Teh Homeless Are Causing Global Warming
America’s Shittiest Website™ is, of course, the blogging home to America’s Shittiest Global Warming Denier™ Iain Murray, who faxed in this piece of nonsense:
Even the American homeless emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the world average, the wastrels. That’s the finding of a new report from MIT:
[T]he “floor” below which nobody in the U.S. can reach, no matter a person’s energy choices, turned out to be 8.5 tons, the class found. That was the emissions calculated for a homeless person who ate in soup kitchens and slept in homeless shelters.
As our own Steve Hayward pointed out in his recent WSJ piece, to reduce American emissions by 80 percent by 2050 with a reasonable guess at population of 400 million, that would mean an individual emission limit of 2.5 tons. And you know what? Switching over to twisty lightbulbs and driving Priuses isn’t likely to acheive [sic] that for the homeless…
Effing homeless. If I’d known they were causing so much global warming, I’d stop giving them my spare quarters!
Of course, 8.5 tons per homeless person does seem like a figure that’s, well, a teensy bit large. After all, if you live in an average size apartment in California and drive around a mid-size car, you would be emitting 7.22 tons of carbon annually. (Calculate that here). Or perhaps the average homeless guy has a better lifestyle than any of us knew about. The reason that we aren’t seeing a line of Hummers parked in front of the Central Union Mission is apparently because the homeless are smart enough to park their gas-guzzlers several blocks away and then walk to the soup kitchen.
Let’s just follow Murray’s link and find out what’s really up with all those megatons of carbon dioxide being spewed out of soup kitchens. First, we have the issue of a “report from MIT.” Er, no:
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology class has studied the carbon emissions of Americans in a wide variety of lifestyles and estimated that people in the United States contribute much more than the global average.
Not to be overly critical of undergraduates or anything but a class project isn’t really conclusive of much of anything other than the grades that the students received.
Not only isn’t this really an MIT report but also it wasn’t really a study of what homeless people actually “emit” but rather what they emit plus an allocation of a large part of the carbon output of state, federal and local governments:
While it may seem surprising that even people whose lifestyles don’t appear extravagant–the homeless, monks, children–are responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions, one major factor is the array of government services that are available to everyone in the United States. These basic services–including police, roads, libraries, the court system and the military–were allocated equally to everyone in the country in this study.
Only a bunch of engineering students could imagine that military carbon emissions should be allocated to the homeless, I suppose because the homeless are so grateful for having their way of life preserved by our troops. And only America’s Shittiest Global Warming Denier™ could think that this undergraduate class project proves anything at all.
Mr. Murray, there’s a call on line 3. Exxon-Mobil wants its money back.
Carbon sequestering the entire staff of the Corner, great idea or greatest idea? Discuss.
But..but…but…I’m flabbergasted. So you figure out the carbon footprint of all government services (including the military!) and you divy up an equal share for each individual, and at the end, the worst offenders are the guys sleeping under sheets of cardboard in the park, instead of the guy sleeping under an electric blanket in a central-heated 3,000 sq. foot home with the TV left on to help him nod off?
Just wanted to clarify that.
I’m going to go with greatest idea, really. They should not be allowed to exhale carbon dioxide. Ever.
Well, with those ears on, shouldn’t he be Iain Furray?
Shouldn’t votes and/or donations to Republicans be weighted somehow?
Wow. So this is the point of his post:
Well no, but it certainly will for people who can afford to do so. As for the government-allocations-count-for-everyone, well…fight for more efficient governmental practices, then. Isn’t that what the free marketeers would like, anyway? Or does the ALGORESUX!!!!!!1 knee-jerk override everything else?
Friedman/Instapundit/Freakanomics Lite arguments are friggin pointless. Yes, you made me raise an eyebrow. So?
I think the
reportclass project stated that 8.5 tons was the “floor”, which was determined by dividing all government services equally amongst the population. Anything above that (such as guy in 3,000 sq ft. home driving Hummer, etc.) is in *addition* to the 8.5 tons.Of course, I’m sure Murray interpreted this as the homeless are the worst polluters in the world.
So, if the government switched to “twisty light bulbs and …Priuses” the allocation would fall, perhaps to that 2.5 tons/person some day.
It’s clear to me and the majority of people (who are Hillary supporters….yes Obama has the lead now, but we’re getting 6000% of the remaining votes) that an Obama administration would be devastating to the environment, because the majority of Obama supporters are creative class people who drive huge cars and don’t live frugal lives like the working class white people, who Obama can’t get support from.
This is why Obama is a horrible choice for the nomination. That and your misogyny, which you practice when you insult me. The more you insult me, the more people will vote for McCain, who has a true coalition of voters.
1) Are your sources truthfully represented? No.
2) Did you provide proper context for your statistics? No.
3) Does this article help us further understand the issues? No.
4) Does this article even make sense? No.
….
Fine then. Let’s publish.
Actually, maybe if more of us were homeless, we’d collectively reduce the carbon footprint of the guys in the 3000 sq. ft. houses.
I’m sure this is an idea the WSJ will gladly promote on behalf of their readership.
The more you insult me, the more people will vote for McCain, who has a true coalition of voters.
Wow, you must be really really important, Iris!
[snicker]
I am important. I am an example of voters that Obama can’t reach, because he’s bla…an elitist.
Sorta-but-not-really-OT: Well, now I know why I saw this book in my local Barnes & Noble recently. I guess Mr. Murray really wants that check from ExxonMobil. One of the funniest (but not “HA-HA” funny) bullet points Murray put on the front cover flap was “how Rachel Carson killed several Africans because she wanted to ban DDT.”
On my drive home, I like to call up the local wingnut radio station, drop a choice Lib-bomb (“Jeremiah Wright? The man’s a saint”), then sit back and enjoy (hey, a man’s got to have a hobby, right) as a great gaseous bellow arises. Little did I know that I’m helping to murder our Earth Mother.
Ooh, I can combine that with the Magnum Doughpus for less than $40.
I think the report class project stated that 8.5 tons was the “floor”, which was determined by dividing all government services equally amongst the population. Anything above that (such as guy in 3,000 sq ft. home driving Hummer, etc.) is in *addition* to the 8.5 tons.
Yeah, according to the Environmental Protection article, the study found the annual individual average to be 20 metric tons.
Also from the article (Gutowski is the MIT professor who taught the class):
A tax increase? No! A thousand times times no! Thirty-dollars worth of Ramen per month no!
Don’t forget the dollar-store spaghetti sauce!
“how Rachel Carson killed several Africans because she wanted to ban DDT.”
And pointing out the nutritional dangers of fast food is denying employment to thousands of pimply teenagers.
Oh yeah, the good ol’ “libruls killed 3rd world babies by banning DDT” argument. This has been debunked several times over:
— The DDT ban wasn’t global, it only affected industrialized countries and a handful of developing countries. Third world countries still used it.
— DDT caused other unintentional disasters in some 3rd world countries. Namely, they killed insects that were natural predators to the pest insects, but didn’t kill the pest insects.
— DDT was on its way out anyway, because bugs were developing an immunity to it. (Of course, rightiwng nuts deny evolution, so you could see why this would make them scratch their heads.)
— Virtually every country today no longer uses it because of the two previous points.
Don’t Cheetos give you gas? We must ban it to slow the human-emitted gas contribution to global warming.
Man, Iris– with all that wanking your clitoris must look like a Vienna sausage that’s been pressed up against a belt sander.
Don’t Cheetos give you gas?
Cheetos AND a foot-long all-meat sammich and you’re going to need to buy emissions credits.
What’s worse is that gas is methane, which is supposedly 25-70 worse than CO2 in global warming. Fortunately, natural gas is mostly methane, so this means that we can stick a capturing unit on Jonas’ ass and have an alternative source of fuel.
Dammit. WordPress ate my link. >:(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane
I think that is Fake Iris. (Geez, now we get Fake Concern Trolls? Oh spare us.)
So, if the government switched to “twisty light bulbs and …Priuses” the allocation would fall, perhaps to that 2.5 tons/person some day.
A step in the right direction would be to get the government to stop invading other countries unless we go in with Priuses instead of tanks and F-16’s.
True. Fighter jets dump a metric fuckload of carbon in the air.
Yeah, this Iris is so rote that she’s almost surely a Garybot. It isn’t Iris without a dash of name-calling and a shot of self-pity.
I only wish Iris had a catchphrase such as “The fact is,” or “Shalom, gentlemen” or “Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned to look past Iris’s snarky, annoying analects. I’ve learned to look past some of the crass things Iris has said. I’ve even learned to look past its attempts to subject human beings to indignities. But I cannot stay silent about Iris’s incomprehensible and unforgivable audacity regarding a specific event that recently occurred.”
You know. So we can mock him/her/it!
This type of sexism is driving voters away from Obama, who can’t win unless he acknowledges progressives’ issues with his campaign. Hillary ran as a true progressive, and that is why her supporters are leaving the Democratic party.
That Iaian has scraped the bottom of the barrel so asdiously that he has splinters under all his fingernails… including the thumbs!
Greetings! Iris is indeed a fake concern troll. We’re still tinkering with catch phrases- great ones like “Shalom” and “The fact is,” don’t just spring up overnight. And let’s be frank, Matt McMahon’s use of the complaint generator is an easy out.
Although the real Iris had some good ones (various incorrect riffs about the “creative class,” for example), they’re tough to start with. We’ll test some catch phrases in the coming weeks to see what sticks.
We here at Sadly, No! Robotics know you have a choice in fake trolls, and we’re appreciate your business. Thank you.
Sadly, No! Robotics
OBOTICS you completely-in-the-tank cultists.
That Iaian has scraped the bottom of the barrel so asdiously that he has splinters under all his fingernails… including the thumbs!
Let’s not assume Iain has (opposable) thumbs now. That’s a bit of a leap if you ask me.
The fact is, I eat <cite> tags.
I must say I am going to give the next homeless person I see a darned good talking to. They can purchase carbon credits like the rest of us.
Actually climate change may pan out as net COOLING in temperate zones, as “climate belts” form … which won’t help to mitigate the warming in the Arctic & Antarctic much. Especially if the cool belts start to shrink away to nothing. The tropics might just become humanly uninhabitable, period – just think about how many of us live there, or how few of us that do have any means to leave.
Also, the damage to the poles won’t take long to be felt everywhere else (parts of Pakistan & Bangladesh are eroding into the sea right NOW); about 90% of humanity lives within sight of or ON a coastline.
Not shaking shit out of your pantleg yet? This has the very real potential to create weather that makes Katrina look like a gentle spring breeze. Real hardcore superstorms haven’t been around since the early prehistoric period, but we might just be inviting them to make a comeback. A superstorm isn’t like a hurricane, it’s more like a hyper-big-ass tornado. Not to mention that, if it either comes out of or creates a hyperstabile system, like Jupiter’s Red Spot, rather than blowing itself out after a week or two it might just keep going, for a very long time. If we don’t wise up soon enough, those upcoming superstorms might make for some reeeeally interesting times.
But hey, it’s nice to know Iain Murray is doing his part for the environment by actively composting – in the above-the-neck area.
OT but it looks like the Duggars are at it again.
Now that I’ve actually read the ‘study’ in question, it strikes me as incredibly defeatist and incomplete.
The students concluded that because the choices the government agencies and entities make, we will not be able to reduce Carbon Dioxide* emissions to a significant degree without raising taxes (which they say is not likely to happen).
Bullshit.
Government can create tax credits, create incentive schemes, create demonstration programs and fund research into conservation and alternative energy – the carrot. They can set fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, appliances, industries, and its own agencies and entities – the stick.
The military, for example, is incredibly wasteful. Its energy usage can be directed by Congress through law. The President can regulate its energy usage through regulations. Tax increases have nothing to do with it.
This kind of stuff was happening under Jimmy Carter after the oil shocks of the 1970’s. For example, there was a Solar Energy/Energy Conservation Demonstration Program for small businesses funded by DOE in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
It worked like this: the program lent money to the businesses, who paid back the loans out of their energy savings. The money paid back went to more businesses in that same state to create a positive ripple effect.
There was at least one demo project in each state and the program more than paid for itself. It was so successful, it was expanded to include non-profits, so they could spend more money on their missions and not on their energy bills.
But Reagan put an effective stop to it and programs like it. And the Clinton administration short-sightedly failed to revive those kinds of efforts after the Reagan-Bush years. And this was not the only successful project to get canned in the name of ‘free market forces’ and ‘let’s give the oil companies more money’.
In short, either the article leaves a lot of stuff out or that class didn’t do a very thorough analysis of the options we have to make a substantial decrease in our energy waste and thus our Carbon Dioxide emissions.
I give ’em a D.
*Yes. I forgot the ASCII for subscripts. Damn!
Global warming is also affecting the Gulf Stream, as cold water is dumped into the Atlantic. In time the huge influx of cold water will stall the warm water-meets-cold-water engine driving the Gulf Stream. That will affect the growth of plankton, which needs the nutrients dragged up by the water churning. And the entire marine food chain depends on plankton, as well as much of the land food chain, since so many people live on the coasts, partially for the food.
I forgot to mention it, but there is a very active prof at MIT who is preaching that nuclear power is our only hope. I fergit his name, but I’d make a bet that class was his.
We’ll test some catch phrases
I SUBMIT THE FOLLOWING (gleaned from actual Iris comments):
~Almost 50% of Democrats have voted for her
~I — a proud liberal — am tired of hearing how racist I am
~I am at pains to point out
~If things have to get worse for the Democratic party to learn a lesson, so be it.
~This just isn’t the time (not yet) for unity and reconciliation.
~You can’t argue that we have to follow the “rules”
~not to pander or anything
OT but it looks like the Duggars are at it again.
I thought the Duggars were always at it!
My wife is a Smart Science Person, and she has been coming around to the idea that, in the short term, nuclear power is the only real solution in our toolbox to stop/slow carbon emissions while maintaining developed-world economy. So there’s that for ya.
I — a proud liberal — am tired of hearing how racist I am
I prefer this one as I have run into the wingnuttiest of wingnuts — for example, religious nuts protesting against gay marriage — who have declared that they were proud liberals!
IMHO, the hypocrisy and crazy just kind of ooze out of that catchphrase like the creepiness oozes out of the McCain Mother’s Day spot.
[shudder]
Sorry, Mrs. Oregon Guy, but there is no ‘short term’ with nuclear power. Tons to time are needed to build ’em. Tons of time are needed to decommision them. Tons of time are needed before the waste is non-fatal.
Conservation, solar, wind, hydro, on the other hand, are quicker, cheaper and much less dangerous.
I like ~not to pander or anything because it’s more broad: any old bullshit can go after it.
The Chernobyl museum in Kiev is a very depressing place to visit. No more of those please.
Well, there’s some book by some scientist somewhere, maybe even your MIT guy, that she’s been reading.
Far be it from me to represent my lovely wife’s views as my own as I lack her erudition on the subject… but…
when we wuz talking about it the other day she mentioned that hydro has huge externalities (see China), wind is very polluting in terms of land use… I think all of your solutions (conservation/wind/solar/hydro) should be used myself – but by themselves probably won’t get us all the way there. Believe me, I’d love to be wrong.
Believe me, I’d love to be wrong.
I’m somewhat on the fence as regards the nuclear issue, but the down side is so so down.
Isn’t the greatest source of potential energy conservation?
If I may put it that way.
It’s rare that the Republicans hand us such a wonderful gift on a platter, but check this out:
Republicans Vote *Against* Mother’s Day
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/08/AR2008050802999.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/09/republicans-vote-against-mothers-day/
Next up, a bill to condemn Cindy Who of Whosville as a trollop.
.
Okay – here’s something on the nukes topic. I think that France is a big nuke plant builder, and to my knowledge, none of their plants have blown up yet.
I also know that they have huge investments in public transit infrastructure that we Americans can only dream about (well, this one does anyway)…
So I got on the Wikipedia and saw that France has the 15th highest carbon emissions in the world, well below those of comparably-populated Italy and the UK.
If we got our carbon footprints down to where the French are, the US carbon footprint would be
2.24 millions (in thousands of metric tons)
down from
6.04 millions (in thousands of metric tons)
which would reduce global carbon output by 15%. Not shabby. Too bad we have so many polluting homeless people, tho’.
What’s next? The “Snuff Out Puppies and Kittens Act”? It doesn’t surprise me that the GOP would do something like this.
The reason doesn’t really help, either. Republicans have been trying to gum up the machinery so that they can force Congress to pass immunity for AT&T and the other telecoms – and basically out of spite because they aren’t in charge anymore.
This could make some great campaign commercials.
I’d bet that the book is by this MIT guy. He’s very persuasive, I understand. But when she says “that hydro has huge externalities (see China)” and minimizes the even huger externalities of nukes, ya gotta wonder. And to neglect the effectiveness of small hydro projects is typical wingnut thinking. Here in the Northeast, for example, there are thousands of old dams which could be retrofitted with generators with virtually no additiona environmental impact.
And as for “wind is very polluting in terms of land use”, I really don’t think ‘pollution’ is the concept here. It’s not like the wind generators are oozing oil into the soil or belching chemicals into the air. So that statement is more like “Wind power uses land”. Yes, it does. So does nuclear power plants and the buffer areas around them. And the nukes will thermally pollute cooling water, amongst other negative externalities
And yes, conservation is probably our best bet for incredibly large reductions in our energy use and emissions, Henry. And, in many cases, it has little or no negative impact on conservation. In many cases, conservation has a positive impact on your lifestyle (for example, if you weatherstrip your windows or insulate your home, you will be more comfortable winter or summer!).
When I get a chance, I’ll track that nuke-prophet MIT prof’s name down. One of my friends went to a talk he gave last year, so I’ll start there.
Speaking of the Corner, does anyone know if K-Lo is married? If not, this is really sad:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWI0YWQ4M2ExN2QzYTY4Njg1OGFiY2ZmNTk2OTBhYzg=
Damn! ‘additional’. ‘do.’
Damns!
Okay – here’s something on the nukes topic. I think that France is a big nuke plant builder, and to my knowledge, none of their plants have blown up yet.
The problem in Chernobyl was that incompetents had stupid ideas and tried them out one day. It was running fine (although I understand that the general design was kind of dumb as these things go). I can accept that certain nations – for now – will have tight enough controls to prevent their plants from exploding, but I have a tough time trusting that the needs of the globe can be met.
Oregon Guy,
Who’s the author of the book?
Also, to jump from “France has a lot of nukes” to “France has the lowest carbon footprint” requires a bit more than faith to prove causation. The French also use incredibly efficient cars and trucks, for example. Many homes do not have central heating, for another.
The last american commercial reactor to come on line was 1996. That means it was at best a 1980s design. While they have done remarkable things with the old commercial reactors to increase their uptime, efficiency and safety, they are still obsolete.
In the meantime, a great deal of research has gone into designing new generations of nuclear power generation systems, which are now available for use. Things like PBRs and more efficient use of fuels.
These reactors can be smaller and much more contained. They pretty much cannot create a TMI or Chernobyl. The only real remaining downside, other than the HUGE upfront costs, is spent fuel and decommisioning costs. While these provide important grounds for debate, I think it’s obvious that nuclear power is going to be a necessary component of power generation over the next 100 years…
mikey
According to her wiki page, she’s not.
Also, she’s only in her early 30’s! All the pictures I’ve seen of her made me think she’s at least ten years older than that. O_o
Uranium is a limited resource too. The price of uranium has shot sky-high recently. There is a lot of it, but most of it is low grade, according to what I”ve read.
Most important of all, you need oil to run mines. Look at South Africa.
The fact is, Iris can find some other place to do “her work”. This place is mine. And that goes for liberalrob as well. The fact is, get the hell out of her
Gary, darlin’, how do you know liberalbob is inside Iris? Is the circle jerk metaphor a sickening reality???
Sweet i’m at 2.27 metric tons a year, why don’t the rest of you jerks stop killing my planet already.
The problem is it only takes one, and then you have a whole of people who are really really sorry, but you know, no one could have seen it coming. Plus as far as I know (which is very little) they still don’t have any where to put all the waste.
Our energy industry is into addiction, so of course they like nuclear better. If you manufacture solar panels and sell them to everyone with a roof, you make a few billion, but then you can’t charge them every month for electricity. The same thing happens if you manufacture windmills and sell them to any farmer who doesn’t mind plowing around them.
These are people who’d charge us for air if they could get away with it.
Ack! These same old arguments from the 1970’s and 80’s!
How about an analogy? It’s like you need to get from point A to point B and you have two choices: You can order a Vargon-class land cruiser which will be ready in 10 years, cost $100,000, and, although it emits a toxic gas right into the cockpit, has a complicated filtering system which should (fingers crossed) keep you safe. In addition, there is a special $250,000 disposal cost once the land cruiser becomes decrepit. Oh, and repair costs are 10x what you might expect. On the bright side, you can go 5 years between re-fuelings!
Or you can go online today and order a Smart Car for $13,000 which will be delivered in 3 months and can be repaired at any garage at the expected cost level. Yes, you’ll have to fill it up every month and it does emit CO2. And you may have to pay $100 to get it towed away when it gets decrepit.
Are you really going to choose the Vargon-class land cruiser because the toxic gas it emits is not CO2 and the SmartCar emits a small amount of CO2?
Sorry. It just doesn’t make sense to me. We have limited time, money and resources. Let’s make choices which will benefit people and the environment over huge corporations.
Because that is another component of this issue: huge companies such as GE, Westinghouse and Brown & Root (Halliburton) make money off of nukes. Smaller companies make money from small hydro projects, solar, wind and conservation.
And don’t get me started on how vulnerable centralizing our power sources makes us to terrorism…
We’ll test some catch phrases
I kind of liked “NEW RULE” myself.
There aint gonna be any ONE measure that will answer all our problems. Nuclear Power is not a magic pony, nor are hydro, wind, solarr, geothermal, um….wave, etc. etc. They ALL have their good points, some have a few bad points as well.
As an aside, (pay attention Doodle!) back in 19*cough*splutt* I worked for USDA ARS (Agricultural Research Services) doing computer geek stuff for hydrologists. One of the research projects showed pretty conclusively that small scale hydro, especially in the NE, made so much sense it was stoopid to NOT fit all those small dams with generators.
And by the way, the real problem with the Gulf Stream isn’t cold water but fresh water. As the polar and Greenland sheets melt it changes the density of the ocean to where the GS will just go away. Thus will “global warming” cause a new ice age in Europe. That that, France!
And finally, yes, there’s akvavit in Portland. It’s the micro-distillery’s own interpretation; much like other akvavit I’ve had but it’s got a markedly different character to it than any others I’ve had.
See also for more about PDX drinking habits and opportunities.
Oh, right. Also, good morning everyone.
The problem with nukes is that the safety system which broke down at Chernyobl is duplicated in all nuclear plants around the world.
The guy holding the control knob.
Er, “
thattake that, France”Iris is still on:
That first sentence is a pretty awesome catchphrase for anything that comes after:
I’d also like to throw out a lament to what used to be the ‘reality-based’ community and a wonderful forum for exchanging ideas. Why does the fur of bats clog my faucet?
I don’t understand this group’s hostility toward obvious parody commenters. I mean, do you guys watch the Colbert Report and get all angry because he says anti-intellectual things like “sorry, Darwin-huggers”? Iris isn’t that great but she’s at least somewhat amusing.
Fuck you WordPress. Just fuck you is all.
She also reveals that we’re all doomed to become fascists.
Thank, PeeJ. I”ve been reading simple explanations of the problems that usually don’t get into details. Or maybe I just don’t’ understand them….
Eh, not amusing enough. Concern trolls need to act sympathetic, not look for sympathy. She has the dynamic off.
She also reveals that we’re all doomed to become fascists.
Pffft. There already.
There’s also this (from Iris @ 19:38 in That Thread™):
Let the flaming begin…..
Doctorb,
Colbert has wit; Iris does not.
What are you talking about? Iris is a shining wit.
Peej is right.
I don’t know anybody who thinks we should ONLY generate power using one methodology. The problem is, you’re trying to offset a truly gargantuan amount of fossil fuel generation (oil, gas, coal), so you’re really not going to be able to take any alternative off the table. Each has a contribution to make.
Sagra, if you think about it, local generation schemes cannot work. Power must be generated and supplied 24×7 and must have additional available capacity to account for fluctuations in demand. Your on-site solar or hydro or wind generator can help offset some of that usage, but without storage and demand buffering solutions, will not provide a solution.
And Doodle, your analogy falls apart if you look at the cost of all kilowatt hours generated over the lifespan of the powerplant, particularly in an era of $100/bbl oil, the economic argument actually mitigates in favor of the nuclear solution.
Does it take a long time to build a nuke plant? Sure does. So in 2017 will our energy problems be all solved, or should we start doing things today that will make contributions to the solution longer term. If we are increasingly desperate in 2015 and start then, we will have lost another decade…
mikey
Re: The Safety of the French Nuke Program (paragraphs are about a ’60 Minutes’ program named ‘Vive Les Nukes’):
“Though she was totally ignored, Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear told 60 Minutes of radioactive contamination in the marine life off Normandy where the French reprocessing center sits, leukemia clusters in people living along that coast, and massive demonstrations in French cities earlier in the year protesting construction of new nuclear power plants.
The Union of Concerned Scientists was upset by 60 Minutes’ downplaying of alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar…
Click the link for much more.
Mikey,
Look at the kilowatt hours saved and generated by alternatives and you’ll see my analogy is sound…
As for the ‘we need to get started NOW!’ argument. I agree. Let’s get started now.
And not just with tepid measures such as finally killing the SUV subsidy for small businesses, but major, sweeping, new conservation and alternatives programs and policies.
By 2017 we’ll be in much better shape than we will be if we devote massive resources to nukes.
Doctorb,
I’ll grant you that she/he/it is a shining twit!
Other possible Iris catchphrases:
A. If I might offer a constructive criticism to liberals and progressives in general,
B. Smear me as a GOP’er all you want…it makes you look even worse.
C. As a final comment in tis thread, and as a warning to Obama supporters. (I noticed a lot of “final comments”)
D. Look carefully before you jump off this cliff, and vote Hillary!
E. Oh, but I’m just practicing the ‘politics of fear’, I’m sure someone will say.
F. And I’ll just say this one more time.
I think she’s also Hattie, and her catchphrase should be “because I need to be accepted first.”
“I’d love to fight global warming, but I need to know it accepts me first.”
“I would vote for national health if it begged me to and I know it accepts me first.”
Nuclear power consumes vast, vast amount of water. Not an ideal source of power here in the semi-arid Mountain West that has been stuck in a drought for the last decade.
I don’t think that it is going to get much better with global climate change around here either. The day is coming when water will be even more valuable than oil.
Not to mention the fact that we’re battling to clean up the uranium mine waste and trailings already.
We have lots and lots of sun (over 300 days per year) and a pretty steady wind. You’ll see Colorado develop as a leader in these technologies.
Power needs are *typically* a lot smaller at night, and there are ways to store energy without crippling losses in efficiency (around 80%-95% efficiency for a battery, compared to 92% for power lines for non-local generation). Plus there’s a lot of stuff that we regularly do with power that doesn’t actually require constant availability.
I still question the need to increase nuclear power generation, though, in part because of the tremendously expensive waste and in part because of the catastrophic nature of failure. I recognize that if you add up all the cost and death and morbidity from fossil fuel power (counting coal miners, but not counting Operation Iraqi Liberation and the like) it’s really really awful, but I am not ready to go nuclear — until we’ve maximized our renewable energy production.
Doodle — I was kind of going for “whining shit” but yeah.
NEW RULE: You Obots who think that your demagogue is going to lead you to the misogynistic paradise will deserve nothing but my scorn, as you couldn’t possibly believe that your beloved “candidate” is anything more than a Republican tool. Hillary is the way! It’s not too late; we can still win West Virginia and Kentucky, which will put Hillary, the true candidate of change, over the top! Soon the superdelegates will start breaking for Hillary’s camp, and then what happens, Obama fanboys? I’ll tell you- you become fascists, but we’ll win the Democratic nomination and then beat McCain and then stop you. Hillary’s proven time and again this election season that she can capture a majority of voters, and the fact that you ignore this shows the sickening bias in the heart of Obotism. You people should be ashamed, the way you’ve raked progressivism through the mud, but I don’t think you will be…as you’re nothing more than pathetic non-working class elites.
Easy question, Doodle. Can we replace our total power generation demand with conservation and alternatives?
If we can, we’d be stupid to build a nuke plant, let alone another coal or gas-fired plant.
I have no idea of the answer to that question. My gut tells me it’s “no”, but my gut was certain the giants would win the world series in ’02. Proving again that the size of the gut is unrelated to the wisdom of the gut.
But it seems like somebody should figure out the total contribution of various non-fossil fuel energy generation schemes and some likely conservation scenarios and determine exactly WHAT we do need to do…
mikey
I’m saying Conventional Wisdom will inevitably wobble to a stop pointing toward nuclear power because that solution results in the largest profits for the fewest corporations.
There aren’t solid buffering and storage solutions and there won’t ever be any while the energy industry can hope for nuclear. The stakes are too high for them to allow it.
And if you don’t believe her, she’ll just have to vote for McCain to instigate that misogynistic paradise even faster.
Easy question, Doodle. Can we replace our total power generation demand with conservation and alternatives?
Conservation and alternatives other than nukes? Yes. There are individuals and small businesses all over which are thriving off the grid right now, for example. Multiply that by many orders of magnitude, and you’re all set.
The challenge will be to overcome the resistence of corporations… well and folks like you — or folks even more stubborn than you!
We would have to make radical changes. Government will have to make decisions based on the common welfare and not on the ‘free market forces’. And the oil companies and utility companies won’t let any of it happen easily.
When I get home, I’ll dig out the proposal someone made when the Seabrook (New Hampshire) nuke was being planned in the 1970’s. Essentially, IIRC, it showed that if the utility had put the proposed budget for the plant into buying everyone in New England insulation for their homes and solar panels for their roofs, they would have completely prevented the need for the plant… and that was before the massive construction cost overruns on that ugly, toxic piece of shit.
No promises, but it gives an idea of the kind of thing we can do now if only we take back our government. I’ll get off my soapbox now. My knees hurt.
I was kind of going for “whining shit” but yeah.
Yean, premature submission again! I thought I had changed ‘shining’ to whining’ but did I check before I hit ‘enter’? No.
Ya see? I did it again! S/B ‘Sadly, No!’
Wonder if there are meds for that kind of thing…
We would have to make radical changes. Government will have to make decisions based on the common welfare and not on the ‘free market forces’.
[Sound of giant Cheeto-based methane release followed by the crackling sound of wingnut heads assploding…]
…local generation schemes cannot work. Power must be generated and supplied 24×7 and must have additional available capacity to account for fluctuations in demand. Your on-site solar or hydro or wind generator can help offset some of that usage, but without storage and demand buffering solutions, will not provide a solution.
Ack! Old argument from the 70’s! Power is being generated and stored so it is available 24×7. Electricity is being stored and buffered. We have the technology. On-site solar and hydro and wind are supplying the solution for people all over right now.
Please. Update your arguments.
What’s your point?
Don’t you libs have anything to offer except more politically-correct enviromentalist tree-hugging and class warfare?
I bet if Hugo Chavez or your buddies in Iran or Hamas wanted to build nuclear plants, you’d be all for it.
Liberals. Hmf.
(Truth, Gary, Saul, you guys can take a break on this thread. I covered all the talking points already.)
“misogynisticparadise?” “Hillary is the way?” “sickening bias in the heart of Obotism”? “pathetic non-working class elites.”?
I’ll give her points for effort, but she’s really trying too hard. Quit showing off, Iris, you’re making the other trolls look sane.
I think I’ve just been insulted.
Liberals. Hmf.
National Geographic Greendex is now on line:
59.
Bring it, you planet killers.
I got 40.
Which makes me a REAL AMERICAN!
Bring it on, hippies! I will bury you in unrecycled beer cans.
Liberals. Hmf.
Circumcision leaves the homeless without the shelter of a foreskin, whose physical area is easily large enough for two to shelter under. This anti-foreskin conspiracy is being directed by a Jewish cabal intent on leaving Heartland homeless who have no homes without the natural resources that G-d has granted all male human men. A classy MIT study proves that circumcised people have a carbon footprint of size 14 while foreskin retaining patriots of the USA of America average size 8 1/2. While Hitlery and Hussien Obama X are calling for circumcision of all Americans, George Willard Bush, the president-patriot of the Heartland is proposing The American Foreskin Refurbishment Act, which would use 500 billion dollars worth of Chinese money to install, reinstall and refurbish foreskins on every living American, regardless of political party or religion. Since this isn’t coming out of our taxes and has wide support from both parties (the Right-wing and the extreme Right-wing wings of the GOP party), it should be signed into law immediately. As Democrats naturally have their heads-in-the-sand, they may be unaware that Democratic policies have brought about a housing crisis that will leave all non-bankers homeless. This situation would be untenable without the natural shelter of a foreskin, so I hope that even you LIE-bruls will see the sense of this legislation and vote for George Willard Bush and John Fauntleroy McCain to bring about CHANGE in this country, as you socialists have scr-wed things up so badly!
CO2. Ha! Did it!
Nope. Didn’t.
Subscript code worked in Preview. Oh well.
Sorry.
The American Foreskin Refurbishment Act, which would use 500 billion dollars worth of Chinese money to install, reinstall and refurbish foreskins on every living American, regardless of political party or religion.
Why do Republicans hate the clitoris?
You’ve got to give NRO some credit for being smart enough not to allow comments. The copious scorn that would be heaped on a post like Murray’s (or La Lopez’s cri de couer) would cripple the intertoobs for weeks.
CO?. Yes?
No.
Even WordPress, the prince of darkness incarnate, disapproves of my tests. I just received this message via hamster:
You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.
Oh well.
Sadly, NO!
Sadly, NOx
52 for me. It’s a little deceptive, though. I don’t own or plan to own a new energy saving central air conditioning system but that doesn’t mean I run an old non-energy saving one; it just means I don’t have airconditioning and can’t afford to install it in the future.
Ah! I see the trouble. Western European hamsters recognize NO subscripts.
Damn you for starting this website in Germany, Seb!
[shakes fist and goes back to muttering as part of discussion of um… uh… ‘mortgage legislation’… yeah, that’s the ticket… with an underling]
Why do Republicans hate the clitoris?
The what? I don’t know what you think you’re saying but you must’ve spelled it wrong. I’ve never heard of anything like that (stupid LIE-brul).
Wow. This week at S,N! completely pwns.
Stryx, tell me how you did the subscript please?
Please – I’ve thought it was and I was wrong, but then I thought it was and I was still wrong.
How the fuck will we ever top 1000 comments if Doodle has to slow down? Iris can’t carry the load all by itself.
Sleight of hand, DB. Mixed case.
Praise the Great Gazoogle
Subscript: x2
Superscript: x2 or x²
or in projects with the templates sub and sup:
Subscript: x{{sub|2}}
Superscript: x{{sup|2}}
ε0 =
8.85 × 10−12
C² / J m.
1 [[hectare]] = [[1 E4 m²]]
Is this going to be on the final?
Subscript: x2
is how it’s supposed to work
x (sub)2(/sub)
or maybe \x_2
no. how about
Subscript: x2
works in preview, but no. how about
CO2
The force is weak with this one.
The fact is, Lain Murray looks like the guy in the picture wearing a viking helmet and holding an axe and making a face. The fact is, if you put that picture next to Lain’s, it would look like the same person.
Now go to hell. Heartland.
Latex code on WordPress.com post should start with
. To make a character Subscript or Superscript you can add an underscore “_” or an accent “^” respectively. See codes below and their respective Latex rendering.
Sure, WordPress can deepfry a water buffalo in 30 seconds, but it can’t render LaTex code?
Maybe it needs to be fed Cheetos.
Ya see how maddening it is, Stryx!?!?!?!?!
But I’m glad you couldn’t get it to work, either. Misery loves company.
I wonder if it’s just alpha subs which work… Me
Also, never underestimate the power of energy conservation (pun intended)!
…a recent study shows that trying to accumulate load on some [computer] servers can improve energy efficiency because the other servers will be mostly unused during off-peak periods and then able to make better use of power saving methods. Specially, where load involves lots of concurrent power-consuming TCP connections, which was the case in the study, a new load-balancing algorithm resulted in an overall 30% power savings.
30 freakin’ percent! Awesum!!
I tell ya! It’s the Yurpeen hamsters!!
The math on this thread is too advanced for me
What is this load balancing you speak of?
Ha! Saved from the taint of hypocricy by Greendex! 65, suckas!
Yeah. Right.
What is this load balancing you speak of?
I has to do with the wide, bowlegged stance one needs to develop when lugging around a normal foreskin, suitable for sheltering at least two full sized human adults.
I was told there would be no math.
Is this going to be on the final?
Yes.
But I KNOW this is false. I cannot install enough solar capacity to run my house during the day AND store power for the night. I cannot install a big windmill, and if I could there is not enough wind to turn it. I have no flowing or falling water.
I don’t know how many people have the space and the environmentals to install that much local generation capacity, but it’s going to prove to be less than 25%. Especially if at the same time you are encouraging efficient high-density urban centers that can be walked and support useful public transportation.
As to your assertion that there are technologies extant today that solve the problems of local energy storage and demand buffering, I pay pretty much attention and I’m unaware of them, so I’ll need a few links, or at least the name of the technologies so I can google them.
But what would average out to about $5000 a year in lead acid or Lithium Ion storage batteries per household is frankly gonna play hell with your economics…
mikey
CO2
Yeah. Right.
But what would average out to about $5000 a year in lead acid or Lithium Ion storage batteries per household is frankly gonna play hell with your economics…
FWIW………I live in an area that’s loaded with “off-grid” homes. These homes supply all of their own power (not 25% of it) and $5000.00 of battery-bank generally lasts about a decade. What’s the problem again?
Besides, there are ways to store energy in compressed air, as the compressed air car demonstrates. It probably takes up more space and a few kinks need to be worked out, but it is entirely possible.
As for windmills in the urban environment, the traditional HAWT (Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine) sucks ass because it depends on a steady, one direction laminar flow wind to work well. VAWTs are far superior in an urban setting, as they don’t depend on wind direction to work, work in turbulent winds, can self start in winds as low as ~3 mph, and some models look pretty damned cool.
But I KNOW this is false. I cannot install enough solar capacity to run my house during the day AND store power for the night. I cannot install a big windmill, and if I could there is not enough wind to turn it. I have no flowing or falling water.
Mikey, You THINK it is false, which is quite different. Maybe you need more information or maybe you need help to implement a scheme which will work for you or maybe you need a source of financing, but it is possible. People are doing it right now.
I know that it would mean big changes. You’d have to get much more efficient appliances for example. And for storage, batteries.
Yes, it would take money. But in the 80’s it took less money for individuals because of PURPA. PURPA required utilities to accept your excess so you feed excess power to the grid when you didn’t need it and then draw it back when you did. So, you didn’t need a battery bank.
So that’s one idea for policy changes: revive the small-scale energy source aspects of PURPA (and decouple the feasibility of small-scale alternative energy production from contracts and other ‘free market’ crap).
Here’s another: fund programs which help homeowners finance and implement small-scale alternative energy projects. So people would KNOW they can do it instead of thinking it’s impossible.
Mikey, one more thing before I need to go home using public transportation (Greendex = 65, suckas!):
There are bigger buildings than your home using alternatives. Right now.
Here is just one. It started out as a home and was re-purposed, as we say.
I vote for
C. As a final comment in tis thread, and as a warning to Obama supporters.
because I was going to nominate it.
My Noms! LEt me Show Tehm U
Tehm UTehm 2 U
Christ, I can’t hardly spell…
The fact is, liberals fail it, again. There is no win in liberalism, only fail. Your bias in the media=fail, your classwar=fail, your hateGodandUSA=fail.
65 is impressive. I got 61.
Ha! Saved from the taint of hypocricy by Greendex…
Greendex’s taint is hypocritical? Makes me wonder whether one could have a critical or hypercritical taint. And that’s something I do NOT want to think about.
NEW RULE: If foreskins are out of bounds, taints are as well.
The 2008 Oregon Brewers Festival will take place Thursday, July 24 through Sunday, July 27.
This is very bad news.
The 2008 Oregon Brewers Festival will take place Thursday, July 24 through Sunday, July 27.
This is very bad news.
Just change your schedule. It’s worth it. Trust me. I’ll treat you to the local akvavit and maybe some local grappa/eau de vie as well.
FWIW………I live in an area that’s loaded with “off-grid” homes. These homes supply all of their own power (not 25% of it) and $5000.00 of battery-bank generally lasts about a decade. What’s the problem again?
1. What method are they using? Wind? Solar?
2. How much area is available to them for power generation?
3. $5000 of battery bank? The average american household uses about 30 kWH per day. Now, I have no idea what voltage you are generating at and converting down to but I would think you’d need about 1500 amp hours of standby as a reasonable number. Based on what I know generating and storing power on sailboats, that’s gonna be pretty close to ten grand with no chance of holding capacity and efficiency anywhere near ten years. Along with the installation and the intelligent power management systems and the difficulties of finding a way to dispose of lead acid or Li-ion batteries, I honestly have to question your assertion, but more importantly, how it applies to us apartment/condo dwellers in urban environments.
It is pretty demonstrable that power generation as a process scales very well, and lends itself quite well to centralized providers who can do large scale generation, storage and delivery. Whether they are power companies, co-ops or neighborhood projects, individual distributed generation will not be a viable economic solution.
One proviso. If we had an abundent supply of cheap hydrogen, small scale hydrogen fuel cells would very likely change that equation. That may be the key breakthrough science..
mikey
Whether they are power companies, co-ops or neighborhood projects, individual distributed generation will not be a viable economic solution.
Man, that’s a crappy sentence.
Try it this way:
Whether they are power companies, co-ops or neighborhood projects, larger-scale power generation solutions will always be more economically viable than individual distributed solutions…
mikey
The fact is, we should either burn homeless people for heat or feed them to livestock, they are useless for anything else.
But Gary, if we feed the homeless to the livestock, aren’t you afraid of “Black Cow Disease*”?
* Bovine negriform encephalopathy
mikey
1. What method are they using? Wind? Solar?
Solar, for the most part, though some tack on a homebuilt wind generator.
2. How much area is available to them for power generation?
Area? It varies. Some use free-standing, sun-tracking PV mounting solutions on others just put PV and solar hot water on their roofs, the area involved is never an issue.
3. $5000 of battery bank? The average american household uses about 30 kWH per day.
(heh) Mikey, when you go off grid you don’t carry electric ovens, electric hot water and electric heat along with you. The normal off-grid house, save for the rare ones put together by wealthy dudes who want to live “without compromise”, is vastly more energy conservant than the *average* American household. Hot water is solar and or propane, cooking is via propane and refrigeration is via super efficient Sunfrost type models.
Working at keeping battery banks above damaging voltage levels requires more attention to what you’re doing than it does with a grid-connected house, but not *that* much more. Folks often have a standby generator (slow-speed, diesel powered) for topping off their batteries every week or two and use the extra power at that time to vacuum or use power tools and other power sucking appliances.
It takes a little adjustment but to claim that one can’t live off grid is simply wrong, there is a sizable community of them doing it every day (My sister-in-law and her family have been comfortably off-grid for over 20 years now), so you might want to re-adjust your perception of all of this.
I got a Greendex 62. I think it overstated my greeness.
I came out at 60. Tiny apartment, no heating or cooling.
Good morning Honolulu!
Just change your schedule. It’s worth it. Trust me.
The last day is a possibility.
I came out at 60.
Congratulations. How’d your wife take it?
[I’m slow this afternoon; double entendres are the best I can manage]
It takes a little adjustment but to claim that one can’t live off grid is simply wrong, there is a sizable community of them doing it every day (My sister-in-law and her family have been comfortably off-grid for over 20 years now), so you might want to re-adjust your perception of all of this
Wow. I must have done a DREADFUL job of communicating. That has never been my premise, and if I gave that impression it’s only because I suck.
I know people who live “off the grid”. The conversation I was having was about supplying the electricity requirements for the entire country, and whether not doing so without or with much reduced fossil fuel usage was possible without nuclear power.
And that led to a discussion about what alternative generation methodologies are usable or appropriate for people who live in higher density urban environments, condo complexes and apartment and dual-use neighborhoods.
While it is interesting and admirable for people to make such extreme changes, and we all agree that major changes in lifestyle have to be made, eliminating the use of electric appliances, for example, is not going to happen. It’s simply unrealistic to think so. If the average household uses 1000 kWH a month, then a 30% reduction in usage due to increased efficiency and conservation methodologies would have to be considered pretty damn good. So you still need something on the order of 700 kWH a month, and we still don’t have a practical way to get there…
mikey
I worked for USDA ARS (Agricultural Research Services)
PeeJ – were you in Beltsville, MD?
What is being measured?
Metric tons of CO²?
Mikey, I
‘m glad you admitted you suck. The wilful ignorance is getting old.
For example, “…and we still don’t have a practical way to get there…”
Yes. We do. It’s just a way which is decentralized and non-profit for large corporations.
Although on reflection, you’ll probably find a way to define ‘practical’ as ‘the status quo’ or ‘free market driven’.
Which leads me to my next question: what do you do for a living? And with what industry? And is your living dependent on oil, gas, nuclear power and/or any of the utilities?
Be honest, now.
Blue Buddha,
Thanks for the links. They are full of savory goodness!
Now read, all you poseurs, & read well!
I am a real homeless person.(Typing from the library in L. A. that overlooks the cemetary where F. Zappa & M. Monroe molder; it is all glamour!) I’m much more worried about my methane emissions than the carbon dioxide. (They feed us bean soup in those soup kitchens.) On the other hand, having to buy pre-packaged, ready to eat food at the stupor-mart w/ my Food Stamps may jack up my carbon footprint more than those who buy in bulk or “fresh.” And I am sorry about those buildings that caught fire when I was squatting in them.
Which is not to deny that you horrid Americans, in debt to China up to your morbidly obese triple chins, are responsible for much of the shit pumped into the atmosphere every day.
I guess this means I’m helping the environment by living in my mom’s basement.
Don’t forget green roofs
I live in Maryland and BG&E (Baltimore Gas and Electric) also offers energy alternatives such as 50 or 100% wind power.
Which leads me to my next question: what do you do for a living? And with what industry? And is your living dependent on oil, gas, nuclear power and/or any of the utilities?
Be honest, now.
Wow. Sometimes I’m a little surprised at how little it takes to get slammed.
“Willful ignorance”? I don’t think anybody who reads this board at all would classify me that way, even if I didn’t accept their stated premise as fact.
Insinuating I’m in the pocket of oil? Y’know, doodle, I’ve read your posts and never noticed you were an asshole.
I’m a marketing guy in the semiconductor industry. So fuck you.
And now? You can prove your point. Just answer two questions.
How do you replace the requirements for energy now being generated by fossil fuels. And you really can be specific – if you can. Or you can wave around vague assertions, but then it’s pretty obvious what you’re doing.
Second. How do you apply green alternative generation methodologies to high density urban environments in a manner that is available today and deployable today?
I’m sorry you find it so troublesome that I’m unaware of the answers to these questions, but based on your inability to provide answers and/or links and your immediate wingnut-like attack/insult/ad hominem response, I’m becoming convinxed you are unable to answer them either.
So, sorry youngster. You can either respond with some facts that will show me something I don’t know, or you can insult me some more.
Whatcha got?
mikey
I am going to be in Carlsbad, CA from Sunday thru Thursday of next week. If any of you southern california Sadly, nosians know of any thing that is a must see please let me know: njmemail(at)verizon.net
acrannymint – Nah. I was at the Watershed Research Center in State College, PA (@ Penn State). Not too far from Beltsville geographically but not very close in any other respect.
Now to take issue with my good friend Doodles the Beaniehaid, it aint that simple. I’m rerminded of my “friends” in college back in the 70’s who were convinced that everyone could abandon nuclear power and cars and all them other evils to just grow their own food on their one acre. Doesn’t work, won’t work, can’t work. We’ve got these things called cities which require enormous amounts of energy to keep going. If only to bring in the food and haul away the trash, for instance.
It’s a fine dream you have but it is an idealistic pipe dream. Which is not to say that that it’s without merit, mind you. If we could start from scratch, we could indeed get to that utopia; alas we can’t start from scratch.
acrannymint:
Don’t miss the Carlsbad Caverns. They’re really impressive!
I’m becoming convinxed
convinxed: adjective. The state of being brow beaten in the blogosphere.
I am a real homeless person.
What’s the deal Bouffant?
“Only a bunch of engineering students could imagine that military carbon emissions should be allocated to the homeless…”
Hey, we’re a wealthy society, and everybody gets a share.
Is this a great country, or what?
And now that I think about it, I’d like to know what I did or said to engender that kind of response. I was trying to have an intelligent conversation. I wasn’t advocating for a particular position, and I wasn’t challenging anybody’s position.
Now it’s true I DID state that my opinion was that we were going to have to build some new nuclear power plants, and that the new designs were highly preferable to the older ones, while acknowledging the remaining problems with nuclear power.
And it’s also true that I took the position that at some level of granularity, distributed power generation schemes are economically infeasible. Facts would change my mind. But I haven’t seen any.
“Some people live off the grid” is not an answer to the question “how do we replace the energy currently being generated using fossil fuels?”. It IS a fact, but no particularly salient to the larger policy discussion.
“Some people live off the grid” is also not an answer to how can you bring green alternative power generation to high density urban neighborhoods. Why do you feel you need to insult me for asking the question?
But it’s almost like some folks are just looking for a fight no matter what. The lesson to be learned is young guys who go around looking for a fight always end up lumpy and missing teeth.
Pick your fights, I guess is the message.
I can’t see where anything I’ve said makes me your enemy…
mikey
* Yakov Smirnov laugh *
While it is interesting and admirable for people to make such extreme changes, and we all agree that major changes in lifestyle have to be made, eliminating the use of electric appliances, for example, is not going to happen. It’s simply unrealistic to think so.
These changes really aren’t as extreme as you might think, it’s really more a matter of the choices you make (as in the appliances you buy, with an eye to efficiency). Ask almost anyone living off-grid and they’ll tell you just how comfortable their lives are. Ultimately, the cost of electricity (along with everything else in an inflationary cycle) will rise so high that people will be forced to change the way they live, like it or not. For some, it’ll be painful but to others it will be no problem at all.
Americans have ALWAYS lived unrealistically, leaving lights on without any concern, buying major appliances based on status or style rather than low power consumption, filling the tanks of their SUV’s as though the good times would never end. Well, they have ended. All of this should’ve been knocked in our heads in the mid-70’s but thanks to the GOP (which considers unlimited consumption a major tenet of their dogma of greed) Carter’s solar panels (on the roof of the White House) were one of the first things the Reaganites removed. Remember California going through energy shock (as Enron ripped off the consumers at a breathtaking clip) and Cheney talking about energy conservation as being a worthless option (he told us we’d need 700 new nuke plants instead)?
When you look ahead to where we’re going (and quickly), it’s “unrealistic” to think that Americans won’t be *forced* to change their ways, and radically so. Particularly if these dick-heads go ahead with their “nuke Iran” plan…….it will get to the point that you’ll be considered “rich” if you’ve got the bread to keep a light burning during the evening (as our economy will be shattered, one way or another). All of this could’ve been painless, if we’d stuck to the Carter plan and kept increasing CAFE standards and appliance efficiency, but the GOP played directly to the worst, most wasteful impulses of Americans, and dug us deep, deep deep in this shithole we’re in.
So, I get home from slaving at the Borg all day, get in the door and get ready to relax and BAM–I trapped in my own home. Meth lab on the 5th floor.
Hazmat/Fire trucks hosing people down, hordes of PoPo crawling everywhere, crime sceen tape closing access to the elevators, the stairs, the entrances/exits and parking lot.
How am I supposed to spark a bowl, dammit!
it will get to the point that you’ll be considered “rich” if you’ve got the bread to keep a light burning during the evening (as our economy will be shattered, one way or another).
Dood. They say I have a pessimistic viewpoint. Oh well, if your scenario plays out electricity is not an issue we’re gonna have to worry about. Defending your tribe and finding something to eat will be a little more important.
But thank you very much for your friendly and civil tone.
So, I get home from slaving at the Borg all day, get in the door and get ready to relax and BAM–I trapped in my own home. Meth lab on the 5th floor.
And nobody smelled it? Wow. I’d like to know how they worked that. Even if they vented to the roof, the surrounding area should have smelled like cat piss.
But look at it like this. At least you got to go into your house. At least they didn’t keep you out on the sidewalk…
mikey
Like mikey I dunno what all the options are. I’m also unlikely to be able to pony up the dough.
I’m awful.
mikey’s been unmasked! Like Dogstar, he works for Big Oil. Admit it, dude, you’re Murph down at the Union 76, aren’t you?
I hope you’re okay, Malignant Bouffant. Dare I ask about the apartment?
Very carefully.
True enough Mikey–but then I could have at least gone to the neighborhood pub.
Don’t know if anyone smelled it or not. I wasn’t in the mood to ask questions after the Man pissed me off. 15 stories, so it would be pretty hard to vent to the ceiling.
These units were built in the 60’s and pretty well isolated from each other. Concrete floors/ceilings, thick walls, no shared HVAC, good doors and seals. There could be a fire right next door to me and at most, it would smell like a campfire.
That’s enough Stoopid to wipe out the ozone layer.
Even if they vented to the roof, the surrounding area should have smelled like cat piss.
A *good* lab would have a positive pressure system leading to a scrubber containing an industial ionizer (which oxidizes any and all fumes, so that there’s literally noting left in the way of smell). Or so I hear.
You elitist tools are gonna rue this day when, come November, all the NRO readers are voting McCain!!!!!!!!!
What? What did I say?
Still catching up from last night’s marathon (I think it was from last night…)
Balzam! That’s the most godawful nasty vile unspeakably disgusting stuff I’ve ever had in my mouth. Those who know me will attest to how really bad that makes it.
Idle chat with my customer, in a pub in Riga, Latvia. Upon finding that I had (once) a taste for Jagermeister, they insisted I try their local specialty. I wanted to die. Pine tar and benzene laced with mildewy leaf rot. Never, ever again.
[shudder]
Pine tar and benzene laced with mildewy leaf rot.
Ok.
But how was the buzz?
mikey
Sounds a bit like retsina………which is an aquired taste.
I mean, fer cryin out loud, didn’t you ever choke down a half a bottle of “Southern Comfort” just to get blasted?
Oh. Really?
Dammit…
mikey
“And you know what? Switching over to twisty lightbulbs and driving Priuses isn’t likely to acheive [sic] that for the homeless…”
Ahhh, yes, the ever popular “Puma Man” argument. “Ohhh, I can’t do it. Why even bother? I’ll be killed! Nyyyyyghhh…”
I am Clin-Ton. As overlord, all will kneel trembling before me and obey my brutal commands
I mean, fer cryin out loud, didn’t you ever choke down a half a bottle of “Southern Comfort” just to get blasted?
I have, and more than once. Worse, I’ve choked down half a bottle of the Southern Comfort knockoff, Southern Host.
I don’t really remember the buzz.
Candy.
You rock.
The good news is we probably would have had sex if we had met.
The bad news is we probably wouldn’t remember it.
Shit.
Maybe we did?
mikey
If foreskins are out of bounds, taints are as well.
I will fight for my frenum of choice.
At the tender age I was when guzzling Southern disComfort, I had not yet developed a palate that required the booze to be “choked down.” We drank Boone’s Farm fer chrissake – SoCo was good.
Smut Clyde wins the Internons including the hamsters that power S,N!
If foreskins are out of bounds, taints are as well.
I will fight for my frenum of choice.
Now that I think about it, the taint is the bound. I’m gonna hafta ponder on this fer a while.
Here, my friends.
Appropos of nothing. And without meaning.
I give you Tanya, and a lovely song.
It’s fun, and it’s melodic, and it’s catchy, and she’s, well, pretty much a god in mikeyland.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rVoY1yBRPRc
Just enjoy…
mik,ey
Um . . . mikey? One never knows . . . I doubt we were ever in the same geographic location, though. 😉
I used to be sorta partial to the Wild Turkey as well. One might not remember the party, but one will remember the hangover for years and years and years.
I’ll confess that I loved Boone’s Farm Apple, PeeJ, and Strawberry Hill too. I can remember my barefoot hippie days, 14 in 1973, smoking weed and drinking Boone’s. I can hear Deep Purple’s Child in Time playing in the background. Those were the days.
Smut Clyde wins the Internons including the hamsters that power S,N!
I vote to award him those prizes on the condition he takes the poorly-named WordPress as well.
I haven’t been around much lately, as I’ve been very busy, but it seems to me there’s been sort of a shortage of threads lately. Don’t mean to complain or nuthin’.
When I was in texas in ’76 and ’77 it was ALL about the Wild Turkey “101”.
I had this antique art deco lighter our of germany in the thirties.
It was laying on a table when some drunk spilled a glass of wild turkey on it.
It laid in the puddle of righteous booze all night and most of the day.
When I recovered it, all the art deco paint was eaten away and the body had deep pits eaten in to it.
Gotta love that organic, healthy Wild Turkey Likker…
mikey
Worst alcoholic beverage ever = Cynar. Teh evil.
Artichoke liquor? What’s next Brussel Sprout liquor?
I was 14 in 1975, jeez I keep making myself older than I really am. It’s weird, cause I’m really sort of youngish in appearance and attitude. Probably on account of the fact that I never really grew up.
Fun fact! My lord and master cult leader Obama and I are almost exactly the same age. He’s one day younger than I am.
When I recovered it, all the art deco paint was eaten away and the body had deep pits eaten in to it.
And to think, I used to mix it with Coca-Cola, which eats the rust of nails. Yurp.
Wow, mikey! Touched a nerve, did I? Does Exxon-Mobil own that semi-conductor firm you work for or something?
And, for the record, I never called you an asshole nor wrote, “fuck you.” Just so I am absolutely clear; you’re the one taking it down that route. I was asking questions since you were, indeed, sounding like a nuclear industry type. You were doing more than suggesting that nukes were the answer.
As for your other objections: Please, I – and others – did give you links. Did you click any? I – and others – gave you facts. Did you consider them?
I’d tell you again how we as a nation can conserve and develop alternatives – even in urban areas – but I make it a habit to avoid drunks. Especially abusive ones.
As for your question, “…didn’t you ever choke down a half a bottle of “Southern Comfort” just to get blasted?” the answer is no.
I’m not an alcoholic.
Balzam! That’s the most godawful nasty vile unspeakably disgusting stuff I’ve ever had in my mouth.
It was bad, but I’ve certainly had worse in my mouth.
Cutting yourself out of the mythical “Grid” or turning off ALL your electrical gizmos all sounds swell, but it’s A) a royal pain in the arse to convert, B) only viable for those who can afford it & C) doesn’t do all that terribly much if only 0.1% of us can stand to do it. Biggest source of CO2-reduction at hand is still conservation/reduction. Just unplugging power-bars & plugin appliances when they’re not in use can save energy – I’ve heard that some use just as much power “off” as they do lit up.
Personally I find mikey’s suggestion of nuke power as VERY dangerous for many reasons, but in pragmatic terms, I also think that’s what folks will settle for, once oil goes soaring over $200/bbl., or beyond. Hydro dams are touted as “clean” too – but they’re literal environmental disasters wherever they’re constructed. Check out the Three Rivers project in China – they might be wishing they had all that farmland back before long.
We need to make the “100 Mile” lifestyle sexy somehow. We need the same level of enthusiasm & talent applied to clean renewable energy sources like hydrogen & solar that was expended on fighting WW2 or on getting us to the Moon, knowing that this goal isn’t symbolic, it’s life-or-death. We need to stop making Moms & Dads with sextuplets from fertility drugs – or ones who have 18 kids, as I just saw on MSN.com – into celebrity heroes, & stop making celebrities who adopt into baby-shopping demons. We need to back away from the suburb model before it eats us alive. But most of all, we need to face up to the truth of how badly the proverbial hourglass is stacked against us as a result of the decades of political & philosophical jerking off we’ve been up to since 1980 – while the situation keeps worsening.
We can’t live without the environment.
The environment has no such dependance on us.
“It’s weird, cause I’m really sort of youngish in appearance and attitude. Probably on account of the fact that I never really grew up.”
You too, huh?
If it makes you feel any younger, I’m a year older than vous.
Thanks for clarifying Doodle.
I’ve got all the data I need now.
I’m not sure what you enjoy about this board, but hey.
You win. You’re a smart guy who knows way more than me.
You don’t need to learn anything else.
Wish I was you…
mikey
mmmm, Brassica nectar.
As for your question, “…didn’t you ever choke down a half a bottle of “Southern Comfort” just to get blasted?” the answer is no.
I’m not an alcoholic.
Wow.
My fuckin hero.
You also can leap tall buildings in a single bound?
Save the sick and heal the wounded?
No. C’mon. Tell us what a fine human being without these goddam pesky human flaws you are.
Dood.
What are you fucking trying to prove here?
You want me to be a bad person?
I think I’ve pretty much confessed to everything up to and INCLUDING murder on this site.
You ain’t got much more to bring to the party.
Just say what you want to say.
If you hate me? Who cares?
mikey
Fuck off DB. That shit’s uncalled for. Really.
Ah, milehi, I don’t really feel all that bad about it. I was a lot more bothered by 25 than 30, or even 40, for some reason. At 25 I just sort of realized (Suddenly! Surprise!) that I wasn’t going to be Queen of the May after all. Since then I’ve been fine with whatever age. I think it matters a lot less now than it used to.
Alright we’re going out for pizza. Just in time. It got a little priggish in here all of teh sudden.
For the record, I’m flat opposed to nukes; however, DB, you’re being an ass. Get over yourself already. When someone poses a few polite questions, it’s not a personal attack. And the “alcoholic” comment? Jeez, why would you want to hang around all us drunks on this site, if’n you so pure? Methinks you need a drink . . .
It’s like déjà vu all over again. Just asking questions. That’s all!
At 25 I just sort of realized (Suddenly! Surprise!) that I wasn’t going to be Queen of the May after all.
Many of my friends settled for just being queens.
I think we all need to go smoke the peace pipe or something.
Peace pipe, huh? So that’s what you kids are calling it these days.
I got what Doodle Bean needs, right HEAH.
OH!
mikey–
Don’t let it get to you. You’re one of the good ones in my book. You can share my stash anytime…
cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooookkkkkkkkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee
I don’t have a fucking problem.
The fact is, I practically have a hard on from the spectacle of all you liberals attacking each other over who is more PC, more green, less racist, less gay. I laugh.
Mmm, Tanya … Belly & Throwing Muses rock my Weltanschauung.
So, naturally, I want to recommend something TOTALLY different.
Warning: it’s those Fair Use bad-boys, negativland … & as the Weatherman himself said, his voice really IS “an insult to the entire digital community” so blame him, not me. But it IS mighty damn funny:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TDwf2OxCf7M
I’m someone who VERY rarely imbibes, but I now feel I must go down the hill on Monday – the start of my “weekend” – to obtain a poverty-pack of delicious Canuckistani India Pale Ale, in solidarity with monsieur mikey.
He’s not dumb, just abrasive – & abrasive is GOOD.
It makes dull things shine.
There’s too much dull going around these days.
I just flew over from NRO’s The Corner and saw this posting. Pardon me, but I stand by my original argument concerning “homeless” person 8.5 ton annual on average total emissions. I mean, c’mon….have you ever smelled a “homeless” person??
Worst alcoholic beverage ever = Cynar. Teh evil.
Oh man, you had to mention that? I’m fucking shuddering over here. I worked in a liquor store when I was in college. We tried every single type of obscure alcoholic beverage in stock and by far that was the worst shit in the house.
I’m not an alcoholic but I am amongst America’s Most Blunted. There’s more songs in that playlist. Eine kleine rapmusik for people who say they don’t like rap.
Fuck, that was one of my sockpuppets with the playlist.
Ward, I have these friends who always seem to have a bottle of Cynar in their bar stock. And, every damn time I go over to their place, I end up doing shots of that crap. I have lovely friends.
Ms. Donelly is so totally teh hawt.
Cynar. Cynar? Can it be as bad as Balzam?
Somebody ship me a case or two and I’ll let y’all know.
I’m in!
mikey
Cynar, grappa, lemoncello–those Italians have some interesting liquors.
NEW AXIOM: Any solution requiring a significant change in human behavior has to be shredded to flinders before it goes into the ‘has a chance’ basket.
I’m an IT guy, I don’t own a bike shop. But you don’t find commuter service bike shops without sufficient urban densities. Just choosing to depend on bicycles instead of cars ends up being a ‘lifestyle choice.’ And I won’t even whine about trying to finding a transportation zone where you aren’t actively pursued as prey.
That and swirly bulbs? My contribution so far.
At the point where we can all get psyched about putting a tax on ourselves to make gas equal in cost to sustainable energy sources, I will have evolved to a ‘woo hoo nukes!’ attitude. Right now, we can’t even agree about where to bury the shit.
And get over the silver bullet.
Geez, what’s the beef with Cynar? I drank it every night for three weeks in Florence and actually grew to like it. Of course, I wa suffering from Stendhal’s Syndrome the whole time, which might have had something to do with it…
Wouldn’t that be STENDHAL’S SYDROME?
Remember, that Britain was somehow able to get iaiaiaiaiain Murray to fuck off to America counts as a bullshit offset.
Geez, what’s the beef with Cynar? I drank it every night for three weeks in Florence and actually grew to like it.
Cynar’s fine. Manazotti and soda, though, is ver’ nice.
Don’t forget Nocino… That’s a weird but tasty beverage. Brings back memories of a little dessert place in some cellar in DC (IIRC, it was on Connecticut Av NW, by the Woodley Park/Zoo Metro station, near the Lebanese Taverna…). It’s been some 15 years or so, but I can still taste the stuff.
Of course, the relationship it instantly reminds me of was weird and tasty too, so my judgment may be somewhat… clouded.
Hey DB….mikey is like the Lord and Protector™ if this site, so don’t make me get my ‘bitch boots’ on!
What am I, chopped liver liqueur?
maybe military carbon emissions were assigned to homeless people because so many of them are veterans. seriously, this is ridiculous.
How to make a Cirrhositini:
4 parts vodka
4 parts white rum
1 part green bile (fresh squeezed, if you can get it)
Shake briefly with cracked ice, strain into a martini glass, garnish with offal.
Um., hey, you guys? Regulars anyway. You remember my friend Z, the 16 year old kid who had a heart attack and hasn’t regained consciousness and his family has been caring for him?
since yesterday he has had trouble breathing, and his mom writes that he thinks he is letting get of the fight. He may be dying.
You need to light some candles, guys.
How’s this for a compromise? We pass a law allowing the construction of new nuclear facilities in neighborhoods where the average income is 150% percent or more of the regional median. In other words, if Iain Murray wants to light his McMansion with nukalur power, he gets Seabrook Mark XIII built next door. Or next to the NRO office, anyways. If the generating capacity is so “essential” to Our Way of Life(tm), certainly the brave patriots at NRO would not hesitate to risk the statistically very insignificant chance of a Chernobyl event, or even the not quite so statistically insignificant but still very very small lifetime increase in their risk of developing various cancers and/or immune-disfunction disorders! Right? Right? (Why is Mr. Murray cowering under his desk, and what is that granular orange spew emerging from the neighboring cubicles?)
More seriously, Mikey — part of the problem we run into discussing “America’s” myriad energy use/conservation problems is that America is not one giant homogenous topographic/meteorological/biological region — it’s a dozen or a hundred or six thousand micro-regions. What “works” for conservation here in New England, for me and Doodle Bean, is quite different than what “works” for you in Southern California: We can do small-scale hydropower at a reasonable price, because we’ve got 200 years of prior infrastructure and construction experience in a topography where every patch of land larger than one of Donald Trump’s bathrooms is going to be sloping in one direction or another or several (i.e., lots of little water courses running downhill). You can do solar power hella more effectively, because you can count on the sun shining at least 300 days a year. Unfortunately, Doodle Bean is quite correct that our corporate overlords prefer one-size-fits-all solutions to Big National Problems, and “more nukes now” is the corporate-friendly solution… in the same way that McDonalds was the corporate-friendly solution to predictable, reasonably-priced dining for the new 20th-century car-based American culture. Nobody expected Ray Kroc’s little drive-thru idea to metastasize into a global megacorporation large enough to be (however inadvertantly) responsible for the destruction of large swathes of the Amazonian rainforest, or the development of a “new” form of meatprocessing where one diseased cow’s carcase can contaminate 10,000 pounds of ground beef. Not to mention what the Big Mac has done to the average American’s idea of what “food” is supposed to taste like, or what a reasonable meal portion should be. (At least we don’t have to store used french-fry oil in leakproof containers for 10,000 years.)
For the past thirty years, we’ve managed to avoid the hard choices Jimmy Carter started warning us about. Americans are like rich kids who didn’t want to listen to some dweeb of a financial manager whine about “living with our means” and “conserving our capital”. A string of Republicans, DINOs, and DNCers were happy to move into the family mansion with us, sell us dope & twinkies, keep the party going twenty-four-seven, and who gave a shite about Teh Future when we were all gonna be dead anyways! Now we’re squatting on our chancred haunches (all the furniture that wasn’t sold having been destroyed), twitching for a fix, just waiting to see if the lights will be turned off before the sheriff arrives with the foreclosure papers (written in Mandarin). We don’t have nearly as many options as we did back then, but we *do* have options. The problem remains facing UP to those options, and doing the hard work (all twelve steps) of making ten million big and little changes in how “Americans” are supposed to live.
(Oh, and DoodleBean? I love ya, but… well, I’ve never been much of a drinker, not from any moral or religious convictions, just because of a bad family history and different recreational choices. It took me about six weeks in my first college dorm to establish that someone who stayed sober enough to shepard everyone else in the direction of home at the end of the evening would still get invited to all the right bar runs. It took maybe twice as long after that to discover that someone who greeted her fellow partyers the next morning with *too* specific a tally of exactly how stupid each particular drinker had been… would no longer be included on the invitations list. Sometimes it’s the better part of wisdom to keep that warm glow of moral superiority all to oneself, or at least to direct one’s public complaints about drunken skanks and lowlife despoilers of the communal johns at those slackjawed fratboys and sorority queens with whom one does *not* share a common table. Just a suggestion from someone who’s found most of the ten thousand ways to lose friends and influence enemies via personal experimentation.)
Hey, now. Don’t be dissin’ lemoncello. That’s some good, potent, tongue-numbing stuff. You just gotta sip it, and make sure it’s practically frozen. My mom makes it, and an orange version as well, which she digs out of the back of the freezer for family gatherings.
Mmmmmmmm…
Hmm this got rather nasty no? There are some discussions that can’t be hashed out in blog comments and whether the US can run purely on alternative energy is probably one of them.
At least drunks have an excuse.
Seriously at some point this went incredibly off-rails for no good reason. Why are people fighting exactly? Because they disagree over whether it’s feasible for urban residents to switch to green energy? For real?
Maybe it’s just because I’ve been drinking but that seems a bit silly.
I think I graduated from that same program, Anne Laurie.
If I understand Iain Murray correctly, he is arguing that every other country in the world has a lower per-capita output of CO2 than the US, and that is why there is simply no practical way for US citizens to reduce their output. It therefore follows that CO2 emissions cannot be a problem.
I think this is my first experience of commenting on the actual content of a post.
If I understand Iain Murray correctly, he is arguing that every other country in the world has a lower per-capita output of CO2 than the US, and that is why there is simply no practical way for US citizens to reduce their output. It therefore follows that CO2 emissions cannot be a problem.
I think this is my first experience of commenting on the actual content of a post.
That’s because Murray’s “reasoning”, which you summarize exquisitely, is so ridiculous upon its lying bug-eyed spittle-crusted face that any further snark would be superfluous.
The reason the right wing loves nuclear power above all others is the fanatical degree of wealth concentration, public subsidy, perpetual return, and monopoly control inherent in the industry.
It has zero to do with the technology, matters of efficiency, or any other non-selfish feature.
I think this is my first experience of commenting on the actual content of a post.
No compute. What is this “post” of which you speak?
The fact is, creative class liberal eleite latte and chablis sipping liberal Shania Law Islamonazi liberal bias media homofascist antiUSA God hating biased liberal slanted to the left shiftless negro terrorist leaning left bias hard left left left liberal hatemongers hate everyone. Hmf.
Every try getting the private sector to insure a nuke plant? Gotta love that free market.
If the wingnuts were mounted on an axis inside a conductive coil, all that cognitive dissonance could generate enough capacity to take all North American coal plants offline.
El Cid says “The reason the right wing loves nuclear power above all others is the fanatical degree of wealth concentration, public subsidy, perpetual return, and monopoly control inherent in the industry.
It has zero to do with the technology, matters of efficiency, or any other non-selfish feature.”
Besides the aforementioned liability limits on insurance, the pricing of nuclear-produced electricity usually guaranteed (by the state)to be profitable. More “free market” at work. With wind power, you can literally manufacture megawatts. Who can afford to hire an attorney to spend years blocking wind farms on the basis of “they spoil the view”? Who owns majority stock positions in conventional utilities? (another conspiracy theory lauched, but this one is a good one!)
[lighting a candle]
Thanks for the update, g. Sorry to hear he is doing worse. Wish I had more to say. 🙁
Everything Anne Laurie said is indisputably true.
It does not, however, come close to answering the major policy question.
If the goal is to take off-line fossil fuel power generation plants due to global warming and the economic and political costs of oil, some amount of the gigantic amount of power generation capacity must be replaced somewhere in the system. That amount will be determined by how effective conservation and increased efficiency initiatives are.
Again, if the US can generate the power required to run not just homes, but businesses and municipalities, everything it requires to function on whatever level it actually IS functioning on at that point, by using green and renewable generation methodologies, then there is no need to talk about nuclear generation. And that would be good.
But remember the goal is to take first the coal-fired plants off line, then the gas and oil burners, so they are not killing the planet with an alarming rapidity. If your “green” solution leaves a large gap between supply and demand, that gap will be filled by burning fossil fuels. The question is, is that better than nukes? I happen to think not, and I would have no problem living next door to a current generation PBR.
Others can certainly disagree, and although I might have trouble convincing a few people around here that I’m not part of the great oil conspiracy to turn Sadly, No into an outlet for oil company propaganda, I really have no greater dog in this fight than any of you do. It’s really your kids (I don’t have any) and their kids who are going to suffer the brunt of what we do wrong at this point.
Ok, I’m gonna stop now. It’s getting boring and redundant. I’ve just been surprised how hard it was to actually get people to hear what I was saying. I wasn’t saying “green doesn’t work” and I wasn’t saying there isn’t a place for distributed generation. Just talking about policy solutions, y’know?
Sorry…
mikey
Doodle Bean, in all fairness, you were being a royal shithead, whether you realize it or not.
Unfortunately, we’ll be burning coal for a long time for our electricity. We can use it more efficiently via ‘fluidized bed’ coal burning technology and using low sulphur coal, but new hyperefficient installations are expensive, and the utilities considered it cheaper to make donations/payoffs to politicians and lobbyists rather than invest in hardware for the long term. We have to start sometime…howsabout January 2009?
Ho. Lee. Shit.
I just saw a picture of a group of unhappy Asian kids with the headline “Time to invade Myanmar?” and laughed out loud.
Then I realized I wasn’t at The Onion. That’s the main story at CNN.com. Does nobody else see this?? I feel like I’m taking CRAZY PILLS!!!
The face is, you are biased hate filled moonbats who want America to lose.
Don’t be sorry, mikey. I heard what you were saying and so did several others, looks like. Dunno why DB launched those piss-bombs at you . . . in my experience, some people hear all questions as attacks, so maybe that’s it. Or, y’know, maybe DB’s trying to breathe out the wrong eyelid or something.
Jesus Christ. Time.com wants us to invade too. Are we that fucking bored? Have we nothing else to do at the moment?
Don’t worry pedestrian. Myanmar doesn’t have vast oil reserves. They’re safe from us.
yeah, i’m sure we won’t actually start another war, especially for such silly reasons as averting a humanitarian crisis or spreading democracy (for reals)
but what the fuck is up with our news media?
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
By that logic, we should’ve invaded Indonesia after the tsunami or New Orleans after Katrina.
In other news, The Pope admits to being a sex addict.
I’m retreating into fiction now.
Wow. Who knew that natural catastrophes were another problem that requires killing as a solution.
What exactly will ADDING to the death and destruction do?
Oh. I forgot. The solution to every problem is military.
Jee ZUS! Is it january ’09 yet?
mikey
I guess the next thing we’ll hear is how Iran is behind the Cyclone?
mikey
It’s like reading Xinhua sometimes. Except that everyone knows that we have a free press and China doesn’t.
mikey said,
May 10, 2008 at 19:07
I guess the next thing we’ll hear is how Iran is behind the Cyclone?
1569: Gerard Mercator invents Mercator map projection, two threads down, mikey.
So we’re aways off before we blame Iran for something. I’m sure we’ll get there, though.
The pope is insinuating sex is rape.
Is he aiming at feminists? Pffft. Good luck.
Next comes the excommunication of women using artificial insemination and birth control. After that, the wholesale abandonment of the Catholic Church by women (and their children and all future generations) for the Episcopalian Church.
You’ll pry my birth control pills out of my cold, dead hands.
sex could “transform itself into a drug” that one partner had to have even against the will of the other.
One partner can have it without the presence of the other partner, let alone the will.
One partner can have it without the presence of the other partner, let alone the will.
Umm, I think the pope is against THAT too…
mikey
The Catholic Church says you can only have sex if you are trying to have a baby. That’s the official line. By the way—
…the “serious moral evil” of abortion…
Now, see, I really like this construction. This tells me that bigshot bishops agree there are less serious moral evils. In fact, this indicates there is a continuum of moral evil, from the deadly serious to the positively frivolous.
Which kind of establishes that even they realize that their morality is nothing short of arbitrary and capricious.
Which certainly makes it no better a compass than a secular morality, and probably makes it substantially worse…
mikey
Ok, I seem to recall Blackwater troops in NOLA after Katrina…
Mikey- so if the goal is simply to replace fossil-fuel plants, and not about getting densely populated urban areas off grid, that’s a lot easier to do. Of course, cities require electric utilities; that’s a given.
Now, for apartment dwellers, there’s not a lot you can do other than conservation. It’s not your building. And even if every apartment building, office building, strip mall, factory, etc. installed solar and wind power systems, it would… well, it would actually save quite a bit. But yes, there’d still be a need for plants to generate during peak usage.
Out here in southern Nevada, we’ve got one big solar plant that I know of, in Boulder City. It took about 3 years to build. It just came online. It makes 64mw of power. It does NOT use pv cells, it’s a solar-thermal system that concentrates sun’s heat with trough-shaped reflectors to drive a fluid through a turbine.
And if you look at it on Google Earth (off US 95, south of Boulder City), it’s just a TEENY, TINY rectangle in a vast, vast desert.
We’ve got a LOT of unused desert out here. A lot. And that’s not even getting into the wind power potential. Also, tidal power. And wave power. There are companies developing systems that combine all of these in near-offshore floating energy farms. Someone above mentioned the land-use issue of wind power? Put’em offshore.
Now as to the storage issue: I can’t find at the moment (too lazy) but someone recently broke ground on what will be the largest utility-scale solar plant in the US, and it uses a system of melted salts to store heat that drives turbines. So, although the energy input (heat from sun) is on/off, energy output is constant.
Then there’s flow batteries, which recirculate electrolyte and store charged electrolyte in huge tanks. There was a huge facility to be built (in West VA, I think?) a few years ago, that was intended to make money by purchasing power from the grid off-peak and selling it back on-peak. The project was purchased by a natural gas company who decided to build a gas-fired generator plant on the site instead.
Anyway, my point is that technology’s not the problem. The tech is there. Economics aren’t the problem either: the demand is there. The problem is political: utilities are regulated and the regulations are heavily stacked in favor of the dinosaurs.
In fact, this indicates there is a continuum of moral evil, from the deadly serious to the positively frivolous.
Yes but I think you have the enpoints wrong. The continuum goes from ‘Icky Icky POOO! nasty!’ to ‘icky icky poo! I’m actually into it but I can’t let anyone know.”
Man, this trackback spam is getting more and more interesting.
Well, there are different types of sins. You got yer venial, or little sin, and you got yer mortal sins, which will damn you to hell. Mortal sins can get you excuommunicated, which means no sacraments, like marriage or baptism or extremem unction (final rites for the dying).
Ha. Kathy Jean watches little kids perform at a function, and all she can think about is them having sex.
Get laid, already, woman. God won’t intervene from heaven and damn you to hell, and it might get your sticky paws off the sexual organs of the youth of America.
Man, I’m always a step behind here. I’m trying to talk about alt-energy and y’all are on to sex and sin.
It’s always going to come back to sex and sin, isn’t it?
You could combine the two. Use sexual energy to run turbines, perhaps? Although I’m not quite sure how to access it.
I haven’t checked it out thoroughly yet but the trackback spam may be links to (some) malicious sites. I’ll look into it a bit more but for now I suggest not following any of those links.
Disclaimer: I’m a software engineer but the web is not my area of expertise. And I’m paranoid. Your mileage may vary. Sorry Tennessee. Zofluxifark is not for everyone. See your doctor if your dick falls off when using Xolimpidik.
That’s kind of creepy.
Why don’t the trackbacks ever think any of MY comments are interesting?
[pouts]
A lot of them seem like link sites… places that try to link to everywhere possible to get listed near the top of Google searches while listing ads along the side that will generate income (assuming someone’s silly enough to click on any links).
Side effects of Zoliflax may include runny nose, nausea, dizziness bleeding from the eyes, stigmata, and death.
I think I’m gonna have to check out that last one.
And pedestrian was never seen again.
That’s okay. Just don’t do it again.
And pedestrian was never seen again.
Nor, apparently, was Doodle Bean. Who, BTW, I think is a dudette, not a dude.
“Pedestrian Hits Bowl: News At Eleven
“Mysterious Burglaries at Snack Factory: Pedestrian Might Be Involved”
“Peds Meds Irk Feds”
What can I say, it’s this or clean.
Hmmm… replace bedsprings with linear motor generators?
PeeJ —
I looked at the HTML output of the site with a JavaScript-safe browser; I’m guessing it’s a click-fraud site more than a malware site. It loads two scripts per each stolen post, and loads the same two scripts into the sidebar; the script from [zango cash dot com] is your typical spammy nonsense:
document.write(unescape("hiddenHTMLcontent"));It spews out a page full of links to the usual suspects of pills & pr0n. Dunno if those links are toxic or not – they do want you to install some, ahem, ‘premium access content tools’, so they definitely could be.
Not bad. You could also let the kids jump on the bed, which they will do anyway. A couple of pre-schoolers can probably make the refrigerator run all night.
I saw an interesting article about a month ago about plans to install electric generators under the tiles of subway stations so that commuters would generate power by walking across the floor.
I’m too lazy to look it up, but maybe the hamsters could offer some perspective.
We are all hamsters now.
I’m not dead yet!
Okay, now they’re just fucking with us.
Did I just hallucinate an Assrocket article?
Well I just hallucinated a comment in the hallucinatory ass-rocket post.
Hey! I commented on the assrocket thread.
I think a congressional subpoena is in order here.
They’re hiding documents!
mikey
We do not recognize your authority to subpoena.
Of course I’m the real pedestrian. No, I didn’t die I just… went over there for awhile. Assrocket? What’s an assrocket? I mean… I know what an assrocket is, I’m a hu-man, I just don’t know why anyone would have needed it for study. Saaaay… let’s all go and get some hu-man food. I mean food!
It’s a mass delusion! Let’s reconstruct. Seems there was something about detainees and recidivism.
And the whole “we can never let ’em go” deal…
mikey
I recall a dryer-venting arm
spiraling down the robot’s side
to the space around his knees.
Fur like tiny hamsters formed a throw
‘cross his shoulder, and his head
looked like duct tape that had sneezed.
Assrocket’s post is melting in the dark
ah fuck it.
I think I broke it with a comment, Patkin.
It was a wonderful comment too; pithy, funny, insightful, full of warm and pragmatic wisdom, diligently researched and cross-linked, ending with an hilarious poop joke.
It would have been a comment for the ages; it would have banished trolls and made Sadly, No! a household name….
…as far as you know.
Too bad WordPress ate it.
Buuuuurp.
There may have been some slutty science girls in dunce caps.
*sob*
They’re probably dead by now.
The post has been fixed and reposted. We were making fun of the wrong stooge. Sadly, it means that the wonderful photo of Hinderaker has been replaced, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find a use for that picture soon enough.
It’s back! But the slutty girls, if any, are indeed dead and gone.
Here ya go, Susan of Texas…
http://www.exn.ca/video/?video=exn20050331-fun.asx
Harnessing the power of play…
Excellent. I can hook up a stationary bike to the X-Box and the kids will have to exercise to make the console work.
Thanks!
Our chief weapon is public subsidy and perpetual return.
No.
Our two chief weapons are public subsidy, perpetual return, and monopoly control inherent in the industry.
No. Our three chief weapons are public subsidy, perpetual return, monopoly control inherent in the industry, and an almost fanatical degree of wealth concentration.
I’ll start again.
Nobody expects the Oil Consortium!
mikey
Did someone mention hamsters?
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/08/hamsterpowered.html
Cell phone charger powered by hamster wheel.
Now that “painted on” solar cells are becoming available (as opposed to the old style thick plastic or glass panels), you can get a backpack that charges your cellphone with solar power.
Leave teh Hamsters ALONE!!11!
Are there in fact any pictures of The Pope that don’t look like they had to Photoshop out the Force Lightning shooting out of his outstreched hands?
In any case, it’s always a good idea to get your sex advice from a celibate guy in a dress and shiny red shoes.
Benedict […] and worried that sex could “transform itself into a drug” that one partner had to have even against the will of the other.
Is he aiming at feminists?
I think he’s still making excuses for any priests, bishops etc. who needed to plead Benefit of Clergy on account of pedophilia.
In any case, it’s always a good idea to get your sex advice from a celibate guy in a dress and shiny red shoes.
Ok.
Now THAT’S funny…
mikey
Talk about your non-sequitors.
Everything is a great excuse for invasion, RO.
Do right wingers ever engage their brains before venturing forth distinctly dodgy opinions?
That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma.
Since “invading Burma” is not currently a serious option — on account of y’all no longer having a spare army with which to invade them — I imagine that Time and Newsweek are more concerned with salvaging the idea of humanitarian invasions as a concept. You know, “Invading Iraq did not work out well, but it should not discredit our good intentions, just because they were implemented poorly.”
The editorial staff are the turning the voices of a few hundred thousand dead Burmese into a chorus of approval for the concept of benign military intervention. Knowing how strongly Chris Hitchens despises this business of ventriloquising the dead, I eagerly await his acerbic condemnation.
Getting back to nuclear power plants….
Everyone in the energy field agrees that they should only be used as a stop-gap. The one advantage they have is they are a very concentrated point of power generation and don’t emit any CO2. Problem is what to do with the nasty stuff and b) building and running a nuclear power plant requires a certain level of carefulness and non-sloppiness that I don’t know Americans are interested in providing any more. (My own answer to the problem is: anyone who was involved in building a nuclear power plant or running it should live within 5 miles of it. If your own ass is grass when a problem occurs, you’re much more likely to insist on high levels of quality control.)
Problems with wind and solar: generation may or may not be steady (although a wind/solar combo might be pretty good at backing up each other), and getting the energy to where it is needed is a bitch. Distributed power generation is a great idea but we’re probably limited right now to some solar panels on roofs and potentially installing co-gen systems in places that get gas.
Best of course is improved efficiency in storing and using what we do have. Japan has been very good at developing energy-sipping technology–unfortunately, the Average American isn’t going to pay $2000 for a washing machine. And considering the problem we’ve been simply getting automobile mpg standards cranked up to something even near what Japanese and European mpg standards are, I’m not holding my breath.
The average american will continue to insist on his god-given right to cheap energy and cheap gas until the whole system comes to a total collapse. Given the mentality, I’m sure some of them think it’s written in the Bible somewhere.
[…] No has the details, or at least all the ones one needs. Murray cites a class project from some MIT undergrads who […]
Cheers, i’ve got photos of my new emo hairstyle
in http://xrl.us/ouog2
Nice post. Looks like wind power is really starting to get some serious consideration in Australia now.
[…] twice the global footprint than average? You do know that that wasn’t an MIT study at all but instead was a class project done by a bunch of MIT undergraduates? And that it included in its calculations the carbon footprint […]
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