But everyone that wants to enjoy flying a radio controlled aircraft is now burdened with this registration scheme. This is punishing thousands, perhaps millions, of hobbyists in the hope the idiot that broke the law was also idiotic enough to register the drone correctly.
We've seen this with registration schemes before. Where the registration leads to the criminal there tends to also be other ample evidence that implicates them.
Also, do you want the registration to be the only means by which we identify the criminal? What if your drone was stolen by some prankster that got someone blinded by flying it into their face? The registration would point to you and you'd be the one on the hook for malicious wounding.
Registration sounds nice in theory, in practice it is worthless.
Right, no sale without registration. It's not like people don't use false names and addresses. Also, what of a drone that is traded, re-sold, gifted, or stolen? How is that registration supposed to be enforced?
We saw this with gun registration. Compliance is nearly non-existent. The people that do comply are not the people you have to worry about. Even when you do have people comply the records tend to be error prone, since the record will be only true at the time of the sale, assuming it was filled out correctly and honestly to begin with. People move, guns and drones will change hands, and people simply won't bother with registering again.
One problem with registration is that it aids confiscation. People that have learned from their history have a natural distrust of government. Cars are supposed to be registered but do you know how many unregistered cars are on the road? Nobody does, because they aren't registered.
Just like almost every other manner on which the federal government will claim jurisdiction because the drone was obtained by interstate commerce. You see the drone came into your possession by way of being built in another state or country, therefore the federal government can claim authority. Even if you are in a rare case where the drone was assembled locally the raw materials were obtained through interstate commerce. Perhaps the plastics were derived from locally sourced oil, the aluminum from a local mine, all refined and made into drone parts in your own state. The federal government will still claim authority because the package the drone was boxed into was printed in another state.
Yes, the federal government will claim authority over your toys just because the cardboard box it came in was made in some other state.
Nitpick, all radio amateur licenses are "no code" now. Your license isn't "tech/no-code" any more it's just a "technician" license now.
Also, while I agree with your argument generally on licensing drones I don't see how the FAA even has a chance of enforcing this. I doubt they have the manpower and I suspect that they won't for years.
The energy industry didn't buy Congress. Congress bought votes through the energy industry. The corn and ethanol industries get all kinds of money from Congress, either through direct subsidies or indirectly by mandating we buy their products. Do you think that people really care that there is ethanol in their fuel? Oh, I'm sure some do but most people just want cheap gas. When the ethanol blended fuel is 10 cents cheaper than the fuel without the ethanol, because it's exempt from some taxes, then people will buy more of it.
The wind industry lives on government subsidy. Every time a wind subsidy gets threatened my mail box overflows with fliers on how I need to call my elected representatives to make sure windmill manufacturers stay in business. If a windmill maker can only afford to hire people because the government is subsidizing it then is it really a viable business model?
There have been numerous public failures of solar power and electric car companies, all funded by the government. What do we get in return? I know, the wealthy executives of these companies cash in on the government subsidy and then turn around to give a portion to the campaign funds of the senators that voted for the subsidy. It's a money laundering scheme, our tax dollars get run through the wash and end up paying for ads telling us how great these senators are in "creating jobs". Governments don't create jobs, a well laid business plan creates jobs.
Windmills, solar panels, bio-fuels, and electric cars are nice but they don't reduce carbon output nearly as much as a nuclear fission power plant would. Windmills only create power when the wind blows, when it doesn't we're burning natural gas. Same for solar panels and daytime, it's a proxy for the natural gas industry. Making ethanol requires gobs of fertilizer, and fuel to "cook" the corn, not to mention all the diesel fuel burned by the trucks, tractors, and trains to get the corn to the distillery. Where does that come from? Natural gas, coal, and oil. And electric cars? No, not electric, coal powered cars.
All this "green washing" so that senators can buy votes from environmentally conscious (and technologically illiterate) voters and wealthy investors trying to cash in on government subsidies.
The energy industry didn't buy Congress. Congress bought votes from fools that think we can power a first world economy on wind and sun. We had a wind and sun powered economy before. It was called the "age of sail" when ships took weeks to cross the ocean. People traveled by buggy, propelled by "bio-fuel" in the form of grass fed beasts of burden.
We have a window of opportunity here. We harnessed coal and oil which gave us the technology to harness an even more potent energy source. One that is limitless. If we don't get nuclear fission driving our economy before the coal and oil runs out then we'll have our "green" economy. We'll also be crossing the sea in wooden ships with sails.
Destroyed? Because forced handouts to failed states has anything to do with reducing emissions? No, this is rebuffing to rent-seeking under guise of international climate change treaty. Western countries could agree to pay 100% of GDP and the world would be as f*(&ed on climate change.
Emission reductions are key critical component, not cash handouts.
Who modded this down? Can't handle the truth, huh?
Wealthy nations that are emitting the carbon paying the nations affected by it does not solve the problem. What will solve the problem is putting that money towards efforts to actually reduce the carbon output.
I say we put that money towards building nuclear fission power plants. Oh, and don't build them like Chernobyl. Build them with liquid fuel, passive safety systems, high efficiency turbines, air cooling (so we're not using freshwater that could be better used for drinking or irrigation), and breeding of fuels.
Not that we'd build another Chernobyl anyway, that's just bad business. But it seems I must say this or some knucklehead will reply with how every nuclear power plant ever built has blown up and irradiated millions. Oh, wait, they haven't. What we did have is hundreds of decades old nuclear reactors operate with perfect safety records but a handful failed spectacularly so now there are seemingly millions of people that will piss themselves if anyone mentions "nukular" within earshot. It's not like hydro dams never failed. People never fall from windmills. Solar panels never electrocute or start fires. Nope, all that stuff is safer than nuclear fission... except when it isn't.
Using fossil fuels is just plain bad for everyone.
Except for those using the fossil fuels.
You want to solve this problem? You want people to stop burning fossil fuels? There is a simple solution to this, give them a better option.
By "better" I don't mean "this won't raise the sea levels in 100 years" but "this is cheaper than what you use now". People don't burn fossil fuels because they are dicks to the environment, they burn fossil fuels because it gives them food, shelter, transportation, warmth, information, and entertainment. You seem confused on why people continue to choose fossil fuels over alternatives.
Do you know what physicians call alternative medicine that is effective? They call it "medicine". Why are wind and solar considered "alternative energy"? Because it's not as effective as coal. If it was as cheap, reliable, and plentiful as coal then wind and solar would no longer be "alternatives" would they? We do have an alternative to burning coal that is cheap, reliable, and carbon free. Well, it's as "carbon free" as wind, solar, or hydro. It's called nuclear fission.
We figured out how to make nuclear fission work for us as reliably as coal decades ago. In the mean time we figured out how to make it safer and cheaper than any other energy source we have. The only thing holding it back is politics.
So long as burning fossil fuels is more beneficial than anything else we will continue to burn them. If you don't like it then you'll just have to deal with the "lots of fucking death" it causes. Nothing speaks louder than money. We can live a carbon free life without having to wear sweaters indoors and putting solar panels on the roof like President Carter wanted us to. Telling people they have to live in a cold house in the winter and sweat through the summer is going to lose every time.
Nuclear fission is our future, or it's ugly sweater day all winter long.
Waiting for wind and solar to be as cheap and reliable as nuclear power is now is just causing more of the "lots of fucking death" that you seemingly so vehemently want to avoid. It's nuclear fission or "lots of fucking death", thinking we have another option is insanity.
What is a "green" environmentalist on the outside but a "red" communist on the inside?
This climate change summit is just an excuse for poor nations to demand more and more money from wealthier nations. They will claim this is to build "green" energy sources and provide accommodations for those displaced by the effects of climate change but in reality it will just line the pockets of the dictators that run these backward hell holes.
This summit is a bunch of watermelons getting together to make themselves look like they are going to save the world from the knuckle dragging troglodytes that actually built the buildings, farmed the food, and drilled the oil that made this summit possible. The solution to this problem isn't taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as if the wealthy nations don't already send billions of dollars to poorer nations every year. The solution is more freedom.
I believe a large part of the poverty in these poor nations is dictators stealing from the populace. People that don't have the freedom to benefit from their labors tend not to work very hard. People that are not free to defend their own property and lives from thugs and the government (but I repeat myself) cannot build up the wealth needed to create a functioning economy.
(In case anyone is confused about what I mean by defending life and property I mean that people are permitted to arm themselves with effective tools of self defense, and carry them freely no matter where they go. Given the technology we have today that means firearms, but just being able to carry a sword or club may be sufficient.)
Most of all people need to be free to take advantage of the most abundant energy resource we have on this earth. That means nuclear power. As it is right now any nation that wishes to develop nuclear energy must be granted permission to do so by those that have already developed it. This "non-proliferation treaty" is supposedly about preventing the development of nuclear weapons but it has effectively only prevented the development of peaceful nuclear power. Those nations that have the desire to obliterate their neighbors under a radioactive mushroom cloud will not be deterred by such a treaty. Those that wish to provide their children with food, warmth, shelter, and education are being held back. These nations must choose between a certain death by not burning oil and coal, or the possibility of living by doing so.
The only way to avoid this dilemma is nuclear power.
Wind and solar power is nice for wealthy nations to experiment with since they already have benefited from centuries of burning coal and decades of nuclear power. Current wind and solar technologies are too expensive for these poor nations to have that luxury. They will either have to develop nuclear power, burn coal, or continue living a second class existence.
I get so frustrated with these watermelons. They claim to be so righteous and helpful but in reality all they are doing is spending other people's money on things that do nothing to address the real issues that brought them to the summit. I have little doubt that this is by design. If they actually solved the problem then that means these "elites" will no longer remain in power. That is because the people they claim to be helping will be free enough to not have to go to these "elites" to ask for more of their "help" in the future.
I find it odd how Slashdot, a forum of people that supposedly are more knowledgeable of science and technology than the average bear, are so pro-solar and yet so anti-nuke. The anti-nuke people will point to Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island as examples on why we can't have nuclear power toady. This ignores advancements in technology we made since those accidents, changes in policy since then, and generally all the lessons we've learned about how NOT to do nuclear power.
I am to believe that we've learned nothing from these incidents and therefore no new nuclear power plant can ever be built. On the other hand we have a history of terribly inefficient solar panels but I am to expect that this efficiency will inevitably improve in time. No doubt that we've made considerable gains in solar panel efficiency but we are quickly approaching, or perhaps already met, the physical limits of photovoltaic efficiency. We went from 5% efficiency to 20% efficiency in 40 years, but that does not mean we can go from 20% to 35% in another 40 years. We will be lucky to get 25% without some very esoteric, and therefore expensive, materials. It may be possible to get better than 50% efficiency at some point from solar power but that ignores some very real and unavoidable flaws with solar power. Solar power requires land, or at least surface area. This area cannot then be used for growing crops, and people are not likely to want to live under them since people like to see the sky. Then there is night time, solar power is unavailable at night. Solar power is also unavailable or diminished with clouds. Nuclear power doesn't care about the time of day or the weather.
Anyone that thinks we can build orbital solar collectors to avoid the land area and night time issues needs to talk to someone that did the engineering and cost estimates on such a system. I'd suggest looking for articles and lectures from Kirk Sorensen on this, he's a former NASA engineer and current nuclear engineer. He's a nuclear engineer precisely because he saw how flawed solar power is for powering anything on earth or in space.
I believe we can live without solar power. Living without nuclear power is going to be very dangerous and dismal.
Really? Opiates taken over a long time will make any human an addict? I must not be human then.
I know a sample size of one does not negate a theory all its own. I suggest you do some more research on your claims since I know them to not be true.
The dangers on opiates are wildly overblown. Humans have been using opiates for pain for hundreds or thousands of years. We know it works and we know how it works. We know how much is safe and how much is too much. Tylenol is far more dangerous than opiates, we have the body counts to prove it. I believe codeine should be over the counter and Tylenol should require a prescription based on recent evidence of over dose deaths alone.
Just like how moonshine is a result of alcohol prohibition we now have heroin because of opiate prohibitions. People in the 1920s didn't want to drink the industrial alcohol that is moonshine, they wanted a glass of wine or a can of beer. Lacking access to that they'd mix m industrial alcohol with fruit juice. There are real people with real pain that don't want to take heroin, but lacking access to anything else to relieve their pain they will take it. Many of these people are desperate for proper medical care but because of bad policy people don't get it. This is a problem the government created, and people are dying because of it.
People tell me that there is no medical use for heroin but that is false. Heroin is just the legal name for dimorphine that was not obtained from a physician. In the USA no physician can legally proscribe dimorphine, but they can prescribe the much more potent hydromorphone. This has nothing to do with any real medical practice or theory, only on government policy based on false assumptions.
What many will agree to be the end of prohibitions on alcohol was when the government had added a new denaturing agent to industrial alcohol. Dozens of people died from this. We are seeing this again with the government adding Tylenol to opiates to keep people from taking too much. You see too much Tylenol will kill you. Too much of an opiate will usually knock you unconscious before it kills. Tylenol will destroy your liver if you take too much. I hear that death from liver damage is prolonged and painful as your body poisons itself over days.
Government policy is such that they would rather you die a long and painful death than get high. We see this happen nearly daily in the USA but very few people seem outraged over this like I am. Perhaps this is by intent. People that live long happy lives with pain managed by opiates are a drain on government provided health care. Dead people only have a one time cost of burial.
Anyone who claims that nuclear is the only option hasn't seriously looked at the alternatives.
I did not claim that nuclear is the only option. I said that any carbon neutral grid that does not include nuclear is not a serious solution.
Any energy solution that includes pumped hydro and battery storage makes wind and solar look worse, not better.
I was able to take a tour of a pumped hydro station, the primary use of it was to store up energy from the nuclear power plant so that it could match the load from the grid. If you have access to nuclear power, which can produce cheap power at a better than 80% capacity factor, and a storage system like a pumped hydro dam, then why even bother with expensive wind and solar that can only provide power at a capacity factor of 30%?
You might claim that technological advancement will bring down the cost of wind and solar. If you want to be able to make that claim then I should be able to make the same claim about nuclear fission. We didn't reach the pinnacle of nuclear fission technology in 1970. We have computers now that allow us to model, design, and operate a nuclear power plant much cheaper than before. This is ignoring real and actual improvements in the theories of fission reactor design, which can also reduce price.
Wind and solar share a problem with current nuclear fission in that the output cannot match the load. If you say that we can build storage systems to even this out then nuclear power can gain the capability to load follow just like wind and solar would. The primary reason that current nuclear reactors cannot load follow is the same reason that coal cannot load follow, they rely on steam turbines to drive the generators. If the government would allow nuclear power to be air cooled, instead of water cooled, then a modern fission reactor can load follow. If nuclear power can load follow then no storage system is necessary. Government policy doesn't bar air cooled reactors exactly, what it does do is place restrictions on reactor design such that anything other than a water cooled reactor would not get approval.
As it is right now, with current technology, we can build nuclear power plants and pumped hydro and we can have a grid that is capable of producing 24/7 electrical power with no increase in its price for the consumer. Wind and solar requires either an increase in price, or some technology that does not yet exist. Any development in utility scale electrical storage benefits nuclear just as much as it does wind and solar.
It appears you have missed the point. Point is that advertisers and retailers find this information very valuable. They are willing to invest the effort into gaining large amounts of demographic data on potential buyers. This information on you and me allow them to gather a creepily accurate picture on how we live our lives. They do this so that they can accost us with directed advertising.
What you point out is the means that someone can abuse this data even more. The creepy IT guy can become a very effective stalker with access to data like this. As you say this level of intrusion into the lives of the store customer can mean people are able to gather dirt on others with a greater ease that they could not before.
It's not just this software that enables this creepy level of intrusion into our lives, it's the government requiring license plates. Someone willing to abuse this information does not need access to DMV data to make it work for them. By "work" I mean provide information that an advertiser might purchase, a store might use internally for targeted advertising, or (as you point out) the creepy IT guy to stalk the pretty lady that like to stop by for office paper. This software works because the government requires personally identifiable information in plain sight on our vehicles.
I propose that a primary means to combat this intrusion into our lives by both government and private entities is to do away with the requirement to have a license plate on our vehicles.
Yes, we have made great leaps in the energy density of batteries but even with that it still cannot reach just 1 MJ/kg, where common hydrocarbons can exceed 50 MJ/kg. That means that the electric vehicle will always be heavier than the ICE.
Any gains in saving weight by using carbon fiber, aluminum, or other nonferrous materials will also create an advantage for ICE powered cars. In fact the gain will be even greater for the ICE because the power plant also gains from these advanced materials. Batteries will still be stuck with an energy density that is an order of magnitude heavier.
Let me know when batteries get even 10 MJ/kg, like ammonia, compressed air, or liquid nitrogen. Experimental batteries have reached these levels but cannot be placed in a vehicle as they are too fragile. ICE technology works now.
As for the "pie in the sky" technologies I mentioned, the synthesis of hydrocarbons was a technology used by the Nazis in WWII. This is not a new technology. Nuclear fission is also a technology that we've been using for decades. It's trivial to marry the two so that we can get mass production of hydrocarbons and close the carbon loop. What the US Navy is researching now is the means to make this technology fit on a ship at sea, and do so at a cost that is viable. We don't use it because, unlike Germany during WWII, we have access to hydrocarbons from petroleum oils.
No doubt the cost of synthesizing hydrocarbons will need to be investigated. What you seem to ignore in your evaluation of battery technology is the cost. High density batteries have been built but only with expensive materials. We can build ICE powered cars with common metals. The plants that produce the hydrocarbons might need expensive materials to produce the fuel but that is a one time cost that can be amortized over all the fuel it produces, it won't be in the car.
Your plan for electric vehicles to replace fossil fuels requires replacing existing vehicles on the road (with a half life around a decade), creating a new infrastructure of charging stations (which only Tesla seems interested in creating), and developing new technologies at an unrealistic rate. My plan allows for infrastructure to remain largely intact, existing vehicles will gain the closing of the carbon loop with no modifications, and we do not need to develop any new technologies.
Electric cars are nice but they will remain in the realm of golf carts, fork lifts, and rich boy toys unless we can get a huge leap in technology. A leap that I do not believe to be possible. Synthesis of hydrocarbons is a technology that we've shown to work, all that remains is the engineering to scale it up to commercial levels.
Because the writing's on the wall. Electric cars are the future, and that future is coming quick.
I don't share your optimism. There are very real limits on how much energy density that can be obtained in a battery, and still make it robust enough to handle being bumped around in a vehicle. There are also very real limits on charging and discharging rates before a battery will be damaged.
We might see an end to fossil fuels but that does not mean the end of the ICE powered vehicle. A lot of research has gone into the synthesis of hydrocarbons lately. The US Navy is big on funding this. They have aircraft carriers with nuclear power plants carrying aircraft that consume a lot of jet fuel. They know that if they can drive a hydrocarbon synthesis process from that nuclear reactor that they can save a lot of money and lives. Transferring this technology to making gasoline from land based nuclear power is trivial.
Hydrocarbons can store energy in a substance that is liquid at atmospheric pressure, at any temperature we'd see from an arctic winter to an Arizona summer. This liquid can be stored in inexpensive metal or plastic tanks for long periods with little risk of it leaking or evaporating away at a rate anyone would consider troublesome. We can pump it through pipes at great distances and/or transport it by ship. It provides lubrication to mechanical components by its very nature. It's dangers are well know, such as its flammability, and we've figured out how to address them. Few energy storage systems have so many pros and few cons.
About the only fuel I can think of that can compete with hydrocarbons is ammonia. Ammonia is not carcinogenic like hydrocarbons, small amounts in the air, drinking water, or other ways it might enter the body is not harmful. Large amounts are a suffocation hazard but that can also be addressed with precautions. A spill is not an environmental disaster, it in fact might be helpful to plant life. Ammonia doesn't store as nicely as liquid hydrocarbons but a mildly pressurized tank can store ammonia with an energy density that is comparable to hydrocarbons. We know how to make ammonia, we have an entire industry dedicated to it. Currently the hydrogen for its synthesis primarily comes from natural gas but it doesn't have to, if we get a high temperature nuclear fission reactor the hydrogen is practically a byproduct of it's operation for desalinating water and/or making electricity.
Electric cars for the common commuter might make a good portion of the vehicles on the road but the ICE will still rule for anything that must travel long distances. For this reason alone we will see filling stations remain. A truck stop can fill a long haul truck just as well as a passenger car. Electric vehicles cannot piggyback on this infrastructure so easily.
Fossil fuels may be "old and dirty" but hydrocarbons can work where electricity cannot. Electric planes will remain in the realm of toys and curiosities. Ships at sea will continue to burn fuel oil, with the possible exception of seeing nuclear power replace it in more than just military submarines and aircraft carriers. Even rockets to orbit burn hydrocarbons. Those are not passenger cars but they are common forms of transportation. Transportation will be powered by hydrocarbons for a very long time. You might be able to convince me that electric cars will become common but the movement of people will continue to be ruled by hydrocarbons for a very long time, perhaps long after we've decided that fossil fuels are too "old and dirty" to bother with.
Imagine I own a store and I want to know as much about my customers as possible. I can place this license plate reader on the entrances and exits to my parking lot. With each purchase I have access to what was purchased when. With a little bit of statistical analysis I can place plates to buyers by comparing when I saw a car come and go to the time stamp on purchases.
For the rare visitor I may only know the state and county of the customer from the automated data. If the software does not already include this feature it would be trivial to add a function to keep a photo of the car along with the time, date, and other data. I now can gather info on the make, model, and year of the vehicle, as well as it's general condition. This can give indications of income and potentially other demographics. Is it a dirty truck? Possibly a farmer, rancher, construction type of employment. Is it an old Cadillac in impeccable condition? Car collector type. Beat up old Cadillac? Possibly not so well off, but was before.
Cross reference this with credit card data and I have the name of the customer, as well as any other information the credit card company is willing to share. Then flip this around, perhaps the credit card company is willing to buy this information from me. The credit card company now has an incentive to encourage other stores to place cameras on their parking lots.
Let's take this a bit further and suppose I give out "anonymous" surveys to customers. The customer doesn't have to put their name on the survey, or their license plate number, just knowing when they filled it out can give a high correlation to the customer. On the survey I could also ask them what car maker they prefer, as a large number of people will put on there what they currently drive. Perhaps I ask what brand of tires they buy, again I can compare this to the photo to verify identity.
If they buy with cash there are still ways to match the customer to the vehicle and purchase. I can ask if they are willing to apply for a store credit card, or "discount club". With facial recognition software piled on top this can get even more interesting. I can match people that drive the same car. Driving the same vehicle would imply family, friends, roommates, or other close relationship.
All this data does not need to be gathered before it is valuable. I can gather this data for some anonymous person for a very long time, once I get a name then I now have a long history to mine. Again, I don't have to gather all this data myself, I can buy pieces of the data from others, perhaps buying it with the data that I gathered.
Oh, another thing just came to me, custom license plates. There are license plates for things like volunteer firefighters, veterans, radio amateurs, and on and on. This adds further value to the data.
Someone that wants to track even more will log the small talk at the register. Any big plans tonight? Nope, I'm working again tonight. Type a note into the register, night shift worker.
All kinds of data can be obtained. It's just a matter of how much effort one is willing to invest. With software that can automate the logging of license plates the amount of effort required just got a lot smaller.
We don't need further tracking of our lives by the government or by the people trying to sell us stuff. I noticed advertising in my web browser based off of things I searched for on other sites. This is no doubt from tracking of my IP address or shared cookies. With this software am I going to get advertising based off of what shops I drove past that day?
No doubt this will lower the cost of entry for petty tyrants in law enforcement that want to track people without cause or warrant. A device with license plate reading and logging capability doesn't have to show on the department purchase logs since it takes just a cell phone or tablet to stream the video, and a common desktop computer to create the log.
An argument for use of this software was made in the article that people have no expectation of privacy, which is nonsense. I should be able to expect that no law enforcement office is going to log my travel activity barring cause or warrant. I should expect no private entity also logging who travels on a public road either, private property is another matter.
As pointed out in the article the government may have a problem with private individuals logging the coming and going of government vehicles. I can see what will happen, the government just won't put individualized plates on their vehicles any more, or not use plates at all. This activity has already been spotted on federal vehicles, expect the trend to expand to local and state government as well.
The government can rule only upon the consent of the governed. If this becomes a problem then expect people to follow the government trend and remove their license plates. But that would be illegal! Yep, sure would. If the government is not willing to put individual plates on all their vehicles then they should not expect the public to do so either.
I can also hear another defense of this practice of logging plates, "We aren't tracking you, we're tracking the vehicle." This is bullshit. I own one vehicle and I am the only driver. Barring a walk to the bank or store I drive everywhere. School, work, and most shopping is too far to walk. If they track my car they are tracking me.
This "papers please" society we all allowing the government to create must stop. As Dr. Franklin warned us we have a republic so long as we defend it, we can have our liberty so long as we don't trade it for the false promise of security. But, but TERRORISTS! Bullshit! We supposedly got a promise of safety from the government through background checks on immigrants, tapping our internet, phones, and postal mail, from gun control, and so many other intrusions in our lives. What did we get? We got a couple immigrants that bought guns because they passed these background checks, then they modified the guns illegally, carried them in public without a permit, and proceeded to shoot up a workplace Christmas party. Every level of government failed us here. The only people that had a fighting chance would be those that also broke the law and carried weapons to defend themselves.
I recommend that the reader consider the value of license plates and licenses to drive. There is a value in them for law enforcement but also a very real threat of government or criminals to abuse these methods of tracking to cause us harm. This also applies to other government documents, like Social Security numbers used for things other than Social Security benefits.
I realize I got to a dark place real fast based on what is really just a fancy OCR program. I'm just seeing a very real trend here and I'd like more people to see it too.
Exactly, electric cars will be coal powered until we (as a nation, society, species, whatever) get off our thumbs and build nuclear power.
To those that believe that wind and solar is the answer I'll just say I don't believe you. I've had the math of wind and solar power explained to me by people that know what they are talking about.
First problem is the economics don't work. Wind and solar costs more than coal and nuclear. Basing a market on the willingness of the public to spend their hard earned money on "green" energy might work on the portion of the public that can afford a Tesla or Porsche but for the other 99% of the public they are going to want electricity that is cheap, even if that means boiling the oceans away next century.
The second problem to powering the world with wind and sun is the engineering involved. Rooftop solar creates a "negative load" that the grid is just not designed to handle. Windmills are spinning masses with their own harmonics that can travel great distances through the grid, we could see a windmill explode in Oklahoma because it was resonating with one in Minnesota. Don't think that can happen? Well, people smarter than you and me tell me this can and has happened. To make this work will require a "smart" grid that will be very expensive. The math to make this "smart" grid work has not been figured out yet, and perhaps it never will.
Nuclear fission works. It is cheap, safe, reliable, and well understood. We can build it up now while we try to solve the issues I mentioned above. People will claim the radioactive waste is a problem. Well, I think that we have time to figure that out because in the mean time we are going to be burning coal. I think we can live with the radioactive waste if it means we're not burning coal to power our cars.
While I can admire any company that takes on an engineering challenge to make a product that can make them a profit the potential market for electric vehicles tend to largely be those that believe this is how we are going to combat global warming, which it will not.
Electric vehicles are coal powered vehicles. People may be able to convince me that powering an electric car from a coal fired plant would reduce the carbon emissions from the driver this is still only a very small part of the global warming problem. This is also assuming that global warming is a problem, and burning fossil fuels causes it, which is something I am not convince of as yet. I do believe that there is a problem with burning fossil fuels but it is a political one. The places that have large reserves of oil tend to also be places with a history of human rights abuses, by buying their oil we are rewarding them.
I see two solutions to this problem. First is, "Drill, baby, drill!" The USA has enough oil reserves to provide all of the liquid fuels and lubricants it needs, we only need the political will to do so and therefore no longer be a party to the funding of dictatorships. It doesn't solve the problem completely as these nations can still sell oil to other nations but at least we can honestly say we are not a party to it.
The second solution I see is nuclear fission. Electric cars as a solution to global warming is based on the theory that hydrocarbons must be dug out of the ground and that some day we will have an electric grid that will not run on coal. We can have an electric grid that does not run on coal only if we build enough nuclear reactors. Hydrocarbons can be synthesized in a way that closes the carbon loop, this also depends on nuclear fission.
I've seen people claim that some day we can power the world with wind, solar, hydro, and other "green" energy if only we invest in enough technological development to make these technologies cheap enough. We'd also have to build a whole new electric grid that is "smart" enough to handle the unreliable energy sources like wind and solar. We'd also have to develop the electric storage technologies to power the grid when we don't have enough wind, sun, and water. You go do that, develop those technologies. In the mean time, while you are off trying to make the technology to save the world I suggest the rest of us actually get to work building nuclear power plants and, you know, actually save the world.
As a bit of a side note I can see why people look back at the 1950s and 1960s in America as something of a high point in our history. Back then we were building things and doing stuff. We were building nuclear power plants then, something we have not done in forty years. We sent people to the flippin' moon! The USA cannot even get their own astronauts into low earth orbit any more, we have to ask other nations to do it for us. Something changed some time between then and now and I don't like it. I do believe that the USA is going to rediscover this thirst for more, and do so soon. This Porsche electric vehicle is perhaps a sign of that. I realize that Porsche is not an American company but they are reacting to American tastes in vehicles. They are seeing a market created by Tesla and think that they can do better. This market is in America.
Oh, and I realize that people do look at the 1950s and 1960s through rose colored lenses so don't lecture me on things like segregation, the state of medical technology, or what ever else you might come up with. I speak of the pioneering spirit then compared to now, the drive to make a better world for the future. Now we have people that think it is perfectly acceptable for their children to live in houses than they grew up in, because it's more "green" to do so. People rarely strive to be an astronaut, engineer, soldier, or even a perfectly acceptable job like being a plumber, welder, or truck driver. Now people strive to be a professional athlete, an entertainer, or something "safe" and boring l
Current nuclear power plants are very much restricted by geography. They can not function in the absence of copious amounts of water without dramatically increasing their operating costs.
That's assuming the plant operates with a steam cycle. Also, it's not like water is difficult to find, especially if you have a nuclear reactor to desalinate it for drinking water as well as filling your cooling pond. Newer designs with air cooling do not require large bodies of water for cooling, neither do they need that water as a firefighting reserve since they'd be small enough and safe enough that any fires can be put out by more traditional means.
Nuclear plants are built on rivers and lakes for a reason.
That's because old reactors were built large enough to make them economically viable given the high regulatory costs of building them in most nations. New designs are not high pressure, so they do not require the heavy piping or large containment dome. New designs are just not as large generally as a matter of economics, a new "sweet spot" is in the 50 to 250 megawatt range, not the gigawatt range of old reactors. Those reactor components can fit on a common over the road shipping truck, no need for a barge on water. It might take 300 trips to bring all the large components on site but that is trivial to building a site that can accommodate a barge.
Again, your numbers are substantially out of date, and your numbers for nuclear are flat out wrong. Nuclear has never been that cheap, due to cost overruns when building plants.
No, the costs are due to regulatory pressures. The cost of nuclear power is a political problem, not a technological one. We can solve the political problems in the time it takes for the next election, technology problems aren't so easily overcome.
Solar is on par with coal now, and far faster to deploy. I can go online and order a pallet of solar panels, with a nameplate capacity of 7370W, for $7170 and have them on my doorstep by Thursday.
And you will get that 7kW output for a few hours per day, while the coal plant will do that day and night. Nameplate capacity is "cute" since it has very little relation to actual output. I can build a nuclear or coal power plant in the arctic circle and expect it to keep me warm through the months long night, that pallet of solar panels you have would be nearly worthless.
I won't dispute that at a given nameplate capacity coal, wind, and solar, all are quite likely to be very close to each other. The problem is that during the year the coal plant will produce three times the electrical energy of the wind or solar energy sources. I recall 30% capacity to be typical of wind and solar, no doubt unfavorable conditions will reduce that output, as well as favorable conditions can improve it.
Going to the moon for helium is insane. Photovoltaic power is reasonable now, without any further benefits of scale or technological advancement, both of which are coming at a steady pace.
Okay, you tell me that once the sun goes down. That pallet of solar panels will produce about 30% of it's nameplate capacity every day. That must be made up by storage, you quoted a household unit at $3500. So, to match the same capacity of the coal plant I'd need three times the nameplate capacity in solar panels AND the storage unit to power my house through the night. That $/kw capacity triples because of the reduced capacity factor, and then gets another $/kw hit because of the battery storage. My coal plant cost $1 per kilowatt to build while your solar panel and battery system costs $4 per kilowatt. My research tells me that operating costs are also comparable, rent and maintenance costs for solar are quite large as it take a lot of area and fragile equipment to function, the coal plant will need fuel but the rent and maintain costs are much lower per nameplate capacity.
I don't have a problem so much with the people that claim man made climate change is a problem as much as I have a problem with how they intend to deal with it. I'll give a few examples.
One problematic solution is the government telling me what kind of light bulbs I can buy. I bought some CFL lights and was horribly disappointed. I put them in the bedroom fixtures only to see them fail prematurely. Upon closer inspection of the box they came in I see that they are not to be use in enclosed fixtures. All my light fixtures are enclosed. I am a tall man in a house with standard eight foot ceilings, any fixture that hangs down more than a typical ceiling fan will hit me on the head as I walk beneath them, I can't just hang chandeliers in every room to accommodate the failings of CFL lighting. Also, I thought I was going insane with my TV remote not working intermittently. That was until I figured out that CFL lights produce infrared with enough intensity that it can jam a typical TV remote. Given the climate I live in the heat produced by incandescent lights is a good thing, it reduces the load on my furnace and keeps the rooms at a more even temperature. In the summer my lighting needs are minimal as daylight is plentiful. This is even more silly given how little of the energy we use is for lighting.
Ethanol in my fuel reduces my miles per tank filing. This was not a problem before since I could easily go two weeks between filling with my old car and my old job. My new job requires me to be at work, with a greater distance to travel, regardless of the weather. That means I now drive a 4WD truck. Without the ethanol in the fuel I can drive a week without filling up, now I can't do that. That might seem trivial with the supposed reductions in carbon output but there is no evidence from these scientists that we're actually saving any carbon. The ethanol is moved by diesel powered trains, because transporting it by pipes would corrode them. The corn is harvested by diesel powered tractors, and "cooked" with coal fired refineries. I do see some potential sanity in this if we had the tractors, trucks, and trains powered by the ethanol that was cooked by the coal, since it is converting an inexpensive commodity like coal into a more valuable one like ethanol, but it cannot do so at a rate better than if we just drilled for more oil.
What would be a workable solution is to have nuclear fission power my lights, then we wouldn't care what kind of lighting we used. It would also improve the carbon footprint of all electric devices, not just lighting. I could sit in my well lit and warm house and not be driven insane from having to duck under my light fixtures or my TV remote not working. If we had nuclear power convert that corn into ethanol then we'd have a much less impact on carbon produced. Even better would be to use that nuclear power to convert trash and sewage into fuel, we have that technology. That would mean more corn available for my corn flakes and whiskey (the breakfast of champions).
I don't believe the scientists that claim burning fossil fuels is destroying the environment largely because the solutions they give means making my life less convenient, less free, more costly, and more uncomfortable. We can reduce our carbon output and still keep our conveniences, we just need to use nuclear power. Not the nuclear power that requires mining the moon. It's stuff like this that makes these people sound insane. If they want to convince me that they want to solve this supposed problem of burning fossil fuels then they need to admit that nuclear fission is a solution. It doesn't have to be the only solution, I like wind power when and where it makes sense as well as some other things these scientists come up with, but nuclear fission must be a part of the solution or I cannot bear to think what other insanity these people will come up with.
Wait a minute. "...using current technology"? If we're comparing something to mining space helium, then why are you limiting this to "current technology"?
Because I know that as of right now we have a workable solution in nuclear fission to power the world. If you want to bring up future technology like advancements in solar photovoltaic or nuclear fission then I want to bring up future advancements in fission technology too. If you want to mine the moon for helium then I can mine the ocean for uranium. We don't have a viable technology now to mine the ocean for uranium but we might in fifty years. If we are going to speculate on future advancement in technology then I want to speculate on advancements in fission. But, again, I don't have to speculate since nuclear fission already works. The only thing holding back nuclear fission as a primary energy source is politics, not technology.
Oh, speaking of politics... Won't you think that by mining the moon for energy might be a political problem? I mean if China and Russia start building rockets capable of lifting tons of materials to the moon that places like USA, UK, and India might get a bit nervous?
How can something be "more logical" and "insane" at the same time?
Because there are levels of insanity. It is insane to think we can mine the moon for energy. It's a deeper level of insanity to think we can power a first world economy on wind and solar power. Mining the moon at least allows us to build rockets, nuclear reactors, heavy industry, and so forth so that we can harvest an energy source that we can cheaply store (in the form of the mined material) and use upon demand. Collecting solar and wind relies on building an expensive global electrical grid because wind and solar is not so easily mined on demand, and storing it is also difficult and expensive.
Powering an airplane from solar power would require quite the process of synthesizing fuels. Solar power cannot reach the same temperatures as nuclear power and wind cannot provide the gobs of electricity on demand like nuclear. Synthesizing aircraft fuel from nuclear power is a solved problem, doing so from wind and solar is not. People have investigated means of doing so but they are not nearly as far along as the nuclear people are.
And how can it be more logical than renewable energy which are being used by millions of people worldwide right now?
Renewable energy makes up less than 5%. Nuclear power makes up more than 10%. Hydro provides more than 15%, which is excellent, but we cannot simply dam up more rivers since we've run out of rivers to dam. There is growth potential in nuclear because it does not rely on geography or weather to function. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and so forth, rely on favorable geography and/or climate. Even bio-fuels require land suitable for growing crops. Mining the moon for helium does not require large amounts of valuable land area on earth. It does require some insane levels of engineering though. Using nuclear fission from materials we can mine on earth, with technology that exists now, is quite logical.
If we add cost into the equation then things look even better for nuclear power. Right now nuclear power is on par with coal, combined cycle natural gas, and hydro. Wind and natural gas turbines cost nearly double those I listed before. Solar, even in favorable environments, is double or triple anything else we have. For solar to compete it's is going to take some serious improvements in technology. If you add in storage technology that does make solar look better but then it also makes nuclear look better. Those batteries don't care if they are charged up with nuclear or solar power but the utilities will. The utility that buy
My dear blindseer, gaze into your crystal ball, and learn that the math has been done. For solar, an estimate says 200,000 square miles for the whole world. Huge on the personal scale, but spread across the globe, not so much, especially given how much can be taken from empty roofs today.
For that to work there would have to be a grid that connects across vast areas so that areas in the dark (night, weather, whatever) can be powered by those in the light. Few people propose doing this because island nations cannot possibly do this, they'd have to rely on expensive underwater cables and the continued benevolence of their neighbors. What would be more feasible, but still wildly expensive, is a mix of large grids and energy storage. This would still be exceedingly expensive and not very practical for areas with little sunlight. Even mixing in energy sources like wind, hydro, geothermal and this idea is impractical, mostly due to the cost of the energy sources compared to existing sources like coal and nuclear, and due to the cost of the large infrastructure of the grid and storage.
That brings us to your next point...
True, we would have to increase production of solar panels to achieve it in a timely manner, but that would reduce some costs as well. And they have fallen to a fifth of what they were in the 1970s.
Because of these large leaps in efficiency in the past there is not much room left for improvement in the future. We can still make solar cheaper but not with the large gains we've had in the past. Much of the cost to make solar power is based on the materials. Materials like aluminum take large amounts of energy to mine and refine, meaning its cost is based for the most part on the cost of the energy. We have cheap aluminum now because we have cheap fossil fuels. No cheap fossil fuels and we'll be refining aluminum with expensive solar energy. This is a plan that may work theoretically but the cost will skyrocket in actual application.
You make no mention of the cost of storage, perhaps because you believe we can build transpacific power cables to collect solar power from the far side of the world. Again that is not practical, politically, as it would mean the Americas would rely on the good graces of China and Russia to sell them power. The storage needs required to allow any electrical grid that relies on solar to a large extent would be astronomical. There is not enough lead in the earth's crust to make all the batteries we'd need. It might be possible to dig up enough iron and nickel to make batteries but they'd have to be very large, as in the area of a large state up the height of a skyscraper.
And given how much coal and other fossil fuels cost in environmental harm, it would not be unreasonable to factor that against it.
How much harm to the environment would we cause in digging up all these minerals needed to build this vast global electrical grid? Do you even know what goes into making a solar panel? Did you know that arsenic is used in making them? There's an environmental disaster for you, solar power. We'd have to dig up vast areas of land, refine out mountain sized chunks for the aluminum, iron, lead, arsenic, mercury, and so forth. After that we'd be building solar panels on a large scale continuously, because they wear out in 20 years or so. After those panels, which contain arsenic, have worn out then how do we dispose of them? I assume that they can be recycled but what kind of poisonous chemicals does that involve?
By comparison coal would we an improvement. But then I'm not advocating for the use of coal, I propose we use nuclear fission. Not only is the environmental impact much less than anything else we have now the use of it does not require any future improvements to make it work. Solar power advocates claim we can do better in the future if only something something, but we don't have to wait for any technological advancement for nuc
Assuming global warming is a problem, and burning fossil fuels is the cause then we have much better ways to solve this problem than... - Making a better than break even He3 fusion reactor - Building moon mining equipment - Launching that equipment to the moon - Mining the helium and shipping it back to earth - Doing all of this before we bake ourselves burning coal in the mean time
We have the technology to get carbon free energy right now, with nuclear fission. Bonus to nuclear fission is that we can make that helium as a byproduct. We don't have to go to the moon, we can make it here.
Claiming we can just mine the moon for helium before we even figure out how to make the reactor work is optimism beyond sanity. I propose we invest in what we know can work, fission works. If we are going to mine the moon for anything I propose we mine it for thorium, there's much more thorium on the moon than helium, and we've already figured out how to get energy from that.
Having had the math of solar, wind, geothermal and other unreliable energy sources explained to me I'd think that mining the moon for helium is a more logical solution. Don't trust me on this, do the math yourself. Go figure out how much real estate it would take to collect enough wind, solar, or whatever with current technology. Then compute the real and actual cost of building all this infrastructure with current technology. Then compare this to things like real and actual functioning coal and nuclear power that exists now.
If you want to claim that advancement of price to energy output of things like wind and solar will make nuclear power a fool's choice then you must also consider that in that same time that technology can improve on nuclear power as well. Right now the best we can do is get 20% or so from solar power, and we've dumped a lot of money into that development. Right now we can get 1% of the energy from uranium with current technology. Right now nuclear power can operate profitably without government subsidy, and solar cannot. We have lots of room to improve nuclear power before we hit physical limits of converting that energy and it works now. Solar power is already getting close to physical limits on energy conversion, there just isn't much room to improve upon. You can claim that solar power can continue to improve at the rate it has in the past but it simply cannot, you're going to hit a thermodynamic wall before you can beat nuclear.
Mining the moon for anything is insane, we just don't have the technology. What we do have is real and actual working nuclear power plants right now. All we have to do is build more. While we are at it we can do things like develop molten salt reactors that promise to provide a much improved efficiency over current designs and also improve upon the already high safety rate that nuclear power provides. Talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima if you like but I'm not changing my mind. The deaths per energy produced with nuclear power is a vast improvement over that of wind and solar. People might not get radiation poisoning from building solar panels and windmills but people fall from roofs, get electrocuted, have machines tear them apart, and all kind of industrial accidents that don't make the news because some guy falling from a windmill here and there don't make the news outside of the local obit page. A nuclear reactor blowing its top will make the news, even if no one dies from it.
Slashdot Mirror
But everyone that wants to enjoy flying a radio controlled aircraft is now burdened with this registration scheme. This is punishing thousands, perhaps millions, of hobbyists in the hope the idiot that broke the law was also idiotic enough to register the drone correctly.
We've seen this with registration schemes before. Where the registration leads to the criminal there tends to also be other ample evidence that implicates them.
Also, do you want the registration to be the only means by which we identify the criminal? What if your drone was stolen by some prankster that got someone blinded by flying it into their face? The registration would point to you and you'd be the one on the hook for malicious wounding.
Registration sounds nice in theory, in practice it is worthless.
Right, no sale without registration. It's not like people don't use false names and addresses. Also, what of a drone that is traded, re-sold, gifted, or stolen? How is that registration supposed to be enforced?
We saw this with gun registration. Compliance is nearly non-existent. The people that do comply are not the people you have to worry about. Even when you do have people comply the records tend to be error prone, since the record will be only true at the time of the sale, assuming it was filled out correctly and honestly to begin with. People move, guns and drones will change hands, and people simply won't bother with registering again.
One problem with registration is that it aids confiscation. People that have learned from their history have a natural distrust of government. Cars are supposed to be registered but do you know how many unregistered cars are on the road? Nobody does, because they aren't registered.
Just like almost every other manner on which the federal government will claim jurisdiction because the drone was obtained by interstate commerce. You see the drone came into your possession by way of being built in another state or country, therefore the federal government can claim authority. Even if you are in a rare case where the drone was assembled locally the raw materials were obtained through interstate commerce. Perhaps the plastics were derived from locally sourced oil, the aluminum from a local mine, all refined and made into drone parts in your own state. The federal government will still claim authority because the package the drone was boxed into was printed in another state.
Yes, the federal government will claim authority over your toys just because the cardboard box it came in was made in some other state.
Nitpick, all radio amateur licenses are "no code" now. Your license isn't "tech/no-code" any more it's just a "technician" license now.
Also, while I agree with your argument generally on licensing drones I don't see how the FAA even has a chance of enforcing this. I doubt they have the manpower and I suspect that they won't for years.
Who bought whom?
The energy industry didn't buy Congress. Congress bought votes through the energy industry. The corn and ethanol industries get all kinds of money from Congress, either through direct subsidies or indirectly by mandating we buy their products. Do you think that people really care that there is ethanol in their fuel? Oh, I'm sure some do but most people just want cheap gas. When the ethanol blended fuel is 10 cents cheaper than the fuel without the ethanol, because it's exempt from some taxes, then people will buy more of it.
The wind industry lives on government subsidy. Every time a wind subsidy gets threatened my mail box overflows with fliers on how I need to call my elected representatives to make sure windmill manufacturers stay in business. If a windmill maker can only afford to hire people because the government is subsidizing it then is it really a viable business model?
There have been numerous public failures of solar power and electric car companies, all funded by the government. What do we get in return? I know, the wealthy executives of these companies cash in on the government subsidy and then turn around to give a portion to the campaign funds of the senators that voted for the subsidy. It's a money laundering scheme, our tax dollars get run through the wash and end up paying for ads telling us how great these senators are in "creating jobs". Governments don't create jobs, a well laid business plan creates jobs.
Windmills, solar panels, bio-fuels, and electric cars are nice but they don't reduce carbon output nearly as much as a nuclear fission power plant would. Windmills only create power when the wind blows, when it doesn't we're burning natural gas. Same for solar panels and daytime, it's a proxy for the natural gas industry. Making ethanol requires gobs of fertilizer, and fuel to "cook" the corn, not to mention all the diesel fuel burned by the trucks, tractors, and trains to get the corn to the distillery. Where does that come from? Natural gas, coal, and oil. And electric cars? No, not electric, coal powered cars.
All this "green washing" so that senators can buy votes from environmentally conscious (and technologically illiterate) voters and wealthy investors trying to cash in on government subsidies.
The energy industry didn't buy Congress. Congress bought votes from fools that think we can power a first world economy on wind and sun. We had a wind and sun powered economy before. It was called the "age of sail" when ships took weeks to cross the ocean. People traveled by buggy, propelled by "bio-fuel" in the form of grass fed beasts of burden.
We have a window of opportunity here. We harnessed coal and oil which gave us the technology to harness an even more potent energy source. One that is limitless. If we don't get nuclear fission driving our economy before the coal and oil runs out then we'll have our "green" economy. We'll also be crossing the sea in wooden ships with sails.
Destroyed? Because forced handouts to failed states has anything to do with reducing emissions? No, this is rebuffing to rent-seeking under guise of international climate change treaty. Western countries could agree to pay 100% of GDP and the world would be as f*(&ed on climate change.
Emission reductions are key critical component, not cash handouts.
Who modded this down? Can't handle the truth, huh?
Wealthy nations that are emitting the carbon paying the nations affected by it does not solve the problem. What will solve the problem is putting that money towards efforts to actually reduce the carbon output.
I say we put that money towards building nuclear fission power plants. Oh, and don't build them like Chernobyl. Build them with liquid fuel, passive safety systems, high efficiency turbines, air cooling (so we're not using freshwater that could be better used for drinking or irrigation), and breeding of fuels.
Not that we'd build another Chernobyl anyway, that's just bad business. But it seems I must say this or some knucklehead will reply with how every nuclear power plant ever built has blown up and irradiated millions. Oh, wait, they haven't. What we did have is hundreds of decades old nuclear reactors operate with perfect safety records but a handful failed spectacularly so now there are seemingly millions of people that will piss themselves if anyone mentions "nukular" within earshot. It's not like hydro dams never failed. People never fall from windmills. Solar panels never electrocute or start fires. Nope, all that stuff is safer than nuclear fission... except when it isn't.
Using fossil fuels is just plain bad for everyone.
Except for those using the fossil fuels.
You want to solve this problem? You want people to stop burning fossil fuels? There is a simple solution to this, give them a better option.
By "better" I don't mean "this won't raise the sea levels in 100 years" but "this is cheaper than what you use now". People don't burn fossil fuels because they are dicks to the environment, they burn fossil fuels because it gives them food, shelter, transportation, warmth, information, and entertainment. You seem confused on why people continue to choose fossil fuels over alternatives.
Do you know what physicians call alternative medicine that is effective? They call it "medicine". Why are wind and solar considered "alternative energy"? Because it's not as effective as coal. If it was as cheap, reliable, and plentiful as coal then wind and solar would no longer be "alternatives" would they? We do have an alternative to burning coal that is cheap, reliable, and carbon free. Well, it's as "carbon free" as wind, solar, or hydro. It's called nuclear fission.
We figured out how to make nuclear fission work for us as reliably as coal decades ago. In the mean time we figured out how to make it safer and cheaper than any other energy source we have. The only thing holding it back is politics.
So long as burning fossil fuels is more beneficial than anything else we will continue to burn them. If you don't like it then you'll just have to deal with the "lots of fucking death" it causes. Nothing speaks louder than money. We can live a carbon free life without having to wear sweaters indoors and putting solar panels on the roof like President Carter wanted us to. Telling people they have to live in a cold house in the winter and sweat through the summer is going to lose every time.
Nuclear fission is our future, or it's ugly sweater day all winter long.
Waiting for wind and solar to be as cheap and reliable as nuclear power is now is just causing more of the "lots of fucking death" that you seemingly so vehemently want to avoid. It's nuclear fission or "lots of fucking death", thinking we have another option is insanity.
What is a "green" environmentalist on the outside but a "red" communist on the inside?
This climate change summit is just an excuse for poor nations to demand more and more money from wealthier nations. They will claim this is to build "green" energy sources and provide accommodations for those displaced by the effects of climate change but in reality it will just line the pockets of the dictators that run these backward hell holes.
This summit is a bunch of watermelons getting together to make themselves look like they are going to save the world from the knuckle dragging troglodytes that actually built the buildings, farmed the food, and drilled the oil that made this summit possible. The solution to this problem isn't taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as if the wealthy nations don't already send billions of dollars to poorer nations every year. The solution is more freedom.
I believe a large part of the poverty in these poor nations is dictators stealing from the populace. People that don't have the freedom to benefit from their labors tend not to work very hard. People that are not free to defend their own property and lives from thugs and the government (but I repeat myself) cannot build up the wealth needed to create a functioning economy.
(In case anyone is confused about what I mean by defending life and property I mean that people are permitted to arm themselves with effective tools of self defense, and carry them freely no matter where they go. Given the technology we have today that means firearms, but just being able to carry a sword or club may be sufficient.)
Most of all people need to be free to take advantage of the most abundant energy resource we have on this earth. That means nuclear power. As it is right now any nation that wishes to develop nuclear energy must be granted permission to do so by those that have already developed it. This "non-proliferation treaty" is supposedly about preventing the development of nuclear weapons but it has effectively only prevented the development of peaceful nuclear power. Those nations that have the desire to obliterate their neighbors under a radioactive mushroom cloud will not be deterred by such a treaty. Those that wish to provide their children with food, warmth, shelter, and education are being held back. These nations must choose between a certain death by not burning oil and coal, or the possibility of living by doing so.
The only way to avoid this dilemma is nuclear power.
Wind and solar power is nice for wealthy nations to experiment with since they already have benefited from centuries of burning coal and decades of nuclear power. Current wind and solar technologies are too expensive for these poor nations to have that luxury. They will either have to develop nuclear power, burn coal, or continue living a second class existence.
I get so frustrated with these watermelons. They claim to be so righteous and helpful but in reality all they are doing is spending other people's money on things that do nothing to address the real issues that brought them to the summit. I have little doubt that this is by design. If they actually solved the problem then that means these "elites" will no longer remain in power. That is because the people they claim to be helping will be free enough to not have to go to these "elites" to ask for more of their "help" in the future.
Right, like that would never be abused.
We'll just define "too stupid to vote" as "someone that disagrees with me" and the problem is solved. Right?
I wish I had points to mod you up right now.
I find it odd how Slashdot, a forum of people that supposedly are more knowledgeable of science and technology than the average bear, are so pro-solar and yet so anti-nuke. The anti-nuke people will point to Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island as examples on why we can't have nuclear power toady. This ignores advancements in technology we made since those accidents, changes in policy since then, and generally all the lessons we've learned about how NOT to do nuclear power.
I am to believe that we've learned nothing from these incidents and therefore no new nuclear power plant can ever be built. On the other hand we have a history of terribly inefficient solar panels but I am to expect that this efficiency will inevitably improve in time. No doubt that we've made considerable gains in solar panel efficiency but we are quickly approaching, or perhaps already met, the physical limits of photovoltaic efficiency. We went from 5% efficiency to 20% efficiency in 40 years, but that does not mean we can go from 20% to 35% in another 40 years. We will be lucky to get 25% without some very esoteric, and therefore expensive, materials. It may be possible to get better than 50% efficiency at some point from solar power but that ignores some very real and unavoidable flaws with solar power. Solar power requires land, or at least surface area. This area cannot then be used for growing crops, and people are not likely to want to live under them since people like to see the sky. Then there is night time, solar power is unavailable at night. Solar power is also unavailable or diminished with clouds. Nuclear power doesn't care about the time of day or the weather.
Anyone that thinks we can build orbital solar collectors to avoid the land area and night time issues needs to talk to someone that did the engineering and cost estimates on such a system. I'd suggest looking for articles and lectures from Kirk Sorensen on this, he's a former NASA engineer and current nuclear engineer. He's a nuclear engineer precisely because he saw how flawed solar power is for powering anything on earth or in space.
I believe we can live without solar power. Living without nuclear power is going to be very dangerous and dismal.
Really? Opiates taken over a long time will make any human an addict? I must not be human then.
I know a sample size of one does not negate a theory all its own. I suggest you do some more research on your claims since I know them to not be true.
The dangers on opiates are wildly overblown. Humans have been using opiates for pain for hundreds or thousands of years. We know it works and we know how it works. We know how much is safe and how much is too much. Tylenol is far more dangerous than opiates, we have the body counts to prove it. I believe codeine should be over the counter and Tylenol should require a prescription based on recent evidence of over dose deaths alone.
Just like how moonshine is a result of alcohol prohibition we now have heroin because of opiate prohibitions. People in the 1920s didn't want to drink the industrial alcohol that is moonshine, they wanted a glass of wine or a can of beer. Lacking access to that they'd mix m industrial alcohol with fruit juice. There are real people with real pain that don't want to take heroin, but lacking access to anything else to relieve their pain they will take it. Many of these people are desperate for proper medical care but because of bad policy people don't get it. This is a problem the government created, and people are dying because of it.
People tell me that there is no medical use for heroin but that is false. Heroin is just the legal name for dimorphine that was not obtained from a physician. In the USA no physician can legally proscribe dimorphine, but they can prescribe the much more potent hydromorphone. This has nothing to do with any real medical practice or theory, only on government policy based on false assumptions.
What many will agree to be the end of prohibitions on alcohol was when the government had added a new denaturing agent to industrial alcohol. Dozens of people died from this. We are seeing this again with the government adding Tylenol to opiates to keep people from taking too much. You see too much Tylenol will kill you. Too much of an opiate will usually knock you unconscious before it kills. Tylenol will destroy your liver if you take too much. I hear that death from liver damage is prolonged and painful as your body poisons itself over days.
Government policy is such that they would rather you die a long and painful death than get high. We see this happen nearly daily in the USA but very few people seem outraged over this like I am. Perhaps this is by intent. People that live long happy lives with pain managed by opiates are a drain on government provided health care. Dead people only have a one time cost of burial.
Anyone who claims that nuclear is the only option hasn't seriously looked at the alternatives.
I did not claim that nuclear is the only option. I said that any carbon neutral grid that does not include nuclear is not a serious solution.
Any energy solution that includes pumped hydro and battery storage makes wind and solar look worse, not better.
I was able to take a tour of a pumped hydro station, the primary use of it was to store up energy from the nuclear power plant so that it could match the load from the grid. If you have access to nuclear power, which can produce cheap power at a better than 80% capacity factor, and a storage system like a pumped hydro dam, then why even bother with expensive wind and solar that can only provide power at a capacity factor of 30%?
You might claim that technological advancement will bring down the cost of wind and solar. If you want to be able to make that claim then I should be able to make the same claim about nuclear fission. We didn't reach the pinnacle of nuclear fission technology in 1970. We have computers now that allow us to model, design, and operate a nuclear power plant much cheaper than before. This is ignoring real and actual improvements in the theories of fission reactor design, which can also reduce price.
Wind and solar share a problem with current nuclear fission in that the output cannot match the load. If you say that we can build storage systems to even this out then nuclear power can gain the capability to load follow just like wind and solar would. The primary reason that current nuclear reactors cannot load follow is the same reason that coal cannot load follow, they rely on steam turbines to drive the generators. If the government would allow nuclear power to be air cooled, instead of water cooled, then a modern fission reactor can load follow. If nuclear power can load follow then no storage system is necessary. Government policy doesn't bar air cooled reactors exactly, what it does do is place restrictions on reactor design such that anything other than a water cooled reactor would not get approval.
As it is right now, with current technology, we can build nuclear power plants and pumped hydro and we can have a grid that is capable of producing 24/7 electrical power with no increase in its price for the consumer. Wind and solar requires either an increase in price, or some technology that does not yet exist. Any development in utility scale electrical storage benefits nuclear just as much as it does wind and solar.
It appears you have missed the point. Point is that advertisers and retailers find this information very valuable. They are willing to invest the effort into gaining large amounts of demographic data on potential buyers. This information on you and me allow them to gather a creepily accurate picture on how we live our lives. They do this so that they can accost us with directed advertising.
What you point out is the means that someone can abuse this data even more. The creepy IT guy can become a very effective stalker with access to data like this. As you say this level of intrusion into the lives of the store customer can mean people are able to gather dirt on others with a greater ease that they could not before.
It's not just this software that enables this creepy level of intrusion into our lives, it's the government requiring license plates. Someone willing to abuse this information does not need access to DMV data to make it work for them. By "work" I mean provide information that an advertiser might purchase, a store might use internally for targeted advertising, or (as you point out) the creepy IT guy to stalk the pretty lady that like to stop by for office paper. This software works because the government requires personally identifiable information in plain sight on our vehicles.
I propose that a primary means to combat this intrusion into our lives by both government and private entities is to do away with the requirement to have a license plate on our vehicles.
Yes, we have made great leaps in the energy density of batteries but even with that it still cannot reach just 1 MJ/kg, where common hydrocarbons can exceed 50 MJ/kg. That means that the electric vehicle will always be heavier than the ICE.
Any gains in saving weight by using carbon fiber, aluminum, or other nonferrous materials will also create an advantage for ICE powered cars. In fact the gain will be even greater for the ICE because the power plant also gains from these advanced materials. Batteries will still be stuck with an energy density that is an order of magnitude heavier.
Let me know when batteries get even 10 MJ/kg, like ammonia, compressed air, or liquid nitrogen. Experimental batteries have reached these levels but cannot be placed in a vehicle as they are too fragile. ICE technology works now.
As for the "pie in the sky" technologies I mentioned, the synthesis of hydrocarbons was a technology used by the Nazis in WWII. This is not a new technology. Nuclear fission is also a technology that we've been using for decades. It's trivial to marry the two so that we can get mass production of hydrocarbons and close the carbon loop. What the US Navy is researching now is the means to make this technology fit on a ship at sea, and do so at a cost that is viable. We don't use it because, unlike Germany during WWII, we have access to hydrocarbons from petroleum oils.
No doubt the cost of synthesizing hydrocarbons will need to be investigated. What you seem to ignore in your evaluation of battery technology is the cost. High density batteries have been built but only with expensive materials. We can build ICE powered cars with common metals. The plants that produce the hydrocarbons might need expensive materials to produce the fuel but that is a one time cost that can be amortized over all the fuel it produces, it won't be in the car.
Your plan for electric vehicles to replace fossil fuels requires replacing existing vehicles on the road (with a half life around a decade), creating a new infrastructure of charging stations (which only Tesla seems interested in creating), and developing new technologies at an unrealistic rate. My plan allows for infrastructure to remain largely intact, existing vehicles will gain the closing of the carbon loop with no modifications, and we do not need to develop any new technologies.
Electric cars are nice but they will remain in the realm of golf carts, fork lifts, and rich boy toys unless we can get a huge leap in technology. A leap that I do not believe to be possible. Synthesis of hydrocarbons is a technology that we've shown to work, all that remains is the engineering to scale it up to commercial levels.
Because the writing's on the wall. Electric cars are the future, and that future is coming quick.
I don't share your optimism. There are very real limits on how much energy density that can be obtained in a battery, and still make it robust enough to handle being bumped around in a vehicle. There are also very real limits on charging and discharging rates before a battery will be damaged.
We might see an end to fossil fuels but that does not mean the end of the ICE powered vehicle. A lot of research has gone into the synthesis of hydrocarbons lately. The US Navy is big on funding this. They have aircraft carriers with nuclear power plants carrying aircraft that consume a lot of jet fuel. They know that if they can drive a hydrocarbon synthesis process from that nuclear reactor that they can save a lot of money and lives. Transferring this technology to making gasoline from land based nuclear power is trivial.
Hydrocarbons can store energy in a substance that is liquid at atmospheric pressure, at any temperature we'd see from an arctic winter to an Arizona summer. This liquid can be stored in inexpensive metal or plastic tanks for long periods with little risk of it leaking or evaporating away at a rate anyone would consider troublesome. We can pump it through pipes at great distances and/or transport it by ship. It provides lubrication to mechanical components by its very nature. It's dangers are well know, such as its flammability, and we've figured out how to address them. Few energy storage systems have so many pros and few cons.
About the only fuel I can think of that can compete with hydrocarbons is ammonia. Ammonia is not carcinogenic like hydrocarbons, small amounts in the air, drinking water, or other ways it might enter the body is not harmful. Large amounts are a suffocation hazard but that can also be addressed with precautions. A spill is not an environmental disaster, it in fact might be helpful to plant life. Ammonia doesn't store as nicely as liquid hydrocarbons but a mildly pressurized tank can store ammonia with an energy density that is comparable to hydrocarbons. We know how to make ammonia, we have an entire industry dedicated to it. Currently the hydrogen for its synthesis primarily comes from natural gas but it doesn't have to, if we get a high temperature nuclear fission reactor the hydrogen is practically a byproduct of it's operation for desalinating water and/or making electricity.
Electric cars for the common commuter might make a good portion of the vehicles on the road but the ICE will still rule for anything that must travel long distances. For this reason alone we will see filling stations remain. A truck stop can fill a long haul truck just as well as a passenger car. Electric vehicles cannot piggyback on this infrastructure so easily.
Fossil fuels may be "old and dirty" but hydrocarbons can work where electricity cannot. Electric planes will remain in the realm of toys and curiosities. Ships at sea will continue to burn fuel oil, with the possible exception of seeing nuclear power replace it in more than just military submarines and aircraft carriers. Even rockets to orbit burn hydrocarbons. Those are not passenger cars but they are common forms of transportation. Transportation will be powered by hydrocarbons for a very long time. You might be able to convince me that electric cars will become common but the movement of people will continue to be ruled by hydrocarbons for a very long time, perhaps long after we've decided that fossil fuels are too "old and dirty" to bother with.
You are so wrong.
Imagine I own a store and I want to know as much about my customers as possible. I can place this license plate reader on the entrances and exits to my parking lot. With each purchase I have access to what was purchased when. With a little bit of statistical analysis I can place plates to buyers by comparing when I saw a car come and go to the time stamp on purchases.
For the rare visitor I may only know the state and county of the customer from the automated data. If the software does not already include this feature it would be trivial to add a function to keep a photo of the car along with the time, date, and other data. I now can gather info on the make, model, and year of the vehicle, as well as it's general condition. This can give indications of income and potentially other demographics. Is it a dirty truck? Possibly a farmer, rancher, construction type of employment. Is it an old Cadillac in impeccable condition? Car collector type. Beat up old Cadillac? Possibly not so well off, but was before.
Cross reference this with credit card data and I have the name of the customer, as well as any other information the credit card company is willing to share. Then flip this around, perhaps the credit card company is willing to buy this information from me. The credit card company now has an incentive to encourage other stores to place cameras on their parking lots.
Let's take this a bit further and suppose I give out "anonymous" surveys to customers. The customer doesn't have to put their name on the survey, or their license plate number, just knowing when they filled it out can give a high correlation to the customer. On the survey I could also ask them what car maker they prefer, as a large number of people will put on there what they currently drive. Perhaps I ask what brand of tires they buy, again I can compare this to the photo to verify identity.
If they buy with cash there are still ways to match the customer to the vehicle and purchase. I can ask if they are willing to apply for a store credit card, or "discount club". With facial recognition software piled on top this can get even more interesting. I can match people that drive the same car. Driving the same vehicle would imply family, friends, roommates, or other close relationship.
All this data does not need to be gathered before it is valuable. I can gather this data for some anonymous person for a very long time, once I get a name then I now have a long history to mine. Again, I don't have to gather all this data myself, I can buy pieces of the data from others, perhaps buying it with the data that I gathered.
Oh, another thing just came to me, custom license plates. There are license plates for things like volunteer firefighters, veterans, radio amateurs, and on and on. This adds further value to the data.
Someone that wants to track even more will log the small talk at the register. Any big plans tonight? Nope, I'm working again tonight. Type a note into the register, night shift worker.
All kinds of data can be obtained. It's just a matter of how much effort one is willing to invest. With software that can automate the logging of license plates the amount of effort required just got a lot smaller.
We don't need further tracking of our lives by the government or by the people trying to sell us stuff. I noticed advertising in my web browser based off of things I searched for on other sites. This is no doubt from tracking of my IP address or shared cookies. With this software am I going to get advertising based off of what shops I drove past that day?
No doubt this will lower the cost of entry for petty tyrants in law enforcement that want to track people without cause or warrant. A device with license plate reading and logging capability doesn't have to show on the department purchase logs since it takes just a cell phone or tablet to stream the video, and a common desktop computer to create the log.
An argument for use of this software was made in the article that people have no expectation of privacy, which is nonsense. I should be able to expect that no law enforcement office is going to log my travel activity barring cause or warrant. I should expect no private entity also logging who travels on a public road either, private property is another matter.
As pointed out in the article the government may have a problem with private individuals logging the coming and going of government vehicles. I can see what will happen, the government just won't put individualized plates on their vehicles any more, or not use plates at all. This activity has already been spotted on federal vehicles, expect the trend to expand to local and state government as well.
The government can rule only upon the consent of the governed. If this becomes a problem then expect people to follow the government trend and remove their license plates. But that would be illegal! Yep, sure would. If the government is not willing to put individual plates on all their vehicles then they should not expect the public to do so either.
I can also hear another defense of this practice of logging plates, "We aren't tracking you, we're tracking the vehicle." This is bullshit. I own one vehicle and I am the only driver. Barring a walk to the bank or store I drive everywhere. School, work, and most shopping is too far to walk. If they track my car they are tracking me.
This "papers please" society we all allowing the government to create must stop. As Dr. Franklin warned us we have a republic so long as we defend it, we can have our liberty so long as we don't trade it for the false promise of security. But, but TERRORISTS! Bullshit! We supposedly got a promise of safety from the government through background checks on immigrants, tapping our internet, phones, and postal mail, from gun control, and so many other intrusions in our lives. What did we get? We got a couple immigrants that bought guns because they passed these background checks, then they modified the guns illegally, carried them in public without a permit, and proceeded to shoot up a workplace Christmas party. Every level of government failed us here. The only people that had a fighting chance would be those that also broke the law and carried weapons to defend themselves.
I recommend that the reader consider the value of license plates and licenses to drive. There is a value in them for law enforcement but also a very real threat of government or criminals to abuse these methods of tracking to cause us harm. This also applies to other government documents, like Social Security numbers used for things other than Social Security benefits.
I realize I got to a dark place real fast based on what is really just a fancy OCR program. I'm just seeing a very real trend here and I'd like more people to see it too.
Exactly, electric cars will be coal powered until we (as a nation, society, species, whatever) get off our thumbs and build nuclear power.
To those that believe that wind and solar is the answer I'll just say I don't believe you. I've had the math of wind and solar power explained to me by people that know what they are talking about.
First problem is the economics don't work. Wind and solar costs more than coal and nuclear. Basing a market on the willingness of the public to spend their hard earned money on "green" energy might work on the portion of the public that can afford a Tesla or Porsche but for the other 99% of the public they are going to want electricity that is cheap, even if that means boiling the oceans away next century.
The second problem to powering the world with wind and sun is the engineering involved. Rooftop solar creates a "negative load" that the grid is just not designed to handle. Windmills are spinning masses with their own harmonics that can travel great distances through the grid, we could see a windmill explode in Oklahoma because it was resonating with one in Minnesota. Don't think that can happen? Well, people smarter than you and me tell me this can and has happened. To make this work will require a "smart" grid that will be very expensive. The math to make this "smart" grid work has not been figured out yet, and perhaps it never will.
Nuclear fission works. It is cheap, safe, reliable, and well understood. We can build it up now while we try to solve the issues I mentioned above. People will claim the radioactive waste is a problem. Well, I think that we have time to figure that out because in the mean time we are going to be burning coal. I think we can live with the radioactive waste if it means we're not burning coal to power our cars.
While I can admire any company that takes on an engineering challenge to make a product that can make them a profit the potential market for electric vehicles tend to largely be those that believe this is how we are going to combat global warming, which it will not.
Electric vehicles are coal powered vehicles. People may be able to convince me that powering an electric car from a coal fired plant would reduce the carbon emissions from the driver this is still only a very small part of the global warming problem. This is also assuming that global warming is a problem, and burning fossil fuels causes it, which is something I am not convince of as yet. I do believe that there is a problem with burning fossil fuels but it is a political one. The places that have large reserves of oil tend to also be places with a history of human rights abuses, by buying their oil we are rewarding them.
I see two solutions to this problem. First is, "Drill, baby, drill!" The USA has enough oil reserves to provide all of the liquid fuels and lubricants it needs, we only need the political will to do so and therefore no longer be a party to the funding of dictatorships. It doesn't solve the problem completely as these nations can still sell oil to other nations but at least we can honestly say we are not a party to it.
The second solution I see is nuclear fission. Electric cars as a solution to global warming is based on the theory that hydrocarbons must be dug out of the ground and that some day we will have an electric grid that will not run on coal. We can have an electric grid that does not run on coal only if we build enough nuclear reactors. Hydrocarbons can be synthesized in a way that closes the carbon loop, this also depends on nuclear fission.
I've seen people claim that some day we can power the world with wind, solar, hydro, and other "green" energy if only we invest in enough technological development to make these technologies cheap enough. We'd also have to build a whole new electric grid that is "smart" enough to handle the unreliable energy sources like wind and solar. We'd also have to develop the electric storage technologies to power the grid when we don't have enough wind, sun, and water. You go do that, develop those technologies. In the mean time, while you are off trying to make the technology to save the world I suggest the rest of us actually get to work building nuclear power plants and, you know, actually save the world.
As a bit of a side note I can see why people look back at the 1950s and 1960s in America as something of a high point in our history. Back then we were building things and doing stuff. We were building nuclear power plants then, something we have not done in forty years. We sent people to the flippin' moon! The USA cannot even get their own astronauts into low earth orbit any more, we have to ask other nations to do it for us. Something changed some time between then and now and I don't like it. I do believe that the USA is going to rediscover this thirst for more, and do so soon. This Porsche electric vehicle is perhaps a sign of that. I realize that Porsche is not an American company but they are reacting to American tastes in vehicles. They are seeing a market created by Tesla and think that they can do better. This market is in America.
Oh, and I realize that people do look at the 1950s and 1960s through rose colored lenses so don't lecture me on things like segregation, the state of medical technology, or what ever else you might come up with. I speak of the pioneering spirit then compared to now, the drive to make a better world for the future. Now we have people that think it is perfectly acceptable for their children to live in houses than they grew up in, because it's more "green" to do so. People rarely strive to be an astronaut, engineer, soldier, or even a perfectly acceptable job like being a plumber, welder, or truck driver. Now people strive to be a professional athlete, an entertainer, or something "safe" and boring l
Current nuclear power plants are very much restricted by geography. They can not function in the absence of copious amounts of water without dramatically increasing their operating costs.
That's assuming the plant operates with a steam cycle. Also, it's not like water is difficult to find, especially if you have a nuclear reactor to desalinate it for drinking water as well as filling your cooling pond. Newer designs with air cooling do not require large bodies of water for cooling, neither do they need that water as a firefighting reserve since they'd be small enough and safe enough that any fires can be put out by more traditional means.
Nuclear plants are built on rivers and lakes for a reason.
That's because old reactors were built large enough to make them economically viable given the high regulatory costs of building them in most nations. New designs are not high pressure, so they do not require the heavy piping or large containment dome. New designs are just not as large generally as a matter of economics, a new "sweet spot" is in the 50 to 250 megawatt range, not the gigawatt range of old reactors. Those reactor components can fit on a common over the road shipping truck, no need for a barge on water. It might take 300 trips to bring all the large components on site but that is trivial to building a site that can accommodate a barge.
Again, your numbers are substantially out of date, and your numbers for nuclear are flat out wrong. Nuclear has never been that cheap, due to cost overruns when building plants.
No, the costs are due to regulatory pressures. The cost of nuclear power is a political problem, not a technological one. We can solve the political problems in the time it takes for the next election, technology problems aren't so easily overcome.
Solar is on par with coal now, and far faster to deploy. I can go online and order a pallet of solar panels, with a nameplate capacity of 7370W, for $7170 and have them on my doorstep by Thursday.
And you will get that 7kW output for a few hours per day, while the coal plant will do that day and night. Nameplate capacity is "cute" since it has very little relation to actual output. I can build a nuclear or coal power plant in the arctic circle and expect it to keep me warm through the months long night, that pallet of solar panels you have would be nearly worthless.
I won't dispute that at a given nameplate capacity coal, wind, and solar, all are quite likely to be very close to each other. The problem is that during the year the coal plant will produce three times the electrical energy of the wind or solar energy sources. I recall 30% capacity to be typical of wind and solar, no doubt unfavorable conditions will reduce that output, as well as favorable conditions can improve it.
Going to the moon for helium is insane. Photovoltaic power is reasonable now, without any further benefits of scale or technological advancement, both of which are coming at a steady pace.
Okay, you tell me that once the sun goes down. That pallet of solar panels will produce about 30% of it's nameplate capacity every day. That must be made up by storage, you quoted a household unit at $3500. So, to match the same capacity of the coal plant I'd need three times the nameplate capacity in solar panels AND the storage unit to power my house through the night. That $/kw capacity triples because of the reduced capacity factor, and then gets another $/kw hit because of the battery storage. My coal plant cost $1 per kilowatt to build while your solar panel and battery system costs $4 per kilowatt. My research tells me that operating costs are also comparable, rent and maintenance costs for solar are quite large as it take a lot of area and fragile equipment to function, the coal plant will need fuel but the rent and maintain costs are much lower per nameplate capacity.
Wind
I don't have a problem so much with the people that claim man made climate change is a problem as much as I have a problem with how they intend to deal with it. I'll give a few examples.
One problematic solution is the government telling me what kind of light bulbs I can buy. I bought some CFL lights and was horribly disappointed. I put them in the bedroom fixtures only to see them fail prematurely. Upon closer inspection of the box they came in I see that they are not to be use in enclosed fixtures. All my light fixtures are enclosed. I am a tall man in a house with standard eight foot ceilings, any fixture that hangs down more than a typical ceiling fan will hit me on the head as I walk beneath them, I can't just hang chandeliers in every room to accommodate the failings of CFL lighting. Also, I thought I was going insane with my TV remote not working intermittently. That was until I figured out that CFL lights produce infrared with enough intensity that it can jam a typical TV remote. Given the climate I live in the heat produced by incandescent lights is a good thing, it reduces the load on my furnace and keeps the rooms at a more even temperature. In the summer my lighting needs are minimal as daylight is plentiful. This is even more silly given how little of the energy we use is for lighting.
Ethanol in my fuel reduces my miles per tank filing. This was not a problem before since I could easily go two weeks between filling with my old car and my old job. My new job requires me to be at work, with a greater distance to travel, regardless of the weather. That means I now drive a 4WD truck. Without the ethanol in the fuel I can drive a week without filling up, now I can't do that. That might seem trivial with the supposed reductions in carbon output but there is no evidence from these scientists that we're actually saving any carbon. The ethanol is moved by diesel powered trains, because transporting it by pipes would corrode them. The corn is harvested by diesel powered tractors, and "cooked" with coal fired refineries. I do see some potential sanity in this if we had the tractors, trucks, and trains powered by the ethanol that was cooked by the coal, since it is converting an inexpensive commodity like coal into a more valuable one like ethanol, but it cannot do so at a rate better than if we just drilled for more oil.
What would be a workable solution is to have nuclear fission power my lights, then we wouldn't care what kind of lighting we used. It would also improve the carbon footprint of all electric devices, not just lighting. I could sit in my well lit and warm house and not be driven insane from having to duck under my light fixtures or my TV remote not working. If we had nuclear power convert that corn into ethanol then we'd have a much less impact on carbon produced. Even better would be to use that nuclear power to convert trash and sewage into fuel, we have that technology. That would mean more corn available for my corn flakes and whiskey (the breakfast of champions).
I don't believe the scientists that claim burning fossil fuels is destroying the environment largely because the solutions they give means making my life less convenient, less free, more costly, and more uncomfortable. We can reduce our carbon output and still keep our conveniences, we just need to use nuclear power. Not the nuclear power that requires mining the moon. It's stuff like this that makes these people sound insane. If they want to convince me that they want to solve this supposed problem of burning fossil fuels then they need to admit that nuclear fission is a solution. It doesn't have to be the only solution, I like wind power when and where it makes sense as well as some other things these scientists come up with, but nuclear fission must be a part of the solution or I cannot bear to think what other insanity these people will come up with.
Wait a minute. "...using current technology"? If we're comparing something to mining space helium, then why are you limiting this to "current technology"?
Because I know that as of right now we have a workable solution in nuclear fission to power the world. If you want to bring up future technology like advancements in solar photovoltaic or nuclear fission then I want to bring up future advancements in fission technology too. If you want to mine the moon for helium then I can mine the ocean for uranium. We don't have a viable technology now to mine the ocean for uranium but we might in fifty years. If we are going to speculate on future advancement in technology then I want to speculate on advancements in fission. But, again, I don't have to speculate since nuclear fission already works. The only thing holding back nuclear fission as a primary energy source is politics, not technology.
Oh, speaking of politics... Won't you think that by mining the moon for energy might be a political problem? I mean if China and Russia start building rockets capable of lifting tons of materials to the moon that places like USA, UK, and India might get a bit nervous?
How can something be "more logical" and "insane" at the same time?
Because there are levels of insanity. It is insane to think we can mine the moon for energy. It's a deeper level of insanity to think we can power a first world economy on wind and solar power. Mining the moon at least allows us to build rockets, nuclear reactors, heavy industry, and so forth so that we can harvest an energy source that we can cheaply store (in the form of the mined material) and use upon demand. Collecting solar and wind relies on building an expensive global electrical grid because wind and solar is not so easily mined on demand, and storing it is also difficult and expensive.
Powering an airplane from solar power would require quite the process of synthesizing fuels. Solar power cannot reach the same temperatures as nuclear power and wind cannot provide the gobs of electricity on demand like nuclear. Synthesizing aircraft fuel from nuclear power is a solved problem, doing so from wind and solar is not. People have investigated means of doing so but they are not nearly as far along as the nuclear people are.
And how can it be more logical than renewable energy which are being used by millions of people worldwide right now?
How much of the world's electricity is from unreliable sources? Let's look... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Renewable energy makes up less than 5%. Nuclear power makes up more than 10%. Hydro provides more than 15%, which is excellent, but we cannot simply dam up more rivers since we've run out of rivers to dam. There is growth potential in nuclear because it does not rely on geography or weather to function. Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and so forth, rely on favorable geography and/or climate. Even bio-fuels require land suitable for growing crops. Mining the moon for helium does not require large amounts of valuable land area on earth. It does require some insane levels of engineering though. Using nuclear fission from materials we can mine on earth, with technology that exists now, is quite logical.
If we add cost into the equation then things look even better for nuclear power. Right now nuclear power is on par with coal, combined cycle natural gas, and hydro. Wind and natural gas turbines cost nearly double those I listed before. Solar, even in favorable environments, is double or triple anything else we have. For solar to compete it's is going to take some serious improvements in technology. If you add in storage technology that does make solar look better but then it also makes nuclear look better. Those batteries don't care if they are charged up with nuclear or solar power but the utilities will. The utility that buy
My dear blindseer, gaze into your crystal ball, and learn that the math has been done. For solar, an estimate says 200,000 square miles for the whole world. Huge on the personal scale, but spread across the globe, not so much, especially given how much can be taken from empty roofs today.
For that to work there would have to be a grid that connects across vast areas so that areas in the dark (night, weather, whatever) can be powered by those in the light. Few people propose doing this because island nations cannot possibly do this, they'd have to rely on expensive underwater cables and the continued benevolence of their neighbors. What would be more feasible, but still wildly expensive, is a mix of large grids and energy storage. This would still be exceedingly expensive and not very practical for areas with little sunlight. Even mixing in energy sources like wind, hydro, geothermal and this idea is impractical, mostly due to the cost of the energy sources compared to existing sources like coal and nuclear, and due to the cost of the large infrastructure of the grid and storage.
That brings us to your next point...
True, we would have to increase production of solar panels to achieve it in a timely manner, but that would reduce some costs as well. And they have fallen to a fifth of what they were in the 1970s.
Because of these large leaps in efficiency in the past there is not much room left for improvement in the future. We can still make solar cheaper but not with the large gains we've had in the past. Much of the cost to make solar power is based on the materials. Materials like aluminum take large amounts of energy to mine and refine, meaning its cost is based for the most part on the cost of the energy. We have cheap aluminum now because we have cheap fossil fuels. No cheap fossil fuels and we'll be refining aluminum with expensive solar energy. This is a plan that may work theoretically but the cost will skyrocket in actual application.
You make no mention of the cost of storage, perhaps because you believe we can build transpacific power cables to collect solar power from the far side of the world. Again that is not practical, politically, as it would mean the Americas would rely on the good graces of China and Russia to sell them power. The storage needs required to allow any electrical grid that relies on solar to a large extent would be astronomical. There is not enough lead in the earth's crust to make all the batteries we'd need. It might be possible to dig up enough iron and nickel to make batteries but they'd have to be very large, as in the area of a large state up the height of a skyscraper.
And given how much coal and other fossil fuels cost in environmental harm, it would not be unreasonable to factor that against it.
How much harm to the environment would we cause in digging up all these minerals needed to build this vast global electrical grid? Do you even know what goes into making a solar panel? Did you know that arsenic is used in making them? There's an environmental disaster for you, solar power. We'd have to dig up vast areas of land, refine out mountain sized chunks for the aluminum, iron, lead, arsenic, mercury, and so forth. After that we'd be building solar panels on a large scale continuously, because they wear out in 20 years or so. After those panels, which contain arsenic, have worn out then how do we dispose of them? I assume that they can be recycled but what kind of poisonous chemicals does that involve?
By comparison coal would we an improvement. But then I'm not advocating for the use of coal, I propose we use nuclear fission. Not only is the environmental impact much less than anything else we have now the use of it does not require any future improvements to make it work. Solar power advocates claim we can do better in the future if only something something, but we don't have to wait for any technological advancement for nuc
Assuming global warming is a problem, and burning fossil fuels is the cause then we have much better ways to solve this problem than...
- Making a better than break even He3 fusion reactor
- Building moon mining equipment
- Launching that equipment to the moon
- Mining the helium and shipping it back to earth
- Doing all of this before we bake ourselves burning coal in the mean time
We have the technology to get carbon free energy right now, with nuclear fission. Bonus to nuclear fission is that we can make that helium as a byproduct. We don't have to go to the moon, we can make it here.
Claiming we can just mine the moon for helium before we even figure out how to make the reactor work is optimism beyond sanity. I propose we invest in what we know can work, fission works. If we are going to mine the moon for anything I propose we mine it for thorium, there's much more thorium on the moon than helium, and we've already figured out how to get energy from that.
Having had the math of solar, wind, geothermal and other unreliable energy sources explained to me I'd think that mining the moon for helium is a more logical solution. Don't trust me on this, do the math yourself. Go figure out how much real estate it would take to collect enough wind, solar, or whatever with current technology. Then compute the real and actual cost of building all this infrastructure with current technology. Then compare this to things like real and actual functioning coal and nuclear power that exists now.
If you want to claim that advancement of price to energy output of things like wind and solar will make nuclear power a fool's choice then you must also consider that in that same time that technology can improve on nuclear power as well. Right now the best we can do is get 20% or so from solar power, and we've dumped a lot of money into that development. Right now we can get 1% of the energy from uranium with current technology. Right now nuclear power can operate profitably without government subsidy, and solar cannot. We have lots of room to improve nuclear power before we hit physical limits of converting that energy and it works now. Solar power is already getting close to physical limits on energy conversion, there just isn't much room to improve upon. You can claim that solar power can continue to improve at the rate it has in the past but it simply cannot, you're going to hit a thermodynamic wall before you can beat nuclear.
Mining the moon for anything is insane, we just don't have the technology. What we do have is real and actual working nuclear power plants right now. All we have to do is build more. While we are at it we can do things like develop molten salt reactors that promise to provide a much improved efficiency over current designs and also improve upon the already high safety rate that nuclear power provides. Talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima if you like but I'm not changing my mind. The deaths per energy produced with nuclear power is a vast improvement over that of wind and solar. People might not get radiation poisoning from building solar panels and windmills but people fall from roofs, get electrocuted, have machines tear them apart, and all kind of industrial accidents that don't make the news because some guy falling from a windmill here and there don't make the news outside of the local obit page. A nuclear reactor blowing its top will make the news, even if no one dies from it.