Huge study about safety can be misinterpreted by SUV drivers

"What I don't support is government mandates that stress the economy by
setting impossible goals for a given technology"
Unfortunately, sometimes this is the only way to force the improvement in
the technology... EX. if we forced all new constrution in "sunny cities"
(cities with x% of sunny days) to have a certain amount of energy generated
by solar, then the solar technology would advance and the price would drop
in a few years.

 

The problem with wind is it can't generate enough energy to replace fossil
fuels, nevermind the birds. It can only supplement fossil fuels.

There currently isn't any "answer" to replacing fossil fuels, except
nuclear, to generate the kind of energy the world requires. Wind, solar,
bio-mass, hydro, conservation are all great but aren't sufficient.

If we could just make nuclear "safe-enough" in terms of preventing accidents
and disposing of the waste, it can produce sufficient energy to power
growing economies without spewing exhaust into the air.

 

So you base your fears on 1/4 century or older technology.

If CO2 is as big of a problem as we are told it is, radioactive waste
is but a tiny fraction as bad. If CO2 is really that bad, then nukes
are one way to go to a less damaging source of energy. Coal plants
actually spew more radioactive materials than nuclear plants.

With the those politically on the left and environmentialists opposing
large scale wind farms proposed by various developers who see wind
turbines as a money maker that can provide clean energy they show their
true stripes. They want to control how people live, and abundant clean
energy threatens that goal.

 

Properly placed large scale wind farms can take some of that load or
in the very least make enough energy so that new fossil fuel plants
need not built.

 

Hiya LP. Now you know it would be a waste of my time to tell you, because
you don't have the brains to understand it anyway, if you did you wouldn't
ask such a stupid question, you would have already read all the Data, not
just what your left wing wackos say.

warming.

Who is this mysterious 'we" that pops up in every post you make. Don't
bother answering, it would just be another of your lies.

 

There's been a Ice Age soon theory for most of this century... not a
recent claim at all.

http://www.iceagenow.com

 

While you are at it, figure out how many are hooked on prescription pain
relievers.

Ed

 

But not for technical reasons.

As I said, the problems were not with the technology, but with the
people.
Storage isn't the problem the ecos make it out to be. They simply
refuse to accept that it can be stored under *any* conditions.
It's really funny to hear them put forth a scenario where the
containment would fail, but the scenario would mean catastrophe so bad
that local release of radioactivity would be a minor concern.

But it *is* being used with very few problems.
And at a very competitive price.
With the ecos refusing to allow just about *any* major new generating
plants (especially on the west coast), we really need to find
something; nuclear fits the bill better than fossil-fuel generating
plants.

 

Would it?
Did mandating auto insurance drop the prices? No, it instead created a
mandated market.
Offering some sort of enducement (like a tax break) would be more
likely to produce reduced prices.
Except it was tried in Arizona, and it didn't work, because the
technology couldn't advance to the point of actually making it
worthwhile.

 

I'm not convinced that even tax breaks would decrease the price of
insurance. In fact, it would likely increase it's price. There exists a
certain demand for insurance and while tax breaks may bring in a few
otherwise non participators, what it will mostly do is make current
purchasers willing to pay higher prices to the tune of the amount of the tax
break. Throwing money into the equation without much change in supply or
demand will just cause an inflationary effect.

This happened years ago during the Carter years when the govt offered tax
breaks for solar water heating systems. All of a sudden you saw door to
door salesman pitching solar water heating systems for much higher prices
than before. The tax break was a big part of the pitch.

CAFE laws mandated mpg standards. Did it have the desired effect? Not
really. The demand for big, powerful cars found a way around CAFE in SUV's.

Increasing the demand for solar artificially via mandate probably wouldn't
work. Oil just isn't as dangerous as the extremist environmentalists say it
is. If it was or if there were an acceptable replacement technology, then
the market would sufficiently demand a replacement for oil. And we'd find
it.

 

Yes, but what happens when we have all of these wind farms and reduce
the total "wind energy" out there. This is no joke! The total amount
of energy in the world is finite. If we convert wind energy to
electricity on a global scale, what are the global implications? I
don't think we have to worry for a while, but we should consider it!


Dan

 

In "real" terms, SOON could mean that your grandchildren's grandchildren
wont have to worry about it, but that doesn't mean we should go
hell-bent-for-leather without a care for what we might be doing to the
world.

Dan

 

That's exactly the sort of arguement I would expect to see from
anti-energy environmentalists eventually. It's also along the same
lines of ones I have used when various energy generation methods
are considered totally without side effects to the environment.

There is some side effect to all forms, all forms can be opposed
on that ground. Some are cleaner than others, some problems are more
livable than others. And I find it amusing the way the objections
shift depending on the method proposed to generate electricity.

Can't build a coal plant because of the pollution and CO2, can't build
a nuke because of the waste and what might happen if 4 layers of
redundant systems go bad and homer simpson is at the controls, can't
build a wind farm because it's ugly and some birds will run into it,
can't build a dam because it floods a local ecosystem, etc and so on.

Adding up all these objections gets us the status quo. But then the
status quo is attacked in that people are using too much energy. I
ask myself what the goal is. And it's quite clear to me the goal
has *NOTHING* to do with conservation or the environment. The
environment is but the excuse to achieve other goals.

IMO, if someone completed Tesla's work next week and we all had free
electricity from the 'ether' there would still be environmental
objections to the process.

 

See below. My replies also apply to similar points put by some other
posters.

I am not saying that I have any pat answers for future sources of energy,
but I am implying that there is no single definite answer at present.

DAS
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NB: To reply directly replace "nospam" with "schmetterling"
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FROM DAS: At the time nuclear power was touted as THE way to go. I was
really quite in favour as I thought much of the criticism overblown and only
used by politicians to curry favour with voters. Hindsight is 20/20 vision
and irrelevant. We cannot foresee what other consequences nuclear power
stations can have. It is, I believe, naive to think that because we have
moved on that a Three Mile Island could never happen again. Of course it
could, because human error can happen again. We have had incidents in
western Europe, too, AFAIK.
Do you think that the Bhopal disaster could not happen again? (Toxic
chemical leak at a Dow plant in India.) It certainly was not the intention
of Dow or a lack of safety rules that caused it, but the negligent atitude
of one or two workers locally.

FROM DAS: I am not sure that CO2 is such a big problem, considering that
every night huge amounts of the gas are released by plants...

I am not talking about the waste 'spewed' out during operation, but the
waste product left after processing. You have to answer the question of
what is to be done with radioactive material that has a half-life of
centuries.

Most location proposals for bury the stuff are not implemented because the
ground is not geologically stable. Leakage into ground water would be the
result. What a legacy to leave our grandchildren!

FROM DAS: Wind farms can be a blot in the landscape. They may be ok in the
Mid-Western prairies when used to power the needs of a few hundred thousand
people, but I can't see them being built in northern New Jersey or the
suburbs of Paris to meet the needs of conurbations containing millions of
people.

 

I didn't put this out there to say "DON'T DO IT". The company I work
for is does this kind of work. I think that it is a great source of
electricity. I just think it is something we have to examine and have
some knowledge of before we get too deep.

Dan

 

The tax break I was referring to was for solar power devices.
Sorry I wasn't clearer on that.

 

And I suppose that if the 'environmentalists' advised against jumping
off the roof, the good conservatives would all dutifully line up to do
so?
The trouble with this whole mess is the media/public's propensity to
cast *everything* into a contest between two equivalently valid
opponents, pick one on the basis of some emotional impulse.
Environmentalism vs. corporatism, prolife vs prochoice, evolutionism
vs creationism, proBush vs. proSaddam, all are treated the same as the
choice of RedSox vs. Yankees. In fact, contrary to the news headlines
the other week, the decision to drop enforcement of the Clean Air laws
is not a 'blow to environmentalists'; it is, in fact, a blow to all
air-breathing organisms in the US.

Yes, as the decisions made regarding fish harvesting limits were not
made on the 'extremist environmentalist' (aka scientist) schedule or
terms, instead splitting the difference between the numbers the
scientists said were the max that would not seriously deplete the
fishery stocks, and the numbers the fishing industry said were
necessary economically. That's the American way, isn't it; compromist
between the two sides. And the result is, of course, that the
fisheries are now overfished, and the industry is in worse shape than
it would have been if the scientists' recommendations had been
followed in the first place.

 

Well, since we agree that people screw it up by making mistakes and
errors of judgement in the design or operation, I'll certainly listen
if you can come up with a way to have nuclear power implemented by
somebody other than people. However, I should warn you that training
chimps to run the plants will not be acceptable either. I was thinking
more of Vorlons or maybe Vulcans.

 

Yes, having seen that allowing large corporations remarkably free rein
to seek, extract, and sell unreplenishable fossil fuel energy sources
through a centralized structure in order to maximize corporate
profitability, which also creates a monetary penalty for the
corporations to concentrate on fuel efficiency, environmentalism, or
safety; clearly the way to go is to transition to another
unreplenishable source to be sought, extracted, and sold through a
centralized structure run by large corporations with a monetary
penalty for concentration on fuel efficiency, environmentalism, or
safety.

 

What's your point? That the concept of global warming via CO2 is
nothing more than a method/excuse to punish corporations?