You can't solve global warming at the fuel production stage, you need to solve it at the consumption stage.
I disagree. One problem is that there is no alternative to jet fuel right now to make things fly. Jet fuel is a mix of hydrocarbons but they don't have to be pumped out of the ground. We can synthesize them.
The US Navy has been doing talks on their seawater-to-jetfuel process for years in the hope of getting more funding from Congress or private industry interested in developing the technology. They've done some very interesting demonstrations, and if their numbers are right then the economics look not all that bad either. With a bit more R&D and/or fossil fuel prices jumping up high enough then this process will look very nice.
It's carbon neutral because it takes carbon that's in the water as dissolved CO2, it came from the air and got soaked into the sea. The energy comes from nuclear power, which the Navy is quite familiar with as they've steamed nuclear powered vessels with an incredible safety record for decades now.
We can solve this on the supply side. We don't have to trade in our hydrocarbon burners for electrics. I believe the US Navy solved the problem already, only not enough people have seen it yet.
Amazon is a technology company that creates new technologies, masters the use of existing ones and does some bloody interesting things with data.
People with the ability to do those things tend to go to college.
Assuming that a college degree is actually required then you can find those people in small towns too. You think small towns are just full of uneducated hicks? Lot's of people go to college and end up in small towns. Even if it's not the people there currently there's the children that would love to find a good job near family. It's also not like people can't commute from a nearby larger town, or move there for the job.
A dollar goes a lot further in a small town. Amazon could attract smart people that can figure that out.
The pressures are hard, yes. But the temperature is easy. Every flame I've heard of will reach that temperature (500C). Even a candle flame reaches 1000C.
But how can they get to these temperatures without burning anything? The goal, so it seems, is to avoid carbon going into the atmosphere.
I assume electric heat can get hot enough but then there is still the question on where to get the energy. Any heat engine that converts boiling water to steam for turning a turbine would be quite wasteful use of that heat if the electricity is then just run to an electric heater. If there is something that is hot enough to begin with then the inefficient process of converting the heat to electricity and back again can be avoided.
Solar thermal might get hot enough but only for a few hours per day. There's no wind or hydro process that gets this hot. Burning bio-mass might be carbon neutral but that's burning a lot of stuff that could be better used for food, clothing, fertilizer, or erosion control.
I say we just burn the plastic. I'm guessing my chemistry professor would still agree.
In the end the carbon in the plastic is still burned, only as a higher grade fuel by "upgrading" into something more convenient and having a higher market value. I'm constantly "reminded" that the future is electric cars anyway (which I do not believe but whatever). If true then this process will become worthless before it ever gets started.
I say don't bother, just burn the plastic to make electricity. I'm convincing myself of the futility of this process as I type this. Interesting chemistry, that's certain, just unlikely to be economically or environmentally viable.
Yeah, sure. USB-C solved the 'plugs in wrong way' problem.
In return, any given USB-C system may or may not support fast charging. Audio may or may not be supported. Cables are frequently proprietary to specific devices. You say USB-C is faster, but that faster speed is also optional. Low quality USB-C cables abound. Even the name has gone off the rails, with USB 3.2 Gen 2 Revision 5 Update 7 Amendment 9 Subchapter 16. Real consumer friendly there!
Fixing the problem of which way is up is worth a lot of the other problems. I hate USB-A and the difficulty to tell which way is up.
The theory of USB-C is great, but the reality is far less grand. USB is supposed to be Plug and Play, but it has turned into Plug and Pray with USB-C. No thanks, not until they get their sh*t together. And it has been long enough to do that yet it still hasn't happened.
It helps if you don't buy cheap shit cables. So long as they comply with the spec there should be little confusion. Part of complying with the spec is proper labeling on the connectors. The symbols on the cable should show what the cable is capable of doing, which includes both max rated data speed and amperage.
The alternative to these different cable types is requiring all cables to support every feature. That would mean the cables would be very expensive. A USB-C Thunderbolt cable (which supports 40Gbps and 5 amp power) is about $25, even though it's less than a meter long. A 2 meter long USB-C cable that supports 3 amp power and only USB 2.0 speed is about $8. Getting a cable that is both 2 meters long and supports Thunderbolt 3 would cost about $60.
Maybe you can argue about my prices a bit but the general relationship among them will be about right. A fast and short cable will cost about three times a slow and long one. A fast and long cable will be about three times the cost of the fast and short one. A 5 amp rated cable could cost as much as double that of a 3 amp cable. I'll put up with some of this confusion so I can get some quality "charge only" cables (which might really mean they support USB 2.0 for the power delivery negotiation) for only $8, and not have to spend $80 for a cable that does it all.
Oh, and I'm with you on the stupid speed naming conventions. They should have just labeled them by max data rate, such as 1.5M, 12M, 480M, 5G, 10G, and 20G.
Naturally occurring uranium has a half life of billions of years. It is effectively inert. It's so very much NOT radioactive that uranium is used to make radiation shielding. Putting yourself in a uranium lined room would actually reduce your radiation exposure as natural background radiation from the sun, stars, dirt, bananas, and table salt is higher than that from uranium.
Nuclear waste is radioactive not because of the uranium but because of what uranium splits into when in a reactor, stuff that's not uranium any more. Once you remove the uranium from that stuff it's not all that different from the natural uranium mined from the ground.
Sure, you could use uranium from nuclear waste for the memory in your data centers. What you won't see is any real increase in your radiation exposure. Even if the uranium decays it produces an alpha particle, a sheet of paper would stop that radiation. An alpha particle becomes helium once it grabs a couple electrons. Maybe your voice might get a bit higher from it, that's all.
There's a number of different kinds of magnetic memory systems that don't involve spinning discs. One I saw is just a micro version of the old core memory from way back when. Instead of a bunch of ladies weaving core memory like beaded jewelry the wires and magnets are printed out like an integrated circuit. There's also magneto-resistive RAM. These are not the spinning platters we've known.
I remember my chemistry professor talking about how stupid it was to recycle plastics. He said we should just burn them for electricity instead of sorting, transporting, and otherwise expending all kinds of energy and effort in recycling. I'm guessing he brought this up in class because the city was debating a waste to energy plant and that burning plastics was part of that debate.
What I'm wondering is where the energy would come from to reach these intense temperatures and pressures for this process. Not many things burn this hot. Would this be a kind of coal blast furnace like that used to make steel? That seems like a rather silly idea if the goal is to reduce the production of waste and CO2.
There is a technology that can reach these temperatures. This technology also produces very little carbon, and theoretically none. That is the molten salt reactor, nuclear power. The US Navy is developing a technology much like this, only they use carbon sourced from CO2 dissolved in seawater. They want high temperature reactors too. Although the high pressures like this process uses might turn them off. They want to get away from the use of high pressure steam as that created inherent hazards to the crew on a ship. High temperatures are also a hazard but a ship at sea is surrounded by a huge heat sink, and any steam from that hot stuff meeting the water would be at atmospheric pressures.
This plastic to fuel process is a nice idea but hardly new. I believe that gentlemen named Fischer and Tropsch developed this same process nearly a century ago in Germany. All they are doing is limiting the feedstock for the process to plastics, but the process would work on most any carbon based material.
You say Nuclear is the safest thing ever, prove it.
I did. I'm defining "safety" as deaths per energy produced. Based on that metric nuclear power is the safest energy source we have.
That safety record includes the deaths at the second generation reactor accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl. Those kind of reactors are not built any more, now we have far safer third and fourth generation reactors. There are still some second generation reactors in existence and are operating with improvements to their safety systems since, bringing them to be as safe as anything newly built today. I do not claim that the accidents you pointed out to me did not happen. I fully admit that they happened, and many people died from Chernobyl. I merely assert that given the deaths from the nuclear power industry, compared to the useful energy produced, that nuclear power is far safer than the others based on that same calculation.
Everything else you gave is speculation and strawmen.
If you don't argue for removal of the unnecessary Price Anderson Act then it proves all of your posts are a construct to annoy and frustrate people.
Your assertion that the Price Anderson Act "proves" anything does not follow. It proves nothing except that in 1957 the government wanted to see the nuclear power industry grow among public fears of an accident and since then few congresscritters had the guts to not vote for it's extension. That's politics for you. It only proves that they'd be pilloried by one side, the other, or both, if they allowed it to expire. Status quo rules.
I did a search on the largest solar farms and none were in the USA, and certainly not operated by the US Navy. If solar power is so great then why is the Navy building nuclear powered ships and not solar powered ships?
My point is that nuclear power is obviously not "worthless" to the military since the US Navy relies on it so heavily for powering it's capital ships. The assertion was nuclear power was "worthless". I can concede that current economics of energy today makes civil nuclear power difficult to compete with cheap and abundant natural gas. The subsidies on wind power is driving the early retirement of some nuclear power plants in "tornado alley"... oops, I mean "wind corridor". As these existing nuclear power plants retire the economics will shift. Demand for more natural gas will drive up prices. The subsidies on wind can only prop up that industry for so long. There will be a time very soon that we will have to build new civil nuclear power or prices will climb quickly.
Until then the US Navy will continue to be the owner/operator of the most nuclear power plants in the world. Even if they own the largest solar power farm in the world they cannot steam their ships with that energy, and they cannot fly their aircraft with it either. Nuclear power will be not "worthless" but "priceless" for the US Navy.
What does Amazon do that requires so many people with a college degree? As a contractor I've done a lot of jobs that, on paper at least, "require" a college degree. As I get into many of these jobs I realize that most of what I do is something someone with a high school education and a bit of on the job experience could do. What college has become is a means to teach people what they should have learned in high school, and/or filter out for intelligence like a high school education would have.
This "leave no child behind" crap has meant that a high school diploma means next to nothing. Statistics on intelligence tells us that those one standard deviation below average intelligence (average being an IQ of 100 by definition) have about a 50/50 chance of graduating high school. That's about 15% of the population, again by definition of a standard deviation. This means that if we had held the standard of a high school education the same then we'd have about a 10% dropout rate. That was deemed "unacceptable" by the powers that be. So, they lowered the standards for a diploma until it became "acceptable". This means people with an IQ below 85, that's one standard deviation below 100, graduate even though their ability to on the "three Rs" are at about what a 9th or 8th grade level education used to be.
College graduates will have an average IQ of about 105, because colleges have been able to keep their standards up for a bit longer. If we keep driving people into college when they don't need it and/or can't meet the traditional standards of a degree, then we will see the value of college be diluted to nothing like a high school education has.
There's nothing wrong with having only a 9th grade education, my dad and his brothers had only that much education and they went into farming, the military, and business. They all retired as millionaires, which used to mean far more than it used to but inflation means that's not a high bar any more.
Small towns are still good places to find workers. These tend to be filled with skilled labor from farming and light industry. These small communities tend to be free from the politics of "leave no child behind" nonsense that made a high school education nothing more than a certificate of having been babysat until they got to be 18 years old. Those without a high school education will still find work as skilled labor where a good work ethic and a good attitude means more than having read Shakespeare in college. Those with a proper high school education should be able to fill most any job Amazon would offer.
90% of Americans would repeal the 2A if it ever came to a vote.
Then bring it to a vote. It shouldn't be all that hard with such support.
Here's the problem, gun laws are largely unenforceable. There is no firearm registry, and there never will be. Canada tried it and they had maybe a 30% compliance rate. A group of people that opposed it had a "swap meet" where they had swapped firearms so that any existing database was useless in telling who had what. "But that's breaking the law!!!" Yes, it was a mass of people breaking the law, what are you going to do about it?
Such registries, confiscations, and bans, have been tried all over the world. This includes a number of states in the USA. I recall reading how Missouri repealed their gun registry because the sheriffs were not complying. Many didn't even know it was a law, sheriffs and citizens. Kind of hard to have any gun control if law enforcement can't be bothered to even look up the law. They got better things to do than keep records on law abiding gun owners.
Oh, and South Dakota just passed "constitutional carry" into law and Oklahoma is considering it now. Vermont never had any restriction on the carry of concealed sidearms. That doesn't sound like a 90% support of the repeal of the Second Amendment to me. There's at least 12 states with such laws now, and many more with no prohibitions on the open carry of sidearms.
There is no wide support for gun control in the USA. Even if there were then you'd still have to convince law enforcement to bother with harassing law abiding citizens on the keeping and carrying of sidearms when they have to worry about actual criminals preying on these same law abiding citizens.
New York wants to drive out Amazon and all the jobs they'd bring? Fine, let the jobs land in places where people are free to defend themselves against crime. Places like Virginia where crime seems to miraculously stop at the border with nearby DC. DC has crime far higher than Virginia, and they have far more restrictions on sidearm ownership. If the criminals in DC are going to VA to buy the guns and then crossing back to commit their violence then all that does is prove DC gun laws unenforceable. If DC wants these laws then let them enforce them. If they can't enforce them then maybe the people there need to leave for their own safety.
I remember going shopping with my mom and they'd have boxes of single use syringes on the shelf for people to buy. My sister has type I diabetes and so needs insulin injections. Each box seemed quite inexpensive as I recall, otherwise they would not be out in the open on the shelf for people to grab while shopping. Then one day they disappeared.
You see the illegal drug abusers were buying these same syringes for their habit and we can't have that, apparently. The "people who know best" in government required people to have a physician's note to buy syringes now. So the drug abusers were saving needles, sharing them, and getting infections from it. HIV spread quickly about this time. So, what does the "people who know best" do? They set up needle exchanges, if you bring in a dirty needle then they give you a clean one. Or some government funded project just hands out needles to anyone that asked for one. You see, we can't seem to stop people using the drugs and so we treat this new health problem by giving the drug abusers clean needles.
Here's an idea, let's go back to selling sterile single use needles by the gross like we did decades ago. That way we aren't expending unnecessary resources in both keeping the drug abusers from getting the needles while also spending government money handing them out. It's probably cheaper to give them away than have to deal with people stealing them from hospitals and clinics. If we make it legal again to just SELL them then people can make money on this.
A gross of needles might sound like a lot at first but for a diabetic that needs 4 injections per day that's a one month supply. This is far safer than re-using needles, and given the prevalence of the practice not so long ago I'd assume it's also quite inexpensive.
Stupid drug laws created this problem with syringes, let's do away with them all. We'd all be healthier for it. It's that or we keep giving out needles instead of just letting the drug abusers buy them like they used to.
Frankly, if we were to go 100% nuclear (we can't and won't, because nuclear plants aren't designed for anything but baseload)
We can totally power the world with 100% nuclear. We do this with the same batteries that the wind and solar advocate claim will make their favorite energy sources viable.
Then there is the high temperature air cooled Brayton cycle systems that can load follow, such as those proposed for LFTR and other MSR derivatives. If (or rather when) we get this working like they claim then we don't even need those batteries.
I have yet to meet a nuclear power advocate that wants to see a world powered by 100% nuclear power. Not because it can't but because it would not make economic sense. If there is access to a place suitable for a hydro-electric dam then use it. Dams are just good ideas for water supplies, flood control, river navigation, and if there's an ability to draw power too then using it makes all kinds of sense. Wind is also not all that bad of an idea in certain places. I'm not a fan of solar given it's high cost but I'm sure it can fit well in many off grid applications and on grid where other energy sources might prove difficult for some reasons.
We can go 100% nuclear but the economics would likely prevent it. What we'd likely see if we were logical about it is a very high percentage from nuclear like France.
More speculation and no data. Try again. With data this time.
Nuclear power is safer than anything else. We have the data. Show me otherwise.
The existence of the Price Anderson Act "proves" nothing. If it's there then nuclear power is "proven" unsafe. If we make attempts to repeal it then the nuclear industry is "proving" it does not care for the public and would leave people homeless and penniless in the case of an accident. The only thing the existence of Price Anderson proves is that federal programs are the closest things we have to immortality, once created they never die, even if their need has long since passed.
1. Expire all tax exemptions, tax exclusions, tax incentives, and tax depreciation for all fossil fuel infrastructure of any type.
So far, so good.
2. Use funds from 1 and any tarrifs on China to fund US built solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and tidal energy capital investment (not operations, only construction) nationwide, including territories.
Wait, isn't this just corporate welfare? Crony capitalism? I mean this money must go to someone to build this stuff. These will be the corporations that build these solar, wind, or whatever, power plants. Even if these companies are government corporations, or non-profits, or volunteers, then the materials for building this stuff will come from private mines, manufacturers, or whatever.
Oh, then how does the government choose where to by this materials? I'm guessing lobbyists will "help" in this decision making.
Problem solved.
No, you've just traded one kind of government buying of votes for another. Just more corrupt government propping up industries that cannot run on their own. Just like the coal companies can't stay afloat without government subsidies, or high paid lobbyists buying congrescritters with expensive meals and trips to "seminars" near beaches and casinos.
This doesn't solve any problems, it only perpetuates the same problems. Same shit, different day.
You are only repeating yourself, nothing you said refutes what I said. Prove to me that wind and solar are safer, with science, or you've lost this argument. You proved nothing. I at least gave something to work with, statistics that compare energy and deaths from nuclear fission power, wind, solar, and other energy sources. Deaths divided by energy produced shows nuclear power to have a long history of safety.
You claim we can make wind and solar safer with better safety practices. I agree. Then you must also agree that we can make nuclear safety with better safety practices, no? If you refute this then I refute your claims of wind and solar being able to be made safer and we are back where we started.
Can we make wind and solar safer? If yes then we can make nuclear safer. Since nuclear is already safer than wind and solar by an order of magnitude or more then wind and solar have a far higher hurdle than nuclear power.
Oh, and you want to bring up deaths from Chernobyl? That was 30+ years ago. How about we compare modern nuclear power to modern wind and solar power? Then let's compare safety. You won't though. You can't. There is no comparison. Nuclear power has a very high safety record and you cannot show otherwise. If you could then you would not be discussing the equivalent of Unsafe at Any Speed when talking about automobile safety in 2019. No one is going to build another RBMK. No one will build another GE BWR-3, or another B&W LLP either.
The USAF is explicitly not a part of the Army since they split in '47.
Still arguing with a figment of your imagination I see.
Did you not see the part where I agreed with you? There's two arguments here, either the USAF is constitutional because it's an extension of the federal authority to raise an Army, or it's not. Just because the USAF is distinct from the Army operationally does not make it unconstitutional. If you want to argue the point on it being unconstitutional then I can agree to disband the USAF. All that happens then is the USAF gets rolled back into the US Army, or the National Guard, or some divided up among the two. With that goes all the personnel, equipment, and funding. The US government will not go without an Air Force because some nitwit is upset about the definition of "army" in the constitution.
There is another option, and you've even mentioned it as a possibility, we'd see an amendment to the US Constitution that flies through DC so fast that it breaks all air speed records ever seen. There, done, the USAF is constitutional. Happy now?
Your argument is based on a narrow definition of "army". We can call it the "Air Army" if we like. Or the "Air Navy". Then we get the "Space Army" next. See? It's an "army" now and totally constitutional. Nitwit.
Everything else you bring up are more strawmen against something I did not say. Go back and actually read what I said and try again, maybe I'll reply. This time without the stawmen.
Any sort of Green, and any sort of _real_ conservative, is hard against nuclear power.
No true Scotsman would make such a claim.
How about some data instead of grade school debate tactics?
Congress needs to stay in their lane. They can't even be bothered to fund the Coast Guard, what makes you think they can fund any kind of energy policy? They might as well legislate the color of the sky, they can't tell people how they get their energy. Not in a nation where people can still vote. This plan will fail one way or another. The only way to make it work is to make wind and solar as cheap, reliable, plentiful, and convenient as natural gas, coal, oil, and nuclear power. They can't legislate that into being, it will take more than 50% + 1 votes to change the laws of physics and economics.
Scaremonger all you want on nuclear power, it's still far safer than anything we have. If you deny that then you deny science. You are debating with emotion, not logic. How unscientific of you. Go outside and play, let the adults talk.
First, there's no requirement that the military be funded at a particular level. Just that a military exists. The Constitutional mandate would be met with a much, much, much smaller and cheaper force.
I agree. That does not make any argument for the government funding any kind of energy policy. Zero fund the military if you like. I see no authority in the constitution for a federally funded energy policy.
Second, I really want to see your argument that the electrical grid does not cross state lines.
I made no such argument.
The government does have to care about protecting cities, so they have a reason to pay for a faster timetable.
This is your argument for government funded energy? The federal government doesn't much care if Miami sinks into the sea, they will just realign the House seats to benefit their voting base after the next census.
Uh...no, the main problem is it is way more expensive per kwh, even in countries that are far more nuclear-friendly. The other enormous problem is there is still no place to store the waste, and the cost of processing and storing it is currently calculated at $0.....and even with that nuclear is way more expensive per kwh than pretty much every other generation method.
The problem of nuclear power not competing is because of government subsidies of wind power, at least in the American Midwest where I live. The nuclear power plants said as much when they announced their shuttering. Get rid of the subsidies on energy and nuclear power will look real nice. The problems of nuclear waste is political, not economic or technological. We know how to manage the waste but the Democrats just love their wind and solar power, they can't let nuclear get in the way.
Yeah, lack of oversight of private industry has never lead to massive disasters. Just what one wants with nuclear power.
You do realize that the deadliest disaster in nuclear power was at a nationally operated nuclear power plant? I like privately owned and operated nuclear power plants. If it "goes boom" then those greedy capitalists aren't making money. They make money when it's operating, not when it's on fire and spreading radiation. I trust greed to keep the power plant safe over the idea of some kind of benevolent dictator for life in the US Senate.
Nothing. Just like the power plants owned by the TVA didn't shut down during the shutdown.
That just proves the government is operating outside of it's bounds. They use the threat of imprisonment to make people work for nothing. Government workers cannot go on strike.
The government does not have to be the operator of the infrastructure it funds.
Um, if the operator isn't getting paid to operate then what happens? Oh, that's right, they go to jail if they don't work for free. I thought private industry was the slave drivers, silly me.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to be a pedantic ass and point out that there are cases of cancer being contagious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's far from common in humans but other species it can be quite common and spread like a plague.
Like I said, I'm picking nits here. Ignore me if you like.
You can't solve global warming at the fuel production stage, you need to solve it at the consumption stage.
I disagree. One problem is that there is no alternative to jet fuel right now to make things fly. Jet fuel is a mix of hydrocarbons but they don't have to be pumped out of the ground. We can synthesize them.
The US Navy has been doing talks on their seawater-to-jetfuel process for years in the hope of getting more funding from Congress or private industry interested in developing the technology. They've done some very interesting demonstrations, and if their numbers are right then the economics look not all that bad either. With a bit more R&D and/or fossil fuel prices jumping up high enough then this process will look very nice.
It's carbon neutral because it takes carbon that's in the water as dissolved CO2, it came from the air and got soaked into the sea. The energy comes from nuclear power, which the Navy is quite familiar with as they've steamed nuclear powered vessels with an incredible safety record for decades now.
We can solve this on the supply side. We don't have to trade in our hydrocarbon burners for electrics. I believe the US Navy solved the problem already, only not enough people have seen it yet.
Amazon is a technology company that creates new technologies, masters the use of existing ones and does some bloody interesting things with data.
People with the ability to do those things tend to go to college.
Assuming that a college degree is actually required then you can find those people in small towns too. You think small towns are just full of uneducated hicks? Lot's of people go to college and end up in small towns. Even if it's not the people there currently there's the children that would love to find a good job near family. It's also not like people can't commute from a nearby larger town, or move there for the job.
A dollar goes a lot further in a small town. Amazon could attract smart people that can figure that out.
The pressures are hard, yes. But the temperature is easy. Every flame I've heard of will reach that temperature (500C). Even a candle flame reaches 1000C.
But how can they get to these temperatures without burning anything? The goal, so it seems, is to avoid carbon going into the atmosphere.
I assume electric heat can get hot enough but then there is still the question on where to get the energy. Any heat engine that converts boiling water to steam for turning a turbine would be quite wasteful use of that heat if the electricity is then just run to an electric heater. If there is something that is hot enough to begin with then the inefficient process of converting the heat to electricity and back again can be avoided.
Solar thermal might get hot enough but only for a few hours per day. There's no wind or hydro process that gets this hot. Burning bio-mass might be carbon neutral but that's burning a lot of stuff that could be better used for food, clothing, fertilizer, or erosion control.
I say we just burn the plastic. I'm guessing my chemistry professor would still agree.
In the end the carbon in the plastic is still burned, only as a higher grade fuel by "upgrading" into something more convenient and having a higher market value. I'm constantly "reminded" that the future is electric cars anyway (which I do not believe but whatever). If true then this process will become worthless before it ever gets started.
I say don't bother, just burn the plastic to make electricity. I'm convincing myself of the futility of this process as I type this. Interesting chemistry, that's certain, just unlikely to be economically or environmentally viable.
Yeah, sure. USB-C solved the 'plugs in wrong way' problem.
In return, any given USB-C system may or may not support fast charging. Audio may or may not be supported. Cables are frequently proprietary to specific devices. You say USB-C is faster, but that faster speed is also optional. Low quality USB-C cables abound. Even the name has gone off the rails, with USB 3.2 Gen 2 Revision 5 Update 7 Amendment 9 Subchapter 16. Real consumer friendly there!
Fixing the problem of which way is up is worth a lot of the other problems. I hate USB-A and the difficulty to tell which way is up.
The theory of USB-C is great, but the reality is far less grand. USB is supposed to be Plug and Play, but it has turned into Plug and Pray with USB-C. No thanks, not until they get their sh*t together. And it has been long enough to do that yet it still hasn't happened.
It helps if you don't buy cheap shit cables. So long as they comply with the spec there should be little confusion. Part of complying with the spec is proper labeling on the connectors. The symbols on the cable should show what the cable is capable of doing, which includes both max rated data speed and amperage.
The alternative to these different cable types is requiring all cables to support every feature. That would mean the cables would be very expensive. A USB-C Thunderbolt cable (which supports 40Gbps and 5 amp power) is about $25, even though it's less than a meter long. A 2 meter long USB-C cable that supports 3 amp power and only USB 2.0 speed is about $8. Getting a cable that is both 2 meters long and supports Thunderbolt 3 would cost about $60.
Maybe you can argue about my prices a bit but the general relationship among them will be about right. A fast and short cable will cost about three times a slow and long one. A fast and long cable will be about three times the cost of the fast and short one. A 5 amp rated cable could cost as much as double that of a 3 amp cable. I'll put up with some of this confusion so I can get some quality "charge only" cables (which might really mean they support USB 2.0 for the power delivery negotiation) for only $8, and not have to spend $80 for a cable that does it all.
Oh, and I'm with you on the stupid speed naming conventions. They should have just labeled them by max data rate, such as 1.5M, 12M, 480M, 5G, 10G, and 20G.
Naturally occurring uranium has a half life of billions of years. It is effectively inert. It's so very much NOT radioactive that uranium is used to make radiation shielding. Putting yourself in a uranium lined room would actually reduce your radiation exposure as natural background radiation from the sun, stars, dirt, bananas, and table salt is higher than that from uranium.
Nuclear waste is radioactive not because of the uranium but because of what uranium splits into when in a reactor, stuff that's not uranium any more. Once you remove the uranium from that stuff it's not all that different from the natural uranium mined from the ground.
Sure, you could use uranium from nuclear waste for the memory in your data centers. What you won't see is any real increase in your radiation exposure. Even if the uranium decays it produces an alpha particle, a sheet of paper would stop that radiation. An alpha particle becomes helium once it grabs a couple electrons. Maybe your voice might get a bit higher from it, that's all.
There's a number of different kinds of magnetic memory systems that don't involve spinning discs. One I saw is just a micro version of the old core memory from way back when. Instead of a bunch of ladies weaving core memory like beaded jewelry the wires and magnets are printed out like an integrated circuit. There's also magneto-resistive RAM. These are not the spinning platters we've known.
I remember my chemistry professor talking about how stupid it was to recycle plastics. He said we should just burn them for electricity instead of sorting, transporting, and otherwise expending all kinds of energy and effort in recycling. I'm guessing he brought this up in class because the city was debating a waste to energy plant and that burning plastics was part of that debate.
What I'm wondering is where the energy would come from to reach these intense temperatures and pressures for this process. Not many things burn this hot. Would this be a kind of coal blast furnace like that used to make steel? That seems like a rather silly idea if the goal is to reduce the production of waste and CO2.
There is a technology that can reach these temperatures. This technology also produces very little carbon, and theoretically none. That is the molten salt reactor, nuclear power. The US Navy is developing a technology much like this, only they use carbon sourced from CO2 dissolved in seawater. They want high temperature reactors too. Although the high pressures like this process uses might turn them off. They want to get away from the use of high pressure steam as that created inherent hazards to the crew on a ship. High temperatures are also a hazard but a ship at sea is surrounded by a huge heat sink, and any steam from that hot stuff meeting the water would be at atmospheric pressures.
This plastic to fuel process is a nice idea but hardly new. I believe that gentlemen named Fischer and Tropsch developed this same process nearly a century ago in Germany. All they are doing is limiting the feedstock for the process to plastics, but the process would work on most any carbon based material.
You say Nuclear is the safest thing ever, prove it.
I did. I'm defining "safety" as deaths per energy produced. Based on that metric nuclear power is the safest energy source we have.
That safety record includes the deaths at the second generation reactor accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl. Those kind of reactors are not built any more, now we have far safer third and fourth generation reactors. There are still some second generation reactors in existence and are operating with improvements to their safety systems since, bringing them to be as safe as anything newly built today. I do not claim that the accidents you pointed out to me did not happen. I fully admit that they happened, and many people died from Chernobyl. I merely assert that given the deaths from the nuclear power industry, compared to the useful energy produced, that nuclear power is far safer than the others based on that same calculation.
Everything else you gave is speculation and strawmen.
If you don't argue for removal of the unnecessary Price Anderson Act then it proves all of your posts are a construct to annoy and frustrate people.
Your assertion that the Price Anderson Act "proves" anything does not follow. It proves nothing except that in 1957 the government wanted to see the nuclear power industry grow among public fears of an accident and since then few congresscritters had the guts to not vote for it's extension. That's politics for you. It only proves that they'd be pilloried by one side, the other, or both, if they allowed it to expire. Status quo rules.
Citation needed.
I did a search on the largest solar farms and none were in the USA, and certainly not operated by the US Navy. If solar power is so great then why is the Navy building nuclear powered ships and not solar powered ships?
My point is that nuclear power is obviously not "worthless" to the military since the US Navy relies on it so heavily for powering it's capital ships. The assertion was nuclear power was "worthless". I can concede that current economics of energy today makes civil nuclear power difficult to compete with cheap and abundant natural gas. The subsidies on wind power is driving the early retirement of some nuclear power plants in "tornado alley"... oops, I mean "wind corridor". As these existing nuclear power plants retire the economics will shift. Demand for more natural gas will drive up prices. The subsidies on wind can only prop up that industry for so long. There will be a time very soon that we will have to build new civil nuclear power or prices will climb quickly.
Until then the US Navy will continue to be the owner/operator of the most nuclear power plants in the world. Even if they own the largest solar power farm in the world they cannot steam their ships with that energy, and they cannot fly their aircraft with it either. Nuclear power will be not "worthless" but "priceless" for the US Navy.
What does Amazon do that requires so many people with a college degree? As a contractor I've done a lot of jobs that, on paper at least, "require" a college degree. As I get into many of these jobs I realize that most of what I do is something someone with a high school education and a bit of on the job experience could do. What college has become is a means to teach people what they should have learned in high school, and/or filter out for intelligence like a high school education would have.
This "leave no child behind" crap has meant that a high school diploma means next to nothing. Statistics on intelligence tells us that those one standard deviation below average intelligence (average being an IQ of 100 by definition) have about a 50/50 chance of graduating high school. That's about 15% of the population, again by definition of a standard deviation. This means that if we had held the standard of a high school education the same then we'd have about a 10% dropout rate. That was deemed "unacceptable" by the powers that be. So, they lowered the standards for a diploma until it became "acceptable". This means people with an IQ below 85, that's one standard deviation below 100, graduate even though their ability to on the "three Rs" are at about what a 9th or 8th grade level education used to be.
College graduates will have an average IQ of about 105, because colleges have been able to keep their standards up for a bit longer. If we keep driving people into college when they don't need it and/or can't meet the traditional standards of a degree, then we will see the value of college be diluted to nothing like a high school education has.
There's nothing wrong with having only a 9th grade education, my dad and his brothers had only that much education and they went into farming, the military, and business. They all retired as millionaires, which used to mean far more than it used to but inflation means that's not a high bar any more.
Small towns are still good places to find workers. These tend to be filled with skilled labor from farming and light industry. These small communities tend to be free from the politics of "leave no child behind" nonsense that made a high school education nothing more than a certificate of having been babysat until they got to be 18 years old. Those without a high school education will still find work as skilled labor where a good work ethic and a good attitude means more than having read Shakespeare in college. Those with a proper high school education should be able to fill most any job Amazon would offer.
You realize the parties switched at one point in history right?
Sure, then they switched back again. Funny how that works.
90% of Americans would repeal the 2A if it ever came to a vote.
Then bring it to a vote. It shouldn't be all that hard with such support.
Here's the problem, gun laws are largely unenforceable. There is no firearm registry, and there never will be. Canada tried it and they had maybe a 30% compliance rate. A group of people that opposed it had a "swap meet" where they had swapped firearms so that any existing database was useless in telling who had what. "But that's breaking the law!!!" Yes, it was a mass of people breaking the law, what are you going to do about it?
Such registries, confiscations, and bans, have been tried all over the world. This includes a number of states in the USA. I recall reading how Missouri repealed their gun registry because the sheriffs were not complying. Many didn't even know it was a law, sheriffs and citizens. Kind of hard to have any gun control if law enforcement can't be bothered to even look up the law. They got better things to do than keep records on law abiding gun owners.
Oh, and South Dakota just passed "constitutional carry" into law and Oklahoma is considering it now. Vermont never had any restriction on the carry of concealed sidearms. That doesn't sound like a 90% support of the repeal of the Second Amendment to me. There's at least 12 states with such laws now, and many more with no prohibitions on the open carry of sidearms.
There is no wide support for gun control in the USA. Even if there were then you'd still have to convince law enforcement to bother with harassing law abiding citizens on the keeping and carrying of sidearms when they have to worry about actual criminals preying on these same law abiding citizens.
New York wants to drive out Amazon and all the jobs they'd bring? Fine, let the jobs land in places where people are free to defend themselves against crime. Places like Virginia where crime seems to miraculously stop at the border with nearby DC. DC has crime far higher than Virginia, and they have far more restrictions on sidearm ownership. If the criminals in DC are going to VA to buy the guns and then crossing back to commit their violence then all that does is prove DC gun laws unenforceable. If DC wants these laws then let them enforce them. If they can't enforce them then maybe the people there need to leave for their own safety.
I remember going shopping with my mom and they'd have boxes of single use syringes on the shelf for people to buy. My sister has type I diabetes and so needs insulin injections. Each box seemed quite inexpensive as I recall, otherwise they would not be out in the open on the shelf for people to grab while shopping. Then one day they disappeared.
You see the illegal drug abusers were buying these same syringes for their habit and we can't have that, apparently. The "people who know best" in government required people to have a physician's note to buy syringes now. So the drug abusers were saving needles, sharing them, and getting infections from it. HIV spread quickly about this time. So, what does the "people who know best" do? They set up needle exchanges, if you bring in a dirty needle then they give you a clean one. Or some government funded project just hands out needles to anyone that asked for one. You see, we can't seem to stop people using the drugs and so we treat this new health problem by giving the drug abusers clean needles.
Here's an idea, let's go back to selling sterile single use needles by the gross like we did decades ago. That way we aren't expending unnecessary resources in both keeping the drug abusers from getting the needles while also spending government money handing them out. It's probably cheaper to give them away than have to deal with people stealing them from hospitals and clinics. If we make it legal again to just SELL them then people can make money on this.
A gross of needles might sound like a lot at first but for a diabetic that needs 4 injections per day that's a one month supply. This is far safer than re-using needles, and given the prevalence of the practice not so long ago I'd assume it's also quite inexpensive.
Stupid drug laws created this problem with syringes, let's do away with them all. We'd all be healthier for it. It's that or we keep giving out needles instead of just letting the drug abusers buy them like they used to.
And you brought no data.
Frankly, if we were to go 100% nuclear (we can't and won't, because nuclear plants aren't designed for anything but baseload)
We can totally power the world with 100% nuclear. We do this with the same batteries that the wind and solar advocate claim will make their favorite energy sources viable.
Then there is the high temperature air cooled Brayton cycle systems that can load follow, such as those proposed for LFTR and other MSR derivatives. If (or rather when) we get this working like they claim then we don't even need those batteries.
I have yet to meet a nuclear power advocate that wants to see a world powered by 100% nuclear power. Not because it can't but because it would not make economic sense. If there is access to a place suitable for a hydro-electric dam then use it. Dams are just good ideas for water supplies, flood control, river navigation, and if there's an ability to draw power too then using it makes all kinds of sense. Wind is also not all that bad of an idea in certain places. I'm not a fan of solar given it's high cost but I'm sure it can fit well in many off grid applications and on grid where other energy sources might prove difficult for some reasons.
We can go 100% nuclear but the economics would likely prevent it. What we'd likely see if we were logical about it is a very high percentage from nuclear like France.
More speculation and no data. Try again. With data this time.
Nuclear power is safer than anything else. We have the data. Show me otherwise.
The existence of the Price Anderson Act "proves" nothing. If it's there then nuclear power is "proven" unsafe. If we make attempts to repeal it then the nuclear industry is "proving" it does not care for the public and would leave people homeless and penniless in the case of an accident. The only thing the existence of Price Anderson proves is that federal programs are the closest things we have to immortality, once created they never die, even if their need has long since passed.
1. Expire all tax exemptions, tax exclusions, tax incentives, and tax depreciation for all fossil fuel infrastructure of any type.
So far, so good.
2. Use funds from 1 and any tarrifs on China to fund US built solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and tidal energy capital investment (not operations, only construction) nationwide, including territories.
Wait, isn't this just corporate welfare? Crony capitalism? I mean this money must go to someone to build this stuff. These will be the corporations that build these solar, wind, or whatever, power plants. Even if these companies are government corporations, or non-profits, or volunteers, then the materials for building this stuff will come from private mines, manufacturers, or whatever.
Oh, then how does the government choose where to by this materials? I'm guessing lobbyists will "help" in this decision making.
Problem solved.
No, you've just traded one kind of government buying of votes for another. Just more corrupt government propping up industries that cannot run on their own. Just like the coal companies can't stay afloat without government subsidies, or high paid lobbyists buying congrescritters with expensive meals and trips to "seminars" near beaches and casinos.
This doesn't solve any problems, it only perpetuates the same problems. Same shit, different day.
You are only repeating yourself, nothing you said refutes what I said. Prove to me that wind and solar are safer, with science, or you've lost this argument. You proved nothing. I at least gave something to work with, statistics that compare energy and deaths from nuclear fission power, wind, solar, and other energy sources. Deaths divided by energy produced shows nuclear power to have a long history of safety.
You claim we can make wind and solar safer with better safety practices. I agree. Then you must also agree that we can make nuclear safety with better safety practices, no? If you refute this then I refute your claims of wind and solar being able to be made safer and we are back where we started.
Can we make wind and solar safer? If yes then we can make nuclear safer. Since nuclear is already safer than wind and solar by an order of magnitude or more then wind and solar have a far higher hurdle than nuclear power.
Oh, and you want to bring up deaths from Chernobyl? That was 30+ years ago. How about we compare modern nuclear power to modern wind and solar power? Then let's compare safety. You won't though. You can't. There is no comparison. Nuclear power has a very high safety record and you cannot show otherwise. If you could then you would not be discussing the equivalent of Unsafe at Any Speed when talking about automobile safety in 2019. No one is going to build another RBMK. No one will build another GE BWR-3, or another B&W LLP either.
Bring me data, not speculation.
The USAF is explicitly not a part of the Army since they split in '47.
Still arguing with a figment of your imagination I see.
Did you not see the part where I agreed with you? There's two arguments here, either the USAF is constitutional because it's an extension of the federal authority to raise an Army, or it's not. Just because the USAF is distinct from the Army operationally does not make it unconstitutional. If you want to argue the point on it being unconstitutional then I can agree to disband the USAF. All that happens then is the USAF gets rolled back into the US Army, or the National Guard, or some divided up among the two. With that goes all the personnel, equipment, and funding. The US government will not go without an Air Force because some nitwit is upset about the definition of "army" in the constitution.
There is another option, and you've even mentioned it as a possibility, we'd see an amendment to the US Constitution that flies through DC so fast that it breaks all air speed records ever seen. There, done, the USAF is constitutional. Happy now?
Your argument is based on a narrow definition of "army". We can call it the "Air Army" if we like. Or the "Air Navy". Then we get the "Space Army" next. See? It's an "army" now and totally constitutional. Nitwit.
Everything else you bring up are more strawmen against something I did not say. Go back and actually read what I said and try again, maybe I'll reply. This time without the stawmen.
Nuclear in its current form is worthless even to the military.
Then why does the US Navy operate 100 nuclear reactors to power it's carriers and submarines?
Why is the US Navy funding continued research in nuclear power and still building more nuclear powered vessels?
Go read a book.
Yeah, and obongo was a "constitutional scholar," whatever that means.
These days "constitutional scholar" means someone that read it once. Sure would be nice if we had some "constitutional scholars" in Congress.
Holy shit, dude! You had to post four replies? If I'm catching this kind of flak then I must be close to the target.
Any sort of Green, and any sort of _real_ conservative, is hard against nuclear power.
No true Scotsman would make such a claim.
How about some data instead of grade school debate tactics?
Congress needs to stay in their lane. They can't even be bothered to fund the Coast Guard, what makes you think they can fund any kind of energy policy? They might as well legislate the color of the sky, they can't tell people how they get their energy. Not in a nation where people can still vote. This plan will fail one way or another. The only way to make it work is to make wind and solar as cheap, reliable, plentiful, and convenient as natural gas, coal, oil, and nuclear power. They can't legislate that into being, it will take more than 50% + 1 votes to change the laws of physics and economics.
Scaremonger all you want on nuclear power, it's still far safer than anything we have. If you deny that then you deny science. You are debating with emotion, not logic. How unscientific of you. Go outside and play, let the adults talk.
First, there's no requirement that the military be funded at a particular level. Just that a military exists. The Constitutional mandate would be met with a much, much, much smaller and cheaper force.
I agree. That does not make any argument for the government funding any kind of energy policy. Zero fund the military if you like. I see no authority in the constitution for a federally funded energy policy.
Second, I really want to see your argument that the electrical grid does not cross state lines.
I made no such argument.
The government does have to care about protecting cities, so they have a reason to pay for a faster timetable.
This is your argument for government funded energy? The federal government doesn't much care if Miami sinks into the sea, they will just realign the House seats to benefit their voting base after the next census.
Uh...no, the main problem is it is way more expensive per kwh, even in countries that are far more nuclear-friendly. The other enormous problem is there is still no place to store the waste, and the cost of processing and storing it is currently calculated at $0.....and even with that nuclear is way more expensive per kwh than pretty much every other generation method.
The problem of nuclear power not competing is because of government subsidies of wind power, at least in the American Midwest where I live. The nuclear power plants said as much when they announced their shuttering. Get rid of the subsidies on energy and nuclear power will look real nice. The problems of nuclear waste is political, not economic or technological. We know how to manage the waste but the Democrats just love their wind and solar power, they can't let nuclear get in the way.
Yeah, lack of oversight of private industry has never lead to massive disasters. Just what one wants with nuclear power.
You do realize that the deadliest disaster in nuclear power was at a nationally operated nuclear power plant? I like privately owned and operated nuclear power plants. If it "goes boom" then those greedy capitalists aren't making money. They make money when it's operating, not when it's on fire and spreading radiation. I trust greed to keep the power plant safe over the idea of some kind of benevolent dictator for life in the US Senate.
Nothing. Just like the power plants owned by the TVA didn't shut down during the shutdown.
That just proves the government is operating outside of it's bounds. They use the threat of imprisonment to make people work for nothing. Government workers cannot go on strike.
The government does not have to be the operator of the infrastructure it funds.
Um, if the operator isn't getting paid to operate then what happens? Oh, that's right, they go to jail if they don't work for free. I thought private industry was the slave drivers, silly me.