I agree. It will also lean heavily on nuclear. Saying nuclear cannot be used, or will continue being only 10% (world average) to 20% (USA), will not work. We will need a lot of new nuclear or the lights will go out. I don't know if that means 25% nuclear or 95% nuclear, only that what we are doing now is insufficient.
I could not find my original source but this web page shows similar numbers: http://energyskeptic.com/2014/... The interesting part is pretty much just the last paragraph.
I tried finding other sources that also did a direct comparison between nuclear and wind on materials needed but came up empty so far. If someone doubts the source above then there do appear to be plenty of places that provide the materials needed for nuclear and wind but just not on the same page. Grab the sources of your choice and put the numbers together yourself, you are going to find something real close to the above. Maybe the materials needed for wind over solar isn't exactly 10x, but certainly close. It's still far beyond steel and concrete production capability we have now to allow wind to replace coal, nuclear, or natural gas. Even a mix with solar and storage won't help much, the margin is that bad.
I will happily agree that heat pumps are not always practical, especially as a replacement in an existing structure. If it is practical then it should be used. When my old furnace failed (the AC died before I even bought the house) I replaced the AC and furnace with a heat pump and natural gas furnace. I realized the next year that the heat pump was not practical. It was practical when I bought it because natural gas cost more then. Prices just for natural gas just happened to drop at that time. I just considered the extra cost for the heat pump as tuition for my education.
I have a high efficiency natural gas furnace but my water heater is an old draft type. I do this because power outages are still a thing here, though getting rarer. If the power goes out I can use my fireplace to keep the house above freezing for quite some time, and with city water supply and the old style water heater I can still take a hot shower.
Nuclear power did not exist until 70 years or so ago. The concept of nuclear power is probably less than a century old. How long have we been trying to use wind to power our factories? Or, use the sun to heat things up? Or, use running water to turn a wheel? That's been done for thousands of years. Or at least centuries. Using solar power to create electricity directly is over a century old.
Sure, let's try some new ideas. I hear people mention Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples on why we can't have new nuclear reactors. Well, those reactors blew up, so don't build new ones like that. Saying we can't have new nuclear power today because of those bad designs is like saying we shouldn't drive a new Chevy Volt because of what you learned from reading Ralph Nader's book. We don't build cars like we did in 1965, and we don't build nuclear reactors like we did then either.
Yes, I understand that a modern windmill is not like what my great grandfather used to pump water on the farm. If someone wants to argue that we should "join the 21st century" then let's talk about technology from the 21st century. That means fourth generation nuclear reactors. It also means not using a reactor design from 1965, with known safety problems. Then failing to put a containment dome over it. Building it with known subpar materials. Running it with poorly trained staff, with oversight by someone appointed for his political connections and not because of any technical knowledge. Then running a "test" with safety features disabled. Then be surprised that it blows up in your face. Don't do those things and the reactor won't blow up.
They typical EV's extra weight often gives them an advantage in snow over gasoline vehicles of the same size class.
I don't care about "size class". I care about the money I have to spend and getting through the snow.
What does the typical EV cost? Let's say even a used one. Well, I just did a quick search for dealers around me for electric cars. I found a few used EVs for less than $15,000. That's not bad. I paid about the same for my 4x4 Ford Explorer. Now, tell me which one is more likely to get stuck in the snow?
Will the EV cost less to fuel? Cost less to insure, repair, and so on? That's quite likely. Will it get stuck in the snow? Also quite likely.
You want to claim I'm a special case that represents some small fraction of the population? I'll agree with that. Even if I'm like only 1% of the population then that still means millions of small 4x4 gasoline trucks and SUVs sold in the USA. You want to claim I can just stay home when it snows? Work from home, "telecommute", on those days? Sure, I could likely make that work. I'd just rather not have my travel plans dictated by the weather and how much the city feels like plowing my street that day.
I don't think you considered your tired, bruised argument very well...
Kind of like how you considered your comment on "size class"?
I could probably get a very nice electric car that can handle the snow very well. It might cost $70,000 but I can get one. Do you know what I could also get for $70,000? A very nice 3/4 ton truck. That would also handle the snow very well.
I was making the argument against a tax on wealth as opposed to a tax on income. If we tax wealth so one individual can have only so much wealth then we are capping the national economy. Or, we will simply have the wealthy find increasingly creative ways to hide their wealth and we get nothing from it. Much like people find ways to hide income. Make the taxes as simple and "fair" (if there is such a thing) as possible so the government can't screw up the economy. Perhaps even end the income tax and find other ways to fund the government.
You can mock the premise that wealth equates to wisdom or intelligence if you like but there is ample evidence of it being true. Perhaps it might be more accurate based on statistics available to equate an education to wealth, but then how does education correlate to intelligence? I don't recall all the statistics but it goes something like this. Average IQ for doctorates (MD, PhD, JD) is 120, masters degree is 115, undergrad is 110, high school graduates about 105. Average IQ is by definition 100. Those with an IQ of about 90 have a 50/50 chance of graduating high school. Those with an IQ below 85 will have a problem even holding a job, any job, which is about 10% of the population. Tell me, how many of these wealthy 1% did not graduate high school? How many didn't graduate college? Professional athletes often get mocked for their lack of intelligence but few of them did not graduate college, and the really successful ones are quite likely to be very intelligent. I suspect that there are quite a few professional athletes in this top 1% of wealth holders.
Especially considering what actually happens if you cut every middle class american a check is the economy does better, because more people spend money.
Is that not what I said? Sure, the economy does better when they pay less in taxes, which is no different really than the government writing them a check. This writing everyone a check also applies to the wealthy too. The problem is that money is not wealth. It represents wealth in many ways but if the government just hands out checks with no real wealth to back it up then they are just handing out pieces of paper. Perhaps worse than handing out paper because people need a means to transfer wealth with ease to have a strong economy. If the government takes this means of wealth transfer and muddies the waters on its value with paper then that damages the economy.
If the government hands some money to someone that does not know how to spend it wisely then that still adds to the economy. What adds even more is giving that money to someone that knows to invest it wisely. How do we know who spends money wisely? Well, it tends to be those with money. Does that mean the government should hand money to those that already have a lot? Of course not. Government intervention in the economy rarely improves it. Partly because the people in government tend to be those that found government work more profitable than "honest" work.
its not like taxes reset the wealthy to zero and leave them penniless and destitute in the streets begging
Of course that doesn't happen. What wealth redistribution will do is remove the level of reward for wise and long term investment and then places a reward on short term gratification, like people spending their government checks on entertainment. Poverty sucks and having some wealth is great. If we make poverty suck less then that's great but people need to see some action on their part for this lowering of suckage or they will inevitably get into bad habits, like spending money on watching movies instead of learning a new skill.
What keeps that big windmill from blowing over? The answer is a large block of concrete buried underneath it. Let's say this windmill does reduce the steel and concrete needed for the same output. How much does it reduce those material requirements? Cuts it in half? Down to one third? Maybe?
Using nuclear cost the materials needed for the same output as wind to 1/10th. That's with current technology. I've seen credible claims that they can cut this in half. If the claims on molten salt come through then there would be no need for the large concrete dome that current reactors have which is where so much material goes in current designs. Instead the structure would be a far smaller concrete "box". This would cut material needs to a fraction of current solid fuel nuclear.
Can windmills be more efficient in material use? Yes, I do believe it can. Can nuclear be more efficient in material use? That is also possible. Perhaps nuclear cannot shrink it's material needs by the same fraction as wind but it's already got a 10x head start.
"Do you know what also stores energy? Oil, coal, natural gas, wood, and uranium."- Oil, coal, natural gas, wood are single use, they are not reuseable.
But they are reliable and inexpensive. Wind is not reliable, and it's only inexpensive if the need for a backup energy store is ignored.
"Wind power only works as an energy source if it has another source to back it up. Which is just another way of saying it doesn't work." - does a nuclear power station produce electricity without any fuel?
No, but we have enough fuel to last until the sun consumes the planet's atmosphere. Nuclear is therefore just as sustainable as wind.
"The problem with using wind is that we have to account for the intermittent nature of wind" and what do we do went a fossil fuel power station goes offline for repairs/maintenance?
We turn on another power plant. We can't just "turn on" the wind.
Look to the future and distributed power with distributed storage - its disrupting the old ideas.
Sure. Let's do that. We can store the energy in oil, coal, wood, and uranium. Let's distribute these stores widely.
You seem to imply that wind, storage, and distributed power are new ideas. They are not. What has created this need for connected grids is the reliance on unpredictable energy sources like wind. We didn't need "storage" until wind and solar was forced upon us. We had to connect these grids so that we had access to increasingly larger stores (in the form of coal and natural gas, with some hydro) to allow for the wind and solar the government makes utilities buy when they don't want it. We used wind before, for running water pumps and moving ships mostly, but abandoned it when we had something more reliable.
Wind was an old idea that was disrupted by coal. We should only go back to it if it can compete on an open market. Government subsidy doesn't make wind viable, it just hides the costs in our taxes.
They have zero reactors operating. Let us known when they have a single one.
Meanwhile, they could buy solar panels and have them up and running this year.
You think that the princes in Saudi Arabia don't know this? Of course they know that investing in nuclear power won't pay off for years. Yet, they are going ahead with it. Think about why that might be.
By your metric, steam powered cars have also been "trying to compete" with internal combustion, because once upon a time steam powered cars were a thing.
People tried to compete with steam, and they failed. People still try with electric, and they'd fail too if the government wasn't propping them up.
I'm fine with people investing into electric vehicles. It's their money, they can spend it as they wish. It doesn't bother me any. Just don't have the government take my money, give it to some rich guy to buy a four door penis... I mean, Tesla, and say the government is doing me any kind of favor.
It wasn't really until circa 2009 with the Nissan LEAF that all-electric highway vehicles became a viable mainstream option.
It took people over 100 years of trying and I still can't find an electric vehicle that won't get stuck in a little snow. Keep trying, maybe in another 100 years they'll get there.
You just demonstrated an inability to maintain your focus long enough to read past the first sentence. An adult would be able to read an entire paragraph.
No, my sweet summer child. People are concerned about "the environment" because that's where we "live".
Then they need to act like it. Things that live in the environment eat other things in the environment, sometimes killing them violently to do so. We have people so bonkers on "saving the environment" that they won't eat a carrot or potato because that means killing the plant to do so. They'll eat corn, because the plant is dead when harvested. An apple is okay with them because the tree "gives up the fruit". Eating meat is "murder" to these idiots. Even a dog will eat meat to live. Are people not more valuable than a dog? Or even on the same level?
Living in the environment means burrowing in the dirt to build a home, like even an ant would do. But digging a basement for a home, well, that's "damaging the environment". No, "environmentalists" don't live in the environment. If they did then they'd see that for us to live will inevitably mean displacing something else competing for that resource. That will often mean some birds will be displaced. Too bad for the bird, I guess.
How would you get the nuclear power reactors to fuck?
I'm not even sure if they do. Maybe they reproduce asexually. Let's get two or three together in one place and see what happens. Shall we? If they fuck and make more then we just need to domesticate and breed them.
Wait, is that what they mean by "breeding reactors"?
No, that's not true. Shareholders are not in it for the long haul. Private investors are in it for the long haul.
This may not have always been true. Holding stock was in the realm of the wealthy as a means to get some like minded people to invest in a common goal. It then became a means for the moderately wealthy to have an asset that would likely increase in value. Then it became a tax shelter or other hold of wealth for most anyone with a job. Then people with little knowledge of how the market worked, or little care for the "long haul", used trading stocks as a their day job. Then share value for the moment became the focus of a large number of small companies. A bad stock value from panic selling could mean the death of a company.
How did people in it for the long haul address this change in shareholders' actions? They stay with private investors.
I expect this to work it's way out eventually. Either the people that trade stocks will put in means to manage this or some other legal and economic construct will develop that has "filters" to keep out shareholders/investors that lack the intent for a long term investment.
This is just another result of the concentration of wealth (and, in particularly, fiat wealth) in society.
An interesting assessment. My question is, what should we do about this?
Should we tax the wealth from these people? I fail to see how this helps the middle class. Taking their money because they have "too much" seems rather arbitrary. How much is "too much"? Is it just those in the 1%? Well, mathematically speaking there is always someone in the top 1%. The people in this top 1% isn't always the same people all the time either. Some people lose some wealth and fall out of this status. Some gain this wealth. People die. People are born and inherit this wealth. How can we decide who has too much wealth?
Let's assume we can figure out who has too much. We still need to figure out how to "fix" this. The government will be involved here. Either they will have to take it from these people, or somehow declare how another person will take it from them and not call this theft. So, for a lack of ideas on how else to do this we'd have to develop some tax. An income tax won't do, because a lot of people with this wealth don't make an income, or at least not enough of one to tax.
So, we'll just have everyone file with the government how much wealth they have and if they have "too much" the government will take some portion of it. Then what do we do with corporations? Are they "people" too? A corporation is not just a company that builds things. A trust that owns some land, or artwork, or intellectual property, is a corporation. City governments are often considered corporations. A trust might own some old family home. This "family" might be a single person, but the person doesn't "own" this wealth, the trust does. How do we decide that a trust is just a way to shelter wealth from being taxed versus an honest means for people to manage an asset?
Assuming we can figure out who these people with "too much" are, and how the government is going to tax it from them, how is this wealth going to get in the hands of the middle class? Do we just have the government write out checks to everyone? Let's just go with that.
How do we know these people that get the checks will invest this wisely? And, what does "invest wisely" mean? I assume this means making a profit. Some of these people with their government checks aren't going to invest wisely. That's just a fact. It might look wise to invest in something, only to have it become worthless. Maybe a certain drug looks promising, but ends up causing birth defects or cancer. Maybe a new kind of energy saving light bulb, only to have a better one come along later. Maybe these people will spend their money on fancy cigars and just burn that money, not that there is anything inherently wrong with enjoying the occasional cigar just that this might not be wise for someone invest into in quantity.
Those that invest poorly will end up with less, but they might not care because they'll just get another government check next year. Those that invest wisely will become wealthier. Perhaps even some of them wealthy enough to become those with "too much" and have the government take some of it from them later.
If you've read this far then I hope you see the folly in this. We'd have the government take money from those that invested wisely, got "too much" wealth, and then distributed among the population where some of them will invest less wisely. We didn't make the economy any better, we just punished people that invested wisely and rewarded those that did not. This is an economic death spiral. There is no problem with people having "too much", that's just an inevitability. Trying to fix this is a cure worse than the disease.
I heard the same thing about ANWR. We can't drill there because it'd take 5 years before it can produce any oil. We also can't drill there until oil prices get high enough to make it profitable. I had someone make this same argument to me and 5 years later oil prices hit record highs.
That was real smart there, Einstein. It sure would have been nice to start drilling for that oil FIVE YEARS AGO!
We can't have that oil in five years, when the prices might be high enough to sell at a profit, if we don't start that drilling today. What if the prices never get high enough to sell at a profit? Then the company that drilled for it will have to take that loss. Lot's of oil wells don't make a profit, but more are profitable than not or we'd have stopped drilling for oil already.
All that next gen BS is always 5 years away for the last 20 years
And it will remain that way unless we start building nuclear reactors.
It's quite amazing this hypocrisy on nuclear power vs. solar and wind. We'll see the government dump all kinds of money into wind and solar. They'll issue permits to build solar collectors. Set aside land for windmills. And they do this because, so they say, that if we don't build these things then it will never get cheap enough to compete with coal.
How do they treat nuclear power? Well we can't waste money on this expensive energy. We need to "know" it's cheaper than coal first. But no one can "know" this until we try. We'll likely fail the first few tries, just like we've been failing to get cheaper than coal with wind and solar for so long. Maybe it will never be cheaper than coal. But we can't know that until we try.
Better off dumping 1 billion into more fusion research for 10 years instead of 1 more nuclear plant.
Right, let's just ignore that there are currently over 400 nuclear power reactors working on the planet right now. Let's just dump more money into that pit so... we can "feel good"? Facts don't care about your feelings. As much emotion you express on this we have in fact proven nuclear power as viable and safe.
Let's just dump more money into research until the lights go out and we all freeze and starve. That's how we can all feel good about saving the planet or something.
There's having caution and being so concerned on details that we're rearranging the deck chairs as the ship sinks. We have too many cooks and not enough indians... or something.
We can't put up the windmills because it might kill some birds. We can't have hydro because it might kill some fish. We can't have solar because it might disturb the mating habits of some turtle. We can't have "nukular" because of "deh rad-ee-ah-shun".
Okay, genius, what is the "cautious approach" here? If it's a choice between humanity and busting up some bird beaks then I choose humanity. It seems kind of pointless to "save the planet" if there's no people around to enjoy it. The planet is going to be fine, save the people. People seem so concerned about "the environment" as if humans are outside of it. We are part of the cycle of life as much as those turtles that can't seem to fuck in the shade of a solar collector.
It seems that there are "environmentalists" that want to live outside of the environment, like it's something that we visit in a zoo or park. Then there are "conservationists" that view the world as something we must live in, manage properly, and be a part of. Hunters have done far more to preserve wildlife than some fourth level vegan.
It's only "caution" if there is an action after thinking it over. If the thinking never ends, or no action after the thought, then it's worse than nothing at all.
I don't know about the fuel mix in the state of New York (and maybe the headline is a mistake)
I won't claim to be an expert either but I in places like New York oil for heating is still quite common. Here's a somewhat old source on this, and likely still quite relevant: https://www.eia.gov/todayinene...
I still think that Gov. Cuomo is an idiot but he may have been not too far from the truth, likely by accident. Oil heating is on the decline with electric heating in many cases replacing it. Heat pumps are more practical now than they used to be. What's perhaps ironic on this is that the electricity being used to power these heat pumps is increasingly natural gas. If we assume that burning natural gas for electricity is 60% efficient, and a heat pump can produce 3 times the heat energy than the electric energy consumed, then we'll still come out ahead compared to even the most efficient natural gas furnaces. Even using less efficient natural gas turbines, with something like 25% efficiency, and heat pumps still compare well with a furnace in converting natural gas to heat.
Marc Jacobson has done a lot of research into the viability of renewables. He found that using solar and wind are complementary. Wind tends to be highest at night; solar by day.
Jacobson is also an idiot. Maybe he stumbled on some truth by accident but this is not anything near a viable energy plan. Wind and solar take 10x more resources per MW than nuclear, coal, or natural gas. Maybe with access to enough hydro, strong winds, sunlight, and such, a place like New York could have an electric grid that's inexpensive, low carbon, and reliable. This is only going to work until energy demands outgrow the availability of hydro storage. One bad drought during a hot summer can make this all fall apart quickly, and badly. This is also unique to New York. Some other state that lacks access to so much hydro is not going to be able to replicate this plan.
If New York wants to see their economy grow (and with people like Cuomo in charge I'm not sure they do) then they will need nuclear power at some point. And lots of it.
Oil is used in heating via heating oil, but the alternative is natural gas which is far more efficient then electric heating.
Natural gas is not always an alternative to oil. My brother lived out in Indiana, and my sister out in North Carolina, neither had natural gas available to them. Natural gas is only viable for heating if it is possible to bury the gas lines. In places where running underground pipes would run into bedrock it's not economical to run gas lines. This is a common problem in northeast USA. These people then have to heat with oil, propane, wood, or electricity (hopefully a heat pump and not resistance).
I'll also dispute your claim that natural gas is more efficient than electric heat. There's too many variables to make this true in all cases. It also depends on how you define "efficient". Natural gas may be more practical in most cases, but not always more "efficient".
Finally...what happens when the wind is not blowing?
Then we'd die.
Oh, wait, that's not what we'd do. What we'd do is burn natural gas or coal. Maybe have some nuclear power or hydro. Wind power only works as an energy source if it has another source to back it up. Which is just another way of saying it doesn't work.
I know someone will want to bring up storage as a solution, like pumped hydro or batteries. Do you know what also stores energy? Oil, coal, natural gas, wood, and uranium. That is energy already stored for us and all we have to do is release it when we need it. Natural gas is storage, and we've been using it as a storage means for wind power for a long time now. The problem with using wind is that we have to account for the intermittent nature of wind and use inefficient turbines instead of efficient boilers. If the concern is reducing CO2 output then we'd stop with wind and use more natural gas boilers and nuclear power.
An extra 400lbs is like driving with two more people in the car, and my mileage stays the same when I do that.
But how much added weight would there be with two more AMERICANS in the car? More than 400 pounds I'd guess.
If a typical car's gas tank held 500lb of fuel, it would have a range of 2000 miles.
Given the transfer rate of a common gasoline pump at a filling station the time it would take to transfer this energy would be less than a half hour. A half hour charge with a Tesla quick charge station will get the car to travel another 50 to 100 miles.
I won't dispute the math that it is possible to provide all of our energy from wind but I'd like someone to tell me how much it costs. I have a paper here on my desk from Morgan Stanley that gives me some idea.
Wind takes ten times the steel and concrete per installed megawatt compared to nuclear, coal, or natural gas. To meet current demand and replace existing electric supply we'd have to build 1200 windmills every week for 50 years, assuming 1.65 MW rated output and 35% capacity factor. Then after 50 years we'd start over and do it all again, assuming those windmills last that long.
For comparison we have nuclear power. We'd have to build 1 per week for 50 years, assuming 900 MW rated output and 90% capacity factor. Sounds like a lot? Well, it takes no more materials than the current steel and concrete we use now to build our coal and gas power plants. I know we can do this because we already are dong this. Just stop putting those resources into coal and gas and put it into nuclear. Oh, and like the windmills we'd have to start over again in 50 years because by then those nuclear power plants would have also reached end of life. This also assumes no new technology. With technology that's in development now we could easily cut these resource requirements in half, if not far less.
We can't switch to wind power, not any time soon, because doing so would require many times more steel and concrete than is currently produced in the world. We could divert all of our steel to windmill towers, and all of our concrete to windmill anchors, and fall very short in getting enough energy from wind.
Wind power will not power the world. Solar power won't either as the resource requirements are similar to wind, we can currently produce only 1/10th of the materials we need for solar to replace coal and gas.
Slashdot Mirror
The solution will be a mixture of sources.
I agree. It will also lean heavily on nuclear. Saying nuclear cannot be used, or will continue being only 10% (world average) to 20% (USA), will not work. We will need a lot of new nuclear or the lights will go out. I don't know if that means 25% nuclear or 95% nuclear, only that what we are doing now is insufficient.
I could not find my original source but this web page shows similar numbers:
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/...
The interesting part is pretty much just the last paragraph.
I tried finding other sources that also did a direct comparison between nuclear and wind on materials needed but came up empty so far. If someone doubts the source above then there do appear to be plenty of places that provide the materials needed for nuclear and wind but just not on the same page. Grab the sources of your choice and put the numbers together yourself, you are going to find something real close to the above. Maybe the materials needed for wind over solar isn't exactly 10x, but certainly close. It's still far beyond steel and concrete production capability we have now to allow wind to replace coal, nuclear, or natural gas. Even a mix with solar and storage won't help much, the margin is that bad.
I will happily agree that heat pumps are not always practical, especially as a replacement in an existing structure. If it is practical then it should be used. When my old furnace failed (the AC died before I even bought the house) I replaced the AC and furnace with a heat pump and natural gas furnace. I realized the next year that the heat pump was not practical. It was practical when I bought it because natural gas cost more then. Prices just for natural gas just happened to drop at that time. I just considered the extra cost for the heat pump as tuition for my education.
I have a high efficiency natural gas furnace but my water heater is an old draft type. I do this because power outages are still a thing here, though getting rarer. If the power goes out I can use my fireplace to keep the house above freezing for quite some time, and with city water supply and the old style water heater I can still take a hot shower.
Nuclear power did not exist until 70 years or so ago. The concept of nuclear power is probably less than a century old. How long have we been trying to use wind to power our factories? Or, use the sun to heat things up? Or, use running water to turn a wheel? That's been done for thousands of years. Or at least centuries. Using solar power to create electricity directly is over a century old.
Sure, let's try some new ideas. I hear people mention Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples on why we can't have new nuclear reactors. Well, those reactors blew up, so don't build new ones like that. Saying we can't have new nuclear power today because of those bad designs is like saying we shouldn't drive a new Chevy Volt because of what you learned from reading Ralph Nader's book. We don't build cars like we did in 1965, and we don't build nuclear reactors like we did then either.
Yes, I understand that a modern windmill is not like what my great grandfather used to pump water on the farm. If someone wants to argue that we should "join the 21st century" then let's talk about technology from the 21st century. That means fourth generation nuclear reactors. It also means not using a reactor design from 1965, with known safety problems. Then failing to put a containment dome over it. Building it with known subpar materials. Running it with poorly trained staff, with oversight by someone appointed for his political connections and not because of any technical knowledge. Then running a "test" with safety features disabled. Then be surprised that it blows up in your face. Don't do those things and the reactor won't blow up.
They typical EV's extra weight often gives them an advantage in snow over gasoline vehicles of the same size class.
I don't care about "size class". I care about the money I have to spend and getting through the snow.
What does the typical EV cost? Let's say even a used one. Well, I just did a quick search for dealers around me for electric cars. I found a few used EVs for less than $15,000. That's not bad. I paid about the same for my 4x4 Ford Explorer. Now, tell me which one is more likely to get stuck in the snow?
Will the EV cost less to fuel? Cost less to insure, repair, and so on? That's quite likely. Will it get stuck in the snow? Also quite likely.
You want to claim I'm a special case that represents some small fraction of the population? I'll agree with that. Even if I'm like only 1% of the population then that still means millions of small 4x4 gasoline trucks and SUVs sold in the USA. You want to claim I can just stay home when it snows? Work from home, "telecommute", on those days? Sure, I could likely make that work. I'd just rather not have my travel plans dictated by the weather and how much the city feels like plowing my street that day.
I don't think you considered your tired, bruised argument very well...
Kind of like how you considered your comment on "size class"?
I could probably get a very nice electric car that can handle the snow very well. It might cost $70,000 but I can get one. Do you know what I could also get for $70,000? A very nice 3/4 ton truck. That would also handle the snow very well.
I was making the argument against a tax on wealth as opposed to a tax on income. If we tax wealth so one individual can have only so much wealth then we are capping the national economy. Or, we will simply have the wealthy find increasingly creative ways to hide their wealth and we get nothing from it. Much like people find ways to hide income. Make the taxes as simple and "fair" (if there is such a thing) as possible so the government can't screw up the economy. Perhaps even end the income tax and find other ways to fund the government.
You can mock the premise that wealth equates to wisdom or intelligence if you like but there is ample evidence of it being true. Perhaps it might be more accurate based on statistics available to equate an education to wealth, but then how does education correlate to intelligence? I don't recall all the statistics but it goes something like this. Average IQ for doctorates (MD, PhD, JD) is 120, masters degree is 115, undergrad is 110, high school graduates about 105. Average IQ is by definition 100. Those with an IQ of about 90 have a 50/50 chance of graduating high school. Those with an IQ below 85 will have a problem even holding a job, any job, which is about 10% of the population. Tell me, how many of these wealthy 1% did not graduate high school? How many didn't graduate college? Professional athletes often get mocked for their lack of intelligence but few of them did not graduate college, and the really successful ones are quite likely to be very intelligent. I suspect that there are quite a few professional athletes in this top 1% of wealth holders.
Especially considering what actually happens if you cut every middle class american a check is the economy does better, because more people spend money.
Is that not what I said? Sure, the economy does better when they pay less in taxes, which is no different really than the government writing them a check. This writing everyone a check also applies to the wealthy too. The problem is that money is not wealth. It represents wealth in many ways but if the government just hands out checks with no real wealth to back it up then they are just handing out pieces of paper. Perhaps worse than handing out paper because people need a means to transfer wealth with ease to have a strong economy. If the government takes this means of wealth transfer and muddies the waters on its value with paper then that damages the economy.
If the government hands some money to someone that does not know how to spend it wisely then that still adds to the economy. What adds even more is giving that money to someone that knows to invest it wisely. How do we know who spends money wisely? Well, it tends to be those with money. Does that mean the government should hand money to those that already have a lot? Of course not. Government intervention in the economy rarely improves it. Partly because the people in government tend to be those that found government work more profitable than "honest" work.
its not like taxes reset the wealthy to zero and leave them penniless and destitute in the streets begging
Of course that doesn't happen. What wealth redistribution will do is remove the level of reward for wise and long term investment and then places a reward on short term gratification, like people spending their government checks on entertainment. Poverty sucks and having some wealth is great. If we make poverty suck less then that's great but people need to see some action on their part for this lowering of suckage or they will inevitably get into bad habits, like spending money on watching movies instead of learning a new skill.
Poverty is it's own punishment, and wealth it's own reward. No need to add to either with government intervention.
Oh, and while debtors prison is a bad idea we do need some kind of enforcement on running up a debt or no one will pay what they owe.
What keeps that big windmill from blowing over? The answer is a large block of concrete buried underneath it. Let's say this windmill does reduce the steel and concrete needed for the same output. How much does it reduce those material requirements? Cuts it in half? Down to one third? Maybe?
Using nuclear cost the materials needed for the same output as wind to 1/10th. That's with current technology. I've seen credible claims that they can cut this in half. If the claims on molten salt come through then there would be no need for the large concrete dome that current reactors have which is where so much material goes in current designs. Instead the structure would be a far smaller concrete "box". This would cut material needs to a fraction of current solid fuel nuclear.
Can windmills be more efficient in material use? Yes, I do believe it can. Can nuclear be more efficient in material use? That is also possible. Perhaps nuclear cannot shrink it's material needs by the same fraction as wind but it's already got a 10x head start.
"Do you know what also stores energy? Oil, coal, natural gas, wood, and uranium."- Oil, coal, natural gas, wood are single use, they are not reuseable.
But they are reliable and inexpensive. Wind is not reliable, and it's only inexpensive if the need for a backup energy store is ignored.
"Wind power only works as an energy source if it has another source to back it up. Which is just another way of saying it doesn't work." - does a nuclear power station produce electricity without any fuel?
No, but we have enough fuel to last until the sun consumes the planet's atmosphere. Nuclear is therefore just as sustainable as wind.
"The problem with using wind is that we have to account for the intermittent nature of wind" and what do we do went a fossil fuel power station goes offline for repairs/maintenance?
We turn on another power plant. We can't just "turn on" the wind.
Look to the future and distributed power with distributed storage - its disrupting the old ideas.
Sure. Let's do that. We can store the energy in oil, coal, wood, and uranium. Let's distribute these stores widely.
You seem to imply that wind, storage, and distributed power are new ideas. They are not. What has created this need for connected grids is the reliance on unpredictable energy sources like wind. We didn't need "storage" until wind and solar was forced upon us. We had to connect these grids so that we had access to increasingly larger stores (in the form of coal and natural gas, with some hydro) to allow for the wind and solar the government makes utilities buy when they don't want it. We used wind before, for running water pumps and moving ships mostly, but abandoned it when we had something more reliable.
Wind was an old idea that was disrupted by coal. We should only go back to it if it can compete on an open market. Government subsidy doesn't make wind viable, it just hides the costs in our taxes.
They have zero reactors operating. Let us known when they have a single one.
Meanwhile, they could buy solar panels and have them up and running this year.
You think that the princes in Saudi Arabia don't know this? Of course they know that investing in nuclear power won't pay off for years. Yet, they are going ahead with it. Think about why that might be.
By your metric, steam powered cars have also been "trying to compete" with internal combustion, because once upon a time steam powered cars were a thing.
People tried to compete with steam, and they failed. People still try with electric, and they'd fail too if the government wasn't propping them up.
I'm fine with people investing into electric vehicles. It's their money, they can spend it as they wish. It doesn't bother me any. Just don't have the government take my money, give it to some rich guy to buy a four door penis... I mean, Tesla, and say the government is doing me any kind of favor.
It wasn't really until circa 2009 with the Nissan LEAF that all-electric highway vehicles became a viable mainstream option.
It took people over 100 years of trying and I still can't find an electric vehicle that won't get stuck in a little snow. Keep trying, maybe in another 100 years they'll get there.
You just demonstrated an inability to maintain your focus long enough to read past the first sentence. An adult would be able to read an entire paragraph.
No, my sweet summer child. People are concerned about "the environment" because that's where we "live".
Then they need to act like it. Things that live in the environment eat other things in the environment, sometimes killing them violently to do so. We have people so bonkers on "saving the environment" that they won't eat a carrot or potato because that means killing the plant to do so. They'll eat corn, because the plant is dead when harvested. An apple is okay with them because the tree "gives up the fruit". Eating meat is "murder" to these idiots. Even a dog will eat meat to live. Are people not more valuable than a dog? Or even on the same level?
Living in the environment means burrowing in the dirt to build a home, like even an ant would do. But digging a basement for a home, well, that's "damaging the environment". No, "environmentalists" don't live in the environment. If they did then they'd see that for us to live will inevitably mean displacing something else competing for that resource. That will often mean some birds will be displaced. Too bad for the bird, I guess.
How would you get the nuclear power reactors to fuck?
I'm not even sure if they do. Maybe they reproduce asexually. Let's get two or three together in one place and see what happens. Shall we? If they fuck and make more then we just need to domesticate and breed them.
Wait, is that what they mean by "breeding reactors"?
but no one is in it for the long run anymore.
No, that's not true. Shareholders are not in it for the long haul. Private investors are in it for the long haul.
This may not have always been true. Holding stock was in the realm of the wealthy as a means to get some like minded people to invest in a common goal. It then became a means for the moderately wealthy to have an asset that would likely increase in value. Then it became a tax shelter or other hold of wealth for most anyone with a job. Then people with little knowledge of how the market worked, or little care for the "long haul", used trading stocks as a their day job. Then share value for the moment became the focus of a large number of small companies. A bad stock value from panic selling could mean the death of a company.
How did people in it for the long haul address this change in shareholders' actions? They stay with private investors.
I expect this to work it's way out eventually. Either the people that trade stocks will put in means to manage this or some other legal and economic construct will develop that has "filters" to keep out shareholders/investors that lack the intent for a long term investment.
This is just another result of the concentration of wealth (and, in particularly, fiat wealth) in society.
An interesting assessment. My question is, what should we do about this?
Should we tax the wealth from these people? I fail to see how this helps the middle class. Taking their money because they have "too much" seems rather arbitrary. How much is "too much"? Is it just those in the 1%? Well, mathematically speaking there is always someone in the top 1%. The people in this top 1% isn't always the same people all the time either. Some people lose some wealth and fall out of this status. Some gain this wealth. People die. People are born and inherit this wealth. How can we decide who has too much wealth?
Let's assume we can figure out who has too much. We still need to figure out how to "fix" this. The government will be involved here. Either they will have to take it from these people, or somehow declare how another person will take it from them and not call this theft. So, for a lack of ideas on how else to do this we'd have to develop some tax. An income tax won't do, because a lot of people with this wealth don't make an income, or at least not enough of one to tax.
So, we'll just have everyone file with the government how much wealth they have and if they have "too much" the government will take some portion of it. Then what do we do with corporations? Are they "people" too? A corporation is not just a company that builds things. A trust that owns some land, or artwork, or intellectual property, is a corporation. City governments are often considered corporations. A trust might own some old family home. This "family" might be a single person, but the person doesn't "own" this wealth, the trust does. How do we decide that a trust is just a way to shelter wealth from being taxed versus an honest means for people to manage an asset?
Assuming we can figure out who these people with "too much" are, and how the government is going to tax it from them, how is this wealth going to get in the hands of the middle class? Do we just have the government write out checks to everyone? Let's just go with that.
How do we know these people that get the checks will invest this wisely? And, what does "invest wisely" mean? I assume this means making a profit. Some of these people with their government checks aren't going to invest wisely. That's just a fact. It might look wise to invest in something, only to have it become worthless. Maybe a certain drug looks promising, but ends up causing birth defects or cancer. Maybe a new kind of energy saving light bulb, only to have a better one come along later. Maybe these people will spend their money on fancy cigars and just burn that money, not that there is anything inherently wrong with enjoying the occasional cigar just that this might not be wise for someone invest into in quantity.
Those that invest poorly will end up with less, but they might not care because they'll just get another government check next year. Those that invest wisely will become wealthier. Perhaps even some of them wealthy enough to become those with "too much" and have the government take some of it from them later.
If you've read this far then I hope you see the folly in this. We'd have the government take money from those that invested wisely, got "too much" wealth, and then distributed among the population where some of them will invest less wisely. We didn't make the economy any better, we just punished people that invested wisely and rewarded those that did not. This is an economic death spiral. There is no problem with people having "too much", that's just an inevitability. Trying to fix this is a cure worse than the disease.
I heard the same thing about ANWR. We can't drill there because it'd take 5 years before it can produce any oil. We also can't drill there until oil prices get high enough to make it profitable. I had someone make this same argument to me and 5 years later oil prices hit record highs.
That was real smart there, Einstein. It sure would have been nice to start drilling for that oil FIVE YEARS AGO!
We can't have that oil in five years, when the prices might be high enough to sell at a profit, if we don't start that drilling today. What if the prices never get high enough to sell at a profit? Then the company that drilled for it will have to take that loss. Lot's of oil wells don't make a profit, but more are profitable than not or we'd have stopped drilling for oil already.
All that next gen BS is always 5 years away for the last 20 years
And it will remain that way unless we start building nuclear reactors.
It's quite amazing this hypocrisy on nuclear power vs. solar and wind. We'll see the government dump all kinds of money into wind and solar. They'll issue permits to build solar collectors. Set aside land for windmills. And they do this because, so they say, that if we don't build these things then it will never get cheap enough to compete with coal.
How do they treat nuclear power? Well we can't waste money on this expensive energy. We need to "know" it's cheaper than coal first. But no one can "know" this until we try. We'll likely fail the first few tries, just like we've been failing to get cheaper than coal with wind and solar for so long. Maybe it will never be cheaper than coal. But we can't know that until we try.
Better off dumping 1 billion into more fusion research for 10 years instead of 1 more nuclear plant.
Right, let's just ignore that there are currently over 400 nuclear power reactors working on the planet right now. Let's just dump more money into that pit so... we can "feel good"? Facts don't care about your feelings. As much emotion you express on this we have in fact proven nuclear power as viable and safe.
Let's just dump more money into research until the lights go out and we all freeze and starve. That's how we can all feel good about saving the planet or something.
Which risk would you mitigate first and how?
I'd first mitigate the risk of the lights going out. I'd do that by building some fucking nuclear power reactors. Lots and lots of them. Big ones too.
There's having caution and being so concerned on details that we're rearranging the deck chairs as the ship sinks. We have too many cooks and not enough indians... or something.
We can't put up the windmills because it might kill some birds. We can't have hydro because it might kill some fish. We can't have solar because it might disturb the mating habits of some turtle. We can't have "nukular" because of "deh rad-ee-ah-shun".
Okay, genius, what is the "cautious approach" here? If it's a choice between humanity and busting up some bird beaks then I choose humanity. It seems kind of pointless to "save the planet" if there's no people around to enjoy it. The planet is going to be fine, save the people. People seem so concerned about "the environment" as if humans are outside of it. We are part of the cycle of life as much as those turtles that can't seem to fuck in the shade of a solar collector.
It seems that there are "environmentalists" that want to live outside of the environment, like it's something that we visit in a zoo or park. Then there are "conservationists" that view the world as something we must live in, manage properly, and be a part of. Hunters have done far more to preserve wildlife than some fourth level vegan.
It's only "caution" if there is an action after thinking it over. If the thinking never ends, or no action after the thought, then it's worse than nothing at all.
I don't know about the fuel mix in the state of New York (and maybe the headline is a mistake)
I won't claim to be an expert either but I in places like New York oil for heating is still quite common. Here's a somewhat old source on this, and likely still quite relevant:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene...
I still think that Gov. Cuomo is an idiot but he may have been not too far from the truth, likely by accident. Oil heating is on the decline with electric heating in many cases replacing it. Heat pumps are more practical now than they used to be. What's perhaps ironic on this is that the electricity being used to power these heat pumps is increasingly natural gas. If we assume that burning natural gas for electricity is 60% efficient, and a heat pump can produce 3 times the heat energy than the electric energy consumed, then we'll still come out ahead compared to even the most efficient natural gas furnaces. Even using less efficient natural gas turbines, with something like 25% efficiency, and heat pumps still compare well with a furnace in converting natural gas to heat.
Marc Jacobson has done a lot of research into the viability of renewables. He found that using solar and wind are complementary. Wind tends to be highest at night; solar by day.
Jacobson is also an idiot. Maybe he stumbled on some truth by accident but this is not anything near a viable energy plan. Wind and solar take 10x more resources per MW than nuclear, coal, or natural gas. Maybe with access to enough hydro, strong winds, sunlight, and such, a place like New York could have an electric grid that's inexpensive, low carbon, and reliable. This is only going to work until energy demands outgrow the availability of hydro storage. One bad drought during a hot summer can make this all fall apart quickly, and badly. This is also unique to New York. Some other state that lacks access to so much hydro is not going to be able to replicate this plan.
If New York wants to see their economy grow (and with people like Cuomo in charge I'm not sure they do) then they will need nuclear power at some point. And lots of it.
Oil is used in heating via heating oil, but the alternative is natural gas which is far more efficient then electric heating.
Natural gas is not always an alternative to oil. My brother lived out in Indiana, and my sister out in North Carolina, neither had natural gas available to them. Natural gas is only viable for heating if it is possible to bury the gas lines. In places where running underground pipes would run into bedrock it's not economical to run gas lines. This is a common problem in northeast USA. These people then have to heat with oil, propane, wood, or electricity (hopefully a heat pump and not resistance).
I'll also dispute your claim that natural gas is more efficient than electric heat. There's too many variables to make this true in all cases. It also depends on how you define "efficient". Natural gas may be more practical in most cases, but not always more "efficient".
Finally...what happens when the wind is not blowing?
Then we'd die.
Oh, wait, that's not what we'd do. What we'd do is burn natural gas or coal. Maybe have some nuclear power or hydro. Wind power only works as an energy source if it has another source to back it up. Which is just another way of saying it doesn't work.
I know someone will want to bring up storage as a solution, like pumped hydro or batteries. Do you know what also stores energy? Oil, coal, natural gas, wood, and uranium. That is energy already stored for us and all we have to do is release it when we need it. Natural gas is storage, and we've been using it as a storage means for wind power for a long time now. The problem with using wind is that we have to account for the intermittent nature of wind and use inefficient turbines instead of efficient boilers. If the concern is reducing CO2 output then we'd stop with wind and use more natural gas boilers and nuclear power.
Besides sabotaging one of the very few middle firing ranges, it also blinds radar used to detect cruise missiles.
I saw a typo in there.
I'm sure you meant "finger".
An extra 400lbs is like driving with two more people in the car, and my mileage stays the same when I do that.
But how much added weight would there be with two more AMERICANS in the car? More than 400 pounds I'd guess.
If a typical car's gas tank held 500lb of fuel, it would have a range of 2000 miles.
Given the transfer rate of a common gasoline pump at a filling station the time it would take to transfer this energy would be less than a half hour. A half hour charge with a Tesla quick charge station will get the car to travel another 50 to 100 miles.
I won't dispute the math that it is possible to provide all of our energy from wind but I'd like someone to tell me how much it costs. I have a paper here on my desk from Morgan Stanley that gives me some idea.
Wind takes ten times the steel and concrete per installed megawatt compared to nuclear, coal, or natural gas. To meet current demand and replace existing electric supply we'd have to build 1200 windmills every week for 50 years, assuming 1.65 MW rated output and 35% capacity factor. Then after 50 years we'd start over and do it all again, assuming those windmills last that long.
For comparison we have nuclear power. We'd have to build 1 per week for 50 years, assuming 900 MW rated output and 90% capacity factor. Sounds like a lot? Well, it takes no more materials than the current steel and concrete we use now to build our coal and gas power plants. I know we can do this because we already are dong this. Just stop putting those resources into coal and gas and put it into nuclear. Oh, and like the windmills we'd have to start over again in 50 years because by then those nuclear power plants would have also reached end of life. This also assumes no new technology. With technology that's in development now we could easily cut these resource requirements in half, if not far less.
We can't switch to wind power, not any time soon, because doing so would require many times more steel and concrete than is currently produced in the world. We could divert all of our steel to windmill towers, and all of our concrete to windmill anchors, and fall very short in getting enough energy from wind.
Wind power will not power the world. Solar power won't either as the resource requirements are similar to wind, we can currently produce only 1/10th of the materials we need for solar to replace coal and gas.