1400 watts is not "low consumption." It's rather high, actually. I'll grant that there isn't much leeway for storage and nighttime usage and such. But for a realistic assessment of what solar power is probably capable of (ie. not heating your house on a dark winter night), it's definitely in the ballpark.
The point of an economy is not to create "jobs". The point is to create stuff, like electricity.
Where the hell do you get off calling private investment "pork"? I get that you want to criticize Texas for lots of other things. That's fine. But you've somehow lost your mind if you think this is a valid economic critique. Texas doesn't exist in order to produce "jobs" for the rest of the country, and it seems to be doing a good job of producing employment for its residents and a few million Mexicans as well. Do you have any evidence to the contrary, or just irrelevant social commentary?
Just because one project doesn't bother to calculate the multiplicative effects of a $350 million dollar renewable energy investment in terms of "jobs" created, doesn't mean they aren't there.
Someone mod this up. You'd have to be retarded to use natural-gas-generated electricity to operate an electric compressed air storage plant. The submitter just made that up.
Texas has a relatively de-regulated electric grid with a lot of wind capacity. Prices fluctuate wildly. This facility will use renwable wind and solar energy to compress air at times when it is cheap. Then, at times when electricity is expensive, the air will be used to operate a natural gas turbine and generate electricity.
This has seemed like an obvious idea to me for a while. I figured Google would be the first. But I'm glad somebody is finally doing it. I wonder how many of these AOL could possibly roll-out? Hundreds, at least. Thousands?
Getting rid of the Federal Reserve is near the top of the list. Classic Republican lunacy. Deregulate and dismantle all safeguards because corporations always know best. Look at the history of deregulating. The SNL bailout was from deregulation as was the bank bailout.
Sorry, but the bank bailout was not a consequence of "deregulation". Glass-Steagall prohibited banks from dealing in securities. This was repealed in the 90s by Clinton in his zeal to help Citibank expand, and to increase subprime lending to Democrat voters via the Community Reinvestment Act. But most of the money going into mortgage-backed securities to build our glut of houses didn't come from deposit banks subject to Glass-Steagall. It came from standalone investment banks with access to the Fed's low interest rates, from government housing programs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), and from foreign investors.
Government interference, specifically the Federal Reserve's price-fixing of interest rates, is the primary cause of the business cycle and of all banking crises. Ron Paul is right to point this out.
mostly in very gossipy articles that quote a lot of third parties but don't do any fact-checking
Wikipedia has a lot of problems, which is why I mostly stopped contributing years ago. But all the problems basically stem directly from their list of "policies" that were erected around the time that a horde of fairly obvious disinformation agents managed to wrest control away from Jimmy Wales. The new Wikipedia "democracy" now ensures that the government with the largest propaganda budget will always be able to control the tone and narrative of any controversial articles.
One of the worst of these policies is the idea that mainsteam media news sources should be given special status. This was obviously intentionally designed to steer the revolutionary capability of truly grass-roots, crowd-sourced intelligence back into the fold of the controlled narrative. And, unfortunately, one of the most blatant abuses of this policy is the way Wikipedia is used as a vehicle to slander controversial public figures.
Gossip is one thing; and perhaps the world is not much worse off when Wikipedia is used to spread tabloid trash. But the world absolutely is worse off when Wikipedia is used as a conduit to smear everyone from political prisoners to rogue investors who make enemies of the increasingly encroaching police state apparatus.
The elderly are disproportionately wealthy since they have generally avoided paying for the negative externalities of fossil fuel consumption and procreation.
You don't *need* a broker or a bank but it helps, rather than having the equivalent of stuffing your mattress with cash by having your bitcoins in a thumbdrive.
You are free to encrypt your Bitcoin thumbdrive with a memorized password, and to make multiple copies. These simple steps cost little or nothing, certainly less than holding fiat currency in a bank, and result in superior protection against theft.
It doesn't have to be paid back. The money is created ex nihilo, and that is one of the main powers of a sovereign government.
Ironic, since that's what the "sovereign" European governments thought as well, but now they aren't quite as sovereign as the bankers are in charge, the debts are re-paid, and the citizens get austerity.
How many millions of years of growing trees and grass do you suppose it would take to offset the amount of carbon we have put into the atmosphere in the last hundred years?
You keep making this argument, as though labor has some inherent value that others are somehow obliged to reward you for performing. I think we all get the point by now that you would prefer some sort of "time-labor" based currency. They are out there, right here in the US even. I encourage you to move someplace that has one and use it and find out firsthand why they don't work.
Maybe you've missed the point that, if you don't want Bitcoin holders to "prosper from your labor" you are free to simply not use it, unlike fiat currencies backed by government force.
Slashdot Mirror
1863: US Civil War
I find this 25 year cycle much more convincing, based on demographics alone.
1400 watts is not "low consumption." It's rather high, actually. I'll grant that there isn't much leeway for storage and nighttime usage and such. But for a realistic assessment of what solar power is probably capable of (ie. not heating your house on a dark winter night), it's definitely in the ballpark.
Because fuck you, that's why.
If you took the fish out of the aquarium, would it be able to swim through the air? How fast? Could it steer?
I think we all know the technology we need to answer these important questions. Let's get to work.
Yes, that's the answer. It's not shitty Slashdot editing. This power plant violates the laws of thermodynamics. Good call.
I just realized that ultimately any municipal services provider is fully funded by the taxpayer.
Oh my god. That means Walmart is also taxpayer funded since taxpayers buy all their products! We must put an end to this!
Which do you think is more likely, Texans are incompetent at energy production, or Slashdot is incompetent at editing?
The point of an economy is not to create "jobs". The point is to create stuff, like electricity.
Where the hell do you get off calling private investment "pork"? I get that you want to criticize Texas for lots of other things. That's fine. But you've somehow lost your mind if you think this is a valid economic critique. Texas doesn't exist in order to produce "jobs" for the rest of the country, and it seems to be doing a good job of producing employment for its residents and a few million Mexicans as well. Do you have any evidence to the contrary, or just irrelevant social commentary?
Just because one project doesn't bother to calculate the multiplicative effects of a $350 million dollar renewable energy investment in terms of "jobs" created, doesn't mean they aren't there.
Someone mod this up. You'd have to be retarded to use natural-gas-generated electricity to operate an electric compressed air storage plant. The submitter just made that up.
Texas has a relatively de-regulated electric grid with a lot of wind capacity. Prices fluctuate wildly. This facility will use renwable wind and solar energy to compress air at times when it is cheap. Then, at times when electricity is expensive, the air will be used to operate a natural gas turbine and generate electricity.
But you can't reproduce a hybrid with just that "source code".
Okay, thanks. That article is a good source.
Do you have a source for that? What assumptions is that based on? I'm sure it's true in aggregate, but I doubt per-capita.
It sounds like the units have air conditioning as well as direct air cooling.
This has seemed like an obvious idea to me for a while. I figured Google would be the first. But I'm glad somebody is finally doing it. I wonder how many of these AOL could possibly roll-out? Hundreds, at least. Thousands?
Getting rid of the Federal Reserve is near the top of the list. Classic Republican lunacy. Deregulate and dismantle all safeguards because corporations always know best. Look at the history of deregulating. The SNL bailout was from deregulation as was the bank bailout.
Sorry, but the bank bailout was not a consequence of "deregulation". Glass-Steagall prohibited banks from dealing in securities. This was repealed in the 90s by Clinton in his zeal to help Citibank expand, and to increase subprime lending to Democrat voters via the Community Reinvestment Act. But most of the money going into mortgage-backed securities to build our glut of houses didn't come from deposit banks subject to Glass-Steagall. It came from standalone investment banks with access to the Fed's low interest rates, from government housing programs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), and from foreign investors.
Government interference, specifically the Federal Reserve's price-fixing of interest rates, is the primary cause of the business cycle and of all banking crises. Ron Paul is right to point this out.
mostly in very gossipy articles that quote a lot of third parties but don't do any fact-checking
Wikipedia has a lot of problems, which is why I mostly stopped contributing years ago. But all the problems basically stem directly from their list of "policies" that were erected around the time that a horde of fairly obvious disinformation agents managed to wrest control away from Jimmy Wales. The new Wikipedia "democracy" now ensures that the government with the largest propaganda budget will always be able to control the tone and narrative of any controversial articles.
One of the worst of these policies is the idea that mainsteam media news sources should be given special status. This was obviously intentionally designed to steer the revolutionary capability of truly grass-roots, crowd-sourced intelligence back into the fold of the controlled narrative. And, unfortunately, one of the most blatant abuses of this policy is the way Wikipedia is used as a vehicle to slander controversial public figures.
Gossip is one thing; and perhaps the world is not much worse off when Wikipedia is used to spread tabloid trash. But the world absolutely is worse off when Wikipedia is used as a conduit to smear everyone from political prisoners to rogue investors who make enemies of the increasingly encroaching police state apparatus.
The elderly are disproportionately wealthy since they have generally avoided paying for the negative externalities of fossil fuel consumption and procreation.
I did read the parent:
Now, 7 Billion people, and, as we speak, the figure keeps going up and up
Our planet simply can't support it
Somehow, you have conflated "not supporting an infinitely-increasing population" with
killing off four fifth of the world population
Probably just because you decided to erect a strawman. Well, how about a little fire, scarecrow?
You don't *need* a broker or a bank but it helps, rather than having the equivalent of stuffing your mattress with cash by having your bitcoins in a thumbdrive.
You are free to encrypt your Bitcoin thumbdrive with a memorized password, and to make multiple copies. These simple steps cost little or nothing, certainly less than holding fiat currency in a bank, and result in superior protection against theft.
It doesn't have to be paid back. The money is created ex nihilo, and that is one of the main powers of a sovereign government.
Ironic, since that's what the "sovereign" European governments thought as well, but now they aren't quite as sovereign as the bankers are in charge, the debts are re-paid, and the citizens get austerity.
https://www.casascius.com/
How many millions of years of growing trees and grass do you suppose it would take to offset the amount of carbon we have put into the atmosphere in the last hundred years?
Actually, you were suggesting we triple the world population and all eat beans for some reason. I was just pointing out what a stupid idea this is.
You keep making this argument, as though labor has some inherent value that others are somehow obliged to reward you for performing. I think we all get the point by now that you would prefer some sort of "time-labor" based currency. They are out there, right here in the US even. I encourage you to move someplace that has one and use it and find out firsthand why they don't work.
Maybe you've missed the point that, if you don't want Bitcoin holders to "prosper from your labor" you are free to simply not use it, unlike fiat currencies backed by government force.