Total available wind power is about 1% of total available solar power (about 9% of solar infall goes into convection, and a lot of that in ways not useful to wind turbines) . Additionally, wind turbines have a far worse maintenance cycle than normal industrial power turbines - they don't last as long, and they're far more annoying to service or replace - which is a real concern at the scale we're talking about.
Geothermal and wave would be viable if we would do the same -- plus they don't leave that bullshit radiation nonsense WHEN(*) they fail.
Geothermal energy doesn't scale. The total heat energy emitted through the Earth's crust is something like 1/10000th of the total Solar irradiance across the surface. Like wind, it's great in the few places that it's great. Wind and wave power are simply poor ways to harvest solar power. Sure, there are a few places where the energy available is far higher than average, and it makes sense there, but again it doesn't scale.
Solar is really the only thing that will scale (to 10B people consuming power at current US rates). We might make fission work as a stopgap, but world uranium reserves are actually quite low compared to what would be needed, they'd be exhausted quickly, and there's no evidence we could mine uranium at a rate that would keep up with that scale
The point of TFA is that we can't build modern solar fast enough. That's a fair point, as it has a long toolchain and is beyond what a third-world nation can manufacture for itself. But there's also solar thermal, which only takes 19th century technology to make work. Right now, solar thermal is just below where it makes sense financially. There are places where modern solar is cheaper per Watt than natural gas, but solar thermal just isn't. But it's not a huge difference, just enough to cross the line into not being worth it.
tl;dr: We can build all the solar thermal we'd need, and build it fast, and build it locally in emerging nations, if it were really a priority. It's the only non-fossil fuel answer that's true of.
It's worth pointing out, however, that if we're talking about replacing almost all power generation in just a few decades, orbital solar wins. At current launch costs and energy prices, it already works (it's just less profitable than other things). However, the more we did it, the cheaper it would get. Given we're talking trillions of dollars, just the minimal corporate R&D budget that would inevitably be spent to cut costs would be orders of magnitude higher than all worldwide space-related research funding ever.
After the way China has chosen to treat Canadians over there I don't need Trump to encourage North America to stop consuming Chinese goods. I can do that myself.
You should hear how they treat anyone from Africa. Recurring police raids at your apartment to ransack the place to look for the drugs you're obviously selling, since you're from Africa. Couple times a year, apparently. With no protection from constitution nor tradition, the police just come in whenever they feel like it, no need for any cause probable or otherwise.
I recently dumped my investments in China. With the rise of Emperor Xi they've been moving in the wrong direction on human rights.
Wait, so the SJW press is complaining that trans people were participating in game development? Just more evidence that there's no point in trying to please SJWs; they aren't even coherent.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to use biometric anything after watching Demolition Man.
Long ago when Back to the Future 2 came out, the newspaper headlines were "Thumb Bandit Strikes Again". The flaws in biometrics were recognized in popular media before there even were cheap biometric sensors.
There was an SJW outcry over Rimworld? I missed that one. I take it the devs ignored that and made the game they wanted to make? Of course, it's hard to compare indie devs to the big guys: the big guys try to make a game that sells, where the indies make what they want, and we become aware of the successes and not the failures.
That's a good point, though I think both affected sales. Had BF5 been a better "realistic WW2 game" it would have given it at least something less bland. However, injecting SJW nonsense was pretty far down it's list of anti-consumer behaviors.
Had the gameplay been new or interesting, they might have gotten away with the rest. It really didn't help that a variety of anti-consume injections were also immersion breaking. Wasn't this the game where loot boxes would parachute down to you mid-fight? Geez. Way worse than cyber-arm, though cyber-arm wasn't helping.
I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.
A hell of a lot smarter than the people that vote for them, wouldn't you agree?
Hell no. I do not believe we area nation of peasants ruled by our aristocratic betters! Fuck that idea in its entirety. That idea is the cancer killing America.
This is the guy who slept 3 hrs a day for weeks on the factory floor because he wouldn't ask anybody to work more hours than him.
I can't imagine a worse boss. Being an insane workaholic yourself is not an excuse for demanding the same from your employees - worse, the workaholic thinks it's OK, which is far worse than the guy who knows he's abusing his people.
Clinton (both), Pelosi, and most high-profile Democrats were in favor of border security, including a wall, before Trump was involved. Didn't Bill Clinton even promise a wall in some year's SOTU?
It's not about the wall, clearly. They don't want Trump to get a win. Pure pettiness. Which is fucking stupid: do you utter morons really expect to beat Trump in a war of petty childish behavior? Seriously? That outranks a land war in Asia for a fight not to pick! Both sides are holding their breath until they turn blue; guess who has the least to lose from brain damage? Trick question, they're all idiots.
That's just not true. 800,000 Americans have been directly impacted by the shutdown. By directly impacted, I mean that they are not receiving a paycheck.
They should get real jobs then. You know, like all the peasants. Us peasants who don't merely get paid vacations when our employer runs out of money. Everyone who not a government aristocrat just gets laid off. Cry me a fucking river.
As would any air traveler who's stuck waiting in line because they're closing terminals due to a TSA shortage.
Easily solved with less government: remove the TSA entirely. Go back to airports with private security. Return to respecting the 4th amendment. Government agents searching you without probable cause in order to fly is such a blatant violation of our rights, and I don't ecall anything in the Bill of Rights that says "unless we're scared".
There's no evidence that the TSA improves security over the process we had in 1999. Other changes did help security, but not the TSA. We don't like them. We don't need them. But the government will never relinquish any power, no matter how petty or useless, over the people.
I'm not saying... any of those thing. What I'm saying is that there's to government power that he won't defend. You're rather the same. Oh, there's always an argument why it's good, of course, of course, but the conclusion is always the same with you guys. "Yup, it totally good for government to take this one more inch of power."
HOTS made far less money that expected. Overwatch made less money than expected. D3 made vastly less money than expected. Titan didn't even make it out the door. HOTS and D3 are parked in maintenance mode now.
Most importantly: Blizzard didn't make the money that Fortnite made from the Battle Royale craze. Blizzard has not had a break-out success in years, and missed the giant break-out success every investor wishes they had.
That makes no sense at all. If things aren't working, you change the big parts, not the small parts. And it doesn't matter how big they are, it matters how fast they grow. Activision has started outsourcing dev on Blizzard-branded products to chase growth.
Doesn't matter in the least. They did not go as well as they were expected to do. That's all that matters.
If you don't follow the industry, this is a common tactic for tearing down any studio that isn't a corporate puppet: just set the bar high enough that they fail, then corporatize them. But to be fair, in this case Blizzard has stumbled a few times, WoW is fading, and there's nothing they've done recently to show they can grow.
Heroes of the Storm flopped. Overwatch did not meet expectations. D3 was a disaster, though they made some money back with the expansion, it was still a damaged brand that was abandoned.
Blizzard lost its autonomy as a result of successive flops, which is why everyone old-school has now left.
Tolerance has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. We, as a nation, either have the right to determine who enters our country, or we don't. We believe in democracy here, and so it must be the voters who get to determine who and how many. But any decision of the voters is moot if that decision can't be enforced.
And that, right hter, is the only real issue here. The very richest families in America don't like where democracy stands on immigration. The number of immigrants we would choose (and have chosen) to welcome here costs them billions compared to the depressed wages that unlimited immigration brings. Can't have that: having less than all the money possible is flatly unacceptable. So the very rich must bypass the ability of the voters to decide.
It boggles my mind how many people don't see the actual issue here.
Slashdot Mirror
Total available wind power is about 1% of total available solar power (about 9% of solar infall goes into convection, and a lot of that in ways not useful to wind turbines) . Additionally, wind turbines have a far worse maintenance cycle than normal industrial power turbines - they don't last as long, and they're far more annoying to service or replace - which is a real concern at the scale we're talking about.
Geothermal and wave would be viable if we would do the same -- plus they don't leave that bullshit radiation nonsense WHEN(*) they fail.
Geothermal energy doesn't scale. The total heat energy emitted through the Earth's crust is something like 1/10000th of the total Solar irradiance across the surface. Like wind, it's great in the few places that it's great. Wind and wave power are simply poor ways to harvest solar power. Sure, there are a few places where the energy available is far higher than average, and it makes sense there, but again it doesn't scale.
Solar is really the only thing that will scale (to 10B people consuming power at current US rates). We might make fission work as a stopgap, but world uranium reserves are actually quite low compared to what would be needed, they'd be exhausted quickly, and there's no evidence we could mine uranium at a rate that would keep up with that scale
The point of TFA is that we can't build modern solar fast enough. That's a fair point, as it has a long toolchain and is beyond what a third-world nation can manufacture for itself. But there's also solar thermal, which only takes 19th century technology to make work. Right now, solar thermal is just below where it makes sense financially. There are places where modern solar is cheaper per Watt than natural gas, but solar thermal just isn't. But it's not a huge difference, just enough to cross the line into not being worth it.
tl;dr: We can build all the solar thermal we'd need, and build it fast, and build it locally in emerging nations, if it were really a priority. It's the only non-fossil fuel answer that's true of.
It's worth pointing out, however, that if we're talking about replacing almost all power generation in just a few decades, orbital solar wins. At current launch costs and energy prices, it already works (it's just less profitable than other things). However, the more we did it, the cheaper it would get. Given we're talking trillions of dollars, just the minimal corporate R&D budget that would inevitably be spent to cut costs would be orders of magnitude higher than all worldwide space-related research funding ever.
After the way China has chosen to treat Canadians over there I don't need Trump to encourage North America to stop consuming Chinese goods. I can do that myself.
You should hear how they treat anyone from Africa. Recurring police raids at your apartment to ransack the place to look for the drugs you're obviously selling, since you're from Africa. Couple times a year, apparently. With no protection from constitution nor tradition, the police just come in whenever they feel like it, no need for any cause probable or otherwise.
I recently dumped my investments in China. With the rise of Emperor Xi they've been moving in the wrong direction on human rights.
Wait, so the SJW press is complaining that trans people were participating in game development? Just more evidence that there's no point in trying to please SJWs; they aren't even coherent.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to use biometric anything after watching Demolition Man.
Long ago when Back to the Future 2 came out, the newspaper headlines were "Thumb Bandit Strikes Again". The flaws in biometrics were recognized in popular media before there even were cheap biometric sensors.
There was an SJW outcry over Rimworld? I missed that one. I take it the devs ignored that and made the game they wanted to make? Of course, it's hard to compare indie devs to the big guys: the big guys try to make a game that sells, where the indies make what they want, and we become aware of the successes and not the failures.
That's a good point, though I think both affected sales. Had BF5 been a better "realistic WW2 game" it would have given it at least something less bland. However, injecting SJW nonsense was pretty far down it's list of anti-consumer behaviors.
Had the gameplay been new or interesting, they might have gotten away with the rest. It really didn't help that a variety of anti-consume injections were also immersion breaking. Wasn't this the game where loot boxes would parachute down to you mid-fight? Geez. Way worse than cyber-arm, though cyber-arm wasn't helping.
To quote Milton Friedman:
I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.
A hell of a lot smarter than the people that vote for them, wouldn't you agree?
Hell no. I do not believe we area nation of peasants ruled by our aristocratic betters! Fuck that idea in its entirety. That idea is the cancer killing America.
OK, then, politicians are the smart ones. Man, if from where you are the mind of a politician looks smart .... How do you even use a keyboard?
This is the guy who slept 3 hrs a day for weeks on the factory floor because he wouldn't ask anybody to work more hours than him.
I can't imagine a worse boss. Being an insane workaholic yourself is not an excuse for demanding the same from your employees - worse, the workaholic thinks it's OK, which is far worse than the guy who knows he's abusing his people.
You can'y buy this product. It's not good for you. You're not smart enough to decide. Your betters must decide for you what's best for you.
Clinton (both), Pelosi, and most high-profile Democrats were in favor of border security, including a wall, before Trump was involved. Didn't Bill Clinton even promise a wall in some year's SOTU?
It's not about the wall, clearly. They don't want Trump to get a win. Pure pettiness. Which is fucking stupid: do you utter morons really expect to beat Trump in a war of petty childish behavior? Seriously? That outranks a land war in Asia for a fight not to pick! Both sides are holding their breath until they turn blue; guess who has the least to lose from brain damage? Trick question, they're all idiots.
That's just not true. 800,000 Americans have been directly impacted by the shutdown. By directly impacted, I mean that they are not receiving a paycheck.
They should get real jobs then. You know, like all the peasants. Us peasants who don't merely get paid vacations when our employer runs out of money. Everyone who not a government aristocrat just gets laid off. Cry me a fucking river.
As would any air traveler who's stuck waiting in line because they're closing terminals due to a TSA shortage.
Easily solved with less government: remove the TSA entirely. Go back to airports with private security. Return to respecting the 4th amendment. Government agents searching you without probable cause in order to fly is such a blatant violation of our rights, and I don't ecall anything in the Bill of Rights that says "unless we're scared".
There's no evidence that the TSA improves security over the process we had in 1999. Other changes did help security, but not the TSA. We don't like them. We don't need them. But the government will never relinquish any power, no matter how petty or useless, over the people.
I love the work SpaceX does, but there's no doubt that Elon is a shitty boss.
I'm not saying ... any of those thing. What I'm saying is that there's to government power that he won't defend. You're rather the same. Oh, there's always an argument why it's good, of course, of course, but the conclusion is always the same with you guys. "Yup, it totally good for government to take this one more inch of power."
There is no power an government can't take over citizens that fluffernutter won't defend.
HOTS made far less money that expected. Overwatch made less money than expected. D3 made vastly less money than expected. Titan didn't even make it out the door. HOTS and D3 are parked in maintenance mode now.
Most importantly: Blizzard didn't make the money that Fortnite made from the Battle Royale craze. Blizzard has not had a break-out success in years, and missed the giant break-out success every investor wishes they had.
That makes no sense at all. If things aren't working, you change the big parts, not the small parts. And it doesn't matter how big they are, it matters how fast they grow. Activision has started outsourcing dev on Blizzard-branded products to chase growth.
Doesn't matter in the least. They did not go as well as they were expected to do. That's all that matters.
If you don't follow the industry, this is a common tactic for tearing down any studio that isn't a corporate puppet: just set the bar high enough that they fail, then corporatize them. But to be fair, in this case Blizzard has stumbled a few times, WoW is fading, and there's nothing they've done recently to show they can grow.
Heroes of the Storm flopped. Overwatch did not meet expectations. D3 was a disaster, though they made some money back with the expansion, it was still a damaged brand that was abandoned.
Blizzard lost its autonomy as a result of successive flops, which is why everyone old-school has now left.
more tolerant countries.
Tolerance has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. We, as a nation, either have the right to determine who enters our country, or we don't. We believe in democracy here, and so it must be the voters who get to determine who and how many. But any decision of the voters is moot if that decision can't be enforced.
And that, right hter, is the only real issue here. The very richest families in America don't like where democracy stands on immigration. The number of immigrants we would choose (and have chosen) to welcome here costs them billions compared to the depressed wages that unlimited immigration brings. Can't have that: having less than all the money possible is flatly unacceptable. So the very rich must bypass the ability of the voters to decide.
It boggles my mind how many people don't see the actual issue here.
They can say "no, you can't cause a bank run by getting your money today."
It may come to that, but at the moment we're just trying to get a working lock on the front door.