What are those exports? It's the solar power and wind power that can't be used for lack of domestic power transmission and simple lack of demand in the areas where it is generated. This power must be exported, because it cannot be consumed. Despite all that, wind turbines still have be shut down at peak generation - leading to a steady decline in actual capacity factors of wind turbines. (Don't worry about you money, of course feed-in tariffs are still being paid when turbines are shut down...)
The most important question on those exports is hidden by the phrasing of those propaganda news: How much did germany get in return for those exports and how much did it cost to produce them? It doesn't take much in the way of imagination to conclude that it isn't much at all. Domestic power prices regularly drop to a fraction of the feed-in tariffs being paid for wind and solar power (occasionally dropping into negative territory) and exports are unlikely to offer better rates.
The result of all that? Germans will pay an average of 0.28 Euro - or about $0.40 per kWh next year, up from 0.25 Euro this year. With a clear trend upwards, as more and more wind turbines and solar cells that produce useless electricity come online. With the recent push for off-shore wind generation that will be 50-100% more expensive than solar power (depending on the scale of the solar power plant), this will only rise. Germany will catch up with the very highest electricity prices in Europe next year (Danemark) and is set to surpass them right thereafter.
Meanwhile, the need for transmission lines is still seen as a conspiracy of the electricity utilities by most "greens" in Germany. The need for serious storage capacity, which is already rather giant, is still not recognized.
This is what you call a bubble - worth on the order of $350bn and rising - paid by electricity consumers through their bills. The only people who profit from it are those who have enough money to pay for solar cells or wind turbines and the more money they spend on them, the more they get. A classic transfer of money from the poor to the richest of our society - all brought to you by massive lobbying of the Green party.
When all improvements are merely seen as proof of how bad the situation is, you miss out on the fact that there has been an improvement - however slight.
Remember what China was like 40 years ago under Mao? Remember the giant steps in which change happened? Right, me neither. Change is slow, incremental, imperceptile, even when it happens at the speed that China has changed. Just because they haven't crossed the finish line doesn't mean it's not a first step.
How about: When those displaced have had an opportunity to find semi-permanent shelter and the number of people without power has dropped significantly below 100,000? Last I heard, there are still 2,500,000 of those around.
Long surpassed in Germany (feed in tariff is about 20 cents, price of electricity is just over 25 cents this year, just under 29 cents next year). Still, nobody wants to let go of subsidies... for the simple reason that electricity from solar cells may cost on the order of 10-15 ct/kWh but just isn't worth it, because solar power need often doesn't deliver the power when you need it and delivers far more than you could hope to use when it does. And storage is both stupidly expensive and inefficient.
If the USA was a true democracy, it would defer the vote until after the clean-up, to ensure a free, fair and equal vote. (Which it doesn't have in the best of years.) But seeing that the USA is very far from being a true democracy and the current situation is deemed to be beneficial by both canidates(*), this is unlikely to happen.
(*)Obama hoping to be seen in a favorable light in response to the hurricane and Romney fearing to be seen in an even worse light with every passing day.
Don't forget that those vehicles are not bicycles. They have as much in common with bicycles as a brick has in common with an airplane. They are aerodynamically optimized to a degree that makes 50km/h a very realistic prospect for most people.
That's just about where the miracles stop reliably. You may or may not find some special cases in which those actually make sense (given that we're talking about concentrated solar and 2-axis drives are mandatory, those cases become even more special), but at large scale it's just not worth it - even without considering the need to store the energy, so you have it when you need it.
The point is, it isn't even published as of right now.
All they had to show for their super duper battery were two vials of approximately 0.1g of the stuff, but already claim it's cheap, easy to produce by the tons, durable etc.
The whole thing is as fake as it gets and I wonder what gullible fool fell for it.
It's quite true. Just look at the way people think about Iran having weapons of mass destruction: The last time anybody used weapons of mass destruction was against Iran by Iraq under Saddam Hussein fighting on the side of the USA who delivered those WMDs, the possesion which was then used as a reason to invade said great ally of the USA in 2003.
Today, the USA has those great allies in Pakistan whom it trusts implicitly not to bomb the USA, but insufficiently to not carry out terror attacks (sorry: shock and awe... erm... moral bombing!) with drones - inflicting more casualties on Pakistan than 9/11 did on the USA.
And then, of course, there is Rambo III, dedicated to those gallant people of Afghanistan (the Mujahideen) who were fighting on the side of the USA against their common enemy the Soviet Union.
Well, USA preventing Soviet missles from being stationed in Cuba since 1962.
Or to quote the people watching Space Shuttle Endeavor being towed to the junkyar^h^h^h^museum:
Well, as a history graduate, you should have checked your sources and pointed out, that 1816 should be 1815 and that there was a hurricane in 1635 but not in 1645. Oups.
Sediments indicate that more and stronger hurricanes made landfall in the area in the 13th and 15th century than at any time since European settlement of New England.
Nothing about Sandy has anything to do with climate change. It was to be expected and people have been warned, though all warnings fell on deaf ears just as in New Orleans. Now, the established procedure is repeated, people moan, complain and blame climate change instead of their incompetent politicians failing to do anything about lack of storm protection for half a century and more - despite the threat being absolutely obvious to anyone daring to have a look at history.
Unfortunately, the USA is a country that collectively doesn't dare to look back into its own history and is thus constantly surprised by every single repetition of things that happened several times before.
I don't remember where I got that number from originally, but it did include the infrastructure.
Building ITER also requires some infrastructure, gives people jobs and leaves behind a lot of material goods. Just one example: Only 15tons of the super conductors that will be used to get a 14.5T magnetic field in the reactor had been made until ITER. The reactor itself will require more than 300tons of the stuff, which means that it will be a lot cheaper to get afterwards and can be employed for better MRIs and other equipment.
Also, it's fundamental research. We know enough about plasma physics to be sure that ITER is going to work (as per prior experience from dozens of other tokamaks), but we really don't know much about it. Applied research will definitely lead to new insights in theory as well. Sure, nobody can say what is going to come out of it, but that's the point. You can only know more about it if you keep working on it.
Russia has proven that point beyond all doubt by putting out the most advanced nuclear reactors in the world and the best rocket engines (the Atlas III and Atlas V have been running with the russian RD-180 since 2000), despite breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991 and russian bankrupcy in 1998. Funding wasn't great, but at least they kept up the research and made sure the knowledge stayed around until financing could be obtained again (these days mostly from gas and oil sales) - quite unlike anything that happened in the west and specifically the USA, that is now at least two or three decades behind in both nuclear power and rocketry for lack of support in basic research.
Why can't one country step forward and just do it?
When it comes to the olympics, they're fighting over who gets to have the honour of spending a shitload of money for something nobody will really need at any time in the future. Here's something that would have an impact for everyone living on this planet for centuries to come and everybody claims it's way too expensive for a single country to do.
Of course, that didn't stop anyone from fearmongering and once more tens of thousands were evacuated needlessly - ensuring that hundreds or thousands won't follow evacuation orders when a real tsunami is coming. It is about time to stop using logarithmic scales for earthquakes. A 7.7 isn't anywhere near as bad as a 9.0 or a 9.2 that created the tsunamis of Japan iand Indonesia respectively.
0.2 more on the scale is a doubling of the energy released by the earthquake and a doubling of the energy potentially creating a tsunami. A difference of 1.3 is a factor 90-100.Yes, a 7.7 earthquake can create locally devastating tsunamis - but in this case your only warning will be the earthquake itself, as the wave will arrive within minutes and any official warning will be too late.
We're doing a disservice to people who may one day be affected by a real tsunami, if tell them to evacuate hundreds of times because of waves barely reaching the height of an average humans knee. (The 1m height reported is from peak to the lowest point - and the lowest point was 2 feet below normal sealevel.)
The only sane course of action if you're somewhere in the pacific or indian ocean and hear a tsunami warning, is to tell people to go and fuck off. Stop crying wolf!
There is also Cs-134 which has a half-life of 2 years, that's 1/15th that of Cs-137.
This means that the same amount of Cs-134 is 15 times as radioactive as Cs-137. It also happens to be the case that Cs-137 is 15 times more common than Cs-134 in fission product decay chains.
The result is that half the original radioactivty of Caesium basically disappears within 6 years along with 87.5% of the Cs-134. After that a 30 year half-life is a useful approximation. (Although this is not quite true for contamination, some of it is being washed away by rainwater and/or penetrates into the soil, where people are being shielded from part of its gamma radiation. Fortunately, Caesium doesn't accumulate in any part of the human body, so that there are no locally high doses as with Strontium, Radium or Iodine even after digestion. Which makes cancer formation much less likely, as the body has to deal with low levels of radiation anyway and can deal with it.)
In Finland people receive 7.5mSv per year in natural radiation on average. Life expectation in Finland is 1.5 years above EU average and 0.8 years above EU median. US regulators demand that all areas must be evacuated after a nuclear accident, where people would receive in excess of 200mSV in 30 years.
Slashdot Mirror
What are those exports? It's the solar power and wind power that can't be used for lack of domestic power transmission and simple lack of demand in the areas where it is generated. This power must be exported, because it cannot be consumed. Despite all that, wind turbines still have be shut down at peak generation - leading to a steady decline in actual capacity factors of wind turbines. (Don't worry about you money, of course feed-in tariffs are still being paid when turbines are shut down ...)
The most important question on those exports is hidden by the phrasing of those propaganda news: How much did germany get in return for those exports and how much did it cost to produce them? It doesn't take much in the way of imagination to conclude that it isn't much at all. Domestic power prices regularly drop to a fraction of the feed-in tariffs being paid for wind and solar power (occasionally dropping into negative territory) and exports are unlikely to offer better rates.
The result of all that? Germans will pay an average of 0.28 Euro - or about $0.40 per kWh next year, up from 0.25 Euro this year. With a clear trend upwards, as more and more wind turbines and solar cells that produce useless electricity come online. With the recent push for off-shore wind generation that will be 50-100% more expensive than solar power (depending on the scale of the solar power plant), this will only rise. Germany will catch up with the very highest electricity prices in Europe next year (Danemark) and is set to surpass them right thereafter.
Meanwhile, the need for transmission lines is still seen as a conspiracy of the electricity utilities by most "greens" in Germany. The need for serious storage capacity, which is already rather giant, is still not recognized.
This is what you call a bubble - worth on the order of $350bn and rising - paid by electricity consumers through their bills. The only people who profit from it are those who have enough money to pay for solar cells or wind turbines and the more money they spend on them, the more they get. A classic transfer of money from the poor to the richest of our society - all brought to you by massive lobbying of the Green party.
When all improvements are merely seen as proof of how bad the situation is, you miss out on the fact that there has been an improvement - however slight.
Remember what China was like 40 years ago under Mao? Remember the giant steps in which change happened? Right, me neither. Change is slow, incremental, imperceptile, even when it happens at the speed that China has changed. Just because they haven't crossed the finish line doesn't mean it's not a first step.
The nerd in me really wanted to read this as a real life implementation of Civilization (the computer game). Sigh.
So was the Democratic Republic of Germany ... also known as Eastern Germany.
How about: When those displaced have had an opportunity to find semi-permanent shelter and the number of people without power has dropped significantly below 100,000? Last I heard, there are still 2,500,000 of those around.
Long surpassed in Germany (feed in tariff is about 20 cents, price of electricity is just over 25 cents this year, just under 29 cents next year). Still, nobody wants to let go of subsidies ... for the simple reason that electricity from solar cells may cost on the order of 10-15 ct/kWh but just isn't worth it, because solar power need often doesn't deliver the power when you need it and delivers far more than you could hope to use when it does. And storage is both stupidly expensive and inefficient.
If the USA was a true democracy, it would defer the vote until after the clean-up, to ensure a free, fair and equal vote. (Which it doesn't have in the best of years.) But seeing that the USA is very far from being a true democracy and the current situation is deemed to be beneficial by both canidates(*), this is unlikely to happen.
(*)Obama hoping to be seen in a favorable light in response to the hurricane and Romney fearing to be seen in an even worse light with every passing day.
Don't forget that those vehicles are not bicycles. They have as much in common with bicycles as a brick has in common with an airplane. They are aerodynamically optimized to a degree that makes 50km/h a very realistic prospect for most people.
That's just about where the miracles stop reliably. You may or may not find some special cases in which those actually make sense (given that we're talking about concentrated solar and 2-axis drives are mandatory, those cases become even more special), but at large scale it's just not worth it - even without considering the need to store the energy, so you have it when you need it.
The point is, it isn't even published as of right now.
All they had to show for their super duper battery were two vials of approximately 0.1g of the stuff, but already claim it's cheap, easy to produce by the tons, durable etc.
The whole thing is as fake as it gets and I wonder what gullible fool fell for it.
I was kidding.
It's quite true. Just look at the way people think about Iran having weapons of mass destruction: The last time anybody used weapons of mass destruction was against Iran by Iraq under Saddam Hussein fighting on the side of the USA who delivered those WMDs, the possesion which was then used as a reason to invade said great ally of the USA in 2003.
Today, the USA has those great allies in Pakistan whom it trusts implicitly not to bomb the USA, but insufficiently to not carry out terror attacks (sorry: shock and awe ... erm ... moral bombing!) with drones - inflicting more casualties on Pakistan than 9/11 did on the USA.
And then, of course, there is Rambo III, dedicated to those gallant people of Afghanistan (the Mujahideen) who were fighting on the side of the USA against their common enemy the Soviet Union.
Well, USA preventing Soviet missles from being stationed in Cuba since 1962.
Or to quote the people watching Space Shuttle Endeavor being towed to the junkyar^h^h^h^museum:
USA USA USA USA USA!!!!!
Well, as a history graduate, you should have checked your sources and pointed out, that 1816 should be 1815 and that there was a hurricane in 1635 but not in 1645. Oups.
Breakthrough paradigm shifting innovative batteries have been around at least since 1901 and none of them worked.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html
(ctrl+f -> miracle batteries)
Technology changes incrementally and not on public demand.
My slightly distracted brain read this as:
"Sudo cause heated debate on Slashdot"
Well, it worked.
Sediments indicate that more and stronger hurricanes made landfall in the area in the 13th and 15th century than at any time since European settlement of New England.
Nothing about Sandy has anything to do with climate change. It was to be expected and people have been warned, though all warnings fell on deaf ears just as in New Orleans. Now, the established procedure is repeated, people moan, complain and blame climate change instead of their incompetent politicians failing to do anything about lack of storm protection for half a century and more - despite the threat being absolutely obvious to anyone daring to have a look at history.
Unfortunately, the USA is a country that collectively doesn't dare to look back into its own history and is thus constantly surprised by every single repetition of things that happened several times before.
As soon as you manage to give him on the order of $5bn to do it.
Hint: He's not that rich. AFAIK, he put less than $200mio into SpaceX (and did a great job, considering he's mostly using 1980ies technology).
I don't remember where I got that number from originally, but it did include the infrastructure.
Building ITER also requires some infrastructure, gives people jobs and leaves behind a lot of material goods. Just one example: Only 15tons of the super conductors that will be used to get a 14.5T magnetic field in the reactor had been made until ITER. The reactor itself will require more than 300tons of the stuff, which means that it will be a lot cheaper to get afterwards and can be employed for better MRIs and other equipment.
Also, it's fundamental research. We know enough about plasma physics to be sure that ITER is going to work (as per prior experience from dozens of other tokamaks), but we really don't know much about it. Applied research will definitely lead to new insights in theory as well. Sure, nobody can say what is going to come out of it, but that's the point. You can only know more about it if you keep working on it.
Russia has proven that point beyond all doubt by putting out the most advanced nuclear reactors in the world and the best rocket engines (the Atlas III and Atlas V have been running with the russian RD-180 since 2000), despite breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991 and russian bankrupcy in 1998. Funding wasn't great, but at least they kept up the research and made sure the knowledge stayed around until financing could be obtained again (these days mostly from gas and oil sales) - quite unlike anything that happened in the west and specifically the USA, that is now at least two or three decades behind in both nuclear power and rocketry for lack of support in basic research.
Why can't one country step forward and just do it?
When it comes to the olympics, they're fighting over who gets to have the honour of spending a shitload of money for something nobody will really need at any time in the future. Here's something that would have an impact for everyone living on this planet for centuries to come and everybody claims it's way too expensive for a single country to do.
THIS IS STUPID!
I was talking about Hawaii.
Without a doubt. But it just won't create much of a tsunami 4000km away.
There have been 5 tsunami warnings of some description stemming from 5 different earthquakes in the pacific area within the last 30 days alone.
http://ptwc.weather.gov/
Of course, that didn't stop anyone from fearmongering and once more tens of thousands were evacuated needlessly - ensuring that hundreds or thousands won't follow evacuation orders when a real tsunami is coming. It is about time to stop using logarithmic scales for earthquakes. A 7.7 isn't anywhere near as bad as a 9.0 or a 9.2 that created the tsunamis of Japan iand Indonesia respectively.
0.2 more on the scale is a doubling of the energy released by the earthquake and a doubling of the energy potentially creating a tsunami. A difference of 1.3 is a factor 90-100.Yes, a 7.7 earthquake can create locally devastating tsunamis - but in this case your only warning will be the earthquake itself, as the wave will arrive within minutes and any official warning will be too late.
We're doing a disservice to people who may one day be affected by a real tsunami, if tell them to evacuate hundreds of times because of waves barely reaching the height of an average humans knee. (The 1m height reported is from peak to the lowest point - and the lowest point was 2 feet below normal sealevel.)
The only sane course of action if you're somewhere in the pacific or indian ocean and hear a tsunami warning, is to tell people to go and fuck off. Stop crying wolf!
There is also Cs-134 which has a half-life of 2 years, that's 1/15th that of Cs-137.
This means that the same amount of Cs-134 is 15 times as radioactive as Cs-137. It also happens to be the case that Cs-137 is 15 times more common than Cs-134 in fission product decay chains.
The result is that half the original radioactivty of Caesium basically disappears within 6 years along with 87.5% of the Cs-134. After that a 30 year half-life is a useful approximation. (Although this is not quite true for contamination, some of it is being washed away by rainwater and/or penetrates into the soil, where people are being shielded from part of its gamma radiation. Fortunately, Caesium doesn't accumulate in any part of the human body, so that there are no locally high doses as with Strontium, Radium or Iodine even after digestion. Which makes cancer formation much less likely, as the body has to deal with low levels of radiation anyway and can deal with it.)
I mixed up the reports, I meant the WASH-1400.
In Finland people receive 7.5mSv per year in natural radiation on average. Life expectation in Finland is 1.5 years above EU average and 0.8 years above EU median. US regulators demand that all areas must be evacuated after a nuclear accident, where people would receive in excess of 200mSV in 30 years.