how is that trolling?
you could either...
A) Turn your standard 15 watt tube on for 2 hours, get 2 hours of light, use 30 watts.
or...
B)Turn your glowing 15 watt tube on for 1 hour, get 1 hour of normal light and one hour of weaker glow, use 15 watts.
One obvious (at least to me) use for this that no one has mentioned yet is energy conservation. Just turn on your glowing fluorescent light, let it charge up, switch it off, and Ta-Da! you have light without using electricity for about an hour.
True, the light is much weaker than standard electric lighting, but it is a step in the right direction.
yea, improved regulation is definately needed, although i'm not sure how good of a job it would do. Coal is big business in KY, and the legislators and regulators don't like to do things to upset them. Groups like Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and Mountain Justice Summer are pushing for a ban on the practice, but they've met resistance all the way. And even if stricter regulations got passed, the improvements would be marginal as the inspectors rarely enforce things to the letter of the law.
however, the problem isn't merely a state one. Mountaintop Removal (MTR) is legal according to the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (SMRA) of 1975 (this type of mining has been going on for 30 years, but only recently with the advent of dragline cranes has it become huge). Under the SMRA, a parcel of land may be intensively strip-mined if the reclaimed mine land can be put to a "higher use" that wasn't previously available. Such vague language allows for pretty much anything, as most of the legislators around here consider anything besides a forest to be a higher use. (In Eastern KY former MTR land is used as real estate for building prisons and Wal-Marts)
But lets leave coal bashing aside for a moment. It's a solid fuel which causes reasonably little damage in it's extraction and transport. (As opposed to burning it which is a nightmare)
I'll argue with you about the "reasonably little damage" coal does in its extraction. Here in Kentucky (and most of Appalachia) the dominate form of coal mining is Mountaintop Removal. The name describes it pretty accurately - the coal company goes to a mountain, cuts all the timber off, dynamites the mountain, digs all the coal out with dragline cranes, and dumps all of the blasted rock into the nearby valley. This does more than a "little damage" to the surrounding area - flooding becomes common in nearby towns due to the lack of vegetation and topsoil on the mountain, the streams that form in the valleys during rainfall are covered, the soil is ruined (it will take around 500 years to return to normal) and the mountains are gone (lowered between 300-1000ft and flattened) forever.
I would suggest going here, here, and here to get a better idea of what coal is like in KY. (For a sense of scale, the crane in the second picture is about 200ft tall)
compare that to widespread sludge farms to grow your bacteria?
Just out of curiousity, why do you think that these tiny alternative fuel cars are little "death traps"? While they may not have the bulk of an SUV, they make up for it in improved handling and drastically reduced risk of roll-over. Also, the safety standards for SUVs are a joke. Because they are utility vehicles SUVs are not held to as strict of safety standards are smaller cars.
and also if you're building dams, has HUGE (and potentially adverse) impact on the environment.
Some of the adverse environmental impact is already in place in the form of water rentention dams, and with modifications these dams could be producing electricity.
I few months ago I attended a lecture at the University of Kentucky by Jack Spadaro (http://www.jackspadaro.com/), an accomplished mining engineer who helped draft much of the (poorly enforced) regulations for surface mining in the United States. At one point in the lecture he claimed that if all of the currently installed water retention dams in the West Virgina were converted to hydroelectric dams West Virginia could meet all of its power needs without using a single lump of coal.
As for wind power, I agree that it only works in certain areas, requires large tracts of land, and can be unreliable. But modern wind turbines have significantly reduced noise by improvements in production techniques and aerodynamics, and are no more noisy than traditional power plants (Buffalo Mountain in Tenneesee is a prime example). Also, the bird deaths at sites like Altamont should be seen in context - proportionally automobiles, radio towers, and skyscrapers each kill more birds than wind farms do, and newer wind turbines are designed to prevent birds from perching/nesting on them and rotate at slower speeds. I would suggest going here (http://www.cogreenpower.org/Wind.htm) for more information on the subject.
"But if Microsoft decides to use this new technology to harass the hell out of people, then they will come to Linux"
Doubt it. Even if Microsoft would be stupid enough to add further annoyance to their OS, it wouldn't prompt a mass switch to Linux, because as you said Linux is still too cumbersome for the average user. A mass switch to the Mac might happen, but again that is dependent on Microsoft being stupid enough (which they aren't) to make their software that much more annoying.
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how is that trolling? you could either... A) Turn your standard 15 watt tube on for 2 hours, get 2 hours of light, use 30 watts. or... B)Turn your glowing 15 watt tube on for 1 hour, get 1 hour of normal light and one hour of weaker glow, use 15 watts.
One obvious (at least to me) use for this that no one has mentioned yet is energy conservation. Just turn on your glowing fluorescent light, let it charge up, switch it off, and Ta-Da! you have light without using electricity for about an hour. True, the light is much weaker than standard electric lighting, but it is a step in the right direction.
yea, improved regulation is definately needed, although i'm not sure how good of a job it would do. Coal is big business in KY, and the legislators and regulators don't like to do things to upset them. Groups like Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and Mountain Justice Summer are pushing for a ban on the practice, but they've met resistance all the way. And even if stricter regulations got passed, the improvements would be marginal as the inspectors rarely enforce things to the letter of the law. however, the problem isn't merely a state one. Mountaintop Removal (MTR) is legal according to the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (SMRA) of 1975 (this type of mining has been going on for 30 years, but only recently with the advent of dragline cranes has it become huge). Under the SMRA, a parcel of land may be intensively strip-mined if the reclaimed mine land can be put to a "higher use" that wasn't previously available. Such vague language allows for pretty much anything, as most of the legislators around here consider anything besides a forest to be a higher use. (In Eastern KY former MTR land is used as real estate for building prisons and Wal-Marts)
Just out of curiousity, why do you think that these tiny alternative fuel cars are little "death traps"? While they may not have the bulk of an SUV, they make up for it in improved handling and drastically reduced risk of roll-over. Also, the safety standards for SUVs are a joke. Because they are utility vehicles SUVs are not held to as strict of safety standards are smaller cars.
Some of the adverse environmental impact is already in place in the form of water rentention dams, and with modifications these dams could be producing electricity.
I few months ago I attended a lecture at the University of Kentucky by Jack Spadaro (http://www.jackspadaro.com/), an accomplished mining engineer who helped draft much of the (poorly enforced) regulations for surface mining in the United States. At one point in the lecture he claimed that if all of the currently installed water retention dams in the West Virgina were converted to hydroelectric dams West Virginia could meet all of its power needs without using a single lump of coal.
As for wind power, I agree that it only works in certain areas, requires large tracts of land, and can be unreliable. But modern wind turbines have significantly reduced noise by improvements in production techniques and aerodynamics, and are no more noisy than traditional power plants (Buffalo Mountain in Tenneesee is a prime example). Also, the bird deaths at sites like Altamont should be seen in context - proportionally automobiles, radio towers, and skyscrapers each kill more birds than wind farms do, and newer wind turbines are designed to prevent birds from perching/nesting on them and rotate at slower speeds. I would suggest going here (http://www.cogreenpower.org/Wind.htm) for more information on the subject.