The range is 30 or 50 feet. That's barely enough to get across my house, and I don't have a large house. The 1/R^2 law has to put some realistic limits on range.
This is just another "wireless electricity" article that gets clicks but no real application. Unless page views was the intended application.
We can go back and forth on this forever but I do want to say that I'd draw the line somewhere around my phone and boots. A used cell phone is near worthless any more since they can be reported stolen and get blacklisted, they can't be used as a phone again after that. This also leaves me unable to call for help. Taking my boots would leave me very vulnerable also, I can't run as fast or kick as hard without them.
If they demand my boots and phone then they mean to take my life or my dignity. They are not street thugs any more looking to get money for drugs, this is a mafia looking to declare authority over an area. Such people are rare, especially around here, but they do exist and giving a blanket statement like you did is, IMHO, bad advice.
I might talk tough now from the safety of my basement, and if pressed in the moment I might take the bruising to my pride instead of my face. I just think it unwise to advise people to hand over their phone and shoes. At that point, run. If you don't want a fight, then run. Once they have your shoes then the option to run just got that much more difficult.
I'd be very reluctant to hand over my phone, not because it's so valuable that it cannot be replaced, but because it is valuable as a means of survival. Not only can I call 911 but it's a flashlight, compass, and Siri knows where my truck is parked and how to get me to the nearest police station, emergency room, fire station, or wherever I might find help. It's worth nothing to them and they should know that, if I hand it over I expect to see it broken in front of me.
I agree with you generally, I just draw a line at shoes and phone is all. At that point I'd think it is clear they want to hurt you.
The video is nearly 20 minutes but worth every minute. I'll highlight what I mean on the "area problem". Energy consumption and production can be compared by density, as in power over area. Developed nations like much of Europe consume energy at a rate of about 1 watt per square meter. Compare this with wind, solar, hydro, and bio-fuels which produce 0.5 to 20 watts per square meter. This means nation sized areas needed to meet nation sized needs, from far larger than the nation has to a still significant portion like 5%.
Nuclear power on the other hand has an energy density of 1000 watts per square meter, a gigawatt plant will easily fit in a square kilometer with a nice grass verge about it for safety and security. Granted this is not total area used, since mining was not accounted for but it still gives a ball park to deal with and mining was not accounted for to get the materials for the windmills and solar collectors. Wind and solar take roughly ten times the material for the same power produced compared to nuclear.
Land is a cost for energy production. Claiming that wind and solar can compete on cost with nuclear in the long term is suspect if only because of the land area required. I say long term because as expensive nuclear power is today, due to the complexities of building them, such costs will go down. If competing for large areas of land for energy then land prices will go up. I don't care if we are talking about Manhattan or Death Valley, land gets cheaper as demand goes down.
Then oil prices went nuts. Ended up recovering the gas furnace expenses in a couple years.
and then this,
So depending on how you heat/cool, and it's pretty much a given that oil prices aren't going anywhere but up beyond inflation over the long term, the recovery period is difficult to calculate.
I agree that oil prices can be nuts but not that it's guaranteed to go up. Oil competes with natural gas, as you should well know. If natural gas goes down then oil will go down. That's just how the markets work.
I made a friendly wager with a co-worker on oil prices. At the time we'd see in the news of record highs of oil, which was trading at something like $120 or $140 per barrel that summer. I bet him that oil would be below $100 by the end of the calendar year. As I recall I had a lot of room to spare, it was $100 in weeks, and by the end of the year it was $80 or $90.
There's going to be a cap on the "long term" that people care about. If they are looking for a furnace then that long term will be something like 10, 20, or 30 years. They just want a payoff before they have to move or replace the furnace again. Same for any such item like a water heater, automobile, or kitchen oven where the energy demand is a large part of the cost of ownership and choices exist in getting that energy. So, if you say "long term" is 400 years then not only do I not dispute that but, neither of us will be here to argue over it.
Maybe we'll get cheap nuclear power and windmills to replace coal, and electric prices drop. Or those cheap solar cells and the "smart grid" I keep hearing will come any day now. Electric resistor heat could be so cheap that no one bothers with a heat pump.
I imagine the university I attend is a lot like many others. I've seen a few and it's pretty typical. On one side you have the dormitories, frat houses, apartments, and old houses that are often rented to students. On another side you have city offices, dentists, lawyers, churches, and other such things. On another side is the restaurants, bars, T-shirt shops, bookstores, and music shops.
Then there is the one side that faces the low rent housing, porn shops, light industrial shops, and so on. Every town seems to have an area like this, where no one goes unless they really really have to. The troublemakers in there usually stay clear of the campus since the cops keep an eye on this corner of campus. Once in a while though the troublemakers wander onto campus and, well, make trouble. This is not typical in the daytime but in the past I've had to be on campus late and I can see them spread out onto campus to beg for change and cigarettes.
Once in a while the school sends an e-mail to everyone warning them about an assault, robbery, abuse, or other crime. It's typically one of two things, a student has had a run in with one of these troublemakers where they got away with someone's wallet, or a report of a sexual assault in the dorms. Then there's the once in a great while report of someone getting shot, beat up to the point of going to the hospital, or other case of a troublemaker making the atypical trouble. I'd rather not be one of those people if I can help it.
Carrying a knife isn't much of a big deal. On my table is my hat and in it there's my keys, wallet, sunglasses, handkerchief, pill bottle, belt, and knife. In the morning I put on my belt, empty the hat into my pockets, put on the hat, and go out the door. When I get home, hat comes off, gets filled with what's in my pockets, and I take off my belt and put it in the hat. It's routine and I don't even think about it.
I don't even consider the knife a weapon really, it's a tool that can be put to use as a weapon. I use it most to open envelopes and punch a hole in the top of those plastic lids they put on my coffee. The hole is to let the air in so the coffee flows freely. And the coffee must flow.
I mean this in the kindest possible way, but your'e a damned fool.
Respectfully, did you read my next sentence with a caveat?
If I think that starting a fight isn't wise then I'll give them my meds
I should have said, "give them my meds first" since I suspect that should satisfy them enough to make them go away. How do I know all they want is my money? Maybe they want to take my money then beat me up. If they back off then I let them run and I call the cops. If they don't back off then, as you point out, I'm in a fight for my life and all bets are off. Judged by twelve is better than carried by six, as the saying goes.
I have a gun, a permit to carry, took an NRA course, and had basic hand to hand and small arms training in the Army. Problem is that carrying a firearm on campus will get me kicked out of school if caught, and possibly charged with a crime. Carrying a knife, by my estimation, is in enough of a gray area that it's not likely to get me expelled or arrested.
Oddly the student manual expressly forbids non-lethal weapons such as OC spray, batons, and tasers. A knife on the other hand has exceptions in the rules, so I carry a knife.
It's a mid size folding knife with a very sharp blade, glass breaker point, and strap cutter, it hides neatly inside waist band with my belt covering the belt clip. If anyone asks, and no one has yet, it's my survival knife in case I need to get out of my truck. True story, I've had a classmate get in a wreck and was stuck hanging from the seat belt in the car for hours, seat belt was jammed and she had nothing to cut the strap. She had no permanent damage from the incident but I don't want to get in that situation. Also, the knife was a gift from a close friend, it's not something I think should be lost in a drawer.
I don't plan on picking a fight. I mention how big I am because I'm not the kind of person a common thug would try to rob. There's easier targets out there.
As to a tax on the poor - I don't see a pack of cigarettes costing $10 or $15 or $20 due to taxes as all that much more of a burden on the poor than if cigarettes cost $5 a pack. If one is in such dire straits that a $5 or $10 increase on a non-essential item is going to break them, then maybe they should stop purchasing said non-essential item.
You do realize that smokers do vote too, right? Assuming what you say is true there are only so many taxes that can be imposed before people push back. There's the smokers, the tobacco lobby, small government lobby, and the lobby lobby sitting in the lobby waiting to lobby for more lobbyists.
Yes, there are people that lobby for these tobacco taxes but I've seen a lot of push back on them. The economy isn't great and lowering taxes is popular.
Enforcement is an issue too. People carry cigarettes over borders all the time to avoid taxes. Take it too far and people get creative real quick.
However, the article is about government trying to address the issue by using the tools of government,...
And I say that there are some things the government should stay out of. Why is the government involved in this? Shouldn't they be worried about bridges falling into rivers? It's not their job to keep people from smoking.
How? Do you think there's a bunch of magical revolutions in technology just waiting in the wings to be deployed after the current rounds have been milked dry?
I did not claim that making EVs attractive to the masses would be quick or easy but it will be necessary for them to displace petroleum burners.
Subsidies can only do so much because people still vote and that money does come from taxes. People don't like the feeling of getting ripped off by their government. Subsidies only work so long as people tolerate them. We already hear people complain on how EV subsidies are just ways for rich people to buy a four door penis with a lithium battery under the hood. Even if they use the subsidies themselves they have to recognize that it's the government holding their own money hostage until they jump through hoops to get the money back.
There might be a majority of the people that want to reduce carbon emissions but recent polls tell me that a small minority want to see their taxes go up to do anything about it.
The only sure fix to this is making EVs something "better" than petroleum burners, and the customer decides how to define "better".
Well, how safe is it to be walking around with a pocket full of cash?
Not that bad by my estimation. But then I'm 6' 5" tall, weigh 220 pounds, and I regularly carry a knife. I also usually carry my prescription meds with me, which are worth a few bucks on the street. I'll put up a fight before I hand over anything, assuming anyone wants to try me. If I think that starting a fight isn't wise then I'll give them my meds, that should make them happier than whatever is in my wallet. The pills are easier to replace than anything else.
What if you get robbed?
Then so what if they have some cash? They have my ATM card, iPhone, and enough pills to make someone goofy for a few hours. If they really work me over then they'll have my boots, knife, and sunglasses too. If they get my truck keys, and they know where my truck is parked, then they have that too and all that is inside. Carrying cash doesn't seem that much of an additional risk.
And people ask me why I carry a knife.
What if you drop your wallet?
Much like above, I've lost my ID, ATM card, and other similarly shaped pieces of plastic. Any cash on top of that is a minimal loss really.
What if you go to the bank machine and it dispenses too few bills, but thinks it dispensed them all?
That's why if I don't have enough cash after hours I'll use my ATM card at the register, or I'll go inside the bank to see a flesh and blood teller. At least I think they're alive. I don't like ATMs or pay at pump systems after reading about card scrapers going around and my brother possibly hit by one. If there is a dispute then there is a live person there to fix it, even if they are dead inside.
What if you go to a teller to withdraw cash and watch them count it, but the bank gets robbed?
Did I mention that I'm 6' 5" tall, weigh 220 pounds, and carry a knife?
At least with credit card payments, there's a known and tested dispute process in place.
True, but it's very rare to see anyone refuse a cash payment. I've seen credit card systems get slow, go down, or broken often. I can recall cash getting refused once because of a busted cash register, the coffee shop just gave me the coffee and muffin for free.
I'll buy stuff online but keep an eye on my statement for anything out of place. It's been a long time since I had to dispute anything. The process is there but it's not fun or easy.
My gas and electric utilities are auto-deduct. Phone and cable bills I pay at their respective shops. Not terribly inconvenient since the shops are close to other frequent destinations like the grocery store, post office (I have to sign for my meds if mailed to me), filling station, and bank. So once per month I go to the bank, deposit any checks, pay my mortgage, get some cash, then go pay my bills, fill my truck, and pick up some groceries. If I'm too lazy to do that then I still have the option to pay my bills by phone.
How do you propose to cool the fuel without power for pumps?
Fourth generation reactor designs have this covered. I'm most familiar with molten salt reactors. If there is a need for a rapid shutdown the fuel, in the form of a molten salt, is dumped into a tank which is of a shape where the fuel cannot remain critical. The drain tanks would still be within the containment structure but below it so gravity is all that is needed, no pumps. Once in the tank convective cooling would take over and the heat dumped to the air, no water needed.
The valves to dump the fuel can take two forms. Perhaps the simplest is in the form of a freeze plug, a section of the pipe between the reactor vessel and the drain tank has cooling and is shaped such that a portion of the salt is frozen in place there. Too much heat or pressure and the plug fails and the fuel drains. Another option is similar to a radiator valve in that there is a spring loaded cam and bimetallic strip that if it gets too hot the cam turns and the valve opens.
Since this is a very expensive piece of equipment that can be damaged with excessive heat we can expect a redundant active cooling system in parallel with the passive one. If there is a need for a rapid shutdown there is no need to wait for the passive heat activated valves to open, just activate the emergency release valve and turn on the emergency cooling pumps/fans/whatever. If power is lost later then the passive systems will still be there to take over.
A more conventional "Gen III+" design would use control rods held up by magnets, if power is lost they drop into the core. The moderator would be heavy water and so if power is lost a tank of light water with a neutron absorbing salt would drain into the core, diluting the moderator and poisoning the neutron production. Once the reactor is shut down power output drops to 10% and convective cooling removes the heat. There's a lot of variations on these themes but in general they are still solid fuel designs with all its flaws so they will need power restored eventually to top off the water that boiled away, or whatever. They are usually designed to last 72 hours before needing power restored or other action.
Like the Gen IV designs Gen III+ reactors will still have backup power to speed the shutdown process and if power is later lost the passive systems take over and the 72 hour safety margin clock starts ticking.
Generally speaking, passive cooling systems handle the decay heat while neutron absorbing materials prevent the fuel from going critical again and adding more heat.
I'm sure the haters will come out and ask, "but what if the passive systems fail?" If that happens then you have a much larger problem than a nuclear reactor melting down.
it took social negotiation (in the form of law changes)
I'm pretty sure social recognition comes before law changes, not the other way around.
Did women get to vote because the law changed and people "negotiated" the law after? Did the draft end in the law and then people protested against the draft? Was slavery ended and then people stopped to think, "yeah, good thing we got rid of that"?
Some things need law changes for social recognition to mean anything, like the draft, slavery, and women's vote. Getting people to buy electric cars does not need any laws. People can choose that on their own. I'm not sure leaded gas needed that either. I remember when leaded gas was still available, we bought unleaded even though one of the tractors had a gas cap that read "leaded gas only". It ran for years on the unleaded fuel. My parents understood lead in fuel was bad, so they stopped buying it.
Which actually suggests an alternative to banning - make the market bear the cost of pollution.
I'd agree to that if the government collected taxes and then used it to do what they claimed they would. The road taxes on gasoline haven't paid for roads and bridges in a long time. If it did then we'd never be seeing bridges fall into rivers. Once I see the road taxes pay for the roads then we can discuss a carbon tax paying for reducing the effects of carbon in the air.
Again I'll point out a better alternative, make electric cars people want to buy. I suppose that they don't have to be electric, just something that is cheap and plentiful, while also reducing carbon output. Maybe natural gas? I remember people talking on how natural gas was going to save the planet, then for some reason natural gas became "evil" almost overnight.
in the process conclusively discovering that lead was NOT naturally present in the environment
What? You need to clarify that. I'm pretty sure they weren't going to the moon to get lead.
In my experience it's more often called "pepper spray" or "mace" but I was at a loss at first too. Using actual CS gas is rare any more, IIRC. OC is more common but people still call it CS or pepper spray even if not technically correct.
There's more to the energy problem than the price. Land area is a problem as well. We need land to collect the sun and wind, that same land is needed to grow crops. It may be trivial to get crops and wind to share *SOME* of this land area but that does not work for solar power. With wind, sun, and food competing for the same limited land area then all of them start getting expensive real quick.
Displacing so much land with bio-fuels, wind, and solar just sounds like a way to get in the interesting situation of having to choose between starving to death or freezing to death. Reducing energy needs with efficiency gains can only go so far. You cannot "reduce, recycle, reuse" your way to zero, people need energy.
Also nuclear is heavy subsidied, who do you think pays the billions of pounds to have a plant decomissioned? It's the tax payers.
Irrelevant. There is limited land and people need food, light, heat, and transportation. Pay for it one way or pay for it another, you will pay for it. No matter how you slice it you have three choices, fossil fuels, nuclear power, or partying like it's 1799.
Umm... you consider banning the reckless widespread release of a potent known neurotoxin with essentially zero natural levels a major step worthy of pushback?
Nope. I don't recall the phase out of leaded fuels all that well. I seem to recall that people readily recognized the risks it posed to their own health and the health of their children so no real push back there. Lead in gas was a "cheap" way to fix the problems with early gasoline engines until other means for lubrication and anti-knock were found. After that lead wasn't "cheap" any more, regulations or not.
Tell people they can't have cheap oil for cooking, heating, and transportation and they'll cut down trees to keep warm. Tell them they can't cut down the trees any more and they'll cut them down out of protest. At some point the government needs to back off or we'll have much greater things to worry about than some fraction of a degree rise in global temperatures.
We've run out of easy solutions to pollution. Now we have to take much greater care or some unintended consequences will smack us in the face.
It might just be that life is more complicated than it used to be.
I don't disagree that life may be more difficult and complex now than (I'm picking a somewhat random time span) a generation ago. Shouldn't we do what we can to simplify things? Such as pick an age of minority/majority and stick with it?
The government is not helping with things like allowing adults to stay on their parents' health insurance until the age of 25. They are adults and should be treated as such. In college, at the age of 21, I found it odd or even condescending to have to put my parents' information on things like student loans. I'm an adult at that point. What my parents do is irrelevant, or at least should be. To get a loan I might need a co-signer but that responsibility should not automatically fall on my parents.
I've lived with friends or my brothers when I could not afford a place on my own. I had to co-sign so my brother could get a loan. We got along without moving back home. I can see your argument on delaying having kids in an age where contraception is cheap and effective but that does not mean marriage should be delayed as well.
Living with parents as an adult is not healthy, and it should not be encouraged by the government or society. That's not saying it should be illegal, but people need to grow up and be allowed/encouraged to grow up. I'm hoping this trend of delayed adulthood is temporary and will become less common as the economy improves.
People accuse the NRA of the mantra of "more guns!!". Well, what I see from the government is the mantra of "more government!!" Can we perhaps get a solution from the government that does not involve more government? Maybe have the government say once in a while, "That's not a problem we can solve, all of you are going to have to figure that one out on your own."
Nope, we have the government see a problem, therefore they must act to solve the problem. Often times the so called solution has little relation to the problem. We'll have a senator speak from a podium and effectively say, "Something must be done! This is something. Therefore it must be done!" There is little thought on if the solution would be effective, and rarely is there a means to remove the law if in the future there is evidence it's doing nothing or in fact making the problem worse.
I agree that we've opened a Pandora's box here. We've created the idea that the government can solve all of our problems. Just like the solution may not in fact be more guns, sometimes the solution may not be more government.
Make the tax for tobacco something like $25 for a pack of cigarettes.
I'm not a fan of that idea. I remember my dad talking about how after he quit he noticed how other people were dealing with their habit. Specifically he noted a lady at a filling station that bought a pack of cigarettes and then started counting pennies to buy enough gas to get home. You see, getting her nic-fix was more important to her than making sure she had enough gas to get home. You can raise the tax but then you have a lot of people still buying them because this is an addiction, not a luxury.
I hear this all the time on how such taxes punish the poor. I used to think that this was just an excuse by the tobacco lobby but now I see some truth in it. This is an addiction that taxes cannot fix, at least not alone. People have to want to quit, and an addiction will cloud their thoughts. I'm sure that taxes will drive some people to stop smoking but they have to remain rational enough to make that decision. Dad tried quitting for decades before he could stop. He had nicotine patches and whatever. I don't know what it took for him to stop, but I suspect getting a new house and not wanting to stink it up helped a lot. He broke a lot of habits after he retired, like not getting up at 5:30 in the morning any more.
What reduced smoking in the USA was the same thing that reduced drunk driving, people just didn't tolerate it any more. People still smoke, people still drive drunk, but people also generally find both behaviors unattractive. Sometimes government is not the solution.
So, give the people cigarettes at 18 so they can die of lung cancer instead of having to shoot them? Works for me.
That's enough snark for now. Seriously though, to me a person is an adult capable of making decisions or not. Set and age at which a person can make their own choices and stick with it.
Marry at 18? Sure. Vote at 18? OK. Buy a house, sign a contract, get a job at 18? Absolutely. Join the military at 18? Works for me. Set a different age for things like buying alcohol, tobacco, or a handgun? There I have a problem.
I hear about this concept of "extended adolescence" where grown people choose to continue living like teenagers. They live in their parent's home, marry later (if at all), and so on. Maybe if the government would stop treating adults like children then they might start to grow up?
You didn't mention a democracy, you did mention government. Last I checked I lived in a democratic republic. If you want to impose your ideas on what I may or may not drive then you are going to have to get enough people to agree with you.
There is the case of limits on government for things like taking people's stuff, fair trials, and so on. Assuming you can make a case that my driving the vehicle I choose is equivalent to swinging my fist where it may contact your nose then there is a process that must be followed. Judging on how people currently feel about global warming in the USA I believe there would be the supermajority there to overrule any limits on vehicle fuels and/or enough people willing to openly break the law to make enforcement impossible.
When you speak of negotiating the limits on what people can live with I think the limits have been pushed just about as far as it will go. We got rid of lead in gasoline (with a few exceptions). Cars and trucks have catalytic converters, and other pollution controls. Low sulfur fuels are the norm. Push this much further and you'll get a lot of people pushing back.
Our water and air are as clean as they've ever been. CO2 emissions have been on the decline for years now. I'd think all the tree hugger types should be pleased with themselves. I don't expect them to stop, we can always improve, but it may be in their best interest to be less aggressive. I've seen the numbers and the oceans are not going to boil next week, we have time to figure this out.
You want more people to get electric cars? Then make an offer they cannot refuse, by making an awesome electric car at an awesome price. Imposing them by law is just going to make people upset. They might even elect a president that wants to re-open the coal mines.
I thought we were talking about hybrid cars. You bring up locomotives, tank destroyers, and submarines. None of those are hybrids (all energy comes from the ICE on board). None of them are parallel-series hybrids (all power to move the vehicle comes solely from the electric motor). And, none of them are cars.
I'm sure now your are just waiting to point out that there are electric hybrid trains because they can operate on a standard track, using diesel power, or with a third rail, using grid power. Or that there are some that use regen braking and batteries. Still not a car. Still no mechanical transmission between the ICE and the wheels. Also, still "not common" transmission type, even among trains.
It's a nice day so I'm going to go outside for a bit and drive my goalpost around the backyard.
Wait, 1980s? That's 25, 35, close to 40 years ago. Pretty sure that most of them are not working now. Quite likely they're all senile or dead by now, or if not at least learned how to read.
Would the next generation be just as illiterate as their parents? Pretty sure seeing Dad have to go to the bank and need someone to sign everything for them was good motivation to learn enough of the "3 Rs" to not have to live like that. We've also seen the creation of the US Department of Education in 1979. I would hope this meant some public schools for some of those miner's... minors? (yeah, bad pun)
I agree, no nuclear reactor should be operating today if it cannot shutdown safely in a loss of power situation. However, do you expect the lights, computers, and on, and on, to operate without power as well? A big battery on site would be real handy for keeping an eye on things if the reactor had to be shut down for some reason.
Obviously I pulled that 2 day reserve out of the air. It can be any size they see fit. If they think it can take 3 days to restore power then have batteries, generators, or whatever on site to last that long. If they think it will take 4 hours then go with that.
Slashdot Mirror
Or a cordless phone.
The range is 30 or 50 feet. That's barely enough to get across my house, and I don't have a large house. The 1/R^2 law has to put some realistic limits on range.
This is just another "wireless electricity" article that gets clicks but no real application. Unless page views was the intended application.
just think if chickens have souls.... poultrygeist!
What of all those buried shoes!
(For the humor and pun impaired, what do you call the bottom of a shoe? Think about it.)
We can go back and forth on this forever but I do want to say that I'd draw the line somewhere around my phone and boots. A used cell phone is near worthless any more since they can be reported stolen and get blacklisted, they can't be used as a phone again after that. This also leaves me unable to call for help. Taking my boots would leave me very vulnerable also, I can't run as fast or kick as hard without them.
If they demand my boots and phone then they mean to take my life or my dignity. They are not street thugs any more looking to get money for drugs, this is a mafia looking to declare authority over an area. Such people are rare, especially around here, but they do exist and giving a blanket statement like you did is, IMHO, bad advice.
I might talk tough now from the safety of my basement, and if pressed in the moment I might take the bruising to my pride instead of my face. I just think it unwise to advise people to hand over their phone and shoes. At that point, run. If you don't want a fight, then run. Once they have your shoes then the option to run just got that much more difficult.
I'd be very reluctant to hand over my phone, not because it's so valuable that it cannot be replaced, but because it is valuable as a means of survival. Not only can I call 911 but it's a flashlight, compass, and Siri knows where my truck is parked and how to get me to the nearest police station, emergency room, fire station, or wherever I might find help. It's worth nothing to them and they should know that, if I hand it over I expect to see it broken in front of me.
I agree with you generally, I just draw a line at shoes and phone is all. At that point I'd think it is clear they want to hurt you.
Why does it have to be wind and solar to make heat pumps feasible? Why won't other energy sources do?
Also, wind and solar have an area problem, well laid out by the late Dr. MacKay.
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi...
The video is nearly 20 minutes but worth every minute. I'll highlight what I mean on the "area problem". Energy consumption and production can be compared by density, as in power over area. Developed nations like much of Europe consume energy at a rate of about 1 watt per square meter. Compare this with wind, solar, hydro, and bio-fuels which produce 0.5 to 20 watts per square meter. This means nation sized areas needed to meet nation sized needs, from far larger than the nation has to a still significant portion like 5%.
Nuclear power on the other hand has an energy density of 1000 watts per square meter, a gigawatt plant will easily fit in a square kilometer with a nice grass verge about it for safety and security. Granted this is not total area used, since mining was not accounted for but it still gives a ball park to deal with and mining was not accounted for to get the materials for the windmills and solar collectors. Wind and solar take roughly ten times the material for the same power produced compared to nuclear.
Land is a cost for energy production. Claiming that wind and solar can compete on cost with nuclear in the long term is suspect if only because of the land area required. I say long term because as expensive nuclear power is today, due to the complexities of building them, such costs will go down. If competing for large areas of land for energy then land prices will go up. I don't care if we are talking about Manhattan or Death Valley, land gets cheaper as demand goes down.
First you say this,
Then oil prices went nuts. Ended up recovering the gas furnace expenses in a couple years.
and then this,
So depending on how you heat/cool, and it's pretty much a given that oil prices aren't going anywhere but up beyond inflation over the long term, the recovery period is difficult to calculate.
I agree that oil prices can be nuts but not that it's guaranteed to go up. Oil competes with natural gas, as you should well know. If natural gas goes down then oil will go down. That's just how the markets work.
I made a friendly wager with a co-worker on oil prices. At the time we'd see in the news of record highs of oil, which was trading at something like $120 or $140 per barrel that summer. I bet him that oil would be below $100 by the end of the calendar year. As I recall I had a lot of room to spare, it was $100 in weeks, and by the end of the year it was $80 or $90.
There's going to be a cap on the "long term" that people care about. If they are looking for a furnace then that long term will be something like 10, 20, or 30 years. They just want a payoff before they have to move or replace the furnace again. Same for any such item like a water heater, automobile, or kitchen oven where the energy demand is a large part of the cost of ownership and choices exist in getting that energy. So, if you say "long term" is 400 years then not only do I not dispute that but, neither of us will be here to argue over it.
Maybe we'll get cheap nuclear power and windmills to replace coal, and electric prices drop. Or those cheap solar cells and the "smart grid" I keep hearing will come any day now. Electric resistor heat could be so cheap that no one bothers with a heat pump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I imagine the university I attend is a lot like many others. I've seen a few and it's pretty typical. On one side you have the dormitories, frat houses, apartments, and old houses that are often rented to students. On another side you have city offices, dentists, lawyers, churches, and other such things. On another side is the restaurants, bars, T-shirt shops, bookstores, and music shops.
Then there is the one side that faces the low rent housing, porn shops, light industrial shops, and so on. Every town seems to have an area like this, where no one goes unless they really really have to. The troublemakers in there usually stay clear of the campus since the cops keep an eye on this corner of campus. Once in a while though the troublemakers wander onto campus and, well, make trouble. This is not typical in the daytime but in the past I've had to be on campus late and I can see them spread out onto campus to beg for change and cigarettes.
Once in a while the school sends an e-mail to everyone warning them about an assault, robbery, abuse, or other crime. It's typically one of two things, a student has had a run in with one of these troublemakers where they got away with someone's wallet, or a report of a sexual assault in the dorms. Then there's the once in a great while report of someone getting shot, beat up to the point of going to the hospital, or other case of a troublemaker making the atypical trouble. I'd rather not be one of those people if I can help it.
Carrying a knife isn't much of a big deal. On my table is my hat and in it there's my keys, wallet, sunglasses, handkerchief, pill bottle, belt, and knife. In the morning I put on my belt, empty the hat into my pockets, put on the hat, and go out the door. When I get home, hat comes off, gets filled with what's in my pockets, and I take off my belt and put it in the hat. It's routine and I don't even think about it.
I don't even consider the knife a weapon really, it's a tool that can be put to use as a weapon. I use it most to open envelopes and punch a hole in the top of those plastic lids they put on my coffee. The hole is to let the air in so the coffee flows freely. And the coffee must flow.
I mean this in the kindest possible way, but your'e a damned fool.
Respectfully, did you read my next sentence with a caveat?
If I think that starting a fight isn't wise then I'll give them my meds
I should have said, "give them my meds first" since I suspect that should satisfy them enough to make them go away. How do I know all they want is my money? Maybe they want to take my money then beat me up. If they back off then I let them run and I call the cops. If they don't back off then, as you point out, I'm in a fight for my life and all bets are off. Judged by twelve is better than carried by six, as the saying goes.
I have a gun, a permit to carry, took an NRA course, and had basic hand to hand and small arms training in the Army. Problem is that carrying a firearm on campus will get me kicked out of school if caught, and possibly charged with a crime. Carrying a knife, by my estimation, is in enough of a gray area that it's not likely to get me expelled or arrested.
Oddly the student manual expressly forbids non-lethal weapons such as OC spray, batons, and tasers. A knife on the other hand has exceptions in the rules, so I carry a knife.
It's a mid size folding knife with a very sharp blade, glass breaker point, and strap cutter, it hides neatly inside waist band with my belt covering the belt clip. If anyone asks, and no one has yet, it's my survival knife in case I need to get out of my truck. True story, I've had a classmate get in a wreck and was stuck hanging from the seat belt in the car for hours, seat belt was jammed and she had nothing to cut the strap. She had no permanent damage from the incident but I don't want to get in that situation. Also, the knife was a gift from a close friend, it's not something I think should be lost in a drawer.
I don't plan on picking a fight. I mention how big I am because I'm not the kind of person a common thug would try to rob. There's easier targets out there.
As to a tax on the poor - I don't see a pack of cigarettes costing $10 or $15 or $20 due to taxes as all that much more of a burden on the poor than if cigarettes cost $5 a pack. If one is in such dire straits that a $5 or $10 increase on a non-essential item is going to break them, then maybe they should stop purchasing said non-essential item.
You do realize that smokers do vote too, right? Assuming what you say is true there are only so many taxes that can be imposed before people push back. There's the smokers, the tobacco lobby, small government lobby, and the lobby lobby sitting in the lobby waiting to lobby for more lobbyists.
Yes, there are people that lobby for these tobacco taxes but I've seen a lot of push back on them. The economy isn't great and lowering taxes is popular.
Enforcement is an issue too. People carry cigarettes over borders all the time to avoid taxes. Take it too far and people get creative real quick.
However, the article is about government trying to address the issue by using the tools of government,...
And I say that there are some things the government should stay out of. Why is the government involved in this? Shouldn't they be worried about bridges falling into rivers? It's not their job to keep people from smoking.
How? Do you think there's a bunch of magical revolutions in technology just waiting in the wings to be deployed after the current rounds have been milked dry?
I did not claim that making EVs attractive to the masses would be quick or easy but it will be necessary for them to displace petroleum burners.
Subsidies can only do so much because people still vote and that money does come from taxes. People don't like the feeling of getting ripped off by their government. Subsidies only work so long as people tolerate them. We already hear people complain on how EV subsidies are just ways for rich people to buy a four door penis with a lithium battery under the hood. Even if they use the subsidies themselves they have to recognize that it's the government holding their own money hostage until they jump through hoops to get the money back.
There might be a majority of the people that want to reduce carbon emissions but recent polls tell me that a small minority want to see their taxes go up to do anything about it.
The only sure fix to this is making EVs something "better" than petroleum burners, and the customer decides how to define "better".
Well, how safe is it to be walking around with a pocket full of cash?
Not that bad by my estimation. But then I'm 6' 5" tall, weigh 220 pounds, and I regularly carry a knife. I also usually carry my prescription meds with me, which are worth a few bucks on the street. I'll put up a fight before I hand over anything, assuming anyone wants to try me. If I think that starting a fight isn't wise then I'll give them my meds, that should make them happier than whatever is in my wallet. The pills are easier to replace than anything else.
What if you get robbed?
Then so what if they have some cash? They have my ATM card, iPhone, and enough pills to make someone goofy for a few hours. If they really work me over then they'll have my boots, knife, and sunglasses too. If they get my truck keys, and they know where my truck is parked, then they have that too and all that is inside. Carrying cash doesn't seem that much of an additional risk.
And people ask me why I carry a knife.
What if you drop your wallet?
Much like above, I've lost my ID, ATM card, and other similarly shaped pieces of plastic. Any cash on top of that is a minimal loss really.
What if you go to the bank machine and it dispenses too few bills, but thinks it dispensed them all?
That's why if I don't have enough cash after hours I'll use my ATM card at the register, or I'll go inside the bank to see a flesh and blood teller. At least I think they're alive. I don't like ATMs or pay at pump systems after reading about card scrapers going around and my brother possibly hit by one. If there is a dispute then there is a live person there to fix it, even if they are dead inside.
What if you go to a teller to withdraw cash and watch them count it, but the bank gets robbed?
Did I mention that I'm 6' 5" tall, weigh 220 pounds, and carry a knife?
At least with credit card payments, there's a known and tested dispute process in place.
True, but it's very rare to see anyone refuse a cash payment. I've seen credit card systems get slow, go down, or broken often. I can recall cash getting refused once because of a busted cash register, the coffee shop just gave me the coffee and muffin for free.
I'll buy stuff online but keep an eye on my statement for anything out of place. It's been a long time since I had to dispute anything. The process is there but it's not fun or easy.
My gas and electric utilities are auto-deduct. Phone and cable bills I pay at their respective shops. Not terribly inconvenient since the shops are close to other frequent destinations like the grocery store, post office (I have to sign for my meds if mailed to me), filling station, and bank. So once per month I go to the bank, deposit any checks, pay my mortgage, get some cash, then go pay my bills, fill my truck, and pick up some groceries. If I'm too lazy to do that then I still have the option to pay my bills by phone.
How do you propose to cool the fuel without power for pumps?
Fourth generation reactor designs have this covered. I'm most familiar with molten salt reactors. If there is a need for a rapid shutdown the fuel, in the form of a molten salt, is dumped into a tank which is of a shape where the fuel cannot remain critical. The drain tanks would still be within the containment structure but below it so gravity is all that is needed, no pumps. Once in the tank convective cooling would take over and the heat dumped to the air, no water needed.
The valves to dump the fuel can take two forms. Perhaps the simplest is in the form of a freeze plug, a section of the pipe between the reactor vessel and the drain tank has cooling and is shaped such that a portion of the salt is frozen in place there. Too much heat or pressure and the plug fails and the fuel drains. Another option is similar to a radiator valve in that there is a spring loaded cam and bimetallic strip that if it gets too hot the cam turns and the valve opens.
Since this is a very expensive piece of equipment that can be damaged with excessive heat we can expect a redundant active cooling system in parallel with the passive one. If there is a need for a rapid shutdown there is no need to wait for the passive heat activated valves to open, just activate the emergency release valve and turn on the emergency cooling pumps/fans/whatever. If power is lost later then the passive systems will still be there to take over.
A more conventional "Gen III+" design would use control rods held up by magnets, if power is lost they drop into the core. The moderator would be heavy water and so if power is lost a tank of light water with a neutron absorbing salt would drain into the core, diluting the moderator and poisoning the neutron production. Once the reactor is shut down power output drops to 10% and convective cooling removes the heat. There's a lot of variations on these themes but in general they are still solid fuel designs with all its flaws so they will need power restored eventually to top off the water that boiled away, or whatever. They are usually designed to last 72 hours before needing power restored or other action.
Like the Gen IV designs Gen III+ reactors will still have backup power to speed the shutdown process and if power is later lost the passive systems take over and the 72 hour safety margin clock starts ticking.
Generally speaking, passive cooling systems handle the decay heat while neutron absorbing materials prevent the fuel from going critical again and adding more heat.
I'm sure the haters will come out and ask, "but what if the passive systems fail?" If that happens then you have a much larger problem than a nuclear reactor melting down.
it took social negotiation (in the form of law changes)
I'm pretty sure social recognition comes before law changes, not the other way around.
Did women get to vote because the law changed and people "negotiated" the law after? Did the draft end in the law and then people protested against the draft? Was slavery ended and then people stopped to think, "yeah, good thing we got rid of that"?
Some things need law changes for social recognition to mean anything, like the draft, slavery, and women's vote. Getting people to buy electric cars does not need any laws. People can choose that on their own. I'm not sure leaded gas needed that either. I remember when leaded gas was still available, we bought unleaded even though one of the tractors had a gas cap that read "leaded gas only". It ran for years on the unleaded fuel. My parents understood lead in fuel was bad, so they stopped buying it.
Which actually suggests an alternative to banning - make the market bear the cost of pollution.
I'd agree to that if the government collected taxes and then used it to do what they claimed they would. The road taxes on gasoline haven't paid for roads and bridges in a long time. If it did then we'd never be seeing bridges fall into rivers. Once I see the road taxes pay for the roads then we can discuss a carbon tax paying for reducing the effects of carbon in the air.
Again I'll point out a better alternative, make electric cars people want to buy. I suppose that they don't have to be electric, just something that is cheap and plentiful, while also reducing carbon output. Maybe natural gas? I remember people talking on how natural gas was going to save the planet, then for some reason natural gas became "evil" almost overnight.
in the process conclusively discovering that lead was NOT naturally present in the environment
What? You need to clarify that. I'm pretty sure they weren't going to the moon to get lead.
In my experience it's more often called "pepper spray" or "mace" but I was at a loss at first too. Using actual CS gas is rare any more, IIRC. OC is more common but people still call it CS or pepper spray even if not technically correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Watch this:
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi...
There's more to the energy problem than the price. Land area is a problem as well. We need land to collect the sun and wind, that same land is needed to grow crops. It may be trivial to get crops and wind to share *SOME* of this land area but that does not work for solar power. With wind, sun, and food competing for the same limited land area then all of them start getting expensive real quick.
Displacing so much land with bio-fuels, wind, and solar just sounds like a way to get in the interesting situation of having to choose between starving to death or freezing to death. Reducing energy needs with efficiency gains can only go so far. You cannot "reduce, recycle, reuse" your way to zero, people need energy.
Also nuclear is heavy subsidied, who do you think pays the billions of pounds to have a plant decomissioned? It's the tax payers.
Irrelevant. There is limited land and people need food, light, heat, and transportation. Pay for it one way or pay for it another, you will pay for it. No matter how you slice it you have three choices, fossil fuels, nuclear power, or partying like it's 1799.
Umm... you consider banning the reckless widespread release of a potent known neurotoxin with essentially zero natural levels a major step worthy of pushback?
Nope. I don't recall the phase out of leaded fuels all that well. I seem to recall that people readily recognized the risks it posed to their own health and the health of their children so no real push back there. Lead in gas was a "cheap" way to fix the problems with early gasoline engines until other means for lubrication and anti-knock were found. After that lead wasn't "cheap" any more, regulations or not.
Tell people they can't have cheap oil for cooking, heating, and transportation and they'll cut down trees to keep warm. Tell them they can't cut down the trees any more and they'll cut them down out of protest. At some point the government needs to back off or we'll have much greater things to worry about than some fraction of a degree rise in global temperatures.
We've run out of easy solutions to pollution. Now we have to take much greater care or some unintended consequences will smack us in the face.
It might just be that life is more complicated than it used to be.
I don't disagree that life may be more difficult and complex now than (I'm picking a somewhat random time span) a generation ago. Shouldn't we do what we can to simplify things? Such as pick an age of minority/majority and stick with it?
The government is not helping with things like allowing adults to stay on their parents' health insurance until the age of 25. They are adults and should be treated as such. In college, at the age of 21, I found it odd or even condescending to have to put my parents' information on things like student loans. I'm an adult at that point. What my parents do is irrelevant, or at least should be. To get a loan I might need a co-signer but that responsibility should not automatically fall on my parents.
I've lived with friends or my brothers when I could not afford a place on my own. I had to co-sign so my brother could get a loan. We got along without moving back home. I can see your argument on delaying having kids in an age where contraception is cheap and effective but that does not mean marriage should be delayed as well.
Living with parents as an adult is not healthy, and it should not be encouraged by the government or society. That's not saying it should be illegal, but people need to grow up and be allowed/encouraged to grow up. I'm hoping this trend of delayed adulthood is temporary and will become less common as the economy improves.
I have a different view on that line of thinking.
People accuse the NRA of the mantra of "more guns!!". Well, what I see from the government is the mantra of "more government!!" Can we perhaps get a solution from the government that does not involve more government? Maybe have the government say once in a while, "That's not a problem we can solve, all of you are going to have to figure that one out on your own."
Nope, we have the government see a problem, therefore they must act to solve the problem. Often times the so called solution has little relation to the problem. We'll have a senator speak from a podium and effectively say, "Something must be done! This is something. Therefore it must be done!" There is little thought on if the solution would be effective, and rarely is there a means to remove the law if in the future there is evidence it's doing nothing or in fact making the problem worse.
I agree that we've opened a Pandora's box here. We've created the idea that the government can solve all of our problems. Just like the solution may not in fact be more guns, sometimes the solution may not be more government.
Make the tax for tobacco something like $25 for a pack of cigarettes.
I'm not a fan of that idea. I remember my dad talking about how after he quit he noticed how other people were dealing with their habit. Specifically he noted a lady at a filling station that bought a pack of cigarettes and then started counting pennies to buy enough gas to get home. You see, getting her nic-fix was more important to her than making sure she had enough gas to get home. You can raise the tax but then you have a lot of people still buying them because this is an addiction, not a luxury.
I hear this all the time on how such taxes punish the poor. I used to think that this was just an excuse by the tobacco lobby but now I see some truth in it. This is an addiction that taxes cannot fix, at least not alone. People have to want to quit, and an addiction will cloud their thoughts. I'm sure that taxes will drive some people to stop smoking but they have to remain rational enough to make that decision. Dad tried quitting for decades before he could stop. He had nicotine patches and whatever. I don't know what it took for him to stop, but I suspect getting a new house and not wanting to stink it up helped a lot. He broke a lot of habits after he retired, like not getting up at 5:30 in the morning any more.
What reduced smoking in the USA was the same thing that reduced drunk driving, people just didn't tolerate it any more. People still smoke, people still drive drunk, but people also generally find both behaviors unattractive. Sometimes government is not the solution.
So, give the people cigarettes at 18 so they can die of lung cancer instead of having to shoot them? Works for me.
That's enough snark for now. Seriously though, to me a person is an adult capable of making decisions or not. Set and age at which a person can make their own choices and stick with it.
Marry at 18? Sure.
Vote at 18? OK.
Buy a house, sign a contract, get a job at 18? Absolutely.
Join the military at 18? Works for me.
Set a different age for things like buying alcohol, tobacco, or a handgun? There I have a problem.
I hear about this concept of "extended adolescence" where grown people choose to continue living like teenagers. They live in their parent's home, marry later (if at all), and so on. Maybe if the government would stop treating adults like children then they might start to grow up?
You didn't mention a democracy, you did mention government. Last I checked I lived in a democratic republic. If you want to impose your ideas on what I may or may not drive then you are going to have to get enough people to agree with you.
There is the case of limits on government for things like taking people's stuff, fair trials, and so on. Assuming you can make a case that my driving the vehicle I choose is equivalent to swinging my fist where it may contact your nose then there is a process that must be followed. Judging on how people currently feel about global warming in the USA I believe there would be the supermajority there to overrule any limits on vehicle fuels and/or enough people willing to openly break the law to make enforcement impossible.
When you speak of negotiating the limits on what people can live with I think the limits have been pushed just about as far as it will go. We got rid of lead in gasoline (with a few exceptions). Cars and trucks have catalytic converters, and other pollution controls. Low sulfur fuels are the norm. Push this much further and you'll get a lot of people pushing back.
Our water and air are as clean as they've ever been. CO2 emissions have been on the decline for years now. I'd think all the tree hugger types should be pleased with themselves. I don't expect them to stop, we can always improve, but it may be in their best interest to be less aggressive. I've seen the numbers and the oceans are not going to boil next week, we have time to figure this out.
You want more people to get electric cars? Then make an offer they cannot refuse, by making an awesome electric car at an awesome price. Imposing them by law is just going to make people upset. They might even elect a president that wants to re-open the coal mines.
I don't even know what you want from me any more.
I thought we were talking about hybrid cars. You bring up locomotives, tank destroyers, and submarines. None of those are hybrids (all energy comes from the ICE on board). None of them are parallel-series hybrids (all power to move the vehicle comes solely from the electric motor). And, none of them are cars.
I'm sure now your are just waiting to point out that there are electric hybrid trains because they can operate on a standard track, using diesel power, or with a third rail, using grid power. Or that there are some that use regen braking and batteries. Still not a car. Still no mechanical transmission between the ICE and the wheels. Also, still "not common" transmission type, even among trains.
It's a nice day so I'm going to go outside for a bit and drive my goalpost around the backyard.
A submarine is not a car.
Wait, 1980s? That's 25, 35, close to 40 years ago. Pretty sure that most of them are not working now. Quite likely they're all senile or dead by now, or if not at least learned how to read.
Would the next generation be just as illiterate as their parents? Pretty sure seeing Dad have to go to the bank and need someone to sign everything for them was good motivation to learn enough of the "3 Rs" to not have to live like that. We've also seen the creation of the US Department of Education in 1979. I would hope this meant some public schools for some of those miner's... minors? (yeah, bad pun)
I agree, no nuclear reactor should be operating today if it cannot shutdown safely in a loss of power situation. However, do you expect the lights, computers, and on, and on, to operate without power as well? A big battery on site would be real handy for keeping an eye on things if the reactor had to be shut down for some reason.
Obviously I pulled that 2 day reserve out of the air. It can be any size they see fit. If they think it can take 3 days to restore power then have batteries, generators, or whatever on site to last that long. If they think it will take 4 hours then go with that.