Sure. However, coal is providing relatively less electricity in the US, and we're ramping up wind and solar. This means that coal power is not employing people to expand the industry, while wind and solar are. To get a good comparison, we'd have to wait until wind and solar are deployed pretty much everywhere they would be.
Or you can look at the costs, which have to include workers' pay.
FWIW, there are reasons you need somewhat expensive equipment to hook up your own generating capacity into the power grid. Probably the most fundamental one is that the distribution system uses AC, and the lines have to be in phase. Another one is that, if you just hook your solar plant up to the grid, there's going to be a power failure and linemen are going to start working on charged lines thinking they're uncharged.
Chernobyl couldn't happen today (at least not in reactors not built by the Soviet Union). Fukushima is the current model for a major disaster, and it wasn't that bad. It's not the power industry's fault that the media focused on mostly harmless radioactive leaks to the exclusion of an earthquake and tsunami that killed something like twenty-five thousand people.
A thriving economy destroys jobs and then takes the freed-up workers and gives them better jobs. Ours is having some serious problems, but the principle is the same. We couldn't have had the industrial revolution without destroying the bulk of agricultural jobs.
First, you're disregarding the disadvantages of burning fossil fuels.
Second, why do you think that doing it right requires more time? We know solar and wind work, and we know how to make the generators in commercial quantities. The basic research is over*, and the current goal is to make renewables in large quantities and reduce costs. This is best done in large-scale production, which is pretty much what we've got now. Waiting for a perfect solution when we've already got a good one is often stupid.
Third, why do you think there's a strictly limited budget for energy research? Federal subsidies and research money for all forms of energy are peanuts in the national budget. The politics say that, if we cut money for solar and win, we're not going to automatically spend it on fusion research. I'm all for increased fusion research, but it isn't an exclusive or.
Here let me play that game, "Alternative energy is always better so we should shut down everything else right now"
Which game is that, competing to see who can say the stupidest thing? People who pay attention to this stuff know that we'll be burning coal for a long time to come.
The point is solar and wind are wasteful and misinvestments and likely to be so for a long time yet to come.
The point is that we, the people, can have concerns beyond next quarter's profits. The question is not "what's the cheapest way to get electricity for March 2017?" It's "how can we best invest our money for the long term?" If we build up a lot of solar and wind manufacturing capability, the prices will come down, and in the near to medium future we'll reap the benefits of cheap solar and wind power. By investing money now, we can save money down the line, not to mention cut back on all the ill effects of coal burning.
I take it you're counting direct subsidies only. Wind and solar do not do as much collateral damage as coal by a long shot. It's hard to figure, but I'm not convinced that, with externalities accounted for and no subsidies, that coal would look good next to wind and solar.
You've also got a lot more luck than most people. It's comforting to think that you did well because you made the right decisions, but a larger part of it than you think is just luck.
you're paying almost all interest for the first 15 years of a 30 year loan
That's the way any long loan works. It's almost all interest up front, and turns to almost all principal at the end. The good thing is that, by paying extra principal early on, you can reduce the effective term of the mortgage. In any case, this is not of interest if the idea is to buy a house and keep it, rather than buy and sell it.
Then I need extra insurance since the 2008 crash & a couple family illnesses (thanks private medical system) wiped out my savings.
Extra insurance? I don't understand where that's coming from. You're going to have to keep the house insured in any case, so that the institution who holds your mortgage doesn't lose all collateral and hope of recovery if the house gets destroyed. Could you explain?
Not just all the cost, but all the _risk_ is on the home owner.
Your risk is that, if you are unable to make mortgage payments, you forfeit the house. The bank really doesn't want the house, and will try to work something out with you. Other than that, the house is yours. If you've got a fixed-rate mortgage, you know how much your principal and interest payments are going to be for decades, and they're not going up on you. Other than that, you've got the house and you're going to keep it. I don't understand what you mean by home owners' risk. The banks collect interest, true, but early in the loan they lose the whole principal if you don't make your payments, and they really don't want the title to your house.
No, why do you ask? To a coin collector, the coin has value in itself, and if I were one, I'd go to a coin shop to buy something I personally value.
On the other hand, my stocks have no physical components. I don't even have pretty stock certificates. I own them to profit, and to insulate against certain market conditions that could cost me money.
That's easy. Here's a compressed version of the Library of Congerss: 1. I'm still working on the decompression algorithm. That will take a little more time.
Back when Bruce Schneier facts were a meme, one claimed that, when Bruce Schneier wanted to write a book, he generated a random string of the correct size and decrypted it.
A friend of mine was involved in a vendor demo for compression to reduce the number of CD-ROMs needed to contain software. He insisted that the information was already compressed, and everybody was ignoring him until the vendor's software increased the number of CD-ROMs.
When I have my glasses off, I can recognize things my eyes can't resolve. Human stereo vision in relative depth perception depends on measurements that are more precise than the layout of cone cells would suggest. I can reliably get information that I can't see. Why can't a computer?
There's going to be more and more automation no matter what. As far as ambitious people go, they can acquire skills. Ambitious people don't want to stay where they are, and want to get the skills and contacts and stuff to succeed in a place they like better. As long as there's a path to acquire skills, what's the problem?
The part where four Federal judges have decided that he may not have that power after all. Do you want to ask any questions about what I actually said?
Which brings up the question of why the courts disagree. If the first judge was way off base, the three appellate judges would have tossed the case when they got it, instead of keeping the stay on enforcing the EO and holding hearings.
The list was a rider to an appropriations bill, so Obama could have vetoed it for a minor provision and let things go unfunded. The President can only sign or veto what Congress sends him, which unlike any other deliberative body in the US I'm aware of has no rule against non-germane amendments on bills, and he does not have a line-item veto. Given a generally hostile Congress, saying "the President approved of or had any influence on this rider that's not germane to the main bill because he signed it", is disingenuous. It doesn't rise to the level of pedantic.
The cnsnews.com article you site is from 2015. and applied to one country, not seven. The vetting process has been successful to the point that no immigrants from the countries listed have committed a terror killing in the US, unlike several other countries in the area that are not on the list. The fact that it was only an inconvenience is primarily due to people attacking the EO in court.
Math is logically independent of the real world. We're more interested in some cases that are relevant to the real world.
You can't mathematically prove anything about the real world. Any mathematical statement about the real world presupposed using the right math. In this case, you said it was mathematically impossible for certain people not to get wealthier in a growing economy, and that's only possible to conclude if you establish that you are using the right math in the first place, and that you have taken all relevant factors into account.
So, you are accusing scientists of unconsciously letting financial concerns affect their results in a major way? Do you realize that there are climate scientists all over the world, who agree? Do you realize that there are climate scientists who will continue to get funding, who agree?
Sorry, I'm missing something here. It never struck me as fantastically difficult to type up a letter, put it in an envelope with address and stamp, and mail it. If I need to have legal proof that I sent something, registered mail works while faxes and email don't.
...is why so many Americans have come to have such a low regard for federal workers, and that in turn is what made Trump's pledge to shrink federal government and "drain the swamp" resonate so strongly with marks.
That fact it never went to trial means she was never cleared.
In US law, trials are a really crappy way of clearing someone. The defendant should be found not guilty if there's reasonable doubt. Conviction is good evidence that the defendant did it, but acquittal isn't really evidence of anything. Had Clinton faced trial, and been found not guilty. the anti-Clinton brigade would have scoffed at her and how she "got off".
Clinton mishandled classified documents without evidence of intent. Those cases are simply not prosecuted.
The Clintons were simply party to many scandals over two long a period to be trust worthy. Some of that perception has to do with a concerted partisan effort to to tie them to things, but its also true most of us even most other politicians don't lead such colorful lives.
"When there's smoke, there's fire."
"Um, is that your smoke bomb there?"
"Yeah, but there's fire around here, honest."
Next you have all the evidence that the DNC deliberately scudded the Sanders campaign, a man who did not have all of Clinton's liabilities.
What nobody tells me is why the DNC shouldn't favor a candidate. The Democratic Party is a private organization.
My first Presidential election was in 1972, when McGovern had won the nomination in much the same way that Sanders could have. That election left me with long-term unpleasant feelings. I want the DNC to come out with viable candidates.
Also, Sanders had his own liabilities, which were largely left alone because the Republicans weren't interested in stopping him. He's a self-described Socialist. To a lot of Americans, that's somewhere between traitor and fiend from the pit in desirability. He had plenty of liabilities.
Also, despite FBI and foreign meddling, Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three millions votes, and narrowly lost in the Electoral College. That's not doing bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. However, coal is providing relatively less electricity in the US, and we're ramping up wind and solar. This means that coal power is not employing people to expand the industry, while wind and solar are. To get a good comparison, we'd have to wait until wind and solar are deployed pretty much everywhere they would be.
Or you can look at the costs, which have to include workers' pay.
FWIW, there are reasons you need somewhat expensive equipment to hook up your own generating capacity into the power grid. Probably the most fundamental one is that the distribution system uses AC, and the lines have to be in phase. Another one is that, if you just hook your solar plant up to the grid, there's going to be a power failure and linemen are going to start working on charged lines thinking they're uncharged.
The Earth will go before the Sun does, to be fair.
Chernobyl couldn't happen today (at least not in reactors not built by the Soviet Union). Fukushima is the current model for a major disaster, and it wasn't that bad. It's not the power industry's fault that the media focused on mostly harmless radioactive leaks to the exclusion of an earthquake and tsunami that killed something like twenty-five thousand people.
A thriving economy destroys jobs and then takes the freed-up workers and gives them better jobs. Ours is having some serious problems, but the principle is the same. We couldn't have had the industrial revolution without destroying the bulk of agricultural jobs.
First, you're disregarding the disadvantages of burning fossil fuels.
Second, why do you think that doing it right requires more time? We know solar and wind work, and we know how to make the generators in commercial quantities. The basic research is over*, and the current goal is to make renewables in large quantities and reduce costs. This is best done in large-scale production, which is pretty much what we've got now. Waiting for a perfect solution when we've already got a good one is often stupid.
Third, why do you think there's a strictly limited budget for energy research? Federal subsidies and research money for all forms of energy are peanuts in the national budget. The politics say that, if we cut money for solar and win, we're not going to automatically spend it on fusion research. I'm all for increased fusion research, but it isn't an exclusive or.
Which game is that, competing to see who can say the stupidest thing? People who pay attention to this stuff know that we'll be burning coal for a long time to come.
The point is that we, the people, can have concerns beyond next quarter's profits. The question is not "what's the cheapest way to get electricity for March 2017?" It's "how can we best invest our money for the long term?" If we build up a lot of solar and wind manufacturing capability, the prices will come down, and in the near to medium future we'll reap the benefits of cheap solar and wind power. By investing money now, we can save money down the line, not to mention cut back on all the ill effects of coal burning.
I take it you're counting direct subsidies only. Wind and solar do not do as much collateral damage as coal by a long shot. It's hard to figure, but I'm not convinced that, with externalities accounted for and no subsidies, that coal would look good next to wind and solar.
You've also got a lot more luck than most people. It's comforting to think that you did well because you made the right decisions, but a larger part of it than you think is just luck.
That's the way any long loan works. It's almost all interest up front, and turns to almost all principal at the end. The good thing is that, by paying extra principal early on, you can reduce the effective term of the mortgage. In any case, this is not of interest if the idea is to buy a house and keep it, rather than buy and sell it.
Extra insurance? I don't understand where that's coming from. You're going to have to keep the house insured in any case, so that the institution who holds your mortgage doesn't lose all collateral and hope of recovery if the house gets destroyed. Could you explain?
Your risk is that, if you are unable to make mortgage payments, you forfeit the house. The bank really doesn't want the house, and will try to work something out with you. Other than that, the house is yours. If you've got a fixed-rate mortgage, you know how much your principal and interest payments are going to be for decades, and they're not going up on you. Other than that, you've got the house and you're going to keep it. I don't understand what you mean by home owners' risk. The banks collect interest, true, but early in the loan they lose the whole principal if you don't make your payments, and they really don't want the title to your house.
No, why do you ask? To a coin collector, the coin has value in itself, and if I were one, I'd go to a coin shop to buy something I personally value.
On the other hand, my stocks have no physical components. I don't even have pretty stock certificates. I own them to profit, and to insulate against certain market conditions that could cost me money.
That's easy. Here's a compressed version of the Library of Congerss: 1. I'm still working on the decompression algorithm. That will take a little more time.
Back when Bruce Schneier facts were a meme, one claimed that, when Bruce Schneier wanted to write a book, he generated a random string of the correct size and decrypted it.
A friend of mine was involved in a vendor demo for compression to reduce the number of CD-ROMs needed to contain software. He insisted that the information was already compressed, and everybody was ignoring him until the vendor's software increased the number of CD-ROMs.
When I have my glasses off, I can recognize things my eyes can't resolve. Human stereo vision in relative depth perception depends on measurements that are more precise than the layout of cone cells would suggest. I can reliably get information that I can't see. Why can't a computer?
There's going to be more and more automation no matter what. As far as ambitious people go, they can acquire skills. Ambitious people don't want to stay where they are, and want to get the skills and contacts and stuff to succeed in a place they like better. As long as there's a path to acquire skills, what's the problem?
The part where four Federal judges have decided that he may not have that power after all. Do you want to ask any questions about what I actually said?
Which brings up the question of why the courts disagree. If the first judge was way off base, the three appellate judges would have tossed the case when they got it, instead of keeping the stay on enforcing the EO and holding hearings.
Some of those cultures were pretty foreign, yes. Consider the Chinese.
The list was a rider to an appropriations bill, so Obama could have vetoed it for a minor provision and let things go unfunded. The President can only sign or veto what Congress sends him, which unlike any other deliberative body in the US I'm aware of has no rule against non-germane amendments on bills, and he does not have a line-item veto. Given a generally hostile Congress, saying "the President approved of or had any influence on this rider that's not germane to the main bill because he signed it", is disingenuous. It doesn't rise to the level of pedantic.
The cnsnews.com article you site is from 2015. and applied to one country, not seven. The vetting process has been successful to the point that no immigrants from the countries listed have committed a terror killing in the US, unlike several other countries in the area that are not on the list. The fact that it was only an inconvenience is primarily due to people attacking the EO in court.
Math is logically independent of the real world. We're more interested in some cases that are relevant to the real world.
You can't mathematically prove anything about the real world. Any mathematical statement about the real world presupposed using the right math. In this case, you said it was mathematically impossible for certain people not to get wealthier in a growing economy, and that's only possible to conclude if you establish that you are using the right math in the first place, and that you have taken all relevant factors into account.
It's an alternative fact that AGW is a hoax made up by the Chinese. Honest!
So, you are accusing scientists of unconsciously letting financial concerns affect their results in a major way? Do you realize that there are climate scientists all over the world, who agree? Do you realize that there are climate scientists who will continue to get funding, who agree?
Sorry, I'm missing something here. It never struck me as fantastically difficult to type up a letter, put it in an envelope with address and stamp, and mail it. If I need to have legal proof that I sent something, registered mail works while faxes and email don't.
FTFY.
In US law, trials are a really crappy way of clearing someone. The defendant should be found not guilty if there's reasonable doubt. Conviction is good evidence that the defendant did it, but acquittal isn't really evidence of anything. Had Clinton faced trial, and been found not guilty. the anti-Clinton brigade would have scoffed at her and how she "got off".
Clinton mishandled classified documents without evidence of intent. Those cases are simply not prosecuted.
"When there's smoke, there's fire."
"Um, is that your smoke bomb there?"
"Yeah, but there's fire around here, honest."
What nobody tells me is why the DNC shouldn't favor a candidate. The Democratic Party is a private organization.
My first Presidential election was in 1972, when McGovern had won the nomination in much the same way that Sanders could have. That election left me with long-term unpleasant feelings. I want the DNC to come out with viable candidates.
Also, Sanders had his own liabilities, which were largely left alone because the Republicans weren't interested in stopping him. He's a self-described Socialist. To a lot of Americans, that's somewhere between traitor and fiend from the pit in desirability. He had plenty of liabilities.
Also, despite FBI and foreign meddling, Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three millions votes, and narrowly lost in the Electoral College. That's not doing bad.