What astonishes me is that so few people even bother to "click through" to find the original source of this claim, even though it's so terribly easy to do so on the web (due to hyperlinks).
This slashdot story is a "summary of a summary" and is several degrees removed from the original source.
The news story upon which this is based, was taken from a lefty news source (alter.net), and is hysterically distorted. The original poll does not claim that "Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources." Nor does the original poll claim that Fox news causes viewers to become misinformed. Quite the opposite, the original poll claims that Fox news viewers are less informed about some issues, whereas viewers of lefty news sources are less informed about other issues, and that "...this suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on."
The alter.net story has drastically distorted the original poll. The story picked and chose specific issues about which fox viewers were less informed, while ignoring (and failing to re-print!) other issues about which they were better informed. Then the story then concluded (contrary to the poll's specific language) that Fox viewers were "less informed".
What astonishes me, is that lefty commentors here on slashdot appear to have read a drastically distorted and incorrect news story, then swallowed it whole, without any criticism or research, all the while believing that they are open minded, critical, and better-informed than the stupid people who watch Fox.
It's especially ironic that the alter.net article was complaining about bias in the news on the conservative side, when the article itself was a particularly striking example of not just bias but outright flagrant distortion in the news from the left.
It would be much better to have one large ship. Large ships consume much less fuel and produce far less pollution, for a given volume of cargo carried, than smaller ships do. This is because of simple geometry: ships expend energy to push water out of the way from the front of the boat, and a ship with 4x the cargo capacity (in a cube) has only 2x the surface area on the front of the ship. As a result, a ship with twice the tonnage burns half the fuel per ton-mile. (This is a simplification, because I'm omitting things like friction on the side of the hull, wind resistance against the tower, propeller cavitation, etc, but the general rule holds than ships with 4x the cargo capacity are twice as efficient).
Is it time to lose "the fear" and go nuclear on cargo vessels?
Nuclear shipping has been tried before. The US funded a cargo/cruise combination ship called the "NS Savannah". It was deemed too expensive to operate, and decommissioned.
However, the reason that nuclear reactors are so expensive is because of the elaborate safety equipment, and not because of anything fundamental to the technology. It would be possible to build a nuclear reactor which is far cheaper if we could relax some of the safety requirements. Perhaps it would be possible to build a cargo ship that burns bunker fuel when within 200 miles of land, and uses a very small nuclear reactor with reduced safety systems when out in the wide ocean. A nuclear accident that's 0.1% the size of Three Mile Island, every 100 years or so, might be acceptable if it's 200+ miles from any human habitation.
Of course, that idea would be useful only for the trans-pacific and trans-atlantic routes. Routes which span from the far east to Europe are almost always within 200 miles of land. Those routes start at China, go south to the straits of Malacca (by Indonesia), go west past the tip of India, go North past Somalia and into the red sea, go through the Suez canal, go through the mediterranean, go through the strait of Gibraltar, and arrive at Felixstowe, Rotterdam, or Hamburg. All of those places are very densely populated.
B, the difficulty with peak oilers and doomers is that they have no idea what they're talking about. They have little knowledge of petroleum engineering, or of energy economics. They speculate without real information.
Part of the problem is that petroleum engineering and energy economics have become technical disciplines that are difficult to approach. As a result, their conclusions are not generally "disseminated". As a result, everyday people can speculate about those subjects at will, without fear of contradiction by real information.
Genuine experts believe that PO doomerism is a silly thing which is obviously wrong for many different reasons. However, those experts do not bother to respond to PO doomerism, because doomers would require so much remedial instruction to understand why they're wrong that it's not worth it.
Most experts do not believe in PO doomerism, nor do they post to peak oil forums. Think about this. There are 50,000 petroleum engineers in this country (USA), and quite a few energy economists. If they believed in PO doomer scenarios, why aren't any of them sounding alarm bells? Climate scientists have managed to sound alarm bells, quite loudly, even though there were only a few hundred of them in this country. Why haven't petroleum engineers or energy economists done the same? The only websites warning us about disaster are theoildrum.com (run by an actuary), LATOC.com (a young attorney), Ruppert (a retired policeman), questioneverything.com (assistant professor of comp sci) and other people who frankly have no basis to speculate. The only person who has any training appears to be Simmons, who has repeatedly made failed predictions over and over again and yet appears unfazed by it and learns nothing.
The real story of peak oil is this. PO exists in a vacuum of information. PO doomerism exists because real experts do not communicate with "lay experts" from theoildrum and other places, so lay experts have no idea they've gone terribly wrong. In fact, the lay experts seem unaware that real experts even exist. The "lay experts" think that Seymour Hirsch is a real expert, and that the Hirsch Report is all you need to know.
And increased demand does not automatically create new oil into the market forever - the same way that the hunger of the economists locked up in my cellar do not create sandwiched for them.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. It demonstrates that PO people have no idea what economists think. They have absolutely no idea.
At least have the courtesy of informing yourself [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia is not a good source of information about this topic. The wikipedia PO article is a mix of serious sources and silly sources. It frequently relies on sources which are shockingly silly, totally wrong, and floundering around in the dark. For example, the article cites people like Kunstler, Simmons, Duncan (with his "olduvai gorge"), Matt Savinar, Seymor Hirsch, etc.
The main determinants of fuel consumption are: 1) speed; and 2) the surface area of the front of the vehicle (since that determines how much air must be pushed out of the way). Since airships are very large, they will never be fuel efficient unless they travel very slowly. If they travel very slowly, then we must ask: why not use a train or a ship? Trains and ships will always have vastly greater carrying capacity, because they don't require helium to lift their cargo which has modest lift for a given volume.
In short: if speed is not important, then trains and ships will always be far cheaper and carry far more; and if speed is important, then airplanes will always be faster and more fuel-efficient at high speeds.
Airships are neglected because they suffer from fundamental limitations and therefore have few uses.
Granted, airships may find niche uses. Airships do have several advantages: first, they can hover for long periods; and second, they require little infrastructure (like long landing strips, ports, or train tracks). Since they can hover for long periods, they have found a use as floating advertisements, and they may find a use as floating observation vehicles for the military. Since they don't require infrastructure, they may find a use in transporting cargo to areas which lack airports, train tracks, or ports. But they will never take over the bulk of transport between major areas, because of fundamental limitations of the technology.
Every few years, someone starts a company to revive the airship. The venture always fails, because o f fundamental limitations of airships that will always prevent widespread adoption. Perhaps some com pany will eventually succeed, but they will succeed in a niche market, not widely.
It should very dangerous for an additional 250 years or so.
The remaining high-level radioactive isotopes are strontium 90 and cesium 237. Both of those have half-lives of about 30 years. After 300 years from the meltdown, their radioactivity has decreased 99.9%, at which point they're mostly harmless.
Bear in mind that those isotopes are consumption hazards. It's safe to go there now if you don't eat or drink anything.
Nokia contributed greatly to close to 5 billion mobile subscribers that the world has now; for many of those people their first real means of communication, a great shift for humanity, that sort of "crap". Unfortunatelly - feelings and expectations of "investors" overlook such long term societal effects (a thing which will also bring new opportunities for "investments"...) - oh well, as long as they are comfortably profitable it's fine
Nokia makes a profit on all the phones it sells. It doesn't wish to surrender the low end of the market, because its profits would be reduced by doing so.
The only reason Apple and Google compete in smartphones only, is because the low end of the cell phone market had already been taken by the time they arrived, and there was limited opportunity for innovation there. However, Apple and Google would still like to gain poor people as customers if it were possible.
feelings and expectations of "investors" overlook such long term societal effects (a thing which will also bring new opportunities for "investments"...)
Investors do not overlook long-term consequences like those, because serving that market increases their profits, if consumers believe that owning a cell phone will have long-term benefits for themselves. The difference with a for-profit company is that the consumers decide what will be of benefit to them in the long term.
But I guess you think not outsourcing to sweatshops is also "fucked"...
I think boycotting the poor is fucked, which of course is the same thing as "not outsourcing to sweatshops".
And I bet if you look hard enough you can find an environmentalist that is against geothermal power.
Geothermal is nuclear. Geothermal energy is ultimately derived from heat, which is produced by radioactive(!) decay(!!) of uranium and thorium in the earth's crust. As a result, Geothermal = Nuclear.
The radioactive isotopes, which ultimately power geothermal, are releasing DEADLY RADIATION into the environment. It's just like Chernobyl, but deeper.
Geothermal treats the whole crust of the earth like a giant nuclear reactor, for the purpose of generating power from it. DO YOU WANT TO LIVE ATOP A GIANT NUCLEAR REACTOR.
Geothermal requires us to DRILL HOLES in the earth's crust, thereby bringing water and DEADLY RADIATION closer to us. The water from the earth's crust contains measurable amounts of radioisotopes, which have been shown to be harmful to human health if taken in high concentrations.
Geothermal relies on chemicals like Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO). Those chemicals are pumped into the earth to extract heat from it. Those chemicals (DHMO) have been shown to cause chemical burns and death if ingested in high enough concentrations and at the right temperatures.
And we haven't even mentioned the carbon emissions caused by hole-drilling, which is probably even worse than the oft-mentioned carbon emissions from pouring concrete for nuclear reactors. Nuclear power is not carbon-free, as has been pointed out, but NEITHER IS GEOTHERMAL. What about the carbon emissions caused by the transport of construction materials to the geothermal site. What about the methane emitted from the geothermal worker who farts. Methane is a greenhouse gas.
Solar and wind is great but the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day
When the Sun does shine, it releases DEADLY RADIATION in sufficient quantities to cause radiation burns on those exposed to it. I personally have radiation burns from standing exposed to a large fusion reactor.
Some environmentalists have been tricked by Big Solar into believing that solar energy is perfectly safe. But, SOLAR IS NUCLEAR. We've been lied to.
wind doesn't blow every day
Wind power is nuclear power. So is biomass, and composting.
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The ONLY non-nuclear source of energy is tidal energy. Anything else, and I'll protest.
(Of course, even tidal power is indirectly nuclear. Tidal power is caused by the rotation of the planet, which ultimately was caused by a nuclear explosion billions of years ago. However, tidal power at least doesn't rely on an ONGOING nuclear reaction, like Solar and Wind rely on ONGOING nuclear reactions).
It's been said, a pair of $75 nike's would cost $300 if made by americans.
New Balance makes a line of shoes which are manufactured entirely in the USA. They cost about $120, but they're higher-end shoes (nice materials, etc).
Take the minority of Americans who pay taxes [guess what: over half of AMericans are no longer net tax payers], and tax them at _100%_. Do it. Do the math.
OK, I've done the math. We would have to increase taxes by about 10% of the average salary, in order to eliminate the deficit and begin paying off the debt. Even then, combined state and federal taxes would be below 40% of the average income.
The US export per GDP is now #179 in the world. That sounds pretty bad to me. Now, we have such a large economy that the raw numbers look great, but saying the US manufacturing sector isn't in a decline is pure nonsense. If I remember correctly, we're on the same performance level as Burma.
The US exported more than $1 trillion last year. That is more than the GDP of all but a handful of countries. And it's definitely higher than Burma.
Most of the US exports were aircraft, defense equipment, capital goods (machine tools, enterprise computers, etc), automobiles, and so on.
US manufacturing has not declined by much in absolute terms (although it has declined relatively to countries like China).
Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn’t proprietary formats and you can read wherever you want to read.
I'm continually amazed at the extreme terminological imprecision of some people in the tech industry.
The word agnostic means someone who believes it's impossible to know whether God exists or not. It does not mean a device which can display book files from multiple publishers. That new usage is not even vaguely analogous to the old one, because it does not connote uncertainty or lack of knowledge at all, nor does it involve knowledge about spiritual matters. For example, the device in question has no uncertainty about whether the book files exist, and holds no opinions on spiritual matters.
The Greek root gnosis doesn't just mean knowledge; it implies knowledge of spiritual matters.
At the peak of the Dotcom era Cisco had a market capitalization that was the highest on the stock market, close to 500B IIRC. This exceeded the Walmart Market cap by more than 5 times (~76Billion IIRC) and edged GE by several dozen Billion.
I see your point, but I'm not sure the current situation is analogous to the dot-com bubble.
Apple's stock has little momentum. It's not in a bubble in the classical sense. Apple's earnings ratio (20.6) is reasonable given their earnings growth of the last few years. Although Apple's stock has a higher earnings ratio than Microsoft's, that's because of anticipated future earnings and not fanboys driving up the price.
Even if Apple were to grow sales 100% a year for 5 years they still couldn't match Microsofts actual profits.
Here are their actual profits, from finance.yahoo.com, as of today:
MSFT:
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 17.29B
AAPL:
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 10.81B
If Apple grew their profits by 100% for even a single year, they would surpass Microsoft.
If you are looking for a long time short Apple is your game boys and girls. It's going to correct some day and it's going to be a brutal correction.
I don't entirely agree.
Don't get me wrong, Apple could easily collapse in value. Not because they're in a bubble, but because they make profits from having cool/aesthetic/etc products. But cool is fleeting. As a result, Apple's profits are less certain than Microsoft's. If Apple puts out a few crappy products, their stock will drop like a rock. On the other hand, if Microsoft puts out a few crappy products, people will buy them anyway, and Microsoft will just release a new version in a few years.
I cannot continue this debate with you, if you reject the most elemental degree of honesty and sincerity. You feign ignorance about the motives of the environmental movement when those motives are obvious to everyone. After all, why would the environmental movement favor biofuels so consistently, when biofuels increase c02 emissions and destroy the environment? Obviously, because biofuels promise a return to a simpler mode of life (grow things and burn wood!) and not because they help the environment. And you can't help but realize these things. Don't pretend you think otherwise.
You're abusing the comment system on slashdot, and I won't put up with it.
You seem to fancy yourself some kind of mind reader. Not only can you infer my intentions and my true motives, but those of environmentalists as well.
I was being quite sincere. I was just taking environmentalists at their word. I was assuming that they truly wanted to help the environment, and not just impose a neo-luddite lifestyle on everyone else. If I'm mistaken about that, if environmentalists want only to impose a fantasy lifestyle, then the problem is with the environmentalists (such as yourself) and not with me.
You have accused me of being insincere, most intemperately. But in the same breath, you accuse the environmental movement of being insincere also, and of not really caring about the environment!
If what you claim is true, and the environmentalists don't really care about the environment, then they are the true enemies of the environment, not the conservatives. Because it's they who prevent any realistic action from being taken, for the sake of their neo-luddite fantasy. If that's the case, then the first task of true environmentalists (such as yourself) is to convince them. Only then could you hope to succeed. You must convince the people who wrongly call themselves "environmentalists" that their dreams of a neo-luddite society are a fantasy, and that the only thing they could actually achieve is to really help the environment, which is a good second-best to their true desires. Convincing them of that is up to you, not me.
The environmental movement should favor reducing safety requirements at nuclear reactors. That would make nuclear reactors cheaper than burning coal and would be politically possible, unlike the everyone-grow-your-own-food-and-stop-using-electricity scenario. If the environmental movement did as I'm suggesting, then they could conceivably have the effect of reducing c02 emissions rather than increasing them.
Now you're just being cheeky and provocative. It won't work; I see through it.
You know perfectly well that the environmental movement considers nuclear power to be as bad as coal burning, or worse. Therefore, they would accomplish nothing by favoring nuclear power. Granted, they would reduce c02 emissions, but that is not their primary objective. They have never really cared about c02, and they don't now. What the environmentalist movement really wants is a reduction in technology and a return to a simpler life. That is their objective. Their claims about c02 are really just means to that end, as you perfectly well know.
I cannot continue this debate with you, if you reject the most elemental degree of honesty and sincerity. You feign ignorance about the motives of the environmental movement when those motives are obvious to everyone. After all, why would the environmental movement favor biofuels so consistently, when biofuels increase c02 emissions and destroy the environment? Obviously, because biofuels promise a return to a simpler mode of life (grow things and burn wood!) and not because they help the environment. And you can't help but realize these things. Don't pretend you think otherwise.
What do you propose? What exactly do you think we should compromise here? The planet is at stake. Should we compromise the planet?
Don't talk to me in that petulant tone. You know perfectly well I'm not suggesting that we compromise the planet.
No; I'm suggesting we compromise on the means to achieve our goals. What we want is to reduce c02 emissions; how we get there is not the important thing.
We must compromise the means, because we don't want to compromise the ends, and if we don't compromise anything, then we won't get anything. Then the planet is endangered.
What I suggest is that the environmental movement become rabidly pro-nuclear, and that they strongly favor nuclear big business. They should also suggest reducing safety requirements at nuclear reactors. Yes, I said it. The environmental movement should favor reducing safety requirements at nuclear reactors. That would make nuclear reactors cheaper than burning coal and would be politically possible, unlike the everyone-grow-your-own-food-and-stop-using-electricity scenario. If the environmental movement did as I'm suggesting, then they could conceivably have the effect of reducing c02 emissions rather than increasing them.
I'm also astonished to watch the uncompromising and unrealistic antics of the environmental movement. They have a platform like this: "we must generate all electricity in this country from windmills and burning wood. And we should all grow our own food and live on communes, or live like indigenous peoples. If we don't get 100% exactly that right now, then fuck it, we're going home." So they go home, and get nothing.
What do you propose? What exactly do you think we should compromise here? The planet is at stake. Should we compromise the planet?
Except we don't really have two opposite forces, we have a right wing party and a far right wing party.
We have a voting system in which both parties must cater to the median voter in order to win. As a result, both parties tend to be somewhat close to each other.
So if you want things to stay in the middle you need to advocate the most "liberal" ideas possible, only then will you end up with something moderate.
No. If you advocate the most "liberal" ideas possible, then you will have no influence on politics whatsoever and will end up with something more conservative. You will not counter-balance anything.
If you want to win, you should advocate something slightly to the left of the median voter.
I'm always astonished that people on the left don't understand that point. That's why they always lose. Oddly enough, it's the left who is totally rigid and uncompromising, so they always lose.
As a recent example, I was astonished to watch people on the far left line up to attack Pres Obama. For example, Naomi Klein ripped into him, for not being truly "transformative". Of course, if he had been truly transformative, and something like a communist as Klein would like, then he would have lost and McCain would be president now.
I'm also astonished to watch the uncompromising and unrealistic antics of the environmental movement. They have a platform like this: "we must generate all electricity in this country from windmills and burning wood. And we should all grow our own food and live on communes, or live like indigenous peoples. If we don't get 100% exactly that right now, then fuck it, we're going home." So they go home, and get nothing.
We must always remember that it was the environmental movement in this country, that killed nuclear power, that supported coal burning (directly or indirectly), and in so doing caused more than 40% of the c02 emissions of the last 4 decades. When given a choice between the technologically possible options of coal burning or nuclear, they proclaim "BOTH ARE PURE EVIL" and so get coal burning. Or worse, they protest at nuclear plants while not protesting at coal plants, and they get what they asked for--massive c02 emissions over decades.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect that Naomi Klein and Greenpeace are actually plants/agents of the republican party. They only serve to marginalize and disempower the left in this country. Not that I mind, because I lean libertarian, and I sometimes secretly rejoice when the left marginalizes itself, and shoots itself in the foot or even the head.
.France has a large number of reactors, yet I've never heard of them having problems with their radioactive waste products... what are other countries doing about it?
France reprocesses its nuclear waste to extract the highly radioactive components. Then, that highly radioactive waste is stored beneath a room, in a building at La Hague. (The volume of highly radioactive waste after reprocessing is very small).
Rad waste consists mostly (95%) of Uranium 238, which is benign. The U-238 is less radioactive than the uranium they dug out of the ground originally, so it doesn't require special handling. By removing the U-238 through reprocessing, you have reduced by 95% the volume of the waste you must store.
That is how France stores all its waste underneath a floor in a room.
Yes it would be awful it companies competed with each other, and made alternatives to each others' products. That would be disastrous. Consumers would be the ultimate losers from that kind of infighting.
there exists no solution for radioactive waste. Maybe we won't have a Chernoby like desaster again - however with every single hour we have nuclear power plants running, we are producing toxins that will be lethal for centuries.
There are many solutions for rad waste, most of which are easy, well-understood, and inexpensive.
One common solution is to vitrify the waste in borosilicate glass, pour it inside a chromium-nickel alloy container, and bury it in a geologic disposal that has remained immobile for millions of years. Any one of these measures by itself would prevent dispersal of rad waste for thousands of years, which is longer than it takes for all the short-lived fission products to disappear.
That would not prevent dispersal of long-lived fission product, since those last for millions of years which is longer than any containment will last. However, the long-lived fission products are extremely small in volume--about 1,000 tons from all nuclear power plants in the US over 40 years; that amount could fit easily in a large closet. That amount is so small, that we could easily launch it all into space, and out of our solar system, by using saturn-V rockets (about 10 of them) like were launched in the early 1960s. I'm not suggesting that that would be the most practical way of disposing of the waste. However, the volume of long-lived fission products is so small that there are many obvious options.
Personally, I think we should separate the LLFPs and put them into interim storage for 200 years. At that time, we can launch them out of the solar system if it has become cheaper and more reliable to launch things into space. If not, we can adulterate them with Sr90, and set them on an antarctic ice sheet. They would melt their way down (over decades) and settle on bedrock in antarctica, after which the Sr90 would be gone and the waste would lose its heat. The LLFPs would then remain under 1 mile of ice for a very long time. Even if human civilization collapses, our hunter-gatherer offspring will not reside one mile beneath the ice in antarctica. There would be no plausible human exposure to rad waste ever. The rad waste could never tunnel its way upwards through 1 mile of ice, then migrate to other continents.
There are several steps that spent fuel must pass before it can be used as fresh fuel in a common LWR again. To begin with, the spent fuel contains a lot of nuclear poisons that prevent the reactor from retaining the nuclear chain reaction, so these must first be removed from the spent fuel. This is not done in a breeder reactor, but rather using centrifuges similar to the ordinary enrichment process.
I think that's wrong. Reprocessing involves chemical separation of different elements, which is far easier than isotope separation. Reprocessing is not done using centrifuges, and is not related to the enrichment process.
The poisons you spoke of are actinides and lathanides, which are different elements, and are not isotopes of uranium or plutonium. As a result, they can be removed using chemical processes.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks much better and performs much better.
That doesn't contradict or refute anything in the post you're responding to.
What astonishes me is that so few people even bother to "click through" to find the original source of this claim, even though it's so terribly easy to do so on the web (due to hyperlinks).
This slashdot story is a "summary of a summary" and is several degrees removed from the original source.
The news story upon which this is based, was taken from a lefty news source (alter.net), and is hysterically distorted. The original poll does not claim that "Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources." Nor does the original poll claim that Fox news causes viewers to become misinformed. Quite the opposite, the original poll claims that Fox news viewers are less informed about some issues, whereas viewers of lefty news sources are less informed about other issues, and that "...this suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on."
The alter.net story has drastically distorted the original poll. The story picked and chose specific issues about which fox viewers were less informed, while ignoring (and failing to re-print!) other issues about which they were better informed. Then the story then concluded (contrary to the poll's specific language) that Fox viewers were "less informed".
What astonishes me, is that lefty commentors here on slashdot appear to have read a drastically distorted and incorrect news story, then swallowed it whole, without any criticism or research, all the while believing that they are open minded, critical, and better-informed than the stupid people who watch Fox.
It's especially ironic that the alter.net article was complaining about bias in the news on the conservative side, when the article itself was a particularly striking example of not just bias but outright flagrant distortion in the news from the left.
It would be much better to have one large ship. Large ships consume much less fuel and produce far less pollution, for a given volume of cargo carried, than smaller ships do. This is because of simple geometry: ships expend energy to push water out of the way from the front of the boat, and a ship with 4x the cargo capacity (in a cube) has only 2x the surface area on the front of the ship. As a result, a ship with twice the tonnage burns half the fuel per ton-mile. (This is a simplification, because I'm omitting things like friction on the side of the hull, wind resistance against the tower, propeller cavitation, etc, but the general rule holds than ships with 4x the cargo capacity are twice as efficient).
Nuclear shipping has been tried before. The US funded a cargo/cruise combination ship called the "NS Savannah". It was deemed too expensive to operate, and decommissioned.
However, the reason that nuclear reactors are so expensive is because of the elaborate safety equipment, and not because of anything fundamental to the technology. It would be possible to build a nuclear reactor which is far cheaper if we could relax some of the safety requirements. Perhaps it would be possible to build a cargo ship that burns bunker fuel when within 200 miles of land, and uses a very small nuclear reactor with reduced safety systems when out in the wide ocean. A nuclear accident that's 0.1% the size of Three Mile Island, every 100 years or so, might be acceptable if it's 200+ miles from any human habitation.
Of course, that idea would be useful only for the trans-pacific and trans-atlantic routes. Routes which span from the far east to Europe are almost always within 200 miles of land. Those routes start at China, go south to the straits of Malacca (by Indonesia), go west past the tip of India, go North past Somalia and into the red sea, go through the Suez canal, go through the mediterranean, go through the strait of Gibraltar, and arrive at Felixstowe, Rotterdam, or Hamburg. All of those places are very densely populated.
B, the difficulty with peak oilers and doomers is that they have no idea what they're talking about. They have little knowledge of petroleum engineering, or of energy economics. They speculate without real information.
Part of the problem is that petroleum engineering and energy economics have become technical disciplines that are difficult to approach. As a result, their conclusions are not generally "disseminated". As a result, everyday people can speculate about those subjects at will, without fear of contradiction by real information.
Genuine experts believe that PO doomerism is a silly thing which is obviously wrong for many different reasons. However, those experts do not bother to respond to PO doomerism, because doomers would require so much remedial instruction to understand why they're wrong that it's not worth it.
Most experts do not believe in PO doomerism, nor do they post to peak oil forums. Think about this. There are 50,000 petroleum engineers in this country (USA), and quite a few energy economists. If they believed in PO doomer scenarios, why aren't any of them sounding alarm bells? Climate scientists have managed to sound alarm bells, quite loudly, even though there were only a few hundred of them in this country. Why haven't petroleum engineers or energy economists done the same? The only websites warning us about disaster are theoildrum.com (run by an actuary), LATOC.com (a young attorney), Ruppert (a retired policeman), questioneverything.com (assistant professor of comp sci) and other people who frankly have no basis to speculate. The only person who has any training appears to be Simmons, who has repeatedly made failed predictions over and over again and yet appears unfazed by it and learns nothing.
The real story of peak oil is this. PO exists in a vacuum of information. PO doomerism exists because real experts do not communicate with "lay experts" from theoildrum and other places, so lay experts have no idea they've gone terribly wrong. In fact, the lay experts seem unaware that real experts even exist. The "lay experts" think that Seymour Hirsch is a real expert, and that the Hirsch Report is all you need to know.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. It demonstrates that PO people have no idea what economists think. They have absolutely no idea.
Wikipedia is not a good source of information about this topic. The wikipedia PO article is a mix of serious sources and silly sources. It frequently relies on sources which are shockingly silly, totally wrong, and floundering around in the dark. For example, the article cites people like Kunstler, Simmons, Duncan (with his "olduvai gorge"), Matt Savinar, Seymor Hirsch, etc.
The main determinants of fuel consumption are: 1) speed; and 2) the surface area of the front of the vehicle (since that determines how much air must be pushed out of the way). Since airships are very large, they will never be fuel efficient unless they travel very slowly. If they travel very slowly, then we must ask: why not use a train or a ship? Trains and ships will always have vastly greater carrying capacity, because they don't require helium to lift their cargo which has modest lift for a given volume.
In short: if speed is not important, then trains and ships will always be far cheaper and carry far more; and if speed is important, then airplanes will always be faster and more fuel-efficient at high speeds.
Airships are neglected because they suffer from fundamental limitations and therefore have few uses.
Granted, airships may find niche uses. Airships do have several advantages: first, they can hover for long periods; and second, they require little infrastructure (like long landing strips, ports, or train tracks). Since they can hover for long periods, they have found a use as floating advertisements, and they may find a use as floating observation vehicles for the military. Since they don't require infrastructure, they may find a use in transporting cargo to areas which lack airports, train tracks, or ports. But they will never take over the bulk of transport between major areas, because of fundamental limitations of the technology.
Every few years, someone starts a company to revive the airship. The venture always fails, because o
f fundamental limitations of airships that will always prevent widespread adoption. Perhaps some com
pany will eventually succeed, but they will succeed in a niche market, not widely.
It should very dangerous for an additional 250 years or so.
The remaining high-level radioactive isotopes are strontium 90 and cesium 237. Both of those have half-lives of about 30 years. After 300 years from the meltdown, their radioactivity has decreased 99.9%, at which point they're mostly harmless.
Bear in mind that those isotopes are consumption hazards. It's safe to go there now if you don't eat or drink anything.
Nokia makes a profit on all the phones it sells. It doesn't wish to surrender the low end of the market, because its profits would be reduced by doing so.
The only reason Apple and Google compete in smartphones only, is because the low end of the cell phone market had already been taken by the time they arrived, and there was limited opportunity for innovation there. However, Apple and Google would still like to gain poor people as customers if it were possible.
Investors do not overlook long-term consequences like those, because serving that market increases their profits, if consumers believe that owning a cell phone will have long-term benefits for themselves. The difference with a for-profit company is that the consumers decide what will be of benefit to them in the long term.
I think boycotting the poor is fucked, which of course is the same thing as "not outsourcing to sweatshops".
Geothermal is nuclear. Geothermal energy is ultimately derived from heat, which is produced by radioactive(!) decay(!!) of uranium and thorium in the earth's crust. As a result, Geothermal = Nuclear.
The radioactive isotopes, which ultimately power geothermal, are releasing DEADLY RADIATION into the environment. It's just like Chernobyl, but deeper.
Geothermal treats the whole crust of the earth like a giant nuclear reactor, for the purpose of generating power from it. DO YOU WANT TO LIVE ATOP A GIANT NUCLEAR REACTOR.
Geothermal requires us to DRILL HOLES in the earth's crust, thereby bringing water and DEADLY RADIATION closer to us. The water from the earth's crust contains measurable amounts of radioisotopes, which have been shown to be harmful to human health if taken in high concentrations.
Geothermal relies on chemicals like Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO). Those chemicals are pumped into the earth to extract heat from it. Those chemicals (DHMO) have been shown to cause chemical burns and death if ingested in high enough concentrations and at the right temperatures.
And we haven't even mentioned the carbon emissions caused by hole-drilling, which is probably even worse than the oft-mentioned carbon emissions from pouring concrete for nuclear reactors. Nuclear power is not carbon-free, as has been pointed out, but NEITHER IS GEOTHERMAL. What about the carbon emissions caused by the transport of construction materials to the geothermal site. What about the methane emitted from the geothermal worker who farts. Methane is a greenhouse gas.
When the Sun does shine, it releases DEADLY RADIATION in sufficient quantities to cause radiation burns on those exposed to it. I personally have radiation burns from standing exposed to a large fusion reactor.
Some environmentalists have been tricked by Big Solar into believing that solar energy is perfectly safe. But, SOLAR IS NUCLEAR. We've been lied to.
Wind power is nuclear power. So is biomass, and composting.
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The ONLY non-nuclear source of energy is tidal energy. Anything else, and I'll protest.
(Of course, even tidal power is indirectly nuclear. Tidal power is caused by the rotation of the planet, which ultimately was caused by a nuclear explosion billions of years ago. However, tidal power at least doesn't rely on an ONGOING nuclear reaction, like Solar and Wind rely on ONGOING nuclear reactions).
New Balance makes a line of shoes which are manufactured entirely in the USA. They cost about $120, but they're higher-end shoes (nice materials, etc).
OK, I've done the math. We would have to increase taxes by about 10% of the average salary, in order to eliminate the deficit and begin paying off the debt. Even then, combined state and federal taxes would be below 40% of the average income.
The US exported more than $1 trillion last year. That is more than the GDP of all but a handful of countries. And it's definitely higher than Burma.
Most of the US exports were aircraft, defense equipment, capital goods (machine tools, enterprise computers, etc), automobiles, and so on.
US manufacturing has not declined by much in absolute terms (although it has declined relatively to countries like China).
I'm continually amazed at the extreme terminological imprecision of some people in the tech industry.
The word agnostic means someone who believes it's impossible to know whether God exists or not. It does not mean a device which can display book files from multiple publishers. That new usage is not even vaguely analogous to the old one, because it does not connote uncertainty or lack of knowledge at all, nor does it involve knowledge about spiritual matters. For example, the device in question has no uncertainty about whether the book files exist, and holds no opinions on spiritual matters.
The Greek root gnosis doesn't just mean knowledge; it implies knowledge of spiritual matters.
I see your point, but I'm not sure the current situation is analogous to the dot-com bubble.
Apple's stock has little momentum. It's not in a bubble in the classical sense. Apple's earnings ratio (20.6) is reasonable given their earnings growth of the last few years. Although Apple's stock has a higher earnings ratio than Microsoft's, that's because of anticipated future earnings and not fanboys driving up the price.
Here are their actual profits, from finance.yahoo.com, as of today:
MSFT:
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 17.29B
AAPL:
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 10.81B
If Apple grew their profits by 100% for even a single year, they would surpass Microsoft.
I don't entirely agree.
Don't get me wrong, Apple could easily collapse in value. Not because they're in a bubble, but because they make profits from having cool/aesthetic/etc products. But cool is fleeting. As a result, Apple's profits are less certain than Microsoft's. If Apple puts out a few crappy products, their stock will drop like a rock. On the other hand, if Microsoft puts out a few crappy products, people will buy them anyway, and Microsoft will just release a new version in a few years.
You need to take your thorazine.
Here is a quote from your original post:
Anyone who could suspect that has obviously lost his reason... I pity you.
You're abusing the comment system on slashdot, and I won't put up with it.
You seem to fancy yourself some kind of mind reader. Not only can you infer my intentions and my true motives, but those of environmentalists as well.
I was being quite sincere. I was just taking environmentalists at their word. I was assuming that they truly wanted to help the environment, and not just impose a neo-luddite lifestyle on everyone else. If I'm mistaken about that, if environmentalists want only to impose a fantasy lifestyle, then the problem is with the environmentalists (such as yourself) and not with me.
You have accused me of being insincere, most intemperately. But in the same breath, you accuse the environmental movement of being insincere also, and of not really caring about the environment!
If what you claim is true, and the environmentalists don't really care about the environment, then they are the true enemies of the environment, not the conservatives. Because it's they who prevent any realistic action from being taken, for the sake of their neo-luddite fantasy. If that's the case, then the first task of true environmentalists (such as yourself) is to convince them. Only then could you hope to succeed. You must convince the people who wrongly call themselves "environmentalists" that their dreams of a neo-luddite society are a fantasy, and that the only thing they could actually achieve is to really help the environment, which is a good second-best to their true desires. Convincing them of that is up to you, not me.
Now you're just being cheeky and provocative. It won't work; I see through it.
You know perfectly well that the environmental movement considers nuclear power to be as bad as coal burning, or worse. Therefore, they would accomplish nothing by favoring nuclear power. Granted, they would reduce c02 emissions, but that is not their primary objective. They have never really cared about c02, and they don't now. What the environmentalist movement really wants is a reduction in technology and a return to a simpler life. That is their objective. Their claims about c02 are really just means to that end, as you perfectly well know.
I cannot continue this debate with you, if you reject the most elemental degree of honesty and sincerity. You feign ignorance about the motives of the environmental movement when those motives are obvious to everyone. After all, why would the environmental movement favor biofuels so consistently, when biofuels increase c02 emissions and destroy the environment? Obviously, because biofuels promise a return to a simpler mode of life (grow things and burn wood!) and not because they help the environment. And you can't help but realize these things. Don't pretend you think otherwise.
Don't talk to me in that petulant tone. You know perfectly well I'm not suggesting that we compromise the planet.
No; I'm suggesting we compromise on the means to achieve our goals. What we want is to reduce c02 emissions; how we get there is not the important thing.
We must compromise the means, because we don't want to compromise the ends, and if we don't compromise anything, then we won't get anything. Then the planet is endangered.
What I suggest is that the environmental movement become rabidly pro-nuclear, and that they strongly favor nuclear big business. They should also suggest reducing safety requirements at nuclear reactors. Yes, I said it. The environmental movement should favor reducing safety requirements at nuclear reactors. That would make nuclear reactors cheaper than burning coal and would be politically possible, unlike the everyone-grow-your-own-food-and-stop-using-electricity scenario. If the environmental movement did as I'm suggesting, then they could conceivably have the effect of reducing c02 emissions rather than increasing them.
What do you propose? What exactly do you think we should compromise here? The planet is at stake. Should we compromise the planet?
We have a voting system in which both parties must cater to the median voter in order to win. As a result, both parties tend to be somewhat close to each other.
No. If you advocate the most "liberal" ideas possible, then you will have no influence on politics whatsoever and will end up with something more conservative. You will not counter-balance anything.
If you want to win, you should advocate something slightly to the left of the median voter.
I'm always astonished that people on the left don't understand that point. That's why they always lose. Oddly enough, it's the left who is totally rigid and uncompromising, so they always lose.
As a recent example, I was astonished to watch people on the far left line up to attack Pres Obama. For example, Naomi Klein ripped into him, for not being truly "transformative". Of course, if he had been truly transformative, and something like a communist as Klein would like, then he would have lost and McCain would be president now.
I'm also astonished to watch the uncompromising and unrealistic antics of the environmental movement. They have a platform like this: "we must generate all electricity in this country from windmills and burning wood. And we should all grow our own food and live on communes, or live like indigenous peoples. If we don't get 100% exactly that right now, then fuck it, we're going home." So they go home, and get nothing.
We must always remember that it was the environmental movement in this country, that killed nuclear power, that supported coal burning (directly or indirectly), and in so doing caused more than 40% of the c02 emissions of the last 4 decades. When given a choice between the technologically possible options of coal burning or nuclear, they proclaim "BOTH ARE PURE EVIL" and so get coal burning. Or worse, they protest at nuclear plants while not protesting at coal plants, and they get what they asked for--massive c02 emissions over decades.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect that Naomi Klein and Greenpeace are actually plants/agents of the republican party. They only serve to marginalize and disempower the left in this country. Not that I mind, because I lean libertarian, and I sometimes secretly rejoice when the left marginalizes itself, and shoots itself in the foot or even the head.
Here:
http://www.contourcrafting.org/
France reprocesses its nuclear waste to extract the highly radioactive components. Then, that highly radioactive waste is stored beneath a room, in a building at La Hague. (The volume of highly radioactive waste after reprocessing is very small).
Rad waste consists mostly (95%) of Uranium 238, which is benign. The U-238 is less radioactive than the uranium they dug out of the ground originally, so it doesn't require special handling. By removing the U-238 through reprocessing, you have reduced by 95% the volume of the waste you must store.
That is how France stores all its waste underneath a floor in a room.
Yes it would be awful it companies competed with each other, and made alternatives to each others' products. That would be disastrous. Consumers would be the ultimate losers from that kind of infighting.
There are many solutions for rad waste, most of which are easy, well-understood, and inexpensive.
One common solution is to vitrify the waste in borosilicate glass, pour it inside a chromium-nickel alloy container, and bury it in a geologic disposal that has remained immobile for millions of years. Any one of these measures by itself would prevent dispersal of rad waste for thousands of years, which is longer than it takes for all the short-lived fission products to disappear.
That would not prevent dispersal of long-lived fission product, since those last for millions of years which is longer than any containment will last. However, the long-lived fission products are extremely small in volume--about 1,000 tons from all nuclear power plants in the US over 40 years; that amount could fit easily in a large closet. That amount is so small, that we could easily launch it all into space, and out of our solar system, by using saturn-V rockets (about 10 of them) like were launched in the early 1960s. I'm not suggesting that that would be the most practical way of disposing of the waste. However, the volume of long-lived fission products is so small that there are many obvious options.
Personally, I think we should separate the LLFPs and put them into interim storage for 200 years. At that time, we can launch them out of the solar system if it has become cheaper and more reliable to launch things into space. If not, we can adulterate them with Sr90, and set them on an antarctic ice sheet. They would melt their way down (over decades) and settle on bedrock in antarctica, after which the Sr90 would be gone and the waste would lose its heat. The LLFPs would then remain under 1 mile of ice for a very long time. Even if human civilization collapses, our hunter-gatherer offspring will not reside one mile beneath the ice in antarctica. There would be no plausible human exposure to rad waste ever. The rad waste could never tunnel its way upwards through 1 mile of ice, then migrate to other continents.
I think that's wrong. Reprocessing involves chemical separation of different elements, which is far easier than isotope separation. Reprocessing is not done using centrifuges, and is not related to the enrichment process.
The poisons you spoke of are actinides and lathanides, which are different elements, and are not isotopes of uranium or plutonium. As a result, they can be removed using chemical processes.