If ethanol subsidies, most of which go to corn and there are better feed stocks than corn, are removed from alternative energy subsidies coal comes in first place in the amount of subsidies [treehugger.com] it gets. The graph on the page linked to says alternative energy got $4.875 billion in 2007. Of that though $3 billion went to ethanol. Coal on the other hand is broken down into 2 categories. Refined coal, whatever that is, got $2.370 billion and coal got $932 million. Together coal got $3.302 billion whereas goethermal, solar, wind and other alternative sources got $1.9 billion excluding ethanol. I do see that it has nuclear as getting less than alternatives though, however I wonder how it breaks down for the different types? As that page asks, "which pig wears the most lipstick?"
Refined coal (aka Clean Coal) is a way of processing coal so it emits less pollution. Carbon Capture is also heavily subsidized. If you have no pollution, and no CO2 emissions, then you've got yourself a green coal power plant. The trouble is, green coal costs around 3x as much as normal coal. So the government subsidizes it. Don't get too carried away with the notion that we're subsidizing dirty coal production. Some states certainly do, and there's health programs for coal miners and such, but if you're opposed to something on moral grounds because it gets subsidies, then you should give nuclear a break (which gets comparitively little) and hate on solar (which gets massive subsidies).
The chart you're showing is total amount, not percentage of cost, so it is not very good. In the other thread, I posted the subsidy rates here in California for various energy sources.
>>We don't have that, unless you're targeting those who can't afford a car.
We do. As I said, it doesn't apply to commuters, but for small business owners for myself, who has to drive to meetings in San Jose or something, it does exist.
You pay, what, 40 cents per gallon in tax, right? You get 50 cents per mile back off your federal taxes. If you do the math, if you drive an old gas-efficient car, it's a net tax gain.
>>So the Wall Street Journal is wrong?
Not picking on the WSJ blogger you quoted in particular, but I've done the research myself on this topic, using primary sources, and have found almost all single secondary sources to be wrong in one area or another. But I'm not sure why you say that nuclear can only compete if there's a carbon tax, and then turn around and say that coal shouldn't get a free ride by dropping external costs on society. (How do you charge coal and gas for their social costs? You tax them.)
But the math isn't as bad as you make it out to be. The "sticker shock" prices of $5-10B are because bigger plants lose a lower percentage to overhead. You can certainly build smaller nuclear plants, but in any event, if you look at the actual costs and profits generated by new nuclear plants in the last 10 years, the situation isn't so dire. They're cost competitive with coal.
It actually answers your question about why the various incentives are in place.
>>Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste.
Dirty means that a plant emits pollution. Nuclear plants don't emit pollution. Really, only coal, oil, gas and certain types of biofuel/MSW plants are "dirty". Nuclear, hydro, and all the rest don't have any emissions at all, except water vapor and waste heat.
The nuclear waste problem is, again, entirely the fault of Greens. They seem to think that radioactive materials buried deep underground are evil. ("They'll plague our childrens childrens children!") And appear completely oblivious to the fact that these radioactive materials... were originally buried underground. By nature.
I'm kind of saddened that you've fallen into this trap, since you're obviously a smart person. Yes, uranium mine tailings and the rest are a real problem, I agree with you on that, but the only explanation I can find for Greens thinking that "natural" uranium with no containment whatsoever underground is better than "processed radioactive "waste" is that nuclear reactors are made from elemental evil, and cause small little devils to enter the uranium at that point. Uranium is tainted by its contact with humans! Ai ya! Mother Earth will be so mad at us!
It's really one of the most illogical stances Greens take. If there weren't Greens, there wouldn't be a waste problem.
In some other thread, a guy was opposed to burying waste deep within the earth's mantle. "Who knows what side effects it would cause?"/sigh
>>Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs.
It's true. In fact, if some of the developments posted here on/. come true, Solar might be the best technology. I'm hardly a nuclear fanboy or anything. Just given the way the world is right now, the pros and cons are very clearly pointed toward nuclear.
But solar has a long way to go before it's cost competitive without subsidies.
>>A very small fraction of the geothermal potential has, therefore, been developed so far
Sure, but the most efficient sites are only located at certain geothermic hot spots - the hotter the temperature of the steam, the more energy you can draw out. Depending on what cost you're willing to pay, there's more or less sites available.
Ah, I see you did find 'celebrated'. I sort of skimmed past your quotes, which were about as long as the entire article you were quoting. Your work above is honestly the biggest quotefail I've ever seen, which is pretty impressive.
If you'd dug more into the history of Germany and nuclear power plants, you'd understand how the Green party alliance is full of fail on the topic as well.
The US isn't the only nation to have cost overruns in building nuclear power plants. The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant, built by the French government owned Areva, and Siemens but Siemens sold it's interest to Areva, originally was supposed to cost 3 billion euros but as of a year ago that increased to 4.2 billion euros. And originally shceduled to start operations in 2009 operations are now planned for 2012. The article France's Much-Vaunted Nuclear Program Draws Fire says France covered up major costs overruns. Forum: France no example for nuclear power too says France has cost overruns. India Faces Delays in 423 Infrastructure Projects with Cost Overruns of More Than $8 Billion says that though 3 nuclear projects in India don't have cost overruns they have had delays. Even the Wall Street Journal says Nuclear power has problems. The article It's the Economics, Stupid: Nuclear Power's Bogeyman says that because of high construction costs "The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power's favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide." By putting a price tag on carbon dioxide you also make geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources competitive though.
The article you quote says that the nuclear power plant with the cost overruns is going to lose money because France currently has an energy surplus. Guess where their surplus came from? Nuclear energy. Your CATO article also said that we should impose a CO2 tax, but now you don't like the idea, apparently.
No, the nuclear power industry is protected from lawsuits. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act indemnifies, protects, the nuclear power industry:
No, absolutely not true.
The nuclear industry is not "protected from lawsuits" by Price-Anderson. They are indemnified against liability, which is an entirely different issue. If you followed the story of the Diablo Canyon plant, you'd know how idiot Greens caused a massive disruption and delay via lawsuits, protests, and illegal activities, for very minor gain in safety. The wikipedia article on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant) doesn't go into the whole epic saga, barely even noting that it happened. But this was basically when California had enough with nuclear - it was because of idiot Greens, lawsuits, and politics, not economic factors that resulted in the moratorium. Take a read at it some time, it takes a couple hours at least to give the story justice.
There are a couple other acts both proposed and on the books that try to remedy the program, none very successful so far. Harry Reid is actually a big supporter of trying to break the gridlock on building power plants, because even someone as liberal as him knows that if we continue down the path of not building anything, anywhere, it's disaster for our country. (And, of course, it increases the power of the federal government at the expense of states.)
>>No body gets subsidies, that includes no passing on external costs to others, or loan guaranties.
Then you should love nuclear. I know you quoted CATO's, "No to subsidies" article. Do you actually know how much of a subsidy ultimately goes into different power types? Nuclear has the least subsidies per KWH (as fraction of price) of any green technology.
And since you mention external costs, we'll lump the social cost of coal in as well, and show nuclear as the best option: Coal/Gas: No subsidies, 300% social cost. Nuclear: 14% subsidies Biomass: 14% - 94% subsidies Fuel Cell: 31% - 56% subsidies Geothermal: 45% subsidies Hy
>>Bird strikes are for the most part gross exaggerations, long since debunked.
Debunked or not, it's still enough to lose a lawsuit to a Green.
The Altamont wind plant outside San Francisco kills something like 10,000 birds a year, enough that a judge ordered them to shut down or move the worst turbines.
>>nuclear power plants that create so much pollution.
Nuclear power plants don't produce any pollution. At all - unless you're talking about the exhaust of the employees driving to the plant or something. Nuclear waste isn't pollution (it doesn't get into the environment), and is really just another form of fuel.
I'm not sure why so many people believe in such counter-factual things. When listening to Pacifica Communist Radio a year or two ago, I was listening to a reporter for the Worker's News Network (or whatever it's called) unironically talking about a group of global warming protesters chaining themselves to a gate of a nuclear power plant, trying to shut it down. Said this with a straight face, with absolutely no clue that what she was talking about made no sense whatsoever.
>>So while this is good news, we really need to start working more on forms of renewable power creation where we can get a minimum load of them on demand or renewable energy will stay on the fringes.
You don't understand how it works then. You just need power "backstops" that can quickly come online to provide power when it gets cloudy or the wind dies or something. These are usually natural gas plants, but they don't have to be. And if they're only running a small fraction of the time, the CO2 they produce is acceptably low.
2) Greens. Ironic, is it not? As the article mentions, the primary opposition to this green power plant came from Greens themselves. And this happens everywhere, with greens blowing up dams, shutting down solar plants, and otherwise trying to block any progress being made whatsoever. The Green movement is like an alcoholic, schizophrenic stepfather.
(Well, and 3) the Native American groups, which seems kind of dubious to me - they have offshore burial grounds? Really? In a very specific spot? I suppose it's vaguely possible, but it seems like they're more looking for a payoff to go away.)
As the Hooked on Subsidies article the pro freemarket CATO Institute republished, originally published by "Forbes", said it is state actors not the market that decides what nuclear power plants are built.
I've read it. Not a good article. It looks like they base their price per KWH on a single analyst's report, instead of going after primary sources themselves. By comparison, when assembling my table of c/KWH of different energy sources for my lecture, I used four different comprehensive reports on energy costs, including the CA DOE and the federal DOE's cost estimates, as well as from two hippie sources (Energy Progress.org and a Tidal Power, Inc., cost estimate). It was also very illuminating to the students to see how cost estimates fluctuate greatly by the person doing the reporting.
Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal, and is the only green energy source that is. The CATO institute gives the very misleading figure of +0.02c/KWH increase for "clean coal". Well, fair enough - but if you're talking about actually "green" coal power plants (i.e. with carbon capture systems), it triples the price of coal power, give or take.
It's a very bad article, actually. Read the very bottom. They say that if CO2 is a problem, you should just implement a tax on CO2 emissions. Guess what this does? It makes nuclear the most cost effective energy solution out there.
It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.
I'm glad I don't donate to the Sierra Club. They're not the only hypocrites though. On the Atlantic Coast there are those who oppose offshore wind farms. Even Ted Kennedy opposed a wind farm, in Cape Cod. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States" lays out the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential to supply all of the US with energy. Meanwhile SciAm published the article A Solar Grand Plan lays out how solar power can "supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." Then there are other potential energy sources as well. Geothermal energy supplied California with 13 terawatts or 4.5% of the electricity used in CA in 2007. One geothermal project in Hawaii is the Puna Geothermal Venture and it supplies the big island of 20% of it's electricity. The SciAm article Hawaii Says Aloha (Greetings) to Clean, Renewable Energy says geothermal energy can be expanded to supply more electricity:
Yeah, this sort of hypocrisy is exactly what I'm talking about. If there's any sort of negative, a plant will get opposed, regardless of the benefits. I'll address the other green power sources in order:
Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal. The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations. The CA DOE report actually does a very good job showing the costs of power sources with and without subsidies. http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF
Geothermal will never amount to more than a couple percentage points of our energy needs. We may have already reached the point of diminishing returns with it.
Biofuels are traps. Ethanol is a bad joke imposed on us by a political system that lets corn farmers vote first in the presidential primaries.
MSW is reasonable enough. Burning trash is better than burying it, if you can trap the byproducts. But again, it's unlikely to account for a very large fraction of our energy needs.
>>It proposes to increase fuel taxes but, and here's the "net-zero tax part", reduce income tax.
We already have this, as long as you're not a commuter. The more you drive, the more you pay in taxes and the less you pay in income tax.
Hey, thanks man. At least my post didn't get modded as flamebait. Though I like the environment, clean air, and all that, I don't have a lot of respect for the Greens, and I have to defend them in class (well, at least explain why someone would think that way), which tends to make me irritable toward them.
>>I don't know what else to tell you than that generalizations like the one you made are the definition of black and white thinking.
You're just talking in circles, then.
I actually research every topic rather thoroughly, and have probably spent more time on RC.org than any other single source, but it doesn't mean I agree with RC.org (in fact, I think they're deceitful hacks). I'll listen to Glenn Beck and Pacifica Communist Radio in the same hour.
Obviously, the generalization that Greens are stupid is, well, a generalization. But taken as a whole (i.e. by looking at the output of the effect of Greens on society), it's quite accurate. The Green movement tends to shut down anything with any sort of negative side, regardless of the positive. This is what I mean by "stupid". If you'd like a less apt analogy, I could compare them to an abusive stepfather that beats you for getting one question wrong on the SAT, or a broken car or something.
When I did a cost comparison of different power sources, I included state subsidies in the analysis. Hell, I drew on a lot of different sources, probably spending 20 hours of my own time trying to cut through the drek and get good numbers for how much things cost. Nuclear is particularly susceptible to lawsuits, which adds to cost overruns here in America, which leads to the greens harping on the delays and cost overruns. There's a bill in Congress to actually transfer the decision making process to the federal Department of the Interior, away from state PUCs, in order to eliminate the logjam we're in.
No the Greens are not necessarily monolithic, though actual Green parties (like the German Greens linked to above) certainly can be bullheaded in their stupid decision making. Instead, what happens in California is that if you want to build a power plant, it's guaranteed at least one green group will make an all or nothing decision and shut you down. I had a friend who went through this when trying to build a power plant near Bakersfield. There was simply no site, ANYWHERE, to build. And this was during our big energy crisis in the Gray Davis days. It would be easier if you could just talk to the Sierra Club and get them to sign off on a project, believe me. It would be more like dealing with an intelligent though illogical adversary than the psychopathic amalgam of green groups we have now.
To use an analogy: you want to buy diapers, and need to go through the same gauntlet that power companies do.:? OPTION 1: Buy disposable plastic diapers. Rejected because it contributes to landfills. OPTION 2: Buy washables. Rejected because it wastes water. Result: We end up with poop everywhere, because Greens reject everything out of hand do to their all or nothing thinking. They simply cannot handle the concept that everything has pros and cons.
>>you have not given a single piece of evidence that the greens don't know that every subject has multiple facets, that they just see something, anything and jump on it, no matter what else is connected to it.
How about throwing parties for shutting down a nuclear power plant? =)
And that's unfortunately a Green party that was actually part of a ruling bloc.
>>but clearly that is not what they do. because if they were doing that, they would be arguing against themselves on many occasions.
Actually, that's precisely what's happening. It's called the "Green on Green Battle", where environmental groups are on both sides of an issue. One group will decide global warming is a bigger problem than 25 tortoises, and another group will decide the tortoises are more important, and... everyone loses.
By contrast, if they held more nuanced views (instead of these nutcase all-or-nothing views which ), you'd have seen actual progress happen, on a variety of fronts.
You're assertion that Green's always hold "all-or-nothing" positions is just bullshit. I find it entertaining that you can't take criticism, hold such a hostile view, and are preparing to lecture students.
Of course not. Very few things are "always" true, and this applies to Greens as much as to rational, thinking individuals. (Or is that too hostile? The use of "bullshit" in your attack on my hostility leads me to think such a statement is okay.)
Find one of the cases I listed above that's not true, and you might have a point. But I call it like I see it, and I see Greens being worse for the environment than any other group. The nuclear ban alone is reason enough.
Because we've all been instantiated, so to speak. So a process to instantiate us exists. This, right there, destroys the theory that death must necessarily be the end of us.
>>As far as I can see, atheism only implies a denial of or lack of belief in god or gods. Even if we substitute "materialism" or "naturalism" where you use "atheism", the implied non-existence you claim still doesn't seem to follow.
I use atheism as shorthand for the atheistic scientism/positive materialism that is the dominant philosophical mode on/. General claims include such things as: no souls exist/there is nothing but matter, a trend toward determinism, science can answer all questions (and what science can't answer is irrelevant) and that death is extinction.
>>You give no indication that any sort of continuity exists between this hypothetical future consciousness and ourselves, and there are reasons to think that no such thing exists (ie. reliance upon a specific brain, for example)
I never implied continuity. Merely that whatever process that took people from unordered matter into thinking conscious entities could happen again to us. Black box the process. You've had no counterarguments to this other than saying that it sounds awfully dubious.
>>As far as the star trek analogy is concerned, "I" would wake up after being beamed, but I'm not sure it would be the same "I" who was anhilated earlier
Ah, but I'm not talking about the copy who appeared on the spaceship. I'm talking about the copy on the planet. Would you (as that copy) actually beam up? Or walk into the annihilation beam after a copy of you was accidentally made up in space?
>>Your analogies ALL seem to rely upon copying a specific neural pattern
Nope. The fact of the matter is, a teleporter will duplicate you, but that won't be your consciousness in that second body. At best, it will be a perfect duplicate of your consciousness. That's entirely my point.
Where did that consciousness come from? We don't know. What happens to the consciousness that is annihilated? We don't know. What is consciousness? We don't know. All we know is that it is possible for a consciousness to arise from a (presumably) unconscious collection of atoms.
>>something which you've given no indication of happening with your "general" scenario of some conscious experience at some unknown time in the future through some unknown mechanism/process.
Explained above. The beauty of it is that we don't need to know. In fact, we may never know. It's a black box.
But just because we don't know what the inner workings of a black box is, doesn't mean we can't know what the black box takes as input and output. Science works with these things all the time. Hell, we run this black box experiment all the time when a pregnant lady eats a bunch of random food items and converts them into a thinking living conscious being.
>>If stupidity is oversimplifying complex problems, then, to at least one significant figure, everyone is stupid.
There's a huge difference between simplifying complex problems, and pretending that it is an all or nothing proposition.
>>South asians in the audience, does it actually help if your civilization is based on a philosophy that admits shades of gray?
To be fair, our Western system of logic is based on the law of the excluded middle, which has resulting in quite a few all-or-nothing fallacies being passed on as logically valid truth. Sorites paradox and all that.
For example, fallacious all-or-nothing arguments like those Greens use, are often of the format: 1) Heat will kill you 2) It is hot outside the house 3) Going outside the house will kill you.
>>The irony is that you ask people to not have such a black and white view on the environment, yet you have a black and white view on politics.
Since I apparently have a black and white view of politics, I'm vastly interested in what you think those are.
>>For example, in the wiki article that YOU site, it claims the removal of the dam was for reasons of safety, the salmon, erosion, and nutrients in the riverbed. Which of those is a "green" issue?
Indeed. (I'm aware of this, having linked the article for you to read.) As I said with the volcano example, there's always a lot of effects, both good or bad, with every decision. But the trend in general to blow up dams is a very troubling one. We need more power plants, not less.
And flood control is a not-insignificant issue, also. In Japan, the Shinto nature-loving country on the other side of the Pacific, every single (well, over 95%) of every river and stream in Japan is dammed. Mainly for flood control issues, but they also produce about 10% of their total power needs from hydro in places like (the very lovely) Kiso River Valley. It's quite jarring to the American eye to see square waterfalls, square streams, and massive hydro plants in the middle of what could be their Yosemite Valley. But they do have something to it.
>>You mix up the meaning of the precautionary principle. It's not the idea of not doing anything because something might have something negative. Rather, often, if something has great risks, even if relatively unlikely, it is better to do the other alternative. And the more unknown things are, the more cautious you should be.
No, I hit the precautionary principle dead on. It paralyzes the decision making process by replacing the weighted balance of pros and cons (which is the alternative, mind you) by allowing anything to block action.
In practice, it means that no power plants get built for thirty years in a state that has grown rather significantly since then.
The worst part is, people don't even realize it is self-contradictory. Sometimes doing nothing is the worst possible alternative, by a long shot.
>>but your post is a simple illusion, it's a blueprint for a rant on anything and fully exchangeable
Exchangeable? Not at all. I'm for power generation, and opposed to stupidity. On general principles.
While your point about the dams is a valid one (there's more reasons than fish that they're destroying them), the simple fact of the matter is that California has truly fucked itself when it comes to energy. It has a mandate for 33% of power generated from green sources in a few years, and yet it allows 25 tortoises (I'm not making that number up - the Sierra Club shut the plant down over 25 tortoises) to block construction of a honest-to-goodness green power plant. Guess what? There's going to be an endangered something or other anywhere you try to build out a large solar plant. It's how it works. (Oh, you want a smaller site, and one that doesn't produce CO2? How about nuclear? No? That's still off the table?)
>>you're just ranting for the hell of it
Not at all. I'm ranting because I have to give a lecture in eight hours and answer questions from the students about why our system is so badly run.
And while I know that you're trolling, I did point out that clean air in general is a good thing. But pretending that something is all or nothing like the Greens do is just idiotic.
>>They want to pump sulfur compounds into the atmosphere, including. When I heard this, also on NPR, I wanted to scream, "What about acid rain you stupid fuckers!?"
They've thought about it. I've read the analysis and it's reasonable. The reason WHY they want to use SO2/SO4 is because we know that this is what happens when volcanoes erupt, and it doesn't cause catastrophic effects. There's plenty of other possible solutions - really, anything that increases the albedo and cloud nucleation would work. I think they've also suggested salt sprayers, for example.
Given how cheap it would be to build one of these things (Bill Gates could fund it out of his evil scientist slush fund), I find it hilarious and sad at the same time that people will talk about how great the threat of AGW is on one hand, and absolutely, positively, refuse to consider any alternative besides us moving into caves and eating granola all day. (And 6 billion people dying in the process, but it's considered gauche to talk about that.)
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>>I'm fed up with nitwits who don't realize that a book written 200+ years ago (The Wealth of Nations) doesn't apply anymore.
Do you thatch your own roof, too?
Playing MAG will prepare them for a disappointing life as a platoon leader later in life.
At least they won't be surprised when half their men randomly decide to start running in circles or getting themselves blown up by mortar fire.
Oh, and on the issue of subsidies:
Refined coal (aka Clean Coal) is a way of processing coal so it emits less pollution. Carbon Capture is also heavily subsidized. If you have no pollution, and no CO2 emissions, then you've got yourself a green coal power plant. The trouble is, green coal costs around 3x as much as normal coal. So the government subsidizes it. Don't get too carried away with the notion that we're subsidizing dirty coal production. Some states certainly do, and there's health programs for coal miners and such, but if you're opposed to something on moral grounds because it gets subsidies, then you should give nuclear a break (which gets comparitively little) and hate on solar (which gets massive subsidies).
The chart you're showing is total amount, not percentage of cost, so it is not very good. In the other thread, I posted the subsidy rates here in California for various energy sources.
>>We don't have that, unless you're targeting those who can't afford a car.
We do. As I said, it doesn't apply to commuters, but for small business owners for myself, who has to drive to meetings in San Jose or something, it does exist.
You pay, what, 40 cents per gallon in tax, right? You get 50 cents per mile back off your federal taxes. If you do the math, if you drive an old gas-efficient car, it's a net tax gain.
>>So the Wall Street Journal is wrong?
Not picking on the WSJ blogger you quoted in particular, but I've done the research myself on this topic, using primary sources, and have found almost all single secondary sources to be wrong in one area or another. But I'm not sure why you say that nuclear can only compete if there's a carbon tax, and then turn around and say that coal shouldn't get a free ride by dropping external costs on society. (How do you charge coal and gas for their social costs? You tax them.)
But the math isn't as bad as you make it out to be. The "sticker shock" prices of $5-10B are because bigger plants lose a lower percentage to overhead. You can certainly build smaller nuclear plants, but in any event, if you look at the actual costs and profits generated by new nuclear plants in the last 10 years, the situation isn't so dire. They're cost competitive with coal.
In any event, the CBO report that your blogger quoted is actually pretty good (though I disagree with bits of it). Read through:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9133/toc.htm
It actually answers your question about why the various incentives are in place.
>>Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste.
Dirty means that a plant emits pollution. Nuclear plants don't emit pollution. Really, only coal, oil, gas and certain types of biofuel/MSW plants are "dirty". Nuclear, hydro, and all the rest don't have any emissions at all, except water vapor and waste heat.
The nuclear waste problem is, again, entirely the fault of Greens. They seem to think that radioactive materials buried deep underground are evil. ("They'll plague our childrens childrens children!") And appear completely oblivious to the fact that these radioactive materials... were originally buried underground. By nature.
I'm kind of saddened that you've fallen into this trap, since you're obviously a smart person. Yes, uranium mine tailings and the rest are a real problem, I agree with you on that, but the only explanation I can find for Greens thinking that "natural" uranium with no containment whatsoever underground is better than "processed radioactive "waste" is that nuclear reactors are made from elemental evil, and cause small little devils to enter the uranium at that point. Uranium is tainted by its contact with humans! Ai ya! Mother Earth will be so mad at us!
It's really one of the most illogical stances Greens take. If there weren't Greens, there wouldn't be a waste problem.
In some other thread, a guy was opposed to burying waste deep within the earth's mantle. "Who knows what side effects it would cause?" /sigh
>>Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs.
It's true. In fact, if some of the developments posted here on /. come true, Solar might be the best technology. I'm hardly a nuclear fanboy or anything. Just given the way the world is right now, the pros and cons are very clearly pointed toward nuclear.
But solar has a long way to go before it's cost competitive without subsidies.
>>A very small fraction of the geothermal potential has, therefore, been developed so far
Sure, but the most efficient sites are only located at certain geothermic hot spots - the hotter the temperature of the steam, the more energy you can draw out. Depending on what cost you're willing to pay, there's more or less sites available.
It's possib
Ah, I see you did find 'celebrated'. I sort of skimmed past your quotes, which were about as long as the entire article you were quoting. Your work above is honestly the biggest quotefail I've ever seen, which is pretty impressive.
If you'd dug more into the history of Germany and nuclear power plants, you'd understand how the Green party alliance is full of fail on the topic as well.
The article you quote says that the nuclear power plant with the cost overruns is going to lose money because France currently has an energy surplus. Guess where their surplus came from? Nuclear energy. Your CATO article also said that we should impose a CO2 tax, but now you don't like the idea, apparently.
No, the nuclear power industry is protected from lawsuits. The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act indemnifies, protects, the nuclear power industry:
No, absolutely not true.
The nuclear industry is not "protected from lawsuits" by Price-Anderson. They are indemnified against liability, which is an entirely different issue. If you followed the story of the Diablo Canyon plant, you'd know how idiot Greens caused a massive disruption and delay via lawsuits, protests, and illegal activities, for very minor gain in safety. The wikipedia article on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant) doesn't go into the whole epic saga, barely even noting that it happened. But this was basically when California had enough with nuclear - it was because of idiot Greens, lawsuits, and politics, not economic factors that resulted in the moratorium. Take a read at it some time, it takes a couple hours at least to give the story justice.
There are a couple other acts both proposed and on the books that try to remedy the program, none very successful so far. Harry Reid is actually a big supporter of trying to break the gridlock on building power plants, because even someone as liberal as him knows that if we continue down the path of not building anything, anywhere, it's disaster for our country. (And, of course, it increases the power of the federal government at the expense of states.)
>>No body gets subsidies, that includes no passing on external costs to others, or loan guaranties.
Then you should love nuclear. I know you quoted CATO's, "No to subsidies" article. Do you actually know how much of a subsidy ultimately goes into different power types? Nuclear has the least subsidies per KWH (as fraction of price) of any green technology.
And since you mention external costs, we'll lump the social cost of coal in as well, and show nuclear as the best option:
Coal/Gas: No subsidies, 300% social cost.
Nuclear: 14% subsidies
Biomass: 14% - 94% subsidies
Fuel Cell: 31% - 56% subsidies
Geothermal: 45% subsidies
Hy
Wow. With the amount of effort you put into quoting it, and trying to prove you read it, you could have just read the thing. :/
Hint: search for "celebrated".
>>Bird strikes are for the most part gross exaggerations, long since debunked.
Debunked or not, it's still enough to lose a lawsuit to a Green.
The Altamont wind plant outside San Francisco kills something like 10,000 birds a year, enough that a judge ordered them to shut down or move the worst turbines.
>>nuclear power plants that create so much pollution.
Nuclear power plants don't produce any pollution. At all - unless you're talking about the exhaust of the employees driving to the plant or something. Nuclear waste isn't pollution (it doesn't get into the environment), and is really just another form of fuel.
I'm not sure why so many people believe in such counter-factual things. When listening to Pacifica Communist Radio a year or two ago, I was listening to a reporter for the Worker's News Network (or whatever it's called) unironically talking about a group of global warming protesters chaining themselves to a gate of a nuclear power plant, trying to shut it down. Said this with a straight face, with absolutely no clue that what she was talking about made no sense whatsoever.
>>So while this is good news, we really need to start working more on forms of renewable power creation where we can get a minimum load of them on demand or renewable energy will stay on the fringes.
You don't understand how it works then. You just need power "backstops" that can quickly come online to provide power when it gets cloudy or the wind dies or something. These are usually natural gas plants, but they don't have to be. And if they're only running a small fraction of the time, the CO2 they produce is acceptably low.
Really, there's only two obstacles in switching to green energy:
1) Cost. Unsubsidized costs of most sources of green power is many times more expensive than coal. Only nuclear is cost competitive. (Best cost estimate I've found - http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF)
2) Greens. Ironic, is it not? As the article mentions, the primary opposition to this green power plant came from Greens themselves. And this happens everywhere, with greens blowing up dams, shutting down solar plants, and otherwise trying to block any progress being made whatsoever. The Green movement is like an alcoholic, schizophrenic stepfather.
(Well, and 3) the Native American groups, which seems kind of dubious to me - they have offshore burial grounds? Really? In a very specific spot? I suppose it's vaguely possible, but it seems like they're more looking for a payoff to go away.)
As the Hooked on Subsidies article the pro freemarket CATO Institute republished, originally published by "Forbes", said it is state actors not the market that decides what nuclear power plants are built.
I've read it. Not a good article. It looks like they base their price per KWH on a single analyst's report, instead of going after primary sources themselves. By comparison, when assembling my table of c/KWH of different energy sources for my lecture, I used four different comprehensive reports on energy costs, including the CA DOE and the federal DOE's cost estimates, as well as from two hippie sources (Energy Progress.org and a Tidal Power, Inc., cost estimate). It was also very illuminating to the students to see how cost estimates fluctuate greatly by the person doing the reporting.
Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal, and is the only green energy source that is. The CATO institute gives the very misleading figure of +0.02c/KWH increase for "clean coal". Well, fair enough - but if you're talking about actually "green" coal power plants (i.e. with carbon capture systems), it triples the price of coal power, give or take.
It's a very bad article, actually. Read the very bottom. They say that if CO2 is a problem, you should just implement a tax on CO2 emissions. Guess what this does? It makes nuclear the most cost effective energy solution out there.
It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.
I'm glad I don't donate to the Sierra Club. They're not the only hypocrites though. On the Atlantic Coast there are those who oppose offshore wind farms. Even Ted Kennedy opposed a wind farm, in Cape Cod. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States" lays out the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential to supply all of the US with energy. Meanwhile SciAm published the article A Solar Grand Plan lays out how solar power can "supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." Then there are other potential energy sources as well. Geothermal energy supplied California with 13 terawatts or 4.5% of the electricity used in CA in 2007. One geothermal project in Hawaii is the Puna Geothermal Venture and it supplies the big island of 20% of it's electricity. The SciAm article Hawaii Says Aloha (Greetings) to Clean, Renewable Energy says geothermal energy can be expanded to supply more electricity:
Yeah, this sort of hypocrisy is exactly what I'm talking about. If there's any sort of negative, a plant will get opposed, regardless of the benefits. I'll address the other green power sources in order:
Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal. The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations. The CA DOE report actually does a very good job showing the costs of power sources with and without subsidies. http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF
Geothermal will never amount to more than a couple percentage points of our energy needs. We may have already reached the point of diminishing returns with it.
Biofuels are traps. Ethanol is a bad joke imposed on us by a political system that lets corn farmers vote first in the presidential primaries.
MSW is reasonable enough. Burning trash is better than burying it, if you can trap the byproducts. But again, it's unlikely to account for a very large fraction of our energy needs.
>>It proposes to increase fuel taxes but, and here's the "net-zero tax part", reduce income tax.
We already have this, as long as you're not a commuter. The more you drive, the more you pay in taxes and the less you pay in income tax.
If you're re-posting it, why didn't you fix the spelling and grammar mistakes? My lord, dude, you make the Unibomber look literate.
I also answered your points, in any event.
>>I don't know who these "Greens" are.
I dunno, the people who join "Green" parties? They count?
Hey, thanks man. At least my post didn't get modded as flamebait. Though I like the environment, clean air, and all that, I don't have a lot of respect for the Greens, and I have to defend them in class (well, at least explain why someone would think that way), which tends to make me irritable toward them.
>>I don't know what else to tell you than that generalizations like the one you made are the definition of black and white thinking.
You're just talking in circles, then.
I actually research every topic rather thoroughly, and have probably spent more time on RC.org than any other single source, but it doesn't mean I agree with RC.org (in fact, I think they're deceitful hacks). I'll listen to Glenn Beck and Pacifica Communist Radio in the same hour.
Obviously, the generalization that Greens are stupid is, well, a generalization. But taken as a whole (i.e. by looking at the output of the effect of Greens on society), it's quite accurate. The Green movement tends to shut down anything with any sort of negative side, regardless of the positive. This is what I mean by "stupid". If you'd like a less apt analogy, I could compare them to an abusive stepfather that beats you for getting one question wrong on the SAT, or a broken car or something.
>>then provide a link.
What would you like a citation for? My lecture notes for this topic are about 10 pages long. I can post them all if you'd like.
You didn't read the article, then.
When I did a cost comparison of different power sources, I included state subsidies in the analysis. Hell, I drew on a lot of different sources, probably spending 20 hours of my own time trying to cut through the drek and get good numbers for how much things cost. Nuclear is particularly susceptible to lawsuits, which adds to cost overruns here in America, which leads to the greens harping on the delays and cost overruns. There's a bill in Congress to actually transfer the decision making process to the federal Department of the Interior, away from state PUCs, in order to eliminate the logjam we're in.
No the Greens are not necessarily monolithic, though actual Green parties (like the German Greens linked to above) certainly can be bullheaded in their stupid decision making. Instead, what happens in California is that if you want to build a power plant, it's guaranteed at least one green group will make an all or nothing decision and shut you down. I had a friend who went through this when trying to build a power plant near Bakersfield. There was simply no site, ANYWHERE, to build. And this was during our big energy crisis in the Gray Davis days. It would be easier if you could just talk to the Sierra Club and get them to sign off on a project, believe me. It would be more like dealing with an intelligent though illogical adversary than the psychopathic amalgam of green groups we have now.
To use an analogy: you want to buy diapers, and need to go through the same gauntlet that power companies do.:?
OPTION 1: Buy disposable plastic diapers. Rejected because it contributes to landfills.
OPTION 2: Buy washables. Rejected because it wastes water.
Result: We end up with poop everywhere, because Greens reject everything out of hand do to their all or nothing thinking. They simply cannot handle the concept that everything has pros and cons.
Tortoises don't live in the desert?
Well, hell, man. You should have told the Sierra club this before they shut the plant down
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34659369/ns/us_news-environment/
>>you have not given a single piece of evidence that the greens don't know that every subject has multiple facets, that they just see something, anything and jump on it, no matter what else is connected to it.
How about throwing parties for shutting down a nuclear power plant? =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_'90/The_Greens
And that's unfortunately a Green party that was actually part of a ruling bloc.
>>but clearly that is not what they do. because if they were doing that, they would be arguing against themselves on many occasions.
Actually, that's precisely what's happening. It's called the "Green on Green Battle", where environmental groups are on both sides of an issue. One group will decide global warming is a bigger problem than 25 tortoises, and another group will decide the tortoises are more important, and... everyone loses.
By contrast, if they held more nuanced views (instead of these nutcase all-or-nothing views which ), you'd have seen actual progress happen, on a variety of fronts.
Of course not. Very few things are "always" true, and this applies to Greens as much as to rational, thinking individuals. (Or is that too hostile? The use of "bullshit" in your attack on my hostility leads me to think such a statement is okay.)
Find one of the cases I listed above that's not true, and you might have a point. But I call it like I see it, and I see Greens being worse for the environment than any other group. The nuclear ban alone is reason enough.
>>so why give yours preference?
Because we've all been instantiated, so to speak. So a process to instantiate us exists. This, right there, destroys the theory that death must necessarily be the end of us.
>>As far as I can see, atheism only implies a denial of or lack of belief in god or gods. Even if we substitute "materialism" or "naturalism" where you use "atheism", the implied non-existence you claim still doesn't seem to follow.
I use atheism as shorthand for the atheistic scientism/positive materialism that is the dominant philosophical mode on /. General claims include such things as: no souls exist/there is nothing but matter, a trend toward determinism, science can answer all questions (and what science can't answer is irrelevant) and that death is extinction.
>>You give no indication that any sort of continuity exists between this hypothetical future consciousness and ourselves, and there are reasons to think that no such thing exists (ie. reliance upon a specific brain, for example)
I never implied continuity. Merely that whatever process that took people from unordered matter into thinking conscious entities could happen again to us. Black box the process. You've had no counterarguments to this other than saying that it sounds awfully dubious.
>>As far as the star trek analogy is concerned, "I" would wake up after being beamed, but I'm not sure it would be the same "I" who was anhilated earlier
Ah, but I'm not talking about the copy who appeared on the spaceship. I'm talking about the copy on the planet. Would you (as that copy) actually beam up? Or walk into the annihilation beam after a copy of you was accidentally made up in space?
>>Your analogies ALL seem to rely upon copying a specific neural pattern
Nope. The fact of the matter is, a teleporter will duplicate you, but that won't be your consciousness in that second body. At best, it will be a perfect duplicate of your consciousness. That's entirely my point.
Where did that consciousness come from? We don't know.
What happens to the consciousness that is annihilated? We don't know.
What is consciousness? We don't know.
All we know is that it is possible for a consciousness to arise from a (presumably) unconscious collection of atoms.
>>something which you've given no indication of happening with your "general" scenario of some conscious experience at some unknown time in the future through some unknown mechanism/process.
Explained above. The beauty of it is that we don't need to know. In fact, we may never know. It's a black box.
But just because we don't know what the inner workings of a black box is, doesn't mean we can't know what the black box takes as input and output. Science works with these things all the time. Hell, we run this black box experiment all the time when a pregnant lady eats a bunch of random food items and converts them into a thinking living conscious being.
We know it exists, and that's all that matters.
>>If stupidity is oversimplifying complex problems, then, to at least one significant figure, everyone is stupid.
There's a huge difference between simplifying complex problems, and pretending that it is an all or nothing proposition.
>>South asians in the audience, does it actually help if your civilization is based on a philosophy that admits shades of gray?
To be fair, our Western system of logic is based on the law of the excluded middle, which has resulting in quite a few all-or-nothing fallacies being passed on as logically valid truth. Sorites paradox and all that.
For example, fallacious all-or-nothing arguments like those Greens use, are often of the format:
1) Heat will kill you
2) It is hot outside the house
3) Going outside the house will kill you.
>>The original intent was to fight organized crime. Catholic child abuse - and especially the cover-up - was both organized and a crime.
If you don't see the fallacy inherent to this statement, we're going to have to agree to disagree.
In any event, the courts have ruled (such as in Magnum v. Archdiocese of Philidelphia) that RICO laws don't apply.
>>The irony is that you ask people to not have such a black and white view on the environment, yet you have a black and white view on politics.
Since I apparently have a black and white view of politics, I'm vastly interested in what you think those are.
>>For example, in the wiki article that YOU site, it claims the removal of the dam was for reasons of safety, the salmon, erosion, and nutrients in the riverbed. Which of those is a "green" issue?
Indeed. (I'm aware of this, having linked the article for you to read.) As I said with the volcano example, there's always a lot of effects, both good or bad, with every decision. But the trend in general to blow up dams is a very troubling one. We need more power plants, not less.
And flood control is a not-insignificant issue, also. In Japan, the Shinto nature-loving country on the other side of the Pacific, every single (well, over 95%) of every river and stream in Japan is dammed. Mainly for flood control issues, but they also produce about 10% of their total power needs from hydro in places like (the very lovely) Kiso River Valley. It's quite jarring to the American eye to see square waterfalls, square streams, and massive hydro plants in the middle of what could be their Yosemite Valley. But they do have something to it.
>>You mix up the meaning of the precautionary principle. It's not the idea of not doing anything because something might have something negative. Rather, often, if something has great risks, even if relatively unlikely, it is better to do the other alternative. And the more unknown things are, the more cautious you should be.
No, I hit the precautionary principle dead on. It paralyzes the decision making process by replacing the weighted balance of pros and cons (which is the alternative, mind you) by allowing anything to block action.
In practice, it means that no power plants get built for thirty years in a state that has grown rather significantly since then.
The worst part is, people don't even realize it is self-contradictory. Sometimes doing nothing is the worst possible alternative, by a long shot.
>>but your post is a simple illusion, it's a blueprint for a rant on anything and fully exchangeable
Exchangeable? Not at all. I'm for power generation, and opposed to stupidity. On general principles.
While your point about the dams is a valid one (there's more reasons than fish that they're destroying them), the simple fact of the matter is that California has truly fucked itself when it comes to energy. It has a mandate for 33% of power generated from green sources in a few years, and yet it allows 25 tortoises (I'm not making that number up - the Sierra Club shut the plant down over 25 tortoises) to block construction of a honest-to-goodness green power plant. Guess what? There's going to be an endangered something or other anywhere you try to build out a large solar plant. It's how it works. (Oh, you want a smaller site, and one that doesn't produce CO2? How about nuclear? No? That's still off the table?)
>>you're just ranting for the hell of it
Not at all. I'm ranting because I have to give a lecture in eight hours and answer questions from the students about why our system is so badly run.
And while I know that you're trolling, I did point out that clean air in general is a good thing. But pretending that something is all or nothing like the Greens do is just idiotic.
>>They want to pump sulfur compounds into the atmosphere, including. When I heard this, also on NPR, I wanted to scream, "What about acid rain you stupid fuckers!?"
They've thought about it. I've read the analysis and it's reasonable. The reason WHY they want to use SO2/SO4 is because we know that this is what happens when volcanoes erupt, and it doesn't cause catastrophic effects. There's plenty of other possible solutions - really, anything that increases the albedo and cloud nucleation would work. I think they've also suggested salt sprayers, for example.
Given how cheap it would be to build one of these things (Bill Gates could fund it out of his evil scientist slush fund), I find it hilarious and sad at the same time that people will talk about how great the threat of AGW is on one hand, and absolutely, positively, refuse to consider any alternative besides us moving into caves and eating granola all day. (And 6 billion people dying in the process, but it's considered gauche to talk about that.)