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Green New Deal Bill Aims To Move US To 100 Percent Renewable Energy, Net-Zero Emissions (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday morning, NPR posted a bill drafted by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) advocating for a Green New Deal -- that is, a public works bill aimed at employing Americans and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the face of climate change. A similar version of the bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate by Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The House bill opens by citing two recent climate change reports: an October 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a heavily peer-reviewed report released in November 2018 by a group of U.S. scientists from federal energy and environment departments. Both reports were unequivocal about the role that humans play in climate change and the dire consequences humans stand to face if climate change continues unchecked.
The bill lists some of these consequences: $500 billion in lost annual economic output for the U.S. by 2100, mass migration, bigger and more ferocious wildfires, and risk of more than $1 trillion in damage to U.S. infrastructure and coastal property. To stop this, the bill says, the global greenhouse gas emissions from human sources must be reduced by 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and we must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. [...] The Green New Deal specifically calls for a 10-year mobilization plan that would "achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers" by creating "millions" of high-paying jobs through investment in U.S. infrastructure. Specific kinds of infrastructure aren't listed, but general categories or works projects are outlined. Adaptive infrastructure tailored to communities, like higher sea walls and new drainage systems, would be included. NPR notes that the language is classified as a non-binding resolution, "meaning that even if it were to pass... it wouldn't itself create any new programs. Instead, it would potentially affirm the sense of the House that these things should be done in the coming years."
Surprisingly, the bill doesn't mention fossil fuels at all. "In a draft version of the Green New Deal that had been circulated in December, a Frequently Asked Questions section did not preclude eventually calling for a tax or a ban on fossil fuels, but it noted that this was not what the bill was about," notes Ars Technica. "Simply put, we don't need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs)," the FAQ notes under the Green New Deal draft language. "We also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment."
The bill lists some of these consequences: $500 billion in lost annual economic output for the U.S. by 2100, mass migration, bigger and more ferocious wildfires, and risk of more than $1 trillion in damage to U.S. infrastructure and coastal property. To stop this, the bill says, the global greenhouse gas emissions from human sources must be reduced by 40 to 60 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, and we must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. [...] The Green New Deal specifically calls for a 10-year mobilization plan that would "achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers" by creating "millions" of high-paying jobs through investment in U.S. infrastructure. Specific kinds of infrastructure aren't listed, but general categories or works projects are outlined. Adaptive infrastructure tailored to communities, like higher sea walls and new drainage systems, would be included. NPR notes that the language is classified as a non-binding resolution, "meaning that even if it were to pass... it wouldn't itself create any new programs. Instead, it would potentially affirm the sense of the House that these things should be done in the coming years."
Surprisingly, the bill doesn't mention fossil fuels at all. "In a draft version of the Green New Deal that had been circulated in December, a Frequently Asked Questions section did not preclude eventually calling for a tax or a ban on fossil fuels, but it noted that this was not what the bill was about," notes Ars Technica. "Simply put, we don't need to just stop doing some things we are doing (like using fossil fuels for energy needs)," the FAQ notes under the Green New Deal draft language. "We also need to start doing new things (like overhauling whole industries or retrofitting all buildings to be energy efficient). Starting to do new things requires some upfront investment."
1. Expire all tax exemptions, tax exclusions, tax incentives, and tax depreciation for all fossil fuel infrastructure of any type.
2. Use funds from 1 and any tarrifs on China to fund US built solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and tidal energy capital investment (not operations, only construction) nationwide, including territories.
Problem solved.
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This could be a revolutionary leap forward in several technologies, job creation and American infrastructure. Shave off a fraction of that bloated military budget to pay for it. It'll be worth it
The funding would come from taxes, especially on the very wealthy who benefit from being able to do business in a climate that isn't being destroyed by mankind.
We're going for a record 100 repeals that do nothing.
For one year, cut the military budget in half.
Spend that on renewables.
But originate from technological progress and not by the will of politicians.
The problem with GND is that there are a lot of tankies and brogressives trying to make it a vehicle for an anti-capitalist manifesto. Which is dumb and will ensure it goes nowhere.
This version is a silly, short, vague kitchen sink plan without any substantive policy or realistic projections. They also throw in a bunch of unrelated wishlist stuff about a jobs-for-all plan and universal healthcare.
We could use real market based energy policy reform. Carbon tax- (Which correctly prices carbon emissions better than any other plan and works inside our existing infrastructure). Power grid improvements to pave the way for decentralized power grids with local power storage and electric vehicles. Solar, wind, nuclear.
The people pushing this GND are nuclearphobes and don't want to acknowledge that any real energy form will be market driven. Transition away from coal and to natural gas have seen massive reductions in non-carbon pollution and that's been entirely market driven.
Well, this suggestion comes from someone who actually wants the taxes to reflect the expenses instead of another unnamed party that has the habit of removing taxes for the richest while increasing the spending and thereby the deficit to an extent that just paying interest now exceeds what "free" healthcare would cost.
You want to know what could fund this completely? Not allowing fossil fuel to externalize the cost of cleaning the mess up.
Another thing that could fund this would be to remove subsidies for businesses that runs the environment.
The tax cuts added a trillion dollars to the debt and nobody blinked.
Dubya's foray into the middle east cost us $7 trillion
I think we can manage this small outlay
If this Renewable Energy thing is to succeed, it will have to be within the financial capabilities of the general public. It it requires huge sacrifices of the people with the most to lose, it won't go anywhere. It will cause resentment and anger that will defeat any gains that would otherwise be achieved. I hope the high rollers in both camps are aware of these limitations and work for an affordable solution to these problems. Otherwise, it is a show stopper.
Things are hard. We should not spend any time to do hard things. We should maintain the status quo at all costs.
This is keynesian economical stmimulus, smarter version. Spending money on changing processes to reduce greenhouse gas will create jobs and yield economical growth. And it will help making the planet a reasonable place for humans to live in the next century.
Me thinks the point of the 100 Percent Renewable Energy, Net-Zero Emissions bill is not to be realistic, but to just introduce legislation that is written in the permanent record and officially begin to turn the tide against what has become a very environmentally destructive administration and party, and towards the future.
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Since the bill contains no appropriations and changes no existing laws and is non-binding it really can't be a revolutionary leap forward in anything nor will anything be required to pay for it. Nothing is risked and there will be no benefit other than political grandstanding.
What is the USA going to do at night, every night?
Stop all its export industry for the night?
Turn off a power plant and tell an industry that needs low cost power 24/7 to "move" to a state with hydro, nuclear?
Give US industry what it wants, 24/7, low cost power that stay on at a much lower price.
Not the solar cycle of light and dark to factor in as a price to pass onto people paying for the product/service.
Mass migration is easy to not worry about. Build a wall and count every approved person with a real passport in and pout out the USA.
No cost to the USA of supporting generations of illegal migrants.
Who is going to pay for a "just transition" so all the workers can learn to code?
Infrastructure spending needs engineers and skilled workers. Most of that would need merit and skill.
Thats not new jobs for people expecting a "just transition" to a profession that needs a lot of university education.
The US tax payer is expected to cover energy? Illegal migrants needs in the USA and chain migration.
Have US tax payers support learn to code projects for many people with few and no skills?
Then pay for education, health care for US citizens too?
Not much of a wage to use after the gov has taken it all.
Welcome to full US Communism.
Tailored to making US communities pay tax.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I mean, for now. But eventually solar energy should be used to make solar panels. And eventually, to mine the materials. There may be by-products of creation (e.g. slag from ore refinement), but there's no logical reason we cannot get to 100% renewable energy. With enough energy we can recycle materials from older panels too, so we can start limiting those by products.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Net negative will require zero greenhouse use energy production, low greenhouse produced making of that equipment, and some type of capture to offset it.
It's not a hard concept we don't get, it's basically common sense.
I don't think a ten year plan to hit net zero is practical, honestly, 40-60% doesn't seem likely without some type of effort to capture them. There was an interesting idea of bubbling CO2 from a power plant through algea pits to make bio fuel for example, but that was ages ago and it's not happening, so I doubt it meets expectations.
Any common sense reading of net zero greenhouse gasses includes manufacturing though, why would you assume it doesn't?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Grandstanding? It's not news that Republicans don't give a shit about the environment, so what's the goal here?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, converting military bases to renewable energy is a great way to build resiliency from attack, as you don't have to defend supply lines as much, and this reduces the actual operating cost of the military at the same time. There are a number of mil programs in action doing just this. Just accelerate it.
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There is a risk though... greater schisms within the Democrats. Hard left vs the moderate left. This is a problem if you are a Democrat.
The Republicans & Trump on the other hand are simply laughing.
A lot of solar and wind production firms operate in upstate NY, upstate PA, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, and all of those get almost all of their energy from renewables already, so it's already happening.
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We're already transitioning beyond fossil fuels just fine. It can't be stopped by Trump and it doesn't need the help of the Dems. Fossil fuels are used largely where they're still economical. They'll change over when it makes sense from a holistic perspective not because of fearmongering and excessive legislative bullying. Whatever globull warming happens is going to happen. Most likely life will go on pretty much as badly or as well as it would anyway. If you want to 'help', concentrate on effective positive approaches like contributing either directly through being a scientists/entrepeneaur etc or indirectly by doing things such as being a good citizen generating economic activity rather than approaches that have repeatedly proven to be ineffective such as supporting oppressive regulations, or centralizing government power in the hands of globalists, or spewing more carbon screaming impotently at 'denialists' in pointless thousand page internet threads.
The right has moved significantly to the left.
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You tax carbon and redistribute it revenue neutral equally across the population.
Anyone using more than the average loses out, anyone using less wins.
Since the very rich use resources orders of magnitude more than the median the majority of people win from a carbon tax.
Rather than crushing the middle class, you are giving them the option to save money by using less carbon, and then get that money and more back to do something else.
So if gas becomes $10/gallon ($7extra/gallon) the median person can choose to not drive, and with the $8/gallon they get (since they're getting the taxes back at average use not median use) can be used to pay for the gas, or they can choose to carpool, and save extra and get the same amount.
The people that would most likely feel a negative from a plan like this would be the upper middle class, as they don't have unlimited money, but use more than the average amount of resources.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
If we could convince billionaires that there is a way they can live forever.
Then the funding will magically appear.
I don't think you understand semiconductors. Creating them requires massive chemical waste. Recycling also requires massive chemical waste. A single factory can poison an entire area for decades (see China).
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This could be a revolutionary leap forward in several technologies, job creation and American infrastructure.
It is important to get the ordering correct. It is better to develop the needed technology, and then build the infrastructure based on it.
It would be better to spend $50B on R&D rather than $500B on deployment. Once the tech is good enough, no government deployment spending is needed, because profit-seeking capitalists will do it for us.
Like my grandpa used to say: If you have two hours to chop down a tree*, spend the first hour sharpening your ax.
Disclaimer: *I am not advocating the destruction of trees.
How many people is Bill Gates employing? Divide the cost of his plane ticket across all employment Microsoft creates (and thanks to Windows this is a LOT bigger than Microsoft)
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So far as I'm concerned, we clearly and objectively need to stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible, and try our damnedest to halt and reverse the progress of global climate change that our species' civilization is responsible for.
However: The rank-and-file citizen of this or pretty much any other country is not far-seeing enough, either geographically or chronologically, to grasp how important all of this is, and how what we do about all this today, while inconvenient and even painful, is necessary to ensure that not only future generations of our own species have a planet to live on that's hospitable to them, but that all life on our world has a hospitable environment to live in. This is not even counting the Dominionist types, who see no need or reason to try to preserve the Earth, or the greedy types who just plain don't give a damn about anything other than lining their own pockets and living large while they can, and screw 'future generations'. The above are, and always have been, the majority of the roadblock on the path to cleaning up the mess our species has made. What's worse, those who, for whatever reasons, speak against any sort of changes intended to help stop global climate change, politicize the issue to people who might listen to reason ('fake news' and 'alternative facts') causing them to turn away from the science and logic and reason. What has to happen is hearts and minds have to be changed where possible, and the greedy and the religious zealots have to be silenced, or at least discredited, at the same time. Otherwise nothing is going to happen, and Grand Plans like this one will go nowhere. Even if Democrats gain control of the Senate as well as the House, and we have a Democrat in the Whitehouse again, the GOP and all who support them will do everything they can to stop and dismantle it. Sooner or later Republicans get control again, and as we see in the last two years of the current Administration, they'll systematically dismantle and destroy anything that might get done. Bottom line: We need to get our collective heads out of our collective asses, stop politicizing everything, and agree that this is the only logical, rational way forward, and get it done, once and for all. We have little time left to do anything; it has to start now.
Actually, converting military bases to renewable energy is a great way to build resiliency from attack
Cool. I can't wait to see what VT mortars can do to the solar panels at an Afghan FOB.
When a barista tries to be a lawmaker, this is what you get. Every single bullshit talking point crammed into one idiotic bill. There's no "wage gap". There's no such thing as "healthy food". There is "healthful food", but not "healthy". Trump is already creating "millions of jobs" and "stopping the transfer of jobs overseas", and "enacting border protections", and there is no way to "provide all people of the United States with [...] housing".
bills like this are specifically to soak up (there's a pun there somewhere) folks put out of work in coal and oil.
Natural gas is pretty much eating those sectors alive. Yeah, we need oil to move cars & planes, but we're not using it for electricity anymore. Same for coal. And electric cars are getting damn good. They're still expensive, but cars are rapidly getting too expensive anyway...
The green new deal is how the Democrats plan to respond to the GOP's "Clean Coal" nonsense where they promise the coal minors their jobs back. The GOP is lying, but the minors will vote GOP because a promise is still better than Hilary's policy of "Fuck you, go back to college, and no, I won't pay for your tuition".
TL;DR; put out of work folks to work building wind and solar plants. Kill two birds with one stone.
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it's been around for ages. It's also, if the 97% of climate scientists are to be believed, necessary if we're not going to have mass disasters, drought and food shortages in the next 20 years. The oil companies knew about this since the 70s. Seriously, google it. Instead of fixing it so we had renewables (which would devalue the resource they own) they spent billions burying it.
AOC isn't a dingbat. She's young, and occasionally makes mistakes, but at her core she knows what's going on and what we need to do about it. And as for ideas penned by a 12 year old, dude, look at Bush Jr. Two fucking terms. Look at how Clinton addressed towns. Look at what happened to Obama every time he talked to the electorate like an adult. Remember "You didn't build it?". That was a)not exactly what he said and b) true. Almost cost him the election as folks went nuts because they didn't understand the difference between "You didn't build the roads you use to get to your little business" and "You never did anything worthwhile in your whole live you god damned loser"...
You can't talk to the electorate as a whole as if they're intelligent. What's the old line? A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky animals.
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Maybe we should balance the budget first and fix the wasteful spending first
Speaking of wasteful spending: America spends $200B annually on oil imports, mostly from countries that are hostile to our interests. Europe (which would also benefit from any tech developed) spends even more on oil, and buys a lot of gas from Russia. America spends about $80B keeping Middle East shipping lanes open and secure.
Overall, Americans spend about $1.5T on energy, about 7% of our economy. If we could produce that energy more efficiently, that money could be spent on other things ... such as balancing the budget.
I don't agree with AOC on much, but investing in developing better green tech is a no-brainer. We need better panels, smarter grids, and (most importantly) better/cheaper batteries (storage is key).
What outlay? There's no appropriations in this bill.
Dubya never had an annual deficit over a half-trillion dollars, Obama rarely had an annual deficit less than one trillion dollars.
So the ten-year 'cost' of Trump's tax cuts is $1TN, so what? That's $100BN/yr, and it stimulated the economy. Obama pushed through a one year, one trillion dollar stimulus package of 'shovel-ready' and 'green energy' jobs that barely moved the economic needle.
Ken
I think she's actually got a degree in Economics, but for what planet, I haven't the foggiest.
Bill Gates won’t be affected. But the least well off will be.
Ask France how that is working out for them. People won’t put up with that shit. We didn’t wind up with Trump because people found him charming.
Yeah, and obongo was a "constitutional scholar," whatever that means.
One problem with this bill is that it wants the government to run the transition. This is a non-starter for those on the right who will note how often the government has failed to add value. As just one example, note the debt problems in Greece basically because a too-large percentage of workers were employed by the government and the government took on too much debt. Government, by definition, does not contribute to GNP. It's administrative overhead. Yet this bill is supposedly promising a large number of jobs being created. A government bill can really only create government jobs
The transition to vastly reduced emissions should instead be made by industry, with government incentives. The government should make it financially beneficial for energy companies to figure out how to supply green energy, even at night. Energy companies will make it happen if it helps them survive. Something like a tax credit for a megaton or gigaton of CO2 emissions removed. And government should not specify things like it can't be nuclear. Nuclear should definitely be an option if the energy producers can make it economically viable.
A combination of carrot (tax credits for CO2 not generated) and stick (fines for generating CO2) may be necessary to goad private industry into making the necessary changes.
See, here's the problem: The purpose of legislation is to make change. If that change is to happen, the legislation must pass votes. To get enough votes, you need to either dominate the House, Senate, and have the presidency in lock-down, OR you have to make friends with your political opponents.
The Democrats control one of the two legislative houses. They do not control the White House. If they want to pass anything, they need to speak the language of the conservatives.
But instead, they let Ocasio-Cortez (who is already a well-known and tainted name on the right) put forth this bill. There is SO MUCH concentrated liberalism in this bill, that I have zero expectation of it making any significant change.
Just look at what the preamble references (because this is what the right will fixate on):
- the cause of climate change (a vast portion of the right disagrees with human-caused climate change)
- wage stagnation (the right is full of corporatists and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires")
- bargaining power of workers (the right hates unions!)
- resources for public sector workers (the right believes there should be fewer public sector workers!)
- 1%ers (who do you think donate the most to the Republican party...)
- the racial wealth divide (they prejudice the right as being racist and assume that bringing up the racial wealth divide will get them to side with the plan?)
- the gender earnings gap (the right wants to control female bodies!! Why do you think they care about a gender earnings gap!?)
- And here's the doozy: "Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘systemic injustices’’) by disproportionately affecting indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’)"
Everyone associated with this bill could have saved themselves A LOT of time by just writing "Allhu akbar, let's stop using oil tomorrow," because it would have gotten the exact same response on the right.
And then we don't win. Nobody wins. Nobody gains anything. Nothing changes.
Unless that was the goal. Maybe the Democrats don't actually want the goals of this bill to come to fruition. Maybe they just want to use Ocasio-Cortez as a token idealist that young liberals can look up to as a revolutionary. "If the Democrats have Ocasio-Cortez, then I want to support the Democrats!" And Ocasio-Cortez can take the heat. And all the more moderate Democrats can say, "Look, we're not nutso like crazy-eyes over there. Here's the more reasonable proposal."
Dubya never had an annual deficit over a half-trillion dollars, Obama rarely had an annual deficit less than one trillion dollars.
Well, Obama had to bail out the banks that Dubya let dump on the economy.
So the ten-year 'cost' of Trump's tax cuts is $1TN, so what? That's $100BN/yr, and it stimulated the economy.
Did it? Corporations are back to laying of workers again and any "stimulation" of the economy is over. Tax cuts, however, are still in effect, just snowballing the debt.
Thank you for demonstrating the worthlessness of an economics degree from Boston University.
I'm a libertarian (small "l") and you sound like you haven't received your U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of a fucking ass-kicking.
There's no point in crippling the United States' economy when India and Asia are going to make CC happen anyway (seriously, go read BP's energy outlook 2018 for different scenarios of various levels of CO2 reduction). If going from 50% renewable to 100% renewable costs an extra $10 trillion (made that number up), maybe that money is better spent getting other parts of the world off of coal.
I don't want to hate on the GND but this is really poorly thought out, and reads like it was written by people that have no serious understanding of the actual issues.
She gave her instructors head with that horse mouth of hers.
Wrong. There aren't processed jet fuel supplies being made at every base, nor bunker fuel, etc.
Bases were not originally built to export energy, but to store it for redistribution. One of the reasons the military is going to renewables is modern combat is becoming fairly electric-based, and it's hard enough getting supplies in for the fossil fuel based stuff, but many drones and most infantry and other units draw a lot of power.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
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Something must be done.
This is something
Therefore, it must be done!
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
Panels move. Supply dumps also blow up, panels tend not to explode as much. You're better off with a frag round on panels.
(caveat: I used to work as combat field engineer support for infantry mortar and machine gun/LAR squads)
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The parent said military bases, not FOB's.
Again, it's a lot easier to use explosive rounds of any type on a fuel storage than it is on either solar or wind infrastructure.
Please come back when you actually know something.
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Even if the numbers support your claims (which I personally doubt) there are considerably more costs and problems that would need solving. For example, you need to move over a huge workforce from fossil fuel industries to renewable and this retraining is not going to be free and is going to cause social problems all over the place as workers relocate and need new houses, roads etc to support them. Then you have to figure out how you are going to produce plastics and all the other non-fuel uses we have for fossil fuels which currently piggy-back off the large fuel-based infrastructure.
All of these problems are solvable but they are by no means easy. While it is often tempting to think that there are easy solutions to society's problems that is rarely the case and trying to implement simplistic solutions to complex problems never works well: sadly today you only have to look at the UK or US to see excellent examples of that.
Its easy to say "we want everyone to have their personal star-ship by 2030", but if you don't have a plan to get there you just look foolish when you fail.
If there is a general plan, then they should show it. At what rate does solar and wind production need to be ramped up. That tells you about how many factories to build, how many workers etc. Large projects know how to do this.
If it needs new technology then say that: "we've calculated that we can ramp up solar and wind quickly enough but will need *new technology* for energy storage". That tells people what is missing and where to put R&D.
Otherwise, why 10 years? Why not 5, or 1, or tomorrow? What is the argument that 10 years is the right time scale. To me it seems absurdly short - they sent 10 years building a single railway overpass near my house, and 30 rebuilding a single damaged bridge. How can anyone imagine a huge change in US infrastructure in 10 years?
If there is a plan, then lets see it. If not, they are just discrediting legitimate programs to reduce CO2 emissions .
Those are the key words here. This is not a bill as such, it is a collection of ideas. Personally I would be highly skeptical of these kinds of grandiose plans. Here are a few choice quotes:
“Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” - Every building. In the entire United States. All of them. The quote mentions "replace" so I presume they are willing to demolish buildings that don't meet the standard.
“Build out high speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary” - Maybe we should check in with our friends in California and see how the rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles is coming along: https://www.latimes.com/local/...
At last count the cost has ballooned from the original $6B to $10.6B - almost double.
Keep in mind this is 119 miles of train line, not the 10's of thousands of miles of train line we would need to make air travel "unnecessary". How are you going to get to Hawaii? Or New York to London? Build a train line across the ocean?
Don't trains also pollute? Or maybe Elon Musk going to build solar trains and solve all of that for us.
Look, I'm all for a cleaner environment but this woman is a complete wingnut.
The real question, of course, is how much will this boondoggle actually cost to which Ocasio-Cortez admits, “even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.”. In other words, astronomical not to mention completely impractical.
All is not lost though. I hear that Venezuela is having some trouble and could use a helping hand.
Corporations are back to laying of workers again
Talk about a workplace benefit! I gotta move to the US ...
Looks like I pissed a bunch of dingbat lovers off. Oh well, her supporters tend to be just as dumb as she is.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
That hypothetical eventual is in a very distant future, because for now there not even a recycling program for these panels. Plus, manufacturing is far, far from being sustainable and environmentally friendly. For foreseeable future solar panels is just outsourcing pollution to China. Not a bad idea, but it is far from net zero.
Actually, converting military bases to renewable energy is a great way to build resiliency from attack
No, it doesn't. I heard such from an Army general.
The Army wants diesel generators for power because those they can put in an underground bunker to protect from attack. They might use solar panels on some tents or something but that's a last ditch, all else lost, kind of power. The US Navy is working on making jet fuel from nuclear power, using seawater as the raw material. Sounds like they've been quite successful too. Get that working on a ship at sea and it can work along any coast, or river bank, as well. Nuclear power is nice too because we've proven it can work without being out in the open, in fact they work quite well under several hundred feet of water and sealed inside a steel armored vessel.
The military might be playing around a bit with solar power but wind power is not even on the table. They tried wind power and they found the spinning blades messed with the radar they need to track threats. Solar power needs to be out in the open and takes a lot of man power to protect and maintain for the little energy they produce. This brings me back to this...
and this reduces the actual operating cost of the military at the same time.
Nope. Solar panels took so much man power that existing projects were abandoned. Oh, and the panels reflected sunlight into the eyes of aircraft pilots, can't have that near any base.
While in the Army I recall the trucks on base ran some mix of petro-diesel and bio-diesel. That's fine when there is a supply line but no base is going to be growing their own soybeans to make that fuel.
There are a number of mil programs in action doing just this. Just accelerate it.
With the exception of the Navy program to make jet fuel from nuclear power these programs were imposed on the DoD from above. The military isn't all that interested in bio-diesel or windmills. They might have some interest in small scale solar but that's again a last ditch kind of power for being small and quiet for long periods, not to power a base.
The military is quite vocal on what they want but few seem to listen. They want nuclear powered ships, such as icebreakers and cruisers, but Congress won't fund them. They want nuclear power on bases, but again Congress is not listening. What Congress wants is, apparently, a navy that is powered by sails and an army on horseback.
The US Navy used to have nuclear powered cruisers before but they were retired in the 1990s. This is not something new the Navy is asking for, just restoring capability that was lost decades ago. Nuclear powered icebreakers aren't a new idea either, the Russians have been building them since 1975.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The top 1% have 50% of the wealth. Why would you think they should pay less than 50% of the taxes? To ever get us back to even a remotely reasonable wealth distribution, the 1% have to own far less than 50% of the wealth. We don't have many ways to remove a disgusting excess of money from a tiny percent of the population other than taxes.
What is your solution to fix this community and culture-destroying wealth inequality that doesn't involve taxing the hell out of the 1%?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Any common sense reading of net zero greenhouse gasses includes manufacturing though, why would you assume it doesn't?
If you look at lifetime emissions (manufacturing, shipping from China) of solar panels, then subtract lifetime energy produced you end up with a negative number for anywhere but Arizona and similar places. So how are you suppose to get to 100% renewable and net-zero? At best you could probably do single-digit % solar and have net zero after major breakthroughs in recycling, manufacturing, mining, refining, transportation if you run carbon capture from some of that produced energy.
here's no logical reason we cannot get to 100% renewable energy
Sure there is, material demands.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
For the same energy output nuclear takes far less materials than wind, hydro, geothermal, and especially solar. There is not enough mining in the world to meet the kind of material needs to switch to 100% renewable energy. We aren't going to get there any time soon either as we are talking not about a doubling or tripling of output but orders of magnitude difference. Nuclear takes no more materials than coal for the same energy. We can switch to nuclear without any kind of "green deal", we only need a government willing to issue licenses for their construction and put an end to the subsidies on wind and solar that drive them out of the market.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The Navy operates the world's largest solar farm just for this purpose.
I disagree.
That's fine if you disagree with generals and admirals but I'm going to agree with the men and women with stars on their shoulders. I'm guessing that they know better than you or I.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
...then Obama nearly doubled the debt, and Trump is doing his best to beat that record. The two parties are just divorced parents competing to spoil their children during visitation rights.
You would not be correct, but that's your opinion.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I started as one.
But do go on and tell me how the world works.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The Navy operates the world's largest solar farm just for this purpose.
Don't confuse them with facts. They might realize most naval bases use solar and wind for desal ops, and to run the bases, and the world has changed since the 1990s their simulation games are based on.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sounds like you may have done too many lines of Obama kool aid in powered form. Getting a politician on the record saying no is just as important as getting them to vote yes. So you can take that stance and end their political careers in the next election. And you only know how many votes you have when you actually hold the vote - which is why Obama worked so hard to kill the public option before it ever came up for a vote.
Besides, how do you think any change or policy that required a mass movement happened? Do you think suffragists or civil rights activists just held their powder dry until they came up with 60 votes, or whatever the excuse was of the day?
The country already supports lefty ideas, conservatives included. A majority of Republicans are onboard Medicare for All, just as a majority of Republicans were for DADT repeal before the previous homophobe-in-chief "evolved" on the subject. Republicans don't want coal, they want jobs. Which is why this is the easiest sell in the world:
"We're going to bring you a motherfucking fuckton of jobs. Well-paying jobs manufacturing wind and solar. Jobs to every county, hamlet, parish, town and city to install them. Jobs for decades to replace coal and nuclear. Jobs that won't require a degree and ten years experience. So many jobs it will make the post-WWII economic boom look like a recession. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs, motherfucker, do you want them?"
And then you use that club and end the career of anyone who doesn't support it 110%.
Think about what you're saying for a moment. The only source of energy on the entire Earth that is not ultimately from sunlight is nuclear. While I'm in favour of more nuclear power, for the moment, let's cut it from the conversation, we can come back to it.
When you say solar can only cover 2% with complete efficiency over the entire US, you're saying that every year you have to use 50 years worth of energy. But then take down the efficiency and covering the entire US etc. and it's much more than that. And the stored energy in the form of fossil fuels, wind, and water potential energy, etc., is being stored at far, far, far less efficiency. I think I'm being super generous in suggesting that 0.1% efficiency is there. Meaning you actually need to consume 50000 years of US history to get 1 year of fuel.
This is *clearly* unsustainable along foreseeable timelines. It's one thing to argue that solar tech is impractical for logistical reasons etc., but if you can't do it with magicalb 100% efficiency and full coverage, then you have pre-admitted to being doomed.
Well, except for nuclear. But I have bad news, the Sun is emitting a fucktonne more nuclear energy at the Earth than the Earth can produce. The advantage to nuclear on Earth is you can produce that in a small, contained area. But if you have magical 100% efficiency solar panels and can cover an entire country, that's not an advantage anymore.
All this is to say, your statement doesn't make any sense on its own face. If you want to check out the wikipedia article, it's plain to see that the worldwide solar energy is tens to hundreds of thousands of times more than energy use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Now, you did specify the US, not the whole world. The US land area is 2% of the world's surface area (not land surface area, total area), and 18% of total energy consumption. So in essence, you can multiple the problem by 9 for just the US.
TL;DR:
I ran the numbers. It comes to somewhere between the US having ten thousand and a hundred thousands times enough sunlight even with no move toward increased efficiency, and that's already including the demand of charging electric vehicles because it already accounts for gasoline energy in cars. Which is good because, as is obvious, we can't capture all of it, we need some to grow food, etc..
Capitalism and private industry will never work to replace coal and nuclear with wind and solar en mass. It's a non-starter. The only entity that can and will do such a thing is government. And those on the right will take government-funded jobs manufacturing and installing renewables faster than Ayn Rand started using Medicare as soon as she was eligible.
That's the right wing propaganda. The reality is that Greece was sold a bill of goods by Goldman Sachs, it's rich citizens don't like paying taxes, and the country has no control over its currency.
Which will never, ever, ever, ever, ever happen. Hippies, NIMBY's and regulations aren't why nuclear power plants aren't being built. It's because that method of heating water is obscenely costly, risky, and thus impossible to justify.
No. there will still be planes and meat for the elite. Just not you, peasant.
So, you're going to throw stones at public spending, while in the same breath push for nuclear power? Wouldn't exist without hundreds of billions in taxpayer support?
The US imperial budget is twice the official number. Lots of items that are purely military in nature aren't counted as part of the military budget, like the Department of Energy maintaining America's arsenal of nuclear weapons.
$750 billion a year buys a lot of wind and solar. And as the jobs created would result in an economic boom (and thus more and higher tax receipts) a GND would eventually pay for much of itself.
It's billion year old dead dinosaurs.
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Yeah, that's why you don't want right-wing presidents like Obama, who made the Bush Tax cuts permanent while bailing out the banks. That's what you were going for, right?
No income tax cut as ever created a single job. Ever. If a company thinks they will make more money by hiring more workers, they will do so. If they don't, they don't. Income taxes after the fact are irrelevant to that equation.
Fixed. The real reason the US has been supporting a coup in Venezuela is the government trading oil in Euros rather than in dollars. It's also the reason Qaddafi was overthrown, as well as Saddam. Overthrowing Iran and Russia are works in progress.
What you describe is socialism. That never ended well for anyone. Socialism only works until you run out of other people's money.
It boggles the mind when people complain about the rich people being so greedy and then saying to correct this we need to take their money, through taxes, and give it to "other people". Well "other people" just means themselves, always. So, who's "greedy" here? I'm thinking it's the people that want to raise taxes on others.
If you want the government to have your money that bad then sign a check and mail it to them. I'm quite certain that they will cash it. If you want the government to have more of my money then I have two words for you, and they aren't "happy birthday". Spending other people's money to fund your idea of a utopia will end like all the other tyrants dreams of imposing their utopia on others, with poverty and suffering.
If you were as smart as you claim to be then why are you posting on Slashdot? Go make it happen in the private sector, you don't need government to make it happen, just lead the way and others will follow. If you need the force of government to create utopia then this is, by definition, dystopian.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Those major breakthroughs are where the green new deal comes in. It effectively gives money to people doing fine (the type of people that can do that research are already doing well).
I think (instinctually) a 20% reduction may be achievable. A few percent (absolute) improvement in solar could have big paybacks (since it's already break even you say, any absolute percent improvement is 2x in payback, and then a multiplier for absolute to relative improvement).
I'm skeptical at the current prices that it is really break even though. Is energy really so much cheaper in China that solar can have a payback but actually cause more CO2?
Also, a quick fix with payback would be to only buy from places that use natural gas for a primary fossil fuel (like the US).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
besides a few gaffs of the sort politicians, especially new ones, are wont to do? Or do you just not like her for some reason, because that's the vibe I get from unsubstantiated insults.
I mean, you could at least go google some of the right wing talking points already prepared for you and copypasta them here.
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I asked this elsewhere in the thread, but like I said, gaffs are gaffs. People make them. Hers are magnified by a powerful right wing press desperate to shut down talks of higher taxes on the wealthy (their bosses) and higher wages for workers (their bosses employees).
You should be more suspicious of the constant bad press. I watched a CNN anchor spend 15 minutes with her fishing for negative soundbites. You shoulda seen the look of frustration on his face when she was too smart to give him one. She knows what she's doing and she knows how the game is played. She's not 100%, but unless the right wing can find something that sticks hard she's going to usher in the next New Deal.
And we _need_ a New New Deal. I don't know about you but inflation is higher than any pay raise I've seen in my lifetime. I've got a few promotions that just barely kept my head above water but I'm honest enough to admit I'm probably at the apex of my career. And those promotions mighta brought a bit of cash for me but they brought a _ton_ of cash for my company. Meanwhile I've got unreliable access to healthcare for my family and I'm paying $16k/yr in tuition for a bloody public University for my kid. That's because we cut funding to schools to cut taxes, btw. Google "538 tuition" and read their (well researched) article on the subject.
The rich are fighting a class war and the working class isn't just losing, they're not even bothering to fight. AOC is fighting, so you've had a multi-billion dollar engine dog pile not just on her but on _you_ to get you to turn against her. You're being manipulated by propaganda my friend. Ask yourself, are you better off than you were 4 years ago? 8? 10? Statistically the answer is no. Even if you are, the other's reading this are not.
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I'll wait. Let's hear it.
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You would not be correct, but that's your opinion.
I think this paper supports your argument however it appears that some government web sites ( energy.gov) are still shutdown. You may find this article interesting.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Gee, I dunno... Maybe because someone whose annual income is 50 million can much better afford to pay 50% in taxes than someone who makes 50 thousand?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The top 1% earn 20% of the wealth and pay 40% of the taxes.
Cite:
https://taxfoundation.org/summ...
They already pay double their "fair share". The people in the top 5% to 10% pay their "fair share" being about 10% of the wages earned and taxes paid, these are people that earn between about $130,000 to $190,000 per year.
The bottom 90% are enjoying the returns on other people's money in government services.
Based on the whole of the world anyone in the USA is likely in the top 1% of wage earners. If any American wants to complain about the top 1% of the wealthy then look in a mirror while you scream. If you have a computer to see this internet forum then you are most very likely in the global 1%.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The Constitution allows for funding the Army or the Navy - but says nothing about an Air Force, the FBI, or the ATF. But no Randian or "strict constitutionalist" ever complains about that. Ever. It's almost like you're partisan hacks looking for excuses to rag on things you don't like, and aren't arguing on any kind of principle.
How do you hold those massively contradictory positions without snapping your spine in six different places? Nuclear energy wouldn't even exist as a concept without massive government investment. It would never have existed in practice without hundreds of billions in taxpayer backing. Backing that extends to dealing with the waste for millennia.
Capitalists would happily see the whole world burn and every last human die if it meant continued quarterly profits. You talk about defense but don't think the government should do anything to defend people from catastrophic climate change.
Profit-seeking capitalists would happily see the world burn and everyone die for the sake of quarterly dividends.
Agreed.
It's one of the many reasons humanity would have been better off under centuries of communism than ever experimenting with capitalism.
I'm not so sure. Purely from a climate perspective, perhaps, since it would've greatly limited the scale of ecologically rapacious behavior, but by any other measure communism could be just as bad or even worse. Communism is no better at long-term or environmentalist thinking - the USSR was the original coal-roller, praising factory pollution as a sign of industrial might. Have you seen the level of inequality *in* North Korea? It's just as horrific as what capitalism has produced, with 0.01%er teenagers regularly buying cups of coffee that cost more than an average worker could make in a month. Most communist economies never produced such incredible levels of inequality but NK has shown that it's possible.
In short, I think the only guaranteed benefit of mankind being communist rather than capitalist would be reducing damage to the Earth...although at the cost of widely increased human suffering. Strictly speaking the choice of economic system isn't the problem so much as a reluctance to direct those economic systems toward pro-average-human long-term goals. Instead communism was allowed to settle into a passive income source for the politburo's cushy lifestyle without much regard for the common worker, and capitalism has been allowed to run free, which is basically as close as you can get to opening a portal to hell.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But on the whole, it's a bunch of pie-in-the-sky shit with no ACTUAL plans for how to implement it or where the money for all this is coming from (hint: That means the taxpayer is going to likely be DIRECTLY boned for it, as opposed to rape-via-taxes).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
https://medium.com/jvnto/why-d...
Can someone explain that to me? **unwilling** to work -- did I read that correctly?
Eh? When the USSR was industrializing, it's not as if everyone knew of the dangers of climate change and CO2 at the time. It's not like the apologia for American slave owners in the 19th century "it was just a sign of the times" when the rest of the western world had already banned the practice. Coal and hydro were the only games in town until nuclear came around. As for NK keep in mind that 99% of what is heard about the country is western propaganda, or the result of western actions - like sanctions, which strengthen regimes while impoverishing people.
In any case, if the USSR hadn't fallen, it's doubtful that its resource consumption would be 30 times that of developing countries the way it is for the United States. Modern communist countries like Vietnam and Cuba would seem to testify to that.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 then we need nuclear power, as it has a lower carbon footprint than wind, solar, or geothermal.
Cite: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
You've rolled this out again. First the "blog" misrepresents the paper it is based on which is originally about human health and not a comparison of carbon sources from energy systems.
Also the paper *itself* neglects to take into account the human health implications from mine tailings and radon released from mining that finds its way into the water table.
The only way the carbon claim for nuclear can be made is when uranium mining is done with in-situ acid leach mining, which happens to be illegal in teh US and Russia.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Taxes keep you from being raped for real. Not all medicine tastes good and yes some of it barely works if at all. That does not make it all bad.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What you will also find there is that nuclear costs less in materials consumed,
Well it would seem that investors disagree. The AP1000 total concrete usage was lowered to make the reactor more affordable. The EPR reactor is a much better designed reactor in terms of safety and longevity, including being resistance to missile attacks. Your assertion is false.
and lives lost, than anything else available to us.
Less than coal, probably. Not less than solar or wind when people use the correct safety equipment so they don't fall off roofs.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nuclear is the best choice we have for the future.
Well it's the future now and in 60 or so years Nuclear power has been one failure after another.
Maybe some new technology will come along to change that
Yes, Solar PV, Solar thermal, wind, geothermal, wave power have all come along in the meantime and changed that. All without the gererous subsidies that nuclear power gets in SEC 600 of the 2005 US energy policy act.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
but until then this "green new deal" is a bunch of nonsense from an ignorant bartender that happened to get elected to office.
They must be getting to you if you need to ad hom like that.
People tell me that "the science is settled". I agree, science tells us that without nuclear power we can look forward to poverty.
OK, where is it then? Show me the science that makes that ridiculous assertion.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There was an interesting idea of bubbling CO2 from a power plant through algea pits to make bio fuel for example, but that was ages ago and it's not happening, so I doubt it meets expectations.
Basically, it couldn't scale up enough. Especially when compared to the effort of just planting trees to capture the same amount of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Any common sense reading of net zero greenhouse gasses includes manufacturing though, why would you assume it doesn't?
Because it's easier to attack that way.
I'm getting real tired of having to say this on a bloody science forum, but here we go again:
This is what AOC & Bernie are: Democratic Socialists.
I know, they are calling for national socialism for the workers. There's been many such political parties and they never seem to end well for millions of people. If you think that a democratic socialist government is such a nice government to have then why stay in the USA? I like it here much as it is now, and there aren't many places like it left. Don't ruin this "terrible" place for me, go where it suits you.
If America is such a terrible place then we need a wall on our borders. We don't want people wandering in and exposing themselves to this. Keep them out, for their own benefit. In fact, leave while you still can. I hear that there's a terrible man in government determined to see our borders walled up. Go, you might not have much time. Save yourself from this terrible government. Go, leave me behind, I'll hold off the thugs that might keep you here so you can escape. I will gladly sacrifice myself to spare you from this terrible nation.
Please, go quickly. I BEG YOU!!
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
maybe you are. Congrats. Wages are down 1.3%. That's a fact, google it.
And "Stop fighting and shit down and shut up" is easy for you to say if you're one of the very few Americans in good shape. The rest of us who never recovered after 2008 and are bracing for the next (utterly pointless) recession would like very much for somebody to fight for us instead of rolling over at the first sign of adversity.
I couldn't care less if Trump loses to another right wing, Clinton Style Democrat. What the actual fuck is the point of electing a Democrat who's going to do the exact same things Trump is going to do but say nice things while he/she does them? I want positive change (note: _positive_ change, not just change for it's own sake, which usually translates into more wars and tax cuts for billionaires).
If the Dems want to win _meaningful_ victories she's the future of the party. But hey, you got yours, fuck me, right?
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They use the numbers given by the wind and solar advocates. The wind and solar industries are using numbers that don't add up to sell themselves. It only takes a bit of math to see this. It's science. If you deny the science, from the wind and solar industries themselves, then I'd like to see your "science" explain a future without nuclear power and without poverty.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You mistake tautology for logic and Blogspot for a source.
Cutting air traffic would mean no engineering design for new aircraft, no manufacturing for those durable goods, no mechanics, no ground crew, no aircrews, no fuel transport, no air traffic control, no airports generating jobs in food service, maintenance, and general hospitality
Uh...."Cut" does not mean "completely eliminate". But it is a lovely strawman. I like what you did with the hat.
Wish I had mod points. Economics is a captured degree; they largely just protect the status quo. Really, it's a good sounding degree for somebody who can't get a Statistics degree... like an Engineer who falls back to being an Architect.
Some actually are good at it and can stand out more in the fall back career path; most are there for a reason. Economics as far as my understanding of the degree is half statistics, is it not? That is what I was told.
If that is the case, her statistics training should be quite useful in policy making since all those lawyers seem to have zero grasp of numbers. We should get some accountants elected too... Hell, we need STEM! not law degrees!
People involved in reality and truth as a background instead of people trained to LIE for their client's benefit... and their client is rarely the voters.
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Unfortunately, that nuclear winter would be fairly brief. Also, an enormous amount of CO2 would be released from incinerating so much carbon. Since forests will have been part of that incinerating, and also harmed by that nuclear winter, you'd probably end up with a worse greenhouse effect for at least several decades.
Eventually you'd reduce atmospheric CO2, but that's also the case with a GND program.
You want to know what could fund this completely? Not allowing fossil fuel to externalize the cost of cleaning the mess up.
Do you know who benefits from 'externalized cost' with fossil fuel? We all do. In other words, none of us do. In other words, it would just fucking disrupt the economy so bad that the thug leftists with placards could probably take over the country during the turmoil.
In other words, it's not gonna happen that way.
So you message is that even when somebody pulls Bush out of mothballs for an argument, Obama shall never be mentioned.
Probably a wise tactic on your part, because your side really shouldn't bring Obama up when it comes to economic matters.
Less than coal, probably. Not less than solar or wind when people use the correct safety equipment so they don't fall off roofs.
Then you have a citation for this? Sure, anything can be safer if people use correct safety equipment. I could also say that Chernobyl would not have been more than a short lived power outage if people used the correct safety equipment.
Here's the deal though, nuclear fission has a far higher safety record than any other energy source we have today. That includes the time vodka addled soviet bureaucrats decided it would be a good idea to bypass the safety systems to burn off some xenon that was poisoning the reactor core.
Again, prove solar and wind are safer than nuclear. I tried to find a better source for the numbers but they all point back to the same studies where nuclear beats them all. Everything else was speculation on what MIGHT happen. Well, lots of things might happen. A nuclear reactor might melt down. It might experience an earthquake. There might be a terrorist attack. Monkeys might fly out of my ass. Deaths from nuclear power don't happen all that often though, and when the safety systems are in place then it happens far less often.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No income tax cut as ever created a single job. Ever.
Are you a complete idiot, or do 'high taxes' give you a boner or something?
When income taxes are cut, people have more to spend, so they spend it on things that grow the economy, which creates more jobs.
It's okay. Give them a few years to grow up.
Are you? Income taxes come after the fact. If you are a business owner and think you will make more money by hiring more workers, you will go ahead and do so, regardless of if the income tax rate is 0% or 91%. Because you'll be making more money than you are now. Idiot.
What you describe is socialism. That never ended well for anyone.
As long as you ignore every developed nation other than the US. It's amazing that something which can't possibly work is working very successfully in, say, all of Western Europe.
Well "other people" just means themselves, always
Nope. I would get nothing directly from any of these programs, nor a tax cut.
If you want the government to have more of my money then I have two words for you, and they aren't "happy birthday"
If you wish to live in our society yet don't want to pay the costs of that society, you're an asshole. Btw, adults aren't afraid to cuss.
Go make it happen in the private sector, you don't need government to make it happen
Unfortunately, folks who think like you currently run the private sector. Your incredibly short-sighted view of the world has resulted in the private sector not caring about anything beyond the next couple quarters. Since this is a program that would require decades to pay off, the private sector won't do it in order to keep servicing your incredibly short worldview.
Also, the private sector wouldn't want to do this in the places where we'd like to create these jobs. We want to create the jobs for this program in places with high unemployment. They have high unemployment because there's no particular reason to build new factories in these places. But we'd like to avoid the damage caused by these places falling further into disrepair, and that requires doing the work in the rust belt and former coal mining areas. As an added bonus to your selfish ass, the jobs would reduce the spending on law enforcement and medical care. I'd bring up the beneficial social effects, but you're far, far to self-centered to care about them.
In other words, private industry's incentives are currently fucked up by stupidity such as yours, and we need to do this in a particular way to start fixing the damage your ideology has caused.
You'll find plenty of other right-wingers on this site. You'll be right at home.
It most definitely is in comparison to the United States. And much of the Chinese pollution western exceptionalists like to whine about is used to produce consumer products for your dumb asses.
Any sort of Green, and any sort of _real_ conservative, is hard against nuclear power.
No true Scotsman would make such a claim.
How about some data instead of grade school debate tactics?
Congress needs to stay in their lane. They can't even be bothered to fund the Coast Guard, what makes you think they can fund any kind of energy policy? They might as well legislate the color of the sky, they can't tell people how they get their energy. Not in a nation where people can still vote. This plan will fail one way or another. The only way to make it work is to make wind and solar as cheap, reliable, plentiful, and convenient as natural gas, coal, oil, and nuclear power. They can't legislate that into being, it will take more than 50% + 1 votes to change the laws of physics and economics.
Scaremonger all you want on nuclear power, it's still far safer than anything we have. If you deny that then you deny science. You are debating with emotion, not logic. How unscientific of you. Go outside and play, let the adults talk.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Here's a couple more.
I asked you to show me the science. What you have shown me is numbers from a expert in information theory, not energy systems, everything I read within it are extreme cases of consumption.
The most glaring factor is that you are talking about an industry that has had no support and less than ten years to develop technology. Whereas Nuclear has had all the support it needs and more that it doesn't use and in 60 years the technology has barely made any progress.
I look forward to seeing how many more misrepresentations I can find in this.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yeah, and obongo was a "constitutional scholar," whatever that means.
These days "constitutional scholar" means someone that read it once. Sure would be nice if we had some "constitutional scholars" in Congress.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Nuclear in its current form is worthless even to the military.
Then why does the US Navy operate 100 nuclear reactors to power it's carriers and submarines?
Why is the US Navy funding continued research in nuclear power and still building more nuclear powered vessels?
Go read a book.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
None of these assholes actually want to enact legislation ... they just want to launch bills they can show to their contributors and say "see! We're moving forward on your request. It may not pass because of the intransigent 'other guys', but we're doing our part. Now about your contribution for the next election cycle ...."
I'm not picking on any particular party. There's enough greed, duplicity, deceit and divisiveness to go around.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
You are only repeating yourself, nothing you said refutes what I said. Prove to me that wind and solar are safer, with science, or you've lost this argument. You proved nothing. I at least gave something to work with, statistics that compare energy and deaths from nuclear fission power, wind, solar, and other energy sources. Deaths divided by energy produced shows nuclear power to have a long history of safety.
You claim we can make wind and solar safer with better safety practices. I agree. Then you must also agree that we can make nuclear safety with better safety practices, no? If you refute this then I refute your claims of wind and solar being able to be made safer and we are back where we started.
Can we make wind and solar safer? If yes then we can make nuclear safer. Since nuclear is already safer than wind and solar by an order of magnitude or more then wind and solar have a far higher hurdle than nuclear power.
Oh, and you want to bring up deaths from Chernobyl? That was 30+ years ago. How about we compare modern nuclear power to modern wind and solar power? Then let's compare safety. You won't though. You can't. There is no comparison. Nuclear power has a very high safety record and you cannot show otherwise. If you could then you would not be discussing the equivalent of Unsafe at Any Speed when talking about automobile safety in 2019. No one is going to build another RBMK. No one will build another GE BWR-3, or another B&W LLP either.
Bring me data, not speculation.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
People said the same thing about Paris, and Kyoto, and many other efforts. Yet here we are, countries making major, sustained efforts to do something about climate change.
This is how politics work. You build up support, get people discussing the issue and making proposals, pushing from different angles. A non-binding agreement acts as a foundation for binding ones, justification for changes to rules and future policies.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"That Dubya let". Yup, which is why the White House didn't to rein in subprime mortgages in 2004 and the Democrats didn't state that home ownership was to important to let that happen. Oh wait...
We are talking Afghanistan. The Panels will be fine. Just the metal in the mounting frames and all the wiring will disappear overnight to reappear a few weeks later as metallic artwork for sale at the base bazaar.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
You don't need to replace 100% of energy production. Start with not wasting energy as much!
until these two monsters of CO2 pollution do anything it wont make any sense to even try to decrease first world pollution.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There are some pretty glaring errors in that blog post.
For example, he claims that Nuclear creates CO2-free energy, which is obviously false. His own graph goes on to contradict the headline, but even that is very optimistic compared to the peer-reviewed IPCC study of lifetime CO2 emissions (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-ii.pdf) that puts it at up to 110 gCO2eq/kWh depending on the fuel source.
His numbers for the amount of raw materials that go into renewables are kinda crazy too, and unsourced. Again, the IPCC report has proper peer reviewed numbers, but just looking at the amount of steel and concrete he thinks go into solar makes it obvious how badly he fudged the numbers.
And, because of course, he uses the classic "deaths per kWh" misdirection at the end to ignore the vast cost of nuclear accidents.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Holy shit, dude! You had to post four replies? If I'm catching this kind of flak then I must be close to the target.
You're significantly overestimating your relevance.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I could also say that Chernobyl would not have been more than a short lived power outage if people used the correct safety equipment.
Or if they wern't trying to be good communists.
That includes the time vodka addled soviet bureaucrats decided it would be a good idea to bypass the safety systems to burn off some xenon that was poisoning the reactor core.
Do you taint everything with BS? Isn't the truth about the matter bad enough? They were running tests, they poisoned the reaction, changed shifts in the middle of the test to a crew with less experience. Same as the TEPCO board not bothering with safety upgrades. Both accidents prove nuclear can't be done safely because of human flaws from the control room all the way to the board.
Fortunately there are enough reasonable and sane people that can see what you are willfully ignorant to.
Again, prove solar and wind are safer than nuclear. I tried to find a better source for the numbers but they all point back to the same studies where nuclear beats them all.
No. There are politics to nuclear power structured into the law so you can have this argument. I get it, you see no place for solar, wind or geothermal so you believe we shouldn't even try and just do nuclear everything if everyone else wasn't so stupid. Even if we doubled current nuclear worldwide it would be 12% global electricity consumption, maybe, and impossible to fuel long term. Nuclear is simply a waste of resources. Awesome technology, ultimately pointless.
Every nuclear promise has come to naught, nuclear has already failed so instead of wasting our resources on something that provides no energy return it's time to try something different. You don't care what anyone else thinks when it comes to nuclear and I don't care what you think about renewable energy sources.
Everything else was speculation on what MIGHT happen. Well, lots of things might happen. A nuclear reactor might melt down.
Nuclear already has melted down.
Deaths from nuclear power don't happen all that often though, and when the safety systems are in place then it happens far less often.
IAEA has interdiction orders over all WHO publications about how many people actually died. That's why you get to say that. It doesn;t mean it's true, it doesn;t mean you are right all it means is you haven't read the IAEA charter to see how the propaganda is constructed.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You are dreaming. The reason the U.S. (read Trump) is supporting a coup in Venezuela is because of fears of hordes of more Latin Americans deciding they'd like a piece of the American Dream. Venezuela is destabilizing its neighborhood with refugees. That causes more refugees and the Administration to cower in their boots...the refugees aren't white, you see.
The reason for Iraq was merely because Bush had already done Afghanistan and they (dimly) thought Iraq would be just like Afghanistan...well it is if you ignore the oil, the tribes, the geo-position, that Arabs are not Afghanis, that Saddam's government was already being infiltrated by Islamists who really, really wanted to have a go at the U.S. to burnish their nutjob credentials, and a host of other things.
Qaddafi had to go because he was causing problems for Europe with refugees. Also, the promise of the West would have rang hollow if it allowed Qaddafi to slaughter his own people, which he had promised to do and was well on the way towards accomplishing. The problem was kicking that can over and no ability to replace it with anything reasonable. No sizable Arab country is governable except by a dictatorship because as soon as freedom raises its head, the religious nutjobs see their opportunity to grab control and praise Allah...a bit weird since by their own theology Allah is so other that he does not communicate directly. So they have a god who doesn't speak, does apparently nothing, yet they feel worshiping him is a good idea.
Your wet dreams about Iran and Russia I'll leave you to.
How about some data instead of grade school debate tactics?
You would do the Politburo proud.
Scaremonger all you want on nuclear power, it's still far safer than anything we have. If you deny that then you deny science. You are debating with emotion, not logic. How unscientific of you. Go outside and play, let the adults talk.
Looks like you're projecting again. You are the perfect Soviet blindseer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Until there's a job shortage, your point has no point.
And you can see how well that's working out for the French.
Any sort of Green, and any sort of _real_ conservative, is hard against nuclear power.
Nuke done right is society's only long-term hope. Is there such a thing?? Don't know... and from the kneejerk conclusion above, neither do you.
I shake my head in disbelief at the depths our educational system has sunk to, and wonder who to blame for the impending death of reason, logic and Western Civilization.
That would fall squarely in the lap of the Radical Right, so you've no-one to congratulate but yourselves.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Every nuclear promise has come to naught, nuclear has already failed so instead of wasting our resources on something that provides no energy return it's time to try something different.
Seriously? Nuclear power in France has been going strong for decades without issue.
Nuclear power is the largest source of electricity in the country, with a generation of 379.1 TWh, or 71.6% of the country's total production of 519.4 TWh, the highest percentage in the world.
What you will also find there is that nuclear costs less in materials consumed
That must be why the EPR in UK will cost less than half as much as recent German solar... Oh, wait, it's the other way round? Never mind...
Ezekiel 23:20
This new New Deal would cost trillions every year, not one trillion over 81 years. It will almost certainly reduce GDP by more than .02%.
Cost/Benefit analysis => Bad idea, not worth doing by a long shot.
it's not just taxes though.
This bill also gets into how houses are built, how you get your electricity, etc.
There are major infrastructure changes that would be needed to see this through. In the end no only would you see higher taxes, housing, food, electric, and many other costs would go up substantially as well. For the people that are barley scraping by, something like this could be the final nail in the coffin for them.
All is not lost though. I hear that Venezuela is having some trouble and could use a helping hand.
That's right, you smug asshole. The options are either the unfettered, heavily subsidized coal and oil energy production we have now or Venezuela. You're so smart.
I don't respond to AC's.
Replace all the airplanes, with high speed rail. Yeah, and I guess they will be solar, wind powered? Not to mention those new high speed UNDERWATER trains as you travel back & forth between the USA and Europe or other places. This lady is one WACK-A-DOODLE lDIOT! But, most SOCIALIST are!
Perhaps Ocasio-Cortez could hold her breath indefinitely to demonstrate how net-zero emissions would work.
I don't agree or disagree with taxing individual wealth, I mean it makes some sense from a societal perspective to prevent accumulation of wealth and power... on the other hand we encourage the accumulation of wealth and power in corporations and governments which are controlled in a hierarchical fashion by individuals. If you don't allow people to accumulate as much wealth and you don't also prevent people from accumulating power through corporations and institutions then you are just shifting the problem and giving it another name.
Also, some things simply require large amounts of capital and sometimes committees of people don't have the vision to take good risks and make good investments on disruptively good innovations.
Imagine a world without the kind of innovation that Elon Musk has enabled because he actually reinvested his Ebay windfall into technology startups. No reusable rockets lowering the cost of space exploration, no electric cars that are forcing the market to compete, no national model for solar leasing with tesla battery walls... that is just one man using capital towards solving problems instead of simply buying more houses and luxury goods and calling it a day.
Big established companies and governments are often too risk averse to spend capital on those sorts of projects and it does take individuals willing to take big risks on big bets.
I should add... wealthy people's ongoing income once they are already wealthy is rarely a result of the value created by their own labor or contributions. If you are taxing the wealthy then more often than not they have the ability to pass through taxing the people that work to create value as their employees, tenants of their real estate or otherwise creating value from the capital and property they control.
Imagine a world without the kind of innovation that Elon Musk has enabled because he actually reinvested his Ebay windfall into technology startups....Big established companies and governments are often too risk averse to spend capital on those sorts of projects and it does take individuals willing to take big risks on big bets.
Bullshit.
Take a look at the historical marginal tax rates during the 20th century. Take a look at those rates between the 30s and 60s. That's a point in time when we were really risk averse, and nothing was accomplished, right? I mean besides a few things like a world war won, social security nets built, an interstate highway system built, nuclear power invented and implemented, electrification of the rural US, a space race won...
The fact that we've gone away from that and you've been convinced that it's impossible is a real success on the part of the 1%. They got you good.
Massive wealth accumulation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is the extraction of wealth from the many into the pockets of the few. If you're not considering the well-being of the many, sure, you can point to a few of the 1% who are really doing great things and say that that wealth accumulation is a good thing. But that ignores everyone in the 1% just taking their yacht to their private island and partying, and it ignores the real harm done to millions and millions by continuing to live in poverty.
Governments can do amazing things, if they have the funding to do it, and the drive and vision. Part of that requires an educated and frankly comfortable populace, and you don't get that by keeping most of them poor. You do that by making sure that excessive wealth gets reinvested into the rest of the populace. And you do that with taxes of some sort.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Yeah, half of France is now a post-nuclear wasteland, and the other half can't get power.
Oh, wait...
that's the point. This is how politicians get things done when it's not just something you do for wealthy donors. You have to go to the public and get them onboard. That means you have to get a discussion started. Either that or you have to find a source of bribes bigger than the opposition (oil companies in this case).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why the insistence that increasing taxes actually raises government revenue when that is demonstrably false (see Hauser's Law)? Also, while extreme wealth inequality is not desirable, why punish the wealthy and destroy incentives to invent, implement, succeed, and employ people (the proven sustainable method of wealth distribution)? Or, is your vision to just knock us all down to the same level of poverty, in which case poverty would disappear because-- well, equality? It seems so virtuous to spew this drivel, but it is ultimately a horrible and cruel vision for society where only the political class wins.
"That's fine if you disagree with generals and admirals"
Maybe he is smarter than the generals. There are a few people like that nowadays.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
More speculation and no data. Try again. With data this time.
Nuclear power is safer than anything else. We have the data. Show me otherwise.
The existence of the Price Anderson Act "proves" nothing. If it's there then nuclear power is "proven" unsafe. If we make attempts to repeal it then the nuclear industry is "proving" it does not care for the public and would leave people homeless and penniless in the case of an accident. The only thing the existence of Price Anderson proves is that federal programs are the closest things we have to immortality, once created they never die, even if their need has long since passed.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
> stopping cows from expelling gas
It's AOC's coded language to get vegan support by making them think supporting GND will give them a legal excuse to restrict meat-eating in the name of climate change.
The actual legislation is relatively tame. AOC's interpretation of it (her FAQ) is a hot mess. Pelosi was 100% right to put AOC on a short leash when assigning committee memberships.
And you brought no data.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
According to Credit Suisse you need to make US $32,400 to be in the 1%. The average US college 2018 college graduate got a starting salary of $50,390.
If you are an average Europian college graduate, provided you did not get a degree and work in Portugal, Greece or Slovenia, you are in the 1%.
She might have some experience with butt plugs. Do you think she really took the train from NYC to Washington DC? That is a nice easy train trip.
Idaho gets ~70% from dams. While considered a renewable power source by the people who generate it it is not considered a green or renewable from the people pushing this list of items. Along with the people supporting this "plan" wanting to remove dams.
Washington is also hydro(dams) and nuclear so they don't qualify. Oregon is hydro and natural gas so they are out.
Give some areas of actual definition for "upstate" and I am sure it is similar. BTW Pennsylvania as a whole get around 93% of its power from nuclear, coal and natural gas.
Based on what year? You underestimate how fast the power profiles of the region you're talking about are changing. In Cali, for example, all new residential will be solar enabled. There's a 50 percent RPI. It is highly likely that by 2020 you'll see a lot online that qualifies as green. The major pushbacks on hydro are large scale (science now shows a 50 percent larger GHG emission aspect due to fertilizer and other runoffs outgassing than originally described) and salmonid impacts. Those are workable in terms of fixes, however, on virtually any mini or micro hydro installations (those box buildings you see next to small lakes, which power a lot of data centers).
Fossil fuels are over. Deal with it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I know. The 30s through the 60s were a terrible time to be an American. The country suffered economically and had its morale and innovation crushed. Why would we ever want to go back to a time like that?
(If you're confused, see my other post in this thread.)
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
AOC knew this bill wasn't going to pass. She can't even get her own party on board with it. She just wanted to act smug and self-righteous and have something to tweet to all her cultists. It's what she does best. She's literally the left's version of Trump. A crazy, unhinged grandstanding narcissistic individual who cares more about ratings than sensible policy.
They sure do. But wind and solar already provide more jobs than coal, and that's without the government spending a few hundred billion to update the electrical grid. Anyone laid off from an oil rig or a coal mine can walk right over to the company installing wind turbines or solar panels and find far more positions available.
You first.
Citation needed.
I did a search on the largest solar farms and none were in the USA, and certainly not operated by the US Navy. If solar power is so great then why is the Navy building nuclear powered ships and not solar powered ships?
My point is that nuclear power is obviously not "worthless" to the military since the US Navy relies on it so heavily for powering it's capital ships. The assertion was nuclear power was "worthless". I can concede that current economics of energy today makes civil nuclear power difficult to compete with cheap and abundant natural gas. The subsidies on wind power is driving the early retirement of some nuclear power plants in "tornado alley"... oops, I mean "wind corridor". As these existing nuclear power plants retire the economics will shift. Demand for more natural gas will drive up prices. The subsidies on wind can only prop up that industry for so long. There will be a time very soon that we will have to build new civil nuclear power or prices will climb quickly.
Until then the US Navy will continue to be the owner/operator of the most nuclear power plants in the world. Even if they own the largest solar power farm in the world they cannot steam their ships with that energy, and they cannot fly their aircraft with it either. Nuclear power will be not "worthless" but "priceless" for the US Navy.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
More speculation and no data. Try again. With data this time.
No, there are enough key words to overcome your alloplastic reasoning.
You don't care about data, all you care about is being as frustrating and annoying as possible so that people express that and you claim some moral superiority that somehow makes you "right".
It is clear you don't even care about nuclear power, it's just what you use to get whatever emotional reactions you seek from people because people have very polarized opinions on the subject. You project your troll mannerisms onto others with your techniques so you can claim they are trolls. You're skilled at it and I suggest that anyone who reads this is going to recognize what you do instantly.
Nuclear power is safer than anything else. We have the data. Show me otherwise.
Sure.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
Chernobyl nuclear disaster
Windscale nuclear fire
Three_Mile_Island_accident
All INES 5 or greater nuclear disasters. If you claim they did no harm, prove it and go to Fukushima and help with the cleanup. I hear properties in the area are being given away. Prove that nuclear is safe by going to Fukushima reactor sites otherwise you are saying that nuclear has no place in our energy supply.
The existence of the Price Anderson Act "proves" nothing. If it's there then nuclear power is "proven" unsafe.
Yes, it is there and yes it proves that nuclear power is unsafe.
If we make attempts to repeal it then the nuclear industry is "proving" it does not care for the public and would leave people homeless and penniless in the case of an accident.
You are so manipulative with your appeal to authority designed to produce an emotional reaction. Anyone who reacts to your subtle troll is called a troll and anyone who argues your point you continue to play your will full ignorance until they give up.
Repealing the P.A act simply means the most dangerous NPPs, like Indian Point and Palo Verde shut down immediately. Then the rest of them progressively close down because their insurance regimen is bought into line with the conditions the rest of industry.
After that there is a massive jobs boom as existing NPPs turbines are converted to natural gas and all of the energy subsidies previously required to keep the nuclear industry afloat are diverted into advancing massive wind, solar and geothermal energy projects.
Nuclear power is keeping America, and many other countries, in poverty because the nuclear industry cares more about existing than whether it is contributing to the public good. Shutting down Nuclear would create the largest economic boom we have seen in our lifetimes.
The only thing the existence of Price Anderson proves is that federal programs are the closest things we have to immortality, once created they never die, even if their need has long since passed.
Then lobby to have it removed. You say Nuclear is the safest thing ever, prove it. Your own reasoning suggests the PA act is not necessary, so commit to your own argument and lobby to repeal the Price Anderson Act because if you don't it just proves that *everything* you say is a complete fabrication designed to frustrate people who simply cannot fathom how deliberately and willfully ignorant you are determined to be.
If you don't argue for removal of the unnecessary Price Anderson Act then it proves all of your posts are a construct to annoy and frustrate people.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The official document can be viewed here: https://apps.npr.org/documents...
I challenge you to cite 4 consecutive sentences from it (NOT from AOC's silly, stupid FAQ or sensationalist social-media headlines) that you specifically believe best exemplify its alleged call for maoism and the destruction of the American way of life.
Note that I'm not claiming GND is good, desirable, or has any chance of passage. I'm simply challenging you to provide proof that you actually *read* the source document, and aren't just regurgitating breathless hype and buzzwords you read somewhere.
Yet here we are, countries making major, sustained efforts to do something about climate change.
I agree, but that's other countries... It helps immensely if you have incentives from the federal government. Sunset the subsidies given to Big Oil and give them to solar, wind, geothermal, etc. Maybe set up a department of Energy Transition (or sub department of the DOE) to help streamline the switchover that's staffed by professionals and academics (mainly the latter, please) deep in said tech.
It's one thing for states, counties, and their respective cities to take the onus upon themselves to reduce emissions, and it's much slower than a federally-mandated and incentivized roadmap.
Sadly, under Trump, all we've done is go in the other direction... allow more oil exploration/extraction on pristine lands, end tax credits for electric vehicles, etc.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
You are only repeating yourself, nothing you said refutes what I said. Prove to me that wind and solar are safer, with science, or you've lost this argument. You proved nothing.
Thank you for the troll mod on this post, it demonstrates that I am human. More importantly it demonstrates blindseers technique to lambast and frustrate people into this situation to discredit any arguments made on this important issue.
Essentially bs's manipulative techniques have nothing to do with support for nuclear power and more to do with his need to create this consternation within people. Simply put, if you are wondering why bs does this I suggest it is because he needs to to feel relevant.
In examining bs's arguments about nuclear power he cares less about that than the emotional reactions that he is provoking, you may recognize this when engaging in a conversation with him.
You claim we can make wind and solar safer with better safety practices. I agree. Then you must also agree that we can make nuclear safety with better safety practices, no?
No, the two have nothing to do with each other. The Nuclear industry *itself* produced over thirty recommendations to make nuclear safer, they weren't adopted because it is too expensive.
If you refute this then I refute your claims of wind and solar being able to be made safer and we are back where we started.
You make childlike arguments.
Can we make wind and solar safer?
Yes, with roofing harnesses and standard safety improvement processes used by industry.
If yes then we can make nuclear safer.
Yes, however it's so expensive that no one can afford to build them. Only the Europeans were smart enough to pick up the four trains feature and incorporate it into the EPR design but even that leaves another 26 improvements out. Just as an exercise go figure out where the only EPR in the US is being built if you want to see where political and economic power rests in the US.
Do you see nuclear reactors being built underground, where they should be? So yes, nuclear can be made safer however it is very very very expensive.
Since nuclear is already safer than wind and solar by an order of magnitude or more then wind and solar have a far higher hurdle than nuclear power.
Fallacious logic designed to lambast and exhaust opponents into submitting.
If nuclear was safe the Price Anderson act would not exist however, since it does exist it proves that nuclear is still considered unsafe by professional risk assessors. So basically you're saying that solar and wind are much safer than nuclear and we should deploy large scale solar and wind installations and decentralize our grid.
Prove nuclear is safe and lobby to have the P.A act repealed. Does solar and wind need special corporate welfare to be successful, no. All of the success of solar and wind deployment are because they are commercially viable without all of the billions of dollars thrown at the nuclear industry. Citation: 2005 US Energy Policy Act.
Oh and by the way the Energy Act does not define Nuclear power as "renewable".
Oh, and you want to bring up deaths from Chernobyl? That was 30+ years ago. How about we compare modern nuclear power to modern wind and solar power? Then let's compare safety. You won't though. You can't. There is no comparison.
Oh please do. AP1000 is so much worse than SNUPPS and much much worse design than Three Mile Island so compare away.
However how can I pass up you comparing wind and solar to an INES level 7 nuclear accident that required an international effort to build "New Safe Containment" so they could start to demolish the building as an example of how safe nuclear power is.
You demonstrate that you are completely divorced from reality, however your antics ar
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You say Nuclear is the safest thing ever, prove it.
I did. I'm defining "safety" as deaths per energy produced. Based on that metric nuclear power is the safest energy source we have.
That safety record includes the deaths at the second generation reactor accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl. Those kind of reactors are not built any more, now we have far safer third and fourth generation reactors. There are still some second generation reactors in existence and are operating with improvements to their safety systems since, bringing them to be as safe as anything newly built today. I do not claim that the accidents you pointed out to me did not happen. I fully admit that they happened, and many people died from Chernobyl. I merely assert that given the deaths from the nuclear power industry, compared to the useful energy produced, that nuclear power is far safer than the others based on that same calculation.
Everything else you gave is speculation and strawmen.
If you don't argue for removal of the unnecessary Price Anderson Act then it proves all of your posts are a construct to annoy and frustrate people.
Your assertion that the Price Anderson Act "proves" anything does not follow. It proves nothing except that in 1957 the government wanted to see the nuclear power industry grow among public fears of an accident and since then few congresscritters had the guts to not vote for it's extension. That's politics for you. It only proves that they'd be pilloried by one side, the other, or both, if they allowed it to expire. Status quo rules.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"One percenters" are the only ones who can make large donations to either party. You imply that it just goes to Republicans, but the Democrats have a generous share. Soros. Buffet. Gates. Many others.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It's going to take more than 10 years. But even if that were the case....then they could move right on to building a mass high speed rail network in the United States, which would take many more decades.
You say Nuclear is the safest thing ever, prove it.
I did. I'm defining "safety" as deaths per energy produced.
Your criteria is too narrow.
Based on that metric nuclear power is the safest energy source we have.
Of course it does, it's the "useful idiot" metric established so you can make that claim.
That safety record includes
but mainly excludes.
I merely assert that given the deaths from the nuclear power industry, compared to the useful energy produced, that nuclear power is far safer than the others based on that same calculation.
Not when measured in "Communities destroyed per hundred years" or numerous other metrics like tons of radio-isotope laden effluent per day.
The question of net energy return of Nuclear power is also in doubt.
Everything else you gave is speculation and strawmen.
You're projecting again.
If you don't argue for removal of the unnecessary Price Anderson Act then it proves all of your posts are a construct to annoy and frustrate people.
Your assertion that the Price Anderson Act "proves" anything does not follow. It proves nothing except that in 1957 the government wanted to see the nuclear power industry grow among public fears of an accident and since then few congresscritters had the guts to not vote for it's extension. That's politics for you. It only proves that they'd be pilloried by one side, the other, or both, if they allowed it to expire.
It proves that your argument has no credibility.
Status quo rules.
And so much of it supports the nuclear industry. It would appear you are unable to fulfill your convictions.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Your perception of reality is completely and utterly inverted. That it is all.
Furthermore, at the time did you realize Sara Palin was a Dingbat? (I'm assuming at this point you'll admit she is.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Interstate highways - which have cost trillions to construct and maintain - would be a "boondogle" if started today instead of in the 50's, as you'd have to go level out vast tracks of land for the roads while going through urban areas. That doesn't mean that it would be worth doing.
CA is a state that is limited in how much it can borrow and spend. The US federal government is under no such limitations - and if you slashed a trillion off the annual imperial budget you would have plenty to spend without raising taxes a dime. Speaking of taxes, receipts would jump from the resulting jobs boom, making part of the spending pay for itself over the long term.