rgmerk

47 ms·

451.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I remember reading part of a PhD thesis about the implications of “peak phosphate” more than a decade ago. (Not my area of expertise, but the guts of it weren’t particularly difficult to understand). My takeaway (though not the author’s) wa
452.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Amazing? Maybe. Surprising? Hardly.
453.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Not a hunter myself, so I’m not sure, but there appear to be companies offering deer hunting tours in my neck of the woods. Google “deer hunting Victoria Australia” should turn up some links. The forests of north-eastern Victoria are a bea
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by rgmerk 3y ago
If anyone wants to go deer hunting with different scenery, come to south-eastern Australia. They’re an imported pest and in plague proportions, so, please, come kill them by the dozen and do our environment a favour.
455.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I think we’re pretty close to that point already.
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by rgmerk 3y ago
That’s not how regulation of transportation works. You can build your own plane and fly it with relatively few restrictions, but as soon as you a) manufacture a plane for sale to someone else, or b) get paid for transporting someone in it,
457.
by rgmerk 3y ago
I'll take that bet. Here's hoping both of us are around to settle it!
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by rgmerk 3y ago
We make cost-benefit tradeoffs on regulation all the time. The EPA uses a value of 7.2 million dollars (2006 dollars) for a life saved [1]: So if adding guards to trucks would save, say, 50% of the lives lost in underride crashes, that woul
459.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Predictions: 1) in 2050, the world will get its energy almost exclusively from renewable sources, with a combination of batteries, hydrogen, biogas, hydropower (conventional and pumped), and demand management used to cope with variability.
460.
by rgmerk 3y ago
If you want to see a good (fictional but pretty much on the money) depiction of this, check out the episode “King Corn” from season six of The West Wing. Even then it was blatantly obvious that corn ethanol was all about subsidising corn fa
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by rgmerk 3y ago
The SLS is operating as designed by Congress - shovelling very amounts of money to the ex-shuttle contractors and their workforces. Any actual flights are a bonus.
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by rgmerk 3y ago
While the cheapest CO2 sequestration sinks are limited in capacity, there seems to be enough alternatives that could be scaled up to virtually any required capacity. Furthermore, direct air capture doesn’t appear to require anything else th
463.
by rgmerk 3y ago
At some point, we will probably want to actively manage Earth’s climate via space-based solar radiation management. We might also consider doing the same for Mars if we ever decide to settle on it. However, we’re going to need to draw down
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by rgmerk 3y ago
This. I’d also point out that Germany has its share of wild weather, including floods and storms. And yet they keep their grid up a lot more reliably than the US.
465.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Interesting statistic: the American power grid has, on average, 475 minutes of outage time annually. The German grid has 12.7 minutes. Rather than rich people spending squillions on propane generators, how about spending less and fixing yo
466.
by rgmerk 3y ago
The US doesn’t need missile defence to maintain second strike capability. That’s what SSBNs are for.
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by rgmerk 3y ago
Real world highway range is lower than EPA or WLTP range (the range quoted in advertisements in the US or EU respectively), often substantially so. EPA range is for a mix of highway and urban driving; unlike ICE vehicles, EVs get worse rang
468.
by rgmerk 3y ago
California HSR is a dumb project, as are some of the more marginal Chinese HSR lines (and many of the HSR lines built in Europe, undoubtedly). By the time California HSR runs from LA to SF electric short-haul airliners will make the environ
469.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Pain as a video game mechanic (with bonus Kim Basinger and Sean Connery): https://youtu.be/MI9_cLu5-JY
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by rgmerk 3y ago
Biological control is important but not a panacea. Not all invasive species have predators/diseases that are effective, specific, and maintain a viable population without human intervention. Biological control can go horribly wrong.
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by rgmerk 3y ago
For most people in urban and suburban areas, a grid connection is going to be sufficiently financially attractive that the rational thing to do is keep it. For one thing, maintaining sufficient storage at home to fully recharge a car overni
472.
by rgmerk 3y ago
In a densely populated country like the UK, nobody lives in a remote enough setting for their particulate emissions to not be a concern. Unfortunately, it seems like middle-class Brits are completely obsessed with log fires, judging by Brit
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by rgmerk 3y ago
Talk to somebody who works at a women’s shelter. These days pretty much all domestic abuse involves a technological component, and tags are definitely included in that.
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by rgmerk 3y ago
The same thing has been happening pretty much everywhere in the world for a century.
475.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Hop on a plane and visit Europe, or Japan. You can take public transport pretty much anywhere you want to go. It’s clean, safe, and generally reasonably priced. The downside is that houses are smaller and more closely packed. By American
476.
by rgmerk 3y ago
Advanced driving courses have a decidedly mixed record on improving safety, unfortunately. I believe the evidence suggests that they improve confidence more than they improve skill. As for the Plaid, from what I’ve read the yoke and the hig
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by rgmerk 3y ago
The thing with rice (grain crops are rarely irrigated) is that while it’s a huge water suck, the nice thing about it is that in a drought you don’t have to plant it, whereas something like fruit trees (which produce a much bigger economic o
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by rgmerk 3y ago
To be fair, in a lot of cases you'd probably build multiple units on the same site which would get you some learning effects. But compared to wind, solar, and batteries...
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by rgmerk 3y ago
Some history might be worth going in to here. The AP1000 design was an evolution of an earlier design called the AP600. The AP600 conceptual design apparently didn't find any customers because the economics of it were unappealing comp
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by rgmerk 3y ago
Good point. Methane leaks are much more environmentally damaging than often appreciated because methane is such a potent greenhouse gas.

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