My point was when you use a 'map' you have to look at the route. Using a GPS it's calculated for you, and unless you dig into it, you just get the next segment presented to you, not the entire route.
A map is 'big' (foldout). A GPS is small. You can't represent the same data. As such the map has more data but slower to process it. GPS is fast, but gives you less info about the trip.
I generally use google maps at home before I leave so that I have a better idea of what to expect, and what I can expect my GPS to do given the general idea. But not everybody does this obviously.
This isn't about the map/GPS being wrong, as you say they can be and are in many cases. This is about people not even having the data given on a map to decide whether the route is suitable. It just takes them to the next turn.
Certainly once you're own the road, noticing that you haven't seen pavement in a while is required, but if you don't know the road will become a 4wd trail in 10 miles you might keep going beyond your return ability. I.e. you don't know you're in trouble until it's too late.
well maps have this thing called a 'legend' that visually indicates that the road is gravel or paved or divided highway. And you need to follow the map all the way to your destination to know the way.
GPS just says 'turn here' 'continue for elventybillion miles'. It doesn't readily give you any idea what types of roads you'll be encountering.
That said, I'm on the side of the 'Darwinism' this represents. However, all these morons tax our emergency responder resources so much that they can't always respond to 'actual' emergencies. So in this case the morons actually do endanger more than just themselves.
Funny, I asked you for numbers and you didn't provide them. I'm not saying you don't have it, but don't claim I'm allergic to numbers in response to my ASKING you for them.
You provide claims of 'massive' subsidies to green techs but no source. Percentage is a poor comparison without knowing the actual amounts. 30% of 100 billion is a lot more than 90% of 1 billion.
And fractions are all that matter here, not absolute numbers.
Only if it is fractions of a whole. Your percentages are of different 'wholes'.
Nuclear: up to 14.1% subsidy
Biomass: up to 94% subsidy
Fuel cell: up to 57% subsidy
Geothermal: up to 46% subsidy
Hydro: up to 38.5% subsidy
Tidal: up to 14.1% subsidy
Solar: up to 108% subsidy
Wind: up to 41% subsidy
I'm glad you listed the 'percentages'. Care to list the actual financial amounts for an accurate comparison? The high percentages for renewable sources are expected because they are 'new' and not entrenched industries. That's what subsidation is *for*. Care to provide a link to back up your claims?
Coal and NG: 0%
Really? The Coal industry gets *no* money from the federal gov't?
EPA Act 2005 "$2.3 billion in tax credits. Of these, 18 request credits for integrated gasification combined cycle plants and 4 for advanced coal-based generation plants. Applications include projects using bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite coals to be built in 19 states" and "$2.7 billion in tax credits. Project are proposed in 17 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington"
Not all 'subsidies' are grants. If they get tax credits for their work it's the same thing. The Oil industry gets tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks annually.
Nuclear is certainly green from the point of view of CO2 production
and Coal is green from the aspect of the electricity fairy farts you so astutely mentioned. Nuclear needs massive subsidies to ever get off the ground. $8 billion loan guarantees And it has waste issues. Why not put that money towards something that doesn't have those issues?
Talk about looking foolish. Nuclear is *not* green by any stretch. It may not pollute the 'air' or release CO2, but it does produce hazardous waste. Nuclear does not work without MASSIVE gov't subsidies. It's not a panacea and has its own fuel reserve issues. Thorium reactors are better on these issues but still produce waste.
If nuclear waste can be turned back into fuel, it becomes less impacting but there will always be waste left over.
Where did I say NG and coal are green?
In your next sentence?
That said, you can run NG and coal both with CC systems, which roughly double the cost of generation
The concept of carbon capture is attractive but shortsighted, the methods don't work yet and likely never will. Injecting it back into the ground is a really *bad* idea. It simply won't stay there for the time frame you need it to stay there; i.e. indefinitely. If you can somehow turn that CO2 into something useful (perhaps a building material?) it becomes better, but there just aren't any workable CC systems of any scale that I'm aware of.
My point is that as you say, doing the fossil fuels 'greenly' will cost significantly more than today. This clearly dictates there is a 'cost' associated with NG/oil/coal that is not currently being assessed; a subsidy if you will.
Rather than spend money on a system that will run out of fuel and is having significant environmental effects, how about we try what the 'environuts' suggest and get the heck off the dirty fuels? We can do it more cheaply and have a never ending fuel/power source than we can with the fossil fuels. It will require some short term cost increases but in the long run will always be cheaper than a power source you have to mine, refine, transport and clean up after.
Electricity *can* be produced greenly. Show me how gas and coal does that hmm?
Switch your system to run on electricity and then switching your production to a clean method is an easy next step. You simply can't clean the emissions of 100 million ICE cars and coal power plants.
The 'nuts' are trying to save your ass from yourself...but don't let that get in the way of your rants
Um, no. In China you aren't even 'allowed' to be in a different party. There is only one.
We have numerous political parties here of which two are decidedly dominant. That does not preclude someone from outside them getting elected. The Tea Party was a pretty significant phenomena that showed other ideas than those of the two parties can be made into a movement. (not trying to start a 'what is the Tea Party' discussion). Ross Perot showed that independent(ly wealthy) candidates can successfully challenge the system as well.
Again, hard does not equal impossible. You simply can't be elected, by law, if you aren't a part of and agree to the rulings of the (only) Party in China.
News to me that democracies of different sizes are in fact different 'types' of democracies. There are different 'types' but that is entirely independent of their size.
Our system fully allows the replacing of the gov't within the rules. ie. the Constitutional Amendment process, regular and orderly elections.
over throwing a monarchy or dictatorship is playing by the rules.
Certainly not the monarch's or dictator's rules...which is the rules of the gov't in question. So this is patently false.
it's called a 'test bed' for a reason. My point is showing that there are cases where different storage mechanisms can and do exist to replace the chemical batteries of today.
I agree that this particular implementation is geared towards racing needs, but that doesn't preclude it being modified towards production road vehicles.
Also easy and *quick* refuel ability - so it's quite doable for those in town trips which are the vast majority.
hydrogen fuel cells require very expensive rare metals, with costly and dirty refinement processes
Platinum is rare but is it's refinement any more dirty than coal or oil? (don't see platinum rigs explode and pollute the Gulf much..)
This is a scale issue that won't be a complete solution but is a viable one for some installations.
[hydrogen] and [air] of which can be very dangerous in a crash, and thus have to be very strong and mounted in a secure location in the vehicle
Compressed Natural Gas would seem to be a bad thing by your definition and its already in use. Propane too. Hydrogen is no more or less safe than gasoline. When it leaks it goes 'up' and dissipates into the air, not say in a pool under your car. High pressure tanks are decidedly old tech and we know how to make them survive any reasonable accident scenario.
Gasoline has to be vaporized first, so it burns slowly.
Ask owners of the Ford Pinto about that.
Even high density batteries have the nasty problem of short circuiting.
again, we have batteries *today* that seem to work just fine and we can protect sensitive cargo appropriately.
It's going to be hard come up with another energy storage that works so well.
And finally, this is the crux of the problem with your argument. There won't be 'one' storage mechanism; there will be numerous technologies tailored to the needs of the specific case.
My point was getting your cars to *run* on electricity frees you up to using these many different technologies.
It slows down the dependence on foreign oil, but it increases pollution. The mining for the batteries, shipping those around the world to build the batteries, making of the cars, producing energy for those cars.
With current technology batteries are generally messy ecologically, but are they any more messy than vehicle exhaust? Switching to all electric vehicles will increase the use of electricity which currently is mostly supplied by dirty methods.
Two big caveats:
1. we can provide electricity using other methods. You can't provide gasoline using other methods - though bio/algae diesel has potential I don't know that it can scale to replace worldwide gas/diesel usage.
So first you get your infrastructure running on a universal power source (electricity) then you 'clean' your production of that power source. It's much easier to clean a single power plant than all the cars in its service area.
2. not all 'batteries' need the caustic chemicals of today's battery tech. Flywheels, compressed air, hydrogen fuel cells (again scale may be an issue) all work just about completely clean.
You wouldn't have a sail sized to your acceleration needs. You'd have one significantly bigger because generally you'll want to stop faster than you accelerate.
Moreover, you'll want a bigger sail so that near the edges of solar wind, where by definition it is weaker, you still get the same acceleration ability.
My point is that wind varies so you need sails that can accommodate that. You would build a sail that would provide both acceleration and breaking ability under the conditions you expect to encounter. I.e. you don't set sail with a sail that is too small for your destination
If you upload a photograph of someone else, this does not apply because copyright is jointly held by the person taking the photograph and the person represented.
This expressly false. The copyright is owned solely by the photographer, subject to any written agreement between the photographer and the subjects in the picture. Unless there is explicit sharing of copyright, it resides *only* with the photographer.
I feel someone who actually has had to work in the seedy underbelly of intelligence gathering as well as served faithfully in the military may actually make a far better president in the USA than a bunch of overprivilaged, pampered frat-boys.
Many of us liberals said exactly that of the comparison between Bush Sr. and his frat-boy son Bush Jr.
Again, only if lots of other people have your same issue or it looks pretty good that you'll win, then and only then, do you get help from other people that decide to help you. Not exactly rock solid support system there.
To get to class action you have to bring suit first anyway.
The efficiency of not using the kinetic energy already imparted is zero.
These systems recoup energy already spent. So the usually minimal cost of carrying around the extra equipment is what you need to measure the efficiency of the system against.
Likewise, using low rpm/high efficient gas engine operation to charge the 'battery' means you measure the system efficiency against what it would cost to provide that extra power during high demand periods (acceleration).
Hybrid system theory is tried and proven; recoup or gen power during high efficiency times and spend it during low efficiency times. The problem right now is sustainable battery technology. Using a physical property of elements instead of a chemical one that fades is one way to make the battery never need to be 'recycled' in a sense. Hydrogen Fuel Cells are the same idea; you use the state of water and changing it back and forth to generate your power.
and if you don't think Putin still runs the show, there's a bridge I'd like to speak to you about...
Putin *clearly* runs the show and has been working on amending the Russian Constitution to do away with the pesky term limit rule. Just recently hinted he might run in 2012.
Googling for Putin and constitutional changes brings up the Reuters link as well as numerous articles on the subject back when the PM job was 'created' for him in 2007/2008. Not a lot since, which is a wee bit telling since Putin/Medvedev have a habit of
closingnewspapers they don't like.
and I grew up in Buffalo/Rochester, NY. Snowy places don't generally deal with ice much. It's usually just too cold for freezing rain/sleet.
I now live outside DC where we are right on the border between the rain/snow almost every time so a lot of icing weather. I will agree that studded tires will likely help *some* on ice.
But most people aren't going to swap tires for a single storm coming through, and the damage studded tires do to paved roads coupled with the rattling of driving them on clear paved roads means it's a rare thing that people have them.
you know I had the exact same experience in PA. Just crawling along and the car in front, very slowly, would start to spin off its track with no apparently cause.
Slashdot Mirror
My point was when you use a 'map' you have to look at the route. Using a GPS it's calculated for you, and unless you dig into it, you just get the next segment presented to you, not the entire route.
A map is 'big' (foldout). A GPS is small. You can't represent the same data. As such the map has more data but slower to process it. GPS is fast, but gives you less info about the trip.
I generally use google maps at home before I leave so that I have a better idea of what to expect, and what I can expect my GPS to do given the general idea. But not everybody does this obviously.
This isn't about the map/GPS being wrong, as you say they can be and are in many cases. This is about people not even having the data given on a map to decide whether the route is suitable. It just takes them to the next turn.
Certainly once you're own the road, noticing that you haven't seen pavement in a while is required, but if you don't know the road will become a 4wd trail in 10 miles you might keep going beyond your return ability. I.e. you don't know you're in trouble until it's too late.
well maps have this thing called a 'legend' that visually indicates that the road is gravel or paved or divided highway. And you need to follow the map all the way to your destination to know the way.
GPS just says 'turn here' 'continue for elventybillion miles'. It doesn't readily give you any idea what types of roads you'll be encountering.
That said, I'm on the side of the 'Darwinism' this represents. However, all these morons tax our emergency responder resources so much that they can't always respond to 'actual' emergencies. So in this case the morons actually do endanger more than just themselves.
As I said, you seem to be allergic to numbers.
Funny, I asked you for numbers and you didn't provide them. I'm not saying you don't have it, but don't claim I'm allergic to numbers in response to my ASKING you for them.
You provide claims of 'massive' subsidies to green techs but no source. Percentage is a poor comparison without knowing the actual amounts. 30% of 100 billion is a lot more than 90% of 1 billion.
And fractions are all that matter here, not absolute numbers.
Only if it is fractions of a whole. Your percentages are of different 'wholes'.
Nuclear: up to 14.1% subsidy
Biomass: up to 94% subsidy
Fuel cell: up to 57% subsidy
Geothermal: up to 46% subsidy
Hydro: up to 38.5% subsidy
Tidal: up to 14.1% subsidy
Solar: up to 108% subsidy
Wind: up to 41% subsidy
gives you 412%.
Not exactly a useful number is it?
Coal and NG: 0%
Really? The Coal industry gets *no* money from the federal gov't?
EPA Act 2005 "$2.3 billion in tax credits. Of these, 18 request credits for integrated gasification combined cycle plants and 4 for advanced coal-based generation plants. Applications include projects using bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite coals to be built in 19 states" and "$2.7 billion in tax credits. Project are proposed in 17 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington"
Not all 'subsidies' are grants. If they get tax credits for their work it's the same thing. The Oil industry gets tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks annually.
$17 billion between 2002 and 2008 for coal source
Nuclear is certainly green from the point of view of CO2 production
and Coal is green from the aspect of the electricity fairy farts you so astutely mentioned. Nuclear needs massive subsidies to ever get off the ground. $8 billion loan guarantees And it has waste issues. Why not put that money towards something that doesn't have those issues?
I was talking about nuclear, which is.
Talk about looking foolish. Nuclear is *not* green by any stretch. It may not pollute the 'air' or release CO2, but it does produce hazardous waste. Nuclear does not work without MASSIVE gov't subsidies. It's not a panacea and has its own fuel reserve issues. Thorium reactors are better on these issues but still produce waste.
If nuclear waste can be turned back into fuel, it becomes less impacting but there will always be waste left over.
Where did I say NG and coal are green?
In your next sentence?
That said, you can run NG and coal both with CC systems, which roughly double the cost of generation
The concept of carbon capture is attractive but shortsighted, the methods don't work yet and likely never will. Injecting it back into the ground is a really *bad* idea. It simply won't stay there for the time frame you need it to stay there; i.e. indefinitely. If you can somehow turn that CO2 into something useful (perhaps a building material?) it becomes better, but there just aren't any workable CC systems of any scale that I'm aware of.
My point is that as you say, doing the fossil fuels 'greenly' will cost significantly more than today. This clearly dictates there is a 'cost' associated with NG/oil/coal that is not currently being assessed; a subsidy if you will.
Rather than spend money on a system that will run out of fuel and is having significant environmental effects, how about we try what the 'environuts' suggest and get the heck off the dirty fuels? We can do it more cheaply and have a never ending fuel/power source than we can with the fossil fuels. It will require some short term cost increases but in the long run will always be cheaper than a power source you have to mine, refine, transport and clean up after.
Electricity *can* be produced greenly. Show me how gas and coal does that hmm?
Switch your system to run on electricity and then switching your production to a clean method is an easy next step. You simply can't clean the emissions of 100 million ICE cars and coal power plants.
The 'nuts' are trying to save your ass from yourself...but don't let that get in the way of your rants
Um, no. In China you aren't even 'allowed' to be in a different party. There is only one.
We have numerous political parties here of which two are decidedly dominant. That does not preclude someone from outside them getting elected. The Tea Party was a pretty significant phenomena that showed other ideas than those of the two parties can be made into a movement. (not trying to start a 'what is the Tea Party' discussion). Ross Perot showed that independent(ly wealthy) candidates can successfully challenge the system as well.
Again, hard does not equal impossible. You simply can't be elected, by law, if you aren't a part of and agree to the rulings of the (only) Party in China.
Our system fully allows the replacing of the gov't within the rules. ie. the Constitutional Amendment process, regular and orderly elections.
over throwing a monarchy or dictatorship is playing by the rules.
Certainly not the monarch's or dictator's rules...which is the rules of the gov't in question. So this is patently false.
'Can' doesn't imply easy nor should it.
But you can't claim that the ability to run for office in US/UK is in any sense comparable to China or other undemocratic govt's.
small caveat:
Democracies are designed to replace the people and the laws that make up the government.
Monarchies/dictatorships, not so much. The only option is overthrow of the entire thing.
you *can* overthrow a democracy, but its built to be able to do the same thing while still playing by the rules.
it's called a 'test bed' for a reason. My point is showing that there are cases where different storage mechanisms can and do exist to replace the chemical batteries of today.
I agree that this particular implementation is geared towards racing needs, but that doesn't preclude it being modified towards production road vehicles.
Flywheels don't work too well on a mobile platform
Porsche would tend to disagree with you.
Compressed air has fairly low energy density
Also easy and *quick* refuel ability - so it's quite doable for those in town trips which are the vast majority.
hydrogen fuel cells require very expensive rare metals, with costly and dirty refinement processes
Platinum is rare but is it's refinement any more dirty than coal or oil? (don't see platinum rigs explode and pollute the Gulf much..) This is a scale issue that won't be a complete solution but is a viable one for some installations.
[hydrogen] and [air] of which can be very dangerous in a crash, and thus have to be very strong and mounted in a secure location in the vehicle
Compressed Natural Gas would seem to be a bad thing by your definition and its already in use. Propane too. Hydrogen is no more or less safe than gasoline. When it leaks it goes 'up' and dissipates into the air, not say in a pool under your car. High pressure tanks are decidedly old tech and we know how to make them survive any reasonable accident scenario.
Gasoline has to be vaporized first, so it burns slowly.
Ask owners of the Ford Pinto about that.
Even high density batteries have the nasty problem of short circuiting.
again, we have batteries *today* that seem to work just fine and we can protect sensitive cargo appropriately.
It's going to be hard come up with another energy storage that works so well.
And finally, this is the crux of the problem with your argument. There won't be 'one' storage mechanism; there will be numerous technologies tailored to the needs of the specific case.
My point was getting your cars to *run* on electricity frees you up to using these many different technologies.
It slows down the dependence on foreign oil, but it increases pollution. The mining for the batteries, shipping those around the world to build the batteries, making of the cars, producing energy for those cars.
With current technology batteries are generally messy ecologically, but are they any more messy than vehicle exhaust? Switching to all electric vehicles will increase the use of electricity which currently is mostly supplied by dirty methods.
Two big caveats:
1. we can provide electricity using other methods. You can't provide gasoline using other methods - though bio/algae diesel has potential I don't know that it can scale to replace worldwide gas/diesel usage.
So first you get your infrastructure running on a universal power source (electricity) then you 'clean' your production of that power source. It's much easier to clean a single power plant than all the cars in its service area.
2. not all 'batteries' need the caustic chemicals of today's battery tech. Flywheels, compressed air, hydrogen fuel cells (again scale may be an issue) all work just about completely clean.
Do you see the fallacy in your logic?
"Why not use 'all' the sail?" followed by "just use more to slow down"
If you used 'all' of it to speed up, there isn't any 'more' to deploy a bigger sail when slowing down.
This was my point, you don't size the sail based on your acceleration alone but on having to stop faster than you accelerated.
You wouldn't have a sail sized to your acceleration needs. You'd have one significantly bigger because generally you'll want to stop faster than you accelerate.
Moreover, you'll want a bigger sail so that near the edges of solar wind, where by definition it is weaker, you still get the same acceleration ability.
My point is that wind varies so you need sails that can accommodate that. You would build a sail that would provide both acceleration and breaking ability under the conditions you expect to encounter. I.e. you don't set sail with a sail that is too small for your destination
If you upload a photograph of someone else, this does not apply because copyright is jointly held by the person taking the photograph and the person represented.
This expressly false. The copyright is owned solely by the photographer, subject to any written agreement between the photographer and the subjects in the picture. Unless there is explicit sharing of copyright, it resides *only* with the photographer.
You don't sail much do you?
You could, you know, trim your sails or deploy more sail depending on the current (solar) wind...
I feel someone who actually has had to work in the seedy underbelly of intelligence gathering as well as served faithfully in the military may actually make a far better president in the USA than a bunch of overprivilaged, pampered frat-boys.
Many of us liberals said exactly that of the comparison between Bush Sr. and his frat-boy son Bush Jr.
Again, only if lots of other people have your same issue or it looks pretty good that you'll win, then and only then, do you get help from other people that decide to help you. Not exactly rock solid support system there.
To get to class action you have to bring suit first anyway.
The efficiency of not using the kinetic energy already imparted is zero.
These systems recoup energy already spent. So the usually minimal cost of carrying around the extra equipment is what you need to measure the efficiency of the system against.
Likewise, using low rpm/high efficient gas engine operation to charge the 'battery' means you measure the system efficiency against what it would cost to provide that extra power during high demand periods (acceleration).
Hybrid system theory is tried and proven; recoup or gen power during high efficiency times and spend it during low efficiency times. The problem right now is sustainable battery technology. Using a physical property of elements instead of a chemical one that fades is one way to make the battery never need to be 'recycled' in a sense. Hydrogen Fuel Cells are the same idea; you use the state of water and changing it back and forth to generate your power.
You may well have reasonable points though I would doubt it.
However, none of them matter unless you have thousands of dollars burning a whole in your pocket to actually sue them. Most people don't and won't.
and if you don't think Putin still runs the show, there's a bridge I'd like to speak to you about...
Putin *clearly* runs the show and has been working on amending the Russian Constitution to do away with the pesky term limit rule. Just recently hinted he might run in 2012.
Googling for Putin and constitutional changes brings up the Reuters link as well as numerous articles on the subject back when the PM job was 'created' for him in 2007/2008. Not a lot since, which is a wee bit telling since Putin/Medvedev have a habit of closing newspapers they don't like.
and I grew up in Buffalo/Rochester, NY. Snowy places don't generally deal with ice much. It's usually just too cold for freezing rain/sleet.
I now live outside DC where we are right on the border between the rain/snow almost every time so a lot of icing weather. I will agree that studded tires will likely help *some* on ice.
But most people aren't going to swap tires for a single storm coming through, and the damage studded tires do to paved roads coupled with the rattling of driving them on clear paved roads means it's a rare thing that people have them.
you know I had the exact same experience in PA. Just crawling along and the car in front, very slowly, would start to spin off its track with no apparently cause.
;-)
Maybe it's just PA