Utopia Talk / Politics / Todays laugh your ass off news

Sam Adams Member	Tue Apr 25 14:57:36 http://dai...llion-to-fight-global-warming/ Al gore demands you give him and his cronies 15 trillion dollars to fight glibal warming.
Hot Rod Revved Up	Tue Apr 25 15:08:24 I'll do it for five trillion.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Apr 25 15:27:38 These fucking scumbags, living the high life of billionaires on taxpayer expense to "save the world". The world needs saving from people like Al Gore.
obaminated Member	Tue Apr 25 15:36:59 The countries that emit the most carbon are the countries that won't stop emitting carbon.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Apr 25 15:40:29 We will stop emmitting carbon when reasonable replacement technology exists.. probably fusion. This trying to force people to use shitty technology is how you get people to ignore you.
Paramount Member	Tue Apr 25 16:03:14 I wanna fight glibal warming too.
jergul large member	Tue Apr 25 16:16:51 600 billion a year globally on green initiatives including R&D sounds about right.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Apr 25 16:29:12 Why jergul isnt in charge of anything
kargen Member	Tue Apr 25 18:36:37 That "R&D" is really just Gore and pals getting even richer for providing no real goods or services. What Gore wants to do is set up an exchange so a country that pollutes a lot can pay a country that doesn't pollute much so first country can pollute even more by using 2nd countries allotment of pollution. Gore and buddies of course will get a hefty commission for setting up the transaction. Actually reducing pollution isn't part of the plan because that would mean less deals to broker for a hefty fee.
jergul large member	Wed Apr 26 07:38:53 "Gore and pals" My God. Are you all CT nutters? =========== Carbon quotas are simply a way to avoid doing the obvious - tax the crap out of fossil fuel consumption.
Sam Adams Member	Wed Apr 26 10:38:59 Jergul defending more big government waste. Typical.
jergul large member	Wed Apr 26 15:36:06 For big government waste, see defence spending.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed Apr 26 15:56:08 Carbon quotas are a scam. Major polluting countries flipped it off. So you have a bunch of minor countries competing over who get's to gimp their economies the most while "saving the whales". The same people who think open borders is a viable way to counter an aging population. My god the green party in Sweden are so fucking useless.
jergul large member	Wed Apr 26 17:27:51 Carbon credits are actually just a way of privatizing a tax regime. Kyoto was introduced while we were in the chicago school of disaster economics. It is much better to just tax emissions down to agreed upon levels.
Sam Adams Member	Wed Apr 26 17:31:30 This is why no one listens to jergul. No civilization in good standing reduces its energy expenditure. By corollary, you dont make energy more expensive unless you are a retard.
kargen Member	Wed Apr 26 18:21:00 "Carbon quotas are simply a way to avoid doing the obvious - tax the crap out of fossil fuel consumption." Al Gore wants them to become a commodity and his company would be the one that brokers that commodity. “As soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave [of investment] in it…There will be unchained investment.” Al Gore to potential investors.
jergul large member	Wed Apr 26 21:51:51 Kargen There is a carbon quota market brokered for the most part from London. Sammy Don't be silly.
kargen Member	Thu Apr 27 17:39:02 jergul you correct and it is the first part of what Gore and his buddies hope to eventually create. Even without the changes Gore and others hope to implement companies profited over thirty billion Euros. They didn't lower pollution amounts at all. They just let one company pollute on another companies carbon credit. Carbon quotas are a scheme for large stock exchanges to get even richer. Less pollution isn't even a concern so long at the money is rolling in.
jergul large member	Thu Apr 27 20:18:28 Carbon emissions are not really pollution. Carbon credits do not reduce emissions, it simply transfers emission rights from one entity to another. The premise is a carbon emission rationing system. The invisible hand is better. Taxes.
Hood Member	Thu Apr 27 20:51:59 Solar + fancy batteries. No R&D needed, just engineering.
Sam Adams Member	Thu Apr 27 21:36:23 That kind of battery doesnt exist. No R and D? Lol. Batteries suck and are still way too expensive. Fusion probably gets here before good batteries.
Hood Member	Thu Apr 27 22:20:06 Nah, just push some water uphill during peak production. Might have a really expensive install cost, but overall upkeep shouldn't be too horrible.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Apr 27 23:49:47 I have no idea what you mean by pushing water up a hill, it is not for free. Where is the pushing energy comming from?
Hood Member	Fri Apr 28 00:05:57 Solar energy production generally produces way more energy than necessary when it's sunny. While you feed what the grid needs with that power, take excess energy and lift water with it. Then once the solar stops producing, cause you know the sun goes down, let the water fall downhill to produce during night.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Apr 28 00:26:01 How much energy do we lose doing that vs storing them in ordinary batteries? What do you call that, conversion efficiency?
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Apr 28 00:35:46 I am actually in the middle of a long ass course in thermodynamics and heatpumps/cooling. At the behest of my employer since I will be project leading some major development together with our partners in the energy sector. Part of it is repetition, but it also has iluminated how little I knew/know. I love their complete and unconditional trust in me :-)
Sam Adams Member	Fri Apr 28 01:25:21 Pumped storage is pretty damn efficient. Big francis turbines are near 99% efficient. The big problem is that you need hills. Big ones. Major mountains in fact. The mass of water required is huge. Most places on earth arent close to a place that qualifies... so youd need to run continental scale transfer lines. To go from mountains to populations.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Apr 28 01:35:32 And youd need to fill it with excess power. In the winter with low solar angles. To power the US in the winter with solar and storage alone would require a couple terrawatts of solar panels.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Apr 28 01:38:08 Actually more like 7 tw. Yikes.
jergul large member	Fri Apr 28 02:52:08 Sammy It just that fossile fuels are such an amazingly great way of storing energy. Better and more versatile than gravity (which is what you are actually talking about regarding hydro). Hydrogen is atractive for that reason, but a bit bulky in (g) form (use solar or hydro or other green to split h2o, then recoup that energy later by buring h to get h2o again). But its also about replacing technology. Terrawatts upon terrawatt need to be replaced on a scale much greater than the transition from steam to oil. Which took many decades and was quite traumatic (in shipping it was eventually resolved by uboots renewing the global merchant fleet one torpedo at a time).
jergul large member	Fri Apr 28 02:57:06 Hood Solar does not produce more power than needed. Its just that stepping down thermal based power is not practical. Thermal + solar produces much more than needed. Gravity storage is one way of reducing thermal power.
hood Member	Fri Apr 28 08:13:00 "To power the US in the winter with solar and storage alone would require a couple terrawatts of solar panels." Well it's not like I'm suggesting we up and replace all current energy production with solar power. But we can certainly get on our way to reducing dependence on gas/coal with relative ease already. Solar + natural battery was just a quick example. Wind farms do wonders, tidal power turbines have been demoed and even installed in some areas. This isn't r&d so much as refining current designs for better efficiency and/or specific implementation problems. We most certainly can start a transition fairly easily. My real point here was that the comment about heavy R&D being needed is crap. We can do things just fine now, it's simply a lack of the willpower to do it that prevents the transition. Sure, to take the next evolutionary step in power generation we will need some heavy r&d, but to simply transition to sustainable energy, we're in a decent spot.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Apr 28 08:21:04 The storage though.
jergul large member	Fri Apr 28 08:54:43 Hood Fossil fuels are rediculously cheap and are an incredibly practical way of storing energy. Hydro storage is hardly natural. Decommissioning old dams is a nightmare (for example). One practical thing that could and should be done is using pricing mechanics to reduce spikes in energy use. Baseline energy production needs capacity to cover spikes. The lower the spikes the lower the capacity that is needed. Less capacity means less replacement technology is needed(which is why energy conservation and efficiency is also important in the grand scheme of things). We are nowhere near a transition to sustainable energy (with certain exceptions like Quebec, Ontario, and North Korea).
jergul large member	Fri Apr 28 08:56:08 *Norway too. I just did not want to mention Norway in the same sentence as Ontario.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Apr 28 10:01:37 Ya hood, you can replace some fossil fuels with solar and wind, but its still a little more expensive. But with grid integration and such limitted storage, the more you add the more expensive it becomes. Outside the pacific northwest where the mighty columbia river and its massive reservoirs pretty easily handle the influx of large ammounts of variable renewables, the technology is not yet ready to generate more than 10 or so percent solar+wind.
hood Member	Fri Apr 28 10:18:38 I don't disagree. My argument was simply that we don't need heavy r&d, just engineering and investment. Sure r&d into better batteries would be ideal, and even into better renewables like fusion, but we already have technology available to do all this. It would simply cost a chunk of money and require more prototyping before full implementation.
kargen Member	Fri Apr 28 11:29:05 jergul your response to me was exactly what I've been saying. These clowns are doing nothing to reduce pollution and are getting rich by claiming to be reducing pollution.
jergul large member	Fri Apr 28 11:41:29 Hood *Energy efficiency *Energy conservation *Energy storage = Heavy RandD They are prerequisites for transition to sustainable energy economies. Kargen I disagree with your characterization of Gore. Kyoto is a bit flawed (signing parties wanted a carbon credit regime within the framework of an ever contracting carbon quota system), but I see no evidence of profiteering as Gore's motivation.
kargen Member	Fri Apr 28 19:05:08 Did you not read the quote I posted? If profit were not a part of the equation why a fee to broker the deal and why have companies already generated over thirty billion in profit for not helping pollution reduction even a tiny bit? It is all about money. The current scheme is based on the same scheme Enron used to get even richer than they already were.
jergul large member	Fri Apr 28 19:50:12 Kargen Here is a better point of departure: http://www...-investment-hype/#2c0f282a32dc
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