Wind, solar and grid storage have already trashed coal and are in the process of out competing natural gas.
Excellent! Now that the problem is solved we can all go on and ignore this. I mean we'll have to keep building more wind and solar but that's just going to happen naturally now that wind and solar are cheaper than coal.
I don't understand all the concern then. Freischutz says we got this all figured out.
It is interesting that my comment was down modded.
The lowest CO2 per energy produced comes from nuclear power. If the threat is irreversible "hot house" Earth if we don't reduce our CO2 output now then we need nuclear power.
A quick look through the discussion so far and most every comment that offers a solution has been moderated down. Those comments that are up moderated tend to be those that exclaim just how fucked we are. This is quite odd for a site that carries "news for nerds". I thought nerds were the kind of people that like to solve problems, or at least marvel on how a problem was solved.
If the problem is too much CO2 from human activity then we should seek solutions to reduce that. What are our options? Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. So why get moderated down for offering those as solutions? Seems to me that this is because people must not want to solve the problem here.
There's a lot of articles that make it to the front page describing the problem. I guess that's "news for nerds". What I'd like to see are more articles that offer solutions, and more people willing to comment on the pros and cons of the offered solution. Nope, I'm getting more people just dwelling on the inevitable death of all life on the planet instead of problem solvers that want to stop it. That's fine, I guess, better the nihilists talk to each other in this echo chamber than make another protest holding up those working on a solution.
Slashdot is not what it once was. Maybe all these goth types will kill themselves or wise up and we can discuss solutions here again.
Are there options that would ultimately allow the USA to lower its per capita emisdions to German levels by potentially redesigning zoning, transport, etc?
If profits were the problem then make them the solution. Make wind, solar, and nuclear more profitable than coal and oil and we'd have people tripping over themselves to be the first to the profits. Easy, no?
It seems to me that you've identified the problem but didn't take it to the conclusion. They don't care about burning coal, they care about making money. Taxes and subsidies might shift things away from coal for a while but eventually someone will just vote out the carbon taxes or whatever, or the economy will tank because the alternatives cost too much. No need to tax and spend, just make an energy source that's cheaper and more plentiful than coal and no one will ever burn coal again.
This isn't an easy problem to solve. I hear politicians claim they want to try "all the above" but they don't mean it. They keep leaving out nuclear. Maybe they should say "all the above" and mean it.
Then I'd like to hear what is the answer. Think quickly because the clock is ticking.
It was promised to be too cheap to meter, instead it is the most costly to generate.
That's kind of irrelevant now, no?
Every plant has lost money and could not have operated without being subsidized, and they all have opened years behind schedule.
Then get GE and Westinghouse on it. They build a handful of reactors for the US Navy every year for submarines and aircraft carriers. Release the plans for others to copy and keep digging for uranium. I know they run on highly enriched uranium, so put the first one off the assembly line on spinning those centrifuges and crank out some uranium.
There hasn't been a new plant to come online in the last 20 years.
That might have something to do with those unwashed hippies that have been trying to "save the planet". The planet's fine, it's us humans that are fucked if we don't do something.
The only plant currently being built (Georgia) is 5 years behind schedule and double its original cost.
Then throw some more money at it. The alternative is potential extinction.
There isn't any place for the spent fuel.
Here's an idea, hollow out a mountain of granite and put the radioactive shit inside. Oh, wait, that was the plan for decades but the Democrats kept fucking that up. Here's an idea, put the radioactive shit in the mountain then shove Democrats in on top to plug the hole.
Used fuel sits on plant grounds until the facility is decommissioned, then moved to a temporary (but long term) home which is a Superfund site. Every decommissioned nuclear plant is a Superfund site. Even the decommissioning facilities for nuclear powered naval vessels is Superfund.
Then super fund it. Unless you have a better idea. I've seen a lot of "better ideas" come and go for years and decades now. Seems like nuclear power has been the lowest CO2 output solution we've had so far. I don't care how much it cost at this point, or how many Democrats we have to pile on top to contain the radiation, let's get this done.
The lowest CO2 per energy produced comes from nuclear power. If the threat is irreversible "hot house" Earth if we don't reduce our CO2 output now then we need nuclear power.
I've heard the complaints... "But nuclear power is expensive!" Is it more expensive than extinction? There's people standing in line at the US NRC for licenses to build more nuclear power plants. They've been there for decades. They weren't asking for money, they were asking for permission.
"But nuclear power is not safe!" Is it more dangerous than extinction? Nuclear power has been shown to be the safest energy source we have available to us. Claims of nuclear being unsafe are nonsense. Even if we were to render large areas of the planet uninhabitable for 1000 years because a nuclear power plant blew up that's still better than rendering the entire planet uninhabitable and killing off numerous species, possibly including humans.
"But wind and solar will save us!" Will it? We've been giving wind and solar just gobs of subsidies for decades now. All kinds of other incentives in the form of feed in tariffs, zoning laws, and so forth. We even had people suing their neighbors to cut down trees because the trees were casting shadows on a solar collector. That's just insane on many levels but that's where these laws in favor of wind and solar brought us. Did oil, gas, and nuclear get subsidies too? Of course. Even so wind and solar got subsidies far in excess of the energy they produced and they still don't produce even 10% of the electricity we use.
Here's an idea, as crazy as it might be I think it might just work. Let's do "all the above". That means we take the top five energy sources we know of that produce minimal CO2, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Let's put a lot of money into them and most of all allow people to invest their own money into it, by granting permission to build. That doesn't mean we throw out all the rules, but we take a real close look at what rules make sense and the ones that don't. The rules that don't make sense in light of such impending doom need to disappear.
Maybe, just maybe if we build enough nuclear power plants in the next few years we can survive. I suppose we could just stop burning coal and oil but that means mass starvation from food not being harvested and transported to stores. The goal should be to save the environment and society. We've been trying the wind and solar solutions and that hasn't been working out so well. It seems that the best estimates on moving from coal without nuclear will take decades of research, development, and constructing the infrastructure. We don't have that much time. Let's try nuclear power too. Doesn't seem like there's much to lose for trying now.
You must be kidding. Your definition of "smart" is quite different from what normal people mean by "smart".
That's quite possible I define "smart" differently than "normal people".
You aren't smart if you know how to read a map and march from point A to B.
And yet I get surprised all the time on how many "smart" people can't read a map and march (or walk, drive, bike, or whatever) from point A to point B.
If you think that all it takes to be successful in a modern military is to be able to read a map and march then you have no idea.
Isn't that the point of a modern college education? Combine the arts and the sciences?
I was looking into going back to college and found a school near me with a software engineering program. I suspect it's like a lot of schools where such a discipline is coordinated between the engineering and CS/mathematics departments. I could take the same degree under the engineering department or the liberal arts department. In either case I'd be required to take math, statistics, lots of programming, and engineering fundamentals. I'd also have to take some physics, chemistry, and have to choose some physical science electives. Then comes things like literature, rhetoric, speech, and a foreign language. There's a requirement for a "performance art", like interpretive dance or playing some musical instrument. I'd have to take courses on history, "diversity" (whatever that means this week), and philosophy.
If I'm reading the curriculum requirements correctly the only difference between the two departments is that under the engineering degree program I'd have to take two courses in engineering while in the liberal arts degree program I'd take two courses in humanities instead. Either way no one could complete this in four years without carrying in credit for foreign languages from high school and taking enough math in high school to jump right in to calculus in their first year. I guess the coursework could be made up over the summers to still graduate in four years but that would require careful planning as well, because courses offered in the summer are limited.
If I go this route then I guess I'll be able to program a computer, play a piano, and write a sonnet in French.
Or are you advocating we all just live in whatever shit town our parents live in, with all of its associated lack of opportunity and jobs, and constrain ourselves to only breeding with people who are similarly trapped?
No, I'd advocate finding or creating family where you happen to go.
I remember someone pointing out where the American stereotypes of the Chinese laundry, Indian cab driver, and Mexican field worker got started. Or at least speculating how it started. It was someone long ago coming to the USA, finding a profession at random, then hiring immigrants from where they were from to help out "family". These people may have been brothers, or cousins, or "cousins" so far removed that only their shared native language and culture connected them any more as "cousins" than anyone else in the USA. These people moved out of their "shit town" and then sought out others like them and "adopted" them as family.
Some companies are realizing this need for family and take efforts to help new employees find a family. This is not just important in attracting and keeping productive employees but in creating a healthy society. I realized this need for family. I had a job hundreds of miles away from anyone I could recognize as family and I hated it, even though the pay was good. My decision to move back near home was largely made up for me when there was a mass layoff. My brother and his wife had a similar realization, they found jobs near "grandma and grandpa" so their kids would grow up knowing family. My sisters found work hundreds of miles away but they work near where their husbands grew up. They created a family.
We've dumbed-down the last few generations enough. Let's turn that around and get back to actually teaching them the three Rs.
Education isn't rocket surgery. We know how to do it because we've done it before. Discipline, less political correctness, real grading, and no Common Core would be a nice start.
This was just in the news: "Of the more than 1,000 people surveyed in May and June of this year, only one person was able to name all five First Amendment rights. A whopping 40 percent, however, couldn't name any." THAT'S the result of doing it wrong. Fix it before trying something new and unproven.
Why was that modded down? We do need better teaching. We could probably start with better teachers. We're seeing elementary school teachers failing in elementary math. https://www.charlotteobserver....
The complaints were that elementary school teachers were failing math testing with questions being at the difficulty of 11th grade math. Why should we expect elementary school teachers to know 11th grade math? The same reason we'd expect any other employee to know 11th grade math, because they are adults. Their job isn't just to demonstrate to children how to add minutes and hours, or count out coins, but to manage the classroom. That means being able to compute grade averages, know how much supplies will be needed for the class, and to keep the brighter than average student occupied with math problems at their level so they don't distract others.
I have no sympathy for elementary school teachers failing a math test with material at a high school level. These are people that supposedly are intelligent and educated enough to graduate college. I don't want people teaching the next generation if they can't meet the standards of education we expect of people that ring up a sale in a grocery store.
And don't forget the brainwashing because with the animosity that you show it clearly worked.
Animosity? Where's the animosity? I believe you are projecting.
You were not trained to think, you were trained to let others think for you.
Right, the military doesn't train people to think, only a college education can do that. Except that's not true. In the military I was rewarded for showing my ability to interpret the data in front of me, think up solutions, and explain how I got those conclusions to my superiors. In college I had to come to the same conclusion as my professor, interpret the data the same as my professor, and I was rewarded with good grades not for thinking but for praising the thinking of the professor. The military runs on thinking better than the other guy, the other guy being the enemy on the battlefield or the other soldiers competing for a promotion. In college people aren't rewarded for thinking better than the professors. If someone thinks better than the professors then they get "rewarded" with poor grades.
I basic training the motto was "you will leave here smart or you will leave here strong". Those that showed they knew how to work smart, solve problems, and get stuff done, got a few more minutes to eat lunch or write letters home. Those that didn't think so clearly were out in the pit lifting logs over their heads.
In the Army I found people that were curious, and asked a lot of questions. In college I found a lot of students, and professors, that lacked curiosity. Rarely did students ask questions in class, even when the professor asked if anyone had questions. I'd ask the professor questions and it was obvious they lacked the curiosity to seek out more than what was in the textbook that was assigned. College seems to beat independent thinking out of people. I could tell a lot of professors didn't like the ROTC students and military veterans in class. Maybe it's because they asked too many questions.
When it comes to wood, paper, and cardboard, we should just bury it. I recall a well know scientist (not known well enough for me to remember his name right now) saying how we should sequester carbon by growing trees and using it for lumber, when we tear down the houses the wood should just be buried in a landfill.
Dr. Moore was an early member of Greenpeace. He had to leave because the organization was losing sight of the science behind environmental protection and people in the organization stopped listening to him. Dr. Moore was originally anti-nuclear power but now sees nuclear power as valuable for reducing human impact on the environment. He's not a fan of wind and solar power.
It seems that recycling glass and plastic are bad ideas, we should just put them in a landfill. Also bad for the environment is "organic" farming. http://ecosense.me/2017/01/18/...
"People say you can't recycle too much. It turns out you can," says Mr. Porter, president of the environmental consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center, near Washington, D.C. "If you spend enough money, you can recycle anything. That doesn't mean you should."
The recycling center near me stopped taking plastic bags, when I asked what I should do with them I was told to just toss them in the trash. So, that's what I did and that's what I plan to do in the future.
Does anyone reading this not have a pile of USB chargers by now? I know I do. I don't need another in the box with the phone. If I do need a charger then I'd like a choice between getting the tiny 5 watt charger or the bigger 30 watt charger.
Maybe even leave out the painfully short 1 meter cable, I'd prefer the 2 meter cable instead. I'd buy a 3 meter cable if I could find one. I'd also like the choice between USB-A and USB-C instead of Apple making that choice for me.
I know that with most any new electronic device I'll need to buy accessories. This may be because the accessories that come with are the wrong size/length/shape, have the wrong connector, or simply be not included. I plan for that and make that part of my budget for the device.
I bought a new display a few months ago, and it came with a VGA cable in the box. Thanks for nothing, I'll just toss that cable in a box with the rest of the VGA cables I'll be taking to the recycling center. What a waste. Apple has to know that at some point people will have moved on from the 1/8 inch connector. Maybe they picked that time too soon. Better than being too late and seeing cables and adapters ending up being tossed out unused.
Maybe instead of throwing a fit over not being able to find the right kind of Bluetooth headset you STFU and buy the $10 adapter for a 1/8 inch headset plug.
If charging up these electronics is such a problem then maybe you should just do without them.
These are First World problems, people! Get a grip and maybe even marvel at all the technology that's available to you now.
They claim to have controlled for most or all of the factors you've raised.
After controlling for factors including age, sex, income and smoking history, the team found that higher exposure to PM2.5 particles, PM10 particles and nitrogen dioxide were each linked to a greater volume of both the right and left ventricles after they had filled with blood.
As so many things are linked to income, such as diet and access to medical care, I suspect that piling on more on top of that is unlikely to add more information.
NGVs improve air quality through dramatic reductions in emissions, such as:
Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20% to 30%
Reducing carbon monoxide (CO) emissions up to 75%
Reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by approximately 50%
Reducing up to 95% of particle matter (PM) emissions
Reducing volatile organic compound (VOCs) emissions by 55%
Source: TIAX Report - Full Fuel Cycle Assessment: Well-To-Wheels Energy Inputs, Emissions, and Water Impacts, 08/2007 (Prepared for California Energy Commission).
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy - Argonne National Laboratory Report: A Full Fuel-Cycle Analysis of Energy and Emissions Impacts of Transportation Fuels Produced from Natural Gas, 12/1999.
They run cheap, fill up fast (unlike electrics), and get good range on one tank. There's likely a CNG filling station near you, and there's an option to fill up at home. https://maps.cngnow.com/ http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles...
There's a lot of natural gas and we'd have even more if we stop burning it for electricity. Instead of natural gas for electricity we should have nuclear, wind, and hydro. By using pumped hydro storage, grid scale batteries, and demand shifting incentives, we should be able to shift relatively quickly. In the long term we'd need better load following technology like thermal energy storage and fourth generation nuclear.
Do you know who does it now? The FAA. They license launches. They should keep doing so. NASA is a research organization.
Who manages orbital space? I won't disagree that NASA, and the military, gets permission from the FAA to launch and re-enter the atmosphere. Once in orbit though does the FAA license the orbits? I can see that the military and NASA operate facilities that track satellites and debris in orbit, so they must have some authority on who goes where and when in space. If the FAA is in charge of managing orbits then I've been unable to find any reference to it.
I put "air space" in quotes because it's not "air space" once the launch leaves the atmosphere, but it operates in much the same fashion. It seems to me that NASA regulates "space space" like the FAA regulates air space.
Do you know who does military space missions now? The Air Force. Not NASA, NASA is a civilian research organization. Creating a "space wing" takes a department of the Air Force and makes it a separate service. Just as the AAF, the Army Air Force, became the Air Force. Creating a "Space Force" does nothing to or about NASA's mission.
If the "space forces" of the USAF, US Navy, and US Army were split off and combined into one it would have as many people in it as the US Coast Guard. If the Coast Guard is big enough to have as a separate branch of the military then a combined space force would as well.
NASA is a civilian agency, I won't dispute that, but they have operated military missions for the DOD and many of the astronauts NASA has are "on loan" from branches of the military. If NASA is a civilian research agency then why are so many military people working there? There should be a bright line between the military space program and the civilian space program. I doubt that will happen unless or until the military creates it's own space force to support it's needs for the heavy lift space flights that NASA did for the DOD.
The FAA is also a research and regulatory agency like NASA, but the FAA doesn't operate flights for carrying cargo and passengers. I'm arguing that NASA should remove itself from the business of operating spaceflights for civilian and military agencies, or private organizations, and stay in the business of research and regulation.
Like the military would do anything like build rockets in-house, they'd outsource it to ULA at 10x the current cost.
The military build little in house. There's an Army armory and a Navy shipyard or two, but most of the military equipment is built by contractors. NASA doesn't build a whole lot in house either, they do some final assembly in house but almost every component is built by contractors. How does moving military space missions from NASA to the military change the government getting fleeced by contractors?
The one thing that largely put an end to the high cost of putting satellites in orbit has been NASA ending their monopoly on space vehicle construction and opening the market to private companies competing for business from other private companies that want satellites in orbit, and government agencies wanting satellites in orbit.
But then I kinda knew this would be a facepalm when you mentioned Trump...
Every Republican in the White House since WWII has mentioned the possibility of a military space force, President Trump is only the most recent and most vocal president that has done so. Maybe there has been a Democrat president that made a mention of doing so, I just don't recall any. President Eisenhower, a Democrat, signed into law the bill creating NASA. NASA was specifically designated as separate from military space programs, and this effectively created a military "space force" within the USAF as the military space flights and research did not end. The Space Shuttle may have been built with military missions in mind, and much of the Shuttle crew "on loan" to NASA from the military, but that just means that NASA has been contracted to run some military flights, or the lines between the military space program and the civilian space program has blurred in time. There will come a time when this line needs to be erased or redrawn.
What we see now is a lot of infighting and confusion on where space programs belong in the military. This is a repeat of where command over the airspace belongs in battle. There were competing "air forces" within the Army and Navy. This ended (mostly) with the creation of the Air Force and an agreement (if not on paper but in practice) that while each branch would operate aircraft the primary military branch with "ownership" over the air would be the Air Force. We will continue to see this confusion on ownership of orbital assets until we get a separate military branch to operate in space.
This isn't a new problem, only the problem has gotten bigger and more noticeable with time.
I've heard this joke before... What's the purpose of the Space Shuttle? To get astronauts to ISS. What's the purpose of ISS? So the Space Shuttle has a place to go.
Well, NASA retired the Space Shuttle program. Good thing too, those were dangerous vehicles that should have been retired long ago. I heard someone point out that with 135 flights and 2 resulting in deaths of the crew that the failure rate was between 1% and 2%, only to have the be corrected by someone else that pointed out with 6 orbiters built there were 2 hull losses with the crew. With 2 hull losses out of 6 that's a failure rate of 33%. Even that's not necessarily correct, since only 5 of the 6 were rated for space operations. The first "orbiter" was Enterprise and it had no engines.
I understand that NASA exists to operate federal space based assets, one example being launching weather satellites. They also do some research in spaceflight for the benefit of commerce and defense for the USA. I'm finding it hard to understand how the ISS, and flights to and from it, add to that mission. Especially now that commercial space flight companies are capable of doing this.
NASA needs to operate more like the FAA, be a regulatory service for keeping everyone safe and managing "air space". (Or, would that be "space space"?) President Trump made an announcement to investigate the creation of a military space force, which if created makes many missions from NASA redundant. This military space force could operate military space launches, manned and unmanned, for the military instead of contracting that out to NASA. If the NOAA or other federal agencies need launches then they can "rent" the military assets, create a small "space force" within these agencies, pare down the space launch capabilities of NASA to match the needs of these agencies, or just have NASA be the agency as a middleman between civilian federal space launch needs and the commercial spaceflight companies that build the vehicles and operate the launches. Given recent developments, such as this announcement, NASA is one small step from just being a middleman already.
NASA took too long to retire the Space Shuttle. Given the state of commercial spaceflight at the time the Space Shuttle was retired I'd think that would have been a good time for NASA to announce they were getting out of human spaceflights to orbit. They could keep doing unmanned flights to orbit and beyond, and plan manned flights beyond orbit.
Since they will fail to be able to swim upstream with this new obstruction. I mean, it's better for the environment if they just upgraded an existing hydropower plant to draw more energy.
Just how many times do you believe an existing hydroelectric dam can be "upgraded" to draw more energy? How do you know that these dams have not already been upgraded to the maximum available output? Hydroelectric dams have a hard limit on their output, the amount of rainfall behind the dam. Unless you can think of a way to increase rainfall then there isn't much we can do to improve hydroelectric output. What has happened in much of the USA and Canada is that smaller and smaller dams are being built, which increases operating costs due to lower economy of scale.
If I'm reading my results from Google searches correctly most hydroelectric upgrades in North America are to add pumped storage to existing dams, and most new hydro around the world is the construction of closed loop pumped storage hydro. These upgrades don't add any additional generation capacity, they only add storage for matching load to supply from base load power (nuclear, coal, and other thermal) and intermittent power (wind and solar).
Hydro kills fish, wind and solar kills birds, coal and natural gas kills everything. What choices do we have for more actual power generation capacity? I believe the answer is in nuclear power. If the concern is to reduce the impact on the environment then we need more nuclear power.
This cryptocurrency mining might be a dead end in short order but I'd think that building these sites are pretty low risk investments. Suppose the mining doesn't pan out, they still have a data center at a site with the cheapest electricity rates they could find. They can still rent out the computing power for lots of things, and it seems to me that there have been a lot of data centers opening up all over North America.
If someone can figure out how to get solar thermal to provide 24/7 power to one of these data centers then that's a bonus for a selling point, they'd have reliable power for running the computers. Put in redundant network links, such as a telco provided main link and satellite backup, and that would be a site that keeps running through a zombie apocalypse.
If we are speculating on getting power to these sites then consider this, micro nuclear power plants. There's been people building nuclear power plants as small as 5 MW since the 1950s, back when they were still figuring out how to make it work. A more reasonable size might be more like 50 MW. I don't know how much power a typical data center uses but if the goal is reliable, cheap, and low carbon, energy source then nuclear is just as good as solar or hydro. The problems for such a reactor is legal, not technical. There's a lot of people out there with experience building and operating these reactors. They weren't called a "small modular reactor", or "micro nuclear power plant", they were called a "naval reactor". We just need to work on the laws that make it so expensive to run outside of a military submarine.
Minors have been getting together to make more minors for a very long time, long before nanobots existed. What are these kids doing with the nanobots anyway? Then again, maybe I don't want to know.
Slashdot Mirror
That already happens. There is already a government mandated cleanup fund for every plant to be decommissioned, so no worries.
Wind, solar and grid storage have already trashed coal and are in the process of out competing natural gas.
Excellent! Now that the problem is solved we can all go on and ignore this. I mean we'll have to keep building more wind and solar but that's just going to happen naturally now that wind and solar are cheaper than coal.
I don't understand all the concern then. Freischutz says we got this all figured out.
Move along, nothing to see here.
It is interesting that my comment was down modded.
The lowest CO2 per energy produced comes from nuclear power. If the threat is irreversible "hot house" Earth if we don't reduce our CO2 output now then we need nuclear power.
A quick look through the discussion so far and most every comment that offers a solution has been moderated down. Those comments that are up moderated tend to be those that exclaim just how fucked we are. This is quite odd for a site that carries "news for nerds". I thought nerds were the kind of people that like to solve problems, or at least marvel on how a problem was solved.
If the problem is too much CO2 from human activity then we should seek solutions to reduce that. What are our options? Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. So why get moderated down for offering those as solutions? Seems to me that this is because people must not want to solve the problem here.
There's a lot of articles that make it to the front page describing the problem. I guess that's "news for nerds". What I'd like to see are more articles that offer solutions, and more people willing to comment on the pros and cons of the offered solution. Nope, I'm getting more people just dwelling on the inevitable death of all life on the planet instead of problem solvers that want to stop it. That's fine, I guess, better the nihilists talk to each other in this echo chamber than make another protest holding up those working on a solution.
Slashdot is not what it once was. Maybe all these goth types will kill themselves or wise up and we can discuss solutions here again.
Are there options that would ultimately allow the USA to lower its per capita emisdions to German levels by potentially redesigning zoning, transport, etc?
Yes, nuclear power.
If profits were the problem then make them the solution. Make wind, solar, and nuclear more profitable than coal and oil and we'd have people tripping over themselves to be the first to the profits. Easy, no?
It seems to me that you've identified the problem but didn't take it to the conclusion. They don't care about burning coal, they care about making money. Taxes and subsidies might shift things away from coal for a while but eventually someone will just vote out the carbon taxes or whatever, or the economy will tank because the alternatives cost too much. No need to tax and spend, just make an energy source that's cheaper and more plentiful than coal and no one will ever burn coal again.
This isn't an easy problem to solve. I hear politicians claim they want to try "all the above" but they don't mean it. They keep leaving out nuclear. Maybe they should say "all the above" and mean it.
Nuclear isn't the answer.
Then I'd like to hear what is the answer. Think quickly because the clock is ticking.
It was promised to be too cheap to meter, instead it is the most costly to generate.
That's kind of irrelevant now, no?
Every plant has lost money and could not have operated without being subsidized, and they all have opened years behind schedule.
Then get GE and Westinghouse on it. They build a handful of reactors for the US Navy every year for submarines and aircraft carriers. Release the plans for others to copy and keep digging for uranium. I know they run on highly enriched uranium, so put the first one off the assembly line on spinning those centrifuges and crank out some uranium.
There hasn't been a new plant to come online in the last 20 years.
That might have something to do with those unwashed hippies that have been trying to "save the planet". The planet's fine, it's us humans that are fucked if we don't do something.
The only plant currently being built (Georgia) is 5 years behind schedule and double its original cost.
Then throw some more money at it. The alternative is potential extinction.
There isn't any place for the spent fuel.
Here's an idea, hollow out a mountain of granite and put the radioactive shit inside. Oh, wait, that was the plan for decades but the Democrats kept fucking that up. Here's an idea, put the radioactive shit in the mountain then shove Democrats in on top to plug the hole.
Used fuel sits on plant grounds until the facility is decommissioned, then moved to a temporary (but long term) home which is a Superfund site. Every decommissioned nuclear plant is a Superfund site. Even the decommissioning facilities for nuclear powered naval vessels is Superfund.
Then super fund it. Unless you have a better idea. I've seen a lot of "better ideas" come and go for years and decades now. Seems like nuclear power has been the lowest CO2 output solution we've had so far. I don't care how much it cost at this point, or how many Democrats we have to pile on top to contain the radiation, let's get this done.
The lowest CO2 per energy produced comes from nuclear power. If the threat is irreversible "hot house" Earth if we don't reduce our CO2 output now then we need nuclear power.
I've heard the complaints...
"But nuclear power is expensive!"
Is it more expensive than extinction? There's people standing in line at the US NRC for licenses to build more nuclear power plants. They've been there for decades. They weren't asking for money, they were asking for permission.
"But nuclear power is not safe!"
Is it more dangerous than extinction? Nuclear power has been shown to be the safest energy source we have available to us. Claims of nuclear being unsafe are nonsense. Even if we were to render large areas of the planet uninhabitable for 1000 years because a nuclear power plant blew up that's still better than rendering the entire planet uninhabitable and killing off numerous species, possibly including humans.
"But wind and solar will save us!"
Will it? We've been giving wind and solar just gobs of subsidies for decades now. All kinds of other incentives in the form of feed in tariffs, zoning laws, and so forth. We even had people suing their neighbors to cut down trees because the trees were casting shadows on a solar collector. That's just insane on many levels but that's where these laws in favor of wind and solar brought us. Did oil, gas, and nuclear get subsidies too? Of course. Even so wind and solar got subsidies far in excess of the energy they produced and they still don't produce even 10% of the electricity we use.
Here's an idea, as crazy as it might be I think it might just work. Let's do "all the above". That means we take the top five energy sources we know of that produce minimal CO2, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Let's put a lot of money into them and most of all allow people to invest their own money into it, by granting permission to build. That doesn't mean we throw out all the rules, but we take a real close look at what rules make sense and the ones that don't. The rules that don't make sense in light of such impending doom need to disappear.
Maybe, just maybe if we build enough nuclear power plants in the next few years we can survive. I suppose we could just stop burning coal and oil but that means mass starvation from food not being harvested and transported to stores. The goal should be to save the environment and society. We've been trying the wind and solar solutions and that hasn't been working out so well. It seems that the best estimates on moving from coal without nuclear will take decades of research, development, and constructing the infrastructure. We don't have that much time. Let's try nuclear power too. Doesn't seem like there's much to lose for trying now.
You must be kidding. Your definition of "smart" is quite different from what normal people mean by "smart".
That's quite possible I define "smart" differently than "normal people".
You aren't smart if you know how to read a map and march from point A to B.
And yet I get surprised all the time on how many "smart" people can't read a map and march (or walk, drive, bike, or whatever) from point A to point B.
If you think that all it takes to be successful in a modern military is to be able to read a map and march then you have no idea.
Isn't that the point of a modern college education? Combine the arts and the sciences?
I was looking into going back to college and found a school near me with a software engineering program. I suspect it's like a lot of schools where such a discipline is coordinated between the engineering and CS/mathematics departments. I could take the same degree under the engineering department or the liberal arts department. In either case I'd be required to take math, statistics, lots of programming, and engineering fundamentals. I'd also have to take some physics, chemistry, and have to choose some physical science electives. Then comes things like literature, rhetoric, speech, and a foreign language. There's a requirement for a "performance art", like interpretive dance or playing some musical instrument. I'd have to take courses on history, "diversity" (whatever that means this week), and philosophy.
If I'm reading the curriculum requirements correctly the only difference between the two departments is that under the engineering degree program I'd have to take two courses in engineering while in the liberal arts degree program I'd take two courses in humanities instead. Either way no one could complete this in four years without carrying in credit for foreign languages from high school and taking enough math in high school to jump right in to calculus in their first year. I guess the coursework could be made up over the summers to still graduate in four years but that would require careful planning as well, because courses offered in the summer are limited.
If I go this route then I guess I'll be able to program a computer, play a piano, and write a sonnet in French.
Or are you advocating we all just live in whatever shit town our parents live in, with all of its associated lack of opportunity and jobs, and constrain ourselves to only breeding with people who are similarly trapped?
No, I'd advocate finding or creating family where you happen to go.
I remember someone pointing out where the American stereotypes of the Chinese laundry, Indian cab driver, and Mexican field worker got started. Or at least speculating how it started. It was someone long ago coming to the USA, finding a profession at random, then hiring immigrants from where they were from to help out "family". These people may have been brothers, or cousins, or "cousins" so far removed that only their shared native language and culture connected them any more as "cousins" than anyone else in the USA. These people moved out of their "shit town" and then sought out others like them and "adopted" them as family.
Some companies are realizing this need for family and take efforts to help new employees find a family. This is not just important in attracting and keeping productive employees but in creating a healthy society. I realized this need for family. I had a job hundreds of miles away from anyone I could recognize as family and I hated it, even though the pay was good. My decision to move back near home was largely made up for me when there was a mass layoff. My brother and his wife had a similar realization, they found jobs near "grandma and grandpa" so their kids would grow up knowing family. My sisters found work hundreds of miles away but they work near where their husbands grew up. They created a family.
We've dumbed-down the last few generations enough. Let's turn that around and get back to actually teaching them the three Rs.
Education isn't rocket surgery. We know how to do it because we've done it before. Discipline, less political correctness, real grading, and no Common Core would be a nice start.
This was just in the news: "Of the more than 1,000 people surveyed in May and June of this year, only one person was able to name all five First Amendment rights. A whopping 40 percent, however, couldn't name any." THAT'S the result of doing it wrong. Fix it before trying something new and unproven.
Why was that modded down? We do need better teaching. We could probably start with better teachers. We're seeing elementary school teachers failing in elementary math.
https://www.charlotteobserver....
The complaints were that elementary school teachers were failing math testing with questions being at the difficulty of 11th grade math. Why should we expect elementary school teachers to know 11th grade math? The same reason we'd expect any other employee to know 11th grade math, because they are adults. Their job isn't just to demonstrate to children how to add minutes and hours, or count out coins, but to manage the classroom. That means being able to compute grade averages, know how much supplies will be needed for the class, and to keep the brighter than average student occupied with math problems at their level so they don't distract others.
I have no sympathy for elementary school teachers failing a math test with material at a high school level. These are people that supposedly are intelligent and educated enough to graduate college. I don't want people teaching the next generation if they can't meet the standards of education we expect of people that ring up a sale in a grocery store.
And don't forget the brainwashing because with the animosity that you show it clearly worked.
Animosity? Where's the animosity? I believe you are projecting.
You were not trained to think, you were trained to let others think for you.
Right, the military doesn't train people to think, only a college education can do that. Except that's not true. In the military I was rewarded for showing my ability to interpret the data in front of me, think up solutions, and explain how I got those conclusions to my superiors. In college I had to come to the same conclusion as my professor, interpret the data the same as my professor, and I was rewarded with good grades not for thinking but for praising the thinking of the professor. The military runs on thinking better than the other guy, the other guy being the enemy on the battlefield or the other soldiers competing for a promotion. In college people aren't rewarded for thinking better than the professors. If someone thinks better than the professors then they get "rewarded" with poor grades.
I basic training the motto was "you will leave here smart or you will leave here strong". Those that showed they knew how to work smart, solve problems, and get stuff done, got a few more minutes to eat lunch or write letters home. Those that didn't think so clearly were out in the pit lifting logs over their heads.
In the Army I found people that were curious, and asked a lot of questions. In college I found a lot of students, and professors, that lacked curiosity. Rarely did students ask questions in class, even when the professor asked if anyone had questions. I'd ask the professor questions and it was obvious they lacked the curiosity to seek out more than what was in the textbook that was assigned. College seems to beat independent thinking out of people. I could tell a lot of professors didn't like the ROTC students and military veterans in class. Maybe it's because they asked too many questions.
When it comes to wood, paper, and cardboard, we should just bury it. I recall a well know scientist (not known well enough for me to remember his name right now) saying how we should sequester carbon by growing trees and using it for lumber, when we tear down the houses the wood should just be buried in a landfill.
That's Dr. Patrick Moore.
http://ecosense.me/2017/01/10/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Dr. Moore was an early member of Greenpeace. He had to leave because the organization was losing sight of the science behind environmental protection and people in the organization stopped listening to him. Dr. Moore was originally anti-nuclear power but now sees nuclear power as valuable for reducing human impact on the environment. He's not a fan of wind and solar power.
It seems that recycling glass and plastic are bad ideas, we should just put them in a landfill. Also bad for the environment is "organic" farming.
http://ecosense.me/2017/01/18/...
"People say you can't recycle too much. It turns out you can," says Mr. Porter, president of the environmental consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center, near Washington, D.C. "If you spend enough money, you can recycle anything. That doesn't mean you should."
The recycling center near me stopped taking plastic bags, when I asked what I should do with them I was told to just toss them in the trash. So, that's what I did and that's what I plan to do in the future.
Does anyone reading this not have a pile of USB chargers by now? I know I do. I don't need another in the box with the phone. If I do need a charger then I'd like a choice between getting the tiny 5 watt charger or the bigger 30 watt charger.
Maybe even leave out the painfully short 1 meter cable, I'd prefer the 2 meter cable instead. I'd buy a 3 meter cable if I could find one. I'd also like the choice between USB-A and USB-C instead of Apple making that choice for me.
I know that with most any new electronic device I'll need to buy accessories. This may be because the accessories that come with are the wrong size/length/shape, have the wrong connector, or simply be not included. I plan for that and make that part of my budget for the device.
I bought a new display a few months ago, and it came with a VGA cable in the box. Thanks for nothing, I'll just toss that cable in a box with the rest of the VGA cables I'll be taking to the recycling center. What a waste. Apple has to know that at some point people will have moved on from the 1/8 inch connector. Maybe they picked that time too soon. Better than being too late and seeing cables and adapters ending up being tossed out unused.
But there'll still be the lightning EarPods in the box. Seems like a weird thing to omit from the article.
Yes, weird.
Or was is deliberately trying to be sensationalist, I wonder?
I don't wonder at all.
Maybe instead of throwing a fit over not being able to find the right kind of Bluetooth headset you STFU and buy the $10 adapter for a 1/8 inch headset plug.
If charging up these electronics is such a problem then maybe you should just do without them.
These are First World problems, people! Get a grip and maybe even marvel at all the technology that's available to you now.
Are wireless headphones even safe?
Compared to the threat of getting a headphone cord wrapped around your neck? Yes, wireless headphones are safe.
They claim to have controlled for most or all of the factors you've raised.
After controlling for factors including age, sex, income and smoking history, the team found that higher exposure to PM2.5 particles, PM10 particles and nitrogen dioxide were each linked to a greater volume of both the right and left ventricles after they had filled with blood.
As so many things are linked to income, such as diet and access to medical care, I suspect that piling on more on top of that is unlikely to add more information.
We should switch our vehicles to natural gas, because it is far cleaner than liquid hydrocarbons.
http://www.cngnow.com/what-is-...
NGVs improve air quality through dramatic reductions in emissions, such as:
Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20% to 30%
Reducing carbon monoxide (CO) emissions up to 75%
Reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by approximately 50%
Reducing up to 95% of particle matter (PM) emissions
Reducing volatile organic compound (VOCs) emissions by 55%
Source: TIAX Report - Full Fuel Cycle Assessment: Well-To-Wheels Energy Inputs, Emissions, and Water Impacts, 08/2007 (Prepared for California Energy Commission).
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy - Argonne National Laboratory Report: A Full Fuel-Cycle Analysis of Energy and Emissions Impacts of Transportation Fuels Produced from Natural Gas, 12/1999.
Vehicles that run on natural gas exist already.
http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles...
They run cheap, fill up fast (unlike electrics), and get good range on one tank. There's likely a CNG filling station near you, and there's an option to fill up at home.
https://maps.cngnow.com/
http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles...
There's a lot of natural gas and we'd have even more if we stop burning it for electricity. Instead of natural gas for electricity we should have nuclear, wind, and hydro. By using pumped hydro storage, grid scale batteries, and demand shifting incentives, we should be able to shift relatively quickly. In the long term we'd need better load following technology like thermal energy storage and fourth generation nuclear.
Do you know who does it now? The FAA. They license launches. They should keep doing so. NASA is a research organization.
Who manages orbital space? I won't disagree that NASA, and the military, gets permission from the FAA to launch and re-enter the atmosphere. Once in orbit though does the FAA license the orbits? I can see that the military and NASA operate facilities that track satellites and debris in orbit, so they must have some authority on who goes where and when in space. If the FAA is in charge of managing orbits then I've been unable to find any reference to it.
I put "air space" in quotes because it's not "air space" once the launch leaves the atmosphere, but it operates in much the same fashion. It seems to me that NASA regulates "space space" like the FAA regulates air space.
Do you know who does military space missions now? The Air Force. Not NASA, NASA is a civilian research organization. Creating a "space wing" takes a department of the Air Force and makes it a separate service. Just as the AAF, the Army Air Force, became the Air Force. Creating a "Space Force" does nothing to or about NASA's mission.
If the "space forces" of the USAF, US Navy, and US Army were split off and combined into one it would have as many people in it as the US Coast Guard. If the Coast Guard is big enough to have as a separate branch of the military then a combined space force would as well.
NASA is a civilian agency, I won't dispute that, but they have operated military missions for the DOD and many of the astronauts NASA has are "on loan" from branches of the military. If NASA is a civilian research agency then why are so many military people working there? There should be a bright line between the military space program and the civilian space program. I doubt that will happen unless or until the military creates it's own space force to support it's needs for the heavy lift space flights that NASA did for the DOD.
The FAA is also a research and regulatory agency like NASA, but the FAA doesn't operate flights for carrying cargo and passengers. I'm arguing that NASA should remove itself from the business of operating spaceflights for civilian and military agencies, or private organizations, and stay in the business of research and regulation.
Like the military would do anything like build rockets in-house, they'd outsource it to ULA at 10x the current cost.
The military build little in house. There's an Army armory and a Navy shipyard or two, but most of the military equipment is built by contractors. NASA doesn't build a whole lot in house either, they do some final assembly in house but almost every component is built by contractors. How does moving military space missions from NASA to the military change the government getting fleeced by contractors?
The one thing that largely put an end to the high cost of putting satellites in orbit has been NASA ending their monopoly on space vehicle construction and opening the market to private companies competing for business from other private companies that want satellites in orbit, and government agencies wanting satellites in orbit.
But then I kinda knew this would be a facepalm when you mentioned Trump...
Every Republican in the White House since WWII has mentioned the possibility of a military space force, President Trump is only the most recent and most vocal president that has done so. Maybe there has been a Democrat president that made a mention of doing so, I just don't recall any. President Eisenhower, a Democrat, signed into law the bill creating NASA. NASA was specifically designated as separate from military space programs, and this effectively created a military "space force" within the USAF as the military space flights and research did not end. The Space Shuttle may have been built with military missions in mind, and much of the Shuttle crew "on loan" to NASA from the military, but that just means that NASA has been contracted to run some military flights, or the lines between the military space program and the civilian space program has blurred in time. There will come a time when this line needs to be erased or redrawn.
What we see now is a lot of infighting and confusion on where space programs belong in the military. This is a repeat of where command over the airspace belongs in battle. There were competing "air forces" within the Army and Navy. This ended (mostly) with the creation of the Air Force and an agreement (if not on paper but in practice) that while each branch would operate aircraft the primary military branch with "ownership" over the air would be the Air Force. We will continue to see this confusion on ownership of orbital assets until we get a separate military branch to operate in space.
This isn't a new problem, only the problem has gotten bigger and more noticeable with time.
I've heard this joke before...
What's the purpose of the Space Shuttle? To get astronauts to ISS. What's the purpose of ISS? So the Space Shuttle has a place to go.
Well, NASA retired the Space Shuttle program. Good thing too, those were dangerous vehicles that should have been retired long ago. I heard someone point out that with 135 flights and 2 resulting in deaths of the crew that the failure rate was between 1% and 2%, only to have the be corrected by someone else that pointed out with 6 orbiters built there were 2 hull losses with the crew. With 2 hull losses out of 6 that's a failure rate of 33%. Even that's not necessarily correct, since only 5 of the 6 were rated for space operations. The first "orbiter" was Enterprise and it had no engines.
I understand that NASA exists to operate federal space based assets, one example being launching weather satellites. They also do some research in spaceflight for the benefit of commerce and defense for the USA. I'm finding it hard to understand how the ISS, and flights to and from it, add to that mission. Especially now that commercial space flight companies are capable of doing this.
NASA needs to operate more like the FAA, be a regulatory service for keeping everyone safe and managing "air space". (Or, would that be "space space"?) President Trump made an announcement to investigate the creation of a military space force, which if created makes many missions from NASA redundant. This military space force could operate military space launches, manned and unmanned, for the military instead of contracting that out to NASA. If the NOAA or other federal agencies need launches then they can "rent" the military assets, create a small "space force" within these agencies, pare down the space launch capabilities of NASA to match the needs of these agencies, or just have NASA be the agency as a middleman between civilian federal space launch needs and the commercial spaceflight companies that build the vehicles and operate the launches. Given recent developments, such as this announcement, NASA is one small step from just being a middleman already.
NASA took too long to retire the Space Shuttle. Given the state of commercial spaceflight at the time the Space Shuttle was retired I'd think that would have been a good time for NASA to announce they were getting out of human spaceflights to orbit. They could keep doing unmanned flights to orbit and beyond, and plan manned flights beyond orbit.
Since they will fail to be able to swim upstream with this new obstruction. I mean, it's better for the environment if they just upgraded an existing hydropower plant to draw more energy.
Just how many times do you believe an existing hydroelectric dam can be "upgraded" to draw more energy? How do you know that these dams have not already been upgraded to the maximum available output? Hydroelectric dams have a hard limit on their output, the amount of rainfall behind the dam. Unless you can think of a way to increase rainfall then there isn't much we can do to improve hydroelectric output. What has happened in much of the USA and Canada is that smaller and smaller dams are being built, which increases operating costs due to lower economy of scale.
If I'm reading my results from Google searches correctly most hydroelectric upgrades in North America are to add pumped storage to existing dams, and most new hydro around the world is the construction of closed loop pumped storage hydro. These upgrades don't add any additional generation capacity, they only add storage for matching load to supply from base load power (nuclear, coal, and other thermal) and intermittent power (wind and solar).
Hydro kills fish, wind and solar kills birds, coal and natural gas kills everything. What choices do we have for more actual power generation capacity? I believe the answer is in nuclear power. If the concern is to reduce the impact on the environment then we need more nuclear power.
This cryptocurrency mining might be a dead end in short order but I'd think that building these sites are pretty low risk investments. Suppose the mining doesn't pan out, they still have a data center at a site with the cheapest electricity rates they could find. They can still rent out the computing power for lots of things, and it seems to me that there have been a lot of data centers opening up all over North America.
If someone can figure out how to get solar thermal to provide 24/7 power to one of these data centers then that's a bonus for a selling point, they'd have reliable power for running the computers. Put in redundant network links, such as a telco provided main link and satellite backup, and that would be a site that keeps running through a zombie apocalypse.
If we are speculating on getting power to these sites then consider this, micro nuclear power plants. There's been people building nuclear power plants as small as 5 MW since the 1950s, back when they were still figuring out how to make it work. A more reasonable size might be more like 50 MW. I don't know how much power a typical data center uses but if the goal is reliable, cheap, and low carbon, energy source then nuclear is just as good as solar or hydro. The problems for such a reactor is legal, not technical. There's a lot of people out there with experience building and operating these reactors. They weren't called a "small modular reactor", or "micro nuclear power plant", they were called a "naval reactor". We just need to work on the laws that make it so expensive to run outside of a military submarine.
With nanobots replicating miners.
Minors have been getting together to make more minors for a very long time, long before nanobots existed. What are these kids doing with the nanobots anyway? Then again, maybe I don't want to know.