" I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence." Liar.
Oh, were you in the classroom with me? I doubt it.
You may have a point with the existence of public schools prior to WWII but there is no doubt that UK built more schools, extended the years that children had to attend, and imposed greater central controls on schools after the war.
Of greater importance is that the public schools will give great praise to "our" schools but those "other" schools are bad, even though there are much more similarities than differences. Even in a free nation the desire to use public schools as a means to spread propaganda is always present. You can call private schools a failure all you like but they inevitably excel over public schools. The reason is simple, private schools must compete for students while public schools do not.
No matter what reactor technology is being used it seems we haven't been able to avoid this characteristic of human nature as Fukushima shows that the nuclear industry learned nothing from Chernobyl.
I do not believe it is fair to say the industry learned nothing from Chernobyl. You can say the lessons learned were not implemented. You can say the wrong lessons were learned. The industry knows what went wrong but there are a lot of reasons why we are still at much higher risk than we should from a nuclear accident.
The hubris of the operators caused the destruction of the communities that surround them.
TEPCO was overconfident in their ability to prevent a meltdown. I have little doubt that they saw additional safety measures that were ordered by the government, but never implemented, as unnecessary. I'm even reluctant to call this an "accident" since there were so many warning signs and plenty of time to prevent this. No doubt the triple redundant systems made them confident in the power plant's safety, they just neglected to consider a common failure mode to them all.
What would have likely saved the plant was to *NOT* shutdown the reactor as they did. When the automated control systems detected a seismic event the control rods were inserted fully, which meant all fission stopped and made restart much more difficult. With the reactor shutdown, generators flooded, power lines washed out, and limited battery power, they had no way to restart the reactor and regain power. One lesson I hope the industry has learned is to reduce power in such an event, had that been done it is quite possible the meltdown could have been prevented and an orderly shutdown performed. I'm not saying this is certain, only that is what I gathered from the assessments of the reports I've read.
We should be concerning ourselves how to ensure improvements to the existing Nuclear Industry are implemented.
I agree that the process by which we license, regulate, and oversee the nuclear power industry does need improvement, but I'm not sure we would agree in what improvements need to be made.
A problem I see is that the governments in Japan and USA are very reluctant to allow new reactors to be built. I don't want to see modifications made to 40 year old reactors. I want to see new reactors get built so these old reactors can be retired. In the USA we are seeing operating licenses for reactors getting extended again and again just so we don't see the lights go out. This is insane. If we see anything like this in the USA in the near future the blame should rest solely on the NRC for not issuing licenses for new reactors for 40 years. Many of the reactors now operating will be 80 years old before they are allowed to shut down. Again, this is INSANE! If we want to see safe nuclear reactors then we need to see continuous construction. As long as we keep building them we keep experienced technicians and engineers in the industry, and we keep training new ones to replace them as they retire. This also means that old reactors with known issues, like not being able to shutdown safely after a power loss, can be retired as new designs that lack these flaws are built.
Let's also make one thing clear, even with the Fukushima and Chernobyl meltdowns nuclear power is the safest energy source we know how to build. The "death print" of nuclear power is lower than coal, oil, and natural gas by a huge margin. Nuclear power is even safer than wind and solar by an order of magnitude. Also, the carbon footprint of nuclear power is lower than solar and wind. Even as flawed as they are the reactors we have running now are extremely safe. We can also make them safer. By making them safer we can also reduce the costs to build and operate them. People have been begging the federal government to bu
How To Lie with Statistics should be required reading in high school.
We had some of that in my school. We were taught how advertisements could be deceiving. We had some instruction on how to make a good argument, and how to recognize poor ones, essentially good debate tactics. What I don't recall ever being taught so explicitly though is how our own government could be lying to us. While we were taught that advertising could be deceiving this was never applied to news or any other medium outside advertising.
I do remember how in history classes those "other" governments lied to the people but in the USA that never seemed to happen.
I remember taking a college history class where we came to the part about WWII. The professor, a doctorate in history no less, told us about the "evil" public schools in Nazi Germany feeding schoolchildren propaganda in their lessons. The next week we were taught how after the war the UK created their own public schools and this professor told us how great it was that these children got an education. I raised my hand and asked what kept the UK schools from giving the children propaganda like the Nazi schools did. He didn't have an answer.
I had my suspicions about how governments should not run schools. I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence.
I know a lesbian couple who I will refer to as T and F. They wanted a child. They got donated sperm (I think from a close relative of T, but that's a guess), used one of F's eggs, and T was the host mother. Parenthood is more complicated than it used to be.
I expect them to be excellent parents. Both see the child as "their own" and so the risks of abuse, neglect, etc. are low. The problem with same sex couples having children is when they adopt, or one of the parents is not related to the child, which is the same risks that happen with any adopted child. The best situation for a child is to be raised by both of the biological parents. I don't know how same sex parenting compares to single parenthood but I suspect that a same sex couple raising a child is better than just one parent.
There are many reasons that a hetero couple is best for a child and it does have something to do with "the bits between their legs". The biological parents will look out for their own, its an evolutionary instinct. Children need same sex role models. This does not need to be their parents but it does need to come from people they respect. I assume that T and F are intelligent and educated enough to recognize this and have neighbors, uncles, grandparents, etc. play a significant role in the childrearing.
There is no demarcation line for religious vs. civil marriage, unfortunately.
Yes and no. Legally there are a number of people that can officiate a marriage, depending on the state, and this almost always includes clergy. Some states allow for marriages to be legally binding without an officiant, which makes sense to me, no one should need a third party to validate what two people feel for each other.
There is, as far as I know, no alternative means to get the legal benefits of marriage.
Yes there are. The process is more complicated but it can be done. Visitation rights, medical decisions, etc. are done with a living will and/or power of attorney. Inheritance and other property right are handled with a will and other legal documents. Marriage confers certain legal rights because of tradition mostly. We can create a legal "shortcut" like a marriage without calling it a marriage if we wanted to. It's just that some people could not be satisfied until the legal definition of marriage was changed to fit their view of the world.
There's going to be some hard feelings between same-sex couples and some churches, and some same-sex couples are going to get aggressive in return.
My Christian upbringing taught me to be kind to others, including the "sinners" among us. If these people are getting aggressive with a church then it is not "in return". Christians will forgive for past sins but they cannot welcome those that continue to live in a way counter to their teachings. This has gone so far that Christian couples will send out invitations to a "blessing of the union" or some words like that to differentiate it from a civil marriage. Getting married under the law is one thing, getting married before God is something different. Some same sex couples are not satisfied with that and demand that a church see them as equal to a hetero couple. The church will no doubt make the distinction apparent to them, not with a lawsuit, or threat of arrest, but with words. If the couple responded "in return" and in kind, with words, then there would not be a problem. The problem is when they respond with a lawsuit.
What I'd like to see is the government get out of the marriage business. Make hetero and same sex couples go through the same process for reasons of visitation rights, inheritance, etc., just don't call the process a "marriage". Call it what it is, power of attorney or whatever else fits.
(1) Sharing a home with another family is not what I consider homeless. (2) Living in an RV is not what I consider homeless.
On top of that the children are going to school, so it's not like they are unable to get out of this rut. So long as they stay in school, and stay out of trouble, they can get a job, join the military, or whatever after they graduate. I hear that California universities don't charge tuition for residents, if they get good grades they can go to college.
My sister in law works at a public school, in a not so great neighborhood, and she talks about the kids getting breakfast at school now. Many of the children in her school get free or reduced lunches for being considered "in poverty". This is a federal program so they must have this in California too.
The big wealth disparity in the area is the result of a booming economy, unfortunately some people will lag in this boom. Give it time and it will correct itself. The high housing prices are the result of demand exceeding supply, with proper management this too is self correcting. I imagine a lot of young adults that just finished high school could build the houses that are in such demand.
What concerns me is how people might see this as a bigger problem than it really is and want the government to do something about it. The government is already doing more than enough, these "homeless" children already get fed and educated from the government coffers. Are we supposed to buy them a four bedroom house and a white picket fence too? What I fear is these children will grow up learning that the government will keep feeding, clothing, and sheltering them through life. I'm all for giving people a hand up but not a handout.
How do you stop the next Fukashima from happening?
First by understanding what went wrong. The reactor survived the tsunami, shutdown successfully from an automated system that detected the seismic activity. So, nothing in the reactor itself failed. What failed was the systems designed to dissipate the heat from the short lived fission products. At least one of the failed reactors was near the end of a fuel cycle and so it had a very large proportion of fission products in the fuel, meaning the core was going to get dangerously hot if cooling stopped. Without fission occurring only the thermal capacity of the fuel kept the pumps running, once it cooled down the head of steam was lost. Once steam pressure is lost the system could not be restarted, I'm not sure why.
Without power to run the cooling pumps the water in the reactor started to get hot, then boil. For reasons of neutron efficiency the fuel is contained by a zirconium alloy. Zirconium, when hot enough, will burn in water. This burning water and zirconium releases hydrogen gas. There are systems to recombine the hydrogen to water but they were not working due to lost power. Either out of a concern for releasing the potentially radioactive hydrogen gas to the air, or a failure of the systems to vent to air, the hydrogen gas was allowed to accumulate in the building. The buildup continued until it reached an explosive level, and then exploded. This further damaged the structure, cooling systems, and containment.
When hot enough to melt zirconium and steel the fuel can lose containment, pile up on the bottom of the vessel, and fission can restart. This makes it hotter. Adding water can moderate the neutrons making the fission rate, and therefore heat production, increase. Not adding water can mean leaving hot volatile metals exposed to the atmosphere where it can be spread by the heated air. Adding water can also fuel more zirconium fires and create another explosion hazard. Not adding water means this hot mess of a core will melt through the concrete. If there is not enough concrete to melt and mix with the fuel to stop the fission it will melt until it hits the water table, the water will flash boil, and fission will stop, by ejecting this mix of fuel, fission products, burning zirconium, and boiling concrete into the air.
So, how do we keep this from happening? Use a moderator other than water. Use a coolant other than water. Use containment structures built out of something other than zirconium and steel. Don't allow fission products to build up. Dissipate the heat in a way that does not rely on pumps.
Use a graphite moderator. Use a salt coolant. Use containment made of a nickel alloy. Separate out the fission products while the reactor is operating. Build the cooling such that if anything goes wrong that air convection can keep it cool.
Where do we find this "magical" reactor? It's called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR. Look it up.
If current trends continue, solar will be more economical within a decade. While the cost of wind and solar are going down, the cost of nuclear is going UP.
Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps the costs of nuclear power has gone up because we've stopped building them for 40 years? The people that knew how to do this are all retired, senile, or dead now. We see this in every industry that prices go down as experience improves. This can even be seen as a single project, like a large building, progresses. The first ten stories take longer to build than the next ten, and the next ten take less time yet.
Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps that solar prices have gone down because of government subsidies? Forget that other energy sectors got subsidies, that's irrelevant. What I'm talking about is that while no nuclear power reactors have been built for 40 years the government has been giving the solar power industry all kinds of money and other benefits.
Now, if perhaps, maybe, we'd have been treating solar and nuclear the same I could argue that nuclear would be cheaper than solar. Even after decades of holding nuclear power back, and giving solar power a push, we still see solar power lagging in some very important ways. Nuclear power has a lower carbon footprint than solar, and nuclear works in all weather.
For 40 years the cost of new nuclear was effectively infinite, there were no licenses issued and so no matter how much one spent they got no new capacity. Now that we see some people in the government willing to grant a license then perhaps we can see nuclear power prices go down. If they keep issuing licenses then it will continue to go down.
Nuclear power has been caught in this death spiral, it costs more because no licenses were issued, no licenses were issued because it cost so much to get into nuclear power.
After holding nuclear back for 40 years, giving solar a lead, then you claim that in another 10 years that solar might be cheaper than nuclear. Well, what do you think would have happened if we'd have held solar back for 50 years and then let it finally compete?
Seriously, I don't see any reason to believe this is true. Nor have the same-sex couples I know gone into traditional gender roles, so I suspect you really don't know what you're talking about.
It is quite possible I don't know what I'm talking about. I listen to talk radio a lot and much of what I know on this is what I've heard on the radio from people that know something on this topic. Even if I could remember when I heard this, where, and from whom I suspect that someone is going to dispute it because they cannot find a recording, dispute it because they simply cannot bother to listen to it, and dispute it because it conflicts with their world view.
What we do know, from studies on adopted children vs. biological children, is that people naturally treat other people's children different than their own. A same sex couple simply cannot have biological children, so the children they raise will on the average not be raised as well as children raised by their biological parents.
As it is, if we have same-sex couples in a "civil union" or "civil partnership" or something, that doesn't necessarily mean anything anywhere else.
I made no distinction between a "civil union" and a "marriage". I made the distinction between a civil marriage and a religious marriage. In many places in the world the religious ceremony is viewed as legally binding, other places view only the civil ceremony as legally binding. I do not wish to play word games by calling one a "civil union" and another a "marriage". I only point out that people, regardless of their gender, can and do choose to have only the civil ceremony and not have it blessed by an officiant in a religious setting. Again, no word games, just one is performed by a justice of the peace (or other government official) and the other by a pastor (or other religious figure).
I'm not aware that any couple has a legal right to force a particular church to marry them.
You are correct but that does not stop same sex couples from suing churches that deny them the service of officiating a wedding. Just do a search on "same sex couple sues church" and you will find plenty of examples of same sex couples trying to force a legal construct, the civil marriage, onto the major religions. That is major religions except Islam.
The problem is that now that these people got their same sex marriage recognized legally they want to force this onto religions. It wasn't enough that they got all the legal protections they demanded, they want the churches to recognize this marriage. Had they stopped at the legal matter of marriage I would not have had a problem. Now that these people want religions to bend to their world view I have a problem. This makes me wonder if granting them the civil marriage was such a wise idea. It is not impossible to get most, if not all, of what they wanted by other means. Things like visitation rights, inheritance, and so forth can be done with the right paperwork. It's more work than a marriage but it is far from impossible. But that was not enough for many of them, they wanted it called a "marriage". Again, I have no problem with calling it a marriage. I have a problem with these people trying to force a modern civil construct onto religions with hundreds or thousands of years of tradition of how a marriage is defined.
If these people want to marry a person of the same sex then fine, you are married. In my mind a civil marriage is merely a contract between two people capable of signing any other kind of contract. The person needs to be of sound mind (old enough, not mentally disabled, etc.), enter this willingly, and uphold their end of the deal (whatever they agree the deal to be). When it comes to a religious marriage the people need to adhere to the traditions and rules of the religion or go find another religion. By using legal force on a religion to get married in a church, or whatever, that church/state separation is broken. The fact that the courts don't just throw these lawsuits out immediately is troubling.
Most people can instantly recognize a picture of Princess Leia. Far fewer could recognize a photo of Lara Croft, and even fewer would recognize Mrs Smith.
Is that because of the popularity of the films or because of the unusual costume? A bit of both I suspect.
As long as one person plays the father role and another plays the mother role, does it matter what bits they have between their legs?
In a way it does. The monogamous heterosexual pairing for raising children is an ideal that is difficult to duplicate. If you have a same sex couple with one "playing dad" and the other "playing mom" then this can create conflicting signals for the child. It's not just the "bits between their legs" that matters. Children learn what being a good parent means from example. If a child is raised by a same sex couple then they will get the signal that it is somehow acceptable to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant and leave. It also does not give children good role models on how to behave. If one is "playing daddy" but is not male, or the one "playing mommy" is not female, then this leaves the child not knowing how a nuclear family should behave.
You may have seen some messed up nuclear families, and some exceptional non-nuclear families, but on the average a nuclear family gives children what they need to succeed in life. The greatest indicator of future criminal behavior is the lack of a father or mother in the home. People raised by a single parent are automatically set up to fail, it takes a lot more work to set this right.
And how weak is your marriage to begin with if it can be affected by other people getting married?
This I can agree with. I have no problem with people of the same sex getting married. A marriage, in the civil sense, is merely a contract where each party has certain rights and responsibilities. If these people bring their biological children to the marriage, such as from a previous failed relationship, then having a second same sex parent is likely much better than continuing to live with just one parent. If this same sex couple wants to adopt children then I have a problem. Should they be legally barred from adopting? I don't know, but if this is allowed then they should get much greater scrutiny than a heterosexual couple precisely because of the statistics that show how problematic this can be for the future of that child.
If the people advocating for same sex marriage stopped at the civil matter then I'd have no problems. Since these people are using the legal status of same sex marriage to force churches to marry them this has become a problem. There is a separation of church and state not to keep the church out of government but to keep the government out of churches. A church should be free to operate as it wishes without government interference. If a same sex couple goes to a Christian church demanding to get married there then the church should be free to tell them no without facing the wrath of the government.
Had they stopped with the civil marriage aspect then I'd have been willing to live and let live. With them using the civil marriage to create a wedge into church matters then that makes me want to lobby for the same sex marriage laws to go away.
This is a double edged blade. The same sex couples should have left well enough alone and very few people would have cared. Now that they are taking churches, bakeries, photographers, etc. to court over refusing services they have gone beyond live and let live. They are forcing their beliefs on others.
Funny thing though. These people will take Christian and Jewish people to court but not Muslims. Why is that do you think? I have my own theories.
Also, if you become profitable, well a company like AT&Fee can come in and undercut you, stealing all your hard earned customers. One could try 2 or 3 year commitments, but that will scare off many.
I'm sure a lot of people would not consider that a bad thing. They want internet and are willing to pay for it. If AT&T at first says that there is no profit in running a line but someone else comes along and proves them wrong then we now have competition. There desire was not to get in the internet business but to get people internet. If AT&T comes along to do better, or buy them out, then the problem was solved.
Competition is good, no? It's not like these people didn't have any internet access, they just didn't like how slow and expensive it was. These people created their own internet to compete with satellite, dial-up, and cellular internet. They were able to do so with lower (or at least comparable) prices, faster speeds, and no data caps (or much higher ones).
This is how business should be done, allow people to go out and compete in the market. All too often though we see people that, instead of trying to do better in business, lobby the government for price controls, government should require that businesses need to offer services to people where there might not be a profit, etc. They see the force of the government, rather than the invisible hand of the free market, as the best means of bringing products and services to market.
Part of a free market is that businesses should be free to fail.
I mean, really, someone has to put a stop to this sort of thing, or next thing you know everyone will be doing it and then where will the monopolies and the billionaires be?
Out on their tractors listening to their favorite music being streamed to them over the internet?
Reminds me of an old joke, do you know the definition of a farmer? A man out standing in his field.
Dr. Simon Tam: River, b- uh, be careful with that, that's, um... What is that? Kaylee Frye: That's a post holer. You dig holes. For posts. Dr. Simon Tam: It's, uh, it's dirty and sharp.
Many people are just afraid of things that are dirty and sharp so they leave that to other people. Turns out if the other people are uninterested, either because they are also afraid of things that are dirty and sharp, or they see no profit in it, then things don't get done. Civilization was built by those that wanted to make their lives better and weren't afraid to do the work themselves. A lot of times that means working with tools that are dirty and sharp.
Let's assume someone is doing a scam, perhaps in housing. A single person in a bank or other financial institution cannot create a housing bubble but if enough people like this get together to collude then they might be able to pull it off. If other banks see this artificial housing market come along then they might get into it to make some money too. These banks outside the circle might see this as a scam, merely suspect it is a scam but can't prove it to anyone, or are oblivious to the scam. Whether they know it is a scam or not they will act in their best interest to make money for themselves.
The house builder just sees the value of housing go up. So he builds more houses. If he sees business improve enough then he'll hire on more people. Some others will see this as a good business to get into and create a new business to build houses, or expand an existing business to do what they already do. For example a person that already has a good business selling replacement windows, siding, and roofing might see more business in building more houses rather than repairing existing ones. Again, these people building the houses might know that there is a scam involved, or not, but either way they will act in their best interests to make money.
When the scam falls apart, and they all do or it's not really a scam, then the people that started it all put on their golden parachutes and make a soft landing in retirement, or creating the next scam. Those that didn't make plans for a soft landing are left in a severe financial position. This might include the people in the scam and those that weren't, those that planned for the scam to run out did well.
If there is a global warming hoax then we cannot assume that everyone in the "green" energy business know it is a hoax. Some people might just be in it for the money. Some might be in it for the "good of the planet" or something. Since this is China we're talking about, and they are wanting to build product to sell around the world, then it is possible that they are not in on the hoax but instead see profit. If they are in on the hoax then they'll say one thing publicly and do another thing privately. Given their air quality issues in the recent past it is difficult to tell. They might not care about global warming but instead care about air quality. It is also possible they don't care about either but want to get in on the money making from the hoax created in the West.
In short, this proves nothing either way on if there is some sort of global warming conspiracy or not.
If socialism is so great then why must it be enforced at gunpoint? If socialism is go great then why is it that so many more patents come from nations with capitalism?
As with so many things we have to take the bad with the good. People with enough freedom to dedicate their lives to medicine and develop vaccines is also the society that has people free enough to take the money they earned in business and spend it on useless crap like a gold plated iPhone.
But I don't think that "winter" is holding us back in the electric car department.
That's not the only thing but it is a big thing. In the USA there are a lot of drivers that have to deal with winter and unless they are also really close to work, shopping, schools, houses of worship, and other common places to gather then pure electric cars will have sales issues. A plug in hybrid would solve many of these problems and for the summer months give a big gain on fossil fuels consumed for miles traveled. Natural gas would help over gasoline, and perhaps diesel too, but I remember having to drive a co-worker home one cold night because her new diesel car would not start.
When I lived in Texas I would meet up with people in an electric car group. Even then heating was an issue but the power demands were much less, mostly keeping the windscreen clear of fog in a rainstorm. Cooling power demands could be problematic though. I saw a couple interesting solutions, such as using a swamp cooler. A swamp cooler relies on evaporative cooling and so relied on the dry air in this semi-arid area. One would have to top off the water tank occasionally as well. There are a lot of sparsely populated areas, large ranches, etc. which meant many people drove long distances daily or at least weekly. Making the battery larger adds to the cost. Using a higher energy density battery technology means waiting for that to come to market. Again a hybrid helps since it can power the air conditioner and a small trickle generator, and give a considerable boost in range between charges. This also adds to the cost, but less than a full EV since the batteries don't have to be as big. It also adds to the carbon foot print, but much less than the ICE only vehicle.
What started this discussion was a claim of shifting attitudes. Well, not everyone is going to have the attitude that a self imposed limitation on their mobility and/or comfort do to the vehicle they buy is a great idea. If the government imposes this then expect a new government to replace it in the next election. If technology improves then we have the problem of the time from now until the technology exists, add the time it takes for the technology to get to market, and the time it takes for people to feel comfortable to trade in their vehicle.
Rather it's price and those prices are dropping rapidly.
Well, it's not dropping fast enough for my taste. There is already a lot of inexpensive gasoline vehicles out there that do quite well, especially when the used market is considered. I believe we'd be doing much better to change minds and save on the carbon output by using natural gas. Natural gas is cheap and getting cheaper. Many people have it piped to their homes already for heat and cooking, so filling up at home is a possibility. CNG doesn't take on water or gel up like gasoline, diesel, or ethanol. CNG reduces carbon output by 30% or so. If used in a plug-in hybrid then greater gains can be made.
Also, all this talk of electric vehicles does nothing for the big consumers of fossil fuels that is over the road trucking, shipping, and aircraft. We can also add in trains here since electrified tracks are difficult to justify on long stretches.
I see a carbon reduced future that looks more like this. Electric, natural gas, and hybrids for much of the passenger car and light truck market. Large trucks would be natural gas, diesel, or one of these new six-stroke engines. Trains would be six-stroke along with some dual mode that can take in electricity on the electrified stretches of railroads. Nuclear power in electric utilities and large ships. Airplanes would probably remain using the same fuels they do now and/or planes that run on some cryogenic fuel.
You think my vision of the future is unlikely? Well, I see the growth of pure EVs to be unlikely. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?
Care to expand on that? It sounds like you're just thumbing your nose.
Not really. Spend a few minutes with Google and a pocket calculator and you will see that while electric vehicles might be able to replace some fraction of the oil burned for fuel but the big consumers, ships, planes, trains, and tractor/trailers, cannot be converted to electricity like a soccer mom's minivan.
And, BTW, the average life of a car is about 11 years total. 30 seconds on Google would have fixed that for you.
Another reason I'm not motivated to give a detailed reply. If you are going to nitpick like that then why should I bother? Especially when you are wrong, the right answer is 11.4 years.
You think that scientific truth depends on political policy? Suppose Trump institutes a stupid policy concerning gravity - are you going to disbelieve in it?
If Trump issues bad policy on gravity then it shows he does not believe in gravity, just like politicians that support bad policy on CAGW show that they don't believe in CAGW.
If CAGW is a problem, and the politicians say it is a problem, but they do next to nothing about it I must conclude one of several things. First, they could be incompetent. Second, it could be that they don't know what CAGW means and so they don't know what to do about it. Third, it could be they know it is a lie but they see it as a means to implement the laws they want, divert taxpayers' money into their districts to buy votes, and other corruption.
So, take your pick, incompetent, corrupt, or ignorant. No matter how you slice it Democrat policies have been bad for the environment and I'm glad to see them go.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have gone from about 280ppm in 1850 to over 400ppm now. Isotopic analysis shows that the increase is due to more carbon from fossil fuels. What part of that is unclear?
The part that is unclear is a description of the effect on the carbon cycle. The ecosystem has the ability to process enormous amounts of carbon, it's how life thrives. The isotropic shift only tells us that we've been burning coal, we knew that. This gain in CO2 could be from natural processes that human activity had nothing to do with. The ecosystem is complex and these "scientists" will point to one thing and claim this "proves" CAGW. It takes a series of events for CAGW to exist. The honest CAGW types have done two things that convinced me, they explained the processes in great detail, and did so in a calm and collected manner. The people screaming about the "hot spot" in the atmosphere that disappeared, or the snow that wouldn't fall but did, the Arctic ice that would melt but is still there, are all annoying, unconvincing, and don't help in advancing the cause.
There is no one thing that can prove CAGW. The pieces of information that show human influence on the environment might prove CAGW if all put together but each one separately proves nothing we didn't already know. The people that take the time to explain this chain of evidence that humans are affecting the planet in ways that are a threat to human civilization will also explain that there is time to debate this, see if the theory proves itself in time, and act if we need to. There is no reason to panic. However, if we do choose to act then it should be done wisely, calmly, and with the greatest effect for the least cost.
Banning off shore drilling is bad policy because we might need access to the natural gas there yet. Drilling for oil might not hurt since demand for oil is still strong and I'd rather we get that oil domestically rather than ship our wealth and warriors off to some desert and never return so that we can burn their oil.
Is there any reason we shouldn't just be planting solar panels along highways?
I'm not saying it is a bad idea but some issues need to be addressed.
Solar panels don't take in all the light, they are flat surfaces that can reflect a good portion of the light that hits them. If placed poorly they can blind drivers from the sunlight. If placed over the roads then the roads cannot benefit from the sunlight that make vehicles, debris, and other hazards more visible. In cold weather the sun would not melt off ice and snow. Even in sub-freezing air temperatures a dark asphalt or concrete road surface can be warmed enough by the sun to melt ice and evaporate the water.
Being large flat surfaces they can divert wind and/or get damaged by it. In places with a lot of snow it is common practice to put up snow fences to keep snow from piling up on roads. The solar panels themselves could act as a snow fence, which might mean they'd be buried in snow for much of the year. They could also divert the surface winds and make the snow problem worse. In extreme winds they could be torn free of their structures and become projectiles and/or road debris.
I've driven I-80 through Nebraska and other states and the wind and snow can be brutal. The winds have been known to take large trucks off the road. Sand and snow storms can be blinding, not good for solar power production. Once out of the cities the wind has a lot of room to pick up speed. Those panels would be sandblasted constantly, also not good. This needs to be taken into account and be part of the maintenance plan.
Those large spaces on either sides of these roads are there for a reason. I'm not sure what all of those reasons might be but if we fill this space with solar panels then we could lose whatever we gained.
Burning wood releases a lot of CO2 and should not be considered clean.
You are correct, at least to a point. If not done correctly burning wood can produce soot just like coal. Depending on the quality of the land it can spread heavy metals into the air. If burning wood is such a good idea then I know of a place in the Ukraine with a lot of trees, near a place called Chernobyl I think. The CO2 released is just time delayed by a few years from what it took out of the air if we burn it. We have better uses for wood than energy though.
I remember someone that believed CAGW was a problem suggesting that we should grow trees and use them for lumber to sequester carbon. That person was run out on a rail for even suggesting anyone cut down a tree. It made sense to me. Seems like trees are very efficient in converting CO2 into a carbon dense material that we call wood, that is until it is mature. Grow trees to maturity, cut them down, plant more. The wood from the trees can be used for structures and the carbon is sequestered in the houses, barns, sheds, etc. Burning them doesn't help. It might not hurt either but if we use trees to sequester carbon then we gain.
To get our energy we can use carbon free nuclear, hydro, and wind, and we'll be carbon negative in no time. To replace oil we can synthesize hydrocarbons from seawater like the US Navy has been experimenting with. The synthetic oil wouldn't be carbon negative but carbon neutral, to make it negative we'd have to be pumping that synthetic oil into old oil wells or something and leaving it there.
Then buy one from a reputable dealer and if it blows up your MacBook then go to the manufacturer that made the battery pack to fix it. I'm pretty sure there are laws against selling products that will damage your stuff, sue them.
If it blew up from not following the USB spec then get the USB people to take them on. Apple would also like to hear about this too, they got deep pockets and they don't like to see people complain about their laptops blowing up. If you bought it from a place like Amazon, Best Buy, or other place that has deep pockets and wants to keep customers happy then let them know. If you buy a USB-C battery from some guy in an alley selling them out of the boot of his car then you roll the dice and take your chances.
I looked and Lenovo doesn't certify USB-C batteries either. Dell does, so if that's what you want then get a Dell. I didn't look at any laptop makers since it became apparent to me that there are numerous big name electronics retailers that will sell USB-C batteries and stand behind them.
Just search for "apple compatible usb-c battery" and all kinds of results show up, getting good reviews from magazines and customers. No indication of MacBooks getting damaged from them.
Wow, look at that. Someone saying something good about nuclear power for once. Of course they will if it let's them hit a milestone like this. I thought nuclear was expensive, dangerous, and if you look at it wrong it will explode and melt your face off.
Here's the milestone I see, nuclear power is being recognized for what it is, carbon free, inexpensive, plentiful, and safe. This is a big deal to me because it is so rare to see anyone say anything good about nuclear power. With this announcement they may not say explicitly that nuclear power is safe and cheap but it is implied, at least they recognize it as carbon free.
I've done the math and it would be exceedingly difficult for any nation, especially one as small as the UK, to be energy independent without nuclear power. I've read some rather crazy claims that we can put solar panels in Africa to power the UK but at the same time we cannot build nuclear power in the UK. Well, if nuclear power is too dangerous to put in the UK then put them out in the African desert and run the wires to the UK, that way you'd get your energy night and day and not have to worry about looking at it wrong and it exploding in your face.
That's not much counting against it though, is it? You have a computer that comes with a 60+ watt power supply standard and you complain... perhaps too strong of a word... point out that a 15 watt power supply won't keep up with the power consumption. I'm thinking you should be happy the iPad charger worked at all.
I like my MagSafe power adapter, it possibly saved my laptop once or twice. It's not a standard port outside of the Apple universe so finding a replacement in a hurry might be a problem. It became a problem with my first laptop when the power supply burned up on me. Since then I've bought a spare power supply with the laptop. Good thing I did too, I broke one already.
I'm a bit torn on the USB-C charging. A port not exclusive to Apple is nice, especially since this is a charging port with such wide support. If I end up replacing my current MacBook with another then I fear I may miss having MagSafe to save me... and my expensive computer.
The ability to pop into just about any place that sells computers or cell phones to pick up a spare charger or battery pack does seem nice. As much as people complain about Apple's choice to use USB-C exclusively I'm seeing the wisdom in it.
I will say that the Dell XPS laptops are impressive. I don't own one but I've seen them recommended as an alternative to the MacBook Pro and I took a look at the pricing and specs. This is from someone that has owned three Apple laptops over the last 15 years. Which is an indication of how long they last and how rarely I buy new equipment. I had a bit of a mishap with my newest MacBook Pro so I'm looking to replace it sooner than I had planned.
The Dell XPS is cheaper, has much of the same capability, and an option for more RAM. What counts against it is it's a bit bigger and heavier, which a few years ago would not have been a big deal but my knees are telling me I need to reduce the weight in my messenger bag as much as I can. The port issue can be a plus or minus. USB-A ports are nice now but I plan on using this thing daily for the next five years. It seems I'll be buying adapters now or later.
The first two Apples I paid for with my own money, the last one the VA bought for me. (Thank you American taxpayer!) This one I have to buy myself so the price is more of a concern. I thought about just using a tablet instead. A tablet would be lighter, cheaper, and given what I typically use a laptop for, and having much better access to big hardware when I need it, an iPad may be in my future.
Oh, and there is the issue of the OS but I'm generally comfortable with many operating systems. I don't know if I'd be happy with using anything other than MacOS after using it as my primary OS for so long. If I get a tablet then I'm definitely getting an Apple, I don't feel comfortable spending my money on anything else.
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" I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence."
Liar.
Oh, were you in the classroom with me? I doubt it.
You may have a point with the existence of public schools prior to WWII but there is no doubt that UK built more schools, extended the years that children had to attend, and imposed greater central controls on schools after the war.
Of greater importance is that the public schools will give great praise to "our" schools but those "other" schools are bad, even though there are much more similarities than differences. Even in a free nation the desire to use public schools as a means to spread propaganda is always present. You can call private schools a failure all you like but they inevitably excel over public schools. The reason is simple, private schools must compete for students while public schools do not.
Let me help you with these parts.
Thank you for adding detail to my description.
No matter what reactor technology is being used it seems we haven't been able to avoid this characteristic of human nature as Fukushima shows that the nuclear industry learned nothing from Chernobyl.
I do not believe it is fair to say the industry learned nothing from Chernobyl. You can say the lessons learned were not implemented. You can say the wrong lessons were learned. The industry knows what went wrong but there are a lot of reasons why we are still at much higher risk than we should from a nuclear accident.
The hubris of the operators caused the destruction of the communities that surround them.
TEPCO was overconfident in their ability to prevent a meltdown. I have little doubt that they saw additional safety measures that were ordered by the government, but never implemented, as unnecessary. I'm even reluctant to call this an "accident" since there were so many warning signs and plenty of time to prevent this. No doubt the triple redundant systems made them confident in the power plant's safety, they just neglected to consider a common failure mode to them all.
What would have likely saved the plant was to *NOT* shutdown the reactor as they did. When the automated control systems detected a seismic event the control rods were inserted fully, which meant all fission stopped and made restart much more difficult. With the reactor shutdown, generators flooded, power lines washed out, and limited battery power, they had no way to restart the reactor and regain power. One lesson I hope the industry has learned is to reduce power in such an event, had that been done it is quite possible the meltdown could have been prevented and an orderly shutdown performed. I'm not saying this is certain, only that is what I gathered from the assessments of the reports I've read.
We should be concerning ourselves how to ensure improvements to the existing Nuclear Industry are implemented.
I agree that the process by which we license, regulate, and oversee the nuclear power industry does need improvement, but I'm not sure we would agree in what improvements need to be made.
A problem I see is that the governments in Japan and USA are very reluctant to allow new reactors to be built. I don't want to see modifications made to 40 year old reactors. I want to see new reactors get built so these old reactors can be retired. In the USA we are seeing operating licenses for reactors getting extended again and again just so we don't see the lights go out. This is insane. If we see anything like this in the USA in the near future the blame should rest solely on the NRC for not issuing licenses for new reactors for 40 years. Many of the reactors now operating will be 80 years old before they are allowed to shut down. Again, this is INSANE! If we want to see safe nuclear reactors then we need to see continuous construction. As long as we keep building them we keep experienced technicians and engineers in the industry, and we keep training new ones to replace them as they retire. This also means that old reactors with known issues, like not being able to shutdown safely after a power loss, can be retired as new designs that lack these flaws are built.
Let's also make one thing clear, even with the Fukushima and Chernobyl meltdowns nuclear power is the safest energy source we know how to build. The "death print" of nuclear power is lower than coal, oil, and natural gas by a huge margin. Nuclear power is even safer than wind and solar by an order of magnitude. Also, the carbon footprint of nuclear power is lower than solar and wind. Even as flawed as they are the reactors we have running now are extremely safe. We can also make them safer. By making them safer we can also reduce the costs to build and operate them. People have been begging the federal government to bu
How To Lie with Statistics should be required reading in high school.
We had some of that in my school. We were taught how advertisements could be deceiving. We had some instruction on how to make a good argument, and how to recognize poor ones, essentially good debate tactics. What I don't recall ever being taught so explicitly though is how our own government could be lying to us. While we were taught that advertising could be deceiving this was never applied to news or any other medium outside advertising.
I do remember how in history classes those "other" governments lied to the people but in the USA that never seemed to happen.
I remember taking a college history class where we came to the part about WWII. The professor, a doctorate in history no less, told us about the "evil" public schools in Nazi Germany feeding schoolchildren propaganda in their lessons. The next week we were taught how after the war the UK created their own public schools and this professor told us how great it was that these children got an education. I raised my hand and asked what kept the UK schools from giving the children propaganda like the Nazi schools did. He didn't have an answer.
I had my suspicions about how governments should not run schools. I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence.
I know a lesbian couple who I will refer to as T and F. They wanted a child. They got donated sperm (I think from a close relative of T, but that's a guess), used one of F's eggs, and T was the host mother. Parenthood is more complicated than it used to be.
I expect them to be excellent parents. Both see the child as "their own" and so the risks of abuse, neglect, etc. are low. The problem with same sex couples having children is when they adopt, or one of the parents is not related to the child, which is the same risks that happen with any adopted child. The best situation for a child is to be raised by both of the biological parents. I don't know how same sex parenting compares to single parenthood but I suspect that a same sex couple raising a child is better than just one parent.
There are many reasons that a hetero couple is best for a child and it does have something to do with "the bits between their legs". The biological parents will look out for their own, its an evolutionary instinct. Children need same sex role models. This does not need to be their parents but it does need to come from people they respect. I assume that T and F are intelligent and educated enough to recognize this and have neighbors, uncles, grandparents, etc. play a significant role in the childrearing.
There is no demarcation line for religious vs. civil marriage, unfortunately.
Yes and no. Legally there are a number of people that can officiate a marriage, depending on the state, and this almost always includes clergy. Some states allow for marriages to be legally binding without an officiant, which makes sense to me, no one should need a third party to validate what two people feel for each other.
There is, as far as I know, no alternative means to get the legal benefits of marriage.
Yes there are. The process is more complicated but it can be done. Visitation rights, medical decisions, etc. are done with a living will and/or power of attorney. Inheritance and other property right are handled with a will and other legal documents. Marriage confers certain legal rights because of tradition mostly. We can create a legal "shortcut" like a marriage without calling it a marriage if we wanted to. It's just that some people could not be satisfied until the legal definition of marriage was changed to fit their view of the world.
There's going to be some hard feelings between same-sex couples and some churches, and some same-sex couples are going to get aggressive in return.
My Christian upbringing taught me to be kind to others, including the "sinners" among us. If these people are getting aggressive with a church then it is not "in return". Christians will forgive for past sins but they cannot welcome those that continue to live in a way counter to their teachings. This has gone so far that Christian couples will send out invitations to a "blessing of the union" or some words like that to differentiate it from a civil marriage. Getting married under the law is one thing, getting married before God is something different. Some same sex couples are not satisfied with that and demand that a church see them as equal to a hetero couple. The church will no doubt make the distinction apparent to them, not with a lawsuit, or threat of arrest, but with words. If the couple responded "in return" and in kind, with words, then there would not be a problem. The problem is when they respond with a lawsuit.
What I'd like to see is the government get out of the marriage business. Make hetero and same sex couples go through the same process for reasons of visitation rights, inheritance, etc., just don't call the process a "marriage". Call it what it is, power of attorney or whatever else fits.
(1) Sharing a home with another family is not what I consider homeless. (2) Living in an RV is not what I consider homeless.
On top of that the children are going to school, so it's not like they are unable to get out of this rut. So long as they stay in school, and stay out of trouble, they can get a job, join the military, or whatever after they graduate. I hear that California universities don't charge tuition for residents, if they get good grades they can go to college.
My sister in law works at a public school, in a not so great neighborhood, and she talks about the kids getting breakfast at school now. Many of the children in her school get free or reduced lunches for being considered "in poverty". This is a federal program so they must have this in California too.
The big wealth disparity in the area is the result of a booming economy, unfortunately some people will lag in this boom. Give it time and it will correct itself. The high housing prices are the result of demand exceeding supply, with proper management this too is self correcting. I imagine a lot of young adults that just finished high school could build the houses that are in such demand.
What concerns me is how people might see this as a bigger problem than it really is and want the government to do something about it. The government is already doing more than enough, these "homeless" children already get fed and educated from the government coffers. Are we supposed to buy them a four bedroom house and a white picket fence too? What I fear is these children will grow up learning that the government will keep feeding, clothing, and sheltering them through life. I'm all for giving people a hand up but not a handout.
How do you stop the next Fukashima from happening?
First by understanding what went wrong. The reactor survived the tsunami, shutdown successfully from an automated system that detected the seismic activity. So, nothing in the reactor itself failed. What failed was the systems designed to dissipate the heat from the short lived fission products. At least one of the failed reactors was near the end of a fuel cycle and so it had a very large proportion of fission products in the fuel, meaning the core was going to get dangerously hot if cooling stopped. Without fission occurring only the thermal capacity of the fuel kept the pumps running, once it cooled down the head of steam was lost. Once steam pressure is lost the system could not be restarted, I'm not sure why.
Without power to run the cooling pumps the water in the reactor started to get hot, then boil. For reasons of neutron efficiency the fuel is contained by a zirconium alloy. Zirconium, when hot enough, will burn in water. This burning water and zirconium releases hydrogen gas. There are systems to recombine the hydrogen to water but they were not working due to lost power. Either out of a concern for releasing the potentially radioactive hydrogen gas to the air, or a failure of the systems to vent to air, the hydrogen gas was allowed to accumulate in the building. The buildup continued until it reached an explosive level, and then exploded. This further damaged the structure, cooling systems, and containment.
When hot enough to melt zirconium and steel the fuel can lose containment, pile up on the bottom of the vessel, and fission can restart. This makes it hotter. Adding water can moderate the neutrons making the fission rate, and therefore heat production, increase. Not adding water can mean leaving hot volatile metals exposed to the atmosphere where it can be spread by the heated air. Adding water can also fuel more zirconium fires and create another explosion hazard. Not adding water means this hot mess of a core will melt through the concrete. If there is not enough concrete to melt and mix with the fuel to stop the fission it will melt until it hits the water table, the water will flash boil, and fission will stop, by ejecting this mix of fuel, fission products, burning zirconium, and boiling concrete into the air.
So, how do we keep this from happening? Use a moderator other than water. Use a coolant other than water. Use containment structures built out of something other than zirconium and steel. Don't allow fission products to build up. Dissipate the heat in a way that does not rely on pumps.
Use a graphite moderator. Use a salt coolant. Use containment made of a nickel alloy. Separate out the fission products while the reactor is operating. Build the cooling such that if anything goes wrong that air convection can keep it cool.
Where do we find this "magical" reactor? It's called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR. Look it up.
If current trends continue, solar will be more economical within a decade. While the cost of wind and solar are going down, the cost of nuclear is going UP.
Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps the costs of nuclear power has gone up because we've stopped building them for 40 years? The people that knew how to do this are all retired, senile, or dead now. We see this in every industry that prices go down as experience improves. This can even be seen as a single project, like a large building, progresses. The first ten stories take longer to build than the next ten, and the next ten take less time yet.
Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps that solar prices have gone down because of government subsidies? Forget that other energy sectors got subsidies, that's irrelevant. What I'm talking about is that while no nuclear power reactors have been built for 40 years the government has been giving the solar power industry all kinds of money and other benefits.
Now, if perhaps, maybe, we'd have been treating solar and nuclear the same I could argue that nuclear would be cheaper than solar. Even after decades of holding nuclear power back, and giving solar power a push, we still see solar power lagging in some very important ways. Nuclear power has a lower carbon footprint than solar, and nuclear works in all weather.
For 40 years the cost of new nuclear was effectively infinite, there were no licenses issued and so no matter how much one spent they got no new capacity. Now that we see some people in the government willing to grant a license then perhaps we can see nuclear power prices go down. If they keep issuing licenses then it will continue to go down.
Nuclear power has been caught in this death spiral, it costs more because no licenses were issued, no licenses were issued because it cost so much to get into nuclear power.
After holding nuclear back for 40 years, giving solar a lead, then you claim that in another 10 years that solar might be cheaper than nuclear. Well, what do you think would have happened if we'd have held solar back for 50 years and then let it finally compete?
[Citation needed]
Seriously, I don't see any reason to believe this is true. Nor have the same-sex couples I know gone into traditional gender roles, so I suspect you really don't know what you're talking about.
It is quite possible I don't know what I'm talking about. I listen to talk radio a lot and much of what I know on this is what I've heard on the radio from people that know something on this topic. Even if I could remember when I heard this, where, and from whom I suspect that someone is going to dispute it because they cannot find a recording, dispute it because they simply cannot bother to listen to it, and dispute it because it conflicts with their world view.
What we do know, from studies on adopted children vs. biological children, is that people naturally treat other people's children different than their own. A same sex couple simply cannot have biological children, so the children they raise will on the average not be raised as well as children raised by their biological parents.
As it is, if we have same-sex couples in a "civil union" or "civil partnership" or something, that doesn't necessarily mean anything anywhere else.
I made no distinction between a "civil union" and a "marriage". I made the distinction between a civil marriage and a religious marriage. In many places in the world the religious ceremony is viewed as legally binding, other places view only the civil ceremony as legally binding. I do not wish to play word games by calling one a "civil union" and another a "marriage". I only point out that people, regardless of their gender, can and do choose to have only the civil ceremony and not have it blessed by an officiant in a religious setting. Again, no word games, just one is performed by a justice of the peace (or other government official) and the other by a pastor (or other religious figure).
I'm not aware that any couple has a legal right to force a particular church to marry them.
You are correct but that does not stop same sex couples from suing churches that deny them the service of officiating a wedding. Just do a search on "same sex couple sues church" and you will find plenty of examples of same sex couples trying to force a legal construct, the civil marriage, onto the major religions. That is major religions except Islam.
The problem is that now that these people got their same sex marriage recognized legally they want to force this onto religions. It wasn't enough that they got all the legal protections they demanded, they want the churches to recognize this marriage. Had they stopped at the legal matter of marriage I would not have had a problem. Now that these people want religions to bend to their world view I have a problem. This makes me wonder if granting them the civil marriage was such a wise idea. It is not impossible to get most, if not all, of what they wanted by other means. Things like visitation rights, inheritance, and so forth can be done with the right paperwork. It's more work than a marriage but it is far from impossible. But that was not enough for many of them, they wanted it called a "marriage". Again, I have no problem with calling it a marriage. I have a problem with these people trying to force a modern civil construct onto religions with hundreds or thousands of years of tradition of how a marriage is defined.
If these people want to marry a person of the same sex then fine, you are married. In my mind a civil marriage is merely a contract between two people capable of signing any other kind of contract. The person needs to be of sound mind (old enough, not mentally disabled, etc.), enter this willingly, and uphold their end of the deal (whatever they agree the deal to be). When it comes to a religious marriage the people need to adhere to the traditions and rules of the religion or go find another religion. By using legal force on a religion to get married in a church, or whatever, that church/state separation is broken. The fact that the courts don't just throw these lawsuits out immediately is troubling.
Most people can instantly recognize a picture of Princess Leia. Far fewer could recognize a photo of Lara Croft, and even fewer would recognize Mrs Smith.
Is that because of the popularity of the films or because of the unusual costume? A bit of both I suspect.
As long as one person plays the father role and another plays the mother role, does it matter what bits they have between their legs?
In a way it does. The monogamous heterosexual pairing for raising children is an ideal that is difficult to duplicate. If you have a same sex couple with one "playing dad" and the other "playing mom" then this can create conflicting signals for the child. It's not just the "bits between their legs" that matters. Children learn what being a good parent means from example. If a child is raised by a same sex couple then they will get the signal that it is somehow acceptable to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant and leave. It also does not give children good role models on how to behave. If one is "playing daddy" but is not male, or the one "playing mommy" is not female, then this leaves the child not knowing how a nuclear family should behave.
You may have seen some messed up nuclear families, and some exceptional non-nuclear families, but on the average a nuclear family gives children what they need to succeed in life. The greatest indicator of future criminal behavior is the lack of a father or mother in the home. People raised by a single parent are automatically set up to fail, it takes a lot more work to set this right.
And how weak is your marriage to begin with if it can be affected by other people getting married?
This I can agree with. I have no problem with people of the same sex getting married. A marriage, in the civil sense, is merely a contract where each party has certain rights and responsibilities. If these people bring their biological children to the marriage, such as from a previous failed relationship, then having a second same sex parent is likely much better than continuing to live with just one parent. If this same sex couple wants to adopt children then I have a problem. Should they be legally barred from adopting? I don't know, but if this is allowed then they should get much greater scrutiny than a heterosexual couple precisely because of the statistics that show how problematic this can be for the future of that child.
If the people advocating for same sex marriage stopped at the civil matter then I'd have no problems. Since these people are using the legal status of same sex marriage to force churches to marry them this has become a problem. There is a separation of church and state not to keep the church out of government but to keep the government out of churches. A church should be free to operate as it wishes without government interference. If a same sex couple goes to a Christian church demanding to get married there then the church should be free to tell them no without facing the wrath of the government.
Had they stopped with the civil marriage aspect then I'd have been willing to live and let live. With them using the civil marriage to create a wedge into church matters then that makes me want to lobby for the same sex marriage laws to go away.
This is a double edged blade. The same sex couples should have left well enough alone and very few people would have cared. Now that they are taking churches, bakeries, photographers, etc. to court over refusing services they have gone beyond live and let live. They are forcing their beliefs on others.
Funny thing though. These people will take Christian and Jewish people to court but not Muslims. Why is that do you think? I have my own theories.
Also, if you become profitable, well a company like AT&Fee can come in and undercut you, stealing all your hard earned customers. One could try 2 or 3 year commitments, but that will scare off many.
I'm sure a lot of people would not consider that a bad thing. They want internet and are willing to pay for it. If AT&T at first says that there is no profit in running a line but someone else comes along and proves them wrong then we now have competition. There desire was not to get in the internet business but to get people internet. If AT&T comes along to do better, or buy them out, then the problem was solved.
Competition is good, no? It's not like these people didn't have any internet access, they just didn't like how slow and expensive it was. These people created their own internet to compete with satellite, dial-up, and cellular internet. They were able to do so with lower (or at least comparable) prices, faster speeds, and no data caps (or much higher ones).
This is how business should be done, allow people to go out and compete in the market. All too often though we see people that, instead of trying to do better in business, lobby the government for price controls, government should require that businesses need to offer services to people where there might not be a profit, etc. They see the force of the government, rather than the invisible hand of the free market, as the best means of bringing products and services to market.
Part of a free market is that businesses should be free to fail.
I mean, really, someone has to put a stop to this sort of thing, or next thing you know everyone will be doing it and then where will the monopolies and the billionaires be?
Out on their tractors listening to their favorite music being streamed to them over the internet?
Reminds me of an old joke, do you know the definition of a farmer? A man out standing in his field.
Would a few lines from "Firefly" be out of order?
Dr. Simon Tam: River, b- uh, be careful with that, that's, um... What is that?
Kaylee Frye: That's a post holer. You dig holes. For posts.
Dr. Simon Tam: It's, uh, it's dirty and sharp.
Many people are just afraid of things that are dirty and sharp so they leave that to other people. Turns out if the other people are uninterested, either because they are also afraid of things that are dirty and sharp, or they see no profit in it, then things don't get done. Civilization was built by those that wanted to make their lives better and weren't afraid to do the work themselves. A lot of times that means working with tools that are dirty and sharp.
Let's assume someone is doing a scam, perhaps in housing. A single person in a bank or other financial institution cannot create a housing bubble but if enough people like this get together to collude then they might be able to pull it off. If other banks see this artificial housing market come along then they might get into it to make some money too. These banks outside the circle might see this as a scam, merely suspect it is a scam but can't prove it to anyone, or are oblivious to the scam. Whether they know it is a scam or not they will act in their best interest to make money for themselves.
The house builder just sees the value of housing go up. So he builds more houses. If he sees business improve enough then he'll hire on more people. Some others will see this as a good business to get into and create a new business to build houses, or expand an existing business to do what they already do. For example a person that already has a good business selling replacement windows, siding, and roofing might see more business in building more houses rather than repairing existing ones. Again, these people building the houses might know that there is a scam involved, or not, but either way they will act in their best interests to make money.
When the scam falls apart, and they all do or it's not really a scam, then the people that started it all put on their golden parachutes and make a soft landing in retirement, or creating the next scam. Those that didn't make plans for a soft landing are left in a severe financial position. This might include the people in the scam and those that weren't, those that planned for the scam to run out did well.
If there is a global warming hoax then we cannot assume that everyone in the "green" energy business know it is a hoax. Some people might just be in it for the money. Some might be in it for the "good of the planet" or something. Since this is China we're talking about, and they are wanting to build product to sell around the world, then it is possible that they are not in on the hoax but instead see profit. If they are in on the hoax then they'll say one thing publicly and do another thing privately. Given their air quality issues in the recent past it is difficult to tell. They might not care about global warming but instead care about air quality. It is also possible they don't care about either but want to get in on the money making from the hoax created in the West.
In short, this proves nothing either way on if there is some sort of global warming conspiracy or not.
If socialism is so great then why must it be enforced at gunpoint? If socialism is go great then why is it that so many more patents come from nations with capitalism?
As with so many things we have to take the bad with the good. People with enough freedom to dedicate their lives to medicine and develop vaccines is also the society that has people free enough to take the money they earned in business and spend it on useless crap like a gold plated iPhone.
But I don't think that "winter" is holding us back in the electric car department.
That's not the only thing but it is a big thing. In the USA there are a lot of drivers that have to deal with winter and unless they are also really close to work, shopping, schools, houses of worship, and other common places to gather then pure electric cars will have sales issues. A plug in hybrid would solve many of these problems and for the summer months give a big gain on fossil fuels consumed for miles traveled. Natural gas would help over gasoline, and perhaps diesel too, but I remember having to drive a co-worker home one cold night because her new diesel car would not start.
When I lived in Texas I would meet up with people in an electric car group. Even then heating was an issue but the power demands were much less, mostly keeping the windscreen clear of fog in a rainstorm. Cooling power demands could be problematic though. I saw a couple interesting solutions, such as using a swamp cooler. A swamp cooler relies on evaporative cooling and so relied on the dry air in this semi-arid area. One would have to top off the water tank occasionally as well. There are a lot of sparsely populated areas, large ranches, etc. which meant many people drove long distances daily or at least weekly. Making the battery larger adds to the cost. Using a higher energy density battery technology means waiting for that to come to market. Again a hybrid helps since it can power the air conditioner and a small trickle generator, and give a considerable boost in range between charges. This also adds to the cost, but less than a full EV since the batteries don't have to be as big. It also adds to the carbon foot print, but much less than the ICE only vehicle.
What started this discussion was a claim of shifting attitudes. Well, not everyone is going to have the attitude that a self imposed limitation on their mobility and/or comfort do to the vehicle they buy is a great idea. If the government imposes this then expect a new government to replace it in the next election. If technology improves then we have the problem of the time from now until the technology exists, add the time it takes for the technology to get to market, and the time it takes for people to feel comfortable to trade in their vehicle.
Rather it's price and those prices are dropping rapidly.
Well, it's not dropping fast enough for my taste. There is already a lot of inexpensive gasoline vehicles out there that do quite well, especially when the used market is considered. I believe we'd be doing much better to change minds and save on the carbon output by using natural gas. Natural gas is cheap and getting cheaper. Many people have it piped to their homes already for heat and cooking, so filling up at home is a possibility. CNG doesn't take on water or gel up like gasoline, diesel, or ethanol. CNG reduces carbon output by 30% or so. If used in a plug-in hybrid then greater gains can be made.
Also, all this talk of electric vehicles does nothing for the big consumers of fossil fuels that is over the road trucking, shipping, and aircraft. We can also add in trains here since electrified tracks are difficult to justify on long stretches.
I see a carbon reduced future that looks more like this. Electric, natural gas, and hybrids for much of the passenger car and light truck market. Large trucks would be natural gas, diesel, or one of these new six-stroke engines. Trains would be six-stroke along with some dual mode that can take in electricity on the electrified stretches of railroads. Nuclear power in electric utilities and large ships. Airplanes would probably remain using the same fuels they do now and/or planes that run on some cryogenic fuel.
You think my vision of the future is unlikely? Well, I see the growth of pure EVs to be unlikely. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?
Care to expand on that? It sounds like you're just thumbing your nose.
Not really. Spend a few minutes with Google and a pocket calculator and you will see that while electric vehicles might be able to replace some fraction of the oil burned for fuel but the big consumers, ships, planes, trains, and tractor/trailers, cannot be converted to electricity like a soccer mom's minivan.
And, BTW, the average life of a car is about 11 years total. 30 seconds on Google would have fixed that for you.
Another reason I'm not motivated to give a detailed reply. If you are going to nitpick like that then why should I bother? Especially when you are wrong, the right answer is 11.4 years.
You think that scientific truth depends on political policy? Suppose Trump institutes a stupid policy concerning gravity - are you going to disbelieve in it?
If Trump issues bad policy on gravity then it shows he does not believe in gravity, just like politicians that support bad policy on CAGW show that they don't believe in CAGW.
If CAGW is a problem, and the politicians say it is a problem, but they do next to nothing about it I must conclude one of several things. First, they could be incompetent. Second, it could be that they don't know what CAGW means and so they don't know what to do about it. Third, it could be they know it is a lie but they see it as a means to implement the laws they want, divert taxpayers' money into their districts to buy votes, and other corruption.
So, take your pick, incompetent, corrupt, or ignorant. No matter how you slice it Democrat policies have been bad for the environment and I'm glad to see them go.
CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have gone from about 280ppm in 1850 to over 400ppm now. Isotopic analysis shows that the increase is due to more carbon from fossil fuels. What part of that is unclear?
The part that is unclear is a description of the effect on the carbon cycle. The ecosystem has the ability to process enormous amounts of carbon, it's how life thrives. The isotropic shift only tells us that we've been burning coal, we knew that. This gain in CO2 could be from natural processes that human activity had nothing to do with. The ecosystem is complex and these "scientists" will point to one thing and claim this "proves" CAGW. It takes a series of events for CAGW to exist. The honest CAGW types have done two things that convinced me, they explained the processes in great detail, and did so in a calm and collected manner. The people screaming about the "hot spot" in the atmosphere that disappeared, or the snow that wouldn't fall but did, the Arctic ice that would melt but is still there, are all annoying, unconvincing, and don't help in advancing the cause.
There is no one thing that can prove CAGW. The pieces of information that show human influence on the environment might prove CAGW if all put together but each one separately proves nothing we didn't already know. The people that take the time to explain this chain of evidence that humans are affecting the planet in ways that are a threat to human civilization will also explain that there is time to debate this, see if the theory proves itself in time, and act if we need to. There is no reason to panic. However, if we do choose to act then it should be done wisely, calmly, and with the greatest effect for the least cost.
Banning off shore drilling is bad policy because we might need access to the natural gas there yet. Drilling for oil might not hurt since demand for oil is still strong and I'd rather we get that oil domestically rather than ship our wealth and warriors off to some desert and never return so that we can burn their oil.
Is there any reason we shouldn't just be planting solar panels along highways?
I'm not saying it is a bad idea but some issues need to be addressed.
Solar panels don't take in all the light, they are flat surfaces that can reflect a good portion of the light that hits them. If placed poorly they can blind drivers from the sunlight. If placed over the roads then the roads cannot benefit from the sunlight that make vehicles, debris, and other hazards more visible. In cold weather the sun would not melt off ice and snow. Even in sub-freezing air temperatures a dark asphalt or concrete road surface can be warmed enough by the sun to melt ice and evaporate the water.
Being large flat surfaces they can divert wind and/or get damaged by it. In places with a lot of snow it is common practice to put up snow fences to keep snow from piling up on roads. The solar panels themselves could act as a snow fence, which might mean they'd be buried in snow for much of the year. They could also divert the surface winds and make the snow problem worse. In extreme winds they could be torn free of their structures and become projectiles and/or road debris.
I've driven I-80 through Nebraska and other states and the wind and snow can be brutal. The winds have been known to take large trucks off the road. Sand and snow storms can be blinding, not good for solar power production. Once out of the cities the wind has a lot of room to pick up speed. Those panels would be sandblasted constantly, also not good. This needs to be taken into account and be part of the maintenance plan.
Those large spaces on either sides of these roads are there for a reason. I'm not sure what all of those reasons might be but if we fill this space with solar panels then we could lose whatever we gained.
Burning wood releases a lot of CO2 and should not be considered clean.
You are correct, at least to a point. If not done correctly burning wood can produce soot just like coal. Depending on the quality of the land it can spread heavy metals into the air. If burning wood is such a good idea then I know of a place in the Ukraine with a lot of trees, near a place called Chernobyl I think. The CO2 released is just time delayed by a few years from what it took out of the air if we burn it. We have better uses for wood than energy though.
I remember someone that believed CAGW was a problem suggesting that we should grow trees and use them for lumber to sequester carbon. That person was run out on a rail for even suggesting anyone cut down a tree. It made sense to me. Seems like trees are very efficient in converting CO2 into a carbon dense material that we call wood, that is until it is mature. Grow trees to maturity, cut them down, plant more. The wood from the trees can be used for structures and the carbon is sequestered in the houses, barns, sheds, etc. Burning them doesn't help. It might not hurt either but if we use trees to sequester carbon then we gain.
To get our energy we can use carbon free nuclear, hydro, and wind, and we'll be carbon negative in no time. To replace oil we can synthesize hydrocarbons from seawater like the US Navy has been experimenting with. The synthetic oil wouldn't be carbon negative but carbon neutral, to make it negative we'd have to be pumping that synthetic oil into old oil wells or something and leaving it there.
Then buy one from a reputable dealer and if it blows up your MacBook then go to the manufacturer that made the battery pack to fix it. I'm pretty sure there are laws against selling products that will damage your stuff, sue them.
If it blew up from not following the USB spec then get the USB people to take them on. Apple would also like to hear about this too, they got deep pockets and they don't like to see people complain about their laptops blowing up. If you bought it from a place like Amazon, Best Buy, or other place that has deep pockets and wants to keep customers happy then let them know. If you buy a USB-C battery from some guy in an alley selling them out of the boot of his car then you roll the dice and take your chances.
I looked and Lenovo doesn't certify USB-C batteries either. Dell does, so if that's what you want then get a Dell. I didn't look at any laptop makers since it became apparent to me that there are numerous big name electronics retailers that will sell USB-C batteries and stand behind them.
Just search for "apple compatible usb-c battery" and all kinds of results show up, getting good reviews from magazines and customers. No indication of MacBooks getting damaged from them.
Wow, look at that. Someone saying something good about nuclear power for once. Of course they will if it let's them hit a milestone like this. I thought nuclear was expensive, dangerous, and if you look at it wrong it will explode and melt your face off.
Here's the milestone I see, nuclear power is being recognized for what it is, carbon free, inexpensive, plentiful, and safe. This is a big deal to me because it is so rare to see anyone say anything good about nuclear power. With this announcement they may not say explicitly that nuclear power is safe and cheap but it is implied, at least they recognize it as carbon free.
I've done the math and it would be exceedingly difficult for any nation, especially one as small as the UK, to be energy independent without nuclear power. I've read some rather crazy claims that we can put solar panels in Africa to power the UK but at the same time we cannot build nuclear power in the UK. Well, if nuclear power is too dangerous to put in the UK then put them out in the African desert and run the wires to the UK, that way you'd get your energy night and day and not have to worry about looking at it wrong and it exploding in your face.
Eighty thousand dollars! Yeah, I think I'll pass on that and get a get a used Ford, GMC, or Honda when I feel like replacing my little truck.
That's not much counting against it though, is it? You have a computer that comes with a 60+ watt power supply standard and you complain... perhaps too strong of a word... point out that a 15 watt power supply won't keep up with the power consumption. I'm thinking you should be happy the iPad charger worked at all.
I like my MagSafe power adapter, it possibly saved my laptop once or twice. It's not a standard port outside of the Apple universe so finding a replacement in a hurry might be a problem. It became a problem with my first laptop when the power supply burned up on me. Since then I've bought a spare power supply with the laptop. Good thing I did too, I broke one already.
I'm a bit torn on the USB-C charging. A port not exclusive to Apple is nice, especially since this is a charging port with such wide support. If I end up replacing my current MacBook with another then I fear I may miss having MagSafe to save me... and my expensive computer.
The ability to pop into just about any place that sells computers or cell phones to pick up a spare charger or battery pack does seem nice. As much as people complain about Apple's choice to use USB-C exclusively I'm seeing the wisdom in it.
I will say that the Dell XPS laptops are impressive. I don't own one but I've seen them recommended as an alternative to the MacBook Pro and I took a look at the pricing and specs. This is from someone that has owned three Apple laptops over the last 15 years. Which is an indication of how long they last and how rarely I buy new equipment. I had a bit of a mishap with my newest MacBook Pro so I'm looking to replace it sooner than I had planned.
The Dell XPS is cheaper, has much of the same capability, and an option for more RAM. What counts against it is it's a bit bigger and heavier, which a few years ago would not have been a big deal but my knees are telling me I need to reduce the weight in my messenger bag as much as I can. The port issue can be a plus or minus. USB-A ports are nice now but I plan on using this thing daily for the next five years. It seems I'll be buying adapters now or later.
The first two Apples I paid for with my own money, the last one the VA bought for me. (Thank you American taxpayer!) This one I have to buy myself so the price is more of a concern. I thought about just using a tablet instead. A tablet would be lighter, cheaper, and given what I typically use a laptop for, and having much better access to big hardware when I need it, an iPad may be in my future.
Oh, and there is the issue of the OS but I'm generally comfortable with many operating systems. I don't know if I'd be happy with using anything other than MacOS after using it as my primary OS for so long. If I get a tablet then I'm definitely getting an Apple, I don't feel comfortable spending my money on anything else.