That's the Edison approach, and hardly a new idea. If it worked, we'd be using it today. There's no vast conspiracy. Large economies of scale do work, and you can't dismiss the concept of scale by wishful thinking.
You can't eliminate technology any more than you can erase knowledge. Nuclear power provides a convenient cover story for weapons production, sure, but it's not actually necessary for the program.
We must learn to deal with nuclear proliferation, and taking the ostrich approach isn't going to solve the problem.
This is another example of the environmentalist's fallacy.
First, why focus on nuclear waste while ignoring all kinds of other long-lived, harmful industrial outputs from processes like semiconductor manufacturing or steel refining?
Second, the volume of nuclear waste is tiny. The waste produced by a nuclear plant in a decade might fill a house. And by reprocessing the waste, we can reduce its volume by 90%. Compared to other forms of power generation, nuclear plants are practically clean.
Third, the waste that is produced is not all that dangerous: the way radioisotopes work, the more radiation a substance produces, the shorter its half-life. Long-lived waste products will be low-radioactivity and inert.
The desert is not full of human life. When we protect the environment, we ought to do it protect human interests, not because the environment has some moral rights. When you train a cat to use a litter box, do you do it because you believe the carpet has moral rights and needs to be protected? Well, I do it so I don't have to deal with the smell.
The desert simply doesn't have much to offer man except mineral resources and wide-open tracks of land for exactly these kinds of projects.
I see what you mean about nuclear power too. But on the other hand, nuclear power is so plentiful that if, as a condition of constructing them, we have to locate them far from population centers and live with transmission losses, so be it. They're still our best bets.
I see your point. But we can mitigate the problem:
According to wikipedia, we can build turbines that reach 90% efficiency. That leaves us with 100MW of power to dissipate (not a 1GW "hair-dryer").
First of all, the output of that turbine is going to be barely warmer than the surrounding air. (Think about it: if it weren't, you could use it as the input to another turbine stage.)
Sure, there will be a lot of this output, but it won't be particularly hot. Also, I imagine you'd use a condensing turbine, so you get most of your original cooling fluid back. What's left is a large volume of warm, dry air. Lots of industrial processes produce that kind of output today, and we don't see birds dropping out of the sky.
So we're reduced to conspiracy theories? The fact is that coal does pose huge, disastrous, scientifically-verifiable problems for mankind. Decades of research have supported this conclusion. You can't simply make it go away because you'd like it not to be true. Saying coal's pollution problems are made up is about as credible as saying the moon landings were faked, or that there really is a Loch Ness monster.
By the way: I oppose coal and strongly support nuclear power.
We can't legislate CO2 out of existence, and we have no viable technology for sequestering it. Reducing the number of coal plants is far more effective than waving a magic legislative wand.
Besides, even if we could eliminate polluting outputs of the plants, coal mining is environmentally disastrous. Uranium mining demands only a small fraction of the manpower, pollution, and infrastructure for the same power output.
I think that's more an issue with a specific plant design than with the technology in general. Can't you use radiative closed-cycle cooling, like in a big automobile engine?
Fortunately, the places people tend to actually live are the places with water.
My point is that government regulation and intervention is often a good thing. Let's look at energy specifically. Coal is cheap if you ignore its huge, disastrous externalities. In an unregulated market, we'd all be using coal. Now, we can ban coal outright, but that's very disruptive. A far better idea to simply make it expensive (or equivalently, make its competitors cheaper).
In this way, government tax manipulation makes markets work better.
No. The reason hydrogen hasn't been seriously considered are that it:
has a terrible energy density
is explosive
leaks out of most tanks, joints, and seals
As an energy transfer medium, you'd be hard-pressed to do worse that hydrogen. That there are people on this site who still believe the trite crap about hydrogen is disturbing. I hope you don't write software, or that I don't use the software you do write: the sloppy thinking you exhibit in the above post is likely to spill over into other areas of your life.
I'll concede that knowing dinosaur colors won't help us a damn bit. But not every outlet of government spending has to have an immediate tangible payback.
That's not the point. Funding artists doesn't help our society in the ways you demand. Neither do war memorials, publicly-financed philosophy departments, or Antarctic research stations.
However, as a society we believe these pursuits to have intrinsic value. If we are to pursue them, government must help, as not having any tangible benefit, businesses won't touch these programs. And why should they? Government ought to be a manifestation of what we consider important, and when the government funds programs like these, it's working well.
I love my N95. Not only does it do everything the iPhone does (except have a touchscreen, which I don't want), tethering is a cinch via bluetooth or USB. I can install any application I want on it. Applications can actually run in the background. And it looks like Symbian might actually become an open-source OS.
Plus, it had 3G support from the start. And wifi. And VOIP. And a built-in GPS receiver. etc. etc.
Wow. I sound like an ad. I'm really just a satisfied customer.
If only that were the case at the bar. This happens far, far too often. I'd love some kind of memory aid.
[talking to hot woman] Me: "Hey. So, you're a biology nut and read Neal Stephanson in your spare time? Hey, what's your name?" Her: "Alice, and you are?" Me: "Dan. So, can you hold on a minute? I've got to run to the bathroom."
[thinking] "Must remember name is Alice" "Must remember name is Alice" "Must remember name is Alice" "Must remember name is Alice"... "Must remember name is Alice"
[comes back] Me: "So, Emily how are you doing?" Her: "Uhm, I'm Alice."
Your comment assumes that higher technology is always better.
Sometimes what you need is a hammer, not a jackhammer. I'm not convinced the massive failures all over the place that result from using lead-free solder are worth the incremental environmental benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
You should be more careful. People have died of laughter.
I imagine most of that electricity would come out as heat one way or another.
That's the Edison approach, and hardly a new idea. If it worked, we'd be using it today. There's no vast conspiracy. Large economies of scale do work, and you can't dismiss the concept of scale by wishful thinking.
As I understand it, photovoltaic panels are useful on cloudy days, while solar thermal installations only work in full sun.
You can't eliminate technology any more than you can erase knowledge. Nuclear power provides a convenient cover story for weapons production, sure, but it's not actually necessary for the program.
We must learn to deal with nuclear proliferation, and taking the ostrich approach isn't going to solve the problem.
Point. Can you use seawater, at least, as a coolant? Europe has a long coastline.
This is another example of the environmentalist's fallacy.
First, why focus on nuclear waste while ignoring all kinds of other long-lived, harmful industrial outputs from processes like semiconductor manufacturing or steel refining?
Second, the volume of nuclear waste is tiny. The waste produced by a nuclear plant in a decade might fill a house. And by reprocessing the waste, we can reduce its volume by 90%. Compared to other forms of power generation, nuclear plants are practically clean.
Third, the waste that is produced is not all that dangerous: the way radioisotopes work, the more radiation a substance produces, the shorter its half-life. Long-lived waste products will be low-radioactivity and inert.
The desert is not full of human life. When we protect the environment, we ought to do it protect human interests, not because the environment has some moral rights. When you train a cat to use a litter box, do you do it because you believe the carpet has moral rights and needs to be protected? Well, I do it so I don't have to deal with the smell.
The desert simply doesn't have much to offer man except mineral resources and wide-open tracks of land for exactly these kinds of projects.
I see what you mean about nuclear power too. But on the other hand, nuclear power is so plentiful that if, as a condition of constructing them, we have to locate them far from population centers and live with transmission losses, so be it. They're still our best bets.
I see your point. But we can mitigate the problem:
According to wikipedia, we can build turbines that reach 90% efficiency. That leaves us with 100MW of power to dissipate (not a 1GW "hair-dryer").
First of all, the output of that turbine is going to be barely warmer than the surrounding air. (Think about it: if it weren't, you could use it as the input to another turbine stage.)
Sure, there will be a lot of this output, but it won't be particularly hot. Also, I imagine you'd use a condensing turbine, so you get most of your original cooling fluid back. What's left is a large volume of warm, dry air. Lots of industrial processes produce that kind of output today, and we don't see birds dropping out of the sky.
Yes, but the scale is tiny. Look: this argument comes up so often, I'm going to give it a name:
The Environmentalist's Fallacy
It goes something like this:
In reality, X produces far less overall pollution than Y.
I've seen this argument used to oppose:
All of these are great technologies. If we're ever to make any progress, we have to learn to think past the environmentalist's fallacy.
So we're reduced to conspiracy theories? The fact is that coal does pose huge, disastrous, scientifically-verifiable problems for mankind. Decades of research have supported this conclusion. You can't simply make it go away because you'd like it not to be true. Saying coal's pollution problems are made up is about as credible as saying the moon landings were faked, or that there really is a Loch Ness monster.
By the way: I oppose coal and strongly support nuclear power.
We can't legislate CO2 out of existence, and we have no viable technology for sequestering it. Reducing the number of coal plants is far more effective than waving a magic legislative wand.
Besides, even if we could eliminate polluting outputs of the plants, coal mining is environmentally disastrous. Uranium mining demands only a small fraction of the manpower, pollution, and infrastructure for the same power output.
I think that's more an issue with a specific plant design than with the technology in general. Can't you use radiative closed-cycle cooling, like in a big automobile engine?
Fortunately, the places people tend to actually live are the places with water.
My point is that government regulation and intervention is often a good thing. Let's look at energy specifically. Coal is cheap if you ignore its huge, disastrous externalities. In an unregulated market, we'd all be using coal. Now, we can ban coal outright, but that's very disruptive. A far better idea to simply make it expensive (or equivalently, make its competitors cheaper).
In this way, government tax manipulation makes markets work better.
Good luck with your mercury-laced syphilis cure.
No. The reason hydrogen hasn't been seriously considered are that it:
As an energy transfer medium, you'd be hard-pressed to do worse that hydrogen. That there are people on this site who still believe the trite crap about hydrogen is disturbing. I hope you don't write software, or that I don't use the software you do write: the sloppy thinking you exhibit in the above post is likely to spill over into other areas of your life.
I'll concede that knowing dinosaur colors won't help us a damn bit. But not every outlet of government spending has to have an immediate tangible payback.
That's not the point. Funding artists doesn't help our society in the ways you demand. Neither do war memorials, publicly-financed philosophy departments, or Antarctic research stations.
However, as a society we believe these pursuits to have intrinsic value. If we are to pursue them, government must help, as not having any tangible benefit, businesses won't touch these programs. And why should they? Government ought to be a manifestation of what we consider important, and when the government funds programs like these, it's working well.
Yes. The battery life is atrocious. However, that can be mitigated by having lots of chargers, and by turning on power-save options.
Keep in mind, too, that that's 3-5 hours of talk time. Just sitting in my pocket, the phone's charge will last days.
We've gone from one King George to another. Escaping laws like this is the reason this country was founded!
Hey. I didn't know about the mymobilesite.com thing. Thanks for the heads up!
I love my N95. Not only does it do everything the iPhone does (except have a touchscreen, which I don't want), tethering is a cinch via bluetooth or USB. I can install any application I want on it. Applications can actually run in the background. And it looks like Symbian might actually become an open-source OS.
Plus, it had 3G support from the start. And wifi. And VOIP. And a built-in GPS receiver. etc. etc.
Wow. I sound like an ad. I'm really just a satisfied customer.
This trick also works with RAR archives.
So, all this time, my dating problems have been a race condition?
If only that were the case at the bar. This happens far, far too often. I'd love some kind of memory aid.
[talking to hot woman]
Me: "Hey. So, you're a biology nut and read Neal Stephanson in your spare time? Hey, what's your name?"
Her: "Alice, and you are?"
Me: "Dan. So, can you hold on a minute? I've got to run to the bathroom."
[thinking] ...
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
[comes back]
Me: "So, Emily how are you doing?"
Her: "Uhm, I'm Alice."
*crap*
Your comment assumes that higher technology is always better.
Sometimes what you need is a hammer, not a jackhammer. I'm not convinced the massive failures all over the place that result from using lead-free solder are worth the incremental environmental benefit.