To be fair, LA is 266 miles away from Las Vegas; drive 1mph slower and you'll make it. Alternatively, they plan to put in a fast-charge station in Barstow (152 miles away) as one of the first 6 fast-charge stations just to make sure people can make it from LA to Las Vegas.
Many families in the US have multiple cars and only take one on a road trip at a time. Most families don't need both cars to be able to go 450 miles on a tank that's fillable anywhere in 5 minutes.
Most people live on the coasts, and are a lot closer to places they'd regularly drive to. You could drive from New York City to Boston or Washington DC on a single 265 mile charge. In southern California, you could drive from LA to San Diego and back on a 265 mile charge. You could even drive around the entire San Francisco Bay Area on a single 190 mile charge (the $60,000 version).
A large number of (wealthy) people in San Francisco, New York, etc. don't even own cars. Surely if they don't need a car then a limited-range EV would satisfy their needs. Sure, EVs aren't for everyone; but a lot of US driving done with gas-powered cars could be easily done with EVs.
It's not about the concentration (absolute or relative), but the effect. If someone started to double the concentration of O2 in out atmosphere from 21% to 42%, I would call that pollution because of the large number of negative externalities (ie. due to the impact it would have on forest fires). If someone increased N2 concentration from 78% to 89%, we'd all have a harder time getting to oxygen we need to function, so continued willy-nilly dumpin of N2 into the atmosphere would be pollution.
Actually, changes to low concentrations of greenhouse gases has a larger effect than changes at high concentrations. In a simplistic picture where the transmissivity of the atmosphere in a certain band depends on a single molecule, you can write the transmissivity of the atmosphere as I = 2^(-t/h). Where I is the % of the light that makes it out of the earth's atmosphere, t is the thickness of the molecule, and h is the level at which that molecule blocks half the light from making it out of the atmosphere.
Let's assume that 200ppm will block out half the light. At 280ppm, 38% of the light made it through. At 390ppm, 26% of the light makes it through. At 480ppm, 19% of the light makes it through. By 5%, basically no light makes it through, which means that from 280ppm, 480ppm is halfway to 5% and at 390ppm (where we are now) we are a third of the way to the effect of 5%. In actuality, every molecule has multiple absorption bands, and I'm sorry I don't have exact numbers handy. But, this exponential dependence is one of the reasons why methane, which is normally at a much lower absolute concentration, is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 (the other reason being that the ocean won't gradually reabsorb it).
When you submit a paper to a journal you typically sign a copyright transfer agreement. These vary a bit from publisher to publisher, but all of the ones I have seen state (and I just checked the two I have in my desk):
1. That the copyright (but not related patent rights) is transferred to the publisher, but the authors retain the right to make personal copies.
2. That it is original work, not published before in any language and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
IANAL, but my understanding is that the first clause prohibits you from submitting the article to another journal and the second clause prohibits you from having already submitted it to another journal.
First of all, in 1000 hours (typical incandescent lifetime) a 60W equivalent CFL saves $5.00 in electricity, so if the price premium for a CFL is less than that, it's still the economical choice (assuming $0.11/kWh) even if it lasts no longer.
My main point is that the way various light bulbs (and CFLs in particular) burn out is actually a pretty complicated process, but LEDs are pretty much the best for most non-high-temperature applications (ie. oven lights), and that they aren't lying maliciously; your usage most likely just differs from their test process. The test process for CFLs involves something like turning it on for 5+ hours at a time, which is typical lighting use in commercial or industrial buildings, but in most people's home many lights are on for 5-10 minutes at a time (bathrooms, garages, halls, walk-in closets, etc.) so they are turned on/off 25 times as much for the same amount of runtime---which results in early failure because of the loss of emission mix. Alternatively, if the power from the grid is of poor quality in your home, the ballast or emission mix may contribute to early failure.
Comment Summary: EULA Summary's Would be Nice
on
EULAs Don't Have To Suck
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't know why no one includes summary's at the top of EULAs. It's not like it's that hard of an idea to think of and I've yet to hear a single objection (though I'm sure/. can help with this). No one is actually saying you can't have pages and pages of precise details spelled out in pages and pages for the lawyers.
By the way, this is suggested on page 2 of the article for all of you who either didn't read the article, or refuse to bother going to page 2 of an article that has no reason not to be on a single page.
Last I heard, the first 1,000 Model Ss will have 230 or 300mi ranges, so the 160mi range owners will not even exist for a while.
Possible Secret Plan:
1. Build 1 supercharger halfway between LA and SF to accomodate owners of the 300mi (and maybe 230mi) range Model S and all Roadster owners, if I understand correctly.
2. Build 2 more superchargers halfway between each metropolis and the first supercharger to accomodate all other Model S owners.
3. Profit.
4. ???
5. More profit.
Yes, the original poster isn't quite right, but you are ignoring the fact that EVs are basically designed to be topped off every night instead of only filled when it gets near empty, as is typically done with gas cars. GP should have said that you can charge it from empty overnight on household power (240V/35A). Even most US houses have this anyway because electricity is delivered on +120V and -120V wires, and it's just that most appliances that aren't electric ovens, dryers, and/or air conditioners, run between 120V and neutral while those large power appliances run between +120V/35A and -120V/35A.
Since most electricity at night costs ~$0.11/kWh and gas costs ~$4.00/gal, going 100 miles costs $3 in a Roadster (27kWh) or $8 in a Prius (2gal). I haven't ever bought electricity in another country, but I know the gas is sure way more expensive in the EU so I expect one would get the same result there.
So a one-car family probably shouldn't have an EV (until we get 1000 mile batteries), in case they need to take a road trip. But many American middle-class families have 2 (or 3) cars, 1 of which could be an EV.
I don't understand why we don't just build pyramids, but with radioactive waste instead of dead pharaohs. They've proven that they can last for 4500 years and counting. You can build them almost wherever you want (subject to only to fault lines, nearby human populations, and proximity to radioactive waste generation).
Also, by this point, I'm not sure Yucca Mountain would be able to hold all of our high-level radioactive waste anyway.
In theory, all we need is a sufficiently high carbon tax or a cap and trade system with a very low cap. The free market would then decide the appropriate amount of decreased consumption vs. increased efficiency vs. cleaner sources vs. etc. That said, such a solution is not really politically possible when we can't even convince people global warming is real/caused by us/a problem. From a more practical standpoint, we need to throw every little solution we can at the problem, and doing those in steps is why you don't often see a list of solutions that actually compares to the magnitude of the problem. But here's what I can come up with off the top of my head:
Gradually increasing carbon tax (at fossil fuel extraction/import so that a few companies worry about it and then pass the cost along to the millions of consumers).
Research integral fast reactors and then build them to meet baseline power consumption.
Research algae & cellulosic biofuels until it's cheaper than conventional jet fuel/gasoline/diesel.
Research cheaper solar photovoltaics systems.
Make roads more bike-friendly so more people will bike to work.
Improve public transportation.
Insulate buildings more.
Build high-speed rail up & down the coasts.
Build solar thermal power stations in the southwest.
Build wind farms in the central US and offshore the East Coast.
Build wave power stations along appropriate coastline.
Build energy storage (ie. pumped hydro).
Increase transmission capability to transfer electricity across the country.
Build a smarter electric grid to decrease demand when intermittent sources decrease.
Once we have more carbon neutral sources of electricity, use electric heat pumps instead of natural gas or oil for heating.
Nowadays almost all camera batteries provided by (computer, camera, car, etc.) manufacturers are Li-Ion and almost all rechargeable AAs are traditional NiMH, so it sounds to me like you are comparing different chemistries and erroneously concluding that the result is due to the quality of the battery.
Li-Ion batteries and low self-discharge NiMH batteries discharge 2-3% per month. Traditional NiMH and NiCd batteries discharge15-30% per month. If you buy the low self-discharge NiMH batteries, you won't look back (unless you have applications where you change the batteries more often than weekly, then you're doing so much recharging you won't notice the longer shelf life).
To answer the original question: since EVs currently use Li-Ion batteries, expect them to discharge a few percent per month, which would add up to one full cycle every 3 years. Using the national average of $0.12/kWh, this would translate to a cost of a $0.64/year for a Chevy Volt (16kWh) , $0.96/year for a Nissan LEAF (24kWh), and $2.12/year for a Tesla Roadster (53kWh), so not much.
Too bad that a) Seagate's QC on the Momentus XT sucks and b) they don't give a shit about their customers and will gladly wait 3 weeks between confirming receipt of malfunctioning, under-warranty drive and actually mailing another one back to you, leaving you drive-less for a full month. But hey, who actually needs a hard drive? I regret not just buying a small SSD for more money but way less hassle.
The cheap options all evaporate as soon as you want a router with the same features as the Time Capsule or the $180 AirPort Extreme (plus BYO external drive); Simultaneous Dual Band and USB looks like it'll run you $120, not $50, from non-Apple brands.
Oh, and "you’ll need to use a little hack [13] to force the new drive to appear in Time Machine. Once it appears, however, your cheap-and-cheerful DIY Time Capsule should function in exactly the same way as the real thing."(emphasis mine) I'm sorry, but what is the point of a backup that should work?
I want a backup that I am confident works; saving $60 isn't worth it.
Or maybe people (our grandkids) should have the liberty/freedom to decide if they want to live in a polluted/warmed environment instead of other people (us) making a nonreversible decision for them. We could force conservation and sustainability on 6 billion people now, or can force it on ~10 billion of our descendants (and maybe more) later by virtue of leaving no other options; which leaves the most people with the most freedom?
If you've really looked around a MagSafe you'd see there is a bit more to it than attaching a magnet to a power cord. The pins are spring-loaded so that the circuit cannot close unless they are depressed, preventing you from accidentally shorting it out and causing a fire. Sure, no one cares about this feature with the typical coax type connector that is held in by friction, because the powered wire is recessed, but you can't really do that if you are trying to get rid of the whole friction thing so it can come undone safely.
You realize that not all radiation is the same right? For a simplistic view of photon radiation, there are high energy photons (x-rays and gamma-rays) with an absorption length of several meters of human tissue which distribute an even dose throughout your tissue and then there are relatively low-energy photons with an absorption length of about a millimeter of human tissue which are consequently absorbed predominantly by your skin, concentrating the dose there.
The TSA claims to be using the low-energy kind that concentrate the dose on your skin which would likely cause skin cancer. (I haven't looked up the absorption spectrum of melanin, but I think it drops off before we get to the soft x-ray region so dark skinned people may be just as susceptible as pasty white/.ers.)
Look up Americium in a Table of Isotopes; there are a decent number gamma rays that it emits at 60keV or 73keV depending on the isotope (Am-241 or Am-243) after it alpha decays. That said, smoke detectors vary a lot depending on the amount of Americium inside and you're always better off with a long half-life calibration source.
You necessarily don't need lots of rare earth elements to make an electric car. Sure, when Toyota was designing the Prius in the mid 1990s, they chose to go with rare-earth magnets in their motors because they were the latest, fanciest, lightest magnets you could buy. On the other hand, Tesla Motors (and other companies) in the 2000s took a more cautious direction and built their propulsion motors without permanent magnets, therefore using no rare-earth elements there (the power windows probably still have rare-earth magnets, just like in every other modern car). Instead, Tesla Motors went back to the induction motor, originally invented by, you guessed it, Nikola Tesla in 1888. Rare earth problem solved.
If we pumped our own oil at the rate we are consuming oil, we would run out in ~10 years and then we'd either be out of oil or need to import ALL our oil instead of 2/3rds of it.
Last I looked, the plants in Japan survived the earthquake and aftershocks with no major damage. However, the fault lines in questions near Japan are in an offshore subduction zone and therefore produce tsunamis, which can cause major problems if systems are not designed properly. The fault lines near the California nuclear plants are slip faults and generally onshore, meaning they can no more produce a problematic tsunami than a wind farm. Also, the power plants in California were designed for an earthquake 15 times stronger than what geologists believe is the maximum possible earthquake locally (remember, since neither plant is on a fault line, the earthquake magnitude is not the local magnitude). On the other hand, nuclear power plants in the Midwest were built without earthquakes in mind and could suffer damage from geologically routine earthquakes in the region --- so I'll take earthquake-prepared California.
I have heard it argued by a realtor that solar panels do not increase the value of the home as buyers tend to underestimate the remaining lifetime of the product. Of course, that was anecdotal and not a study with stated error bars.
The CO2 plateau is so narrow on a geologic scale that it isn't often discussed. The apparent plateau you see on the right of the page you mentioned is in fact only a few pixels wide on the left and occurs naturally every 100,000 years. This link is somewhat more readable. I hope you don't view this as me ignoring the cause/effect so I'm going to be redundant: I think that the effect is historically normal, and the cause is the same historical cause of the last three jumps from 200 to 280 ppm, though I don't know exactly what that is.
What we've seen in the last 200 year has been an increase from 280 to 370 ppm, more than enough to end a glacial maximum, not to mention the other greenhouse gases like methane. Furthermore, the hockey stick graph is only a 1 dimensional picture. Scientists now have climate models with huge numbers of parameters; I've yet to see one that doesn't predict global warming in the next century due primarily to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
Most environmentalists are trying to make some progress and would be ok with half the progress they think the world needs, as a step in the right direction. The oil and coal lobby is fighting against all compromise, because for them compromising is losing.
Since global warming is a negative externality of CO2 emissions, the free market will operate best if this cost is internalized -- so I advocate a gradually increasing CO2 tax so as not to shock the economy but to make it clear that the price of fossil fuels will go up. The entire proceeds can be spent on domestic research, solar panels for government buildings from domestic manufacturers, or even giving the proceeds back to the people in the form of tax credits.
Someday, a CO2 tax or cap and trade will happen. Global warming can only be denied for so long. Not too mention, someday we'll run out of fossil fuels (not literally, the prices will start spiking). Long-term smart money is in clean energy.
Actually, most of the "failed terrorist attacks" actually succeeded in making us scared. The "failed" shoe bomber means 800 million people annually now need to take off their shoes every time they go through security, taking a cumulative 760 man-years of time (assuming 30 seconds for on and off), of monetary value $67 million if you assume $10/hour value for the average person's time. The "failed" underwear bomber, now means 800 million domestic airline passengers annually need to be xray-screened, and costing us even more in (useless) machines, all for a bomb that probably cost $5.
I think we're wasting way more time and energy reacting to their past attempts than they are thinking of new ways to try to hurt us.
Consider that buying a 1992 Honda means someone else can't...Honda can't decide to make more 1992 Hondas. Whereas buying a new Prius means Toyota makes one more Prius (approximately). Even if you sell your Prius every year to buy a new one, your old one isn't getting crushed -- someone else is buying it who instead might be buying a less fuel efficient car. Right now, you have to choose between fuel efficient (low energy upkeep) and reliable (initial energy cost being amortized over a longer time). But in 20 years, people will be choosing between a reliable Camry and a reliable Camry Hybrid.
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To be fair, LA is 266 miles away from Las Vegas; drive 1mph slower and you'll make it. Alternatively, they plan to put in a fast-charge station in Barstow (152 miles away) as one of the first 6 fast-charge stations just to make sure people can make it from LA to Las Vegas.
Many families in the US have multiple cars and only take one on a road trip at a time. Most families don't need both cars to be able to go 450 miles on a tank that's fillable anywhere in 5 minutes.
Most people live on the coasts, and are a lot closer to places they'd regularly drive to. You could drive from New York City to Boston or Washington DC on a single 265 mile charge. In southern California, you could drive from LA to San Diego and back on a 265 mile charge. You could even drive around the entire San Francisco Bay Area on a single 190 mile charge (the $60,000 version).
A large number of (wealthy) people in San Francisco, New York, etc. don't even own cars. Surely if they don't need a car then a limited-range EV would satisfy their needs. Sure, EVs aren't for everyone; but a lot of US driving done with gas-powered cars could be easily done with EVs.
That sounds really cool. Or hot since, unfortunately, the close proximity to its star means that it probably has a surface temperature of 1500 K.
I guess I'd be more interested in a different-sized planet a bit further away from its star.
It's not about the concentration (absolute or relative), but the effect. If someone started to double the concentration of O2 in out atmosphere from 21% to 42%, I would call that pollution because of the large number of negative externalities (ie. due to the impact it would have on forest fires). If someone increased N2 concentration from 78% to 89%, we'd all have a harder time getting to oxygen we need to function, so continued willy-nilly dumpin of N2 into the atmosphere would be pollution.
Actually, changes to low concentrations of greenhouse gases has a larger effect than changes at high concentrations. In a simplistic picture where the transmissivity of the atmosphere in a certain band depends on a single molecule, you can write the transmissivity of the atmosphere as I = 2^(-t/h). Where I is the % of the light that makes it out of the earth's atmosphere, t is the thickness of the molecule, and h is the level at which that molecule blocks half the light from making it out of the atmosphere.
Let's assume that 200ppm will block out half the light. At 280ppm, 38% of the light made it through. At 390ppm, 26% of the light makes it through. At 480ppm, 19% of the light makes it through. By 5%, basically no light makes it through, which means that from 280ppm, 480ppm is halfway to 5% and at 390ppm (where we are now) we are a third of the way to the effect of 5%. In actuality, every molecule has multiple absorption bands, and I'm sorry I don't have exact numbers handy. But, this exponential dependence is one of the reasons why methane, which is normally at a much lower absolute concentration, is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 (the other reason being that the ocean won't gradually reabsorb it).
When you submit a paper to a journal you typically sign a copyright transfer agreement. These vary a bit from publisher to publisher, but all of the ones I have seen state (and I just checked the two I have in my desk):
1. That the copyright (but not related patent rights) is transferred to the publisher, but the authors retain the right to make personal copies.
2. That it is original work, not published before in any language and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
IANAL, but my understanding is that the first clause prohibits you from submitting the article to another journal and the second clause prohibits you from having already submitted it to another journal.
As far as I can tell, it's quite effective.
First of all, in 1000 hours (typical incandescent lifetime) a 60W equivalent CFL saves $5.00 in electricity, so if the price premium for a CFL is less than that, it's still the economical choice (assuming $0.11/kWh) even if it lasts no longer.
My main point is that the way various light bulbs (and CFLs in particular) burn out is actually a pretty complicated process, but LEDs are pretty much the best for most non-high-temperature applications (ie. oven lights), and that they aren't lying maliciously; your usage most likely just differs from their test process. The test process for CFLs involves something like turning it on for 5+ hours at a time, which is typical lighting use in commercial or industrial buildings, but in most people's home many lights are on for 5-10 minutes at a time (bathrooms, garages, halls, walk-in closets, etc.) so they are turned on/off 25 times as much for the same amount of runtime---which results in early failure because of the loss of emission mix. Alternatively, if the power from the grid is of poor quality in your home, the ballast or emission mix may contribute to early failure.
I don't know why no one includes summary's at the top of EULAs. It's not like it's that hard of an idea to think of and I've yet to hear a single objection (though I'm sure /. can help with this). No one is actually saying you can't have pages and pages of precise details spelled out in pages and pages for the lawyers.
By the way, this is suggested on page 2 of the article for all of you who either didn't read the article, or refuse to bother going to page 2 of an article that has no reason not to be on a single page.
Last I heard, the first 1,000 Model Ss will have 230 or 300mi ranges, so the 160mi range owners will not even exist for a while.
Possible Secret Plan:
1. Build 1 supercharger halfway between LA and SF to accomodate owners of the 300mi (and maybe 230mi) range Model S and all Roadster owners, if I understand correctly.
2. Build 2 more superchargers halfway between each metropolis and the first supercharger to accomodate all other Model S owners.
3. Profit.
4. ???
5. More profit.
Yes, the original poster isn't quite right, but you are ignoring the fact that EVs are basically designed to be topped off every night instead of only filled when it gets near empty, as is typically done with gas cars. GP should have said that you can charge it from empty overnight on household power (240V/35A). Even most US houses have this anyway because electricity is delivered on +120V and -120V wires, and it's just that most appliances that aren't electric ovens, dryers, and/or air conditioners, run between 120V and neutral while those large power appliances run between +120V/35A and -120V/35A.
Since most electricity at night costs ~$0.11/kWh and gas costs ~$4.00/gal, going 100 miles costs $3 in a Roadster (27kWh) or $8 in a Prius (2gal). I haven't ever bought electricity in another country, but I know the gas is sure way more expensive in the EU so I expect one would get the same result there.
So a one-car family probably shouldn't have an EV (until we get 1000 mile batteries), in case they need to take a road trip. But many American middle-class families have 2 (or 3) cars, 1 of which could be an EV.
I don't understand why we don't just build pyramids, but with radioactive waste instead of dead pharaohs. They've proven that they can last for 4500 years and counting. You can build them almost wherever you want (subject to only to fault lines, nearby human populations, and proximity to radioactive waste generation).
Also, by this point, I'm not sure Yucca Mountain would be able to hold all of our high-level radioactive waste anyway.
Nowadays almost all camera batteries provided by (computer, camera, car, etc.) manufacturers are Li-Ion and almost all rechargeable AAs are traditional NiMH, so it sounds to me like you are comparing different chemistries and erroneously concluding that the result is due to the quality of the battery.
Li-Ion batteries and low self-discharge NiMH batteries discharge 2-3% per month. Traditional NiMH and NiCd batteries discharge15-30% per month. If you buy the low self-discharge NiMH batteries, you won't look back (unless you have applications where you change the batteries more often than weekly, then you're doing so much recharging you won't notice the longer shelf life).
To answer the original question: since EVs currently use Li-Ion batteries, expect them to discharge a few percent per month, which would add up to one full cycle every 3 years. Using the national average of $0.12/kWh, this would translate to a cost of a $0.64/year for a Chevy Volt (16kWh) , $0.96/year for a Nissan LEAF (24kWh), and $2.12/year for a Tesla Roadster (53kWh), so not much.
Too bad that a) Seagate's QC on the Momentus XT sucks and b) they don't give a shit about their customers and will gladly wait 3 weeks between confirming receipt of malfunctioning, under-warranty drive and actually mailing another one back to you, leaving you drive-less for a full month. But hey, who actually needs a hard drive? I regret not just buying a small SSD for more money but way less hassle.
The cheap options all evaporate as soon as you want a router with the same features as the Time Capsule or the $180 AirPort Extreme (plus BYO external drive); Simultaneous Dual Band and USB looks like it'll run you $120, not $50, from non-Apple brands.
Oh, and "you’ll need to use a little hack [13] to force the new drive to appear in Time Machine. Once it appears, however, your cheap-and-cheerful DIY Time Capsule should function in exactly the same way as the real thing."(emphasis mine) I'm sorry, but what is the point of a backup that should work?
I want a backup that I am confident works; saving $60 isn't worth it.
Or maybe people (our grandkids) should have the liberty/freedom to decide if they want to live in a polluted/warmed environment instead of other people (us) making a nonreversible decision for them. We could force conservation and sustainability on 6 billion people now, or can force it on ~10 billion of our descendants (and maybe more) later by virtue of leaving no other options; which leaves the most people with the most freedom?
If you've really looked around a MagSafe you'd see there is a bit more to it than attaching a magnet to a power cord. The pins are spring-loaded so that the circuit cannot close unless they are depressed, preventing you from accidentally shorting it out and causing a fire. Sure, no one cares about this feature with the typical coax type connector that is held in by friction, because the powered wire is recessed, but you can't really do that if you are trying to get rid of the whole friction thing so it can come undone safely.
You realize that not all radiation is the same right? For a simplistic view of photon radiation, there are high energy photons (x-rays and gamma-rays) with an absorption length of several meters of human tissue which distribute an even dose throughout your tissue and then there are relatively low-energy photons with an absorption length of about a millimeter of human tissue which are consequently absorbed predominantly by your skin, concentrating the dose there.
The TSA claims to be using the low-energy kind that concentrate the dose on your skin which would likely cause skin cancer. (I haven't looked up the absorption spectrum of melanin, but I think it drops off before we get to the soft x-ray region so dark skinned people may be just as susceptible as pasty white /.ers.)
Look up Americium in a Table of Isotopes; there are a decent number gamma rays that it emits at 60keV or 73keV depending on the isotope (Am-241 or Am-243) after it alpha decays. That said, smoke detectors vary a lot depending on the amount of Americium inside and you're always better off with a long half-life calibration source.
You necessarily don't need lots of rare earth elements to make an electric car. Sure, when Toyota was designing the Prius in the mid 1990s, they chose to go with rare-earth magnets in their motors because they were the latest, fanciest, lightest magnets you could buy. On the other hand, Tesla Motors (and other companies) in the 2000s took a more cautious direction and built their propulsion motors without permanent magnets, therefore using no rare-earth elements there (the power windows probably still have rare-earth magnets, just like in every other modern car). Instead, Tesla Motors went back to the induction motor, originally invented by, you guessed it, Nikola Tesla in 1888. Rare earth problem solved.
References: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/induction_motors
If we pumped our own oil at the rate we are consuming oil, we would run out in ~10 years and then we'd either be out of oil or need to import ALL our oil instead of 2/3rds of it.
Last I looked, the plants in Japan survived the earthquake and aftershocks with no major damage. However, the fault lines in questions near Japan are in an offshore subduction zone and therefore produce tsunamis, which can cause major problems if systems are not designed properly. The fault lines near the California nuclear plants are slip faults and generally onshore, meaning they can no more produce a problematic tsunami than a wind farm. Also, the power plants in California were designed for an earthquake 15 times stronger than what geologists believe is the maximum possible earthquake locally (remember, since neither plant is on a fault line, the earthquake magnitude is not the local magnitude). On the other hand, nuclear power plants in the Midwest were built without earthquakes in mind and could suffer damage from geologically routine earthquakes in the region --- so I'll take earthquake-prepared California.
I have heard it argued by a realtor that solar panels do not increase the value of the home as buyers tend to underestimate the remaining lifetime of the product. Of course, that was anecdotal and not a study with stated error bars.
Yes, but China also has a lot of relatively inexpensive (but not quite cheap) skilled labor.
On the other hand, I don't see the US government using Chinese rockets unless there is no domestic supplier.
The CO2 plateau is so narrow on a geologic scale that it isn't often discussed. The apparent plateau you see on the right of the page you mentioned is in fact only a few pixels wide on the left and occurs naturally every 100,000 years. This link is somewhat more readable. I hope you don't view this as me ignoring the cause/effect so I'm going to be redundant: I think that the effect is historically normal, and the cause is the same historical cause of the last three jumps from 200 to 280 ppm, though I don't know exactly what that is.
What we've seen in the last 200 year has been an increase from 280 to 370 ppm, more than enough to end a glacial maximum, not to mention the other greenhouse gases like methane. Furthermore, the hockey stick graph is only a 1 dimensional picture. Scientists now have climate models with huge numbers of parameters; I've yet to see one that doesn't predict global warming in the next century due primarily to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.
Most environmentalists are trying to make some progress and would be ok with half the progress they think the world needs, as a step in the right direction. The oil and coal lobby is fighting against all compromise, because for them compromising is losing.
Since global warming is a negative externality of CO2 emissions, the free market will operate best if this cost is internalized -- so I advocate a gradually increasing CO2 tax so as not to shock the economy but to make it clear that the price of fossil fuels will go up. The entire proceeds can be spent on domestic research, solar panels for government buildings from domestic manufacturers, or even giving the proceeds back to the people in the form of tax credits.
Someday, a CO2 tax or cap and trade will happen. Global warming can only be denied for so long. Not too mention, someday we'll run out of fossil fuels (not literally, the prices will start spiking). Long-term smart money is in clean energy.
Actually, most of the "failed terrorist attacks" actually succeeded in making us scared. The "failed" shoe bomber means 800 million people annually now need to take off their shoes every time they go through security, taking a cumulative 760 man-years of time (assuming 30 seconds for on and off), of monetary value $67 million if you assume $10/hour value for the average person's time. The "failed" underwear bomber, now means 800 million domestic airline passengers annually need to be xray-screened, and costing us even more in (useless) machines, all for a bomb that probably cost $5.
I think we're wasting way more time and energy reacting to their past attempts than they are thinking of new ways to try to hurt us.
*800 million from http://www.numberof.net/number-of-airline-passengers-per-year/
Consider that buying a 1992 Honda means someone else can't...Honda can't decide to make more 1992 Hondas. Whereas buying a new Prius means Toyota makes one more Prius (approximately). Even if you sell your Prius every year to buy a new one, your old one isn't getting crushed -- someone else is buying it who instead might be buying a less fuel efficient car. Right now, you have to choose between fuel efficient (low energy upkeep) and reliable (initial energy cost being amortized over a longer time). But in 20 years, people will be choosing between a reliable Camry and a reliable Camry Hybrid.