When in college I was in the solar car club. I heard the car we were building was using a steel frame because the old car with an aluminum frame broke in half. The car was not in a competition at the time, it was being driven to train drivers or something. It hit a bump in the pavement and suddenly the car was in two pieces.
Other issues driving the decision to build a car with a steel frame instead of aluminum was time and money. The high chrome steel used was expensive but still much cheaper than the structural aluminum. it was also easier to find people willing to weld the steel.
All these green energy subsidies have to stop. I believe we've past the tipping point years ago that green energy technology needed government money for development. Perhaps it was five years ago, maybe it was fifty, but we don't need to give rich people money to buy solar panels they'd be buying anyway.
Solar panels reduce carbon released into the environment, we know that. Solar panels save money for those people that can afford to buy them. What we have now are tax avoidance schemes for rich people. This makes poor people bear a greater portion of the tax load.
What seems to be an issue lately is that people are buying solar panels too quickly. The electric grid in many places was not designed to handle residences putting energy into the grid, it was designed only for residences to draw from it. Solar power is good, we need more of it. Problem is that if the solar power is added too quickly to the system then it can become unstable. Giving people tax breaks to people for putting solar panels on the roof of their house means less tax money to improve the electric grid to accommodate the increased use of solar power.
Same goes for electric cars, CFL bulbs, windmills, and bio fuels. People would be making money with these technologies without the government subsidies. With the subsidies they are making more money by giving tax breaks to the people wealthy enough to buy them. It's rich people becoming richer by taking from the poor. Because solar panels are involved we're all supposed to feel good about ourselves. Everyone is going to feel real good when the power goes out because we gave tax money to rich people instead of improving an aging electric grid.
We don't need to encourage people to buy solar panels any more with tax money. The money saved in power produced is enough. The good feelings people have in saving the environment doesn't hurt either.
Now we have a federal court that says we have a right to travel by whatever means we choose. It is insufficient that there are other means to travel to prevent people from boarding a plane as the government has argued before. Where else might this apply? I could see a right to travel being applied to other cases.
What of a person that wishes to pilot a plane? We've seen people be denied getting flight lessons before because of actions by DHS and/or DOJ.
What of a person that wishes to drive a car? Pushing this a bit further can the government require a license to drive? Could the government be forced to issue a license to drive? People with vision problems would not likely have a case, an issue of being physically capable of controlling the vehicle would be obvious. What of a person that was perhaps found guilty of vehicular manslaughter? Or a long history of drunken driving?
We've seen all kinds of barriers to free travel, the ability to fly is just a small part. We've seen random searches of people walking on public streets for drugs and weapons, "safety" roadblocks where police will go fishing for drunk drivers and busted tail lights, ID checks on city buses, TSA pat downs to **leave** a train, which is just a few off the top of my head.
We've seen our freedom to travel get slowly eroded. The excuse seems to be to make us "safe". I seem to recall a wise man saying something about trading our liberty for the promise of safety.
The problem I have with global warming alarmists is not so much about the shaky evidence they have but the solutions they propose. These people are watermelons, "green" environmentalists on the outside but "red" communists on the inside. They're solution to every problem is more government, it's just that global warming is a convenient bogeyman to scare everyone into accepting more government.
Whether or not global warming is real is, IMHO, irrelevant. The problem is too much government. If the goal is reduced fossil fuel consumption then the solution is to get the government out of the way. I can get behind less fossil fuels because that means less reliance on foreign sources of oil. Many of the problems we have in this world is because of oil. Those that have the oil tend to be brutal dictators. Those the have the money to buy the oil tend to be in nations free from those dictators. Oil is the means by which wealthy free people can be convinced to give that wealth to murderous dictators.
What we need is nuclear power but, here in the USA at least, the government does not seem interested in an energy source that is low in carbon output, inexpensive, reliable, and safe. To those that will reflexively scream "NUCLEAR WASTE!" I suggest looking up waste annihilating molten salt reactors. With molten salt reactors we would not only not produce more nuclear waste we'd be able to destroy the waste we already have.
Not only does the government hold up nuclear power they hold up solar and wind. The subsidies to "help" solar and wind power do not help any more, they only hurt. We've been subsidizing wind and solar for decades to assist in its development. The problem with continued subsidies is that there is no incentive to improve. The people in these industries know that so long as they can prop up the global warming bogeyman that they will make a profit from government subsidy. At some point they have to sink or swim on their own. Allowing them to continue like this means they need oil and coal to make the money so they can skim off the top to line their pockets.
Subsidies on wind and solar are only holding them back. I don't believe that solar is a viable energy source, wind is something I can see as making a lot of people wealthy. Wind, nuclear, and hydro are what I see as the future. But the government is in the way. No more subsidies, that means for oil too. Get out of the way of nuclear power and let people build some nuclear power plants.
I don't care if the world is getting hotter. I want to see some solutions to the problem that does not involve more government involvement in my life. I don't want the government telling me what kind of light bulbs to buy or where to set my thermostat, I want my government to tell me that they are serious about the problems and will issue permits for the construction of some nuclear power plants.
Nancy Pelosi should be outraged but instead she uses the lost e-mails as an excuse for more spending. You see the IRS lost the e-mail because they did not have enough money to buy backup tapes or to hire enough IT staff. If we don't spend more money on backup systems now then we can expect more records to get "lost" in the future.
How do people like her get to stay in office? How do people like her get to be Speaker of the House?
Forget I asked. I know the answer. She gets to where she is because her answer to every problem is more government. We've created a feedback loop where more government creates more government. I'm not sure when this loop was created but I believe that the creation of the IRS has a lot to do with it.
That's a nice story but it does not explain why only e-mail to external people were lost and internal e-mail messages could be retrieved. Had it played out as you explained then all e-mail from some date in the past, where the e-mail had exceeded quotas, would have been lost. What smells the worst about this is that we are hearing about this just now. These people have been fighting over these e-mails for a long time and only when it looks like they might actually have to hand them over does it come out that they were lost.
I suppose someone can come up with another interesting anecdote on how things like this happen all the time but this sounds all too convenient. If I gave an excuse like this to the government they'd lock me up and throw away the key. I'd hope equality of the law would apply but some animals are more equal than others.
It seems you and I are in complete agreement. They claim good intentions but the way they go about it does not help anyone. It's all based on lies.
It seems a bit odd that every solution that these "greens" come up with involves more government. I think that many of them are "watermelons", green environmentalists on the outside but red communists on the inside. The rest are just useful idiots.
There is no such thing as nuclear waste. If it's radioactive it falls into one of four categories: - Nuclear fuel - Industrial material - Medical material - Nuclear shielding/moderators
I suppose one might make a fifth category for weapons but that's just a special case for any one of the four I mentioned. The only reason we're not reprocessing this "waste" into useful material is government policy.
NIMBYism is from ignorance. I also suspect that given the choice between freezing to death and living in the shadow of a nuclear power plant most people will choose to live in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. Those that fear nuclear power that much should be treated for mental illness.
Most people drive less than 15 miles a day, to and from work. That won't touch a fully charged electric. It can recharge at night, or while it's sitting at work.
... and they cost three times as much as a gasoline powered car to produce. It's only because of taxation policy that the sticker price is only double.
I'd love to have an all electric. No more oil changes. No more stupid consumables. It'll be almost maintenance free.... Soooooo many less moving parts. Lube it up once in a while, update the firmware, and that's that.
Someone would have to drive the electric car for something like 200,000 miles before the total cost of ownership is equal to a gasoline powered car. Not many people are willing to make that commitment to keeping a car that long to save money and not be inconvenienced with periodic maintenance.
I'm not pretending solar is as cheap as coal. I'm saying it is, 'cause I read the news. I also work in semiconductor manufacturing, and there are some nasty chemicals.... but producing solar panels really doesn't produce any significant carbon. And no, if I want solar and wind power, which work great, have no radioactive waste, can be put on rooftops, don't suffer from NIMBYism, etc etc etc, I am not a bad guy for wanting to bring on "climate change".
First, if carbon in the atmosphere is bad and you advocate the second best solution to solve that problem then, yes, I say you are the bad guy. Second, look up "waste annihilating molten salt reactors". Not only do they not create radioactive waste they "eat" the waste we have already. Third, nuclear NIMBYism can be fixed with education. Wind and solar also have their own NIMBY problems. Problems like windmills interfering with weather, navigation, and military radar cannot be easily fixed. Or having people getting headaches from having the windmill shadow making the sunlight blink in their windows. Solar panels like to reflect light into homes, aircraft, and what not, making people uncomfortable at a minimum and unsafe at worst.
You're wrong on every single point except that lithium is not cheap. You're probably wrong on the cost of the care though... Soooo many less moving parts. No Engine. The battery IS pricey. It'll come down.... And the charge times are not long.
I could be wrong, I'll admit that. For right now electric cars are a luxury that few can afford. Electric vehicles will remain a luxury until that cost comes down. It not only has to come down but it has to get to a price that's even close to gasoline before all but a small minority would even consider it.
Are you a shill, or just really really uninformed? Ah, my bad, logical fallacy: black or white. Sorry......
It seems we agree on everything here except the comparative total cost of ownership of gas vs. electric cars. Even then you seem to agree with me that the cost of electric cars is currently much too high. You claim the cost of electric cars will come down. Time will tell.
What can affect the total cost of ownership on electric cars is the price of electricity. Wind and solar have very real limits on how cheap it can get because of what we know on physics. We are still figuring out how to squeeze the most energy from nuclear power at the lowest cost. Developing those waste annihilating molten salt reactors could prove to really drive down the cost of electricity. If electricity gets cheap enough then you win your argument and I'll be pleased I lost.
Here's an idea, instead of your mistaken false dichotomy: how about not using fossil fuels for electricity AND not using fossil fuels for transportation? Brilliant, huh?
Yes, brilliant. That is if we replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. We have three choices: - Keep using fossil fuels - Switch to nuclear power - Live like Little House on the Prairie
I didn't say that electric cars make energy expensive, I said energy from wind and solar is expensive. If we try to switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar then energy will be so expensive that few people will be able to afford cars any more. While I doubt people will completely revert to log cabins and horse drawn buggies life would be quite close. People would walk, ride buses, or bike to work. Those that have cars will likely have them off the books. No license or registration. No safety inspections. Running off of whatever fuel they can barter or steal. Think of the crowded noisy streets of India or China where people are choking from the blue smoke from the few cars and motorcycles that work, or possibly the empty streets of North Korea where everyone moved out to the countryside for subsistence farming. When people get to work it will be dark and cold because no one can afford heat and light.
Imagine running an aluminum refinery from wind and solar. If the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine millions of dollars of equipment is ruined because the aluminum cooled solid in the machinery. No aluminum means no windmills or power lines. No diesel fuel means no trucks to carry the windmills to the sites to be erected. No coal or natural gas means no concrete and steel for the windmill towers.
That is unless we replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. Then we get to keep our aluminum refineries running, and our concrete and steel. We can use the nuclear power to make hydrocarbons. We can keep our gasoline cars, but we'll run them on synthetic fuel. No additional carbon in the environment, we'll take the carbon to make the hydrocarbons from the air and water. We do that then we don't need expensive electric cars.
The key here is how we choose to replace fossil fuels. We can choose cheap nuclear power and keep or improve our standard of living, or we can choose wind and solar where energy will be so expensive and unreliable that few could afford a car.
It's my belief that bio-fuel research has been set back 50 to 100 years because of the prohibition on alcohol. I remember reading that the Ford Model T was designed to run on alcohol. It had too because getting gasoline was hard to do in many places.
Back when the Model T came out the roads were poor. There was no interstate highway system to move large quantities of gasoline. Even if you could it's not like filling stations were everywhere, people were buying gasoline in tin cans at the dry goods store.
What people could do is make alcohol. Corn was cheap and someone skilled to distill some moonshine was easy enough to find. People were burning alcohol.
Then came Prohibition. These backyard stills were largely destroyed. Those that remained were hidden away and the alcohol was too valuable to burn in a car.
I'm working with someone that wants to develop some technology to create some good whiskey. He called me asking some questions on how to make sure the equipment he was using was logging every drop of alcohol. Even though Prohibition was lifted we still have piles of laws on how we can make, transport, and consume alcohol. If this machine he is building can be operated in a manner that the products aren't logged properly then the ATF can come down on him hard.
I'd like to see bio-fuel research just go bonkers. Let them try all kinds of crazy things. But they can't, the laws make it very expensive to start the research since pure alcohol is just as much a controlled substance as opiates.
Personally I believe that bio-fuels is a bunch of good intentions that will pave the way to economic ruin. I will accept the possibility that I am wrong though. I am confident enough in my position that I proposed lifting any and all restrictions into it's research so that this question can be answered. Once we get passed the nonsense that is bio-fuel then we can move on to something that can actually work.
Civilizations have ended because they were burning their food. We need to learn our lessons so we aren't doomed to repeat history.
Excellent! Everyone is buying windmills and solar panels. Now we can stop the subsidies, right? I mean if wind and solar power is now as cheap as coal then we've reached the goals that the subsidies was supposed to give us, get over the "hump" on adoption of wind and solar over coal. Now that we have achieved that goal we can end the subsidies and allow the free market to replace coal with cleaner energy on its own.
Seems like whenever I propose ending wind and solar power subsidies people backpedal all of the sudden. That for some reason now that the government money might come to an end that wind and solar aren't so cheap any more.
The other possible outcome of proposing ending wind and solar subsidies is that someone will point out how coal is subsidized too. OK, end those subsidies as well then. Let wind, solar, coal, and everything else stand on its own in the market. Since we've established that wind and solar is as cheap as coal then we should expect wind and solar to win. There should be no one objecting to the end to the subsidies now.
People talk about the evil "big oil" and "big coal", I say what about "big wind"? Am I to assume that wind does not lobby in DC. Of course they do. Whenever there is a hint of someone dropping wind subsidies I get a letter in the mail on how I should write my congresscritters to keep them. Wind is big around here. If the government pulls the subsidy then a lot of people lose their jobs. I say good, we don't need government leeches. I say let them find work that is profitable. If they cannot make wind power profitable then find something that is, like nuclear.
Problem is that nuclear power has it's own political issues because of it's association with weapons. This is unfortunate. Modern nuclear reactor designs are useless for making weapons. Yet regulations for nuclear power were written in the 1950s and no one bothered to fix them.
Really, solar power is as cheap as coal now. If that is true then why don't I see solar panels popping up everywhere? Perhaps its because solar is not cheap. What makes solar power expensive is that it does not work at night. Storing that solar power is expensive.
Assuming we can produce wind and solar power cheaper than nuclear, and do so when accounting for the storage infrastructure too, nuclear still wins out. The goal is, presumably, to reduce carbon output. That's why we have electric cars, right? Nuclear has a lower carbon output than wind and solar. If we are going to ignore price of producing electricity to account for "externalities" like climate change then the best answer we have with current technology is nuclear power.
If you want to claim that solar is as cheap as coal then I can play along. Problem is the carbon produced in making those solar panels. Only hydroelectric dams can beat nuclear power for carbon emitted per kWh and we've already dammed up every river worth a dam. Now the best option is nuclear. If you want solar and wind power over nuclear then you are the bad guy here for wanting to bring on "climate change".
I agree that both electric and gasoline cars need iron and aluminum. Gasoline cars don't need lithium though. Lithium is not cheap, iron is. Because a gasoline car does not need expensive lithium a gasoline car will always be cheaper than an electric one. Total cost of ownership for an electric car may be cheaper than a gasoline car but a person would have to put a lot of miles on the car to notice the savings. Few people drive that much. Even fewer people are willing to put up with the long charge times.
I had the same question. The response I got was that the software license control system needed an internet connection. Locking the network down wasn't really a big issue to worry about. Having internet access meant security updates could be installed easily, meaning the systems were arguably more secure because of the internet access. Loss of security updates from Microsoft changes that obviously.
Set sales quotas on electric cars? What if no one wants the electric car? Do they have to give the electric car away before they can sell the next gasoline car? Who then pays for this electric car?
So many questions on this and I don't think I'd like the answers. The California government is telling the people they know what cars suit them better then the people buying them do.
Another question, where is this electricity coming from to power the cars? If it's anything other than nuclear or hydro then the gasoline cars are probably a better choice.
It wasn't that long ago that natural gas cars were the big craze. What happened? Why are natural gas cars evil? That's probably where the electricity comes from anyway. Natural gas cars make much better sense to me than electric if the concern is carbon emissions, at least until we get more nuclear power. No one said that legislation has to make sense though.
Oh, right, it's not. No electric car is doing well right now. Tesla is a possible exception only because they aren't selling electric cars so much as expensive sport cars that happen to also be electric.
What if people don't want to buy the more fuel efficient cars? The government mandates they build the cars but they have not, yet, mandated that we buy them.
Chrysler did not want to make these electric cars, they know they will not sell well because they cost too much and don't offer the same performance and convenience of gasoline cars. Chrysler's job, their corporate mandate, is to make money. They chose to make money by selling cars people want to buy. Their job is not to save the people from themselves. That's assuming that there is even truth behind the "climate change" scaremongering.
If the government really wanted to keep carbon out of the air then they'd let people build nuclear power plants. Nothing except hydroelectric does better than nuclear in kWh out versus carbon emissions. We can synthesize gasoline using nuclear power, we get clean air and can keep our gasoline cars.
Molten salt nuclear reactors don't produce waste like solid fuel reactors, in fact they can burn up the waste that exists and what "waste" they do produce can be turned into valuable materials for industry and medicine.
The government is trying to solve the carbon emission problem on the demand side, which only hurts our economy. If they work on the supply side, by getting our energy from nuclear power, then we get much better results. Electric cars just mean we burn more coal. Nuclear power means we burn no coal.
I have to wonder if the people in government even want to reduce carbon output. I think they just like telling people what to do.
You are assuming that the problems with the price of electric cars versus gasoline cars is economies of scale. If that were true then we'd think that Chrysler would want to see their electric cars be successful. Problem is that gasoline cars are made of iron and aluminum, two of the most abundant elements on Earth. Electric cars need lithium for the batteries, an element that is relatively rare and therefore will always be more expensive.
Where is the benefit in electric cars anyway? Our electricity comes from coal and natural gas. We could build more wind and solar but that means energy prices triple, if we're lucky. It's quite possible energy would be ten times what it costs now if we cannot use fossil fuels or nuclear. We can build nuclear power plants and get cheap energy with very little carbon output, lower carbon output than wind and solar per kWh produced.
Nuclear power does not address the issue of the cost of materials in electric cars. What would lower our carbon emissions and give us cheap energy is synthetic fuels. We can make hydrocarbons from carbon in the air and close that loop, no new carbon added to the atmosphere. Power it all from nuclear power. Then we get to have our cars made from cheap iron and aluminum. We also get to keep our 300 mile range from a five minute fill up.
Using waste annihilating molten salt reactors also means we get to burn up the "spent" fuel from old reactors that keep piling up. Nuclear power means cheap energy, cheap cars, clean air, and reduction in radioactive waste. Electric cars means expensive energy, more carbon output, and unless we get modern nuclear power that radioactive waste will continue to slowly decay away. We can get rid of the waste in decades with modern nuclear power or we can let it sit for hundreds of years.
Economies of scale cannot compete with the laws of physics.
Right now our choices are, keep XP, move to Windows 8.1, or choose an OS that Microsoft does not make. Only one person at work has asked for Windows 8, everyone else wants XP or 7. For a variety of reasons Windows 8 is not an option for widespread adoption. If Microsoft removes the choice to keep XP then the choice to move to something not made by Microsoft becomes that much easier.
Even though the desktops may stay on Windows XP there are still servers that need to be upgraded. We can move the Server 2003 boxes to Server 2008 or Server 2012 so long as XP stays. If we can't keep XP then the servers might move to Linux or Apple. Once we break that barrier to an OS not made by Microsoft then moving the next server or desktop to something other than Microsoft gets easier.
If we can't keep using IE on the computers because of security issues then we'll probably use Chrome instead. Once people get used to Chrome then moving to some other operating system that runs Chrome becomes easier. Outlook uses the IE engine to render HTML messages, if IE is broken then so is Outlook. If we can't use Outlook then we'll use something else. If people aren't using Outlook then do we need to run Exchange Server anymore? No.
AutoCAD runs on Mac OSX just as well as Windows, we can switch. Same goes for anything offered by Adobe. Microsoft Office runs on Windows and Mac OS X. So long as Office runs on XP we'll keep using it. If we make that leap to Apple systems then how long will we keep running Microsoft Office? Maybe once we switch the OS we might decide to switch our word processors and spreadsheets too. Maybe not.
The longer we can run XP the longer it makes sense to keep the other Microsoft products. If whatever version of Windows that follows 8.1 does not suck as bad then we might buy that one. It does not sound like we'll ever switch to Windows 8, it's just that bad. If Microsoft decides to force a choice out of us they might not like what we choose.
The bosses won't invest in Windows 8.1 because it has a really bad UI. They don't like how it looks and works so they are going to stick with Windows 7 and XP as long as possible. Microsoft dropping support for XP and offering 8.1 as a replacement is not going over very well. It sounds like if they have to give up XP because of lack of support then they'd consider Linux or Apple rather than going to Windows 8.1 because the UI is just that bad.
At home, yes. I'll surf the web for answers to questions that pop into my head with whatever computer I happen to be using at the time. With IE being the default browser then it tends to get used. Even if I install a different browser the IE engine is so intertwined with the OS that other software will use it for things like help files.
At work the people will use those computers for all kinds of crazy things. The primary use is for running the equipment but they'll use them to check e-mail or whatever, and the IE engine tends to be used to render HTML formatted messages.
If we switch away from Microsoft then we're not likely to ever switch back. Perhaps their next version of Windows won't suck as bad as 8.x and we upgrade then.
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When in college I was in the solar car club. I heard the car we were building was using a steel frame because the old car with an aluminum frame broke in half. The car was not in a competition at the time, it was being driven to train drivers or something. It hit a bump in the pavement and suddenly the car was in two pieces.
Other issues driving the decision to build a car with a steel frame instead of aluminum was time and money. The high chrome steel used was expensive but still much cheaper than the structural aluminum. it was also easier to find people willing to weld the steel.
All these green energy subsidies have to stop. I believe we've past the tipping point years ago that green energy technology needed government money for development. Perhaps it was five years ago, maybe it was fifty, but we don't need to give rich people money to buy solar panels they'd be buying anyway.
Solar panels reduce carbon released into the environment, we know that. Solar panels save money for those people that can afford to buy them. What we have now are tax avoidance schemes for rich people. This makes poor people bear a greater portion of the tax load.
What seems to be an issue lately is that people are buying solar panels too quickly. The electric grid in many places was not designed to handle residences putting energy into the grid, it was designed only for residences to draw from it. Solar power is good, we need more of it. Problem is that if the solar power is added too quickly to the system then it can become unstable. Giving people tax breaks to people for putting solar panels on the roof of their house means less tax money to improve the electric grid to accommodate the increased use of solar power.
Same goes for electric cars, CFL bulbs, windmills, and bio fuels. People would be making money with these technologies without the government subsidies. With the subsidies they are making more money by giving tax breaks to the people wealthy enough to buy them. It's rich people becoming richer by taking from the poor. Because solar panels are involved we're all supposed to feel good about ourselves. Everyone is going to feel real good when the power goes out because we gave tax money to rich people instead of improving an aging electric grid.
We don't need to encourage people to buy solar panels any more with tax money. The money saved in power produced is enough. The good feelings people have in saving the environment doesn't hurt either.
Want to have a bad time at a traffic stop? Start your traffic stop by doing the crack-the-window and repeating the "am I free to go" mantra.
If the cops don't like dealing with people that keep asking if they are free to go then here's an idea, don't stop people without cause.
Now we have a federal court that says we have a right to travel by whatever means we choose. It is insufficient that there are other means to travel to prevent people from boarding a plane as the government has argued before. Where else might this apply? I could see a right to travel being applied to other cases.
What of a person that wishes to pilot a plane? We've seen people be denied getting flight lessons before because of actions by DHS and/or DOJ.
What of a person that wishes to drive a car? Pushing this a bit further can the government require a license to drive? Could the government be forced to issue a license to drive? People with vision problems would not likely have a case, an issue of being physically capable of controlling the vehicle would be obvious. What of a person that was perhaps found guilty of vehicular manslaughter? Or a long history of drunken driving?
We've seen all kinds of barriers to free travel, the ability to fly is just a small part. We've seen random searches of people walking on public streets for drugs and weapons, "safety" roadblocks where police will go fishing for drunk drivers and busted tail lights, ID checks on city buses, TSA pat downs to **leave** a train, which is just a few off the top of my head.
We've seen our freedom to travel get slowly eroded. The excuse seems to be to make us "safe". I seem to recall a wise man saying something about trading our liberty for the promise of safety.
The problem I have with global warming alarmists is not so much about the shaky evidence they have but the solutions they propose. These people are watermelons, "green" environmentalists on the outside but "red" communists on the inside. They're solution to every problem is more government, it's just that global warming is a convenient bogeyman to scare everyone into accepting more government.
Whether or not global warming is real is, IMHO, irrelevant. The problem is too much government. If the goal is reduced fossil fuel consumption then the solution is to get the government out of the way. I can get behind less fossil fuels because that means less reliance on foreign sources of oil. Many of the problems we have in this world is because of oil. Those that have the oil tend to be brutal dictators. Those the have the money to buy the oil tend to be in nations free from those dictators. Oil is the means by which wealthy free people can be convinced to give that wealth to murderous dictators.
What we need is nuclear power but, here in the USA at least, the government does not seem interested in an energy source that is low in carbon output, inexpensive, reliable, and safe. To those that will reflexively scream "NUCLEAR WASTE!" I suggest looking up waste annihilating molten salt reactors. With molten salt reactors we would not only not produce more nuclear waste we'd be able to destroy the waste we already have.
Not only does the government hold up nuclear power they hold up solar and wind. The subsidies to "help" solar and wind power do not help any more, they only hurt. We've been subsidizing wind and solar for decades to assist in its development. The problem with continued subsidies is that there is no incentive to improve. The people in these industries know that so long as they can prop up the global warming bogeyman that they will make a profit from government subsidy. At some point they have to sink or swim on their own. Allowing them to continue like this means they need oil and coal to make the money so they can skim off the top to line their pockets.
Subsidies on wind and solar are only holding them back. I don't believe that solar is a viable energy source, wind is something I can see as making a lot of people wealthy. Wind, nuclear, and hydro are what I see as the future. But the government is in the way. No more subsidies, that means for oil too. Get out of the way of nuclear power and let people build some nuclear power plants.
I don't care if the world is getting hotter. I want to see some solutions to the problem that does not involve more government involvement in my life. I don't want the government telling me what kind of light bulbs to buy or where to set my thermostat, I want my government to tell me that they are serious about the problems and will issue permits for the construction of some nuclear power plants.
Nancy Pelosi should be outraged but instead she uses the lost e-mails as an excuse for more spending. You see the IRS lost the e-mail because they did not have enough money to buy backup tapes or to hire enough IT staff. If we don't spend more money on backup systems now then we can expect more records to get "lost" in the future.
How do people like her get to stay in office? How do people like her get to be Speaker of the House?
Forget I asked. I know the answer. She gets to where she is because her answer to every problem is more government. We've created a feedback loop where more government creates more government. I'm not sure when this loop was created but I believe that the creation of the IRS has a lot to do with it.
That's a nice story but it does not explain why only e-mail to external people were lost and internal e-mail messages could be retrieved. Had it played out as you explained then all e-mail from some date in the past, where the e-mail had exceeded quotas, would have been lost. What smells the worst about this is that we are hearing about this just now. These people have been fighting over these e-mails for a long time and only when it looks like they might actually have to hand them over does it come out that they were lost.
I suppose someone can come up with another interesting anecdote on how things like this happen all the time but this sounds all too convenient. If I gave an excuse like this to the government they'd lock me up and throw away the key. I'd hope equality of the law would apply but some animals are more equal than others.
It seems you and I are in complete agreement. They claim good intentions but the way they go about it does not help anyone. It's all based on lies.
It seems a bit odd that every solution that these "greens" come up with involves more government. I think that many of them are "watermelons", green environmentalists on the outside but red communists on the inside. The rest are just useful idiots.
There is no such thing as nuclear waste. If it's radioactive it falls into one of four categories:
- Nuclear fuel
- Industrial material
- Medical material
- Nuclear shielding/moderators
I suppose one might make a fifth category for weapons but that's just a special case for any one of the four I mentioned. The only reason we're not reprocessing this "waste" into useful material is government policy.
NIMBYism is from ignorance. I also suspect that given the choice between freezing to death and living in the shadow of a nuclear power plant most people will choose to live in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. Those that fear nuclear power that much should be treated for mental illness.
You know nothing.
Yep.
Most people drive less than 15 miles a day, to and from work. That won't touch a fully charged electric. It can recharge at night, or while it's sitting at work.
... and they cost three times as much as a gasoline powered car to produce. It's only because of taxation policy that the sticker price is only double.
I'd love to have an all electric. No more oil changes. No more stupid consumables. It'll be almost maintenance free.... Soooooo many less moving parts. Lube it up once in a while, update the firmware, and that's that.
Someone would have to drive the electric car for something like 200,000 miles before the total cost of ownership is equal to a gasoline powered car. Not many people are willing to make that commitment to keeping a car that long to save money and not be inconvenienced with periodic maintenance.
I'm not pretending solar is as cheap as coal. I'm saying it is, 'cause I read the news. I also work in semiconductor manufacturing, and there are some nasty chemicals.... but producing solar panels really doesn't produce any significant carbon. And no, if I want solar and wind power, which work great, have no radioactive waste, can be put on rooftops, don't suffer from NIMBYism, etc etc etc, I am not a bad guy for wanting to bring on "climate change".
First, if carbon in the atmosphere is bad and you advocate the second best solution to solve that problem then, yes, I say you are the bad guy. Second, look up "waste annihilating molten salt reactors". Not only do they not create radioactive waste they "eat" the waste we have already. Third, nuclear NIMBYism can be fixed with education. Wind and solar also have their own NIMBY problems. Problems like windmills interfering with weather, navigation, and military radar cannot be easily fixed. Or having people getting headaches from having the windmill shadow making the sunlight blink in their windows. Solar panels like to reflect light into homes, aircraft, and what not, making people uncomfortable at a minimum and unsafe at worst.
You're wrong on every single point except that lithium is not cheap. You're probably wrong on the cost of the care though... Soooo many less moving parts. No Engine. The battery IS pricey. It'll come down.... And the charge times are not long.
I could be wrong, I'll admit that. For right now electric cars are a luxury that few can afford. Electric vehicles will remain a luxury until that cost comes down. It not only has to come down but it has to get to a price that's even close to gasoline before all but a small minority would even consider it.
Are you a shill, or just really really uninformed? Ah, my bad, logical fallacy: black or white. Sorry......
It seems we agree on everything here except the comparative total cost of ownership of gas vs. electric cars. Even then you seem to agree with me that the cost of electric cars is currently much too high. You claim the cost of electric cars will come down. Time will tell.
What can affect the total cost of ownership on electric cars is the price of electricity. Wind and solar have very real limits on how cheap it can get because of what we know on physics. We are still figuring out how to squeeze the most energy from nuclear power at the lowest cost. Developing those waste annihilating molten salt reactors could prove to really drive down the cost of electricity. If electricity gets cheap enough then you win your argument and I'll be pleased I lost.
How on earth does nuclear power mean cheap cars?
It doesn't.
How do electric cars mean expensive energy?
They don't.
Here's an idea, instead of your mistaken false dichotomy: how about not using fossil fuels for electricity AND not using fossil fuels for transportation? Brilliant, huh?
Yes, brilliant. That is if we replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. We have three choices:
- Keep using fossil fuels
- Switch to nuclear power
- Live like Little House on the Prairie
I didn't say that electric cars make energy expensive, I said energy from wind and solar is expensive. If we try to switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar then energy will be so expensive that few people will be able to afford cars any more. While I doubt people will completely revert to log cabins and horse drawn buggies life would be quite close. People would walk, ride buses, or bike to work. Those that have cars will likely have them off the books. No license or registration. No safety inspections. Running off of whatever fuel they can barter or steal. Think of the crowded noisy streets of India or China where people are choking from the blue smoke from the few cars and motorcycles that work, or possibly the empty streets of North Korea where everyone moved out to the countryside for subsistence farming. When people get to work it will be dark and cold because no one can afford heat and light.
Imagine running an aluminum refinery from wind and solar. If the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine millions of dollars of equipment is ruined because the aluminum cooled solid in the machinery. No aluminum means no windmills or power lines. No diesel fuel means no trucks to carry the windmills to the sites to be erected. No coal or natural gas means no concrete and steel for the windmill towers.
That is unless we replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. Then we get to keep our aluminum refineries running, and our concrete and steel. We can use the nuclear power to make hydrocarbons. We can keep our gasoline cars, but we'll run them on synthetic fuel. No additional carbon in the environment, we'll take the carbon to make the hydrocarbons from the air and water. We do that then we don't need expensive electric cars.
The key here is how we choose to replace fossil fuels. We can choose cheap nuclear power and keep or improve our standard of living, or we can choose wind and solar where energy will be so expensive and unreliable that few could afford a car.
It's my belief that bio-fuel research has been set back 50 to 100 years because of the prohibition on alcohol. I remember reading that the Ford Model T was designed to run on alcohol. It had too because getting gasoline was hard to do in many places.
Back when the Model T came out the roads were poor. There was no interstate highway system to move large quantities of gasoline. Even if you could it's not like filling stations were everywhere, people were buying gasoline in tin cans at the dry goods store.
What people could do is make alcohol. Corn was cheap and someone skilled to distill some moonshine was easy enough to find. People were burning alcohol.
Then came Prohibition. These backyard stills were largely destroyed. Those that remained were hidden away and the alcohol was too valuable to burn in a car.
I'm working with someone that wants to develop some technology to create some good whiskey. He called me asking some questions on how to make sure the equipment he was using was logging every drop of alcohol. Even though Prohibition was lifted we still have piles of laws on how we can make, transport, and consume alcohol. If this machine he is building can be operated in a manner that the products aren't logged properly then the ATF can come down on him hard.
I'd like to see bio-fuel research just go bonkers. Let them try all kinds of crazy things. But they can't, the laws make it very expensive to start the research since pure alcohol is just as much a controlled substance as opiates.
Personally I believe that bio-fuels is a bunch of good intentions that will pave the way to economic ruin. I will accept the possibility that I am wrong though. I am confident enough in my position that I proposed lifting any and all restrictions into it's research so that this question can be answered. Once we get passed the nonsense that is bio-fuel then we can move on to something that can actually work.
Civilizations have ended because they were burning their food. We need to learn our lessons so we aren't doomed to repeat history.
Excellent! Everyone is buying windmills and solar panels. Now we can stop the subsidies, right? I mean if wind and solar power is now as cheap as coal then we've reached the goals that the subsidies was supposed to give us, get over the "hump" on adoption of wind and solar over coal. Now that we have achieved that goal we can end the subsidies and allow the free market to replace coal with cleaner energy on its own.
Seems like whenever I propose ending wind and solar power subsidies people backpedal all of the sudden. That for some reason now that the government money might come to an end that wind and solar aren't so cheap any more.
The other possible outcome of proposing ending wind and solar subsidies is that someone will point out how coal is subsidized too. OK, end those subsidies as well then. Let wind, solar, coal, and everything else stand on its own in the market. Since we've established that wind and solar is as cheap as coal then we should expect wind and solar to win. There should be no one objecting to the end to the subsidies now.
People talk about the evil "big oil" and "big coal", I say what about "big wind"? Am I to assume that wind does not lobby in DC. Of course they do. Whenever there is a hint of someone dropping wind subsidies I get a letter in the mail on how I should write my congresscritters to keep them. Wind is big around here. If the government pulls the subsidy then a lot of people lose their jobs. I say good, we don't need government leeches. I say let them find work that is profitable. If they cannot make wind power profitable then find something that is, like nuclear.
Problem is that nuclear power has it's own political issues because of it's association with weapons. This is unfortunate. Modern nuclear reactor designs are useless for making weapons. Yet regulations for nuclear power were written in the 1950s and no one bothered to fix them.
Really, solar power is as cheap as coal now. If that is true then why don't I see solar panels popping up everywhere? Perhaps its because solar is not cheap. What makes solar power expensive is that it does not work at night. Storing that solar power is expensive.
Assuming we can produce wind and solar power cheaper than nuclear, and do so when accounting for the storage infrastructure too, nuclear still wins out. The goal is, presumably, to reduce carbon output. That's why we have electric cars, right? Nuclear has a lower carbon output than wind and solar. If we are going to ignore price of producing electricity to account for "externalities" like climate change then the best answer we have with current technology is nuclear power.
If you want to claim that solar is as cheap as coal then I can play along. Problem is the carbon produced in making those solar panels. Only hydroelectric dams can beat nuclear power for carbon emitted per kWh and we've already dammed up every river worth a dam. Now the best option is nuclear. If you want solar and wind power over nuclear then you are the bad guy here for wanting to bring on "climate change".
I agree that both electric and gasoline cars need iron and aluminum. Gasoline cars don't need lithium though. Lithium is not cheap, iron is. Because a gasoline car does not need expensive lithium a gasoline car will always be cheaper than an electric one. Total cost of ownership for an electric car may be cheaper than a gasoline car but a person would have to put a lot of miles on the car to notice the savings. Few people drive that much. Even fewer people are willing to put up with the long charge times.
I had the same question. The response I got was that the software license control system needed an internet connection. Locking the network down wasn't really a big issue to worry about. Having internet access meant security updates could be installed easily, meaning the systems were arguably more secure because of the internet access. Loss of security updates from Microsoft changes that obviously.
Excellent analogy, wish I had mod points.
Set sales quotas on electric cars? What if no one wants the electric car? Do they have to give the electric car away before they can sell the next gasoline car? Who then pays for this electric car?
So many questions on this and I don't think I'd like the answers. The California government is telling the people they know what cars suit them better then the people buying them do.
Another question, where is this electricity coming from to power the cars? If it's anything other than nuclear or hydro then the gasoline cars are probably a better choice.
It wasn't that long ago that natural gas cars were the big craze. What happened? Why are natural gas cars evil? That's probably where the electricity comes from anyway. Natural gas cars make much better sense to me than electric if the concern is carbon emissions, at least until we get more nuclear power. No one said that legislation has to make sense though.
Right, because building a successful electric car is easy. If it's so easy why don't you do it? I'd think you'd make lots of money.
Right, because the Chevy Volt is selling so well.
Oh, right, it's not. No electric car is doing well right now. Tesla is a possible exception only because they aren't selling electric cars so much as expensive sport cars that happen to also be electric.
What if people don't want to buy the more fuel efficient cars? The government mandates they build the cars but they have not, yet, mandated that we buy them.
Chrysler did not want to make these electric cars, they know they will not sell well because they cost too much and don't offer the same performance and convenience of gasoline cars. Chrysler's job, their corporate mandate, is to make money. They chose to make money by selling cars people want to buy. Their job is not to save the people from themselves. That's assuming that there is even truth behind the "climate change" scaremongering.
If the government really wanted to keep carbon out of the air then they'd let people build nuclear power plants. Nothing except hydroelectric does better than nuclear in kWh out versus carbon emissions. We can synthesize gasoline using nuclear power, we get clean air and can keep our gasoline cars.
Molten salt nuclear reactors don't produce waste like solid fuel reactors, in fact they can burn up the waste that exists and what "waste" they do produce can be turned into valuable materials for industry and medicine.
The government is trying to solve the carbon emission problem on the demand side, which only hurts our economy. If they work on the supply side, by getting our energy from nuclear power, then we get much better results. Electric cars just mean we burn more coal. Nuclear power means we burn no coal.
I have to wonder if the people in government even want to reduce carbon output. I think they just like telling people what to do.
You are assuming that the problems with the price of electric cars versus gasoline cars is economies of scale. If that were true then we'd think that Chrysler would want to see their electric cars be successful. Problem is that gasoline cars are made of iron and aluminum, two of the most abundant elements on Earth. Electric cars need lithium for the batteries, an element that is relatively rare and therefore will always be more expensive.
Where is the benefit in electric cars anyway? Our electricity comes from coal and natural gas. We could build more wind and solar but that means energy prices triple, if we're lucky. It's quite possible energy would be ten times what it costs now if we cannot use fossil fuels or nuclear. We can build nuclear power plants and get cheap energy with very little carbon output, lower carbon output than wind and solar per kWh produced.
Nuclear power does not address the issue of the cost of materials in electric cars. What would lower our carbon emissions and give us cheap energy is synthetic fuels. We can make hydrocarbons from carbon in the air and close that loop, no new carbon added to the atmosphere. Power it all from nuclear power. Then we get to have our cars made from cheap iron and aluminum. We also get to keep our 300 mile range from a five minute fill up.
Using waste annihilating molten salt reactors also means we get to burn up the "spent" fuel from old reactors that keep piling up. Nuclear power means cheap energy, cheap cars, clean air, and reduction in radioactive waste. Electric cars means expensive energy, more carbon output, and unless we get modern nuclear power that radioactive waste will continue to slowly decay away. We can get rid of the waste in decades with modern nuclear power or we can let it sit for hundreds of years.
Economies of scale cannot compete with the laws of physics.
Right now our choices are, keep XP, move to Windows 8.1, or choose an OS that Microsoft does not make. Only one person at work has asked for Windows 8, everyone else wants XP or 7. For a variety of reasons Windows 8 is not an option for widespread adoption. If Microsoft removes the choice to keep XP then the choice to move to something not made by Microsoft becomes that much easier.
Even though the desktops may stay on Windows XP there are still servers that need to be upgraded. We can move the Server 2003 boxes to Server 2008 or Server 2012 so long as XP stays. If we can't keep XP then the servers might move to Linux or Apple. Once we break that barrier to an OS not made by Microsoft then moving the next server or desktop to something other than Microsoft gets easier.
If we can't keep using IE on the computers because of security issues then we'll probably use Chrome instead. Once people get used to Chrome then moving to some other operating system that runs Chrome becomes easier. Outlook uses the IE engine to render HTML messages, if IE is broken then so is Outlook. If we can't use Outlook then we'll use something else. If people aren't using Outlook then do we need to run Exchange Server anymore? No.
AutoCAD runs on Mac OSX just as well as Windows, we can switch. Same goes for anything offered by Adobe. Microsoft Office runs on Windows and Mac OS X. So long as Office runs on XP we'll keep using it. If we make that leap to Apple systems then how long will we keep running Microsoft Office? Maybe once we switch the OS we might decide to switch our word processors and spreadsheets too. Maybe not.
The longer we can run XP the longer it makes sense to keep the other Microsoft products. If whatever version of Windows that follows 8.1 does not suck as bad then we might buy that one. It does not sound like we'll ever switch to Windows 8, it's just that bad. If Microsoft decides to force a choice out of us they might not like what we choose.
The bosses won't invest in Windows 8.1 because it has a really bad UI. They don't like how it looks and works so they are going to stick with Windows 7 and XP as long as possible. Microsoft dropping support for XP and offering 8.1 as a replacement is not going over very well. It sounds like if they have to give up XP because of lack of support then they'd consider Linux or Apple rather than going to Windows 8.1 because the UI is just that bad.
And on those machines you surf the WWW using IE?
At home, yes. I'll surf the web for answers to questions that pop into my head with whatever computer I happen to be using at the time. With IE being the default browser then it tends to get used. Even if I install a different browser the IE engine is so intertwined with the OS that other software will use it for things like help files.
At work the people will use those computers for all kinds of crazy things. The primary use is for running the equipment but they'll use them to check e-mail or whatever, and the IE engine tends to be used to render HTML formatted messages.
If we switch away from Microsoft then we're not likely to ever switch back. Perhaps their next version of Windows won't suck as bad as 8.x and we upgrade then.