If solar ever does become cheaper than natural gas (and eventually it will), everyone will switch then.
Price volatility is what is stopping people at the moment. If you gave people a guarantee on the price of electricity to stay the same over the next 20 years, then they would go to the bank, buy solar, and pay the bank instead of the utility company. This is exactly what is happening in countries which offer guaranteed prices. It is also happening in the US through private enterprise, but on a much smaller scale.
That's without factoring the cost of carbon pollution.
Gee, we're lucky that the rest of the world is working on the problem.
Is this because you are reducing the influence of oil companies or because your alternatives aren't going to provide enough to meet demand? Oh, I know, you're just going to legislate private energy consumption levels so electricity usage will come down!
Based on *empirical* evidence, when a tax is put on carbon, and then credited towards energy efficiency, people quickly end up paying less on their electricity bills because they need less of it.
I have to agree with you here: you are merely spewing the ideals of socialist oppression, but you seem to lack the mental processes to think critically about the human suffering the policies enacted would inflict.
Well, according to *empirical* evidence, this *neo-liberal* idea (you know who Hayek is?) works, and does not inflict human suffering. The USA does not rank very well in poverty, crime, education, life-satisfaction, personal freedom, unless you want to compare yourselves to the 2nd and 3rd world.
You talk about thinking critically -- do you know what projection is?
I wish we could differentiated environmentalist from the scientists and the raving hippy nuts.
This is actually really easy to do if you actually bother to dig beneath the surface.
They are a lot of options. The trick is to get the right balance.
The market will take care of that. It is the ultimate information processing machine for those types of choices. The market does suffer when vested interests peddle their influence in Washington, but ultimately, it will win out.
Now, the market will not price externalities (carbon pollution) on its own. Thankfully we don't need to price carbon in order to make renewables economically competitive. We're almost at the cross-over point. You think in 2020 that Google is going to run its data centres on expensive coal electricity? Of course not, and there ain't a thing that Koch an their allies can do about it.
The optimal thing to do at this point would be to drive innovation with incentive structures. This is already happening in most of the rest of the world, and if they produce the technology, they'll sell it to poor backward USA when we're still locked into expensive dirty technologies. Or, we could just use the amazing technological depth of this country to solve the problems here.
So really, the best way to solve this problem involves just the slightest influence from government. Say a 0.5% tax on carbon that is credited towards the energy efficiency industry. Retro-fitting homes and factories to use less electricity. Funding university and industry R&D into new materials. The *empirical* experience of the rest of the world shows that this would quickly *reduce* the electricity bills of both factories and residents, in just a few years. And then, if you take day 1 as a baseline, it is all win from there.
Yeah, there is plenty of oil, and we'll seriously harm pretty much the whole world if we burn it. The economics of renewables will stop us from burning it -- which is lucky, because otherwise, I think we really would burn it, whilst praying to Jesus for salvation.
After following this issue closely for 10 years now, I'm guessing that renewables will seamlessly take over from fossil fuels, after much teeth gnashing from invested interests and those who think environmentalists are out to impose world government. Economics will rule the day. From a certain point of view, we'll get lucky in this regard, but not before doing major long-term damage to our infrastructure world-wide. Every port, almost every major city, almost all agriculture activity, will be affected over then next 100 years. Conservatives will still blame environmentalists.
Jobs, future markets, less pollution, energy security, advancement of science
Is it financial, or non-financial?
Yes and yes.
Are the returns earned by the owner of the investment or by third parties?
Yes and yes.
Who is qualified to estimate the size of these returns in an unbiased manner?
Banks, actuaries, scientists
What is the opportunity cost of this investment
The influence of existing interests (Koch/Exxon, etc.) will wane.
Electricity usage will come down (see the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which covers 20% of the US economy, which grew relative to the rest of the US economy) giving factories a competitive advantage.
New economies will grow -- a small portion of Exxon's profits gets injected directly into the local economy creating jobs that improve energy efficiency in industry and housing.
It's really a non-brainer, and there is empirical proof that these are the effects, because other parts of the world (and the US) have already started trying these thing.
I found this amusing:
"let's have the government levy taxes and attempt to make this happen"
Conservatives harp on about incentive structures, so, to adopt a neo-liberal (market fundamentalist) approach to solving GHG emissions, let's tax what we don't want (carbon), and let the market sort out the rest. Heck, we can reduce taxes on what we do want (labour/entrepreneurship).
You want to talk opportunity cost? Do you want more carbon in the atmosphere and higher taxes on labour, or less carbon in the atmosphere and lower taxes on labour?
I could go on about Solyndra, but I think that's enough for now. Just look further into the program that funded Solyndra and ask yourself home much money was wasted/earned in *totality*, and how that compares to typical venture capitalism.
This is just scare-mongering. Germany is moving to renewables, and their electricity bills didn't triple because of feed-in tariffs. They have created 340k jobs, many high-tech, and have moved the country to 20% renewables even whilst growing relative to the rest of the world.
Solar/wind will soon cost less than oil/coal/nuclear, even when you discount the cost of pollution. We have already reached the threshold depending on how you measure. (Pricing a coal power-plant includes pricing the future cost of coal over 30-40 years, and that ain't easy.) Tata in India has already declared that they aren't building any more coal power plants because it doesn't make financial sense.
The economic scare-mongering just doesn't make sense. The label "Alarmist" is projection.
The traditional utilities and oil/mining companies stand to lose their rent income. They have money and political influence. Propaganda works.
Material success is proof that the infidel is soft, and (paradoxically) oppressing our glorious people! The best thing to do with this people is prove the vapidity of their narrative by treating them like criminals in a fair and transparent criminal justice system.
It does however think that women have a different role than men, and that homosexual activity is sinful. Such a public sin-- particularly if unrepentant, and willful-- would immediately disqualify one for a leadership role in the church.
To make that claim is to profess that you do not understand what sola scriptura is.
This is an outrageous suggestion. AFAIK, Sola Scriptura is not about about biblical literalism. Basically, all protestants are saying is that the original text has more authority than whatever someone said about it later. Basically, it is about taking the pope/clergy down a peg.
But for every Fisker, A123 or Solendra, you'll get the occasional success - say, Tesla. I for one can't wait until they begin to make electric cars below 20 grand.
Not occasional. The DOE investments were, on the whole, highly successful.
As soon as someone starts harping on about Solyendra, then you know they have as little knowledge about government energy investments as they do about other thought terminating cliches, such as socialism. To the conservative mind, Solyendra is merely a thought terminating cliche. A single word that is the beginning and end of an ideological analysis.
Sure Solyendra was a disaster, but 95% of the investments were not, the money is substantially coming back, and we have new successful companies pioneering the technologies for the economy of tomorrow. The economy that is going to deliver year-on-year growth that will keep your mortgage afloat, and you solvant.
Bertrand Russell was spot on about fools and the wise. Please go learn something about the governments investments in clean energy.
So the money isn't wasted because it is used to prevent other people from selling us stuff at low prices?
If you want the USA to be a leader on the technologies of tomorrow, then it is not a waste. If you want the USA to lose its technical advantage, then sure, it is a waste of money. Let foreign countries engage in begger-thy-neighbor economic politices.
Your argument really is adolescent in its simplicity. There are people who actually study the economy, and know things about it. Great champions of the free market, such as Adam Smith, and Friedrich Hayek, explicitly endorsed the role of the government in the economy. It has always been this way. The great conservative experiment on market fundamentalism is anti-intellectual, and frankly dangerous.
The point is that this is just more money being pissed away while we go into a hole at a rate of around 100 billion dollars a month
You're not listening to what the GP said. I'll repeat. Please read and understand this. if private enterprise had the success record of Chu, they would be lauded as being one of the most successful investors of all times.
You will remember great hits like Solendra, A123, and Fisker.
This is a perfect example of a successful political hit-job. Yes Solendra et al. was a waste of money. But have you ever heard of a venture capital operation losing money? It happens all the time. The statistic you should be interested in is how money the parent program dished out in loans, how much was paid back, and home many successful new companies we have.
Do you know those statistics? Didn't think so. That is because they are not suitable Fox/Rush talking points.
Political discourse is/designed/ to poison the discourse with misinformation.
Agreed. Writing GUIs in C++ isn't that much fun, and GUI logic doesn't need the theoretical performance that C++ could give anyway. Just because C++ is not the right tool for every job does not mean that it is intrinsically bad.
The problem is - governments outside of North Korea feel it would be a bad move to cut them totally off and let their population starve to death.
It's not just about people starving to death. It's about game theory. Engagement actually does and has brought real change across the world. NK may be a special case.
and then have the next 10 years of "Nation Building" infrastructure improvements that we've become accustomed to giving the vanquished foes.
What an insane notion. Not that I don't think the leadership in NK are insane. But seriously, if they gave a shit about their people, then they'd, you know, be a little benevolent and all. These guys are in control, and having the US invade would not allow them to continue to keep their privileged position.
Slashdot Mirror
The best "decision" we could make as a society is to get rid of all the government distortions in the market.
Can you see the extremism in that view? Hayek himself was bullish about government involvement in the economy where appropriate.
What you espousing is anarchy -- just like Marx. Did you know that?
There is a whole world out there to learn about. Yolo.
If solar ever does become cheaper than natural gas (and eventually it will), everyone will switch then.
Price volatility is what is stopping people at the moment. If you gave people a guarantee on the price of electricity to stay the same over the next 20 years, then they would go to the bank, buy solar, and pay the bank instead of the utility company. This is exactly what is happening in countries which offer guaranteed prices. It is also happening in the US through private enterprise, but on a much smaller scale.
That's without factoring the cost of carbon pollution.
Gee, we're lucky that the rest of the world is working on the problem.
Is this because you are reducing the influence of oil companies or because your alternatives aren't going to provide enough to meet demand? Oh, I know, you're just going to legislate private energy consumption levels so electricity usage will come down!
Based on *empirical* evidence, when a tax is put on carbon, and then credited towards energy efficiency, people quickly end up paying less on their electricity bills because they need less of it.
I have to agree with you here: you are merely spewing the ideals of socialist oppression, but you seem to lack the mental processes to think critically about the human suffering the policies enacted would inflict.
Well, according to *empirical* evidence, this *neo-liberal* idea (you know who Hayek is?) works, and does not inflict human suffering. The USA does not rank very well in poverty, crime, education, life-satisfaction, personal freedom, unless you want to compare yourselves to the 2nd and 3rd world.
You talk about thinking critically -- do you know what projection is?
I wish we could differentiated environmentalist from the scientists and the raving hippy nuts.
This is actually really easy to do if you actually bother to dig beneath the surface.
They are a lot of options. The trick is to get the right balance.
The market will take care of that. It is the ultimate information processing machine for those types of choices. The market does suffer when vested interests peddle their influence in Washington, but ultimately, it will win out.
Now, the market will not price externalities (carbon pollution) on its own. Thankfully we don't need to price carbon in order to make renewables economically competitive. We're almost at the cross-over point. You think in 2020 that Google is going to run its data centres on expensive coal electricity? Of course not, and there ain't a thing that Koch an their allies can do about it.
The optimal thing to do at this point would be to drive innovation with incentive structures. This is already happening in most of the rest of the world, and if they produce the technology, they'll sell it to poor backward USA when we're still locked into expensive dirty technologies. Or, we could just use the amazing technological depth of this country to solve the problems here.
So really, the best way to solve this problem involves just the slightest influence from government. Say a 0.5% tax on carbon that is credited towards the energy efficiency industry. Retro-fitting homes and factories to use less electricity. Funding university and industry R&D into new materials. The *empirical* experience of the rest of the world shows that this would quickly *reduce* the electricity bills of both factories and residents, in just a few years. And then, if you take day 1 as a baseline, it is all win from there.
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
Yeah, there is plenty of oil, and we'll seriously harm pretty much the whole world if we burn it. The economics of renewables will stop us from burning it -- which is lucky, because otherwise, I think we really would burn it, whilst praying to Jesus for salvation.
After following this issue closely for 10 years now, I'm guessing that renewables will seamlessly take over from fossil fuels, after much teeth gnashing from invested interests and those who think environmentalists are out to impose world government. Economics will rule the day. From a certain point of view, we'll get lucky in this regard, but not before doing major long-term damage to our infrastructure world-wide. Every port, almost every major city, almost all agriculture activity, will be affected over then next 100 years. Conservatives will still blame environmentalists.
What is the return on this investment?
Jobs, future markets, less pollution, energy security, advancement of science
Is it financial, or non-financial?
Yes and yes.
Are the returns earned by the owner of the investment or by third parties?
Yes and yes.
Who is qualified to estimate the size of these returns in an unbiased manner?
Banks, actuaries, scientists
What is the opportunity cost of this investment
The influence of existing interests (Koch/Exxon, etc.) will wane.
Electricity usage will come down (see the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which covers 20% of the US economy, which grew relative to the rest of the US economy) giving factories a competitive advantage.
New economies will grow -- a small portion of Exxon's profits gets injected directly into the local economy creating jobs that improve energy efficiency in industry and housing.
It's really a non-brainer, and there is empirical proof that these are the effects, because other parts of the world (and the US) have already started trying these thing.
I found this amusing:
"let's have the government levy taxes and attempt to make this happen"
Conservatives harp on about incentive structures, so, to adopt a neo-liberal (market fundamentalist) approach to solving GHG emissions, let's tax what we don't want (carbon), and let the market sort out the rest. Heck, we can reduce taxes on what we do want (labour/entrepreneurship).
You want to talk opportunity cost? Do you want more carbon in the atmosphere and higher taxes on labour, or less carbon in the atmosphere and lower taxes on labour?
I could go on about Solyndra, but I think that's enough for now. Just look further into the program that funded Solyndra and ask yourself home much money was wasted/earned in *totality*, and how that compares to typical venture capitalism.
quadrupling the price of electricity
This is just scare-mongering. Germany is moving to renewables, and their electricity bills didn't triple because of feed-in tariffs. They have created 340k jobs, many high-tech, and have moved the country to 20% renewables even whilst growing relative to the rest of the world.
Solar/wind will soon cost less than oil/coal/nuclear, even when you discount the cost of pollution. We have already reached the threshold depending on how you measure. (Pricing a coal power-plant includes pricing the future cost of coal over 30-40 years, and that ain't easy.) Tata in India has already declared that they aren't building any more coal power plants because it doesn't make financial sense.
The economic scare-mongering just doesn't make sense. The label "Alarmist" is projection.
The traditional utilities and oil/mining companies stand to lose their rent income. They have money and political influence. Propaganda works.
Miles make better ad jingles?
Material success is proof that the infidel is soft, and (paradoxically) oppressing our glorious people! The best thing to do with this people is prove the vapidity of their narrative by treating them like criminals in a fair and transparent criminal justice system.
Is it any wonder that Keynsianism - with its abysmal record of failed predictinos
Someone who reads conservatives blogs demonstrating the inverse relationship between competence and confidence.
I don't 'believe' in science, I examine the evidence
Someone doesn't get science.
It does however think that women have a different role than men, and that homosexual activity is sinful. Such a public sin-- particularly if unrepentant, and willful-- would immediately disqualify one for a leadership role in the church.
The law of man, not god =0.
To make that claim is to profess that you do not understand what sola scriptura is.
This is an outrageous suggestion. AFAIK, Sola Scriptura is not about about biblical literalism. Basically, all protestants are saying is that the original text has more authority than whatever someone said about it later. Basically, it is about taking the pope/clergy down a peg.
But for every Fisker, A123 or Solendra, you'll get the occasional success - say, Tesla. I for one can't wait until they begin to make electric cars below 20 grand.
Not occasional. The DOE investments were, on the whole, highly successful.
As soon as someone starts harping on about Solyendra, then you know they have as little knowledge about government energy investments as they do about other thought terminating cliches, such as socialism. To the conservative mind, Solyendra is merely a thought terminating cliche. A single word that is the beginning and end of an ideological analysis.
Sure Solyendra was a disaster, but 95% of the investments were not, the money is substantially coming back, and we have new successful companies pioneering the technologies for the economy of tomorrow. The economy that is going to deliver year-on-year growth that will keep your mortgage afloat, and you solvant.
Bertrand Russell was spot on about fools and the wise. Please go learn something about the governments investments in clean energy.
So the money isn't wasted because it is used to prevent other people from selling us stuff at low prices?
If you want the USA to be a leader on the technologies of tomorrow, then it is not a waste. If you want the USA to lose its technical advantage, then sure, it is a waste of money. Let foreign countries engage in begger-thy-neighbor economic politices.
Your argument really is adolescent in its simplicity. There are people who actually study the economy, and know things about it. Great champions of the free market, such as Adam Smith, and Friedrich Hayek, explicitly endorsed the role of the government in the economy. It has always been this way. The great conservative experiment on market fundamentalism is anti-intellectual, and frankly dangerous.
The point is that this is just more money being pissed away while we go into a hole at a rate of around 100 billion dollars a month
You're not listening to what the GP said. I'll repeat. Please read and understand this. if private enterprise had the success record of Chu, they would be lauded as being one of the most successful investors of all times.
You will remember great hits like Solendra, A123, and Fisker.
This is a perfect example of a successful political hit-job. Yes Solendra et al. was a waste of money. But have you ever heard of a venture capital operation losing money? It happens all the time. The statistic you should be interested in is how money the parent program dished out in loans, how much was paid back, and home many successful new companies we have.
/designed/ to poison the discourse with misinformation.
Do you know those statistics? Didn't think so. That is because they are not suitable Fox/Rush talking points.
Political discourse is
Me? I want my salt to be as refined and inorganic as possible. Na and Cl in equal proportions, nothing more.
The you will probably develop an thyroid problem. Please rate the parent comment -1 uninformed.
Small point, but the main reason for preferring sea salt is that it tastes different than "normal" table salt.
The main reason for using sea-salt is: Iodine.
Boost and MFC /Win32
Agreed. Writing GUIs in C++ isn't that much fun, and GUI logic doesn't need the theoretical performance that C++ could give anyway. Just because C++ is not the right tool for every job does not mean that it is intrinsically bad.
The problem is - governments outside of North Korea feel it would be a bad move to cut them totally off and let their population starve to death.
It's not just about people starving to death. It's about game theory. Engagement actually does and has brought real change across the world. NK may be a special case.
and then have the next 10 years of "Nation Building" infrastructure improvements that we've become accustomed to giving the vanquished foes.
What an insane notion. Not that I don't think the leadership in NK are insane. But seriously, if they gave a shit about their people, then they'd, you know, be a little benevolent and all. These guys are in control, and having the US invade would not allow them to continue to keep their privileged position.