As an engineering consultant, I do in fact have a copyright on the design documents I produce. If I really wanted to, I could sue a former client if they attempt to continue using my designs. They are licensed, not sold.
And if I shelve a project (or more appropriately, walk off a job - which I've done) then all that really happens is I'm no longer legally responsible for any shit that goes down from that point on. I can refuse to deliver finished project documents, oversee the project construction, and address issues that arise during and after installation.
And just because your name is on a patent doesn't mean you own the rights. Must be one of those situations where the stipulation of your employment at a company means anything you create belongs to them? If so, then that's what you agreed to and that's what you get. =Smidge=
Choosing to shelve a project for an ethical principle, for the reason I stated in my last sentence, makes sense only if you think you are uniquely clever and no one else will think of it.
Not really - You're basically saying there's no point in distancing yourself from anything because someone else might do it anyway.
If you're an accountant and your boss is pressuring you to cook the books. There's no point quitting because if you leave, he'll just hire someone else who'll do what he wants. Right? =Smidge=
Someone will always jockey for a position of dominance, because that's how capitalism works. The result is monopolies, robber barons and corporate oligarchy. Or it can go to the other extreme, where all trade is strictly regulated and controlled by third parties (eg governments). The result is the ideal case of socialism where everything is effectively owned and operated by everyone.
The reality in practice is always a mix of these two; some combination of dominant corporate influences and government regulations that attempt to keep them from running completely roughshod over the economy. This in no way resembles the "free market" that everyone learns about in high school economics class because that's just a simplified, idealized example and not a tenable economic model. =Smidge=
Amazon.com charges a restocking fee under exactly the same circumstances that Newegg does... except Amazon can hit you for 20%-50% of the item's price instead of just 15%.
That said, it's always worth shopping around - but I find Newegg pretty consistently has better prices, and lately they even have a price guarantee on some things. =Smidge=
Excusing you from something *everyone else* has to do - eg pay taxes - is a form of subsidy. It's special treatment. It's a benefit.
A subsidy is any form of financial assistance. If someone else pays your bills (a tax writeoff on equipment is exactly equivalent to having someone else contribute the taxable value of that equipment) then it's a subsidy. The taxpayer is picking up some or all of the cost of doing business.
But fine, if you only want to include direct payments - The fossil fuel industry receives billions in direct payments. $3.4 billion in cash (grants) and another $1.3 billion in preferential loan guaranteed as part of the Recovery Act in 2009. Everyone complains about the $535 mil Solyndra got but nobody seems to care that they gave the oil industry nine times as much cash when they didn't even need it.
Sometimes subsidies are warranted and justified. It's not justified when the person or entity receiving this perk could handily get by without the preferential treatment. If people making over $15,000/yr don't qualify for earned income tax credit, why should a company making billions in NET profit qualify for tax writeoffs and other benefits? =Smidge=
Let me preface this by saying that storage is, in fact, largely overrated for solar power. The vast majority of our energy needs occur during the daytime. Storage is really really nice to have, but is not entirely necessary unless you are producing much more than you need and don't want to waste it (see: Germany)
That said, let's talk "easy"
On a technical level, it's far easier to store electricity. Just need a battery or capacitor. If you want a more general form of solar energy as heat, then you just need a storage medium like water or oil or molten salt or whatever. Very easy and these storage mechanisms generally last a very long time with little maintenance if built properly.
Storing natural gas is a lot harder, again on a technical level. It's lighter than air and a fire/explosion hazard. It's moderately low energy density means it needs to be stored under pressure, so you need compressors and pumps to move it around. This means the very act of storing and transferring needs additional energy from secondary source - usually electricity.
If you define "easy" in terms of final stored density, then yes natural gas wins handily - especially if you liquefy it. But higher density storage requires more energy input, so your efficiency (energy invested in storing the fuel versus energy in the fuel itself) starts to drop.
If you define "easy" as recoverability, then it's a bit more complicated: batteries and capacitors give up their energy readily. Thermal storage requires an extra step to convert to electricity, if electricity is what you want... if you want heat then no conversion is necessary and again it's super easy to take out of storage. Natural gas can either be burned directly from storage if you just want some fire, or it could need converting into something else like mechanical power or electricity which are extra steps. You really need to define what you want to use the energy for to compare them, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
If you define "easy" in terms of infrastructure/investment required, that also gets a bit murky. Natural gas already has the benefit of decades and billions of dollars in storage and transport infrastructure development. Thermal energy has only modest transport infrastructure (district heating/municipal steam systems) and not much int he way of storage. Electricity has excellent transport infrastructure but storage is still in its infancy compared to natural gas... you can find the odd pumped hydro station or massive battery bank but most electricity storage is low energy/high power used for smoothing out spikes and sags.
With regard to your anecdote: Whomever designed it needs a kick in the balls, that's all. There is no sensible reason why a properly selected pump, for example, would fail every two years because of "too much heat." I'm a mechanical engineer with 16 years of HVAC design experience and I've never heard of that. Corrosion is not really a function of temperature - I suppose at the chemistry level it is, but a good and proper tank will be either coated or cathodically protected or both. There are tanks 50+ years old still in service because they were properly designed and installed. Sorry to hear of your troubles but it's just not the technology's fault. =Smidge-
and anybody trying to form their own company; anybody doing work for hire.
Does not compute.
How do you legitimize trying to take their money, to take their capital, to take food off others tables? Who decides "hand over fist"? You or the guy in Ethiopia?
Take who's money? I'm talking about making people and corporations who can afford it pay their own way instead of mooching off of taxpayers.
It's a pretty simple concept: Establish a minimum profits:subsidies ratio. Tax incentives scale back as your company becomes more and more profitable until you don't qualify for incentives at all. It's kind of like how social services for poor people work right now, where if your income is above a certain threshold you don't qualify for benefits.
Or is it okay to give away taxpayer money to someone who clearly doesn't need it? =Smidge=
You like to point at some specific government programs that ended up being useful but how much money and other resources is wasted by government on things that never work out and only reduce total economic viability?
I dunno, why don't you tell me? Let's go one for one! You name a specific government program and describe how it "reduced total economic viability" and for every one you come up with I'll come up with one that turned out to be a really good idea in the long run. =Smidge=
Legitimate cost? Sure. But why do they get to write off the cost when they already make money hand over fist?
If you're going to say "any other business gets the same benefit" then I'll preempt that by asking: Why that should matter? Maybe, just maybe, a business shouldn't get to write off expenses if it's fully capable of affording it and still making billions of dollars in pure profit. All that does is subsidize shareholder's dividends payments and CEO's avarice. =Smidge=
My tax dollars no doubt go towards things you approve of but I do not. Your tax dollars no doubt go towards things I approve of and you do not. You live in a civilized society, that's just the way it's gonna be. I'm generally okay with that, and if you have a problem you're free to go somewhere else... just be sure to leave all the things that living in this society has enabled you to have because otherwise you'd be stealing from everyone else.
As for natural gas: It's not sustainable, so all you're doing it switching from an expensive, limited fuel source to a slightly cheaper, limited fuel source. Congratulations for kicking the can down the road and fucking over future generations with your lack of foresight.
As for tipping point: You're wrong. Solar is becoming more affordable and more common every year. There are more solar power installers popping up every day it seem. It's a booming industry. It makes economic sense for many homeowners and businesses, and with the various subsidies the payback is typically under 10 years - often under 5. That means whomever installs solar will see a net savings after that time, and that means they have more money to put back into the economy.
The same is not true for oil and gas companies that are already making obscene profits. Subsidizing them does not put more money into the economy nearly as efficiently - it just pads their bottom line and benefits a relative handful of CEOs and shareholders. They are fully capable of doing everything they do now without one dime of government money or tax write-off and still being one of the most lucrative industries on the planet. =Smidge=
Venture capital and bank loans require a knowledge and quantification of risks. These people want to know when they'll get their money back, and how much profit they can expect to make.
When you are doing things that are very much worth doing (there are lots of great reasons to develop renewable energy; economic, national security, AND environmental) but do not have either clearly defined risks or payback schedules, then you will have a VERY HARD TIME securing capital for those projects. This is exactly the best time for governments to step in and provide that capital. It is not until there is a clear business case that you'll be able to get much in the way of private funding.
We are close to a tipping point with solar PV. Prices have fallen and now it's really installation costs that are the lion's share of a complete system. Businesses - from manufacturers to installers - have taken advantage of the subsidies offered by all levels of government and private industry alike and built business models around PV installation. It's not *quite* self sustaining yet, but it very well could be very soon. I'm perfectly okay with my tax dollars going towards expanding renewable energy. =Smidge=
Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded.
Yup. At no point was the telecommunications industry given billions of dollars in loan guarantees, grants, low-cost or even free use of public lands/eminent domain claims, and tax write-offs to build out the national internet infrastructure. That never happened and it most certainly isn't STILL happening. Telecoms are a free-market utopia and a testament to how great private industry is in the absence of government intervention. =Smidge=
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
Seriously?
A quick Google tells me that the oil industry has been receiving subsidies since essentially day one, by being allowed to write off the full cost of drilling new wells. Even to this day the oil industry in the US gets $4 billion per year in subsidies one way or another. =Smidge=
A "three-pronged trailer hitch", which I presume is the insert part; a length of 2x2 (or 1.5x1.5) inch square stock with attachment points for multiple sized ball hitches. It's easy to imagine some careless driver forgetting to secure the retaining pin and such an item sliding out onto the roadway. If so, then that thing is a good sized hunk of metal. Okay, maybe it won't "pierce" a leg being pretty blunt, but that's a broken ankle or fractured fibula easily.
As for ride height - one thought is if he was using the Model S' automatic ride height adjustment. If equipped and active, the car gets lower to the ground the faster it goes to improve handling and efficiency. Stock clearance is supposedly 6 inches from what I could gather, and the car will go lower than that at highway speeds. Not sure by how much, but if the max clearance is 7.5 inches then it's fair to guess it could got he same distance in the other direction: 4.5 inches. Pretty low! =Smidge=
As to the increased friction well that will be caused by the lack of the oil! AKA the oil will be separated from the source of heat.
"Separated from the source of heat" by being sprayed all over the engine?
I don't have any documentation of transmission oil fires, though I can give personal anecdote of a vehicle with a faulty transmission oil hose that sprayed the stuff up into the engine compartment. Quite a mess and, honestly, lucky it didn't cause a fire. It happened in a driveway and was caught almost immediately (fluid even got up onto the windshield)... if that happened on the highway with everything nice and hot there would've been a fire no doubt.
However, I DO have documentation of a coolant leak leading to a fire (PDF) Coolant line failed, sprayed coolant everywhere. Engine overheated, evaporating water from coolant allowing the ethylene glycol to ignite. Fire spread and destroyed the entire (fortunately empty) bus. =Smidge=
Well that's just false. Oil, transmission fluid and even engine coolant are all flammable liquids, and the increased heat from poor lubrication makes a fire more likely even from non-liquids like wiring harnesses, plastic cowlings and rubber tubing.
Any debris impact severe enough to pierce the quarter-inch armor plate on the underside of the battery pack is more than enough to pierce an oil pan, transmission, fuel tank or floorboard of any other vehicle. That is a debilitating debris strike in any vehicle, not a "little tap." In any other vehicle this guy could have ended up with that trailer hitch piercing his leg instead.
That said, this is the second debris strike in as many months... maybe Tesla owners just aren't paying attention to the road? =Smidge=
Problem is, it wouldn't be a "stop-gap" measure. Unless you have a different definition of "stop-gap" from mine.
Given the costs if construction and maintenance, whatever you built will be used until the cost of maintaining it outstrips the cost of building something else, just like with the nuclear plant now. Better to just transition straight to something that already IS better, even if it costs more now, and be done with it. =Smidge=
I didn't write anything about "bankrolling" a "camp". That sound suspiciously like conspiracy theory to me. As for paychecks... they do come from somewhere, yes? I'm not suggesting any kind of big conspiracy, as you seem to be doing. I'm simply saying: AGW is what they're doing, and they are getting paid for it. Is there something about that with which you disagree?
They are paid to research the climate. The climate exists and needs to be studied regardless of what it's actually doing, so as long as their research is based on actual data they would be getting paid to do their job no matter what... so there is no logic in asserting that funding grants are biased toward researchers who advocate AGW. Such bias would be pretty easy to show, since there seems to be a complete lack of angry climatologists whose grant applications have been repeatedly denied.
So the idea that researchers are crying AGW because that's what gets them funded seems to be a total non-starter. Got any others? =Smidge=
So, not carbon-neutral, just carbon-reduced. And definitely not carbon-negative. Carbon-reduced can still be useful, of course.
Are you sure you know what those terms mean?
Burning biomass and having carbon left over means it's carbon negative. The carbon emitted as CO2 minus the carbon absorbed from growing the biomass is a negative number. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
As an engineering consultant, I do in fact have a copyright on the design documents I produce. If I really wanted to, I could sue a former client if they attempt to continue using my designs. They are licensed, not sold.
And if I shelve a project (or more appropriately, walk off a job - which I've done) then all that really happens is I'm no longer legally responsible for any shit that goes down from that point on. I can refuse to deliver finished project documents, oversee the project construction, and address issues that arise during and after installation.
And just because your name is on a patent doesn't mean you own the rights. Must be one of those situations where the stipulation of your employment at a company means anything you create belongs to them? If so, then that's what you agreed to and that's what you get.
=Smidge=
Choosing to shelve a project for an ethical principle, for the reason I stated in my last sentence, makes sense only if you think you are uniquely clever and no one else will think of it.
Not really - You're basically saying there's no point in distancing yourself from anything because someone else might do it anyway.
If you're an accountant and your boss is pressuring you to cook the books. There's no point quitting because if you leave, he'll just hire someone else who'll do what he wants. Right?
=Smidge=
$30K for a current-gen Tesla? Where do I sign up? Cheapest they offer now is double that.
=Smidge=
There's no such thing as a free market.
Someone will always jockey for a position of dominance, because that's how capitalism works. The result is monopolies, robber barons and corporate oligarchy. Or it can go to the other extreme, where all trade is strictly regulated and controlled by third parties (eg governments). The result is the ideal case of socialism where everything is effectively owned and operated by everyone.
The reality in practice is always a mix of these two; some combination of dominant corporate influences and government regulations that attempt to keep them from running completely roughshod over the economy. This in no way resembles the "free market" that everyone learns about in high school economics class because that's just a simplified, idealized example and not a tenable economic model.
=Smidge=
I once built a machine that increases local entropy. It was 100% efficient.
=Smidge=
Amazon.com charges a restocking fee under exactly the same circumstances that Newegg does... except Amazon can hit you for 20%-50% of the item's price instead of just 15%.
That said, it's always worth shopping around - but I find Newegg pretty consistently has better prices, and lately they even have a price guarantee on some things.
=Smidge=
Excusing you from something *everyone else* has to do - eg pay taxes - is a form of subsidy. It's special treatment. It's a benefit.
A subsidy is any form of financial assistance. If someone else pays your bills (a tax writeoff on equipment is exactly equivalent to having someone else contribute the taxable value of that equipment) then it's a subsidy. The taxpayer is picking up some or all of the cost of doing business.
But fine, if you only want to include direct payments - The fossil fuel industry receives billions in direct payments. $3.4 billion in cash (grants) and another $1.3 billion in preferential loan guaranteed as part of the Recovery Act in 2009. Everyone complains about the $535 mil Solyndra got but nobody seems to care that they gave the oil industry nine times as much cash when they didn't even need it.
Sometimes subsidies are warranted and justified. It's not justified when the person or entity receiving this perk could handily get by without the preferential treatment. If people making over $15,000/yr don't qualify for earned income tax credit, why should a company making billions in NET profit qualify for tax writeoffs and other benefits?
=Smidge=
How are you defining "Easy."
Let me preface this by saying that storage is, in fact, largely overrated for solar power. The vast majority of our energy needs occur during the daytime. Storage is really really nice to have, but is not entirely necessary unless you are producing much more than you need and don't want to waste it (see: Germany)
That said, let's talk "easy"
On a technical level, it's far easier to store electricity. Just need a battery or capacitor. If you want a more general form of solar energy as heat, then you just need a storage medium like water or oil or molten salt or whatever. Very easy and these storage mechanisms generally last a very long time with little maintenance if built properly.
Storing natural gas is a lot harder, again on a technical level. It's lighter than air and a fire/explosion hazard. It's moderately low energy density means it needs to be stored under pressure, so you need compressors and pumps to move it around. This means the very act of storing and transferring needs additional energy from secondary source - usually electricity.
If you define "easy" in terms of final stored density, then yes natural gas wins handily - especially if you liquefy it. But higher density storage requires more energy input, so your efficiency (energy invested in storing the fuel versus energy in the fuel itself) starts to drop.
If you define "easy" as recoverability, then it's a bit more complicated: batteries and capacitors give up their energy readily. Thermal storage requires an extra step to convert to electricity, if electricity is what you want... if you want heat then no conversion is necessary and again it's super easy to take out of storage. Natural gas can either be burned directly from storage if you just want some fire, or it could need converting into something else like mechanical power or electricity which are extra steps. You really need to define what you want to use the energy for to compare them, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
If you define "easy" in terms of infrastructure/investment required, that also gets a bit murky. Natural gas already has the benefit of decades and billions of dollars in storage and transport infrastructure development. Thermal energy has only modest transport infrastructure (district heating/municipal steam systems) and not much int he way of storage. Electricity has excellent transport infrastructure but storage is still in its infancy compared to natural gas... you can find the odd pumped hydro station or massive battery bank but most electricity storage is low energy/high power used for smoothing out spikes and sags.
With regard to your anecdote: Whomever designed it needs a kick in the balls, that's all. There is no sensible reason why a properly selected pump, for example, would fail every two years because of "too much heat." I'm a mechanical engineer with 16 years of HVAC design experience and I've never heard of that. Corrosion is not really a function of temperature - I suppose at the chemistry level it is, but a good and proper tank will be either coated or cathodically protected or both. There are tanks 50+ years old still in service because they were properly designed and installed. Sorry to hear of your troubles but it's just not the technology's fault.
=Smidge-
and anybody trying to form their own company; anybody doing work for hire.
Does not compute.
How do you legitimize trying to take their money, to take their capital, to take food off others tables? Who decides "hand over fist"? You or the guy in Ethiopia?
Take who's money? I'm talking about making people and corporations who can afford it pay their own way instead of mooching off of taxpayers.
It's a pretty simple concept: Establish a minimum profits:subsidies ratio. Tax incentives scale back as your company becomes more and more profitable until you don't qualify for incentives at all. It's kind of like how social services for poor people work right now, where if your income is above a certain threshold you don't qualify for benefits.
Or is it okay to give away taxpayer money to someone who clearly doesn't need it?
=Smidge=
How do you figure? We already do have different rules - both officially and de facto.
It's just that right now, the rules are almost entirely biased towards the wealthy.
=Smidge=
You like to point at some specific government programs that ended up being useful but how much money and other resources is wasted by government on things that never work out and only reduce total economic viability?
I dunno, why don't you tell me? Let's go one for one! You name a specific government program and describe how it "reduced total economic viability" and for every one you come up with I'll come up with one that turned out to be a really good idea in the long run.
=Smidge=
Legitimate cost? Sure. But why do they get to write off the cost when they already make money hand over fist?
If you're going to say "any other business gets the same benefit" then I'll preempt that by asking: Why that should matter? Maybe, just maybe, a business shouldn't get to write off expenses if it's fully capable of affording it and still making billions of dollars in pure profit. All that does is subsidize shareholder's dividends payments and CEO's avarice.
=Smidge=
My tax dollars no doubt go towards things you approve of but I do not. Your tax dollars no doubt go towards things I approve of and you do not. You live in a civilized society, that's just the way it's gonna be. I'm generally okay with that, and if you have a problem you're free to go somewhere else... just be sure to leave all the things that living in this society has enabled you to have because otherwise you'd be stealing from everyone else.
As for natural gas: It's not sustainable, so all you're doing it switching from an expensive, limited fuel source to a slightly cheaper, limited fuel source. Congratulations for kicking the can down the road and fucking over future generations with your lack of foresight.
As for tipping point: You're wrong. Solar is becoming more affordable and more common every year. There are more solar power installers popping up every day it seem. It's a booming industry. It makes economic sense for many homeowners and businesses, and with the various subsidies the payback is typically under 10 years - often under 5. That means whomever installs solar will see a net savings after that time, and that means they have more money to put back into the economy.
The same is not true for oil and gas companies that are already making obscene profits. Subsidizing them does not put more money into the economy nearly as efficiently - it just pads their bottom line and benefits a relative handful of CEOs and shareholders. They are fully capable of doing everything they do now without one dime of government money or tax write-off and still being one of the most lucrative industries on the planet.
=Smidge=
Also not including the cost of health care associated with pollution.
=Smidge=
Venture capital and bank loans require a knowledge and quantification of risks. These people want to know when they'll get their money back, and how much profit they can expect to make.
When you are doing things that are very much worth doing (there are lots of great reasons to develop renewable energy; economic, national security, AND environmental) but do not have either clearly defined risks or payback schedules, then you will have a VERY HARD TIME securing capital for those projects. This is exactly the best time for governments to step in and provide that capital. It is not until there is a clear business case that you'll be able to get much in the way of private funding.
We are close to a tipping point with solar PV. Prices have fallen and now it's really installation costs that are the lion's share of a complete system. Businesses - from manufacturers to installers - have taken advantage of the subsidies offered by all levels of government and private industry alike and built business models around PV installation. It's not *quite* self sustaining yet, but it very well could be very soon. I'm perfectly okay with my tax dollars going towards expanding renewable energy.
=Smidge=
Bringing the Internet to the masses wasn't government funded.
Yup. At no point was the telecommunications industry given billions of dollars in loan guarantees, grants, low-cost or even free use of public lands/eminent domain claims, and tax write-offs to build out the national internet infrastructure. That never happened and it most certainly isn't STILL happening. Telecoms are a free-market utopia and a testament to how great private industry is in the absence of government intervention.
=Smidge=
Oil came into its own without a ton of federal help, so why can't alternative forms of energy?
Seriously?
A quick Google tells me that the oil industry has been receiving subsidies since essentially day one, by being allowed to write off the full cost of drilling new wells. Even to this day the oil industry in the US gets $4 billion per year in subsidies one way or another.
=Smidge=
A "three-pronged trailer hitch", which I presume is the insert part; a length of 2x2 (or 1.5x1.5) inch square stock with attachment points for multiple sized ball hitches. It's easy to imagine some careless driver forgetting to secure the retaining pin and such an item sliding out onto the roadway. If so, then that thing is a good sized hunk of metal. Okay, maybe it won't "pierce" a leg being pretty blunt, but that's a broken ankle or fractured fibula easily.
As for ride height - one thought is if he was using the Model S' automatic ride height adjustment. If equipped and active, the car gets lower to the ground the faster it goes to improve handling and efficiency. Stock clearance is supposedly 6 inches from what I could gather, and the car will go lower than that at highway speeds. Not sure by how much, but if the max clearance is 7.5 inches then it's fair to guess it could got he same distance in the other direction: 4.5 inches. Pretty low!
=Smidge=
As to the increased friction well that will be caused by the lack of the oil! AKA the oil will be separated from the source of heat.
"Separated from the source of heat" by being sprayed all over the engine?
I don't have any documentation of transmission oil fires, though I can give personal anecdote of a vehicle with a faulty transmission oil hose that sprayed the stuff up into the engine compartment. Quite a mess and, honestly, lucky it didn't cause a fire. It happened in a driveway and was caught almost immediately (fluid even got up onto the windshield)... if that happened on the highway with everything nice and hot there would've been a fire no doubt.
However, I DO have documentation of a coolant leak leading to a fire (PDF) Coolant line failed, sprayed coolant everywhere. Engine overheated, evaporating water from coolant allowing the ethylene glycol to ignite. Fire spread and destroyed the entire (fortunately empty) bus.
=Smidge=
Only the fuel line is likely to start a fire.
Well that's just false. Oil, transmission fluid and even engine coolant are all flammable liquids, and the increased heat from poor lubrication makes a fire more likely even from non-liquids like wiring harnesses, plastic cowlings and rubber tubing.
=Smidge=
Any debris impact severe enough to pierce the quarter-inch armor plate on the underside of the battery pack is more than enough to pierce an oil pan, transmission, fuel tank or floorboard of any other vehicle. That is a debilitating debris strike in any vehicle, not a "little tap." In any other vehicle this guy could have ended up with that trailer hitch piercing his leg instead.
That said, this is the second debris strike in as many months... maybe Tesla owners just aren't paying attention to the road?
=Smidge=
Problem is, it wouldn't be a "stop-gap" measure. Unless you have a different definition of "stop-gap" from mine.
Given the costs if construction and maintenance, whatever you built will be used until the cost of maintaining it outstrips the cost of building something else, just like with the nuclear plant now. Better to just transition straight to something that already IS better, even if it costs more now, and be done with it.
=Smidge=
I didn't write anything about "bankrolling" a "camp". That sound suspiciously like conspiracy theory to me. As for paychecks... they do come from somewhere, yes? I'm not suggesting any kind of big conspiracy, as you seem to be doing. I'm simply saying: AGW is what they're doing, and they are getting paid for it. Is there something about that with which you disagree?
They are paid to research the climate. The climate exists and needs to be studied regardless of what it's actually doing, so as long as their research is based on actual data they would be getting paid to do their job no matter what... so there is no logic in asserting that funding grants are biased toward researchers who advocate AGW. Such bias would be pretty easy to show, since there seems to be a complete lack of angry climatologists whose grant applications have been repeatedly denied.
So the idea that researchers are crying AGW because that's what gets them funded seems to be a total non-starter. Got any others?
=Smidge=
So, not carbon-neutral, just carbon-reduced. And definitely not carbon-negative. Carbon-reduced can still be useful, of course.
Are you sure you know what those terms mean?
Burning biomass and having carbon left over means it's carbon negative. The carbon emitted as CO2 minus the carbon absorbed from growing the biomass is a negative number.
=Smidge=
No.
Plus, I've been doing it on Slashdot much longer than on Fark. Neener neener.
=Smidge=