I was reading about India, which has severe coal-related pollution problems, and just recently the price of solar has dropped there has dropped to be less than coal.
The price of any commodity gets lower as demand decreases. If fewer people burn coal, reducing competition on price, then coal gets cheaper. This is not a static price so any claims that do not take this into account is suspect.
Within five years the cost of solar plus battery will be less on a per kwh basis than coal.
What keeps people from charging these batteries with coal power? One reason that coal is so cheap is because it cannot follow changes in load. For that we primarily use natural gas turbines, likely true in India too. Maybe they use fuel oil generators, I don't know and I really don't care. Point is that batteries don't care what is used to charge them up and they work great for load following. If these batteries become cheap then it makes sense to use cheap and reliable coal to charge them up instead of expensive and unreliable solar power. Improvements in battery technology is not necessarily helpful for solar power.
Also, India is largely tropical and sub-tropical which makes solar more profitable. What are the people that live outside of 30 degrees north and south latitude supposed to do?
Your mistake is in not thinking the grid already has lots of storage, in the form of water behind hydroelectric dams and stockpiles of biomass fuels.
I know that the grid has lots of storage, it's called nuclear, coal, and natural gas. The energy is stored in the fuel they use.
Since we have other sources of night-time power, millions of electric cars would make a significant contribution.
Are you saying that the grid would be so unreliable that people would have to run their houses off the batteries in their cars? Or, are you saying that the grid would be so unreliable that people would have to buy a battery pack for their house in addition to the one in their car? If people have a choice between an electric car and a non-electric car in this world then why would they choose the electric car?
I lived on a farm and electricity is vital. We needed it to pump our water, keep the animals warm and dry, and so on. We deal with this by having a generator on the farm and diesel fueled tractors to run it. If the power was out then we'd have a tractor run the generator for the well pump and some lights and another tractor to mill corn instead of the electric mill. You think that people would buy an expensive battery pack instead of using cheap diesel fuel and natural gas to generate that electricity? It's possible that batteries could get very cheap but nothing compares to hydrocarbons in their ability to store and transport energy, and that translates to costs.
We kept fuel tanks on the farm, one with diesel for the tractors and another with gasoline for the car and truck. If electricity is so unreliable that people have to run their house on the batteries in their cars then why would they buy an electric car? What are they supposed to do if the power does not come back in the morning because of a storm or something and they need to drive to work? Or, school? Or, the hospital?
What you describe is a world in such poverty that they must often choose between driving and keeping the lights on in their home. I don't want to live in that world.
My suspicion is that when you think about solar power, you are thinking only about residential rooftop solar power, which is indeed more expensive to due lack of economies of scale. That would be an error, since utility-scale solar power is where the advances in cost-effectiveness are occurring.
No, I'm thinking of issues with reliability and transmission. Your citations even point out that the costs of storage and transmission was not part of the cost computations. If solar is going to grow beyond irrelevancy then it needs to have storage to deal with night time. That costs money.
If some unit of nuclear energy costs $5 and that same unit of solar energy costs $4 then nuclear still wins because no where are you going to find storage through the night for $1. For solar to compete we'd have to see $1 for that unit of energy, for a doubling of capacity we'd see another $1 since the sun will not shine for more than 12 hours per day, $1 for the storage through the night, and another $1 to account for the additional transmission lines to account for clouds here and there. That is over simplified round numbers math but I hope it makes the point.
Advancements in storage and transmission costs alone cannot save solar because those advancements can be applied to wind, nuclear, coal, or whatever too. If we can store energy for $1 then we'll use cheap coal and nuclear at $5 so we don't have to use gas turbines at $8 per energy unit for peak loads. If we can ship noontime solar energy from the east cost to the west coast for $1 then we can ship nighttime nuclear energy from the east coast to the west coast for $1.
The error in claiming solar is cheaper than coal is not taking storage and transmission costs into account. This can be ignored so long as solar is less than something like 10% since that is well within natural daily and seasonal variations. For it to get to something like 30% then these costs start to become very important because now that means building more infrastructure that we would not need with reliable energy like nuclear, coal, and natural gas.
Whatever. It's easy to double the installs year over year when it can't make even 2% of total output. Also, how long can this last? It's easy to cover up for solar power shortfalls when it can't make even 2% of total output. If all that solar power capacity disappeared tonight would anyone care? I'm pretty sure they don't because it disappears every night.
Solar thermal.
But how much does that cost? Not only does it have to be available 24 hours a day but it has to be cheaper than what we already use. I don't mean cost of installed capacity because that means next to nothing. I want to know how much it costs per watt-hour because that's what people really care about.
Do you think that solar thermal would be cheaper than, for example, nuclear? I'm certain solar thermal could ever be as "green", cheap, and reliable as nuclear. If solar thermal can't beat nuclear on carbon footprint and price then shouldn't we go with nuclear instead?
The price per watt of solar power drops every year and shows no sign of leveling out any time soon.
That's nice but I asked about the price per watt-hour. That claim on the dropping cost per watt means nothing since so many things can affect the price of solar energy other than the price of the panels alone.
I suspect that solar power advocates don't like to talk about the cost of the solar watt-hour because if they did that then the charts would not look so great.
Cell phones used analog transmissions as late as 2008. How do I know this? Because that was when my cell provider bought me a new phone so they could retire all their analog equipment. I had a "dual mode" phone then that could do digital and analog. The FCC would not allow the cell providers to get rid of their analog equipment until enough of their subscribers had digital phones. I hung on to that phone so long that not only did I get a free phone but I was paid $50 to take the free phone.
Another thing that prompted the switch were instances of high up government officials having their phone calls listened to by people with scanners.
That's true but oil is traded on the global market. If an area that produces a lot of oil is all of the sudden not producing oil because of war then oil gets expensive even for those that don't buy oil from that area. That oil has to be replaced by those that continue to produce oil, and increasing production costs money.
I'm not saying that this justifies US military involvement in the Middle East. Quite the opposite in fact. I say let them fight it out amongst themselves. I also say we need to make it clear that we will trade with people that can act kindly to their neighbors, treat their citizens and visitors with respect, and generally act with civility. This trade can include weapons if they like. Keeping the peace does mean being prepared to go to war after all.
The way to allow the USA to not concern itself with what goes on there is to produce enough energy on our own that whatever happens in the Middle East will have minimal effect on prices we pay here. We can do this by drilling for more oil, digging for more coal, putting up more windmills, and building more nuclear power plants.
I've had people tell me that building nuclear power plants will do nothing for the price of oil because oil is primarily for vehicle fuel while nuclear power is primarily used for electricity. I've seen the opposite though. Energy is energy. People will use whatever is cheapest.
I grew up on a farm and I've seen gasoline driven augers and electric driven augers used to move corn. There's advantages to both but in the end it comes down to cost on which the farmer will choose to use. Go to Sears, or wherever you might see lawn mowers and such, and you will see electric mowers next to the gasoline powered ones. This happens on the small scale with suburban yards to mow. On the medium scale with the family farm. Why would this not happen on an industrial scale?
Oil is oil and energy is energy. An economy needs energy. To decouple the USA from the Middle East militarily means that the Middle East needs to be decoupled from the world economically.
So, we see wind and solar combined to reach an arbitrary goal of 10% so that it is worthy of a headline apparently. One question that I'd like answered is how much this electricity cost. Not how much the consumers were charged for it, because that would include the government subsidies. I want to see the economics of this so I can judge the validity of this as a future energy source.
Every so often I get a bunch of letters in the mail from elected officials and lobbyists that want me to get all concerned about some vote coming up in Congress over wind subsidies. They tell me how much more CO2 would be produced, or how many jobs lots, or whatever bad thing they can think of that might trigger my "feels" to get me to call someone or vote some way.
Here's the thing. We can want wind and solar to replace coal as soon as possible but the only sure way for that to happen is for wind and solar to be cheaper than coal. Once that happens then no one would need to send me a letter telling me to call my congressman. Instead I should be getting a letter from the utility notifying me that my rates were lowered.
It looks to me like wind might actually be cheaper than coal except for that nasty problem of the wind not blowing when we need it. This can be addressed right now in some areas with a local pumped hydro dam used for energy storage. No other electric storage method is economical right now.
Solar will likely never get cheap enough to bother with. Like wind it is unreliable. Unlike wind we know it will never provide power at night. Any advancements in storage technologies to address this will also make wind look better. This also apples to coal and nuclear as storage systems would allow for load following with them. The problem with anything that boils water like coal and nuclear is that they do not follow load well. With something like a pumped hydro dam or a sufficiently large battery array even a gigawatt nuclear power plant can follow changes in loads. That would make nuclear look awesome.
For a short time solar power made 2% of the electricity used in the USA. How often do people ask why solar is so unpopular? After being subsidized heavily in the USA for decades this is all we have to show for it. Perhaps we need to stop and think if this is in fact a good use of our tax money.
After learning some history of modern civilization I've seen the danger of an overly powerful central government. What does this have to do with energy efficiency standards? The states are handing over their authority to a central government is helping to create an entity with enough power to do terrible things and only a very bloody war can stop it.
You want efficiency standards on consumer items? Publish and enforce them yourself. You want more windmill subsidies? Do it yourself. You want more highway funds? Raise them yourself.
What we see with states pushing such things on the federal government they won't see people leave the state over high taxes, or vote state officials out of office. Since it's more difficult to leave the country than leave a state so then by enacting a tax, fee, or regulation on a federal level the states can raise taxes, reap the rewards, and blame someone else for doing it.
Here's the deal though, the federal government officials also know that unpopular policies can get people voted out of office. Suing them for this stuff won't change that, people still vote. So the people in the federal government don't want this either.
Here's what state can do to make things better for themselves and the environment, take back some of the authority the federal government usurped from the state. Tell the federal government to take a hike and go license nuclear reactors yourself, that will clean the air more than anything else. Tell them you will manage your own wildlife in spite of how its listed on the endangered species list. Tell them you'll regulate carbon emissions, sulfur in diesel, CFC releases, waterways, and on and on.
It's not like the states haven't done this before. It seems to have worked for marijuana. It also seems to have worked to end alcohol prohibition, slavery, prohibition on women voting, and on and on. If enough states do it first and the federal government will have to follow. The federal government is a construct of the states, it has only the authority that the states have granted it. Take it back. Not only will states asserting their authority over the federal government mean more freedom for all it can also mean averting a very bloody war in the future.
The states won't do it though. Not unless it means more tax revenue like marijuana legalization did. There's no revenue in telling people that they can't buy stuff so they throw a fit in the hope to find enough judges that think they can pass laws from the bench. That's another rant too, for another time.
And yes, I know that most of the nuclear cost is regulatory.
Regulatory costs can be voted away in law, physical material costs cannot. Therefore solar is not cheaper than nuclear. You contradict your own claims every time.
This is a good example of why religion should be abolished throughout the world, ANY religion.
How do you propose you enforce this? If a man declares that there is a god then would you impose a fine? If the fine is not paid then would the person be imprisoned? How long would the man have to remain in prison? Is there a set time? Would the man have to stop declaring that there is a god to be set free? If the man declares that there is a god to the other inmates how would you silence him? Would he have to be separated from the other inmates? Would the guards be allowed to hear him speak?
In the end the only way to silence such a man is to kill or mutilate him. Unless you are willing to do that then you cannot free the world from religion.
If you do get to this point then you have just created a society where people are "disappeared" for speaking their opinion. Congratulations, you have just created a world worse than any religion ever could.
Nice collection of weapons pulled off antifa members who were looking to attack people at pro-trump/free speech rally. http://www.officer.com/news/12...
Holy shit!! I think I saw the rusty hatchet stolen from my shed in there. Any chance I can get it back?
And what the hell is that at the bottom of the image? Is that a a gate hinge bolted to a shin guard? That's gotta hurt.
This also demonstrates that no government can disarm the public, people will improvise. You can take their guns and knives but then they'll just fashion their own. Part of the reason why the speakers and attendees to these speeches get their ass kicked so often is that the venue is "weapons free" but the area to and from is not. The police disarmed one group but not the other. Would these hooligans be so bold to bring a sack full of bricks if they thought the attendees might shoot back?
I know someone is thinking, "but at least the hooligans didn't have a gun." What makes you think the hooligans could buy a gun? These students are likely often high on drugs (prescribed or not), likely with previous criminal records, or a protection order out on them. They couldn't pass a background check to buy a firearm.
Another common reply to my comment, "Do you really think it justified to use a gun against someone swinging a sack of bricks?" Yes. Wait, let me make myself clear... HELL YES!! Swinging a sack of bricks, putting a plastic bag over someone's head, hitting them with a pipe wrench, or a bike lock, is deadly force. Deadly force should be met with deadly force. That includes the use of a firearm in defense of lives.
Milo and Coulter couldn't speak on college campuses because of violent left-wing protests.
Not only that I read in the university paper an editorial praising this behavior. After Milo was denied access to campus after the administration got concerned over the potential for violence (at least that was the claim, I think it was just an excuse for them to ban Milo out of personal preference of the admins) the editorial board had a couple pieces on this. The one that most outraged me was some idiot calling this a win for speaking freely on college campuses. The argument was some nonsense about how people can't feel free to speak if we allow such hateful speakers on campus.
This newspaper editor actually thought that denying people the ability to speak was a win for speaking freely.
Then he thought it might be a good idea to write it down.
Then the editorial board for the newspaper approved it for printing.
The blindness to their own nonsense and hypocrisy must have spread far and wide on colleges across the nation.
Only the purest of math courses are safe, once one steps into any application of math then the problems begin.
I'm in a "big data" program at a liberal arts university. In my statistics class all the examples in the book where on global warming, gender bias, and whatever cause of the day was when it was printed. I took a statistics course before at a university that taught primarily engineering, and in that course the examples were things like mean time to fail for components, analysis of noise on a transmission line, weight/length/size variations in manufacturing. I have to wonder if the engineering students are still free of this nonsense or if their statistics books this year are like mine.
In my algorithms course we were discussing a classic problem called the "stable marriage problem" and every 15 minutes of lecture over three days the instructor felt the need to stop for a second and apologize that the algorithm does not allow for same sex pairings. To avoid this for a while he talked of pairing ice cream to cake for making a dessert. This was laughable because it required applying a preference of "mates" based on flavors of each and the ice cream "proposing" to the cake and the cake "rejecting" the pairing or not. He also had to explain that we could not simply put two flavors of ice cream on the same plate.
In a numerical analysis course a problem was to compute the trajectory of an "occupied" spacecraft and the pilot had to decide how to fire the thrusters. It wasn't a "manned" spacecraft, it was "occupied". We don't compute "man-hours" any more, it's "work-hours" or something. In a data analysis class the professor keeps apologizing that the medical examples given split people between "male" and "female" because I guess 52 genders were "discovered" from when the data was collected last semester and now.
It was refreshing to be free from this nonsense in math class until the professor thought she had to go on a 20 minute anti-war/anti-military rant. I'm not sure how she got from what was on the chalkboard to what her rant was about but I was not amused. I am a veteran, and I know that at least one other veteran was in the class. There had to be two or three ROTC students in class. Given that this class was being taught to students in engineering, computer science, physics, and math there is a high probability that a third or a half of the class will end up working in the "military industrial complex" she just ranted against. I held my mouth shut and I was surprised everyone else did too.
Of course out of math classes the political correctness is on a level that boggles the mind. A philosophical discussion on "love" had the instructor telling the class that love of an object is the same thing as love between a married couple. A car, dog, man, or woman are all "loved" in the same way. This is from a doctoral candidate that claims to be an expert on the English language and literature. It didn't bother me terribly at first because he's welcome to his opinion. When I voiced an opposing opinion I was told I was wrong, and that bothered me. I dropped the course shortly after that.
Again, you look to be looking for reasons for solar to fail. As if you have a religion of "hate solar".
I'm not looking for reasons for solar to fail, I simply did a pro/con of all energy sources available and I found that solar simply cannot compete with nuclear, natural gas, hydro, and wind when it comes to price, availability, and carbon footprint. I have nothing against coal really, since I think skyrocketing energy prices are a greater threat to civilization than any global warming it may cause but if we assume that coal is "bad" then a mix of nuclear, natural gas, hydro, and some wind will mean lowered energy prices (cheaper than coal in the long run) and unlimited energy. Solar only adds to the problem.
Solar only makes sense for communication satellites and pocket calculators and I'm not even sure about those any more. Any leaps in solar technology may change this. What will not change this is advancements in battery technology. Those batteries don't care if they are charged up by wind or excess nuclear capacity.
Just don't put the tree between the solar and the sun.
That's just another way to say they are incompatible.
Sure, coal is cleaner than solar. There is zero space needed for solar. If every building had panels on the roof, then we'd produce more power than we consume. Yes, it is that easy, absolutely zero space needed. As for the materials, they are common and cheaper than the pro-coal-religion nutjobs claim (yes, the pro-coal nutjobs are a religion, as it's a belief held in opposition of logic and evidence)..
Seems to me you did in fact compare solar to coal.
Let's assume I am reading this incorrectly (as I'm sure you will claim) then how do you expect people to switch to solar if it is not cheaper than coal? You want to have them jailed for burning coal? Fined into poverty if they use coal instead of solar? Then what you propose is the tyranny behind the "green" movement. They can't compete on price and/or convince people with words so they turn to the government to force it on people. You be a good little watermelon and keep talking about how solar power is going to "save" us.
Another thing, you claimed that if we had rooftop solar that we would not have to sacrifice any trees. Do you not have shade trees where you live? Have you not seen them or heard them discussed before? Seems to me that in many parts of the world people plant shade trees near their homes, or build their homes under existing trees, to protect them from the sun. An easy way to save on some air conditioning. With roof top solar we can't do that any more.
Trees and solar panels are not compatible with each other.
I am also amazed that so few seem to connect the dots and seen the futility of it all.
An effective firearm silencer can be made from a scrap piece of metal on a common lathe in very little time. Just thread the inside of the piece to match the gun and the outside to match an off the shelf oil filter. Bigger guns need a bigger oil filter, and these things aren't exactly optimal, but they are cheap and easy to make. If anyone tries this without government permission first (and paying a tax, of course) then they can get in a lot of trouble.
Getting a device that can machine out parts for a fully automatic rifle is trivial. Making a fully automatic pistol from common plumbing parts, scrap metal, and high school shop level welding skills, is only slightly less trivial but also less expensive.
Chemistry is not my thing but I've heard that making LSD is not too hard for someone that has taken some college chemistry courses. (I went to college and I may or may not have met some of these people.) Apparently concentrating an off the shelf cough syrup into something as potent as heroin is easy enough for the drug addled brain to do. Then there is meth, I don't think I need to tell people how easy it is to make meth because we hear about new meth labs being found all the time.
This is news apparently because people are using computers to sell drugs. I guess people are no longer surprised that people were cooking them up in their own kitchens any more. I tell you, someday, just maybe, this internet thing will catch on. If that happens then we'll never be able to stop people from getting any drug they want.
It's a good thing that Nancy Reagan told us to just say no to drugs in the 1980s, otherwise we'd still have a drug problem.
It was last summer I think when a local state prison guard got sent to federal prison for selling illegal drugs to inmates. At the same time they caught another guard for bringing in cell phones and cigarettes, I'm not sure this guy went to prison but he certainly had to find a new job. Point is that if we cannot keep drugs out of prison then we are doing a very bad job on this war on some drugs.
We've seen drug dealers builtd semi-submersible watercraft that can sail from Colombia to California non-stop. They have a diesel-battery-electric drive like World War II era submarines so that they can run quiet when close to the Coast Guard. They have a non-metallic hull so they cannot be picked up by sonar or radar unless they are right on top of each other. These things can cost over $2,000,000 to build but they can carry 100 times that value in drugs. They usually take a year to build but I'm not sure they even bother to try to re-use them, it's just cheaper/easier to scuttle it and build another than risk getting caught trying to sail it back.
Now law enforcement is finding evidence that the drug smugglers have been building true submersibles. These have steel hulls, which might be picked up by sonar if someone knew where to look but can go deep enough that surface radar won't find them. They cannot be seen from the air either like the semi-submersibles. We don't know for sure that they've been used since no one caught one in the water yet, they've only been found during construction. This could mean that none have sailed successfully, or that they've been so successful none have been caught.
We've tried addressing the demand through propaganda and education. We've tried limiting supply with catching these submarines. We have nothing to show for it.
Another thing about education... I remember getting this slide show in grade school about the dangers of using illegal drugs and they made a point between legal drugs, which are made in clean laboratories, and illegal drugs, which are made in a dirty shed. What came to my mind then, as a stupid little kid, was why would the drug dealers poison their customers? Would that not mean the users would die or find someone with "clean" drugs to sell them? Also, if the drugs from the "clean" place are the same as the drugs from the "dirty" shed are the same drugs then would not the users try to get the "clean" drugs?
I figured this out in minutes as a stupid little kid and it seems that the drug dealers figured this out too. As it is right now we've got some of the most potent, purest, and CHEAPEST drugs on the illegal market right now. If anyone is dying from drug use today then it's likely from getting an inconsistent dose, the illegal dealers don't want to kill their customers but if they screw up on keeping the dosage consistent there's no government or private oversight committee to double check their work.
We require houses be built to minimum safety standards. Why not minimum sustainable standards? $10,000 on the cost of a $400,000 home doesn't look to be pushing anyone into poverty.
Because it doesn't cost $10,000 for a $400,000 home. That might cover the cost of the batteries, maybe, but the solar panels will cost even more. When I did my calculations I found it would cost as much as the home for all the solar panels and electronics. If we compare the costs for a loan this large to the typical electric bill then it came to a ten times increase in the cost of electricity. Let's assume my calculations were way off and it's just a doubling, then we see what we have in Germany of "energy poverty" where people cannot pay their electric bills any more.
Where does this stop? If we keep putting regulations on people that cost so little that it can't "push anyone into poverty" then at some point it will. That money has to come from somewhere. Let's assume that people can in fact afford the electric bill increase from solar power, that just means less money for something else, like health care and education. In the short term this means next to nothing but over even a decade this can be a serious drag on a family and a nation.
We don't have to choose between expensive sustainable energy and cheap dirty coal. We can have nuclear. Nuclear is the safest and greenest energy source we know of today. It's as cheap as coal so long as the protesting nut jobs don't go around tossing firebombs and chaining themselves to bulldozers. This costs money. If these people are dumping sugar in the concrete mixers, pissing in fuel tanks, knocking over safety barriers, and so on then they are going to cost even more money.
There is a part of me that wants to just let them chain themselves to the bulldozers and then the operator go drive on anyway and let the punks that do this get torn in half as the dozer moves on. If they jump in the path of the pouring of the concrete then work will not stop and they will be buried there. I recall something somewhere on horse blood was used to make mortar stronger. I say we try using the blood of these jackasses that get in the way of nuclear power plant construction to build the plant.
This protesting can only go so far before someone fights back. The lunatics that try to hold up the nuclear power with their heckler's veto once construction starts might find themselves in an "accident". Looking at polling for nuclear power and I find two kinds of results, a 50/50 result where just as many oppose as support, the other is some more definitive showing of support. A bunch of protesters going on a nuclear power plant construction site and getting killed in the act can be spun by the powers that be. They can talk about how the people were warned not to go out where the dozers were operating. They'll talk about how this is why energy prices are so high, needing security and insurance for these knuckleheads.
Think about how this goes over for the public. People just want to live their lives and one side says we need to double out electricity prices, protest the cheap nuclear power, and everyone will have to add a government mandated solar panel and battery pack to their house. The other side offers cheap nuclear power but the only reason it's not cheap and operating now is because of the protesters.
I listen to these anti-nuke people and they are often screaming lunatics, thinking that if they only chant loud enough that people will agree with them. The nuclear people are much more polite, reasonable, and charismatic. The calmer ones will often talk and try to convince people with logic but the logic does not work in their favor.
If you want to sell me on solar then don't tell me it costs only a "little bit" more than coal and nuclear". You need to show me it is actually cheaper and greener. We've already seen windmills fail on being "green" for producing power when no one wants it (which brings negative pricing) an
Climate change is real and Trump supporters are douche bags.
You do realize that comments like yours is why Trump won, right? People don't like being called douche bags, and they will dig in their heels just to make a point. Calling Republicans a "basket of deplorables" or whatever it was just drove people to vote Republican when they might not have voted at all. This also doesn't make Democrats feel great to vote because they don't want to be associated with name callers.
You may be absolutely correct on both counts but it's not going to help your cause by being so crude. Learn to be diplomatic or learn to hold your tongue. Votes have consequences. Trump is POTUS and with that comes his ability to roll back climate change policies made by Obama.
Trump is tossing out every executive order Obama ever signed. And I'm just loving it. I guess that makes me a douche bag.
Actually there is. How about giving a monthly allowance to those who have no biological children and are sterilized or are otherwise incapable of reproducing?
Because the people that would feel compelled to take this money is exactly the kind of people we need to keep breeding. Do you think that stupid people would take this money? They already worked the system by having the government pay them to have children. It's the smart people that would take the money to not have kids because they are the ones that can think beyond their next government check.
Wait... I have what might be a better idea. Instead of paying people to not have children I believe we should stop paying people to have children.
I know that can seem harsh to seemingly leave children to starve by not giving the parents money for them but consider this as a means to have both. The parents that cannot support their child will receive a check on the condition they don't have another child, get sterilized if they must. If they have more kids then they have a choice, give up the kids or give up the check. We're paying people not to breed, right? If they break contract by having more kids then we are no longer obligated to give them money. For the sake of the kids they can live with their parents and be supported by them or they can be adopted by people that have the means to support the child. If the parents cannot support the children without a government check then they've already made their choice, no kids and no checks.
If they didn't take the chance to get sterilized after having the first kid then we should not be giving them money. If they keep having kids while not being able to support then then they are fucked in the head and should be put in a room all alone. If they still have kids after that then kill it because that's not human.
For this idea to work we'd have to first stop paying people to have kids. I think that if we do just that then we might just solve the problem and avoid the need to encourage people into getting sterilized with another government subsidy.
IF it cannot be done today, why are you quoting a system worse than the Tesla Powerwall 2 system?
To show that it is impractical and at the time (two or three years ago) that was a top of the line system. As of TODAY the Tesla Powerwall is not widely available and not much better than what I quoted. It doesn't take much to find people that have done the math on the Powerwall and found it to be only a means to allow rich people to show how much better they are than their neighbors.
Since you've already lied, claiming that your multi-ton lead battery system was a modern system, I can only assume you are an anti-environmental nutcase.
Who's the nutcase? I did not lie, I made an honest attempt to find the actual cost of a home solar power system. I found that it costs many times more than electricity from the utility, we can argue if it means a ten times increase in cost or a doubling in cost but either way this is just an indulgence for the wealthy. I also found that it is only practical if one allows for the use of natural gas heating and cooking in winter, at least for where I live. Some places north of me will not be able to even get that far with the costs I computed. The nutcases are those that think we can transition to solar power TODAY and wish to use the power of the government to force people onto a technology that will drive them into poverty.
Problem solved, for every one except industrial applications, where they are buying wind and hydro, or having those solar farms you find so unsighly.
In other words the problem is not solved. You just admitted to it. To make this work we'd have to cover over large chunks of land with windmills and solar panels to power our industry. This is very different than just covering rooftops. These solar farms would be displacing people, wildlife, and/or crops. Windmills displace crops, people, and wildlife too though perhaps not as bad. Hydro is great but there is no growth in that, we've already dammed up all the rivers worth a dam.
You know what would solve the problem TODAY? Nuclear power. I've done that math also and the only reason it's not being deployed widely is politics. If we regulated coal like we did nuclear power then we'd stop using coal for the radiation it releases. If we regulated nuclear like we did coal then we'd be building a new nuclear power plant in the USA every month, because it's "green", cheap, plentiful, and safe. It's cheaper, cleaner, safer, and more reliable than solar.
If you want to call me a liar then show where I lied. It's real easy to look on the internet and see that solar kills more people per megawatt-hour produced compared to nuclear. It's easy to see that nuclear power produced less CO2 than solar per megawatt-hour produced. I'm not the nutcase that fears nuclear power more than climate change. If you fear nuclear power more than climate change then climate change must not be much of a threat.
The dots are inserted by the printer firmware, not the driver.
I don't doubt that but the driver can insert dots too. Unless the firmware is complex enough to see these dots and know enough to not print them then the driver can insert dots that can render the firmware inserted dots unreadable.
Slashdot Mirror
I was reading about India, which has severe coal-related pollution problems, and just recently the price of solar has dropped there has dropped to be less than coal.
The price of any commodity gets lower as demand decreases. If fewer people burn coal, reducing competition on price, then coal gets cheaper. This is not a static price so any claims that do not take this into account is suspect.
Within five years the cost of solar plus battery will be less on a per kwh basis than coal.
What keeps people from charging these batteries with coal power? One reason that coal is so cheap is because it cannot follow changes in load. For that we primarily use natural gas turbines, likely true in India too. Maybe they use fuel oil generators, I don't know and I really don't care. Point is that batteries don't care what is used to charge them up and they work great for load following. If these batteries become cheap then it makes sense to use cheap and reliable coal to charge them up instead of expensive and unreliable solar power. Improvements in battery technology is not necessarily helpful for solar power.
Also, India is largely tropical and sub-tropical which makes solar more profitable. What are the people that live outside of 30 degrees north and south latitude supposed to do?
Your mistake is in not thinking the grid already has lots of storage, in the form of water behind hydroelectric dams and stockpiles of biomass fuels.
I know that the grid has lots of storage, it's called nuclear, coal, and natural gas. The energy is stored in the fuel they use.
Since we have other sources of night-time power, millions of electric cars would make a significant contribution.
Are you saying that the grid would be so unreliable that people would have to run their houses off the batteries in their cars? Or, are you saying that the grid would be so unreliable that people would have to buy a battery pack for their house in addition to the one in their car? If people have a choice between an electric car and a non-electric car in this world then why would they choose the electric car?
I lived on a farm and electricity is vital. We needed it to pump our water, keep the animals warm and dry, and so on. We deal with this by having a generator on the farm and diesel fueled tractors to run it. If the power was out then we'd have a tractor run the generator for the well pump and some lights and another tractor to mill corn instead of the electric mill. You think that people would buy an expensive battery pack instead of using cheap diesel fuel and natural gas to generate that electricity? It's possible that batteries could get very cheap but nothing compares to hydrocarbons in their ability to store and transport energy, and that translates to costs.
We kept fuel tanks on the farm, one with diesel for the tractors and another with gasoline for the car and truck. If electricity is so unreliable that people have to run their house on the batteries in their cars then why would they buy an electric car? What are they supposed to do if the power does not come back in the morning because of a storm or something and they need to drive to work? Or, school? Or, the hospital?
What you describe is a world in such poverty that they must often choose between driving and keeping the lights on in their home. I don't want to live in that world.
My suspicion is that when you think about solar power, you are thinking only about residential rooftop solar power, which is indeed more expensive to due lack of economies of scale. That would be an error, since utility-scale solar power is where the advances in cost-effectiveness are occurring.
No, I'm thinking of issues with reliability and transmission. Your citations even point out that the costs of storage and transmission was not part of the cost computations. If solar is going to grow beyond irrelevancy then it needs to have storage to deal with night time. That costs money.
If some unit of nuclear energy costs $5 and that same unit of solar energy costs $4 then nuclear still wins because no where are you going to find storage through the night for $1. For solar to compete we'd have to see $1 for that unit of energy, for a doubling of capacity we'd see another $1 since the sun will not shine for more than 12 hours per day, $1 for the storage through the night, and another $1 to account for the additional transmission lines to account for clouds here and there. That is over simplified round numbers math but I hope it makes the point.
Advancements in storage and transmission costs alone cannot save solar because those advancements can be applied to wind, nuclear, coal, or whatever too. If we can store energy for $1 then we'll use cheap coal and nuclear at $5 so we don't have to use gas turbines at $8 per energy unit for peak loads. If we can ship noontime solar energy from the east cost to the west coast for $1 then we can ship nighttime nuclear energy from the east coast to the west coast for $1.
The error in claiming solar is cheaper than coal is not taking storage and transmission costs into account. This can be ignored so long as solar is less than something like 10% since that is well within natural daily and seasonal variations. For it to get to something like 30% then these costs start to become very important because now that means building more infrastructure that we would not need with reliable energy like nuclear, coal, and natural gas.
Also look up the growth curve in solar installs.
Whatever. It's easy to double the installs year over year when it can't make even 2% of total output. Also, how long can this last? It's easy to cover up for solar power shortfalls when it can't make even 2% of total output. If all that solar power capacity disappeared tonight would anyone care? I'm pretty sure they don't because it disappears every night.
Solar thermal.
But how much does that cost? Not only does it have to be available 24 hours a day but it has to be cheaper than what we already use. I don't mean cost of installed capacity because that means next to nothing. I want to know how much it costs per watt-hour because that's what people really care about.
Do you think that solar thermal would be cheaper than, for example, nuclear? I'm certain solar thermal could ever be as "green", cheap, and reliable as nuclear. If solar thermal can't beat nuclear on carbon footprint and price then shouldn't we go with nuclear instead?
Solar and wind are already cheaper than coal even without subsidies.
[citation needed]
The price per watt of solar power drops every year and shows no sign of leveling out any time soon.
That's nice but I asked about the price per watt-hour. That claim on the dropping cost per watt means nothing since so many things can affect the price of solar energy other than the price of the panels alone.
I suspect that solar power advocates don't like to talk about the cost of the solar watt-hour because if they did that then the charts would not look so great.
Cell phones used analog transmissions as late as 2008. How do I know this? Because that was when my cell provider bought me a new phone so they could retire all their analog equipment. I had a "dual mode" phone then that could do digital and analog. The FCC would not allow the cell providers to get rid of their analog equipment until enough of their subscribers had digital phones. I hung on to that phone so long that not only did I get a free phone but I was paid $50 to take the free phone.
Another thing that prompted the switch were instances of high up government officials having their phone calls listened to by people with scanners.
Most M.E. oil goes to Europe and other countries.
That's true but oil is traded on the global market. If an area that produces a lot of oil is all of the sudden not producing oil because of war then oil gets expensive even for those that don't buy oil from that area. That oil has to be replaced by those that continue to produce oil, and increasing production costs money.
I'm not saying that this justifies US military involvement in the Middle East. Quite the opposite in fact. I say let them fight it out amongst themselves. I also say we need to make it clear that we will trade with people that can act kindly to their neighbors, treat their citizens and visitors with respect, and generally act with civility. This trade can include weapons if they like. Keeping the peace does mean being prepared to go to war after all.
The way to allow the USA to not concern itself with what goes on there is to produce enough energy on our own that whatever happens in the Middle East will have minimal effect on prices we pay here. We can do this by drilling for more oil, digging for more coal, putting up more windmills, and building more nuclear power plants.
I've had people tell me that building nuclear power plants will do nothing for the price of oil because oil is primarily for vehicle fuel while nuclear power is primarily used for electricity. I've seen the opposite though. Energy is energy. People will use whatever is cheapest.
I grew up on a farm and I've seen gasoline driven augers and electric driven augers used to move corn. There's advantages to both but in the end it comes down to cost on which the farmer will choose to use. Go to Sears, or wherever you might see lawn mowers and such, and you will see electric mowers next to the gasoline powered ones. This happens on the small scale with suburban yards to mow. On the medium scale with the family farm. Why would this not happen on an industrial scale?
Oil is oil and energy is energy. An economy needs energy. To decouple the USA from the Middle East militarily means that the Middle East needs to be decoupled from the world economically.
That's right, everyone that has a brain has converted their gas-burning SUV to wind power!
I've upped my use of wind power! Up yours!
So, we see wind and solar combined to reach an arbitrary goal of 10% so that it is worthy of a headline apparently. One question that I'd like answered is how much this electricity cost. Not how much the consumers were charged for it, because that would include the government subsidies. I want to see the economics of this so I can judge the validity of this as a future energy source.
Every so often I get a bunch of letters in the mail from elected officials and lobbyists that want me to get all concerned about some vote coming up in Congress over wind subsidies. They tell me how much more CO2 would be produced, or how many jobs lots, or whatever bad thing they can think of that might trigger my "feels" to get me to call someone or vote some way.
Here's the thing. We can want wind and solar to replace coal as soon as possible but the only sure way for that to happen is for wind and solar to be cheaper than coal. Once that happens then no one would need to send me a letter telling me to call my congressman. Instead I should be getting a letter from the utility notifying me that my rates were lowered.
It looks to me like wind might actually be cheaper than coal except for that nasty problem of the wind not blowing when we need it. This can be addressed right now in some areas with a local pumped hydro dam used for energy storage. No other electric storage method is economical right now.
Solar will likely never get cheap enough to bother with. Like wind it is unreliable. Unlike wind we know it will never provide power at night. Any advancements in storage technologies to address this will also make wind look better. This also apples to coal and nuclear as storage systems would allow for load following with them. The problem with anything that boils water like coal and nuclear is that they do not follow load well. With something like a pumped hydro dam or a sufficiently large battery array even a gigawatt nuclear power plant can follow changes in loads. That would make nuclear look awesome.
For a short time solar power made 2% of the electricity used in the USA. How often do people ask why solar is so unpopular? After being subsidized heavily in the USA for decades this is all we have to show for it. Perhaps we need to stop and think if this is in fact a good use of our tax money.
After learning some history of modern civilization I've seen the danger of an overly powerful central government. What does this have to do with energy efficiency standards? The states are handing over their authority to a central government is helping to create an entity with enough power to do terrible things and only a very bloody war can stop it.
You want efficiency standards on consumer items? Publish and enforce them yourself. You want more windmill subsidies? Do it yourself. You want more highway funds? Raise them yourself.
What we see with states pushing such things on the federal government they won't see people leave the state over high taxes, or vote state officials out of office. Since it's more difficult to leave the country than leave a state so then by enacting a tax, fee, or regulation on a federal level the states can raise taxes, reap the rewards, and blame someone else for doing it.
Here's the deal though, the federal government officials also know that unpopular policies can get people voted out of office. Suing them for this stuff won't change that, people still vote. So the people in the federal government don't want this either.
Here's what state can do to make things better for themselves and the environment, take back some of the authority the federal government usurped from the state. Tell the federal government to take a hike and go license nuclear reactors yourself, that will clean the air more than anything else. Tell them you will manage your own wildlife in spite of how its listed on the endangered species list. Tell them you'll regulate carbon emissions, sulfur in diesel, CFC releases, waterways, and on and on.
It's not like the states haven't done this before. It seems to have worked for marijuana. It also seems to have worked to end alcohol prohibition, slavery, prohibition on women voting, and on and on. If enough states do it first and the federal government will have to follow. The federal government is a construct of the states, it has only the authority that the states have granted it. Take it back. Not only will states asserting their authority over the federal government mean more freedom for all it can also mean averting a very bloody war in the future.
The states won't do it though. Not unless it means more tax revenue like marijuana legalization did. There's no revenue in telling people that they can't buy stuff so they throw a fit in the hope to find enough judges that think they can pass laws from the bench. That's another rant too, for another time.
And yes, I know that most of the nuclear cost is regulatory.
Regulatory costs can be voted away in law, physical material costs cannot. Therefore solar is not cheaper than nuclear. You contradict your own claims every time.
Keep going though, this is fun.
This is a good example of why religion should be abolished throughout the world, ANY religion.
How do you propose you enforce this? If a man declares that there is a god then would you impose a fine? If the fine is not paid then would the person be imprisoned? How long would the man have to remain in prison? Is there a set time? Would the man have to stop declaring that there is a god to be set free? If the man declares that there is a god to the other inmates how would you silence him? Would he have to be separated from the other inmates? Would the guards be allowed to hear him speak?
In the end the only way to silence such a man is to kill or mutilate him. Unless you are willing to do that then you cannot free the world from religion.
If you do get to this point then you have just created a society where people are "disappeared" for speaking their opinion. Congratulations, you have just created a world worse than any religion ever could.
Nice collection of weapons pulled off antifa members who were looking to attack people at pro-trump/free speech rally. http://www.officer.com/news/12...
Holy shit!! I think I saw the rusty hatchet stolen from my shed in there. Any chance I can get it back?
And what the hell is that at the bottom of the image? Is that a a gate hinge bolted to a shin guard? That's gotta hurt.
This also demonstrates that no government can disarm the public, people will improvise. You can take their guns and knives but then they'll just fashion their own. Part of the reason why the speakers and attendees to these speeches get their ass kicked so often is that the venue is "weapons free" but the area to and from is not. The police disarmed one group but not the other. Would these hooligans be so bold to bring a sack full of bricks if they thought the attendees might shoot back?
I know someone is thinking, "but at least the hooligans didn't have a gun." What makes you think the hooligans could buy a gun? These students are likely often high on drugs (prescribed or not), likely with previous criminal records, or a protection order out on them. They couldn't pass a background check to buy a firearm.
Another common reply to my comment, "Do you really think it justified to use a gun against someone swinging a sack of bricks?" Yes. Wait, let me make myself clear... HELL YES!! Swinging a sack of bricks, putting a plastic bag over someone's head, hitting them with a pipe wrench, or a bike lock, is deadly force. Deadly force should be met with deadly force. That includes the use of a firearm in defense of lives.
Milo and Coulter couldn't speak on college campuses because of violent left-wing protests.
Not only that I read in the university paper an editorial praising this behavior. After Milo was denied access to campus after the administration got concerned over the potential for violence (at least that was the claim, I think it was just an excuse for them to ban Milo out of personal preference of the admins) the editorial board had a couple pieces on this. The one that most outraged me was some idiot calling this a win for speaking freely on college campuses. The argument was some nonsense about how people can't feel free to speak if we allow such hateful speakers on campus.
This newspaper editor actually thought that denying people the ability to speak was a win for speaking freely.
Then he thought it might be a good idea to write it down.
Then the editorial board for the newspaper approved it for printing.
The blindness to their own nonsense and hypocrisy must have spread far and wide on colleges across the nation.
Only the purest of math courses are safe, once one steps into any application of math then the problems begin.
I'm in a "big data" program at a liberal arts university. In my statistics class all the examples in the book where on global warming, gender bias, and whatever cause of the day was when it was printed. I took a statistics course before at a university that taught primarily engineering, and in that course the examples were things like mean time to fail for components, analysis of noise on a transmission line, weight/length/size variations in manufacturing. I have to wonder if the engineering students are still free of this nonsense or if their statistics books this year are like mine.
In my algorithms course we were discussing a classic problem called the "stable marriage problem" and every 15 minutes of lecture over three days the instructor felt the need to stop for a second and apologize that the algorithm does not allow for same sex pairings. To avoid this for a while he talked of pairing ice cream to cake for making a dessert. This was laughable because it required applying a preference of "mates" based on flavors of each and the ice cream "proposing" to the cake and the cake "rejecting" the pairing or not. He also had to explain that we could not simply put two flavors of ice cream on the same plate.
In a numerical analysis course a problem was to compute the trajectory of an "occupied" spacecraft and the pilot had to decide how to fire the thrusters. It wasn't a "manned" spacecraft, it was "occupied". We don't compute "man-hours" any more, it's "work-hours" or something. In a data analysis class the professor keeps apologizing that the medical examples given split people between "male" and "female" because I guess 52 genders were "discovered" from when the data was collected last semester and now.
It was refreshing to be free from this nonsense in math class until the professor thought she had to go on a 20 minute anti-war/anti-military rant. I'm not sure how she got from what was on the chalkboard to what her rant was about but I was not amused. I am a veteran, and I know that at least one other veteran was in the class. There had to be two or three ROTC students in class. Given that this class was being taught to students in engineering, computer science, physics, and math there is a high probability that a third or a half of the class will end up working in the "military industrial complex" she just ranted against. I held my mouth shut and I was surprised everyone else did too.
Of course out of math classes the political correctness is on a level that boggles the mind. A philosophical discussion on "love" had the instructor telling the class that love of an object is the same thing as love between a married couple. A car, dog, man, or woman are all "loved" in the same way. This is from a doctoral candidate that claims to be an expert on the English language and literature. It didn't bother me terribly at first because he's welcome to his opinion. When I voiced an opposing opinion I was told I was wrong, and that bothered me. I dropped the course shortly after that.
Again, you look to be looking for reasons for solar to fail. As if you have a religion of "hate solar".
I'm not looking for reasons for solar to fail, I simply did a pro/con of all energy sources available and I found that solar simply cannot compete with nuclear, natural gas, hydro, and wind when it comes to price, availability, and carbon footprint. I have nothing against coal really, since I think skyrocketing energy prices are a greater threat to civilization than any global warming it may cause but if we assume that coal is "bad" then a mix of nuclear, natural gas, hydro, and some wind will mean lowered energy prices (cheaper than coal in the long run) and unlimited energy. Solar only adds to the problem.
Solar only makes sense for communication satellites and pocket calculators and I'm not even sure about those any more. Any leaps in solar technology may change this. What will not change this is advancements in battery technology. Those batteries don't care if they are charged up by wind or excess nuclear capacity.
Just don't put the tree between the solar and the sun.
That's just another way to say they are incompatible.
I never compared solar to coal or nuclear.
Is this not your post?
Sure, coal is cleaner than solar. There is zero space needed for solar. If every building had panels on the roof, then we'd produce more power than we consume. Yes, it is that easy, absolutely zero space needed. As for the materials, they are common and cheaper than the pro-coal-religion nutjobs claim (yes, the pro-coal nutjobs are a religion, as it's a belief held in opposition of logic and evidence)..
Seems to me you did in fact compare solar to coal.
Let's assume I am reading this incorrectly (as I'm sure you will claim) then how do you expect people to switch to solar if it is not cheaper than coal? You want to have them jailed for burning coal? Fined into poverty if they use coal instead of solar? Then what you propose is the tyranny behind the "green" movement. They can't compete on price and/or convince people with words so they turn to the government to force it on people. You be a good little watermelon and keep talking about how solar power is going to "save" us.
Another thing, you claimed that if we had rooftop solar that we would not have to sacrifice any trees. Do you not have shade trees where you live? Have you not seen them or heard them discussed before? Seems to me that in many parts of the world people plant shade trees near their homes, or build their homes under existing trees, to protect them from the sun. An easy way to save on some air conditioning. With roof top solar we can't do that any more.
Trees and solar panels are not compatible with each other.
I am also amazed that so few seem to connect the dots and seen the futility of it all.
An effective firearm silencer can be made from a scrap piece of metal on a common lathe in very little time. Just thread the inside of the piece to match the gun and the outside to match an off the shelf oil filter. Bigger guns need a bigger oil filter, and these things aren't exactly optimal, but they are cheap and easy to make. If anyone tries this without government permission first (and paying a tax, of course) then they can get in a lot of trouble.
Getting a device that can machine out parts for a fully automatic rifle is trivial. Making a fully automatic pistol from common plumbing parts, scrap metal, and high school shop level welding skills, is only slightly less trivial but also less expensive.
Chemistry is not my thing but I've heard that making LSD is not too hard for someone that has taken some college chemistry courses. (I went to college and I may or may not have met some of these people.) Apparently concentrating an off the shelf cough syrup into something as potent as heroin is easy enough for the drug addled brain to do. Then there is meth, I don't think I need to tell people how easy it is to make meth because we hear about new meth labs being found all the time.
This is news apparently because people are using computers to sell drugs. I guess people are no longer surprised that people were cooking them up in their own kitchens any more. I tell you, someday, just maybe, this internet thing will catch on. If that happens then we'll never be able to stop people from getting any drug they want.
It's a good thing that Nancy Reagan told us to just say no to drugs in the 1980s, otherwise we'd still have a drug problem.
It was last summer I think when a local state prison guard got sent to federal prison for selling illegal drugs to inmates. At the same time they caught another guard for bringing in cell phones and cigarettes, I'm not sure this guy went to prison but he certainly had to find a new job. Point is that if we cannot keep drugs out of prison then we are doing a very bad job on this war on some drugs.
We've seen drug dealers builtd semi-submersible watercraft that can sail from Colombia to California non-stop. They have a diesel-battery-electric drive like World War II era submarines so that they can run quiet when close to the Coast Guard. They have a non-metallic hull so they cannot be picked up by sonar or radar unless they are right on top of each other. These things can cost over $2,000,000 to build but they can carry 100 times that value in drugs. They usually take a year to build but I'm not sure they even bother to try to re-use them, it's just cheaper/easier to scuttle it and build another than risk getting caught trying to sail it back.
Now law enforcement is finding evidence that the drug smugglers have been building true submersibles. These have steel hulls, which might be picked up by sonar if someone knew where to look but can go deep enough that surface radar won't find them. They cannot be seen from the air either like the semi-submersibles. We don't know for sure that they've been used since no one caught one in the water yet, they've only been found during construction. This could mean that none have sailed successfully, or that they've been so successful none have been caught.
We've tried addressing the demand through propaganda and education. We've tried limiting supply with catching these submarines. We have nothing to show for it.
Another thing about education... I remember getting this slide show in grade school about the dangers of using illegal drugs and they made a point between legal drugs, which are made in clean laboratories, and illegal drugs, which are made in a dirty shed. What came to my mind then, as a stupid little kid, was why would the drug dealers poison their customers? Would that not mean the users would die or find someone with "clean" drugs to sell them? Also, if the drugs from the "clean" place are the same as the drugs from the "dirty" shed are the same drugs then would not the users try to get the "clean" drugs?
I figured this out in minutes as a stupid little kid and it seems that the drug dealers figured this out too. As it is right now we've got some of the most potent, purest, and CHEAPEST drugs on the illegal market right now. If anyone is dying from drug use today then it's likely from getting an inconsistent dose, the illegal dealers don't want to kill their customers but if they screw up on keeping the dosage consistent there's no government or private oversight committee to double check their work.
We require houses be built to minimum safety standards. Why not minimum sustainable standards? $10,000 on the cost of a $400,000 home doesn't look to be pushing anyone into poverty.
Because it doesn't cost $10,000 for a $400,000 home. That might cover the cost of the batteries, maybe, but the solar panels will cost even more. When I did my calculations I found it would cost as much as the home for all the solar panels and electronics. If we compare the costs for a loan this large to the typical electric bill then it came to a ten times increase in the cost of electricity. Let's assume my calculations were way off and it's just a doubling, then we see what we have in Germany of "energy poverty" where people cannot pay their electric bills any more.
Where does this stop? If we keep putting regulations on people that cost so little that it can't "push anyone into poverty" then at some point it will. That money has to come from somewhere. Let's assume that people can in fact afford the electric bill increase from solar power, that just means less money for something else, like health care and education. In the short term this means next to nothing but over even a decade this can be a serious drag on a family and a nation.
We don't have to choose between expensive sustainable energy and cheap dirty coal. We can have nuclear. Nuclear is the safest and greenest energy source we know of today. It's as cheap as coal so long as the protesting nut jobs don't go around tossing firebombs and chaining themselves to bulldozers. This costs money. If these people are dumping sugar in the concrete mixers, pissing in fuel tanks, knocking over safety barriers, and so on then they are going to cost even more money.
There is a part of me that wants to just let them chain themselves to the bulldozers and then the operator go drive on anyway and let the punks that do this get torn in half as the dozer moves on. If they jump in the path of the pouring of the concrete then work will not stop and they will be buried there. I recall something somewhere on horse blood was used to make mortar stronger. I say we try using the blood of these jackasses that get in the way of nuclear power plant construction to build the plant.
This protesting can only go so far before someone fights back. The lunatics that try to hold up the nuclear power with their heckler's veto once construction starts might find themselves in an "accident". Looking at polling for nuclear power and I find two kinds of results, a 50/50 result where just as many oppose as support, the other is some more definitive showing of support. A bunch of protesters going on a nuclear power plant construction site and getting killed in the act can be spun by the powers that be. They can talk about how the people were warned not to go out where the dozers were operating. They'll talk about how this is why energy prices are so high, needing security and insurance for these knuckleheads.
Think about how this goes over for the public. People just want to live their lives and one side says we need to double out electricity prices, protest the cheap nuclear power, and everyone will have to add a government mandated solar panel and battery pack to their house. The other side offers cheap nuclear power but the only reason it's not cheap and operating now is because of the protesters.
I listen to these anti-nuke people and they are often screaming lunatics, thinking that if they only chant loud enough that people will agree with them. The nuclear people are much more polite, reasonable, and charismatic. The calmer ones will often talk and try to convince people with logic but the logic does not work in their favor.
If you want to sell me on solar then don't tell me it costs only a "little bit" more than coal and nuclear". You need to show me it is actually cheaper and greener. We've already seen windmills fail on being "green" for producing power when no one wants it (which brings negative pricing) an
Climate change is real and Trump supporters are douche bags.
You do realize that comments like yours is why Trump won, right? People don't like being called douche bags, and they will dig in their heels just to make a point. Calling Republicans a "basket of deplorables" or whatever it was just drove people to vote Republican when they might not have voted at all. This also doesn't make Democrats feel great to vote because they don't want to be associated with name callers.
You may be absolutely correct on both counts but it's not going to help your cause by being so crude. Learn to be diplomatic or learn to hold your tongue. Votes have consequences. Trump is POTUS and with that comes his ability to roll back climate change policies made by Obama.
Trump is tossing out every executive order Obama ever signed. And I'm just loving it. I guess that makes me a douche bag.
Actually there is. How about giving a monthly allowance to those who have no biological children and are sterilized or are otherwise incapable of reproducing?
Because the people that would feel compelled to take this money is exactly the kind of people we need to keep breeding. Do you think that stupid people would take this money? They already worked the system by having the government pay them to have children. It's the smart people that would take the money to not have kids because they are the ones that can think beyond their next government check.
Wait... I have what might be a better idea. Instead of paying people to not have children I believe we should stop paying people to have children.
I know that can seem harsh to seemingly leave children to starve by not giving the parents money for them but consider this as a means to have both. The parents that cannot support their child will receive a check on the condition they don't have another child, get sterilized if they must. If they have more kids then they have a choice, give up the kids or give up the check. We're paying people not to breed, right? If they break contract by having more kids then we are no longer obligated to give them money. For the sake of the kids they can live with their parents and be supported by them or they can be adopted by people that have the means to support the child. If the parents cannot support the children without a government check then they've already made their choice, no kids and no checks.
If they didn't take the chance to get sterilized after having the first kid then we should not be giving them money. If they keep having kids while not being able to support then then they are fucked in the head and should be put in a room all alone. If they still have kids after that then kill it because that's not human.
For this idea to work we'd have to first stop paying people to have kids. I think that if we do just that then we might just solve the problem and avoid the need to encourage people into getting sterilized with another government subsidy.
IF it cannot be done today, why are you quoting a system worse than the Tesla Powerwall 2 system?
To show that it is impractical and at the time (two or three years ago) that was a top of the line system. As of TODAY the Tesla Powerwall is not widely available and not much better than what I quoted. It doesn't take much to find people that have done the math on the Powerwall and found it to be only a means to allow rich people to show how much better they are than their neighbors.
Since you've already lied, claiming that your multi-ton lead battery system was a modern system, I can only assume you are an anti-environmental nutcase.
Who's the nutcase? I did not lie, I made an honest attempt to find the actual cost of a home solar power system. I found that it costs many times more than electricity from the utility, we can argue if it means a ten times increase in cost or a doubling in cost but either way this is just an indulgence for the wealthy. I also found that it is only practical if one allows for the use of natural gas heating and cooking in winter, at least for where I live. Some places north of me will not be able to even get that far with the costs I computed. The nutcases are those that think we can transition to solar power TODAY and wish to use the power of the government to force people onto a technology that will drive them into poverty.
Problem solved, for every one except industrial applications, where they are buying wind and hydro, or having those solar farms you find so unsighly.
In other words the problem is not solved. You just admitted to it. To make this work we'd have to cover over large chunks of land with windmills and solar panels to power our industry. This is very different than just covering rooftops. These solar farms would be displacing people, wildlife, and/or crops. Windmills displace crops, people, and wildlife too though perhaps not as bad. Hydro is great but there is no growth in that, we've already dammed up all the rivers worth a dam.
You know what would solve the problem TODAY? Nuclear power. I've done that math also and the only reason it's not being deployed widely is politics. If we regulated coal like we did nuclear power then we'd stop using coal for the radiation it releases. If we regulated nuclear like we did coal then we'd be building a new nuclear power plant in the USA every month, because it's "green", cheap, plentiful, and safe. It's cheaper, cleaner, safer, and more reliable than solar.
If you want to call me a liar then show where I lied. It's real easy to look on the internet and see that solar kills more people per megawatt-hour produced compared to nuclear. It's easy to see that nuclear power produced less CO2 than solar per megawatt-hour produced. I'm not the nutcase that fears nuclear power more than climate change. If you fear nuclear power more than climate change then climate change must not be much of a threat.
The dots are inserted by the printer firmware, not the driver.
I don't doubt that but the driver can insert dots too. Unless the firmware is complex enough to see these dots and know enough to not print them then the driver can insert dots that can render the firmware inserted dots unreadable.