Josh Cryer On Polywell At DU

[Josh Cryer]

Roger, heh, I changed my icon if you didn't notice. It was hemp (OK, pot) before, but I kept getting jerks telling me to stop smoking it. Somehow the anarchy symbol hasn't elicited nearly as many insulting responses.

[MSimon]

Josh,

You must have gotten your information from the IPCC.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricit ... iges1.html



Of course that is just electricity.

[MSimon]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/forecasting.html

[Roger]

Interesting. Coal is down from 52% to 48%. While Solar and wind IIRC went from 1.7% to 3.1%. With out checking I'll bet nat gas went up too.

Josh, I dont hang as much @ DU as I used to. My well written & researched dairies dont get the respect they used to. (whining, )

[MSimon]

Interesting. Coal is down from 52% to 48%. While Solar and wind IIRC went from 1.7% to 3.1%. With out checking I'll bet nat gas went up too.

Josh, I dont hang as much @ DU as I used to. My well written & researched dairies dont get the respect they used to. (whining, :-) )

Roger,

The quality of thinking on the left has declined precipitously.

I enjoy interacting with you and Josh because although we may disagree the quality of your thinking is generally excellent.

I ascribe a lot of it to the Malthusian nihilism now rampant.

The left in the 60s and 70s (the era when I came of age) had dreams. A better life for every one. Expansion. Now all they can think about is restriction.

It is part of why I'm on the right these days. That is the only place where there are even remnants of the dream.

[MSimon]

The left is going to die out (or get physically destroyed) if the best vision they have is some variant of Lebensraum - i.e. there is not enough and some of you will have to go so that there is enough left for the rest of us. And of course the superior should be in control and we who recognize the problem are obviously superior.

[MSimon]

The question lefties ought to be asking themselves is why the left so often falls for some variant of Stalinism.

Lebensraum, kulaks, educated classes. Targets.

[bcglorf]

The question lefties ought to be asking themselves is why the left so often falls for some variant of Stalinism.

Lebensraum, kulaks, educated classes. Targets.

Because humans are dumb. They fall for Stalinism for fear that leaning right leads to fascism. The same can be said for the right falling for some variant of corporatism for fear of Stalinism. It's easy to shoot holes in an opposition if they're most extreme adherents are assumed to be representative.

[CaptainBeowulf]

You know, I agree with the comments about loss of the dream.

What happened to the attitude of "We will put a man on the moon in ten years"?

If these people had been around in 1940, they would have declared the Manhattan project impossible, the Axis lead in military build-up to be too great to catch up with, and surrendered.

I'm not a blind polywell enthusiast. I know it quite likely may not work as currently envisioned. But continued research will point us in a direction towards something that can work. FRCs and other variants should be researched too. I even support continued ITER research, if it produces useful knowledge about high energy plasmas etc.

It just strikes me that generally speaking, we're closer to being able to do real fusion now than we were to doing fission in 1939, or to landing on the moon in 1960. We're close to doing a lot of things, like being able to use carbon nanotube composites for manufacturing (thus making all sorts of vehicles, from rockets to aircraft to cars, lighter and more durable and therefore more fuel-efficient). Instead we get a constant dirge of defeatism.

I agree that the left has gotten really bad, but the right isn't much better. No one is presenting a vision today. And by a vision, I mean something concrete; not empty slogans.

[jmc]

People are producing ideas with vision, just not nations or people involved in politics.

I think it could be said that many who work in google have vision for instance (and their looking at you!!)

[jmc]

Josh,

You must have gotten your information from the IPCC.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricit ... iges1.html



Of course that is just electricity.

Oh, I see how they justified their statement. Take wind at 3.1%, take a capacity factor of 20% Thus when all the wind turbines all over America are blowing full whack wind supplies 15.5% add to this the 6 percent from Hydro and you get and instantaneous maximum power production level tha exceeds nuclear.

[Josh Cryer]

Josh,

You must have gotten your information from the IPCC.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricit ... iges1.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricit ... figes1.jpg

Of course that is just electricity.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/ ... able1.html

[MSimon]

Josh,

You must have gotten your information from the IPCC.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricit ... iges1.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricit ... figes1.jpg

Of course that is just electricity.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/ ... able1.html

Roughly:

Wood derived fuels 2%
Hydroelectric 2.4%
Biofuels 1.4%
Total 5.8%

Nuclear 7.3%

Hydroelectric is the only one of the above that replaces nuclear. And since hydroelectric sites in the USA are tapped out.....

And then wind at .5% and solar at .1%

And nuclear and hydro are dispatchable. Wind and solar are not. In fact wind is so bad and the subsidy so large that at certain times wind plants will pay $40 a MWh to the grid to take their power.

Of course we could grow forests and clear cut them for home heating. If it didn't make enviros scream. But you know why we gave up wood and coal? Natural gas is easier to transport and you don't have to dispose of the ash.

So you are correct. But it doesn't help.

[Scupperer]

That's kind of a "darn lie" game with the numbers, there.

Throwing in all the fossil used for transportation and heating waters down the nuclear %, and pumps up the "renewable" fuels by including biofuels and biomass not used for electricity production. This is hardly a case against nuclear, or even for renewables; just a different context of looking at the numbers.

[Josh Cryer]

The US is the only country in the world whose emissions are dropping.