"If any editor is found to receive compensation from the subject or an article they edit, all edits they have ever made will be immediately reversed and removed and they will be banned from editing Wikipedia for life."
This way anyone paying an editor when discovered losses all their changes and edits. Maybe even counterpoints are highlighted for a period of time, say 5 years.
Help the Streisand effect work. Don't see another way to stop this. Maybe paying editors but that wouldn't really prevent this. Perhaps a team that looks for these types of abuses. But the wiki folk have to know that this is the only real way they lose their organization.
No. Social media doesn't turn people hateful. It simply allows already hateful people to express themselves in an environment where there's low risk of being judged by society and punished.
I.e. they are just unleashing their suppressed inner arsehole which has always been there.
It also amplifies what hateful people say because that's what draws attention, clicks and money. Me posting nice things about the post I'm responding to here on./ usually gets me ignored unless its a really really good post. If however, I write a sarcastic, mocking, and funny post with some good details then I get lots of replies and moderations (sometimes good, sometimes bad). Most of human communication between folks is basically pleasant most of the time so you only notice when it isn't. And for some reason, probably the same reason people rubberneck at traffic accidents, people give more attention to the hateful comments. Until people change that basic behavior, the algorithms will keep pumping those more nasty posts your way. Don't know what to do about that though. Social media isn't truly a mirror of humanity, its more like a reality show where the most dysfunctional get the most attention. Or maybe it is...
co2 is less harmful than methane, so why not just flare all the methane and be done with it? doesn't fix the problem, but sounds like a good mitigation strategy
Burning methane by flaring it is what makes the CO2 (well one of the ways). And the difference in damage between the two isn't enough to make your proposal help at all. Perhaps leave this stuff to the (not software) engineers?
Receiving constructive criticism is a rare skill these days...BTW
Yep. Common inside academia, rare in business.
Hahahahahahahahaha, thanks I needed the laugh. Its rare everywhere. Just as rare in school as outside of it. Sometimes more because often educators have no or limited real world experience. So while their knowledge about their topic is valuable (and almost always correct), their advice on many other topics is often laughably bad. Sometimes, its not really their fault as they don't receive feedback to know when they are so off base. Often though they are just too egotistical to acknowledge that feedback, just like in business.
Modify the techniques for other purposes, which in fact, is already being done.
Wouldn't that be the very definition of a Meritocracy? What you are railing against is called Cronyism. Confusing the two is what is causing all the drama. Words have meaning and you don't get to redefine them just because someone is using them to weasel out of something. The weaseling is the problem, not the word Meritocracy.
I used to think he was corrupt because I read the newspapers, which didn't like him at all. When I investigated deeper, it seems like he knew how to keep things legal, and the newspapers just didn't like him for some reason. He's just really good at playing the game.
The most in fear of my life I've ever been was during a mayoral debate I was at in 2000.
I don't know what that was about.
Then you weren't there, political violence was a tool in Brown's toolbox and he didn't mind using it and did so on multiple occasions against multiple groups he didn't like.
The person I look at with a lot of respect is Willy Brown. That is a guy who had everything stacked against him. If you're whining about it today, you don't have as many challenges as he did. You weren't born in a segregated town with mob violence, shining shoes of white folks. He did, but he answered the question, "When challenges arise, how do you respond to them?"
I know you didn't live in the bay area when he was mayor here. Like many a politician, his early life was laudable. He was a lawyer who made his name suing banks for red line policies. But when he became a politician, things changed. You can respect his success but the man was so crooked his dick bent twice. Shady dealings, bribery and backroom deals were the norm during his time. His election campaigns for mayor often featured odd happenings and his core supporters he assembled were willing to do anything for him. The most in fear of my life I've ever been was during a mayoral debate I was at in 2000. Boss Tweed of SF is the best way to frame him historically and again you can respect his success but he has an actual body count behind him. His political machine would still be running SF if Gavin with the Getty money behind him hadn't come along. Of course the first thing that lot did is change policies to reduce the amount of Brown's supporters living in SF. City politics is rough and I'm not entirely sure a more honest politician could have succeeded but I'd like to think they could. Harvey Milk was able to just a couple of years before Brown became a politician.
Well, toxic individuals are part of it. A great programmer who causes other pretty good programmers to leave is not a net asset.
How do you feel about whiny mediocre programmers who get upset every time someone has to explain to them why their pet idea won't work? I've seen this far more often than "toxic" lead programmers. In fact, when that "toxic" lead programmer leads is often when it all falls apart. Receiving constructive criticism is a rare skill these days...BTW, the 3 best engineers I've ever worked with, you would probably find toxic. I have thick skin (grew up working class) and knowledge...what you do have?
But those aren't what anyone thinks about when they hear the phrase "meritocracy", especially in a context critical of the concept.
No, that's what you think about when you hear "meritocracy". The rest of us use the dictionary and realize that when you hear that word you think it means cronyism. Which is what you are railing about. But the rest of us think of meritocracy as hiring someone who can do the job and rewarding them when they do well.
I will say that bad corporate management rarely rewarding merit is the real problem. To add insult to injury they then hide behind the word "meritocracy". That's why you are mad at this word.
But you have to understand that the world runs in cycles and that hack they promoted over you then gets the VP in trouble because they did someone dumb or at least didn't do the smart thing the company needed them to do. Bad management decisions often come home to roost but it just takes time. There is a huge pile of failed companies in the past to prove that. The problem is a bit of survivor bias, you don't think or see those companies that failed due to bad management because they don't exist anymore and you may not have even heard of them. Running your company the way you ideas seem to argue for, would likely end in everyone losing because whether you like it or not, customers will reward merit if they can. And usually they can somehow...
Except that they tend to lack in areas of knowledge actually required to do their jobs
The general success of institutions, industry and so forth across the planet would appear to contradict your statement.
Actually no, it would seem to support his statement. Institutions have a lifecycle just like people do. They start out young and nimble with new ideas. If those ideas are successful, they "Mature" by adding more of the socially astute you talk about but this weakens the organization's ability to enact strategies. Also, as the original more technically skilled managers are gradually replaced by more social managers the organization can enter a dead sea effect that gradually weakens the organization until it "dies" of old age. I've seen it my entire career. Not valuing technical strategy and bad technical strategy has sunk more SV startups than any other cause. I compare it to trying to ignore gravity. You can jump and for awhile you can float but slow web sites lose users to faster ones. Bad or buggy products have angry customers who sue.
Gravity always wins. If you consistently don't make good products that your customers like and work you might be able to survive on hype for awhile but gravity always wins. You can hate on Apple but their products generally work well enough for their customers. You can hate on FB all you want but their site is always responsive. Same for amazon and google. Yet your company (and ones I've sadly worked for) probably take 2 seconds to deliver a static home page to a user when its been well known that latency is the most important factor in making customers happy for over 10 years. The socially astute you discuss are often the cause of the organizations ultimate failures. From one POV, they are actually a cancer...but perhaps its better to say that those that lust for power should never be given it and not frame this as socially astute but instead frame it as those that brown nose for power.
Say you applied for a job and the employer threw away the applications of minorities...which has been known to happen and has been caught on camera, YOU just benefitted from racism. You didn't know it, but you did. And then if you say "I earned my sucess" you're wrong, you didn't earn it fairly. You didn't have to compete on a fair playing field. The deck was stacked in your favor, you were rolling attack rolls in the RPG of real-life with a D20 modified to roll 20's more often.
Sure, guys like you believe that we live in a Meritocracy, it makes you feel better about your selfishness bigotry and racism: "Why those ghetto people are undeserving, they should do what I did. They're just lazy" But society as a whole was giving you XP boosts, extra loot, early access, and you didn't even know it.
So your company will be hiring programmers to your team by lottery then? Let me know how that goes for you...
Does it make you feel good to call people who disagree with you Nazis?
Of course it does. The GP's entire psychology is based up it. When you see a messed up situation you can do one of two things: 1) Separate yourself from it, 2) try to help. Trying to help is hard. You have to work with people already in the situation. You need to understand the issue, have a solution and then implement it. Separating yourself from the situation and blaming others is easy. And we have been teaching complaining as some sort of social good in the school system for the last 10 or 15 years. Turns out, when you teach people to complain instead of help, you end up with a situation where nobody helps, everyone complains about everything and things gets worse consistently. Sound familiar? The GP probably has probably never done anything remarkable their entire life but has been told consistently how great they are despite all evidence to the contrary. So someone else who actually does remarkable things must be bad because they disprove the GP's worldview.
The real problem is that we see self-esteem as some sort of good by itself instead of something to be earned by mastering some other task or skill. This causes Trumpism (ignoring of experts) and this sort of post-modern anti-merit idea at the same time. Turns out, artificially created and unearned self-confidence is bad for kids and society. Who knew?...Probably every generation of parents before us
It's actually the exact opposite. The input cost on beef is the feedlots but you can get beef to slaughter weight on pasture... I even manage it with finicky sickly holstein calves discarded from dairies and they are some of the worst breeds to raise on pasture. Sheep and decent cattle breeds can be run in ways that are positive for the environment. At least soil and water retention.
Holsteins are dairy cows (hence coming from dairies). You don't raise them for meat. Also, I grew up on a dairy farm, with Holsteins which were raised on pasture. We never had a problem and our family farm was in business for over 70 years. Not sure why you think they are so bad on a pasture other than they are so often seen on feedlots because of their high milk production. That's only because they are the highest producing breed overall, not because they don't do well on pasture. And the input cost on beef cattle is mostly feed, not land when raised on feedlots. The input cost is land when raised on pasture. So it all depends on how high intensity your operation is. In the western US, its almost all feedlots because good land is at a premium due to low rainfall. This isn't true for most of the world but it is true for the western US.
Do you? Go watch this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/... if you really think that's 2 hours of lies and bullshit and so-called 'libtards' and their 'liberal agenda' then you don't belong on slashdot or in any science or technology-based career, go to seminary and become a goddamned priest.
Great, so you know there is a problem. Now how about a science based solution...as in nuclear...anything else is just a rounding error and a feel good solution that does nothing. The first step is knowing there is a problem. But that's not the stage we are at right now. We know there is a problem, we just can't get anyone to invest in a realistic solution. Instead we get feel good solutions that do nothing to solve the core problems and likely make things worse in the long run. Until you (and your side) goes all the way to a realistic science based solution...stop using science as your sword. Because its only a sword if you use it to find a solution too. Otherwise, you are a fake using the word science to give yourself credibility while you try to amass more control of others.
Even using your bad faith interpretation, I'd still prefer these kids than the thousands of shills co-opted by the energy industry who've been spreading FUD these last few decades in order to pad their bottom line.
Is that anything like the environmental movement's bad faith spreading of FUD about nuclear? Question: is it better for someone to know of a solution to climate change and do everything they can to prevent that solution if A) they will make more profit this way or B) they will make more donations this way? I don't see a difference. The leaders of the Sierra Club and Exxon are the same to me. They both make money off the current situation and both have no interest in a solution that works. They both know of a way to switch our energy production to a CO2 free way of making energy with almost no pollution. But instead we get SOLAR, WIND and natural gas which is really solar, wind and NATURAL GAS.
Solar is great for small amounts of power which are far from generation sources. Its just not a useful energy source for large scale grid applications.
My local power company would like to see your analysis, since they've been working on different numbers and quietly building out large PV farms. Considering that thermal solar is even cheaper than PV, my thinking is that they're telling everybody else that it isn't worthwhile to invest in home solar while they build out their own infrastructure.
Your local power company doesn't do this type of analysis. They build/buy what their regulators tell them to. Those regulators don't do analysis either, they answer to elected officials. Those elected officials don't do the analysis either unless their opposition does it, in which case they do it too but twist the numbers to say what they want. Ironically, the only folks to do these types of analysis work for banks which bet on these power companies and energy traders that bet on the price of energy in highly localized markets. They love solar but not for the reason you do. They love it because it makes the price of energy very volatile. That's good for them and bad for the rest of us. Of course, to do this type of analysis, all you need to know are the raw inputs to each type of energy source and then see what it would take to replace a good chunk of a major grid with new supply. At that point, the result of the analysis will come screaming out at you, either yes it scales (nuclear and fossil fuels) or no it doesn't (everything else).
Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism.
Interesting. I'd like to see some numbers on that. What is it that limits the size of an underground holding tank?
Doesn't matter. Its a limitation of the molten salt material itself. Any size will have a max limit of about 6 hours with current technology. It has nothing to do with the size/scale of the salt loop. Perhaps it will get better in the future but the limitation is quality of insulation and that's unlikely to radically improve.
they heat their homes 3 weeks out of the year. I don't think you've ever lived in the American Southwest.
And RTFS, all they have to do it have no carbon emissions. There are Zero emission gas plants. That's half the reason coal is dead. Gas is cheaper and cleaner. Clean coal doesn't work because coal is dirty as F.
Well natural gas is cheaper and produces less soot and particulate matter. So that part is good. It also likely releases a lot of methane from leaks created during the fracking process. Its entirely likely that natural gas is much worse from a GHG POV than coal but since we can't measure the extra amount of methane emissions from the ground due to fracking, we have no idea. Also, that plant hasn't started up yet and much like "clean coal" I don't really expect to see them running in large numbers (or at all) now or in the future. But since the environmental movement was weirdly embraced natural gas (large cash donations tend to get that effect), it somehow gets a pass despite the massive amount of environmental damage that fracking certainly causes. But since we figured out how to stop the earthquakes its all good now huh...and there is no need to actually do something like nuclear that would actually fix the problem.
Wind turbines, photovoltaics (residential and large-scale industrial), solar steam plants, molten salt heat storage, ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies, decentralization . . . It's a time in which it only makes economic sense to dispense with old and adopt the new.
Wind turbines when the wind speed is productive.
Photovoltaics when the sun is out.
Molten salt heat storage works until the molten part cools and gets stuck.
Ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies is still too expensive.
Someone is going to have to pay for all the new.
Low cost 24/7 power is what the USA needs.
Add all of those up, even without considering cost and only limiting with issues like world-wide mining production of various raw materials and you still won't even replace 10% of our current power production. Scale matters. Energy density matters. When PG&E says they will get 50% of their power from renewables, they are calculating nameplate capacity only. At 50% nameplate capacity, only 5% of the power generated will actually be from renewables with the rest coming from fossil fuels and nuclear. Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism. You need at least 80 hours worth to backup a grid, otherwise you are always spinning natural gas as a backup. Keep pumping up those unicorns though, laws of physics be damned...
The generators are cheap even accounting for lifetime costs.
Battery costs will be a non-issue if BEVs spread due to the synergistic effect of renewable generation growth and BEV fleet growth. Massive amounts of load can be shifted to or from BEV charging almost instantly, so lots of BEVs allow for greater renewable generation deployment, and conversely, lots of renewable generators ensure that there's extra electricity available for lots of BEVs, which will standing around most of the time anyway like almost all cars.
This old one again. Look, its not possible to make enough Li-ion batteries (or batteries of any type) to back up a grid for even a day. Your solution is off by about a factor of 100x in terms of being about to do what you claim.
Germany and other countries/states have shown, those with the highest percent of renewables have the highest power costs.
Or, it's the other way round and countries with high electricity costs turn to renewables in order to lower power costs in the future. Germany just had a "bump" problem in the sense that it was the first one to do it on such a scale that early costs bit them, but that's a 2010 thing, not a 2020 thing.
Germany has higher energy costs because of renewables. They had lower costs in 2010. Then they installed a lot of renewables (from 2010-now) and now they have higher costs. Also, more CO2 output because of all the natural gas they burn to backup their wind. But don't let facts get in your unicorn's way.
Slashdot Mirror
This way anyone paying an editor when discovered losses all their changes and edits. Maybe even counterpoints are highlighted for a period of time, say 5 years. Help the Streisand effect work. Don't see another way to stop this. Maybe paying editors but that wouldn't really prevent this. Perhaps a team that looks for these types of abuses. But the wiki folk have to know that this is the only real way they lose their organization.
No. Social media doesn't turn people hateful. It simply allows already hateful people to express themselves in an environment where there's low risk of being judged by society and punished.
I.e. they are just unleashing their suppressed inner arsehole which has always been there.
It also amplifies what hateful people say because that's what draws attention, clicks and money. Me posting nice things about the post I'm responding to here on ./ usually gets me ignored unless its a really really good post. If however, I write a sarcastic, mocking, and funny post with some good details then I get lots of replies and moderations (sometimes good, sometimes bad). Most of human communication between folks is basically pleasant most of the time so you only notice when it isn't. And for some reason, probably the same reason people rubberneck at traffic accidents, people give more attention to the hateful comments. Until people change that basic behavior, the algorithms will keep pumping those more nasty posts your way. Don't know what to do about that though. Social media isn't truly a mirror of humanity, its more like a reality show where the most dysfunctional get the most attention. Or maybe it is...
co2 is less harmful than methane, so why not just flare all the methane and be done with it? doesn't fix the problem, but sounds like a good mitigation strategy
Burning methane by flaring it is what makes the CO2 (well one of the ways). And the difference in damage between the two isn't enough to make your proposal help at all. Perhaps leave this stuff to the (not software) engineers?
They really don't.
They really do. Especially if you scale solar up to what you need to reduce CO2 emissions by any real degree.
We should research everything, and scale up what works.
We have, only nuclear scales. Also, Thorium and MSRs scale better than LWRs.
It is nerds, not politicians, who will save the world.
Couldn't agree more.
I'll take "Things That Didn't Happen" for $1000, Alex
You must be incredibly naive. When I die, I'm moving to Chicago so I can still vote.
it's amazing that even on a supposedly tech-related news blog, no one seems to remember that stuxnet exists
These plants and the equipment they use predates PLCs and internet connected devices.
Receiving constructive criticism is a rare skill these days...BTW
Yep. Common inside academia, rare in business.
Hahahahahahahahaha, thanks I needed the laugh. Its rare everywhere. Just as rare in school as outside of it. Sometimes more because often educators have no or limited real world experience. So while their knowledge about their topic is valuable (and almost always correct), their advice on many other topics is often laughably bad. Sometimes, its not really their fault as they don't receive feedback to know when they are so off base. Often though they are just too egotistical to acknowledge that feedback, just like in business.
How could you not know that "Blind auditions" are a thing that exists and has worked in the professional orchestral scene
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Modify the techniques for other purposes, which in fact, is already being done.
Wouldn't that be the very definition of a Meritocracy? What you are railing against is called Cronyism. Confusing the two is what is causing all the drama. Words have meaning and you don't get to redefine them just because someone is using them to weasel out of something. The weaseling is the problem, not the word Meritocracy.
I used to think he was corrupt because I read the newspapers, which didn't like him at all. When I investigated deeper, it seems like he knew how to keep things legal, and the newspapers just didn't like him for some reason. He's just really good at playing the game.
The most in fear of my life I've ever been was during a mayoral debate I was at in 2000.
I don't know what that was about.
Then you weren't there, political violence was a tool in Brown's toolbox and he didn't mind using it and did so on multiple occasions against multiple groups he didn't like.
The person I look at with a lot of respect is Willy Brown. That is a guy who had everything stacked against him. If you're whining about it today, you don't have as many challenges as he did. You weren't born in a segregated town with mob violence, shining shoes of white folks. He did, but he answered the question, "When challenges arise, how do you respond to them?"
I know you didn't live in the bay area when he was mayor here. Like many a politician, his early life was laudable. He was a lawyer who made his name suing banks for red line policies. But when he became a politician, things changed. You can respect his success but the man was so crooked his dick bent twice. Shady dealings, bribery and backroom deals were the norm during his time. His election campaigns for mayor often featured odd happenings and his core supporters he assembled were willing to do anything for him. The most in fear of my life I've ever been was during a mayoral debate I was at in 2000. Boss Tweed of SF is the best way to frame him historically and again you can respect his success but he has an actual body count behind him. His political machine would still be running SF if Gavin with the Getty money behind him hadn't come along. Of course the first thing that lot did is change policies to reduce the amount of Brown's supporters living in SF. City politics is rough and I'm not entirely sure a more honest politician could have succeeded but I'd like to think they could. Harvey Milk was able to just a couple of years before Brown became a politician.
Well, toxic individuals are part of it. A great programmer who causes other pretty good programmers to leave is not a net asset.
How do you feel about whiny mediocre programmers who get upset every time someone has to explain to them why their pet idea won't work? I've seen this far more often than "toxic" lead programmers. In fact, when that "toxic" lead programmer leads is often when it all falls apart. Receiving constructive criticism is a rare skill these days...BTW, the 3 best engineers I've ever worked with, you would probably find toxic. I have thick skin (grew up working class) and knowledge...what you do have?
Lucky I read this article. I'll judge it on its merits.
So none then?
But those aren't what anyone thinks about when they hear the phrase "meritocracy", especially in a context critical of the concept.
No, that's what you think about when you hear "meritocracy". The rest of us use the dictionary and realize that when you hear that word you think it means cronyism. Which is what you are railing about. But the rest of us think of meritocracy as hiring someone who can do the job and rewarding them when they do well.
I will say that bad corporate management rarely rewarding merit is the real problem. To add insult to injury they then hide behind the word "meritocracy". That's why you are mad at this word.
But you have to understand that the world runs in cycles and that hack they promoted over you then gets the VP in trouble because they did someone dumb or at least didn't do the smart thing the company needed them to do. Bad management decisions often come home to roost but it just takes time. There is a huge pile of failed companies in the past to prove that. The problem is a bit of survivor bias, you don't think or see those companies that failed due to bad management because they don't exist anymore and you may not have even heard of them. Running your company the way you ideas seem to argue for, would likely end in everyone losing because whether you like it or not, customers will reward merit if they can. And usually they can somehow...
The general success of institutions, industry and so forth across the planet would appear to contradict your statement.
Actually no, it would seem to support his statement. Institutions have a lifecycle just like people do. They start out young and nimble with new ideas. If those ideas are successful, they "Mature" by adding more of the socially astute you talk about but this weakens the organization's ability to enact strategies. Also, as the original more technically skilled managers are gradually replaced by more social managers the organization can enter a dead sea effect that gradually weakens the organization until it "dies" of old age. I've seen it my entire career. Not valuing technical strategy and bad technical strategy has sunk more SV startups than any other cause. I compare it to trying to ignore gravity. You can jump and for awhile you can float but slow web sites lose users to faster ones. Bad or buggy products have angry customers who sue.
Gravity always wins. If you consistently don't make good products that your customers like and work you might be able to survive on hype for awhile but gravity always wins. You can hate on Apple but their products generally work well enough for their customers. You can hate on FB all you want but their site is always responsive. Same for amazon and google. Yet your company (and ones I've sadly worked for) probably take 2 seconds to deliver a static home page to a user when its been well known that latency is the most important factor in making customers happy for over 10 years. The socially astute you discuss are often the cause of the organizations ultimate failures. From one POV, they are actually a cancer...but perhaps its better to say that those that lust for power should never be given it and not frame this as socially astute but instead frame it as those that brown nose for power.
Say you applied for a job and the employer threw away the applications of minorities...which has been known to happen and has been caught on camera, YOU just benefitted from racism. You didn't know it, but you did. And then if you say "I earned my sucess" you're wrong, you didn't earn it fairly. You didn't have to compete on a fair playing field. The deck was stacked in your favor, you were rolling attack rolls in the RPG of real-life with a D20 modified to roll 20's more often.
Sure, guys like you believe that we live in a Meritocracy, it makes you feel better about your selfishness bigotry and racism: "Why those ghetto people are undeserving, they should do what I did. They're just lazy" But society as a whole was giving you XP boosts, extra loot, early access, and you didn't even know it.
So your company will be hiring programmers to your team by lottery then? Let me know how that goes for you...
Does it make you feel good to call people who disagree with you Nazis?
Of course it does. The GP's entire psychology is based up it. When you see a messed up situation you can do one of two things: 1) Separate yourself from it, 2) try to help. Trying to help is hard. You have to work with people already in the situation. You need to understand the issue, have a solution and then implement it. Separating yourself from the situation and blaming others is easy. And we have been teaching complaining as some sort of social good in the school system for the last 10 or 15 years. Turns out, when you teach people to complain instead of help, you end up with a situation where nobody helps, everyone complains about everything and things gets worse consistently. Sound familiar? The GP probably has probably never done anything remarkable their entire life but has been told consistently how great they are despite all evidence to the contrary. So someone else who actually does remarkable things must be bad because they disprove the GP's worldview.
The real problem is that we see self-esteem as some sort of good by itself instead of something to be earned by mastering some other task or skill. This causes Trumpism (ignoring of experts) and this sort of post-modern anti-merit idea at the same time. Turns out, artificially created and unearned self-confidence is bad for kids and society. Who knew?...Probably every generation of parents before us
It's actually the exact opposite. The input cost on beef is the feedlots but you can get beef to slaughter weight on pasture... I even manage it with finicky sickly holstein calves discarded from dairies and they are some of the worst breeds to raise on pasture. Sheep and decent cattle breeds can be run in ways that are positive for the environment. At least soil and water retention.
Holsteins are dairy cows (hence coming from dairies). You don't raise them for meat. Also, I grew up on a dairy farm, with Holsteins which were raised on pasture. We never had a problem and our family farm was in business for over 70 years. Not sure why you think they are so bad on a pasture other than they are so often seen on feedlots because of their high milk production. That's only because they are the highest producing breed overall, not because they don't do well on pasture. And the input cost on beef cattle is mostly feed, not land when raised on feedlots. The input cost is land when raised on pasture. So it all depends on how high intensity your operation is. In the western US, its almost all feedlots because good land is at a premium due to low rainfall. This isn't true for most of the world but it is true for the western US.
Do you? Go watch this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/... if you really think that's 2 hours of lies and bullshit and so-called 'libtards' and their 'liberal agenda' then you don't belong on slashdot or in any science or technology-based career, go to seminary and become a goddamned priest.
Great, so you know there is a problem. Now how about a science based solution...as in nuclear...anything else is just a rounding error and a feel good solution that does nothing. The first step is knowing there is a problem. But that's not the stage we are at right now. We know there is a problem, we just can't get anyone to invest in a realistic solution. Instead we get feel good solutions that do nothing to solve the core problems and likely make things worse in the long run. Until you (and your side) goes all the way to a realistic science based solution...stop using science as your sword. Because its only a sword if you use it to find a solution too. Otherwise, you are a fake using the word science to give yourself credibility while you try to amass more control of others.
Even using your bad faith interpretation, I'd still prefer these kids than the thousands of shills co-opted by the energy industry who've been spreading FUD these last few decades in order to pad their bottom line.
Is that anything like the environmental movement's bad faith spreading of FUD about nuclear? Question: is it better for someone to know of a solution to climate change and do everything they can to prevent that solution if A) they will make more profit this way or B) they will make more donations this way? I don't see a difference. The leaders of the Sierra Club and Exxon are the same to me. They both make money off the current situation and both have no interest in a solution that works. They both know of a way to switch our energy production to a CO2 free way of making energy with almost no pollution. But instead we get SOLAR, WIND and natural gas which is really solar, wind and NATURAL GAS.
Solar is great for small amounts of power which are far from generation sources. Its just not a useful energy source for large scale grid applications.
My local power company would like to see your analysis, since they've been working on different numbers and quietly building out large PV farms. Considering that thermal solar is even cheaper than PV, my thinking is that they're telling everybody else that it isn't worthwhile to invest in home solar while they build out their own infrastructure.
Your local power company doesn't do this type of analysis. They build/buy what their regulators tell them to. Those regulators don't do analysis either, they answer to elected officials. Those elected officials don't do the analysis either unless their opposition does it, in which case they do it too but twist the numbers to say what they want. Ironically, the only folks to do these types of analysis work for banks which bet on these power companies and energy traders that bet on the price of energy in highly localized markets. They love solar but not for the reason you do. They love it because it makes the price of energy very volatile. That's good for them and bad for the rest of us. Of course, to do this type of analysis, all you need to know are the raw inputs to each type of energy source and then see what it would take to replace a good chunk of a major grid with new supply. At that point, the result of the analysis will come screaming out at you, either yes it scales (nuclear and fossil fuels) or no it doesn't (everything else).
Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism.
Interesting. I'd like to see some numbers on that. What is it that limits the size of an underground holding tank?
Doesn't matter. Its a limitation of the molten salt material itself. Any size will have a max limit of about 6 hours with current technology. It has nothing to do with the size/scale of the salt loop. Perhaps it will get better in the future but the limitation is quality of insulation and that's unlikely to radically improve.
they heat their homes 3 weeks out of the year. I don't think you've ever lived in the American Southwest. And RTFS, all they have to do it have no carbon emissions. There are Zero emission gas plants. That's half the reason coal is dead. Gas is cheaper and cleaner. Clean coal doesn't work because coal is dirty as F.
Well natural gas is cheaper and produces less soot and particulate matter. So that part is good. It also likely releases a lot of methane from leaks created during the fracking process. Its entirely likely that natural gas is much worse from a GHG POV than coal but since we can't measure the extra amount of methane emissions from the ground due to fracking, we have no idea. Also, that plant hasn't started up yet and much like "clean coal" I don't really expect to see them running in large numbers (or at all) now or in the future. But since the environmental movement was weirdly embraced natural gas (large cash donations tend to get that effect), it somehow gets a pass despite the massive amount of environmental damage that fracking certainly causes. But since we figured out how to stop the earthquakes its all good now huh...and there is no need to actually do something like nuclear that would actually fix the problem.
Wind turbines, photovoltaics (residential and large-scale industrial), solar steam plants, molten salt heat storage, ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies, decentralization . . . It's a time in which it only makes economic sense to dispense with old and adopt the new. Wind turbines when the wind speed is productive. Photovoltaics when the sun is out. Molten salt heat storage works until the molten part cools and gets stuck. Ever-less-expensive chemical battery technologies is still too expensive. Someone is going to have to pay for all the new. Low cost 24/7 power is what the USA needs.
Add all of those up, even without considering cost and only limiting with issues like world-wide mining production of various raw materials and you still won't even replace 10% of our current power production. Scale matters. Energy density matters. When PG&E says they will get 50% of their power from renewables, they are calculating nameplate capacity only. At 50% nameplate capacity, only 5% of the power generated will actually be from renewables with the rest coming from fossil fuels and nuclear. Also, molten salt loops only last 6 hours. Not an especially useful grid scale backup storage mechanism. You need at least 80 hours worth to backup a grid, otherwise you are always spinning natural gas as a backup. Keep pumping up those unicorns though, laws of physics be damned...
The generators are cheap even accounting for lifetime costs.
Battery costs will be a non-issue if BEVs spread due to the synergistic effect of renewable generation growth and BEV fleet growth. Massive amounts of load can be shifted to or from BEV charging almost instantly, so lots of BEVs allow for greater renewable generation deployment, and conversely, lots of renewable generators ensure that there's extra electricity available for lots of BEVs, which will standing around most of the time anyway like almost all cars.
This old one again. Look, its not possible to make enough Li-ion batteries (or batteries of any type) to back up a grid for even a day. Your solution is off by about a factor of 100x in terms of being about to do what you claim.
Germany and other countries/states have shown, those with the highest percent of renewables have the highest power costs.
Or, it's the other way round and countries with high electricity costs turn to renewables in order to lower power costs in the future. Germany just had a "bump" problem in the sense that it was the first one to do it on such a scale that early costs bit them, but that's a 2010 thing, not a 2020 thing.
Germany has higher energy costs because of renewables. They had lower costs in 2010. Then they installed a lot of renewables (from 2010-now) and now they have higher costs. Also, more CO2 output because of all the natural gas they burn to backup their wind. But don't let facts get in your unicorn's way.