As you say, that's probably fast enough for most purposes...
For most present-day purposes, perhaps. If 100Mb/s+ broadband is ubiquitous in a few years, along with whatever other technology is coming along, no-one knows today what opportunities will be created.
No. Most people don't have cable, but instead have ADSL over copper phone lines from the interchange to the home. Pay TV is not ubiquitous, and AFAIK is mostly served via satellite. I live in a fairly typical suburb and the interchange is a few kilometres away, so max download speed is around 4-5 Kb/s.
If you have the storage economically covered (e.g. with molten salt storage, although that doesn't apply to photovoltaics) you need LESS peak production, because you can draw on stores both to supplement peak times and to cover night time/cloudy days.
Appropriate government subsidies can have a massive impact on domestic installations, particularly for those who would like to install a system but cannot afford it.
In Australia, with rebates, Renewable Energy Certificates etc, you can get a 3KW system for under $10,000. With the feed-in tariff and conservative energy use my system will pay for itself in 4-5 years (it is currently providing about $1500/year in income); if I missed the tariff cutoff it would be more like 10 years. And solar panels do add a similar amount to the value of your home when it comes to selling. If the system you're looking at is $30K, maybe it is bigger than what you need.
We also rug up in winter. You're right: sweaters/jumpers are cheaper than heating.
Your claim that organic farming is "pre-scientific" only serves to show your own ignorance. There is plenty of science involved in maintaining healthy soil and crops, with or without synthetic fertlisers and pesticides.
"Throwing money at something" worked for Australia, which didn't even go into recession during the GFC*. Yes, we had other things going for us too, but spending billions on building programs and cash handouts did help keep the Australian economy ticking. Cost cutting would have just meant more unemployment, which happens to generate... more unemployment. Sometimes when business lacks confidence, it helps for government to take up the slack.
Your experience of poor fiscal management does not prove that all government spending is evil.
Yes, a PETA member can refuse to sell you meat, if they own the butcher shop, just as a newsagent can refuse to stock pr0n. The butcher might go out of business, but that doesn't mean they can't do it. Shopkeepers are not under compulsion to stock products they disagree with.
I'm not advocating for judgementalism, but an important aspect of freedom is the ability to stick to your personal convictions in the course of your trade. Your customers also have the freedom to go elsewhere if you refuse to supply what they want.
Because Europe started with an ETS and it achieved nothing for the first few years. Essentially it is an ETS, (the 'Tax' thing is a red herring that the government should have squashed quickly). The fixed price means it can be phased in in a controlled and predictable way (incremented each year), rather than having too many/too few permits in the first few years.
(Too many = low price, ineffective: see European ETS experience. Too few = high cost of permits, big hit to the economy, everyone suffers).
The cost of "everything" won't go up. The costs of products made using high emissions will go up. That which is produced with less emissions will become more competitive. It is a matter of taking the externalised costs (pollution) and internalising them to the producer, which is how it should be, period.
Coal fired electricity will get more expensive. Wind power (relatively) will not. Wind power will become more competitive.
Externalised costs mean you, me, the environment, our grandchildren and our health (now - look into the effects of coal smog) suffer. Internalising them (via emissions trading) means someone has to pay cold hard cash for those costs, now. Which means those companies who don't externalise the costs can now compete - which is fairer outcome for everyone. It might mean the cost of living goes up in the short term, but as a wealthy nation we can afford it. If it bites hard, interest rates will drop accordingly. Or people can skip a few coffees each week.
Anti-greenies seem to forget that what keeps an economy going is not the act of making stuff, but of moving money around. If you are spending money on making your cars/roads/factories/public transit/whatever more efficient, you are creating jobs, which means money is going into bank accounts and out again into coffee shops or tax coffers or farmers or whatever, and from there on into the next place and so on and so on. When money flows, people have jobs.
Getting a massage doesn't use (much) stuff but it keeps the economy moving.
Getting someone to mow your lawn doesn't use any more stuff than if you did it yourself but it keeps the economy moving.
Building a wind farm doesn't put another widget in your hand but it keeps the economy moving (and as fossil fuel costs continue to rise, it will save you money in the long term, not to mention the huge health benefits over coal smog).
War is good for the economy (if you can afford it). Apply the same principle to your dirty infrastructure, in a way that saves you money long term, and your economy be much better for it.
Your local experience is not indicative of the rest of the world. Many countries maintain excellent public schools, roads, etc. If your local infrastructure and services suck, it's probably due to limited funding as well as socio-economic factors (particularly income inequality). Pay more tax (and don't spend it all on the military), get better services.
You get what you pay for, regardless of how you pay.
China is currently putting together five pilot projects for different ways of pricing carbon emissions in different provinces. One of them will be based on the Australian emissions trading scheme (which has been erroneously labelled a 'tax').
Perth, Western Australia has recently upgraded and extended their train network. As far as I know it is now just as fast (and much more efficient) to get to the CBD by train.
It is also one of the most sprawling cities in the world.
The idea of the tax (which in Australia will increase each year before being market-based with a diminishing amount of emissions allowed) is to make big business and energy producers (which contributes a massive proportion of our emissions) change where they get their energy NOW because they know in a couple of years it will be ridiculously expensive to use dirty energy sources. That 'paper shuffling' is actually attached to a big incentive for business to change.
It may be too little, too late, but it's at least worth trying. Unfortunately people have forgotten that incredibly fast transitions that happened during WW2 - that is more or less what we need now.
the smallest mining/waste footprint per joule, lowest fatality count per joule, lowest land-use per watt technology we have, renewables included
Does this take into account the cancer deaths from Chernobyl (between 30,000 and 985,000, depending on who you talk ask) and ultimately Fukushima, and the land degradation from nuclear fallout in both cases (which might be considered under both waste footprint and land-use-per-watt)? If so, do you have figures to show this (I am genuinely interested)? How do you calculate land-use-per-watt for roof-mounted photovoltaic systems (which effectively don't require developing any more land)?
For the record, in asking these questions, I am not implying that nuclear is worse than fossil fuels. I think they all have to go, and we already have the technological resources to replace them, at least for electricity production. What fossil fuels we have left should be saved for their more long-term uses such as creating steel, plastics, and (until we can get large-scale sustainable agriculture in place) fertiliser.
It's fine to disagree with someone's sense of humour. It's not fine to abuse them as a response. And, in case you missed it, there was actually someone playing the bagpipes in one of the photos.
Any serious study on the application of 100% renewable energy (and there are many) recognises that you need a combination of technologies, which, along with smart grid demand management, can generate enough energy when the other sources are less effective. If you include stored energy sources such as hyrdroelectric, solar thermal with salt storage, biomass generators, and in some places, geothermal, and your grid is geographically broad enough to be in multiple weather regions, you can cover you bases even on a still night with no waves. Studies in Germany, Catalonia (Spain), Japan and Australia have shown exactly how this can be done using current technology and real-world, year-round data on energy demand and weather conditions, including peaks and base load. (Sorry I don't have a link, I went to a lecture on this a few years back by a German professor who headed up three of the studies mentioned but I can't remember his name!)
Not necessarily. If you look at how they work, with multiple devices attached to a single hydro turbine, they may need to be installed in parallel to maintain a fairly even output and peak efficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
For most present-day purposes, perhaps. If 100Mb/s+ broadband is ubiquitous in a few years, along with whatever other technology is coming along, no-one knows today what opportunities will be created.
You got me. Typo. Mb/s. :)
No. Most people don't have cable, but instead have ADSL over copper phone lines from the interchange to the home. Pay TV is not ubiquitous, and AFAIK is mostly served via satellite. I live in a fairly typical suburb and the interchange is a few kilometres away, so max download speed is around 4-5 Kb/s.
The revolution will not be...pretty.
If you have the storage economically covered (e.g. with molten salt storage, although that doesn't apply to photovoltaics) you need LESS peak production, because you can draw on stores both to supplement peak times and to cover night time/cloudy days.
Appropriate government subsidies can have a massive impact on domestic installations, particularly for those who would like to install a system but cannot afford it.
In Australia, with rebates, Renewable Energy Certificates etc, you can get a 3KW system for under $10,000. With the feed-in tariff and conservative energy use my system will pay for itself in 4-5 years (it is currently providing about $1500/year in income); if I missed the tariff cutoff it would be more like 10 years. And solar panels do add a similar amount to the value of your home when it comes to selling. If the system you're looking at is $30K, maybe it is bigger than what you need.
We also rug up in winter. You're right: sweaters/jumpers are cheaper than heating.
Your claim that organic farming is "pre-scientific" only serves to show your own ignorance. There is plenty of science involved in maintaining healthy soil and crops, with or without synthetic fertlisers and pesticides.
"Throwing money at something" worked for Australia, which didn't even go into recession during the GFC*. Yes, we had other things going for us too, but spending billions on building programs and cash handouts did help keep the Australian economy ticking. Cost cutting would have just meant more unemployment, which happens to generate... more unemployment. Sometimes when business lacks confidence, it helps for government to take up the slack.
Your experience of poor fiscal management does not prove that all government spending is evil.
Yes, a PETA member can refuse to sell you meat, if they own the butcher shop, just as a newsagent can refuse to stock pr0n. The butcher might go out of business, but that doesn't mean they can't do it. Shopkeepers are not under compulsion to stock products they disagree with.
I'm not advocating for judgementalism, but an important aspect of freedom is the ability to stick to your personal convictions in the course of your trade. Your customers also have the freedom to go elsewhere if you refuse to supply what they want.
Because Europe started with an ETS and it achieved nothing for the first few years. Essentially it is an ETS, (the 'Tax' thing is a red herring that the government should have squashed quickly). The fixed price means it can be phased in in a controlled and predictable way (incremented each year), rather than having too many/too few permits in the first few years.
(Too many = low price, ineffective: see European ETS experience. Too few = high cost of permits, big hit to the economy, everyone suffers).
That doesn't make the concept useless, but the implementation.
Three words:
Triple bottom line.
The cost of "everything" won't go up. The costs of products made using high emissions will go up. That which is produced with less emissions will become more competitive. It is a matter of taking the externalised costs (pollution) and internalising them to the producer, which is how it should be, period.
Coal fired electricity will get more expensive. Wind power (relatively) will not. Wind power will become more competitive.
Externalised costs mean you, me, the environment, our grandchildren and our health (now - look into the effects of coal smog) suffer. Internalising them (via emissions trading) means someone has to pay cold hard cash for those costs, now. Which means those companies who don't externalise the costs can now compete - which is fairer outcome for everyone. It might mean the cost of living goes up in the short term, but as a wealthy nation we can afford it. If it bites hard, interest rates will drop accordingly. Or people can skip a few coffees each week.
Anti-greenies seem to forget that what keeps an economy going is not the act of making stuff, but of moving money around. If you are spending money on making your cars/roads/factories/public transit/whatever more efficient, you are creating jobs, which means money is going into bank accounts and out again into coffee shops or tax coffers or farmers or whatever, and from there on into the next place and so on and so on. When money flows, people have jobs.
Getting a massage doesn't use (much) stuff but it keeps the economy moving.
Getting someone to mow your lawn doesn't use any more stuff than if you did it yourself but it keeps the economy moving.
Building a wind farm doesn't put another widget in your hand but it keeps the economy moving (and as fossil fuel costs continue to rise, it will save you money in the long term, not to mention the huge health benefits over coal smog).
War is good for the economy (if you can afford it). Apply the same principle to your dirty infrastructure, in a way that saves you money long term, and your economy be much better for it.
Your local experience is not indicative of the rest of the world. Many countries maintain excellent public schools, roads, etc. If your local infrastructure and services suck, it's probably due to limited funding as well as socio-economic factors (particularly income inequality). Pay more tax (and don't spend it all on the military), get better services.
You get what you pay for, regardless of how you pay.
China is currently putting together five pilot projects for different ways of pricing carbon emissions in different provinces. One of them will be based on the Australian emissions trading scheme (which has been erroneously labelled a 'tax').
Perth, Western Australia has recently upgraded and extended their train network. As far as I know it is now just as fast (and much more efficient) to get to the CBD by train.
It is also one of the most sprawling cities in the world.
The idea of the tax (which in Australia will increase each year before being market-based with a diminishing amount of emissions allowed) is to make big business and energy producers (which contributes a massive proportion of our emissions) change where they get their energy NOW because they know in a couple of years it will be ridiculously expensive to use dirty energy sources. That 'paper shuffling' is actually attached to a big incentive for business to change.
It may be too little, too late, but it's at least worth trying. Unfortunately people have forgotten that incredibly fast transitions that happened during WW2 - that is more or less what we need now.
If you read the comments on TFA, it appears it was written in the author's on time.
Does this take into account the cancer deaths from Chernobyl (between 30,000 and 985,000, depending on who you talk ask) and ultimately Fukushima, and the land degradation from nuclear fallout in both cases (which might be considered under both waste footprint and land-use-per-watt)? If so, do you have figures to show this (I am genuinely interested)? How do you calculate land-use-per-watt for roof-mounted photovoltaic systems (which effectively don't require developing any more land)?
For the record, in asking these questions, I am not implying that nuclear is worse than fossil fuels. I think they all have to go, and we already have the technological resources to replace them, at least for electricity production. What fossil fuels we have left should be saved for their more long-term uses such as creating steel, plastics, and (until we can get large-scale sustainable agriculture in place) fertiliser.
It's fine to disagree with someone's sense of humour. It's not fine to abuse them as a response. And, in case you missed it, there was actually someone playing the bagpipes in one of the photos.
Any serious study on the application of 100% renewable energy (and there are many) recognises that you need a combination of technologies, which, along with smart grid demand management, can generate enough energy when the other sources are less effective. If you include stored energy sources such as hyrdroelectric, solar thermal with salt storage, biomass generators, and in some places, geothermal, and your grid is geographically broad enough to be in multiple weather regions, you can cover you bases even on a still night with no waves. Studies in Germany, Catalonia (Spain), Japan and Australia have shown exactly how this can be done using current technology and real-world, year-round data on energy demand and weather conditions, including peaks and base load. (Sorry I don't have a link, I went to a lecture on this a few years back by a German professor who headed up three of the studies mentioned but I can't remember his name!)
Not necessarily. If you look at how they work, with multiple devices attached to a single hydro turbine, they may need to be installed in parallel to maintain a fairly even output and peak efficiency.
There's this stuff people use these days called 'paint'. They even put it on ships and submarine craft. Technology, I tell ya!