You need to cover the "once every 20 years there's a modest shortfall and we can predict it 2-3 days out" which we are at now.
And that's because the variable sources of power discussed here don't make up much of the power supply. Crank it up to a much larger percent and you will have problems more often.
A lot of this stuff is just off-loading costs onto electricity consumers. For example, all those businesses who can't just afford to be down for hours or days just because the "once every 20 years modest shortfall" happens again and again will need beefed up backup generators and power storage - stuff the electricity provider no longer provides.
Natural processes that we happen to be extracting energy from. Just like every other form of power generation. Or water that we pumped up there (in cases of pumped storage schemes).
But having said that, I echo your concerns about the considerable variability of many of the renewable energy sources and the facile and ignorant analysis described in the article.
Well, how do you explain social engineering? Just because something has the word "engineering" in it doesn't mean it goes through the full rigamarole of professional engineering standards.
Nirmal countries have regulations and saveguards to prevent this.
Because regulations and safeguards prevent magnitude 9 earthquakes from happening. The point of regulations and safeguards is not to maintain the unicorn herd that will keep bad things from ever happening, but rather to attempt to reduce the occurrence of bad things and externalities to a level the society is willing to tolerate. Well, that and controlling peoples' behavior because your ideology mandates that the behavior is bad.
They point out that the Nuke owners are guaranteed a 11.5% return no matter how late the plant is:
Unless that plan gets canceled or scaled back in a variety of ways. Substantial construction delays make it more likely that they're not going to get that guarantee.
Who's paying for it? We all have this nasty chronic disease called "life" and we'll all die of it. Arguments like this, with no consideration of cost, have a nasty built-in slippery slope to a scenario where society can't afford everyone's promised health care.
If you and your fellow sufferers have enough nasty chronic diseases and other health conditions so that society can't both pay for them and still maintain normal infrastructure (transportation, law enforcement, emergency services, national defense, etc), then you're SOL. The only distinction is whether you're SOL before or after your society falls apart.
So you're sure that your "primary goal" is to get a living wage, rather than something else such as say, a "life"?
That's only possible by accepting a job and working under its requirements today.
And you don't acknowledge that there's more than one job out there. No job is perfect like no life is perfect. But that doesn't mean that you can't find work that fits well with what your actual priorities are.
Nor do you recognize that you can save the wealth you earn so that you have better choices in the future including not working at all.
Except that there is no coercion here. Just because you have needs doesn't mean someone has forced you to do any particular thing. That fear you mention is your fear not the fear of the employer.
Keep in mind also that another reasonable set of choices is look for new work, not necessarily in the same area or same field.
In other words, contrary to the grandparent's assertion employers and everyone else are indeed hurt by this. And it's not "constant". Just because the US system is epic fail, doesn't mean the rest of the world is good. The developed world as a whole is experiencing health care cost growth that rises faster than GDP. That should be a warning sign.
If *most* people were content with one job and a reduced income
"IF". If we assume you are absolutely right, then you're absolutely right. Amazing how that works.
The problem is that most people would not be satisfied with only working 20 hours. And inflation would consume whatever gains you think you were making here.
Of course more advanced automation would also become more cost effective - but the price of that is in free-fall already
From really expensive to somewhat less really expensive. While Moore's Law might be still driving down cost of computation in theory, it doesn't apply to other things such as hardware for actually manipulating the real world.
I seriously doubt that more than a very small percentage of those working 80+ hours a week are truly willing to work those hours.
I put that percentage at 100% in the developed world (I can't rule out slavery in the rest of the world) since that work is voluntary. "Truly willing" is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Given you could retain your same outcome but spend half as much with universal care
"Could" is not the same as "will". Since we're speaking of the US system here, we could be spending half as much now with no changes at all to the system. But we're not. One has to pay attention to what's actually going on in the system.
Then follow your desires. I really don't get the point of this thread. The world doesn't end just because some people work 80+ hours per week while others don't work at all.
I might even be more productive during those 25 hours than the normal 40 expected today.
I agree that your assessment may be right. Mentally demanding jobs, for example, tend not to be 40 hours per week jobs.
Nobody forces you to work. But of course, if you want stuff other than just not working, then you need to come up with a way to get that or have someone get it for you.
But you're happy with that not changing in over a century, because of your neuroses?
My neuroses don't matter. What do you care if I don't buy into your assertion? Slack all you want, it's nothing to me.
You're a horrid person.
I guess that's what happens when you don't work. You just can't afford a decent class of insult.
OMG you ignorant fuck. Tesla batteries are made of wonderful shit like Nickel. A fire in such a plant could loft heinous amounts of contaminates which would promptly precipitate out in the vicinity downwind of the plant.
Even in the situation you claim is possible, those "heinous amounts of contaminants" are not going to as toxic as methyl isocyanate (the primary component of the Bhopal accident's release) or in the quantities released (up to 42 metric tons).
The scientists were about evenly divided on whether they thought the effects of global climate change over the next 50 to 100 years were likely to be near catastrophic (41 percent) or moderately dangerous (44 percent). About 13 percent saw relatively little danger.
While this is a group of knowledgeable outsiders, it's a group of knowledgeable outsiders with somewhat less conflict of interest than those who study "climate change".
Giving it a label doesn't mean it exists. Note that climate models don't predict a "temperature escalator". And the graph in question only goes back to 1970 which happens to be a local minimum.
Slashdot Mirror
You need to cover the "once every 20 years there's a modest shortfall and we can predict it 2-3 days out" which we are at now.
And that's because the variable sources of power discussed here don't make up much of the power supply. Crank it up to a much larger percent and you will have problems more often.
A lot of this stuff is just off-loading costs onto electricity consumers. For example, all those businesses who can't just afford to be down for hours or days just because the "once every 20 years modest shortfall" happens again and again will need beefed up backup generators and power storage - stuff the electricity provider no longer provides.
You won't have hurricane force winds both off the coast of MASS and SC at the same time, ever.
Yea, right. Uncommon != never.
And what put the water into the dam?
Natural processes that we happen to be extracting energy from. Just like every other form of power generation. Or water that we pumped up there (in cases of pumped storage schemes). But having said that, I echo your concerns about the considerable variability of many of the renewable energy sources and the facile and ignorant analysis described in the article.
Well, how do you explain social engineering? Just because something has the word "engineering" in it doesn't mean it goes through the full rigamarole of professional engineering standards.
Nirmal countries have regulations and saveguards to prevent this.
Because regulations and safeguards prevent magnitude 9 earthquakes from happening. The point of regulations and safeguards is not to maintain the unicorn herd that will keep bad things from ever happening, but rather to attempt to reduce the occurrence of bad things and externalities to a level the society is willing to tolerate. Well, that and controlling peoples' behavior because your ideology mandates that the behavior is bad.
They point out that the Nuke owners are guaranteed a 11.5% return no matter how late the plant is:
Unless that plan gets canceled or scaled back in a variety of ways. Substantial construction delays make it more likely that they're not going to get that guarantee.
As a state we get accused of trying to do the impossible, but I can't stress that we really are trying, and we often get damn close.
And when California finally finishes its act of economic suicide, it'll be a great warning to the rest of the world should they choose to heed it.
if you've got a nasty chronic disease, you're SOL
Who's paying for it? We all have this nasty chronic disease called "life" and we'll all die of it. Arguments like this, with no consideration of cost, have a nasty built-in slippery slope to a scenario where society can't afford everyone's promised health care.
If you and your fellow sufferers have enough nasty chronic diseases and other health conditions so that society can't both pay for them and still maintain normal infrastructure (transportation, law enforcement, emergency services, national defense, etc), then you're SOL. The only distinction is whether you're SOL before or after your society falls apart.
That's only possible by accepting a job and working under its requirements today.
And you don't acknowledge that there's more than one job out there. No job is perfect like no life is perfect. But that doesn't mean that you can't find work that fits well with what your actual priorities are.
Nor do you recognize that you can save the wealth you earn so that you have better choices in the future including not working at all.
Except that there is no coercion here. Just because you have needs doesn't mean someone has forced you to do any particular thing. That fear you mention is your fear not the fear of the employer.
Keep in mind also that another reasonable set of choices is look for new work, not necessarily in the same area or same field.
you keep saying the exact opposite of reality
I'm not the one confusing unsubstantiated computer models with reality.
and no, 1970 was not some local minimum
I looked before I posted.
everyone pays for it in their taxes
In other words, contrary to the grandparent's assertion employers and everyone else are indeed hurt by this. And it's not "constant". Just because the US system is epic fail, doesn't mean the rest of the world is good. The developed world as a whole is experiencing health care cost growth that rises faster than GDP. That should be a warning sign.
If *most* people were content with one job and a reduced income
"IF". If we assume you are absolutely right, then you're absolutely right. Amazing how that works.
The problem is that most people would not be satisfied with only working 20 hours. And inflation would consume whatever gains you think you were making here.
Of course more advanced automation would also become more cost effective - but the price of that is in free-fall already
From really expensive to somewhat less really expensive. While Moore's Law might be still driving down cost of computation in theory, it doesn't apply to other things such as hardware for actually manipulating the real world.
I seriously doubt that more than a very small percentage of those working 80+ hours a week are truly willing to work those hours.
I put that percentage at 100% in the developed world (I can't rule out slavery in the rest of the world) since that work is voluntary. "Truly willing" is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Given you could retain your same outcome but spend half as much with universal care
"Could" is not the same as "will". Since we're speaking of the US system here, we could be spending half as much now with no changes at all to the system. But we're not. One has to pay attention to what's actually going on in the system.
What has changed in six years aside from a modest amount of backtracking by the IPCC?
Like keeping your job through the next layoff, where you'll be asked to work more hours?
What's so important about keeping your job, if you don't have any priorities other than working less? Losing that job furthers your goals.
Who's paying for that? Employers are the obvious first target. Employees are the obvious second target. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
I'd rather work less
Then follow your desires. I really don't get the point of this thread. The world doesn't end just because some people work 80+ hours per week while others don't work at all.
I might even be more productive during those 25 hours than the normal 40 expected today.
I agree that your assessment may be right. Mentally demanding jobs, for example, tend not to be 40 hours per week jobs.
I get the impression you have an opinion. Maybe you should just state what that opinion is.
No, I mean people. What's the point of pushing this phony argument? We already know lots of people choose to work more for a variety of reasons.
And because of that, we have to keep working?
Nobody forces you to work. But of course, if you want stuff other than just not working, then you need to come up with a way to get that or have someone get it for you.
But you're happy with that not changing in over a century, because of your neuroses?
My neuroses don't matter. What do you care if I don't buy into your assertion? Slack all you want, it's nothing to me.
You're a horrid person.
I guess that's what happens when you don't work. You just can't afford a decent class of insult.
OMG you ignorant fuck. Tesla batteries are made of wonderful shit like Nickel. A fire in such a plant could loft heinous amounts of contaminates which would promptly precipitate out in the vicinity downwind of the plant.
Even in the situation you claim is possible, those "heinous amounts of contaminants" are not going to as toxic as methyl isocyanate (the primary component of the Bhopal accident's release) or in the quantities released (up to 42 metric tons).
The scientists were about evenly divided on whether they thought the effects of global climate change over the next 50 to 100 years were likely to be near catastrophic (41 percent) or moderately dangerous (44 percent). About 13 percent saw relatively little danger.
While this is a group of knowledgeable outsiders, it's a group of knowledgeable outsiders with somewhat less conflict of interest than those who study "climate change".
Giving it a label doesn't mean it exists. Note that climate models don't predict a "temperature escalator". And the graph in question only goes back to 1970 which happens to be a local minimum.