what is the opposite of up? what day is after friday? what does seven plus three equal? what letter of the alphabet comes before d? how many wheels does a bicycle have? what is the third word of this sentence?
These are generally difficult for computers to solve, can be programed to have permutations, and since the quiz answer can be tied to the account, if a particular question or style is getting spammed frequently, it can be removed from the list of questions.
It's an arms race, and this system won't work forever, but it's fairly easy to implement and fairly difficult to overcome.
I am not a medical professional, but it sure seems that Jonathan Lee Riches is acting in ways that may be medically insane. The US Justice system doesn't exactly have a good track record when dealing with mental illness.
Of the 49 Democrats in the Senate, the vote was 20-27-1 for FISA -- the Dems as a group voted against the bill, with Kennedy not present.
Of the 2 Independents in the Senate, the vote was 1-1-0 for FISA -- Sanders voted against, Lieberman for.
Of the 49 Republicans in the Senate, the vote was 47-0-2 for FISA -- the Republicans as a group voted unanimously for the bill, with McCain and Sessions not present.
So it seems to me the beef ought not to be with the "Bloody Democrats" -- but rather with 100% of the Republican Senators, 50% of the Independent Senators, and roughly 40% of the Democratic Senators.
* Global Poverty Act (S.2433) * Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act (S. 230) * Lugar-Obama Nonproliferation Legislation
There's three, related to three very different topics, and all were an improvement in my opinion.
As for McCain-Feingold... he violates the spirit of it every time he catches a ride in his multi-millionaire wife's company plane. With respect to McCain-Lieberman, he both spoke against it to the press as the vote came up a few weeks ago, and then didn't bother to show up and vote one way or the other on the bill itself. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he wasn't in a contested race for POTUS nomination at the time.
* Hawaii, because including shipping is cheaper than coal * Alaska, because it is cheap due to shipping differential * Florida & Mississippi to a lesser extent * Virginia on up the Atlantic Coast all the way to Maine generated between 5% and 36%+ of their electricity from oil at least one year within the past ten. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but I do know that the numbers are coming down because new/larger coal plants, nuclear capacity expansions, and a small amount of increased biomass and wind energy have displaced oil.
Still, none of that is Texas, which is about 37% coal in 2007 (39% in 1999), 13% nuclear in 2007 (10% nuclear in 1999), and 4% renewable (1% in 1999), the remainder of which is natural gas. What will wind replace? My bet is some coal but even more natural gas. That's OK -- replacing any coal is a good deal at this point.
Installing a "club room" near every gate would be really expensive to build and operate, so it won't happen. Now, if you're a first class passenger, would you rather sit on the narrow hard seats in the terminal and pay for beverages, or board the plane and sit in comfort with a cold drink?
How about a Constitutional Amendment requiring all money raised for a campaign MUST be raised from registered voters in the District you intend to represent?
All 100 Senators and 435 House Members with votes in Congress vote on issues that impact me. They all vote on military, taxes, social programs, regulations, and the like. Why shouldn't I, as an American citizen who is directly impacted by all 435, be able to contribute to any of them? Furthermore, would people be allowed to volunteer for campaigns outside of their district? How about work for them for a salary? Could I slap a bumper sticker on my car for the candidate in the next district over, where I happen to drive to every day for work?
You can't limit what people can do for national elections based on where they live. It's arbitrary and full of loop-holes, but more importantly it ignores the very fact that there are 535 Members of Congress working for me and 300 million other Americans, ostensibly equally. Why shouldn't we, the Americans, be able to get involved in all of their campaigns equally?
"The government" is not represented by a single assessor in West Virginia. Perhaps you noticed that the judge [also a member of "the government"] required that they be handed over for a very small fee.
Why not free? I'll tell you why: if I were pissed off at a department in my town, I could just stroll in and request everything. Flood them with requests for information. It takes time to gather all of that information and fill the requests, and that takes away from the other duties those employees must attend. Placing a nominal fee serves to significantly reduce the action of those who seek simply to waste time, but doesn't serve as a substantial burden to those who want the information for productive purposes.
Finally, given that this is being settled in the judicial system, your call for angry mobs is more than a bit premature.
Washington DC. Their subway system was built about 40ish years ago, and 100 years ago Washington DC was a swamp with a few Senators. Sure, that's a special case too, but all cities are special cases. Your point about city planning 100 years ago is a fair one, but I suspect that the problem is that nobody is willing to invest in permanent mass transit without the density, and you just can't get the density without the mass transit.
That's what I mean about making changes to society. You don't have to force people's hand, but you can change the rules. You can build subways, even if they're underutilized at first. You can changing zoning, allowing for mixed use, no setbacks, smaller [or no] parking lots, etc. You can resist the demands to continue to expand the highways into the cities, instead investing that money in making it easier [and cheaper] for people to live in the city.
I do think that federal, state, and local action can make higher density living more attractive, and that doing so is essential to a sustainable existence.
P.S. Front lawns? I've got a 100ish acre front lawn... it's a park. I don't have to mow it, but I get to use it any time I want!
Having more people in an area will result in more cars on the road.
See Manhattan Island for counterargument. Once you get a high enough population density -- especially with mixed zoning -- cars just aren't needed. People walk to the grocery store [or eat out]. They take mass transit to/fro work. Once you get that critical mass, the number of cars per capita, and perhaps even the aggregate number of cars, can decrease.
Making changes to society to encourage auto alternatives will have a greater influence in, say, Greensboro than in SF Bay where they've already got fairly good transit.
Want to use linux to reduce gridlock? Harness it to improve telecommuting, encourage bicycling or walking, cheapen mass transit, or [somehow!] use it to alter zoning laws to encourage more mixed use space that results in fewer people having to drive to work in the first place.
In most ways, increasing road capacity by scheduling/information isn't much different than increasing capacity by adding a lane. It's great for a while, but then we see traffic again. More capacity invites more cars. Maximizing "efficient" use of roadways makes traffic jams that much worse when there is an accident because the system has got more vehicles in it.
Making it more convenient/cheaper to drive a car will always result in more cars on the road, not fewer.
and ditched my car 7 years ago. I live in Boston across the street from a subway stop. There's another one a few hundred yards away, a third line 1 mile away and a fourth 1.3 miles away. I ride my bicycle year round for many trips 5 miles or less, and arrive faster than the subway or a car. Walking a mile is also no big deal, and I occasionally car pool if a neighbor and I are both headed to a meeting or event.
What about groceries? Smaller trips or deliveries. What about big purchases? If I ever needed one, I'd borrow a friend's car or sign on to zipcar. What about weekends in NYC? I take Acela or the bus. What about weekends in rural Vermont? I rent a car for $40 a day. The combined total of non-air travel for my wife and I: $2500/yr, and that includes a combined total of 5 months of time out of Boston. Can your car ownership costs -- insurance, gas, tires, lubes, car payment/depreciation, parking, tickets, tolls, taxes, and repairs match that?
Yeah, you can ditch your car. Doesn't mean you'll never have to borrow or rent one, but it does mean you'll likely save money, operate an auto for fewer miles per year, get a bit more exercise, have a chance to read a magazine or book while using transportation once in a while, and contribute to a higher quality of life for yourself and your community. Don't let the perfect [a completely car-free society] get in the way of the good [a society where the average miles driven per driver is under 5,000, or even less].
Faithless electors can be punished in 24 states. Furthermore, most electoral college voters are established party faithful -- it'd cost an awful lot of money to start swinging their votes since their political career would be destroyed.
At $1 million each, buying enough would cost $270 million. For that kind of money, why not just run for president and sink it in your campaign like Mitt Romney. How many politically connected folks would throw away their career, their connections, and their source of future income for less than a mil?
but I'd bet he left out one word -- illegal. It likely requires that a student can't knowingly be in a room with people who are illegally consuming alcohol [under 21], or illegally consuming tobacco [under 18]. Since some high school students turn 18, it might also ban being in the same room with any high school student consuming tobacco products. Kids can still go to major league sporting events and sit with 30,000 people drinking beer at the same time. They can't have a beer, and they can't sit net to their classmate having a beer.
Grandma's spaghetti gets a pass, as does communion. The toast at New Year? Nope. Get cider or something. I'd hope you'd expect your child to honor the promise of not consuming alcohol.
1. Nuclear power is not carbon neutral. Uranium is mined, and nobody is running mining equipment on biodiesel, nor are they transporting it to power plants using biodiesel, ethanol, or even renewable generated electricity on electric locomotives. To be sure, the amount of carbon is extremely low per kWh of electricity generated, but very small > 0, even for very small cases of very small.
2. As you know, nuclear proponents continually ignore the major immediate problem with nuclear power -- waste storage. Nobody wants more glass-encased nuclear waste in their neighborhood, and presently nobody wants some other neighborhood's nuclear waste being transported through their neighborhood. The nuclear industry has got to find technical and political solutions to these problems before society will embrace nuclear as a green solution. I'm not arguing that burning coal or oil is safer or cleaner than nuclear, just that any change to a status quo requires more than a slight or obscured imbalance, which is how the public currently perceives the status quo.
3. What is Hubbart's Peak for uranium? I have no idea, but it surely must have one.
4. Which nations have substantial amounts of useful uranium? What would the balance of power be if those nations became the new Saudi Arabia of energy?
5. Solar off-peak is simply not a problem, not for a long time. Peak demand is highly correlated with sunshine in most of the world -- solar could serve quite effectively as the peaking plant, relying on other types of generation for base load. Electric storage is just not a major issue for solar -- it might become one for wind but it wouldn't be that hard to operate other green energy plants in a negative correlation to wind, ie burn woodchips when the wind isn't blowing, but not when the wind is blowing.
6. That said, plug in cars might change that formulation substantially, since most people would plug in their cars at night thereby adding demand off-peak [and off-sun]. If/when that happens, much of (5) becomes moot and there'd be some shifting of nighttime use [industrial, it's cheaper] to daytime and there'd be encouragement for folks to charge during the day [plug in jacks at car parks] to help keep demand during the day higher, when production due to solar is higher.
7. Ultimately, this doesn't matter. Solar production in the US is well less than 1%. Even at 10% there won't be a necessary substantial change in infrastructures or demand shaping. So, until then, more of every kind of renewable electricity generation is better, and none of it will create challenges. And, of course, nuclear may or may not be greenish, but it is not renewable.
I think the way you're thinking about oil and global warming is a really interesting way to think about it. There's a potential flaw though: coal can be converted to oil, as can tar sands. Neither process is efficient with the carbon fuel or other resources [other energy, water, etc], but it can be done. As the price of oil continues to rise, more tar sand extraction and coal to liquid processes will begin, as will using coal to help convert agriculture to fuel. Therefore, carbon-based fuel isn't just limited to liquid crude, it's also got sand crude and coal. That is a lot more fuel opportunity, lasting maybe another 100 years or more. It's also far more carbon to be released in to the air.
If carbon based transportation relied on oil and there were no substitute goods at any cost, that'd fit the scenario you describe. The reality, though, is that coal is a [more expensive but usable] substitute for oil both directly via F-T and indirectly by fueling plants that convert plants to ethanol or biodiesel.
So... as you point out, how do we stop them from switching to coal? The same way we encourage them to use less oil. Higher MPG and higher cost per mile traveled on fossil fuels relative to lower/non carbon options like mass transit, cycling, walking, and telecommuting, as well as public policies that encourage mixed use zoning so that more people can live close to where they work, play, shop, learn, and heal.
P.S. Slowing down the carbon emissions per year will result in the same amount of carbon when all oil is gone, but it will give the world more time to work on the problem -- to reduce emissions from other sources, to add more biomass sinks by reforesting, etc. It'll buy time for humans to adapt ourselves or our living environment.
1. The bus is mass transit, and it's by-and-large reliable. It's true that not every city/metro area has great transit in terms of coverage or reliability, but the sheer number of people who live within 1 mile of mass transit in NYC, Chicago, DC, LA, Boston, Philly, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, and SF [I don't know much about TX or SoCal transit] is enormous -- and each one of those areas contains a significant number of poor, as defined by the census... and many of them don't own cars. P.S. a car doesn't "fit" CAFE standards, as the CAFE standards apply to fleets (hence the F) of autos sold.
2. Sudden changes in the market [including taxes] do not result in efficient behavior, nor fair or safe behavior, for all parties. For a rational transition, entities need time to formulate a plan, to make changes in their capital investment policies, adequately adjust their labor vs. capital expenditures, adjust their supply chains appropriately, deal with inventory already on hand, etc.
So, you either signal the change far enough in advance so that entities begin to plan and adjust their behavior ahead of time, or you ramp up the tax so that not only do you get the same behavior from rational forward-thinking entities, but you stimulate the same behavior from entities which aren't behaving quite as rationally. Is a penny a month the right slope? I have no freaking idea. It seems sufficiently slow so that it doesn't bring us to the problematic situation described above, and this is/. not a think tank.
3. "The Market" is not capable of good public policy by itself. Transit networks are necessary public goods, and therefore require public investment. Cap and trading carbon won't be as effective if people don't have effective lower-carbon choices like HOV lanes, safe bike trails, or mass transit. None of those things will magically materialize due to a free market, but are all things that would help the region generate less carbon emissions.
1. We have enough corn and enough food right now... and if the rising corn prices increase the price of corn-fed food, perhaps Americans will simply eat less meat and our health will improve too. As you know, scientists are learning how to generate ethanol from other feed stocks more efficiently; the intent is to use corn to jump start ethanol production and then shift to other sources like grasses, food waste, or bacteria. 2. The 15% didn't make the final bill. Even if it did, about 1/4 of that was allowable from fuel efficiency gains. States like VA, NC, and TN do have wind capability in the Appalachians, they're simply resisting. Solar is also a nice possibility. Biofuel [wood pellets and chips] possibilities exist due to the pine lumber and paper mills. Biogas both from human waste and from hog & broiler waste remains relatively untapped in the South. The South could get it done, but it would take effort and the elec companies who control the South [AEP, Southern] are only interested in coal and nuke. Duke Power didn't complain about the 15% mandate; they're a smaller, more nimble, and more diversified elec co. 3. The government will be buying more fuel efficient vehicles because of CAFE. Remember, CAFE doesn't require any given vehicle have a certain mpg; rather it requires that the entire fleet of vehicles sold by a car company have an aggregate mpg. This creates an incentive for the companies to balance their auto offerings with the prices for those autos to ensure that they're selling a fleet with a high enough mpg. Uncle Sam is just another customer who's interactions with GM, Ford, et al will impact the car company's ability to comply with CAFE. If Uncle Sam buys fuel inefficient cars from GM, then GM will just have to sell more fuel efficient autos to other customers. Likewise, if Uncle Same buys fuel sippers from General Motors, it will allow GM to sell more gas guzzlers to others. Therefore, companies like GM will use vehicle offerings and pricing for all customers to make sure it makes its CAFE requirements, including their large customers like rental car companies and government agencies.
The poor in America often falls into two categories: city dwellers [no car anyway, or have mass transit options] and the rural dwellers [no mass transit options and long drives]. Clearly, this will have a bigger impact on the rural poor, but also lower middle class homes in the suburbs. If the price of gas went up quickly, these poor wouldn't have time to migrate to more efficient cars. Also, since they typically buy used cars, the used car market needs to have an adequate supply of fuel efficient vehicles, and it doesn't yet.
So, it seems to me the way to do it is to raise the gas tax a penny. Each month. Indefinitely. This will ratchet up the demand for fuel efficient vehicles in a way that allows the new car market and the used car market a little time to adapt.
P.S. Those other things: mass transit, car pooling [more HOV lanes!], staggered work time, encouraging tele-commuting, improving intra city rail... all great things on which tUSA should be spending more money IMO.
and offer them any book in your stacks that they'd like. Then call a local high school and a local college, and do the same.
You can only read one book in any instant, and only a few "at a time". Why not share the others with people who'd get value from them, especially if the library will allow you to borrow them "back" later? We like the idea of rewarding authors of good works, but really -- given the insane amount of overconsumption the Western World engages in, reducing consumption by reusing items, including books, makes more and more sense.
Notice that neither Wind or Solar energy can actually act as either Base or Variable loads.
This isn't quite accurate. In many industrialized parts of the world, the annual peak load is during sunny periods. Think: Arizona. Why is the peak load during sunny periods? Air conditioning. When do solar cells produce the most electricity? During sunny periods. Correlation can be used to allow intermittent power to be considered "base". Is it possible that there'd be a peak on a cloudy day in Arizona, or at night? I guess. It's also possible that all the coal power plants will have to come down for emergency service at the same time.
Correlation can also be used to allow wind to be base load, under at least two scenarios: In the first, if you had two wind turbines spread geographically in such a way that they were highly negatively correlated -- that is, if one was spinning, the other wasn't -- then you could count one of the two as base load, since one of the two will always spin. You won't be able to get two turbines with a coefficient of -1.0, but you might be able to find a series of turbines in which they were always generating some power, and you could count that as base. The other way to count wind turbines as base is to use a second source of power [say, natural gas, wood chips, landfill gas with a storage tank, etc] and force them to have a correlation of -1.0 by varying the output of the second source of power perfectly negatively with the wind, thereby guaranteeing a minimum output between the two systems.
Are any of these methods applicable just anywhere? Nope. But, there's plenty of room for solar installations in the Southwest US to count as base [and as an added bonus they're distributed, so massive failure is far less likely], and some wind can be used as base load anywhere if there's enough negative correlation in wind or using a second type of power plant.
All of this ignores the very real opportunity to use technology to shift peak. Give people instant feedback on the supply-demand curves [ie change price] and watch as they shift their usage off peak -- thinks like running the dishwasher or clothes washer/dryer will start happening later in the evening, helping to smooth the peak thereby making intermittent power sources like wind and solar less difficult to incorporate into the supply grid.
Slashdot Mirror
what is the opposite of up?
what day is after friday?
what does seven plus three equal?
what letter of the alphabet comes before d?
how many wheels does a bicycle have?
what is the third word of this sentence?
These are generally difficult for computers to solve, can be programed to have permutations, and since the quiz answer can be tied to the account, if a particular question or style is getting spammed frequently, it can be removed from the list of questions.
It's an arms race, and this system won't work forever, but it's fairly easy to implement and fairly difficult to overcome.
I am not a medical professional, but it sure seems that Jonathan Lee Riches is acting in ways that may be medically insane. The US Justice system doesn't exactly have a good track record when dealing with mental illness.
If he is ill, I hope he gets treatment.
There are brick and mortar equivalents to your eBay Tiffany vendor -- everything from tables in Chinatown to flea markets.
Does Tiffany's actively go after the flea market owners/managers who happen to have a vendor renting a flea market stand and selling fugazi jewelry?
Of the 49 Democrats in the Senate, the vote was 20-27-1 for FISA -- the Dems as a group voted against the bill, with Kennedy not present.
Of the 2 Independents in the Senate, the vote was 1-1-0 for FISA -- Sanders voted against, Lieberman for.
Of the 49 Republicans in the Senate, the vote was 47-0-2 for FISA -- the Republicans as a group voted unanimously for the bill, with McCain and Sessions not present.
So it seems to me the beef ought not to be with the "Bloody Democrats" -- but rather with 100% of the Republican Senators, 50% of the Independent Senators, and roughly 40% of the Democratic Senators.
* Global Poverty Act (S.2433)
* Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act (S. 230)
* Lugar-Obama Nonproliferation Legislation
There's three, related to three very different topics, and all were an improvement in my opinion.
As for McCain-Feingold... he violates the spirit of it every time he catches a ride in his multi-millionaire wife's company plane. With respect to McCain-Lieberman, he both spoke against it to the press as the vote came up a few weeks ago, and then didn't bother to show up and vote one way or the other on the bill itself. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he wasn't in a contested race for POTUS nomination at the time.
* Hawaii, because including shipping is cheaper than coal
* Alaska, because it is cheap due to shipping differential
* Florida & Mississippi to a lesser extent
* Virginia on up the Atlantic Coast all the way to Maine generated between 5% and 36%+ of their electricity from oil at least one year within the past ten. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but I do know that the numbers are coming down because new/larger coal plants, nuclear capacity expansions, and a small amount of increased biomass and wind energy have displaced oil.
Still, none of that is Texas, which is about 37% coal in 2007 (39% in 1999), 13% nuclear in 2007 (10% nuclear in 1999), and 4% renewable (1% in 1999), the remainder of which is natural gas. What will wind replace? My bet is some coal but even more natural gas. That's OK -- replacing any coal is a good deal at this point.
but rather, because we have these rare pieces of real estate called sidewalks, and people who actually use them for walking.
Installing a "club room" near every gate would be really expensive to build and operate, so it won't happen. Now, if you're a first class passenger, would you rather sit on the narrow hard seats in the terminal and pay for beverages, or board the plane and sit in comfort with a cold drink?
I aspire to make that choice one day.
All 100 Senators and 435 House Members with votes in Congress vote on issues that impact me. They all vote on military, taxes, social programs, regulations, and the like. Why shouldn't I, as an American citizen who is directly impacted by all 435, be able to contribute to any of them? Furthermore, would people be allowed to volunteer for campaigns outside of their district? How about work for them for a salary? Could I slap a bumper sticker on my car for the candidate in the next district over, where I happen to drive to every day for work?
You can't limit what people can do for national elections based on where they live. It's arbitrary and full of loop-holes, but more importantly it ignores the very fact that there are 535 Members of Congress working for me and 300 million other Americans, ostensibly equally. Why shouldn't we, the Americans, be able to get involved in all of their campaigns equally?
"The government" is not represented by a single assessor in West Virginia. Perhaps you noticed that the judge [also a member of "the government"] required that they be handed over for a very small fee.
Why not free? I'll tell you why: if I were pissed off at a department in my town, I could just stroll in and request everything. Flood them with requests for information. It takes time to gather all of that information and fill the requests, and that takes away from the other duties those employees must attend. Placing a nominal fee serves to significantly reduce the action of those who seek simply to waste time, but doesn't serve as a substantial burden to those who want the information for productive purposes.
Finally, given that this is being settled in the judicial system, your call for angry mobs is more than a bit premature.
Washington DC. Their subway system was built about 40ish years ago, and 100 years ago Washington DC was a swamp with a few Senators. Sure, that's a special case too, but all cities are special cases. Your point about city planning 100 years ago is a fair one, but I suspect that the problem is that nobody is willing to invest in permanent mass transit without the density, and you just can't get the density without the mass transit.
That's what I mean about making changes to society. You don't have to force people's hand, but you can change the rules. You can build subways, even if they're underutilized at first. You can changing zoning, allowing for mixed use, no setbacks, smaller [or no] parking lots, etc. You can resist the demands to continue to expand the highways into the cities, instead investing that money in making it easier [and cheaper] for people to live in the city.
I do think that federal, state, and local action can make higher density living more attractive, and that doing so is essential to a sustainable existence.
P.S. Front lawns? I've got a 100ish acre front lawn... it's a park. I don't have to mow it, but I get to use it any time I want!
See Manhattan Island for counterargument. Once you get a high enough population density -- especially with mixed zoning -- cars just aren't needed. People walk to the grocery store [or eat out]. They take mass transit to/fro work. Once you get that critical mass, the number of cars per capita, and perhaps even the aggregate number of cars, can decrease.
Making changes to society to encourage auto alternatives will have a greater influence in, say, Greensboro than in SF Bay where they've already got fairly good transit.
Want to use linux to reduce gridlock? Harness it to improve telecommuting, encourage bicycling or walking, cheapen mass transit, or [somehow!] use it to alter zoning laws to encourage more mixed use space that results in fewer people having to drive to work in the first place.
In most ways, increasing road capacity by scheduling/information isn't much different than increasing capacity by adding a lane. It's great for a while, but then we see traffic again. More capacity invites more cars. Maximizing "efficient" use of roadways makes traffic jams that much worse when there is an accident because the system has got more vehicles in it.
Making it more convenient/cheaper to drive a car will always result in more cars on the road, not fewer.
and ditched my car 7 years ago. I live in Boston across the street from a subway stop. There's another one a few hundred yards away, a third line 1 mile away and a fourth 1.3 miles away. I ride my bicycle year round for many trips 5 miles or less, and arrive faster than the subway or a car. Walking a mile is also no big deal, and I occasionally car pool if a neighbor and I are both headed to a meeting or event.
What about groceries? Smaller trips or deliveries. What about big purchases? If I ever needed one, I'd borrow a friend's car or sign on to zipcar. What about weekends in NYC? I take Acela or the bus. What about weekends in rural Vermont? I rent a car for $40 a day. The combined total of non-air travel for my wife and I: $2500/yr, and that includes a combined total of 5 months of time out of Boston. Can your car ownership costs -- insurance, gas, tires, lubes, car payment/depreciation, parking, tickets, tolls, taxes, and repairs match that?
Yeah, you can ditch your car. Doesn't mean you'll never have to borrow or rent one, but it does mean you'll likely save money, operate an auto for fewer miles per year, get a bit more exercise, have a chance to read a magazine or book while using transportation once in a while, and contribute to a higher quality of life for yourself and your community. Don't let the perfect [a completely car-free society] get in the way of the good [a society where the average miles driven per driver is under 5,000, or even less].
Faithless electors can be punished in 24 states. Furthermore, most electoral college voters are established party faithful -- it'd cost an awful lot of money to start swinging their votes since their political career would be destroyed.
At $1 million each, buying enough would cost $270 million. For that kind of money, why not just run for president and sink it in your campaign like Mitt Romney. How many politically connected folks would throw away their career, their connections, and their source of future income for less than a mil?
but I'd bet he left out one word -- illegal. It likely requires that a student can't knowingly be in a room with people who are illegally consuming alcohol [under 21], or illegally consuming tobacco [under 18]. Since some high school students turn 18, it might also ban being in the same room with any high school student consuming tobacco products. Kids can still go to major league sporting events and sit with 30,000 people drinking beer at the same time. They can't have a beer, and they can't sit net to their classmate having a beer.
Grandma's spaghetti gets a pass, as does communion. The toast at New Year? Nope. Get cider or something. I'd hope you'd expect your child to honor the promise of not consuming alcohol.
This exists for everyone with funny money called inkles at Inkling Markets
1. Nuclear power is not carbon neutral. Uranium is mined, and nobody is running mining equipment on biodiesel, nor are they transporting it to power plants using biodiesel, ethanol, or even renewable generated electricity on electric locomotives. To be sure, the amount of carbon is extremely low per kWh of electricity generated, but very small > 0, even for very small cases of very small.
2. As you know, nuclear proponents continually ignore the major immediate problem with nuclear power -- waste storage. Nobody wants more glass-encased nuclear waste in their neighborhood, and presently nobody wants some other neighborhood's nuclear waste being transported through their neighborhood. The nuclear industry has got to find technical and political solutions to these problems before society will embrace nuclear as a green solution. I'm not arguing that burning coal or oil is safer or cleaner than nuclear, just that any change to a status quo requires more than a slight or obscured imbalance, which is how the public currently perceives the status quo.
3. What is Hubbart's Peak for uranium? I have no idea, but it surely must have one.
4. Which nations have substantial amounts of useful uranium? What would the balance of power be if those nations became the new Saudi Arabia of energy?
5. Solar off-peak is simply not a problem, not for a long time. Peak demand is highly correlated with sunshine in most of the world -- solar could serve quite effectively as the peaking plant, relying on other types of generation for base load. Electric storage is just not a major issue for solar -- it might become one for wind but it wouldn't be that hard to operate other green energy plants in a negative correlation to wind, ie burn woodchips when the wind isn't blowing, but not when the wind is blowing.
6. That said, plug in cars might change that formulation substantially, since most people would plug in their cars at night thereby adding demand off-peak [and off-sun]. If/when that happens, much of (5) becomes moot and there'd be some shifting of nighttime use [industrial, it's cheaper] to daytime and there'd be encouragement for folks to charge during the day [plug in jacks at car parks] to help keep demand during the day higher, when production due to solar is higher.
7. Ultimately, this doesn't matter. Solar production in the US is well less than 1%. Even at 10% there won't be a necessary substantial change in infrastructures or demand shaping. So, until then, more of every kind of renewable electricity generation is better, and none of it will create challenges. And, of course, nuclear may or may not be greenish, but it is not renewable.
I think the way you're thinking about oil and global warming is a really interesting way to think about it. There's a potential flaw though: coal can be converted to oil, as can tar sands. Neither process is efficient with the carbon fuel or other resources [other energy, water, etc], but it can be done. As the price of oil continues to rise, more tar sand extraction and coal to liquid processes will begin, as will using coal to help convert agriculture to fuel. Therefore, carbon-based fuel isn't just limited to liquid crude, it's also got sand crude and coal. That is a lot more fuel opportunity, lasting maybe another 100 years or more. It's also far more carbon to be released in to the air.
If carbon based transportation relied on oil and there were no substitute goods at any cost, that'd fit the scenario you describe. The reality, though, is that coal is a [more expensive but usable] substitute for oil both directly via F-T and indirectly by fueling plants that convert plants to ethanol or biodiesel.
So... as you point out, how do we stop them from switching to coal? The same way we encourage them to use less oil. Higher MPG and higher cost per mile traveled on fossil fuels relative to lower/non carbon options like mass transit, cycling, walking, and telecommuting, as well as public policies that encourage mixed use zoning so that more people can live close to where they work, play, shop, learn, and heal.
P.S. Slowing down the carbon emissions per year will result in the same amount of carbon when all oil is gone, but it will give the world more time to work on the problem -- to reduce emissions from other sources, to add more biomass sinks by reforesting, etc. It'll buy time for humans to adapt ourselves or our living environment.
1. The bus is mass transit, and it's by-and-large reliable. It's true that not every city/metro area has great transit in terms of coverage or reliability, but the sheer number of people who live within 1 mile of mass transit in NYC, Chicago, DC, LA, Boston, Philly, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, and SF [I don't know much about TX or SoCal transit] is enormous -- and each one of those areas contains a significant number of poor, as defined by the census... and many of them don't own cars. P.S. a car doesn't "fit" CAFE standards, as the CAFE standards apply to fleets (hence the F) of autos sold.
/. not a think tank.
2. Sudden changes in the market [including taxes] do not result in efficient behavior, nor fair or safe behavior, for all parties. For a rational transition, entities need time to formulate a plan, to make changes in their capital investment policies, adequately adjust their labor vs. capital expenditures, adjust their supply chains appropriately, deal with inventory already on hand, etc.
So, you either signal the change far enough in advance so that entities begin to plan and adjust their behavior ahead of time, or you ramp up the tax so that not only do you get the same behavior from rational forward-thinking entities, but you stimulate the same behavior from entities which aren't behaving quite as rationally. Is a penny a month the right slope? I have no freaking idea. It seems sufficiently slow so that it doesn't bring us to the problematic situation described above, and this is
3. "The Market" is not capable of good public policy by itself. Transit networks are necessary public goods, and therefore require public investment. Cap and trading carbon won't be as effective if people don't have effective lower-carbon choices like HOV lanes, safe bike trails, or mass transit. None of those things will magically materialize due to a free market, but are all things that would help the region generate less carbon emissions.
1. We have enough corn and enough food right now... and if the rising corn prices increase the price of corn-fed food, perhaps Americans will simply eat less meat and our health will improve too. As you know, scientists are learning how to generate ethanol from other feed stocks more efficiently; the intent is to use corn to jump start ethanol production and then shift to other sources like grasses, food waste, or bacteria.
2. The 15% didn't make the final bill. Even if it did, about 1/4 of that was allowable from fuel efficiency gains. States like VA, NC, and TN do have wind capability in the Appalachians, they're simply resisting. Solar is also a nice possibility. Biofuel [wood pellets and chips] possibilities exist due to the pine lumber and paper mills. Biogas both from human waste and from hog & broiler waste remains relatively untapped in the South. The South could get it done, but it would take effort and the elec companies who control the South [AEP, Southern] are only interested in coal and nuke. Duke Power didn't complain about the 15% mandate; they're a smaller, more nimble, and more diversified elec co.
3. The government will be buying more fuel efficient vehicles because of CAFE. Remember, CAFE doesn't require any given vehicle have a certain mpg; rather it requires that the entire fleet of vehicles sold by a car company have an aggregate mpg. This creates an incentive for the companies to balance their auto offerings with the prices for those autos to ensure that they're selling a fleet with a high enough mpg. Uncle Sam is just another customer who's interactions with GM, Ford, et al will impact the car company's ability to comply with CAFE. If Uncle Sam buys fuel inefficient cars from GM, then GM will just have to sell more fuel efficient autos to other customers. Likewise, if Uncle Same buys fuel sippers from General Motors, it will allow GM to sell more gas guzzlers to others. Therefore, companies like GM will use vehicle offerings and pricing for all customers to make sure it makes its CAFE requirements, including their large customers like rental car companies and government agencies.
The poor in America often falls into two categories: city dwellers [no car anyway, or have mass transit options] and the rural dwellers [no mass transit options and long drives]. Clearly, this will have a bigger impact on the rural poor, but also lower middle class homes in the suburbs. If the price of gas went up quickly, these poor wouldn't have time to migrate to more efficient cars. Also, since they typically buy used cars, the used car market needs to have an adequate supply of fuel efficient vehicles, and it doesn't yet.
So, it seems to me the way to do it is to raise the gas tax a penny. Each month. Indefinitely. This will ratchet up the demand for fuel efficient vehicles in a way that allows the new car market and the used car market a little time to adapt.
P.S. Those other things: mass transit, car pooling [more HOV lanes!], staggered work time, encouraging tele-commuting, improving intra city rail... all great things on which tUSA should be spending more money IMO.
There's two ideas here:
1. No charge; you don't have to pay any hard cash.
2. No cost; you bear no burden at all -- money, labor, or attention to ads.
Knol will have no charge, but it won't come at no cost.
and offer them any book in your stacks that they'd like. Then call a local high school and a local college, and do the same.
You can only read one book in any instant, and only a few "at a time". Why not share the others with people who'd get value from them, especially if the library will allow you to borrow them "back" later? We like the idea of rewarding authors of good works, but really -- given the insane amount of overconsumption the Western World engages in, reducing consumption by reusing items, including books, makes more and more sense.
Books aren't trophies.
This isn't quite accurate. In many industrialized parts of the world, the annual peak load is during sunny periods. Think: Arizona. Why is the peak load during sunny periods? Air conditioning. When do solar cells produce the most electricity? During sunny periods. Correlation can be used to allow intermittent power to be considered "base". Is it possible that there'd be a peak on a cloudy day in Arizona, or at night? I guess. It's also possible that all the coal power plants will have to come down for emergency service at the same time.
Correlation can also be used to allow wind to be base load, under at least two scenarios: In the first, if you had two wind turbines spread geographically in such a way that they were highly negatively correlated -- that is, if one was spinning, the other wasn't -- then you could count one of the two as base load, since one of the two will always spin. You won't be able to get two turbines with a coefficient of -1.0, but you might be able to find a series of turbines in which they were always generating some power, and you could count that as base. The other way to count wind turbines as base is to use a second source of power [say, natural gas, wood chips, landfill gas with a storage tank, etc] and force them to have a correlation of -1.0 by varying the output of the second source of power perfectly negatively with the wind, thereby guaranteeing a minimum output between the two systems.
Are any of these methods applicable just anywhere? Nope. But, there's plenty of room for solar installations in the Southwest US to count as base [and as an added bonus they're distributed, so massive failure is far less likely], and some wind can be used as base load anywhere if there's enough negative correlation in wind or using a second type of power plant.
All of this ignores the very real opportunity to use technology to shift peak. Give people instant feedback on the supply-demand curves [ie change price] and watch as they shift their usage off peak -- thinks like running the dishwasher or clothes washer/dryer will start happening later in the evening, helping to smooth the peak thereby making intermittent power sources like wind and solar less difficult to incorporate into the supply grid.