The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

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Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Thermal has a 60-70% capacity factor.

The sun isn't there at night, and we haven't gotten good solutions to actually store our solar energy yet.

It's not like that's unsolvable, but it's way more important then improving the efficiency of each solar installation is.

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Apr 1, 2013

# ¿ Apr 1, 2013 05:31

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 11:20

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Solar thermal stores energy as heat in molten salt in order to drive a turbine and can operate for 16 hours without any sunlight. That's how it achieves 70% capacity.

It doesn't require underground salt pipes across the country, the stored salt drives a heat engine turbine.

That's not really my point, my point is that minor improvements in the efficiency of panels and thermal towers mean nothing in comparison to what improvements in storage technology get us. We can always just build a shitload more solar and rely on volume to make up for inefficiency there after all.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2013 15:35

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

That doesn't explain why the plant was just left to run and not replaced with another generator.

Because there wasn't approval to build any form of replacement yet. What are you really looking for here?

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 02:08

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

That bureaucracy and general incompetence led to the Fukushima incident. That even in full knowledge that the plant was too old, with advice from scientists and nuclear regulators that it needed to be replaced, it didn't get replaced. That future nuclear plants could just as easily fall victim to the same sort of fecklessness.

Building a new power plant isn't free, where the hell did you expect the money to come from to replace the plant right then specifically? It was already scheduled to be decomissioned within the next decade by the way, and they had no way of knowing the tsunami would strike it in 2011.

You're basically just reacting out of sheer ignorance. Did you pay attention to the fact that half of the reactors at the facility didn't have problems despite being equally old and subjected to the same conditions? No of course you didn't.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 02:41

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Borrow it? Half the point of state-regulated power is to not be subject to the whims of capital. If the company had no way of securing the money needed to decommission it at the time required, then that's poor planning and frankly one more argument against it.

So which was it? Was the plant too old and unsafe at the time the tsunami hit or did it have up to another decade left? All I've heard is geschrein in the thread about they knew Fuskushima needed to be shut down and it's not because nuclear's unsafe and they just didn't listen to the experts and WE'D do it differently and frankly no, sorry, if a country as loving terrified of radiation as Japan couldn't get their poo poo together to either properly audit the plant or get it shut down within the recommended time frame I don't hold out high hopes for the US doing the same. Your two choices here were either the risk wasn't calculated properly or red tape bound up the processes needed to safely decommission the plant, and from everything I've been able to gather about the incident, even from PRO-nuclear sources, it was the latter.

Also note that again, because I'm sure someone's going to bring up coal again, I am not using this as an argument for not replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy.

Borrow it from whom? Are you not aware that Japan is a capitalist nation?

The plant was functioning perfectly fine before it was hit by a massive earthquake shortly followed by a major tsunami. Give me an actual reason that the reactors should have already been shut down in February 2011. Are you not aware that 2 brand new reactors were planned for the site, meant to operational by 2020, before the tsunami happened?

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 03:18

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Ganguro King posted:

Sorry, you are just wrong.

Although they didn't know that a tsunami would strike specifically when it did, TEPCO knew since at least 2006 that their tsunami estimates were inadequate. They did nothing to rectify this.

Also, 4 out of 6 reactors there suffered major problems. The other two were fine because they were already in cold shutdown for maintenance.

No, you're wrong.

Their plan to rectify this was to build new reactors so they could decommision the old reactors. Under TEPCO's original planning, the new reactors would have started construction late 2012/early 2013 and take a few years to come online. Retrofitting better tsunami protection for the cooling systems was not considered practical.

3 reactors were shut down for maintenance when the tsunami hit.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 03:25

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Japan has the ability to issue sovereign debt. I am aware Japan is a capitalist nation, but frankly "well a private company had its hands tied by capital availability" isn't a good argument for why important poo poo didn't get done. It's almost like one of my misgivings about the whole idea is private for-profit companies being trusted to run nuclear plants, just like how we're currently trusting them to run coal and oil plants and things aren't going all that well!

So you're stating that the plant was functioning perfectly fine, that safety audits were comfortable with the plant continuing to operate for at least a few more years, and that they were wrong. It's fine if that's your argument and that you're comfortable with stuff like Fukushima happening during times of catastrophic failure, but that's neither the argument nor impression I've gotten from other pro-nuclear advocates arguing the Fukushima case.

You're not addressing how this would be afforded, or why Japan should give away money to a private company to replace them, and you're also not comprehending that if you started building the replacements then, the plant would still have been running in 2011 when the disaster happened.

The safety audits were not wrong, a motherfucking earthquake and tsunami happened. What aren't you understanding about massive natural disasters causing damage?

Quantum Mechanic posted:

I get that replacing the plant involves building a new plant, I didn't think Japan ran a nuclear reactor because Cherenkov radiation is so pretty. My question was why was a new plant (not necessarily nuclear) not built, and is there any way of ensuring that the same political calculus wouldn't occur in the future?

Because the new reactors were scheduled to be built "now" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant&oldid=396253422

Each of the 2 planned new reactors would be powerful enough to replace 2 of the oldest reactors on-site. Seriously dude, there was already a plan in place to replace and decommission the oldest reactors on site by the end of this decade. The plan was to do that in this timeframe because they'd be able to afford it that way, there wasn't the money to do it earlier.

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Apr 4, 2013

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 03:28

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

You're probably right that Japan shouldn't be handing money to a private corporation if they can't afford to handle the fundamental maintenance of the equipment the safety of which they're supposed to be responsible for. However, if they can't afford that fundamental maintenance they shouldn't be running nuclear plants.

Actually I distinctly remember the safety audits for Fukushima saying that it was in a tsunami/earthquake risk zone and that the possibility should have been accounted for. Regardless, the environmental impact if it had been solar plants would have been at worst a bunch of fertiliser dumped into the ocean instead of a 20km evacuation zone.

Dude since you aren't getting this, the reason there was a problem was not from lack of maintence, it was from diesel generators that supplied power to cooling when the reactors are shut down being flooded. They had been designed for a tsunami roughly 2 meters shorter then the one that hit.

All of Japan is an earthquake/tsunami risk zone. The specific power plant had even been struck by an earthquake several decades ago. They designed with earthquakes and tsunamis in mind, it just turned out they designed too low for tsunamis. There has been almost no environmental impact from this in case you aren't aware.

Ganguro King posted:

This was your contention:

But the reason they didn't suffer problems is because they were already shut down! You said so yourself!

Nearly the exact scenario that happened was predicted:
NISA, Tepco knew in �06 of Fukushima tsunami threat
TEPCO ignored latest research on tsunami

Yet nothing was done.

And those reactors are currently online... it is normal operation for a plant o have some of its reactors shut down for maintenance at any one time.

Nothing was done because it was decided the best plan was to build the new reactors and decommission the old, since retrofitting wasn't considered feasible. There wasn't really a meaningful way to fix the problems they found without doing that.

computer parts posted:

A. The equivalent amount of solar panels would cover a 20km area

B. The only reason it was a 20km area is that people are scared of atoms.

This too.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 03:50

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

You seem to think I don't understand the argument about they didn't have the money, when in fact the argument that they didn't have the money is the core of my point. Assuming that Fukushima was not deemed safe at the time, which like I said is the drum every nuclear advocate has been beating about why Fukushima even happened, then that is a failure of the system to properly account for and deal with the basic expected maintenance of a nuclear plant and is a liability in the planning for future nuclear capacity.

This right here is exactly my issue. When "do nothing" is even a choice in regards to something with the capability of a meltdown if nothing is done, that's a concern for me.

I'm aware Japan doesn't have the space for solar thermal. I'm actually not even trying to make an argument that nuclear wouldn't be a good choice for Japan, I'm using the Fukushima incident as an example of how things could get hosed up in countries that DO have the space for solar thermal or wind farms.

They had the money, just not the money to have it already replaced by February 2011. They had the money to have new reactors online by roughly 2015. And this isn't a failure of the system.

The plan was to do nothing immediately because they were planning to replace them. This isn't a problem.

You're using an incident you don't understand to argue about things you don't know.

Istvun posted:

Quantum Mechanic, if the Fukushima nuclear plant had instead been a solar plant, the city of Fukushima would have already been abandoned due to electricity being unavailable there.

The city of Fukushima was never evacuated. It's over 50 KM from the power plant on the shore.

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Apr 4, 2013

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 03:54

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Ganguro King posted:

I know it's normal for them to be shut down for maintenance. But you were chastising the guy by saying that half the reactors were fine when the only reason they didn't suffer problems is because when the cooling systems failed, they were already shut down and didn't need to be cooled anyway.

Backup generators on higher ground wasn't feasible? A higher wall wasn't feasible? Sounds like TEPCO covering their asses if you ask me.

Those reactors would have been fine if they were running too.

You can't just move the backup generators for active reactors, a higher wall would not have guaranteed the existing ones wouldn't have flooded in this particular tsunami.

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Obviously it was!

Seriously, if you are arguing that Fukushima at the time was not considered unsafe in its audit and that the 2015 time frame was acceptable, that's one thing, but that is not the argument being put forward by people who even nominally agree with you, nor does it gel with the information you have provided that the plant was not built to safely account for tsunamis and that doing so after the fact wouldn't have been possible.

No more a problem then "quantum mechanic should have known to wear a bulletproof vest when the lunatic gunman burst into his home and shot him".

Fukushima Daiichi WAS built safely to account for tsunamis, just not ones as powerful as the one that hit. What's not to get here?

Ganguro King posted:

Um, Japan has a power grid you know. Even if one plant fails they can get power from other plants.

Power grids aren't magic. Japan does not have infinite reserve capacity hanging around.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 04:15

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

From the looks of it they knew a tsunami that large was possible for something like twenty years? That's a long time to do nothing about it.

Possible but not considered likely enough to do anything. Same reason that buildings in earthquake-prone areas have to be designed to withstand roughly say 8 on the scale, not 9, even though 9 is possible.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 04:26

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Renewables will not be free of those things, but the consequences are at the very least not as dramatic.

What consequences exactly are you thinking of?

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 04:52

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Evacuations, environmental destruction, uranium mining. I understand that they're not in all cases direct consequences of problems with plants and can often be overstated but the fact remains that even if the population on aggregate shift to being more comfortable with nuclear power and things like remaining within 20km of a meltdown there's always going to be media shock-stories or an opposition party willing to capitalise on what is a fundamentally very psychologically impressive event. Honestly if the failings of nuclear acted more like those of coal (i.e. a slow burn of environmental impact/health impact portioned out over the course of years) you'd probably easily get away with it since you're absolutely right - by pure stats nuclear is safe. I don't think we'd have a single coal plant left if the health and environmental impacts were rolled into a single three-hour orgy of smoke and death once every fifty years.

With regards to mining, I know mining can be replaced with seawater extraction, but that requires a state program, state subsidies or a uranium mining ban, since without it uranium mining is going to be the cheaper option for the foreseeable future.

The evacuations are purely precautionary. The environment there is fine. Uranium mining isn't even strictly neccesary with newer designs and allowances for reprocessing.

You still need to mine a hell of a lot of stuff out of the ground in order to build a wind power facility, or to build a field of solar panels or reflectors, or to run power lines from those to other things.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 05:07

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Fine-able Offense posted:

As of late last year, TEPCO estimated the cost of the Fukushima incident + cleanup at around $11 TRILLION yen.

Not actually that big of a deal in a country with a GDP of 3 quadrillion yen or so!

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 18:11

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Fine-able Offense posted:

You're right, if an accident only costs 2% of annual GDP, it's definitely "not very severe".

It actually isn't? Especially in comparison to the goddamn tsunami and earthquake that happened at the same time?

This happens once, rather than fossil fuels which cause damage constantly.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 18:25

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Biomass generation is supposed to be meant as a supplemental energy source that also allows us to greatly reduce landfill usage.

Fine-able Offense posted:

The tsunami and earthquake are irrelevant to what we are talking about- that $137 billion bill is solely for the costs of Fukushima Dai-ichi related cleanup, not for tsunami related costs. The cause is not really material at all, though it should be noted that there was certainly a way to prevent the meltdown incident even with the natural disaster, if things had been done properly.

And if you are going to sit there and seriously tell people that 2% of annual GDP isn't a huge loving cost for one corporation or entity to shell out for, then I don't think I even need to respond to that to make a point. In the words of Obama: please proceed, Install Gentoo.

The entire point here is that certain energy-related accident events, like the Gulf oil spill, Fukushima, whatever, are not subject to a Time x Severity cost benefit analysis. That's all! That's it! A simple, easy to understand point that basically everyone in a relevant policy or industry position understands and accepts: you need to treat these things separately, both from a cost/benefit standpoint and a regulatory standpoint, because the insurance costs are effectively infinite if something goes wrong. And please read CombatInformatiker's post if you don't understand what "effectively infinite" means from an insurance perspective.

And yet despite that simple fact, that we are even having this conversation is, again, pretty elegantly advancing my point: a lot of nuclear advocates in this thread are being irrational in a way I normally associate with ideological movements rather than discussions of how to make lights turn on. You can still be pro-nuclear while acknowledging that there's a serious issue at play of how to insure against these costs and to treat them with a higher degree of severity than you do other ones. I am pro-hydro power, and yet a big chunk of my loving job is asking questions like, "Well, what happens if that dam collapses in an earthquake?", because I am a loving adult and not a middle schooler pushing a pet cause I just discovered. The whole point being: as was seen in both Fukushima and the Gulf spill, people will cut corners and ignore the elephant in the room if you let them, so you need to consciously design everything to prevent that from happening because the severity threshold is so much higher. And not, you know, just handwave it away like some ignorant-rear end technophile that has apparently never interacted with a venal, MBA-having manager in his life.

Again, some pro-nuclear people in this thread keep making this argument like it's some kind of trump card, because apparently they know dick all about human psychology, politics, and economics. News flash: the costs of pollution from coal plants are what we call "externalities", and they are essentially socially-acceptable ones at that. By way of analogy, they fall into the same category as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes from eating lovely food- sure, everybody knows eating lovely food is bad, and the government could easily mandate everyone become vegetarian or whatever (thereby saving society enormous costs), but that's only a rational argument to make if you are somehow pig-loving-ignorant of all of the vested interests at play in making that decision, up to and including the average dude's love of Cheetos. If you want to make an argument to convince somebody to drop the trans fats and eat some celery, you can't do it by being Captain Smugboat McSperglord and trying to somehow stand athwart human nature.

"This only happened once!" is a pretty hilarious argument to make in the face of a bunch of people telling you that just because something only happens once, doesn't mean it isn't prohibitively expensive to deal with. It's basically the worst, least-effective argument you can make (not that there is any reasonable argument to be made at all, since pointing out the insurance issue isn't inherently an anti-nuclear stance at all, but I guess such trivialities fall by the wayside once the Pro-Nuclear Jihad batsignal has been lit).

Nothing you have posted does anything to contradict the cost analysis. This happened once, in the midst of a huge natural disaster, and that's it.

You don't seem to get that 2% of GDP happening one time ever isn't actually a major thing? Sucks for TEPCO but I'm not exactly going to shed tears over TEPCO posting a loss for the next couple years. No one even died from it, and most of the land area that is temporarily evacuated is going to be just fine very soon, with a lot of it already being fine. Much of it was simultaneously devastated by the quake and tsunami too.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 19:08

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Fine-able Offense posted:

If you think a one-time $137 billion dollar bill is nothing for insurance purposes, and doesn't elegantly illustrate the point people were trying to make here about Time/Cost analysis not being relevant for certain categories of cost, then I don't know what to say.

I feel like you actually made my case for me, so thanks for that! I'm going to stop derailing the thread with this conversation.

That doesn't make Time/Cost analysis not relevant though? The plant was there for 40 years.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2013 19:28

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

OwlBot 2000 posted:

Obviously certain regions have big rivers for hydroelectric, lots of wind, etc. and others don't, but I think Denmark's goal of being 100% renewable isn't as crazy as it first sounds.

Denmark is able to tap into the whole Europe-wide electrical infrastructure in cases of local insuffciency, so having Denmark's goal of local generation be 100% renewable is quite sound. 100% renewable all the time for them however? Yeah not so much, but then they don't plan that last I heard.

# ¿ May 26, 2013 19:08

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

computer parts posted:

The problem with non-nuclear renewables is that they're either not able to provide power 24/7 (solar, wind, etc) or are already being used right now and can't be counted for additional energy (hydroelectric power, especially in the western US ). No amount of cooperation is going to fix that.

Well we can load up on them to provide enough excess capacity in an area, but that does require having the proper setup to use it when there's too much coming in, or store it.

# ¿ May 26, 2013 20:13

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Ervin K posted:

So what's with people's love for solar PV? Everywhere I read about renewable energy, what people seem to be most excited about is the dropping price of photovoltaics. Personally I'm not convinced; for starters they require significant amounts of rare earth minerals to produce so that alone makes things difficult. I especially don't understand the logic of solar parks like this one:

That's a lot of lost green space that's necessary for oxidization and the local ecosystem, as well as carbon absorption. I understand building one of these in the middle of the desert, but why clear a forest for it? Now don't get me wrong, I don't think PVs are bad, they would be a great way to complement the existing power sources, by dropping them on top of warehouses or supermarkets, or anything else with a large roof. I just don't see the value of building an entire farm. Isn't wind ultimately the best renewable source (outside of hydroelectricity)to replace fossil fuels that we have right now? It doesn't need to be built close to the equator for maximum efficiency, and produces more power.

Lieberose Solar Park was not built on "cleared forest". Lieberose Solar Park was built on the grounds of a former East German/Soviet military base, which actually dated back to Nazi times.

So your assertion that its about clearing a forest is baseless.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2013 17:53

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Placebo Orgasm posted:

I forget, was there ever a reason why we don't store the "waste" at the WIPP in New Mexico?

Constant and vociferous uninformed anger at anything that has to do with anything nuclear. I mean, the facilityh itself was finalyl approved to open in 1992... but that opening was repeatedly held back until 1999!

We have since sent a lot of waste there though.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 04:09

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

Which means the Mojave could fit nearly 9,000 of them, 3 times the existing power generation in the US. There's space.

And you don't see why demolishing an entire ecosystem and its native species might be a bad thing?

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 02:08

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Dusseldorf posted:

Which method of power generation has no environmental footprint?

Most assuredly not solar thermal that's literally covering an entire 25,000 square mile area.

At peak performance it would put out 3x the current power needs of the country but a) night time exists and b) day time is never continuous 100% output. And this is before considering the enviromental footprint of the neccesary energy storage facilities so that there's power at night.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 03:44

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Dusseldorf posted:

You don't necessarily need storage. Solar is peak generation and unless you have an only solar grid you would use nuclear or coal for baseline generation.

It would be insane to say the least to cover the whole desert or even a significant portion of the desert just to use for peak generation. Or just, in general, to dedicate the same amount of land spread all over to solar that was just meant to be used at peak.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2013 04:02

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Or you can just use the land that's sitting right there.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2013 05:27

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Hobo Erotica posted:

This seems at odds with your last few posts concerning the land footprint for solar thermal.

The land footprint for agriculture is already taken, and we're already producing more than enough food for the world with it. Current population modelling predicts a continuance of the trend of ever-declining birth rates leading to ever-slowing growth of world population: so we're not due to have to deal with 20 billion people by 2100 ever more, instead it's looking more like 8 to 10 billion.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2013 16:04

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

The vertical farming proposals rarely seem to mention how they're meant to be harvested, I've always found it strange.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2013 18:13

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Anosmoman posted:

I don't think anybody is saying we have the technology to make a transition right now - but it should be the end goal. Right now we're trying to use plants designed for seasons, open fields, sunlight etc and put them into a very different system. There's no reason to think we can't make organisms tuned to convert nutrients into food at a much faster and efficient rate then conventional farming can sustain. Maybe that's future speak on the level of fusion power but if we can't do that we're simply hosed.

Well adapting other organisms for this purpose would pretty much eliminate to build vertical farms as envisioned - vertical farm plans are based entirely around making a multifloor version of a farm for normal crops and their designs reflect that while something like say re-engineered algae could instead be maybe something we put on a couple floors of buildings all throughout or even have them grown in the basements.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2013 20:25

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

There is no need to go vertical because farmland exists and is serving us just fine.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2013 07:21

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Flaky posted:

What are the assumptions underlying this estimate? I would imagine that if conditions are favourable, then the population will increase. Is there some point at which everyone will just decide 'actually, 2 babies is more than enough'.

Most European countries are already at under 2 babies per woman at this point, actually. Birth rates have been declining near-universally. Earth's global birth rate was at its highest in the 1960s/1970s.

Also everyone loves to gently caress, but few people like dealing with raising kids much more than they have to. Contraception and available abortion are heavily used when women have access to them.

Hobo Erotica posted:

As for install windows, there are plenty of problems with the present food production system - like chemical run off and crazy distribution networks, but I'm on my phone and it's late so I might address them tomorrow.

They are not solved by attempting to jam in agriculture to random clear room in cities though.. although they do provide a nice use of space they inherently have restricted yields due to the logistics of small spaces and the like. To wit: they should be encouraged where there's vacancy that can't otherwise be used, but they're not going to replace farms. Especially when the farms are in places better suited to grow whatever it is you want.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2013 04:40

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

You're joking, right? Get your poo poo together, Canada.

This is par for the course anywhere the Greens haven't achieved substantial positions in government already. The direction of causality there remains unclear.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2014 01:07

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Wind Turbine Sickness is par for the course for Greens groups? I get anti-nuclear and fluoride and even anti-vax to some degree (although I think there's a special place in hell for anti-vax Greens) but being turbine skeptics is always something I've associated with a completely different brand of crazy.

Being full of crazies is par for the course in Greens parties that haven't ever held meaningful office. Mostly because only the crazier types tend to hang around in them instead of flocking to a stronger party. In contrast, when those parties are frequently actually holding seats and even being in a governing coalition, the crazy types tend to get blotted out by the kind of people who actually win elections.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2014 01:14

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

The installed capacity of solar power in the US doesn't quite match up with what people might expect geographically though:

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 18:53

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Baronjutter posted:

Looks like a pretty good match up of climate + population.

You might want to look at a map of the US again. New Jersey's 23% of the population of California, 5% of the land area (to say nothing of how there's no huge tracts of low latitude deserts), but it has 37% the installed solar capacity.

And Texas is absurdly low for its area, population, and amount of ideal solar production area.

Consider these official government maps of solar potential:

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jan 10, 2014

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 19:00

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

The main thing with New Jersey is that most of the electric utilities have been sticking south-facing solar panels on every utility pole in their territory. I'm not sure how effective they actually are, but it's fuckin' everywhere.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 19:21

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Just goes to show why fuel taxes were never a particularly smart idea for permanent infrastructure funding (like just about everything, it should have been progressive income tax for that purpose).

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 20:15

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Phanatic posted:

Fuel taxes are, prior to electric vehicles, a really good proxy for miles driven. Use the roads more, you pay more in tax. A progressive income tax for the same purpose provides a disincentive for people to minimize their use of the resource; if you're going to tax me the same whether I drive or not, might as well drive.

They're regressive in nature, but you can offset that by other means. If you want to tax people who use the roads in order to fund the upkeep on the roads, then a fuel tax has a lot to recommend it as a way of doing so.

Yeah and the whole idea just doesn't make sense unless created with the idea that efficiency can never go up and actual usage will never go down. Meanwhile much infrastructure maintenance doesn't actually go down with less miles driven or fuel used. And that's before you get into how most states have long used gas/diesel taxes for funding all forms of transportation

"The people who use it pay for it" sold to politicians and the public, but it's not actually viable long term. Especially when you consider that the richer you are the more leeway you have to avoid it and vice versa. Especially when you consider things like multiuse infrastructure with heavy bus traffic on the automotive lanes, or with rail usage on the same structures.

Edit: essentially "disincentivizing a particular good associated with an activity" and "funding the infrastructure for that activity and others off taxing that good" come into conflict once people have a choice besides just using at the same rate.

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jan 10, 2014

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 21:05

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Phanatic posted:

That'd be the case if the tax amount were set in stone, but it's not. A tax on fuel is actually a *driver* of efficiency, because it's a disincentive to use more fuel. Again, if you're taxing me by the same amount of my income no matter how much I drive on the roads, then I don't have as much incentive to purchase a fuel-efficient car. With a fuel tax, the funding of the roads falls disproportionately on the people whose vehicles cause a disproportionate amount of damage: heavy fuel-sucking SUVs and trucks (which, hey, means it stops being disproportionate).

Road maintenance does. Especially when there are fewer heavy vehicles being driven fewer miles.

That's not really an argument against fuel taxes, that's an argument against specific-purpose taxes being dumped into the general fund and used to pay for <whateverwefeellikethisweek>.

How does one avoid a fuel tax, no matter how rich you are? If I'm Eric Schmidt and I fly around everywhere in my private jet, there's still taxes on that fuel. How does your statement there not apply similarly to income taxes? The rich don't have more leeway to avoid income taxes than poorer people do?

Except fuel taxes are actually primarily meant for road funding in the US. And the diesel taxes we have have severely discouraged purchases of more efficient diesel engines for anything besides commercial vehicles

Many aspects of road maintenance don't change at all no matter how many vehicles drive by. For example, repainting bridges and other structures that need protective paint, maintaining lighting and signals, fixing stuff after disasters. And maybe you really didn't notice but dumb heavy SUVs already use less gas than they did in the 90s while incurring the same maintenance costs on the roads.

It's really odd of you to characterize transportation funding as "the general fund". Do you think buses don't need to use roads?

You avoid fuel taxes by not using the fuel. Who is more able to afford to move to somewhere conveniently located to transit and have a job conveniently located, a rich dude or Terry the person who works 2 jobs to keep food on the table? And outside that, who's currently better able to afford a newer fuel efficent car versus having to make due with a 20 year old inefficent one?

Phanatic posted:

If you want to adhere to the notion that the users of a resource should be the ones who fund it, and that that funding should be in proportion to their use, a fuel tax is a *great* way to fund the roads, until (a) you do something like not raise the tax for 20 years which constricts your revenues because one of the intended effects of the tax, to reduce fuel consumption and miles driven, has actually come to pass, and (b) fuel consumption stops being a good proxy for miles driven, which has started to happen. And then you reach the point we're at, where the general fund has to start kicking money back to the highway fund to make up for the shortfall.

I haven't seen any solid answers for this. Raising the tax is complicated, because while it would raise revenues in the short-term, it's then an even larger disincentive for consuming fuel. On one hand, most of the low-hanging fruit for improving ICE fuel efficiency has been picked, it's not like we're going to start turning out 40mpg SUVs. But on the other hand, overall fuel efficiency would go up a lot if the tax seriously started incentivizing people to buy smaller vehicles. And on the other other hand, if they *did* do that, then road maintenance requirements would go down and you wouldn't need as much revenue in the first place. But that still doesn't touch (b): as more people go electric, fuel use becomes a worse proxy for miles driven.

And another much-floated solution, sticking trackers in everyone's car so you can just track their miles driven directly and bill them accordingly, is politically a giant can of worms; you can't just look at the odometer, you need to track location, because otherwise you'll be taxing people on driving miles in another state, or on private roads, etc. Oregon has a voluntary scheme based on that sort of tracking, and they really really promise to destroy the personal records after 30 days, but good luck getting a lot of people to sign up for that sort of thing now, in light of Snowden's revelations, etc.

If you're willing to forego the notion that the users of a thing should pay for it, okay, sure, income tax it is. But if you don't want to charge people who aren't using a thing for the use of a thing, what else can you come up with?

That's why the entire idea is flawed. It worked ok back when two things were true:
1) Minimal advancements were made in fuel efficency
2) Most public transportation was still being handled by private entities, often using their own infrastructure

Now however the efficiency has increased a lot, and non-fuel vehicles are even practical for some users. And nearly all public transit has rightly shifted onto governments, who now need to pay for it. Smaller vehicles barely have anything to do with it, and you can't make the trucks smaller who are doing the majority of the damage on every road. And we already have one of the lowest usage rates of road trucks for freight and shipping in the developed world thanks to a robust freight rail infrastructure.

We already have tracking on the vehicles that cause the majority of the damage - truckers are required to keep logs, that poo poo goes to the government.

Frankly, getting the money as income taxes is the easiest, fairest, and most reliable way to fund just about everything. This doesn't mean fuel taxes should go away, they just can't be relied upon to continue to provide necessary funding. If we had perfect combinations of public transit and energy efficient vehicles using centrally generated power, we'd still need to spend tons of money on the underlying infrastructure, including roads.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 22:00

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

MrYenko posted:

What the hell does someone's income have to do with paying their share of transportation taxes?

The same as every other public service out there, what you have to spare is what's important to real share in funding society bub. Maybe you haven't noticed that poo poo's falling apart and that trying to raise the money with increases to fuel taxes would way disproportionately hurt poorer people, especially because of the patterns of adoption for higher efficency vehicles/alternatives. We have similar issues with electricity too (who can afford better insulation and more efficent newer appliances easier?).

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jan 10, 2014

# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 22:16

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 11:20

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

VideoTapir posted:

Why shouldn't they count?

Because then coal would be the cheapest of all.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2014 15:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Energy Generation Megathread: Heated Exchanges

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