Also, because you're AC how can I or anyone else question YOUR posting history to see YOUR bias?
Do you see the hypocrisy in an AC criticizing a NON-AC's posting history?
Of course you don't, because you're an idiot.
Seriously, why don't you tell me your non-AC name on this server and then I can quickly go through your posting history to see if YOU are free of bias.
Rather doubt you'd pass your own stupid test. Which is probably why you'll refuse my challenge. You know you'd fail. And that makes things even easier for me because you can just fail by default. So easy.
To a foaming radical like yourself, anyone that cautions restraint, reflection, and humility must seem like the enemy.
If you read my post you'll find I laid criticism at both parties and said that to heal the divide it would require humility on both sides to come to common ground.
Now if THAT statement offends you, then I'm pretty comfortable labling YOU as a radical that is actually part of the problem.
The guy asking for reflection and humility before our common mistakes and passions can hardly be cited as the radical.
Your position can't even be a difference of opinion. You're just patiently wrong.
You're also following me from thread to thread, posting under AC, not contributing to discussions, and JUST throwing out a bunch of stupid insults.
What you probably haven't grasped because you're clearly a pretty simple creature... is that you're actually making me look better by making such a giant ass of yourself.
Here you'll jump on a couple sock accounts and down vote me. None of that means anything to me and the fact that you're going to do that further validates my position.
You wanted me to know that "you" an AC has no regard for me?
Do you not see the irony in your statement? And the fact that you didn't then and probably even after it has pointed out to you still don't... says all I need to know about you.
The comic hypocrisy of your statements which goes completely over your head renders you a laughable source of judgement.
I know I know... You're mad. But your lack of emotional control doesn't give weight to your opinions but rather detracts from them.
Try harder to be an adult and maybe the other adults will treat you like one.
Every time a party is in power, there is a tendency for those in that power to think it will never end. That they hold the whip hand forever.
They exceed their authority... they press beyond the normal bounds of what their office, the law, and their mandate warrants... and people... typically their opposition says "think to the future when you're not in power and I have this power."
This is rarely heeded... and then power changes hands and those that were wielding the power suddenly cry fowl when the same excesses are practiced by their opposition.
It seems to never end much to the shame of the Republic.
Those that cry fowl now... take a moment in humility to remember when you scoffed at those that said you exceeded your own power.
And those that are in power now... take a moment to appreciate that the power will change hands eventually... and everything shall be repeated by your opposition.
Everything else is hypocrisy. There is no moral high ground amoungst the parties in the United States. Both are liars, cheats, pigs feeding at troughs full of hookers and cocaine. Nearly all decisions are no more deeper or profound than the desire of the existing politicians to hold on to power. Both parties sell out their constituents... not even to save their stupid jobs... often just to get a check from a donor... and the sums of these checks... the absurd cheapness with which they are bought would make a whore blush.
I did an analysis involving campaign donations vs government contracts... the ratio of value was about 1:100. That is... a 1 dollar donation roughly netted 100 dollars in contracts... 1 million = 100 million... etc. Estimation is rough but its in that ballpark.
The point of which is this.. be careful that in all your moral outrage that you don't forget which ever side you choose... you have no purity. Both sides are invested with corruption... to their very core.
Perhaps you hold out some belief that one leader or another will save it. Perhaps... the future is tea leaves and pigeon entrails... can't be predicted. But if history is any guide, then any reform will be ephemeral. A flash of purity in an ocean of shit.
And the point of that is this... humility. It is the first and most important step to addressing corruption and error. Humility. A willingness to admit one's faults. An honest reflection. An ability to drop to your knees before something greater... if you value more than merely the power than you must sacrifice for that thing as the EXPENSE of your power. If nothing is worth sacrificing for your power... then what you worship is that power.
The best of science, law, programming, philosophy, etc all has this quality in common. Humility before our fallibility as humans.
And all that gets thrown out the window if we go full radical holy war with our stupid simplistic politics.
there are hundreds of millions of people in this country. Half of them voted one way and half the other.
Any way you count it the nation has been divided for a long long time. Rather than one faction or another attempting to dominate the other by jamming its desires down the other's throat... perhaps we should see what we agree upon. On that which we agree upon... we have law. That which is not agreed upon... perhaps don't try to impose that until we have "actual" agreement. Not some procedural trick. Not I won an election by 2 percent so I'm god emperor... BOTH parties are doing this... and it is ripping us apart.
You want things half the country opposes? Willing to rip the country apart for it? I don't think there is any wise person that actually expects to live here that would take that deal.
Restraint and humility. It is time and past time that real honest genuine compromises be made... pacts be set down that will be honored in good faith.
Because all the agreements of the last 30 or 40 years have been betrayed. It can't go on.
How many recommended FDA servings are there in an elephant? When a man goes to Costco etc and buys a one gallon jar of mayonnaise... how does he propose to use it all?
One serving at a time.
It took us over ten years to get here... how long will it take us to get out? If we work at it, another ten years.
The man asks why are we not doing it? The man does not know that we ARE doing it. What the man means is "why haven't we ALREADY done it?"... Time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You might as well ask from the rear seat of the car on the way to Disneyland... "are we there yet" no more than a mile from the old man's house.
Patience. See the big picture. See the forest instead of the tree for a minute. Its all relative and just as China could be made something from nothing something else can be made to take its place.
Houses are built... men come along, prepare the earth, lay the foundation, build up the walls, and plop a roof on it. What ever shall we do if we lose one building or another? Why we'll have to go through the trouble to make another one.
Do you know how much cheaper china is than the US at this point?
Its marginal.
First because labor costs are decreasing in relevance as we automate.
Second because chinese labor costs have gone up.
Third because various things in china other than labor are more expensive than in the US.
Fourth because there are often unaccounted costs to doing business in china such as forced tech transfers, IP theft, etc that ultimately can erase all gains.
There is more... but that makes the point that it is more complicated and the cost of doing business in china is not that much cheaper than in the US.
And because I won't be believed and no one uses a search engine to inform themselves absent it getting jammed in their faces: http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/...
China is replaceable in the US supply chain. We only used them because we are making a lot of things in other countries in east asia and china was a reasonable place to assemble things. Totally replaceable.
I know I know... lots of either clueless or politically motivated asshats running around running their mouths saying X or Y must be and the status quo is forever.
Think for yourselves.
Note the UK is also cheaper than Germany. Add that to your thinking on the Brexit discussions.;)
Proving my point, you didn't read your own statistics.
Women in your chart have the highest suicide rate at around 65 and then taper off.
However, men in your chart have an increasing rate of suicide as they get older.
By all means, mod me down for letting the air out of your balloon. The lowest suicide rates are when people are young and the highest are when people are older. To suggest that there is a negative relationship between age and suicide contradicts the very pdf you cited and clearly didn't read or understand.
citing your left finger is not convincing me... there's a reason assisted suicide is something the old tend to go for not the young.
But frankly this is a pointless argument. You are married to a concept absent any basis and I really don't see why I'd waste time trying to convince you... no one is paying me to me to help you here. Not motivated.
the use categories they're not competitive in are the ones where they're not commonly used... the internal combustion engine is to be challenged in those "use categories" then you need a technology that is competitive in them.
"alive" means what in this context? Heart still beating? Is the mind still there? Is the life active? Are you in pain? Will you look like a shriveled yoda?
Full regeneration is what you're going to want... and for real immortality you're going to need neural backup and replication.
Imagine living to 125 in increasing pain and decreasing mobility.
follow the history of the anti nuclear lobby... its where it comes from.
As to we can't do this technology ever again for the next infinity of the universe because of early crude technology... Is that a position you're honestly proud of and feel is good? Because its clearly pretty terrible. If we applied that principle generally most technologies would get banned.
As to nuclear weapons not being an issue with nuclear... I don't see how you're coming to that conclusion.
First, only some countries are permitted to have nuclear power for geopolitical reasons.
On that point alone the argument fails.
Second, most of the opposition to nuclear power comes from the same political camp that wants total denuclearization of weapons. Are we to pretend that 1:1 correlation is a coincidence?
As to three mile island, it was a scare with no real material consequence. What is more, just because something is dangerous does not mean it should not be used. By that logic we shouldn't use fire because you can burn yourself if you don't respect it. Everything is as dangerous as it is useful in equal measure. And that is because danger and utility correlate. Edison cautioned people to not use AC because it could electrocute people.
All one must do is be careful with its use. Our technology with nuclear has evolved dramatically since its first introduction. The reactors that have had issues were all early generation reactors and on top of that those specific reactors were subjected to dramatic human error. Chernobyl for example had its safeties deliberately disabled. Three mile island had a design flaw that had been identified multiple times and not been fixed. Fukushima involved fraud on the part of the power company where they lied about doing basic maintenance.
Regardless, modern reactor designs include fail safe designs that cannot melt down and have a much more secure coolant cycle.
As to "growth" the overwhelming majority of power that will be installed in China in the coming future will be non-renewable. Nuclear, Coal, etc makes up the vast majority not just of existing power but of planned installations.
As to most of the growth in renewables happening in the US and Europe... I already said that. And the reason is that we have enough money that efficiency doesn't matter to us too much and we have serious political pressure to install these technologies indifferent to practicality.
Added to this you have to watch out for people playing "carbon accounting" tricks. Just like bank fraud, carbon credits can be moved around such that they can be used by the multiple people over and over again. When you do this with money, it is eventually caught because there is an outstanding bill that gets built up by double counting money... especially if you follow it to its logical conclusion. However, with carbon credits there is no fail safe in the auditing. You can inflate them infinitely. A given power plant that sells renewable power will charge a premium and basically sell a little sticker that says "you use 100 percent renewable" or something... but who is to stop a 5 megawatt power plant from selling 200 megawatts worth of carbon credits?
You also have pollution outsourcing. States like California or countries like Germany import electricity form other places that generate the power via coal and natural gas. California is getting power from Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and in some cases as far away as New Mexico. When the power enters california, its generation technology is not cited and thus is effectively carbon neutral on California's carbon balance sheet the way they calculate it. Germany does the same thing with power it imports from Poland and France. The french power is largely nuclear and the polish power is largely coal. Germany doesn't count the coal carbon debt against its own balance sheet when it imports polish power. And it does not cite energy as nuclear when it comes from France.
There are politics, gimmicks, greed, and fraud.
Do not take any reports out of these people seriously unless you've gone through their information with a fine toothed comb... and about a ten pound bag of salt.
nuclear is not going to happen in non-nuclear power... nuclear is obviously political as well. Because nuclear weapons and lingering cold war politics.
As to solar and wind taking off in africa, I've looked at it and it isn't. There are some projections and some grants offered by the first world to stimulate its construction but it makes up less than 1 percent of production and is basically not considered absent being paid for by third parties.
I sniffed around Egypt, South Africa, and a few other major countries in Africa... they have a consistent profile.
As to MIGHT and IF... tell that to the rusted wind mills and abandoned solar plants in my desert. It was built, seemed to work for about five or ten years... then it died.
Given that the build out of solar and wind is extremely heavily subsidized and extremely political, you really can't draw logistical arguments from what is going on at this point on those numbers. Keep in mind that often wind and solar projects billed as costing X tend to run into serious problems 10 or 20 years later. My state is littered with failed renewable projects that are rusting in the desert as the promises that justifed them ultimately come up short. When all is said and done with them there is typically not even enough money left over to tear them down. Leaving wind mill and solar ruins all over the place.
This colors my impression of "promises" and "projections" that people make on such things. I've seen first hand how when push comes to shove... its not there. So forgive me for being dubious of claims. Here you might say "there's no need for that, we know it works because look at this spread sheet"... we had those too and they were doctored. So your spread sheet would need to be audited. Once bitten twice shy. Its not unreasonable.
What we see is coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric carrying the brunt of the load. Also outside of countries where there is a lot of political activism in energy you generally see strong growth in these tent pole power generation technologies. Strong solar and wind growth seems to correlate not where there is economic pressure but where there is lots of extra money to be thrown at anything and a lot of political activism.
You don't see wind and solar growing quickly in poor countries absent foreign endowments. You see coal, hydro, natural gas, and sometimes nuclear. Where we see wind and solar growing is in places like western europe and the US. This means the correlation is not with cost or efficiency. Its with politics and economic surplus.
Its really not even something you can argue against credibly. Its denying the Sun at this point.
These tent pole technologies are relatively cheaper than wind and solar IGNORING the need to back stop wind and solar with battery storage if used in municipal applications. And after the backstopping is taken into consideration they become boondoggles if they're anything but ON-SITE power.
Here is one of the things I find so sad about renewable power. Its utility is being squandered by people that want to eat their cake and have it too. The power of renewables is that they offer diffuse power pretty much everywhere. Solar should not be in huge solar farms or wind in huge wind farms. Both should be installed at point of use to REDUCE grid draw rather than supply the grid draw.
A house blasting its air conditioner with solar panels on the roof will draw less from the grid. The entire thing is more efficient. And this becomes dramatically more so if the homes are switched to a DC power supply system at least in part to save on the transformer conversion.
Now, this does nothing to help big highly concentrated urban centers. They have to have either concentrated power or grid power. They can't use diffuse on site power to supply skyscrappers etc.
And that is really okay. We do have good grid solutions. They're just not wind and solar. We have all the always on very reliable power sources to drive the cities. Everything doesn't have to run on solar and wind. And practically speaking it won't unless the technology changes radically.
These hope and dream articles with absurdly speculative wish fulfillment graphs are not helping usher in the new renewable era. If anything, they are retarding adoption of renewables by filling the discussion with misinformation, fantasy, and non-constructive tribal politics.
If people ACTUALLY want to increase adoption of these technologies then we need to go into it with clear unblinkered eyes. That means no more distoring the fucking data and no presuming that a given technology is a good idea in literally all applications. Which is generally what the environmental lobbyists will try to do with renewables. Its not helping.
in the same spirit, my opinion is that it is very important when making predictions to have a clear idea as to how accurate and reliable your predictions are before you do anything.
In this case, they're so unreliable as to be accused of begging the question. That is, they're so unreliable and speculative that they're arbitrary.
You could take the same graph and reverse and it would be just as valid. You could then create an alternative argument based on that reversal.
You could also take the graph and just draw all the lines sidewise making an argument for stasis and that would be just as valid.
Thus arguments of increase, decrease, or stasis projected out that far in the future are basically just "what-about-ism".
And that is "fine" so long as you acknowledge it as such. Neither the article nor the vast majority of people discussing the article in this thread have acknowledged how arbitrary the prediction is at this point. And thus that the argument not such acknowledged is sort of a leading question.
A more useful discussion would be about HOW we get from point A to point B sustainably. So, costs of renewables needs to come down, storage needs need to come down, and the relevant electronics that manage all that mess needs to come down.
We need to talk about things like switching home electrical grids from AC to DC. We need to talk about how renewable are more effective at POINT OF USE and are less useful in traditional municipal applications.
I mean, that might be actually interesting.
But a totally arbitrary graph speculation followed by the declaration of prophecy that THIS WILL COME TO BASS *twittles fingers* is magical thinking and is about as interesting as a dude cutting a chicken open, looking at entrails, and the predicting the weather in 20 years in the future from that data.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't provide counter examples unless you provide a specific abuse of the trump administration you want to talk about.
I'll probably easily find something in the Obama admin that matches it and you probably know that... which is why you're afraid to play the game.
You know you're wrong... and you have to know I know you're wrong as well. So why struggle, baby? Its already over.
Give an example.
Also, because you're AC how can I or anyone else question YOUR posting history to see YOUR bias?
Do you see the hypocrisy in an AC criticizing a NON-AC's posting history?
Of course you don't, because you're an idiot.
Seriously, why don't you tell me your non-AC name on this server and then I can quickly go through your posting history to see if YOU are free of bias.
Rather doubt you'd pass your own stupid test. Which is probably why you'll refuse my challenge. You know you'd fail. And that makes things even easier for me because you can just fail by default. So easy.
You're just responding with word salad now.
I point out an obvious illogical argument you're making and you respond that I'm being unethical.
That's moronic.
To a foaming radical like yourself, anyone that cautions restraint, reflection, and humility must seem like the enemy.
If you read my post you'll find I laid criticism at both parties and said that to heal the divide it would require humility on both sides to come to common ground.
Now if THAT statement offends you, then I'm pretty comfortable labling YOU as a radical that is actually part of the problem.
The guy asking for reflection and humility before our common mistakes and passions can hardly be cited as the radical.
Your position can't even be a difference of opinion. You're just patiently wrong.
You're also following me from thread to thread, posting under AC, not contributing to discussions, and JUST throwing out a bunch of stupid insults.
What you probably haven't grasped because you're clearly a pretty simple creature... is that you're actually making me look better by making such a giant ass of yourself.
Here you'll jump on a couple sock accounts and down vote me. None of that means anything to me and the fact that you're going to do that further validates my position.
You're garbage. Be better.
Point out the exact incidence of abuse of power you wish to reference and I'll find an analog in other house.
Both parties have been exceeding authority in many spheres. Which excess bothers you specifically.
Cite it specifically so I can respond.
I believe I've been sufficiently clear. A clear and direct response would be appreciated.
You wanted me to know that "you" an AC has no regard for me?
Do you not see the irony in your statement? And the fact that you didn't then and probably even after it has pointed out to you still don't... says all I need to know about you.
The comic hypocrisy of your statements which goes completely over your head renders you a laughable source of judgement.
I know I know... You're mad. But your lack of emotional control doesn't give weight to your opinions but rather detracts from them.
Try harder to be an adult and maybe the other adults will treat you like one.
it also renders one of china's primary contributions irrelevant... the other one is a willingness to pollute their country.
Sure, Comrade. After the great revolution there will finally be social justice.
You people keep making the same mistakes and not learning.
Every time a party is in power, there is a tendency for those in that power to think it will never end. That they hold the whip hand forever.
They exceed their authority... they press beyond the normal bounds of what their office, the law, and their mandate warrants... and people... typically their opposition says "think to the future when you're not in power and I have this power."
This is rarely heeded... and then power changes hands and those that were wielding the power suddenly cry fowl when the same excesses are practiced by their opposition.
It seems to never end much to the shame of the Republic.
Those that cry fowl now... take a moment in humility to remember when you scoffed at those that said you exceeded your own power.
And those that are in power now... take a moment to appreciate that the power will change hands eventually... and everything shall be repeated by your opposition.
Everything else is hypocrisy. There is no moral high ground amoungst the parties in the United States. Both are liars, cheats, pigs feeding at troughs full of hookers and cocaine. Nearly all decisions are no more deeper or profound than the desire of the existing politicians to hold on to power. Both parties sell out their constituents... not even to save their stupid jobs... often just to get a check from a donor... and the sums of these checks... the absurd cheapness with which they are bought would make a whore blush.
I did an analysis involving campaign donations vs government contracts... the ratio of value was about 1:100. That is... a 1 dollar donation roughly netted 100 dollars in contracts... 1 million = 100 million... etc. Estimation is rough but its in that ballpark.
The point of which is this.. be careful that in all your moral outrage that you don't forget which ever side you choose... you have no purity. Both sides are invested with corruption... to their very core.
Perhaps you hold out some belief that one leader or another will save it. Perhaps... the future is tea leaves and pigeon entrails... can't be predicted. But if history is any guide, then any reform will be ephemeral. A flash of purity in an ocean of shit.
And the point of that is this... humility. It is the first and most important step to addressing corruption and error. Humility. A willingness to admit one's faults. An honest reflection. An ability to drop to your knees before something greater... if you value more than merely the power than you must sacrifice for that thing as the EXPENSE of your power. If nothing is worth sacrificing for your power... then what you worship is that power.
The best of science, law, programming, philosophy, etc all has this quality in common. Humility before our fallibility as humans.
And all that gets thrown out the window if we go full radical holy war with our stupid simplistic politics.
there are hundreds of millions of people in this country. Half of them voted one way and half the other.
Any way you count it the nation has been divided for a long long time. Rather than one faction or another attempting to dominate the other by jamming its desires down the other's throat... perhaps we should see what we agree upon. On that which we agree upon... we have law. That which is not agreed upon... perhaps don't try to impose that until we have "actual" agreement. Not some procedural trick. Not I won an election by 2 percent so I'm god emperor... BOTH parties are doing this... and it is ripping us apart.
You want things half the country opposes? Willing to rip the country apart for it? I don't think there is any wise person that actually expects to live here that would take that deal.
Restraint and humility. It is time and past time that real honest genuine compromises be made... pacts be set down that will be honored in good faith.
Because all the agreements of the last 30 or 40 years have been betrayed. It can't go on.
I have high hopes for the development and modernity of the Indian people, however I think the larger changes are being ignored here...
The need for cheap labor in far away places to do menial tasks relies on that cheap labor being economically efficient.
Look at the combine harvester and what that did to slave cotton picking economics?
Machines can make literal slave labor uneconomical.
So, what work would you put the Indians to that the machines aren't coming for like a shot already?
Entire economic paradigms are going to have to sway in the breeze or snap at the root.
How many recommended FDA servings are there in an elephant? When a man goes to Costco etc and buys a one gallon jar of mayonnaise... how does he propose to use it all?
One serving at a time.
It took us over ten years to get here... how long will it take us to get out? If we work at it, another ten years.
The man asks why are we not doing it? The man does not know that we ARE doing it. What the man means is "why haven't we ALREADY done it?"... Time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You might as well ask from the rear seat of the car on the way to Disneyland... "are we there yet" no more than a mile from the old man's house.
Patience. See the big picture. See the forest instead of the tree for a minute. Its all relative and just as China could be made something from nothing something else can be made to take its place.
Houses are built... men come along, prepare the earth, lay the foundation, build up the walls, and plop a roof on it. What ever shall we do if we lose one building or another? Why we'll have to go through the trouble to make another one.
Really not that big of a deal.
You can green eggs and ham that if that is your pleasure... I can certainly empathize with north by north west thinking. ;)
Do you know how much cheaper china is than the US at this point?
Its marginal.
First because labor costs are decreasing in relevance as we automate.
Second because chinese labor costs have gone up.
Third because various things in china other than labor are more expensive than in the US.
Fourth because there are often unaccounted costs to doing business in china such as forced tech transfers, IP theft, etc that ultimately can erase all gains.
There is more... but that makes the point that it is more complicated and the cost of doing business in china is not that much cheaper than in the US.
And because I won't be believed and no one uses a search engine to inform themselves absent it getting jammed in their faces:
http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/...
China is replaceable in the US supply chain. We only used them because we are making a lot of things in other countries in east asia and china was a reasonable place to assemble things. Totally replaceable.
I know I know... lots of either clueless or politically motivated asshats running around running their mouths saying X or Y must be and the status quo is forever.
Think for yourselves.
Note the UK is also cheaper than Germany. Add that to your thinking on the Brexit discussions. ;)
Proving my point, you didn't read your own statistics.
Women in your chart have the highest suicide rate at around 65 and then taper off.
However, men in your chart have an increasing rate of suicide as they get older.
By all means, mod me down for letting the air out of your balloon. The lowest suicide rates are when people are young and the highest are when people are older. To suggest that there is a negative relationship between age and suicide contradicts the very pdf you cited and clearly didn't read or understand.
I say again, GOOD DAY, sir.
https://youtu.be/HaoySOGlZ_U?t...
citing your left finger is not convincing me... there's a reason assisted suicide is something the old tend to go for not the young.
But frankly this is a pointless argument. You are married to a concept absent any basis and I really don't see why I'd waste time trying to convince you... no one is paying me to me to help you here. Not motivated.
time will tell
I don't see batteries having legs.
the use categories they're not competitive in are the ones where they're not commonly used... the internal combustion engine is to be challenged in those "use categories" then you need a technology that is competitive in them.
Did you get that peer reviewed?
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/...
Do you know what the suicide rate is amongst the old?
No offense... I think you're 100% wrong and don't think there is really good evidence for that position.
... fuel cells. The batteries are a stop gap. We need air breathing fuel cells to compete with hydrocarbon internal combustion engines.
Quality of life.
"alive" means what in this context? Heart still beating? Is the mind still there? Is the life active? Are you in pain? Will you look like a shriveled yoda?
Full regeneration is what you're going to want... and for real immortality you're going to need neural backup and replication.
Imagine living to 125 in increasing pain and decreasing mobility.
Yay.
Side effects include suicidal thoughts.
follow the history of the anti nuclear lobby... its where it comes from.
As to we can't do this technology ever again for the next infinity of the universe because of early crude technology... Is that a position you're honestly proud of and feel is good? Because its clearly pretty terrible. If we applied that principle generally most technologies would get banned.
As to nuclear weapons not being an issue with nuclear... I don't see how you're coming to that conclusion.
First, only some countries are permitted to have nuclear power for geopolitical reasons.
On that point alone the argument fails.
Second, most of the opposition to nuclear power comes from the same political camp that wants total denuclearization of weapons. Are we to pretend that 1:1 correlation is a coincidence?
As to three mile island, it was a scare with no real material consequence. What is more, just because something is dangerous does not mean it should not be used. By that logic we shouldn't use fire because you can burn yourself if you don't respect it. Everything is as dangerous as it is useful in equal measure. And that is because danger and utility correlate. Edison cautioned people to not use AC because it could electrocute people.
All one must do is be careful with its use. Our technology with nuclear has evolved dramatically since its first introduction. The reactors that have had issues were all early generation reactors and on top of that those specific reactors were subjected to dramatic human error. Chernobyl for example had its safeties deliberately disabled. Three mile island had a design flaw that had been identified multiple times and not been fixed. Fukushima involved fraud on the part of the power company where they lied about doing basic maintenance.
Regardless, modern reactor designs include fail safe designs that cannot melt down and have a much more secure coolant cycle.
As to "growth" the overwhelming majority of power that will be installed in China in the coming future will be non-renewable. Nuclear, Coal, etc makes up the vast majority not just of existing power but of planned installations.
As to most of the growth in renewables happening in the US and Europe... I already said that. And the reason is that we have enough money that efficiency doesn't matter to us too much and we have serious political pressure to install these technologies indifferent to practicality.
Added to this you have to watch out for people playing "carbon accounting" tricks. Just like bank fraud, carbon credits can be moved around such that they can be used by the multiple people over and over again. When you do this with money, it is eventually caught because there is an outstanding bill that gets built up by double counting money... especially if you follow it to its logical conclusion. However, with carbon credits there is no fail safe in the auditing. You can inflate them infinitely. A given power plant that sells renewable power will charge a premium and basically sell a little sticker that says "you use 100 percent renewable" or something... but who is to stop a 5 megawatt power plant from selling 200 megawatts worth of carbon credits?
You also have pollution outsourcing. States like California or countries like Germany import electricity form other places that generate the power via coal and natural gas. California is getting power from Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and in some cases as far away as New Mexico. When the power enters california, its generation technology is not cited and thus is effectively carbon neutral on California's carbon balance sheet the way they calculate it. Germany does the same thing with power it imports from Poland and France. The french power is largely nuclear and the polish power is largely coal. Germany doesn't count the coal carbon debt against its own balance sheet when it imports polish power. And it does not cite energy as nuclear when it comes from France.
There are politics, gimmicks, greed, and fraud.
Do not take any reports out of these people seriously unless you've gone through their information with a fine toothed comb... and about a ten pound bag of salt.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
And for fun, tha
nuclear is not going to happen in non-nuclear power... nuclear is obviously political as well. Because nuclear weapons and lingering cold war politics.
As to solar and wind taking off in africa, I've looked at it and it isn't. There are some projections and some grants offered by the first world to stimulate its construction but it makes up less than 1 percent of production and is basically not considered absent being paid for by third parties.
I sniffed around Egypt, South Africa, and a few other major countries in Africa... they have a consistent profile.
As to MIGHT and IF... tell that to the rusted wind mills and abandoned solar plants in my desert. It was built, seemed to work for about five or ten years... then it died.
Given that the build out of solar and wind is extremely heavily subsidized and extremely political, you really can't draw logistical arguments from what is going on at this point on those numbers. Keep in mind that often wind and solar projects billed as costing X tend to run into serious problems 10 or 20 years later. My state is littered with failed renewable projects that are rusting in the desert as the promises that justifed them ultimately come up short. When all is said and done with them there is typically not even enough money left over to tear them down. Leaving wind mill and solar ruins all over the place.
This colors my impression of "promises" and "projections" that people make on such things. I've seen first hand how when push comes to shove... its not there. So forgive me for being dubious of claims. Here you might say "there's no need for that, we know it works because look at this spread sheet"... we had those too and they were doctored. So your spread sheet would need to be audited. Once bitten twice shy. Its not unreasonable.
What we see is coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric carrying the brunt of the load. Also outside of countries where there is a lot of political activism in energy you generally see strong growth in these tent pole power generation technologies. Strong solar and wind growth seems to correlate not where there is economic pressure but where there is lots of extra money to be thrown at anything and a lot of political activism.
You don't see wind and solar growing quickly in poor countries absent foreign endowments. You see coal, hydro, natural gas, and sometimes nuclear. Where we see wind and solar growing is in places like western europe and the US. This means the correlation is not with cost or efficiency. Its with politics and economic surplus.
Its really not even something you can argue against credibly. Its denying the Sun at this point.
These tent pole technologies are relatively cheaper than wind and solar IGNORING the need to back stop wind and solar with battery storage if used in municipal applications. And after the backstopping is taken into consideration they become boondoggles if they're anything but ON-SITE power.
Here is one of the things I find so sad about renewable power. Its utility is being squandered by people that want to eat their cake and have it too. The power of renewables is that they offer diffuse power pretty much everywhere. Solar should not be in huge solar farms or wind in huge wind farms. Both should be installed at point of use to REDUCE grid draw rather than supply the grid draw.
A house blasting its air conditioner with solar panels on the roof will draw less from the grid. The entire thing is more efficient. And this becomes dramatically more so if the homes are switched to a DC power supply system at least in part to save on the transformer conversion.
Now, this does nothing to help big highly concentrated urban centers. They have to have either concentrated power or grid power. They can't use diffuse on site power to supply skyscrappers etc.
And that is really okay. We do have good grid solutions. They're just not wind and solar. We have all the always on very reliable power sources to drive the cities. Everything doesn't have to run on solar and wind. And practically speaking it won't unless the technology changes radically.
These hope and dream articles with absurdly speculative wish fulfillment graphs are not helping usher in the new renewable era. If anything, they are retarding adoption of renewables by filling the discussion with misinformation, fantasy, and non-constructive tribal politics.
If people ACTUALLY want to increase adoption of these technologies then we need to go into it with clear unblinkered eyes. That means no more distoring the fucking data and no presuming that a given technology is a good idea in literally all applications. Which is generally what the environmental lobbyists will try to do with renewables. Its not helping.
in the same spirit, my opinion is that it is very important when making predictions to have a clear idea as to how accurate and reliable your predictions are before you do anything.
In this case, they're so unreliable as to be accused of begging the question. That is, they're so unreliable and speculative that they're arbitrary.
You could take the same graph and reverse and it would be just as valid. You could then create an alternative argument based on that reversal.
You could also take the graph and just draw all the lines sidewise making an argument for stasis and that would be just as valid.
Thus arguments of increase, decrease, or stasis projected out that far in the future are basically just "what-about-ism".
And that is "fine" so long as you acknowledge it as such. Neither the article nor the vast majority of people discussing the article in this thread have acknowledged how arbitrary the prediction is at this point. And thus that the argument not such acknowledged is sort of a leading question.
A more useful discussion would be about HOW we get from point A to point B sustainably. So, costs of renewables needs to come down, storage needs need to come down, and the relevant electronics that manage all that mess needs to come down.
We need to talk about things like switching home electrical grids from AC to DC. We need to talk about how renewable are more effective at POINT OF USE and are less useful in traditional municipal applications.
I mean, that might be actually interesting.
But a totally arbitrary graph speculation followed by the declaration of prophecy that THIS WILL COME TO BASS *twittles fingers* is magical thinking and is about as interesting as a dude cutting a chicken open, looking at entrails, and the predicting the weather in 20 years in the future from that data.