Nonsense. We just need the government to give us access to that "star gate" they've been hiding in Cheyenne mountain, and we can dump all the garbage we want into the sun, without having to worry about power issues.
Think armoured personnel carriers, armoured fighting vehicles, tanks, etc. Right now they generally use halon which, while fairly effective at putting out fires, also has a tendency to suffocate and/or poison anyone who survived the initial hit.
Well, at the point solar power runs out, we'd have to find a new planet anyway.
I was more concerned about the materials which go into panel production.
Also, all forms of energy generation require human workers. Who do you think digs up the coal, oil, and uranium?
The same types of people who dig up the materials needed to make your panels?
You'd need more resources (ergo, more people working) to build the damn panels in the first place, and THEN you'd need to hire tens of thousands of workers to service the panels. There's a reason why solar power is currently THE most expensive source of energy on the market, and is between 2 and 3 times more expensive over the lifespan of the panels when compared to nuclear (and 4-6 times more expensive than oil/coal).
Do you have any evidence that we'd need more workers per unit of solar power than for other forms of power?
You know, I had a really long comment written up, with figures showing you'd need upwards of 10,000,000 man hours to do a single cleaning, and extrapolating that to X number of full time workers and comparing it to number of workers needed to run a nuclear power plant.... but then I went and checked and it turns out solar panels don't need to be cleaned all that often. So, suffice it to say, I don't have any solid figures, and I don't think anyone else does at this point. We'd have to figure out a mean rate of failure, which would be different for different panel types, AND we'd have to figure out how often they need cleaning, which would be different for each area. You'd also have to worry about unexpected things, like tornadoes and other extreme weather (which don't generally affect nuclear power plants), and you'd have to worry about man-made problems, like Billy Bob and his cousin Cletus figuring out that there's millions of free panels sitting there for the taking. I'd say that it's fairly obvious that they would, at the very least, require a similar number of personnel as other forms of power generation, but I suspect the number would be far higher.
Quite true. A 100 mile by 100 mile solar power plant would provide all the electricity that the United States needs [americanen...ndence.com].
Yes, but how many mexicans would you need to keep the panels clean? 10,000? 100,000? 100,000,000?
Of course, the number of nuclear power plants needed to produce the same amount of electricity could fit in a 10 mile by 10 mile area. And they wouldn't need hordes of window-washers to keep operating at full capacity. Nor would they shut down at night time.
It would have the added benefit of never running out, as fossil fuels and fissile nuclear fuels do.
First you accuse me of posting figures which don't have a citation; after showing you that they, in fact, had multiple citations, you then quote "German" figures for which there are no citations whatsoever. So you're a hypocrite, at the very least. Worse than that, though, you completely ignore the Australian and UK figures in the same article, which are quite similar to the ones provided by the US, in favor of waving your unsourced German stats, which are completely out to lunch. So we have figures from 3 separate nations, all of which are sourced, and all of which show roughly the same trends, versus data from 1 country which isn't sourced and shows an entirely different trend. And you choose to go with the latter. ... What exactly did you do for "the energy industry", again? Sweep the floors?
As for the California figures, I already told you - they're based on figures after government subsidies. Here's the exact phrasing from the article: Note that the above figures incorporate tax breaks for the various forms of power plants. Subsidies range from 0% (for Coal) to 14% (for nuclear) to over 100% (for solar).
Looking at figures after subsidies is useless, unless your goal is to determine how you yourself can best make money - if we're looking at total cost of power generation, those figures tell us absolutely nothing.
Anyway, at this point, I'm convinced that you're being intentionally dishonest, so we're definitely done here. If you wish to discuss this further, I would - at the very least - expect you to acknowledge that your initial behavior was foolish, admit that this is not a question that can be answered by "common sense", and provide some data from a reputable source that supports your position. Otherwise, don't expect a response.
b) from the US government - and is just a table of costs, with no citations backing those costs;D
Yeah, I guess I must have imagined the part that says: "Source: Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2011, December 2010, DOE/EIA-0383(2010)" Yep, that's definitely not a citation. Not at all. It must be google adsense inserting random ads.
And this cite note? Yep, that's a figment of my imagination, also.
c) does only include the e.g. for nuclear plants, the direct cost related to the plant - e.g. not the cost to store the waste
"Total System Levelized Cost (the rightmost column) gives the dollar cost per megawatt-hour that must be charged over time in order to pay for the total cost."
If you would read your own citation and scroll down to the California levelized energy costs for different generation technologies in US dollars per megawatt hour (2007)
You are one dishonest bastard, you know that? First you complain that the citation is "only for the US", then you scroll down past the estimates provided by the UK and start talking about estimates for California. Nice. In the process, you also fail to mention that Californias estimates "incorporate tax breaks", which immediately disqualifies their figures from any serious consideration, AND you miss the Australian estimates which appear immediately below the Californian figures.
Either you're the worst scholar in the history of slashdot, or you're deliberately misrepresenting the data in order to support your preconceptions. Either way, I don't see much point to continuing this discussion.
Fair enough - I could be out to lunch on that point. I try to stay relatively well-informed about US politics, but I'm sure I miss some stuff here and there.
So are you only a socialist when it comes to nuclear power, or do you believe other critical national infrastructure like health care should be socialized as well?
Eh... it's complicated. On the one hand, I want government to remain as small as possible. On the other hand, I know that a minimalist-government system never works long term because people keep asking for more, and politicians are happy to use it as an opportunity to get more power. So, while I'm ideologically opposed to socialism as a rule, I'm willing to tolerate it in some circumstances. Since you asked about health-care specifically - I don't generally like our state-funded health-care, but I'd be less put-off by it if we still had a private option. Unfortunately, we do not. Now, we're lucky in that we can easily cross the border and get private care in the US, but it still pisses me off that there's no private option here.
Ideally I'd like to see the government acting only as an insurer, instead of the kind of iron-fisted rule they currently have over our health-care system.
As far as nuclear power is concerned, again, ideally I'd like to leave it up to private business, with the government just providing oversight for safety regulations. But I'm willing to compromise - if a private system means no power plants get built because everyone opposes them, while a government run system means we get to build new ones, then I'll go with the government option in a heartbeat.
No, that is your misconception. I don't need citations for stuff that is common knowledge, or should be common knowledge, depending what you define worthy to teach in schools.
Right. Everyone knows that Nuclear is the cheapest form of power, and wind and solar are the most expensive, therefore I don't need to provide any citations. Since my comment is common knowledge, you can engage in autofelatio if you don't agree.
Your last sentence: Which would put them well above the cost of coal, gas, etc. e.g. I know you just ended your post emotionally.. however the most expensive energy source, surprisingly is: gas.
Sorry, but it's common knowledge that gas power plants are completely free, due to leprechaun labour. Again, you lose.
Now, while I'm really enjoying your "anything I say doesn't require a citation" theory, I'll actually provide some info that you can check out when you're not busy trying to pass off personal opinions as facts. Enjoy:
Car accidents are a spectrum between minor rubbig while parking and a full head-on collision at a closing velocity of 250+ km/h. It's nearly impossible to determine the point at which one becomes "fatal".
No-one outside of America (and, I suspect, a whole lot of people inside America) would consider the Democrats to be Left-wing. They're Right-wing, just not so crazy Right-wing as the alternatives.
Not exactly. Since WW2, most nations have consistently slid to the left side of the political spectrum, embracing various degrees of socialism. So here, in Canada, even our "Conservatives" wouldn't dream of challenging socialised healthcare, social security, government funding for the arts, environment, etc. By the standards of past generations, that would make every party in Canada left-wing. Most first world nations are in a similar situation. So yeah, if you look at the US through the lens of your current society, both of their main parties are "right wing", but if you look at them in a historical context, they're the only ones who actually have a decent balance. And even the Republicans don't generally oppose some forms of socialism (eg. Social Security). If you combined the Libertarians fiscal policies with the Republicans social policies, only then would you have a "real" right-wing party.
Even better, AECL is currently developing the ACR-1000 which is based on the proven CANDU design but delivers more power, has improved safety mechanisms, is simpler to build and operate, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the government has decided to sell off AECL, so the future of these reactors seems nebulous at the moment.
I would be more likely to accept your claim that you "worked in the energy industries like 15 years" if your written responses didn't make you seem like a 12 year old. As for the citation, yes, you certainly do need to provide one. Saying "duh, wind and sun are teh free!" makes you sound like a simpleton. You need to consider construction costs, maintenance costs, general servicing costs, and average lifespan of the power plant. Without those figures you simply can not make any informed comment about the average cost of "renewables" vs other electrical production methods. So far, the limited data we have seems to indicate that wind and solar are at least as expensive as nuclear, if not more so. Which would put them well above the cost of coal, gas, etc.
I'll be all for nuclear as soon as someone can figure out how to ensure that enough checks are in place so that dumb/lazy/cheap people won't compromise its safety.
Label them critical national infrastructure and put the military in charge of building, maintaining, and operating them. It gives you a good reason to increase the military budget - which would keep the right-wing happy - while ensuring that profit and nepotism don't compromise safety - which should keep the lefties happy. You can even throw in an extra layer of civilian oversight, to include yearly inspections and procedural review.
Really, I think that there are already enough checks in place to ensure that safety isn't compromised. Three Mile Island was the worst disaster the US has had, and it was so minor that it's not even worth mentioning. Even this Japanese disaster - which is orders of magnitude worse than anything that's happened in the US - is unlikely to lead to a significant rise in the cancer rate. So I think the suggestion I made above is entirely unnecessary - but if you really want to improve safety and security, that's you best bet.
And that's what has happened in Canada. Lie to parliament and refuse to disclose information, BAM you're outa here.
Not really, no. The financial figures were a red herring - you don't dissolve a government over something so minor. I started receiving election fliers and phone-calls about two weeks earlier, so that tells you how big a surprise this was. All the parties wanted an election; the claims about the financial figures are a convenient excuse.
But just because you can say 'This person is now slightly better off' does not mean that the factory is a good thing.
This, right here, sums up the entire problem with your world view. I mean, your total ignorance of farming is an issue, also, but this is a much bigger problem. As long as you can go around saying "sure, these people are better off, but the factory is still TEH EEEEVIL!!", we really have nothing to discuss.
But instead of being poor people working 14 hours in unsafe factories, they could be poor people working 6 hours a day on land they own growing food.
See, I don't want to call you ignorant, because this is pretty typical for someone who grew up in a big city, and never left except for flying to a resort for a vacation. I would suggest that you do some research on the subject of farming, especially as it's generally practiced in low-tech agrarian societies. I can't discuss the subject with someone who honestly believes that farming is a 6-hour-a-day job.
Working in a factory is inherently more work
See above. There's a reason why these factory jobs are sought out by the locals.
so it's up to you to demonstrate factory workers are better off
Sure! It's quite simple: with the exception of forced labor, people generally choose the best work they can find ("best", of course, being a balance between money and effort that's different for each individual). If there are people working at these factories, and they aren't being forced to be there at gunpoint, then it means that the factory jobs are better than whatever other alternatives these people have. QED.
but apparently you cannot read the word 'slavery', and think I'm just making that up.
Oh, I know you're making it up. That's not even worth discussing. It's your other ideas that I'm curious about.
Says the person who snipped every single historic reference I made
Yep - none of your historical references were relevant to the discussion at hand. Moreover they're selective; you overemphasize the dangerous conditions in the factories, while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the workers were there willingly because their alternatives were worse, and ignoring the fact that one third of deaths during the "industrial revolution" were caused by disease. You have no grasp of what the situation was actually like at the time, because you can't fathom a society where malnutrition and the lack of awareness about basic hygiene are the norm. I mean, sure, maybe you've read about these things, but you clearly don't understand them if you're making these claims. To compare conditions during the industrial revolution to factories in China is so pigheaded that it's truly mind-boggling.
Too bad every economic system is unworkable since it doesn't follow the laws of thermodynamics.
Complete nonsense. Your understanding of economics is even worse than your understanding of physics. This is equivalent to the idiots who keep trying to tell me that evolution is impossible because of entropy.
Too bad communism can never work because of the existence of human nature and greed.
This is either true or false, depending on how you define communism, and the availability of resources within a given society. For most of human history and for most definitions of "communism", it's been true. There are some circumstances in which a non-authoritarian type of loose communism may be successful, but it won't happen in my lifetime.
Too bad you don't get off your butt to try to force a useful change like some of us.
An imperfect status-quo is infinitely better than the kind of changes that well-intentioned idiots want to make. As a German general once famously said:
I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!
If you were clever and lazy, I might trust you a bit more. If you could demonstrate to me that you know what you're doing and that your "change" will have a positive effect, you would have my complete support. However, as long as your attitude is "I don't know what I'm doing, but I want CHANGE!", I'll do my best to suppress you, since your zeal and incompetence are a dangerous combination.
So keep talking uselessly while the rest of us actually try something.
Yes, instead of working in a field they own and growing food to eat, they are working 14 hours a day in a factory and not getting paid enough to own the shit they're making. And getting killed by toxins for their trouble. If not beaten to death by the police if they attempt to strike.
That's much better than going out and growing some rice like they used to do.
Actually, yes, it is. You say they are "not getting paid enough to own the shit they're making" as if that's surprising - how many of them, do you imagine, could afford to own that "shit" if they were working as subsistence farmers? Do you honestly imagine that the oppressive attitude of the state would go away if they had no factories? How, exactly, do you imagine things would be better for them?
In my universe they're farmers who are perfectly capable of feeding themselves, like, uh, you just said, and they have managed to do for thousands of years.
You obviously don't have a very firm grasp of history.
See, if you're going to link to definitions of "ad-hominem", you should at least peruse the articles first, in order to make sure they support the point you're trying to make. For instance, from Wikipedia:
Common misconceptions Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name-calling" itself is not an ad hominem or a logical fallacy.[7][8][9][10][11] This is not to be confused with a true fallacy, which would be "X is idiotically ignorant [of politics], so why should we listen to him now?"
Also, I'm very hurt that you don't want to be my friend any more. If I promise not to make you feel dumb any more, will you take me off your enemies list? Please? Pretty, pretty please?
You don't get a legitimate right to take this holier-than-thou attitude when you provide no more proof of your counterclaims than I did my own
My apologies - I looked at your UID and assumed you knew how to use Google. I didn't realize you were still stuck with Ask Jeeves.
Unless you can irrefutably disprove my statements, calling me ignorant is just so much testosterone-fueled hot air
Well, I can, so I guess your statement doesn't apply?
I am aware of the cozy decades-long relationship between U.S. administrations and Saudi Arabia
*golf clap*
but the Bush family has had a profoundly deeper one than most.
You don't get a legitimate right to take this holier-than-thou attitude when you provide no more proof of your counterclaims than I did my own.
That isn't merely my contention.
Yeah, other ideologues say it, too. It must be true!
And there was not a genuine invasion of Iraq during the Clinton presidency;
Never said there was. Nice straw-man!
yes, there were air campaigns and strikes from afar, but no boots on the ground. That only happened during the two Bush presidencies. Not what I would call a "war".
Miriam Webster is your friend war noun, often attributive \wor\ Definition of WAR 1 a (1) : a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations (2) : a period of such armed conflict (3) : state of war b : the art or science of warfare c (1) obsolete : weapons and equipment for war (2) archaic : soldiers armed and equipped for war 2 a : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end c : variance, odds 3
I guess you'd like that changed? What shall the new definition be? How about:
war noun, often attributive \wor\ Definition of WAR 1 a : armed conflict between states, except when it's a democrat president killing brown people from the air. b: anything a republican does, including playing with puppies.
How does that sound?
Actually, if we're to be completely honest, I'd agree that we need to differentiate between different types of conflicts. However, if we're going to start redefining words, then Iraq and Afghanistan both stopped being wars around week 3 after the invasion and turned into police-actions / nation-building missions. As long as we continue calling them wars, you don't get to put a different label on what Clinton did.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of light artillery has a range of 600 miles?
AC-130?
Nonsense. We just need the government to give us access to that "star gate" they've been hiding in Cheyenne mountain, and we can dump all the garbage we want into the sun, without having to worry about power issues.
This must occur more often than I realize.
Think armoured personnel carriers, armoured fighting vehicles, tanks, etc. Right now they generally use halon which, while fairly effective at putting out fires, also has a tendency to suffocate and/or poison anyone who survived the initial hit.
Well, at the point solar power runs out, we'd have to find a new planet anyway.
I was more concerned about the materials which go into panel production.
Also, all forms of energy generation require human workers. Who do you think digs up the coal, oil, and uranium?
The same types of people who dig up the materials needed to make your panels?
You'd need more resources (ergo, more people working) to build the damn panels in the first place, and THEN you'd need to hire tens of thousands of workers to service the panels. There's a reason why solar power is currently THE most expensive source of energy on the market, and is between 2 and 3 times more expensive over the lifespan of the panels when compared to nuclear (and 4-6 times more expensive than oil/coal).
Do you have any evidence that we'd need more workers per unit of solar power than for other forms of power?
You know, I had a really long comment written up, with figures showing you'd need upwards of 10,000,000 man hours to do a single cleaning, and extrapolating that to X number of full time workers and comparing it to number of workers needed to run a nuclear power plant .... but then I went and checked and it turns out solar panels don't need to be cleaned all that often. So, suffice it to say, I don't have any solid figures, and I don't think anyone else does at this point. We'd have to figure out a mean rate of failure, which would be different for different panel types, AND we'd have to figure out how often they need cleaning, which would be different for each area. You'd also have to worry about unexpected things, like tornadoes and other extreme weather (which don't generally affect nuclear power plants), and you'd have to worry about man-made problems, like Billy Bob and his cousin Cletus figuring out that there's millions of free panels sitting there for the taking. I'd say that it's fairly obvious that they would, at the very least, require a similar number of personnel as other forms of power generation, but I suspect the number would be far higher.
Quite true. A 100 mile by 100 mile solar power plant would provide all the electricity that the United States needs [americanen...ndence.com].
Yes, but how many mexicans would you need to keep the panels clean? 10,000? 100,000? 100,000,000?
Of course, the number of nuclear power plants needed to produce the same amount of electricity could fit in a 10 mile by 10 mile area. And they wouldn't need hordes of window-washers to keep operating at full capacity. Nor would they shut down at night time.
It would have the added benefit of never running out, as fossil fuels and fissile nuclear fuels do.
Bullshit. Everything runs out eventually.
First you accuse me of posting figures which don't have a citation; after showing you that they, in fact, had multiple citations, you then quote "German" figures for which there are no citations whatsoever. So you're a hypocrite, at the very least. Worse than that, though, you completely ignore the Australian and UK figures in the same article, which are quite similar to the ones provided by the US, in favor of waving your unsourced German stats, which are completely out to lunch. So we have figures from 3 separate nations, all of which are sourced, and all of which show roughly the same trends, versus data from 1 country which isn't sourced and shows an entirely different trend. And you choose to go with the latter.
...
What exactly did you do for "the energy industry", again? Sweep the floors?
As for the California figures, I already told you - they're based on figures after government subsidies. Here's the exact phrasing from the article:
Note that the above figures incorporate tax breaks for the various forms of power plants. Subsidies range from 0% (for Coal) to 14% (for nuclear) to over 100% (for solar).
Looking at figures after subsidies is useless, unless your goal is to determine how you yourself can best make money - if we're looking at total cost of power generation, those figures tell us absolutely nothing.
Anyway, at this point, I'm convinced that you're being intentionally dishonest, so we're definitely done here. If you wish to discuss this further, I would - at the very least - expect you to acknowledge that your initial behavior was foolish, admit that this is not a question that can be answered by "common sense", and provide some data from a reputable source that supports your position. Otherwise, don't expect a response.
The citation you gave is:
a) for USA
Scroll down.
b) from the US government - and is just a table of costs, with no citations backing those costs ;D
Yeah, I guess I must have imagined the part that says:
"Source: Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2011, December 2010, DOE/EIA-0383(2010)"
Yep, that's definitely not a citation. Not at all. It must be google adsense inserting random ads.
And this cite note? Yep, that's a figment of my imagination, also.
c) does only include the e.g. for nuclear plants, the direct cost related to the plant - e.g. not the cost to store the waste
"Total System Levelized Cost (the rightmost column) gives the dollar cost per megawatt-hour that must be charged over time in order to pay for the total cost."
If you would read your own citation and scroll down to the California levelized energy costs for different generation technologies in US dollars per megawatt hour (2007)
You are one dishonest bastard, you know that? First you complain that the citation is "only for the US", then you scroll down past the estimates provided by the UK and start talking about estimates for California. Nice. In the process, you also fail to mention that Californias estimates "incorporate tax breaks", which immediately disqualifies their figures from any serious consideration, AND you miss the Australian estimates which appear immediately below the Californian figures.
Either you're the worst scholar in the history of slashdot, or you're deliberately misrepresenting the data in order to support your preconceptions. Either way, I don't see much point to continuing this discussion.
Fair enough - I could be out to lunch on that point. I try to stay relatively well-informed about US politics, but I'm sure I miss some stuff here and there.
So are you only a socialist when it comes to nuclear power, or do you believe other critical national infrastructure like health care should be socialized as well?
Eh ... it's complicated. On the one hand, I want government to remain as small as possible. On the other hand, I know that a minimalist-government system never works long term because people keep asking for more, and politicians are happy to use it as an opportunity to get more power. So, while I'm ideologically opposed to socialism as a rule, I'm willing to tolerate it in some circumstances. Since you asked about health-care specifically - I don't generally like our state-funded health-care, but I'd be less put-off by it if we still had a private option. Unfortunately, we do not. Now, we're lucky in that we can easily cross the border and get private care in the US, but it still pisses me off that there's no private option here.
Ideally I'd like to see the government acting only as an insurer, instead of the kind of iron-fisted rule they currently have over our health-care system.
As far as nuclear power is concerned, again, ideally I'd like to leave it up to private business, with the government just providing oversight for safety regulations. But I'm willing to compromise - if a private system means no power plants get built because everyone opposes them, while a government run system means we get to build new ones, then I'll go with the government option in a heartbeat.
No, that is your misconception.
I don't need citations for stuff that is common knowledge, or should be common knowledge, depending what you define worthy to teach in schools.
Right. Everyone knows that Nuclear is the cheapest form of power, and wind and solar are the most expensive, therefore I don't need to provide any citations. Since my comment is common knowledge, you can engage in autofelatio if you don't agree.
Your last sentence: Which would put them well above the cost of coal, gas, etc. e.g. I know you just ended your post emotionally .. however the most expensive energy source, surprisingly is: gas.
Sorry, but it's common knowledge that gas power plants are completely free, due to leprechaun labour. Again, you lose.
Now, while I'm really enjoying your "anything I say doesn't require a citation" theory, I'll actually provide some info that you can check out when you're not busy trying to pass off personal opinions as facts. Enjoy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_cost_of_electricity_generated_by_different_sources#U.S._Department_of_Energy_estimates
Car accidents are a spectrum between minor rubbig while parking and a full head-on collision at a closing velocity of 250+ km/h. It's nearly impossible to determine the point at which one becomes "fatal".
Oh ... wait ....
No-one outside of America (and, I suspect, a whole lot of people inside America) would consider the Democrats to be Left-wing. They're Right-wing, just not so crazy Right-wing as the alternatives.
Not exactly. Since WW2, most nations have consistently slid to the left side of the political spectrum, embracing various degrees of socialism. So here, in Canada, even our "Conservatives" wouldn't dream of challenging socialised healthcare, social security, government funding for the arts, environment, etc. By the standards of past generations, that would make every party in Canada left-wing. Most first world nations are in a similar situation. So yeah, if you look at the US through the lens of your current society, both of their main parties are "right wing", but if you look at them in a historical context, they're the only ones who actually have a decent balance. And even the Republicans don't generally oppose some forms of socialism (eg. Social Security). If you combined the Libertarians fiscal policies with the Republicans social policies, only then would you have a "real" right-wing party.
Even better, AECL is currently developing the ACR-1000 which is based on the proven CANDU design but delivers more power, has improved safety mechanisms, is simpler to build and operate, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the government has decided to sell off AECL, so the future of these reactors seems nebulous at the moment.
Or replace them with some other form of power generation, maybe?
I hear unicorn farts have a really good ROI.
I would be more likely to accept your claim that you "worked in the energy industries like 15 years" if your written responses didn't make you seem like a 12 year old. As for the citation, yes, you certainly do need to provide one. Saying "duh, wind and sun are teh free!" makes you sound like a simpleton. You need to consider construction costs, maintenance costs, general servicing costs, and average lifespan of the power plant. Without those figures you simply can not make any informed comment about the average cost of "renewables" vs other electrical production methods. So far, the limited data we have seems to indicate that wind and solar are at least as expensive as nuclear, if not more so. Which would put them well above the cost of coal, gas, etc.
I'll be all for nuclear as soon as someone can figure out how to ensure that enough checks are in place so that dumb/lazy/cheap people won't compromise its safety.
Label them critical national infrastructure and put the military in charge of building, maintaining, and operating them. It gives you a good reason to increase the military budget - which would keep the right-wing happy - while ensuring that profit and nepotism don't compromise safety - which should keep the lefties happy. You can even throw in an extra layer of civilian oversight, to include yearly inspections and procedural review.
Really, I think that there are already enough checks in place to ensure that safety isn't compromised. Three Mile Island was the worst disaster the US has had, and it was so minor that it's not even worth mentioning. Even this Japanese disaster - which is orders of magnitude worse than anything that's happened in the US - is unlikely to lead to a significant rise in the cancer rate. So I think the suggestion I made above is entirely unnecessary - but if you really want to improve safety and security, that's you best bet.
So lying to parliament to get legislation passed is minor in your opinion?
Careful now. You don't want to be making libelous claims without evidence.
I thought the previous Liberal governments were scum but Harper has taken every dirty trick they came up with and gone one step farther.
That's pretty funny :)
And that's what has happened in Canada. Lie to parliament and refuse to disclose information, BAM you're outa here.
Not really, no. The financial figures were a red herring - you don't dissolve a government over something so minor. I started receiving election fliers and phone-calls about two weeks earlier, so that tells you how big a surprise this was. All the parties wanted an election; the claims about the financial figures are a convenient excuse.
But just because you can say 'This person is now slightly better off' does not mean that the factory is a good thing.
This, right here, sums up the entire problem with your world view. I mean, your total ignorance of farming is an issue, also, but this is a much bigger problem. As long as you can go around saying "sure, these people are better off, but the factory is still TEH EEEEVIL!!", we really have nothing to discuss.
And yet you can give ZERO example of how or why I'm wrong, which totally makes any further thing you say null and void
That's easy: you're wrong because you don't follow the laws of thermodynamics.
A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
By the way, optical physics here, plus photobiology.
Really? Where'd you buy that? Dr. Nicks School for Scienticians?
But instead of being poor people working 14 hours in unsafe factories, they could be poor people working 6 hours a day on land they own growing food.
See, I don't want to call you ignorant, because this is pretty typical for someone who grew up in a big city, and never left except for flying to a resort for a vacation. I would suggest that you do some research on the subject of farming, especially as it's generally practiced in low-tech agrarian societies. I can't discuss the subject with someone who honestly believes that farming is a 6-hour-a-day job.
Working in a factory is inherently more work
See above. There's a reason why these factory jobs are sought out by the locals.
so it's up to you to demonstrate factory workers are better off
Sure! It's quite simple: with the exception of forced labor, people generally choose the best work they can find ("best", of course, being a balance between money and effort that's different for each individual). If there are people working at these factories, and they aren't being forced to be there at gunpoint, then it means that the factory jobs are better than whatever other alternatives these people have. QED.
but apparently you cannot read the word 'slavery', and think I'm just making that up.
Oh, I know you're making it up. That's not even worth discussing. It's your other ideas that I'm curious about.
Says the person who snipped every single historic reference I made
Yep - none of your historical references were relevant to the discussion at hand. Moreover they're selective; you overemphasize the dangerous conditions in the factories, while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the workers were there willingly because their alternatives were worse, and ignoring the fact that one third of deaths during the "industrial revolution" were caused by disease. You have no grasp of what the situation was actually like at the time, because you can't fathom a society where malnutrition and the lack of awareness about basic hygiene are the norm. I mean, sure, maybe you've read about these things, but you clearly don't understand them if you're making these claims. To compare conditions during the industrial revolution to factories in China is so pigheaded that it's truly mind-boggling.
Too bad every economic system is unworkable since it doesn't follow the laws of thermodynamics.
Complete nonsense. Your understanding of economics is even worse than your understanding of physics. This is equivalent to the idiots who keep trying to tell me that evolution is impossible because of entropy.
Too bad communism can never work because of the existence of human nature and greed.
This is either true or false, depending on how you define communism, and the availability of resources within a given society. For most of human history and for most definitions of "communism", it's been true. There are some circumstances in which a non-authoritarian type of loose communism may be successful, but it won't happen in my lifetime.
Too bad you don't get off your butt to try to force a useful change like some of us.
An imperfect status-quo is infinitely better than the kind of changes that well-intentioned idiots want to make. As a German general once famously said:
I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!
If you were clever and lazy, I might trust you a bit more. If you could demonstrate to me that you know what you're doing and that your "change" will have a positive effect, you would have my complete support. However, as long as your attitude is "I don't know what I'm doing, but I want CHANGE!", I'll do my best to suppress you, since your zeal and incompetence are a dangerous combination.
So keep talking uselessly while the rest of us actually try something.
Deal. Have fun!
Yes, instead of working in a field they own and growing food to eat, they are working 14 hours a day in a factory and not getting paid enough to own the shit they're making. And getting killed by toxins for their trouble. If not beaten to death by the police if they attempt to strike.
That's much better than going out and growing some rice like they used to do.
Actually, yes, it is. You say they are "not getting paid enough to own the shit they're making" as if that's surprising - how many of them, do you imagine, could afford to own that "shit" if they were working as subsistence farmers? Do you honestly imagine that the oppressive attitude of the state would go away if they had no factories? How, exactly, do you imagine things would be better for them?
In my universe they're farmers who are perfectly capable of feeding themselves, like, uh, you just said, and they have managed to do for thousands of years.
You obviously don't have a very firm grasp of history.
See, if you're going to link to definitions of "ad-hominem", you should at least peruse the articles first, in order to make sure they support the point you're trying to make. For instance, from Wikipedia:
Common misconceptions
Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name-calling" itself is not an ad hominem or a logical fallacy.[7][8][9][10][11]
This is not to be confused with a true fallacy, which would be "X is idiotically ignorant [of politics], so why should we listen to him now?"
Also, I'm very hurt that you don't want to be my friend any more. If I promise not to make you feel dumb any more, will you take me off your enemies list? Please? Pretty, pretty please?
You don't get a legitimate right to take this holier-than-thou attitude when you provide no more proof of your counterclaims than I did my own
My apologies - I looked at your UID and assumed you knew how to use Google. I didn't realize you were still stuck with Ask Jeeves.
Unless you can irrefutably disprove my statements, calling me ignorant is just so much testosterone-fueled hot air
Well, I can, so I guess your statement doesn't apply?
I am aware of the cozy decades-long relationship between U.S. administrations and Saudi Arabia
*golf clap*
but the Bush family has had a profoundly deeper one than most.
You don't get a legitimate right to take this holier-than-thou attitude when you provide no more proof of your counterclaims than I did my own.
That isn't merely my contention.
Yeah, other ideologues say it, too. It must be true!
And there was not a genuine invasion of Iraq during the Clinton presidency;
Never said there was. Nice straw-man!
yes, there were air campaigns and strikes from afar, but no boots on the ground. That only happened during the two Bush presidencies. Not what I would call a "war".
Miriam Webster is your friend
war
noun, often attributive \wor\
Definition of WAR
1
a (1) : a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations (2) : a period of such armed conflict (3) : state of war
b : the art or science of warfare
c (1) obsolete : weapons and equipment for war (2) archaic : soldiers armed and equipped for war
2
a : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism
b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end
c : variance, odds 3
I guess you'd like that changed? What shall the new definition be? How about:
war
noun, often attributive \wor\
Definition of WAR
1
a : armed conflict between states, except when it's a democrat president killing brown people from the air.
b: anything a republican does, including playing with puppies.
How does that sound?
Actually, if we're to be completely honest, I'd agree that we need to differentiate between different types of conflicts. However, if we're going to start redefining words, then Iraq and Afghanistan both stopped being wars around week 3 after the invasion and turned into police-actions / nation-building missions. As long as we continue calling them wars, you don't get to put a different label on what Clinton did.