Here's the thing. It always seems like solar cell wattages are not average, but rated assuming a sahara desert level of sunlight. So, you'll rarely see 1watt out of a 1 watt panel - and if you did, it would be for perhaps an hour or so on a july day, and not much more. On average, you would get a curve going from zero to something like a fraction of the watt, and from there, you can extrapolate that you'd need a lot more solar cells to actually power your house.
For all intents and purposes, there's no such thing as a seismically dead area in North America. I run insurance simulations all the time, and, forecast out to 10k years, everyone will incur some damage from an earthquake.
If Bose is not a quality audio solution, then who is? Are we back to Sony, Pioneer? Or is there some other premium band? And, what do you even look for? Bose at least plays there stuff in a store, you can hear it, and it sounds pretty good. So, what kind of music do you listen to that demands something else?
Everyone says Bose sucks, but no one ever says, well, who is better.
Also, what's the -best- sound card for hardware wavetable MIDI synthesis?
Oh I see you say later to privatize it, and how's that going to work, like how Russia's Yukov was privatized instantly creating a billionare? Reminds me of the Russian oil tycoon in Val Kilmer's "The Saint".
No, you'd have to set minimum prices and what not, and run an auction. The Treasury does this every month is it for issuing debt, so I don't see a reason why this can't work for something more physical. I'm not sure if the FCC spectrum model is a good model to follow.
Can't you see what you're doing? You're casting me as your stereotypical enemy even though I haven't expressed any sentiments which are particularly radical or even particularly different. Open up your mind. You don't have to agree with me at all, but at least realize that my point of view might be valid, and I'm not your mortal political enemy just because I disagree with you on one point. I'm just trying to come up with a fix for one particular pervasive market inefficiency so that we can all work out the best way to live our lives as individuals.
I don't think you are evil. I think your viewpoint is well reasoned, certainly, but I think that a carbon tax is not the best solution to the problem of national energy independence and global warming. You are just wrong. The ironic part is, that yours is the position that I held for a long time on this issue. Slap a tax on CO2 and use the money to clean it up. That makes perfect sense, if it would work. The problem is, it can't, with the technology that we have.
A carbon tax does not reduce carbon dioxide. It can't. That's the whole problem. The idea is that we can put a tax on carbon, and either pay a third world nation to sequester carbon dioxide, or sequester it ourselves. Sure, there's some that argue that we could just reduce our output and pay the third world to use less, but, with the current CO2 level approaching quadruple the pre-industrial age levels, it stands to reason that we need to bring the carbon dioxide level DOWN. We have to sequester to correct what we've already done, and we have to sequester for what we will continue to do.
I would love to believe that we could slap a tax on carbon to pay for national sequestration. But, I've yet to see a reasonable plan to actually sequester the 4 gigatons of carbon we produce per year. Planting trees ultimately doesn't work, the science on that is clear. And I really do not trust plans to pump it into the ground. The iron filings into the ocean plan seems like it could work, but what happens with a big earthquake or some other disturbance, launching all of this carbon back skyward like so much soda fizz. The only thing that could work, in my mind, would be a brute force approach to breaking carbon dioxide back into carbon and oxygen, but that would require more magnesium than we could possibly have. A back of the envelope calculation, that if you could do it, anyway, would require the full electrical output of at least 500 NEW nuclear power plants.
On a smaller scale, could the above work? Yeah, sure. But 4 gigatons is an aweful lot. Right wingers talk about Krakatoa blowing 25 cubic kilometers of dirt in the air, and say that there's no way that humanity can do that. But, humans have never had a look at a coal mine or driven past a coal fired generating station. They ARE mountains of coal getting burned. Trains MILES long haul coal from Wyoming Powder River Basin, and that area of the country looks like someone just took a monster sized spoon and ripped a bite out of the planet. They drop it all off that coal plant, once a month, and make a mountain of coal that looks almost like an ancient egyptian great pyramid, and then they burn it, all of it, over the course of a month, until that next train comes along. 4 gigatons - it's just an enormous amount. I know there are those that say that all the gold that has ever been mined could fill a room, but I guarantee you that it would take a mighty big room to house all the coal that has ever been mined.
SO, yeah, I wish I could believe in sequestration. But I don't. I see Mount Coal getting torched every month as I drive past the local coal fired generating station, and I'm just like "sequester all that - no f--- way." It's just easier to not make a mess, than it is to clean it up.
We have to work with what we have. Yes, being able to sequester carbon dioxide completely would be the ideal thing. In this case, you would think of a tax or a user fee for all atmospheric emissions, that push the lev
find it ironic that you apparently think that taxing industries which provably cause cancer is some vast conspiracy to steal your money, but spending a trillion bucks dumping bombs into some godforsaken country halfway around the world is a good use of your hard-earned cash.
Well, no. All things being equal, we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. But, now that we've done it, we can't afford to lose.
All I'm saying is that the 6.1 cents per kilowatt-hour which I pay for my coal-generated electricity does not account for the full costs of that generation
In essence, what you are advocating is a planned economy. The ability for people to negotiate prices amongst themselves, versus, having a price determined by a committee, is really the guts of the difference between capitalism and socialism. You make the claim that the costs can be calculated apriori, and they really can't. Sure, 100 years ago, it seemed like it might have been a good idea, as it was untried. But, everywhere it has been tried, it wound up riddled with corruption, completely innaccurate, and it utterly failed. Seriously, look at the Russians. They aren't stupid people. If you look at the planning committees of all the the communist party groups in Russia, you'd find that they were, during the height of the Cold War, were highly educated men. Many had advanced engineering degrees, and the same elsewhere around the world where socialism has been tried. Until corruption and graft kicked in, they gave it their best shot. It simply hasn't worked. The situation is the same everywhere around the world. The socialists were never stupid - although they often had hicks for muscle. Their leaders were always smart. And they always fail and will always fail. And really, when you think about it, it -can't- work, because, economics is an extremely complex system, non-linear, dynamic, and predicting it falls well within the realms of that which we can't predict.
In my mind, and to borrow a phrase from you, advocating a system that has so utterly failed as a solution to any problem is more criminal. If we did nothing about global warming, humanity would run into some problems but would bounce back and adapt. We're very flexible creatures, and honestly, we've survived a lot worse than this and with less tools. But, if we get ourselves into a socialist system, and buy into this wrong idea that a group of well honored men and women can fix costs, accurately and without corruption, we'll provably suffer far, far more.
So, that leaves a very simple answer. If you don't like coal plants, and honestly, I'm not a big fan of them either. I drive by coal plants and I see a mountain of coal getting shipped in on 2 mile long trains every 30 days and I know that the bulk of the mass of that coal - the carbon, goes straight up into the air. It's just not a good thing to do. And I've worked in the electric business and I know that they would sooner work a 100 year plant into the ground than spend a nickel on something new. So, my answer is simple.
Build a federal nuclear power plant system, like the TVA. Use breeder reactors and other advanced nuclear designs so we don't have to deal with as much waste, and retire ALL of the coal plants. Invest in nuclear fusion. Just ban coal plants. That way, yes, you have ultimately a federal subsidy in a limited area, limiting anti-market forces. Electricity prices wouldn't be so badly effected, as, its really peak demand that drives the price, and windmills and gas turbines pick up the slack there. After a time, you could then auction off pieces of this nuclear baseload system, privatizing it.
If you build enough nuclear power plants, then, by the way, you'll have the energy to do a mixed fuels portfolio for cars. There's not going to be a single replacement for gasoline. IT's going to be a mix of solutions depending on what people want and need. You'll have biodiesel, ethanol (corn and switchgrass), coal to liquids (assuming nuclear power supplies the energy and
Each of us owns about one six-billionth of the atmosphere and oceans.
No, you don't. I own the atmosphere, and my brother owns the oceans. You don't get any. In fact, you are lucky that I let you breath for free. Really, you owe me about a dollar for the air you've used.
So you're saying we should just close our eyes to the problem and let polluters run wild because, well, arriving at an accurate cost is hard, let's go shopping
No, I'm saying that, if you can't say what the cost is, (which you can't, because, there's no market), then, by definition, pollution does not exist.
Turning a blind eye to trouble just because it's difficult is an immature point of view.
So you agree then, that would should continue to fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, rather than surrender?
Stopping crime is hard too, so let's just legalize theft and murder. Unfettered pollution is no different than theft and murder, morally speaking, it's just the same amount of evil spread out over more people.
No its not, because, coal plants do far far more good than they do harm. Electricity == good. No electricity == bad. That sort of thing, ya know. Sorry, but not all of us agree that going back to being cavemen communining in the ice ages is where humanity should head.
Objective scientific assessment of the problem can arrive at a good estimate of the costs
No it can't. That's utterly laughable. Objective scientists. Boy, that's a good one! And you think we righties are nuts for believing in God... you believe in, a fantasy...
If defending liberty is "liberal", why do conservatives hate liberty so much?
The ACLU doesn't defend liberty. It harasses small towns into forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars to make them go away. Let's really check a list of lawsuits:
Please, tell me how freedom is maximized when you have an organization tearing down religious symbols. They don't.
Finally, the ACLU itself believes that WE DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.
The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.
The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court's long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected
So there, a classic liberal organization - oppressing the majority, and depriving everyone of their right to keep and bear arms.
And, don't even get me started on vouchers, bussing, and other matters. The ACLU has consistenly violated the rights of the majority and their elected officials.
A coal power plant generates enormous problems for its surrounding community and for the planet as a whole, and they do not pay for this
What really set me off, in the original post, was the linking of the difference in price between the solar panel and the coal plant to the supposed environmental cost of the coal plant. There is a block of people that sell this idea that a CO2 tax designed roughly to address economic disparities between the likes of coal and solar panels accurately captures the cost of global warming. It doesn't.
What is the cost though? That's the whole problem. You can't objectively arrive at a cost because, there is no market to set the price! Essentially, what you are asking for is price controls, and that, we already know, doesn't work. Everyone will say that they are damaged by the coal plant, once the government starts passing out money for that. You could never get an accurate assesment. Even if the sea levels rise, you also get a better growing season with it, in areas that still have water. In general, if we go by the fossil record, the biodiversity of the earth will ultimately increase. More growing time, more plants, more insects, still more plants, and finally more animals. There's a lot of benefits to THAT. Plus, we haven't even calculated the economic benefit of being able to exploit two rather significant land areas. We'll have the whole of Greenland and Antarctica, if the worst should come to pass.
So, people want to have a tax to cover some cost, that may not even be a cost, but a benefit, and the question really is, if there is no cost, then, why do they want all of this money? That, to me, is what makes carbon taxes a theft, more than a real solution to a (potential) problem.
I am a liberal. I am not against nuclear power. Specifically, I think we need to heavily invest in many new nuclear power plants using the latest designs (that is, less to no waste leaves the building).
Well, that makes some sense! Now, here's the question. Would you be willing to spend 100 billion dollars a year for like, say, a few years, to completely replace all coal plants with nuclear power, and have enough surplus plants to allow for all cars to be replaced with electric cars? This substantially cuts US greenhouse emissions, allows us to pull out of the Persian gulf, and we can go on our merry way. I've not met a conservative who wouldn't take that deal, even if they are normally opposed to big government projects, but liberals on this tend to be opposed?
I don't want to steal anyone's money "for adding no value to the economy". I'm not sure what this means
It's a troll, no lie there. Basically, many liberals, and you might not be one of them, advocate redistribution of wealth solely for redistribution of wealth. I think it was Keynes that said, that, if you wanted to have a consumer economy, you could just tax the rich people, then have the government pay one guy to dig a hole, and another guy to fill it in. That doesn't work.
I will say that, there ARE times when government spending does work. Clearly, spending on the highway system, is both redistributive, AND, economically efficient.
So, gasp... for putting up with my troll, I will concede that redistribution of wealth does work, so long at improves the overall economic efficiency of the country or has some geopolitical gain.
If we can, over the next 100 years, get used to a rise of a meter a year, then we can get used to that for ever. By 2050, we'll have fusion - for real, and then the whole greenhouse gas thing goes away.
Well, perhaps you could run for office to implement your unconventional ideas. I don't know if the "immature sociopath" demographic will be able to swing any elections, but...oh, right, my bad.
See, there ya go! All I have to do, against a liberal candidate raving on about mother earth and the human planet, is say, "hey, why the hell should we care about the rest of the world. I don't see too many foreign soldiers helping us in Iraq. We gave up all of our manufacturing so that the rest of the planet can get jobs, give the arabs a trillion dollars for oil, bail Europe out from first the Nazis and then the commies, and we get NOTHING."
The only reason Yucca mountain isn't accepting nuclear waste now is because of this absurd notion that we have to have the waste be safe for all time. You don't need to worry about 10,000 or 100,000 years down the road, as the enviros would have us believe. It's just absurd.
Honestly, if we build it for a thousand years, that's plenty of time. After a thousand years of technological progress, there will probably be some machine that just zaps it into ashtrays. Or, we'll be overrun by the Chinese and we'd want them all to get cancer anyway.
So screw them. Dump the waste into the ocean, actually.
62MW of Solar power. That's laughable, when your average gas turbine peaker cranks out a few hundred MW, and a big coal or nuclear station can crank out a 1000. Look at the energy portfolio of the USA, and its obvious, you need to have nuclear power if you want to get rid of coal.
I would further dispute the idea that there is a "cost" of global warming that should be recovered by the government by raising taxes on carbon. If that is not a liberal act of theft, I don't know what is. "Hi, your act imbalances the environment, so give me and my friends some money." That's what these messages are.
The real reason liberals are against nuclear power as a solution to global warming, rather than carbon taxes, is because, at the end of the day, they just want to steal your money for adding no value to the economy, just like they always do. I'm not disputing the science, but the salespeople pushing this are a bunch of fricking crooks.
Let's say for a minute, that global warming does come to pass, antarctica and iceland melt, the oceans rise, and even a billion people drown. My answer is: so what. The world population will still be higher than it is today, and, if it isn't, that's not a bad thing either. If the oceans rise up, sure, a bunch of people will have to move from the coastlines, but, look at all the construction jobs you'll get, and you'll have cities built with better transportation and newer technology. New York, London, and other coastal cities are all old anyway and its time to just move on.
Besides, you could take all of those disasters, and I'd almost rather have that, turning the whole world upside down, than give an extremist socialist liberal one thin dime. Let's see. Give the liberals money, or trash the planet. Sorry Earth.
It's just a no brainer. Better Dead than Red, means something to this day!
None of those were/are monopolies. There are monopolies in international cargo shipping (the big-boat kind), international communications, and an operating system developer called Microsoft.
IBM wasn't a monopoly? My oh my, how do you not remember the lessons of the 1960s. Back in the day, IBM not only dominated computer hardware, but services, and software as well. Everything was tied together in a system called account control.
AND, US Steel, along with Standard Oil and the Railroads, were why the Sherman Anti-Trust act was written to begin with.
Prior to the Japanese invasion, GM was enormously dominant. "What's good for GM is good for America", as the saying went. That brings up an interesting point - competition comes from unexpected quarters. That's the case in computers, steel, trains, ships and planes, and it will be the case in operating systems too.
Just why, exactly, should the ACLU expend limited resources on gun cases when one of the largest and most powerful lobbying groups in the U.S. is devoted purely to gun rights?
You echo my point. The ACLU is an organization that mostly sticks to liberal issues!
Hey genius, most of those regulations are based on the commerce clause.
And then you really echo my point. What exactly does the environment have to do with commerce? Answer : its a heck of a stretch. Of course, you can always conjure up some economic argument to anything but commerce was meant to be a much more limited thing. The reality is that, if you wanted the federal government to have that right, you would really need to amend the constitution so that it could regulate more. It would need to say: "Article I, Section 8 is amended. Before "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;" After "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; regulate the environment, safety, national standards of measurement and compatibilty, and to protect civil rights"
Instead, you've conjured up this lie that "commerce" is everything to get a practical end. I agree that some of it is useful, but it certainly isn't honest.
Yeah, it seems like it would have had to be. I just can't imagine Germans putting up with that sort of thing. If Germans and Americans have one thing in common, its that, neither people are particuarly fond of inspectors and cops...
Isn't the moon believed to be spun off from the same blob of magma as the earth? If so, it should have the same ratio of Uranium as this mud ball, and zero environmental concerns.
The moon is believed to be spun off from the same magnum blob as the earth, but I think the simulations predicted that the moon actually would get all the junky stuff, and the earth would get all the good stuff. So, from what I understand, most of the heavy elements wound up on the earth, and the moon gets mostly crap.
I talked to a geologist about mining once, and he said that water was a sort of prerequisite to get concentrated ore deposits. For example, you get some rock that has some level of gold in it, and its exposed to a water flow for many thousands of years, and the gold washes out, and being heavier, concentrates in places. Then, it gets buried up good, and we go get it.
I always found it amazing how much conservatives hate an organization dedicated to protecting your constitutional rights
When the ACLU joins the NRA to defend the 2nd Amendment, then I will believe they are into defending constitutional rights. Let me see the ACLU sue to block environmental and other legislation because such legislation is a violation of the commerce clause. Let's see the ACLU sue to defend someone who shoots a burglar in his house, rather than the burglar for breaking in. Until then, I have to believe that they selectively sue to advance a liberal agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the thing. It always seems like solar cell wattages are not average, but rated assuming a sahara desert level of sunlight. So, you'll rarely see 1watt out of a 1 watt panel - and if you did, it would be for perhaps an hour or so on a july day, and not much more. On average, you would get a curve going from zero to something like a fraction of the watt, and from there, you can extrapolate that you'd need a lot more solar cells to actually power your house.
For all intents and purposes, there's no such thing as a seismically dead area in North America. I run insurance simulations all the time, and, forecast out to 10k years, everyone will incur some damage from an earthquake.
If Bose is not a quality audio solution, then who is? Are we back to Sony, Pioneer? Or is there some other premium band? And, what do you even look for? Bose at least plays there stuff in a store, you can hear it, and it sounds pretty good. So, what kind of music do you listen to that demands something else?
Everyone says Bose sucks, but no one ever says, well, who is better.
Also, what's the -best- sound card for hardware wavetable MIDI synthesis?
Oh I see you say later to privatize it, and how's that going to work, like how Russia's Yukov was privatized instantly creating a billionare? Reminds me of the Russian oil tycoon in Val Kilmer's "The Saint".
No, you'd have to set minimum prices and what not, and run an auction. The Treasury does this every month is it for issuing debt, so I don't see a reason why this can't work for something more physical. I'm not sure if the FCC spectrum model is a good model to follow.
say "we don't know why this works... but we think it makes you happy..."
Yet, somehow, a good joint and a stiff drink are evil.
Can't you see what you're doing? You're casting me as your stereotypical enemy even though I haven't expressed any sentiments which are particularly radical or even particularly different. Open up your mind. You don't have to agree with me at all, but at least realize that my point of view might be valid, and I'm not your mortal political enemy just because I disagree with you on one point. I'm just trying to come up with a fix for one particular pervasive market inefficiency so that we can all work out the best way to live our lives as individuals.
I don't think you are evil. I think your viewpoint is well reasoned, certainly, but I think that a carbon tax is not the best solution to the problem of national energy independence and global warming. You are just wrong. The ironic part is, that yours is the position that I held for a long time on this issue. Slap a tax on CO2 and use the money to clean it up. That makes perfect sense, if it would work. The problem is, it can't, with the technology that we have.
A carbon tax does not reduce carbon dioxide. It can't. That's the whole problem. The idea is that we can put a tax on carbon, and either pay a third world nation to sequester carbon dioxide, or sequester it ourselves. Sure, there's some that argue that we could just reduce our output and pay the third world to use less, but, with the current CO2 level approaching quadruple the pre-industrial age levels, it stands to reason that we need to bring the carbon dioxide level DOWN. We have to sequester to correct what we've already done, and we have to sequester for what we will continue to do.
I would love to believe that we could slap a tax on carbon to pay for national sequestration. But, I've yet to see a reasonable plan to actually sequester the 4 gigatons of carbon we produce per year. Planting trees ultimately doesn't work, the science on that is clear. And I really do not trust plans to pump it into the ground. The iron filings into the ocean plan seems like it could work, but what happens with a big earthquake or some other disturbance, launching all of this carbon back skyward like so much soda fizz. The only thing that could work, in my mind, would be a brute force approach to breaking carbon dioxide back into carbon and oxygen, but that would require more magnesium than we could possibly have. A back of the envelope calculation, that if you could do it, anyway, would require the full electrical output of at least 500 NEW nuclear power plants.
On a smaller scale, could the above work? Yeah, sure. But 4 gigatons is an aweful lot. Right wingers talk about Krakatoa blowing 25 cubic kilometers of dirt in the air, and say that there's no way that humanity can do that. But, humans have never had a look at a coal mine or driven past a coal fired generating station. They ARE mountains of coal getting burned. Trains MILES long haul coal from Wyoming Powder River Basin, and that area of the country looks like someone just took a monster sized spoon and ripped a bite out of the planet. They drop it all off that coal plant, once a month, and make a mountain of coal that looks almost like an ancient egyptian great pyramid, and then they burn it, all of it, over the course of a month, until that next train comes along. 4 gigatons - it's just an enormous amount. I know there are those that say that all the gold that has ever been mined could fill a room, but I guarantee you that it would take a mighty big room to house all the coal that has ever been mined.
SO, yeah, I wish I could believe in sequestration. But I don't. I see Mount Coal getting torched every month as I drive past the local coal fired generating station, and I'm just like "sequester all that - no f--- way." It's just easier to not make a mess, than it is to clean it up.
We have to work with what we have. Yes, being able to sequester carbon dioxide completely would be the ideal thing. In this case, you would think of a tax or a user fee for all atmospheric emissions, that push the lev
find it ironic that you apparently think that taxing industries which provably cause cancer is some vast conspiracy to steal your money, but spending a trillion bucks dumping bombs into some godforsaken country halfway around the world is a good use of your hard-earned cash.
Well, no. All things being equal, we shouldn't have invaded Iraq. But, now that we've done it, we can't afford to lose.
All I'm saying is that the 6.1 cents per kilowatt-hour which I pay for my coal-generated electricity does not account for the full costs of that generation
In essence, what you are advocating is a planned economy. The ability for people to negotiate prices amongst themselves, versus, having a price determined by a committee, is really the guts of the difference between capitalism and socialism. You make the claim that the costs can be calculated apriori, and they really can't. Sure, 100 years ago, it seemed like it might have been a good idea, as it was untried. But, everywhere it has been tried, it wound up riddled with corruption, completely innaccurate, and it utterly failed. Seriously, look at the Russians. They aren't stupid people. If you look at the planning committees of all the the communist party groups in Russia, you'd find that they were, during the height of the Cold War, were highly educated men. Many had advanced engineering degrees, and the same elsewhere around the world where socialism has been tried. Until corruption and graft kicked in, they gave it their best shot. It simply hasn't worked. The situation is the same everywhere around the world. The socialists were never stupid - although they often had hicks for muscle. Their leaders were always smart. And they always fail and will always fail. And really, when you think about it, it -can't- work, because, economics is an extremely complex system, non-linear, dynamic, and predicting it falls well within the realms of that which we can't predict.
In my mind, and to borrow a phrase from you, advocating a system that has so utterly failed as a solution to any problem is more criminal. If we did nothing about global warming, humanity would run into some problems but would bounce back and adapt. We're very flexible creatures, and honestly, we've survived a lot worse than this and with less tools. But, if we get ourselves into a socialist system, and buy into this wrong idea that a group of well honored men and women can fix costs, accurately and without corruption, we'll provably suffer far, far more.
So, that leaves a very simple answer. If you don't like coal plants, and honestly, I'm not a big fan of them either. I drive by coal plants and I see a mountain of coal getting shipped in on 2 mile long trains every 30 days and I know that the bulk of the mass of that coal - the carbon, goes straight up into the air. It's just not a good thing to do. And I've worked in the electric business and I know that they would sooner work a 100 year plant into the ground than spend a nickel on something new. So, my answer is simple.
Build a federal nuclear power plant system, like the TVA. Use breeder reactors and other advanced nuclear designs so we don't have to deal with as much waste, and retire ALL of the coal plants. Invest in nuclear fusion. Just ban coal plants. That way, yes, you have ultimately a federal subsidy in a limited area, limiting anti-market forces. Electricity prices wouldn't be so badly effected, as, its really peak demand that drives the price, and windmills and gas turbines pick up the slack there. After a time, you could then auction off pieces of this nuclear baseload system, privatizing it.
If you build enough nuclear power plants, then, by the way, you'll have the energy to do a mixed fuels portfolio for cars. There's not going to be a single replacement for gasoline. IT's going to be a mix of solutions depending on what people want and need. You'll have biodiesel, ethanol (corn and switchgrass), coal to liquids (assuming nuclear power supplies the energy and
I think the USA needs to invest big time in nuclear rockets, and at the same time, wrap up its Constellation program.
Each of us owns about one six-billionth of the atmosphere and oceans.
No, you don't. I own the atmosphere, and my brother owns the oceans. You don't get any. In fact, you are lucky that I let you breath for free. Really, you owe me about a dollar for the air you've used.
So you're saying we should just close our eyes to the problem and let polluters run wild because, well, arriving at an accurate cost is hard, let's go shopping
No, I'm saying that, if you can't say what the cost is, (which you can't, because, there's no market), then, by definition, pollution does not exist.
Turning a blind eye to trouble just because it's difficult is an immature point of view.
So you agree then, that would should continue to fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, rather than surrender?
Stopping crime is hard too, so let's just legalize theft and murder. Unfettered pollution is no different than theft and murder, morally speaking, it's just the same amount of evil spread out over more people.
No its not, because, coal plants do far far more good than they do harm. Electricity == good. No electricity == bad. That sort of thing, ya know. Sorry, but not all of us agree that going back to being cavemen communining in the ice ages is where humanity should head.
Objective scientific assessment of the problem can arrive at a good estimate of the costs
No it can't. That's utterly laughable. Objective scientists. Boy, that's a good one! And you think we righties are nuts for believing in God... you believe in, a fantasy...
If defending liberty is "liberal", why do conservatives hate liberty so much?
The ACLU doesn't defend liberty. It harasses small towns into forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars to make them go away. Let's really check a list of lawsuits:
http://www.floppingaces.net/2005/10/13/aclu-wackiness/
Please, tell me how freedom is maximized when you have an organization tearing down religious symbols. They don't.
Finally, the ACLU itself believes that WE DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.
The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.
The ACLU agrees with the Supreme Court's long-standing interpretation of the Second Amendment [as set forth in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller] that the individual's right to bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected
So there, a classic liberal organization - oppressing the majority, and depriving everyone of their right to keep and bear arms.
And, don't even get me started on vouchers, bussing, and other matters. The ACLU has consistenly violated the rights of the majority and their elected officials.
A coal power plant generates enormous problems for its surrounding community and for the planet as a whole, and they do not pay for this
What really set me off, in the original post, was the linking of the difference in price between the solar panel and the coal plant to the supposed environmental cost of the coal plant. There is a block of people that sell this idea that a CO2 tax designed roughly to address economic disparities between the likes of coal and solar panels accurately captures the cost of global warming. It doesn't.
What is the cost though? That's the whole problem. You can't objectively arrive at a cost because, there is no market to set the price! Essentially, what you are asking for is price controls, and that, we already know, doesn't work. Everyone will say that they are damaged by the coal plant, once the government starts passing out money for that. You could never get an accurate assesment. Even if the sea levels rise, you also get a better growing season with it, in areas that still have water. In general, if we go by the fossil record, the biodiversity of the earth will ultimately increase. More growing time, more plants, more insects, still more plants, and finally more animals. There's a lot of benefits to THAT. Plus, we haven't even calculated the economic benefit of being able to exploit two rather significant land areas. We'll have the whole of Greenland and Antarctica, if the worst should come to pass.
So, people want to have a tax to cover some cost, that may not even be a cost, but a benefit, and the question really is, if there is no cost, then, why do they want all of this money? That, to me, is what makes carbon taxes a theft, more than a real solution to a (potential) problem.
I am a liberal.
I am not against nuclear power. Specifically, I think we need to heavily invest in many new nuclear power plants using the latest designs (that is, less to no waste leaves the building).
Well, that makes some sense! Now, here's the question. Would you be willing to spend 100 billion dollars a year for like, say, a few years, to completely replace all coal plants with nuclear power, and have enough surplus plants to allow for all cars to be replaced with electric cars? This substantially cuts US greenhouse emissions, allows us to pull out of the Persian gulf, and we can go on our merry way. I've not met a conservative who wouldn't take that deal, even if they are normally opposed to big government projects, but liberals on this tend to be opposed?
I don't want to steal anyone's money "for adding no value to the economy". I'm not sure what this means
It's a troll, no lie there. Basically, many liberals, and you might not be one of them, advocate redistribution of wealth solely for redistribution of wealth. I think it was Keynes that said, that, if you wanted to have a consumer economy, you could just tax the rich people, then have the government pay one guy to dig a hole, and another guy to fill it in. That doesn't work.
I will say that, there ARE times when government spending does work. Clearly, spending on the highway system, is both redistributive, AND, economically efficient.
So, gasp... for putting up with my troll, I will concede that redistribution of wealth does work, so long at improves the overall economic efficiency of the country or has some geopolitical gain.
The water levels are forecast to rise a meter, no matter what we do. So why bother at this point?
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RQKV7O0&show_article=1
If we can, over the next 100 years, get used to a rise of a meter a year, then we can get used to that for ever. By 2050, we'll have fusion - for real, and then the whole greenhouse gas thing goes away.
Well, perhaps you could run for office to implement your unconventional ideas. I don't know if the "immature sociopath" demographic will be able to swing any elections, but...oh, right, my bad.
See, there ya go! All I have to do, against a liberal candidate raving on about mother earth and the human planet, is say, "hey, why the hell should we care about the rest of the world. I don't see too many foreign soldiers helping us in Iraq. We gave up all of our manufacturing so that the rest of the planet can get jobs, give the arabs a trillion dollars for oil, bail Europe out from first the Nazis and then the commies, and we get NOTHING."
Then I win.
The only reason Yucca mountain isn't accepting nuclear waste now is because of this absurd notion that we have to have the waste be safe for all time. You don't need to worry about 10,000 or 100,000 years down the road, as the enviros would have us believe. It's just absurd.
Honestly, if we build it for a thousand years, that's plenty of time. After a thousand years of technological progress, there will probably be some machine that just zaps it into ashtrays. Or, we'll be overrun by the Chinese and we'd want them all to get cancer anyway.
So screw them. Dump the waste into the ocean, actually.
62MW of Solar power. That's laughable, when your average gas turbine peaker cranks out a few hundred MW, and a big coal or nuclear station can crank out a 1000. Look at the energy portfolio of the USA, and its obvious, you need to have nuclear power if you want to get rid of coal.
I would further dispute the idea that there is a "cost" of global warming that should be recovered by the government by raising taxes on carbon. If that is not a liberal act of theft, I don't know what is. "Hi, your act imbalances the environment, so give me and my friends some money." That's what these messages are.
The real reason liberals are against nuclear power as a solution to global warming, rather than carbon taxes, is because, at the end of the day, they just want to steal your money for adding no value to the economy, just like they always do. I'm not disputing the science, but the salespeople pushing this are a bunch of fricking crooks.
Let's say for a minute, that global warming does come to pass, antarctica and iceland melt, the oceans rise, and even a billion people drown. My answer is: so what. The world population will still be higher than it is today, and, if it isn't, that's not a bad thing either. If the oceans rise up, sure, a bunch of people will have to move from the coastlines, but, look at all the construction jobs you'll get, and you'll have cities built with better transportation and newer technology. New York, London, and other coastal cities are all old anyway and its time to just move on.
Besides, you could take all of those disasters, and I'd almost rather have that, turning the whole world upside down, than give an extremist socialist liberal one thin dime. Let's see. Give the liberals money, or trash the planet. Sorry Earth.
It's just a no brainer. Better Dead than Red, means something to this day!
None of those were/are monopolies. There are monopolies in international cargo shipping (the big-boat kind), international communications, and an operating system developer called Microsoft.
IBM wasn't a monopoly? My oh my, how do you not remember the lessons of the 1960s. Back in the day, IBM not only dominated computer hardware, but services, and software as well. Everything was tied together in a system called account control.
AND, US Steel, along with Standard Oil and the Railroads, were why the Sherman Anti-Trust act was written to begin with.
Prior to the Japanese invasion, GM was enormously dominant. "What's good for GM is good for America", as the saying went. That brings up an interesting point - competition comes from unexpected quarters. That's the case in computers, steel, trains, ships and planes, and it will be the case in operating systems too.
Just why, exactly, should the ACLU expend limited resources on gun cases when one of the largest and most powerful lobbying groups in the U.S. is devoted purely to gun rights?
You echo my point. The ACLU is an organization that mostly sticks to liberal issues!
Hey genius, most of those regulations are based on the commerce clause.
And then you really echo my point. What exactly does the environment have to do with commerce? Answer : its a heck of a stretch. Of course, you can always conjure up some economic argument to anything but commerce was meant to be a much more limited thing. The reality is that, if you wanted the federal government to have that right, you would really need to amend the constitution so that it could regulate more. It would need to say: "Article I, Section 8 is amended. Before "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;" After "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; regulate the environment, safety, national standards of measurement and compatibilty, and to protect civil rights"
Instead, you've conjured up this lie that "commerce" is everything to get a practical end. I agree that some of it is useful, but it certainly isn't honest.
Yep, absolutely crazy and.... completely made up
Yeah, it seems like it would have had to be. I just can't imagine Germans putting up with that sort of thing. If Germans and Americans have one thing in common, its that, neither people are particuarly fond of inspectors and cops...
Isn't the moon believed to be spun off from the same blob of magma as the earth? If so, it should have the same ratio of Uranium as this mud ball, and zero environmental concerns.
The moon is believed to be spun off from the same magnum blob as the earth, but I think the simulations predicted that the moon actually would get all the junky stuff, and the earth would get all the good stuff. So, from what I understand, most of the heavy elements wound up on the earth, and the moon gets mostly crap.
I talked to a geologist about mining once, and he said that water was a sort of prerequisite to get concentrated ore deposits. For example, you get some rock that has some level of gold in it, and its exposed to a water flow for many thousands of years, and the gold washes out, and being heavier, concentrates in places. Then, it gets buried up good, and we go get it.
Jesus Christ. That's absolutely crazy.
I always found it amazing how much conservatives hate an organization dedicated to protecting your constitutional rights
When the ACLU joins the NRA to defend the 2nd Amendment, then I will believe they are into defending constitutional rights. Let me see the ACLU sue to block environmental and other legislation because such legislation is a violation of the commerce clause. Let's see the ACLU sue to defend someone who shoots a burglar in his house, rather than the burglar for breaking in. Until then, I have to believe that they selectively sue to advance a liberal agenda.
Standing up to the government and large corporations is a "left wing" thing?
No, but giving $5000 to the ACLU surely is.