Except that none of these rating agencies *ever* cared about the deficit until it was used as a political weapon...
Once the deficit becomes the sticking point to actually getting things done in Congress...like say passing debt limit increases...well now your rating agencies are going to price in the possibility you might actually default.
The GOP completely manufactured this disaster and deserves the *entire* blame for it. And I mean the downgrade and it's aftermath, the 'current' debt and deficit are largely GOP created, but not completely. Long term debt issues come from more Democratic policies..SocSec/Medicare. But the current debt is much more the GOP's creation than anybody else's.
But plugging in at 2am isn't feasible anyway, not in aggregate across the entire population - few people will set their alarm to 2am every night to save a nickel.
They won't but the 'smart meter' will know that's when it's cheap and start charging then. Hence, everybody 'turning on' at 2am. Of course this assumes that you can charge your car enough from 2am to morning, which isn't likely for most anyway.
But, hey, if he was 'incorporated' we should just let the 'corporation' do whatever it wants. Less regulation is better for business...except maybe the light bulb business....
I said decades, which is pretty darned permanent. Could new people move back, probably, but you still have to relocate 100,000 people. What's the economic cost of that?
just because an old reactor failed during a pair of natural disasters that were far worse than anything it was designed for
So it was 'safe' right up until it wasn't? what's your point? My point is that it can't ever be 'safe' enough because there will always be something you haven't planned for.
And yes every situation has *something* that isn't planned for. The difference with nuclear is the effect of that failure. And we're seeing it can be downright catastrophic with no ability to mitigate.
This thread took off when somebody wished there was less micromanagement in nuclear industry.
Do you really want BP running a nuclear plant with George W Bush doing oversight?
100,000 people even in Japan were not permanently relocated.
You mean everybody is allowed to go home now? Sources please... They were decidedly *not* concerned with safety since the US had a bigger exclusion zone than the Japanese did. It was politics playing its role. They finally had to admit that multiple reactors had full containment breach through the bottom. That's not 'safe' by any stretch.
You are correct that nuclear will never be 100% safe, neither will coal, neither will any power generation method that is on any appreciable scale.
What 'safety' issues exist with solar and wind? Again, coal has operational issues but not failure issues. You can plan for the former, you can at best mitigate the latter.
By that logic we should ban drilling for oil because it's not safe!
And I've said that very thing. Most specifically deep water drilling because we simply can't contain a problem when it happens. 160+ 'failure' scenarios for the blowout preventers! seriously, 160 ways they can fail when they are the last line of defense. Yet we're still using the same design even now post Deepwater Horizon.
Centralia is 1.6 sq mi. Compared with 31,000 sq miles that Fukashima has fouled.
Did I ever say coal was 'good'? nope, I simply said it does not have the failure issues that nuclear does. If you think a coal plant failing is remotely close to a nuclear plant failing, logic won't sway you I'm sure.
Mining is bad, I agree. You know what? You have to mine uranium too. What's your point again? I"m in favor of renewable so there's nothing of the sort for fuel.
The only nuclear disaster that wasn't contained was Chernobyl
Which was a human event with no safety systems. Note the human part, if humans are involved in design, construction or operation, there will be failures. We are not infallible. When there are failures at nuclear plants it is *possible* that you have vast areas uninhabitable.
Fukashima was considered 'safe' prior to this event. How many more 'safe' events are we going to have hmmm?
How do you wan't to measure "safety"? By whose science-fiction novel is scarier, or by actual death and injury rates?
Well for starters I don't compare failure scenarios to operational ones...
Coal has significant operational issues I don't deny that. But you can mitigate those with enough money, stack scrubbers etc. We haven't done this and so coal causes many deaths world wide. That is not the same as being unable to contain something like a nuclear accident.
To your point about safety. Fukashima was 'safe', they didn't consider it was *possible* to have the magnitude of event that happened.
Which is my point, you can't plan for failure, because things have failed. You can try and mitigate and redundancy you're way to some percentage, but it is not and never will be 100% safe.
Coal simply does not have these types of failure conditions. It has operational issues, which you can plan for adequately. We certainly haven't, but you *can*. Nuclear cannot be made 100% safe, ever. And when a 1% chance means relocating 100,000 people? I say that's not feasible.
Coal is not dangerous from a 'failure' perspective. It is dangerous from an operational perspective. It is *possible* to run a clean coal operation, prohibitively expensive, but possible.
Nuclear is not possible to contain in a 'failure', by definition because things have failed you don't have control. Without control, the entire area is no longer safe.
Some failures are and have been contained, but others haven't. So you can't guarantee that it can be contained. Hence you can't say it's 'safer' than coal.
what might happen if the State decided to stop micromanaging energy production and allowed technology to advance on its own.
When the power source in question is capable of rendering 100 mile radius uninhabitable for decades....sorry I want micromanagement.
Now, solar/wind on the other hand don't do a damned thing when they fail. They might fall over and hit you but once they have failed they are completely inert and can be cleaned up right after the storm.
To be fair, I like Thorium as a reactor fuel, but my understanding of Thorium is the tech isn't yet there; i.e. keeping corrosive radioactive salts contained with no maintenance (closed systems) is still problematic.
In any event, it still has a fuel cost that renewable sources don't.
Well, first off they can't because I own the account.
Whoosh. Yes you do own your 401k, feds don't. Which is my entire point. They are pawns in ways you can't be, so yes they do have added protections and benefits because of that.
You don't seem to understand a 'pension'. The risk is assumed by the *employer*, not the employee. I work for you 20/30 years at lower than normal salary in return you give me a retirement program. Pensions don't offer great returns, it's pretty low, much like Social Security returns are low. It's meant and designed to be 'safe' rather than risk oriented. It's a pretty safe system unless the company isn't putting the money in that they are supposed to when they are supposed to. That's where the problem lies...the "Well we're short this year so we'll pay more next year" just keeps happening.
I've actually worked at the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp (gov agency) that's tasked with insuring pensions offered by companies. It's not a pretty site, they are all vastly under funded.
It doesn't have to be that way, the company and the employees signed an agreement. The companies aren't living up to that agreement.
The pro is you wont have to answer to a boss and you wont be micromanaged.
Well assuming you can find a goverment contract who will hire just 'you'. Most contracts are large enough they aren't going to a single person, they are going to a company. That company might sub-contract out some of the work to a smaller company who might do the same thing to hire 'you'.
Instead of one layer of gov't mgmt, you now have the same gov't mgmt plus 2-3 layers of corporate mgmt. It ain't so 'cheap', nor are you ever likely to work without a boss and micromanagement.
You know why most of the gov't positions have pretty good benefits and other protections? Because the gov't uses them as political pawns.
You know how we're currently paying our bills? By raiding the pensions of retired federal workers. linky
Seriously, what would you do if your employer raided your 401k to pay it's bills? Moreover what would you do in negotiating your compensation next time you were up for it? You'd demand serious benefits and pay to cover the fact that your employer is stealing from you...
and Oxygen will kill you in high enough concentrations too. Drink too much water and you will die. A pollutant can be anything, it's about what it does to the system it is being added into.
The point here is that your exhale is CO2 that was removed from the air within roughly the last few weeks. That doesn't effect the system because it is a net zero process for your life cycle.
Coal/oil/gas is putting CO2 into the atmosphere that was removed millions of years ago. It isn't a net zero process for human time lines. We're taking CO2 removed from the atmosphere over of millions of years and adding it back in now in just a couple centuries. That is polluting the current ecosystem in a way that isn't natural.
This would be the laptop equivalent of hybrid cars so yes technically it's possible.
By capturing energy from the 'waste' heat, the heat produced by operating the computer would give it slightly longer battery life. Just like regenerative braking of hybrids charges a battery which then allows them to use the full weight of the vehicle for power generation while only carrying a small percentage of increased weight.
"Any doubts this PC wasn't going to happen should now disappear "
They perhaps have updated the summary to clarify that it should no longer be doubted and it will most likely be going into production because the production and alpha boards would be the same.
3. earth warming, but in the future will cool by itself
#3 means we're fine, no matter what.
Not quite. It might warm to 400 degrees and then cool down to 80. Everything still dies at that 400 peak. Just because it has been warmer in the past doesn't mean 'we' can survive during a natural swing [which irrelevant since this isn't a natural swing].
Well except for the quite recent study that showed the gap between projected warming and actual warming was likely do to the increased coal power plants in China which are polluting the atmosphere so much that light is being reflected out before it gets in.
Eventually it will cause enough warming to be a serious problem. So we're dealing with which form of pollution is preferable...can't stop coal 'if' it's the only thing keep the planet slightly cooler [BIG if there], but can't keep doing it because it is actually causing some warming and 10,000s of deaths per year....
*Nothing* was stolen. It was illegally obtained, but not stolen. The accounts still exist and are usable by the rightful owners baring any disabling by the telecom itself.
My problem is that I look around and see people who have made a choice that collecting unemployment for a year or two is a better financial choice than getting a shitty job.
And you know this *how*? Sources please. Show me anything that shows a significant percentage of people collecting unemployment *want* to do that rather than work. A few cases don't make your point, you need to show that lots of people are doing this.
The economy sucks, there aren't jobs available to take. Worse, companies are now saying they won't hire people who aren't currently employed or are only recently unemployed. Having college grads take minimum wage jobs isn't the answer because then the HS grads can't get work and everybody is worse off.
Once you make collecting a government check better than not collecting one you have set up things to only get worse.
If that were the case, then you are assuming that everyone is a lazy SOB. Why are you a lazy SOB? oh wait you aren't, just 'them'. Who is 'them'?
And again sources, how is unemployment better than collecting a paycheck? Comparing to not getting anything is not a fair comparison. Unemployment payments create more money than they cost. Literally. Why? Because unemployed people still need to eat. So that money goes directly into the economy and starts returning tax revenue as the retailers then by product to replace what was bought with the unemployment insurance.
Unemployment insurance is like the shock absorber in your car. It softens the bumps but makes them last a little longer. In the long run the ride is smoother.
Reducing spending *will* hurt the economy. If the government stops spending $1 trillion dollars, that's $1 trillion dollars that isn't being paid out into the economy for goods and services. What effect do you think that will have? The only solution to this crisis is to bring tax rates in line with spending. That will require movement of both sides, tax rates up and spending down....over time. In a recession, cuts will only make the recession worse.
There will be increased cost associated with continued deficit spending in terms of the interest paid, but it will be far far less then pulling something like 8% of the economy out of circulation.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that none of these rating agencies *ever* cared about the deficit until it was used as a political weapon...
Once the deficit becomes the sticking point to actually getting things done in Congress...like say passing debt limit increases...well now your rating agencies are going to price in the possibility you might actually default.
The GOP completely manufactured this disaster and deserves the *entire* blame for it. And I mean the downgrade and it's aftermath, the 'current' debt and deficit are largely GOP created, but not completely. Long term debt issues come from more Democratic policies..SocSec/Medicare. But the current debt is much more the GOP's creation than anybody else's.
The economy is built on a set of beliefs.
Exactly.
And when you give the keys to your crazy uncle Bob (Tea Party) your insurance company BELIEVES it might be a good idea to raise your premiums...
Pretty sure that'd be a dumb meter.
In an article about 'smart meters' you're 'pretty sure' it would be a dumb meter?
just wow.
But plugging in at 2am isn't feasible anyway, not in aggregate across the entire population - few people will set their alarm to 2am every night to save a nickel.
They won't but the 'smart meter' will know that's when it's cheap and start charging then. Hence, everybody 'turning on' at 2am. Of course this assumes that you can charge your car enough from 2am to morning, which isn't likely for most anyway.
But, hey, if he was 'incorporated' we should just let the 'corporation' do whatever it wants. Less regulation is better for business...except maybe the light bulb business....
Not only that, the only workers affected have merely received their year's quota of radiation and can't work there for a while.
They received much more than one year's dose, which is why they raised the allowed dosage by 500%.
The reactors are still emitting fatal doses of radiation to this very day. 10 sieverts per hour was the max on the readers and it was pegged.
Here's a handy radiation dosage chart. They are well into the bottom right of the scale.
just because an old reactor failed during a pair of natural disasters that were far worse than anything it was designed for
So it was 'safe' right up until it wasn't? what's your point? My point is that it can't ever be 'safe' enough because there will always be something you haven't planned for.
And yes every situation has *something* that isn't planned for. The difference with nuclear is the effect of that failure. And we're seeing it can be downright catastrophic with no ability to mitigate.
This thread took off when somebody wished there was less micromanagement in nuclear industry.
Do you really want BP running a nuclear plant with George W Bush doing oversight?
100,000 people even in Japan were not permanently relocated.
You mean everybody is allowed to go home now? Sources please... They were decidedly *not* concerned with safety since the US had a bigger exclusion zone than the Japanese did. It was politics playing its role. They finally had to admit that multiple reactors had full containment breach through the bottom. That's not 'safe' by any stretch.
You are correct that nuclear will never be 100% safe, neither will coal, neither will any power generation method that is on any appreciable scale.
What 'safety' issues exist with solar and wind? Again, coal has operational issues but not failure issues. You can plan for the former, you can at best mitigate the latter.
By that logic we should ban drilling for oil because it's not safe!
And I've said that very thing. Most specifically deep water drilling because we simply can't contain a problem when it happens. 160+ 'failure' scenarios for the blowout preventers! seriously, 160 ways they can fail when they are the last line of defense. Yet we're still using the same design even now post Deepwater Horizon.
Did I ever say coal was 'good'? nope, I simply said it does not have the failure issues that nuclear does. If you think a coal plant failing is remotely close to a nuclear plant failing, logic won't sway you I'm sure.
Mining is bad, I agree. You know what? You have to mine uranium too. What's your point again? I"m in favor of renewable so there's nothing of the sort for fuel.
The only nuclear disaster that wasn't contained was Chernobyl
Which was a human event with no safety systems. Note the human part, if humans are involved in design, construction or operation, there will be failures. We are not infallible. When there are failures at nuclear plants it is *possible* that you have vast areas uninhabitable.
Fukashima was considered 'safe' prior to this event. How many more 'safe' events are we going to have hmmm?
How do you wan't to measure "safety"? By whose science-fiction novel is scarier, or by actual death and injury rates?
Well for starters I don't compare failure scenarios to operational ones...
Coal has significant operational issues I don't deny that. But you can mitigate those with enough money, stack scrubbers etc. We haven't done this and so coal causes many deaths world wide. That is not the same as being unable to contain something like a nuclear accident.
Coal bad != nuclear good
To your point about safety. Fukashima was 'safe', they didn't consider it was *possible* to have the magnitude of event that happened.
Which is my point, you can't plan for failure, because things have failed. You can try and mitigate and redundancy you're way to some percentage, but it is not and never will be 100% safe.
Coal simply does not have these types of failure conditions. It has operational issues, which you can plan for adequately. We certainly haven't, but you *can*. Nuclear cannot be made 100% safe, ever. And when a 1% chance means relocating 100,000 people? I say that's not feasible.
sigh, Centralia is 1.6 sq km. Hardly comparable to 31,000 sq miles...
Even if you're comparing the apples of mining to oranges of plant operation...
Coal is not dangerous from a 'failure' perspective. It is dangerous from an operational perspective. It is *possible* to run a clean coal operation, prohibitively expensive, but possible.
Nuclear is not possible to contain in a 'failure', by definition because things have failed you don't have control. Without control, the entire area is no longer safe.
Some failures are and have been contained, but others haven't. So you can't guarantee that it can be contained. Hence you can't say it's 'safer' than coal.
what might happen if the State decided to stop micromanaging energy production and allowed technology to advance on its own.
When the power source in question is capable of rendering 100 mile radius uninhabitable for decades....sorry I want micromanagement.
Now, solar/wind on the other hand don't do a damned thing when they fail. They might fall over and hit you but once they have failed they are completely inert and can be cleaned up right after the storm.
To be fair, I like Thorium as a reactor fuel, but my understanding of Thorium is the tech isn't yet there; i.e. keeping corrosive radioactive salts contained with no maintenance (closed systems) is still problematic.
In any event, it still has a fuel cost that renewable sources don't.
Well, first off they can't because I own the account.
Whoosh. Yes you do own your 401k, feds don't. Which is my entire point. They are pawns in ways you can't be, so yes they do have added protections and benefits because of that.
You don't seem to understand a 'pension'. The risk is assumed by the *employer*, not the employee. I work for you 20/30 years at lower than normal salary in return you give me a retirement program. Pensions don't offer great returns, it's pretty low, much like Social Security returns are low. It's meant and designed to be 'safe' rather than risk oriented. It's a pretty safe system unless the company isn't putting the money in that they are supposed to when they are supposed to. That's where the problem lies...the "Well we're short this year so we'll pay more next year" just keeps happening.
I've actually worked at the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp (gov agency) that's tasked with insuring pensions offered by companies. It's not a pretty site, they are all vastly under funded.
It doesn't have to be that way, the company and the employees signed an agreement. The companies aren't living up to that agreement.
The pro is you wont have to answer to a boss and you wont be micromanaged.
Well assuming you can find a goverment contract who will hire just 'you'. Most contracts are large enough they aren't going to a single person, they are going to a company. That company might sub-contract out some of the work to a smaller company who might do the same thing to hire 'you'.
Instead of one layer of gov't mgmt, you now have the same gov't mgmt plus 2-3 layers of corporate mgmt. It ain't so 'cheap', nor are you ever likely to work without a boss and micromanagement.
You know why most of the gov't positions have pretty good benefits and other protections? Because the gov't uses them as political pawns.
You know how we're currently paying our bills? By raiding the pensions of retired federal workers. linky
Seriously, what would you do if your employer raided your 401k to pay it's bills? Moreover what would you do in negotiating your compensation next time you were up for it? You'd demand serious benefits and pay to cover the fact that your employer is stealing from you...
Original? nope, Fox does lots of things like this.
However, it is completely accurate...
and Oxygen will kill you in high enough concentrations too. Drink too much water and you will die. A pollutant can be anything, it's about what it does to the system it is being added into.
The point here is that your exhale is CO2 that was removed from the air within roughly the last few weeks. That doesn't effect the system because it is a net zero process for your life cycle.
Coal/oil/gas is putting CO2 into the atmosphere that was removed millions of years ago. It isn't a net zero process for human time lines. We're taking CO2 removed from the atmosphere over of millions of years and adding it back in now in just a couple centuries. That is polluting the current ecosystem in a way that isn't natural.
This would be the laptop equivalent of hybrid cars so yes technically it's possible.
By capturing energy from the 'waste' heat, the heat produced by operating the computer would give it slightly longer battery life. Just like regenerative braking of hybrids charges a battery which then allows them to use the full weight of the vehicle for power generation while only carrying a small percentage of increased weight.
"Any doubts this PC wasn't going to happen should now disappear "
They perhaps have updated the summary to clarify that it should no longer be doubted and it will most likely be going into production because the production and alpha boards would be the same.
too damned funny!
3. earth warming, but in the future will cool by itself
#3 means we're fine, no matter what.
Not quite. It might warm to 400 degrees and then cool down to 80. Everything still dies at that 400 peak. Just because it has been warmer in the past doesn't mean 'we' can survive during a natural swing [which irrelevant since this isn't a natural swing].
Well except for the quite recent study that showed the gap between projected warming and actual warming was likely do to the increased coal power plants in China which are polluting the atmosphere so much that light is being reflected out before it gets in.
Eventually it will cause enough warming to be a serious problem. So we're dealing with which form of pollution is preferable...can't stop coal 'if' it's the only thing keep the planet slightly cooler [BIG if there], but can't keep doing it because it is actually causing some warming and 10,000s of deaths per year....
Solution?
4. can we get an accurate summary?
*Nothing* was stolen. It was illegally obtained, but not stolen. The accounts still exist and are usable by the rightful owners baring any disabling by the telecom itself.
My problem is that I look around and see people who have made a choice that collecting unemployment for a year or two is a better financial choice than getting a shitty job.
And you know this *how*? Sources please. Show me anything that shows a significant percentage of people collecting unemployment *want* to do that rather than work. A few cases don't make your point, you need to show that lots of people are doing this.
The economy sucks, there aren't jobs available to take. Worse, companies are now saying they won't hire people who aren't currently employed or are only recently unemployed. Having college grads take minimum wage jobs isn't the answer because then the HS grads can't get work and everybody is worse off.
Once you make collecting a government check better than not collecting one you have set up things to only get worse.
If that were the case, then you are assuming that everyone is a lazy SOB. Why are you a lazy SOB? oh wait you aren't, just 'them'. Who is 'them'?
And again sources, how is unemployment better than collecting a paycheck? Comparing to not getting anything is not a fair comparison. Unemployment payments create more money than they cost. Literally. Why? Because unemployed people still need to eat. So that money goes directly into the economy and starts returning tax revenue as the retailers then by product to replace what was bought with the unemployment insurance.
Unemployment insurance is like the shock absorber in your car. It softens the bumps but makes them last a little longer. In the long run the ride is smoother.
Reducing spending *will* hurt the economy. If the government stops spending $1 trillion dollars, that's $1 trillion dollars that isn't being paid out into the economy for goods and services. What effect do you think that will have? The only solution to this crisis is to bring tax rates in line with spending. That will require movement of both sides, tax rates up and spending down....over time. In a recession, cuts will only make the recession worse.
There will be increased cost associated with continued deficit spending in terms of the interest paid, but it will be far far less then pulling something like 8% of the economy out of circulation.