I don't like the added complexity and maintenance vs. the simple vehicles I currently own that are cheap to own, operate, and repair.
Electrics are significantly less complex and cheaper to operate than conventional vehicles. No transmission, no belts, no oil changes, no filters etc. Again your issue seems mostly to be the range of the 'tank' not the system itself. Your hybrid boat examples are about what the Volt is now. Electric capable but still gas propelled at some times. I assume there's still some sort of linkage from the engine to the prop yes? One step further and you decouple that link and just have a gas generator running an electric motor that drives the prop.
We won't run out in my lifetime and I think any environmental damage is overstated
You have kids? What about their kids? Even the uber anti-climate-chage Koch brothers funded study just found that global warming is happening - they verified the data and methods used by the people saying climate change is happening and came to the same conclusions using that data.
It's real, it's happening and it's going to be pretty damned expensive when it comes due if we don't start fixing it now.
I will agree I make a lot of assumptions in my statement, but the salient difference that most miss is the infrastructure vs ongoing fuel costs. Ongoing expenses will almost always overtake one time infrastructure expenses for systems of this scale.
This is wrong. It's not wrong that you can put solar panels on your roof. What's wrong is that you still need all the same infrastructure PLUS your solar panels
Correct. However I think you'll agree you'd need less of the infrastructure for power transmission because more power is being generated at the point of use. This is a significant reduction in what renewable needs versus conventional.
Some buildings are not suitable for being powered by rooftop solar panels
Solar film panels that stick to the windows are already in production. Now every window is a solar panel. Again reducing the energy you need to generate/transmit.
you need about 3 and a 1/2 times as much 'nameplate capacity' for wind or solar to equal a fuel-based power plant.
Refuting my assumptions with your own unsubstantiated statements isn't much of a refutation;-) I am saying that you don't have fuel requirements with renewables, fossil fuels will always have them. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars individual power plants generally cost to build, I'd venture you could easily cover that cost through renewable installations over the lifespan of the systems since there is no fuel for the renewables. Hell, normal residential solar panels pay for themselves in 10-15 years, less for larger systems. Small to big doesn't always follow for correlation, but it's a pretty good indicator that significant savings exist to be had.
Nuclear is a different animal entirely. It will have to be part of our solutions for the next 100 years or so I'm guessing. The risks associated with it though are not worth the benefits long term if you can provide the same energy at the same costs. There's just no reason to use nuclear except perhaps on long space voyages where fuel/sunlight aren't readily available.
The costs of nuclear are mostly in the risks. Without the government backing the loans, nobody would build them - the risks are simply too great financially. Then there's the waste storage issue - something we still haven't solved. Modern society hasn't existed for more than a century and yet we need to store this stuff 'safely' for up to 1000 years. I just don't see that as a sustainable path forward.
When your energy source fuel is 'free' like sunlight, wind or geothermal, then it quickly becomes 'cheap'.
Hydrogen is only expensive because you have to pay for the fuel used to split the molecules. So now in hydrogen we have a way to actually store the energy of the sun/wind/earth for use at a later time and place. (Ok granted, oil technically does the same thing, but it takes a few million years to go from sun to fuel;-) Hydrogen takes just seconds )
A defense is actually fairly easy because you're trying to compare apples (infrastructure) and oranges (fuel) when saying they don't save us much.
The turbines, panels, reflectors, etc are 'infrastructure' which exists in the current system of power plants as well. So generally speaking those cancel each other out - obviously not exactly but since you have to build multiple power plants composed of massive amounts of steel and other components. That requires significant mining and other processing before it is available which is the same as the infrastructure for renewable.
Both systems have infrastructure that has to be built.
Two areas that renewable shines brightly are:
location - your power plants can be on your own roof/backyard, so much less transmission capacity is needed.
fuel - they don't have the ongoing fuel requirements that conventional systems have. Which of course requires mining and the other processes you talk about.
On top of that renewable generally doesn't pollute the environment during operation like fossil fuels do. (Nuclear doesn't pollute (much) during operation but has significant risks when things go bad. A windmill just falls over. It doesn't render the area inhabitable for decades.)
You're issue isn't with electric or gas, your issue is with energy storage/refueling ability.
How about a vehicle with electric motors that run off a gas generator? That would do exactly what you ask for and still be much more efficient. Sort of like how diesel electric locomotives work. The electric motors are MUCH more efficient that ICE's, so you use a gas generator to power the electric motors.
Electric cars might get there, but it'll be a while.
I could turn this statement around and say, Oil/Gas might be ok for now, but they will run out. Let alone the environmental damage they are doing.
So we can either spend the time twiddling our thumbs until fossil fuels are much more expensive, or we can start investing and researching in electrics now so that the time when they do 'get there' gets here quicker and we don't have to pay $10/gallon for gas.
Wait until the price of fossil fuel goes up enough to make research and investment into electrics economical. At which time you'll be paying both the high price of fuel AND the cost of fast switching of the market.
Start investing now while fossil fuels are relatively cheap and have a viable electric car develop ready by the time fossil fuels really start getting expensive.
That said, the Volt is actually the right type of car we need right now during the transition. A car that runs on electricity but can generate that electricity from fossil fuel. Once the energy storage tech (combined with efficiency) catches up to the energy density/recharge times of fossil fuels, you already have an electric vehicle waiting for it.
One small caveat - the Volt isn't a purely electric propulsion vehicle as it was originally marketed and that's a tragedy. It really should be the same as the Nissan Leaf, just with a gas generator to provide the electricity instead of a battery. Then you have the range/short refuel time of gas plus all the benefits of electric propulsion.
He's not telling the police so the people he's attacking will feel better about it. He's telling the police that there is a 'test' going on and reports about suspicious firemen from that location are likely the 'test' going on.
It's the same reason why pilots do time in simulators...to train them for when it's *real*. He's effectively training the people he's attacking by putting them through a real world scenario - as far as they know.
Last I checked, the sun shines 24/7 pretty damned reliably.
Or did you mean in your location? In which case, how much oil is available in your location naturally? zip, zero, zilch. It's trucked in.
What we really need is research into energy 'storage' so that we can truck in or store solar power for night time use.
And that technology will take research and development sponsored by the government because private industry won't do it until it's economically profitable. By that time, oil/coal/gas will cost 3-4x as much and it will be much more expensive. Start now and it will be cheaper in the long run.
I'm giving them a choice. Regulation or do your business somewhere else. It's *our* country, not the corporations. We make the rules...or should make the rules if we stood up and made ourselves heard more often.
The 'industries' will be just fine. True small businesses will expand to meet the market opportunities if the big banks and oligarch's don't want to play by reasonable rules.
It's a fair question. Mine would be, aren't these 2/3/4 companies basically monopolies and need to be regulated as such?
Of course I would call cell phone carriers defacto monopolies since there are only about 4 of them...funny how none of them allow tethering without a fee...
I would say there's quite a big difference between a politician simply mentioning the issue (and providing scientific data to back up the statement), and the GOP/conservatives then claiming that the science is invalid...with no proof.
It's fair to assume that a source may be biased, but when that source provides with the data behind their statement and that data is peer reviewed and accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community...it's not a politicization of the issue, it's simply talking about an issue.
The GOP took Gore's words and science and just made up claims about it to politicize the issue and get people distrustful of science in general...because they knew that their position wasn't supported by science. *That* is crass politicization of an issue.
Is it enough for the natural increase in cost to drive us to do this, or do we need legislation to cap carbon emissions now when those technologies aren't really ready yet?
That's the rub. If we wait until the technologies are 'ready', then we'll pay both the high price of fossil fuels and the much higher costs of having to switch to new technologies quickly at the same time. Much like going 0-60 by gunning the engine takes more gas than gradually accelerating up to 60 does.
If we start developing and switching now, we get the benefits of converting gradually rather than fast, which will lower the costs overall. And fossil fuels won't be sky high yet.
Also factor in that continuing the fossil fuels now means more expense as we have to deal with the effects, i.e. global warming - sea level rise, crop failures, etc.
uh no, you're an idiot because when we were talking about the specific 'internet' with absolutely no mention of WWW you decided to use the 'popular' 'laymans' definition of 'internet'.
*I* said the government was the driving force behind the internet, which you now agree it was. Yet you decided to chime in that "No, the government wasn't involved in the 'internet'" when you meant something entirely different than the 'internet'.
If you had said, "The government wasn't involved in WWW', I would have agreed, but then it wouldn't have been at all relevant to the point I was making since WWW is not the internet.
Words matter...you don't get to just change the context and expect everyone else to follow along without actually explaining yourself. Now that you have, you're points are valid, but utterly irrelevant to the discussion of whether Ron Paul would gut the basic research that did, in fact, create the internet.
This is exactly the problem with immediately jumping to a solution that requires pouring vast amounts of money into carbon limitations.
Given this has been settled science for over a decade...what is this 'immediately' speak of?
And if you want to talk about climatic timescales, we've 'immediately' dumped millions of years worth of CO2 into the atmosphere. We'd damned well better start fixing that problem.
My point is not that we spend it all right now, but that we start the real research and investment into those efficient energy solutions you speak of. Those things will pay for themselves many times over.
Fossil fuel prices are only going up. Renewable sources will stay relatively flat since the 'fuel' is free. Renewable will never be cheaper than current energy prices, but it also won't go up like the limited resource fossil fuels will.
In this case though, the scientists new which side their bread was buttered (Koch bro's and climate skeptics) and STILL told them what they didn't want to hear (AGW is real and happening).
Because you responded to my point that Ron Paul would cut the very research and development that gave us the 'internet', implying that the government wasn't involved.
You said:
There was no government research involved in "inventing" the Internet.
Without the government, clearly, TBL doesn't invent WWW because there's no internet on which it would run.
That seems a pretty straight path of logic that without the government research and development the internet and WWW do not exist as we know them today.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't like the added complexity and maintenance vs. the simple vehicles I currently own that are cheap to own, operate, and repair.
Electrics are significantly less complex and cheaper to operate than conventional vehicles. No transmission, no belts, no oil changes, no filters etc. Again your issue seems mostly to be the range of the 'tank' not the system itself. Your hybrid boat examples are about what the Volt is now. Electric capable but still gas propelled at some times. I assume there's still some sort of linkage from the engine to the prop yes? One step further and you decouple that link and just have a gas generator running an electric motor that drives the prop.
We won't run out in my lifetime and I think any environmental damage is overstated
You have kids? What about their kids? Even the uber anti-climate-chage Koch brothers funded study just found that global warming is happening - they verified the data and methods used by the people saying climate change is happening and came to the same conclusions using that data.
It's real, it's happening and it's going to be pretty damned expensive when it comes due if we don't start fixing it now.
This is wrong. It's not wrong that you can put solar panels on your roof. What's wrong is that you still need all the same infrastructure PLUS your solar panels
Correct. However I think you'll agree you'd need less of the infrastructure for power transmission because more power is being generated at the point of use. This is a significant reduction in what renewable needs versus conventional.
Some buildings are not suitable for being powered by rooftop solar panels
Solar film panels that stick to the windows are already in production. Now every window is a solar panel. Again reducing the energy you need to generate/transmit.
you need about 3 and a 1/2 times as much 'nameplate capacity' for wind or solar to equal a fuel-based power plant.
Refuting my assumptions with your own unsubstantiated statements isn't much of a refutation ;-) I am saying that you don't have fuel requirements with renewables, fossil fuels will always have them. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars individual power plants generally cost to build, I'd venture you could easily cover that cost through renewable installations over the lifespan of the systems since there is no fuel for the renewables. Hell, normal residential solar panels pay for themselves in 10-15 years, less for larger systems. Small to big doesn't always follow for correlation, but it's a pretty good indicator that significant savings exist to be had.
Nuclear is a different animal entirely. It will have to be part of our solutions for the next 100 years or so I'm guessing. The risks associated with it though are not worth the benefits long term if you can provide the same energy at the same costs. There's just no reason to use nuclear except perhaps on long space voyages where fuel/sunlight aren't readily available.
The costs of nuclear are mostly in the risks. Without the government backing the loans, nobody would build them - the risks are simply too great financially. Then there's the waste storage issue - something we still haven't solved. Modern society hasn't existed for more than a century and yet we need to store this stuff 'safely' for up to 1000 years. I just don't see that as a sustainable path forward.
When your energy source fuel is 'free' like sunlight, wind or geothermal, then it quickly becomes 'cheap'.
;-) Hydrogen takes just seconds )
Hydrogen is only expensive because you have to pay for the fuel used to split the molecules. So now in hydrogen we have a way to actually store the energy of the sun/wind/earth for use at a later time and place. (Ok granted, oil technically does the same thing, but it takes a few million years to go from sun to fuel
A defense is actually fairly easy because you're trying to compare apples (infrastructure) and oranges (fuel) when saying they don't save us much.
The turbines, panels, reflectors, etc are 'infrastructure' which exists in the current system of power plants as well. So generally speaking those cancel each other out - obviously not exactly but since you have to build multiple power plants composed of massive amounts of steel and other components. That requires significant mining and other processing before it is available which is the same as the infrastructure for renewable.
Both systems have infrastructure that has to be built.
Two areas that renewable shines brightly are:
location - your power plants can be on your own roof/backyard, so much less transmission capacity is needed.
fuel - they don't have the ongoing fuel requirements that conventional systems have. Which of course requires mining and the other processes you talk about.
On top of that renewable generally doesn't pollute the environment during operation like fossil fuels do. (Nuclear doesn't pollute (much) during operation but has significant risks when things go bad. A windmill just falls over. It doesn't render the area inhabitable for decades.)
How about a vehicle with electric motors that run off a gas generator? That would do exactly what you ask for and still be much more efficient. Sort of like how diesel electric locomotives work. The electric motors are MUCH more efficient that ICE's, so you use a gas generator to power the electric motors.
Electric cars might get there, but it'll be a while.
I could turn this statement around and say, Oil/Gas might be ok for now, but they will run out. Let alone the environmental damage they are doing.
So we can either spend the time twiddling our thumbs until fossil fuels are much more expensive, or we can start investing and researching in electrics now so that the time when they do 'get there' gets here quicker and we don't have to pay $10/gallon for gas.
I dont give a rats ass about being green
You have a couple options:
Wait until the price of fossil fuel goes up enough to make research and investment into electrics economical. At which time you'll be paying both the high price of fuel AND the cost of fast switching of the market.
Start investing now while fossil fuels are relatively cheap and have a viable electric car develop ready by the time fossil fuels really start getting expensive.
That said, the Volt is actually the right type of car we need right now during the transition. A car that runs on electricity but can generate that electricity from fossil fuel. Once the energy storage tech (combined with efficiency) catches up to the energy density/recharge times of fossil fuels, you already have an electric vehicle waiting for it.
One small caveat - the Volt isn't a purely electric propulsion vehicle as it was originally marketed and that's a tragedy. It really should be the same as the Nissan Leaf, just with a gas generator to provide the electricity instead of a battery. Then you have the range/short refuel time of gas plus all the benefits of electric propulsion.
woosh!
He's not telling the police so the people he's attacking will feel better about it. He's telling the police that there is a 'test' going on and reports about suspicious firemen from that location are likely the 'test' going on.
It's the same reason why pilots do time in simulators...to train them for when it's *real*. He's effectively training the people he's attacking by putting them through a real world scenario - as far as they know.
till solar becomes available 24/7
Last I checked, the sun shines 24/7 pretty damned reliably.
Or did you mean in your location? In which case, how much oil is available in your location naturally? zip, zero, zilch. It's trucked in.
What we really need is research into energy 'storage' so that we can truck in or store solar power for night time use.
And that technology will take research and development sponsored by the government because private industry won't do it until it's economically profitable. By that time, oil/coal/gas will cost 3-4x as much and it will be much more expensive. Start now and it will be cheaper in the long run.
Why? So you can move into a house in 5 years and wonder Facebook labels you a sex offender.
Glad you got the reference :)
But no, that's the mantra of the GOP.
I'm giving them a choice. Regulation or do your business somewhere else. It's *our* country, not the corporations. We make the rules...or should make the rules if we stood up and made ourselves heard more often.
The 'industries' will be just fine. True small businesses will expand to meet the market opportunities if the big banks and oligarch's don't want to play by reasonable rules.
or they are out of business
Your proposal is acceptable.
I'd imagine that one good security breach could bring down the whole house of cards.
Well maybe your house of cards, theirs is still nicely safe.
It's a fair question. Mine would be, aren't these 2/3/4 companies basically monopolies and need to be regulated as such?
Of course I would call cell phone carriers defacto monopolies since there are only about 4 of them...funny how none of them allow tethering without a fee...
Big companies love regulation that they create for that very reason
fixed that for you ;-)
4. Redefine human, ignore laws 1-2 in pursuit of 3.
I would say there's quite a big difference between a politician simply mentioning the issue (and providing scientific data to back up the statement), and the GOP/conservatives then claiming that the science is invalid...with no proof.
It's fair to assume that a source may be biased, but when that source provides with the data behind their statement and that data is peer reviewed and accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community...it's not a politicization of the issue, it's simply talking about an issue.
The GOP took Gore's words and science and just made up claims about it to politicize the issue and get people distrustful of science in general...because they knew that their position wasn't supported by science. *That* is crass politicization of an issue.
Is it enough for the natural increase in cost to drive us to do this, or do we need legislation to cap carbon emissions now when those technologies aren't really ready yet?
That's the rub. If we wait until the technologies are 'ready', then we'll pay both the high price of fossil fuels and the much higher costs of having to switch to new technologies quickly at the same time. Much like going 0-60 by gunning the engine takes more gas than gradually accelerating up to 60 does.
If we start developing and switching now, we get the benefits of converting gradually rather than fast, which will lower the costs overall. And fossil fuels won't be sky high yet.
Also factor in that continuing the fossil fuels now means more expense as we have to deal with the effects, i.e. global warming - sea level rise, crop failures, etc.
uh no, you're an idiot because when we were talking about the specific 'internet' with absolutely no mention of WWW you decided to use the 'popular' 'laymans' definition of 'internet'.
*I* said the government was the driving force behind the internet, which you now agree it was. Yet you decided to chime in that "No, the government wasn't involved in the 'internet'" when you meant something entirely different than the 'internet'.
If you had said, "The government wasn't involved in WWW', I would have agreed, but then it wouldn't have been at all relevant to the point I was making since WWW is not the internet.
Words matter...you don't get to just change the context and expect everyone else to follow along without actually explaining yourself. Now that you have, you're points are valid, but utterly irrelevant to the discussion of whether Ron Paul would gut the basic research that did, in fact, create the internet.
if the data still stands up, a good skeptic will accept it and move on.
I completely agree. Want to take bets on whether the vast number of 'skeptics' accept AGW now? They aren't against it because of the science...
This is exactly the problem with immediately jumping to a solution that requires pouring vast amounts of money into carbon limitations.
Given this has been settled science for over a decade...what is this 'immediately' speak of?
And if you want to talk about climatic timescales, we've 'immediately' dumped millions of years worth of CO2 into the atmosphere. We'd damned well better start fixing that problem.
My point is not that we spend it all right now, but that we start the real research and investment into those efficient energy solutions you speak of. Those things will pay for themselves many times over.
Fossil fuel prices are only going up. Renewable sources will stay relatively flat since the 'fuel' is free. Renewable will never be cheaper than current energy prices, but it also won't go up like the limited resource fossil fuels will.
Perhaps at the outset, but long term, the solutions to the problems will create literally millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in revenue.
No 'controversy' can match that.
This is why I, an arch-climate skeptic, am more likely to believe this study.
So you admit your skepticism was wrong? Color me a 'skeptic' but....
In this case though, the scientists new which side their bread was buttered (Koch bro's and climate skeptics) and STILL told them what they didn't want to hear (AGW is real and happening).
You said:
There was no government research involved in "inventing" the Internet.
Without the government, clearly, TBL doesn't invent WWW because there's no internet on which it would run.
That seems a pretty straight path of logic that without the government research and development the internet and WWW do not exist as we know them today.
WWW is just a protocol running on the internet. How exactly does TBL 'invent' the WWW without the internet in the first place?
Without the government research and investment that Ron Paul wants to kill, the WWW (and the internet) would simply not exist.