Not again
Yup. It’s a necessary evil when you run a business. Employees. Ugh. Who the fuck needs ’em?
Regarding yesterday’s brouhaha, I’m gonna poke the fucking bear, because some of the comments were fucking ridiculous.
OK, so. As the comedian I linked yesterday pointed out: Say you don’t believe in climate change. Fine, it’s a free country, you can choose to rabidly, angrily disbelieve any of it, for whatever bullshit reason you rationalize. Fair.
Now, answer the question: what’s wrong with moving our country to cleaner, more efficient energy than fossil fuels? As 2 the Gryphon pointed out: Even if all climate change data is worng, you get cleaner air, water, and land. What’s the fucking problem? Why do so many people scream and hate and rage and rail when their precious gasoline economy is threatened? Do you own stocks in Texaco? Does your family come from a long line of oil barons? Do you have a fetish for natural gas and crude oil? Seriously, there’s a small contingent, any time that climate change is brought up, who just rage and froth and hop around like someone just showed them pictures of their mother sucking wholesale dicks. What’s the problem? I’m seriously asking.
I do believe that climate change is occurring. I’m not a militant about it. But we now have the technology to have cars powered by the sun, and homes powered by wind. Seriously. You can even pick that shit up at Walmart. So what’s your beef? Why does the idea of solar and wind power piss you off to the same degree that Obama would if he pissed on a bible and punched your grandmother in the face?
This isn’t a strawman either. I’ve worked with more than a handful of people who straight got livid if the words “global warming” came up in a conversation. In person. Not the internet. When I did this comic back in 2009, I got a big steaming inbox of livid hatred from the freeps.
Why does this topic inspire you to such ridiculous hatred? Couldn’t you repurpose that rage into some other, more beneficial activity? Like picking up trash at a local park?
If this post pisses you off again, blow me. Just settle the fuck down, have a Coke, and tell me why, exactly, you get so rabid.
Couple of years ago, the Arizona Repugnant ran a poll. Real simple question, yes or no:
“If you could convert your home to run entirely on solar power for free, would you?”
I disremember the exact numbers, but significantly over 30% of the responses were NO.
WHAT. THE. STEAMING. FIDDLY. BLUE-EYED. FUCK.
I’m sure in AZ sun availability is not a problem, but here in Maryland, I def. wouldn’t go 100% solar. I’d be without power more than is acceptable. Now solar with backup? No problem.
Believe it or not, Arizona is not all sunny. Flagstaff for instance gets a good amount of snow. Payson and Prescott are also within the reach of the Republic, and they get significantly less sunshine than Phoenix. A lot of the homes among the tall pines won’t have enough sunlight in a 24 hour period to charge the panels for the night.
I can tell you exactly why, and I run my RV purely off of solar. Solar panels cost a lot, and can be damaged by hail(still roughly a dollar per watt). The Republic has a reach beyond the valley. There’s a significant portion of Arizonans who are already living on solar, and know the issues. And some of them have already experienced the limitations of overnight power usage.
As I said, I currently run my RV purely off of solar. I have an old loud champion generator that never leaves the shed. I still wouldn’t convert my home to pure solar. Maintenance is the killer there.
I get worked up about it because it’s bullshit.The Carbon Economy makes people a lot of money and they don’t follow thier rules since they still use big cars and fly alot. It gives big business credits to pollute.
I don’t support renewable energy because it doesn’t bring a return anywhere near enough that an oil or gas power plant brings. I know since I know people who work for wind powwer farms and not only do they not generate enough energy they take up electricity when it’s not windy since the motors have to keep running.
So Man made global warming?BULLSHIT!
I will do it, just because it’s the right thing to do. I just won’t over-pay for it – a lot of the crap the Ultra Greenies are pushing for is nowhere near ready for prime-time, and the rest is still way overpriced because the standards haven’t settled out.
Right now there are gasoline powered cars where the air out the tailpipe is cleaner than it was going in – and yet they want more. Half the price of a modern car is Safety and Emissions gear, we’ve reached the point of Diminishing Returns – and yet they want more.
Silicon Solar Cell Panels and the inverters to connect them to the Grid still cost almost as much to make as the energy they generate back. The Solar Boiler generating plants have the efficiency, but you have to hide them in desert canyons so you don’t blind pilots. And for both you have to build massive pumped-storage lakes to have energy for overnight.
CNG and LNG are perfect for cars and trucks – CNG has real spotty availability, and virtually none for LNG yet outside of private filling stations for truck fleets even though it’s got much better density.
We’ve got a half-dozen competing and mutually incompatible “Standards” just for electric car charging. And “Battery Pack swapping” can’t work, someone’s going to get stuck with the Hot Potato of a bad pack and their car dies halfway to nowhere. You could use power pickup for long trips, but see the next paragraph…
And interstate highways (inductive pickup) and rail lines (overhead catenary) are a natural for electrification – plus that power lead down the center of the lane is instant Self-Driving Car – but it’s Chicken or Egg. They can’t build the Hybrid cars and trucks and trains to use them till the powered lanes and catenary wires exist. And that starts with getting the solar plants built and the power grids beefed up as you cross the wide open plains and the deserts, so there’s juice to use.
I could go on, but you get the point – I hope.
XKCD putting it in perspective: xkcd: 4.5 Degrees
“Couldn’t you repurpose that rage into some other, more beneficial activity? Like picking up trash at a local park?”
I feel the same way any time environmentalists lecture/shame/berate me for dumping all my cans/bottles in with the rest of my trash, taking a 40min shower, and enjoying the luxury of air conditioning. Their rage is actually more obnoxious, because it’s got that holier-than-thou air of elitist indignation to it. Meanwhile, they take to the streets in meaningless protest and leave more trash and a bigger carbon footprint than I could create in a year.
It’s not that I hate the planet or want to dump toxins in the air and water – it’s just that I’m sick of these self-righteous hypocritical fucks trying to dictate my life, while not even TRYING to live by the same standards they’d have imposed on me. Screw them. If someone else’s ideology requires MY effort against my will (or with no benefit, as -I- define the term, to me), then they can go pound sand.
As for global whatever – look, I’m all for science, but not for science being treated like a religion. At the end of the day, if the Earth isn’t going to be rendered uninhabitable in the next 50 years, then WGAF. It comes down to this: if the technology is advanced enough that we can realistically provide for a first-world nation’s energy needs with renewable sources – go for it. Hell, it’d be economically stupid NOT to. But if that tech ISN’T there, or it’s not realistic, or it’s not cost/benefit efficient – then let’s not pretend like it is just for sake of patting ourselves on the back at how “green” we are.
Yeah, because WGAF how our kids’ and grandkids’ lives are. Congratulations on being a selfish, shortsighted asshole. If that makes me obnoxious, so be it.
If I don’t have kids or grandkids, why would that be a concern to me?
Even if I DID – I inherited the world I came into just as they will. Where do I live now? A post-New Deal State in which the sovereign continues amassing power that I’m effectively helpless to do anything about, where my rights are abrogated by a bunch of sanctimonious SOBs lecturing me about a “greater good” that comes at my expense and not theirs. You think I asked for that? You think my parents and my grandparents thought that to be a “better world” for their kids and grand kids? Hell no.
We all live in a world that was screwed up by the people who lived here before us. I deal with it. Your kids and their kids can too.
(Friggin’ mod filters.)
You are just lazy. Don’t pretend you don’t recycle because some strawman hippy protesters are even more wasteful than you.
Some of us down because we understand, other than aluminum, its a net drain on resources.
And the paper industry has created more forest on our planet because they need to replenish their stock material. Im all for reusing things, and fixing them. But most of the recycling crap is just a political and economic game.
Don’t.. not down.
Net drain on resources? Citation on that? It’s not about trees and saving the environment anyway, it’s about where the garbage is going. In my county, for example, we have one landfill. Every bit of garbage that goes in it is removing capacity from it, when it is full, we have to go to the next landfill that is further away costing more to both transport the garbage there, and pay their higher out of county tipping fee. All of those that do recycle, are subsidizing your wastefulness.
I can cite the common sense of it, but nothing more. Consider: Aluminum takes so much less work to reclaim than to mine that they’re willing to pay you a noteworthy amount to give them back your cans.
The glass industry also pays for recycled bottles of some types, but since I can’t find many places purposed entirely for paying people to turn in glass, I’m putting a pin in it for now.
Why does the paper industry not pay you to turn in used paper?
Are there any other commonly reclaimed materials that one can drop in a curbside recycle bin which the industry in question is willing to pay you to give them, directly?
If you can think of any, then they’re probably worth recycling. If not, then they’re, well, shit.
You’re absolutely right! I am lazy. I could give a rats ass about recycling. I love lazing about in a hot shower.
So what?
Those are things environmentalists care about – not me. Why should I be doing the legwork for something they care about and I don’t?
If anything, if environmentalists were at all committed to their ideals – they’d be doing DOUBLE duty. Not only would they be going through their own trash – they’d be going through mine too. Why? Because they (allegedly) “care about the planet.”
But god forbid right? No, they need ME to exercise THEIR virtues FOR them.
It’s no different whatsoever than if a Christian forced them to go to church on Sunday.
Your analogy with religion sucks and is wrong. It is different because resources are finite and shared by everyone, religion doesn’t even fit into that dynamic. And actually don’t I give a shit about the planet or hugging trees either. I care about my costs going up, because lazy a-holes like you don’t pull your fair share and expect others to do double to make up for their sloth. We all have to pay to have water shipped to our city, we all have to pay to have our garbage sent somewhere. You are simply a horrible human trying to justify being an asshole.
I disagree. The analogy works just fine. You’re talking about ideology: environmental ideology. “You should do [X].” “You should not do [Y].” You assert a set of principles and actions that are Right and Wrong.
I disagree with those principles. Yet, you seem to think I should be obliged to them anyway – against my will. How is that any different than a Christian forcing you into their church?
The fact that resources are finite is irrelevant. Even if you’re taking a communitarian “shared by everyone” stance, as opposed to a “save the planet” one – it’s still the imposition of an ideology you’d like me to practically server through action, when I don’t want to. (For whatever reason I have, including simple laziness.)
You care about your costs going up? What if I don’t? If your concern is costs, then we’re back to the same answer: it’s on YOU to do something about it, not me. I don’t care about your costs, and it’s not my responsibility to take action to minimize them for you. Think recycling will lower your costs? Fine – there’s my garbage. It’s all yours to go through. Go lower your costs at expense of YOUR OWN effort, not mine.
You say “fair share?” I say go fuck yourself. Who gets to define that anyway, and on what basis? At the end of the day, you want something from me to serve an end I don’t care about. There’s only two ways that works: force, or coersion.
If you try and force me, I’ll just rebel. But I could theoretically be coerced. Just answer me one simple question: what’s in it for me? (If you want to PAY me to recycle, for instance… And no, a “tax break” doesn’t count.)
Yay, that old line again! “If you car so much, you try twice as hard to cut yoru emissions and I’ll carry on the same way as before.”
Do us a favour and post your photograph and address, and some photographs of your kids too, AT. We’re all very keen to make sure WE don’t waste OUR effort pulling YOU or THEM out of any rivers or stopping any of YOUR family from bleeding out any time you need OUR help. There’s clearly nothing in it for us, after all.
You might want to go cool down for a bit, then come back and read that second paragraph over again.
What you wrote could very easily be seen as a thinly veiled threat. Now, I’m not saying that you were threatening him or his family, but it could be seen that way quite easily.
The purpose of debate is to sway the other party and the audience into agreeing with your premise. That paragraph not only fails at doing that, but probably drove people towards agreeing with your opponent, making it a critical failure.
It was aimed at AT, and AT got it: “If you don’t care what impact your life has on other people and won’t do a thing for them, other people won’t care what impact their lives have on you and shouldn’t be expected to do anything for you.” That’s what it means and it’s what it was taken to mean.
Also, it came 53 minutes after AT said: “If I don’t have kids or grandkids, why would that be a concern to me? Even if I DID – I inherited the world I came into just as they will.”
I’m good, if a little out of practice, but not even I can be a credible threat to someone who doesn’t exist.
That’s a fair, albeit emotional, response. But here’s the thing: all those things you describe are acts of charity, samaritanism, or otherwise good will. But they’re not moral obligations. If I get hit by a car and am bleeding in the street – you could choose not to help me, and morally you’d have done no wrong (legally I think there are some affirmative duty to rescue statutes – but they’re not relevant to the moral issue). You don’t owe me or mine help (or anything else for that matter); and my rights are not deprived BY you, by you NOT helping.
You help because you WANT to, and/or you see VIRTUE in doing so. Or, maybe you help because you expect a reward (material or spiritual). Either way, it’s voluntary.
Environmentalism, however, acts with force. They want to COMPEL the charity. (Apparently the contradiction there is lost on them.) Environmentalism doesn’t ASK me to recycle in an act of charity – it passes laws MANDATING that I recycle, with penalties if I don’t. Environmentalism doesn’t ASK me to stop using incandescent bulbs – it passes laws banning them, and removes the choice to use them. Environmentalism doesn’t ASK me to use less water in the shower – it regulates the showerheads. (I got quite the satisfaction at disassembling and ripping the little control chip out of mine, and now my shower is like a waterfall. Suck it California.)
You want me to take actions consistent with environmental ideology, like I said: tell me what’s in it for me.
And no, a clean and healthy planet for the next generations isn’t a valid answer. Not just because I’m selfish and don’t care about them, but because I also do not put stock in the doom and gloom apocalyptic predictions of environmental hysteria. So, you’ll have to come up with a better reason than that.
If I wanted you to help me out of the street while I bleed, you can bet I’d be willing to cover your costs in doing so.
Let me know when an industry does that for recycling, or alternative energy, and then you’ll have passed the Heinlein test: “Never rely on a man’s ‘better nature’. He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.”
Notably: When the industry pays for your crushed cans, people save these crushed cans. Want my paper? Guess what you should do.
“At the end of the day, if the Earth isn’t going to be rendered uninhabitable in the next 50 years, then WGAF.”
Anyone currently under 30 years old, anyone who has children currently under 30 years old and anyone who has children who are currently looking for a partner with whom to raise children, for a start.
So you think that Earth will no longer be capable of sustaining human life within the next 50 years? If so, on what do you base this horribly pessimistic fate?
Ah, no. You asked who gives a **** if the Earth ceases to be habitable for humans as long as it takes more than 50 years from now for it to happen. I supplied a few examples.
I believe the Earth’s ability to sustain human life is being degraded by over-exploitation. We’re using up resources that aren’t being replaced, and without them the world will be a less human-friendly place. It’s not going to go to zero inside 50 years. Several thousand would survive even if Yellowstone blew up tomorrow and a kilometre-wide rock slammed down into the Indian Ocean at 60km/s. The world could still sustain human life after that. For it to be completely incapable of sustaining any human life at all would take something immense …
Of course, whatever’s going to happen “by 2050” or “in the next 50 years” or “by the end of the century” isn’t going to wait until the last second to do it. It’s not like we’ll just carry on, unaffected, until November 2049 and then *BAM* the sea comes up 50cm, the weather patterns shift and everybody goes: “WHOA! DUDE! WHOA! What just happened? This place was freezing like 2 minutes ago!” then in November 2099 the sea jumps up another 50cm, the weather patterns shift again and Martha’s Knitwear sells out of sweaters, cardigans, yarn, knitting needles and patterns and How To Knit books in one mad afternoon of customers wrapped in quilts desperately seeking layers. There’ll be stuff going on all the way.
If the Earth is going to be just fine and humans are going to continue to be able to live on it – then what’s the problem? Those who are wringing their hands giving a **** have nothing to worry about. “Degraded” by over-exploitation isn’t “dead.” This is why, frankly, I don’t give a damn about environmentalism. The question I ask myself and its answer are: “Is this going to be a real, actual problem that affects my life in a significant and negative way? No? Then who cares.” If every polar bear drowned tomorrow (though despite the hysterics of a half-decade ago they’re in no danger of that), how would your life be affected? It wouldn’t. So who cares.
By the way, what exactly does that means, specifically – “degraded by over-exploitation”? It’s a pretty vague way of describing what’s actually going to happen to Earth’s ability to sustain human life.
Higher up in the thread you’re going on about natural resources – but let’s not be stupid here. There is so much oil and coal all over this world that we could easily meet our energy needs with it exclusively for another dozen generations. There might be polluting effects to that (see: China), but absent a demonstrable, significant harm to our everyday lives – and there isn’t one – there’s no impetus to find something different. Should we look? Absolutely! (Though, with PRIVATE research – not with taxpayer dollars. I cringe to think how much of THAT has been pissed away on environmental boondoggles.) But absent an ACTUAL alternative that meets the needs of a first world nation, we’re not talking realistically.
You kind of define “degraded” as a “less human-friendly place” – but, dude, Earth has ALWAYS been unfriendly to humans. Natural disasters have plagued us for eons. We’re omnivores that don’t come naturally equipped with particularly strong physical attributes with which to hunt and kill food; and our nutritional requirements are more than the flora world can provide. Our bodies are more sensitive to heat, cold, hunger, and exposure. Homo sapien’s strength has always been in adaptation through rational ingenuity. We built tools. We crafted clothes. We erected shelters. We developed agriculture and technology. If the icecaps were to melt and the world were covered in water, we’d figure out and invent a way to survive there too. That’s what humans DO when the natural world is “less human-friendly” to them. That’s why I always laugh at the idiots who think we need to (or can) prevent climate change. Hahaha, no we don’t – we just need to adapt to it (and if it’s slowly progressive like you say, all the better). Unless we’re talking about an uninhabitable Earth in the near future, which you deny.
(And you still haven’t answered the question that would validate your entire argument: what’s in it for me? But I’m not holding my breath – environmentalism doesn’t have an answer to that one.)
Well, since you asked nicely… You’re right, there’s nothing wrong with what you’re describing. The issue for me isn’t about the veracity of GC, nor the results of shifting to cleaner methods of energy production, but rather the means by which people propose we get there. I believe we should do it, but by we I mean individuals convinced of the veracity of the problem and voluntarily addressing those problems as their means allow. If that’s what you mean too then we have no disagreement.
The problem is, most of the rabid GC crowd aren’t talking in those terms. And that is what I take issue with.
For the record, just purchased a new car that gets 10MPG better than the car it replaced (pushing 40mpg), would love to have a Tesla some day, and am in the process of putting solar on my house via Solar City. Why yes, I do enjoy the way Elon Musk thinks.
I’ll give you two reasons for “what’s wrong with moving our country to cleaner, more efficient energy than fossil fuels”.
1) Particle or aerosol forcing. This is the effect of atmospheric particulate pollution on albedo. Generally they are considered to exert a cooling influence. IOW, they act to reduce or ameliorate climatological warming. If you believe in HCGW you want this. Get rid of it and you accelerate the warming, whatever its cause may be. It may in fact be the reason for the fact that observed warming has been so much less than the climate models have predicted.
2) Economics. No good ever came from governments trying to force outcomes which were contrary to those the market was producing. It tends to run terribly afoul of the law of unintended consequences, and it is by definition more costly than what it seeks to replace. The great and abiding boon which a free market produces is that, in economist-speak, it allocates scarce resources to their most valued uses, and does it without extraneous costs because it happens automatically through the interactions of millions of people and firms. Central planning must substitute deliberate actions for this automatic process, and each action carries a cost which the market solution doesn’t. It is also slow and ponderous, and tends to suffer from bureaucratic dysfunctions in the planning and implementation processes. And at present it would require this sort of central planning and a coercive regulatory regime to bring about the obsolescence of fossil fuels.
2) Economics. No good ever came from governments trying to force outcomes which were contrary to those the market was producing. It tends to run terribly afoul of the law of unintended consequences, and it is by definition more costly than what it seeks to replace.
Because the free market produced the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, right? Los Angeles actually has sunny days, not smoggy days, because of market pressures, not regulatory ones? We’re no longer breathing lead from car exhaust because the market wholeheartedly embraced Patterson’s research on airborne lead poisoning when he first published it in 1965, right?
Oh, wait, that all happened through a coercive regulatory regime…
Have you considered the possibility that government-imposed limits on the height of buildings is to blame for the massive sprawl of LA, and thereby also responsible for much of the smog problem?
Did NYC ever have a smog problem to the degree that LA did? What about Chicago, Philadelphia, or Boston?
Everything that the government does to restrict private industry will result in unintended consequences. In many cases, these consequences are worse than the problem government originally set out to fix.
Those regulations on building height? What regulations?
Los Angeles sits in a coastal basin at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains, just the way Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York don’t. The mountains prevent air masses from easily leaving the basin.
I’ll point out that ‘many cases’ is not the same thing as ‘all cases’, nor even ‘most cases’. And that laws that implement new regulations have a tendency to be challenged in court. Isn’t that the proper venue in which ‘consequences’ get judged as to their harm?
In response to the author’s rant, the answer is very simple. Because it won’t work. It can’t.
First off, most so-called “clean” energies aren’t. When you count copper mining and manufacturing costs, et al, most ‘clean’ energies have as big or bigger environmental costs. BUT, before you light up another strawman again, note I didn’t say said technologies shouldn’t be used, period.
Which leads us to the fundamental issue; Yes, we can ADD ‘clean’ energies to the supply, but they cannot *replace* so-called “dirty” energies. For example, we cannot run passenger aircraft on electricity. Perhaps in the future when we have micro-fusion-reactors or a supercapacitor battery that is a hundredth the weight and ten thousand times the capacity of any current super battery, yes, we’ll be able to. But today, and likely for the distant forseeable future, no, passenger aircraft must run on fossil fuels.
And even when electrics have uses- such as in cars- they are still not universal. For those outside the Sun Belt, below-freezing temperatures (which many parts of the US and Canada see for upwards of six months of the year) can cut the mileage of an electric down to single digits. For similar reasons solar (thermal or photovoltaic) are also limited- useful, at best, as a booster, but unworkable as a primary source.
Again, alternative sources can be *added* to the supply, but they will not, and can not, supplant traditionals entirely.
Which leads to the vitriol you speak of receiving. Here the problem is that the typical environmentalist line is “something must be done NOW!!!” Regardless of demand, the state of the technology or the detriment to the average person, we’re told we need to immediately shut down every single coal plant (literally impossible, unless you want about a quarter of a million people to freeze next winter) we must park and crush every single gas-burning car (again, impossible) and switch every industry away from fossil fuels (equally and utterly impossible.)
THERE is source of the hate. It will take years- decades, really- for many of the so-called ‘clean’ sources to mature to the point they can supply more than a fraction of our total energy needs, but the environmentalists say we have to switch NOW, regardless of the economic impacts.
Yes, we need to *add* to the ‘clean’ sources, but do it as the technology matures, not mandated by presidential fiat.
Doc.
Only a quarter of a million? That is a very generous estimate, would likely be millions.
I like the idea of solar and wind power too. I think that’s great. My main point is, and has always been, if you promote those things with a foundation of lies then the person doing that is hurting their cause. It’s been proven that global warming is bunk (yes I have sources) and it’s been proven there was an attempt to sell it (again, I do have sources) and it’s also been proven that quite a few powerful folks stood to gain by the spreading of that lie.
It’s like the whole rainforest lie that Sting started way back when. “X amount of the rainforest is disappearing each year.” No, it wasn’t. He admitted it. And in that lie, he hurt the real environmentalist movement. Real environmentalism embraces science. Science admits when it’s wrong.
I agree, the superior solar and wind technologies should be allowed to flourish. Remove government involvement, and allow the market to prove their utility.
After all, if they need government grants to survive, then somebody is lying their ass off about how viable these techs are.
You know the power and oil industry have plenty of government involvement of their own right? Look up Duke Energy and Florida. If those a-holes had to compete for service they would no longer exist.
No, we do not have the technology. If we did, you would see it. You can give me all the bullshit about the big evil energy companies buying up all the patents or any other conspiracy you want, but it’s the 21st century and we live in a free market. If someone could make a viable car that seated 4, did 0-60 in under 10 seconds, get a top speed of 100 mph, pass all the safety regulations, cost under 40 grand (hell, maybe even 100 grand), and not need anything other than to sit in the sun, I promise you they would be fucking EVERYWHERE. I would have 2. None of the cars out there are significantly better at saving the planet than any other, so those of you who bought a prius so you could drive around at 40 in the fast lane with a shit eating grin because of how much better a person you are, that little plastic wonder car you drive uses big honking batteries. You should look up what it takes to make gigantic batteries and how terrible it is on the environment to produce them. Wind and solar cannot meet our current demands with our current technology, period. If it could, it would, because it would be cheaper than fossil fuels. Despite the ideal that people who are against alternative energy are some kind of planet hating super villains from captain planet, energy companies don’t want to pollute the places they have to live in. They are in it to make money, and fossil fuels are currently the only viable solution. If you don’t like it, go make a solar panel with more than 30% efficiency, or a wind generator that works at less than 15 mph gusts. It isn’t that simple. Oh and for those about to call bullshit on my statements, I have an engineering degree to back up my beliefs.
I am fairly sure that the earth is warming. I am not totally sold on humans being the primary driving factor, simply because there are known periods of warming and cooling that have happened multiple times in our earth’s history. The absolute bottom line is this: In order for us as a species to make any noticeable improvement in the rate of global warming, we would have to severely compromise our current standard of living. How much? I am not exaggerating when I say that literally millions of people would have to die from starvation, dehydration, or exposure. If you find that an acceptable solution, then get on the horn with the UN and get the death camps warmed up. Personally, I believe that, just like the dinosaurs, our number may be up soon. I would rather that we as a species go out on top, possibly blissfully unaware, than scrape by huddling together in a hut on a barren plain.
But hey, that’s just me.
Have you look into the Tesla? It does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, it has a top speed of 120mph, it has 5 star safety rating (and even broke the testing machine).
While It cannot sit in the sun and charge (hint no car will in around 80 years) you can just plug it into a dryer socket at your home and charge it for less than what it takes you to feel your sedan. It varies by electricity cost but even if you pay .30 kwh it still 15$ cheaper to fill than fuel up my gas Jetta.
As you said yes the batteries are a bit toxic but the same company that makes the car will take those batteries after they expire and reuse them for solar energy collection. The batteries last around 10 years(obviously depends on miles too but normal usage of a car yearly will net those 10 years) after that they take them free of charge and supposedly use them for around 10 more years and then recycle them to make new ones.
The price for the 3.9 seconds Tesla is 85,000$ but they start at 71,000$ without tax credits 63,570 after tax credits.
Does your per-mile cost analysts include the cost of replacing the batteries?
Historically, the ugly truth with electric vehicles is that the batteries don’t last forever. Not only are they prohibitively expensive to replace, but both their manufacture and disposal are extremely environmentally nasty.
It also doesn’t help the environmental calculus that the energy generation in the U.S. breaks down to roughly 39% coal, 27% natural gas, 19% nuclear, 7% hydro, 6% misc. renewable.
There’s a reason why many on the right refer to plug-in electric vehicles as “coal powered cars.”
We just “hope” there’s an economy of scale in not having to lug the coal burner with us, and aren’t losing more over the transmission losses in high-tension lines.
If someone could make a viable car that seated 4, did 0-60 in under 10 seconds, get a top speed of 100 mph, pass all the safety regulations, cost under 40 grand (hell, maybe even 100 grand), and not need anything other than to sit in the sun, I promise you they would be fucking EVERYWHERE. I would have 2.
We do. It’s the Tesla Model S. Fully loaded, a 2013 model S tops out around 100k (stock is 65k) and no less of an authority than Top Gear rated it higher than a Maserati Quattroporte.
It actually bothers me that I have to say this, but the electrical socket in your home is not run off of unicorn farts or fairy dust. It’s made from the burning of fossil fuels. The tesla S (and every other electric car) still runs off of coal (or possibly natural gas), just like everything else in your home.
Hydrogen fuel cells are one possible way out of this, but hydrogen is extremely difficult to store and manipulate and very dangerous (remember the Hindenberg?) Also, the majority of our accessible hydrogen comes from separating fossil fuels, which means (wait for it)… you’re STILL BURNING FOSSIL FUELS.
This! This to the nth THIS! Electric cars are powered by electricity.
I have 1 car – a 9 year old Prius that -still- gets 42-47 MPG. It seats 4 people with fat butts comfortably and can do 0 to 60 in about 8 seconds. When purchased, loaded with everything but constant GPS contact coverage [Onstar or whatever is the correct system] – it cost $29,000 after taxes, fees – and it is much cheaper to maintain than was the Honda Accord I owned before it.
While I enjoy the idea of electric vehicles, IMO hybrid vehicles make more economic sense.
The other problem with the tesla is that unless you have a spare two-phase outlet for your home to install the fast charger, you are stuck with the slow trickle charger, which will take literally all day to charge the battery pack back up.
Your rant seems misguided. It’s not just about replacing fossil with wind and solar or driving fancy electric cars, it’s about doing a better job of emissions controls. Like how in the 90s we went from electrostatic precipitators to air scrubbers and bag houses. Alternative energy is great, but not the most efficient way to address the problem, tightening the standards on already existing tech would be much more cost effective.
Alternative energy is great, but not the most efficient way to address the problem,
And it never will be until people get their fucking heads out and start making it that way. Simply yawning and saying “Nope, not efficient enough now” is just fucking lazy. How efficient do you think the first internal combustion engines were?
More efficient than feeding and taking care of horses as a mode of transportation?
Nope. Less efficient by far, in fact. But the early cars and trucks didn’t get sick, didn’t require someone on-staff to look after them at all times. Less efficient, and slower, too. But they were more convenient, especially in urban environments where the same truck could be used to make deliveries 24/7, if needed.
Not having to pay for a vet, or a second horse when one NEEDS that vet, those are ALSO measures of efficiency, you realize.
Technically horses are STILL more efficient than cars, just slower, the warranty has significantly lower miles, and restoration projects have all proven unsuccessful.
On the other hand, they are quite easy to manufacture, although the lead time is relatively long.
Emissions are sometimes a problem though.
by contrast, you can’t exactly dump your motor oil in your garden with equivalent results.
I’m in agreement with Vhyrus, we do not have the technology.
Wind and solar energy are great technologies, but they have a major flaw, they cannot store energy efficiently. The way our electrical system works is by matching the electrical demand with a fairly accurate amount of electricity. When everyone turns on their A/C or electric heat at once, the grid has to accommodate that extra demand. Now here’s where hydrocarbon fuels shine. To meet extra demand, all the power plant needs to do is activate another boiler or increase the fuel flow. How do you store excess wind and solar energy at an industrial scale? This is not a minor question, this is a serious problem. Batteries do not store nearly as much energy as you think. Hydrocarbon fuels store roughly a 100 times more energy than batteries based on their mass.
If you want to wire your home for wind or solar and live completely off the grid, that’s great. However, the resources required to do that to every house in america is completely impractical. Ask yourself this, you really think the northern half of the country gets enough wind and sunlight to keep warm through the winter?
You want to help remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Get an education and work to develop a synthetic gasoline substitute with CO2 as a feedstock.
I’m currently paying about 16-17 cents / mile to drive, as of this week’s gas prices (lost about 3 mpg switching from an AWD/stick CR-V to an AWD/automatic Element). I have demonstrated a willingness to pay up to 20 cents/mile.
What I’d like to see is something like hydrogen fuel-cell electrics, or direct hydrogen combustion. When that becomes available, at under 20 cents/mile, I’ll buy it.
I am NOT willing to be taxed for “carbon credits”, or get my taxed jacked to subsidize a bunch of wood-burning Third World peeps.
It’s part of their identity, it’s the opposite of what those limp wristed liberals believe.
It’s interesting that pretty much even the biggest corporations now acknowledge that it is happening, they just don’t want to be regulated and forced to do anything about it, so they play to the FOX News contingent that its all a lie so they can influence the laws that regulate them.
I think the evidence is on the side of climate change.
I also think that the people clamoring for government and international action on the topic are the same ones who oppose freedom on every issue, in ever forum, in every two bit propaganda show.
I’ve always wondered why the same people also are the ones who tend to oppose the right to keep and bear arms. If what they’re saying about climate change is something they really believe….isn’t that a contradiction?
I find it interesting that you chose a Bill Nye video to support your opinion, since he’s an example of why so many “deniers” have a knee jerk reaction to comments about global warming. This is a guy who made his name doing middle school level science experiments on TV, and really doesn’t understand the science on actual global warming. So then he joins with other people who don’t understand science to create videos that are provable lies to support his side.
The people pushing “manmade global warming” have been caught lying, conspiring to block any facts that don’t agree with their cause, and harassing people who make the mistake of disagreeing in public so often that it’s impossible to believe anything they say.
On top of that, just about every one of these methods to reduce energy consumption costs more to implement, and the time required for that cost to see returns is frequently far longer than these products actually last, regardless of their claims. I replace half of my bathroom lights with CFL, and half with incandescents. The incandescents have all outlasted the CFL bulbs. Hybrid cars don’t become cheaper than a similar gas model until you hit 200k-300k miles (depending on if it’s $3/gal gas you’re using for the numbers or $4/gal). But the batteries aren’t expected to last that long. On top of that, you’re trading tailpipe emissions for a toxic battery to handle and process.
“zero emission” cars are just “remote emissions”, because you’re tailpipe is a coal-fired power plant in some other state. Is that more efficient? Absolutely. But you’re either stupid or a liar if you call it “zero emissions”. I’ll believe global warming is really the threat they claim when the people pushing for all of these changes stop flying in jets to meet, get rid of their jets and yachts, and stop trying to kill all the hydro and nuclear plants.
Working in the oilfield services, it does tend to piss me off when people try to jump on the “get rid of fossil fuels” bandwagon. Yeah, that line of thinking does directly affect me (ie: can put me out of a job), but it also affects a lot of other people. I can’t say for sure, but I’m sure a good number on that bandwagon tend to forget that petroleum products are made into more than just gasoline/diesel/fuel and motor oil, that modern plastics require petroleum as well. How much of a solar panel, or a wind turbine requires a plastic component (with a base of petroleum)? As a car guy, I’d love to have a performance electric car, or one I could take on long road trips. But I’m also cognizant that our tech isn’t there yet, and even when it does, you still will have a long time before 100% adoption of said technology.
That probably doesn’t make much sense, thanks to a raging head cold/sore throat.
You’re right. It really doesn’t make much sense. The more materials like car bodies, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, circuit boards, solar panels, wind turbines and so on we can make out of oil, the more sense it makes to stop burning it, much like burning $1 bills for heat is crazy but not nearly as crazy as burning $100 bills for heat.
Just because it is clean by your house, doent make it better for the hell hole that is brewing in China where they make those solar panels. Or the net drain on resources that wind power brings, from making and maintaining those giant rotors. We could also look at the ecological issue of dead bats and birds near wind power installations.
Or the fact that most of these technologies are made by petrochemicals. Will we still need oil in that electric car’s transmission and bearings? Yes. Will its plastics, if they are expected to last a while, need to be made from petroleum sources? Probably. Will that battery pack last the 400,000+ miles that I expect my current vehicle to last? Doubt it.
Before the .gov bought out everything, things were looking up for clean hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. What they needed was infrastructure support for fueling (AKA, dont pass crazy laws preventing storage tanks and facilities). What they got was a name change, and passing the buck down the road to the power plant, in a country where our electricity grid is already taxed.
Ok, since you decided to poke the bear, I’ll respond. Ever since the Global Warming panic started, it’s been about one thing: making people feel guilty. It’s a Puritan thing that seem to be a fundamental part of the Liberal mindset. I’m supposed to feel guilty about so many things, being white, being straight, being middle class, being a Mensa member, etc. that my guilt circuit has burned out. On the Global Warming front, it’s obvious that the people making the most noise don’t actually want to solve the problem. In addition, too many of the organizations involved have been caught cooking the books, so I don’t beleive anything they say anymore. It’s about money and power, not about Glocal Warming.
What’s wrong with people focussing so much attention on Global Warming? It obscures other, more serious and immediate problems.
More serious … like MDRTB, Ebola, HIV, Yellowstone, La Palma or the current President being an atheist Muslim lizard Arab from Kenya and outer space who’s black?
I wish I had the strawman concession for this comic… I’d make a FORTUNE.
Doc.
It’s simple. Ackmowledging there’s a problem means they would have to make big changes to their lifestyle. A lot, and in the downward direction. And not even the climate change acknowledgers want to do that. (Which is probably why “if I can convince others climate change exists, I’ll have done enough” is such a popular mindset.)
As a petroleum engineering major turned to a civil engineering major with a minor in environmental science, I’m all for renewable engery, I actually hope to have a career in it some day. But for as of right now, the technology in wind and solar energy production needed to match the levels of energy we receive from fossil fuels is not there. Wind turbines produce their peak power long after peak energy consumption. This then floods the grid with excess power and kicks many generators offline. To return those generators back to peak power costs thousands of dollars and large amounts of fuel, thus defeating the purpose. Solar energy is beginning to push way ahead of solar energy in terms of effeciency and producing power but the materials needed to manufacture solar panels, their deep cycle batteries, and other components are detrimental to the environment. Natural gas is turning heads with how much energy can be produced with it and how much cleaner it burbs. A local steel mill has replaced all their semis with natural gas burning semis because of the greater effeciency in the engines and how much cleaner it burns. I’m not trying to say green energy bad fossil fuels good, I’m just trying to share a side of green energy most people do not understand. Fossil fuel technology is leaps and bounds ahead of solar and wind. They will eventually catch up and i believe it will be rather soon, but for right now they cannot match the power output of fossil fuels. But then again I’m just a college kid and I still have a lot to learn.
As a person who lives on the bleeding edge of financial balance I am unable to convert my home to solar. The only reason is the cost. Solar and residential wind power are viable but are not priced so that those of my class can convert. I’ll hazard a guess and say that is due to economic pressure from corporate interests. Hell man, I’ve got a back field of 6 acres with year round sun exposure I could dedicate to a solar farm if there were an economical way to do it without bankrupting myself. We already grow 70% of our yearly food intake, use LED bulbs through out the house, and conserve everything, but more independence is better.
I hear you. I actually had solar city come by and give me a quote for putting their panels on my house. the best they could do was to create a second bill wherein I’d pay the utility company half of what they currently get, and solar city would get the other half. Plus, I wouldn’t own any of the equipment, I’m locked into it for 20 years, and I get none of the tax breaks. (they don’t mention this on the first couple pages of the brochures, but that is the truth.)
Solar power and renewable resources make me so angry because they’re supported by DIRTY FUCKING HIPPIES, and those who’d use the DIRTY FUCKING HIPPIES as tools to control our lives politically. I wouldn’t mind if we switched over, as long as it means I can keep using the amount of power I need to do what I want to do. But the second some zampolit says “:No civilian, you need to turn off your computer and your lights and your air conditioning between the hours of 5pm to 10am for the good of Mother Gaia and we’ll prosecute and/or tax the living shit out of you as a penalty”, then I’m totally not cool with it. And somehow in my mind I think the DIRTY FUCKING HIPPIES would be allright with the zampolit’s decrees, because it’s Good for the Environment ™.
Also, the “OMG, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE IF WE DON’T GO SOLAR/RENEWABLE!!!!!” tone of some of them is a big turn-off.
If it were economically feasible to go green, it would have been done already. EVERYTHING comes at a cost; the chemicals needed to make solar panels are extremely toxic and difficult to dispose of, windmills require lots of land, lots of maintenance, and are a hazard to birds of prey, electric cars need electricity to recharge, and you don’t get that by plugging into a rainbow. The bottom line is, green energy would require a massive social, economic, and material shift that our country can’t afford. Especially since King Putt has taken office.
Once green energy becomes profitable, watch out, because it will expoand faster than internet porn.
And yet, it already is profitable for Elon Musk, incredibly so, and the shitbag corrupt fucks in the government are doing everything they can to stop his electric cars from being sold in various states.
Actually, trying to keep them on an even playing field with the other auto manufacturers.
Here in AZ they wanted to sell directly to the public. The Arizona Auto Dealers got their panties in a bunch because they would be cutting out the middle man. And he’s selling them at a profit, only because his price point is so high. Sixty to a hundred grand for a sedan. Pretty much the Scottsdale/Fountain Hills crowd only. Not the general public. Just the 1%ers…
Musk is capitalizing on the “cool factor” of his cars (which I applaud) but the fact remains, those cars still need to get power from somewhere. Just because we don’t see it being generated doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. When a Tesla wins the Daytona 500 or 24 hours at Le Mans, you will see a surge of interest.
So it’s the “Apple iCar”
What? No more Stacey?
The is-it-or-isnt-it of the climate change debate is irrelevant. And as you point out, a move to something else is inevitable. After all, fossil fuels are a limited resource. The BIG PROBLEM with climate change is it’s use as yet another tool to chip away at our individual liberties for the greater good. It’s a rally cry for new regulations, and for someone like me who distrusts government to my core, nothing good can come of this.
I am all for clean energy but true or not, “Climate Change” is just a political buzzword like “Assault Weapon” “Gun Violence” “Living Wage” “Fair Share” “Common Sense” etc etc etc. When producers, inventers and capitalists make clean energy work better than fossil fuels THEN it’s a good thing for our society.
Let me put it another way:
“Even if all climate change data is worng, you get cleaner air, water, and land. What’s the fucking problem?”
Because my primary number-one above all else guiding principal is INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY
I would rather live free in a stinking smokey burned out hull of a planet than under the pristine boot of a solar powered fascist.
Sure. Glad to oblige.
Real environmental stewardship gets you off-grid preppers. Phony, politicized “environmental stewardship” gets you Solyndra-style crony capitalist corruption.
By the way, your simplistic question, “what’s wrong with moving our country to cleaner, more efficient energy than fossil fuels?” is just as foolish as the simplistic question, “what’s wrong with a background check for everyone who buys a gun?” What’s wrong is that these initiatives inevitably drag along a crapload of included baggage that goes way beyond what we wanted or needed just to solve that problem. In fact, from our history, one could easily make the argument that these initiatives have all been honey-coated Trojan horses whose actual primary purpose was to allow politicians to slip in things we never would have let them done otherwise like universal gun registration). It’s as naive as supporting the “Patriot Act” because… well, who’s not a patriot?
Thirty years ago, simplistic people asked, “what’s wrong with reducing air and water pollution?” Eventually they found out: the government moves in and “nationalizes” your backyard because a temporary wet spot or even a manmade irrigation ditch has suddenly become a “navigable water.”
(For some reason I don’t understand, only one of the five hyperlinks in my posting is showing up highlighted (at least on my machine). It’s worth seeking them out by mousing around, because they are each instructive.)
I can get them to highlight, but not to actually function as a link.
When you look at source, the double quotes in your comment are showing up different than the double quotes in other comments. Did you copy and paste your comment out of Word or another fancy text editor? That’s what I would learn towards. WordPress has a long time issue with certain types of punctuation marks. (ie double dashes, three periods in a row, quotes marks, etc….) It turns them into fancier versions since of just normal text because the devs like the fancier versions. There are ways to turn that off but involve installing a plugin from outside the normal wordpress community. (The devs really like that fancy text)
LOL! Yeah, you poked the bear alright.
Right in the nutsack with a cattle prod.
As has been said by others, the “scientists” who lead the research “proving” global warming have been caught cooking the numbers on multiple occasions and thus retain zero credibility. As we all know, the scientific method is far more about questions, discovery, and exploration than hard conclusions. And yet, “the science is settled” because Bill Nye says so? That much alone makes it at least irritating. The whole thing stinks of agenda-driven politics rather than clean, unbiased science. But, even if man made global warming could be honestly proven, none of the proposed solutions make any sense. We’re all going to drive coal powered cars and then replace the coal plants with bird choppers and solar cookers? If we want clean, cheap energy, why don’t we just go nuclear? Seriously, nuclear power is time proven, and, today is so far beyond what it used to be that another Chernobyl is vanishingly unlikely. But to the ZOMG Gaia!! crowd, nuclear is completely off the table for some reason.
As others have already mentioned, the really angering part is how bossy the environmentalists get. Look, I use reusable cloth grocery bags. It’s mostly because they’re more convenient to deal with than paper or plastic, to me anyway. The fact that I’m not consuming that much paper or plastic is a side benefit. We recycle quite a bit of household waste in the form of paper, plastic, glass, aluminum, and steel. Although I think recycling is probably a good thing, again my motivation is more convenience than anything else. When the city issued a rolling, covered dumpster nearly identical to our trash bin that we can use for any color glass, paper, corrugated, plastics 1-8 or something, as well as any aluminum and empty food cans, then it became worthwhile to go ahead and separate our garbage.
When my wife and I build, we will carefully consider geothermal, wind, and/or solar energy options and weigh the cost/benefit ratio against running copper, including long-term payoff. It’s pretty much a given that we’ll have a well and some kind of septic system. I’d like to run the plumbing to allow usage of the fresh well water, gray water, or even rain water. There is no garbage collection where we’re looking to move, so there’s going to be a lot of recycling and composting. Frankly, I like the idea of staying off the grid and minimizing my footprint on the planet. I just don’t want to be guilted into it by some socialist busybodies, pushing some agenda, based on dubious scientific claims asserted by politicians and entertainers. Or even worse, to have it written into law and forced down our throats at government gunpoint.
Alas, the science for global warming is not settled, and since the most vocal adherents have been caught cooking the data (read the stolen info a hacker got from Mann’s files if you don’t agree) I have trouble believing them.
I’m all for not fouling our planet. I remember the horrible pollution in the ’60’s and ’70’s. We’ve come a long way from that, but should do better. Let’s do it intelligently.
Solar panels have come a long way. Lab tests have come much further. I’d much prefer to get solar panels that are 50% or 33% efficient instead of the current 18% commercial variety. Also, they are using some truly horrific chemicals to produce those solar panels, which is why it is done in China where the regulations are non-existent. Solar panel production here cannot compete because they have to deal with those chemicals (a very good thing) and China just dumps them and poisons their people. If you truly care about the planet, why would you buy those solar panels and perpetuate the pollution currently associated with them?
A thinking environmentalist is rabidly pro-nuclear. Even in it’s current frozen-in-the-70’s tech, nuclear has no carbon footprint. It’s always on, so the power is available when it’s dark and the wind isn’t blowing. The new plutonium-thorium molten salt reactor has incredible potential. It cannot melt down, leaks automatically get plugged, and it will use up those vicious transuranics that the old reactors produced. We can use old nuclear bombs to fuel it as well (a win-win). A fascinating wrinkle is using a molten salt reactor to heat a depolymerization plant, turning our garbage into oil.
One problem with electric cars is the batteries required. Batteries are heavy, dangerous and can only hold a fraction of the power that burning hydrocarbons provides. They also wear out quickly in comparison to a modern IC engine, making more toxic waste to deal with.
The Fischer-Tropsh process was used widely in Germany in WWII turning coal into gasoline, but it requires lots of heat (and so burned lots of coal). A nuclear plant would provide the heat, allowing us to make hydrocarbons from trees and grass. It’s a carbon cycle – burn the gas, CO2 gets used by plants, plants get made back into gas.
Don’t sh*t where you sleep. I get that. Let’s do it right. We don’t need to give the government more money and power, and we certainly don’t need to follow liars and hypocrites. By the way, how much pollution does a ‘burn’ make?
A thinking environmentalist is rabidly pro-nuclear. Even in it’s current frozen-in-the-70’s tech, nuclear has no carbon footprint.
I, for one, am rabidly pro-nuclear, and just because nuke designs here haven’t moved much since the 1970s (and god, I wish Shoreham had gotten built in the 80s…), that’s not entirely true across the industry. Pebble-bed designs are much safer than the older plants, for example – but no nukes, man, no nukes…
CVN-65, USS Enterprise has been retired, after 51 years of service. The Nimitz-class supercarriers are all still in service. On 7 July, 2016, USS Nimitz will have been in active service for 40 years.
There has never been a nuclear disaster on an American CVN-series supercarrier.
The United States Navy runs dozens of nuclear-powered ships and subs (boats, not ships), and has for decades, without any serious mishaps occurring. Nuclear power can be done safely, it can be done in the long term. It requires proper training and failsafes, but it can be done. That it’s not is a testament to the power of not hippies, but the sensationalist media that never met a danger it couldn’t overhype to sell your eyeballs to their advertisers.
This.
I used to work for General Dynamics – Electric Boat Division. I started on the CVN(X) nuclear aircraft carrier redesign project, then moved to the UK’s Astute SSN program and then to the USN’s Virginia class SSN program. When we started CVN(X), we did a huge study of the potential available power sources at the time, which included comparisons between oil, LNG turbines, and nuclear. Nuclear won far and away in every category including environmental impact. The hot water/coolant discharges are THE SAME for a given Megawatt value, the in-service water and air pollution produced are vastly less, nuclear fuel is produced domestically, and disposal is NO PROBLEM: we simply cut the RC out of the boat, fill it with cement, and bury it in Nevada remarkably close to the place where they mined the uranium in the first place.
We did the nuclear design and construction work in New London, CT. We fueled the reactors there. Right up the river, less than a mile away, is Naval Submarine Base, Groton, which houses most of the east coast submarine fleet. Between the two locations we would have anywhere from 2 to 12 subs around at any given time. Right down the road is Millstone, a commercial plant. Chrtistine Brinkley lives right across Long Island Sound from Millstone, and she frequently funds and leads protests against the plant. We very rarely had protestors at EB or Groton base, and when we did they were insignificant in number and effectiveness.
When we build reactors, their size is very much dependent on their power density. Enrichment is the term used to describe this power density, and it refers to the ratio of U-235 to U-238 in the fuel rods. Low density piles are used in the commercial nuclear industry, averaging less than 5% enrichment. Power plants are designed for long, steady operation at near peak capacity, so they can afford the long warm up and quick cool downs associated with lightly enriched piles.
Now let me let you in on a little secret. Naval reactors are significantly more enriched than commercial reactors. I’m actually not allowed to tell you exactly how much more, but I can say that you could basically flip the ratio and you’d be close: naval reactors average well above 70% enrichment. That means their piles are small, dense, and HOT, in every sense of the word. Now, why can the Navy operate reactors that are much hotter than commercial reactors and cycle them up and down through their power range extremely rapidly? Keep in mind this is the worst type of performance you can demand from a nuke plant, for safety’s sake, for life cycle cost, for cooling requirements, and a whole host of other reasons that are bad and should not be done with a power plant, but which we HAVE to do with ships. Why has the Navy achieved such an exceptional performance record with submarines and nuclear power?
The nature of nuclear power, both in production and in use, is a task that is eminently suitable for the military. It requires extreme discipline and reliability. It is a national scale project and it uses materials that shouldn’t be in private hands. I believe we could easily build a class of “power ships” based on the new carrier plant design, leverage the existing nuclear power experience of our Navy, and provide extremely safe, robust, modular, and easily managed power plants for every major coastal city. Disposal would be a cinch; when the plants reach the end of their service life, you tow in a new one, tow the old one away, and dispose of the waste in Nevada, right where we do now and right back where we got it from in the first place. The infrastructure exists right now in this country to do it, it would be relatively cheap, as compared to fighting wars abroad (could be done for a lot less than $5 billion per Gigawatt), would give us a reliable base from which to improve distribution efficiency, would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, would make the electric car revolution possible without needed solar panels and their inherent production pollution.
But this country has a knee-jerk reaction to ideas like this about nuclear power. You’ll hear totally inapplicable arguments about Chernobyl (we don’t build reactors like those fucking IDIOTS in Russia), Fukashima (naval plants are immune to the effects of tidal waves), or even 3-mile island (we don’t build or operate plants like that anymore.) You will also hear idiotic NIMBY arguments about waste and disposal from people who drive cars all their lives and argue that global warming might not be man made, or exist, or be a problem, or be their responsibility to do anything about. But those of us who actually work with nuclear power know the truth – nukes can save the world.
OUR nuclear reactors are safe. So safe in fact that the “3 Mile Island” incident was actually PROOF of how safe our plants are. Yet it’s shown as some kind of scary incident. Heck Russian plants are designed so that when they lose power to the control system the control rods LIFT OUT of the reactor. Ours drop into the reactor. Why? because we’re not absolute idiots when designing reactors. I explain to people that OUR reactors don’t leak radiation like Cold War era Russian reactors. as far as people arguing about nuke plants, generally I hear it from “green” folks who have no clue about how a reactor works.
The key takeaway from Chernobyl was that Russian plants were so unsafe that a minor miscommunication during a standard test could easily result in a major international catastrophe.
The key takeaway from TMI was that our plants were so inherently safe that those running the reactor could do pretty much everything wrong that they possibly could, melt a reactor, and never have containment breached.
That being said, TMI was still a MAJOR nuclear catastrophe: A reactor, with a planned 30 year lifespan, was rendered totally inoperable within about 90 days of being brought online. That’s the kind of financial disaster that can take decades to recover from. It’s entirely possible that factoring in the cost of such disasters into the TCO of a nuclear plant has played a major role in moderating interest in building new commercial nuclear power plants.
Economically, it was a nuclear disaster, but the incident was proof that our plants are so safe that even after every screw-up they could do, the thing still didn’t leak radiation. About the only thing they didn’t do wrong was reroute the primary cooling into the secondary cooling using pvc piping.
Ships are only immune to tidal waves if they’re at sea where the ocean is deep. There are giants out there in the canyons, and a good captain can’t fall asl… Wait. Billy Joel sidetrack. Sorry. *ahem* Ships are only immune to tidal waves if they’re at sea where the ocean is deep. In port, they’re at risk of being thrown onto a pier or something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0YOXVlPUu4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SftjAs4hxis
Yep, it’s hard to buy the argument that nuclear power is unsafe when you happen to land a 49,000 lb airplane on eight of the damned things that happen to float and do 35 plus knots.
Ok, I’ll bite. I don’t get quite froth-at-brain angry about things, but I get a little pissy with people that take every piece of hyperbole at face value, and never consider the cost or the science. For example, I get annoyed at people that drive electric cars out to protest at a power plant. There’s a growing body of evidence that much of the temperature record that is used to show Global Warming has been adjusted and corrupted to make the warming more sensational. When this empirical question is broached among the True Believers, it draws immediate attacks and accusations of being an evil, flat earth, science denying high school dropout that hates poor people and wants to drown baby polar bears. This does not address the question, nor does it engender my support. In related fashion, many of the so-called fixes for Global Warming have some pretty serious downsides and dubious upsides. Solar plants whose construction leaves heavy metal pollution in the soil and water of the Chinese plant that produces it. The wind farm that chops up endangered raptors at an alarming rate and has to be constantly backed up by a natural gas generator. Another concern of mine is that the level of noise surrounding Global Warming is cancelling advances in other, potentially more impactful, fields of research. Advances in the power distribution system could reduce our consumption of fossil fuels by 50% (+/-), but instead of advocating for efficiency, we have people advocating for dismantling the system. I find it to be inconsistent on a level that can only barely be explained by the combination of ignorance, apathy, and blind faith in a questionable science, a science which appears to have been subborned by a political movement.
I support cleaner, more efficient energy and less pollution. In fact, I’ve been conducting experiments on alternative energy trying to make solar power and cellulosic ethanol viable for years now. That said, I do not believe the evidence supports the current anthropogenic global warming model and the current “global warming” movement has little to nothing to do with “saving the world” and more to do with artificially enforcing scarcity in order to increase control over people’s lives.
First, solar and wind power do not produce enough energy in their current forms to be viable. The world’s biggest solar plant is located in Nevada. It occupies hundreds of square acres of land, yet produces less than a tenth of the energy of one medium sized coal plant. All of the UK’s windmills put together still produce less power than one coal plant. To run America on solar power, we would basically have to cover America in solar panels. All of it.
Second, even if we did that, we still need gasoline for auto fuel. Consider the electric car for a moment. Owning one requires that you own your own home with a garage. I live in an apartment. Can’t run an extension cord across the parking lot, someone’ll steal it. An electric car requires what, an eight hour charging time? So if you ever get more than half your car’s effective range away from your home, you’re buying a hotel room for the night. Better hope they have a charging station too. Electric cars also require big expensive batteries that require so much manufacturing that it wipes out any perceived environmental savings and, once they wear out, it will be cheaper to buy a new car than to fix the old one. Basically a loser on all fronts.
Even despite all that, what if I told you that cheap, clean, virtually limitless, carbon neutral energy is not only possible with existing technology, it has been since the 1950’s? Give up? It’s nuclear. Nuclear power produces no CO2, runs 24/7 without refueling for 18 months at a time, and actually exposes the people nearby to less background radiation than a coal plant (really, look it up). Nuclear waste becomes a complete non issue with the use of breeder reactor technology, which can recycle nuclear waste back into useable fuel. It’s been estimated that this technology could meet our energy needs for the next 5 BILLION YEARS! Literally until the sun burns out! Yet today, there is not a single breeder reactor left in the United States and all of our nuclear plants are at least 30 years old. Anyone who truly supports clean, efficient energy should be backing expanded an expanded nuclear program all the way.
Whether or not climate change is occurring is not up for debate. It is. What I find to be the unanswered question is whether or not we are actually causing it or if it is a natural cycle. Because the Earth does go through cycles. It has gone through several ice ages and gotten out of all of them. We actually are still getting out of the last one. Also considering the fact that these cycles take millions of years and mankind has measured temperatures for only about 200, there really isn’t enough evidence to say that it is mankind’s fault or that we are even effecting it.
That being said, I agree that no harm can come from switching to clean sources of energy. However, I feel that becoming energy independent is more currently more important, and until we can establish a big enough infrastructure of clean energy sources, I say make the switch, but use what we have until it becomes fully feasible.
Give it another 45 years and you’ll catch up with where the rest of us are now.
Those cycles were identified and studied at least that long ago. Some of them were studied three times that long ago, but it was around that long ago that someone actually mapped out shedloads of 3-, 7-, 10-, 11-, 23-, 39-, 101- and whatever-else-year-cycles in the Earth’s climate and found that all the climate history data matched those cycles up until around 1940, then things went off-track and where we should have been going into a cooling trend we were instead seeing steady temperatures. He said at the time that it was probably due to anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that there wasn’t enough information available and the models available weren’t sophisticated enough for the making of a valid prediction of what effects our ongoing and increasing carbon dioxide emissions would have. This has since been interpreted as “scientists used to think CO2 would cause the next ice age” by sleazy people who want you to doubt the scientists.
*sigh*
Water vapor has a vastly greater impact than CO2.
back in the 70’s, we were absolutely dead-on certain the ice age was coming. 20 years ago we were told there would be no more polar ice.
Both were wrong. But please, keep pushing that man has, somehow, managed to ruin everything with what appears to be a 1-2% variation in temp.
http://ftf-comics.com/?comic=familiar
“Actually, 30-odd years ago, weren’t they claiming we we about to go into another ice age? Or was that 40 years ago?”
No, they weren’t.
This isn’t quite as bad as the “There’s been no warming in the last 10 years” horseshit, but it’s still horseshit.
Yes, that RG guy is wrong. No, the scientists were not saying we were about to go into another ice age.
For one thing, we’re still in one. Quite apart from that, take a look at actual papers from 30 to 40 years ago and see what they were actually saying.
…
In summary: “That whole subject is really a lot more complicated than we thought, we don’t know what’s going on out there yet, the possibilities are really scary and we need to watch what’s happening, figure stuff out and do something about it.”
………
The only ones predicting imminent glaciation were some journalists, though, IIRC. There was one particularly splashy article in “TIME”, I believe.
No, it doesn’t. And no, there was no consensus that we were in for an ice age, just a few outliers.
I know the “climate change” crowd isn’t serious. how do I know this?
go to the location of any “earth day” or environmental rally..about 2 hours AFTER the rally is over and everyone has dispersed.
the place will be TRASHED. garbage everywhere. it will take days to clean it up.
now go to any TEA party rally, and do the same thing. wait for it to disperse, and give it about 2 hours.
most times the place will be cleaner than before the rally, with the single exception of the bagged trash waiting for pickup.
so, who’s the environmentalists again?
I “know” the 2nd amendment advocates aren’t serious, you know why? People keep shooting themselves at gun shows, proves they don’t really care about guns.
Sorry, but people who shoot themselves at gun shows are far more rare than the “environmentalists” who leave trash all over the place. Heck even the leaders of the environmental movements waste more fuel in a week than I could use in a year flying around in their jets. It would be more like seeing Wayne La Pierre twirling loaded 1911’s with the hammers back and the safety off, telling people the 4 rules.
… I might pay money to see something like that. From behind a foot or three of lexan, granted, but still…
Want to know my problem with “Environmentalists?”
I drive a diesel truck. The fuel I have to use must be petroleum based instead of bio diesel because the environmentalists decided that a few morons who liked to “Roll Coal” were enough to change the requirements on diesels. So because of the environmentalists, my diesel truck must have a cat, and Diesel Particulate Filter installed. The DPF filters the black smoke, but it would get clogged if I used 100% biodiesel. It also decreased fuel efficiency from 20mpg to about 12mpg. If I remove the DPF and cat, I get that back(I know I ran without a DPF and the DPF delete tune for a bit but because of emissions requirements, I have to have it on).
I see these green folks and their protests. All of them wasting resources. They have their rallys on green fields and leave them muddy messes with trash strewn about. They pretend to be for the environment, but I end up cleaning up after THEIR messes. I’m absolutely for cleaning up the environment. That’s why I hate the “environmentalists” who try to get the government to force people to clean up. They almost always go for the most inefficient method of cleaning up. Electric cars? Not until you don’t need the batteries charged by the coal plants. Recycling? Great now we produce more trash per person, because we’re “recycling” the crap we throw out.
These “environmentalists” targeted my boat when I was in the Navy because it ran on nuclear power. Our core lasted 30 plus years with the only side effect being we warmed the water around our boat with our hot showers. MEANWHILE they are blocking us from port in a huge “Greenpeace” diesel boat idling and a whole bunch of gasoline powered zodiacs. Gee, why would I hate the “green” folks.
Maybe the reason I dislike the “environmentalists” is the total abject hypocrisy. THEY ruin the planet. THEY trash beautiful places. THEY refuse to allow us to thin forests which makes a minor forest fire into hundreds of thousands of acres burned. THEY oppose technology THAT EXISTS in favor of technology that might exist in the future… You want me to support cleaning up the environment? QUIT TRASHING IT! Seriously! I fish, camp, hike, kayak, and even sail(pure wind power, gosh), but some environmentalist claims I’m destroying the planet with my diesel truck idling for 3 minutes while I wait for my turbos to spin down. In the back of my truck right now I have TWO full garbage bags of trash I DID NOT CREATE taken from another camp site with that same set of “green” folks who left it there. That kind of thing happens more often than I care to think about. They want SOMEONE ELSE to clean up the world. THAT’S why I hate the “Green” movement.
“Recycling? Great now we produce more trash per person, because we’re “recycling” the crap we throw out.”
Huh?
It’s been shown that more trash is produced because people don’t feel bad about tossing it in the “recycle” bin. Instead of reusing the glass bottles like we used to do, now the glass it just thrown out and it doesn’t actually get recycled. It would be better to just keep the glass jars and bottles to use in art projects. The glass costs more in monetary and energy expenses to recycle than just make new. So we produce more trash because we’re “recycling” than we were when we just re-used those glass jars…
Right. Thanks. Now it makes sense. We produce mroe trash throwing “recyclables” in a “recycle” bin but not actually recycling them than we used to when we knew they went to landfill.
Yes, “mroe” trash. It’s, ah, a technical term, meaning … erm … well, it’s complicated, but it mostly means “more” in this context.
Exactly. People feel less bad about throwing trash in a recycle bin thinking it’ll be recycled than throwing it in a trash bin thinking it’ll end up in the dump. Meanwhile it still ends up in the dump.
I have no doubt the climate is warming up at the moment, but whenever I hear a global warming foaming at the mouth fanatic tell me that it’s “settled science”, it sounds exactly like some politician stating gun laws are “commonsense” to me. I also recall the mid 70’s Time Magazine cover telling me in giant, scary font that the next ice age is coming…I never did get those cross country skis and I seem to be doing fine. Global warming science, I’m good with that, lets find the answers and the truth. Global warming as a state sponsored religion…not so much.
I saw this article and I thought you’d like it. http://www.tpnn.com/2014/09/29/controversial-owner-declares-her-store-a-muslim-free-zone-find-out-her-reasoning/
I am all for wind and solar energy, if they work. The problem is, they don’t. Not yet, and not on a large scale.
Looking out over vast arrays of wind turbines, bought at taxpayer expense, that aren’t even turning on most days and the days they do turn only contribute a minute amount of energy, pisses me off.
Wind energy on a large scale is a monumental failure. You can’t store the energy they produce and they produce such a small amount that the grid barely notices it.
Wind energy for a single home? Sign me the fuck up! If you build a home that is energy efficient, with LED lighting and low energy appliances, you can work off of wind and solar.
When I built my last house it would have cost me $13K to run electricity to the house. So I designed a hybrid solar and wind system with generator backup for $11K. When I took it to the bank and told them what I wanted to do, I got laughed out of the office. They wouldn’t finance a self sustaining home. I could have had the solar/wind system, but I would have had to hook it to the grid to get financing.
They do work, quite well in fact. Germany gets more power from solar than we do. and they are not known as a bright sunny country. Wind farms too. The EU also produces more power than we do that way. And why is the amount so small? Because they are still so few.
And “Electricity prices in Germany are already among the highest in the world. The price of industrial electricity has risen about 37 percent since 2005, according to the Federation of German Industries. The price in the United States has fallen by 4 percent over about the same time. The rise in energy prices has already cost Germany $52 billion in net exports…” ( Source: NY Times story below, because I suspect that you would pooh-pooh anything from Fox 😉 )
Also, Germany is going all in on new coal-fired power generation. And rather dirty coal at that. To paraphrase Obi-wan Kenobi, “This is not the progress you are looking for.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/business/energy-environment/german-energy-push-runs-into-problems.html?_r=0
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/problems-prompt-germany-to-rethink-energy-revolution-a-852815.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/07/08/germanys-solar-industry-is-imploding/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/23/germany-to-open-six-more-coal-power-stations-in-2013/
This pretty much sums it up: https://medium.com/@BigFatWhale/the-climate-denial-march-on-reality-f2d504a88890
When the Kennedy’s stop bitching about wind farms in view of their beach-front property, and Al Gore sells his mansions and starts riding a bicycle, then they can scold me about “green” power. Until then they can fuck right off.
“[W]hat’s wrong with moving our country to cleaner, more efficient energy than fossil fuels?”
In theory, nothing. The problems, however, are many.
First, there actually isn’t anything for efficient than fossil fuels. Pound for pound, they have the biggest energy bang for your buck. This is especially true when you start looking at biofuels, which are less efficient and somewhat damaging to car engines (not the very newest engines, but most of us don’t have a brand new car, do we?).
Second, is pure cost – the next most affordable form of energy besides fossil fuels is at least twice as expensive, and that includes massive federal subsidies to make it even that cheap. Unless you don’t mind people not being able to heat their homes in the winter, or cool them in the summer, or be able to go get to work, then they simply are not ready for prime time. Should we keep working to make them cheaper? Yes. Should we limit that which works now in the meantime? No.
The last issue is reliability and availability. There is nothing that can meet the current demands for power that exist now, and do it day in and day out. Wind and solar just can’t meet the demand. And unless we start building more rectors (thorium has so much promise that it is insane, but NIMBY is still very much a thing).
And I just want to point out – no. No, man-made “global warming” is not proven. No models can even reliably chart the past, let alone the future. They are – every one of them – far higher than current temps, and most are wildly inaccurate.
Here, this guy says it far better than I do, when it comes to “climate change science”: Steven E. Koonin: Climate Science Is Not Settled.
And I know people love Bill Nye, but maybe the dude with a nothing but a BS in Mechanical Engineering should not talk so much. My father has duel masters in Mechanical and Electrical engineering – does that make him 3 times the Science Guy?
And Koonin has an actual doctorate, and has been in the field of climate science. I’m gonna listen to him more than a guy best known for explaining atoms to 6 year olds.
I actually like Koonan. Unlike Nye who is… well… an entertainer first and scientist not so much, Koonan breaks it down that While yes, we are affecting climate, and yes the climate is changing, it’s the extent of our affect that is questionable. That’s one of my biggest gripes about “Climate Change Science is Settled” proponents. Even gravitational science isn’t settled. I don’t get called a gravitational science denier for asking questions about gravitational field theory that may contradict some law. Science evolves and continues to change as new information is learned. Dogmas refuse to change.
This.
For virtually all of human history, science has been about challenging the accepted orthodoxy of the day. From proving flat-earthers wrong, to proving that the Earth is not the center of the universe, nor the center of the Solar system.
I think my biggest problem with the crowd promoting the idea of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is that they seek to upset this balance: Rather than embrace scientists who are attempting to challenge their assumptions/beliefs, they instead dismiss them as heretics.
The concept of heresy is a fundamentally religious notion; It is a notion that exists to be used as a hammer to beat down all opposition.
Fine, how about Niel DeGrasse Tyson?
Too busy attacking Republicans in general for me to take serious anymore. He’s already proven he’s willing to lie to damage his opposition. Or rather fabricate quotes at least.
Isn’t he a cosmologist?
Meh. Physics is physics, and that’s really all climate science is – physics and calculus.
Um. That’s sorta the same rationale as saying that a physicist should know all about life sciences since biology is just chemistry, and chemistry is just physics.
If he would follow his own advice, he’d be fine.
When talking about the cosmos in general, he was all “we need to question everything, that’s what science is about,” but when you talk to him about AGW, he sort of forgets he said that stuff about questions.
I’m all for zero emission vehicles and clean power. There are some objective realities to consider, however:
Fuel cell EVs: What’s the most plentiful source of hydrogen? Oh, that’s right, fossil fuels. That changes nothing. You’re still running a big risk of polluting the oceans and shores, still using a couple million gallons to run a supertanker’s diesels to transport fuel from the Persian gulf to the gulf of Mexico. And worse, to make a good high surface area catalyst, you’re mining platinum (a rare earth metal. Note that word, “rare”: As in, not enough to cover the number of cars on the road, also, “expensive”.) in Canada, shipping it to China, preparing it and then shipping it back to North America. Millions of gallons of fuel again.
Solar compared to a modest gasoline powered modern car’s (Mazda 2) energy usage: 76kW with a a 10.4 second 0-60 time and a top speed of 114 MPH. You can’t fit enough solar panels onto it to achieve those specs.
EVs are rather limited (How am I going to visit my doctor’s office every month (and I’m not a hypochondriac, I have a medical necessity to do so) when the hospital is 91 road miles away? the best current EVs (the rather metrosexual Smart fortwo Electric Drive Coupe) have a sub-70 (68) mile range, and take 8 hours to charge to 90%. The top speed is 78 MPH with a “leisurely”, by one reviewer, 11.4 second 0-60: That’s a rolling road hazard when the freeway speed is 75 MPH.) I’m not spending 8+ hours for a trip that normally takes me 4 hours to get there, get things done and get back into town. The worst part of them, however, is if you believe in AGW, which I don’t, is you’re shifting the pollution from your car to the power plant. And again, millions of gallons to make and ship lithium polymer batteries.
Solar for the home: Great if it’s subsidized and if you live in SoCal, Arizona, New Mexico or western Texas, nasty to make the cells (Seriously, Gallium and Arsenic mining/refining? Cadmium/Tellurium mining? Induction heating of pure silicon to >1300C? Yeah, those easily covered without making any pollution. ) and not very effective if you live in dusty, cloudy, windy or hail-prone areas (like about 90% of houses are placed.
Wind power: See the Rare earth mining criticisms, add the propensity to confuse and blend birds and the decreasing efficiency of turbine fields. Oh, and, are you sure, absolutely sure, that screwing with surface-mid level wind patterns is a good idea?
wave power: See the criticisms for wind power, but change birds to whales, wind to ocean current. (Wouldn’t that be ironic: You interrupt the thermohaline circulation process and create a sea life population crash by trying to prevent fossil fuel use from interrupting the thermohaline circulation process and creating a sea life population crash.)
I’d go with an EV, but in return, I want the best non-polluting power plants available (Nuclear, an anathema to the AGW-theory-supporting hard-core left) and easily changeable energy storage that didn’t pollute so much (domestic manufacture of the batteries. Let the rest of the world twist: An anathema to the left, again, because it’s counter to the goal of assuaging their guilt about the actions of their colonialist ancestors.)
My problem with AGW/climate change/whateverthehellthey’recallingitthesedays is the same as my problem with anti-nuclear power plant sentiments: the people, by and large, don’t have any common sense. Rather, they have “Common Sense”(R)(TM)(SM)(C)(D-VT) and tend to build an argument based on alarmism, pathos and ad hominem. (None of the dire conditions predicted ten years ago have come to pass: I believe you can call that “alarmism” with a straight face.) And yet, somehow, “denier” has become a dirty word.
My view is much simpler: The earth is a very large system, and not even the climate scientists know all of the variables involved in the climate (If they did, there’d be a five-nines accurate 365 day hourly weather forecast for every place on earth. They can barely manage a week for the free-air temperature and cloud cover.) preventing a prediction with any degree of accuracy. Building public (and fiscal) policy on an incomplete and untestable theory is unsound and untenable.
Right, don’t get me started on hydrogen. Hydrogen isn’t a “fuel source,” it’s a “battery.” A battery stores energy pumped into it from somewhere else, for later delivery; it doesn’t actually produce any energy, and it involves a small net conversion loss. A fuel source is mined — meaning, you find unexploited deposits of the stuff, and then exploit them, for a net gain in value. When we can send big scoop tankers to Jupiter to “mine” hydrogen, then it will become a “fuel source.” Until then, it’s only good for specialized storage scenarios, which don’t include all the vain yuppies who want to brag that they are “no longer using gasoline” in their cars, as if the electricity they are pumping into their cars was a product of rainbows and unicorn farts.
To be fair, mined ‘fuel sources’ are also ‘batteries’. Stored solar energy. We can make more, but it will be energy-intensive, the laws of Thermodynamics ALWAYS apply (you’ll put more energy in than you get out), and it will probably have an economic cost as well.
That said, until we vastly improve battery capacity or develop powerful mini-fission or -fusion plants, chemical fuels are the most potent energy storage and transport solution we have.
Considering the carbon cycle, as long as plants are doing the work for us of converting the sun’s nuclear fusion into hydrocarbons and various sugars, I don’t think it counts as ‘a battery’ to US, since we’re not the ones putting the energy into the process.
I turned 60 this year, and ever since I was a kid I’ve been listening to Chicken Little tell me how the end of the world is right around the corner if I don’t [reliquish power into the hands of people who think I suck and want me dead.] Hasn’t happened yet. In fact things are much better than they were in the 60’s. Car exhausts are many times cleaner than they used to be. You old enough to remember when you could cut off a chunk of LA smog and chew it like taffee? Been there lately? It’s still a hellhole, but the air is cleaner. People don’t litter as promiscuously as they used to, or dump shit in rivers. The environmental movement did that, both through oppressive legislation and by shaming us into attitudinal changes. All good, really.
But their doomsday predictions in the 60’s were proven false. The current doomsday predictions have already been proven outright lies. Al Gore’s jets and mansions have proven him to be a hypocritical asswipe. These people lose credibility by the minute, but people still buy the bullshit. I don’t get it.
I’m a hermit in the desert, and as far as your ‘cleaner, more efficient energy’ is concerned I’m living the dream. I’m several miles from the nearest power pole, produce all my own electricity with solar. And it wasn’t even expensive: My total investment over five years is something just over $700. Of course that’s because I scrounged a lot of the gear – your mileage absolutely would vary. But still, it works for me. It works for me because I’m in the high-altitude southwest desert and because my usage is very small. If you tried to scale this up to a municipal size the result would be hellish. Where would you put the panels? What would you use for batteries? And did I mention it requires periodic maintenance? Most people won’t do that, Cletus. Also, I have no data on how much pollution I sent to China, where my panels were made. Also, I’m speaking from experience when I saw we need much better battery technology.
In its efforts to clean up a very dirty world, the environmental movement has probably been a net plus in the past fifty years. As an advocate for the prevention of world destruction it just keeps embarrasing itself. And if you really want to convince people to move toward cleaner fuels, make it worth their while with market forces. Don’t use the threat of force. I hate that.
What are you using for batteries. I heard Crown are good, and if you set your charge controller to 15V they last longer. Though setting the charge that high generally means you have to check your batteries bi-weekly.
I think it’s funny when I hear people talk about “everyone should be on solar” who have never tried living solely on solar. Or people who advocate pure electric cars who have never been in an area where the cold caused their battery to be so weak it wouldn’t turn over their car engine.
that seems weird to me, since I’ve heard of GAS engines which wouldn’t turn over due to the cold, but don’t most people know you store batteries in the fridge to last longer? Electrical losses increase with heat.
Lead acid batteries are a different animal than the sealed alkaline batteries. Electrical losses increase with heat, but electrical storage capacity grows. So in hot weather if you sit your battery idle, it’ll drain faster with no draw on it than it would in the cold. In cold weather, the storage capacity for the electrical engine drops significantly.
I’m embarrassed to admit how rusty I am on the basics, being that I have a career in electronics, but that *feels* counterintuitive, given what I remember of superconductors, near absolute 0.
Well transmission of electricity is different than storage and charging. I find it ironic that my solar panels generate more power when they are cold, but my batteries cannot store what we generate.
What are you using for batteries.
I have two 230 amp/hour 6-volt Interstates. I installed them this past February, replacing two much older 186 a/H batts I bought from a guy whose RV burned down. I got a couple of years’ service from those but expect the Interstates to last much longer. Having learned from the misfortune of friends, I’m very careful about maintenance.
Most people’s battery banks are at least four times larger than mine. I live in a little 200 sq. ft. microcabin and my ‘pooter is my biggest draw other than occasional power tools.
Weird thing I heard lately: Most of LA’s smog rolls in from China now.
Fuck, we import EVERYTHING from those guys…
I’d love to move to cleaner energy, once it’s actually efficient and effective on a large scale. Solar works alright in a limited use scenario. I’d love it on my roof out here Cali, but back home in Maine it wouldn’t work so well. Wind turbines? The smaller ones burn out in high winds, the large ones generate too much power at low-demand times, and too little during peak usage. Hydroelectric? Dams are effective, but involve massive ecological change. Tidal generators and free-flow turbines are inefficient and have a high upkeep. Nuke plants work, as long as they get the required upkeep. That means training people how to do it and then actually making sure they do so. It also means not bouncing the plant through six different management teams in ten years because you don’t want to fix the problems from the last decade of neglect (sorry, only a little bitter about the hometown nuke plant being decommissioned early).
So, our ‘environmentally savvy’ politicians branded the 100 watt incandescent light bulb into an electric power waster and they banned them. Below is what is written in the information section of the National Electrical Code by W. Creighton Richter, ICBO-IAEI Certified Electrical Inspector and Electrical Engineer. Yes, this is THE electrical code that applies to every American.
“Larger lamps are more efficient, give off more light per watt of power used, than smaller sizes. Three 60-watt lamps (total 180 watts) give 10% more light than five 40-watt lamps (total 200 watts). One 150-watt lamp gives twice as much light as five 25-watt lamps (125 watts). One 100-watt lamp gives 15% more light than three 40-watt lamps (120-watts). From these figures it should be plain that a fixture that uses one large lamp will in general provide more light than using several small lamps of equivilant wattage.”
So, I conclude the ‘smart’ politicians should have banned small bulbs, not 100 watt bulbs in the name of ecology.
I tried a CFL and it caught on fire (thank God I was home) so I refuse to have any in my home, plus I hate the color of thee light they emit. However, LED technology is maturing and the CREE 75-watt and 100-watt (equivilant) bulbs are simply amazing. They are an example of technology that actually works. I wish I could buy stock in their company.
Yeah, switching from 3 x 100W to 5 x 60W or 8 x 40W doesn’t work so well, but replacing a single 100W incandescent bulb with a few 3W LED bulbs seems to be made of win so far.
There’s one other little tiny problem with CFLs that practically everyone’s missed- the bulbs have mercury in them, making them a pain in the ass to dispose of when they do fail. And bog help you if you break one of the little fuckers…
It’s been years now, but someone somewhere did … or claimed to have done … the maths on that and found that the extra power consumed by incandescent bulbs during the CFL’s lifetime would, in being generated, put more mercury into the air than was actually in the CFL. “Into the air,” not “into your carpet,” of course, but then you don’t break every CFL you buy, do you?
” but then you don’t break every CFL you buy, do you?”
Well, YOU don’t. I’ve watched my trash being thrown out and crushed by the truck. I’ve seen that sucker smash a couch flat. I’m gonna guess most of those bulbs are busted.
WOW !! I guess you DID poke the fucking bear ! ! ! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . shesh !
If only I could get something that would have this sort of effect on my roses, eh?
Coffee grounds
I’ve heard of their use as a slug-blocker, but not as a fertiliser.
Figures, doesn’t it? A creature with a top speed of 0.03 mph hates coffee.
Actually the coffee retains water and keeps the area around the base of the roses damp. They enrich the soil with a slightly more acidic pH level.
I had heard to do it with my roses, and ever since, my rose bushes grow almost too much… and I’m in the desert of Arizona.
http://jack-rosarian.blogspot.com/2013/03/coffee-grounds-and-roses.html
Ah. Mine are on the top of the riverbank. We average 14 inches of rain a year here, but they’re within 10 feet of running water. Great conditions for slugs …
Also, earthworms love coffee. They aerate the soil, and return wormpoo to fertilize the roots as well. Give it a try, you might have fuller rose bushes. I mean you drink coffee, so, you already have the grounds. May as well re-use them for something productive.
More of the same, unless you don’t have access to this level of horseshit. 😉
No shit rite
Well, at least he’ll have two fewer people to interview this time around?
I’m not rabid, at least not compared to people who label anyone who questions them a “denier”.
What’s funny is that I’m a lukewarmer, as I certainly agree that the Co2 we’re adding to the atmosphere is probably contributing to the warming. I’m just much more frightened about the long term impact of heavy metals on the environment.
When climate scientists start committing their climate models and data to GitHub then they’ll get some respect. This business of hiding the data and source they use so that no one can reproduce their results is crap.
I don’t mind going green. I do mind forcing it on me at the perverbial point of a gun. We have plenty of resources here we can use until we have better technology. Coal and natural gas plants in America are much cleaner burning then the dozens of new coal plants china and the rest of the third world build every year.
America has actually MET its Kyoto protocol levels, even though we didn’t ratify it. Most of the countries that signed it never did…
I’ve lived for a hear with solar and wind mill power. And a 10k generator for 220 to run the deep well pump. I’ve have to maintain batteries, reset breakers, reset the system that manages where the juice flows/how fast it flows. Replaced the lighting fuse that blew, but still didn’t save my very expensive controller. I’ve had to replace a windmill that didn’t like said lighting bolt either….
Running a solar/windmill system is essentially running a personal power plant. Your batteries release an explosive gas that needs to be vented. Acid creep coats the top of the cells and robs amps. Things pop and have to be reset. Programs fail and need to be sorted. There are people in my block now that should be allowed to flip a light switch. Now you want them to run their own power plant?
We have decades of natural gas and coal left. Use that time to build the systems needed to make green power. Don’t shove it down our throats. Because honestly it does not matter. China, India, and Pakistan will not stop making coal plants with absolutely zero emissions controls. So even if Americas Carbon foot print hit zero the world is doomed. Unless of course every single climate change model has been wrong the last decade, and maybe the world is able to adjust for our stupidity more then we think it can…