And if wind turbines stop the jet stream, the whole Earth will freeze over.
See? I can come up with absurd sci-fi scenarios too. Again, you're simply playing up fear, uncertainty, and doubt with nightmare fantasies which do not reflect reality. It's a transparent appeal to emotion which doesn't match any real world data. It's anti-science, in precisely the same way the anti-vaxxer movement is anti-science. What if vaccines cause autism? But all the chemicals? Brain swelling! Someone somewhere could possibly get hurt!
As if the vaccines aren't demonstrably saving tens of millions of lives. But hey, if we can get just a little doubt to creep in about something scary...
>You can't make that claim until all of the waste has cooled. Until then, it can still kill people.
I can relate the fact that after decades of real-world use, nuclear power plants have resulted in fewer human deaths per TWh than any other source. All you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt about things you're afraid of because you don't understand them. You are incorrectly calculating risk based on flawed emotional responses.
We have nuclear power plants for the same reason we have military conflict? That doesn't make any sense at all. You're just throwing random words out there as if it's some sort of deeply insightful commentary. The reasons behind military conflicts are extremely varied; from ancient tribal disputes to religious strife to resource scarcity and dozens of others. None of those are why we have constructed and continued to construct nuclear power plants. We have them because there is a market/need for electrical power and nuclear power plants offer a safe, efficient, relatively inexpensive (once constructed) source. And the broken window fallacy? Complete non-sequitur. You're saying we build nuclear power plants because of a belief that destroying something and rebuilding it spurs economic growth? Do you have any idea what you're even saying? Because it's complete nonsense.
Here's what the Congressional Budget Office says about the cost-effectiveness in the United States (where nuclear regulation is very high and where fuel reprocessing is barred; both of which work against nuclear power):
"[T]he longer-term competitiveness of nuclear technology as a source of electricity is likely to depend on policymakers' decisions regarding carbon dioxide constraints. If such constraints are implemented, nuclear power will probably enjoy a cost advantage over conventional fossil-fuel alternatives as a source of electricity-generating capacity. Today, even the anticipation that carbon dioxide emissions will be priced is a factor being weighed in investors' decisions about new base-load capacity."
So the CBO puts the cost of nuclear - even under the less than ideal conditions present in the US - as cheaper than fossil fuels once even limited cost externalities relating to climate change are accounted for. Yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to build a nuclear power plant. Yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to operate a nuclear power plant throughout its lifetime. And yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to decommission a nuclear power plant. That's their job. And if nuclear power plants are competitive with fossil fuel plants in the United States, they're even better positioned in the rest of the world where fuel reprocessing is allowed which reduces waste product storage requirements and overall fuel consumption and cost.
So in addition to being the safest form of electrical power generation in the history of mankind, nuclear is also cost-effective. Still waiting for a reasoned argument against it.
If it's not cost efficient, why do 450 nuclear power plants exist worldwide with another 60 under construction? (https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm)
If it's not safe, why is its mortality rate the lowest of every kind of power plant ever constructed? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)
Nuclear is already the safest form of electrical power generation ever implemented by mankind. And that's with all the greed, shortcuts, extreme risk taking, etc. factored into it. Nearly every nuclear plant ever built simply operated day after day, providing safe, clean power from the moment it achieved criticality to the final day of service. The few examples of problems you can think of either didn't kill anyone or caused so few deaths that it doesn't begin to compare to any other source. People die setting up wind turbines and solar installations (particularly rooftop). People die building hydro dams and many more die when those dams fail. Every source has risk and every source has a cost. Thus far, with decades of experience, nuclear has the lowest risk to human life - as implemented - compared to any other option. And its designs have only become far safer.
Refusing to back nuclear due to safety concerns is based purely on a provably inaccurate assessment of risk. Provably with 65 years of real-world data. It works and it's safe. Is it perfect? Of course not. It's just closer to perfect than any other option we've got.
A small positive void coefficient like what you see in the CANDU plants is fine when paired with passive safety systems. The reaction build-up is slow and small enough that it'll never present a significant threat. The issue with the RBMK design was that it had a huge positive void coefficient coupled with virtually no passive safety mechanism. Everything had to be turned on and operating correctly or the reaction would very quickly run out of control. The obvious difference being that with a CANDU plant (and they've made continuous iterative design improvements for the CANDU series over decades), a total plant failure will result in the plant running for a while before shutting itself down with some minor damage to the equipment, fuel, etc. With the RBMK series - at least, pre-retrofit - a total plant failure was an immediate meltdown and massive explosions, with loss of containment and long term ecological damage. However, after Chernobyl, all existing RBMK plants were modified to make them far safer. And any modern design - CANDU or otherwise - is going to be incredibly safe and effective.
Personally, I think the CANDU series is fantastic and should be mass produced throughout the world. Here in the US, we need to change the law barring fuel reprocessing. That will help quite a bit with the spent fuel storage problem as well. The CANDU series is passively safe, highly efficient, resistant to fuel weaponization, and incredibly flexible. There's potential there for a cost-effective thorium cycle. And at that point, there's no more concern over conflict-zone mining or ever running out of fuel.
When you push on the brake pedal, you're actually operating a piston that pushes on brake fluid, and that fluid pushes on the pistons in the brake calipers. You have vacuum assist to make it easier, but even with the engine not running you can still brake (granted it takes much more force to do it).
So my anti-lock brakes and traction control system don't take my inputs, run them against sensory inputs, and then output braking controls to the physical brakes based on (if everything's working) what will enable me to maintain control over the vehicle? Because I'm pretty sure the ABS controller has the ability to ignore my braking inputs.
And only one or two car models have steering by wire, almost all cars still have mechanical rack and pinion steering, with either hydraulic or electrical assist. Again if the engine cuts out it will take more effort to steer but it's still working.
Sure, and when the steering assist malfunctions in such a way that it's "assisting" in the opposite direction from where I'm trying to turn the wheel? Or randomly "assisting" in different directions? There's still sensors that detect the torque on the wheel and feed that input into a controller, and all that still connects into any electronic stability control system, which can easily vary the assist in such a way that steering becomes practically impossible. Even a simpler malfunction such as the steering assist randomly turning on and off at the wrong time (such that you go from under-torquing to over-torquing the steering wheel because you never know how hard to steer) would easily make even small adjustments turn into extreme risk scenarios.
I don't know where you got your information, but it's moslty wrong.
It's coming from the manufacturers of cars. Modern cars have a lot of technology with a lot of control over how the car responds to the driver's input. Considering how few things need to go wrong for a modern car to become uncontrollable at even moderate speeds, it's a wonder we don't hear more about accidents where the onboard computer systems malfunctioned. That's a testament to the level of engineering going into the code and failure modes of that equipment.
If the vehicle you're driving now was built in the past 10-20 years, chances are it's already drive-by-wire. You can press the brake pedal all you like, but if the traction control/electronic stability control/anti-lock brakes/etc decide not to apply any braking action due to a malfunction, you've got no brakes. And you can ease up off the accelerator pedal all you like, but if the throttle control sensor/cruise control/etc decide to throw gas into the engine, you're going to speed up right quick. And you'd best pray that steering assist doesn't malfunction in such a way that your steering becomes impossible to predict or you'll have next to no control over that either.
Accelerator, brakes, steering; all computer controlled. You've been at the mercy of computer malfunctions for years. The fact that you've still got a steering wheel to grip and pedals to press while you speed towards death in an uncontrollable malfunctioning car is giving you just enough false hope to let you believe you have some control. Tesla's just taking the next logical step. That step was and is inevitable.
I think the 2014 Bundy Standoff showed that the government is very much afraid of its armed citizens. The government has nothing to fear from one armed individual. It's the other ~50 million that hold the government to account and help ensure we maintain a restrained, Constitutional republic. All the people scared of President Trump should be thankful all those armed people (including police officers and members of the US military) will never allow him to become a king, no matter how much he might like that. He's the President and has only the powers provided to the President by the US Constitution until someone else is lawfully elected to the office, he's lawfully removed from office, or he hits the term limits as set by the 22nd Amendment. He would not be allowed to become president for life. It's been that way since the formation of the United States. See also: Federalist 46:
Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.
Who the hell cares about his intent? He downloaded information mistakenly posted to a publicly available system. Unless he's trying to sell state secrets to the Russians, which still doesn't criminalize the act of downloading the stuff, there's absolutely nothing he's done wrong. To say otherwise is to say you can criminalize viewing information that the government posts on billboards by the highway if the government mistakenly puts up the wrong information on the billboards.
Preservation of human life should be your first priority; whatever is required for that (which, admittedly, is typically going to involve reduction in kinetic energy, but will also often involve modification of the path of said kinetic energy). This brings up a really interesting possibility for self-driving cars as the technology improves: the ability for the car to take into account its own safety features (crumple zones, airbags, etc) and the safety features of various things it could crash into in the event of an unavoidable wreck when deciding how to proceed. For example, a direct head-on collision is vastly less dangerous for human occupants than offset head-on collisions, so two autonomous vehicles could potentially negotiate with one another to steer directly into each other (totally counter-intuitive) if circumstances made that the option most likely to preserve life.
Where might this come into play? Every been on a fairly narrow, windy mountain road? (think coastal mountain highways in California as an example) What happens when an object (be it falling rocks or a reckless cyclist) suddenly drops into the roadway in a completely unpredictable way and there's no guardrail or shoulder on the cliff side of the road? Humans will typically panic in such a situation and react in unpredictable ways, potentially sending someone off the road into an uncontrolled rollover situation or even running over the cyclist. Two autonomous vehicles may mutually decide and communicate to one another in a fraction of a second that by braking to just below the steerable friction threshold while turning directly into one another, odds are extreme high that a simple fender-bender will be the extent of the damage, both vehicles will remain fully operational, and no human beings will sustain any serious injuries. Still an accident, but a nice, controlled wreck where everyone leaves unharmed. Should those circumstance be between a car and a motorcycle, perhaps the autonomous car decides that braking hard while steering slightly into the cliff wall best preserves human life.
In any case, whatever the challenges are that exist today, the naysayers will inevitably lose in the end because humans are incredibly poorly adapted for operating motor vehicles. I say this as someone who loves to drive and will probably continue to drive manually so long as it's legal to do so. But if computers aren't already better overall drivers than humans, they absolutely will be within a decade or less.
The difference with guns - especially the assault types obtainable in the US - is that they have no legitimate use. You would have to define killing other people as legitimate for you to be able to use that argument with guns.
Self defense is not a legitimate use? You don't believe in self defense? Just lay down and die?
*a stationary object camouflaged with its backdrop.
The semi-trailer sitting still was a colored in such a way as to effectively mask it from view due its matching up against the sky behind it. Based on the available data, it's likely the total number of traffic fatalities that day worldwide were slightly reduced because of the Tesla self-drive. You only hear wall-to-wall news coverage of the failure, but the Internet contains vast examples (many with video documentation) demonstrating the Tesla self-drive feature avoiding a serious and potentially fatal accident.
If your point is that the Tesla self-drive feature is imperfect, it's absurd up against the point that human beings are terrible drivers due in part to their near complete lack of accurate risk assessment. Combined with the fact that our higher reasoning centers cease functioning under high-stress situations and you have all the makings of disaster. Humans are terrible drivers and tens of thousands die every year in the US because of it. Driving is one of the most dangerous activities any human in the western world does on purpose.
Simple answer: if the car goes and does something the driver didn't tell it to do and anything goes wrong (gets a flat, goes off the road, hits a guard rail, etc - because pulling off the road throws you into a whole new set of variable and unpredictable conditions), there's a high risk of liability issues. If the guy tells the car "drive" and the car does its best to do that while repeatedly warning the operator to pay attention and be ready to take over at any time and something goes wrong, well that's on the operator.
In essence, the safest bet is always to keep the trust and the responsibility on the individual operating the vehicle. Once you start making decisions for that operator (such as refusing to drive anymore and pulling over at an arbitrary spot), you're muddying the waters as to who is in charge of that vehicle and who bears responsibility for what happens with it.
And when the left wants to smoke weed, they suddenly remember states' rights and the 10th Amendment, but when they don't like what the local board of education is doing or don't like that people are allowed to own and carry firearms, that memory fades into a cloud of pipe smoke.
Both sides do plenty of picking and choosing about when and where they respect the rights of states. Conservatives tend to more frequently side with states' rights over the Federal government because that fits with their fundamental principles, but obviously isn't applied in all cases. Let's be honest about the fact that nobody is 100% consistent with their principles in all cases, though that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out hypocrisy. Just don't get too holier-than-thou about it.
If he filmed any sex acts with a 17 year old, he's done. Even if he didn't film them, kindly locate for me a jury who will provide anything less than the maximum available penalties as soon as the words "minor child", "fraud", "sex", and "rape" are uttered together.
Not only are there legitimate criticisms about the interpretations of measurements, but even of the measurements themselves. Prior to the 1920s, most stations around the world providing temperature measurements weren't staffed with trained personnel recording the data. In many cases, the measurements weren't taken at any regular intervals, but rather when someone had free time in between performing other work to do so. In fact, it was often a janitor or other completely untrained staff member recording temperatures because it wasn't viewed as a critical task and being with a degree or two was good enough. This began to change around the 1920s and 30s, especially as radio and television began to take hold and the sciences around climate and weather began to develop.
Accurate instruments didn't even become available until the late 1800s, so any direct measurements taken prior 'til then are highly suspect regardless of who was in charge of taking them. This makes most of the direct measurements prior to ~1930 extremely limited and any direct measurements prior to ~1880 just about utterly useless. It isn't until the 1960s that you really start getting measurements useful to a discussion about 1C of variability in climate worldwide. Earlier climate data is even worse, as that primarily comes from proxy measurements. Two problems there: 1) the proxies lack the precision to be useful in a discussion of 2-3C of climate variation and 2) the proxies don't agree with one another, nor do any of them agree with direct measurements.
Statistical smoothing is used to work around this, and that's where we get into what you stated about problems with interpretations of the measurements and the way in which mathematical principles are applied. You can blur your way out of very minor errors and largely leave the data intact, but you can't do so when your error bars are orders of magnitude greater than the trend you're seeking. At that point, by the time you've blurred away the errors, any reliable data hidden in there has long since been turned to mush.
None of this is to say we shouldn't be working hard on climate science. Rather, it's to say we need to do better work on the subject and stop pretending we understand our world's climate or its history. None of this is to say we shouldn't be working hard on shifting from technologies that pollute and poison our environment to cleaner and better technologies. Rather, it's to say we shouldn't jump to absurd doomsday conclusions and take radical actions like geo-engineering "solutions" to problems we can't yet say for certain even exist.
Good science is honest about its faults; about what it does know, what it should know, and what it can't know. Good science starts with good data, strict methodology, open presentation of work for review, and the ability to accept valid criticism. Unfortunately, climate science has been tribalized into an "us vs them" situation unlike virtually any other science. There are great debates in science about the validity of things like string theory, quantum loop gravity, etc, but those arguments are based on the underlying math and how well it explains what we've actually observed thus far in our universe. The debate around climate science is mostly crap. It's two sides screaming "WE'RE RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG!" at each other. I'm not surprised that there's a group that will always refuse to believe humans have any impact on the climate of our world because we have a group (and it's largely the same group) that refuses to believe evolution is a real thing despite the fact that we can observe it happening in front of us. No, what surprises (and saddens) me is that there's a group that believes in AGW with a religious fervor on par with the worst of the zealots. Questioning the data or the science behind their dogmatic beliefs is an attack on their very being, and they respond by spewing hate. It's unfortunate, because there are extremely important questions to answer and there needs to be real work done on answering them rather than merely confirming beliefs.
The politics of Russia are not the politics of China.
Russia can get away with it because Russians don't really have much in the way of standards and are satisfied to live in shit so long as they can thumb their nose at the rest of the world and get drunk. The Chinese people are far more demanding for the sake of their children. Their acquiesce is entirely contingent on their guarantee that anything they endure ensures a better, brighter future for the next generation. Hence, Putin can push old school Soviet style foreign policy that creates terrible woes for the Russian people, but China has to walk a very fine line wherein they don't burn the bridges that keep them growing.
And China is incredibly smart about it. Look at their activities throughout Africa: they're sealing up deals with the worst of the worst leaders in the region to roll in and extract every natural resource worth anything and they're even bringing in their own people to do it. And they're refurbing old Russian naval equipment so that when some of those leaders threaten to renege on the deals (or new leaders rise to power and murder the older leadership, then threaten to renege on the deals), they can project power to enforce their rights. That's long term, strategic, ruthless thinking and frankly it's the easiest way to get what you want in many parts of the world. They use their money setting themselves up for a future where they control vast amounts of precious resources and we burn ours trying to force peace in places where people don't want it (or us).
And that's why China doesn't want or need to dump our debt. That's short-term, feel-good, short-sighted thinking. That isn't how China rolls. China plays the long game and they do whatever they have to do to rig the game so they win.
That would crush their economy far worse than ours.
Our government survives recessions. If they don't show significant growth each year (and much of that is fueled by foreign investment), their people would no longer tolerate the draconian restrictions under which they live. When you talk with ordinary Chinese people, they know all about the freedoms the rest of the world has, but they also know that most established Western nations who have those freedoms see 1-2% annual economic growth versus 6-8% (after removing China's fudge factor for all reported data) at home. So they tolerate their government for as long as that government can deliver huge growth.
We should be so lucky as to see China dump our debt. We'd have a few years of tough times. They'd have a bloody and drawn out revolution.
We're talking about a tectonic shift in an industry which effectively constructed the middle class of this country and upon which the entire concept of the American dream is based. One could literally finish some level of schooling (in many cases, not even high school until much later) and get one job that you kept your entire life and which paid enough to buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood, put a car in the driveway, modern appliances throughout, and buy everything needed for a wife and 2, 3, even 5 or 6 kids. More often than not, most or all of those kids did the same thing: finished some level of schooling and went to work doing the same job as dad or something quite similar. Entire towns and even cities were built around this model. Generations of families were built around this model. And not for a tiny number of niche workers in some remote and isolated part of the country: this was the backbone of the United States' economy.
I'm not disagreeing with the substance of what you've said: changes are happening and the old models are rapidly losing their economic viability in most cases. But until the political leadership recognizes the immense cultural and even psychological impact of these changes and provides a specific, actionable, immediately tangible path to a positive outcome, any promise to preserve what has been for a long time is going to get a ton of traction. And when I say immediately tangible, I mean to say it has to be actively happening and visible. These are not the types to be swayed by a 12-point plan of some possible future concept. They need to witness their friends and neighbors actually transitioning on the path to whatever the model may be (perhaps construction and maintenance of these automated factories as part of it?) before they'll be convinced.
So either show them a path forward or promise them a path backward. I don't think anything else is going to resonate with them and I don't think Democrats can win much of anything without them. If state and local Republicans figure this out before Democrats do, watch for a big shift there too. And once they're out of power, those state and local Democrats aren't going to have much ability to put a path forward into practice. I fear Republicans may be perfectly happy to just keep making promises of a return to the past, since they're free, quick, easy, and (at least for now) work.
Trump ran businesses; he didn't set US trade policy and he didn't pass free trade agreements. Did he outsource jobs himself? Absolutely, though his response to that has been that he acted as any businessman would - reacting to changes in the marketplace which occurred (at least in part) because of US trade policy and free trade agreements. Did Trump ship some blue collar jobs overseas? Certainly. Was he "instrumental" in the process? No, just one of many business leaders who did it to save a buck. Does that make him a saint? Of course not.
As for the rust belt workers getting that they were being lied to, there's two pieces there. First, Trump was the only candidate in the general election even talking to them. Whether he was feeding them lies or not, the other candidate was arrogantly explaining to other audiences how great free trade (and all the outsourcing that comes with it) was for America even as blue collar rust belt workers were losing jobs in droves and scared shitless that they (and the families depending on them) were going to be out in the street any day now. Trump may have fed them a lie about saving their jobs, but at least he talked to them and didn't try to "elite-splain" to them why losing the only jobs they've ever known and that put food on their tables was a good thing.
Second, none of us can yet say for certain that Trump was telling them lies. We can assert that even if he reverses US trade policy, there's enough inertia in play to continue bleeding blue collar jobs and the jobs that left won't come back. We can further assert that even if outsourcing were somehow halted that automation would still put a sizable portion of those rust belt workers out of the job all the same. But the fact is that we won't know for sure until a) we see what he even does (and what Congress is willing to go along with) and b) what impact those actions actually have.
And I'm not saying you must or even should "give Trump a chance"; I'm simply commenting on what got us here. And if Democrats want to have any hope whatsoever of retaking much of anything in 2020, they better stop painting the rust belt with a broad brush of racism and sexism accusations and start figuring out what they're going to offer those voters on the economics front to win them back. If this election should have taught the Democratic party anything, it's that a large part of their critical core voters is made up of people who don't vote blindly for "D", but rather who vote for whomever they think will help them keep putting food on the table. And that whomever can include a real asshole if it's their only option, as evidenced by all the lifelong Democrats who showed up at the polls in November and cast a vote for Trump.
Democrats/liberals/progressives need to stop calling them stupid, naive, racist, sexist, and all the other crap flying around and start coming up with a way to address their needs. These are hard-working people watching their entire way of life crumble before their eyes. Help them or lose them, along with every election until they're all dead generations from now.
Still waiting for Van Jones to openly, publicly apologize to those voters he painted with the broad brush of being part of some ridiculous "whitelash" on election night. Based on the CNN series where he went out and spoke with those rust belt workers, I do think he actually gets it now that for most of them, this was entirely about putting food on the table. Yet his words still stand, and so long as he allows them to stand uncorrected, he's a lousy hypocrite.
Clinton said generally (rarely ever actually talking directly to rust belt workers because her campaign took those lifelong Democrat voters for granted) that manufacturing jobs were gone forever and that was a good thing because trade is good for everyone. There was some lip service done to suggest retraining and better jobs were coming at some point, but nothing remotely specific. That was her basic message on the subject and she didn't spend a whole lot of time discussing it.
Trump talked directly to rust belt blue collar workers, telling them that decades of trade policy - much of it championed by the Clintons - was rewarding and accelerating moving American manufacturing jobs overseas at the expense of the American worker, but that he would reverse that policy and stem the flow and even come up with ways to bring jobs like that back to the US.
Somehow we act surprised that so many of the second, third, even fourth generation blue collar rust belt workers who spent decades doing the one job they know, the one job their fathers and grandfathers knew, the job that put food on the table and a roof over their family's head, who always voted for Democrats because Democrats were the union worker's best ally, who have watched their friends and family members lose those great jobs in droves, who've watched entire factories and factory towns disappear before their eyes, who sit at home every night wondering how long they have before their only means of earning a living wage disappears - we're surprised that these voters abandoned the candidate who told them it's better this way and voted for the candidate who promised to fix it.
Or we just call them racists and sexists because we're pissy our candidate didn't win. Either way, it's total bullshit. Rust belt blue collar workers have voted solidly Democrat for generations because Democrats helped them put food on the table. Their entire way of life is now under threat, in no small part because of the work of Democrats (and to be fair, Republicans too!) on things like trade policy. It should be no surprise they'd get on board with just about anyone who will throw them a lifeline, especially when the other side is only offering to throw them a boat anchor.
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And if wind turbines stop the jet stream, the whole Earth will freeze over.
See? I can come up with absurd sci-fi scenarios too. Again, you're simply playing up fear, uncertainty, and doubt with nightmare fantasies which do not reflect reality. It's a transparent appeal to emotion which doesn't match any real world data. It's anti-science, in precisely the same way the anti-vaxxer movement is anti-science. What if vaccines cause autism? But all the chemicals? Brain swelling! Someone somewhere could possibly get hurt!
As if the vaccines aren't demonstrably saving tens of millions of lives. But hey, if we can get just a little doubt to creep in about something scary...
>You can't make that claim until all of the waste has cooled. Until then, it can still kill people.
I can relate the fact that after decades of real-world use, nuclear power plants have resulted in fewer human deaths per TWh than any other source. All you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt about things you're afraid of because you don't understand them. You are incorrectly calculating risk based on flawed emotional responses.
We have nuclear power plants for the same reason we have military conflict? That doesn't make any sense at all. You're just throwing random words out there as if it's some sort of deeply insightful commentary. The reasons behind military conflicts are extremely varied; from ancient tribal disputes to religious strife to resource scarcity and dozens of others. None of those are why we have constructed and continued to construct nuclear power plants. We have them because there is a market/need for electrical power and nuclear power plants offer a safe, efficient, relatively inexpensive (once constructed) source. And the broken window fallacy? Complete non-sequitur. You're saying we build nuclear power plants because of a belief that destroying something and rebuilding it spurs economic growth? Do you have any idea what you're even saying? Because it's complete nonsense.
Here's what the Congressional Budget Office says about the cost-effectiveness in the United States (where nuclear regulation is very high and where fuel reprocessing is barred; both of which work against nuclear power):
"[T]he longer-term competitiveness of nuclear technology as a source of electricity is likely to depend on policymakers' decisions regarding carbon dioxide constraints. If such constraints are implemented, nuclear power will probably enjoy a cost advantage over conventional fossil-fuel alternatives as a source of electricity-generating capacity. Today, even the anticipation that carbon dioxide emissions will be priced is a factor being weighed in investors' decisions about new base-load capacity."
So the CBO puts the cost of nuclear - even under the less than ideal conditions present in the US - as cheaper than fossil fuels once even limited cost externalities relating to climate change are accounted for. Yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to build a nuclear power plant. Yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to operate a nuclear power plant throughout its lifetime. And yes, the CBO knows how much it costs to decommission a nuclear power plant. That's their job. And if nuclear power plants are competitive with fossil fuel plants in the United States, they're even better positioned in the rest of the world where fuel reprocessing is allowed which reduces waste product storage requirements and overall fuel consumption and cost.
So in addition to being the safest form of electrical power generation in the history of mankind, nuclear is also cost-effective. Still waiting for a reasoned argument against it.
If it's not cost efficient, why do 450 nuclear power plants exist worldwide with another 60 under construction? (https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm)
If it's not safe, why is its mortality rate the lowest of every kind of power plant ever constructed? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents)
Nuclear is already the safest form of electrical power generation ever implemented by mankind. And that's with all the greed, shortcuts, extreme risk taking, etc. factored into it. Nearly every nuclear plant ever built simply operated day after day, providing safe, clean power from the moment it achieved criticality to the final day of service. The few examples of problems you can think of either didn't kill anyone or caused so few deaths that it doesn't begin to compare to any other source. People die setting up wind turbines and solar installations (particularly rooftop). People die building hydro dams and many more die when those dams fail. Every source has risk and every source has a cost. Thus far, with decades of experience, nuclear has the lowest risk to human life - as implemented - compared to any other option. And its designs have only become far safer.
Refusing to back nuclear due to safety concerns is based purely on a provably inaccurate assessment of risk. Provably with 65 years of real-world data. It works and it's safe. Is it perfect? Of course not. It's just closer to perfect than any other option we've got.
A small positive void coefficient like what you see in the CANDU plants is fine when paired with passive safety systems. The reaction build-up is slow and small enough that it'll never present a significant threat. The issue with the RBMK design was that it had a huge positive void coefficient coupled with virtually no passive safety mechanism. Everything had to be turned on and operating correctly or the reaction would very quickly run out of control. The obvious difference being that with a CANDU plant (and they've made continuous iterative design improvements for the CANDU series over decades), a total plant failure will result in the plant running for a while before shutting itself down with some minor damage to the equipment, fuel, etc. With the RBMK series - at least, pre-retrofit - a total plant failure was an immediate meltdown and massive explosions, with loss of containment and long term ecological damage. However, after Chernobyl, all existing RBMK plants were modified to make them far safer. And any modern design - CANDU or otherwise - is going to be incredibly safe and effective.
Personally, I think the CANDU series is fantastic and should be mass produced throughout the world. Here in the US, we need to change the law barring fuel reprocessing. That will help quite a bit with the spent fuel storage problem as well. The CANDU series is passively safe, highly efficient, resistant to fuel weaponization, and incredibly flexible. There's potential there for a cost-effective thorium cycle. And at that point, there's no more concern over conflict-zone mining or ever running out of fuel.
When you push on the brake pedal, you're actually operating a piston that pushes on brake fluid, and that fluid pushes on the pistons in the brake calipers. You have vacuum assist to make it easier, but even with the engine not running you can still brake (granted it takes much more force to do it).
So my anti-lock brakes and traction control system don't take my inputs, run them against sensory inputs, and then output braking controls to the physical brakes based on (if everything's working) what will enable me to maintain control over the vehicle? Because I'm pretty sure the ABS controller has the ability to ignore my braking inputs.
And only one or two car models have steering by wire, almost all cars still have mechanical rack and pinion steering, with either hydraulic or electrical assist. Again if the engine cuts out it will take more effort to steer but it's still working.
Sure, and when the steering assist malfunctions in such a way that it's "assisting" in the opposite direction from where I'm trying to turn the wheel? Or randomly "assisting" in different directions? There's still sensors that detect the torque on the wheel and feed that input into a controller, and all that still connects into any electronic stability control system, which can easily vary the assist in such a way that steering becomes practically impossible. Even a simpler malfunction such as the steering assist randomly turning on and off at the wrong time (such that you go from under-torquing to over-torquing the steering wheel because you never know how hard to steer) would easily make even small adjustments turn into extreme risk scenarios.
I don't know where you got your information, but it's moslty wrong.
It's coming from the manufacturers of cars. Modern cars have a lot of technology with a lot of control over how the car responds to the driver's input. Considering how few things need to go wrong for a modern car to become uncontrollable at even moderate speeds, it's a wonder we don't hear more about accidents where the onboard computer systems malfunctioned. That's a testament to the level of engineering going into the code and failure modes of that equipment.
If the vehicle you're driving now was built in the past 10-20 years, chances are it's already drive-by-wire. You can press the brake pedal all you like, but if the traction control/electronic stability control/anti-lock brakes/etc decide not to apply any braking action due to a malfunction, you've got no brakes. And you can ease up off the accelerator pedal all you like, but if the throttle control sensor/cruise control/etc decide to throw gas into the engine, you're going to speed up right quick. And you'd best pray that steering assist doesn't malfunction in such a way that your steering becomes impossible to predict or you'll have next to no control over that either.
Accelerator, brakes, steering; all computer controlled. You've been at the mercy of computer malfunctions for years. The fact that you've still got a steering wheel to grip and pedals to press while you speed towards death in an uncontrollable malfunctioning car is giving you just enough false hope to let you believe you have some control. Tesla's just taking the next logical step. That step was and is inevitable.
I think the 2014 Bundy Standoff showed that the government is very much afraid of its armed citizens. The government has nothing to fear from one armed individual. It's the other ~50 million that hold the government to account and help ensure we maintain a restrained, Constitutional republic. All the people scared of President Trump should be thankful all those armed people (including police officers and members of the US military) will never allow him to become a king, no matter how much he might like that. He's the President and has only the powers provided to the President by the US Constitution until someone else is lawfully elected to the office, he's lawfully removed from office, or he hits the term limits as set by the 22nd Amendment. He would not be allowed to become president for life. It's been that way since the formation of the United States. See also: Federalist 46:
Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.
You're welcome.
Who the hell cares about his intent? He downloaded information mistakenly posted to a publicly available system. Unless he's trying to sell state secrets to the Russians, which still doesn't criminalize the act of downloading the stuff, there's absolutely nothing he's done wrong. To say otherwise is to say you can criminalize viewing information that the government posts on billboards by the highway if the government mistakenly puts up the wrong information on the billboards.
Maybe in China.
Preservation of human life should be your first priority; whatever is required for that (which, admittedly, is typically going to involve reduction in kinetic energy, but will also often involve modification of the path of said kinetic energy). This brings up a really interesting possibility for self-driving cars as the technology improves: the ability for the car to take into account its own safety features (crumple zones, airbags, etc) and the safety features of various things it could crash into in the event of an unavoidable wreck when deciding how to proceed. For example, a direct head-on collision is vastly less dangerous for human occupants than offset head-on collisions, so two autonomous vehicles could potentially negotiate with one another to steer directly into each other (totally counter-intuitive) if circumstances made that the option most likely to preserve life.
Where might this come into play? Every been on a fairly narrow, windy mountain road? (think coastal mountain highways in California as an example) What happens when an object (be it falling rocks or a reckless cyclist) suddenly drops into the roadway in a completely unpredictable way and there's no guardrail or shoulder on the cliff side of the road? Humans will typically panic in such a situation and react in unpredictable ways, potentially sending someone off the road into an uncontrolled rollover situation or even running over the cyclist. Two autonomous vehicles may mutually decide and communicate to one another in a fraction of a second that by braking to just below the steerable friction threshold while turning directly into one another, odds are extreme high that a simple fender-bender will be the extent of the damage, both vehicles will remain fully operational, and no human beings will sustain any serious injuries. Still an accident, but a nice, controlled wreck where everyone leaves unharmed. Should those circumstance be between a car and a motorcycle, perhaps the autonomous car decides that braking hard while steering slightly into the cliff wall best preserves human life.
In any case, whatever the challenges are that exist today, the naysayers will inevitably lose in the end because humans are incredibly poorly adapted for operating motor vehicles. I say this as someone who loves to drive and will probably continue to drive manually so long as it's legal to do so. But if computers aren't already better overall drivers than humans, they absolutely will be within a decade or less.
The difference with guns - especially the assault types obtainable in the US - is that they have no legitimate use.
You would have to define killing other people as legitimate for you to be able to use that argument with guns.
Self defense is not a legitimate use? You don't believe in self defense? Just lay down and die?
*a stationary object camouflaged with its backdrop.
The semi-trailer sitting still was a colored in such a way as to effectively mask it from view due its matching up against the sky behind it. Based on the available data, it's likely the total number of traffic fatalities that day worldwide were slightly reduced because of the Tesla self-drive. You only hear wall-to-wall news coverage of the failure, but the Internet contains vast examples (many with video documentation) demonstrating the Tesla self-drive feature avoiding a serious and potentially fatal accident.
If your point is that the Tesla self-drive feature is imperfect, it's absurd up against the point that human beings are terrible drivers due in part to their near complete lack of accurate risk assessment. Combined with the fact that our higher reasoning centers cease functioning under high-stress situations and you have all the makings of disaster. Humans are terrible drivers and tens of thousands die every year in the US because of it. Driving is one of the most dangerous activities any human in the western world does on purpose.
Simple answer: if the car goes and does something the driver didn't tell it to do and anything goes wrong (gets a flat, goes off the road, hits a guard rail, etc - because pulling off the road throws you into a whole new set of variable and unpredictable conditions), there's a high risk of liability issues. If the guy tells the car "drive" and the car does its best to do that while repeatedly warning the operator to pay attention and be ready to take over at any time and something goes wrong, well that's on the operator.
In essence, the safest bet is always to keep the trust and the responsibility on the individual operating the vehicle. Once you start making decisions for that operator (such as refusing to drive anymore and pulling over at an arbitrary spot), you're muddying the waters as to who is in charge of that vehicle and who bears responsibility for what happens with it.
And when the left wants to smoke weed, they suddenly remember states' rights and the 10th Amendment, but when they don't like what the local board of education is doing or don't like that people are allowed to own and carry firearms, that memory fades into a cloud of pipe smoke.
Both sides do plenty of picking and choosing about when and where they respect the rights of states. Conservatives tend to more frequently side with states' rights over the Federal government because that fits with their fundamental principles, but obviously isn't applied in all cases. Let's be honest about the fact that nobody is 100% consistent with their principles in all cases, though that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out hypocrisy. Just don't get too holier-than-thou about it.
If he filmed any sex acts with a 17 year old, he's done. Even if he didn't film them, kindly locate for me a jury who will provide anything less than the maximum available penalties as soon as the words "minor child", "fraud", "sex", and "rape" are uttered together.
"between the ages of 17 and..."
Thanks for playing: go directly to jail. Goodbye!
Not only are there legitimate criticisms about the interpretations of measurements, but even of the measurements themselves. Prior to the 1920s, most stations around the world providing temperature measurements weren't staffed with trained personnel recording the data. In many cases, the measurements weren't taken at any regular intervals, but rather when someone had free time in between performing other work to do so. In fact, it was often a janitor or other completely untrained staff member recording temperatures because it wasn't viewed as a critical task and being with a degree or two was good enough. This began to change around the 1920s and 30s, especially as radio and television began to take hold and the sciences around climate and weather began to develop.
Accurate instruments didn't even become available until the late 1800s, so any direct measurements taken prior 'til then are highly suspect regardless of who was in charge of taking them. This makes most of the direct measurements prior to ~1930 extremely limited and any direct measurements prior to ~1880 just about utterly useless. It isn't until the 1960s that you really start getting measurements useful to a discussion about 1C of variability in climate worldwide. Earlier climate data is even worse, as that primarily comes from proxy measurements. Two problems there: 1) the proxies lack the precision to be useful in a discussion of 2-3C of climate variation and 2) the proxies don't agree with one another, nor do any of them agree with direct measurements.
Statistical smoothing is used to work around this, and that's where we get into what you stated about problems with interpretations of the measurements and the way in which mathematical principles are applied. You can blur your way out of very minor errors and largely leave the data intact, but you can't do so when your error bars are orders of magnitude greater than the trend you're seeking. At that point, by the time you've blurred away the errors, any reliable data hidden in there has long since been turned to mush.
None of this is to say we shouldn't be working hard on climate science. Rather, it's to say we need to do better work on the subject and stop pretending we understand our world's climate or its history. None of this is to say we shouldn't be working hard on shifting from technologies that pollute and poison our environment to cleaner and better technologies. Rather, it's to say we shouldn't jump to absurd doomsday conclusions and take radical actions like geo-engineering "solutions" to problems we can't yet say for certain even exist.
Good science is honest about its faults; about what it does know, what it should know, and what it can't know. Good science starts with good data, strict methodology, open presentation of work for review, and the ability to accept valid criticism. Unfortunately, climate science has been tribalized into an "us vs them" situation unlike virtually any other science. There are great debates in science about the validity of things like string theory, quantum loop gravity, etc, but those arguments are based on the underlying math and how well it explains what we've actually observed thus far in our universe. The debate around climate science is mostly crap. It's two sides screaming "WE'RE RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG!" at each other. I'm not surprised that there's a group that will always refuse to believe humans have any impact on the climate of our world because we have a group (and it's largely the same group) that refuses to believe evolution is a real thing despite the fact that we can observe it happening in front of us. No, what surprises (and saddens) me is that there's a group that believes in AGW with a religious fervor on par with the worst of the zealots. Questioning the data or the science behind their dogmatic beliefs is an attack on their very being, and they respond by spewing hate. It's unfortunate, because there are extremely important questions to answer and there needs to be real work done on answering them rather than merely confirming beliefs.
They'll still only get it 70% right, but it'll cost 10% as much to produce.
The politics of Russia are not the politics of China.
Russia can get away with it because Russians don't really have much in the way of standards and are satisfied to live in shit so long as they can thumb their nose at the rest of the world and get drunk. The Chinese people are far more demanding for the sake of their children. Their acquiesce is entirely contingent on their guarantee that anything they endure ensures a better, brighter future for the next generation. Hence, Putin can push old school Soviet style foreign policy that creates terrible woes for the Russian people, but China has to walk a very fine line wherein they don't burn the bridges that keep them growing.
And China is incredibly smart about it. Look at their activities throughout Africa: they're sealing up deals with the worst of the worst leaders in the region to roll in and extract every natural resource worth anything and they're even bringing in their own people to do it. And they're refurbing old Russian naval equipment so that when some of those leaders threaten to renege on the deals (or new leaders rise to power and murder the older leadership, then threaten to renege on the deals), they can project power to enforce their rights. That's long term, strategic, ruthless thinking and frankly it's the easiest way to get what you want in many parts of the world. They use their money setting themselves up for a future where they control vast amounts of precious resources and we burn ours trying to force peace in places where people don't want it (or us).
And that's why China doesn't want or need to dump our debt. That's short-term, feel-good, short-sighted thinking. That isn't how China rolls. China plays the long game and they do whatever they have to do to rig the game so they win.
That would crush their economy far worse than ours.
Our government survives recessions. If they don't show significant growth each year (and much of that is fueled by foreign investment), their people would no longer tolerate the draconian restrictions under which they live. When you talk with ordinary Chinese people, they know all about the freedoms the rest of the world has, but they also know that most established Western nations who have those freedoms see 1-2% annual economic growth versus 6-8% (after removing China's fudge factor for all reported data) at home. So they tolerate their government for as long as that government can deliver huge growth.
We should be so lucky as to see China dump our debt. We'd have a few years of tough times. They'd have a bloody and drawn out revolution.
We're talking about a tectonic shift in an industry which effectively constructed the middle class of this country and upon which the entire concept of the American dream is based. One could literally finish some level of schooling (in many cases, not even high school until much later) and get one job that you kept your entire life and which paid enough to buy a decent house in a decent neighborhood, put a car in the driveway, modern appliances throughout, and buy everything needed for a wife and 2, 3, even 5 or 6 kids. More often than not, most or all of those kids did the same thing: finished some level of schooling and went to work doing the same job as dad or something quite similar. Entire towns and even cities were built around this model. Generations of families were built around this model. And not for a tiny number of niche workers in some remote and isolated part of the country: this was the backbone of the United States' economy.
I'm not disagreeing with the substance of what you've said: changes are happening and the old models are rapidly losing their economic viability in most cases. But until the political leadership recognizes the immense cultural and even psychological impact of these changes and provides a specific, actionable, immediately tangible path to a positive outcome, any promise to preserve what has been for a long time is going to get a ton of traction. And when I say immediately tangible, I mean to say it has to be actively happening and visible. These are not the types to be swayed by a 12-point plan of some possible future concept. They need to witness their friends and neighbors actually transitioning on the path to whatever the model may be (perhaps construction and maintenance of these automated factories as part of it?) before they'll be convinced.
So either show them a path forward or promise them a path backward. I don't think anything else is going to resonate with them and I don't think Democrats can win much of anything without them. If state and local Republicans figure this out before Democrats do, watch for a big shift there too. And once they're out of power, those state and local Democrats aren't going to have much ability to put a path forward into practice. I fear Republicans may be perfectly happy to just keep making promises of a return to the past, since they're free, quick, easy, and (at least for now) work.
Trump ran businesses; he didn't set US trade policy and he didn't pass free trade agreements. Did he outsource jobs himself? Absolutely, though his response to that has been that he acted as any businessman would - reacting to changes in the marketplace which occurred (at least in part) because of US trade policy and free trade agreements. Did Trump ship some blue collar jobs overseas? Certainly. Was he "instrumental" in the process? No, just one of many business leaders who did it to save a buck. Does that make him a saint? Of course not.
As for the rust belt workers getting that they were being lied to, there's two pieces there. First, Trump was the only candidate in the general election even talking to them. Whether he was feeding them lies or not, the other candidate was arrogantly explaining to other audiences how great free trade (and all the outsourcing that comes with it) was for America even as blue collar rust belt workers were losing jobs in droves and scared shitless that they (and the families depending on them) were going to be out in the street any day now. Trump may have fed them a lie about saving their jobs, but at least he talked to them and didn't try to "elite-splain" to them why losing the only jobs they've ever known and that put food on their tables was a good thing.
Second, none of us can yet say for certain that Trump was telling them lies. We can assert that even if he reverses US trade policy, there's enough inertia in play to continue bleeding blue collar jobs and the jobs that left won't come back. We can further assert that even if outsourcing were somehow halted that automation would still put a sizable portion of those rust belt workers out of the job all the same. But the fact is that we won't know for sure until a) we see what he even does (and what Congress is willing to go along with) and b) what impact those actions actually have.
And I'm not saying you must or even should "give Trump a chance"; I'm simply commenting on what got us here. And if Democrats want to have any hope whatsoever of retaking much of anything in 2020, they better stop painting the rust belt with a broad brush of racism and sexism accusations and start figuring out what they're going to offer those voters on the economics front to win them back. If this election should have taught the Democratic party anything, it's that a large part of their critical core voters is made up of people who don't vote blindly for "D", but rather who vote for whomever they think will help them keep putting food on the table. And that whomever can include a real asshole if it's their only option, as evidenced by all the lifelong Democrats who showed up at the polls in November and cast a vote for Trump.
Democrats/liberals/progressives need to stop calling them stupid, naive, racist, sexist, and all the other crap flying around and start coming up with a way to address their needs. These are hard-working people watching their entire way of life crumble before their eyes. Help them or lose them, along with every election until they're all dead generations from now.
Still waiting for Van Jones to openly, publicly apologize to those voters he painted with the broad brush of being part of some ridiculous "whitelash" on election night. Based on the CNN series where he went out and spoke with those rust belt workers, I do think he actually gets it now that for most of them, this was entirely about putting food on the table. Yet his words still stand, and so long as he allows them to stand uncorrected, he's a lousy hypocrite.
Clinton said generally (rarely ever actually talking directly to rust belt workers because her campaign took those lifelong Democrat voters for granted) that manufacturing jobs were gone forever and that was a good thing because trade is good for everyone. There was some lip service done to suggest retraining and better jobs were coming at some point, but nothing remotely specific. That was her basic message on the subject and she didn't spend a whole lot of time discussing it.
Trump talked directly to rust belt blue collar workers, telling them that decades of trade policy - much of it championed by the Clintons - was rewarding and accelerating moving American manufacturing jobs overseas at the expense of the American worker, but that he would reverse that policy and stem the flow and even come up with ways to bring jobs like that back to the US.
Somehow we act surprised that so many of the second, third, even fourth generation blue collar rust belt workers who spent decades doing the one job they know, the one job their fathers and grandfathers knew, the job that put food on the table and a roof over their family's head, who always voted for Democrats because Democrats were the union worker's best ally, who have watched their friends and family members lose those great jobs in droves, who've watched entire factories and factory towns disappear before their eyes, who sit at home every night wondering how long they have before their only means of earning a living wage disappears - we're surprised that these voters abandoned the candidate who told them it's better this way and voted for the candidate who promised to fix it.
Or we just call them racists and sexists because we're pissy our candidate didn't win. Either way, it's total bullshit. Rust belt blue collar workers have voted solidly Democrat for generations because Democrats helped them put food on the table. Their entire way of life is now under threat, in no small part because of the work of Democrats (and to be fair, Republicans too!) on things like trade policy. It should be no surprise they'd get on board with just about anyone who will throw them a lifeline, especially when the other side is only offering to throw them a boat anchor.