcing the plant to emit more than is sufficient for certain economic incentive threshold to be hit, plant owner will literally execute a controlled shut down of the plant so they can maintain the sufficient buffer to be able to emit.
And since everything is logged on control systems of the plant, you didn't need people climbing smoke stacks in decades beyond replacing the sensors. You just make the query from each sensor. Falsifying this data is not just very hard to do, but would put actors who would agree to such an act in prison in most developing countries today.
Wait, you think that the acid from acid rain is still causing severe harm in regions where NOx and SO2 emissions have been taken care of?
Our biosphere has very powerful circulation of elements. The damage is taken care of in a matter of years by the normal activity of the nature itself if the cause is halted.
Even heavy metals get flushed out of the system eventually, through that tends to take longer. But luckily in most cases, heavy metal poisoning is extremely localized problem, to the point where contaminated area can simply be abandoned for a few decades with minimal economic impact. The only one that really can't be addressed this way is mercury, most specifically mercury in the oceans. And that is because mercury keeps getting emitted in developing countries that just don't care about emissions.
Wait, you think that the acid from acid rain is still causing severe harm in regions where NOx and SO2 emissions have been taken care of?
No. Your reading comprehension is just very poor.
And you think that discovering subsurface black rock that burns is easier than observing that fallen tree branches float and maybe tie a few together to make a raft?
Capitalism without any sort or moral structure destroys itself.
I agree, it probably does. The questions are, though, how long will that take, and how much collateral damage will occur in the meantime? Also doesn't help if the government doesn't punish corporations for being bad, or worse, encourages them.
Trollololol. GTFO.
A realistic world? Sure, in a country with very strict regulations, this could have been a solved problem, but in places like the US or China, it is not, despite the technological means. Blame the crooks in your society on it if you will.
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, then we will certainly get on well.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The world you're describing is diametrically opposed to any kind of observable reality. In real world, when you generate a solution for the problem that needs lack of this solution to persist, the problem either goes away entirely, or becomes small enough to be irrelevant.
Example: vaccination and mumps, measles and rubella. Just because some people don't vaccinate, and in some regions vaccines aren't used doesn't mean that problem of complications associated with mumps, measles and rubella infections haven't been solved.
Feel free to elaborate.
Capitalism without any sort or moral structure destroys itself.
That would be in a similar way to which a nuclear bomb destroys itself.
Likewise the damage is not limited to the bomb...
Capitalism without any sort or moral structure destroys itself.
I agree, it probably does. The questions are, though, how long will that take, and how much collateral damage will occur in the meantime? Also doesn't help if the government doesn't punish corporations for being bad, or worse, encourages them.
What happens is Capitalism is destroyed and turned into corporatism as soon as the market selects a winner. The issue with greed is that the winners are often endowed with huge amounts of greed, and do not want competition, and want nothing less than total control.
The problem with that kind of pathological greed is that it has no concept of when to stop. It wants all of the money. Instead of harnessing the greed for good, it wants to gut those that initially supported it.
If the USA continues on it's present path, after the most greedy are finished turning the country into a bananna Republic, they will turn on each other. there is no money to take from the poor any more at that point.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Capitalism without any sort or moral structure destroys itself.
That would be in a similar way to which a nuclear bomb destroys itself.
Likewise the damage is not limited to the bomb...
Kinda. But if there is a throttle, it can be harnessed.
Just like a car engine. run it wide open, and it is finished after a short time. With a nice throttle, it can run a long time.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not if you can't read
So you've got nothing. Ok. Thank you for conceding.
Your ignorance of history is your embarrassment, not my problem.
https://www.historyanswers.co....
We're in the third wave of industrialization, and now more wealth is created from nothing than real things.
Listen ASSHOLE, there was NO REASON TO BRING RACE INTO THIS. Fuck the fuck off.
Good, good. Let the capitalist butthurt flow through you.
There was also the publicly traded British East India company that spend a few hundred years invading and occupying India. There were the publicly traded coal companies that paid their workers starvation wages - in company scrip that could only be redeemed at company stores. Or the publicly traded companies that sold asbestos or cigarettes long after they knew the health effects while lying to the public, the publicly traded war contractors that make robot planes that blow up children....could go on all day.
Capitalism, like colonialism, is one of the worst inventions mankind has ever produced. Facts.
I've read plenty of articles about surface deposits of coal.. But regardless, we're both speculating..
A dictionary is not a reference of how to use words, but how words are used. A dictionary is a historical record and is meant to be useful for future generations to understand how we currently use words.
Yes - they definitely exist. But trees near bodies of water are way more plentiful. Probabilities are on the side of boats before coal.
It's a fucking windmill and so I'm going to call it a windmill.
I'm going to call a nuclear power plant a kettle. All it does is boil water.
Your sig is hilarious.
They're not supposed to be PROFITABLE. They're supposed to make electricity.
> Of course now [they]'re going to say "what if there's no wind or sun for a whole month?"
ObReply: "That means you, personally, have been buried alive and have been a zombie for over four weeks. Give up and die already!"
Coal is subsidized to the tune of 22 trillion a year.
You are armed because you are a moron. Not all armed people are morons, it just happens you're one.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
FWIW, you're right about nuclear reactor/power plant design; but the NIMBYs and others who have been scared off of nuclear are standing in the way of it saving us from ourselves --
Oh boy.
NIMBYs, Greenies and hippies in combies have no impact on the placement of Nuclear facilities.
and being someone who voted for Rancho Seco to be shut down back in the 80's, I feel I have a right to admit we were both right for all the wrong reasons, and wrong for all the right reasons, if you catch my drift.
Obviously you didn't take it seriously and never learned the lessons. Perhaps you were just going with what you thought people think is popular.
There are now, in fact, much safer fission reactor designs that are not the 'high pressure' types currently in use, and that are inherently safer, theoretically meltdown-proof,
No there isn't. Show me!
but trying to get the DoE to allow them to be built,
That's the NRC's job.
getting funding to build them,
it's a bad investment, that's why no one wants to invest.
and getting people within the affected area to sign off on them being built,
Residents have no input to placement of Nuclear facility by law
has prevented any of them from moving forward.
except that it hasn't.
We've got to get past this fear of the nuclear boogeyman though.
Or you have to learn about radionuclides and bio-accumulations.
Fission isn't as good as fusion will be once we get the details of it ironed out, but we need time to do that, and meanwhile we need to stop dumping the last several million years worth of natural carbon sequestration back into the atmosphere.
A post full of motherhood statements.
What about when an asteroid hits a nuke plant and spreads radiation around the globe? You can only wish you had nice clean solar and wind instead. Another one WILL hit at some time.
Fukushima is already doing that.