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[Sergarr]

My point is that nuclear will be decommissioned anyway because it's so expensive

It really isn't that expensive

It really is. It takes somewhere around two-three decades to just pay off the capital expenses, if you take inflation into account. And that's assuming the price on electricity stays the same, which it quite likely won't do - it'll go lower, due to solar driving it down. And then it won't pay off at all, because it'd be decommisioned before the theoretical pay-off date.

[Reelya]

It would be more accurate to look at yearly actual generation capacity per acre, then compare that to yearly USA energy needs.

https://www.energymanagertoday.com/it-takes-2-8-acres-of-land-to-generate-1gwh-of-solar-energy-per-year-says-nrel-094185/

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a report on the land use requirements of solar power plants based on actual land-use practices from existing solar facilities.

So this isn't pie in the sky theoretical production, these are operating figures for pre-existing solar plants: 2.8 acres will generate 1 gWh of solar power in a year.

The USA uses very close on 4,000,000 gWh of electricity. so the acres would need to be around 11 million acres. But that assumes all future solar plants are no more efficient that pre-existing plants. (EDIT: there's also the fact that there's no reason you can't put solar generation equipment on top of other things, like buildings, which isn't possible for coal and nuclear plants).

[Egan_BW]

My house shall wear a fission plant like a hat!

[Strife26]

So, what are the means of which someone like myself can protect myself against my ISP selling my personal information and other such things to advertisers? Now that our government is most assuredly going to repeal any amount of protection we have.

Uninstall your network cards, mainly. I for one am switching to hand-encrypted letters to my friends.

Pretty much. If you want to save time on the encryption, I wrote a program to do it that I'll totally license copies of.

What about stuff like TOR?

Not sure how TOR works, but the data would need encrypting BEFORE it entered the router. I believe most VPNs are able to do that.

Yeah, your ISP still gets all your info on the way to the first TOR node.

[Reelya]

http://www.theenergycollective.com/solarbusiness/265726/land-requirements-pv-versus-coal-generation

NREL’s web page launch refers to another related study by Columbia University which concluded that “on a life-cycle electricity-output basis—including direct and indirect land transformation—utility-scale PV in the U.S. Southwest requires less land than the average U.S. power plant using surface-mined coal”.

Interesting thing people screaming about solar power's land-use never do: compare it to fossil fuel's land use requirements.

[Frumple]

... oh, neat. Just noticed reports claiming white house staff and former transition team members are wiping phone data and destroying paperwork, what's presumed to be in response to the possibility of a subpoena. Seems like there's a questionably reliable possibility that flynn may have been flipped by the FBI and squealed in exchange for leniency, probably mostly in relation to the whole russia thing. Haven't noticed anything particularly concrete about it, but it's looking like there's either some rather embarrassed news networks or one hell of a media hullabaloo coming up in the near future.

[palsch]

A Trump critic has withdrawn from taking a non-political job with the DoD. It's a bit of a messy story, but the last paragraphs are spicy;

William C. Triplett II, a China specialist and former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the withdrawal was appropriate.

"Patrick Cronin not only signed the obnoxious ‘Never Trump' letters, he went out of his way to endorse Hillary for president," Triplett said.

"Just another of the inappropriate appointments coming out of office of the secretary of defense," he added. "I think it is disloyal to continue to throw declared enemies at the White House and demand their endorsement. Such a situation would be unthinkable if Hillary had become president."

Again, a non-political position.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's particularly egregious because that is not the standard for even political appointments. Even high-level appointments, on occasion.

[PTTG??]

... oh, neat. Just noticed reports claiming white house staff and former transition team members are wiping phone data and destroying paperwork, what's presumed to be in response to the possibility of a subpoena. Seems like there's a questionably reliable possibility that flynn may have been flipped by the FBI and squealed in exchange for leniency, probably mostly in relation to the whole russia thing. Haven't noticed anything particularly concrete about it, but it's looking like there's either some rather embarrassed news networks or one hell of a media hullabaloo coming up in the near future.

If that's true...

Hoo boy, this presidency is turning out to be very exciting.

I'm looking forward to Trump trying to hide his violations from the Emoluments clause.

[Flying Dice]

I'm hearing a lot of pro-coal talk out of the White House lately. Are there any informed parties who would care to weigh in on the matter?
I was under the impression that coal is destroying our environment and killing the miners who labor to produce it. But maybe modern techniques make coal relatively harmless to obtain and use? What are the facts here?

As a Kentuckian: Coal is dead.

Coal has been dead for years. We've lost pretty much all of the coal jobs, the coal towns are dying. People 'round here are desperate for a pro-coal government not to preserve good jobs and prosperous economic conditions, but because they want them to come back. Here's a good article from about a year ago on the subject.

Coal is just a fantasy, a vision of past prosperity which will never return. And the desperation with which people claw at that has allowed companies to use environmentally harmful extraction practices which even further damage rural communities (while continuing to feed coal power, one of the worst polluters in the world), without creating a meaningful number of jobs. The easy coal is pretty much all gone from the traditional coal fields. The labor-intensive mining ain't coming back, and we're going to ruin the Appalachians by clipping hilltops and contaminating the water table to pry out what's left, just so that we can keep fueling an obsolete and environmentally damaging power source.

[Max™]

Thermal towers are uneconomical, but "solar thermal" in those words is generally referring to residential water systems and are highly cost effective. There are parts of China where they're the main form of water heating, makes great savings on electricity or gas.

Not sure about anyone else, but if I say solar thermal or CSP I'm talking about stuff like this little guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar_Thermosolar_Plant and until someone figures out how to keep a PV plant generating power 24 hours a day for over a month there will be a place for stuff like those, or a need for stuff like nuclear for base load (especially in areas too far to transmit power economically, over 3000 km it stops being cheap, over about 4000/7000 km AC/DC it stops being feasible because you're dealing with the costs of replacing melted lines rather than costs of moving electrons) and whatnot.

I do like the idea of a solar thermal water heater though.

So, what are the means of which someone like myself can protect myself against my ISP selling my personal information and other such things to advertisers? Now that our government is most assuredly going to repeal any amount of protection we have.

They can do that now, and have been able to do so. The bill voted down in the Senate would have let the FCC institute protections against ISP's doing this.

Also: I despise Marsha Blackburn, and look forward to the day she gets Dorothy'D¹ with eager anticipation.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/ad-industry-lobbyists-celebrate-impending-death-of-online-privacy-rules/

"We wholeheartedly commend Senator Flake and Congressman Blackburn, and their Senate and House colleagues, for introducing resolutions of disapproval for the FCC's ill-considered move to create a new, costly, counterproductive, confusing and unnecessary regulatory regime around privacy for broadband providers," ad industry lobby and trade groups said...

From the same shitbag I was bitching at a few years back for her stupid fucking support of defunding the goddamn James Webb Space Telescope, though I'm not sure if I'm still in her district or not due to how stupid TN is chopped up, but I suspect I still am, and either way wish her the worst.

^1:_{as in literally having a fucking house dropped on the old witch}

[Frumple]

... voted down? It passed the senate a few days ago, hit the desk in the house on the 23rd, iirc. Least the bit of bullshittery FD linked to mention of upthread a bit.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I do like the idea of a solar thermal water heater though.

Like I said, hundreds of thousands if not millions use them now thanks to the Chinese government being surprisingly sane about some things. You'll typically find newer ones are evacuated cylinders surrounding a propylene glycol/water cycle which circulates heat to the hot water line. It's better than nothing if you don't have a gas or electric heater, and saves usage on those if you do. Even halfway decent weather can get water to scalding temperatures when the absorption is maximized.

There's been some investigation into air heaters as well, but I did a fairly extensive analysis of them in college and found they tend to fall short, though a form of traditional floor heating used in Korea works well (and is amazing if you sleep on the floor, such as Koreans sometimes do).

[Max™]

... voted down? It passed the senate a few days ago, hit the desk in the house on the 23rd, iirc. Least the bit of bullshittery FD linked to mention of upthread a bit.

"Congressional disapproval [...] of the rule submitted by the [FCC] relating to [Protection of Privacy]" seems to mean they were voting against the FCC proposal for privacy protections.

[uber pye]

... voted down? It passed the senate a few days ago, hit the desk in the house on the 23rd, iirc. Least the bit of bullshittery FD linked to mention of upthread a bit.

"Congressional disapproval [...] of the rule submitted by the [FCC] relating to [Protection of Privacy]" seems to mean they were voting against the FCC proposal for privacy protections.

behold the worst power of the politician, obfuscatingly verbose text.