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US Politics: Shryke and Commodore agree (and other signs and portents)


lokisnow

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Ace,

But how much habitat has already been lost to dams? How many areas are left that would be good for dams? Are there enough tidal areas to get rid of dams and replace them with tidal?

I'm not sure about any of your questions. My thought is that the habitats lost to dams are already gone. I'm more interested in how many coal or natural gas plants we can replace with tidal than the number of dams.

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My view is that that this debate will continue and the status quo will largely remain, until breakthrough fusion power generation is achieved and everything that went before will become irrelevant.

For a limited time .... but the status quo will change when the significant solar tax credit expired in 2016. Time is actually against the solar installers for residences right now, unless they lobbied intensely for the extension of this tax credit. If it does not get renewed, adoption rate for residential solar will drop and many of these companies will go bankrupt.

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Hydro power? Three Sisters Gorge? Yes?

That's probably one of the worst ways of going about it, right?

We can probably do better, but putting a dam up is going to alter the river significantly, with important ecological impacts. I'm not sure how that stacks up against nuclear plants' possible danger. How does one weigh one type of negative against another, which are so different but both are quite horrific in their own ways?

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A Democratic Party email received by a friend (who is not a Democrat):

[Friends Name]-- The Clintons have both emailed you.

The Obamas have both emailed you.

It’s because the South and the Senate WILL be decided by what happens before the FINAL quarterly deadline in 12 hours. We need YOU to step up NOW.

Six races are virtually tied, and the GOP needs just three to take control. It’s our FINAL chance to go on the ATTACK and win.

President Clinton just warned, this deadline “is the most important we’ve ever faced… If you don’t want Republicans to run this country, you can’t wait for someone else to pick up the slack.”

We’re begging now: Please donate before midnight, and we’ll triple match your gift. It will go IMMEDIATELY to battleground states. This is our FINAL CHANCE.

Anyone have any fun Republican party emails?

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And before we go on more on the comparisons I just want to use the same soap box if have been using for a while: the future will be a blended energy economy with differences between localities as determined by their specific characteristics. The energy profile of Maine will be different from the energy profile of Idaho. And that is a good thing. All the naysayers are almost always making the judgment based on whether alternative X can replace fossil fuels. That's a straw man.

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And before we go on more on the comparisons I just want to use the same soap box if have been using for a while: the future will be a blended energy economy with differences between localities as determined by their specific characteristics. The energy profile of Maine will be different from the energy profile of Idaho. And that is a good thing. All the naysayers are almost always making the judgment based on whether alternative X can replace fossil fuels. That's a straw man.

I will laugh in your face when Idaho and Maine both satisfy 100% of their energy needs with clean, green, power from potato generators.

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I will laugh in your face when Idaho and Maine both satisfy 100% of their energy needs with clean, green, power from potato generators.

Just because it's legal, it doesn't mean you have to use so much of it.

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Tidal and hydro energy generation is too environmentally disruptive to justify the escalation of their adoption.

Geothermal though are a good alternative source, but it is too location-centric.

There have been huge gains in tidal technology over the last few years.

http://www.brighthub.com/environment/science-environmental/articles/11287.aspx

"In contrast, turbine-based systems do not have the same geographic constraints, do not disrupt the environment to nearly the same degree, have less of an impact on local organisms, and are quieter; however, the requisite technology is not nearly as mature, large-scale power generation is less efficient, and the costs (both short- and long-term) are more uncertain. Still, the advantages weigh in their favor, which is why a number of such systems are being tested around the world"

This wouldn't be a case of supporting all our energy needs, but it could supplement them to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

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Locksnow,

Hey, we eat them after boiling them alive. Is a little cardo before they go really much to ask?

That would just make them less tender!

***

Along the lines of the last few pages, and my complaints that liberals give up at the first bad data indicating adversity...

Here's something that liberalus-wonkus types have been using data extraordinarily badly to give themselves the vapors (and that means they promote bad policy solutions for a problem that isn't really a problem) : The gas tax.

As any dutiful liberalswonkus will tell you, all gas tax revenue has collapsed because of hybrid and electric cars and because Millenials don't drive as much as their Boomer parents, but mostly the villainous fuel efficiency gains of hybrid and electric cars must be penalized and punished and attacked for being the entire and total cause of the lack of gas tax revenue. This delights the oil industry, and liberals are pleased as punch to carry water for them on this issue. Let's get an onerous big government tax on vehicle miles traveled! that will solve the problem.

Um. No. It won't. Because in terms of declining gas tax revenue, the contribution of greater fuel economy and fewer vehicle miles traveled is utterly miniscule. The latter is less than one percent of the problem, the former less than 10 percent. and fewer Vehicle Miles Traveled means less wear and tear on the roads so it should mean we don't have as high a need for gas tax revenues.

The entirety of the problem is that regular inflation of <2% a year since 1993 has eaten away at the purchasing power of the gas tax collected. This composes almost the entirety of the problem of declining gas tax revenues. But nope, lets all listen to liberalswonkus and declare we need a giant new government expansion of state DMVs (or a federal DMV!) collecting data on vehicle miles traveled and assessing taxes for every vehicle in the country. why would we dash towards this nonsolution? because um, hybrid and electric cars are the devil and clearly the problem!

Pretty graphs illustrating this at the link.

http://letsgola.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/components-of-highway-funding-shortfalls/

The loss of purchasing power due to inflation dominates; change in VMT trends only recently emerges as a relatively minor factor. Changes in fuel efficiency have had basically zero effect on the long-term solvency of the fund, as recent gains in fuel efficiency have just barely offset losses in fuel efficiency in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Note that theoretically, declining revenues due to declining VMT isn’t even a problem in the first place, since less driving means less roads are needed. And due to climate change, trends that result in higher fuel efficiency and lower VMT are net positives for society.

So why so much talk about declining VMT and fuel efficiency? Wild guesses: first, it’s a convenient narrative if you want to replace the gas tax with a VMT tax and/or tolls. Second, it makes the problem seem more complicated, which creates the opportunity for Serious People™ to opine. And lastly, it provides a scrap of cover to incompetent politicians who would look like dunces if everyone realized that the problem could be solved by a 25-word piece of legislation raising the tax and indexing it to inflation.

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As any dutiful liberalswonkus will tell you, all gas tax revenue has collapsed because of hybrid and electric cars and because Millenials don't drive as much as their Boomer parents, but mostly the villainous fuel efficiency gains of hybrid and electric cars must be penalized and punished and attacked for being the entire and total cause of the lack of gas tax revenue. This delights the oil industry, and liberals are pleased as punch to carry water for them on this issue. Let's get an onerous big government tax on vehicle miles traveled! that will solve the problem.

Wait, what? I spend plenty of time listening to liberalwonkuses and I have literally never heard of this thing about punishing fuel efficiency gains to make up for the lack of gas tax revenue.

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Wait, what? I spend plenty of time listening to liberalwonkuses and I have literally never heard of this thing about punishing fuel efficiency gains to make up for the lack of gas tax revenue.

And it's hard to research where this is happening when the first line in the article is this:

"I forget where, but I recently heard another story about highway funding that specifically mentioned declining vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and increasing fuel efficiency as causing reductions in gas tax revenues."

Such journalist. So good.

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Wait, what? I spend plenty of time listening to liberalwonkuses and I have literally never heard of this thing about punishing fuel efficiency gains to make up for the lack of gas tax revenue.

Ah, well maybe that's my fault, I was badly referring to the proposals to scrap the gas tax and switch to a vehicle miles traveled tax. A VMT tax. The main reason this is always proposed as a grand and wonderful thing is that hybrid's and electrics are not carrying their fair share of the fiscal burden of paying for the shared roadway infrastructure. But the real problem is the gas tax shortfall. The gas tax shortfall is due to inflation, but the implication is often made that the gas tax shortfall is caused by fuel efficiency gains.
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