It'll cost a further $63 billion over the next decade, just to keep the existing reactors running. Many of their reactors are quite old now, and no longer meet current safety standards.
I'm in favour of nuclear power where it makes sense, but the costs are not small. Accidents do happen, and given the potential consequences, safety standards must be strictly adhered to, which just adds to the costs. This has to be factored into any serious energy planning.
Do you honestly think those people are employed to *generate* each MWh? What, are they all standing around a solar panel carefully angling a mirror at it??
Surely it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that these people are *installing* solar panels. All those jobs are due to the boom in solar *capacity*, not generation, and their labour now will provide free power for *decades*. Even you would have thought of this, if you weren't in such a hurry to display how wilful your ignorance is.
So if you want to calculate jobs per MWh, first multiply the projected annual output by 30 (probably a lot more, considering how easy it is to replace a panel in an existing installation). Then consider that most of these jobs would be domestic installations, trading scale efficiency for personal empowerment, wide-distribution resiliency, etc.
Sadly true, our local conservatives downgraded the plan significantly when they got into power. Although our fibre rollout is mostly stalled at 39%, we're still on track to get minimum 25 Mbps to every premise, with 90% of wired premises at minimum 50 Mbps.
By contrast, 39% of the rural US still can't get 25 Mbps. Cities are a lot better, with the large majority having access to 100 Mbps, but nearly all of those are available only from a single ISP. Australia's NBN has a single, government-owned wholesaler with all participating ISPs competing to provide retail services to customers.
Population density of NZ is nearly half that of the US (17 vs 32 heads/km2), with similar urbanisation (85 vs 80%). Sure there's more to cover in the US, but many more customers to pay for it, and the US has had a pretty big head start. Even Australia started building a similar plan some years back - and we're almost as big as the US but with a population density of only 3 heads/km2.
Australia knows all about ultra-low population areas, yet is still targeting 93% coverage, using wireless and satellite where needed. So it's absolutely possible for the US to do far better than it has. You're right about the elitists being the problem, but maybe wrong about who and why - it's not because they don't know what's involved, but simply because the telco executives are already making fat profits from their existing territories and are not interested in competing further.
Perfect response from someone who clearly intends to ignore any & all science that doesn't suit their pre-existing beliefs. And it's particularly ironic that your chosen straw man excuse is based on cases where well-established evidence and scientific consensus were also blatantly ignored in favour of the political leader's desires.
I'd settle for simply voting in people who listen to science. No need to change your precious lifestyle, just stop blocking the modernisation of our infrastructure, and the rest will follow from there.
Not that any of their opinions matter half as much as a practicing climatologist's, since expertise in the field is the only way to reach an informed conclusion. By contrast, your chosen authority freely admits:
"I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so - half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned..."
Maybe this is a more useful picture, rather than a single cherry-picked datapoint.
The good news is, as expected we're getting more rainfall overall, as humidity rises with temperature. The bad news is, some important specific areas are getting quite a lot less. Sucks to be a farmer living there.
Click here to see the uncorrected data graphed alongside the main corrected analyses (source: Berkeley Earth via Ars Technica).
Hopefully this makes it abundantly clear that the raw data still shows an obvious warming trend even before known problems are removed. It also shows how little difference the corrections have actually made, particularly in the last 75 years.
Go AIs weren't expected to beat humans for another 10 years though - if that. In 2014 the top programs could only sometimes beat professional-level humans, even with a four-stone handicap, and Grand Masters were a different level, let alone beating the world best. Monte Carlo tree searches make it possible, but they need a good evaluator to guide the simulations. If your simulations aren't good enough then your statistical samples aren't representative, and the best pre-programmed Go evaluator heuristics just weren't in the same league.
AlphaGo's evaluator is what sets it apart, not more searches. It uses layered neural networks, trained against millions of human moves then against each other, to greatly improve their guided simulations, which make it possible to use Monte Carlo searches much more effectively. It was this improved evaluator that enabled AlphaGo to be the first program to beat a professional player (Fan Hui) without a handicap, despite evaluating thousands of times fewer positions than Deep Blue did against Kasparov.
By "equivalent temperature increase", I imagine you're looking only at surface temperatures? (not that you've ever cited anything for these assertions you regularly throw out)
Have you considered where else that energy might be going? Because scientists have:
Ocean warming dominates the global energy change inventory. Warming of the ocean accounts for about 93% of the increase in the Earth’s energy inventory between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence)
The real data is all there, fully sourced and cited - if you can bring yourself to face it. But if you think have an equally reputable source that says otherwise, you should probably cite it, else we all may laugh at you just like we do the other religious extremists trying to justify nonsense with faith.
This trend has continued much longer than the solar cycle, or the ENSO, PDO, and ADO cycles - yet it's far too rapid to be due to the longer cycles like Milankovitch orbital variations. Nobody has found any evidence of a medium-length natural cycle that would fit the bill. But known human CO2 emissions have a calculated effect that fits the observed trend very nicely.
Exec 1: So what went wrong this time? The phone looked great - lots of grunt, the latest dual cameras, real waterproofing after we ditched Exec 3's ridiculous modules idea. And that new 18:9 screen was fantastic, large yet easy to hold.. I don't understand, it had all the boxes ticked - the spec nerds should have loved it!
Exec 2: That's just it - the nerds we marketed it at all got so completely distracted by that unreduced 18:9 ratio, they forgot to buy the phone. Our sales were down 6/8ths.
Exec 1: Sigh. Fine, I'll just move to Apple - their customers don't care about reduced ports or whatever.
Exec 2: I'm going to Amazon myself. I hear their next phone will be called the Prime - the nerds will *have* to love that one.
Rather than linking to a selectively-quoting blog, just cite the source directly (assuming you actually want to hear what it says). I suggest Section 2.6, or at least the Extreme Events executive summary on page 162.
While there is a lack of sufficient data in some areas, the executive summary cites increases in heatwaves and heavy precipitation events, and significant changes in droughts (more in some areas, less in others). Tropical cyclones are stronger in the North Atlantic, though trends elsewhere are not so certain. These are all "meteorological events".
But hey, your link's selective observation about thunderstorms specifically is about right - with the important caveat that we don't actually know what the trends really are because we haven't studied them closely enough yet.
You haven't cited any facts. So far, all you've done is deny the existing facts - hand-waving them away as "adjusted" without any evidence that this makes them less accurate, and without any challenge to the methodology. Your only justification is that the corrections are "large", and give results you don't like. In what way do these claims constitute "facts"? Sounds like textbook denial to me.
Perhaps take some time to at least learnwhy the corrections were needed, so your next attempt to discredit them is worth looking at.
Statistically it proves a rising trend. If there were no trend, we'd expect a 50% chance of getting an above-average year. Now work out the odds of flipping a coin and getting 20 heads in a row (about 1 in 2^20). But with a rising trend, the probability of eventually getting 20 in a row approaches 1.0.
Assuming you also supply those plants with plenty of nutrients, water, and sunlight; adding more CO2 alone won't do much for most farms. And assuming the associated climate change doesn't cause more droughts, floods, or extreme weather in your area.
Slashdot Mirror
It'll cost a further $63 billion over the next decade, just to keep the existing reactors running. Many of their reactors are quite old now, and no longer meet current safety standards.
I'm in favour of nuclear power where it makes sense, but the costs are not small. Accidents do happen, and given the potential consequences, safety standards must be strictly adhered to, which just adds to the costs. This has to be factored into any serious energy planning.
Do you honestly think those people are employed to *generate* each MWh? What, are they all standing around a solar panel carefully angling a mirror at it??
Surely it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that these people are *installing* solar panels. All those jobs are due to the boom in solar *capacity*, not generation, and their labour now will provide free power for *decades*. Even you would have thought of this, if you weren't in such a hurry to display how wilful your ignorance is.
So if you want to calculate jobs per MWh, first multiply the projected annual output by 30 (probably a lot more, considering how easy it is to replace a panel in an existing installation). Then consider that most of these jobs would be domestic installations, trading scale efficiency for personal empowerment, wide-distribution resiliency, etc.
Sadly true, our local conservatives downgraded the plan significantly when they got into power. Although our fibre rollout is mostly stalled at 39%, we're still on track to get minimum 25 Mbps to every premise, with 90% of wired premises at minimum 50 Mbps.
By contrast, 39% of the rural US still can't get 25 Mbps. Cities are a lot better, with the large majority having access to 100 Mbps, but nearly all of those are available only from a single ISP. Australia's NBN has a single, government-owned wholesaler with all participating ISPs competing to provide retail services to customers.
Population density of NZ is nearly half that of the US (17 vs 32 heads/km2), with similar urbanisation (85 vs 80%). Sure there's more to cover in the US, but many more customers to pay for it, and the US has had a pretty big head start. Even Australia started building a similar plan some years back - and we're almost as big as the US but with a population density of only 3 heads/km2.
Australia knows all about ultra-low population areas, yet is still targeting 93% coverage, using wireless and satellite where needed. So it's absolutely possible for the US to do far better than it has. You're right about the elitists being the problem, but maybe wrong about who and why - it's not because they don't know what's involved, but simply because the telco executives are already making fat profits from their existing territories and are not interested in competing further.
Probably because the bag of meat's eyes are too often turned elsewhere.
Perfect response from someone who clearly intends to ignore any & all science that doesn't suit their pre-existing beliefs. And it's particularly ironic that your chosen straw man excuse is based on cases where well-established evidence and scientific consensus were also blatantly ignored in favour of the political leader's desires.
Just keep in mind the example of Saudi Arabia.
I'd settle for simply voting in people who listen to science. No need to change your precious lifestyle, just stop blocking the modernisation of our infrastructure, and the rest will follow from there.
I'll see your Nobel Laureate, and raise you 36 Nobel Laureates.
Not that any of their opinions matter half as much as a practicing climatologist's, since expertise in the field is the only way to reach an informed conclusion. By contrast, your chosen authority freely admits:
"I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so - half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned..."
Maybe this is a more useful picture, rather than a single cherry-picked datapoint.
The good news is, as expected we're getting more rainfall overall, as humidity rises with temperature. The bad news is, some important specific areas are getting quite a lot less. Sucks to be a farmer living there.
Click here to see the uncorrected data graphed alongside the main corrected analyses (source: Berkeley Earth via Ars Technica).
Hopefully this makes it abundantly clear that the raw data still shows an obvious warming trend even before known problems are removed. It also shows how little difference the corrections have actually made, particularly in the last 75 years.
Of course El Nino contributed. But it's still hotter than every other El Nino year we've ever seen.
Go AIs weren't expected to beat humans for another 10 years though - if that. In 2014 the top programs could only sometimes beat professional-level humans, even with a four-stone handicap, and Grand Masters were a different level, let alone beating the world best. Monte Carlo tree searches make it possible, but they need a good evaluator to guide the simulations. If your simulations aren't good enough then your statistical samples aren't representative, and the best pre-programmed Go evaluator heuristics just weren't in the same league.
AlphaGo's evaluator is what sets it apart, not more searches. It uses layered neural networks, trained against millions of human moves then against each other, to greatly improve their guided simulations, which make it possible to use Monte Carlo searches much more effectively. It was this improved evaluator that enabled AlphaGo to be the first program to beat a professional player (Fan Hui) without a handicap, despite evaluating thousands of times fewer positions than Deep Blue did against Kasparov.
By "equivalent temperature increase", I imagine you're looking only at surface temperatures? (not that you've ever cited anything for these assertions you regularly throw out)
Have you considered where else that energy might be going? Because scientists have:
Ocean warming dominates the global energy change inventory. Warming of the ocean accounts for about 93% of the increase in the Earth’s energy inventory between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence)
The real data is all there, fully sourced and cited - if you can bring yourself to face it. But if you think have an equally reputable source that says otherwise, you should probably cite it, else we all may laugh at you just like we do the other religious extremists trying to justify nonsense with faith.
Apparently he can't even do that.
Thank you for explaining my joke. Note to self: the word 'baseload' really triggers people.
Solar isn't baseload. They'd need some sort of crazy energy storage device.
Well, some were gaoled. But mostly low-level, none of the big fish.
This trend has continued much longer than the solar cycle, or the ENSO, PDO, and ADO cycles - yet it's far too rapid to be due to the longer cycles like Milankovitch orbital variations. Nobody has found any evidence of a medium-length natural cycle that would fit the bill. But known human CO2 emissions have a calculated effect that fits the observed trend very nicely.
Exec 1: So what went wrong this time? The phone looked great - lots of grunt, the latest dual cameras, real waterproofing after we ditched Exec 3's ridiculous modules idea. And that new 18:9 screen was fantastic, large yet easy to hold.. I don't understand, it had all the boxes ticked - the spec nerds should have loved it!
Exec 2: That's just it - the nerds we marketed it at all got so completely distracted by that unreduced 18:9 ratio, they forgot to buy the phone. Our sales were down 6/8ths.
Exec 1: Sigh. Fine, I'll just move to Apple - their customers don't care about reduced ports or whatever.
Exec 2: I'm going to Amazon myself. I hear their next phone will be called the Prime - the nerds will *have* to love that one.
Rather than linking to a selectively-quoting blog, just cite the source directly (assuming you actually want to hear what it says). I suggest Section 2.6, or at least the Extreme Events executive summary on page 162.
While there is a lack of sufficient data in some areas, the executive summary cites increases in heatwaves and heavy precipitation events, and significant changes in droughts (more in some areas, less in others). Tropical cyclones are stronger in the North Atlantic, though trends elsewhere are not so certain. These are all "meteorological events".
But hey, your link's selective observation about thunderstorms specifically is about right - with the important caveat that we don't actually know what the trends really are because we haven't studied them closely enough yet.
even when facts clearly show the opposite
Still waiting for that to be the case.
You haven't cited any facts. So far, all you've done is deny the existing facts - hand-waving them away as "adjusted" without any evidence that this makes them less accurate, and without any challenge to the methodology. Your only justification is that the corrections are "large", and give results you don't like. In what way do these claims constitute "facts"? Sounds like textbook denial to me.
Perhaps take some time to at least learn why the corrections were needed, so your next attempt to discredit them is worth looking at.
Once again you entirely miss the point.
Statistically it proves a rising trend. If there were no trend, we'd expect a 50% chance of getting an above-average year. Now work out the odds of flipping a coin and getting 20 heads in a row (about 1 in 2^20). But with a rising trend, the probability of eventually getting 20 in a row approaches 1.0.
maybe within a couple of years there will be android phones that gets system updates from Amazon
Like this one?
Assuming you also supply those plants with plenty of nutrients, water, and sunlight; adding more CO2 alone won't do much for most farms. And assuming the associated climate change doesn't cause more droughts, floods, or extreme weather in your area.