That would mean only the established big players can compete/produce.
Not even close. Big established players only can compeat today. It won't take long for a new, smaller, player to be slapped with a lawsuit from those established big players today. Without an army of lawyers it's difficult if not impossible to wade through the patent mine field, and what small business can afford such an army of attorneys?
Because if I invent something with a 10M budget and start producing it, they easily can take my invention and produce it cheaper
Again not quite. As the inventor you have first mover advantage. Big players can take years to turn around and produce something. Big players don't turn on a dime. And if you haven't made improvements in your product by the tyme your competition releases it's own compeating product then you're not progressing.
What would be the point then for me to invent anything?
If the above do not work for you then there's these things called trade secrets. Fabrication businesses already exist that will build or manufacture other businesses products on contract. The Taiwanese business Foxconn builds computers and other electronics for others, Apple contracted with Foxconn to make iPads, iPhones, and iPods. Trade secrets, and contracts, prevent Foxconn from making these and selling them as their own products. I as an inventor could go to Foxconn or another fabricator, have them sign an NDA or Non-disclosure Agreement, and ask them if they can manufacture my product. Then if Foxconn started to sell my invention as their own product I have good grounds to sue and believe I can win.
Now I may not have enough money to file a lawsuit myself but I could find an investor would does have deep pockets. Or better yet again with signed NDAs I can show my invention to angel investors or business incubators. With their assistance I can start manufacturing my product myself.
This is the result of letting companies get patents that boil down to numbers and abstract generic processes. I think the only way to fix it is to reform how patents are granted, for what, and for how long. If USPTO simply can't handle the load they're under, then they should complain to their bosses for more resources, reform their practices, or change applicant's expectations.
You ignored a fix, one that would encourage more progress. Get rid of patents altogether.
Is this more MS FUD? Are we actually going to find out what MS patents are being infringed? Or is it going to turn out to be another SCO case? A bunch of lies but no proof?
Based on that, to equal a nuclear reactor putting out 1 gigawatt, you need 4 or 5 gigawatts of wind towers. So the planned capacity is equal to 1 or 2 nuclear power stations with several large reactors running at each.
Those wind turbines can be spaced out though, and they're not a potentially large threat to the environment. But that's only looking at wind potential. There could be other potential sources of energy as well such as geothermal, which because it is steady is quite usable as a baseload.
Electricity isn't required "8 hours a day", and the grid required for current solar panels to supply an entire country's worth of power...
So you like most others ignored other energy sources. I mentioned two that don't depend on the sun shining, geothermal and wind. Geothermal is steady and reliable, and the wind is always blowing somewhere.
in the US, you have a lot of empty space, but over here in the UK we don't actually have room for all the of required panels.
What is justice? What is right or is corrected. Eliminate many of the laws on the books. For instance victimless crime laws. The War on Drugs? A big waste of tyme, money, and resources. Laws against prostitution? Where are the victims? Laws against fornication? Against sodomy? Against oral sex? Where are the victims? Getting rid of these laws will dramatically reduce the need for a justice system. Laws and law enforcement should be working on the harm personal acts afflict on the unwilling. Should there be a Law? is an excellent flowchart depicting the flow of reason that should occur in deciding what laws there will be.
I'd rather have power wielded by a democratic government - which I can influence - than corporations (which I can't).
I will handle this in two different ways. The first one being who gives corporations their power? Government does. If corporations have too much power it's because government gave them that power. Thirty years after Thomas Jefferson drafted the "Declaration of Independence" he wrote this warning:
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
However there was a reason the first corporate charters were granted, yes they are granted by government. The first businesses to be granted a charter was the British East India Company in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. Both were shipping companies, as hinted by their names, but shipping was a risky business. If either cargo, crew, or passengers were lost the ship's owners were liable. If pirates captured the ship killing people, or just stole the cargo, the owners had to pay for their loss. The same with sinkings such as caused by hurricanes. So if I as a small investor wanted to and had the money to invest in a ship, if that ship was lost I would be financially liable. Not only would I lose the money I invested but I could lose my home and everything I owned. So the British and Dutch crowns decided to grant some businesses a corporate charter giving investors limited liability. With these charters I could invest money in a ship and if the ship was lost all I'd lose was the money I invested. This allows society and many people to benefit, international trade is a common or public good.
I could go on but you should now have a clear idea why corporations exist. Now onto the second way. So you trust government more than businesses? Has any business, or group of businesses, killed as many people as governments have? The greatest number of deaths all at once I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal Disaster in India. The estimate with the highest number of deaths from it is 15,000, with an estimate of less than 600,000 injured.
Now how many people have governments killed or violated the rights of? NAZI Germany, over 600,000. Stalin's Russia, 20,000,000. Mao's China, 50,000,000. The US isn't guilt free either. The US, and state governments, have killed people and violated many more people's rights. Those in US prisons for non-violent drug offenses, and the US has the world's largest prison population? Their rights are violated on a daily basis. Throughout it's history the US massacred American Indian tribes. Up through the 1970s the US government's Indian Health Service had doctors sterilize Native American Women, forcefully and
I don't know, let me check. According to the wiki article Wind power in Finland wind produced 143 MW with 118 turbines in December 2008. It says wind is the most popular energy resource in Finland. Now that doesn't say what the wind potential is so I'll continue... According to the Finnish Wind Atlas the south and southwest in coastal areas has plenty of potential. iea wind says wind is the second largest renewable resource with a target of 6 TWh/yr in 2020 (2,000 to 3,000 MW). It goes on saying that there's already 5,400MW to 8,000MW of wind power in planning or announced.
However that can only supply Finland with a fraction of it's electricity. According to Statistics Finland in 2009 the nation used 81.3 terawatt hours (TWh). More can be generated by adding capacity faster though.
Imagine you live in China, France, India, or Russia. Will the markets pay to build nuclear power plants? Or will it take government officials to decide what's built?
Today, modern nuclear designs are by far the best replacement for existing nuclear generation (wind and solar can help, but the time tables for the gigawatts we need are easier to meet with nuclear).
Citation needed. The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, being built by the French government owned Areva, was supposed to be compleated in 2009. Now it's not scheduled for completion before 2012, three years late with cost overruns doubling the cost. According to the wiki article the first two reactors will generate 860 MW each. Erecting 10 5 megawatt wind turbines a month will potentially add 1 GW in 20 months. Erecting 10 a month 10 months a year would add more capacity in two years than one of Olkiluoto's reactors.
Quite simply erecting wind turbines will add capacity faster than building nuclear power plants will. With the added benefit that wind turbines can be erected in places where nuclear power plants can't be built and can be distributed and not be one monolithic plant.
Reprocessing the spent fuel can remove all the extremely radioactively hot material which can then be fissioned in the reactor again. That'll break it down into much cooler material.
You might want to tell France how to do it then.
"France’s engineers tried harder than those in any other country to build and run breeder reactors reliably at a commercial scale, but ultimately they failed. The result is that even in France--the best real-world model of what reprocessing can accomplish--the technology remains a tantalizing but only partial solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste."
We can do much better now, but the anti-nuclear lobby has prevented us from getting anything built.
The anti-nuclear lobby has not prevented plants from getting built in China, France, India, or Russia. In the Forbes article Hooked on Subsidies it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
Imagine if there was an anti-car lobby with as much power. We'd all (OK a very small number of us would) be driving around in incredibly expensive and patched-up Ford Anglias and Morris Minors today. Everyone else would be going by horse or foot.
Imagine if petroleum wasn't as cheap as it was when cars were first mass produced what we'd be driving today. Without cheap petroleum we wouldn't be driving internal combustion engine vehicles, we'd be driving electric cars. The first one was built in 1828, before the Otto cycle, four stroke engine was invented. Well we might be driving vehicles powered by Rudolf Diesel's Diesel engine. However Diesel made his fuel from hemp oil, peanut oil, and other vegetable oils.
The problem with you "alternative" energy types is that you have no sense of proportion. You could entirely cover the Sahara (according to a British study) in photovoltaic cells and still not cover Europe's energy needs.
That isn't to say we shouldn't move to more alternative fuels (we should), but to naively think that will be sufficient is just blind.
To say alternative energy can't be sufficient is just blind. Requiring people to pay the full cost of the energy they use, including but not only eliminating subsidies and paying for pollution, then people won't be as wasteful.
Can you say geothermal? Like nuclear power plants geothermal power plants generate steam which turns turbines. So, pro-nuke hysteria just means more nuclear power plants are built causing more pollution. However more powerful is the negawatt. Every watt not needed is one less watt that has to be generated. And the negawatt pays off faster than any energy source.
I look outside and while it's sunny, it's not windy - if my power supply isn't consistent it's worthless, so scratch wind and solar.
Many of those off the grid do great with solar and wind. A national smart grid can be supplied nationwide, solar can provide electricity 8+ hours a day, it's always windy somewhere, and geothermal always works. Ignoring this shows a bias, or ignorance.
"Fact is is that Nuclear Power is Hooked on Subsidies [cato.org]."
So is any other kind of power generation, from the fossil fuel power to new 'green' alternatives.
You only stated that environmentalist will use this as a reason to oppose nuclear power. I showed businesses will not and the markets will not support them either. Ignoring those who are not environmentalists but still oppose nuclear power shows your bias against environmentalists.
Yeah. Better to have all the shit coal mining and power generation throws into the environment slowly poison us every day of our lives than live in fear of a death statistically as likely as being struck by lightning. Heaven forbid that waste be in a form that's compact, easily contained, at a location of our choosing (so we can find it if we think of better ways to contain/dispose of it)...
I mean you do know what chemical plants, fuel storage facilities, and tailings dams are, right? You've surely seen what happens when one of those fails catastrophically. Do you oppose any expansion of mining or heavy industry in general because you're scared of terrorists?
Well, maybe you do. Terrorists really are that scary, after all...
I dare you to point out where I supported coal mining and power generation? I'll save you the trouble, I haven't. I oppose fossil fuel power plants too. I have stated many, many tymes I want to increase alternative energy sources such as geothermal, solar, and wind. The rest of your post is garbage too.
I agree, but I was thinking about what some politicians have said and worry about. Myself, I've stated many tymes government scares me more than any business or terrorists.
Terrorists have only killed a few thousand people in the last century, and the most advanced weapons they've got are motherfucking airliners.
Whereas in the same tyme period the NAZIs exterminated 600,000 plus people, Stalin massacred some 20,000,000, and Mao another 50,000,000.
The US, on the other hand, has murdered millions, and has access to the most advanced weapons in the world. In fact, the only country to ever murder other people using nuclear weapons is the USA. I'd rather put those guns in the hands of terrorists than in those of the US, I'd feel safer.
Not only has the US government used nuclear weapons against others, but the US has killed and massacred others or supported those who carried these killings and massacres. To take just one example then President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger supported Indonesia's dictator Gen. Suharto's invasion of East Timor, where 200,000 East Timorese were massacred. How many Chileans disappeared at the same tyme while Ford and Kissinger supported Gen. Pinochet's overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile? How many Mayans were massacred by right wing thugs in Central America with Reagan's support? And that doesn't count terrorists governments have supported.
Yes, governments, all of them, scare me more than any terrorists.
Oil, coal, and all the "green" schemes are also heavily subsidized.
Yeap, some more than others. Coal, clean and otherwise, is the most heavily subsidized. At least by the US federal government.
I don't even know how bad a thing that is, to be honest, since it does push down consumer costs. In general, I'm not a fan of subsides, but what do I know.
I've said a number of tymes here on Slashdot I oppose subsidies and want to stop all of them. Let the market say and pay for what gets built. The one thing government can and should do is either itself or have third parties build a national smart grid. I say this because it will take governmental grants of easements to build the grid. Any generator of electricity then would be allowed to hook up to the grid to distribute the power to whoever will pay for it.
All non-fossil power generation is "hooked on subsidies" -- until we internalize the environmental costs of fossil fuels, nothing else is competitive and so everything else has to be subsidized.
It depends on what you mean by "subsidy". If it means government financial assistance to build the power plants, not all fossil fuel power plants are subsidized. All fossil fuels are subsidized though, even petroleum. Government has to subsidize the building of nuclear power plants though, in the form of government guaranteed loans. Without these guaranties banks will not make the loans, and the builders and owners will not pay to build them. And that does not include lawsuit protection government grants the plants.
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Everybody knows, er should know, ghosts are programs doing things they shouldn't do. They're bad or misbehaving.
Falcon
That would mean only the established big players can compete/produce.
Not even close. Big established players only can compeat today. It won't take long for a new, smaller, player to be slapped with a lawsuit from those established big players today. Without an army of lawyers it's difficult if not impossible to wade through the patent mine field, and what small business can afford such an army of attorneys?
Because if I invent something with a 10M budget and start producing it, they easily can take my invention and produce it cheaper
Again not quite. As the inventor you have first mover advantage. Big players can take years to turn around and produce something. Big players don't turn on a dime. And if you haven't made improvements in your product by the tyme your competition releases it's own compeating product then you're not progressing.
What would be the point then for me to invent anything?
If the above do not work for you then there's these things called trade secrets. Fabrication businesses already exist that will build or manufacture other businesses products on contract. The Taiwanese business Foxconn builds computers and other electronics for others, Apple contracted with Foxconn to make iPads, iPhones, and iPods. Trade secrets, and contracts, prevent Foxconn from making these and selling them as their own products. I as an inventor could go to Foxconn or another fabricator, have them sign an NDA or Non-disclosure Agreement, and ask them if they can manufacture my product. Then if Foxconn started to sell my invention as their own product I have good grounds to sue and believe I can win.
Now I may not have enough money to file a lawsuit myself but I could find an investor would does have deep pockets. Or better yet again with signed NDAs I can show my invention to angel investors or business incubators. With their assistance I can start manufacturing my product myself.
And all that ignores why patents are granted, yes patents are granted and not a right. According to the Constitution of the USA patents are meant "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". However economic studies have shown patents impede progress. Yet Another Study Finds Patents Do Not Encourage Innovation. Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy.
Falcon
This is the result of letting companies get patents that boil down to numbers and abstract generic processes. I think the only way to fix it is to reform how patents are granted, for what, and for how long. If USPTO simply can't handle the load they're under, then they should complain to their bosses for more resources, reform their practices, or change applicant's expectations.
You ignored a fix, one that would encourage more progress. Get rid of patents altogether.
Falcon
You would think well into the Post Gates era the folks at Microsoft would consider a little better how this type of thing looks?
Didn't you know we're in the Steve Ballmer era? This is a person who loves to throw chairs, and shouting out how he's going to kill Google.
"This is what happens when a great deal of intelligence is invested in ignorance" - Chairman of Bregna, Trevor Goodchild
But things are unraveling.
We're meant to die.
Falcon
Does your statements equally apply to Apple? Just curious. Apple sued HTC and Motorola over Android for patent infringement..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030203916.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/04/apple_adds_12_more_patents_to_lawsuit_against_motorola.html
To me it applies as much to Apple as it does to Microsoft.
Actually I want almost if not all patenting ended. If you can't compeat with a better product then get out of business.
Falcon
Is this more MS FUD? Are we actually going to find out what MS patents are being infringed? Or is it going to turn out to be another SCO case? A bunch of lies but no proof?
Falcon
Or, better yet, how about licensed radios that actually have some range to them?
Best yet, drop requiring licenses period. Allow the airwaves to be homesteaded. Congress – Stop Selling Our Airwaves!.
Falcon
Based on that, to equal a nuclear reactor putting out 1 gigawatt, you need 4 or 5 gigawatts of wind towers. So the planned capacity is equal to 1 or 2 nuclear power stations with several large reactors running at each.
Those wind turbines can be spaced out though, and they're not a potentially large threat to the environment. But that's only looking at wind potential. There could be other potential sources of energy as well such as geothermal, which because it is steady is quite usable as a baseload.
Falcon
Electricity isn't required "8 hours a day", and the grid required for current solar panels to supply an entire country's worth of power...
So you like most others ignored other energy sources. I mentioned two that don't depend on the sun shining, geothermal and wind. Geothermal is steady and reliable, and the wind is always blowing somewhere.
in the US, you have a lot of empty space, but over here in the UK we don't actually have room for all the of required panels.
So use other sources. At the beginning of 2011 the UK received over 5.2 gigawatts of wind power making it the eighth largest wind energy producer. The UK's wind potential is much higher. The University of Strathclyde says "it is theoretically possible to obtain more than 1000TWh of electricity each year from the wind." The University of St Andrews in Scotland says there's a lot of potential for geothermal. The Scottish National Minewater Potential Study [pdf] details some of that potential.
Falcon
What is justice? What is right or is corrected. Eliminate many of the laws on the books. For instance victimless crime laws. The War on Drugs? A big waste of tyme, money, and resources. Laws against prostitution? Where are the victims? Laws against fornication? Against sodomy? Against oral sex? Where are the victims? Getting rid of these laws will dramatically reduce the need for a justice system. Laws and law enforcement should be working on the harm personal acts afflict on the unwilling. Should there be a Law? is an excellent flowchart depicting the flow of reason that should occur in deciding what laws there will be.
I'd rather have power wielded by a democratic government - which I can influence - than corporations (which I can't).
I will handle this in two different ways. The first one being who gives corporations their power? Government does. If corporations have too much power it's because government gave them that power. Thirty years after Thomas Jefferson drafted the "Declaration of Independence" he wrote this warning:
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
However there was a reason the first corporate charters were granted, yes they are granted by government. The first businesses to be granted a charter was the British East India Company in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. Both were shipping companies, as hinted by their names, but shipping was a risky business. If either cargo, crew, or passengers were lost the ship's owners were liable. If pirates captured the ship killing people, or just stole the cargo, the owners had to pay for their loss. The same with sinkings such as caused by hurricanes. So if I as a small investor wanted to and had the money to invest in a ship, if that ship was lost I would be financially liable. Not only would I lose the money I invested but I could lose my home and everything I owned. So the British and Dutch crowns decided to grant some businesses a corporate charter giving investors limited liability. With these charters I could invest money in a ship and if the ship was lost all I'd lose was the money I invested. This allows society and many people to benefit, international trade is a common or public good.
I could go on but you should now have a clear idea why corporations exist. Now onto the second way. So you trust government more than businesses? Has any business, or group of businesses, killed as many people as governments have? The greatest number of deaths all at once I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal Disaster in India. The estimate with the highest number of deaths from it is 15,000, with an estimate of less than 600,000 injured.
Now how many people have governments killed or violated the rights of? NAZI Germany, over 600,000. Stalin's Russia, 20,000,000. Mao's China, 50,000,000. The US isn't guilt free either. The US, and state governments, have killed people and violated many more people's rights. Those in US prisons for non-violent drug offenses, and the US has the world's largest prison population? Their rights are violated on a daily basis. Throughout it's history the US massacred American Indian tribes. Up through the 1970s the US government's Indian Health Service had doctors sterilize Native American Women, forcefully and
You obviously did not read the Economist article, and the Economist doesn't spread environmentalist non-sense. So I conclude you're being nonsensical.
Falcon
I don't know, let me check. According to the wiki article Wind power in Finland wind produced 143 MW with 118 turbines in December 2008. It says wind is the most popular energy resource in Finland. Now that doesn't say what the wind potential is so I'll continue... According to the Finnish Wind Atlas the south and southwest in coastal areas has plenty of potential. iea wind says wind is the second largest renewable resource with a target of 6 TWh/yr in 2020 (2,000 to 3,000 MW). It goes on saying that there's already 5,400MW to 8,000MW of wind power in planning or announced.
However that can only supply Finland with a fraction of it's electricity. According to Statistics Finland in 2009 the nation used 81.3 terawatt hours (TWh). More can be generated by adding capacity faster though.
Falcon
Imagine you live in China, France, India, or Russia. Will the markets pay to build nuclear power plants? Or will it take government officials to decide what's built?
Falcon
Today, modern nuclear designs are by far the best replacement for existing nuclear generation (wind and solar can help, but the time tables for the gigawatts we need are easier to meet with nuclear).
Citation needed. The Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, being built by the French government owned Areva, was supposed to be compleated in 2009. Now it's not scheduled for completion before 2012, three years late with cost overruns doubling the cost. According to the wiki article the first two reactors will generate 860 MW each. Erecting 10 5 megawatt wind turbines a month will potentially add 1 GW in 20 months. Erecting 10 a month 10 months a year would add more capacity in two years than one of Olkiluoto's reactors.
Quite simply erecting wind turbines will add capacity faster than building nuclear power plants will. With the added benefit that wind turbines can be erected in places where nuclear power plants can't be built and can be distributed and not be one monolithic plant.
Falcon
Reprocessing the spent fuel can remove all the extremely radioactively hot material which can then be fissioned in the reactor again. That'll break it down into much cooler material.
You might want to tell France how to do it then.
"France’s engineers tried harder than those in any other country to build and run breeder reactors reliably at a commercial scale, but ultimately they failed. The result is that even in France--the best real-world model of what reprocessing can accomplish--the technology remains a tantalizing but only partial solution to the problem of high-level nuclear waste."
Falcon
I have dead family from the last US-backed military dictatorship (I live in Argentina).
Sorry. The closest I am is I'm part American Indian so some long gone relations may of been killed.
And yes, government scares me more than anything else in this world.
I'm not an anarchist but I want government as small as possible. A justice system is about it.
Falcon
We can do much better now, but the anti-nuclear lobby has prevented us from getting anything built.
The anti-nuclear lobby has not prevented plants from getting built in China, France, India, or Russia. In the Forbes article Hooked on Subsidies it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
Imagine if there was an anti-car lobby with as much power. We'd all (OK a very small number of us would) be driving around in incredibly expensive and patched-up Ford Anglias and Morris Minors today. Everyone else would be going by horse or foot.
Imagine if petroleum wasn't as cheap as it was when cars were first mass produced what we'd be driving today. Without cheap petroleum we wouldn't be driving internal combustion engine vehicles, we'd be driving electric cars. The first one was built in 1828, before the Otto cycle, four stroke engine was invented. Well we might be driving vehicles powered by Rudolf Diesel's Diesel engine. However Diesel made his fuel from hemp oil, peanut oil, and other vegetable oils.
Falcon
The problem with you "alternative" energy types is that you have no sense of proportion. You could entirely cover the Sahara (according to a British study) in photovoltaic cells and still not cover Europe's energy needs.
Citation requested.
Here's my own: A Solar Grand Plan. Another one, Hooked on Subsidies. Yet, another one, The elusive negawatt. Still another: Renewable Energy Maps of Nevada. Also Renewable Energy for America.
That isn't to say we shouldn't move to more alternative fuels (we should), but to naively think that will be sufficient is just blind.
To say alternative energy can't be sufficient is just blind. Requiring people to pay the full cost of the energy they use, including but not only eliminating subsidies and paying for pollution, then people won't be as wasteful.
Falcon
Can you say geothermal? Like nuclear power plants geothermal power plants generate steam which turns turbines. So, pro-nuke hysteria just means more nuclear power plants are built causing more pollution. However more powerful is the negawatt. Every watt not needed is one less watt that has to be generated. And the negawatt pays off faster than any energy source.
Falcon
Geothermal, solar, and wind
I look outside and while it's sunny, it's not windy - if my power supply isn't consistent it's worthless, so scratch wind and solar.
Many of those off the grid do great with solar and wind. A national smart grid can be supplied nationwide, solar can provide electricity 8+ hours a day, it's always windy somewhere, and geothermal always works. Ignoring this shows a bias, or ignorance.
Falcon
"Fact is is that Nuclear Power is Hooked on Subsidies [cato.org]."
So is any other kind of power generation, from the fossil fuel power to new 'green' alternatives.
You only stated that environmentalist will use this as a reason to oppose nuclear power. I showed businesses will not and the markets will not support them either. Ignoring those who are not environmentalists but still oppose nuclear power shows your bias against environmentalists.
Falcon
Yeah. Better to have all the shit coal mining and power generation throws into the environment slowly poison us every day of our lives than live in fear of a death statistically as likely as being struck by lightning. Heaven forbid that waste be in a form that's compact, easily contained, at a location of our choosing (so we can find it if we think of better ways to contain/dispose of it)...
I mean you do know what chemical plants, fuel storage facilities, and tailings dams are, right? You've surely seen what happens when one of those fails catastrophically. Do you oppose any expansion of mining or heavy industry in general because you're scared of terrorists?
Well, maybe you do. Terrorists really are that scary, after all...
I dare you to point out where I supported coal mining and power generation? I'll save you the trouble, I haven't. I oppose fossil fuel power plants too. I have stated many, many tymes I want to increase alternative energy sources such as geothermal, solar, and wind. The rest of your post is garbage too.
Falcon
I agree, but I was thinking about what some politicians have said and worry about. Myself, I've stated many tymes government scares me more than any business or terrorists.
Terrorists have only killed a few thousand people in the last century, and the most advanced weapons they've got are motherfucking airliners.
Whereas in the same tyme period the NAZIs exterminated 600,000 plus people, Stalin massacred some 20,000,000, and Mao another 50,000,000.
The US, on the other hand, has murdered millions, and has access to the most advanced weapons in the world. In fact, the only country to ever murder other people using nuclear weapons is the USA. I'd rather put those guns in the hands of terrorists than in those of the US, I'd feel safer.
Not only has the US government used nuclear weapons against others, but the US has killed and massacred others or supported those who carried these killings and massacres. To take just one example then President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger supported Indonesia's dictator Gen. Suharto's invasion of East Timor, where 200,000 East Timorese were massacred. How many Chileans disappeared at the same tyme while Ford and Kissinger supported Gen. Pinochet's overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile? How many Mayans were massacred by right wing thugs in Central America with Reagan's support? And that doesn't count terrorists governments have supported.
Yes, governments, all of them, scare me more than any terrorists.
Falcon
Oil, coal, and all the "green" schemes are also heavily subsidized.
Yeap, some more than others. Coal, clean and otherwise, is the most heavily subsidized. At least by the US federal government.
I don't even know how bad a thing that is, to be honest, since it does push down consumer costs. In general, I'm not a fan of subsides, but what do I know.
I've said a number of tymes here on Slashdot I oppose subsidies and want to stop all of them. Let the market say and pay for what gets built. The one thing government can and should do is either itself or have third parties build a national smart grid. I say this because it will take governmental grants of easements to build the grid. Any generator of electricity then would be allowed to hook up to the grid to distribute the power to whoever will pay for it.
Falcon
All non-fossil power generation is "hooked on subsidies" -- until we internalize the environmental costs of fossil fuels, nothing else is competitive and so everything else has to be subsidized.
It depends on what you mean by "subsidy". If it means government financial assistance to build the power plants, not all fossil fuel power plants are subsidized. All fossil fuels are subsidized though, even petroleum. Government has to subsidize the building of nuclear power plants though, in the form of government guaranteed loans. Without these guaranties banks will not make the loans, and the builders and owners will not pay to build them. And that does not include lawsuit protection government grants the plants.
Falcon