Last time I checked we produced 88% of our electricity with nuclear power plants, and we would need ~3000km^2 of solar panels to cover our electric needs (1km^2 produces some 1000GWh/year in France).
It might sounds big, but it only represents less than half of our available roofs (~10 000km^2)
Anyway, the solution is neither 100% solar nor 100% nuclear, but using some (i.e. less) nuclear power plants to power our TGV and our industries while using some (i.e. a lot more) panels to cover our decentralized needs would be great.
BTW, due to the fact that we only spew ~70gCO2/kWh (thanks to nuclear+hydro), we can power our TGV (up to 560km/h) with only 2gCO2/km, and using solar panels instead (~150g/kWh) would actually release more greenhouse gases! Sure, we would have a lot less radioactive wastes.
I (almost) totally agree with you, does that mean you're an idiot too?;)
Obviously, we need some cars/airplanes/power plants, and I'd rather see them as efficient as possible.
But, the trouble is that our earth doesn't give a damn about efficiency of a single component. It'd rather see 10 times as less cars as today even if they pollute twice as much. As you wrote, the best option would be to decrease our needs *and* to increase efficiency, but that's not gonna happen overnight, and it's much easier to ride a bike than to build an hybrid. Heck, we European still need to divide our carbon footprint by 5, and American by 10. Is this gonna happen thanks to hybrid cars? Don't think so....
The real problem (to which I dedicated my previous F**K) is that we don't use technology or efficiency improvements to build normal cars that would be more eco-friendly, we build bigger cars that consume as much as before, if not more (combined with the fact that mankind will build more cars in the next 20 years than it has ever build). This is the exact opposite of what we should teach next generations, and pedagogy is all we have left to save our world.
Talking about hybrid, Prius still has a whopping 104gCO2/km, just because it has been designed as a sport-car for wealthy people having problem to sleep at night. The worst thing is that Prius drivers really think that driving this car improves our atmosphere. Maybe flowers and butterflies burst out the exhaust system? Following the trend, Lexus has been working on an hybrid SUV, that "only" rejects 192gCO2/km. (http://cars.uk.msn.com/Reviews/article.aspx?cp-do cumentid=476045)
French TGV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV) achieved 357 mph while spewing 3gCO2/km, proving that technology is not always an environmental curse.
Bottom line is, you'll do much more for the environment if you stop eating too much meat than if you buy a brand new hybrid car. Once again, that would imply asking us the right questions!
Sorry for being rude here on/., but I'd just like to say a big F**K YOU to those trying to find a pseudo-technical solution in order not to change any of their filthy habits.
You want to be able to look at your children without being ashamed of the environment you left them? Forget about algae-powered airplanes, electric/hybrid cars, economic light bulbs or black background Google, they wont help you lowering your greenhouse gases emissions, at least not significantly, and could sometimes create other environmental hazard (just like dams or nuclear power plants...).
Instead, consider not using your car at all, take a walk, ride your bike, take the train/bus or share a car with your neighbor. Stop taking a 1-hour flight to go shopping, stop eating fruits/vegetables coming from Togo/NZ/Chile, get your house isolated, turn your 3 testing servers with 3 different linux/BSD flavors off, and think twice before buying a technical gadget described as "A+++ Environmentally friendly" that you won't even use in 6 months.
Any other "technical solution" is just a crapload of lame excuses and will only enable rich people to think they did everything right for the atmosphere, while Britons/Chinese/Indians are under flood, and South Europa/Africa/ Latin America are dying from droughts.
Please mod me down, it won't stop me from lowering my carbon footprint by applying what I proposed in the 3rd paragraph : I can assure you it feels damn good, and I won't be ashamed to tell my children that, at least, I tried to do my best not to leave them a cradle of filth.
Mod me Troll if you want, but I think that my parent's right!
For every global warming discussion that we have here on/., wouldn't it make sense to think that as long as Joe NextGuy can afford to drive a 15mpg car and take a 1-hour plane to go shopping, fuel prices are damn too low???
Anyway, please continue to think that fuel prices are high, give all your money away to rogue/commie states and wait for them to decide that 10$/gallon is still not expensive enough!
I can bet you'll look good, with your Humvee running out of gas, 2 or 3 Katrina's a year and terrorists' wallet full of petrodollars!
What about patriot act, what about war on terror, what about Guantanamo, what about WMD's in Irak?
Was it possible for Joe Nextguy to stand up and say that the government might have been wrong on those points, without being censored, called a commie, a weasel or sent to Guantanmo without any charge?
To me, US have become as much a democracy as UK, Italy or France are, and it really isn't anything to be proud anymore.:(
So your point basically is: the US may not be a democracy anymore, but it's not a problem because it's been like this for a long time, and Bush isn't responsible?
I'm seriously getting sick of seeing kW/h or energy units used as consumption measure without any context. Wow.. 'energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts', you say????? It's almost 7E-13 kWh! So I guess I could power trillions of LHC with just a liter of oil.
Either with solar ponds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond) and ORC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle), solar panels and DACM (diffusion absorption cooling machine), solar panels and ORC, or paraboloid solar panels ans Stirling engines (http://engnet.anu.edu.au/DEresearch/solarthermal/ images/basics/sb.jpg).
10 seconds LCA lesson: grass+space+energy=>meat meat+transport=>food in your plate food in your plate=>energy to move your arm Moving your arm doesn't directly imply CO2 release, but preparing everything so that you can move it does.
Please continue acting as if the American way of life wasn't negotiable, but don't come crying the day you'll understand that the only thing nonnegotiable on earth is its resources, and that we use way too much.
Even solar cells (once again, better than oil or nuclear power, but still non-carbon-neutral) and hybrids (Prius still releases 104gCO2/km) won't get us much farther if we don't change our point of view.
So please understand today that everything we do has an impact, and that producing electricity without producing a net-gain of CO2 is a mindview!
Moving your arm produces CO2 (ever heard about Life Cycle Analysis???) So sure, fissioning an atom do not directly imply CO2 release, but building 5m wide concrete walls & bringing uranium from Australia do. Same thing for producing wind turbines, building dams or solar cells.
Once again, I love technology and I'd love to see it helps us going happily through this century, but IPCC is pretty sure that won't do if we don't change our way of life. And you'd better trust 2000 scientists telling you something, or you'll never trust anyone else!
BTW, neither nuclear, nor solar nor wind power are *carbon neutral*.
You think technology will save us and prevent us from changing our lifestyle? Nope, (at least if we hear you), because consuming better will give us the impression that we can consume more!
Basically, we agree : fossil fuels are evil (though they represent 80% of our primary energy), and nuclear power can be useful.
Breeder reactor & fusion are the solutions, why bother reducing our consumption? they're indeed very efficient, but only in engineers mind and on paper, yet.:(
My point was to tell you that we need nuclear powerplants, not that they are the unique solution to all of our problems. And if we don't reduce our consumption, we'll indeed run out of uranium before we get any chance to develop more sustainable way to produce energy from fertile elements.
Your chinese and indian argument is (sorry!) totally stupid. There is no space for 4,5,6,7 or 10 billions people on Earth living like we do, so we'd better show developing countries the right way if we don't want to force Mother Nature to tell us how we should behave in a sustainable way. Nuclear power won't save us if we keep on abusing meat/hummer/chillers.
I don't like nuclear power either (it's unsafe, unsustainable and expensive), but in today's world, it's not like we have lot of choices... So we should put renewable energies where we can (please, no more than a % wind power, but a *lot* of solar panels!), ignore gas/coal, reduce our consumption drastically, and stop refusing nuclear power for irrational reasons.
The truth is, any environmentalist should accept the fact that no energy is a blessing nor a curse, and removing nuclear power from our energy panel is as stupid as arguing about nuclear wastes in a 1000 years when everything that we do today (like planning 26 new coal powerplants in Germany to replace nuclear powerplants!) lead us into *big* troubles in no more than 50 years...
If we don't want any nuclear powerplant next to our home, we should begin by turning off those damn chillers & admit the fact that winter is cold (put a jumper!) and summer is hot (sweat a bit!).
-Either way, the'll have to learn a new system, and the learning curve for Vista+Office2007 is rather steep.
-Google's online business applications look a lot more like previous MSOffice than Office 2007 does.
-Just put them a decent user-friendly distro, 3 bigs icons on the desktop to link to Gmail, one to GoogleDocs & one to GoogleSpreadsheet. Done!
=>You won't need more than 2 days to explain them everything they need to know to get started, and you'll save a *lot* of money by leaving the Vista way.
I'm not particularly proud of those French guys, but I think they all get a pretty decent chance of winning hands down. Some tips for your own "idiots & morons": -French people do shower -Moon can also be seen from Europe (even though it stands on the other side of earth!) -It is possible to speak more than one language -Columbia is not a mexican city -There was no WMD in Iraq (nor in Afghanistan) -Global warming is (very likely) happening, mainly because of human activities since 1750 -Hussein had no link with Al Qaeda -....
Slashdot Mirror
Last time I checked we produced 88% of our electricity with nuclear power plants, and we would need ~3000km^2 of solar panels to cover our electric needs (1km^2 produces some 1000GWh/year in France).
It might sounds big, but it only represents less than half of our available roofs (~10 000km^2)
Anyway, the solution is neither 100% solar nor 100% nuclear, but using some (i.e. less) nuclear power plants to power our TGV and our industries while using some (i.e. a lot more) panels to cover our decentralized needs would be great.
BTW, due to the fact that we only spew ~70gCO2/kWh (thanks to nuclear+hydro), we can power our TGV (up to 560km/h) with only 2gCO2/km, and using solar panels instead (~150g/kWh) would actually release more greenhouse gases! Sure, we would have a lot less radioactive wastes.
And if you dont have any pictures database, there's always GREYCstoration:t ion/index.htmlt ion/demonstration.html
http://www.greyc.ensicaen.fr/~dtschump/greycstora
It's pretty impressive:
http://www.greyc.ensicaen.fr/~dtschump/greycstora
and works with the gimp.
:(){ :|:& };:
http://ww.geothermie.de/iganews/no39/guadeloupe_ge othermal_developmen.htm
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/gr eenhouse/plate.html
I eat good organic meat from the neighbourhood once a week, just because I was fed up to eat bad chicken/pork in every salad/sandwich/meal I had.
I (almost) totally agree with you, does that mean you're an idiot too? ;)
o cumentid=476045)
Obviously, we need some cars/airplanes/power plants, and I'd rather see them as efficient as possible.
But, the trouble is that our earth doesn't give a damn about efficiency of a single component. It'd rather see 10 times as less cars as today even if they pollute twice as much. As you wrote, the best option would be to decrease our needs *and* to increase efficiency, but that's not gonna happen overnight, and it's much easier to ride a bike than to build an hybrid. Heck, we European still need to divide our carbon footprint by 5, and American by 10. Is this gonna happen thanks to hybrid cars? Don't think so....
The real problem (to which I dedicated my previous F**K) is that we don't use technology or efficiency improvements to build normal cars that would be more eco-friendly, we build bigger cars that consume as much as before, if not more (combined with the fact that mankind will build more cars in the next 20 years than it has ever build). This is the exact opposite of what we should teach next generations, and pedagogy is all we have left to save our world.
Talking about hybrid, Prius still has a whopping 104gCO2/km, just because it has been designed as a sport-car for wealthy people having problem to sleep at night. The worst thing is that Prius drivers really think that driving this car improves our atmosphere. Maybe flowers and butterflies burst out the exhaust system?
Following the trend, Lexus has been working on an hybrid SUV, that "only" rejects 192gCO2/km. (http://cars.uk.msn.com/Reviews/article.aspx?cp-d
French TGV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV) achieved 357 mph while spewing 3gCO2/km, proving that technology is not always an environmental curse.
Bottom line is, you'll do much more for the environment if you stop eating too much meat than if you buy a brand new hybrid car. Once again, that would imply asking us the right questions!
Sorry for being rude here on /.,
but I'd just like to say a big F**K YOU to those trying to find a pseudo-technical solution in order not to change any of their filthy habits.
You want to be able to look at your children without being ashamed of the environment you left them?
Forget about algae-powered airplanes, electric/hybrid cars, economic light bulbs or black background Google, they wont help you lowering your greenhouse gases emissions, at least not significantly, and could sometimes create other environmental hazard (just like dams or nuclear power plants...).
Instead, consider not using your car at all, take a walk, ride your bike, take the train/bus or share a car with your neighbor. Stop taking a 1-hour flight to go shopping, stop eating fruits/vegetables coming from Togo/NZ/Chile, get your house isolated, turn your 3 testing servers with 3 different linux/BSD flavors off, and think twice before buying a technical gadget described as "A+++ Environmentally friendly" that you won't even use in 6 months.
Any other "technical solution" is just a crapload of lame excuses and will only enable rich people to think they did everything right for the atmosphere, while Britons/Chinese/Indians are under flood, and South Europa/Africa/ Latin America are dying from droughts.
Please mod me down, it won't stop me from lowering my carbon footprint by applying what I proposed in the 3rd paragraph : I can assure you it feels damn good, and I won't be ashamed to tell my children that, at least, I tried to do my best not to leave them a cradle of filth.
Anyway, global warming is only BS. Look! It's cold outside, even though we're in July.
Mod me Troll if you want, but I think that my parent's right!
/., wouldn't it make sense to think that as long as Joe NextGuy can afford to drive a 15mpg car and take a 1-hour plane to go shopping, fuel prices are damn too low???
For every global warming discussion that we have here on
Anyway, please continue to think that fuel prices are high, give all your money away to rogue/commie states and wait for them to decide that 10$/gallon is still not expensive enough!
I can bet you'll look good, with your Humvee running out of gas, 2 or 3 Katrina's a year and terrorists' wallet full of petrodollars!
Congratulations! I didn't think it could actually be possible to write something worse than your parent.
Talking about basic math....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#Boiler_hor sepower,
it looks that 'bhp' could mean 'boiler horsepower=9.8kW', the efficiency would then be
300*9.8kW/4MW=73.5%
and not
300*0.7kW/4MW=5.5%
Hmmm, forget what I said, it doesn't sound very likely either!
What about patriot act, what about war on terror, what about Guantanamo, what about WMD's in Irak?
:(
Was it possible for Joe Nextguy to stand up and say that the government might have been wrong on those points, without being censored, called a commie, a weasel or sent to Guantanmo without any charge?
To me, US have become as much a democracy as UK, Italy or France are, and it really isn't anything to be proud anymore.
So your point basically is:
the US may not be a democracy anymore, but it's not a problem because it's been like this for a long time, and Bush isn't responsible?
I'm seriously getting sick of seeing kW/h or energy units used as consumption measure without any context.
Wow.. 'energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts', you say?????
It's almost 7E-13 kWh! So I guess I could power trillions of LHC with just a liter of oil.
Try Compiz(http://compiz.org/), Beryl(http://beryl-project.org/), compositing manager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_manager) or compositing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing)!
It indeed already exists!
/ images/basics/sb.jpg).
Either with solar ponds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond) and ORC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_cycle), solar panels and DACM (diffusion absorption cooling machine), solar panels and ORC, or paraboloid solar panels ans Stirling engines (http://engnet.anu.edu.au/DEresearch/solarthermal
Sounds you didn't take time to read those articles. I'll put them once again: http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/gr eenhouse/plate.html
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/gr eenhouse/quota_GHG.html
Enough!
10 seconds LCA lesson:
grass+space+energy=>meat
meat+transport=>food in your plate
food in your plate=>energy to move your arm
Moving your arm doesn't directly imply CO2 release, but preparing everything so that you can move it does.
Please continue acting as if the American way of life wasn't negotiable, but don't come crying the day you'll understand that the only thing nonnegotiable on earth is its resources, and that we use way too much.
Even solar cells (once again, better than oil or nuclear power, but still non-carbon-neutral) and hybrids (Prius still releases 104gCO2/km) won't get us much farther if we don't change our point of view.
So please understand today that everything we do has an impact, and that producing electricity without producing a net-gain of CO2 is a mindview!
Moving your arm produces CO2 (ever heard about Life Cycle Analysis???)
r yId=9008658&contentId=7016688u clearpower/03.htm
/ 28/2228251
So sure, fissioning an atom do not directly imply CO2 release, but building 5m wide concrete walls & bringing uranium from Australia do. Same thing for producing wind turbines, building dams or solar cells.
( http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?catego
=>No CO2 is released from the production of electricity but processes of uranium mining, enrichment and transport do cause CO2 emissions.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/expert/realexpert/n
=>
Grams of CO2/kWh
Coal
970-1245 grams
Gas
450-660 grams
Solar
100-280 grams
Wind
6-29 grams
Nuclear
9-21 grams
Hydro
3-11 grams
)
With your argument, this kind of crap:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03
would be the global warming solution.
Once again, I love technology and I'd love to see it helps us going happily through this century, but IPCC is pretty sure that won't do if we don't change our way of life. And you'd better trust 2000 scientists telling you something, or you'll never trust anyone else!
No offense meant, but I think you should read some more articles!
r eenhouse/plate.htmlr eenhouse/quota_GHG.html
;)
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/g
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/g
Those are a good start
BTW, neither nuclear, nor solar nor wind power are *carbon neutral*.
You think technology will save us and prevent us from changing our lifestyle?
Nope, (at least if we hear you), because consuming better will give us the impression that we can consume more!
Basically, we agree : fossil fuels are evil (though they represent 80% of our primary energy), and nuclear power can be useful.
:(
Breeder reactor & fusion are the solutions, why bother reducing our consumption?
they're indeed very efficient, but only in engineers mind and on paper, yet.
My point was to tell you that we need nuclear powerplants, not that they are the unique solution to all of our problems.
And if we don't reduce our consumption, we'll indeed run out of uranium before we get any chance to develop more sustainable way to produce energy from fertile elements.
Your chinese and indian argument is (sorry!) totally stupid.
There is no space for 4,5,6,7 or 10 billions people on Earth living like we do, so we'd better show developing countries the right way if we don't want to force Mother Nature to tell us how we should behave in a sustainable way.
Nuclear power won't save us if we keep on abusing meat/hummer/chillers.
I don't like nuclear power either (it's unsafe, unsustainable and expensive), but in today's world, it's not like we have lot of choices...
So we should put renewable energies where we can (please, no more than a % wind power, but a *lot* of solar panels!), ignore gas/coal, reduce our consumption drastically, and stop refusing nuclear power for irrational reasons.
The truth is, any environmentalist should accept the fact that no energy is a blessing nor a curse, and removing nuclear power from our energy panel is as stupid as arguing about nuclear wastes in a 1000 years when everything that we do today (like planning 26 new coal powerplants in Germany to replace nuclear powerplants!) lead us into *big* troubles in no more than 50 years...
If we don't want any nuclear powerplant next to our home, we should begin by turning off those damn chillers & admit the fact that winter is cold (put a jumper!) and summer is hot (sweat a bit!).
-Either way, the'll have to learn a new system, and the learning curve for Vista+Office2007 is rather steep.
-Google's online business applications look a lot more like previous MSOffice than Office 2007 does.
-Just put them a decent user-friendly distro, 3 bigs icons on the desktop to link to Gmail, one to GoogleDocs & one to GoogleSpreadsheet. Done!
=>You won't need more than 2 days to explain them everything they need to know to get started, and you'll save a *lot* of money by leaving the Vista way.
Let's try some IQ and general culture tests!
Bush/Chirac
Cheney/Sarkozy
Wolfowitz/Villepin
I'm not particularly proud of those French guys, but I think they all get a pretty decent chance of winning hands down.
Some tips for your own "idiots & morons":
-French people do shower
-Moon can also be seen from Europe (even though it stands on the other side of earth!)
-It is possible to speak more than one language
-Columbia is not a mexican city
-There was no WMD in Iraq (nor in Afghanistan)
-Global warming is (very likely) happening, mainly because of human activities since 1750
-Hussein had no link with Al Qaeda
-....