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enron_by_the_sea
Participant[quote=SK in CV] It kind of, sort of, sounded like a good idea until he was asked to name specific deductions. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. And the reason is that these deductions don’t mainly hit the top 1%. They hit mainly those between the top 1% and the top 3%. The 2%ers. Those earning between $250k and $400K. Anything to save the really rich from paying more. If they can’t get the poor to pay more, maybe they can get the almost rich to pay more.
[/quote]Exactly. Paul Krugman wrote – and I agree with the sentiment – that GOP is prepared to throw moderately wealthy under the bus to protect the super rich !!!
This fight really shows whose side GOP is truly on. Until this moment it was easy for them to hide it.
To their credit, Dems proposal at least make super rich pay more than moderately wealthy ( who in turn pay more than middle class who pay more than poor … )
ParticipantZNGA has more shoes to drop than HPQ (which itself has more shoes than Imelda Marcos)
NEW YORK (AP) — Zynga shares tumbled nearly 12 percent in after-hours trading Thursday after the online game company and Facebook disclosed that they changed their relationship status to become less attached to each other.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/zynga-slides-updated-agreement-facebook-224523650.html
Participant[quote=spdrun]Moronic argument.
Burning natural gas releases CO2. Less than oil, but it still does. Climate change is an immediate/near-term problem, not one 1000 years in the future.
Slit the petroleum/gas industry’s throat as soon as possible, retrain the workers to work in other energy industries, and let’s move into the 21st century.
And yes, I’d be comfortable a few blocks from a modern nuclear plant.[/quote]
We can dream of the world where all power is produced by nuclear and renewables. But dreaming does not make it happen. There are far too many people who will oppose construction of nuclear power plants and frankly they have more than one point. You may be comfortable living near one but my prediction is that you will be outnumbered by those in opposition.
Burning nat gas is better than burning coal for CO2 emission and this substitution would have a big impact. We can already see it in the numbers. Couple this with efficiency improvements and some lucky breakthroughs in renewables (and perhaps a global depression) and we have a fighting chance against climate change.
The remarks about 1000 years was not about climate change – which I agree is more near term issue. But life does not end once we conquered climate change! There is a definite risk that we present to our future generations by creating 1000s of tonnes of nuclear waste and burying it somewhere underground to decay. We may think we are smart but nature is more powerful than us and our powers of thinking quite limited. What if the waste we thus created ends up leaking some how over the course of 1000s of years and poisoning the planet. I am not arrogant enough to say that we can anticipate every problem and natural force that will happen at such a site.
As you might know Plutonium, for example, is quite deadly. There is a reason why nature did not create it in any significant quantity on this planet. If we think we can create tonnes of it and somehow contain it in some small space for eternity, we are probably naive or arrogant!
[quote=spdrun]
Those reactors are basically irrelevant in a safety discussion of modern reactor tech. Fukushima is more relevant — but again, it was a mid-60s design.[/quote]
I am sure that when these reactors came online in the 50s and 60s their designers thought they were quite safe and they were designed to withstand any possible stress they could think of in those times.
Of course, it turned out their designers were not pessimistic enough so we have this new generation of reactors. My belief is that they will also see some situation which their designers did not think of and after 30 years there will be another “extremely safe’ reactor.
Besides safety of reactors has less to do with the design of the reactor itself and more to do with people running it, geography, backup systems etc.
( I always get amused about how people claim that third generation reactors like French built EPR are extremely safe. I ask them how many are built and the answer is zero. How can one claim something is safe without actually building any? )
Participant[quote=spdrun]
US civilian reactors have consistently proven to be safe.
[/quote]If “consistently” does not include three mile island or many low level incidents that are reported on regular basis by regulators!
Maybe you mean, there hasn’t been an incident where many people have died. Maybe so. But is it because of sheer luck or by design?
[quote=spdrun] Disposal of high-level waste is primarily a political problem.[/quote]
Sure, call it whatever you want but the bottom line is that it has not been solved!
How come people are called NIMBYs when they oppose Yucca Mountain or CA high speed train but they are visionaries if they oppose fracking or Keystone pipeline? I smell certain double standard.
For some people the risk of something unanticipated happening 100s or 1000s of years after you made a certain decision is a non-issue or trivial. But for many people, it is the other way. Who is right?
At least fracking/Nat-gas does not cause problems that will only be found out 1000 years from now!
Participant[quote=livinincali]
Huh. Oak Ridge had a working experiment LFTR in the 1960’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment. In addition there’s at least a few experimental projects going on right now, including the Fuji MSR, the Chinese Thorium MSR Project, and a project in Prague.LFTR would be a great stop gap measure until working fusion is achieved. Nat Gas could also serve in that role for some time.[/quote]
There is a huge difference ( i.e. many decades) between demonstrating a experimental reactor (or presenting a cool powerpoint at a TED talk) and actually building hundreds of commercial reactors each producing 1000s of MW of electricity all over the world and running them for decades safely, reliably and economically while getting rid of the waste they generate safely.
P.S. : IMHO Running out of U-235 is not the primary problem with the adoption nuclear energy today (which is what Thorium project/others seems to be focused on). Someday that will also be an issue. However more immediately, (a) Making a safe, economic and reliable reactor and (b) disposal of waste in safe and reliable manner is what is hampering atomic energy.
Participant[quote=spdrun]
Have you considered that CO2 emissions in the USA is now at their 20 -year low because of all the natural gas generated by Fracking which is forcing coal plants to shut down?
Burning “fossil farts” still produces CO2. Plus supplies are limited.
Thorium cycle nuclear and renewables are the correct answer for the long term. It’s really fucking retardedly stupid not to utilize the 100W per square foot of energy that’s basically given us for free. Yeah, conversion losses, daylight hours, and cloud cover. But even 10W per sf on a 1500 sf roof isn’t trivial.[/quote]
I see that I did not get my point of making best the enemy of good across.
The problem with your post above is that you trivialized so many things that I wonder who really fvcking retardedly stupid is …
(a) You conveniently ignored that no one has made thorium cycle nuclear reactor or no one is likely to make one in coming decade. No one with any credibility has proven that it will be economical. Why didn’t you just say fusion reactor instead. And by the way after buliding nuclear plant for 60 years we still do not know how to reliably dispose off hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste that keeps on piling all over this country and the world.
(b) You forgot to mention cost of solar energy, account for energy needed to make solar panels which barely last for 20 years, the fact that efficieny of those barely approaches 15-20%, the fact that we need to spend hundreds of billions to upgrade the grid and build storage if everyone decides to put a panel on their rooftop, the fact that there are areas in most of the world where energy density is too low etc.
My point is – After 50 to 100 years we will have the “best” option of renewables and fusion reactor. But there is no realistic way that is happening before then on a large scale. However we still need to cut our CO2 emissions urgently before we reached that promised land of renewables without reverting back to stone age. Natural Gas derived from fracking ( coupled with energy efficiency improvements) can be that bridge to the promised land.
If you really care for climate change, you would embrace fracking and regulate/fix it for real issues with it – which are excessive water use, potential groundwater contamination, methane release and potential earthquake concerns. Those are real and serious issues but they can be fixed.
If you only want to feel good for being virtuous without really making any difference in the world then you will oppose fracking on the grounds that it produces fossil fuels and all we should do is renewables. In that world, we will keep burning coal and it will take 50 years for renewables to come online anyway.
Participant[quote=spdrun]
The pay is good, but can they live with themselves considering that they’re making a nice contribution to environmental destruction?[/quote]
Have you considered that CO2 emissions in the USA is now at their 20 -year low because of all the natural gas generated by Fracking which is forcing coal plants to shut down?
Ever heard the expression – ” Don’t make the best the enemy of the good” ?
November 14, 2012 at 10:11 AM in reply to: OT-Why Did CIA Director Petraeus Suddenly Resign … And Why Was the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Murdered? #754677Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook] I thought Petraeus had more on the ball, but he’s probably cut from the same cloth as those morons Tommy Franks and Ricardo Sanchez. Best army in the world and it’s led by incompetent ass kissers.
[/quote]We did have a certain general Eric Shinseki who refused to “kiss ass” and look what happened to his military career!
Participant[quote=dumbrenter]Will they have nets on the buildings too.[/quote]
Why? To prevent robot suicides?
November 9, 2012 at 10:26 AM in reply to: Foxconn Sees New Source of Cheap Labor: The U.S.A. #754237ParticipantCan robots be unionized?
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Government workers aren’t asking for any kind of special tax treatment (they’re often the ones paying a higher tax rate than the speculators), nor do they think they’re better than anyone else.
[/quote]CAR:
Here is one special Romney tax treatment that was recently uncovered but people missed it,
Participant[quote=AN]
Would that mean CA will no longer have any problem, since Democrats can do almost anything they want?[/quote]Yes. 🙂
The positive side of me welcomes passage of prop. 30. It is preferable to have prop. 30, rather than the unknown alternative that would have come from our assembly in Sacramento which certainly would have been a lot worse.
[quote=AN]
My point is, I better not hear anymore excuses about unemployment or budget problem. When you have super majority in all branches, there’s no one left to blame.[/quote]+1
Participant[quote=no_such_reality]Oh my, 50-49 and it’s a clear mandate…
[/quote]I have long memory.
In another time and place there was another president who also won 50.x-48.x but claimed a mandate!
[quote]
President Bush proclaimed his election as evidence that Americans embrace his plans to reform Social Security, simplify the tax code, curb lawsuits and fight the war on terror, pledging Thursday to work in a bipartisan manner with “everyone who shares our goals.”
Bush staked his claim to a broad mandate and announced his top priorities at a post-election news conference, saying his 3.5 million vote victory had won him political capital that he would spend enacting his conservative agenda.
“I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush told reporters. “It is my style.”[/quote]
ParticipantDear fellow prop. 30 haters,
Don’t despair because prop. 30 passed. The fact is that Democrats now gained 2/3 supermajority in both state assembly and state senate this election. So if prop. 30 had not passed, those tax increases would have happened any way.
Always look at the bright side …
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Democrats-get-supermajority-in-Legislature-4015861.php
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