Start a nuclear plant today and it won't come online for 20 years if ever.
Then stop putting the government in charge of building them. Or at least the US federal government. If the US federal government was put in charge of the Sahara desert then we'd have a crisis of a sand shortage in 20 years. If not sooner.
Electric cars have developed traction almost overnight.
How old are you? To make that kind of statement means a level of ignorance that can almost only come from youth.
Electric cars have been trying to compete with internal combustion for over a century. Oddly enough the final nail in the electric car coffin was the electric starter. Before then the operation of a gasoline engine was a very complicated and physically demanding process, but electric cars were push button operated. We might have electric starters, electric drive trains, and all kinds of other electric devices on a car but the primary source of the power is still gasoline. If something should change that in the future then it would be far from an "overnight success".
This project though is another welcome indicator that the concept has taken hold, and that society just might be on a committed pathway to reduce petroleum use.
We didn't go to the moon on wind power and a trip to Mars won't be powered by wind either. The future will be very energy intensive, and wind is not going to be enough. That does not mean we use petroleum, it just means that we won't be using wind power. Wind power used to rule the seas, and if we go back to wind power for our travels then we've seriously screwed up somewhere.
Saudi Arabia has been in the news of late, looking to diversify its economy in recognition that the oil genie might not grant wishes forever.
I've read the news too. Saudi Arabia has plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants in the coming decades. They see a growing need for domestic energy and the more oil and natural gas they burn for that electricity is the less they can export. Sure, they will invest in solar power too but, as you point out, they will diversify.
South Australia does have uranium but there is no domestic market and likely never will be - political suicide to anyone who would stare down environmentalists.
Then the "environmentalists" are ignorant, or idiots, or quite possibly both. Nuclear power produces less carbon than solar and kills fewer birds than wind. If these people are concerned about global warming and saving rare birds then they'd support nuclear power just as much or more than wind and solar.
There were murmurs about commissioning a study a year or two back but any motion would ultimately be defeated by both the coal lobby and the greens.
Do the lobbies vote or do the people? I'm sure both lobbying groups contain a lot of people but just how many coal miners are there? I've already established the "greenies" are ignorant idiots. For those that don't much care about global warming, coal mining jobs, or birds getting killed in windmills, then there is still the matter that nuclear power is safe, reliable, and inexpensive. There are more than 400 nuclear power plants worldwide in operation today. 50 more are being built today, and many more planned. If Australia can't bring themselves to embrace nuclear power now then they will in the future. I see that Australia exports a lot of coal and uranium. I expect that at some point, with old coal power being shut down and new nuclear coming online, uranium exports will exceed that of coal and then the coal lobby will no longer have the power to stop domestic nuclear power.
Oh, and that moonbat Helen Caldicott isn't getting any younger. I expect a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment to die off with her.
The electric utility is not in the business to make electricity, they are in the business to make money. If solar + batteries ever do get to a point where the costs of running wires is above that of what it takes you to disconnect from the grid then I can expect the utility to pay you to go away so they can focus on more profitable customers. As people on the fringes disconnect the people closer to the power plants will see costs go down for not having to subsidize the long wires out to sparsely populated areas.
For solar + batteries to work means having enough sun on the roof, and enough batteries underneath it, to provide power day and night even if there is the occasional cloudy day. In a residence you have people are away for much of the day, and sleeping at night. This means a couple hours of peak use for hot showers and coffee in the morning. At night you'll have a few hours of TV watching and LED lights. The rest of the time the use of electricity in the house is just keeping the clocks running and the ice cream frozen.
On the other hand you'll have your typical office spaces with computers and people heating up the place and AC to cool them down. Restaurants will be heating up food and running dish washing machines. Industrial users will be running all kinds of motors, lights, heating, cooling, and whatever. Maybe all this too can be run from solar + batteries but it will have to be on scales far lager than can be on their property. If the wires from the solar panels to the big users happens to be near some houses then I suspect the utility will gladly sell some electricity to the people that live there for a price they cannot refuse.
I suspect that a lot of people will find needing to keep enough storage on hand to last through the occasional cloudy day will be more than what it costs to have utility services. Powering a house through the night means charging up all day so that once everyone goes asleep lots of things get turned off. A cloudy day means not having that recharge, and supper consists of eating melting ice cream by candlelight. Maybe you routinely have ice cream by candlelight for supper but I suspect many people do not.
Perhaps my suspicions will prove incorrect, and the utilities will find it difficult to sell electricity because solar + batteries just got too cheap. Then maybe they will get into the business of contracting maintenance on solar + battery systems. If by chance you have some excess solar generating capacity then they might find a small side business running some wires to shift the sunlight from those that have it to those that want more of it.
The kicker is that soon (5 years?) batteries will be cheap enough for people to go off grid altogether.
That won't happen. Or, it might happen but the market will quickly correct for this and make being connected to the grid economical again.
One day after discussing the cost of energy with friends I decided to figure out just how much it would cost me to go off grid. I took several angles to this and one was to just buy one of those "backup" natural gas generators and run it continuously. If I assumed that I could use the electricity as it was generated then my cost for the natural gas was the same as what I paid the utility for electricity. That means if I assumed the generator was free (as in I did not add capital and maintenance costs in the electricity cost) then my costs would be unchanged if I went off grid.
Well, the utility burns natural gas to produce electricity too. Economy of scale kicks in and they can run a generator cheaper than I could. This will always be true because of physics. If the price of natural gas goes up then my costs go up, as does the utility. So long as they can keep the economy of scale big enough to cover the costs I'd have to pay in things like capital and maintenance then it will be in my advantage to buy from the utility.
I saw similar effects for solar. I could buy solar panels just like the utility could. My shipping, install, and other capital expenses would always be larger than the utility because I'm a small time solar producer and the utility is not. I'll always spend more on batteries than the utility as well.
The utility can also diversify unlike I could. A utility can put up solar panels, windmills, and natural gas. If I was to try to do that then I'd run into costs of permits, perhaps buying more land, and I'll always be getting smaller windmills or whatever as the utility.
Well, what if I get together with some neighbors to buy some windmills, solar panels, and natural gas generators? That would spread out the costs, right? Yes it would. The utility can spread out the management costs even more, such as seeing how much each person in the neighborhood has to contribute to maintenance and paying down capital.
Going off grid completely is unlikely to get cheaper than being on the grid because the utility can simply spread out costs better than an individual. That does not mean that going off grid would not be more viable in the future than it is now. I can still see an advantage to going off grid, even if that might mean higher energy costs. Power outages are still a thing. People place value in their independence.
One thing utilities are good at is diverting excess in capacity to places with a shortage of capacity. If enough people threaten to go off grid because of the costs of paying for the wires to their house then the utilities will simply offer to buy excess capacity from home owners and pay for the wires themselves. They will pay you for your extra solar energy because someone somewhere will want to buy it.
This should play well in markets with high electricity pricing like Australia, Hawaii, Germany & California. And now that Tesla has opened the door, I expect to see other players in energy storage such as Sonnebatterie try to make similar deals.
Solar power is expensive and unreliable. Sure, batteries address the reliability problem but then add to the cost. Without the batteries then it's cheaper but then something has to fill in the gap during the night. This means burning oil or natural gas.
I'm sure we'll see competition in batteries being supplied but they all use the same materials and technology to create those batteries. They can only get so cheap. The cheapest batteries are the ones you don't have to buy.
Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear don't need storage because the energy is already stored in the fuel. Solar and wind will need storage or it will have to become cheap enough that just dumping the energy is viable, and we are a long way off from that. People will make the claim that solar is already cheaper than coal and nuclear but that's only true if there is a way to put that energy to use as it is produced. If the sun shines and people don't need energy, or people need energy and there is no sun, then solar energy doesn't look so cheap.
You might expect new competition in energy storage but I do not. I expect energy prices to rise until there is a breaking point. People will be paying so much for energy that they will demand anything to bring prices down, even if that means breaking the ban on nuclear power.
Without nuclear power you can choose only two of these three, reliable, inexpensive, and carbon free. Nuclear power is reliable, inexpensive (at least compared to solar + batteries), carbon free, and also the safest energy source we have.
I agree that Tesla opened a door here. These batteries look great for managing the grid with solar. They'd also work great for managing the grid with nuclear. To make nuclear cheap means making it big. Big means it can't match the load as quickly as it changes. To match the load to the nuclear supply means batteries, but far fewer than if used with solar.
I'm not sure how that helps. If you don't have the password but your spouse does then they'll just call the spouse and explain how they will torture and kill unless the password is handed over. What would your spouse do in that case? Allow you to be tortured? Hand over the password and hope they hold up their end of the deal?
This assumes they believe you that you do not in fact have the password. This assumes that they even care if they get the password, they might just beat you up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I find it completely frustrating on how much faith people put in a little piece of laminated paper. That piece of paper proves nothing.
I tried to explain the worthlessness of a license to drive to someone, on how unless the document is verified in some way it means nothing. The guy told me of course it has value, when pulled over he feels great confidence in having the officer look at his ID card. I tried to explain to him that the officer is not checking his license, he's checking how compliant he is. Someone reluctant to hand over ID, claiming the ID was lost, or sweating profusely at handing it over will be looked at more closely. If the person hands over an ID card then the officer might actually look at some obvious errors or instance of fraud. If the photo looks even close to that of the person handing it over, and the expiration date is in the future, then the officer will often not check further.
Again, this is not "checking the ID", this is playing a psychological game.
If an officer was honestly checking the identity of the person then he'd have to check the government records. The ID card simply makes this a simpler process by giving the person a unique ID number, a number that correlates to the information on file.
But this is not an app for the government to use. It's for non-government people to check, and it said so in the article. This is for things like signing for a package delivery at a store. I fully expect this app to be spoofed at some point. If people rely on this app for things like picking up prescriptions then someone is going to falsify this to get some other person's pills. Then what are they going to have? They'll have to check security cameras, rely on witness accounts, maybe they can do some signature analysis (they did get a signature, right?) or whatever else might happen in a case of identity fraud.
Unless this app has some very complex authentication then it's a step backward. It's far easier to manipulate bits on a screen than come up with things like watermarks and other anti-fraud systems common in government issued documents.
Would a gov/mil/police request ever respect the consumer level user settings? Would any consumer level user settings the user could track show what the gov app was OS and hardware approved to do?
How long would the government be able to keep quiet this ability to track the users of their apps? I'm sure that people would not be surprised that the government would lie to them but then if the government did lie then people would simply not use the app. What do you expect the government to do then? Require smart phone users to install the app? Then people will leave the phone home, wrap the phone in aluminum foil as they drive, or find other ways to subvert this.
I'm assuming Finland has some level of democratic representation in government. If there are enough people that find the government lied to them on tracking their movement then this can be corrected in the next election.
Also, the phone OS developers would have to be in on this. They'd have to have a "hook" in the OS for the government supplied app to be able to track location even though the user requested that location data not be sent to the app. How long in a free economy would a company like this still be able to sell phones?
This is from someone that has a serious mistrust of government but even I find this difficult to comprehend as any real threat.
What this app does is provide a means to present a government identifying document to non-government entities. The government would already have your photo on file. This is not much different than taking a photo of your ID and storing it on your phone. Presumably the app will have some feature to assure the person viewing it that it's a legitimate document and not something someone altered in Photoshop. How the app would make that assurance was not stated in the fine article.
You don't have to hand over anything - they already know who you are,
When I opened an account at my new bank they asked if I would allow them to scan my driving license to keep on file. I didn't think much of it until I went to the bank later. I walked up to the counter, gave my name and asked to do a withdrawal. The teller punched in my name and my photo popped up on her screen, she processed my withdrawal very quickly after that. I still had to sign my name on a little digital scanner, much like one would see at a checkout for using a credit card. Of course the bank had cameras watching everything I did. I didn't have to give the teller a piece of paper to "prove" who I am. Trusting a piece of paper as any kind of identifying document is a fail to start with. Even Sam's Club figured this out with their membership cards, they will take your picture and print it on the membership card only as a backup, the real record is in their computers and the cashiers will check your face with what is on their screen when ringing up your sale.
Now, tell me how this interaction with my bank is all that different than with a police officer that might, for example, pull me over to tell me I had a burnt out taillight? They have a computer with my photo in it. The vehicle is registered and a plate is visible. The officer will most likely run my plate before leaving the cruiser, find that I am the owner, and get my photo. When the officer comes up to my window there will be a dash computer printout or a tablet computer to compare my face to the photo on file. Assuming my face still looks like the photo, and I don't have any other reason for the officer to have an interest in me, then I should be on my way quickly with perhaps a piece of paper from the officer to remind me that I need to fix my taillight.
If you don't want the government to "already know who you are" when doing traffic enforcement then we'd need to do away with license plates and licenses to drive. I don't just mean the physical license plates and identifying cards, I mean no more registration of vehicles or government testing for driving. If you believe that the government having the ability to scan license plates, or that having your photo on their computer, is a problem then I'm having a problem with finding a solution than ending the practice of needing prior government approval to drive on public roads.
If you believe that safety on the roads is more important than your privacy then we have come to what Dr. Franklin warned us about long ago. Those who choose safety over liberty will get neither safety or liberty.
Makes sense. Off hand I can't find any fault in your logic. I can't say that I completely agree with it, but its a good point.
That's fair enough if you can't completely agree with it. I'm not sure I completely agree with my argument either. I would appreciate if someone offered a counter argument, just to see where I might be wrong.
I also thought of another aspect that bothers me about software subscriptions. If the files produced by this software is in a format that can only be read by software provided under this subscription then potentially someone might find their data held hostage. I don't know how Microsoft or other software publishers handle this but it can be a concern. The usual arrangement, in my experience, is that a free product can view these files, print them, but not allow edits or conversions to other formats. That might be enough for a lot of people but potentially crippling for someone else. Also, most any software will save in some widely supported file format but using the file format unique to the software means getting greater control on the file, or some other advantage. For someone that is mindful of their data potentially being held hostage can usually avoid this with little effort. Those that don't keep this in mind can find themselves in trouble.
I went through this a bit by talking about the software as information, in that failing to pay "rent" means losing the software. I'm pointing out that the product of the software tool is also information. If we think of software as a tool then failing to pay rent is like seeing your cupboards disappear because you failed to pay the rent on the table saw you used to make them. Or, perhaps, you can make the cupboards and still use them without paying rent but if you want to make any alterations later then you can only use their table saw to do so. I know the analogy breaks down quickly but that's just how analogies work.
Market forces determine prices. This applies even to Apple. If Apple thinks that they can move refurbished products with only a 10% discount then they'd be idiots for going any lower on price.
If you believe buying Apple products is just paying an "idiot tax" then you need to brush up on some basic economics. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world right now. Maybe all their customers are idiots. If so, then that just means catering to idiots is a genius business plan.
Apple provides updated operating systems for free. If you are concerned about running the latest Apple software on a 4 year old OS then you've simply failed to take advantage of the free updates. Or perhaps your computer is now 15 years old.
There's nothing wrong with using an "old" computer, IMHO. In fact the computer I'm typing on right now is about 10 years old. I also have the expectation that Apple will stop providing support for it, if they haven't already. I'm also not paying rent for any of the software on it to work.
I like my Apple so much that I just bought a new one, and that's the third one I've bought new with my own money. I paid a lot of money for it up front and I expect it to work for me for 10 years too. Maybe paying rent for software works for some people but I like not having to pay rent to use my own computer.
Also on my desk is an old computer running Windows XP. It comes in handy for running some old software I like. I'm not sure how old it is because I'm at least the third owner. You can laugh about not being able to run the latest and greatest software but I'm not paying rent. That old XP machine still does the same things it did when it was new. When you stop paying rent what do you have? Or when the rent collectors decide your computer is "too old"? A paperweight?
I really never understood the raw hatred people have here for the office subscription package.
I do. Software is a tool. It's also information. I can buy information and I can buy tools.
Let's consider software as information. If I buy information in the form of a book, newspaper, magazine, or etchings in a stone tablet, then I own that information. Copyright law might at least stipulate I own that copy of the information. This same information might need updating periodically but if I'm satisfied with the old information then I can keep it on a shelf or in a drawer and refer to it as I wish. If I feel a need to have this information updated regularly then I might get a subscription from the information provider, such as with a newspaper, magazine, or what not. When I get new information I don't expect to have to lose access to the old information, or lose access to the old information if I end my subscription.
Let's consider software as a tool. If I buy a tool then I expect that tool to work for me so long as it is relevant to my work and so long as I maintain it. If I buy a hammer, or table saw, then I expect to be able to use that tool as I wish. That use of the tool might not be "approved" by the company or person that made it but then it's my choice on how it's used. If I happen to damage the tool in normal operation then I have some assurance of the manufacturer providing some means to rectify the damage, this might cost money for this service but we expect this service to be far less than buying a new tool. Most everyone understands that this support fades in time but also if the tool is cared for by the user then it should keep working indefinitely as it came originally. I might buy some kind of support on this tool, such as a maintenance contract, either from the maker of the tool or a third party. I don't expect the tool to be confiscated if I don't pay for support from the manufacturer. We expect that tools will wear out, become obsolete, or generally a new tool will have to be purchased to replace the old, but this time is expected to be when the user decides, not the tool maker.
Subscriptions on software means I'm paying rent on something that someone made for me. If I buy a house then I don't expect to have to keep paying the carpenter or lose my home. That person got paid for his labors and I expect him to go away after being paid for his work. If he keeps coming back for payment afterwards, threatening to take my home if I don't pay, then we'd call that extortion.
These companies can call it a subscription, and perhaps correlate it to paying rent or buying a maintenance contract, but in many people's minds it's just extortion. If people see software as payment for manufacturing a tool or collecting/creating information, which seems reasonable to me, then they should expect payment for that work and go away. If they want to keep getting paid then they should come up with a new product that people see value in obtaining, just like the carpenter building new houses or perhaps doing maintenance on existing structures.
Plus subscription plans have been the norm for business software for decades. This is really not anything new.
This is new. The subscriptions used to be a support contract. As I recall most of my support calls would be for problems on license management failing. I'll have people call me that some software stopped working and I'd have to call the company to find out what hoop I failed to jump through on keeping the software from contacting the license server. It used to be that the license was managed with a "dongle". If these companies stayed with those dongles then perhaps I would not have to call them so often.
If I have a boss that demands I use the latest version of Microsoft Office for producing documents, and does not provide that to me on the company provided computer, then I believe you've created a false dichotomy with "upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job". Most any job would be an upgrade from that.
My work experience has been primarily in educational institutions and large technology centered corporations. In both settings there was a strong leaning on Microsoft technologies, and also a strong tendency to avoid the upgrade treadmill. Skipping versions was the norm. If Microsoft comes out with a new OS and/or Office suite every three years or so, and provides support for six years, then we'll see an upgrade on new systems every six years. New computers that come in with the latest Microsoft product would be downgraded to the standard or the company would simply tolerate supporting the last two (or even three) versions of Microsoft products. If my boss in one of these companies demands that the latest and greatest version of a Microsoft product be used then I'd point to the company policy on supported file formats. He cannot demand the use of the latest and greatest as that would mean half the company would be unable to open the file and read it as intended.
Even with these companies I've worked for having a strong leaning on Microsoft there is enough corporate memory on past efforts of supporting proprietary file formats that any document of any importance must be archived in a standardized format. This usually means ASCII text. If there is a need for some formatting then the text will have markup in LaTeX, HTML, or be stored as a PDF.
That's your experience compared to my own. The question I have, and pose to the reader, which is more likely for others to experience? Your situation, or my own? In my experience the computer and software I needed was provided to me at company expense. It appears that in your experience the boss would demand the use of a proprietary and fresh off the shelf file format, and demanded that you pay for the software yourself on a computer that I also assume you had to buy as well. If he expects you to buy the latest Microsoft software from your own pocket then, again, most any job would be an upgrade from that.
For some reason memories of Fortran programming projects from college just came flooding back to me. Be thankful you at least have upper and lower case characters to choose from.
After reading your post, and seeing your signature line, I'm not sure if you are John Moser or just one of his supporters. Either way I have something you can pass on to your Democrat Party buddies, I will find it very hard to vote for a Democrat so long as the party platform does not include support for nuclear power.
When I say "support for nuclear power" I don't mean the happy mouth noises Obama made in his campaign debates on funding research for next generation nuclear reactors. When I say "support for nuclear power" I mean I want to hear from Democrats that we will see one gigawatt of new nuclear power capacity somewhere in the America EVERY MONTH. I say that because that is the rate at which old coal and nuclear plants are being shut down. If we don't build new nuclear at that rate, or better, then we will see carbon free nuclear power getting replaced with natural gas.
Further expansion of solar and wind power is certainly a good idea, along with nuclear power, but after 40 years of subsidies and preferential legislation neither have shown the ability to replace coal. It's not like we can't build 12 GW of nuclear power every year, we did that once decades ago, and I believe we can do it again. But that means we need a government willing to issue licenses to build these reactors. I'm not seeing licenses getting issued. I can see you've put a lot of thought into this, as have I. If nuclear power isn't part of the solution for Democrats then I have to wonder if they even understand the problem.
There are a lot of climate activists who agree with you.
I have no doubt of that. My rant is on governments doing next to nothing on global warming. As I said, it's highly likely they know more about this than anyone reading this. Or, at least, they have access to more information but have failed to seek out this information, understand it, and act upon it.
I've seen the platform documents from both the Democrat and Republican parties. No mention of nuclear power even appears on the Democrat platform. Republicans will state support for the development of more nuclear power, that energy policy also includes support for more oil drilling and pipelines. So, I'll ask the reader, which party should a person that wants to see the problems of global warming solved vote for? I realize that individuals run for office, not parties, but we all know that votes for bills will more often than not go along party lines and be in concert with the party platform.
I'm leaning Republican right now because they will at least talk about nuclear power. Democrats seem to pretend nuclear power doesn't even exist, and any mention of the word "nuclear" must be followed by "waste", "weapons", or "threat". I don't see much difference between the modern Democrat and President Carter. They just want us to put solar panels on our roof, lower the thermostat in our house, put on a sweater, and that will somehow solve our energy problems. That was over 40 years ago. I suspect that nuclear power technology has improved since then, and if it hasn't then who has been holding up the research? Those evil Republicans? I'm quite certain it was the Democrats that kept the one new nuclear waste facility we had from opening, and they continue to complain about all the nuclear waste we have and no place to store it.
I'm thinking that the Democrat party hasn't updated their platform since Carter because a vast majority of them have been in office since the Carter Administration. They'll leave office eventually. They might be removed kicking and screaming due to losing an election, or quietly as they are carried out feet first. Is it just me or has there been a trend of senators serving until they die? Maybe that's a large part of our problem right there.
What's your next course of action for a friend who tried and failed to defenestrate his laptop?
Buy an Apple.
If funding limitations prevent buying a new computer then install VirtualBox and the Linux distro of your choosing in a virtual machine. Make the virtual machine as big as possible on RAM and drive space allocations. Run everything in the virtual machine, with the full screen option. The laptop will simply appear in most every case to be running Linux on the metal. That way Windows is not much more than a hardware abstraction layer.
Another possible solution, assuming the problems are limited to lacking sound, WiFi, and perhaps some other hardware issues, is install Linux on the metal and purchase some USB peripherals that Linux supports. I did this with one of my laptops. The machine had four USB-A ports and I put these tiny little USB adapters for Bluetooth and WiFi into two of those ports. They are so small that they almost disappear in the port. This still left a port for a mouse and another for whatever else I wanted to plug in, such as occasional use of a flash drive, a cell phone, or an optical drive. If the $50 or so to buy these USB adapters and "defenestrate" your laptop... {ahem} I mean "your friend's laptop", is too much then see above and run Linux in a virtual machine.
What should your friend do if he cannot afford a new Apple laptop? And, has a laptop that cannot run Linux? Or, not enough memory to run Linux in a Windows VM? And, cannot afford a memory upgrade? Or, Linux will run but there are some issues with sound and networking? And, your friend cannot afford some USB adapters to address those hardware shortcomings? Or, using up USB ports is impractical for some reason? Well, then maybe your friend needs to cut back on the trips to the coffee shop and brew at home to save some money to get some hardware.
Assuming your friend is dedicated to leaving Windows then this is a problem that will come to resolution eventually. At some point that laptop will need to be replaced. It could be broken, stolen, worn out, or just deemed too outdated to be useful. Tell your friend to put up with Windows for now but just don't buy another computer with Windows on it in the future. In the mean time suggest to him that he install as much "Linux-like" software to do what he needs to make the future switch to Linux as smooth as possible.
Also, I don't believe for a second that you are "just asking for a friend".
I don't have friends that use Windows, I've left those that could not leave Windows. Family members still use Windows and I can't abandon family. I can only support them as best I can until they see daylight.
I will believe global warming is a real threat when the governments of the world deploy nuclear power in large numbers. Presumably these government officials have more information on the threat than any one reading this forum. The zero CO2 output of nuclear power is undeniable, or rather it's as close to zero as any other energy source that's being called "zero carbon".
I'm sure someone is going to claim that nuclear power is too expensive. Well, how much does the extinction of humanity cost? Also, this isn't saying that we can't also deploy wind and solar too, only that we'd get to zero CO2 output faster if nuclear power was part of the solution.
Then there are those that claim nuclear power would cause the spread of nuclear weapons. Tell me, what better way to dispose of fissile material do we have other than destroying it in a nuclear reactor? We'd encourage the destruction of weapons by showing that while we destroy the weapon material that bountiful and CO2 free energy can be produced.
What about the waste? Well, we can figure that out. We're talking about the extinction of humanity from too much CO2, aren't we? What's a greater threat? Global warming, or running out of holes to bury nuclear waste. Burying nuclear waste is a perfectly viable solution. An even better solution is processing the waste into more fuel, nuclear reactors, and so on, so we have more energy. Oh, but that costs a lot of money? How much is it worth to save humanity?
It seems the governments of the world fear nuclear power more than global warming. This just proves to me that global warming is nothing to fear. Oh, but nuclear power is unsafe. What's "safe" about inevitable global warming? We can use nuclear power and run the very small risk of some nuclear power accident, or we have the certainty of the end of civilization by global warming.
As much as the people in government talk about the threat of global warming they don't seem to be doing anything about it. If it is such a threat, and this threat so obvious, then "all the above" would include nuclear power.
The other option is that nuclear power is an actual and real threat to humanity. If that is the case then we'd see the governments of the world shutting down the existing 400+ reactors around the world. Those reactors must be safe or they'd be shut down already. We've proven nuclear power is safe, or "safe enough", to use. Let's have more nuclear power or you'll eventually have a lot of people calling bullshit on the global warming scare.
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Start a nuclear plant today and it won't come online for 20 years if ever.
Then stop putting the government in charge of building them. Or at least the US federal government. If the US federal government was put in charge of the Sahara desert then we'd have a crisis of a sand shortage in 20 years. If not sooner.
Electric cars have developed traction almost overnight.
How old are you? To make that kind of statement means a level of ignorance that can almost only come from youth.
Electric cars have been trying to compete with internal combustion for over a century. Oddly enough the final nail in the electric car coffin was the electric starter. Before then the operation of a gasoline engine was a very complicated and physically demanding process, but electric cars were push button operated. We might have electric starters, electric drive trains, and all kinds of other electric devices on a car but the primary source of the power is still gasoline. If something should change that in the future then it would be far from an "overnight success".
This project though is another welcome indicator that the concept has taken hold, and that society just might be on a committed pathway to reduce petroleum use.
We didn't go to the moon on wind power and a trip to Mars won't be powered by wind either. The future will be very energy intensive, and wind is not going to be enough. That does not mean we use petroleum, it just means that we won't be using wind power. Wind power used to rule the seas, and if we go back to wind power for our travels then we've seriously screwed up somewhere.
Saudi Arabia has been in the news of late, looking to diversify its economy in recognition that the oil genie might not grant wishes forever.
I've read the news too. Saudi Arabia has plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants in the coming decades. They see a growing need for domestic energy and the more oil and natural gas they burn for that electricity is the less they can export. Sure, they will invest in solar power too but, as you point out, they will diversify.
Nuclear is not an option.
Nuclear is always an option.
South Australia does have uranium but there is no domestic market and likely never will be - political suicide to anyone who would stare down environmentalists.
Then the "environmentalists" are ignorant, or idiots, or quite possibly both. Nuclear power produces less carbon than solar and kills fewer birds than wind. If these people are concerned about global warming and saving rare birds then they'd support nuclear power just as much or more than wind and solar.
There were murmurs about commissioning a study a year or two back but any motion would ultimately be defeated by both the coal lobby and the greens.
Do the lobbies vote or do the people? I'm sure both lobbying groups contain a lot of people but just how many coal miners are there? I've already established the "greenies" are ignorant idiots. For those that don't much care about global warming, coal mining jobs, or birds getting killed in windmills, then there is still the matter that nuclear power is safe, reliable, and inexpensive. There are more than 400 nuclear power plants worldwide in operation today. 50 more are being built today, and many more planned. If Australia can't bring themselves to embrace nuclear power now then they will in the future. I see that Australia exports a lot of coal and uranium. I expect that at some point, with old coal power being shut down and new nuclear coming online, uranium exports will exceed that of coal and then the coal lobby will no longer have the power to stop domestic nuclear power.
Oh, and that moonbat Helen Caldicott isn't getting any younger. I expect a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment to die off with her.
The electric utility is not in the business to make electricity, they are in the business to make money. If solar + batteries ever do get to a point where the costs of running wires is above that of what it takes you to disconnect from the grid then I can expect the utility to pay you to go away so they can focus on more profitable customers. As people on the fringes disconnect the people closer to the power plants will see costs go down for not having to subsidize the long wires out to sparsely populated areas.
For solar + batteries to work means having enough sun on the roof, and enough batteries underneath it, to provide power day and night even if there is the occasional cloudy day. In a residence you have people are away for much of the day, and sleeping at night. This means a couple hours of peak use for hot showers and coffee in the morning. At night you'll have a few hours of TV watching and LED lights. The rest of the time the use of electricity in the house is just keeping the clocks running and the ice cream frozen.
On the other hand you'll have your typical office spaces with computers and people heating up the place and AC to cool them down. Restaurants will be heating up food and running dish washing machines. Industrial users will be running all kinds of motors, lights, heating, cooling, and whatever. Maybe all this too can be run from solar + batteries but it will have to be on scales far lager than can be on their property. If the wires from the solar panels to the big users happens to be near some houses then I suspect the utility will gladly sell some electricity to the people that live there for a price they cannot refuse.
I suspect that a lot of people will find needing to keep enough storage on hand to last through the occasional cloudy day will be more than what it costs to have utility services. Powering a house through the night means charging up all day so that once everyone goes asleep lots of things get turned off. A cloudy day means not having that recharge, and supper consists of eating melting ice cream by candlelight. Maybe you routinely have ice cream by candlelight for supper but I suspect many people do not.
Perhaps my suspicions will prove incorrect, and the utilities will find it difficult to sell electricity because solar + batteries just got too cheap. Then maybe they will get into the business of contracting maintenance on solar + battery systems. If by chance you have some excess solar generating capacity then they might find a small side business running some wires to shift the sunlight from those that have it to those that want more of it.
Can you give citations for your claims? I'll provide a couple.
Nuclear has lower carbon footprint than solar:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/so...
Nuclear power is safer and cheaper than solar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Whatever. I'll listen to the people that ran the numbers.
https://blogs.scientificameric...
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
Where did you get your numbers from?
The kicker is that soon (5 years?) batteries will be cheap enough for people to go off grid altogether.
That won't happen. Or, it might happen but the market will quickly correct for this and make being connected to the grid economical again.
One day after discussing the cost of energy with friends I decided to figure out just how much it would cost me to go off grid. I took several angles to this and one was to just buy one of those "backup" natural gas generators and run it continuously. If I assumed that I could use the electricity as it was generated then my cost for the natural gas was the same as what I paid the utility for electricity. That means if I assumed the generator was free (as in I did not add capital and maintenance costs in the electricity cost) then my costs would be unchanged if I went off grid.
Well, the utility burns natural gas to produce electricity too. Economy of scale kicks in and they can run a generator cheaper than I could. This will always be true because of physics. If the price of natural gas goes up then my costs go up, as does the utility. So long as they can keep the economy of scale big enough to cover the costs I'd have to pay in things like capital and maintenance then it will be in my advantage to buy from the utility.
I saw similar effects for solar. I could buy solar panels just like the utility could. My shipping, install, and other capital expenses would always be larger than the utility because I'm a small time solar producer and the utility is not. I'll always spend more on batteries than the utility as well.
The utility can also diversify unlike I could. A utility can put up solar panels, windmills, and natural gas. If I was to try to do that then I'd run into costs of permits, perhaps buying more land, and I'll always be getting smaller windmills or whatever as the utility.
Well, what if I get together with some neighbors to buy some windmills, solar panels, and natural gas generators? That would spread out the costs, right? Yes it would. The utility can spread out the management costs even more, such as seeing how much each person in the neighborhood has to contribute to maintenance and paying down capital.
Going off grid completely is unlikely to get cheaper than being on the grid because the utility can simply spread out costs better than an individual. That does not mean that going off grid would not be more viable in the future than it is now. I can still see an advantage to going off grid, even if that might mean higher energy costs. Power outages are still a thing. People place value in their independence.
One thing utilities are good at is diverting excess in capacity to places with a shortage of capacity. If enough people threaten to go off grid because of the costs of paying for the wires to their house then the utilities will simply offer to buy excess capacity from home owners and pay for the wires themselves. They will pay you for your extra solar energy because someone somewhere will want to buy it.
This should play well in markets with high electricity pricing like Australia, Hawaii, Germany & California.
And now that Tesla has opened the door, I expect to see other players in energy storage such as Sonnebatterie try to make similar deals.
Solar power is expensive and unreliable. Sure, batteries address the reliability problem but then add to the cost. Without the batteries then it's cheaper but then something has to fill in the gap during the night. This means burning oil or natural gas.
I'm sure we'll see competition in batteries being supplied but they all use the same materials and technology to create those batteries. They can only get so cheap. The cheapest batteries are the ones you don't have to buy.
Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear don't need storage because the energy is already stored in the fuel. Solar and wind will need storage or it will have to become cheap enough that just dumping the energy is viable, and we are a long way off from that. People will make the claim that solar is already cheaper than coal and nuclear but that's only true if there is a way to put that energy to use as it is produced. If the sun shines and people don't need energy, or people need energy and there is no sun, then solar energy doesn't look so cheap.
You might expect new competition in energy storage but I do not. I expect energy prices to rise until there is a breaking point. People will be paying so much for energy that they will demand anything to bring prices down, even if that means breaking the ban on nuclear power.
Without nuclear power you can choose only two of these three, reliable, inexpensive, and carbon free. Nuclear power is reliable, inexpensive (at least compared to solar + batteries), carbon free, and also the safest energy source we have.
I agree that Tesla opened a door here. These batteries look great for managing the grid with solar. They'd also work great for managing the grid with nuclear. To make nuclear cheap means making it big. Big means it can't match the load as quickly as it changes. To match the load to the nuclear supply means batteries, but far fewer than if used with solar.
I'm not sure how that helps. If you don't have the password but your spouse does then they'll just call the spouse and explain how they will torture and kill unless the password is handed over. What would your spouse do in that case? Allow you to be tortured? Hand over the password and hope they hold up their end of the deal?
This assumes they believe you that you do not in fact have the password. This assumes that they even care if they get the password, they might just beat you up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I find it completely frustrating on how much faith people put in a little piece of laminated paper. That piece of paper proves nothing.
I tried to explain the worthlessness of a license to drive to someone, on how unless the document is verified in some way it means nothing. The guy told me of course it has value, when pulled over he feels great confidence in having the officer look at his ID card. I tried to explain to him that the officer is not checking his license, he's checking how compliant he is. Someone reluctant to hand over ID, claiming the ID was lost, or sweating profusely at handing it over will be looked at more closely. If the person hands over an ID card then the officer might actually look at some obvious errors or instance of fraud. If the photo looks even close to that of the person handing it over, and the expiration date is in the future, then the officer will often not check further.
Again, this is not "checking the ID", this is playing a psychological game.
If an officer was honestly checking the identity of the person then he'd have to check the government records. The ID card simply makes this a simpler process by giving the person a unique ID number, a number that correlates to the information on file.
But this is not an app for the government to use. It's for non-government people to check, and it said so in the article. This is for things like signing for a package delivery at a store. I fully expect this app to be spoofed at some point. If people rely on this app for things like picking up prescriptions then someone is going to falsify this to get some other person's pills. Then what are they going to have? They'll have to check security cameras, rely on witness accounts, maybe they can do some signature analysis (they did get a signature, right?) or whatever else might happen in a case of identity fraud.
Unless this app has some very complex authentication then it's a step backward. It's far easier to manipulate bits on a screen than come up with things like watermarks and other anti-fraud systems common in government issued documents.
Would a gov/mil/police request ever respect the consumer level user settings?
Would any consumer level user settings the user could track show what the gov app was OS and hardware approved to do?
How long would the government be able to keep quiet this ability to track the users of their apps? I'm sure that people would not be surprised that the government would lie to them but then if the government did lie then people would simply not use the app. What do you expect the government to do then? Require smart phone users to install the app? Then people will leave the phone home, wrap the phone in aluminum foil as they drive, or find other ways to subvert this.
I'm assuming Finland has some level of democratic representation in government. If there are enough people that find the government lied to them on tracking their movement then this can be corrected in the next election.
Also, the phone OS developers would have to be in on this. They'd have to have a "hook" in the OS for the government supplied app to be able to track location even though the user requested that location data not be sent to the app. How long in a free economy would a company like this still be able to sell phones?
This is from someone that has a serious mistrust of government but even I find this difficult to comprehend as any real threat.
What this app does is provide a means to present a government identifying document to non-government entities. The government would already have your photo on file. This is not much different than taking a photo of your ID and storing it on your phone. Presumably the app will have some feature to assure the person viewing it that it's a legitimate document and not something someone altered in Photoshop. How the app would make that assurance was not stated in the fine article.
You don't have to hand over anything - they already know who you are,
When I opened an account at my new bank they asked if I would allow them to scan my driving license to keep on file. I didn't think much of it until I went to the bank later. I walked up to the counter, gave my name and asked to do a withdrawal. The teller punched in my name and my photo popped up on her screen, she processed my withdrawal very quickly after that. I still had to sign my name on a little digital scanner, much like one would see at a checkout for using a credit card. Of course the bank had cameras watching everything I did. I didn't have to give the teller a piece of paper to "prove" who I am. Trusting a piece of paper as any kind of identifying document is a fail to start with. Even Sam's Club figured this out with their membership cards, they will take your picture and print it on the membership card only as a backup, the real record is in their computers and the cashiers will check your face with what is on their screen when ringing up your sale.
Now, tell me how this interaction with my bank is all that different than with a police officer that might, for example, pull me over to tell me I had a burnt out taillight? They have a computer with my photo in it. The vehicle is registered and a plate is visible. The officer will most likely run my plate before leaving the cruiser, find that I am the owner, and get my photo. When the officer comes up to my window there will be a dash computer printout or a tablet computer to compare my face to the photo on file. Assuming my face still looks like the photo, and I don't have any other reason for the officer to have an interest in me, then I should be on my way quickly with perhaps a piece of paper from the officer to remind me that I need to fix my taillight.
If you don't want the government to "already know who you are" when doing traffic enforcement then we'd need to do away with license plates and licenses to drive. I don't just mean the physical license plates and identifying cards, I mean no more registration of vehicles or government testing for driving. If you believe that the government having the ability to scan license plates, or that having your photo on their computer, is a problem then I'm having a problem with finding a solution than ending the practice of needing prior government approval to drive on public roads.
If you believe that safety on the roads is more important than your privacy then we have come to what Dr. Franklin warned us about long ago. Those who choose safety over liberty will get neither safety or liberty.
Makes sense. Off hand I can't find any fault in your logic. I can't say that I completely agree with it, but its a good point.
That's fair enough if you can't completely agree with it. I'm not sure I completely agree with my argument either. I would appreciate if someone offered a counter argument, just to see where I might be wrong.
I also thought of another aspect that bothers me about software subscriptions. If the files produced by this software is in a format that can only be read by software provided under this subscription then potentially someone might find their data held hostage. I don't know how Microsoft or other software publishers handle this but it can be a concern. The usual arrangement, in my experience, is that a free product can view these files, print them, but not allow edits or conversions to other formats. That might be enough for a lot of people but potentially crippling for someone else. Also, most any software will save in some widely supported file format but using the file format unique to the software means getting greater control on the file, or some other advantage. For someone that is mindful of their data potentially being held hostage can usually avoid this with little effort. Those that don't keep this in mind can find themselves in trouble.
I went through this a bit by talking about the software as information, in that failing to pay "rent" means losing the software. I'm pointing out that the product of the software tool is also information. If we think of software as a tool then failing to pay rent is like seeing your cupboards disappear because you failed to pay the rent on the table saw you used to make them. Or, perhaps, you can make the cupboards and still use them without paying rent but if you want to make any alterations later then you can only use their table saw to do so. I know the analogy breaks down quickly but that's just how analogies work.
Market forces determine prices. This applies even to Apple. If Apple thinks that they can move refurbished products with only a 10% discount then they'd be idiots for going any lower on price.
If you believe buying Apple products is just paying an "idiot tax" then you need to brush up on some basic economics. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world right now. Maybe all their customers are idiots. If so, then that just means catering to idiots is a genius business plan.
I love Pepsi's caffeine delivery technology.
Yes, the latest macOS will install on a 4 year old Mac. It will install on an 8 year old Mac.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Apple provides updated operating systems for free. If you are concerned about running the latest Apple software on a 4 year old OS then you've simply failed to take advantage of the free updates. Or perhaps your computer is now 15 years old.
There's nothing wrong with using an "old" computer, IMHO. In fact the computer I'm typing on right now is about 10 years old. I also have the expectation that Apple will stop providing support for it, if they haven't already. I'm also not paying rent for any of the software on it to work.
I like my Apple so much that I just bought a new one, and that's the third one I've bought new with my own money. I paid a lot of money for it up front and I expect it to work for me for 10 years too. Maybe paying rent for software works for some people but I like not having to pay rent to use my own computer.
Also on my desk is an old computer running Windows XP. It comes in handy for running some old software I like. I'm not sure how old it is because I'm at least the third owner. You can laugh about not being able to run the latest and greatest software but I'm not paying rent. That old XP machine still does the same things it did when it was new. When you stop paying rent what do you have? Or when the rent collectors decide your computer is "too old"? A paperweight?
I really never understood the raw hatred people have here for the office subscription package.
I do. Software is a tool. It's also information. I can buy information and I can buy tools.
Let's consider software as information. If I buy information in the form of a book, newspaper, magazine, or etchings in a stone tablet, then I own that information. Copyright law might at least stipulate I own that copy of the information. This same information might need updating periodically but if I'm satisfied with the old information then I can keep it on a shelf or in a drawer and refer to it as I wish. If I feel a need to have this information updated regularly then I might get a subscription from the information provider, such as with a newspaper, magazine, or what not. When I get new information I don't expect to have to lose access to the old information, or lose access to the old information if I end my subscription.
Let's consider software as a tool. If I buy a tool then I expect that tool to work for me so long as it is relevant to my work and so long as I maintain it. If I buy a hammer, or table saw, then I expect to be able to use that tool as I wish. That use of the tool might not be "approved" by the company or person that made it but then it's my choice on how it's used. If I happen to damage the tool in normal operation then I have some assurance of the manufacturer providing some means to rectify the damage, this might cost money for this service but we expect this service to be far less than buying a new tool. Most everyone understands that this support fades in time but also if the tool is cared for by the user then it should keep working indefinitely as it came originally. I might buy some kind of support on this tool, such as a maintenance contract, either from the maker of the tool or a third party. I don't expect the tool to be confiscated if I don't pay for support from the manufacturer. We expect that tools will wear out, become obsolete, or generally a new tool will have to be purchased to replace the old, but this time is expected to be when the user decides, not the tool maker.
Subscriptions on software means I'm paying rent on something that someone made for me. If I buy a house then I don't expect to have to keep paying the carpenter or lose my home. That person got paid for his labors and I expect him to go away after being paid for his work. If he keeps coming back for payment afterwards, threatening to take my home if I don't pay, then we'd call that extortion.
These companies can call it a subscription, and perhaps correlate it to paying rent or buying a maintenance contract, but in many people's minds it's just extortion. If people see software as payment for manufacturing a tool or collecting/creating information, which seems reasonable to me, then they should expect payment for that work and go away. If they want to keep getting paid then they should come up with a new product that people see value in obtaining, just like the carpenter building new houses or perhaps doing maintenance on existing structures.
Plus subscription plans have been the norm for business software for decades. This is really not anything new.
This is new. The subscriptions used to be a support contract. As I recall most of my support calls would be for problems on license management failing. I'll have people call me that some software stopped working and I'd have to call the company to find out what hoop I failed to jump through on keeping the software from contacting the license server. It used to be that the license was managed with a "dongle". If these companies stayed with those dongles then perhaps I would not have to call them so often.
If I have a boss that demands I use the latest version of Microsoft Office for producing documents, and does not provide that to me on the company provided computer, then I believe you've created a false dichotomy with "upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job". Most any job would be an upgrade from that.
My work experience has been primarily in educational institutions and large technology centered corporations. In both settings there was a strong leaning on Microsoft technologies, and also a strong tendency to avoid the upgrade treadmill. Skipping versions was the norm. If Microsoft comes out with a new OS and/or Office suite every three years or so, and provides support for six years, then we'll see an upgrade on new systems every six years. New computers that come in with the latest Microsoft product would be downgraded to the standard or the company would simply tolerate supporting the last two (or even three) versions of Microsoft products. If my boss in one of these companies demands that the latest and greatest version of a Microsoft product be used then I'd point to the company policy on supported file formats. He cannot demand the use of the latest and greatest as that would mean half the company would be unable to open the file and read it as intended.
Even with these companies I've worked for having a strong leaning on Microsoft there is enough corporate memory on past efforts of supporting proprietary file formats that any document of any importance must be archived in a standardized format. This usually means ASCII text. If there is a need for some formatting then the text will have markup in LaTeX, HTML, or be stored as a PDF.
That's your experience compared to my own. The question I have, and pose to the reader, which is more likely for others to experience? Your situation, or my own? In my experience the computer and software I needed was provided to me at company expense. It appears that in your experience the boss would demand the use of a proprietary and fresh off the shelf file format, and demanded that you pay for the software yourself on a computer that I also assume you had to buy as well. If he expects you to buy the latest Microsoft software from your own pocket then, again, most any job would be an upgrade from that.
For some reason memories of Fortran programming projects from college just came flooding back to me. Be thankful you at least have upper and lower case characters to choose from.
What have I got in my pocket?
A fish!
After reading your post, and seeing your signature line, I'm not sure if you are John Moser or just one of his supporters. Either way I have something you can pass on to your Democrat Party buddies, I will find it very hard to vote for a Democrat so long as the party platform does not include support for nuclear power.
When I say "support for nuclear power" I don't mean the happy mouth noises Obama made in his campaign debates on funding research for next generation nuclear reactors. When I say "support for nuclear power" I mean I want to hear from Democrats that we will see one gigawatt of new nuclear power capacity somewhere in the America EVERY MONTH. I say that because that is the rate at which old coal and nuclear plants are being shut down. If we don't build new nuclear at that rate, or better, then we will see carbon free nuclear power getting replaced with natural gas.
Further expansion of solar and wind power is certainly a good idea, along with nuclear power, but after 40 years of subsidies and preferential legislation neither have shown the ability to replace coal. It's not like we can't build 12 GW of nuclear power every year, we did that once decades ago, and I believe we can do it again. But that means we need a government willing to issue licenses to build these reactors. I'm not seeing licenses getting issued. I can see you've put a lot of thought into this, as have I. If nuclear power isn't part of the solution for Democrats then I have to wonder if they even understand the problem.
There are a lot of climate activists who agree with you.
I have no doubt of that. My rant is on governments doing next to nothing on global warming. As I said, it's highly likely they know more about this than anyone reading this. Or, at least, they have access to more information but have failed to seek out this information, understand it, and act upon it.
I've seen the platform documents from both the Democrat and Republican parties. No mention of nuclear power even appears on the Democrat platform. Republicans will state support for the development of more nuclear power, that energy policy also includes support for more oil drilling and pipelines. So, I'll ask the reader, which party should a person that wants to see the problems of global warming solved vote for? I realize that individuals run for office, not parties, but we all know that votes for bills will more often than not go along party lines and be in concert with the party platform.
I'm leaning Republican right now because they will at least talk about nuclear power. Democrats seem to pretend nuclear power doesn't even exist, and any mention of the word "nuclear" must be followed by "waste", "weapons", or "threat". I don't see much difference between the modern Democrat and President Carter. They just want us to put solar panels on our roof, lower the thermostat in our house, put on a sweater, and that will somehow solve our energy problems. That was over 40 years ago. I suspect that nuclear power technology has improved since then, and if it hasn't then who has been holding up the research? Those evil Republicans? I'm quite certain it was the Democrats that kept the one new nuclear waste facility we had from opening, and they continue to complain about all the nuclear waste we have and no place to store it.
I'm thinking that the Democrat party hasn't updated their platform since Carter because a vast majority of them have been in office since the Carter Administration. They'll leave office eventually. They might be removed kicking and screaming due to losing an election, or quietly as they are carried out feet first. Is it just me or has there been a trend of senators serving until they die? Maybe that's a large part of our problem right there.
What's your next course of action for a friend who tried and failed to defenestrate his laptop?
Buy an Apple.
If funding limitations prevent buying a new computer then install VirtualBox and the Linux distro of your choosing in a virtual machine. Make the virtual machine as big as possible on RAM and drive space allocations. Run everything in the virtual machine, with the full screen option. The laptop will simply appear in most every case to be running Linux on the metal. That way Windows is not much more than a hardware abstraction layer.
Another possible solution, assuming the problems are limited to lacking sound, WiFi, and perhaps some other hardware issues, is install Linux on the metal and purchase some USB peripherals that Linux supports. I did this with one of my laptops. The machine had four USB-A ports and I put these tiny little USB adapters for Bluetooth and WiFi into two of those ports. They are so small that they almost disappear in the port. This still left a port for a mouse and another for whatever else I wanted to plug in, such as occasional use of a flash drive, a cell phone, or an optical drive. If the $50 or so to buy these USB adapters and "defenestrate" your laptop... {ahem} I mean "your friend's laptop", is too much then see above and run Linux in a virtual machine.
What should your friend do if he cannot afford a new Apple laptop? And, has a laptop that cannot run Linux? Or, not enough memory to run Linux in a Windows VM? And, cannot afford a memory upgrade? Or, Linux will run but there are some issues with sound and networking? And, your friend cannot afford some USB adapters to address those hardware shortcomings? Or, using up USB ports is impractical for some reason? Well, then maybe your friend needs to cut back on the trips to the coffee shop and brew at home to save some money to get some hardware.
Assuming your friend is dedicated to leaving Windows then this is a problem that will come to resolution eventually. At some point that laptop will need to be replaced. It could be broken, stolen, worn out, or just deemed too outdated to be useful. Tell your friend to put up with Windows for now but just don't buy another computer with Windows on it in the future. In the mean time suggest to him that he install as much "Linux-like" software to do what he needs to make the future switch to Linux as smooth as possible.
Also, I don't believe for a second that you are "just asking for a friend".
Friends don't let friends use Windows.
I don't have friends that use Windows, I've left those that could not leave Windows. Family members still use Windows and I can't abandon family. I can only support them as best I can until they see daylight.
I will believe global warming is a real threat when the governments of the world deploy nuclear power in large numbers. Presumably these government officials have more information on the threat than any one reading this forum. The zero CO2 output of nuclear power is undeniable, or rather it's as close to zero as any other energy source that's being called "zero carbon".
I'm sure someone is going to claim that nuclear power is too expensive. Well, how much does the extinction of humanity cost? Also, this isn't saying that we can't also deploy wind and solar too, only that we'd get to zero CO2 output faster if nuclear power was part of the solution.
Then there are those that claim nuclear power would cause the spread of nuclear weapons. Tell me, what better way to dispose of fissile material do we have other than destroying it in a nuclear reactor? We'd encourage the destruction of weapons by showing that while we destroy the weapon material that bountiful and CO2 free energy can be produced.
What about the waste? Well, we can figure that out. We're talking about the extinction of humanity from too much CO2, aren't we? What's a greater threat? Global warming, or running out of holes to bury nuclear waste. Burying nuclear waste is a perfectly viable solution. An even better solution is processing the waste into more fuel, nuclear reactors, and so on, so we have more energy. Oh, but that costs a lot of money? How much is it worth to save humanity?
It seems the governments of the world fear nuclear power more than global warming. This just proves to me that global warming is nothing to fear. Oh, but nuclear power is unsafe. What's "safe" about inevitable global warming? We can use nuclear power and run the very small risk of some nuclear power accident, or we have the certainty of the end of civilization by global warming.
As much as the people in government talk about the threat of global warming they don't seem to be doing anything about it. If it is such a threat, and this threat so obvious, then "all the above" would include nuclear power.
The other option is that nuclear power is an actual and real threat to humanity. If that is the case then we'd see the governments of the world shutting down the existing 400+ reactors around the world. Those reactors must be safe or they'd be shut down already. We've proven nuclear power is safe, or "safe enough", to use. Let's have more nuclear power or you'll eventually have a lot of people calling bullshit on the global warming scare.