Firewire is dead like EISA and MCA before. Or what about SCSI which cost hundreds dollars in controller and cables and terminators just to connect a fucking 2X CDROM drive. Firewire had many connectors too, like SCSI.
Firewire is not dead, it's just moved on to the professional and "prosumer" market.
When it comes to connectors Firewire has had only 3, each identified by pin count, 4, 6, or 9. It's had only 2 speeds 400 and 800Mbps, with some rarer devices going beyond that to 1600 and 3200 with only the 9 pin connector supporting those speeds. This is far simpler than USB with it's dozen or so connectors, with type A, B, AB, and C variants to complicate it further. Then it's got 5 (or 6?) wildly varying data rate specifications and not always being backward/forward compatible.
I don't know why you bring SCSI into this other than to find something that USB might be considered an improvement over. Yep, SCSI was pretty messed up. That might explain why things like eSATA, Firewire, and Thunderbolt, replaced it.
As for Thunderbolt it's good for turning a $25 PCIe board into a $400 Thunderbolt peripheral even if you just wanted a couple serial ports.
If you are spending hundreds of dollars on a controller for a CD-ROM, or hundreds of dollars on a serial port adapter, then you are doing it wrong. If you just want a cheap serial port adapter then that's what things like PCIe, and of course USB, are for.
Nice straw man there. Still doesn't change that USB brings what we got from Thunderbolt and Firewire a decade earlier. I'm baffled why the USB people are bothering with USB 3.2 when Thunderbolt 3 already exceeds its performance now on the same connector. All they are doing with this "not invented here" syndrome would be to bring further confusion to their products and add nothing of any real value.
If they work on making people forget that the USB type-B connectors even existed, and really lean on getting people to adopt type A (for low speed/power/cost uses on hosts) and type C connectors (for high speed/power, or small space, uses on hosts and clients) then they might have something good for a long time yet. Don't add more confusion with yet another USB 3.2 "alt-mode" on top of USB 3.0/3.1, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, HDMI, MHL, and this already very frustrating audio accessory mode.
What we find with this audio accessory mode, which was already a solved problem with using a cheap and tiny USB 2.0 audio device chip, is confusion added on top of confusion. You want to make fun of needing expensive adapters for Thunderbolt, Firewire, or SCSI? Well, at least with those you'd know they would work. With the nonsense we have now people might need 2 or 3 different USB-C to audio adapters depending on the device they want to plug their headphones into.
This problem is easy to solve, make a law that requires all batteries to be removable.
Here's a few questions. Are we going to require the manufacturer to create replacement batteries? How do you enforce that? We can make them removable, now define "removable". The iPad battery in the article was removable, you just need a heating pad, screwdriver, a plastic pry bar, and about an hour.
Define the "battery". If you define it too broadly then the manufacturers can just define the device as the battery. Define it too tightly and each individual cell is a battery, and removing them means the cells spilling out and near impossible to replace. Removing them could be also made more difficult. I'm not sure how in this case but I'm guessing manufacturers would find a way if only out of spite.
As an example on the difficulty of this just look at assault weapons bans around the world. What does an AR-15 have to do with an iPad? The definition of a "removable magazine". First you have to define what a magazine is and is not. Then you have to define "removable". In this case the desire was to make the magazine NOT removable. So they said that a non-removable magazine meant it requires the use of a "tool" to remove. Okay, now you have to define a "tool". From this came the "bullet button". I could go on but this is something still being fought back and forth between the law and the manufacturers.
Here's the point. You can pass a law, and the manufacturers that don't like the law will follow the letter of the law, but still defeat the intent. Apple is one example in consumer electronics with the intent to keep some kind of standard on cell phone chargers. Apple has put a USB port on their chargers, but their phones have something not USB. Many people find this a problem because it still means having to buy an Apple certified cable. Others find this perfectly acceptable as it means the phone comes with a very much bog standard USB power brick that might be 5 watts, 12 watts, or whatever. Other manufacturers interpret this differently with ports on the device that at least looks like a USB port, and a wall wart power brick with a connector on the cable that looks like USB, but they violate the spec in potentially dangerous ways.
You want a law? Okay, you write one. Go post it somewhere for review, and I can expect in no time you'll find a dozen people find 20 ways the law will not meet the intended goal. You get a company with potentially billions of dollars at stake and they will find many more ways to get around the law.
You will need more than a law. You'll need to convince the people that make this stuff to get on board. Good luck with that.
It's been said that those who don't understand FireWire will be condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
Maybe I have that quote confused a bit. It does work though, USB was supposed to be a cheaper and easier alternative to FireWire. It took them a while (only about 30 years) but they got all the features of FireWire, but all the baggage of backward compatibility with an inferior spec.
The USB-C connector isn't bad but without Thunderbolt and/or DisplayPort on the cable it's only barely better than what I had from FireWire 10 years earlier.
What a fucked up spec. They have at least 10 different connectors and how many different speeds? I hear they want to boost the speed again with another revision, USB 3.2... now with "SuperSpeed Plus"! Congratulations! You just reinvented Thunderbolt 2! POORLY!
And if nuclear was really that cost effective, utilities would be jumping on it.
That was covered in that Lazard report. Natural gas is cheaper than everything. What happens when natural gas prices come back up? My guess is another boom in nuclear power, much like what was seen in the 1970s and 1980s.
What few people seem to realize is that even though new nuclear power construction effectively stopped 40 years ago the output we've seen from nuclear power kept increasing. Improved techniques raised the capacity factor from less than 50% in the 1970s to over 90% today. Upgrades and a better understanding on how the reactors worked allowed for increases in maximum power ratings. This brought down the costs.
Had we not stopped building nuclear power then we would not have seen the loss in experienced technicians and engineers. It's been long enough now that if these people are not retired (or senile, or dead) then they've found work elsewhere. Finding people to build nuclear power at the rate we did 40 years ago will be expensive. At least it will at first.
Nuclear power is expensive because we decided it was expensive. That's it. Once we decide it's not expensive then the price will come back down. It's that simple.
The French did it and it required massive government subsidies - and that will not happen in our political climate.
Gov Brown is an excellent administrator; if not the best in the USA in the last 50 years.
He LISTENS to science and reason and applies them and does not get stuck down to a position like a normal person.
I might be able to find this believable if Gov. Brown supported nuclear power. He is stuck on an anti-nuclear position in spite of science and reason. We are going to have to decide which is the greater threat, nuclear power or global warming. If nuclear power is the greater threat then I have to wonder just how much of a threat global warming truly poses. If global warming is the greater threat then we must build more nuclear power plants.
Don't give me bullshit over a "false dichotomy". I'm merely asking which poses a greater threat. If you want to tell me that nuclear power poses a greater threat then I'll simply move along in my gasoline powered 4x4 truck. If you believe global warming is a greater threat than nuclear power then I'd be quite pleased to buy a new electric vehicle once that nuclear power plant comes on line. As I'm quite confident that people would rather choose global warming over nuclear power then I have no fear in having to scrap my truck.
The California legislature cannot legislate the laws of physics or economics. There is no way for the utilities to provide enough power through wind, water, and sun, and provide it cheaper than could be done with nuclear, natural gas, and coal. Not with current technology. The California government can't legislate new technology into being either.
They can require a plan all they want, and make it a crime to fail to do so. If the utilities tell the legislature that they will have to get nuclear power, raise their CO2 output, or see energy prices triple then the government will have to choose to accept one of those options.
The California government can punish the utilities if they like, all that is likely to do is make them go out of business. Then what? Pass another law to make the lights come back on? Will they fine the utilities? They don't care, they'll just raise their rates. If the government doesn't let them raise rates to pay the fines then the lights go out. If the government doesn't let them build nuclear power plants then the lights go out. If the government doesn't let them burn natural gas then the lights go out.
As we know the government will not allow the utilities to simply turn out the lights. The utilities don't want the lights to go out either, because then they don't make money. The utilities will submit a plan as required. The government will approve it, even if it's a pile of bullshit. No one will get fined or otherwise punished, and the lights will not go out, if the CO2 emission milestones are missed.
The government has no real enforcement here because the utilities are not required to supply power under their terms, they can simply close up shop and find a state not run by escapees from a mental institution.
We cannot do this economically, just like we cannot operate nuclear reactors economically.
Irrelevant. Irrelevant political bullshit.
If the problem of global warming is driving people to expensive energy in the form of wind and sun then we can afford to use nuclear power. If you want to bring capitalism into this then let's do that. Make a true "all the above" energy policy that opens up development for wind, solar, nuclear, or whatever, and have them compete for money on the open market. If people want unreliable solar and wind then let them buy it. If people are willing to spend a bit more for reliable nuclear power then let them do it. Given time I can expect every one to get cheaper from more research and development.
Bringing up the costs of nuclear power is a bullshit excuse. It's as cheap as wind and solar but far more reliable. Add in the costs of storage needed for wind and solar to make them reliable and nuclear starts looking real cheap. No, cost is not an issue. That's a bullshit excuse if we can afford solar and wind.
Is global warming a problem or not? If it is then spend the money to solve it. I've seen engineers show the costs of building a nuclear power plant. The materials, labor, land, and all other costs are the same for nuclear as it is for coal, except one. That one overriding cost to prevent nuclear from owning the market is regulatory. Fix the political BULLSHIT and make nuclear economical. The costs for new nuclear power has been effectively infinite because the government refused to issue operating licenses. Issue licenses and the costs come down.
This is all bullshit. This is all politics. And I am simply tired of all the excuses. There is no excuse, only BULLSHIT!
In a nutshell, nuclear sucks compared to everything else.
If you actually read the Lazard report they make it very clear that it's dangerous to compare costs of reliable energy sources, like nuclear and natural gas, with unreliable energy, like from wind and sun. Storage and backup costs money, a cost not included in that report from Lazard. Costs that, again, Lazard warns should be included when making honest comparisons of energy sources. Nuclear "sucks" only if you are being dishonest and disingenuous.
Oh, and later Lazard reports point out that solar thermal and rooftop PV are exceedingly expensive. Utility scale solar might seem cheap at first but only if, again, not taking into account the need for storage and/or backup power.
Which it does. What does it require to be done now?
Fucking planning.
Then write a law that requires the utilities in the state to produce those plans. Perhaps require plans be submitted to the governor, or whatever executive agency that might be appropriate, and have some means to hold the utilities to those plans. Punishing the utilities with fines for not meeting goals is likely to simply provide them an excuse for not meeting future plans, they simply say they couldn't do it because of a lack of funds. So creating this will not be easy.
This is a law with no requirement to produce those plans. There's no enforcement of the goal. At least none that I could see. I can set a personal goal of eliminating the CO2 output of the state of California by 2045. That means about as much as this promise from the governor. Given that he's likely to be out of office by then, and given his age likely dead, this means nothing.
I'll repeat that, this means nothing.
This is nothing more than a goal for which some future governor and future members of the legislature will have to put into motion. The people in government today did nothing, made no promise to do anything themselves towards this goal. It's just a request to their replacements in the the government to meet some arbitrary goal. They are under no obligation to respond to this request and even if the law had some kind of enforcement mechanism then the next people in office can simply negate it.
This isn't a plan, and does not even require a plan be produced. They made some happy mouth noises to make people in the state feel better about themselves. Or rather, those that don't bother to think this through can feel better about themselves. The people with the intellectual and emotional maturity to actually realize what this means will simply roll their eyes and move on. Nothing has changed and the California government did nothing of any value.
This is a fine example of how government works today. They waste time on this bullshit so they can pretend they are important. If they took their jobs seriously then this law would never have even been proposed. This is an ineffective law from ineffective people.
If global warming from carbon emissions are bringing us all these terrible storms, with all the death and destruction they cause, then we should do everything in our power to reduce our CO2 footprint. As nuclear power is the one energy source we have today with the lowest CO2 output per energy produced then we should be building nuclear power plants as quickly as we can. Anyone standing in the way of nuclear power development is by inaction killing people and destroying property.
I'm sure someone will shout, "but nuclear power is not safe!!" Is it? Less safe than hurricanes? I call bullshit. Nuclear power is the safest energy source we have existing today, look it up. In fact here's a web page to get you started: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
If CO2 is the problem then we need to look at solutions with the lowest CO2 output. That means nuclear power. It also means more wind and hydro but not many people oppose those. If you oppose nuclear power based on the threat it poses to humanity then I must assume you are ignorant or believe global warming is no real threat.
I personally believe that global warming is no real threat but I advocate nuclear power for many reasons, one of them being to get the global warming alarmists to SHUT THE FUCK UP!! If global warming is a problem then it only remains a problem because we stopped building nuclear power plants in the USA.
1 ) sequester carbon ( is there a way of sequestering Carbon that does not require more energy then the energy produced by creating the carbon emission in the first place? )
Trees. Seriously, plant trees. Dr. Patrick Moore, a noted environmentalist and founding member of Greenpeace, stated that we should plant a bunch of trees and then use the lumber for construction as a carbon sink. This plan got him kicked out of Greenpeace since, apparently to these non-scientific minded idiots, we can't dare cut down trees. Well, I heard him explain the plan and it makes sense to me.
2 ) virtually ban all internal combustion engines.
That's not necessary. We know of carbon neutral fuels we can burn. We can synthesize hydrocarbons and ammonia fuels from nuclear power. I heard that from Dr. Moore too, and many other people with a PhD agree with him. We can electrify the trains, use electric cars, have nuclear powered ships, but we will need internal combustion engines for large land vehicles and aircraft. For those use synthesized fuel.
3 ) Generate all your electricity from clean sources
Like nuclear power? We simply cannot achieve carbon neutrality without nuclear power or some leap in technology. While we wait for this technology to come we need more nuclear power.
4 ) Somehow control where you source every item entering your territory from ( cars, lumber, solar panels, computers) so they were produced with only green power , or have some rule that requires you sequester carbon equal to the carbon cost of producing those items.
That's something that California, or any US state, cannot do on its own. The federated government we have places restrictions on state governments and restrictions on the federal government. Because we live in a global economy that means international cooperation as well. Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as anything we've given that label to. Wind, solar, hydro, and whatever else you can think of as "zero carbon" will have to be used to reach this goal. As too many people consider nuclear power something not included in an "all the above" energy policy then they are not taking the goal of "zero carbon" seriously. Why leave out the one energy source that is so low in CO2, safe, inexpensive, reliable, and plentiful? My only guess on this is because they have some desire to not actually solve the problem.
If we solve the problem of CO2 then the politicians will just have to think of another boogieman to scare us into voting for them. That not only shows they lack any actual fear of global warming but also a lack of imagination on exposing any problems that they can be relied upon as a leader to solve.
It's only "clean" in terms of carbon dioxide. Nuclear waste isn't "clean".
Waste is inevitable. There's waste from coal power, wind power, solar power, all power has waste. The definition of waste is it is not "clean". We know what to do with spent nuclear fuel. We can reprocess it into new fuel, and the stuff left over from that can be processed further into industrial and medical isotopes. The stuff left over from that is, again by definition, "waste" which we know how to dispose of safely.
The problem is that we, as a nation, had picked a number of sites to dispose of this waste but the Democrats have been holding up the funding to open these sites. Yucca Mountain as a waste disposal site has been in the planning for perhaps 60 years. It should have been opened in the 1990s for permanent storage of waste. It's 20 or 30 years beyond that now and the site still has not opened.
Any problems of nuclear waste are all political. These problems only exist because politicians created them. The bulk of these politicians are in one political party. That party is the Democratic Party.
The nuclear waste problem is a construct of the Democrats. Get them out of the way and we don't have a nuclear waste problem.
First, the governor is making a plan so far in the future that he will not be responsible for making it happen. No politician can make such a promise because their actions cannot dictate the actions of a future executive or legislature. A goal in 2045 is, by my math, 27 years in the future. Unless he plans on staying in office that long I don't believe him in having any intention to attain this goal. On top of that the guy is 80 years old, so even if he thought he could stay in office for 25+ years then he must also have a plan to live well beyond his 100th birthday.
Had he made an energy plan for the remainder of his term, or even to the end of being re-elected on more time, then I'd take him seriously.
Second, he's shutting down all the nuclear power plants. No other energy source we know of has a lower CO2 output per energy produced than nuclear power. By shutting down the last of the nuclear power plants, and having no plans to build more, makes this plan of 100% carbon neutral power a load of bullshit. If he was serious about this plan then he'd include in the plan nuclear power, as unpopular as it might be to do so. Saying he'll do everything in his power to lower CO2 but use nuclear power tells me that he sees nuclear power a greater threat to the state, nation, human species, or whatever, than nuclear power.
If nuclear power is a greater threat than CO2 then I have to wonder just how much of a threat CO2 is to anyone. Someone explain this to me. How much of a threat is CO2? How much of a threat is nuclear power? How can nuclear power be a greater threat? If we can't have nuclear power to solve the problem of our CO2 emissions then why should I take any threat of global warming from CO2 seriously?
This is bullshit for a politician to make any promise of government action beyond the end of their term. This is bullshit to make any plan of lowered CO2 from energy production that does not include nuclear power. This is double bullshit to make both promises at the same time.
Yes, but they may not be good for your health, either. For example, brass and bronze will contain lead unless specifically specified as "lead free", and "lead free" will still have up to 0.25% lead on the wetted surface. And copper and silver may not be great for your health, depending on several factors, and are going to be alloyed with other metals that may or may not be worse.
We have been using copper and silver in pots, pans, utensils, jewelry, and such for a very long time. We've learned how to make such alloys safe and their antiseptic properties have been known for some time. We've also known of lead poisoning for a long time and so no one would intentionally put lead in something where it might be used in something that touches food or skin. Copper poisoning is a real thing but very unlikely from the use of copper pots and drinking straws. Silver is so safe for consumption that people (with more dollars than sense) will use silver to decorate confections. They will EAT SILVER. Some people have consumed so much silver that its been deposited in their skin. Other than an odd blue/gray skin coloring they've not seen any ill effects. This variation in skin tone requires consuming silver for a very long time and not like to develop from using silver alloys in drinking straws and utensils. If it did then old time family photos would look very different.
Silver and copper are both "generally regarded as safe" for use in many things, including jewelry, kitchen utensils, surgical instruments, and in some cases even as things we eat. Comments of lead poisoning from an improperly used alloy does not follow. Don't put lead in an alloy intended to be in contact with food and skin.
You boil the straws. That should work for sanitizing any drinking straw made of glass, metal, or even plastic.
If you don't have a pot and something to heat it to boiling then you have bigger problems than finding a drinking straw. If you don't have water to boil your drinking straws then what are you drinking?
I remember reading that certain metals have natural antiseptic properties. Silver and brass/bronze/copper will kill bacteria, as I recall. Get a straw made of such materials, either as an alternative to a dishwasher or as an additional level of protection from disease regardless of how you keep the straw clean.
You want more nuclear facilities in the Middle East? Really?
No, I want more nuclear power plants in the Middle East. A "nuclear facility" can be a lot of things. They can burn natural gas or they can use nuclear power for reliable 24/7 power. I'd rather they use nuclear power.
In any case, I would be willing to bet that bids for solar power would be lower than nuclear.
That's fine. What happens if you lose that bet? I'm fine with them using solar power but I've seen the resources, land, manpower, and therefore expense, on using solar power, and nuclear is far better on every metric. Nuclear power is even lower on CO2 emitted per energy produced.
Providing power for desalination is an ideal application for solar power, because it is easy to accommodate the intermittent nature of solar.
Sure, I'll go with that. Here's the problem, they'd be building a very expensive facility to desalinate the water and be able to operate it only when the sun shines. Maybe they can use a molten salt solar thermal system to keep it going 24/7 but that adds to the cost even more.
I've seen these solar thermal storage systems and they use the same salts as a molten salt breeder reactor. I say go ahead with your solar desalination plant, it will prove the technology for molten salt nuclear reactors in the future. So, sure, go ahead with solar power. Seems to me that if they think shipping an iceberg from Antarctica is something to consider then they are pretty desperate at this point. Do "all the above", as that seems to be a popular phrase these days.
Maybe they can keep it running at night with natural gas, but that's still burning a lot of natural gas they would not have to if they ran it on nuclear power. Maybe they can build three of these solar powered plants so that they can make up for the time the sun isn't shining bright enough to keep it running, such as dusk, dawn, and through the night. Or, maybe, they can build three nuclear powered desalination plants for the same price as those three solar powered ones and get three times the output.
Do you believe that anyone can stop nations in the Middle East from developing nuclear power? It's not rocket science. The USA figured it out 60 years ago. The knowledge to make it work is widely available, and the details can be derived by people motivated to do so, just like we did. Nuclear fuel is in the dirt and the water, so it's not like we can stop them from getting it.
Even if I wanted them to not get nuclear power how do you propose we stop them?
Desalination is a big fat valuable target and a nuclear power station is not?
Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? They are built under a concrete dome that's three feet thick, built to hold up to a plane crash. Those that are concerned about an act of war taking them out will build their nuclear reactors under a mountain. How does a nation protect a solar collector from acts of terrorism or war? Build that under a mountain too?
We're seeing nuclear power plants built into warships, that's how well they hold up in war. We've never seen a solar powered warship. We did see wind powered warships at one time, they don't work so well up against the nuclear powered kind.
Every desalination plant will be a target in war. To protect them would mean making them small, hardened, and therefore easy to defend. Solar power does not allow for this because they require things light, spread out, and therefore difficult to defend. Greenpeace has been on a mission to "prove" nuclear facilities around the world are vulnerable to terrorism. If that's true then why are the only terrorists trying to attack these sites members of Greenpeace?
How much would 80 million square meters of solar collectors cost compared to how much they spend now on natural gas for their power? Or the nuclear power plants they are building now?
The UAE is building solar power collectors for energy, and it's a good idea for them to do so. What's also a good idea is investing in nuclear power. Competition is a good thing. Put solar vs. nuclear vs. wind vs. whatever, and then see who comes out cheapest.
Given the solar potential of that area of the world, they could use solar thermal to power the desal plants, mine the brine for lithium and magnesium and use the sodium & potassium salts for thermal energy storage
Taking the whole area of the Middle East, the population there, the solar power available, and the drinking water that solar power could produce, then I would agree that solar thermal is possible as a solution. There's a huge problem, the people in the Middle East are a bunch of groups that don't get along very well. Politics prevent this from being feasible.
First, solar desalination is a big fat valuable target in case of war or terrorism. You can't put a solar collector in a bunker and expect it to work. Maybe you can build it from bulletproof glass and such but it's still a big target if it's to collect enough sun to matter. Second, some of these nations are small with not a lot of open area for solar collectors. To get enough sun they'd have to "import some sun" from their neighbors in the form of desalinated water, electricity, or something else of value. This means trade with people that might just rather see them dead, and also having something of value to give in return. What would these nations have to trade? Other than the oil and natural gas that we'd rather not see burned?
I could go on but I hope I've made my point. This is not a problem that can be solved with solar power given the politics. That's even assuming the physics and economics work out. To convince them to switch to solar power you'd have to show them it can make them money, or be less of a money sink than using oil, natural gas, or nuclear power. I've seen the math and even in sunny UAE they cannot rely on solar power to provide the electricity and drinking water they need. They will have to use nuclear power or revert to a stone age existence in time.
Multiple ships towing an iceberg of this size multiple thousands of miles... belching carbon into our atmosphere.... this sounds like a horrible idea.
Then use nuclear powered ships. Or use nuclear power to desalinate the water off their shore. Or do both. There's other ways to get power than from oil. Lot's of them don't "belch" carbon into the air, that includes nuclear power.
How about instead we don't build enormous cities in deserts.
Where should they go? You got a spare bedroom to rent?
And accelerating the melting of the iceberg will raise sea levels that much faster.
You failed physics, didn't you? There's at least four different ways that's wrong that I could come up with in a few seconds of thinking about it.
On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows:
Net electricity generation by energy source in 2016[1]
Natural gas (33.8%)
Coal (30.4%)
Nuclear (19.7%)
Hydro (6.5%)
Wind (5.5%)
Biomass (1.5%)
Other (2.6%)
I know I'm comparing different years here but I'd think it's safe to assume some year to year consistency on funding. We see nuclear power get 7% of the tax subsidies and yet produces 20% of the electricity we use. Renewable energy gets 45% of the tax subsidies but produces maybe 10% of the electricity.
Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as wind or solar. Nuclear power is safe, this is especially true in the USA. I'm tired of this talk of Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples of nuclear power being unsafe. First, neither happened in the USA. Second, those are old reactors built decades ago and have very little in common with how nuclear reactors are built today. Even with those two high profile cases of nuclear power gone wrong we still have plenty of other reactors, hundreds of them, that didn't make the news because they hurt no one.
When it comes to nuclear power being expensive well, just look at how much money nuclear power has been getting from the government in looking to make it cheaper. Just imagine how much cheaper nuclear power would be today if it got funding like wind and solar. Or, even as much money as was spent on fossil fuels.
Politicians like to make happy mouth noises about an "all the above" energy policy but when it comes to actually funding what works they short change nuclear power every time. If they were serious about lowering CO2, providing cheap and reliable energy, and reducing reliance on foreign energy sources, then they'd be giving nuclear power funds on par with its portion of the energy we consume.
I don't like the idea of energy subsidies, they should all go away. However, if we are to have subsidies then let's do it based on the actual energy produced. Since the goal is to reduce CO2 as well then reduce the subsidies based on that. Nuclear power produces a HUGE amount of energy and very little CO2. We should reward this accordingly.
Fossil fuels are not cheap because of the subsidies, they get very little subsidies compared to other sources and the amount of energy we get from it. Fossil fuels are cheap because it's easy to get and we have centuries of experience in digging it up and turning it into useful work. We learned a lot on how to turn uranium into useful work, maybe if we put some effort into learning more we could make it even cheaper. If we want "all the above" on energy then be honest about it.
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Why would autistic stress rocking call for kleenex and dating? Shouldn't this instead call for calming music and comfort foods?
You did specify "if Google made this".
Firewire is dead like EISA and MCA before. Or what about SCSI which cost hundreds dollars in controller and cables and terminators just to connect a fucking 2X CDROM drive. Firewire had many connectors too, like SCSI.
Firewire is not dead, it's just moved on to the professional and "prosumer" market.
When it comes to connectors Firewire has had only 3, each identified by pin count, 4, 6, or 9. It's had only 2 speeds 400 and 800Mbps, with some rarer devices going beyond that to 1600 and 3200 with only the 9 pin connector supporting those speeds. This is far simpler than USB with it's dozen or so connectors, with type A, B, AB, and C variants to complicate it further. Then it's got 5 (or 6?) wildly varying data rate specifications and not always being backward/forward compatible.
I don't know why you bring SCSI into this other than to find something that USB might be considered an improvement over. Yep, SCSI was pretty messed up. That might explain why things like eSATA, Firewire, and Thunderbolt, replaced it.
As for Thunderbolt it's good for turning a $25 PCIe board into a $400 Thunderbolt peripheral even if you just wanted a couple serial ports.
If you are spending hundreds of dollars on a controller for a CD-ROM, or hundreds of dollars on a serial port adapter, then you are doing it wrong. If you just want a cheap serial port adapter then that's what things like PCIe, and of course USB, are for.
Nice straw man there. Still doesn't change that USB brings what we got from Thunderbolt and Firewire a decade earlier. I'm baffled why the USB people are bothering with USB 3.2 when Thunderbolt 3 already exceeds its performance now on the same connector. All they are doing with this "not invented here" syndrome would be to bring further confusion to their products and add nothing of any real value.
If they work on making people forget that the USB type-B connectors even existed, and really lean on getting people to adopt type A (for low speed/power/cost uses on hosts) and type C connectors (for high speed/power, or small space, uses on hosts and clients) then they might have something good for a long time yet. Don't add more confusion with yet another USB 3.2 "alt-mode" on top of USB 3.0/3.1, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, HDMI, MHL, and this already very frustrating audio accessory mode.
What we find with this audio accessory mode, which was already a solved problem with using a cheap and tiny USB 2.0 audio device chip, is confusion added on top of confusion. You want to make fun of needing expensive adapters for Thunderbolt, Firewire, or SCSI? Well, at least with those you'd know they would work. With the nonsense we have now people might need 2 or 3 different USB-C to audio adapters depending on the device they want to plug their headphones into.
This problem is easy to solve, make a law that requires all batteries to be removable.
Here's a few questions. Are we going to require the manufacturer to create replacement batteries? How do you enforce that? We can make them removable, now define "removable". The iPad battery in the article was removable, you just need a heating pad, screwdriver, a plastic pry bar, and about an hour.
Define the "battery". If you define it too broadly then the manufacturers can just define the device as the battery. Define it too tightly and each individual cell is a battery, and removing them means the cells spilling out and near impossible to replace. Removing them could be also made more difficult. I'm not sure how in this case but I'm guessing manufacturers would find a way if only out of spite.
As an example on the difficulty of this just look at assault weapons bans around the world. What does an AR-15 have to do with an iPad? The definition of a "removable magazine". First you have to define what a magazine is and is not. Then you have to define "removable". In this case the desire was to make the magazine NOT removable. So they said that a non-removable magazine meant it requires the use of a "tool" to remove. Okay, now you have to define a "tool". From this came the "bullet button". I could go on but this is something still being fought back and forth between the law and the manufacturers.
Here's the point. You can pass a law, and the manufacturers that don't like the law will follow the letter of the law, but still defeat the intent. Apple is one example in consumer electronics with the intent to keep some kind of standard on cell phone chargers. Apple has put a USB port on their chargers, but their phones have something not USB. Many people find this a problem because it still means having to buy an Apple certified cable. Others find this perfectly acceptable as it means the phone comes with a very much bog standard USB power brick that might be 5 watts, 12 watts, or whatever. Other manufacturers interpret this differently with ports on the device that at least looks like a USB port, and a wall wart power brick with a connector on the cable that looks like USB, but they violate the spec in potentially dangerous ways.
You want a law? Okay, you write one. Go post it somewhere for review, and I can expect in no time you'll find a dozen people find 20 ways the law will not meet the intended goal. You get a company with potentially billions of dollars at stake and they will find many more ways to get around the law.
You will need more than a law. You'll need to convince the people that make this stuff to get on board. Good luck with that.
It's been said that those who don't understand FireWire will be condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
Maybe I have that quote confused a bit. It does work though, USB was supposed to be a cheaper and easier alternative to FireWire. It took them a while (only about 30 years) but they got all the features of FireWire, but all the baggage of backward compatibility with an inferior spec.
The USB-C connector isn't bad but without Thunderbolt and/or DisplayPort on the cable it's only barely better than what I had from FireWire 10 years earlier.
What a fucked up spec. They have at least 10 different connectors and how many different speeds? I hear they want to boost the speed again with another revision, USB 3.2... now with "SuperSpeed Plus"! Congratulations! You just reinvented Thunderbolt 2! POORLY!
And if nuclear was really that cost effective, utilities would be jumping on it.
That was covered in that Lazard report. Natural gas is cheaper than everything. What happens when natural gas prices come back up? My guess is another boom in nuclear power, much like what was seen in the 1970s and 1980s.
What few people seem to realize is that even though new nuclear power construction effectively stopped 40 years ago the output we've seen from nuclear power kept increasing. Improved techniques raised the capacity factor from less than 50% in the 1970s to over 90% today. Upgrades and a better understanding on how the reactors worked allowed for increases in maximum power ratings. This brought down the costs.
Had we not stopped building nuclear power then we would not have seen the loss in experienced technicians and engineers. It's been long enough now that if these people are not retired (or senile, or dead) then they've found work elsewhere. Finding people to build nuclear power at the rate we did 40 years ago will be expensive. At least it will at first.
Nuclear power is expensive because we decided it was expensive. That's it. Once we decide it's not expensive then the price will come back down. It's that simple.
The French did it and it required massive government subsidies - and that will not happen in our political climate.
Haven't you heard? The climate is changing.
They are a private company, and as such, they get to choose the customers they serve and sell their shit to--period.
According to a rather famous court case concerning a wedding cake that's not true.
Gov Brown is an excellent administrator; if not the best in the USA in the last 50 years.
He LISTENS to science and reason and applies them and does not get stuck down to a position like a normal person.
I might be able to find this believable if Gov. Brown supported nuclear power. He is stuck on an anti-nuclear position in spite of science and reason. We are going to have to decide which is the greater threat, nuclear power or global warming. If nuclear power is the greater threat then I have to wonder just how much of a threat global warming truly poses. If global warming is the greater threat then we must build more nuclear power plants.
Don't give me bullshit over a "false dichotomy". I'm merely asking which poses a greater threat. If you want to tell me that nuclear power poses a greater threat then I'll simply move along in my gasoline powered 4x4 truck. If you believe global warming is a greater threat than nuclear power then I'd be quite pleased to buy a new electric vehicle once that nuclear power plant comes on line. As I'm quite confident that people would rather choose global warming over nuclear power then I have no fear in having to scrap my truck.
The California legislature cannot legislate the laws of physics or economics. There is no way for the utilities to provide enough power through wind, water, and sun, and provide it cheaper than could be done with nuclear, natural gas, and coal. Not with current technology. The California government can't legislate new technology into being either.
They can require a plan all they want, and make it a crime to fail to do so. If the utilities tell the legislature that they will have to get nuclear power, raise their CO2 output, or see energy prices triple then the government will have to choose to accept one of those options.
The California government can punish the utilities if they like, all that is likely to do is make them go out of business. Then what? Pass another law to make the lights come back on? Will they fine the utilities? They don't care, they'll just raise their rates. If the government doesn't let them raise rates to pay the fines then the lights go out. If the government doesn't let them build nuclear power plants then the lights go out. If the government doesn't let them burn natural gas then the lights go out.
As we know the government will not allow the utilities to simply turn out the lights. The utilities don't want the lights to go out either, because then they don't make money. The utilities will submit a plan as required. The government will approve it, even if it's a pile of bullshit. No one will get fined or otherwise punished, and the lights will not go out, if the CO2 emission milestones are missed.
The government has no real enforcement here because the utilities are not required to supply power under their terms, they can simply close up shop and find a state not run by escapees from a mental institution.
We cannot do this economically, just like we cannot operate nuclear reactors economically.
Irrelevant. Irrelevant political bullshit.
If the problem of global warming is driving people to expensive energy in the form of wind and sun then we can afford to use nuclear power. If you want to bring capitalism into this then let's do that. Make a true "all the above" energy policy that opens up development for wind, solar, nuclear, or whatever, and have them compete for money on the open market. If people want unreliable solar and wind then let them buy it. If people are willing to spend a bit more for reliable nuclear power then let them do it. Given time I can expect every one to get cheaper from more research and development.
Bringing up the costs of nuclear power is a bullshit excuse. It's as cheap as wind and solar but far more reliable. Add in the costs of storage needed for wind and solar to make them reliable and nuclear starts looking real cheap. No, cost is not an issue. That's a bullshit excuse if we can afford solar and wind.
Is global warming a problem or not? If it is then spend the money to solve it. I've seen engineers show the costs of building a nuclear power plant. The materials, labor, land, and all other costs are the same for nuclear as it is for coal, except one. That one overriding cost to prevent nuclear from owning the market is regulatory. Fix the political BULLSHIT and make nuclear economical. The costs for new nuclear power has been effectively infinite because the government refused to issue operating licenses. Issue licenses and the costs come down.
This is all bullshit. This is all politics. And I am simply tired of all the excuses. There is no excuse, only BULLSHIT!
In a nutshell, nuclear sucks compared to everything else.
If you actually read the Lazard report they make it very clear that it's dangerous to compare costs of reliable energy sources, like nuclear and natural gas, with unreliable energy, like from wind and sun. Storage and backup costs money, a cost not included in that report from Lazard. Costs that, again, Lazard warns should be included when making honest comparisons of energy sources. Nuclear "sucks" only if you are being dishonest and disingenuous.
Oh, and later Lazard reports point out that solar thermal and rooftop PV are exceedingly expensive. Utility scale solar might seem cheap at first but only if, again, not taking into account the need for storage and/or backup power.
Which it does. What does it require to be done now?
Fucking planning.
Then write a law that requires the utilities in the state to produce those plans. Perhaps require plans be submitted to the governor, or whatever executive agency that might be appropriate, and have some means to hold the utilities to those plans. Punishing the utilities with fines for not meeting goals is likely to simply provide them an excuse for not meeting future plans, they simply say they couldn't do it because of a lack of funds. So creating this will not be easy.
This is a law with no requirement to produce those plans. There's no enforcement of the goal. At least none that I could see. I can set a personal goal of eliminating the CO2 output of the state of California by 2045. That means about as much as this promise from the governor. Given that he's likely to be out of office by then, and given his age likely dead, this means nothing.
I'll repeat that, this means nothing.
This is nothing more than a goal for which some future governor and future members of the legislature will have to put into motion. The people in government today did nothing, made no promise to do anything themselves towards this goal. It's just a request to their replacements in the the government to meet some arbitrary goal. They are under no obligation to respond to this request and even if the law had some kind of enforcement mechanism then the next people in office can simply negate it.
This isn't a plan, and does not even require a plan be produced. They made some happy mouth noises to make people in the state feel better about themselves. Or rather, those that don't bother to think this through can feel better about themselves. The people with the intellectual and emotional maturity to actually realize what this means will simply roll their eyes and move on. Nothing has changed and the California government did nothing of any value.
This is a fine example of how government works today. They waste time on this bullshit so they can pretend they are important. If they took their jobs seriously then this law would never have even been proposed. This is an ineffective law from ineffective people.
If global warming from carbon emissions are bringing us all these terrible storms, with all the death and destruction they cause, then we should do everything in our power to reduce our CO2 footprint. As nuclear power is the one energy source we have today with the lowest CO2 output per energy produced then we should be building nuclear power plants as quickly as we can. Anyone standing in the way of nuclear power development is by inaction killing people and destroying property.
I'm sure someone will shout, "but nuclear power is not safe!!" Is it? Less safe than hurricanes? I call bullshit. Nuclear power is the safest energy source we have existing today, look it up. In fact here's a web page to get you started:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
If CO2 is the problem then we need to look at solutions with the lowest CO2 output. That means nuclear power. It also means more wind and hydro but not many people oppose those. If you oppose nuclear power based on the threat it poses to humanity then I must assume you are ignorant or believe global warming is no real threat.
I personally believe that global warming is no real threat but I advocate nuclear power for many reasons, one of them being to get the global warming alarmists to SHUT THE FUCK UP!! If global warming is a problem then it only remains a problem because we stopped building nuclear power plants in the USA.
To be carbon neutral you would have to:
HAVE TO? Well, let's consider each one.
1 ) sequester carbon ( is there a way of sequestering Carbon that does not require more energy then the energy produced by creating the carbon emission in the first place? )
Trees. Seriously, plant trees. Dr. Patrick Moore, a noted environmentalist and founding member of Greenpeace, stated that we should plant a bunch of trees and then use the lumber for construction as a carbon sink. This plan got him kicked out of Greenpeace since, apparently to these non-scientific minded idiots, we can't dare cut down trees. Well, I heard him explain the plan and it makes sense to me.
2 ) virtually ban all internal combustion engines.
That's not necessary. We know of carbon neutral fuels we can burn. We can synthesize hydrocarbons and ammonia fuels from nuclear power. I heard that from Dr. Moore too, and many other people with a PhD agree with him. We can electrify the trains, use electric cars, have nuclear powered ships, but we will need internal combustion engines for large land vehicles and aircraft. For those use synthesized fuel.
3 ) Generate all your electricity from clean sources
Like nuclear power? We simply cannot achieve carbon neutrality without nuclear power or some leap in technology. While we wait for this technology to come we need more nuclear power.
4 ) Somehow control where you source every item entering your territory from ( cars, lumber, solar panels, computers) so they were produced with only green power , or have some rule that requires you sequester carbon equal to the carbon cost of producing those items.
That's something that California, or any US state, cannot do on its own. The federated government we have places restrictions on state governments and restrictions on the federal government. Because we live in a global economy that means international cooperation as well. Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as anything we've given that label to. Wind, solar, hydro, and whatever else you can think of as "zero carbon" will have to be used to reach this goal. As too many people consider nuclear power something not included in an "all the above" energy policy then they are not taking the goal of "zero carbon" seriously. Why leave out the one energy source that is so low in CO2, safe, inexpensive, reliable, and plentiful? My only guess on this is because they have some desire to not actually solve the problem.
If we solve the problem of CO2 then the politicians will just have to think of another boogieman to scare us into voting for them. That not only shows they lack any actual fear of global warming but also a lack of imagination on exposing any problems that they can be relied upon as a leader to solve.
It's only "clean" in terms of carbon dioxide. Nuclear waste isn't "clean".
Waste is inevitable. There's waste from coal power, wind power, solar power, all power has waste. The definition of waste is it is not "clean". We know what to do with spent nuclear fuel. We can reprocess it into new fuel, and the stuff left over from that can be processed further into industrial and medical isotopes. The stuff left over from that is, again by definition, "waste" which we know how to dispose of safely.
The problem is that we, as a nation, had picked a number of sites to dispose of this waste but the Democrats have been holding up the funding to open these sites. Yucca Mountain as a waste disposal site has been in the planning for perhaps 60 years. It should have been opened in the 1990s for permanent storage of waste. It's 20 or 30 years beyond that now and the site still has not opened.
Any problems of nuclear waste are all political. These problems only exist because politicians created them. The bulk of these politicians are in one political party. That party is the Democratic Party.
The nuclear waste problem is a construct of the Democrats. Get them out of the way and we don't have a nuclear waste problem.
I call this a case of double bullshit.
First, the governor is making a plan so far in the future that he will not be responsible for making it happen. No politician can make such a promise because their actions cannot dictate the actions of a future executive or legislature. A goal in 2045 is, by my math, 27 years in the future. Unless he plans on staying in office that long I don't believe him in having any intention to attain this goal. On top of that the guy is 80 years old, so even if he thought he could stay in office for 25+ years then he must also have a plan to live well beyond his 100th birthday.
Had he made an energy plan for the remainder of his term, or even to the end of being re-elected on more time, then I'd take him seriously.
Second, he's shutting down all the nuclear power plants. No other energy source we know of has a lower CO2 output per energy produced than nuclear power. By shutting down the last of the nuclear power plants, and having no plans to build more, makes this plan of 100% carbon neutral power a load of bullshit. If he was serious about this plan then he'd include in the plan nuclear power, as unpopular as it might be to do so. Saying he'll do everything in his power to lower CO2 but use nuclear power tells me that he sees nuclear power a greater threat to the state, nation, human species, or whatever, than nuclear power.
If nuclear power is a greater threat than CO2 then I have to wonder just how much of a threat CO2 is to anyone. Someone explain this to me. How much of a threat is CO2? How much of a threat is nuclear power? How can nuclear power be a greater threat? If we can't have nuclear power to solve the problem of our CO2 emissions then why should I take any threat of global warming from CO2 seriously?
This is bullshit for a politician to make any promise of government action beyond the end of their term. This is bullshit to make any plan of lowered CO2 from energy production that does not include nuclear power. This is double bullshit to make both promises at the same time.
Yes, but they may not be good for your health, either. For example, brass and bronze will contain lead unless specifically specified as "lead free", and "lead free" will still have up to 0.25% lead on the wetted surface. And copper and silver may not be great for your health, depending on several factors, and are going to be alloyed with other metals that may or may not be worse.
We have been using copper and silver in pots, pans, utensils, jewelry, and such for a very long time. We've learned how to make such alloys safe and their antiseptic properties have been known for some time. We've also known of lead poisoning for a long time and so no one would intentionally put lead in something where it might be used in something that touches food or skin. Copper poisoning is a real thing but very unlikely from the use of copper pots and drinking straws. Silver is so safe for consumption that people (with more dollars than sense) will use silver to decorate confections. They will EAT SILVER. Some people have consumed so much silver that its been deposited in their skin. Other than an odd blue/gray skin coloring they've not seen any ill effects. This variation in skin tone requires consuming silver for a very long time and not like to develop from using silver alloys in drinking straws and utensils. If it did then old time family photos would look very different.
Silver and copper are both "generally regarded as safe" for use in many things, including jewelry, kitchen utensils, surgical instruments, and in some cases even as things we eat. Comments of lead poisoning from an improperly used alloy does not follow. Don't put lead in an alloy intended to be in contact with food and skin.
You boil the straws. That should work for sanitizing any drinking straw made of glass, metal, or even plastic.
If you don't have a pot and something to heat it to boiling then you have bigger problems than finding a drinking straw. If you don't have water to boil your drinking straws then what are you drinking?
I remember reading that certain metals have natural antiseptic properties. Silver and brass/bronze/copper will kill bacteria, as I recall. Get a straw made of such materials, either as an alternative to a dishwasher or as an additional level of protection from disease regardless of how you keep the straw clean.
Right, why buy an iPhone when you can get an Android phone? Like a Samsung Galaxy Note 7?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You want more nuclear facilities in the Middle East? Really?
No, I want more nuclear power plants in the Middle East. A "nuclear facility" can be a lot of things. They can burn natural gas or they can use nuclear power for reliable 24/7 power. I'd rather they use nuclear power.
In any case, I would be willing to bet that bids for solar power would be lower than nuclear.
That's fine. What happens if you lose that bet? I'm fine with them using solar power but I've seen the resources, land, manpower, and therefore expense, on using solar power, and nuclear is far better on every metric. Nuclear power is even lower on CO2 emitted per energy produced.
Providing power for desalination is an ideal application for solar power, because it is easy to accommodate the intermittent nature of solar.
Sure, I'll go with that. Here's the problem, they'd be building a very expensive facility to desalinate the water and be able to operate it only when the sun shines. Maybe they can use a molten salt solar thermal system to keep it going 24/7 but that adds to the cost even more.
I've seen these solar thermal storage systems and they use the same salts as a molten salt breeder reactor. I say go ahead with your solar desalination plant, it will prove the technology for molten salt nuclear reactors in the future. So, sure, go ahead with solar power. Seems to me that if they think shipping an iceberg from Antarctica is something to consider then they are pretty desperate at this point. Do "all the above", as that seems to be a popular phrase these days.
Maybe they can keep it running at night with natural gas, but that's still burning a lot of natural gas they would not have to if they ran it on nuclear power. Maybe they can build three of these solar powered plants so that they can make up for the time the sun isn't shining bright enough to keep it running, such as dusk, dawn, and through the night. Or, maybe, they can build three nuclear powered desalination plants for the same price as those three solar powered ones and get three times the output.
Do you believe that anyone can stop nations in the Middle East from developing nuclear power? It's not rocket science. The USA figured it out 60 years ago. The knowledge to make it work is widely available, and the details can be derived by people motivated to do so, just like we did. Nuclear fuel is in the dirt and the water, so it's not like we can stop them from getting it.
Even if I wanted them to not get nuclear power how do you propose we stop them?
Desalination is a big fat valuable target and a nuclear power station is not?
Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? They are built under a concrete dome that's three feet thick, built to hold up to a plane crash. Those that are concerned about an act of war taking them out will build their nuclear reactors under a mountain. How does a nation protect a solar collector from acts of terrorism or war? Build that under a mountain too?
We're seeing nuclear power plants built into warships, that's how well they hold up in war. We've never seen a solar powered warship. We did see wind powered warships at one time, they don't work so well up against the nuclear powered kind.
Every desalination plant will be a target in war. To protect them would mean making them small, hardened, and therefore easy to defend. Solar power does not allow for this because they require things light, spread out, and therefore difficult to defend. Greenpeace has been on a mission to "prove" nuclear facilities around the world are vulnerable to terrorism. If that's true then why are the only terrorists trying to attack these sites members of Greenpeace?
How much would 80 million square meters of solar collectors cost compared to how much they spend now on natural gas for their power? Or the nuclear power plants they are building now?
The UAE is building solar power collectors for energy, and it's a good idea for them to do so. What's also a good idea is investing in nuclear power. Competition is a good thing. Put solar vs. nuclear vs. wind vs. whatever, and then see who comes out cheapest.
Or the US Navy shows up and shoots them all in the head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Given the solar potential of that area of the world, they could use solar thermal to power the desal plants, mine the brine for lithium and magnesium and use the sodium & potassium salts for thermal energy storage
Taking the whole area of the Middle East, the population there, the solar power available, and the drinking water that solar power could produce, then I would agree that solar thermal is possible as a solution. There's a huge problem, the people in the Middle East are a bunch of groups that don't get along very well. Politics prevent this from being feasible.
First, solar desalination is a big fat valuable target in case of war or terrorism. You can't put a solar collector in a bunker and expect it to work. Maybe you can build it from bulletproof glass and such but it's still a big target if it's to collect enough sun to matter. Second, some of these nations are small with not a lot of open area for solar collectors. To get enough sun they'd have to "import some sun" from their neighbors in the form of desalinated water, electricity, or something else of value. This means trade with people that might just rather see them dead, and also having something of value to give in return. What would these nations have to trade? Other than the oil and natural gas that we'd rather not see burned?
I could go on but I hope I've made my point. This is not a problem that can be solved with solar power given the politics. That's even assuming the physics and economics work out. To convince them to switch to solar power you'd have to show them it can make them money, or be less of a money sink than using oil, natural gas, or nuclear power. I've seen the math and even in sunny UAE they cannot rely on solar power to provide the electricity and drinking water they need. They will have to use nuclear power or revert to a stone age existence in time.
Some sources:
https://www.withouthotair.com/
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
Multiple ships towing an iceberg of this size multiple thousands of miles... belching carbon into our atmosphere.... this sounds like a horrible idea.
Then use nuclear powered ships. Or use nuclear power to desalinate the water off their shore. Or do both. There's other ways to get power than from oil. Lot's of them don't "belch" carbon into the air, that includes nuclear power.
How about instead we don't build enormous cities in deserts.
Where should they go? You got a spare bedroom to rent?
And accelerating the melting of the iceberg will raise sea levels that much faster.
You failed physics, didn't you? There's at least four different ways that's wrong that I could come up with in a few seconds of thinking about it.
An interesting link there. What I found especially interesting was further down the page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows:
Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)
Compare that to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Net electricity generation by energy source in 2016[1]
Natural gas (33.8%)
Coal (30.4%)
Nuclear (19.7%)
Hydro (6.5%)
Wind (5.5%)
Biomass (1.5%)
Other (2.6%)
I know I'm comparing different years here but I'd think it's safe to assume some year to year consistency on funding. We see nuclear power get 7% of the tax subsidies and yet produces 20% of the electricity we use. Renewable energy gets 45% of the tax subsidies but produces maybe 10% of the electricity.
Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as wind or solar. Nuclear power is safe, this is especially true in the USA. I'm tired of this talk of Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples of nuclear power being unsafe. First, neither happened in the USA. Second, those are old reactors built decades ago and have very little in common with how nuclear reactors are built today. Even with those two high profile cases of nuclear power gone wrong we still have plenty of other reactors, hundreds of them, that didn't make the news because they hurt no one.
When it comes to nuclear power being expensive well, just look at how much money nuclear power has been getting from the government in looking to make it cheaper. Just imagine how much cheaper nuclear power would be today if it got funding like wind and solar. Or, even as much money as was spent on fossil fuels.
Politicians like to make happy mouth noises about an "all the above" energy policy but when it comes to actually funding what works they short change nuclear power every time. If they were serious about lowering CO2, providing cheap and reliable energy, and reducing reliance on foreign energy sources, then they'd be giving nuclear power funds on par with its portion of the energy we consume.
I don't like the idea of energy subsidies, they should all go away. However, if we are to have subsidies then let's do it based on the actual energy produced. Since the goal is to reduce CO2 as well then reduce the subsidies based on that. Nuclear power produces a HUGE amount of energy and very little CO2. We should reward this accordingly.
Fossil fuels are not cheap because of the subsidies, they get very little subsidies compared to other sources and the amount of energy we get from it. Fossil fuels are cheap because it's easy to get and we have centuries of experience in digging it up and turning it into useful work. We learned a lot on how to turn uranium into useful work, maybe if we put some effort into learning more we could make it even cheaper. If we want "all the above" on energy then be honest about it.