beat

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211.
by beat 7y ago
Facts have a known liberal bias.
212.
by beat 7y ago
This is why it's so important that wind and solar costs have plummeted to below the cost of coal. If it wasn't for the introduction of fracking, they'd be much cheaper than natural gas, too. As developing nations build up the
213.
by beat 7y ago
Buying beach property isn't such a big deal when you're rich - at worst, you lose it, but you're still rich. As for living in the present... I'm in my 50s, and have a chronic respiratory illness that developed a few year
214.
by beat 7y ago
Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man th
215.
by beat 7y ago
When 99% of the experts in the field agree, and that's not a compelling argument to a layman with no expertise, "skeptic" is not a word I'd use to describe that layman.
216.
by beat 7y ago
Does it really not work? It seems to have done okay in various contexts - Maoism in China and Ba'athism in the Arab world stand out to me. Maoism evolved and became very successful. Ba'athism mostly fell apart with the Arab Spring
217.
by beat 7y ago
That's assuming there are mass migrations due to lack of food. Why can't they just adjust crops? We keep imagining agriculture as some sort of on-off switch - "We have crops, and then the global warming happens, and suddenly
218.
by beat 7y ago
For non-developers, yeah. People whose work necessarily involves file management are hosed. But that's a small minority of what gets done on computers these days.
219.
by beat 7y ago
Right. But climate change may not be a fast enough trigger to cause an instantaneous collapse of civilization. And at what scale are we talking? A local community, or a nation, or the world? The instantaneous collapse of global civilization
220.
by beat 7y ago
Something else to consider, that the article doesn't really touch, is the pace of change. Even at global-disaster scale, climate change moves pretty slowly. The ocean may rise a couple of meters, but it's not rising a couple of me
221.
by beat 7y ago
If you want to use incorrect data to get correct answers, you need a human. That's one of the fundamental differences between humans and computers.
222.
by beat 7y ago
I'm not saying it's free. Sheesh. I'm saying that there's some point on the price curve where it becomes cheaper than nuclear, even for base load. Now, that point may never happen. Or maybe it's already happened, an
223.
by beat 7y ago
I grew up in Bloomington, the closest city in the world to Normal. I moved away before the Mitsubishi plant was built, tho.
224.
by beat 7y ago
Without going back and digging for sources (google it yourself), existing nuclear costs about $100/Mwh. Coal is around there, too (this is round number, different sources have slight variations). Onshore wind and natural gas are curren
225.
by beat 7y ago
I'm not seeing anyone state any numbers, though. Just a bunch of handwaving about how it's totally impossible, which strikes me as simplistic BS.
226.
by beat 7y ago
If solar costs less than a third what nuclear does (which is where we're headed, we're already down to half), why do you need nuclear base load? Why not just do this gas conversion? Nuclear is basically dead right now because of c
227.
by beat 7y ago
Transitions take time. We can't just flip a switch from one technology to another. What we are seeing is that the cost drop over the past decade for wind/solar/gas is so drastic that coal and nuclear are simply shutting dow
228.
by beat 7y ago
Technically, storage is a solved problem. It's not even hard, and y'all keep saying it's impossible. The unsolved problem is cost. And it's a simple formula... how much grid storage is needed to account for variations?
229.
by beat 7y ago
HFCS is common not just because of corn subsidies, but also because of sugar tariffs. The US has very high protective tariffs for our domestic sugar industry, which makes sugar more expensive in the US relative to the rest of the world. HFC
230.
by beat 7y ago
Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Neodymium magnets are much lighter and more compact for the same strength. (I know this from being a guitar player - exact composition of magnets in guitar pickups and speakers is a subject of substantia
231.
by beat 7y ago
This book was a tremendous influence on me as a young professional programmer. I still quote from it regularly. ("SELECT isn't broken!")
232.
by beat 7y ago
To refine my statement... in a representative democracy, our choice of candidates for representatives is purely identity politics. Better? This doesn't get into details of issues. Our candidates that match our identities have their pol
233.
by beat 7y ago
Storing energy isn't exactly magical. Humans built the first dam nearly 3000 years ago. It's simply a matter of cost, and that's a combination of situation and experience. Batteries, hydro, compressed air, thermal, gravity...
234.
by beat 7y ago
Solar, maybe, for now. But I can't imagine that there is a need for large amounts of exotic metals in a wind turbine, which is a simple generator. Exotic materials might give a percent or three more operational efficiency, but they&#x2
235.
by beat 7y ago
Because nuclear can't keep up on cost. Right now, new wind, PV solar, and gas all cost about half as much per kwh as nuclear. We actually have numerous nuclear plants being decommissioned early in the US, because they've lost indu
236.
by beat 7y ago
Go read the parent to my comment again. I was responding to that parent, not to this detailed question of yours. To answer your question... it doesn't. It isn't a catch-all explanation for every single policy detail. That does not
237.
by beat 7y ago
All politics is identity politics. You can spot the people who function from a position of privilege politically, because they're the ones who think that "identity politics" is what other people are doing. Privilege is just
238.
by beat 7y ago
Heh. And I was trying to be polite about it, but you're absolutely right.
239.
by beat 7y ago
The problem is that you're building a new system to completely replace an existing system, and the existing system is tightly integrated in a way that makes piecemeal change difficult to impossible. And the new system isn't just a
240.
by beat 7y ago
#notallsoftware

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