I'm reading, slowly, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where there is a quaint attitude that a priori Knowledge
is preferable. All creationist should read Hume to understand why they belittle God.
I think I was pointing to a possible flaw in the example that was not covered on the Wiki page, namely Smith lacks exhuastive knowledge
of the number of coins (even though he could easily investigate) and thus does not see that that there is no way to distinguish
between himself and Jones on the basis of the number of coins. A flaw in the example does not imply that the problem does not exist.
For example, there are things that are true in formal systems that can not be demonstrated to be true within the formal system
according to Godel, and this might be related to the problem posed here. So, I don't know if what I point to as a flaw actually
solves the underlying problem by making it go away, or if the problem is more intractible and a better example would show this, or
if I've not identified a flaw at all.
If the other means that Smith employs to justify his belief is listening to the gossip that usually surrounds employment decisions, then
he has no sort of knowledge on the other side either. Do you know of a clearer statement of the problem?
-- Illuminate energy problems with solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
I'm not so sure. You seem to be getting at the inference problem,
which is still a bit of a Gordian knot with frequentist or alternative
approaches. This is more about dumb luck, a bit like Godel's result.
Also, some folks still feel that a priori knowledge
is possible when you seem to claim that is is not.
No problem is solved without at least a little thought, and these problems apparently have come in for
considerable thought. Collecting them in this way brings attention to all of them and thus may increase the
amount of thought being spent on them.
In some ways, this is no different than sending people to school where such things are discussed. And, passed
unsolved problems, like the difficulty in finding a fractional form for pi, have been solved in this way.
This excellent. Your answer is "With letters." or even better, a koan
"What is truth?"
I think you and I should offer a prize for
the solution to this problem. This has become more and more of a
tradition http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/25/233325 0.
In order to to make it easy for the winner to decline the prize and
thus demonstrate that the winner is a true philosopher, let us say
that the person who demonstrates the existence of objective truth
shall have the honor of paying us $5000 each. The winner shall be
selected by popular acclamation.
Self-referential
demonstrations that objective truth does not exist shall be rewarded
by demonstrators paying themselves.
I claim the first of these
with the statement "I think I think therefore I think I am." showing
that the existence of the thinker is second order subjective and thus,
practically speaking, objective truth is unapproachable. My prize award is contingent on a non-true philosopher disproving this since I can't afford to pay myself the prize. --
Rethink Solar!
http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
The Getties problem came up as an unsolved problem in epistemology, the theory of knowledge. It looks like a problem in
unknown knowns to get my former boss backwards. It is listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_ philosophy.
[T]wo men, Smith and Jones, who are awaiting the results of their applications for the same job. Each man has ten coins in his pocket. Smith has excellent reasons to believe that Jones will get the job and, furthermore, knows that Jones has ten coins in his pocket (he recently counted them). From this Smith infers, "the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket." However, Smith is unaware that he has ten coins in his own pocket. Furthermore, Smith, not Jones, is going to get the job. While Smith has strong evidence to believe that Jones will get the job, he is wrong. Smith has a justified true belief that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job; however, according to Gettier, Smith does not know that a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, because Smith's belief is "...true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith's pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith's pocket, and bases his belief...on a count of the coins in Jones's pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job."
This seems to have something to do with the answer I sometimes give my son when he ask how to spell a word and I answer "With letters."
The problem looks to me to be one of degenerate labeling when passing by reference. Basically, if Smith wants to believe something
about people with coins in their pockets he is getting the answer to the question: some people have applied for a job, will
one of them get it? If you redirect by the number of coins in a pocket, but you have not checked that this is a unique label,
then the question ends up meaning something other than you think it means. The statement about the man with ten coins getting the
job is true for the same reason that "A or not A" is true. Regardless of coins, there is no knowledge about the answer to the
apparent question (who will be offered the job) until the decision has been made, and since neither Smith nor Jones make that
decision, thay can't know its outcome till they are told.
Hum..., you want to get together and decide about the climate, but it's strange that the UN (the way we all get together to decide
things) would pick a year as a baseline? OK, I'm a big proponent of returning to preinsdustrial CO2 levels so I'm mostly with you.
I don't think present levels can be shown to be safe in terms of avoiding natural feedbacks which will raise the CO2 concentration
far beyond our control. That's not to say that I don't think the present concentration is not safe, I'm just not persuaded that it
is. So, if you'll go along with me and reset to the preindustrial level, I'll go along with you to then look at a range of concentrations at leisure and pick one that everyone can be happy with. Deal?
--
Solar: It's the reset button. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
[...] as an advance on quantitative understanding of global warming, the report is really really nice, but in terms of modeling the effects of pursuing various policy options, it is pretty much a failure since it excludes the economically most likely scenarios.
You can contact me about payment arrangements through my home page.
My experience is more with exotic semi conductors rather than silicon. These reanneal at low temperatures after
cosmic ray damage. I expect the temperature for reannealing is higher for silicon. If that leads to dopant mobility
then there will be an issue there, if not I'd guess you can reanneal until handling breaks the cells (if reannealing
makes sense for silicon). If it goes to remelting you just keep doing it until the dopant concentration becomes
a problem, then you need to purify again. So, many cycles until you need to do more, then many cycles again. I'd
guess that barring a disruptive technology that diplaces solar, the silicon atoms in panels today will still be in
use in (recycled) panels 300 years from now.
A bit more on safety: in our model where the equipment is rented, the company handles maitainance so the training is there
to keep safety first. That said, roofs are slanted and people who work on them do get hurt from time to time. The fraction
of occupational fatalities that were from falling from a roof in 2005 was about 3%; mining had a similar fraction. I put in a
recommendation to get the franchises sharing best practices for safety in installation. Thanks for bringing that up.
ExxonMobil is definitely a bad actor but a lot of boycotts center on human rights violations associated with the oil industry rather
than on PR or profits.
You have picked a model uncertainty estimate, not a measurement. The observed value is well known. Also, you got the units wrong because it is a rate, not a displacement. Geez, you don't get $10K for that. Go try harder.
--
Be sure, go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Well, distributed power is fundementally more robust than centralized power (in many more senses than that intended here) and so
roof top installation beats any gains that might be had from say a south west US deployment, or a space deployment. Had we had
decentralized solar power after Katrina or Rita, the recovery logistics would have been much more managable owing to surviving
refridgeration. The population displacement would have been much less.
In terms of safety, anti-islanding circuits cover the main hazard that is not already present with electric power.
I think you are using an average value for solar power at the bottom of the atmosphere, 1000 W/m^2 is closer for noon and averaging
including night is about 250 W/m^2 at the cloud deck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation. Our panels are about 15% efficient. Our production capacity is 500 MW peak/plant/year. Repacing existing generation capacity in a decade requires 200 fabrication plants, a tidy number but not so bad if you consider the world market as well and give 4 decades of use per plant before needing to replace installed stock.
Again, it is important to realize that old panels are worth $25/kilo as scrap. They are not waste but rather fall rather neatly
into the cradle-to-cradle paradigm. An old solar panel is just a cheaper way to get a new solar panel since it is already low
impurity silicon.
Silicon fabrication does involve some chemical processes that need to be looked at. However, much of this work has already been done
by the Rocky Mountain Institute in collaboration with Texas Instruments. It's under control. Send me an email and I'll send you
the technical conference call number and login for next Wed. an you can listen in. It is amazing what scale does for panel
production, well to be expected, but you still get surprised when the results are actually there.
--
Contact: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
I'd agree with you except that they are assuming there is something wrong with the report rather than asking if there might be.
Assuming you conclusions is circular and thus they are asking for intellectual dishonesty. But, they do put it prettily don't they?
I dispute the study on economic grounds. Fossil fuels are becoming more expensive while renewables are getting cheaper.
Market forces will put ExxonMobil's fossil fuel side out of business much sooner that the report assumes. There is a
fundemental flaw in the report's assumptions!
The national labs generally support training on the job, so if you come in as a programer, you can get
a second degree and move over to a science position. Look at the National Academies website http://www.national-academies.org/
to find mentor contacts in a field that interests you. Career Links is down and to the right.
--
Or, convert everyone to solar http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
What is clearly needed is a rational study by qualified scientists, and discussion and even attacks on the conclusions drawn by other groups of equally qualified scientists. This is essentially the kind of thing that is done to keep scholarly journals on track.
The present study is just that. It relies on refereed liturature and attempts to reconcile what has been published. What you want
has already happened.
The conflict of interest is about getting paid to reach predetermined conclusions (a problem in the report) rather than
getting paid to examine the report for errors and either find it sound or not.
--
Solar, its conflict free: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
In reporting on the effects of GHG emissions, fear does not seem to be very important. This is basically a matter of fact thing.
Policy makers' response may be driven by fear, as in the case of the present administration which fears the loss to their backers'
funding source, or it may be driven by confidence in the manner that, say FDR, handled things. That's a leadership choice, not a scientific
issue. -- Solar! Rage, rage against the dying of the light! -The other Dylan http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
On the other hand, leftist papers have been in a sort of "we're doomed" sort of mode.
I think that this is because the senarios used in the report (even the 2000 level stable senario)
have been strongly influenced by the US political interference in the report. You can see the
discomfort in the way the report goes out of its way to say that the Kyoto senario has not been
included.
The base level economic/population projections are potentially unrealistic given the rapidly falling cost
of renewable energy as the scale advantage comes into play. Solar is approaching $1.50 per peak W and advances
in wind are also very encouraging. From a competative point of view, especially for solar which avoids
long haul transmission costs, things are looking very positive. This study outlines the scale advantage
http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/renewables/r eports/kpmg8.pdf which solar is taking and which
fossil fuel energy sources cannot. So, renewable energy gets cheaper while fossil fuel energy can only get
more expensive.
So, the gloominess is really a result of the consensus process being manipulated by groups that are not able to
act in good faith, rather than a reflection of the full range of possible senarios.
I really think we're at the point of arguing about which method of suicide is best, and that is not my point. There is still a
little breathing space before this link hits the slashdot front page http://www.ipcc.ch/. So, I'll just say right now, read
http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/ for a bit.
From a technical call two nights ago I can say that cost per peak W for solar has hit $1.53 (fabrication not installation) and the
time to pay back the energy to produce the panels is now about 1 year. This is cheap! Worrying about clean up for solar strikes
me as a little silly. A defunct solar panel is defunct owing to lattice disorder caused by cosmic rays. It still has many more
useful cycles after recrystalization. I would even guess that it does not have to be fully remelted, but this is a problem that
we have not faced yet owing to our rather clueless addiction to fossil fuels and nuclear power. This report http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/renewables/r eports/kpmg8.pdf explains the basic economics of large scale solar power production.
Well, you want to look at the placement of the plants. Many are in fairly high population density regions. The next big
accident might be lucky and there will be time to evacuate, but not all of them. Remember, you want to use nuclear power
to displace most of the power we use. So that means that the accidents will become more frequent, and you want to do it for
a long time. Some of the accidents will be very deadly, especially those that aren't accidents at all but rather deliberate
attacks.
Now, you are arguing that nuclear is better than coal or oil, and instantaneously it is likely less deadly, but you
have also missed what I said about the waste being nastier than the fuel. Mammals are evolved to tolerate uranium, but all
the plutonium was gone by the time we came along. Waste storage needs to segregate a portion of the Earth from mammals very
tightly because our biology does not know how to protect itself from plutonium.
Every dominant species evolved from species whose evolution was strongly influenced by previously dominant species because
the mere presence of those dominant species defined nitches throughout the ecosystem. So, it might not seem so out of line
for our mess to define future dominant species, but the nitches that develop in the presence of nuclear waste seem to favor
roaches. Not too strange, but since insects have had their turn, it seems like a bit of a step back. It would be much more
interesting to leave the Earth clean and imagine what might come of that.
We can displace both coal and nuclear with solar much faster than we can displace coal with nuclear and we can do it cheaper
so it seems much better to do this, especially since we need extra energy to transmute the nuclear waste we've already made.
Going with nuclear becomes a trap energywise. And, while I have a deep love of coal mine disaster songs, I don't really want
to get a repetoire of nuclear plant disaster anthems.
--
Solar: It's disaster free! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Me too, thanks. Now, just to cast a line in and troll along here.
There are some people who are being paid to hold an opinion, and some being paid to form an opinion.
Those who pay the opinion formers are curious about what opinion they'll come to.
Those who pay the opinion holders are curious about how high they can push their profit margin.
This is a key distinction. The original article shows that things have gone well beyond bribery and
have moved on to intimidation and racketeering. One can certainly say that the ExxonMobil efforts affect
thier stock prices and, being intentionally misleading http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html, could well be securities fraud.
--
Solar: clean energy http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Slashdot Mirror
I'm reading, slowly, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where there is a quaint attitude that a priori Knowledge is preferable. All creationist should read Hume to understand why they belittle God.
s -selling-solar.html
I have heard good reports of Jaynes' book and I am a collector of books on statistics, being rather suspicious of them, so I think I'll follow your advice.
--
Solar: It's cheaper, really! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think I was pointing to a possible flaw in the example that was not covered on the Wiki page, namely Smith lacks exhuastive knowledge of the number of coins (even though he could easily investigate) and thus does not see that that there is no way to distinguish between himself and Jones on the basis of the number of coins. A flaw in the example does not imply that the problem does not exist. For example, there are things that are true in formal systems that can not be demonstrated to be true within the formal system according to Godel, and this might be related to the problem posed here. So, I don't know if what I point to as a flaw actually solves the underlying problem by making it go away, or if the problem is more intractible and a better example would show this, or if I've not identified a flaw at all.
s -selling-solar.html
If the other means that Smith employs to justify his belief is listening to the gossip that usually surrounds employment decisions, then he has no sort of knowledge on the other side either. Do you know of a clearer statement of the problem?
--
Illuminate energy problems with solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I'm not so sure. You seem to be getting at the inference problem, which is still a bit of a Gordian knot with frequentist or alternative approaches. This is more about dumb luck, a bit like Godel's result.
a l-Structure-World/dp/0691101701/sr=1-9/qid=1170693 965/ref=sr_1_9/105-0836718-1902056?ie=UTF8&s=books to be helpful in laying out some of the stickier issues.
s -selling-solar.html
Also, some folks still feel that a priori knowledge is possible when you seem to claim that is is not.
On the subject you raise, I've found "Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World" by Wesley C. Salmon http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Explanation-Caus
--
I'm not selling my copy but I do sell solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
No problem is solved without at least a little thought, and these problems apparently have come in for considerable thought. Collecting them in this way brings attention to all of them and thus may increase the amount of thought being spent on them.
s -selling-solar.html
In some ways, this is no different than sending people to school where such things are discussed. And, passed unsolved problems, like the difficulty in finding a fractional form for pi, have been solved in this way.
So, I'd say this is the usual means for handling these kinds of problems and for coming up with new ones too.
--
Solving energy dependence and global warming: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This excellent. Your answer is "With letters." or even better, a koan "What is truth?"
5 0.
In order to to make it easy for the winner to decline the prize and
thus demonstrate that the winner is a true philosopher, let us say
that the person who demonstrates the existence of objective truth
shall have the honor of paying us $5000 each. The winner shall be
selected by popular acclamation.
s -selling-solar.html
I think you and I should offer a prize for the solution to this problem. This has become more and more of a tradition http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/25/23332
Self-referential demonstrations that objective truth does not exist shall be rewarded by demonstrators paying themselves.
I claim the first of these with the statement "I think I think therefore I think I am." showing that the existence of the thinker is second order subjective and thus, practically speaking, objective truth is unapproachable. My prize award is contingent on a non-true philosopher disproving this since I can't afford to pay myself the prize.
--
Rethink Solar! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
This seems to have something to do with the answer I sometimes give my son when he ask how to spell a word and I answer "With letters."
The problem looks to me to be one of degenerate labeling when passing by reference. Basically, if Smith wants to believe something about people with coins in their pockets he is getting the answer to the question: some people have applied for a job, will one of them get it? If you redirect by the number of coins in a pocket, but you have not checked that this is a unique label, then the question ends up meaning something other than you think it means. The statement about the man with ten coins getting the job is true for the same reason that "A or not A" is true. Regardless of coins, there is no knowledge about the answer to the apparent question (who will be offered the job) until the decision has been made, and since neither Smith nor Jones make that decision, thay can't know its outcome till they are told.
If anyone has worked on this I'd like to hear if this solution has already been discounted.
--
Power your bright ideas with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Hum..., you want to get together and decide about the climate, but it's strange that the UN (the way we all get together to decide things) would pick a year as a baseline? OK, I'm a big proponent of returning to preinsdustrial CO2 levels so I'm mostly with you. I don't think present levels can be shown to be safe in terms of avoiding natural feedbacks which will raise the CO2 concentration far beyond our control. That's not to say that I don't think the present concentration is not safe, I'm just not persuaded that it is. So, if you'll go along with me and reset to the preindustrial level, I'll go along with you to then look at a range of concentrations at leisure and pick one that everyone can be happy with. Deal?s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar: It's the reset button. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
You can contact me about payment arrangements through my home page.
My experience is more with exotic semi conductors rather than silicon. These reanneal at low temperatures after cosmic ray damage. I expect the temperature for reannealing is higher for silicon. If that leads to dopant mobility then there will be an issue there, if not I'd guess you can reanneal until handling breaks the cells (if reannealing makes sense for silicon). If it goes to remelting you just keep doing it until the dopant concentration becomes a problem, then you need to purify again. So, many cycles until you need to do more, then many cycles again. I'd guess that barring a disruptive technology that diplaces solar, the silicon atoms in panels today will still be in use in (recycled) panels 300 years from now.
A bit more on safety: in our model where the equipment is rented, the company handles maitainance so the training is there to keep safety first. That said, roofs are slanted and people who work on them do get hurt from time to time. The fraction of occupational fatalities that were from falling from a roof in 2005 was about 3%; mining had a similar fraction. I put in a recommendation to get the franchises sharing best practices for safety in installation. Thanks for bringing that up.
Moving takes a lot of effort, good luck with it!
ExxonMobil is definitely a bad actor but a lot of boycotts center on human rights violations associated with the oil industry rather than on PR or profits.
s -selling-solar.html
Something more direct is to work for a cut in emissions. http://stepitup2007.org/ is one way to do this by getting together on April 14.
--
Solar works! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
You have picked a model uncertainty estimate, not a measurement. The observed value is well known. Also, you got the units wrong because it is a rate, not a displacement. Geez, you don't get $10K for that. Go try harder.s -selling-solar.html
--
Be sure, go solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Well, distributed power is fundementally more robust than centralized power (in many more senses than that intended here) and so roof top installation beats any gains that might be had from say a south west US deployment, or a space deployment. Had we had decentralized solar power after Katrina or Rita, the recovery logistics would have been much more managable owing to surviving refridgeration. The population displacement would have been much less.
In terms of safety, anti-islanding circuits cover the main hazard that is not already present with electric power.
I think you are using an average value for solar power at the bottom of the atmosphere, 1000 W/m^2 is closer for noon and averaging including night is about 250 W/m^2 at the cloud deck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation. Our panels are about 15% efficient. Our production capacity is 500 MW peak/plant/year. Repacing existing generation capacity in a decade requires 200 fabrication plants, a tidy number but not so bad if you consider the world market as well and give 4 decades of use per plant before needing to replace installed stock.
Again, it is important to realize that old panels are worth $25/kilo as scrap. They are not waste but rather fall rather neatly into the cradle-to-cradle paradigm. An old solar panel is just a cheaper way to get a new solar panel since it is already low impurity silicon.
Silicon fabrication does involve some chemical processes that need to be looked at. However, much of this work has already been done by the Rocky Mountain Institute in collaboration with Texas Instruments. It's under control. Send me an email and I'll send you the technical conference call number and login for next Wed. an you can listen in. It is amazing what scale does for panel production, well to be expected, but you still get surprised when the results are actually there.
--
Contact: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
Experts testify to their area of competence, and both sides may bring them to the trial. The jury is told who the expert is testifying for. With ExxonMobil they are in the habit of hiding their hand in the climate debate http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html so if you want to go by rules of evidence,
they'd have been thrown out of court. s -selling-solar.html
--
Sunshine is yours http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I'd agree with you except that they are assuming there is something wrong with the report rather than asking if there might be. Assuming you conclusions is circular and thus they are asking for intellectual dishonesty. But, they do put it prettily don't they?
I dispute the study on economic grounds. Fossil fuels are becoming more expensive while renewables are getting cheaper. Market forces will put ExxonMobil's fossil fuel side out of business much sooner that the report assumes. There is a fundemental flaw in the report's assumptions!
s -selling-solar.html
You said you wanted economic criticism too. That'll be $10K plus travel please.
--
Solar! It's cheaper! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The national labs generally support training on the job, so if you come in as a programer, you can get a second degree and move over to a science position. Look at the National Academies website http://www.national-academies.org/ to find mentor contacts in a field that interests you. Career Links is down and to the right.
--
Or, convert everyone to solar http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
Solar: It's easy http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The conflict of interest is about getting paid to reach predetermined conclusions (a problem in the report) rather than getting paid to examine the report for errors and either find it sound or not.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar, its conflict free: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The report is already quite definite about its conclusions. The ExxonMobil effort is not at all likely to move us forward in the way you would like.s -selling-solar.html
--
Move forward wih solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
In reporting on the effects of GHG emissions, fear does not seem to be very important. This is basically a matter of fact thing. Policy makers' response may be driven by fear, as in the case of the present administration which fears the loss to their backers' funding source, or it may be driven by confidence in the manner that, say FDR, handled things. That's a leadership choice, not a scientific issue.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar! Rage, rage against the dying of the light! -The other Dylan http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The scientists had already reached their conclusions before being asked to speak about them.
s -selling-solar.html
This is just the opposite, money is being offered to reach predetermind conclusions (that the report is wrong).
The first case is quite honorable and, as we have seen, brave, given the unscrupulous methods of those who fund the deniers.
The second case is, as the article said, an inducement to a conflict of interest, namely deciding the outcome of work before the work is performed.
--
Solar! It's whats for power! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
On the other hand, leftist papers have been in a sort of "we're doomed" sort of mode.
r eports/kpmg8.pdf which solar is taking and which
fossil fuel energy sources cannot. So, renewable energy gets cheaper while fossil fuel energy can only get
more expensive.
s -selling-solar.html
I think that this is because the senarios used in the report (even the 2000 level stable senario) have been strongly influenced by the US political interference in the report. You can see the discomfort in the way the report goes out of its way to say that the Kyoto senario has not been included.
The base level economic/population projections are potentially unrealistic given the rapidly falling cost of renewable energy as the scale advantage comes into play. Solar is approaching $1.50 per peak W and advances in wind are also very encouraging. From a competative point of view, especially for solar which avoids long haul transmission costs, things are looking very positive. This study outlines the scale advantage http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/renewables/
So, the gloominess is really a result of the consensus process being manipulated by groups that are not able to act in good faith, rather than a reflection of the full range of possible senarios.
Save money with solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I really think we're at the point of arguing about which method of suicide is best, and that is not my point. There is still a little breathing space before this link hits the slashdot front page http://www.ipcc.ch/. So, I'll just say right now, read http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/ for a bit.
r eports/kpmg8.pdf explains the basic economics of large scale solar power production.
From a technical call two nights ago I can say that cost per peak W for solar has hit $1.53 (fabrication not installation) and the time to pay back the energy to produce the panels is now about 1 year. This is cheap! Worrying about clean up for solar strikes me as a little silly. A defunct solar panel is defunct owing to lattice disorder caused by cosmic rays. It still has many more useful cycles after recrystalization. I would even guess that it does not have to be fully remelted, but this is a problem that we have not faced yet owing to our rather clueless addiction to fossil fuels and nuclear power. This report http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/renewables/
If you want to help, go to http://www.powur.com/mdsolar and click on "Become an Ecopenure."
Well, you want to look at the placement of the plants. Many are in fairly high population density regions. The next big accident might be lucky and there will be time to evacuate, but not all of them. Remember, you want to use nuclear power to displace most of the power we use. So that means that the accidents will become more frequent, and you want to do it for a long time. Some of the accidents will be very deadly, especially those that aren't accidents at all but rather deliberate attacks.
s -selling-solar.html
Now, you are arguing that nuclear is better than coal or oil, and instantaneously it is likely less deadly, but you have also missed what I said about the waste being nastier than the fuel. Mammals are evolved to tolerate uranium, but all the plutonium was gone by the time we came along. Waste storage needs to segregate a portion of the Earth from mammals very tightly because our biology does not know how to protect itself from plutonium.
Every dominant species evolved from species whose evolution was strongly influenced by previously dominant species because the mere presence of those dominant species defined nitches throughout the ecosystem. So, it might not seem so out of line for our mess to define future dominant species, but the nitches that develop in the presence of nuclear waste seem to favor roaches. Not too strange, but since insects have had their turn, it seems like a bit of a step back. It would be much more interesting to leave the Earth clean and imagine what might come of that.
We can displace both coal and nuclear with solar much faster than we can displace coal with nuclear and we can do it cheaper so it seems much better to do this, especially since we need extra energy to transmute the nuclear waste we've already made. Going with nuclear becomes a trap energywise. And, while I have a deep love of coal mine disaster songs, I don't really want to get a repetoire of nuclear plant disaster anthems.
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Solar: It's disaster free! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Me too, thanks. Now, just to cast a line in and troll along here.c ould-be-paid-for-by.html, could well be securities fraud.
s -selling-solar.html
There are some people who are being paid to hold an opinion, and some being paid to form an opinion.
Those who pay the opinion formers are curious about what opinion they'll come to.
Those who pay the opinion holders are curious about how high they can push their profit margin.
This is a key distinction. The original article shows that things have gone well beyond bribery and have moved on to intimidation and racketeering. One can certainly say that the ExxonMobil efforts affect thier stock prices and, being intentionally misleading http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-
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Solar: clean energy http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user