The refrigerator you can buy today, compared to the 1970s, is 3 times as large, and uses a 1/3rd the electricity.
And you can thank California for that:) Government can drive people's activities through regulation, subsidization and taxation.
Fossil fuels are heavily subsidized through tax cuts and federal highway funds to build/maintain the roads the country uses. Rail? not so much even though it's much more efficient. Tax long haul trucking and put the money towards a modern rail network and you save a LOT.
Likewise, tax gasoline and subsidize electric vehicles and you start pushing people towards using vehicles that help rather than exacerbate the problem.
Nuclear is a necessary evil. Nothing else currently can replace base load power and so nuclear is the only thing we have that can that doesn't contribute to global warming.
His support for it is based on this.
400,000 people evacuated and relocated and 1000 sq km of Russia uninhabitable for decades if not hundreds of years is not a viable power source solution. Nuclear can be made 'safer' but never safe enough given the potential dangers of when it fails.
Yet we are going to need it for another 50-100 years before true renewable sources can be base load viable.
If oil does start to become scarce, the trillions to be made by finding a good alternative will be obvious to anyone who'd like to make a buck.
Yes and as a society we can pay really expensive gas AND trillions in research to find those solutions at the same time.
OR
We can start trying to find those solutions now while gas prices are still relatively cheap before it *does* becomes scarce and in many studies, it already is. Canada's Tar Sands are only viable with $4+/gallon gas. The cheap stuff is already found and online, there isn't any more of it.
You do realize i can produce hydrogen using zero energy right? Or at least zero energy I have to put in, the sun gives all the energy we need to make our hydrogen.
So no it is not as efficient, it is much more efficient because the fuel is quite literally 'free'. You don't 'burn' hydrogen in a fuel cell. Burning anything is by definition inefficient. Hydrogen is your battery and it stores the energy imparted when you split water. That energy can come from the sun as I said and so you have no energy costs to create your 'fuel' which creates your battery - the hydrogen itself.
Or rather the efficiency matters a whole lot less when your fuel is free and infinite. You just build more capacity.
When gas was $0.25/gallon, cars got maybe 10 miles/gallon and nobody cared. Why? because fuel was cheap and plentiful.
I can now give you a fuel that is quite literally free and infinite. Efficiency matter a whole lot less than the size of the tank of your fuel.
Solar energy density is low for sure. But we have LOTS of roof space and deserts. Storage of that energy is the biggest issue holding back solar energy's practicality.
Gasoline and coal energy densities have built this world, but they now threaten to radically alter it, perhaps even beyond our ability to 'fix' it.
Yes, it is $10/gallon because it is heavily taxed and used to subsidize the 'socialist' agenda (not a bad thing). You don't NEED a car because they have actual public transportation systems that work and run on time. Even far out suburbs have well running bus systems to get you where you need to go. London's subway system gets you within 3 blocks of your destination anywhere in the city practically. NYC is our best attempt at decent public transit.
Europe for example, you can tell - to the minute - when that train will arrive and on which track in the station. We know how to do this, because we helped them build the damn system after WWII. Yet here the auto and air industries has taken over and so only roads and air get government subsidies, whereas rail has to basically cover it's own costs.
And which party has continually said it was worthless to subsidize solar/green energy? If WE had done this 20 years ago, we'd be the leaders in the manufacturing of solar. But the GOP in their anti-climate change mantra wouldn't even build the tools the entire world was clamoring for. The party of 'business' my ass.
If something is expensive, generally speaking it is hard to create or simply hard to find. Basing the world transportation network on something like that would be problematic, so if you can do it with cheaper more available components, that is always a good things.
Now cars already contain platinum in the catalytic converters so thankfully we aren't talking going from zero use, but when those things fail they are expensive to replace. Cheaper (monetarily) is always better.
Nuclear exists because of global warming. We have plenty of coal to power our needs. Shale gas is still a CO2 emitter is it not? It doesn't solve the problem that nuclear does solve. Of course there's also the water table pollution issue...
You can generate hydrogen through electrolysis, so your electrical source is very relevant to the article.
Heck how about that Hawaii flight where the top of the fuselage ripped off and yet it still landed safely.
The actual point is still that when airplanes do fail, they affect the people in them and a 'few' people on the ground. And 9/11 was not airplane failure.
In a catastrophic nuclear failure, 100 sq miles will be rendered uninhabitable for decades - hence the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone still in existence today 30 years later. Something about not fit for habitation for 20,000 years. Workers responsible for rebuilding the sarcophogus are only allowed to work five hours a day for one month before taking 15 days of rest.
400,000 people evacuated and resettled. Show me *anything* else that can do that kind of damage.
Airplanes do not affect 100 sq miles when they fail. And the 'miracle on the hudson' completely refutes your concept that when plains fail, people die.
Hell, Cessna's can now come with built in parachutes so that when they 'fail' you have survivable landings. There are no such safety guarantees with nuclear.
My point is simply the scope, range and potential damage of a catastrophic nuclear disaster is orders of magnitude beyond any other power source. We don't build them to be so redundant for fun. It's because there is serious potential for disaster when using them.
Negative? Having to evacuate Tokyo is negative? You're damn skippy it's negative. Did we end up having to do that? No but it was an actual considered plan if they couldn't get Fukushima under control.
They test nuclear warheads all the time, underwater, underground, in the desert
You're comparing 1 time events with something that has to operate successfully for 50 years. Not exactly a apples to apples comparison.
But you do make my point. We test nuclear devices 100s of miles away from populations for the very reason. It's dangerous.
if we spent nearly as much energy and resources as we do for the "green" initiatives
We aren't spending money to resources on green tech, that's the problem. Far more was just guaranteed to the nuclear industry by this Administration than has been spent on green perhaps in total. We won't even talk about the 40 billion per year we're giving to the oil industry. Yet people scream about 500 million lost on Solyndra as being so wasteful as to stop all green investing.
If we spent as much on nuclear as we did on green tech, we'd likely all be dead since it wouldn't be nearly enough to build the necessary safety measures.
Nuclear fission is a finite resource anyway. Once the uranium/thorium has been mined it's gone. We have to switch to things we can never run out of within reasonable time frames.
Solar, hydro, wind have no realistic fuel limitations. They have energy density and storage issues that research can solve.
No other power source has the potential for disaster that nuclear does. They were seriously considering evacuating Tokyo until they got Fukushima under some semblance of control. Name anything else that you can't plan for (hydro) that has the potential to force the evacuation of a city 100 miles away.
Nuclear is radioactive, it is lethal even through walls and miles of distance. We build massive amounts of redundancy in because of this. Yet you claim it isn't more dangerous than other sources?
Proper filtering of the emissions would prevent the operational issues associated coal plants. We choose not to do this for financial reasons. As you said these are 'by design' and therefore by definition are not 'failures'.
Nuclear is bad. Nuclear is not safe and never will be. It is also going to be necessary for the next 50-100 years.
Nuclear plants simply can not fail which is why they make them so massively redundant, expensive and exhor. And yet if humans are involved in the design, planning, construction or operation of something, there will be failures.
Newer nuclear plants are indeed 'safer' than previous ones. So is my 2000s honda safer than my 1980s honda. People still die in cars. Nuclear plants will still fail. None has yet failed in a truly catastrophic manner thankfully, but no other source of power has such potential destruction if it does fail catastrophically.
Coal has many operational issues, but failure is limited to the plant and extremely immediate surrounding area. Likewise mining and coal slag ponds are limited to their destructive area. Hydro-dams can be planned around for failure and you can walk in the next day to do clean up.
We need to be investing heavily in renewable techs and energy storage so that it can be grid scale ready down the road, yet we're still giving 40 billion a year to the oil companies who make nearly that much profit each year.
If gov't oversight had any teeth, they are *required* to provide quality service and if it can be shown they didn't and isn't weather related (act of God and all that) then yes if they want to play in that area, they play by that area's rules.
And given the area in question is California? Not surprising if true. Now Texas would give you a nice big 'aw shucks' and then tell you to piss off. I'll choose the former and taxes to pay for it over dumb poor and stupid bible thumpers.
Uh, which party likes to 'spend' money again, and which created the worst deficits in history? That would be the Dems in the former and the GOP in the later.
Tax and Spend liberals is used like an epithet by the GOP yet it's actually called fiscal responsibility. The GOP spend like drunken sailors on tax cuts which only serve to increase the debt and make the rich richer and the rest of us holding the bag.
Literally HALF of the debt under Obama is Bush anyway, since we were losing a trillion dollars a year on 2009, in 3 years that's 3 trillion of the 6 trillion increase. So under Bush, we went from 4 trillion in debt (and a SURPLUS budget), again mostly by GOP priorities with some Democratic help, to 13 billion assuming the 1 trillion a year deficits he created and left for us since 2009.
I agree that both parties have a hand in cuts, but you can't with a straight face say that the Dems are the ones who would initiate and implement cuts when they are routinely tarred as the people who spend too much. Granted they don't have the spine to call the GOP corporatists what they are so they are culpable in that regard, but both parties spend. One does it with tax cuts and the other does it with investments in the country; i.e. stimulus that actually creates jobs.
You're argument is that the Dems have had control of congress for 2 years out of 12 means it wasn't GOP controlled?
The only difference is the Dems when in the minority didn't pull what the GOP has done since 2010. They allowed votes on controversial issues except for a few judges they opposed. The GOP on the other hand has issued more filibusters in the last 2 years than the previous 30 years COMBINED.
If Harry Reid had the balls to change the rules in 2010 this wouldn't have happened and we'd be a damn sight better off now. But Reid has proven to be one of the most ineffectual Senate Leaders in history.
Combine that with a GOP who open admitted they top priority was stopping Obama. Not actually helping the country, just stopping anything the President and the Dems wanted. Patriots my ass. Treason is a bit strong, but anti-American seems good enough for me.
I've actually been waiting for some anti-GW people to attack the facilities that store the ice cores. If those cores are lost, we lose thousands of years of data that can't be easily replaced.
Single payer government run health care solves the first 2.
(cue the 'free marketards' - you have infinitely more control over government than you do a private corporation)
The third is easy enough if we get off oil and don't have to be the worlds policeman nearly as much.
Exactly. They always take credit for the successes but assign blame for the failures (i.e. Solyndra). Without *some* failures you can't have progress.
Solar is bad has been the mantra of the GOP for a long time. Now they're complaining that China has all the manufacturing of solar panels. Well, uh, if you'd invested in what the ENTIRE WORLD was clamoring for instead of denying global warming we might actually be the leading producer.
And the GOP call themselves the party of 'business' - it's laughable if not so sad and destructive for the country.
Seriously? The LEFT is against NASA? Bush tried to kill the Voyager programs for a measly $4 million/year in savings. The 2 single farthest things we've ever sent into space sending back data we won't be able to reproduce for literally 40 years and he wanted to kill the program for that little bit of savings.
The LEFT is all about funding NASA, the problem is the RIGHT's obstinate blocking of anything related to INVESTMENT in our future. Why don't we have a Shuttle program? Yet give out more than NASA's ENTIRE budget to the oil industry EVERY YEAR?
The LEFT is not the problem.
On a more rational note, gerrymandered districts are a major problem on both sides of the aisle. But that's a more fundamentally broken part of our government.
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The refrigerator you can buy today, compared to the 1970s, is 3 times as large, and uses a 1/3rd the electricity.
And you can thank California for that :) Government can drive people's activities through regulation, subsidization and taxation.
Fossil fuels are heavily subsidized through tax cuts and federal highway funds to build/maintain the roads the country uses. Rail? not so much even though it's much more efficient. Tax long haul trucking and put the money towards a modern rail network and you save a LOT.
Likewise, tax gasoline and subsidize electric vehicles and you start pushing people towards using vehicles that help rather than exacerbate the problem.
Nuclear is a necessary evil. Nothing else currently can replace base load power and so nuclear is the only thing we have that can that doesn't contribute to global warming.
His support for it is based on this.
400,000 people evacuated and relocated and 1000 sq km of Russia uninhabitable for decades if not hundreds of years is not a viable power source solution. Nuclear can be made 'safer' but never safe enough given the potential dangers of when it fails.
Yet we are going to need it for another 50-100 years before true renewable sources can be base load viable.
If oil does start to become scarce, the trillions to be made by finding a good alternative will be obvious to anyone who'd like to make a buck.
Yes and as a society we can pay really expensive gas AND trillions in research to find those solutions at the same time.
OR
We can start trying to find those solutions now while gas prices are still relatively cheap before it *does* becomes scarce and in many studies, it already is. Canada's Tar Sands are only viable with $4+/gallon gas. The cheap stuff is already found and online, there isn't any more of it.
You do realize i can produce hydrogen using zero energy right? Or at least zero energy I have to put in, the sun gives all the energy we need to make our hydrogen.
So no it is not as efficient, it is much more efficient because the fuel is quite literally 'free'. You don't 'burn' hydrogen in a fuel cell. Burning anything is by definition inefficient. Hydrogen is your battery and it stores the energy imparted when you split water. That energy can come from the sun as I said and so you have no energy costs to create your 'fuel' which creates your battery - the hydrogen itself.
Or rather the efficiency matters a whole lot less when your fuel is free and infinite. You just build more capacity.
When gas was $0.25/gallon, cars got maybe 10 miles/gallon and nobody cared. Why? because fuel was cheap and plentiful.
I can now give you a fuel that is quite literally free and infinite. Efficiency matter a whole lot less than the size of the tank of your fuel.
Solar energy density is low for sure. But we have LOTS of roof space and deserts. Storage of that energy is the biggest issue holding back solar energy's practicality.
Gasoline and coal energy densities have built this world, but they now threaten to radically alter it, perhaps even beyond our ability to 'fix' it.
Yes, it is $10/gallon because it is heavily taxed and used to subsidize the 'socialist' agenda (not a bad thing). You don't NEED a car because they have actual public transportation systems that work and run on time. Even far out suburbs have well running bus systems to get you where you need to go. London's subway system gets you within 3 blocks of your destination anywhere in the city practically. NYC is our best attempt at decent public transit.
Europe for example, you can tell - to the minute - when that train will arrive and on which track in the station. We know how to do this, because we helped them build the damn system after WWII. Yet here the auto and air industries has taken over and so only roads and air get government subsidies, whereas rail has to basically cover it's own costs.
And which party has continually said it was worthless to subsidize solar/green energy? If WE had done this 20 years ago, we'd be the leaders in the manufacturing of solar. But the GOP in their anti-climate change mantra wouldn't even build the tools the entire world was clamoring for. The party of 'business' my ass.
If something is expensive, generally speaking it is hard to create or simply hard to find. Basing the world transportation network on something like that would be problematic, so if you can do it with cheaper more available components, that is always a good things.
Now cars already contain platinum in the catalytic converters so thankfully we aren't talking going from zero use, but when those things fail they are expensive to replace. Cheaper (monetarily) is always better.
Nuclear exists because of global warming. We have plenty of coal to power our needs. Shale gas is still a CO2 emitter is it not? It doesn't solve the problem that nuclear does solve. Of course there's also the water table pollution issue...
You can generate hydrogen through electrolysis, so your electrical source is very relevant to the article.
Heck how about that Hawaii flight where the top of the fuselage ripped off and yet it still landed safely.
The actual point is still that when airplanes do fail, they affect the people in them and a 'few' people on the ground. And 9/11 was not airplane failure.
In a catastrophic nuclear failure, 100 sq miles will be rendered uninhabitable for decades - hence the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone still in existence today 30 years later. Something about not fit for habitation for 20,000 years. Workers responsible for rebuilding the sarcophogus are only allowed to work five hours a day for one month before taking 15 days of rest.
400,000 people evacuated and resettled. Show me *anything* else that can do that kind of damage.
And that wasn't even catastrophic.
Airplanes do not affect 100 sq miles when they fail. And the 'miracle on the hudson' completely refutes your concept that when plains fail, people die.
Hell, Cessna's can now come with built in parachutes so that when they 'fail' you have survivable landings. There are no such safety guarantees with nuclear.
My point is simply the scope, range and potential damage of a catastrophic nuclear disaster is orders of magnitude beyond any other power source. We don't build them to be so redundant for fun. It's because there is serious potential for disaster when using them.
They test nuclear warheads all the time, underwater, underground, in the desert
You're comparing 1 time events with something that has to operate successfully for 50 years. Not exactly a apples to apples comparison.
But you do make my point. We test nuclear devices 100s of miles away from populations for the very reason. It's dangerous.
if we spent nearly as much energy and resources as we do for the "green" initiatives
We aren't spending money to resources on green tech, that's the problem. Far more was just guaranteed to the nuclear industry by this Administration than has been spent on green perhaps in total. We won't even talk about the 40 billion per year we're giving to the oil industry. Yet people scream about 500 million lost on Solyndra as being so wasteful as to stop all green investing.
If we spent as much on nuclear as we did on green tech, we'd likely all be dead since it wouldn't be nearly enough to build the necessary safety measures.
Nuclear fission is a finite resource anyway. Once the uranium/thorium has been mined it's gone. We have to switch to things we can never run out of within reasonable time frames.
Solar, hydro, wind have no realistic fuel limitations. They have energy density and storage issues that research can solve.
No other power source has the potential for disaster that nuclear does. They were seriously considering evacuating Tokyo until they got Fukushima under some semblance of control. Name anything else that you can't plan for (hydro) that has the potential to force the evacuation of a city 100 miles away.
Nuclear is radioactive, it is lethal even through walls and miles of distance. We build massive amounts of redundancy in because of this. Yet you claim it isn't more dangerous than other sources?
Proper filtering of the emissions would prevent the operational issues associated coal plants. We choose not to do this for financial reasons. As you said these are 'by design' and therefore by definition are not 'failures'.
Nuclear is bad. Nuclear is not safe and never will be. It is also going to be necessary for the next 50-100 years.
Nuclear plants simply can not fail which is why they make them so massively redundant, expensive and exhor. And yet if humans are involved in the design, planning, construction or operation of something, there will be failures.
Newer nuclear plants are indeed 'safer' than previous ones. So is my 2000s honda safer than my 1980s honda. People still die in cars. Nuclear plants will still fail. None has yet failed in a truly catastrophic manner thankfully, but no other source of power has such potential destruction if it does fail catastrophically.
Coal has many operational issues, but failure is limited to the plant and extremely immediate surrounding area. Likewise mining and coal slag ponds are limited to their destructive area. Hydro-dams can be planned around for failure and you can walk in the next day to do clean up.
We need to be investing heavily in renewable techs and energy storage so that it can be grid scale ready down the road, yet we're still giving 40 billion a year to the oil companies who make nearly that much profit each year.
And I bet rocks the dagburn gubmint made them do it. Funny how regulation has benefits.
If gov't oversight had any teeth, they are *required* to provide quality service and if it can be shown they didn't and isn't weather related (act of God and all that) then yes if they want to play in that area, they play by that area's rules.
And given the area in question is California? Not surprising if true. Now Texas would give you a nice big 'aw shucks' and then tell you to piss off. I'll choose the former and taxes to pay for it over dumb poor and stupid bible thumpers.
So that's what Halliburton did wrong in Iraq....
ooo Tinfoil curtains! I'll make a killing, or rather my wife will when she sees them.
Uh, which party likes to 'spend' money again, and which created the worst deficits in history? That would be the Dems in the former and the GOP in the later.
Tax and Spend liberals is used like an epithet by the GOP yet it's actually called fiscal responsibility. The GOP spend like drunken sailors on tax cuts which only serve to increase the debt and make the rich richer and the rest of us holding the bag.
Literally HALF of the debt under Obama is Bush anyway, since we were losing a trillion dollars a year on 2009, in 3 years that's 3 trillion of the 6 trillion increase. So under Bush, we went from 4 trillion in debt (and a SURPLUS budget), again mostly by GOP priorities with some Democratic help, to 13 billion assuming the 1 trillion a year deficits he created and left for us since 2009.
I agree that both parties have a hand in cuts, but you can't with a straight face say that the Dems are the ones who would initiate and implement cuts when they are routinely tarred as the people who spend too much. Granted they don't have the spine to call the GOP corporatists what they are so they are culpable in that regard, but both parties spend. One does it with tax cuts and the other does it with investments in the country; i.e. stimulus that actually creates jobs.
You're argument is that the Dems have had control of congress for 2 years out of 12 means it wasn't GOP controlled?
The only difference is the Dems when in the minority didn't pull what the GOP has done since 2010. They allowed votes on controversial issues except for a few judges they opposed. The GOP on the other hand has issued more filibusters in the last 2 years than the previous 30 years COMBINED.
If Harry Reid had the balls to change the rules in 2010 this wouldn't have happened and we'd be a damn sight better off now. But Reid has proven to be one of the most ineffectual Senate Leaders in history.
Combine that with a GOP who open admitted they top priority was stopping Obama. Not actually helping the country, just stopping anything the President and the Dems wanted. Patriots my ass. Treason is a bit strong, but anti-American seems good enough for me.
I've actually been waiting for some anti-GW people to attack the facilities that store the ice cores. If those cores are lost, we lose thousands of years of data that can't be easily replaced.
Single payer government run health care solves the first 2.
(cue the 'free marketards' - you have infinitely more control over government than you do a private corporation) The third is easy enough if we get off oil and don't have to be the worlds policeman nearly as much.
Yet the GOP is adamant against both things...
Exactly. They always take credit for the successes but assign blame for the failures (i.e. Solyndra). Without *some* failures you can't have progress.
Solar is bad has been the mantra of the GOP for a long time. Now they're complaining that China has all the manufacturing of solar panels. Well, uh, if you'd invested in what the ENTIRE WORLD was clamoring for instead of denying global warming we might actually be the leading producer.
And the GOP call themselves the party of 'business' - it's laughable if not so sad and destructive for the country.
Seriously? The LEFT is against NASA? Bush tried to kill the Voyager programs for a measly $4 million/year in savings. The 2 single farthest things we've ever sent into space sending back data we won't be able to reproduce for literally 40 years and he wanted to kill the program for that little bit of savings.
The LEFT is all about funding NASA, the problem is the RIGHT's obstinate blocking of anything related to INVESTMENT in our future. Why don't we have a Shuttle program? Yet give out more than NASA's ENTIRE budget to the oil industry EVERY YEAR?
The LEFT is not the problem.
On a more rational note, gerrymandered districts are a major problem on both sides of the aisle. But that's a more fundamentally broken part of our government.