there are many places in the US where there will never be a wind farm
True enough, but if only one 10,000th of the best percent of the land available for wind farms in the U.S. had turbines, then there would be so much overcapacity that we would need no other kinds of power plants or any hydrogen storage tanks.
It just occured to me that the way to start a generation starship would be to arrange for a nearby asteroid to get a huge gravity assist from a local planet, then send a 1-g ship to accelerate and dock behind it, dig in, and mount some telescopes on the other side.
Which hard science fiction has the best generation starships?
As far as I'm concerned, the only thing nukes are good for is generation starships.
Compare [renewables] to the health and environmental effects of coal, oil, and natural gas....
Excellent point. The problem is, unsubsidized coal could cost less than unsubsidized wind for the next several years unless the environmental externalities are properly amortized (and we all know what happens to U.S. Treasury Secretaries who those kinds of "fuzzy math" commonly accepted practices!)
We have a 400-year supply of coal. It needs to last us for the next 400,000 years. The OMB can't even see far enough ahead to factor in the baby boomers.
The $0.04/kwh is the unsubsidized cost for new installations of modern wind turbines, and includes the amortized cost of maintenance. However, I have no qualms quoting the average subsidized cost in the (about $0.035 in the U.S. and less than $0.03 in California), because if a jurisdiction decides to implement a subsidy, they have every right and justification to do so.
According to the CPUC information that comes with my electric bill every few months, nuclear in California costs about $0.14/kwh, not including the decommissioning surcharge. The CATO Institute can not be trusted on energy policy, as they're in bed with the industry lobby and firmly believe that "research" should be a for-profit endeavor, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Look at what they were saying about tobacco in the 1980s.
Do you realize that the nuclear industry has a blanket insurance policy from the U.S. congress? Without the Price-Anderson Act subsidy, the insurance on nuclear would make it way more expensive than even solar. I've heard figures in the $0.45/kwh range. So be careful if you want to stop talking about subsidies.
You also haven't adaquately addressed the reliablity problems of wind
What reliability problems? There aren't any. That's why wind is the fastest-growing source, and has been for the past six years, not counting a jump in natural gas at the tail end of the economic boom. Do you think all the other types of plants are going to go away? There is plenty of backup power on-demand for periods of widespread calm winds already attached to the grid.
nor have you mentioned that many hundreds of facilites would have to be built to replace existing power plants.
The number is 1.5 million wind turbines to completely power the entire U.S. As a matter of complexity, two street lights take more time and effort to install than one wind turbine.
If you had 10 nuke plants for California, then if one goes down it's rolling blackout time. The inherent redundancy of wind turbines avoids that problem.
The only reason there is a huge deficit is because Democrats are unwilling to cut things that really are not needed
At present, the Republicans have control of the House, Senate and the presidency. They have increased the deficit to about $44 trillion when health care and pensions for the baby-boomers and the recently activated soldiers are amortized in. Three years ago there was a surplus. Since then, the stock market lost $7 trillion and more than 2 million voters have lost their jobs.
unfortunately, the Democrats will do something like "because we have such a huge deficit, we can't extend unemployment benefits". Just to get people mad at Bush.
On the contrary, both of the recent unemployment benefit extensions were authored by Democrats.
If you... get ["a long spiralling tunnel of destruction with the sociallist agenda..."], what will the next generation push for in order to one-up the previous generations rebellion?
This recent Mothers' Day, Sweden was voted the best place in the world to be a mother, while the U.S. was 11th. Do you think Sweden is socialist? Their tax rate as a proportion of GDP is about twice ours, but they have low unemployment (4%, 2002 [CIA]) and inflation (2.2%) and plenty of money for education, which correlates with increased levels of respect for all human rights, decreased crime rates, and increased property values. Their taxpayers love their tax rates because they have reasonable progressivity. If you're making $500,000 per year, who cares if half of it goes to pay taxes for universal health care, universal day care, and free college tuition? What percentage of the Swedish youth are rebelling against their government? If incarceration rates are any measure, I think you will find a lot more in the U.S., where more than 1 in 100 are in jail.
the democrats will not allow their goal to be finished until society is ready for what they want to push on it next (such as pedophilia)
I believe you are mistaken. Which plank of the platform are you referring to?
Howard Dean thinks that the U.S. military shouldn't be strong
No, he thinks it shouldn't be much stronger than it needs to be, as it is now, and I hope it thinks that it shouldn't be wasting money trying to keep track of all your purchases at the neglect of building better systems to help all people learn additional languages.
Also, the Linguistic Data Consortium sent their catalog update out yesterday. As usual, there are no new corpi of people attempting to read a language
as they are acquiring it, at any age.
I've seen... reports on the California situation which claim that wind is one of the most expensive ways to generate power.
Please either post a citation or retract that potentially very dangerous FUD claim.
What's "social cost"?
For example, many jursidictions offer a $0.01/kwh to $0.03/kwh subsidy for renewables, which brings the cost in much of the US including California (at least last year) under $0.03/kwh.
... the "average" European site right now is an IDEAL site. Windmills are now almost exclusively placed in ideal locations, and we build more and more windmills we'll start using less than ideal sites and the efficency will drop dramatically.
In the U.S., we have not even used one 10,000th of the very best percent of land available for wind farms, because when we get there, we will have installed so much overcapacity that we will not need any other kinds of electrical generation or storage cells.
If the tax cuts do as they should, Bush's deficit could go away
Oh, brother.
Reagan's budget director,
David Stockman, called trickle-down economics "unbridled greed."
President Bush's father called it "voodoo economics" when he ran
against Reagan, but was forced by the popularity of Steve Forbes'
ultra-regressive flat tax to make a promise about not raising taxes
that he knew he couldn't keep. President Bush is now in the same
predicament that his father was in. He fired Paul O'Neil for using
accrual accounting which adds the amortized cost of the health care
and pensions for the hundreds of thousands of newly-activated
soldiers to the deficit, because it made the deficit look five
times larger than with the cost accounting method used by the OMB.
You want to know what's going away? Jobs in the Bush economy.
If you care to take a look, you might be interested in the 6% tax increase planned for 2005. On Table S-1, row 11, reciepts as a percent of GDP it jumps from 17.0 to 18.0 percent right after the election.
We, the people, know far better how to appropriately spend our money than the damnable politicians who only spend to keep their own jobs.
Sweden has about twice our tax rate as a percentage of GDP, but
voters there are happy with their progressive tax structure which
removes great burdens from the working class, grows their middle
class, gives them plenty of money for education, keeps their
unemployment low (4% in 2002), keeps their inflation in
check (2.2% in '02), and gives them a high enough standard of living
to be judged the best place to be a mother (the U.S. was the 11th.)
Businesses in Sweden (e.g. Ericson, Ikea, Volvo) aren't significantly
harmed by their top-bracket tax rates, if robust international
sales are any measure. Sweden also has robust small businesses.
They don't give a shit if we have one.
A year from November, Bush is going to wish the three million who lost their jobs had somewhere other than the polling place to go. That is why it is so important to make sure the Democrats pick a good candidate in the primaries.
You do realize that by percentage [of GDP], the deficit is smaller than it has been in years, right?
Wrong. The interest required to maintain the national debt only looks small right now because intrest rates, as set by the Federal Open Market Committee are at an all time low. And since O'Niell was fired for trying to amortize, the Fed is pissed off.
Perhaps you remember what the "conservative" Fed did in the months leading up to the 2000 election? Perhaps you noticed that they had to give away almost all their interest-lowering power in a failing attempt to make up for their political meddling? Bush filed his papers this month. It's time to pay the piper.
I'm not saying wind doesn't work - obviously it does - but that it's not a viable source of power for everyone, everywhere.
Granted, if you aren't near or able to hook to the grid, and it's very calm when you live, then wind isn't for you. However, nuclear is just plain expensive when compared to other kinds of renewables, such as hydroelectric, too.
Those 14,000 acres will end up distributed all over the nation, clustered around the windy areas of most counties.
Birds avoid big spinning things. They can even hear the new, quiet, turbines in the dark. See Peter Asmus's book, Reaping the Wind for more information about birds.
Have you considered what drawing that kind of energy out of the wind might do to the weather?
Yes, it will mitigate about one hundredth of the solar heat we have recently been forcing to stay in the troposphere which has been causing stronger storms and mean windspeeds over the past decade.
In fact, storms have been becomming noticably stronger over the past couple decades, along with mean windspeeds, so think of it simply as mitigation of global warming.
The original post suggests that of the 1.5 million windmills needed, only 150,000 of those need to run at peak power to provide the necessary power. As near as I can figure, that's almost a 1000% surplus! So, now your $0.03 looks closer to $0.30
On the contrary, wind power is currently about $0.035/kwh in the U.S. with modern turbines. They aren't much more than swivel-mouned generators with propellor blades on a pole. They are cheap and easy to maintain, and just as subject to economies of scale as any other easily mass-produced product.
On top of all that, the reality is that the wind farms in California have been killing birds and costing at least 2x as much as the rest of our power from the minute they went in.
Nonsense. Birds naturally avoid big spinning white things, even in the dark. Read the book Reaping the Wind for details.
The Altamont Pass wind field is decades old. You should drive through the Riverside County wind fields sometime. The first thing that you will notice is that they are almost all in service, and they don't make any noise.
Cost of the land isn't factored into your equation.
On the contrary, the 3 cents/kwh figure for wind includes real estate costs. The 12 cents/kwh for nuclear does not include the external waste disposal costs.
The 14,000 acre area is enough wind power for the enitre United States of America using today's most modern 2.5 megawatt turbines with syncronized directionality. The land below can usually be used for farming or grazing.
The surplus and battery banks necessary are insignificant. Although the wind stops and starts, it is usually blowing somewhere on the grid. Existing grid generators will probably be phased out over time as they are replaced with surplus turbines and PEM-electrolysis fuel cell hydrogen storage tanks.
I'm aware of two economic methods of generating H2. The least economic is from cracking water using electricity (the topic of this article). The most economic is by cracking natural gas - this is the method used by everybody I know of in the chemical industry.
Consumption of fossil fuels is very rapidly becomming uneconomic. Not only do they pollute, but we have already used more than half our petroleum. Perhaps you have noticed the oil wars that used to be impending?
Proton exchange membrane hydrogen electrolysis systems are about 50% efficient.
The most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under $0.03/kwh. Therefore, wind-based electrolyzed hydrogen already costs less than nuclear-based hydrogen.
The most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under $0.03/kwh. Therefore, wind-based electrolyzed hydrogen already costs less than nuclear-based hydrogen.
The most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under $0.03/kwh.
Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres. If trends continue, by this time next year, wind will be approaching two cents/kwh, placing it firmly under European coal, and in two years it will be on parity with dirty U.S. coal, which is presently running around 1.5 cents.
...
do you know Caffeine is more poisonous than Plutonium?
No, I do not know anything of the sort. Please post a citation to the LD50 (the dose at which there is a 50% probability of causal fatality per kilogram of body weight) for each. I think you will find that caffeine does not accumulate in the bones as heavy metals do, and it does not emit leukemia-causing radiation
once it is there.
Being against nuclear power of any form whatsoever is blindingly dumb
To the extent that most people prefer their nuclear power at least eight light-seconds away, that is true.
However, I think you will find that the most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under US$0.03/kwh. Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres. If trends continue, by this time next year, wind will be approaching two cents/kwh, placing it firmly under European coal, and in two years it will be on parity with dirty U.S. coal, which is presently running around 1.5 cents.
You wanted to know what the left thinks. I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this.
Slashdot Mirror
True enough, but if only one 10,000th of the best percent of the land available for wind farms in the U.S. had turbines, then there would be so much overcapacity that we would need no other kinds of power plants or any hydrogen storage tanks.
Which hard science fiction has the best generation starships?
I like Fruedenthal's LINCOS, too.
Excellent point. The problem is, unsubsidized coal could cost less than unsubsidized wind for the next several years unless the environmental externalities are properly amortized (and we all know what happens to U.S. Treasury Secretaries who those kinds of "fuzzy math" commonly accepted practices!)
We have a 400-year supply of coal. It needs to last us for the next 400,000 years. The OMB can't even see far enough ahead to factor in the baby boomers.
According to the CPUC information that comes with my electric bill every few months, nuclear in California costs about $0.14/kwh, not including the decommissioning surcharge. The CATO Institute can not be trusted on energy policy, as they're in bed with the industry lobby and firmly believe that "research" should be a for-profit endeavor, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Look at what they were saying about tobacco in the 1980s.
Do you realize that the nuclear industry has a blanket insurance policy from the U.S. congress? Without the Price-Anderson Act subsidy, the insurance on nuclear would make it way more expensive than even solar. I've heard figures in the $0.45/kwh range. So be careful if you want to stop talking about subsidies.
What reliability problems? There aren't any. That's why wind is the fastest-growing source, and has been for the past six years, not counting a jump in natural gas at the tail end of the economic boom. Do you think all the other types of plants are going to go away? There is plenty of backup power on-demand for periods of widespread calm winds already attached to the grid.
The number is 1.5 million wind turbines to completely power the entire U.S. As a matter of complexity, two street lights take more time and effort to install than one wind turbine.
If you had 10 nuke plants for California, then if one goes down it's rolling blackout time. The inherent redundancy of wind turbines avoids that problem.
On the contrary, both of the recent unemployment benefit extensions were authored by Democrats.
This recent Mothers' Day, Sweden was voted the best place in the world to be a mother, while the U.S. was 11th. Do you think Sweden is socialist? Their tax rate as a proportion of GDP is about twice ours, but they have low unemployment (4%, 2002 [CIA]) and inflation (2.2%) and plenty of money for education, which correlates with increased levels of respect for all human rights, decreased crime rates, and increased property values. Their taxpayers love their tax rates because they have reasonable progressivity. If you're making $500,000 per year, who cares if half of it goes to pay taxes for universal health care, universal day care, and free college tuition? What percentage of the Swedish youth are rebelling against their government? If incarceration rates are any measure, I think you will find a lot more in the U.S., where more than 1 in 100 are in jail.
I believe you are mistaken. Which plank of the platform are you referring to?
No, he thinks it shouldn't be much stronger than it needs to be, as it is now, and I hope it thinks that it shouldn't be wasting money trying to keep track of all your purchases at the neglect of building better systems to help all people learn additional languages.
This year's one day seminar on Integrating Speech Technology in Language Learning has been cancelled. The InSTIL seminar was all that had been left of what was once a funded U.S. research program to use speech recognition to help people learn to read. However, over the past few years the budget of the Interagency Educational Research Initiative has been slashed and the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership program has been ZEROED. The IERI and LAAP programs were created to deal with DARPA funding deficencies, but DARPA has not taken up the slack for speech recognition in language instruction. Fewer U.S. polyglots will have a far greater impact on intelligence-gathering efforts than bandaids like Project Babylon or any of the DARPA advanced speech recognition programs can possibly provide. Please join me in asking John Poindexter and his advisory board and NIST to help get this vital funding back in the budget.
Also, the Linguistic Data Consortium sent their catalog update out yesterday. As usual, there are no new corpi of people attempting to read a language as they are acquiring it, at any age.
Please either post a citation or retract that potentially very dangerous FUD claim.
For example, many jursidictions offer a $0.01/kwh to $0.03/kwh subsidy for renewables, which brings the cost in much of the US including California (at least last year) under $0.03/kwh.
In the U.S., we have not even used one 10,000th of the very best percent of land available for wind farms, because when we get there, we will have installed so much overcapacity that we will not need any other kinds of electrical generation or storage cells.
www.protonenergy.com/index.php/html/energysystems
Oh, brother.
Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, called trickle-down economics "unbridled greed." President Bush's father called it "voodoo economics" when he ran against Reagan, but was forced by the popularity of Steve Forbes' ultra-regressive flat tax to make a promise about not raising taxes that he knew he couldn't keep. President Bush is now in the same predicament that his father was in. He fired Paul O'Neil for using accrual accounting which adds the amortized cost of the health care and pensions for the hundreds of thousands of newly-activated soldiers to the deficit, because it made the deficit look five times larger than with the cost accounting method used by the OMB.
You want to know what's going away? Jobs in the Bush economy.
You haven't seen the FY 2004 budget yet have you?
If you care to take a look, you might be interested in the 6% tax increase planned for 2005. On Table S-1, row 11, reciepts as a percent of GDP it jumps from 17.0 to 18.0 percent right after the election.
Sweden has about twice our tax rate as a percentage of GDP, but voters there are happy with their progressive tax structure which removes great burdens from the working class, grows their middle class, gives them plenty of money for education, keeps their unemployment low (4% in 2002), keeps their inflation in check (2.2% in '02), and gives them a high enough standard of living to be judged the best place to be a mother (the U.S. was the 11th.) Businesses in Sweden (e.g. Ericson, Ikea, Volvo) aren't significantly harmed by their top-bracket tax rates, if robust international sales are any measure. Sweden also has robust small businesses.
A year from November, Bush is going to wish the three million who lost their jobs had somewhere other than the polling place to go. That is why it is so important to make sure the Democrats pick a good candidate in the primaries.
Do you know how to store hydrogen with proton-exchange membrane-based electrolysis and then convert it back to water in a fuel cell?
And Kerry wonders why he can't raise money.
Wrong. The interest required to maintain the national debt only looks small right now because intrest rates, as set by the Federal Open Market Committee are at an all time low. And since O'Niell was fired for trying to amortize, the Fed is pissed off.
Perhaps you remember what the "conservative" Fed did in the months leading up to the 2000 election? Perhaps you noticed that they had to give away almost all their interest-lowering power in a failing attempt to make up for their political meddling? Bush filed his papers this month. It's time to pay the piper.
Granted, if you aren't near or able to hook to the grid, and it's very calm when you live, then wind isn't for you. However, nuclear is just plain expensive when compared to other kinds of renewables, such as hydroelectric, too.
Thank you!
It's been so long since I've had a nuke plant debate that I forgot how far away the good one was.
They should name these card after presidents Bush. You can run up a huge deficit without touching anything.
Birds avoid big spinning things. They can even hear the new, quiet, turbines in the dark. See Peter Asmus's book, Reaping the Wind for more information about birds.
Yes, it will mitigate about one hundredth of the solar heat we have recently been forcing to stay in the troposphere which has been causing stronger storms and mean windspeeds over the past decade.
Considering how much solar heat we've recently been forcing to stay trapped in the troposphere, the needs of the entire U.S. power grid is less than one hundredth of that.
In fact, storms have been becomming noticably stronger over the past couple decades, along with mean windspeeds, so think of it simply as mitigation of global warming.
On the contrary, wind power is currently about $0.035/kwh in the U.S. with modern turbines. They aren't much more than swivel-mouned generators with propellor blades on a pole. They are cheap and easy to maintain, and just as subject to economies of scale as any other easily mass-produced product.
Nonsense. Birds naturally avoid big spinning white things, even in the dark. Read the book Reaping the Wind for details.
The Altamont Pass wind field is decades old. You should drive through the Riverside County wind fields sometime. The first thing that you will notice is that they are almost all in service, and they don't make any noise.
On the contrary, the 3 cents/kwh figure for wind includes real estate costs. The 12 cents/kwh for nuclear does not include the external waste disposal costs.
The 14,000 acre area is enough wind power for the enitre United States of America using today's most modern 2.5 megawatt turbines with syncronized directionality. The land below can usually be used for farming or grazing.
The surplus and battery banks necessary are insignificant. Although the wind stops and starts, it is usually blowing somewhere on the grid. Existing grid generators will probably be phased out over time as they are replaced with surplus turbines and PEM-electrolysis fuel cell hydrogen storage tanks.
Consumption of fossil fuels is very rapidly becomming uneconomic. Not only do they pollute, but we have already used more than half our petroleum. Perhaps you have noticed the oil wars that used to be impending?
Proton exchange membrane hydrogen electrolysis systems are about 50% efficient. The most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under $0.03/kwh. Therefore, wind-based electrolyzed hydrogen already costs less than nuclear-based hydrogen.
Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres.
I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this. As if it wasn't inevitable anyway.
True, yet, proton exchange membrane hydrogen electrolysis systems are about 50% efficient.
The most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under $0.03/kwh. Therefore, wind-based electrolyzed hydrogen already costs less than nuclear-based hydrogen.
I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this. As if it wasn't inevitable anyway.
Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres. If trends continue, by this time next year, wind will be approaching two cents/kwh, placing it firmly under European coal, and in two years it will be on parity with dirty U.S. coal, which is presently running around 1.5 cents.
I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this.
No, I do not know anything of the sort. Please post a citation to the LD50 (the dose at which there is a 50% probability of causal fatality per kilogram of body weight) for each. I think you will find that caffeine does not accumulate in the bones as heavy metals do, and it does not emit leukemia-causing radiation once it is there.
To the extent that most people prefer their nuclear power at least eight light-seconds away, that is true.
However, I think you will find that the most heavily subsidized and poorly-insured nuclear power runs about US$0.12 per kilowatt hour, whereas wind power is already under US$0.03/kwh. Plus, the new wind turbine models can power the entire U.S. in only 14,000 acres. If trends continue, by this time next year, wind will be approaching two cents/kwh, placing it firmly under European coal, and in two years it will be on parity with dirty U.S. coal, which is presently running around 1.5 cents.
You wanted to know what the left thinks. I need to check Howard Dean's web site to make sure he knows all this.