When someone uses the term "Alternative energy" they almost always mean "A little bit of energy on sunny days when the wind is blowing". It may work for households, but when it comes to industry, as a replacement for coal, without nukes, it's pure unadulterated Arithmetic Denialism.
I have been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for about 40 years now.
You left out a biggy: 5. Don't punish conservation.
How do some CA utilities punish water conservation? It goes like this: A. drought hits. B. utility requests conservation. C. Good citizens comply. D. Because utility revenue is proportional to usage, utility has less revenue. E. Utility has to raise rates. F. Good citizen who complied is a chump. He ends up paying more because he did a good deed.
And on top of that: Good citizen complies, water supplies get more scarce, mandatory rationing is implemented as it is Every. Single. Time., in the form of "Everybody must cut back on their previous use by x%", bad citizen just waters his lawn three times a week instead of every day, but good citizen is screwed.
Yeah, I really hate "gadzillions and gadzillions of gallons of water" reporting on the water deficit.
Taking their figures, 42 cubic kilometers, and California with an area of 423,970 square km, that's a deficit of about 10cm of rainfall, statewide.
(Assuming I didn't slip a decimal point.)
Yeah, it grossly underestimates the issue, because that much rain all at once would mostly run off, and rainfall is not evenly distributed, but it's more useful than the nutty measurement that was reported in that article.
HR departments and felons... oh, yeah. At a previous employer, we really desperately wanted to hire a really good technical guy, but he'd been convicted of possession of some AT&T code at some time in the past. My boss pushed back on HR, and they said "You can probably force the issue and get him hired... eventually. But we can and will use every means at our disposal to block and delay it for as long as we possibly can. I can guarantee it will be at least a year."
So, since we needed someone sooner than a year, we had to pass on our ideal candidate.
I've had air conditioning. And I've had lack of air conditioning. Air conditioning in the summer is a very big improvement to quality of life in most of the United States. Maybe not so much in Sweden. But I do not live in Sweden.
Actually, large coal plants are enough more efficient than the usual automobile internal combustion engine that, even with electrical losses along the way, there's less CO2 emission per mile with an electric car charged from electricity powered by a coal plant than from a gas car.
Fission plant wastes are two differnet problem sets: 1) Fission products, which are pretty much gone after a couple of hundred years for even the long-lived ones, and 2) transuranics bred from uranium absorbing neutrons. It's the transuranics that are the long-lived stuff, but they are potentially nuclear fuel, so should be recycled into new fuel rods. Plutonium is the most obvious one of these, but any transuranic is going to alternate between absorbing neutrons, decaying via some decay path or another, and eventually hit a fissionable isotope of something, at which point it gives off a bunch of energy and joins the fission product problem set.
Of course, if this fusion technology of Lockheed's really does pan out, no one is going to bother. I want a Mr. Fusion to power my Tesla.
But what percentage of the people who make such a big ostentatious show of being so very very very concerned about CO2 and climate change are not also rabid anti-nukes? Much of our problem with CO2 is that we failed to phase out coal in favor of nuclear decades ago. And California just shut down another nuclear plant, replacing its carbon-free energy with more megatons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere. (Yes, California does have some "sunny days when the wind is blowing" power generation. But as long as any power is being generated by fossil fuels, shutting down nuclear plants is increasing amount of fossil fuels burned.)
A usefull corrolary to keep in mind is one from the "Freefall" web comic: "Any technology, no matter how simple, is magic to you if you don't understand it." And too few people really understand science or technology on even a basic level.
On the other hand, I like Dr. Barry Gehm's version, too: "Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not advanced enough."
While environmental studies professors continue to pump out ready excuses for imposing increasing economic feudalism in Europe and North America, China and India are going to build out nuclear power and produce energy. I doubt they'll be dissuaded from trying because of anything this professor says.
When people like this say, "the world can't" remember that they actually mean, "we aren't going to let you."
This. I wish I had mod points today to mod this up.
Meanwhile... this week's Science Friday podcast had a couple of people on touting the "Stop Global Warming" march, and one of them did, in fact, with no sense of irony whatsoever, tout his previous activity in anti-nuclear marches. And Ira Flatow did not call him on it.
Not a very detailed article -- basically, it just says "Amory Lovins says that..." which I find singularly unconvincing without more support than that.
Lovins is an absorbing speaker. I heard him give a talk on his idea for his super-duper-ultra-mega-hypercar. But his arguments veer towards the tendentious. In the example of his car ideas, it's amazing to me to hear someone who supposedly has a degree in physics assert that crumple zones will protect someone in a featherweight vehicle in a collision with a normal car. Really? Has conservation of momentum been repealed because he says so? I don't think so.
I'm not ever going to forget that one of his premises is that cheap, clean, abundant energy is inherently a bad thing. "Nothing short of disasterous", in his words.
Not that I'm going to toss it out just because Amory said it. But I'm certainly not going to blindly accept it as TRVTH because Amory said it, either. I'm going to subject it to a great deal of scrutiny, to see what his assumptions are.
How many of the people marching in this protest have also marched in "No Nukes Shut 'Em Down" marches? How many agree with the anti-nukes? To power an industrial-technological civilization, the alternatives we have are (1) nuclear and (2) coal. There is no (3), no matter how much the arithmetic denialists claim that we can power our civilization on "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy.
Who are "the 11 Puerto Rican Prisoners of War" that the group she did belong to supports in their list of goals? Is that the group of FALN assassins who tried to murder Harry Truman?
Yeah... I tried that. It makes it near impossible to view Youtube videos on my TiVo. The TiVo doesn't stay logged in nor does it remember passwords, so I have to get a new OTP every time I want to view on the TiVo. (Though, now I also have a Chromecast, and I suspect it works more reasonably with 2FA... Time to give it another try, I don't use the TiVo to watch Youtube anymore since I got the Chromecast.)
I used Waze off-and-on for a while. I didn't find the "social networking" stuff exactly appropriate while driving. Worse, it kept popping up screen-obscuring advertisements for things like Enema (however the rapper spells his name) albums that I have active antipathy to, and no way to get it to target ads less inappropirately.
Worst, though, was the battery use, and the fact that no matter what I did with the settings, it insisted on randomly re-starting itself and devouring my battery. That was why I eventually uninstalled it.
It did have some good features, but I sure hope Google doesn't incorporate its misfeatures into Google Maps.
Since the Rocky Mountain Institute's head proclaims that "It would be nothing short of a disaster if we were ever to find a source of cheap, clean, abundant energy", I take any statement from RMI with... about a metric ton of salt.
There was a certain celebrated folk singer. Communist, of course. In May 1941, he and his group published an album of "Don't send our boys over there to fight for the plutocrats" songs, against any involvement in stopping the Axis powers from taking all of Europe. ("Und tomorrow, ze VORLD!")
On June 22, 1941, he pulled this "peacenik" album from distribution, and quickly started cranking out "We must arm, fight, and save the world from Hitler" songs.
So, what happened on June 22, 1941? There's a reason I consider this folk singer to be Stalin's Sock Puppet.
I really admire the way the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor refused to knuckle under to Jackson back in 2001 after Jackson labeled Cypress a "white supremacist hate group.’” I hope every Silicon Valley target of his does the same.
T. J. Rodgers. One of my very favorite comments on Jesse Jackson ever: "Jesse Jackson is like a seagull. He flies in, craps all over everything, then flys out again."
Slashdot Mirror
When someone uses the term "Alternative energy" they almost always mean "A little bit of energy on sunny days when the wind is blowing". It may work for households, but when it comes to industry, as a replacement for coal, without nukes, it's pure unadulterated Arithmetic Denialism.
I have been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for about 40 years now.
You left out a biggy: 5. Don't punish conservation.
How do some CA utilities punish water conservation? It goes like this: A. drought hits. B. utility requests conservation. C. Good citizens comply. D. Because utility revenue is proportional to usage, utility has less revenue. E. Utility has to raise rates. F. Good citizen who complied is a chump. He ends up paying more because he did a good deed.
And on top of that: Good citizen complies, water supplies get more scarce, mandatory rationing is implemented as it is Every. Single. Time., in the form of "Everybody must cut back on their previous use by x%", bad citizen just waters his lawn three times a week instead of every day, but good citizen is screwed.
Yeah, I really hate "gadzillions and gadzillions of gallons of water" reporting on the water deficit.
Taking their figures, 42 cubic kilometers, and California with an area of 423,970 square km, that's a deficit of about 10cm of rainfall, statewide.
(Assuming I didn't slip a decimal point.)
Yeah, it grossly underestimates the issue, because that much rain all at once would mostly run off, and rainfall is not evenly distributed, but it's more useful than the nutty measurement that was reported in that article.
We'll know that communism has succeeded when we find a communist country that doesn't prevent its citizens from leaving.
This. Oh, so very much this.
We should stop using transistors and purge our textbooks of all knowledge of DNA because Shockley and Watson are racists.
HR departments and felons... oh, yeah. At a previous employer, we really desperately wanted to hire a really good technical guy, but he'd been convicted of possession of some AT&T code at some time in the past. My boss pushed back on HR, and they said "You can probably force the issue and get him hired ... eventually. But we can and will use every means at our disposal to block and delay it for as long as we possibly can. I can guarantee it will be at least a year."
So, since we needed someone sooner than a year, we had to pass on our ideal candidate.
I've had air conditioning. And I've had lack of air conditioning. Air conditioning in the summer is a very big improvement to quality of life in most of the United States. Maybe not so much in Sweden. But I do not live in Sweden.
Actually, large coal plants are enough more efficient than the usual automobile internal combustion engine that, even with electrical losses along the way, there's less CO2 emission per mile with an electric car charged from electricity powered by a coal plant than from a gas car.
Fission plant wastes are two differnet problem sets: 1) Fission products, which are pretty much gone after a couple of hundred years for even the long-lived ones, and 2) transuranics bred from uranium absorbing neutrons. It's the transuranics that are the long-lived stuff, but they are potentially nuclear fuel, so should be recycled into new fuel rods. Plutonium is the most obvious one of these, but any transuranic is going to alternate between absorbing neutrons, decaying via some decay path or another, and eventually hit a fissionable isotope of something, at which point it gives off a bunch of energy and joins the fission product problem set.
Of course, if this fusion technology of Lockheed's really does pan out, no one is going to bother. I want a Mr. Fusion to power my Tesla.
Heh... I just saw a commedian on TV last night who said "I hate PETA. I would eat a cat just to piss PETA off." The audience roared with laughter.
But what percentage of the people who make such a big ostentatious show of being so very very very concerned about CO2 and climate change are not also rabid anti-nukes? Much of our problem with CO2 is that we failed to phase out coal in favor of nuclear decades ago. And California just shut down another nuclear plant, replacing its carbon-free energy with more megatons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere. (Yes, California does have some "sunny days when the wind is blowing" power generation. But as long as any power is being generated by fossil fuels, shutting down nuclear plants is increasing amount of fossil fuels burned.)
A usefull corrolary to keep in mind is one from the "Freefall" web comic: "Any technology, no matter how simple, is magic to you if you don't understand it." And too few people really understand science or technology on even a basic level.
On the other hand, I like Dr. Barry Gehm's version, too: "Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not advanced enough."
While environmental studies professors continue to pump out ready excuses for imposing increasing economic feudalism in Europe and North America, China and India are going to build out nuclear power and produce energy. I doubt they'll be dissuaded from trying because of anything this professor says.
When people like this say, "the world can't" remember that they actually mean, "we aren't going to let you."
This. I wish I had mod points today to mod this up.
As I suspected...
Not a very detailed article -- basically, it just says "Amory Lovins says that..." which I find singularly unconvincing without more support than that.
Lovins is an absorbing speaker. I heard him give a talk on his idea for his super-duper-ultra-mega-hypercar. But his arguments veer towards the tendentious. In the example of his car ideas, it's amazing to me to hear someone who supposedly has a degree in physics assert that crumple zones will protect someone in a featherweight vehicle in a collision with a normal car. Really? Has conservation of momentum been repealed because he says so? I don't think so.
I'm not ever going to forget that one of his premises is that cheap, clean, abundant energy is inherently a bad thing. "Nothing short of disasterous", in his words.
Not that I'm going to toss it out just because Amory said it. But I'm certainly not going to blindly accept it as TRVTH because Amory said it, either. I'm going to subject it to a great deal of scrutiny, to see what his assumptions are.
How many of the people marching in this protest have also marched in "No Nukes Shut 'Em Down" marches? How many agree with the anti-nukes? To power an industrial-technological civilization, the alternatives we have are (1) nuclear and (2) coal. There is no (3), no matter how much the arithmetic denialists claim that we can power our civilization on "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy.
But... but... but... where will I get all my Viagra spam from if he does this?
Who are "the 11 Puerto Rican Prisoners of War" that the group she did belong to supports in their list of goals? Is that the group of FALN assassins who tried to murder Harry Truman?
Yeah... I tried that. It makes it near impossible to view Youtube videos on my TiVo. The TiVo doesn't stay logged in nor does it remember passwords, so I have to get a new OTP every time I want to view on the TiVo. (Though, now I also have a Chromecast, and I suspect it works more reasonably with 2FA... Time to give it another try, I don't use the TiVo to watch Youtube anymore since I got the Chromecast.)
I used Waze off-and-on for a while. I didn't find the "social networking" stuff exactly appropriate while driving. Worse, it kept popping up screen-obscuring advertisements for things like Enema (however the rapper spells his name) albums that I have active antipathy to, and no way to get it to target ads less inappropirately.
Worst, though, was the battery use, and the fact that no matter what I did with the settings, it insisted on randomly re-starting itself and devouring my battery. That was why I eventually uninstalled it.
It did have some good features, but I sure hope Google doesn't incorporate its misfeatures into Google Maps.
would reply to this
"Yes, I have an attitude. It is not my problem."
Since the Rocky Mountain Institute's head proclaims that "It would be nothing short of a disaster if we were ever to find a source of cheap, clean, abundant energy", I take any statement from RMI with ... about a metric ton of salt.
It isn't a 'public' hotspot, it is a hotspot for Comcast customers. And you are getting something - the ability to use those same Comcast hotspots.
They also increased the bandwidth quite a bit when the new modems were delivered, and removed the bandwidth cap.
$20/year for the electricity to run it? Is that really so outrageous? Seriously?
There was a certain celebrated folk singer. Communist, of course. In May 1941, he and his group published an album of "Don't send our boys over there to fight for the plutocrats" songs, against any involvement in stopping the Axis powers from taking all of Europe. ("Und tomorrow, ze VORLD!")
On June 22, 1941, he pulled this "peacenik" album from distribution, and quickly started cranking out "We must arm, fight, and save the world from Hitler" songs.
So, what happened on June 22, 1941? There's a reason I consider this folk singer to be Stalin's Sock Puppet.
I really admire the way the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor refused to knuckle under to Jackson back in 2001 after Jackson labeled Cypress a "white supremacist hate group.’” I hope every Silicon Valley target of his does the same.
T. J. Rodgers. One of my very favorite comments on Jesse Jackson ever: "Jesse Jackson is like a seagull. He flies in, craps all over everything, then flys out again."