>> ^dag:
As far as efficiency goes, I'd take fission over solar.
The amount of square feet required to make solar energy as well as the material required for all of those panels- heavy metals and toxic chemicals- and a short equipment lifespan make them about as well thought-out as ethanol- which is to say not at all.
If we could get over our irrational nuclear fears- nuclear fission really is the best option for the planet in the short term, and then roll on the fusion when it gets here. 10 years right?


Much of the cost for fission reactors is hidden by government subsides. Cost is definitely a reason that there hasn't been a new nuclear reactor build in the US for over 30 years. They are damn expensive. And then the real cost comes with storage of radiated materials. A storage fee that will last a long time.

Last time I checked, most decent solar panels come with a 25-year warranty which means they might last 30 to 50 years if not damaged. There are also solar-based plants that focus sunlight to heat water to drive turbines - much more efficient that current solar panel technology. I can't compare solar energy to ethanol in good faith.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

As far as efficiency goes, I'd take fission over solar.

The amount of square feet required to make solar energy as well as the material required for all of those panels- heavy metals and toxic chemicals- and a short equipment lifespan make them about as well thought-out as ethanol- which is to say not at all.

If we could get over our irrational nuclear fears- nuclear fission really is the best option for the planet in the short term, and then roll on the fusion when it gets here. 10 years right?
>> ^Psychologic:
Fusion has some great advantages, especially in the power-per-area department, but I still like solar better for a few reasons.
Fusion is an "all or nothing" tech. It takes a very large investment up front before anything significant can be done with it. Solar, on the other hand, is more of an evolutionary process. It already works, so the main goal is lowering cost and increasing efficiency (which is happening pretty quickly these days).
However, I think one of the largest advantages solar has over fusion is that it doesn't require a power grid. Once the cost and efficiency reach a certain level then you can create your own power, which will be huge in remote low-income areas. Villages wouldn't have to wait for their region to invest in a reactor or worry about power distribution being damaged.
Fusion is great and will greatly benefit the world, but I don't think it's our best option at this point.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'climate change, ethanol, supergrid, solar power, al gore, john stewart' to 'tds, climate change, ethanol, supergrid, solar power, al gore, jon stewart' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'climate change, ethanol, supergrid, solar power' to 'climate change, ethanol, supergrid, solar power, al gore, john stewart' - edited by volumptuous

>> ^gwiz665:
Bull - shit. The body doesn't absorb alcohol, especially in the form of beer, that fast. Im-fucking-possible.
If it had been pure ethanol then MAYBE, but beer? No way.


That's what I was thinking. I think he first passed out because he wasn't breathing while he was chugging. But there's gotta be something else going on for all the rest of his non-responsiveness. It takes a minute or two for the alcohol to start building up to dangerous levels after a long chug.

Bull - shit. The body doesn't absorb alcohol, especially in the form of beer, that fast. Im-fucking-possible.

If it had been pure ethanol then MAYBE, but beer? No way.

Also, don't self-link, rottenseed.

Ha!

"..That tough talk comes despite growth energy in ethanol lobbying groups- Err hold on, this just in: A sudden hurricane has now been detected sweeping through the area... Oh, my! We are getting hit with TORRENT WINDS! Rain is nearly coming down sideways!!

I.. DON'T KNOW.... HOW MUCH... LONGER I'LL BE ABLE TO... KEEP THIS.... FEED ON THE AIR....!!!" *blows into microphone*

Ironic that the anchors praise his dedication as a reporter when he was actually trivializing the story about serious criticism of ethanol. I had no idea what he had said after the first viewing.

Ethanol is a huge waste of resources. From the food it negates to the fields it destroys for so little yield. Hemp seeds, on the other hand, restore soil and return more fuel per acre than corn ever could, all while giving multiple useful byproducts. Obama?!

I believe those use ethanol as a fuel so it can't be ALL that bad for the environment.

>> ^imstellar28:
As far as spending millions of dollars researching this for human benefit, well that would be quite a waste wouldn't it?


>> ^rougy:
But you don't know that, stellar.

...if the government did it, then we all would have the chance to benefit equally from the new technology, and that would be socialism, or communism, and that would be bad.


My, aren't we young and gullible. The government basically takes your money, by force, and then it's hands it out to researchers of its choice. Now, why would we do this? Why would we give the money to someone who didn't earn it and allow them to spend it? They have none of their own labor behind it, so there's no risk of loss to prevent the recipient from being chosen on the basis of campaign financing, friendship, or other conflicts of interest. Socialism expects the politician to be completely impartial and decide with more knowledge and thrift as he who earned the money, but that's an idealist absurdity. Research and invention in the private sector has always blown away USSR distribution models. Nobody spending their own money wants to create a product that utterly fails to be seen as valuable to others, they need voluntary purchases or they'll never offset the costs of making it.

Now, it's true, there's a lot of private funding towards highly experimental and directionless research at universities to "maybe stumble on something major." But philanthropy from wealthier members of society is sufficient for that as well. Priorities dictate that we pursue these interests when we've secured our necessities. Like hell we need to deprive somes families, with a generalized tax, from having a second kid or a better education or more food so that we can blindly finance public research on things no private company sees as having potential.

You should look at monster blunders like corn ethanol, a continuous misallocation of research money that never would have happened in the private sector. The massive subsidies it got made it profitable to reduce field use for food crops, thereby raising the price of food. Doh! Also turns out that ethanol is very inefficient, taking almost as much energy to create as we get out of it.

When oil does become too expensive, you begin to see private research and investment in companies with the best records and most promising ideas. Unfortunately, some of the best ones lose to competitors because their competitors have political connections and win forcibly appropriated money. The oil companies themselves get special tax credits. It's all been manipulated, delaying replacements by subsidizing the price of fuel. Not easy to compete with businesses that never had to convince an earner of a voluntary investment or purchase. I personally think electric cars are the future, with a nuclear infrastructure, always have. Nuclear power is very cheap and safe and independent, but our government has blocked new plants for DECADES. We are such a socialist, interventionist failure at this point economically and with energy policy, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

Dude, ethanol is less corny.

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
Do you think that eventually a manufacturing base in the US is sustainable in the long run?

I think manufacturing in the U.S. will continue to shrink as a % of GDP, but reach an asymptote at some point. All the R&D creates new things to build, much of which requires technical expertise to do so. Also, for smaller businesses, local production makes sense because they can't justify enough inventory to make the benefit of cheaper labor outweigh the shipping costs. And then there's on-demand production. It's only in its infancy right now, but I think it's going to be big.

I agree that yes you have a significant population in the agricultural business, I just simply disagree with subsidization of this industry by the government.

Totally agree. Agricultural subsidies suck. They actually hurt U.S. farmers too. All this push for corn-based ethanol has screwed cattle ranchers, for instance. It's a mess. It's also one of the most difficult things politically to get rid of. But a lot of third world nations provide subsidies too (often in response to U.S. policy) either directly or in the form of price controls, tariffs, etc. It's a vicious cycle, and the only way it ends is if the developed world (U.S. and EU) takes the lead and starts removing them.

Of course you're right that true and fair globalization (as opposed to exploitation) is the best solution. How much luck have you had convincing your neighbors? I haven't had much.

Almost none. Its a hard topic to explain because it requires a very wide macroeconomic viewpoint instead of a localized view. I mean would say 90% of the people I knew in University on one hand wanted development in the third world but were against the implications that developing the third world would mean a short term loss of certain industries locally. But its going to happen eventually. We can't all be growing bananas.

Yep - everyone is all for economic development, until it means they might have to retrain for a different job. That's human nature. Few people are willing to sacrifice their own comfort (and in some cases a lot more than that) for better times down the road.

"An Ethanol Picture"

Other countries' socialist policies, like in say, the whole of Europe, do quite well compared to us.

Actually, this is causation without correlation. If you go to Europe, living situations are deteriorating. Their massive amounts of welfare have created a situation in which immigrants are coming not for opportunity, but to be subsidized by programs they haven't paid into their whole lives like existing citizens. Sound familiar? Our programs are being strained by the same problem. I won't deny that they've made better decisions with their socialist powers over the past twenty years. If you want to make this an argument about whose dictator is doing a better job at emulating the market, then certainly Europe wins. France, for example, gets 80% of their energy from nuclear power and is the largest energy exporter in Europe. I'm jealous. That's what the market would have chosen. Our dictators, however, have been blocking it for thirty years due to the influence of the radical environmentalist lobby. Our government-directed economy has also pumped billions of forcibly appropriated money into agri-business bio-fuels like ethanol. It reduced the supply of food because it became more profitable after all the subsidies to grow corn for ethanol than some other crop for food. And it takes almost as much energy to create as it produces. Negative net result, that money would have been better off staying in the hands of people who really couldn't afford to have it taken away. We realize this now, but it never needed to happen. Any product that wouldn't be able to compete on the market without being funded with stolen money isn't worth a damn. So why did we think a bill could do something the market couldn't? All subsidies are retarded, they have collusive anti-competitive redistribution written all over them, and that's exactly what we got despite election year promises that it would give us miracles.

In fact, imagine if a stranger comes to your house and says "Hi, I'd like to take some of your money from your paycheck every week because I think I can spend it better than you can on products and services for your life. You look pretty busy, irresponsible, and unintelligent." Would you give it to them? Why would you do that? That's essentially socialism in a nutshell. People spending other people's money on the claim they can do so with greater thrift than the person that earned it.

Another thing that we do different than Europe is maintain a gigantic military empire. Of course their socialist programs are better, they don't have a military industrial complex sucking trillions of dollars away from them. It's really not necessary in the nuclear age. No nuclear power has ever been invaded domestically. Because it's a losing proposition. If you win the ground war, they have nothing to lose so they launch them. But we're idiots over here, we have this manchausen syndrome where our CIA creates problems that eventually blow back in our face, at which point we can launch all out invasions under the pretense of self-defense. This might include installing the Shah in Iran. Or giving bioweapons to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Or arming afghani warriors to fight the Soviets. Or paying off Musharraf in Pakistan to be a puppet. Terrorist propaganda becomes effective because of this shit.

Nowhere else in the world has a more libertarian system than us, as near as I can tell, and it handicaps us.

Price fixing interest rates = socialist
Bailout out bankruptcy with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Allowing one industry to loan out money they don't have, at interest = socialist
Subsidizing one company and not another = socialist
Taxing one company and not another = socialist
Nationalizing private industry to be financed with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Directing industry and research with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Declaring lending standards discriminatory to low income people and forcing banks to remove them via the Community Reinvestment Act = socialist
Issuing a non-market determined or constitutional money, banning competing currencies, and taxing dollar debasement gains on gold as if it were income = socialist
Blocking nuclear power for 30 years = socialist
Blocking domestic oil drilling for 20 years = socialist


Actually no, they would just need to get enough market power, and apply it ruthlessly to stomp out competition wherever it rises.

Bullshit, no one but the government has endless streams of capital to buy up anything and everything. Only government monopolies are self-sustaining, because they're the only monopolies financed with forcibly appropriated money.

In your version of the world, AMD shouldn't exist. Aptera Motors shouldn't exist. Right? I mean, giant corporations a thousand times their size existed before they even entered the market. They should have been bought out. Oh, wait, what's that? Not all companies are publicly traded.

The reality is, in order for a MARKET monopoly (note: in an environment where they don't have access to government specific powers like inflation and subsidization) to stay that way is to continue to offering the best product at the best price. Because then there's no window, no opportunity for someone else to come in and eat into that marketshare. If a company is delivering crap or overcharging, however, that immediately opens a window for someone else to come in. That's how AMD got so large, Intel was doing exactly that with netburst architecture. Even with a monopoly position, competition was waiting in the wings.

Suppose Microsoft took XP off the market and put Windows 3.1 on the shelf? Do you think they wouldn't go bankrupt? Do you think a competitor wouldn't arise to take their place? Because they're an all-powerful monopoly, right? They don't have to deliver shit, they can just buy Macintosh and anyone else while they pay thousands of programmers to create a product that doesn't sell.

Doh. Someone doesn't understand basic market principles.

One of my favorites from the roaring 20's was the rate war. Slash your prices to nearly nothing, and let your company lose a lot of money, on the premise that the smaller company will go bankrupt before you do.

Actually, large businesses with lots of workers have far more overhead and are much more inefficiently run. That's why most businesses today are small businesses. My mother owns an advertising business for wedding directories with no one but herself employed. A local newspaper owned by the Gannett company recently created a staff of twenty people to try and compete with her. They lasted two years before the magazine ended the operation. It was costing way more money than it was bringing in, and the so-called greedy megagiant slashed it.

Nuttery, Ron Paul is the only politician who believes in the law? Seriously, that's what you're saying? He's probably the only Republican who believes in the law being supreme, but there's more than a few Democrats who believe in the supremacy of law (including some joker with a law degree from Harvard running for President...).

Supreme law is the constitution doofus. It's the law that came before all other laws, it's the laws against government to prevent them from becoming a tyrannical, collusive nuthouse like all other governments before it by assessing which powers, which enablements, it shouldn't have under any circumstances. And inflation was one of them. But after a couple hundred years, people became complacent, arrogant, and ignorant, like yourself, and politicians found that they could ignore it with impunity. There was no longer a bunch of gun-toting, tea-hating radicals ready to hang them on the nearest tree when they broke it. There was nothing but the opposing party. But that party loves to spend, too. So they compromise by allowing the other to break it so long as they get to break it in another way. Remember how the bailout failed and then got passed? They put some extra pork in there to get the votes they needed. Rum and arrowheads...

http://www.greenfaucet.com/economy/porky-the-bailout-bill/19680

Welcome to our country, and the socialist enablements that make this spending possible.

No, but he can still bribe the politicians to look the other way on violation of rights. They do it now, and I'm not sure why it would change, just because the companies have more money to spend (according to your theory).

The bottom line here is that attacking Democrats as being socialist is a huge fucking straw man. We like the free market, and we want it to work.

No, you don't, You don't even know what it is.

Most investment banks are now crying out to be regulated in the wake of this credit crisis, and given that they bribed the government into deregulating them in the first place, that should tell you something.

They're not crying to be regulated, they're crying to be bailed out after being regulated. What do you think regulation is exactly? Do you realize that the fundamental way in which banks operate is fraudulent? How do you regulate that? How do you oversee to make sure fraud is being conducted in the best way possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking#Money_creation

This is the type of nonsense I hear from the republicrat camp. Regulation, the buzzword of the day. It's meaningless. To "regulate" the bank runs this system was causing, the Federal Reserve was created to backstop bankruptcy. Yes, failure, that free market pinnacle that makes private business suffer and fear consequences for risk and imprudent policy. Or how about the FDIC, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INSURANCE on deposits. Don't worry, now you don't have to fear about losing your deposit on this scam industry. We've regulated it with the FDIC. OOPS, THE FEAR OF LOSING ONE'S DEPOSIT WAS WHAT DETERRED PEOPLE FROM GIVING IT TO HIGHLY LEVERAGED INVESTMENT BANKS OFFERING ABNORMAL YIELDS, CAUSING THAT BUSINESS MODEL TO GROW, CAUSING OTHER BANKS TO FOLLOW SUIT IN ORDER TO COMPETE.

The problem is regulation on fraudulent activity that should have never been allowed. It slowly but surely eliminated basic deterrents and self-regulating principles by backstopping risk and rewarding bad behavior.