Setting Fire To Sleeping Strawmen (now with extra Toniiiiiiiiiight, you're right, you're right, you're right)
-
I'll just leave this right here:
Yeah. That Burt Rutan.
-
We're not going to see 20-foot ocean rising.
So you're confident about this and plan to purchase seafront property on the basis of your prediction? After all, all those people who are worrying about possible sea rises must be getting it wrong and so you'll be able to pick up some sweet deals on land for a song.
-
So you're confident about this and plan to purchase seafront property on the basis of your prediction?
I'm confident that if I don't buy seafront property it won't be because I'm worried about global sea level rise.
After all, all those people who are worrying about possible sea rises must be getting it wrong and so you'll be able to pick up some sweet deals on land for a song.
I cannot figure out a good response to this, but at least we can agree those guys are wrong.
-
In the night, Hanzo stealthily created a post without content, not worried about the force the Shinaken would unleash when they would discover the treason, for he had his favorite kenjaki cleverly disguised as a protocol analyzer.
-
Interesting, your ability to detect sarcasm is reduced when the prejudices you read into the comment align strongly with your political views. You should watch that: it leaves you open to easy manipulation.
More seriously, I was suggesting that if someone believes that the people worried about climate change causing sea level rise are truly wrong, purchasing the seafront land off them as they run for the hills is a good proposition. Make a profit. And if the climate worriers are actually right, the sceptic ends up losing the lot, but that's fair enough: it's a market-aware solution, and they'd be taking a gamble (and losing in that scenario, as opposed to the one immediately preceding where they'd come out on top). So long as they don't go bleating to the government to bail them out if things go wrong, it's no problem.
Where I live, sea level rise isn't a problem. There will be billions of people displaced before water laps at my door…
-
I recently heard a secondhand story from some military base in the South Carolina area and everyone there claims the sea levels have been dropping and they're reclaiming new coastland.
-
plan to purchase seafront property on the basis of your prediction?
No, but that's because I know how much seafront property already costs.
-
Interesting, your ability to detect sarcasm is reduced when the prejudices you read into the comment align strongly with your political views.
I had trouble reconciling conflicts of the message. So I just went with incoherent and said what I wanted to say. Also, there was no politics in there.
More seriously, I was suggesting that if someone believes that the people worried about climate change causing sea level rise are truly wrong, purchasing the seafront land off them as they run for the hills is a good proposition. Make a profit.
Sadly, it's not that good a strategy as there are too many people who value the real estate highly.
-
More seriously, I was suggesting that if someone believes that the people worried about climate change causing sea level rise are truly wrong, purchasing the seafront land off them as they run for the hills is a good proposition. Make a profit.
Any property that can be described as oceanfront without causing violent laughter commands a stiff premium here. If people are seriously worried about climate change causing rising sea levels, the market here doesn't seem to reflect that.
-
We're greatly over-paranoid about the storage problem. We treat spent fuel with more care and paranoia than we do the good stuff.
I doubt that. My dad used to work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (the largest nuclear waste repository in the US). The bulk of the waste stored there is radioactive sludge, kept in multi-shelled tanks. These tanks are then buried underground. Unfortunately, the sludge has two nasty habits:
- Heat buildup.
- Corrision.
Both of these cause the tanks to fail, which means the tanks have to be constantly monitored. This is especially important given the proximity to the Hanford Reach1 on the Columbia River. Every 5 to 50 years - depending on a variety of factors, from the concentration of the sludge, to the fill of the tank, to the composition of the shells - the sludge in a tank gets transferred to a new tank. Once or twice, they have actually had tanks leak before they transferred the sludge and they now have to monitor the material in the ground to make sure it doesn't contaminate the ground water or the river.
Basically, they aren't being overly paranoid about the waste storage problem.
1 The Hanford Reach is the last free flowing stretch of the Columbia River. Approximately 50 miles long, its natural state has been preserved partly because of the creation of the Hanford Site as part of the Manhattan Project during WWII. Many animals, as well as local and downstream communities, rely on the Columbia River and the Hanford Reach.
-
I recently heard a secondhand story from some military base in the South Carolina area and everyone there claims the sea levels have been dropping and they're reclaiming new coastland.
But then it comes back 12 hours and 25 minutes later?
-
so do I have to change my name to javahubertdev?
-
Every 5 to 50 years - depending on a variety of factors, from the concentration of the sludge, to the fill of the tank, to the composition of the shells - the sludge in a tank gets transferred to a new tank.
Have they considered vitrification as a way to make the sludge less mobile? They'd still have the heat problem — the only real way to get that solved faster is with neutron bombardment, but that's an “interesting” way to deal with it, and politically toxic — but at least they'd have less of a problem with environmental contamination. The contamination risk is the real problem. I'd guess that vitrifying into small small pellets and then spreading those out reasonably thinly would help a lot with the heat too (using the usual surface area computations).
-
Have they considered glassification as a way to make the sludge less mobile? They'd still have the heat problem — the only real way to get that solved faster is with neutron bombardment, but that's an “interesting” way to deal with it, and politically toxic — but at least they'd have less of a problem with environmental contamination. The contamination risk is the real problem. I'd guess that glassifying into small small pellets and then spreading those out reasonably thinly would help a lot with the heat too (using the usual surface area computations).
If by "glassification" you mean "vitrification", then yes. They actually started a construction on a facility about 15 years ago. They were going to seriously dilute the waste down and vitrify it into cylinders for long term storage. The project was scrapped for two reasons:
- Someone who knew just enough to be dangerous got their hands on the plans and realized that there was an area of that plant that would be too radioactive for maintenance once the plant was active. Any issues in that area could not be resolved. Never mind that this area was made as small as possible, could not be completely eliminated, and had dozens of redundancies in case of any potential problems. This busybody then started raising flags and escalating the problems so that he could be the hero.
- The vitrification facility was supposedly designed to withstand an earthquake in the 8.5 to 9.0 range. despite not having any major active faults in the area. The most violent earthquake recorded in the area might tickle your toes. A year or two after construction started, a team of geologists studying a fault in nearby Rattlesnake Mountain discovered evidence of earthquakes in the range of 10.0 (don't ask me how they came up with that number) which supposedly happened about every 5 to 10 thousand years. According to their findings, the next one should hit in the next 100 to 1000 years. Based on this, the politicians decided that the facility needed to be able to withstand at least a 10.0 earthquake.
These are the kind of things that happen when you let politicians run your nuclear program.
-
That is all just too stupid to believe...if you are not familiar with how government bureaucracy works. If you are, then it just seems par for the (very stupid) course.
-
I did mean “vitrification”. Just couldn't think of the word. Hanzo'd
-
This busybody then started raising flags and escalating the problems so that he could be the hero.
Do you happen to be talking about Harry Reid and the Yucca Mountain facility?
-
Do you happen to be talking about Harry Reid and the Yucca Mountain facility?
No. I don't actually know who the busybody was. If you look back a couple posts, I was talking about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in Washington.
-
No. I don't actually know who the busybody was. If you look back a couple posts, I was talking about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in Washington.
I knew you had been talking about Hanford, but Yucca Mountain, IIRC, was more or less supposed to be the future repository for all waste, so it wasn't an entirely unreasonable guess.
-
-
It appears a typical panel is about 1m² and can produce about 0.75kWhr/day. I use about 24kWhr/day (max) so I'd need 32m² to do my house. Assuming 100% efficiency storing to batteries etc, though. My roof is 8×15 metres so it can easily fit that many cells.
I would assume that adding panels could make a potential difference, yet now you have me curious. According to current data, the US consumes 4,686,400,000 kWh/yr, which converts to 12,830,938 kWh / day. Assuming we amp up solar energy consumption so that every square meter of land is covered in panels, that excess energy can be stored losslessly, and and that every day is full sun (not quite the case in Alaska), 0.75kWh/day/m2 across 9.857 x 1012 m2 yields a shockingly large number - about 576,000 times more than consumption. Granted, that estimate is a little too far on the sunny side of things.
I'd have to do calculations but I heard that the deserts in Australia could provide enough power for the whole world, barring transmission problems!
Given that China, the US, and the EU consume more than half the world's share, that seems plausible. However, I'm sure that attempts to transmit excess power over long distances will be met with great resistance.
-
attempts to transmit excess power over long distances will be met with great resistance.
Ugh.
-
I doubt that. My dad used to work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (the largest nuclear waste repository in the US).
Just because the current system is bad doesn't mean it has to be. Most of the world's nuclear waste policies have been created with from the following perspectives:- Nuclear proliferation - building reactors specifically to use to breed material for the arms industry.
- Nuclear non-proliferation - building reactors that cannot be used for making bombs.
- NIMBY.
Notice what's not in the list - doing what works. On site reprocessing creates lower level waste that's easier to handle, but goes against #2 and #3. Designing reactors correctly back in the heyday of US reactor construction was against #1. The modern trend of stressing #2 and #3 comes to the inevitable conclusions of "put in all in a big pile somewhere that no one will go for a thousand years" or "crap, this stuff is too dangerous to transport, let's just pretend it doesn't exist". Both of those are horrible ideas.
-
Assuming we amp up solar energy consumption so that every square meter of land is covered in panels, that excess energy can be stored losslessly, and and that every day is full sun (not quite the case in Alaska), 0.75kWh/day/m2 across 9.857 x 1012 m2 yields a shockingly large number - about 576,000 times more than consumption. Granted, that estimate is a little too far on the sunny side of things.
Aside from being an insane level of sunny butsumption here, I'd like to point out that you're suggesting to cover at least 1/576,000th of the US in panels. Have you considered the energy cost of producing all of them? Or storing the energy when there's no sun? How about the price of energy when trying to pay off for all those panels?
It's not happening.
-
I wasn't necessarily suggesting that we charge into it. Every proposal needs to be evaluated based on its capacitance to improve things as well as its costs, you know.
Exhausting all the low-hanging fruit makes this more difficult.
-
I wasn't necessarily suggesting that we charge into it. Every proposal needs to be evaluated based on its capacitance to improve things as well as its costs, you know.
My suggestion was tongue (on the 9V battery) in cheek. To induct so much power is within the current technology but not really practical considering everything else.
The 0.75kWhr/day/m² is average generation: sunny areas will get more. I have six panels on my roof and get around 5kWhr/day and just a little 1kW inverter. Rarely under 4. But then I'm in the subtropics in the sunshine state.
I'm standing on a train platform right now getting burned by that very heat source!
Fired under: watt? No ohm/omega on this keyboard!?
-
Last I checked, most panels cost about $6/Watt. That's not counting batteries, inverters, wiring, miscellaneous hardware (you can't glue those things on to your shingles, obviously) and so on.
The retail price for my 1kW system was $8k inc tax etc. It was free for me due to a subsidy. Grid connected so no batteries. Mass producing will drive down the price but at what cost?
BTW I have a Colorbond roof. Easy bolts.
-
Useful renewables (longshot stuff)
Much less long than many people still believe. Quite probably available significantly faster and cheaper than new nukes.
[quote=rmi.org]The key barrier to success is not inadequate technologies but tardy adoption. The rate of implementation required to reach Reinventing Fire’s ambitious goals is challenging but manageable—just as it was in 1977–85, when the U.S. cut its oil intensity at an average rate of 5.2%/y. Our analysis assumes that on average, the entire United States will ramp up over decades to the rates of efficiency and renewables adoption that the most attentive states have already achieved. Whatever exists is possible. What’s needed is a coherent and compelling vision, leadership at all levels (but not necessarily from Congress, whose action is not actually required for Reinventing Fire), and the courage to capture the opportunities now before each of us. Their value, feasibility, and practical uptake can thrive in our immensely diverse and politically fractious society if we focus on outcomes, not motives—if we simply do what makes sense and makes money, without having to agree on why it’s important.[/quote](emphasis mine)
-
Nuclear fission now
Can't do nuclear fission "now". Takes decades to build that shit.
-
-
We could build frickin' huge PV panels in spaaaaaaaaaaace and beam that shit down in big microwave beams of death
Or we could be smart enough to stick billions of mass-produced PV panels on every building in existence and have everybody make a buck from 15% of the irradiation currently wasted on overheating their rooftops.
Clue: go look at Chinese PV panel production rates over the last decade.
-
Break out the RTG's and start strip mining. And since the moon is tidally locked, put the fusion reactors up there and break out the microwave beams of doom again.
Surely we can figure all that out in 3-5000 years.
Sounds very Enterprisey.
-
-
Just because the current system is bad doesn't mean it has to be.
Just because political problems aren't technical doesn't mean they're not real problems.
-
Every industry needs more regulation and fewer regulators regulating them.
-
@Zemm said:
I'd have to do calculations but I heard that the deserts in Australia could provide enough power for the whole world, barring transmission problems!
Given that China, the US, and the EU consume more than half the world's share, that seems plausible. However, I'm sure that attempts to transmit excess power over long distances will be met with great resistance.
The EU is closer to the Sahara. It's bigger than the whole of Australia, and gets plenty of insolation. There are also some solar power plants already in Spain. (Won't be fitting solar panels to my current house though; it's really not cost-effective where am due to a combination of extreme cloudiness and very low sun angle for much of the year.)
-
The EU is closer to the Sahara. It's bigger than the whole of Australia, and gets plenty of insolation.
Kind of my point: square footage/meterage of available land is not the thing stopping large scale solar installations. Cost and environmental factors are what's doing it. Manufacturing solar panels isn't exactly sunflowers and raindrops, it's still quite dirty. Transmission isn't so hard: we have technology to bump up to high DC so electrical resistance isn't as significant.
I have friends with a solar installation because it would cost more to get on the grid (house is in the middle of whoop whoop). Solar is great in this situation but is not the panacea to the world's energy problems.
There are some great renewable sources and the solution is a mix of each. Wind, tidal, geothermal, hydro, different solar (not just photovoltaic), even burning hydrogen or methane or ethanol, off the top of my head.
-
There are some great renewable sources and the solution is a mix of each. Wind, tidal, geothermal, hydro, different solar (not just photovoltaic), even burning hydrogen or methane or ethanol, off the top of my head.
For just electricity? Yes, maybe. For electricity and everything else fossil fuels are burned (not processed like for plastics), which is many times worldwide electrical generation? Then no, if you ever want to see the human species pull the poorest of us out of the worst conditions. There's no way to drop the entire (or even majority) world economy on all of that. Hydrogen is great, but needs to be created through either electricity or a catalyst (which can take even more energy to produce) -- lots of it. Methane and ethanol still release CO2, ethanol at a higher rate per unit of work than gas.
Current fossil fuels are about the most efficient return for energy used to acquire because it externalizes the cost of initial oil production to the planet, like much of everything else we do (a metric ton of iron ore is worth about $120 -- look at the price of a weight-set and think about that for a minute). Uranium would be the most efficient but we would rather have thousands, if not millions, die from coal dust inhalation, well explosions, wars to secure wells, radiation exposure from burned coal, etc, than hundreds or less be exposed to some radiation from nuclear waste.
With green tech there's always so much handwavium. People say they did the math and then think that that's solely the only problem. No one in these discussions takes into account the true energy cost of producing PV on the scale they want. It's like someone who only knows HTML dictating what can and can't be done in C#.
The math espoused upthread isn't enough, because averages don't work like that IRL. We don't get to pick perfect spots for putting panels, because it will have secondary effects. Plus any PV installation which is subsidized is, you know, being paid for by everyone. Just because you have not paid for it yourself, or have had the cost greatly reduced, doesn't mean the cost is disappearing.
And the kicker? The way things like this work, most often the people who can most afford panels in the first place are the ones to install them.
-
The EU is closer to the Sahara. It's bigger than the whole of Australia, and gets plenty of insolation. There are also some solar power plants already in Spain. (Won't be fitting solar panels to my current house though; it's really not cost-effective where am due to a combination of extreme cloudiness and very low sun angle for much of the year.)
Most of the EU has a higher latitude than the most populous parts of Canada. True, Canada is screwed by having the Canadian Shield, which pretty much means it (and the northern states of the US) can get arctic weather express delivered like it was about a week ago, The important takeaway is that much of the EU is stuck at latitudes that do not get the sun needed for efficient PV.
Get this through your head -- if the pollution generated to produce a PV panel* is greater than what it would have saved during its entire operational life in that area (and I believe all PV panels have to be replaced every 20-25 years, depending on environment), then you, as the user of PV, are actually more evil than me as the user of hydrocarbons. Even more so if you did get it subsidized.
*Which is substantial, but I haven't seen anyone try to compare it apples to apples to hydrocarbons.
-
Methane and ethanol still release CO2, ethanol at a higher rate per unit of work than gas.
But (assuming by methane we're referring to biogas not natural gas) the carbon in that CO2 didn't use to be underground in fossil fuels. It used to be in living plants (and I mean last month, not millions of years ago) and before that it was ... CO2 in the air, exactly as much as it is now.
-
Or we could be smart enough to stick billions of mass-produced PV panels on every building in existence and have everybody make a buck from 15% of the irradiation currently wasted on overheating their rooftops.
Snow.I don't see my roof much for about a quarter of the year. So, either I (and everyone else) have to clear their roofs (good fucking luck. You can't get people to clear their CAR roofs), we build alternative power plants (of what variety?), or we get way better at power transmission. And given how many "50% of the US has snow on the ground!" news blurbs there have been lately, that power is going to have to be imported.
Gets worse when you look at commercial and industrial buildings, which account for much more square footage. Being flat, they hold on to accumulations much better.
-
But (assuming by methane we're referring to biogas not natural gas) the carbon in that CO2 didn't use to be underground in fossil fuels. It used to be in living plants (and I mean last month, not millions of years ago) and before that it was ... CO2 in the air, exactly as much as it is now.
First there's the amount of land you need to produce either biogas or biofuel and not planted with forests or food crops, followed by highly inefficient collection, and ending with fertilizer runoff and all the other farm pollution problems except now you've got way more farm. If you took out fossil fuels from the mix, you might still get more energy than you put in, but you definitely wouldn't get a whole lot more.
-
Most of the EU has a higher latitude than the most populous parts of Canada. True, Canada is screwed by having the Canadian Shield, which pretty much means it (and the northern states of the US) can get arctic weather express delivered like it was about a week ago, The important takeaway is that much of the EU is stuck at latitudes that do not get the sun needed for efficient PV.
The US and the EU are both unusual, but in opposite directions. You've got the Canadian Shield, we've got the Gulf Stream. It's good in summer being so far north. Loads of sunlight. Except for the weather usually being cloudy where I live anyway, which is a whole 'nother thing. We get more cloud than the Pacific Northwest. And more rainy days.
Wind and tidal power make more sense than solar for us. (Hydro would work too, except we've got the wrong geology and topography. The big reservoirs we have are mostly for drinking water.)
-
-
It was free for me due to a subsidy.
I'm glad you added the "for me".
Grid connected so no batteries.
That does reduce the cost, but it means in a grid-down situation you don't have power at night, of course.
-
Can't do nuclear fission "now". Takes decades to build that shit.
Yes, but probably almost all of that is regulatory stuff. The construction certainly doesn't need to take that long.
-
That figure is well out of date.
Interesting. I wonder how well they work and how well they last. Chinese merchandise isn't known for quality, whereas when I was semi-following the industry in the 90s, you could expect a useful life of 30+ years for your panels, if you took care of 'em (those are anecdotes, admittedly, but from people who were actually using panels on their own homes.)
Edit: also, given all the other shenanigans going on in China, I wonder if and how that low cost was subsidized, because it probably was.
-
There are also some solar power plants already in Spain.
How much of that was due to huge subsidies? I may be mixing up countries here but I thought Spain was giving out big ones, and decided to cut them off and some of the plants were going to close because they weren't cost-effective without the subsidies.
-
How much of that was due to huge subsidies? I may be mixing up countries here but I thought Spain was giving out big ones, and decided to cut them off and some of the plants were going to close because they weren't cost-effective without the subsidies.
No idea, but governments have always meddled in the power market as politicians hate power cuts. They're bad for their reelection chances.
-
Lots of that through the deserts of the southwest?
Which is where not so many people live, so you're back to running power lines. That's obviously not insurmountable, but it's something you have to address.
