Quote :

""socialism" is the reason solar panel companies are exploding (in a good way) all over the nation and Texas is transforming into a giant windmill farm. We don't need new technology, we need political will."

I'm glad you realize that "socialism" is just the government taxing the poor to pay rich white capitalists.

1/2/2019 10:41:19 AM

It's good to see Bill Gates throwing more support behind nuclear energy generation technology. It's the only viable (current) energy solution path forward for anyone actually worried about CO2 emissions.

1/3/2019 8:59:30 AM

https://www.wral.com/-the-only-thing-we-can-do-is-adapt-greenland-ice-melt-reaches-tipping-point-study-finds/18139737/

1/22/2019 2:10:47 PM

Quote :

"Most Americans are unwilling to pay $10 a month to fight climate change, a survey found."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-americans-believe-global-warming-they-won-t-pay-much-n962001?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

1/24/2019 10:55:29 AM

^^"adapt" has been the logical and realistic option for the last 15 years anyway, for anyone with half a brain.

1/24/2019 1:31:39 PM

um, ok? There's also the option of trying to "prevent". Or the option of "adapting" while also trying "mitigate"?

[Edited on January 24, 2019 at 2:28 PM. Reason : ]

1/24/2019 2:10:49 PM

deny climate change, deny climate change, deny climate change, the only thing we can do is adapt anyways...

1/24/2019 2:27:07 PM

^^perhaps one day you'll realize that unless governments push nuclear energy nobody in power is taking this seriously.

1/25/2019 4:07:01 PM

Um, okay?

Taking what seriously?

1/25/2019 4:58:43 PM

Climate change mitigation. Unless there's a lot of money involved and an expansion of government power, nobody in power is interested.

1/29/2019 2:22:09 PM

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-sounding-off-climate-change-loses-argument-actual-climatologists-government-ones-212948898.html

1/30/2019 1:42:27 PM

Green energy is very profitable, but the fossil fuel industry has massive regulator capture that's hurting everyone.

Look at how Trump is dumping money into coal... it's completely idiotic. US could be changing the culture to promote rail travel over airplanes... we could be building quality national rail travel but we're not.

It's dumb how much money is in our country, but we have to wait for billionaires to deign to want to invest in something for the public good versus just using the will of society and doing it.

1/31/2019 12:50:44 AM

It is not a culture problem keeping passenger rail down, it is an engineering problem. Passenger rail is simply bad technology. Steel wheels on steel rails are great at moving heavy things efficiently. Passengers are not heavy. The vast majority of the weight of a passenger train is the train itself. As such, there is not much energy savings moving passengers by rail versus by bus, but it does suffer horribly in every other respect. First, due to separation requirements, rail cannot move as many people as a similarly configured bus line because rubber tires on asphalt produce dramatically quicker stopping times than steel wheels on steel rails. Which means at high speeds train separations are managed by signals and measured in fractions of miles rather than the dozens of feet maintained by drivers for buses. Second, the right-of-way (ROW) of a dedicated bus line can handle grades as high as 10%, while rail requires bulldozing the countryside and city around the ROW to achieve a 1% and less grade at great expense and dislocation. If a rail line needs to cross an elevated bridge over a river, or another rail line, that means the line must be elevated for miles on either side of the river to gradually achieve that altitude. Same problem for turning radius: a train needs miles to make a turn at high speed. Thirdly, it is exceedingly difficult to schedule passenger trains on the same tracks as freight trains (freight stopping distances are measured in several miles). Usually, passenger lines with even moderate traffic render the line unusable for freight at all. Meanwhile, an asphalt road has no trouble carrying buses, trucks, and cars.

Passenger rail is big in some countries because those countries choose to subsidize the hell out of it. So, in that sense it is kinda a cultural issue. Americans already subsidize amtrak and urban rail a ridiculous amount, thank goodness they have a lower limit to how much they with subsidize ineffective technology compared to some other countries.

1/31/2019 2:13:02 AM

your steel wheels conspiracy post was amusing the last time you posted it too, you should start a youtube channel

1/31/2019 8:55:50 AM

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right

1/31/2019 10:09:42 AM

Whoah, I hadn't heard the steel wheel conspiracy before. Thanks!

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/30/690003678/massive-starfish-die-off-is-tied-to-global-warming

1/31/2019 10:25:20 AM

Quote :

"LoneSnark All American 12162 Posts user info edit post One of the surveys that calculated average trip time by mode also asked why they chose that mode. "free time to do other activities" rated very high for those riding transit. And yes, the issues with mass transit is entirely inherent to the thing. Given the laws of physics and human nature we are living under, transit is a poor solution to mankind's organizational problems. To summarize, passenger trains are killed by the laws of physics, full stop. They are a horrible solution to whatever problem it is you're trying to solve. It all breaks down to friction. A train with metal wheels on metal rails has an offensively low coefficient of friction. This limits the amount of force the wheels can apply to the vehicle. This means that trains cannot accelerate quickly, especially when it comes to stopping. This means that trains must always be given primary right of way: gates at crossings, not just stop lights. It also means that trains at speed cannot be close to each other. A passenger train moving at 80 mph needs about a mile to stop. A MILE. That is a mile of track not carrying anything. It is no accident that the busiest corridor in the world is 2-dedicated bus lanes in Turkey that at one station has a bus leaving every 14 seconds. No rail line could hope to match that passenger throughput. But the effect upon city planning is worse. Not only is rail low capacity, it is insanely expensive. Because train wheels cannot exert much force, they cannot handle any more than a 1% grade. Meanwhile, cars routinely cross grades of 15% or more over short distances (climbing an overpass to avoid a train track, for example). As such, the train track dictates the land use all around it. If the track needs to be elevated here to clear a river further down the line, then the land around it must be bulldozed to do the land-fill to support it. The biggest cost driver that makes rail so much more expensive than roads is tied up in grading the land and the land around the tracks. They are similarly handicapped when it comes to turning ability, which means long sweeping turns, everything else in town must be moved out of the way to let the train make the turn at its own slow pace. Trains are a technology to solve one problem: the high cost of energy. Steel wheels have very low rolling resistance, so they can carry heavy loads efficiently. To do this, they sacrifice nearly all their performance. This is worth doing when it comes to moving freight, which is both very heavy and doesn't mind going slow. It also can dramatically improve capacity, as a mile long train makes a mile long stopping distance not seem so bad at a 50% hypothetical utilization rate. Meanwhile, passengers are both very light (the vehicle to carry them always weighs far more than they do) and are in a hurry to get there. This can be a tradeoff worth making for passengers if you live in the 19th century when steam engines were 2% efficient and coal was mined by hand. But as of the 20th century and especially today, energy is ungodly cheap compared to everything else humans care about. As such, passenger trains should be limited to corridors that make sense: rail corridors built and maintained to carry freight can carry passenger trains for a marginal cost, so no good reason not to use them as such. But dedicated metro lines are simply bad engineering and should never be built again. Buses, however, are a useful tool in any well rounded transportation system. Privatized and self organizing bus lines can compete with cars in many instances. They can also share right-of-way with trucks to move freight and cars as well in most instances. But, even done well, they will always complete a small share of all trips, depending on the urban area. Some urban areas will be well served by buses and jitneys, most will be poorly served. Whichever it is, they require a well built and flowing road network to operate. Zone and plan accordingly (see my prescriptions above). 5/3/2018 12:42:14 AM"

IT ALL BREAKS DOWN TO FRICTION GUYZ

1/31/2019 10:44:33 AM

It's amusing how easily moron thinks it is to "change the culture" of anything in this country.

We've been trying to "change the culture" surrounding guns since the frontier closed.

1/31/2019 10:47:46 AM

Quote :

"your steel wheels conspiracy"

I suppose your point is I have no purpose bringing physics to you when you don't have the basic knowledge needed to comprehend, so it all sounds like a conspiracy? Like those "Non-Flat Earth Conspiracies" and "Earth orbiting the Sun Conspiracies" Your response kinda makes sense. If you don't know anything about basic physics, my conclusions can certainly sound made up.

[Edited on January 31, 2019 at 11:04 AM. Reason : .,.]

1/31/2019 11:02:34 AM

says the man who's never heard of normal force

1/31/2019 11:15:51 AM

^^(physics is the foundation of my studies and degree from State)

1/31/2019 11:41:00 AM

^ And yet stopping distance is a conspiracy theory to you? I guess you're trying to play dumb for comedic effect?

^^ of course I have. What made you think otherwise?

[Edited on January 31, 2019 at 2:14 PM. Reason : ^]

1/31/2019 2:12:19 PM

Lol, I gave you too much of a hint already

1/31/2019 4:57:49 PM

Are you bothered I used the word "friction" instead of "static friction"? Because the normal force is not this. The thing that matters to stopping ability and climbing ability is the static friction of the wheels on the rolling surface, or dynamic friction if the wheels are sliding, nothing to do with the normal force per-se (whose job here just keeps the two objects from passing through each other). So, either your joke is too deep for me or you yourself are fucking up and trying to pretend otherwise.

1/31/2019 6:54:51 PM

Nope, that's not the problem

[Edited on January 31, 2019 at 7:54 PM. Reason : Cool to learn normal force doesnt have anything to do with kinetic friction tho]

1/31/2019 7:53:06 PM

That is not what I said, A+ trolling though.

1/31/2019 10:27:39 PM

Trying to prop up coal is pretty short sighted. I get the impression Trump is doing it just for votes. Killing it with regulations are one thing, but if it can't compete with natural gas, that's just too bad.

Potential development that could further strengthen the natural gas advantage. This would be really great for China, given the hundreds of coal plants they have in operation.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2183466/chinas-plan-use-nuclear-bomb-detonator-release-shale-gas

Even more promising, is Fusion energy production finally just around the corner?

https://medium.com/s/2069/finally-fusion-power-is-about-to-become-a-reality-c6b8b5915cf5?fbclid=IwAR28xl0hgC2d4uTSOzvqFMBzQ94sdEAPyV9jm98LVK-FPFSn_GA2p74Ed-k

2/1/2019 8:35:02 AM

Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau3433.full

2/2/2019 11:05:48 AM

Oil and Coal both make more money for the people at the top and create worse lives for people at the bottom. That's why those industries will continue to thrive world-wide.

2/2/2019 2:39:04 PM

Oil and coal have raised the standard of living dramatically for the entire world, especially for those at the bottom. Solar is nowhere near being ready to replace them in any significant way without adversely effecting the poor through more expensive electricity.

2/3/2019 8:00:52 AM

So we subsidize? It doesn't really matter if it's more expensive anymore, it only matters if it reduces co2 output

2/3/2019 8:04:39 AM

Solar is subsidized to death, and we have no realistic large scale storage means. Unless this country dramatically changes socially to being willing to terraform mountains and start installing pumped hydro storage facilities everywhere we can, there is no solution to this problem on the horizon. There are groups out there that want to rip out every dam we have now, despite them being our best renewable energy source and help tremendously with flood control and drinking water.

2/3/2019 2:49:38 PM

Protections for coal companies that allow then to escape their environmental damage is a subsidy much larger than anything the solar industry receives

2/3/2019 4:23:41 PM

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/06/692060375/2018-was-earths-fourth-hottest-year-on-record-scientists-say

2/7/2019 9:42:52 AM

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/691997301/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-releases-green-new-deal-outline

Can't wait to see the backlash from the right about this. FOX hosts are going to have apoplexy.

2/7/2019 9:48:13 AM

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1093536733101207552?s=21

I don’t mean to pick on this one reporter but I’ve seen this over and over. Infrastructure projects are always expensive and I swear, the right has basically hammered into the mainstream mindset that the only fiscal stimulus that could possibly grow GDP are tax cuts for the wealthy (despite overwhelming evidence supporting infrastructure projects doing the same).

[Edited on February 7, 2019 at 11:00 AM. Reason : For the record I have yet to read the report, but judging by twitter the cost is the big complaint]

2/7/2019 11:00:13 AM

axios is anti-left, of course they are going to make silly criticisms about this

2/7/2019 11:04:23 AM

From a political standpoint, the argument should be fairly simple: the Republicans latest supply side experiment failed, again, so now it's our turn. $2 trillion in deficit spending produced absolutely none of the desired results. No uptick in capital expenditures, no wage growth and no increased hiring. Just a bunch of stock buybacks and increasing the already record hoards of cash corporations have been stockpiling. So repeal the whole damn thing, except the changes to SALT/property taxes and tax cuts for households making <$400k, and do it our way instead. $2 trillion would go a long way towards increasing health care coverage, revamping our energy infrastructure, and the results would be immediately tangible.

2/7/2019 12:50:08 PM

^^^^Whoever wrote that outline is a moron.

My Favorite parts
Upgrade or Replace every single building in the country for state of the art energy efficiency
Have economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work
Not sure how fast they will be able to get rid of cows that fart too much and airplanes
Eliminating Nuclear Power Plants

All Democrats have to do is not be insane and they can't do it.

2/7/2019 2:06:46 PM

I bet the criticisms were identical for the original new deal too.

2/7/2019 2:39:55 PM

^^ When you mention an outline, are you referring to the resolution framework?

For reference, could you cite the page and line numbers where those items are mentioned within the framework? I was only able to locate the following excerpt on page 7, lines 16-20, when I searched the document:

Quote :

"upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;"

[Edited on February 7, 2019 at 3:57 PM. Reason : ]

2/7/2019 3:56:09 PM

call me crazy, but I’m ok with spending as much money as it takes to save humanity

2/7/2019 4:23:40 PM

Why would we be an interstate highway system when most people don’t even have cars?

2/7/2019 5:35:54 PM

2/7/2019 5:38:28 PM

^^^^ Never mind. It was in the FAQ, not the resolution framework.

Resolution framework: https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5731829-Ocasio-Cortez-Green-New-Deal-Resolution

FAQ: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5729035/Green-New-Deal-FAQ.pdf

2/8/2019 1:06:47 AM

Quote :

"Have economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work"

don’t think this is an actual thing and it looks like Wolfey got got by legitimate fake news

2/8/2019 10:28:30 PM

Quote :

"The actual resolution that outlines the Green New Deal does not include the "unwilling to work" part, but the overview document, released by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's office, does include the "unwilling" language."

2/9/2019 3:09:50 PM

Who cares. Universal Basic Income isn't some far far left concept.

2/9/2019 6:11:54 PM

https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degrees-to-global-warming-20190225/

Quote :

"As the CO2 level ratchets up in the simulated sky and the sea surface heats up, the dynamics of the cloud evolve. The researchers found that the tipping point occurs, and stratocumulus clouds suddenly disappear, because of two dominant factors that work against their formation. First, when higher CO2 levels make Earth’s surface and sky hotter, the extra heat drives stronger turbulence inside the clouds. The turbulence mixes moist air near the top of the cloud, pushing it up and out through an important boundary layer that caps stratocumulus clouds, while drawing dry air in from above. Entrainment, as this is called, works to break up the cloud. Secondly, as the greenhouse effect makes the upper atmosphere warmer and thus more humid, the cooling of the tops of stratocumulus clouds from above becomes less efficient. This cooling is essential, because it causes globs of cold, moist air at the top of the cloud to sink, making room for warm, moist air near Earth’s surface to rise into the cloud and become it. When cooling gets less effective, stratocumulus clouds grow thin. Countervailing forces and effects eventually get overpowered; when the CO2 level reaches about 1,200 parts per million in the simulation — which could happen in 100 to 150 years, if emissions aren’t curbed — more entrainment and less cooling conspire to break up the stratocumulus cloud altogether."

Quote :

"Schneider emphasized an important caveat to the study, which will need to be addressed by future work: The simplified climate model he and his colleagues created assumed that global wind currents would stay as they are now. However, there is some evidence that these circulations might weaken in a way that would make stratocumulus clouds more robust, raising the threshold for their disappearance from 1,200 ppm to some higher level. Other changes could do the opposite, or the tipping point could vary by region."

2/25/2019 3:36:55 PM

https://gridarendal-website-live.s3.amazonaws.com/production/documents/:s_document/465/original/GlobalLinkages.pdf

Quote :

"Warmer temperatures in the Arctic resulted in a record low in the winter sea ice extent between 2015–2018 (Overland et al., 2018). Indeed, under a medium- or high-emission scenario,2 projected temperature changes for the Arctic will follow a winter warming trend at least double the rate for the northern hemisphere (AMAP 2017a). This means that even if countries manage to cut GHG emissions to the targets outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, winter temperatures in the Arctic will still be 3 to 5°C higher by 2050 and 5 to 9°C higher by 2080, relative to 1986–2005 levels. In fact, even if we stopped all emissions overnight, winter temperatures in the Arctic will still increase by 4 to 5°C compared to the late twentieth century. This increase is locked into the climate system by GHGs already emitted and ocean heat storage (AMAP 2017a)."

3/14/2019 5:50:56 PM