Fact is, NOBODY should have been involved in WWI, it was a very stupid war. That's sort of the MAIN FUCKING THEME of WWI.
Fact is, nobody in the MIDDLE EAST should have been involved in WWI, either. The fucking Ottomans had no more business being involved than America. Sit down. Stop talking.
It's Italy. Nothing is going on over there... it's just Italy. This is the sort of stuff you should just expect coming from the Italian government. That's just... how they are. If you check your Big Book of European Stereotypes, dysfunctional government and bureaucracy will be listed under "Italy"
Not even plants can harness 100% of the sunlight hitting the earth -- and they've had millions of years to work on the problem. We're not going to do any better.
2/3 the planet is covered with water. We just can't ever plan on putting solar over that. Besides, even if we could, the ecological impact would be immeasurable. Other things need that sunlight.
In time, solar could probably provide a good source of energy. In time. That time is not today. All we're doing now is rushing out tech that is immature -- we are wasting energy on steam-powered cars for the good of horses, and retarding the emergence of more efficient tech, and blowing a ton of energy and money on crap that we'll just have to blow a ton of energy and money replacing sooner rather than later anyway.
Meanwhile, everyone's upset over nuclear power because they don't like the designs that are 50 years old. If you're going by 5-decade-old tech, cars are a bad idea too. Fortunately, there's more modern designs. Unfortunately, NIMBYs don't really care about that, 'cause like, they know it's baaad, man. Nuclear has to be bad, because there's been, like, 2 or 3 serious nuclear accidents, man!
DID YOU KNOW.. that with modern reactor designs, Fukushima wouldn't have really had any problems at all? Now you do. That's a fact. Modern designs output less quantity of waste, which is less radioactive, for a order of magnitude less time. Modern designs can continue circulating coolant through the reactor after a loss of power through *the natural convection* of the coolant, or they may have a control rod design which uses the magic of gravity to drop them in place if there is a loss of power. And hey, if it's the former, that naturally convecting coolant can circulate for 2 weeks without power -- and when it starts getting too hot, the increased temperature of the coolant changes it so that it begins to act as a neutron trap. That means it retards fission naturally and without any human intervention!
Shocking, isn't it? 50 year old designs aren't as good as modern designs. News at 11. Nuclear tech works, it works now, it works better than it ever has before. Solar is not yet ready for prime time. We should not invest in the deployment of immature tech, and especially not when we have good and matured tech that will work. Solar, right now, is supported not for what it can do but for what it represents. That is foolish.
Mhmm, except gravity does not act equally on all objects. Yeeaaaahh. It's close enough that differences can be discarded, but even macroscopically speaking the gravitation of the earth is not consistent across all points and no two objects can occupy the same location. and then there's the mess that happens when you get down to the atomic level.
See? Look at all the wonder we can find through investigation of even what by all appearances is absolutely known to be true!
The opinion that AGW is an unquestionable fact does nothing but hold back scientific advancement. That's the nature of "incontrovertible" truths. They tend to be far less incontrovertible than believed, and knowledge can only be advances through that questioning. Science will bear out truth, in the end, but will inevitably stagnate when a belief is held so sacred that questioning it is disallowed.
Are human activities causing things which are or may cause global temperatures to rise? Yeah, that seems pretty likely at this point. But uh, there's a ton of knowledge yet to be discovered. Holding AGW as a fact that cannot be questioned or challenged won't lead to any greater insight into AGW. Science is questioning, challenging, investigating, disbelieving, proving. Not reaching a conclusion and claiming that no further scientific inquiry need be made. That's dumb.
No. Just, no, Mr. AC. Nothing is so certain that it cannot bear further scrutiny. If AGW is true, if it is a fact, further investigation -- even if the initial premise is that AGW is not happening -- will eventually come to the conclusion that AGW is true and happening.
The only bad science is the science that is held above questioning. That's called faith.
Did you actually read anything about why he resigned from the APS, or are you just making assumptions?
His big point was their statement that AGW is *incontrovertible*.
He's right. That's not science.
His other opinions on the matter may or may not be valid, and are irrelevant. He's right. Deciding that one sort of conclusion is correct and may not be questioned or investigated is decidedly unscientific. Is the speed of light constant at all places and times? Hey, let's do some math, let's devise some experiments! Awesome! SCIENCE! Are humans causing global warming? YES AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH, ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE!
Actually, predating Tiberium, and I think much closer to what this device actually does..
Frederick Pohl's Heechee saga makes mention of piezoelectric energy generation.. if I recall things right.. which basically operated with the same concept as this device.
My memory of anything more specific is a bit shady. I last read those books nearly 20 years ago.
For the record, they're a little over the head of a 5th grader, but not by as much as you'd think.
You're right. Science IS science. Know what's great about the whole East Anglia fiasco? It came to light that all the climate data they collected from all those climate recording stations was destroyed. They kept their normalized data (which of course we can't see either), but there's no record of the original, raw data -- nor of the methods the used to normalized that data.
We just have to TRUST THEM.
That's faith, not science. Science is science, and agreeing with a conclusion based upon trust IS NOT SCIENCE.
They're probably right, too. That's the awful part. They're most likely correct -- but their conclusions cannot be independently verified, and thus fall outside of the realm of science and squarely into faith. Faith that they aren't making things up, faith that their normalization techniques were sound, faith that their conclusions are sound. I'd LIKE to believe them, but frankly I won't allow myself to because they are positioning themselves as priests and not scientists. Just bunk.
If we're to believe them we may as well start investing in perpetual motion machines and cold fusion. Why not? There's scientists I'm sure you could find who would support either of those concepts. I mean, that's a scientist. Better trust 'em. Especially if all they show you are their results and conclusions and dismiss the data and proof with a wave of their hand!
No, I won't click it -- because I agree. That is certainly a factor. It's probably the largest single factor, too.. but it's not the only one.
I also had to replace my furnace 2 years ago because the old one quit. At the same time, two of my mom's co-workers were doing the same. A friend had the year previous. A neighbor needs to soon, but is setting money aside for now since it's not immediately necessary.
No one did it because they "could", they only did it because they "had to". Same reason people re-shingle their roof -- hardly anyone does it just because they can, but many people do it because they *have to*.
Those necessary repairs and replacements increase efficiency. These aren't people dropping 10 grand in a bucket to make themselves feel better. These are people who are scrounging up 10 grand because the other option is not having a place to live.
I never disagreed with your point, only in the way it was stated -- unequivocally singularly. Decreased usage is a factor in decreased usage, and likely the largest, but it is not the only factor in play. Hell, if it lasts long enough, there'll be enough broken-down old tech replaced grudgingly out of necessity that hey, who knows? Consumption might not even reach old levels even if usage does! Er, that won't happen -- population increases and all -- but if advancements in technology did not play a part in things, we'd all be driving around in cars that get 12mpg instead of 24mpg and even with decreased usage our consumption would be much higher than it is.
*YOU*, however, were saying that it was *entirely* based on reduced usage. That cannot possibly be true.
I was, and am, simply pointing out other factors that *DO* decrease overall consumption without any decrease in usage.
Both things, as well as I'm sure other factors I have failed to realize yet, have had an impact on overall consumption. Off the top of my head, at least in my area the past few winters have been relatively mild (w/r/t temperature, not precipitation).
Oh, funny thing, by the by. The post-war housing boom was roughly 1945-1955. Most home furnaces have an expected life of around 50 years or so, and if you're on a tight budget you can stretch that out a little further. Do I think more have been replaced between 2000 and 2010 than 1990 and 2000? Shit, I'd bet my hat on it. They're getting up in age just as are the baby boomers -- and a sudden increase in installation of the things at one period will result in an increase in the replacement of them years down the road (though of a lesser magnitude, since some will be replaced sooner and some later).
These are all factors, and to attribute everything to simply a reduction in usage is hasty and foolish.
I'm not even talking about hybrids. You would know if I'm talking about hybrids by the spittle on my mouth -- fucking abominations for dull minds unable to grasp the costs of constructing a thing and the costs of getting rid of a thing.
All cars are becoming more efficient. More horsepower from smaller engines that use less fuel to get a set distance. Not everyone can buy a new car, and not everyone can afford any car, but enough people are moving from 198x models to 199x models or 20xx models that overall there is an increase in the efficiency of fuel consumption. Some of that is new cars, but a lot of it is not.
Same goes for home furnaces. As time passes, the really old ones just stop working and need to be replaced. That's not an option, regardless of your income. No heat? Your home is condemned. Either you're a renter and your landlord *must* replace it, or you're a homeowner and you *must* replace it. Whatever you replace it with is going to be lightyears more advanced than the 60- or 70-year old model you've been chugging along with. That is not an upgrade made to just "be green", that's something that people are doing *just to get by*. It happens. It's happening. Frequently enough that, *OVERALL*, there is an increase in home oil furnace efficiency. There simply is no option to replace a worn-out furnace with something that is not more efficient.
The inexorable march of technology eventually catches everyone up, but it catches all of us up bit by bit.
These are not luxuries. These are not things people are doing for the sake of saving the environment. These are just things people are doing because they MUST do them -- and these things, as they do them, involve replacing older technology that has broken down with newer technology, and that newer technology is going to be -- and is -- nearly universally more efficient. The few people whose cars fall apart and replace them with something *less* efficient are far outnumbered by everyone else, who just wants the same car, and that "same car" will be a decade newer than their old -- even if it's a decade behind -- and it will be a decade more efficient. Maybe they're only going from 20mpg to 25mpg, but that's huge when extrapolated across a large population. Enormous.
That's real savings. That's a real increase in efficiency. That's not greenwashing or hippies in Priuses. These aren't people who took government rebates, these are people buying 10 year old cars to replace 20 year old cars. That's real. That's happening. That has a greater impact than people replacing 5 year old cars with brand new cars.
It only really began in the US after we were once again allowed to brew beer at home;) We had that whole Prohibition thing for a spell -- which is why American beer is considered shit beer, incidentally -- and I think it was 1976? that common citizens without license were allowed to make beer at home... yeah, fucking weird, huh? I'm off on that year I'm certain.. but it was relatively recently.
Prohibition.. ugh. It set our liquor industry back decades, and beer.. yanno. Back in the day, American beer was just European beer on new soil. Especially somewhere, like, oh, say, where I live, which was populated primarily by Germans (mostly from southern Germany and Bavaria) and a smattering of English (and Irish and Scots). Beer was huge. And then... it stopped. None really made it through Prohibition. Before, nearly every bar or tavern would've been brewing their own brand out in the back -- after? Nothing. Just awful.:(
I said the US is a little less mired in tradition than Europe, and I meant it.. but not wholly in the way it sounds. We in the US are surrounded by shitty beer. Over in Europe, that's not really true. Over here, there's a bigger market for new types of beer, simply because anyone who wants good beer HAS TO go to a microbrew -- our mass market brew is piss (albeit a very consistent and well-maintained piss...). We're less mired in tradition in that we're less apt to go out and drink the same beer that's been made for decades or centuries, because it just either doesn't exist or isn't very good. Our only option for good beer is new beer. But at least we have that option these days!
Total use also includes efficiency. If total use of home heating oil is down, it MAY be due to people keeping their houses not as hot in the winter, or using less hot water. It MAY ALSO be due to people replacing their old oil furnaces and water heaters -- but not decreasing their usage of those devices.
IN REALITY.. it's probably a combination of the two.
I mean, damn. If I start using half as much gas as I used to, it is not absolutely because I am driving half as much as I used to. Maybe I just got a new car that gets twice as many miles to a gallon, and didn't decrease my driving habits at all. Very simple stuff here dude.
The biggest problem in the CA market was NIMBY honestly. Everyone wanted power -- huge, huge amounts of power -- but nobody wanted any additional power plants built, *anywhere*. Prices ARE gonna go through the roof when things like that happen, that's basic ground-floor level supply/demand stuff, there
well.. no, those reactors don't exist yet -- and that is only because of NIMBY and general fear about the reactors we *currently* have, which are horribly old tech. They're basically first or second generation technology, and right now.. hell.. I'm not even up to date on things really, but it's at least fourth generation. They could be built, *right now*. China is going to be building them.
And that's the other point, that basically negates the latter 2/3 of your post -- the new designs? [i]They eat the old nuclear waste[/i]. Dumping it into a hole in the ground or into the ocean would no longer be a good solution, as the current nuclear waste would in fact have a real value, it would be valuable as fuel for the new reactor designs. That is, the new reactor designs solve one of the biggest problems with the old reactor designs. Sure, they still put out waste, but it's only dangerous for a fraction of the time that the old waste was dangerous. It's also a far lesser volume of waste. It's also a safer *form* of waste.
Besides, solar is hardly clean or renewable or safe. The best you can get on those 3 points is solar collection plants, which I will grant are pretty clean and renewable and safe -- but solar panels, the ones that convert sunlight right into energy? the energy they *produce* may be clean and renewable and safe, but the panels themselves are none of that. They're short-lived, they're not reusable.. it's just really not a good investment. Nevermind the REMs needed to build them.. that's hardly a clean process.
Most importantly, I'm not saying "This is all we should do" -- all I'm saying is WHY THE HELL AREN'T WE DOING THIS AT ALL? See the first part of my post -- of course we have none of the newer reactor designs that can produce more energy, more safely, more cheaply, and for longer times. We don't have any because people hear "nuclear" and go "OMG THREE MILE ISLAND" -- despite the fact that the TMI "disaster" would be literally impossible with current designs, and despite the fact that the TMI "disaster" was at *no time* a threat to anybody outside of the reactor. In other words, even our *completely outdated and obsolete* reactor design had sufficient safety protocols and designs in place to prevent anything dangerous from happening, which wouldn't even be needed in a newer design of reactor.
What we are doing now with regards to nuclear power is akin to your grandmother letting her ancient VW Rabbit rust in the shed because she ran over a raccoon decades ago because it couldn't brake in time, and her insisting that buying a new car is foolish because her old one can't turn or stop well and she might die. It makes no sense, but that's *exactly* what is going on with nuclear power plants right now.
Also I am pretty sure that by the rules of slashdot I just won by making a valid car analogy.:D
I guess you're not familiar with the heavily-booming US microbrewery industry.
Once we were legally allowed to brew at home again, people started it, and some people discovered that they made some killer beer, so they went into business. There's been a trend towards more "extreme" sorts of beer, but that's subsiding -- but was and is a pretty good agent for change and the creation of new and delicious beer. The US is a little less... mired in tradition, let's say.. than European brewers. That basically means we're free to pretty much copy any kind of European beer, or create new weird and good beers.
I (am about to sound like a hipster, but) always order a microbrew when I'm out somewhere, if one is available. It almost doesn't even matter who makes it or what sort of beer it is, they're all pretty good and some are outstanding. Though that's riskier on the west coast, they've got more microbreweries over there that have run with the whole crank-it-to-11 idea.. east coast microbrews i've found to typically be more interested in just making damn good beer without the gimmicks (but since there's fewer of them, there isn't the competition to stand out from as on the west coast. and also less hipsters..)
The problem is locating things that depend on smooth reflective surfaces in deserts is that they're in deserts, and subject to sandblasting.
It might be a good idea for some places, but that doesn't mean that nuclear isn't also a good idea. This isn't a single-solution problem, and throwing nuclear out because of the horrible track record of 60 year old reactor designs is just a tad foolish. Especially when modern designs are passively safe -- they're designed in such a way that any problems are controlled by the design of the thing, not by things built into them. Control rods magnetically held above reactors are pretty rad. Plant loses power, can't pump coolant? Plant shuts off without human interaction. Sodium-cooled reactors are also a big thing. They'll actually run for I believe 2 weeks after losing the ability to pump coolant, because of good designing -- the coolant naturally convects itself through the system for a period of time. And then, when that time has passed.. neat little bit of science. As the sodium heats further and starts to become dangerous, it actually begins acting as a control rod. That is, as the reactor begins to overheat and threaten meltdown, its coolant also overheats -- and slows and stops nuclear reactions from taking place until it cools off again. Neutron capture! It's actually really really fucking brilliant!
These new reactors could practically be left alone to run themselves for decades without human interaction! they'd run out of fuel before then, of course, but the designs themselves are just.. just amazing. And they eat up what we currently call nuclear waste. And they're viable to build just about anywhere.
Keeping the mirrors for those solar collection plants is a little harder than spraying them down with some windex and wiping them off. Don't know if you're aware of it. They're not just regular old mirrors, and the work isn't really all that safe to do during the day.
Yes, nuclear is a better option. It's more consistent, it lasts longer, and *modern* designs last so much longer and so much cheaper than any nuclear plant currently in operation anywhere on the planet. Check out Integral Fast Reactors -- that's basically a 20 year old design that's still 20 years more advanced than anything in the US. They'd basically run on all that nuclear waste we were planning on storing in Yucca Mountain.
I don't see how you could possibly argue that a modern plant design, with safety mechanisms in place that would have withstood the Japan quake and tsunami by passively stopping reactors in the quake -- yeah, they don't melt down because a loss of power causes things to shut down, they actually require power and stability to keep them going instead of needing those to stop -- and reactors that would turn our hundreds-of-centuries-dangerous nuclear waste into hundreds-of-years-dangerous nuclear waste, could possibly be a bad idea.
Unless you're just another NIMBY who doesn't like the idea of nuclear power because, gosh, we've had so many problems with 60 year old designs. I mean gosh. There's been three major disasters with those designs that are shortly collecting social security. Except Chernobyl was caused by human stupidity, and to an extent so was TMI (never mind there wasn't any dangerous release of radioactivity for that one), and Japan's trouble.. well. As I said, modern designs would actually have weathered the quake and tsunami without any threat of a meltdown, and would have been using and not just storing the nuclear waste.
And after just a few short years, there's a tremendous loss in efficiency as the mirrors used to collect all that sunlight become dirty and pitted. Same problem with solar panels, actually, but not quite as bad since it's quite a bit easier to clean and replace simple mirrors than solar panels. Solar panels take a lot to build in the first place, and they're not the cleanest things to build either.
Build a nice good old nuclear plant, though, and it'll run for decades. Centuries, really, if you do it right. And with only producing a fraction of the nuclear waste current plants produce -- and that waste would only remain radioactive for a fraction of the time of current nuclear waste's lifespan.
But hey, yeah. Let's throw all our money at solutions that will need more money to rebuild in 5-10 years. Good call, Germany -- insert Nazi reference as example of good German governance here.
*PEOPLE* write those articles. People. People know when shit is hitting the fan. People write about shit hitting the fan escalating to larger shit hitting the fan. That's not a computer predicting anything, that's just a computer reading the news and noticing when *PEOPLE* are writing about escalations in shit-fan collisions in certain areas.
Absolutely none of it is surprising. Most people have been waiting for this to happen in the Middle East for quite some time. The only shocking thing is that Iran is still Iran, honestly.
Very, very, very highly doubtful. Maybe you're thinking of "truck" as in a pickup truck, or maybe a European Lorry. That's not a tractor trailor truck, that's not what we mean by "trucking company" in America.
Hybrid trucks won't do shit compared to a diesel. Too heavy, too inefficient, too costly to, yes, purchase, but also to maintain. Those batteries become gradually less efficient, while a good diesel engine, well maintained, will not lose efficiency for decades. You can't run a hybrid for a decade without replacing the battery pack. Certainly not if you're using it 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week.
You might recoup the increased cost of a hybrid after a few years -- in fuel savings -- but a few years after that you're just breaking even, because the batteries are wearing out. A few years after that, they're worn out, and you can either dump an amount of money into the damn thing or sell it and get that same amount back.
Oh, heck, and you have to retrain your maintenance crew. That's not cheap. And they're not as robust -- they will break down more often. And that increased efficiency is probably never even going to be there under real-world conditions, either.
So, yeah, I guess they have them, if you're a big enough idiot.
Let's not even get into how much pollution is dumped into China to produce those battery packs, and how much pollution is dumped into China when they're recycled. Know how much pollution is created when you recycle *steel*?
Slashdot Mirror
Some of them are Polish, too, but it's not really a lie if you just don't know any better.
well, there were those chaps who drove the vans into that british airports. doctors, i believe. they seemed to be doing fairly well for themselves.
Fact is, NOBODY should have been involved in WWI, it was a very stupid war. That's sort of the MAIN FUCKING THEME of WWI.
Fact is, nobody in the MIDDLE EAST should have been involved in WWI, either. The fucking Ottomans had no more business being involved than America. Sit down. Stop talking.
It's Italy. Nothing is going on over there... it's just Italy. This is the sort of stuff you should just expect coming from the Italian government. That's just... how they are. If you check your Big Book of European Stereotypes, dysfunctional government and bureaucracy will be listed under "Italy"
Not even plants can harness 100% of the sunlight hitting the earth -- and they've had millions of years to work on the problem. We're not going to do any better.
2/3 the planet is covered with water. We just can't ever plan on putting solar over that. Besides, even if we could, the ecological impact would be immeasurable. Other things need that sunlight.
In time, solar could probably provide a good source of energy. In time. That time is not today. All we're doing now is rushing out tech that is immature -- we are wasting energy on steam-powered cars for the good of horses, and retarding the emergence of more efficient tech, and blowing a ton of energy and money on crap that we'll just have to blow a ton of energy and money replacing sooner rather than later anyway.
Meanwhile, everyone's upset over nuclear power because they don't like the designs that are 50 years old. If you're going by 5-decade-old tech, cars are a bad idea too. Fortunately, there's more modern designs. Unfortunately, NIMBYs don't really care about that, 'cause like, they know it's baaad, man. Nuclear has to be bad, because there's been, like, 2 or 3 serious nuclear accidents, man!
DID YOU KNOW.. that with modern reactor designs, Fukushima wouldn't have really had any problems at all? Now you do. That's a fact. Modern designs output less quantity of waste, which is less radioactive, for a order of magnitude less time. Modern designs can continue circulating coolant through the reactor after a loss of power through *the natural convection* of the coolant, or they may have a control rod design which uses the magic of gravity to drop them in place if there is a loss of power. And hey, if it's the former, that naturally convecting coolant can circulate for 2 weeks without power -- and when it starts getting too hot, the increased temperature of the coolant changes it so that it begins to act as a neutron trap. That means it retards fission naturally and without any human intervention!
Shocking, isn't it? 50 year old designs aren't as good as modern designs. News at 11. Nuclear tech works, it works now, it works better than it ever has before. Solar is not yet ready for prime time. We should not invest in the deployment of immature tech, and especially not when we have good and matured tech that will work. Solar, right now, is supported not for what it can do but for what it represents. That is foolish.
Mhmm, except gravity does not act equally on all objects. Yeeaaaahh. It's close enough that differences can be discarded, but even macroscopically speaking the gravitation of the earth is not consistent across all points and no two objects can occupy the same location. and then there's the mess that happens when you get down to the atomic level.
See? Look at all the wonder we can find through investigation of even what by all appearances is absolutely known to be true!
The opinion that AGW is an unquestionable fact does nothing but hold back scientific advancement. That's the nature of "incontrovertible" truths. They tend to be far less incontrovertible than believed, and knowledge can only be advances through that questioning. Science will bear out truth, in the end, but will inevitably stagnate when a belief is held so sacred that questioning it is disallowed.
Are human activities causing things which are or may cause global temperatures to rise? Yeah, that seems pretty likely at this point. But uh, there's a ton of knowledge yet to be discovered. Holding AGW as a fact that cannot be questioned or challenged won't lead to any greater insight into AGW. Science is questioning, challenging, investigating, disbelieving, proving. Not reaching a conclusion and claiming that no further scientific inquiry need be made. That's dumb.
knock yourself out! as far as i'm aware, i didn't steal it from anyone else
No. Just, no, Mr. AC. Nothing is so certain that it cannot bear further scrutiny. If AGW is true, if it is a fact, further investigation -- even if the initial premise is that AGW is not happening -- will eventually come to the conclusion that AGW is true and happening.
The only bad science is the science that is held above questioning. That's called faith.
Did you actually read anything about why he resigned from the APS, or are you just making assumptions?
His big point was their statement that AGW is *incontrovertible*.
He's right. That's not science.
His other opinions on the matter may or may not be valid, and are irrelevant. He's right. Deciding that one sort of conclusion is correct and may not be questioned or investigated is decidedly unscientific. Is the speed of light constant at all places and times? Hey, let's do some math, let's devise some experiments! Awesome! SCIENCE! Are humans causing global warming? YES AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH, ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE!
Huh? The fuck?
Actually, predating Tiberium, and I think much closer to what this device actually does..
Frederick Pohl's Heechee saga makes mention of piezoelectric energy generation.. if I recall things right.. which basically operated with the same concept as this device.
My memory of anything more specific is a bit shady. I last read those books nearly 20 years ago.
For the record, they're a little over the head of a 5th grader, but not by as much as you'd think.
You're right. Science IS science. Know what's great about the whole East Anglia fiasco? It came to light that all the climate data they collected from all those climate recording stations was destroyed. They kept their normalized data (which of course we can't see either), but there's no record of the original, raw data -- nor of the methods the used to normalized that data.
We just have to TRUST THEM.
That's faith, not science. Science is science, and agreeing with a conclusion based upon trust IS NOT SCIENCE.
They're probably right, too. That's the awful part. They're most likely correct -- but their conclusions cannot be independently verified, and thus fall outside of the realm of science and squarely into faith. Faith that they aren't making things up, faith that their normalization techniques were sound, faith that their conclusions are sound. I'd LIKE to believe them, but frankly I won't allow myself to because they are positioning themselves as priests and not scientists. Just bunk.
If we're to believe them we may as well start investing in perpetual motion machines and cold fusion. Why not? There's scientists I'm sure you could find who would support either of those concepts. I mean, that's a scientist. Better trust 'em. Especially if all they show you are their results and conclusions and dismiss the data and proof with a wave of their hand!
I'm not going to go that far, but just read the dude's quote in TFSummary:
"the notion of a shared responsibility in the collective metropolitan realm is predictably distant."
I know, I *KNOW* that your ears can taste feces. And your eyes, since you're reading that.
No, I won't click it -- because I agree. That is certainly a factor. It's probably the largest single factor, too.. but it's not the only one.
I also had to replace my furnace 2 years ago because the old one quit. At the same time, two of my mom's co-workers were doing the same. A friend had the year previous. A neighbor needs to soon, but is setting money aside for now since it's not immediately necessary.
No one did it because they "could", they only did it because they "had to". Same reason people re-shingle their roof -- hardly anyone does it just because they can, but many people do it because they *have to*.
Those necessary repairs and replacements increase efficiency. These aren't people dropping 10 grand in a bucket to make themselves feel better. These are people who are scrounging up 10 grand because the other option is not having a place to live.
I never disagreed with your point, only in the way it was stated -- unequivocally singularly. Decreased usage is a factor in decreased usage, and likely the largest, but it is not the only factor in play. Hell, if it lasts long enough, there'll be enough broken-down old tech replaced grudgingly out of necessity that hey, who knows? Consumption might not even reach old levels even if usage does! Er, that won't happen -- population increases and all -- but if advancements in technology did not play a part in things, we'd all be driving around in cars that get 12mpg instead of 24mpg and even with decreased usage our consumption would be much higher than it is.
Nope! I'm not saying that.
*YOU*, however, were saying that it was *entirely* based on reduced usage. That cannot possibly be true.
I was, and am, simply pointing out other factors that *DO* decrease overall consumption without any decrease in usage.
Both things, as well as I'm sure other factors I have failed to realize yet, have had an impact on overall consumption. Off the top of my head, at least in my area the past few winters have been relatively mild (w/r/t temperature, not precipitation).
Oh, funny thing, by the by. The post-war housing boom was roughly 1945-1955. Most home furnaces have an expected life of around 50 years or so, and if you're on a tight budget you can stretch that out a little further. Do I think more have been replaced between 2000 and 2010 than 1990 and 2000? Shit, I'd bet my hat on it. They're getting up in age just as are the baby boomers -- and a sudden increase in installation of the things at one period will result in an increase in the replacement of them years down the road (though of a lesser magnitude, since some will be replaced sooner and some later).
These are all factors, and to attribute everything to simply a reduction in usage is hasty and foolish.
I'm not even talking about hybrids. You would know if I'm talking about hybrids by the spittle on my mouth -- fucking abominations for dull minds unable to grasp the costs of constructing a thing and the costs of getting rid of a thing.
All cars are becoming more efficient. More horsepower from smaller engines that use less fuel to get a set distance.
Not everyone can buy a new car, and not everyone can afford any car, but enough people are moving from 198x models to 199x models or 20xx models that overall there is an increase in the efficiency of fuel consumption. Some of that is new cars, but a lot of it is not.
Same goes for home furnaces. As time passes, the really old ones just stop working and need to be replaced. That's not an option, regardless of your income. No heat? Your home is condemned. Either you're a renter and your landlord *must* replace it, or you're a homeowner and you *must* replace it. Whatever you replace it with is going to be lightyears more advanced than the 60- or 70-year old model you've been chugging along with.
That is not an upgrade made to just "be green", that's something that people are doing *just to get by*. It happens. It's happening. Frequently enough that, *OVERALL*, there is an increase in home oil furnace efficiency. There simply is no option to replace a worn-out furnace with something that is not more efficient.
The inexorable march of technology eventually catches everyone up, but it catches all of us up bit by bit.
These are not luxuries. These are not things people are doing for the sake of saving the environment. These are just things people are doing because they MUST do them -- and these things, as they do them, involve replacing older technology that has broken down with newer technology, and that newer technology is going to be -- and is -- nearly universally more efficient. The few people whose cars fall apart and replace them with something *less* efficient are far outnumbered by everyone else, who just wants the same car, and that "same car" will be a decade newer than their old -- even if it's a decade behind -- and it will be a decade more efficient. Maybe they're only going from 20mpg to 25mpg, but that's huge when extrapolated across a large population. Enormous.
That's real savings. That's a real increase in efficiency. That's not greenwashing or hippies in Priuses. These aren't people who took government rebates, these are people buying 10 year old cars to replace 20 year old cars. That's real. That's happening. That has a greater impact than people replacing 5 year old cars with brand new cars.
It only really began in the US after we were once again allowed to brew beer at home ;) We had that whole Prohibition thing for a spell -- which is why American beer is considered shit beer, incidentally -- and I think it was 1976? that common citizens without license were allowed to make beer at home... yeah, fucking weird, huh? I'm off on that year I'm certain.. but it was relatively recently.
Prohibition.. ugh. It set our liquor industry back decades, and beer.. yanno. Back in the day, American beer was just European beer on new soil. Especially somewhere, like, oh, say, where I live, which was populated primarily by Germans (mostly from southern Germany and Bavaria) and a smattering of English (and Irish and Scots). Beer was huge. And then... it stopped. None really made it through Prohibition. Before, nearly every bar or tavern would've been brewing their own brand out in the back -- after? Nothing. Just awful. :(
I said the US is a little less mired in tradition than Europe, and I meant it.. but not wholly in the way it sounds. We in the US are surrounded by shitty beer. Over in Europe, that's not really true. Over here, there's a bigger market for new types of beer, simply because anyone who wants good beer HAS TO go to a microbrew -- our mass market brew is piss (albeit a very consistent and well-maintained piss...). We're less mired in tradition in that we're less apt to go out and drink the same beer that's been made for decades or centuries, because it just either doesn't exist or isn't very good. Our only option for good beer is new beer.
But at least we have that option these days!
No, you're wrong. ZING!
Total use also includes efficiency. If total use of home heating oil is down, it MAY be due to people keeping their houses not as hot in the winter, or using less hot water. It MAY ALSO be due to people replacing their old oil furnaces and water heaters -- but not decreasing their usage of those devices.
IN REALITY.. it's probably a combination of the two.
I mean, damn. If I start using half as much gas as I used to, it is not absolutely because I am driving half as much as I used to. Maybe I just got a new car that gets twice as many miles to a gallon, and didn't decrease my driving habits at all. Very simple stuff here dude.
The biggest problem in the CA market was NIMBY honestly. Everyone wanted power -- huge, huge amounts of power -- but nobody wanted any additional power plants built, *anywhere*. Prices ARE gonna go through the roof when things like that happen, that's basic ground-floor level supply/demand stuff, there
well.. no, those reactors don't exist yet -- and that is only because of NIMBY and general fear about the reactors we *currently* have, which are horribly old tech. They're basically first or second generation technology, and right now.. hell.. I'm not even up to date on things really, but it's at least fourth generation. They could be built, *right now*. China is going to be building them.
And that's the other point, that basically negates the latter 2/3 of your post -- the new designs? [i]They eat the old nuclear waste[/i]. Dumping it into a hole in the ground or into the ocean would no longer be a good solution, as the current nuclear waste would in fact have a real value, it would be valuable as fuel for the new reactor designs. That is, the new reactor designs solve one of the biggest problems with the old reactor designs.
Sure, they still put out waste, but it's only dangerous for a fraction of the time that the old waste was dangerous. It's also a far lesser volume of waste. It's also a safer *form* of waste.
Besides, solar is hardly clean or renewable or safe. The best you can get on those 3 points is solar collection plants, which I will grant are pretty clean and renewable and safe -- but solar panels, the ones that convert sunlight right into energy? the energy they *produce* may be clean and renewable and safe, but the panels themselves are none of that. They're short-lived, they're not reusable.. it's just really not a good investment. Nevermind the REMs needed to build them.. that's hardly a clean process.
Most importantly, I'm not saying "This is all we should do" -- all I'm saying is WHY THE HELL AREN'T WE DOING THIS AT ALL? See the first part of my post -- of course we have none of the newer reactor designs that can produce more energy, more safely, more cheaply, and for longer times. We don't have any because people hear "nuclear" and go "OMG THREE MILE ISLAND" -- despite the fact that the TMI "disaster" would be literally impossible with current designs, and despite the fact that the TMI "disaster" was at *no time* a threat to anybody outside of the reactor. In other words, even our *completely outdated and obsolete* reactor design had sufficient safety protocols and designs in place to prevent anything dangerous from happening, which wouldn't even be needed in a newer design of reactor.
What we are doing now with regards to nuclear power is akin to your grandmother letting her ancient VW Rabbit rust in the shed because she ran over a raccoon decades ago because it couldn't brake in time, and her insisting that buying a new car is foolish because her old one can't turn or stop well and she might die.
It makes no sense, but that's *exactly* what is going on with nuclear power plants right now.
Also I am pretty sure that by the rules of slashdot I just won by making a valid car analogy. :D
I guess you're not familiar with the heavily-booming US microbrewery industry.
Once we were legally allowed to brew at home again, people started it, and some people discovered that they made some killer beer, so they went into business. There's been a trend towards more "extreme" sorts of beer, but that's subsiding -- but was and is a pretty good agent for change and the creation of new and delicious beer. The US is a little less... mired in tradition, let's say.. than European brewers. That basically means we're free to pretty much copy any kind of European beer, or create new weird and good beers.
I (am about to sound like a hipster, but) always order a microbrew when I'm out somewhere, if one is available. It almost doesn't even matter who makes it or what sort of beer it is, they're all pretty good and some are outstanding. Though that's riskier on the west coast, they've got more microbreweries over there that have run with the whole crank-it-to-11 idea.. east coast microbrews i've found to typically be more interested in just making damn good beer without the gimmicks (but since there's fewer of them, there isn't the competition to stand out from as on the west coast. and also less hipsters..)
The problem is locating things that depend on smooth reflective surfaces in deserts is that they're in deserts, and subject to sandblasting.
It might be a good idea for some places, but that doesn't mean that nuclear isn't also a good idea. This isn't a single-solution problem, and throwing nuclear out because of the horrible track record of 60 year old reactor designs is just a tad foolish. Especially when modern designs are passively safe -- they're designed in such a way that any problems are controlled by the design of the thing, not by things built into them. Control rods magnetically held above reactors are pretty rad. Plant loses power, can't pump coolant? Plant shuts off without human interaction. Sodium-cooled reactors are also a big thing. They'll actually run for I believe 2 weeks after losing the ability to pump coolant, because of good designing -- the coolant naturally convects itself through the system for a period of time. And then, when that time has passed.. neat little bit of science. As the sodium heats further and starts to become dangerous, it actually begins acting as a control rod. That is, as the reactor begins to overheat and threaten meltdown, its coolant also overheats -- and slows and stops nuclear reactions from taking place until it cools off again. Neutron capture! It's actually really really fucking brilliant!
These new reactors could practically be left alone to run themselves for decades without human interaction! they'd run out of fuel before then, of course, but the designs themselves are just.. just amazing. And they eat up what we currently call nuclear waste. And they're viable to build just about anywhere.
Keeping the mirrors for those solar collection plants is a little harder than spraying them down with some windex and wiping them off. Don't know if you're aware of it. They're not just regular old mirrors, and the work isn't really all that safe to do during the day.
Yes, nuclear is a better option. It's more consistent, it lasts longer, and *modern* designs last so much longer and so much cheaper than any nuclear plant currently in operation anywhere on the planet. Check out Integral Fast Reactors -- that's basically a 20 year old design that's still 20 years more advanced than anything in the US. They'd basically run on all that nuclear waste we were planning on storing in Yucca Mountain.
I don't see how you could possibly argue that a modern plant design, with safety mechanisms in place that would have withstood the Japan quake and tsunami by passively stopping reactors in the quake -- yeah, they don't melt down because a loss of power causes things to shut down, they actually require power and stability to keep them going instead of needing those to stop -- and reactors that would turn our hundreds-of-centuries-dangerous nuclear waste into hundreds-of-years-dangerous nuclear waste, could possibly be a bad idea.
Unless you're just another NIMBY who doesn't like the idea of nuclear power because, gosh, we've had so many problems with 60 year old designs. I mean gosh. There's been three major disasters with those designs that are shortly collecting social security. Except Chernobyl was caused by human stupidity, and to an extent so was TMI (never mind there wasn't any dangerous release of radioactivity for that one), and Japan's trouble.. well. As I said, modern designs would actually have weathered the quake and tsunami without any threat of a meltdown, and would have been using and not just storing the nuclear waste.
And after just a few short years, there's a tremendous loss in efficiency as the mirrors used to collect all that sunlight become dirty and pitted. Same problem with solar panels, actually, but not quite as bad since it's quite a bit easier to clean and replace simple mirrors than solar panels. Solar panels take a lot to build in the first place, and they're not the cleanest things to build either.
Build a nice good old nuclear plant, though, and it'll run for decades. Centuries, really, if you do it right. And with only producing a fraction of the nuclear waste current plants produce -- and that waste would only remain radioactive for a fraction of the time of current nuclear waste's lifespan.
But hey, yeah. Let's throw all our money at solutions that will need more money to rebuild in 5-10 years. Good call, Germany -- insert Nazi reference as example of good German governance here.
It's not even really predicting anything.
*PEOPLE* write those articles. People. People know when shit is hitting the fan. People write about shit hitting the fan escalating to larger shit hitting the fan. That's not a computer predicting anything, that's just a computer reading the news and noticing when *PEOPLE* are writing about escalations in shit-fan collisions in certain areas.
Absolutely none of it is surprising. Most people have been waiting for this to happen in the Middle East for quite some time. The only shocking thing is that Iran is still Iran, honestly.
Very, very, very highly doubtful. Maybe you're thinking of "truck" as in a pickup truck, or maybe a European Lorry. That's not a tractor trailor truck, that's not what we mean by "trucking company" in America.
Hybrid trucks won't do shit compared to a diesel. Too heavy, too inefficient, too costly to, yes, purchase, but also to maintain. Those batteries become gradually less efficient, while a good diesel engine, well maintained, will not lose efficiency for decades. You can't run a hybrid for a decade without replacing the battery pack. Certainly not if you're using it 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week.
You might recoup the increased cost of a hybrid after a few years -- in fuel savings -- but a few years after that you're just breaking even, because the batteries are wearing out. A few years after that, they're worn out, and you can either dump an amount of money into the damn thing or sell it and get that same amount back.
Oh, heck, and you have to retrain your maintenance crew. That's not cheap. And they're not as robust -- they will break down more often. And that increased efficiency is probably never even going to be there under real-world conditions, either.
So, yeah, I guess they have them, if you're a big enough idiot.
Let's not even get into how much pollution is dumped into China to produce those battery packs, and how much pollution is dumped into China when they're recycled. Know how much pollution is created when you recycle *steel*?