Given the choice between burning methane and burning coal, burn methane.
Given the choice between burning methane and letting it bubble out ("Laptev Sea methane emissions"), burn methane
Both choices must be temporary, whilst mankind embarks on a crash-plan buildout of nuclear power - with the best will in the world trying to do it with "renewables" simply isn't practical(*) or indeed possible(**). We may already be too late to prevent an anoxic oceanic event - which might sound like a good thing the way some pave-the-earth types spin it, but half our breathable oxygen comes from the oceans.
(*) It costs too much compared to nuclear power and generates too much CO2
(**) Ignoring the safety aspects of blade-off events(***), and pollution from solar PV manufacture(****), Carpetting populated areas with windmills and solar PV would _just about_ match current electrical generation capacity. Unfortunately electrical generation currently only accounts for around 35-40% of current carbon emissions and moving to a more-electric future by reducing carbon-sourced heating and transportation will increase that electrical demand by a factor of around 8-10 once transmission losses are taken into account.
No, you can't just build massive solar arrays in deserts. The oft-touted "Sahara for Europe" project would be stealing energy that Africa has a rightful claim to (colonialism writ large yet again)(+) and in any case the transportation infrastructure alone would be the single largest project that humanity has ever embarked upon - and that's quite apart from the much larger issue that it's only economic to move electricity about 1500 miles at most before energy losses stop making it worthwhile.
(***) 2MW turbine blades have been known to go almost 2 miles.
(****) pollution around Chinese manufacturing sites is so bad it's putting potable water at risk for tens of millions of people. Flint MI is small fry.
(+) The developed world cannot hold back developing countries without risking all out war and planetary chaos (and in any case it wouldn't work in terms of reducing carbon emissions). Access to cheap energy is crucial to improving quality of life and has been the driving force of most civilisations over the last few thousand years (slaves replaced with wind, water and then electricity, carbon). Those populations will burn oil/coal/gas if they can't get cheap nuclear electricity and it's in our collective interest to give it to them - as people get lifted out of poverty they have fewer children and the only way to avert a complete ecological collapse is to reduce the overall human birthrate below 1.6. Contrary to popular opinion, wars and famines don't reduce populations. Within 2 generations the losses have always been made up - and then some.
Only in the UK. The rest of the english-speaking world uses the same sense as the USA does and "underpants" for what you call pants. (and what you used to call underpants as recently as 30 years ago)
"Even worse, it is usually presented in a form such as "3 times higher than normal!!!" or some such jibberish because while meaningless without further information, a scientifically illiterate populace is easily swayed by the apparently alarming fact."
Compounded by memories of radiation injuries to the general public which WERE caused by people playing fast and loose with (lack of) safety standards.
Not just the radium girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but also ill-advised "pedoscopes" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - which were usually poorly maintained, and awareness of the radiation-induced injuries at hiroshima and nagasaki (which whilst horrific, are used to vastly overblow fear of "radiation" beyond all rational analysis - useful to discourage people from engaging in nuclear war but a handicap when trying to rationally approach risk management)
Low production, low paid jobs are difficult to economically justify robotizing. You might save a few tens of thousands per unit purchased over the life of the robot, or you might only break even/lose money.
On the other hand, robotising or automating/augmenting high skill but highly algorithmic jobs pays off a lot more per unit purchase.
It's already been happening. People do more, with fewer staff right across the board. Whilst there's a claim that office productivity is down on the 1960s, the reality is that actual staff numbers are significantly lower - receptionists, telephonists, typists, runners, copyists, stenographers, account clerks etc are frequently rolled into one job.
In the near-to-mid term future, you're going to see a lot more redundant bankers, market traders, sharebrokers, programmers, accountants and lawyers than burger flippers or labourers - and jobs like plumbing/electrician etc will take even longer to automate out of existence even if automation reduces the workforce.
Driving is one area where there's a lot of concentration - but in that area it's not so much because of pay rates (which are low) as restrictions on allowable working hours, the need to return to base frequently and the costs when drivers make serious errors or fail to heed mechanical system warnings. Whilst the push is for "self driving cars", "automonous commercial vehicles" is actually where the payoff happens.
Protesting is not a crime, even if it's a hobby or a job.
Affray or rioting is a different matter and professional protesters not only stay well away from that but won't associate with anyone suspected of being involved.
I've seen protesters truss up vandals and hand them over to the cops. It all depends on the level of tolerance and how well organised the violent sorts are, but the best advice I've ever seen given is "if people start that shit, don't hang around to watch"
AKA "The very large French nuclear reactor fleet in the country next door (which happens to be France)", which has some load-following ability.
"Renewables" in northern europe have the potential to replace all current carbon emitting sources - if the entire european countryside is carpetted in turbines and glazed with solar panels, at a cost several tens of times higher than the carbon-emitting sources (and the fuel) they replace.
Eliminating OTHER sources of carbon (heating, transportation, industrial processes) will require an increase in electrical generation by a factor of _AT LEAST_ 6 if not more. The only way forward is massive investment into nuclear sources and nuclear research. We _need_ LFTR technology and we need it deployed at least 10 years ago. The ironic thing is that LFTR's inherent ability to load-follow without penalty means that whilst it's an ideal backing source for "renewables" the overall lower cost of operation (an removal of the need to subsidise, as LTFRs are carbon-neutral) means that the deployed renewables fleet would become white elephants overnight.
When you factor in the requirements for increased energy availability in developing countries, the need for nuclear sources is clear. Even in equatorial areas the investment required to ramp up production of "renewable" energy dwarfs the cost of a few nuclear plants (conventional or LFTR) and without low-cost reliable energy, we cannot continue to both pull people out of poverty AND reduce the population (well-off people have fewer kids. Making people better off is the only _proven_ way of curbing population growth. Wars, Famine and Malthus effects have _all_ resulted in population bounces which more than made up the losses within 2 generations.)
Those nuclear plants are likely to be chinese, and the LFTR plants will almost definitely be chinese - they're the biggest player in R&D into making LFTRs viable. It'll be interesting to see how fast chinese industry hoovers up both Thorium and "nuclear waste" to feed their plants in the next 20 years.
The reason I suggest solar heat panels is because they're cheap to manufacture and maintain, making the 5-10% potential heating costs saving worthwhile aiming for.
If you wanted to get really whizzy you could store solar heat in the ground in summer and extract in winter but that's a massive complexity boost with long payoff period. On the other hand schools tend to have large open fields where the pipework for such systems can be laid relatively easily and deeply.
Apart from the massive amounts of nasty environmental waste being produced in China (where most come from) that's threatening the potable water of a few tens of millions of people downstream.
Hydroflouric acid in particular is something you don't want in your waterways.
In northern latitudes, you'd be better off thinking about solar heat panels and suchlike to offset your energy costs, but solar PV is generally a waste of space unless you're off-grid and away-from-grid (in many cases the cost of solar is a lot more than the cost of a grid connection), or using it for low energy-density applications (I'm pretty sure that even those solar-panel equipped streetlights will need topups in winter months if used in the UK)
Plenty of large software companies have done it, some have been american and some have been _very_ large. I'm aware of a couple of cases where a superinjunction was sought (and granted) - a superinjunction means that you can't even drop hints that there's a court case.
Personal opinion: Given the exploits are in use by greyhats (spy agencies), then blackhats probably have them anyway and rapid disclosure is the prudent path so that whitehats can man the barricades.
MS and others used to be notorious for not fixing bugs in a timely manner.
The other point of the movie was that there were no terrorists. Everything was disintegrating due to lack of or poor maintenance coupled with bureaucratic incompetence and terrorists were being blamed as a convenient scapegoat
There's also a lot of methane being tossed into warmer arctic waters, which keeps them churned up and harder to freeze.
If there continue to be warm water incursions from the Atlantic there's a very real risk of a clathrate slump offshore from Siberia (the Laptev Sea methane venting is showing no sign of abating) and if that happens then apart from the tsunami damage the longer-term effects are likely to be nasty. Dissolved oceanic methane levels are already problematic and there's a strong possibility of an anoxic event already being underway.
I grew up in New Zealand. Ice on the _inside_ of windows in winter wasn't uncommon and as well as being cold, New Zealand housing is _damp_, with mould being a constant problem.
Antonov will happily build them if someone orders enough to justify starting the line - but it's kinda hard to run a factory when there's a civil war going on just down the road
The current problem is that the Progress turbofan engines on them aren't very efficient (or particularly reliable, despite being made modular for easy repairs) and that coupled with needing a crew of 4-8 means that the planes have higher operating cost per tonne/km than haulers want to pay.
Couple that with legendary Russian "built like a brick shithouse" engineering - which is great for flying into unimproved runways, but again makes the economics not so hot and the hassles of flying a type which isn't homogenous and more large operators won't go there.
Antonov has been looking at re-engining and redoing the avionics on the things since the mid 2000s but aviation has long lead-times everywhere. In the meantime the existing fleet of AN124s is working so hard the airframes are wearing out, so something's got to give soon (either they give up, or they start building more).
The interesting thing is that China's looking at license-building the AN224 with progress engines attached.
"Most kids I see still ride their bikes down the sidewalks with impunity and no one flips their shit because they are paying attention and not going too fast."
And the last four words of that statement is why it's tolerated - also small kids on bikes tend not to be quiet, so you get plenty of warning they're coming.
Whilst you might think the cyclist vs toddler incident is rare, there are regular postings in the UK of cyclists being filmed riding at 20+ miles per hour on busy footpaths whilst they _usually_ get away with it, there are a couple of deaths every year caused by high speed cyclists on the footpath and a lot more injury crashes besides, so no - it's not particularly rare.
"Windy or not you do not know the definition of bad weather"
NZ is smack in the middle of the Roaring Forties and the only other land that far south is Patagonia. The type of weather - and the rapid changes in it - can easily kill someone who was expecting a nice sunny day in a matter of hours - and regularly does.
The bigger problem is the parochiality of the inhabitants. That friendliness is skin deep and try as you might, as a foreigner (or an intellectual) you will never be accepted as a New Zealander. If you are a tall poppy, you will be cut down to size or driven out of the country.
This is the reason it's been in the top4 (usually top2) for youth suicide rate (12-24 years) in the western world for the last 50 years
Not to mention the shitty standards for insulation, etc in NZ housing.
It's one of those countries where no matter how much heating you have, you'll feel cold indoors - and the locals will tell you "Suck it up and wear a jumper"
There's a ripoff mentality on imports due to past high taxes and crony deals with "import licensing" - it's not uncommon to be able to buy 4-5 copies of software from the USA and have it delivered with taxes paid, for less than the cost of a single copy from local distributors.
The population is extremely parochial, with a constant need to be assured their country is the best in the world and a nasty tendency to turn violent if told it's not.
The population is 4 million, but there are 6 million passport holders.
There's a legend of being "clean, green and corruption free" - the country is none of these (it might have been in the 1950s but the legend died by the 1970s, but it's sold so heavily the population believe it - which allows corrupt police to pretty much anything they want - the spirit of Gene Hunt is alive and well in kiwiland.
If you want an example of how corrupt the country is, read the latest court judgement in the Kim Dot Com case. You'll be sitting gobmacked at how blatent it is in the proceedings and the judgement. It's all-but-explicitly admitted _by the prosecution_ that Hollywood was driving the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the choice between burning methane and burning coal, burn methane.
Given the choice between burning methane and letting it bubble out ("Laptev Sea methane emissions"), burn methane
Both choices must be temporary, whilst mankind embarks on a crash-plan buildout of nuclear power - with the best will in the world trying to do it with "renewables" simply isn't practical(*) or indeed possible(**). We may already be too late to prevent an anoxic oceanic event - which might sound like a good thing the way some pave-the-earth types spin it, but half our breathable oxygen comes from the oceans.
(*) It costs too much compared to nuclear power and generates too much CO2
(**) Ignoring the safety aspects of blade-off events(***), and pollution from solar PV manufacture(****), Carpetting populated areas with windmills and solar PV would _just about_ match current electrical generation capacity. Unfortunately electrical generation currently only accounts for around 35-40% of current carbon emissions and moving to a more-electric future by reducing carbon-sourced heating and transportation will increase that electrical demand by a factor of around 8-10 once transmission losses are taken into account.
No, you can't just build massive solar arrays in deserts. The oft-touted "Sahara for Europe" project would be stealing energy that Africa has a rightful claim to (colonialism writ large yet again)(+) and in any case the transportation infrastructure alone would be the single largest project that humanity has ever embarked upon - and that's quite apart from the much larger issue that it's only economic to move electricity about 1500 miles at most before energy losses stop making it worthwhile.
(***) 2MW turbine blades have been known to go almost 2 miles.
(****) pollution around Chinese manufacturing sites is so bad it's putting potable water at risk for tens of millions of people. Flint MI is small fry.
(+) The developed world cannot hold back developing countries without risking all out war and planetary chaos (and in any case it wouldn't work in terms of reducing carbon emissions). Access to cheap energy is crucial to improving quality of life and has been the driving force of most civilisations over the last few thousand years (slaves replaced with wind, water and then electricity, carbon). Those populations will burn oil/coal/gas if they can't get cheap nuclear electricity and it's in our collective interest to give it to them - as people get lifted out of poverty they have fewer children and the only way to avert a complete ecological collapse is to reduce the overall human birthrate below 1.6.
Contrary to popular opinion, wars and famines don't reduce populations. Within 2 generations the losses have always been made up - and then some.
> "pants" refers to underwear
Only in the UK. The rest of the english-speaking world uses the same sense as the USA does and "underpants" for what you call pants. (and what you used to call underpants as recently as 30 years ago)
"Even worse, it is usually presented in a form such as "3 times higher than normal!!!" or some such jibberish because while meaningless without further information, a scientifically illiterate populace is easily swayed by the apparently alarming fact."
Compounded by memories of radiation injuries to the general public which WERE caused by people playing fast and loose with (lack of) safety standards.
Not just the radium girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but also ill-advised "pedoscopes" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... - which were usually poorly maintained, and awareness of the radiation-induced injuries at hiroshima and nagasaki (which whilst horrific, are used to vastly overblow fear of "radiation" beyond all rational analysis - useful to discourage people from engaging in nuclear war but a handicap when trying to rationally approach risk management)
"once you have "cleaned up" the radiation, where are you going to put it?"
Ideally into a MSR, where it can be burned down (or left alone for around 300 years when it should be safe enough to handle anyway)
Low production, low paid jobs are difficult to economically justify robotizing. You might save a few tens of thousands per unit purchased over the life of the robot, or you might only break even/lose money.
On the other hand, robotising or automating/augmenting high skill but highly algorithmic jobs pays off a lot more per unit purchase.
It's already been happening. People do more, with fewer staff right across the board. Whilst there's a claim that office productivity is down on the 1960s, the reality is that actual staff numbers are significantly lower - receptionists, telephonists, typists, runners, copyists, stenographers, account clerks etc are frequently rolled into one job.
In the near-to-mid term future, you're going to see a lot more redundant bankers, market traders, sharebrokers, programmers, accountants and lawyers than burger flippers or labourers - and jobs like plumbing/electrician etc will take even longer to automate out of existence even if automation reduces the workforce.
Driving is one area where there's a lot of concentration - but in that area it's not so much because of pay rates (which are low) as restrictions on allowable working hours, the need to return to base frequently and the costs when drivers make serious errors or fail to heed mechanical system warnings. Whilst the push is for "self driving cars", "automonous commercial vehicles" is actually where the payoff happens.
And that's secure, as the USB infection vector of a certain bunch of centrifuges can attest.....
Protesting is not a crime, even if it's a hobby or a job.
Affray or rioting is a different matter and professional protesters not only stay well away from that but won't associate with anyone suspected of being involved.
I've seen protesters truss up vandals and hand them over to the cops. It all depends on the level of tolerance and how well organised the violent sorts are, but the best advice I've ever seen given is "if people start that shit, don't hang around to watch"
"the European buffering capacity of the network"
AKA "The very large French nuclear reactor fleet in the country next door (which happens to be France)", which has some load-following ability.
"Renewables" in northern europe have the potential to replace all current carbon emitting sources - if the entire european countryside is carpetted in turbines and glazed with solar panels, at a cost several tens of times higher than the carbon-emitting sources (and the fuel) they replace.
Eliminating OTHER sources of carbon (heating, transportation, industrial processes) will require an increase in electrical generation by a factor of _AT LEAST_ 6 if not more. The only way forward is massive investment into nuclear sources and nuclear research. We _need_ LFTR technology and we need it deployed at least 10 years ago. The ironic thing is that LFTR's inherent ability to load-follow without penalty means that whilst it's an ideal backing source for "renewables" the overall lower cost of operation (an removal of the need to subsidise, as LTFRs are carbon-neutral) means that the deployed renewables fleet would become white elephants overnight.
When you factor in the requirements for increased energy availability in developing countries, the need for nuclear sources is clear. Even in equatorial areas the investment required to ramp up production of "renewable" energy dwarfs the cost of a few nuclear plants (conventional or LFTR) and without low-cost reliable energy, we cannot continue to both pull people out of poverty AND reduce the population (well-off people have fewer kids. Making people better off is the only _proven_ way of curbing population growth. Wars, Famine and Malthus effects have _all_ resulted in population bounces which more than made up the losses within 2 generations.)
Those nuclear plants are likely to be chinese, and the LFTR plants will almost definitely be chinese - they're the biggest player in R&D into making LFTRs viable. It'll be interesting to see how fast chinese industry hoovers up both Thorium and "nuclear waste" to feed their plants in the next 20 years.
The reason I suggest solar heat panels is because they're cheap to manufacture and maintain, making the 5-10% potential heating costs saving worthwhile aiming for.
If you wanted to get really whizzy you could store solar heat in the ground in summer and extract in winter but that's a massive complexity boost with long payoff period. On the other hand schools tend to have large open fields where the pipework for such systems can be laid relatively easily and deeply.
"Solar power has almost zero downsides."
Apart from the massive amounts of nasty environmental waste being produced in China (where most come from) that's threatening the potable water of a few tens of millions of people downstream.
Hydroflouric acid in particular is something you don't want in your waterways.
In northern latitudes, you'd be better off thinking about solar heat panels and suchlike to offset your energy costs, but solar PV is generally a waste of space unless you're off-grid and away-from-grid (in many cases the cost of solar is a lot more than the cost of a grid connection), or using it for low energy-density applications (I'm pretty sure that even those solar-panel equipped streetlights will need topups in winter months if used in the UK)
"you will need a(n expensive) backup source to meet demand"
If you can use LFTR (when they're ready) it's likely to prove so cheap that solar and wind installations will be abandoned.
Plenty of large software companies have done it, some have been american and some have been _very_ large. I'm aware of a couple of cases where a superinjunction was sought (and granted) - a superinjunction means that you can't even drop hints that there's a court case.
Personal opinion: Given the exploits are in use by greyhats (spy agencies), then blackhats probably have them anyway and rapid disclosure is the prudent path so that whitehats can man the barricades.
MS and others used to be notorious for not fixing bugs in a timely manner.
The problem is that time and again when given a deadline to fix, vendors have gone to court to try and prevent the exploits being published.
The only way to prevent that is to set a deadman switch on the release of data.
A "don't sue" clause seems prudent.
And there was much rejoicing.
The other point of the movie was that there were no terrorists. Everything was disintegrating due to lack of or poor maintenance coupled with bureaucratic incompetence and terrorists were being blamed as a convenient scapegoat
There's also a lot of methane being tossed into warmer arctic waters, which keeps them churned up and harder to freeze.
If there continue to be warm water incursions from the Atlantic there's a very real risk of a clathrate slump offshore from Siberia (the Laptev Sea methane venting is showing no sign of abating) and if that happens then apart from the tsunami damage the longer-term effects are likely to be nasty. Dissolved oceanic methane levels are already problematic and there's a strong possibility of an anoxic event already being underway.
Putting this in context - British police have paid out _millions_ apiece in the case of bogus arrests for non-existent terrorism offences
He needs a decent lawyer and publicist.
The settlement is too little too late.
The apology is too little, too late.
Those who made the arrest haven't apologised.
It'd be interesting to doorstop them with a BBC news team and see how they like it.
I grew up in New Zealand. Ice on the _inside_ of windows in winter wasn't uncommon and as well as being cold, New Zealand housing is _damp_, with mould being a constant problem.
Antonov will happily build them if someone orders enough to justify starting the line - but it's kinda hard to run a factory when there's a civil war going on just down the road
The current problem is that the Progress turbofan engines on them aren't very efficient (or particularly reliable, despite being made modular for easy repairs) and that coupled with needing a crew of 4-8 means that the planes have higher operating cost per tonne/km than haulers want to pay.
Couple that with legendary Russian "built like a brick shithouse" engineering - which is great for flying into unimproved runways, but again makes the economics not so hot and the hassles of flying a type which isn't homogenous and more large operators won't go there.
Antonov has been looking at re-engining and redoing the avionics on the things since the mid 2000s but aviation has long lead-times everywhere. In the meantime the existing fleet of AN124s is working so hard the airframes are wearing out, so something's got to give soon (either they give up, or they start building more).
The interesting thing is that China's looking at license-building the AN224 with progress engines attached.
"Most kids I see still ride their bikes down the sidewalks with impunity and no one flips their shit because they are paying attention and not going too fast."
And the last four words of that statement is why it's tolerated - also small kids on bikes tend not to be quiet, so you get plenty of warning they're coming.
Whilst you might think the cyclist vs toddler incident is rare, there are regular postings in the UK of cyclists being filmed riding at 20+ miles per hour on busy footpaths whilst they _usually_ get away with it, there are a couple of deaths every year caused by high speed cyclists on the footpath and a lot more injury crashes besides, so no - it's not particularly rare.
Which is why I mentioned webasto heaters. They exist, they work and they're reliable.
"Windy or not you do not know the definition of bad weather"
NZ is smack in the middle of the Roaring Forties and the only other land that far south is Patagonia. The type of weather - and the rapid changes in it - can easily kill someone who was expecting a nice sunny day in a matter of hours - and regularly does.
The bigger problem is the parochiality of the inhabitants. That friendliness is skin deep and try as you might, as a foreigner (or an intellectual) you will never be accepted as a New Zealander. If you are a tall poppy, you will be cut down to size or driven out of the country.
This is the reason it's been in the top4 (usually top2) for youth suicide rate (12-24 years) in the western world for the last 50 years
Not to mention the shitty standards for insulation, etc in NZ housing.
It's one of those countries where no matter how much heating you have, you'll feel cold indoors - and the locals will tell you "Suck it up and wear a jumper"
There's a ripoff mentality on imports due to past high taxes and crony deals with "import licensing" - it's not uncommon to be able to buy 4-5 copies of software from the USA and have it delivered with taxes paid, for less than the cost of a single copy from local distributors.
The population is extremely parochial, with a constant need to be assured their country is the best in the world and a nasty tendency to turn violent if told it's not.
The population is 4 million, but there are 6 million passport holders.
There's a legend of being "clean, green and corruption free" - the country is none of these (it might have been in the 1950s but the legend died by the 1970s, but it's sold so heavily the population believe it - which allows corrupt police to pretty much anything they want - the spirit of Gene Hunt is alive and well in kiwiland.
If you want an example of how corrupt the country is, read the latest court judgement in the Kim Dot Com case. You'll be sitting gobmacked at how blatent it is in the proceedings and the judgement. It's all-but-explicitly admitted _by the prosecution_ that Hollywood was driving the case.