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Comment: Re:Location, location, location (Score 1) 452

by radl33t (#36671922) Attached to: Renewable Energy Production Surpasses Nuclear In the US
Some. Other greenies quite like them. I'd wager that just about everybody prefers them to cooling towers and open pit mines.

Wind and solar take a LOT of space.
We have a lot of space.

We won't use it everywhere.

First, this is not the thing, as in [many peer reviewed citations needed]. Secondly, humans are adaptable. Some of us will carry on despite any extreme changes in climate. Thirdly, global geoengineering projects are not out of the question.

We don't need figures saying what we can and are doing today, we need to know if it's even possible to do what we wish for. Can we get 100% clean? If so, how can we do it? Is it sustainable? I'd really like to know. Why do you want to know? Do you want to hear the answers are "No" so you can admit defeat / not change / accept some other status quo ? Sustainability is an impossible dream. Go buy a V8 coupe and eat some grapes from Honduras, may as well enjoy the party? I'm sure you'll find that more palatable then: 1) abandon your car and AC 2) stop eating meat and processed & imported food 3) lower your thermostat or actually "engineer" residential construction 4) don't buy stupid shit. If a majority of people did these simple things, we could start abandoning large portions of our energy infrastructure (think 20 - 80%), (fortunately/unfortunately) we also dismantle similar portions of our economy.

Comment: Re:Way to grind that axe, buddy (Score 1) 452

by radl33t (#36671272) Attached to: Renewable Energy Production Surpasses Nuclear In the US
And without gasbags like yourself we wouldn't need modern economies. Arbitrary blame in my fantasy reality is fun too! How can we possibly have any energy problems with experts like yourself filled with all the answers. Global warming fixes, research level fission technology, electric grid, solar, wind, non existent geothermal technology, you've got it all figured out. WoW!

Comment: Re:Tax Distraction (Score 3, Insightful) 623

by radl33t (#36621702) Attached to: Amazon Drops California Associates to Avoid Sales Tax
no, let's start with texas and then sweep through the south. It does not negate his point: Munitions are valuable good and they are created here with our scarce resources and end up as heaping piles of rubble over there. There is a massive opportunity cost of not using these resources for building ourselves up rather than tearing someone down. Creative destruction abroad is wasteful compared to domestic investment, unless your playing some Machiavellian game whereupon foreign aggression is actually indirectly benefiting the economy. In any event, any such plan would rely on pure conjecture and a healthy dose of negligence with regard to history.

Comment: Re:TFA is way off the mark (Score 1) 611

by radl33t (#35820820) Attached to: America's Tech Decline: a Reading Guide

You are incorrect. Sealing gaps and super insulating new homes is green energy technology and both of these menial tasks reduce the cost of new construction. Double paned windows with low e coatings are green technology and they reduce the TCO of residential buildings without any incentives. In a cold climate, pointing your new house at the sun, is a green technology that is viable without government mandates... There are no government mandates for CFLs, dual flush toilets, 1.6L turbo diesels, or bicycles, and about 37,000 other things and yet these are all green energy technologies that are cost effective compared to alternative technology. However, I feel the target of your misinformed rant is technologies such as solar thermal or PV, which are also viable without government mandates for millions of homes. You can buy an integrated collector/storage solar thermal system for the cost of a hot water heater and never pay fuel prices. These systems aren't littering the roofs of the American southwest (unlike say the entire developing world) due to general ignorance and widespread deluded thinking by people like you who simply refuse to acknowledge, that perhaps, under many (and a growing set) of conditions they are hopelessly wrong. But yeah, U.S. government mandates are necessary for green energy technology, which explains why poor people in developing countries are adopting these technologies in spades...

Comment: Re:...advantages outweigh the problems (Score 1) 358

by radl33t (#35817752) Attached to: New Houses Killing Wi-Fi
Well said sir!

We use about 10% of our national energy to heat/cool our homes (another 10% to heat/cool commercial buildings). Energy efficient construction (basically insulation, gap sealing, and orientation/design) can _reduce_ heating/cooling loads by 40-60% at _lower_ initial cost. Saving hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, ft^3 of natural gas, or tons of coal and spending thousands of dollars less for new construction makes the WiFi in the garden a pretty trivial issue in comparison... especially since the savings from 1 or 2 mo of heating/AC bills could buy you an extra AP to solve your problem...

Comment: Re:Wikipedia irrelevant for Physics positions (Score 2) 139

by radl33t (#35756346) Attached to: Editing Wikipedia Helps Professor Attain Tenure
That's a shame. Any educator who substantially improves the portal to information about their discipline should be proud. Granted, it shouldn't carry the same weight as research metrics (for a research position anyway), but given two equal candidates I would strongly favor one with 60,000 contributions to publicly accessible physics knowledge, possibly above many other qualities. IMO declaring it irrelevant is simply a sign of the dangerously contagious pointy hat syndrome that we academics develop to guard our section of the ivory tower.

Comment: Re:Solar cells is a bad idea for concentrators (Score 1) 245

So. you're right. At the end of the day total system efficiency is what matters and there is no PV technology that can compete with a heat engine. There will NOT be any commercially viable PV solution for decades based on the development time of _all previous energy conversion technology_. Also what's this funniness about not needing cooling? Nothing will survive at 1000 suns without a massive cooling system.

Comment: Re:Download Your Profile (Score 1) 368

by radl33t (#35379040) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Facebook Archiving?

We're talking about electronic files and the basic architecture of the internet. Shed your ridiculous examples
"No, there is in fact no reason why she should know better."

What a charming vision of society you have: people don't know better. It's up to techno-wizards behind the curtain to keep everything running smoothly... Sorry, but if you raise a daughter in this age who doesn't understand file storage and transmission then she will remain on her knees in the kitchen. Judging from your perspective, she'll probably be better off anyway. Hey, speaking of that, have her friend me on facebook.

Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.