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[Trekkin]

There's a big issue with renewables, and Trekkin hit it on the head;

See for instance, the idiots in my own area.

That was not exactly my meaning, I'm afraid.

The main problem I see with public-facing initiatives isn't that people are stupid. I've found individual people, at least, are generally pretty intelligent as long as you explain things in terms that relate to experiences they've had and don't just shove jargon down their throats. At the same time, though, they're drowning in information and complexity, and one of the quickest ways to simplify things is to decide that everyone but you is stupid and evil, and that's what propagates outward.

What we've got here, with these turbines, is a good example. Seen from the opposing sides, we've got a load of thoroughly stupid rednecks spooked at shadows trying to keep evil city-slickers from ruining their town for the sake of absentee landlords' profit margins. That's not really a position from which it's possible to reach an accommodation, and worse, it's not a position that encourages any deeper examination of anything. "Idiots gonna be idiots" is just as much an ad hoc explanation as any appeal to divine incomprehensibility, or any conspiracy theory (which is just a more convoluted version of "the powerful people are eeeevil." It has just as little predictive value, too, for the same reasons.

Calling everybody we don't like stupid and evil might make us feel good, and assuming everyone else is dumber than us so we get to explain everything we already know as mind-blowing facts doubly so, but the stupid and evil people vote too, and at some point we either understand them enough to motivate them, wait for them to die, or destroy them. I was suggesting that top-down incentives make the first (and, in my opinion, the only workable) option a lot less viable.

Still, neither of these are even a hundredth of the danger that court-packing represents. By way of an analogy, introducing court-packing as a response to McConnell's behavior would be "you didn't die when you stubbed your toe, so it must be OK to shoot you in the face."

This sounds a lot like the usual conservative line about how it's terrible how their guys came to power, but fixing it would be worse, so...fuck you got mine.

[Kagus]

So, there's been a certain amount of renewable development here in Norway, but the issue is... It's been primarily wind energy.

Why is that an issue? Norway's about as flat as grandpa's scrotum on a cold day. There aren't many places that get enough steady wind coverage that it would make any sense to put turbines there, and when they do find a place, they have to spend a bunch of time clearing, blasting, flattening, and then pouring in order to get the maintenance infrastructure (like roads) and flat-ish necessary in order to even build and service those turbines.

What does this result in? The same acreage will have about 1/5th the number of turbines, for 5 times the cost and pollution of setting it up. Not to mention shredding the local nature and pouring asphalt over it instead.


Because, obviously, fuck building them out at sea... That would be unreasonable, and might get in the way of the oil and fishery industries or something. Or the view of expensive waterfront properties.

And thinking that nuclear may not be a true replacement for fossil fuels does not make someone a racist and, well, class-ist? I guess? Anyway, claiming that it does is patently ridiculous.

The point (which isn't entirely clear in the posts), is that Max does not agree that CO² release is an actual threat or impediment to the environment. So it's the restriction of fossil fuels itself which is racist, not so much the specific alternatives being suggested, because with CO² out of the picture then there's no pertinent reason to get rid of fossil fuels other than oppressing developing nations, who don't have the infrastructure/technology to even implement the higher-tech alternatives. Even if they did work as well/reliably.

Know what fusion produces?

CON: Fusion


Cold fusion would be pretty frickin' cool though.

[Max™]

As for nuclear waste being a "bogeyman", well, I suggest you do research as to why exactly we have limits on exactly how much radiation people are supposed to be exposed to and just how radioactive and long-lasting nuclear reactor radioactive leftovers last as sources of dangerous radiation.

Breeder reactors burn that waste up just fine but the bogeyman of NUCULAR WEPNS prevents their development. Trust me when I say I have done the research on this shit, hell, I've done actual in the field experience, ever worked in a coal plant? Want a close up of the pores in my nose which have never been the same? Want to hear me cough sometimes? I barely lasted a month in that shit despite the ridiculous money (1 grand a week at 20~something? sheeeet) and I got more of a dose from working in a shut down coal plant than I would having a nuke plant nearby.

Solar, tidal, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, none of them is going to make fossil fuels go away. However, if you are smart and make use of all alternatives where each of them is appropriate, then yeah you could manage to almost completely reduce or outright eliminate dependence on fossil fuel energy.

Only one of those has a stigma attached and stupid old cunts like Sanders need to die off fast because we needed more nuke construction thirty years ago, the fucker is proud of having killed plants in his state, nobody should be proud of this, they should be shamed and marched down the street in chains for it.

[wierd]

There's a big issue with renewables, and Trekkin hit it on the head;

See for instance, the idiots in my own area.

That was not exactly my meaning, I'm afraid.

The main problem I see with public-facing initiatives isn't that people are stupid. I've found individual people, at least, are generally pretty intelligent as long as you explain things in terms that relate to experiences they've had and don't just shove jargon down their throats. At the same time, though, they're drowning in information and complexity, and one of the quickest ways to simplify things is to decide that everyone but you is stupid and evil, and that's what propagates outward.

What we've got here, with these turbines, is a good example. Seen from the opposing sides, we've got a load of thoroughly stupid rednecks spooked at shadows trying to keep evil city-slickers from ruining their town for the sake of absentee landlords' profit margins. That's not really a position from which it's possible to reach an accommodation, and worse, it's not a position that encourages any deeper examination of anything. "Idiots gonna be idiots" is just as much an ad hoc explanation as any appeal to divine incomprehensibility, or any conspiracy theory (which is just a more convoluted version of "the powerful people are eeeevil." It has just as little predictive value, too, for the same reasons.

Calling everybody we don't like stupid and evil might make us feel good, and assuming everyone else is dumber than us so we get to explain everything we already know as mind-blowing facts doubly so, but the stupid and evil people vote too, and at some point we either understand them enough to motivate them, wait for them to die, or destroy them. I was suggesting that top-down incentives make the first (and, in my opinion, the only workable) option a lot less viable.

Still, neither of these are even a hundredth of the danger that court-packing represents. By way of an analogy, introducing court-packing as a response to McConnell's behavior would be "you didn't die when you stubbed your toe, so it must be OK to shoot you in the face."

This sounds a lot like the usual conservative line about how it's terrible how their guys came to power, but fixing it would be worse, so...fuck you got mine.

Agreed;  The problem is that in this case, the demographic in question actively RESISTS becoming informed.  They also cling tightly to conspiracy theory. (I wish it wasn't so, Truly!!)

They indeed do vote, and they outnumber more educated or sensible/rational people when they do.

Consequence?

We can't have nice things.
https://www.kwch.com/content/news/Reno-County-Planning-Committee-denies-proposal-for-wind-farm-508981781.html


In order to get the slow incremental change you find more preferable, you have to get past the blockade.  You dont get past the blockade being nice.



Look, I get that you would prefer a bloodless transition toward the way that we both know things need to go in in order to have a planet worth living on in the next century. I want that too.

The problem,-- the fundemental problem--  Is that you have people that do not WANT to understand that "Keeping things the way they are now" is not an option that can be considered. They want to not change so much, that they downplay actual radiation exposure from coal ash, and up-play fantasy stories about people having deformed babies because of exposure to whooping noises and shadows. (Because those are things that are new to them, and thus imminently bad.)

Your argument is prefaced by the notion that understanding these people will permit you to work with them;  This premise is fundemenatally falted.  The more you understand them, the more you will come to understand that their innate desire prevents them from being reasonable to change.

[Max™]

Note that I do not want a bloodless transition, and I will cheer the day Sanders keels over because fuck that guy hard.

[Madman198237]

Max: Breeder reactors are capable of re-enriching some fuel as I recall but they definitely are not capable of actually REMOVING the problem that ultimately something comes out of your reactor cycle that is radioactive and will remain radioactive on timescales best measured in decades and centuries, even if it may be heavily depleted.

The problem isn't the radiation from an active plant, the problem is the caches of radioactive material necessarily left behind as one of those plants operates and the very large amount of material left when one of those plants is deactivated. Nuclear is a very safe type of power plant to have operating, but the waste it leaves behind is dangerous in a way that cannot be ignored or handwaved away.

Yes, nuclear energy has a stigma attached because it has caused some pretty spectacular disasters. People are understandably reluctant to accept the perceived risk of a Three Mile Island type disaster anywhere near them, even if those who actually pay attention to the tech understand that it's come a long way and is safe, reliable, and fairly efficient nowadays.

[wierd]

Actually, the waste that comes out of a fast breeder reactor is "Violently radioactive",-- It decays VERY VERY Fast, and emits hella numbers of particles per second.  But the consequence of that is that the material reaches its half life very quickly, and becomes manageable quickly.  (It's also useful if you have a booming space science sink to dispose of it with. Those RTGs dont run on sugar candy you know.)

The converse-- slowly decaying waste that takes geological timescales to reach halflife-- is what you are discussing.  That's what comes out of an ordinary reactor.

[Reelya]

No, what you need is FUSION.

Did you know that helium is a rapidly disappearing commodity? Do you understand the implications of not having access to helium, once its all gone?  Maybe you should.

Know what fusion produces?

Helium.

You have this wrong. Running out of helium is not really a concern.

Helium just seeps out of the ground from inside the magma. it will continue doing so for billions of years. The shortages happen because it's hard to store or reprocess since it's so light and floats away. But the prices have always fluctuated, it's just "news" because the current fluctuations are making party balloons more expensive. If that's the main story then there's really nothing to see here. It's just like price fluctuations in literally any commodity and nowhere near signaling "the end".

[wierd]

Helium embrittlement is an issue, yes.

(PSA: Helium and Hydrogen molecules are so small, and at the pressures used for storage, have superfluid properties that cause them to work their way between metal grains in containers, causing the slow migration of those grains away from each other, and causing microfractures to form, which cause spontaneous failure of the container over time, as well as slow leakage of the contents.)

Issues with storage would be alleviated the same way power grid peak demand is handled-- On demand production.

Which brings us back to fusion.

It's also much bigger than just balloons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/science/helium-shortage-party-city.html

A large number of industries, especially in medicine and sciences, need helium in pretty large quantities. Those industries are growing, and the natural capability to produce helium are not sufficient.

Being able to 1) Produce power in large amounts, cheaply, efficiently and 2) Have a a READY market for your waste product that shows no signs of drying up, EVER-- Sounds like a win-win.  That was the point.

[Trekkin]

Your argument is prefaced by the notion that understanding these people will permit you to work with them;  This premise is fundemenatally falted.[sic]  The more you understand them, the more you will come to understand that their innate desire prevents them from being reasonable to change.

Well yeah, if you go at it with that attitude.

I know you know about the backfire effect, so I won't reiterate it here, but I will say that your logic resembles that of certain radical feminists I know who, mystified about the negative reactions they get when they tell men how they're responsible for all manner of privilege, have determined that force is the only answer. It, too, is a comforting form of simplification; people react more predictably when you antagonize them than when you empathize with them.

Everybody thinks, at least implicitly, that they're a good person who tries to do the right thing, a smart person whose ideas are rationally founded, and a fair-minded person who tries to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. When any of those are disputed, as here, the first thing they do, almost instinctively, is find a way of framing the other person's comments so they're wrong. Then the rationalization happens. You might say "wind farms are good for our planet", but what they're hearing is "let absentee landlords cover the land next to you with big propellers on sticks or you might as well just start killing your children now, you monsters" followed by "if you don't believe renewable energy is a bigger priority than your comfort, you just don't understand the problem, you idiots." When they complain about shadows and noise and liability, there's a lot of anxiety about land ownership and outside meddling in their community and some resentment about how suddenly they have to fix a planet big coastal companies burned up factoring into that, but they can't articulate all that in a town hall meeting so they complain about windmills. It's a small, manageable expression of problems too big for them to solve, and an attempt to reclaim agency when they don't have much anymore. Unfortunately, it's really tempting to read their concerns literally so they can be dumb and wrong and trivial.

Ultimately, beating people over the head with how you know better than they do what's best for them isn't going to bring them around -- and a big part of the breakdown in our national dialogue is how we all ran out of second chances for the other side a hundred Internet fights ago. We were all, as we remember it, more than fair, and it isn't our job to educate them. If they don't understand by now they're never going to, etc., and it's all we've come to expect from the other side, too. Snowflakes vs. theocrats, communists vs. fascists, etc. Believing the other side has no capacity to change has never been easier or more dangerous.

[wierd]

Easily enough said when you dont live in close proximity to them, I suppose.  (I do.)


Also, your own counterargument falls victim to itself;  Any and all criticisms of your own projected view have been about how the people making them are wrong, and you are more wise, and right.

At some point it is necessary to acknowledge that there are irreconcilable differences of opinion that no amount of comprehension or diplomacy will fix.  When you fail to accept this, you are not engaging in reality; You are reaching for an ivory tower ideal.

We can quibble over when or where we will reach that impasse, but insistence that it is not real is fantasy.  I just am telling you, (with lots of experience behind it), that we have already hit it.

[Reelya]

https://www.nap.edu/read/12844/chapter/6#55

USA is 4.4% of world population but uses half the helium. USA should stop wasting it on party balloons before worrying that it's running out. The average American uses 12 times the per-capita world average of the stuff. Cutting excessive usage is more practical that conceiving of sci-fi tech to get more. Most of the world is getting along perfectly well, even better than, the USA without all that helium consumption.

[LordBaal]

Now this is what comes to mind about all of you guys.

[wierd]

Now this is what comes to mind about all of you guys. 

Honestly, no jokes about cutting it with sulfur hexafluoride?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4ixGhtBPp0

[SalmonGod]

In regards to nuclear waste, just have to share this

https://twitter.com/Spocks_Brian/status/1133414385794408448

Take this into account when you frame it as a racist/classist issue.