I was not talking about a cherry picked set of years, I was talking over a much longer term.
The ONLY "much longer term" where gasoline prices at beginning and end were ~$4.00/gal is 1918-2013.
Note that over MY lifetime (more than 50 years), gasoline prices have increased by ~60% higher than inflation (and during most of that period, gasoline prices were lower than they were when I was born).
Why would the sun all of a sudden start coming up at 3-4am?? With or without DST sun comes up here about 6am +/-
Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice, ~50 degrees north latitude, daylight lasts about 16 hours. So 4AM to 8PM, sans DST, or 5AM to 9PM with DST.
That's just a bit north of the Canada/US border, south of the UK, northern France, southern Germany or Poland...
Northern Scotland will have pre-4AM sunrises for several months (and 3AM sunrise, 9PM sunset on the Solstice), much of Norway and the other Scandinavian countries, ditto. And Alaska, of course.
Mind you, with how cheap electricity is now, and with how much interior lighting is used anyways, it doesn't matter anymore and hasn't for decades, but it made sense at one point.
It was never about saving electricity - it was about keeping pubs open after people got off work during the blackouts imposed by the War....
Only a politician would think you could cut a foot from one end of a blanket, sew it to the other end, and have a bigger blanket.
Of course, the whole idea got going as an attempt to keep the pubs open a bit longer during the War - they had to shutdown at dark as part of the blackout.
From what I understand, there are small towns near Lafayette, LA where they have two Mardi Gras parades every year; one for white people, and one for "people of color."
And in New Orleans we have Zulu and Rex doing parades on Mardi Gras. One group is "people of color", one isn't.
No, it's not that way because we're racist assholes (some of us are, no doubt, but check out the people actually going to both those parades sometime), but because of TRADITION!
Simply making it to a second consecutive term of democracy is a pretty big acheivement
No, they're not "making it to a consecutive term of democracy".
What they are doing is actually reaching the Constitutional limit on the maximum period between elections (five years, unless a vote of no confidence brings down the government first).
Remember, "Government" means something slightly different in Parliamentary systems than it does in the USA.
Congress can't cut it's pay because no one can live on less than $200,000 a year.
535 assorted Congresscritters @ ~$200K per year costs us ~$110M per year.
Which is ~0.01% of the annual deficit. In other word, trivial.
Note, by the by, that reducing Congressional salaries would make Congress even more a place for the 1% - costs money to maintain two residences (one of which is in an expensive place - DC)....
As to raising taxes and/or reducing the military, neither is going to have a huge long-term effect on the deficit. The real deficit driver for the foreseeable future is Medicare spending (which is expected to be the majority of the budget within a couple decades).
Note that Medicare/Medicaid(Fed only)/SSA is ALREADY the majority of the budget - it's not going to get any better without a painful revamp of the way we do things.
And fossil fuels are already heavily subsidized [priceofoil.org]. Why is the parent marked insightful?!
Your link actually describes the level of subsidies as generously as possible ("any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers or lowers the price paid by energy consumers"), and yet even they can't come up with more than $52B in annual subsidies.
And that's at their high-end estimate. The range they offer ($10B to $52B) shows that they have no real idea how much "subsidy" fossil fuels are getting.
Note also that your "unsubsidized solar is already cheaper than coal" claim is for "European retail power prices". Last I checked, I pay rather less than your average European for electricity.....
While we're at it how about we quit spending trillions of dollars on wars intended to ensure our continued access to cheap oil?
Which wars would those be? I don't recall us attacking Canada (largest source of imported oil for the USA),Saudi Arabia (#2 - about half what we get from Canada) or Venezuela (#3 - about 2/3 what we get from Saudi Arabia) recently...
Instead of inflating the existing costs of enery to make green techs look better now, all while hurting the people at the bottom the most, gas is 4 bucks a gallon, 10 years ago it was 98 cents.
When inflation is factored in, the price of has, on average, not changed very much.
Inflation in the USA, from 2000 to 2012 (yes, it's a bit longer than ten years, but I like round numbers) was ~32%.
Adjust that $0.98/gal upwards by 32%, and we get ~$1.30/gal for gas.
$4.00/gal is NOT, contrary to your beliefs, "not changed very much" from $1.30.
US officials during the Cold War would frequently state that the USSR had a massive advantage over the US in ballistic missles, even though in reality the US had thousands more.
Considering that we never had as many as two thousand ballistic missiles of all kinds (ICBM/SLBM), I consider it very unlikely that we had "thousands more" than the Soviets.
Note that with 2000 ballistic missiles, the Soviets would have had to have ZERO for us to have "thousands more"....
Yes, because they're massively overbuilt and use much more highly enriched uranium allowing them to shrug off the xenon poisoning.
No, they're not massively overbuilt. Yes, they do use more highly enriched uranium.
And this has what to do with the question of whether "current reactor designs" cannot be ramped up or down quickly? Certainly CIVILIAN reactor designs can't be ramped up or down quickly.
But this in no way implies that reactor designs that can do this haven't been around for 50+ years.
That IO has left a huge toroid of highly charged sulfur atoms running around Jupiter and that perhaps Titan's atmosphere is just banging into that cloud and what we're witnessing is sulfur ionizing at high altitude?
Might not be unreasonable if Titan orbited Jupiter.
Alas, Titan is orbiting Saturn, and is a bit far away for what you're describing....
It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional qustion: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.
Sincerely,
Eric Holder
So, what exactly does "not engaged in combat" mean to this administration, given their rather interesting interpretation of the word "imminent"?
Note, by the way, that when I read the article that Holder was "responding" to, the whole "not in combat" thing was included in the original query by Paul, but at that time, Holder could not be pinned down to a "no".
Note that he wasn't pinned down to a "no" in his answer either, since there is pretty much no situation where someone is actually "in combat" in the USA where anyone is going to be asking the President for permission to wax him - the local SWAT team will handle it quite nicely without consulting with the Pres....
Slashdot Mirror
Around here we have a nuclear power plant. So, yes, getting around CO2 is possible.
The ONLY "much longer term" where gasoline prices at beginning and end were ~$4.00/gal is 1918-2013.
Note that over MY lifetime (more than 50 years), gasoline prices have increased by ~60% higher than inflation (and during most of that period, gasoline prices were lower than they were when I was born).
Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice, ~50 degrees north latitude, daylight lasts about 16 hours. So 4AM to 8PM, sans DST, or 5AM to 9PM with DST.
That's just a bit north of the Canada/US border, south of the UK, northern France, southern Germany or Poland...
Northern Scotland will have pre-4AM sunrises for several months (and 3AM sunrise, 9PM sunset on the Solstice), much of Norway and the other Scandinavian countries, ditto. And Alaska, of course.
It was never about saving electricity - it was about keeping pubs open after people got off work during the blackouts imposed by the War....
Of course, the whole idea got going as an attempt to keep the pubs open a bit longer during the War - they had to shutdown at dark as part of the blackout.
Katrina's eye passed over my house. Cry me a river...
;-)
And in New Orleans we have Zulu and Rex doing parades on Mardi Gras. One group is "people of color", one isn't.
No, it's not that way because we're racist assholes (some of us are, no doubt, but check out the people actually going to both those parades sometime), but because of TRADITION!
No, they're not "making it to a consecutive term of democracy".
What they are doing is actually reaching the Constitutional limit on the maximum period between elections (five years, unless a vote of no confidence brings down the government first).
Remember, "Government" means something slightly different in Parliamentary systems than it does in the USA.
535 assorted Congresscritters @ ~$200K per year costs us ~$110M per year.
Which is ~0.01% of the annual deficit. In other word, trivial.
Note, by the by, that reducing Congressional salaries would make Congress even more a place for the 1% - costs money to maintain two residences (one of which is in an expensive place - DC)....
As to raising taxes and/or reducing the military, neither is going to have a huge long-term effect on the deficit. The real deficit driver for the foreseeable future is Medicare spending (which is expected to be the majority of the budget within a couple decades).
Note that Medicare/Medicaid(Fed only)/SSA is ALREADY the majority of the budget - it's not going to get any better without a painful revamp of the way we do things.
Ad hominem.
You blow your own argument out of the water by resorting to the same sorts of tactics you decry in your opponents.
Your link actually describes the level of subsidies as generously as possible ("any government action that lowers the cost of fossil fuel energy production, raises the price received by energy producers or lowers the price paid by energy consumers"), and yet even they can't come up with more than $52B in annual subsidies.
And that's at their high-end estimate. The range they offer ($10B to $52B) shows that they have no real idea how much "subsidy" fossil fuels are getting.
Note also that your "unsubsidized solar is already cheaper than coal" claim is for "European retail power prices". Last I checked, I pay rather less than your average European for electricity.....
Which wars would those be? I don't recall us attacking Canada (largest source of imported oil for the USA),Saudi Arabia (#2 - about half what we get from Canada) or Venezuela (#3 - about 2/3 what we get from Saudi Arabia) recently...
Hmm, because gas heaters dump CO2 into the atmosphere?
Note that I have gas heat as well.
Inflation in the USA, from 2000 to 2012 (yes, it's a bit longer than ten years, but I like round numbers) was ~32%.
Adjust that $0.98/gal upwards by 32%, and we get ~$1.30/gal for gas.
$4.00/gal is NOT, contrary to your beliefs, "not changed very much" from $1.30.
Back in the day, beer was basically fermented bread. Not only could you drink it, but you could CHEW it, since it had a lot of solids....
Considering that we never had as many as two thousand ballistic missiles of all kinds (ICBM/SLBM), I consider it very unlikely that we had "thousands more" than the Soviets.
Note that with 2000 ballistic missiles, the Soviets would have had to have ZERO for us to have "thousands more"....
You'd be more correct if you replaced "typical hunting rifle" with "typical hunter" and "a sniper's rifle" with "a sniper".
Typed in "vatican.va", got whisked off to the Vatican's homepage. I think you're misspelling something.
Or perhaps you live someplace where the local government blocks the Vatican? ;-)
TFA uses the phrase "sun-like stars" a lot. It doesn't get more specific than that.
It's certainly possible they're talking about "all dwarf stars", but it's not really a good way to bet.
Umm, Constantinople was NEVER a living human being. It was a CITY.
Perhaps you meant "Constantine", the man the CITY of Constantinople was named after?
No, they're not massively overbuilt. Yes, they do use more highly enriched uranium.
And this has what to do with the question of whether "current reactor designs" cannot be ramped up or down quickly? Certainly CIVILIAN reactor designs can't be ramped up or down quickly.
But this in no way implies that reactor designs that can do this haven't been around for 50+ years.
It should, perhaps, be noted that the nuke plants in subs are quite capable of ramping power output up/down very quickly.
Might not be unreasonable if Titan orbited Jupiter.
Alas, Titan is orbiting Saturn, and is a bit far away for what you're describing....
So, what exactly does "not engaged in combat" mean to this administration, given their rather interesting interpretation of the word "imminent"?
Note, by the way, that when I read the article that Holder was "responding" to, the whole "not in combat" thing was included in the original query by Paul, but at that time, Holder could not be pinned down to a "no".
Note that he wasn't pinned down to a "no" in his answer either, since there is pretty much no situation where someone is actually "in combat" in the USA where anyone is going to be asking the President for permission to wax him - the local SWAT team will handle it quite nicely without consulting with the Pres....
Nothing wrong with the "that"s other than a clumsily constructed sentence.
On the other hand the "was" should have been "were"