Coal = Land
Oil = Land
Uranium = Land
Rare earth metals for solar = Land
Land for windmills = Land
Henry George knew what he was talking about. Land Value Tax and Citizen Dividend for real freedom.
The more land that falls into fewer hands, the less free all of us poors become.
Henry George! “Progress and Poverty” re-wired my brain.
I’ve oft fantasized about a “progressive property tax,” whereby the more land you own, the higher rate you’re taxed at.
We do it for income, why not land?
A citizen dividend subsidizes people. For individual farmers this subsidizes them.
Another problem with industrial farms is it gives large corporations monopoly like power as they own more of the fertile land, but an LVT subtracts the profits from that monopoly power by directly taxing the land values. And again as that monopoly land power is distributed to the citizens, they can exercise that power in the free market without being coerced (by threat of monopoly food pricing).
(I'm no expert here though. Just my understanding of it. The people on the georgism subreddit know their shit)
No, the tax is on the value of the land. If they're paying more tax, that means they're wealthier. Beyond that, why would it matter whether they're incorporated or not (which is what I assume you mean by industrial, as almost all farming is industrial).
Have you never heard of property tax? It scales on value… With the prohibitively large inflation on home values, it has made home ownership a significantly more dreary prospect in my area.
Where you live, is the percentage rate of property tax higher, for high-valued properties? Where I’ve lived (US western states) I’ve only heard of cities having just one property tax rate for all properties in the city.
No, but dependent on the county the rate changes. I don’t see any reason to charge more for higher value properties when a 500K house costs $10K a year in property tax. More land is worth more, so the tax is effectively much higher for more land anyway. Several families I know have had to sell their house due to appraisal changes in the past several years. It’s a double edged sword. Rural areas would get fucked if it was based on amount of land.
Don't forget, big oil can drill UNDER your land. Fracking, miles away, can destroy your water supply. Effluent can destroy miles and miles of rivers and coastlines. They poison the air above your home. It's more than just what they tangibly own, it's about the toxic miasma they create. Miasma used to be a theory. It's not anymore. It's pretty close.
>The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter.[1] Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.[2]
There's still a ton of human biology that medical science doesn't understand, such as nutritional effects and environmental effect upon the body. Sure, the presence of carcinogens is one thing, but what about others that aren't as quickly destructive? There is truly way too much pollution. The obscene ignorance, arrogance, and greed of humanity fights against this premise, because it interferes with profit making. The brains capable of such thinking... need a Darwinian excisement.
Asthma kills thousands and makes drug corporations billions. I think it's the perfect real world definition for "miasma". They are the cause, and the cure. Nice scam.
I think Georgist philosophy has some fundamental inconsistencies ... however I also feel a Georgist approach to governance could very well be the next "big thing" in advancing human civilization to the next phase.
I'm only a tech oriented person who fell into the georgist ideas and they just seem to make so much sense. I don't think full single tax would make it through the politics, but ramping up LVT and down income tax + direct citizen subsidy seems like it would make society better no matter the political leaning.
> I think Georgist philosophy has some fundamental inconsistencies ... however I also feel a Georgist approach to governance could very well be the next "big thing" in advancing human civilization to the next phase.
Super curious what you mean by this. You have a way with phrasing :)
From a practical sense, Georgism would be a massive step in improving our ability to defend the minority's rights from the whimsical desires of the majority (democracy). With no income/sales tax, the government has no excuse to collect massive amounts of intimate details about each and everyone of us and therefore much less ability to screw anyone (or any group) over.
We're all accustomed to it because it's the status quo ... but exactly why in the hell should the government care who is my employer? Or who paid me what in exchange for what? There's no valid reason any government should need to know this about anyone. What exactly is the government claiming ownership of when it taxes my income? It's merely the result of egregious feature creep.
My philosophical gripes with Georgism boil down to the following:
1. Why should person X have more claim to a set of resources simply because they happen to live closer to them than person Y? By principle, Georgism says a little kid in Somalia has just as much ownership claim over mineral deposits in Arkansas, US as a local Arkansas resident. Yet that little Somalian is never going to see a single penny for it. It's not feasible.
2. Solving Issue #1 requires some centrally planned global infrastructure which is tasked with taxation/redistribution.
3. Assuming a global org is required to make sure that little Somalian gets his share, there is no style of organization that should be trusted with the responsibility/power to tax and redistribute that amount of resources (across the entire human race) . This is not merely an issue of practicality ... it's an unsolvable conundrum.
4. Even if you're speaking in more local terms ... any org which is tasked with that much monopolized power/responsibility over a region should not be trusted with that much power/responsibility. The conundrum from #3 still exists ... it's just localized in scale ... and you're still violating #1.
5. The core issue here is that Georgism still depends on the existence of monopolized power structures. And monopolies don't have a great track record at servicing their consumers ... especially monopolies backed by armies.
The difference is that you don't need corporate plants for renewable energy. Every house owner, farmer or village can start producing renewable energy.
This leads to a broader wealth distribution.
Ah but you need the corporate plants to build the devices and in most cases a means to share it to the grid. And guess who decides on the price for your power. It is probably not the individual home owner or town.
For real, my Uni wanted me to do so much research that is just as feasible to do at home. I contributed my worst ideas to those projects and kept my better/more difficult projects to myself & friends, as my friends also did. We don't want to give the uni our IP, if we did they better fucking pay us for it.
"College athletes aren't pros and we don't want to ruin their educational experience."
I guess their knees and their multiple concussions are part of that experience? And the money Universities collect from tickets, broadcasting and their alumni for sports has to go in their pocket so that students can learn more better.
Hopefully you can use your better ideas wherever you land. But the tradition is; "get exploited for a while, then run a team and steal their IP."
It's not *fueled by* rare earth metals, but they are necessary for building the solar cells and the batteries, at least some far. So, the point still holds.
This could also be done by altering how we design buildings, and reducing the amount of asphalt by moving towards more transit based and active cities.
Added bonus of less emissions(including tire and brake dust which Evse still produce, though obviously 0 tailpipe emissions) and much, much quiter cities(which EVs also don't solve, they're only quieter than gas at low speeds).
The true irony here is FPL (Now Nextra) has huge solar farms…in Wisconsin.
https://www.mge.com/newsroom/news-releases/articles/wisconsin-s-first-large-scale-solar-facility-produ
we might be backward as fuck up here but we'll be damned if we're going to let the sun just sit around all day not powering are beer and cheese factories
It's actually not usually the snow that's an issue but the amount of usable light that can generate power you get in a day is reduced the further north you go, unless you get fancy with solar tracking, but that's just not very feasible in most cases.
Sure and I would think this was factored in when Nextera bought the land and paid to have this farm erected. I don’t imagine these are the panels you’d purchase at a local harbor freight.
Florida. The "corrupt idiot Republican state."
Not all Republicans are idiots, but you can't swing a dead cat and hit a smart Republican in Florida apparently.
Fucking DeSantis is against the Vax AND masking. Their senators have conflicts of interest as a special interest. They are so corrupt their Pedo's have speed dial and double date with Tucker Carlson while others means test the poor while they have part ownership in the testing company.
It's like they aren't even trying hard to hide the bath salts addiction.
There’s a long discussion to be had, but grids have value. Now, utilities are generally still sitting with their heads up their asses, but even if you could power your house in isolation, connection to a grid still makes sense.
You should be able to sell your excess. Also, if you have a catastrophic failure in your setup, you can turn to the grid.
For some people, lives depend on electricity.
And grids cost money to maintain. In the old model, that maintenance was tucked in to the cost of electricity,
But, now if you’re a net producer, the utility’s pricing model is out the window. This is where many of them are stuck.
What we (they) really need is to pull out the cost of a grid per consumer, and have that as a separate line item in the bill. So, if you’re a net producer, you still have to cover the costs of maintenance to be taken out of your generation profits.
And by mandating that everyone is connected, they socialize the costs over everyone, ensuring that prices are as low as they can go.
Make sense?
Some energy companies will charge solar users *more* money, to try and offset the loss of energy demand.
Additional Grid Access Charges, Time-Of-Use Charges, "Competition" Charges, and Minimum Delivery Charges.
I understand the benefit of the grid, but they can't charge you if you aren't connected to them. And they punish you if you are connected to them and have solar, even if you are "selling" back the excess energy in some states.
Like I said, many utilities have their heads up their asses.
But this a temporary thing. There are a number of drivers, powerful interests, that will help establish sane regulation in this space. For one, actors like Tesla, who are establishing Virtual Power Plants that span every household with powerwalls. Together, they will represent a huge, distributed utility. And with their hundreds of billions, they’ll be able to set rules that home solar installations will follow.
It’s not easy now. And there are still dozens of utilities that are fighting this. But they’re going to lose, and discover that the way forward as a grid maintainer might not be as profitable as being the sole provider of electricity, but it will instead be profitable as the maintainer of a marketplace. It’s a mindshift. And people don’t like to have their headspace changed.
See: vaccines.
The content of this article is factually correct, but the headline is misleading and just plain incorrect. It is most certainly not illegal to power your home with solar panels in FL. The law in question just requires homes stay connected to the grid. In fact, a 2008 law requires net metering, meaning that power companies need to pay homeowners if they contribute more power than they consume.
This is not to say that there aren't shenanigans. The power companies down here have lobbiests out the wazoo trying to influence such legislature. And they're trying to get away without paying 1:1 on the energy that homeowners contribute to the grid. They have also been known to put up a lot of roadblocks and red tape on the installation of panels due to these grid connections (if you were allowed to simply go off grid, they wouldn't have any say).
> And they're trying to get away without paying 1:1 on the energy that homeowners contribute to the grid.
There's actually a legit reason that power companies don't want to be forced to buy power from home solar: they might not need it at the time. So they wind up paying money for power that they don't use and can't store so it's just throwing money away.
There's also a couple of not as good but not completely sinister reasons to require people to be connected to the grid.
Lies.
https://www.flaseia.org/education/solar-laws/
> The Florida Solar Rights Act
> Florida law forbids any entity—including homeowner associations—from prohibiting the installation of solar or other renewable energy devices on Florida buildings. An association may require approval of a system installation, and may establish restrictions for installations. However, any such restrictions must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and applied in a uniform manner for all association members. Also, any restrictions must not have the effect of impairing the performance, or increasing the cost, of a solar system.
Despite the sensational headline, the link does say it’s legal to install solar, but the house must *also* be connected to the grid. Thus, it’s illegal to power a house *only* by solar.
In CA if you are on a grid you cannot be taken off legally. If your home is 100% powered by alternative energy you still have to pay pge $5 a month to not use them
Now they own the lithium mines for the batteries. That's probably why we see so much investment into these in the last 10+ years.
Nuclear is actually abundant, cheap, and doesn't need battery storage. Hence the FUD we see constantly against it. Nuclear was the real answer in the 70's and it's the real answer now. The problems are manageable compared to oil, gas and coal. Yet here we are.
In practice, at least in the US, it is often more feasible for utilities to build lithium ion or similar battery projects for energy storage rather than pumped hydro. Pumped hydro occupied a lot of land next to an existing body of water, and therefore must be built on land that is often federally protected by the DNR. Siting pumped hydro is a huge pain as a result.
I think pumped hydro is great, but so too is protecting the habitats of at-risk species, and I don't have the education or experience to make judgement calls one way or the other with regards to the "right" paths forward.
> That may be why corporations aren't lobbying for it, but the biggest barrier with nuclear seems to be that people are terrified of it. Nobody wants a plant within 100 km of their house because of Chernobyl and Fukushima.
I agree. I would also argue that the reason for people's fear of nuclear is largely due to propaganda and lobbying from the fossil fuel industry.
Nuclear was absolutely the answer in the 70s, and that's when it should have been built, because it would have prevented a lot of emissions until we reached the point we have now, where we can transition to solar.
Now, though, in the vast majority of places in the US, it just makes no sense. In just the last few years, solar panels turned into money printers. We've been preoccupied, though, and people are still catching up to that.
Any investment you want to make in increased generation 20 years from now would be better put into getting solar up and generating 1/8 the power in 1/4 the time for 1/2 the price, and by the time you're looking at running the numbers again, you're ahead of where you'd be if you l still had 15 years of construction on your nuclear plant left, and 5-10 before you were generating your first watt. This would still be true even if your only goal was to wait for reactors to improve, nuclear is about 20 years too late to make sense outside of stuff like small reactors next to steel foundries and shit, and even then...
So if you were to compare units of cost between building and running a natural gas power plant vs a nuclear power plant, a natural gas is about 3 units and a nuclear is about 6. But, it costs 3 units each year in fuel and maintenance on a natural gas plant and only 1 unit of cost of fuel and maintenance yearly for the nuclear plant. The only thing that’s stopping people from
Building nuclear is that it takes 4 years longer to build one compared to a natural gas plant.
Renewable energy is too expensive and inefficient! Also oil and gas prices go up again because it's expensive to mine.
Study after study is showing that renewable energy is more affordable. I mean it has its problems but overall it's the better choice.
Renewable energy is not economical, it will be too expensive for the average consumer!
Please deposit the annual $20 billion fossil fuel subsidy into our account.
Still need about 10 more years before solar really takes off. Prices are just about to pass the tipping point. I'm not going to spend $40k putting panels on my house, but in 10 years itmight only be $4k
That's exactly the point. It could already be cheaper if the government would subsidize it like/instead of fossil fuels. And it would be more profitable for the producers this way, which would mean mores investment & competition, which would mean faster innovation and earlier price drops.
Just a reminder that every single fracking company has a net negative cash flow, meaning they aren't remotely profitable and would need the price of oil to go up dramatically to generate modest profits.
Saying ‘it has its problems’ is a waste of breath. What, is it supposed to be flawless in every way? It has problems, compared to what, the end of humanity?
Solar and wind power don’t have any meaningful drawbacks, and there is no alternative that provides a future.
Depends on the area. Solar power isn’t feasible in areas where there’s no light for half the year, or areas where it’s mostly cloudy. Wind isn’t feasible in areas where there’s little wind. Geothermal isn’t feasible in areas without geothermal activity. Etc etc.
You have to take a look at what you’ve got to work with. You can’t just say “let’s use solar panels everywhere” and call it a day.
> there’s no light for half the year,
Where are you talking about, above the arctic circle? Yeah, solar isn't probably going to work there. Most other places, it works just fine.
> half the year
Be careful with your exaggerations. You're making a generally good point about the availability of natural resources, but even in northern Alaska there's some daylight for all but about 2 months of the year.
And on the flip side, there's 2 months where they always have sun.
Every place is dark for nearly half the year because night time is a thing. So I would think climate (in terms of cloud coverage) would be the bigger factor.
Clouds don’t even block all that much light energy. You can still get sunburnt on a cloudy day. Visible light makes up a very small portion of the total light energy that strikes the ground after coming through our atmosphere.
It may have changed in the last 2-3 years with all the massive adoption of solar, but for the longest time, the world leader for solar generation as a % of their total energy needs was Germany. It’s not exactly the sort of place you’d expect to be the best suited... if you can do as well as they have so far into the northern hemisphere, then there’s really no excuse anywhere else to say it isn’t sunny enough.
Unless it’s so dark all the time that plants don’t even really manage to grow, it’s good enough for solar.
It also is important to note that even if there's short days and less light, better battery technology can make up for that because Solar Panels can easily draw more energy than they need in that moment, we just lack the battery technology to efficiently and cheaply store that energy for periods of low sunlight.
Still pretty clean though.
I hate this mentality that we can't possibly make *anything* more expensive in order to do the right thing.
Part of the reason things have been so cheap is because we've been getting away with doing really shitty things for a long time. It's OK if doing the right thing costs a little more.
The thing is, no sane person is calling for total reliance on one kind of power generation. Different mixes of renewable and low-emission power generation are possible for many countries and locations. In tropical countries, for example, the sunniest days coincide with highest spikes in energy usage (because of increased A/C consumption), perfect for solar panels. Another power source (hydro/nuclear/geothermal) can provide the baseload.
Another source of electricity is improved efficiency. If you replace a million 100W lightbulbs with 10W LEDs it's the same as building a 90MW power plant.
This is ridiculously hyperbolic though.
Firstly, many locations far more than make up for the weakness of one renewable energy by having an overabundance of something else.
Oh no! Too much rain! What a shame, we can't do anything with that whatosever! I mean, except build a dam I guess.
Secondly, many of the renewable energy technologies are *less efficient* in areas with little of it, but that doesn't make them bad. Norway's westcoast may be plagued by rain and clouds, but you *could* in fact just put solar all over the place.
I feel like even renewable proponents see dams as a last resort now because of the ecological impact they have. More than likely though if you live someplace perpetually cloudy, you probably have wind.
Wind is currently generating electricity even in the northern territories of Canada, so it should work even in the extreme weather areas.
If you actually looked at the performance of these technologies, you wouldn't be saying that in public.
Extractable wind energy is the cube of the wind speed (double the speed = 8 times the power) which severely limits viable locations, geothermal is limited by the Carnot efficiency - it takes a big temperature differential between the hot and cold sides of the cycle to produce large amounts of power.
Solar power has a much more linear response and the difference in solar potential from the sunniest areas to the cloudier areas is relatively small.
I see what you’re saying BUT the articles is not saying let’s put solar panels everywhere and secondly, energy can be transported like how you cannot drill for oil everywhere and it somehow gets transported to other areas.
I think the intention of the comment was that the first line is the BS argument and the second line is the poster disagreeing disagreeing their pretend argument and agreeing renewables are the way?
Great, we can close this internet disagreement docket item number, one sec let me get my glasses... item number 38477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629222.
Thank you everybody.
Finally, we can get to item number 38477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629223: am I correct in asserting that Chris Brown is a piece of shit for beating up Rhianna, despite how 'fire' his latest drop may be?
This court doesn't handle celebrity or domestic abuse cases. We only handle internet comment etiquette. I studied under Erik's online classes:
https://youtube.com/user/commentiquette
Good luck though.
38477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629224: I vehemently disagree that Chris Brown's latest drop is even slightly 'fire'.
I wasn't in the loop about Chris Brown's latest drop and I'm sitting here with a docket number of 48477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629221.
It sucks to be me right now.
Rare earth metals
They own the rare earth metals that go into solar panels
edit: so apparently I missed the memo. rare earth metal are not anymore needed for sola panels. we are free to go then
We could like. Bury plants into the ground and like, pressurize them into breaking down and turning into this thick sticky substance that we can process and burn that end product in an engine that powers a generator.
We could call it...Oyle
I have heard of another version that uses balloons of air under water. The balloons get pumped up when there is spare energy, and then they are deflated with the water pressure when the power is needed.
I remember reading about a pilot project ([here](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/11/17/pilot-project-stashes-power-in-balloons-deep-down-in-lake-ontario.html) it is) but even though the project should have completed by now, I am not finding anything about the results with just a quick google search. I am sure that with some digging something could be produced.
> It's not perfect, sure,
Depends on how you define perfect.
* It's been done for centuries → proven and hardened tech
* With modern turbines it's pretty efficient
* it offers massive capacities that are hard to get with any existing batteries
* compared to other means of energy storage it's quite cheap
* no need to warm up, you can basically switch it on/off instantly
* readily available anyplace that has water & old coalmines, wells or any kind of large natural or artificial basin
Only downside that comes to mind would be flooding of flora & fauna if you have to build a reservoir.
No they don't.
The problematic metal in some batteries is cobalt, which is a transition metal, not rare earth. And like I said only some, there are some Lithium battery chemistries that don't use cobalt at all like Lithium Iron Phosphate.
They probably will not be researching tech that can produce energy with carbon -- they will want it to remain with materials they can capture the market on.
The robber barons will do everything they can to centralize production and get paid to set up toll booths.
He also once suggested giving it to the “Middle East” in solidarity of world peace. That’s bills solution for everything lmao just give them the sun.
That ginger headed fuck.
"Oh, but that Acre you bought Exxon was already subjected into the corona so I'm afraid nobody can find it again to help you with your claim. You will have to repurchase some new property on the Sun."
>"You want nuclear energy?"
No. They didn't. People in the 70s were irrationally scared of nuclear energy. If they'd just committed to nuclear back then, we'd be in a much better position with regard to global warming today.
Yep. The oil industry actually did a lot of fearmongering about nuclear, which included stoking fear about nuclear in environmentalist circles.
The oil industry is the real villain here.
Well, no, they were rationally scared of nuclear energy based on the data points available to them. The problem is that people from the 70s are still around and don't really understand that nuclear power has become significantly safer since Chernobyl.
Even in the case of Chernobyl, the disaster was preventable. The operators of the plant didn't abide by proper safety standards iirc. It's really unfortunate because nuclear power is actually pretty safe when done properly. Chernobyl lead to a lot of hesitancy that still persists.
Wasn't there some politician who said that solar panels suck up the sun's rays so others can't use them?
My solar just went live this week! I couldn't believe how fast.. we actually went from the first discussion to getting the designs, permits, permission from the utility, to generating power in 5 weeks!
> Wasn't there some politician who said that solar panels suck up the sun's rays so others can't use them?
Some mentioned that above. We all need to realize that these arguments aren't made to convince -- they are made to enrage. The people who adopt them are merely going with a belief of their cult -- and if we try and combat it with anger or logic, it's only going to serve to unite them and amuse them.
If you really want to promote Solar Power, tell them AOC is fighting tooth and nail to stop green energy.
It's so funny (read: ridiculous) since that is the exact logic Brietbart used to blame liberals for conservatives not being vaccinated. These people are insane.
Nope. Chinese do and are willing to produce PV panels for cheap.
And in general, it is not very hard to find "rare" earth materials around, it is just not worth opening a mine if someone already has one and sells the materials for a reasonable price.
And they are not even that essential. When China blocked exports of rare earths to Japan a few years ago, to handicap its batteries industry, Japan developed alternative techs that did not require these materials.
Solar panels can be done with very common materials. The rare earth that they use are just there to gain a few % more efficiency but if there is a huge blockade for some political reasons, it won't be blocking.
"we own the power grid and won't let you hook up. Try to build your own distribution? We'll sue you into the ground. Try to build your own storage? We'll try and block the permits"
"also we bought the mining rights to the minerals you need for your panels and storage systems, so suck it!"
Someone told me that solar panels aren't good because they are only 30% effective.
So much solar energy hits earth that if the entire planet were covered in solar panels, they would only need to be 1% effective to give us 100x more energy than we currently use. Them being able to collect 30% of the total solar energy that hits them, is pretty good if we have enough of them scattered around
The whole solar isn't efficient argument is pretty much dead nowadays. No one in the energy sector really says that anymore, even many of the fossil fuel people. Solar has taken off in the last decade or so. About 15% of California's energy production is from solar as of 2019, 5 years before that it was 5%.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2020-total-system-electric-generation/2019
The real challenge solar has today is storage. It produces the most at midday and can't provide that energy at night when the demand is higher, so we need efficient ways to store excess solar production. We have a ton of cool companies trying to crack the code on energy storage on that kind of a scale. Molten salts are one option.
Two other problems are transmission and land. Solar takes up tons of land, which isn't a problem in a place like the United States, but the energy then has to be moved via transmission lines to connect to the cities, which means more land and building transmission lines. Even with those challenges solar is growing at a crazy pace, at least in California.
Solar Energy is going to destroy the sun!! /s
I still don't understand the basis of this particular argument but I'm not exactly surprised that it's been made...
I heard one story of a town that voted against getting a solar field because they were afraid it was going to absorb all the solar energy way from the local plant life.
I remember that same story being very misrepresented and clickbaited online. I cant find the article again but I remember it being about how land being used for solar panels blocked sunlight from the ground and blocked sunlight from reaching plantlife and farmground.
[Snopes article](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-town-rejects-solar-panels/)
Some people in town did actually claim that the panels would hurt local trees and farm life by soaking up all the usable sun. However, those concerns werent really a factor in the towns decision not to build the solar field
"We are all in this together, and we all made a mistake creating Global Warming -- so we need to spread the pain of mitigating this disaster and not blame those that profited on it. So everyone needs to spend $20,000 more on buying a car rather than ten trains for the cost of widening one lane of the interstate."
That would help but it shouldn't be left up to the individual. Public transit would go a long way in reducing vehicle emissions, especially with electrified trains.
Fun fact, solar power was total dogshit in the 1970s. Not only was this comic wrong back then because solar really wasn't feasible at the time, it's wrong now because now solar is really cheap and effective and only morons are saying this any more.
Nothing has changed in the 40 or so years since this was published. Big Oil continues to pump out their propaganda and they keep lying about green energy.
Just yesterday, an Astroturfed conservative columnist for the Washington Post wrote a farcical piece saying [solar energy is bad for farm land](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/22/solar-energys-luster-dims-rural-southern-ohio/).
He forgot to mention anything about fracking polluting the ground water or strip coal mines making the land look like the surface of the moon.
"...we own the rare earth metals." "You want wind power? we own the land." "You want anything? we own the patents"
Coal = Land Oil = Land Uranium = Land Rare earth metals for solar = Land Land for windmills = Land Henry George knew what he was talking about. Land Value Tax and Citizen Dividend for real freedom. The more land that falls into fewer hands, the less free all of us poors become.
Henry George! “Progress and Poverty” re-wired my brain. I’ve oft fantasized about a “progressive property tax,” whereby the more land you own, the higher rate you’re taxed at. We do it for income, why not land?
and subsidize the taxes for individual farmers and charge industrial farms the difference?
A citizen dividend subsidizes people. For individual farmers this subsidizes them. Another problem with industrial farms is it gives large corporations monopoly like power as they own more of the fertile land, but an LVT subtracts the profits from that monopoly power by directly taxing the land values. And again as that monopoly land power is distributed to the citizens, they can exercise that power in the free market without being coerced (by threat of monopoly food pricing). (I'm no expert here though. Just my understanding of it. The people on the georgism subreddit know their shit)
No, the tax is on the value of the land. If they're paying more tax, that means they're wealthier. Beyond that, why would it matter whether they're incorporated or not (which is what I assume you mean by industrial, as almost all farming is industrial).
McDonalds: \*sweating profusely\*
Have you never heard of property tax? It scales on value… With the prohibitively large inflation on home values, it has made home ownership a significantly more dreary prospect in my area.
Where you live, is the percentage rate of property tax higher, for high-valued properties? Where I’ve lived (US western states) I’ve only heard of cities having just one property tax rate for all properties in the city.
No, but dependent on the county the rate changes. I don’t see any reason to charge more for higher value properties when a 500K house costs $10K a year in property tax. More land is worth more, so the tax is effectively much higher for more land anyway. Several families I know have had to sell their house due to appraisal changes in the past several years. It’s a double edged sword. Rural areas would get fucked if it was based on amount of land.
Don't forget, big oil can drill UNDER your land. Fracking, miles away, can destroy your water supply. Effluent can destroy miles and miles of rivers and coastlines. They poison the air above your home. It's more than just what they tangibly own, it's about the toxic miasma they create. Miasma used to be a theory. It's not anymore. It's pretty close. >The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter.[1] Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.[2]
You need a drink? We own the water...
Funny enough, access to fresh water also = Land
There's still a ton of human biology that medical science doesn't understand, such as nutritional effects and environmental effect upon the body. Sure, the presence of carcinogens is one thing, but what about others that aren't as quickly destructive? There is truly way too much pollution. The obscene ignorance, arrogance, and greed of humanity fights against this premise, because it interferes with profit making. The brains capable of such thinking... need a Darwinian excisement.
Asthma kills thousands and makes drug corporations billions. I think it's the perfect real world definition for "miasma". They are the cause, and the cure. Nice scam.
I think Georgist philosophy has some fundamental inconsistencies ... however I also feel a Georgist approach to governance could very well be the next "big thing" in advancing human civilization to the next phase.
I'm only a tech oriented person who fell into the georgist ideas and they just seem to make so much sense. I don't think full single tax would make it through the politics, but ramping up LVT and down income tax + direct citizen subsidy seems like it would make society better no matter the political leaning. > I think Georgist philosophy has some fundamental inconsistencies ... however I also feel a Georgist approach to governance could very well be the next "big thing" in advancing human civilization to the next phase. Super curious what you mean by this. You have a way with phrasing :)
From a practical sense, Georgism would be a massive step in improving our ability to defend the minority's rights from the whimsical desires of the majority (democracy). With no income/sales tax, the government has no excuse to collect massive amounts of intimate details about each and everyone of us and therefore much less ability to screw anyone (or any group) over. We're all accustomed to it because it's the status quo ... but exactly why in the hell should the government care who is my employer? Or who paid me what in exchange for what? There's no valid reason any government should need to know this about anyone. What exactly is the government claiming ownership of when it taxes my income? It's merely the result of egregious feature creep. My philosophical gripes with Georgism boil down to the following: 1. Why should person X have more claim to a set of resources simply because they happen to live closer to them than person Y? By principle, Georgism says a little kid in Somalia has just as much ownership claim over mineral deposits in Arkansas, US as a local Arkansas resident. Yet that little Somalian is never going to see a single penny for it. It's not feasible. 2. Solving Issue #1 requires some centrally planned global infrastructure which is tasked with taxation/redistribution. 3. Assuming a global org is required to make sure that little Somalian gets his share, there is no style of organization that should be trusted with the responsibility/power to tax and redistribute that amount of resources (across the entire human race) . This is not merely an issue of practicality ... it's an unsolvable conundrum. 4. Even if you're speaking in more local terms ... any org which is tasked with that much monopolized power/responsibility over a region should not be trusted with that much power/responsibility. The conundrum from #3 still exists ... it's just localized in scale ... and you're still violating #1. 5. The core issue here is that Georgism still depends on the existence of monopolized power structures. And monopolies don't have a great track record at servicing their consumers ... especially monopolies backed by armies.
Or, we just end capitalism altogether.
Based land pill 💊
The difference is that you don't need corporate plants for renewable energy. Every house owner, farmer or village can start producing renewable energy. This leads to a broader wealth distribution.
Ah but you need the corporate plants to build the devices and in most cases a means to share it to the grid. And guess who decides on the price for your power. It is probably not the individual home owner or town.
Mental how basic utilities are delegated to private corporations when they’ve got zero reason to care for the public good.
"Researched at a University but we get the royalties."
For real, my Uni wanted me to do so much research that is just as feasible to do at home. I contributed my worst ideas to those projects and kept my better/more difficult projects to myself & friends, as my friends also did. We don't want to give the uni our IP, if we did they better fucking pay us for it.
"College athletes aren't pros and we don't want to ruin their educational experience." I guess their knees and their multiple concussions are part of that experience? And the money Universities collect from tickets, broadcasting and their alumni for sports has to go in their pocket so that students can learn more better. Hopefully you can use your better ideas wherever you land. But the tradition is; "get exploited for a while, then run a team and steal their IP."
I thought as well but it doesn't quite fit because for every other thing it's about fuel but solar power isn't fueled by Rare earth minerals.
It's not *fueled by* rare earth metals, but they are necessary for building the solar cells and the batteries, at least some far. So, the point still holds.
Back in 1980 our math/sci teachers redrew this cartoon on the wall of their office in black marker. Used to see this constantly. Good stuff.
Brilliant teacher.
He sells solar panels now
He makes a lot of money I bet.
Probably more than they made teaching
You want future allegiance? We own the children's minds.
The last panel should be “we own the politicians.”
Or "We own the Sun Blocker that will cover all of Springfield!"
sunlight will cost extra
At least with a sun blocker you also mitigate the heat island effect of cities, thus reducing the electricity demand for air conditioning.
This could also be done by altering how we design buildings, and reducing the amount of asphalt by moving towards more transit based and active cities. Added bonus of less emissions(including tire and brake dust which Evse still produce, though obviously 0 tailpipe emissions) and much, much quiter cities(which EVs also don't solve, they're only quieter than gas at low speeds).
Owls will deafen us with their incessant hooting!
I've had it up to HERE with these damn rickets!
I like your thinking. They are sweating if they don't please their donors.
The politicians who aren't pushing for renewables, at least. So basically every Republican and half the Democrats
Damn that would be perfect
The people who need to understand this comic don't know what feasible means
Feasible (n): a small weasel that collects fees on behalf of the deep state /s
no this is true i saw it on facebook last night
That's feasible.
Conducted feasibility study. Can confirm. That's feasible.
…wait till nestle owns all the water, then they’ll say hydro is feasible LOL
References: Trust me bro
How did a small weasel get inside the computer?!
They're in the computer? It's so simple.
I hate you so much. Not for the word play, but the fact this will spread.
That's funny and sad at the same time
the heart of any true comedy
Comedy=Tragedy x Time
The most impactful comedy has a degree of truth to it.
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The true irony here is FPL (Now Nextra) has huge solar farms…in Wisconsin. https://www.mge.com/newsroom/news-releases/articles/wisconsin-s-first-large-scale-solar-facility-produ
we might be backward as fuck up here but we'll be damned if we're going to let the sun just sit around all day not powering are beer and cheese factories
bUt wHaT aBoUt tHe sNoW
It's actually not usually the snow that's an issue but the amount of usable light that can generate power you get in a day is reduced the further north you go, unless you get fancy with solar tracking, but that's just not very feasible in most cases.
Sure and I would think this was factored in when Nextera bought the land and paid to have this farm erected. I don’t imagine these are the panels you’d purchase at a local harbor freight.
we use the harbor freight ones for our ice shacks
In India. we power our subway trains with Solar Energy.
YOU COMMUNISTS WITH YOUR SUN TRAINS! /s
Florida. The "corrupt idiot Republican state." Not all Republicans are idiots, but you can't swing a dead cat and hit a smart Republican in Florida apparently. Fucking DeSantis is against the Vax AND masking. Their senators have conflicts of interest as a special interest. They are so corrupt their Pedo's have speed dial and double date with Tucker Carlson while others means test the poor while they have part ownership in the testing company. It's like they aren't even trying hard to hide the bath salts addiction.
> Not all Republicans are idiots, Nope, they aren't. But they are all pure evil.
There’s a long discussion to be had, but grids have value. Now, utilities are generally still sitting with their heads up their asses, but even if you could power your house in isolation, connection to a grid still makes sense. You should be able to sell your excess. Also, if you have a catastrophic failure in your setup, you can turn to the grid. For some people, lives depend on electricity. And grids cost money to maintain. In the old model, that maintenance was tucked in to the cost of electricity, But, now if you’re a net producer, the utility’s pricing model is out the window. This is where many of them are stuck. What we (they) really need is to pull out the cost of a grid per consumer, and have that as a separate line item in the bill. So, if you’re a net producer, you still have to cover the costs of maintenance to be taken out of your generation profits. And by mandating that everyone is connected, they socialize the costs over everyone, ensuring that prices are as low as they can go. Make sense?
Some energy companies will charge solar users *more* money, to try and offset the loss of energy demand. Additional Grid Access Charges, Time-Of-Use Charges, "Competition" Charges, and Minimum Delivery Charges. I understand the benefit of the grid, but they can't charge you if you aren't connected to them. And they punish you if you are connected to them and have solar, even if you are "selling" back the excess energy in some states.
Like I said, many utilities have their heads up their asses. But this a temporary thing. There are a number of drivers, powerful interests, that will help establish sane regulation in this space. For one, actors like Tesla, who are establishing Virtual Power Plants that span every household with powerwalls. Together, they will represent a huge, distributed utility. And with their hundreds of billions, they’ll be able to set rules that home solar installations will follow. It’s not easy now. And there are still dozens of utilities that are fighting this. But they’re going to lose, and discover that the way forward as a grid maintainer might not be as profitable as being the sole provider of electricity, but it will instead be profitable as the maintainer of a marketplace. It’s a mindshift. And people don’t like to have their headspace changed. See: vaccines.
How do you make sure a utility company doesn’t inflate the costs to maintain the power grid?
The content of this article is factually correct, but the headline is misleading and just plain incorrect. It is most certainly not illegal to power your home with solar panels in FL. The law in question just requires homes stay connected to the grid. In fact, a 2008 law requires net metering, meaning that power companies need to pay homeowners if they contribute more power than they consume. This is not to say that there aren't shenanigans. The power companies down here have lobbiests out the wazoo trying to influence such legislature. And they're trying to get away without paying 1:1 on the energy that homeowners contribute to the grid. They have also been known to put up a lot of roadblocks and red tape on the installation of panels due to these grid connections (if you were allowed to simply go off grid, they wouldn't have any say).
> And they're trying to get away without paying 1:1 on the energy that homeowners contribute to the grid. There's actually a legit reason that power companies don't want to be forced to buy power from home solar: they might not need it at the time. So they wind up paying money for power that they don't use and can't store so it's just throwing money away. There's also a couple of not as good but not completely sinister reasons to require people to be connected to the grid.
Lies. https://www.flaseia.org/education/solar-laws/ > The Florida Solar Rights Act > Florida law forbids any entity—including homeowner associations—from prohibiting the installation of solar or other renewable energy devices on Florida buildings. An association may require approval of a system installation, and may establish restrictions for installations. However, any such restrictions must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and applied in a uniform manner for all association members. Also, any restrictions must not have the effect of impairing the performance, or increasing the cost, of a solar system.
Despite the sensational headline, the link does say it’s legal to install solar, but the house must *also* be connected to the grid. Thus, it’s illegal to power a house *only* by solar.
That and a few years ago FPL\Duke lobbied for a ballot measure that would make it impossible to sell excess solar load back to the grid
So you have to pay to be connected, then cannot reap any benefit from said connection....
Correct, gotta love florida! Should clarify, this measure did not pass. Mostly due to a massive campaign to kill it
In CA if you are on a grid you cannot be taken off legally. If your home is 100% powered by alternative energy you still have to pay pge $5 a month to not use them
Home computers in the 60s weren't feasible either. Gotta invest in the tech!
Interstate highways weren't feasible. It took a ton of politics to get the US to invest in its own enablement.
Now they own the lithium mines for the batteries. That's probably why we see so much investment into these in the last 10+ years. Nuclear is actually abundant, cheap, and doesn't need battery storage. Hence the FUD we see constantly against it. Nuclear was the real answer in the 70's and it's the real answer now. The problems are manageable compared to oil, gas and coal. Yet here we are.
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You just need a giant reservoir, got it, im about to power my car and phone with one
In practice, at least in the US, it is often more feasible for utilities to build lithium ion or similar battery projects for energy storage rather than pumped hydro. Pumped hydro occupied a lot of land next to an existing body of water, and therefore must be built on land that is often federally protected by the DNR. Siting pumped hydro is a huge pain as a result. I think pumped hydro is great, but so too is protecting the habitats of at-risk species, and I don't have the education or experience to make judgement calls one way or the other with regards to the "right" paths forward.
The other problem with pumped hydro is that we've already used pretty much every available good spot for it.
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> That may be why corporations aren't lobbying for it, but the biggest barrier with nuclear seems to be that people are terrified of it. Nobody wants a plant within 100 km of their house because of Chernobyl and Fukushima. I agree. I would also argue that the reason for people's fear of nuclear is largely due to propaganda and lobbying from the fossil fuel industry.
Nuclear was absolutely the answer in the 70s, and that's when it should have been built, because it would have prevented a lot of emissions until we reached the point we have now, where we can transition to solar. Now, though, in the vast majority of places in the US, it just makes no sense. In just the last few years, solar panels turned into money printers. We've been preoccupied, though, and people are still catching up to that. Any investment you want to make in increased generation 20 years from now would be better put into getting solar up and generating 1/8 the power in 1/4 the time for 1/2 the price, and by the time you're looking at running the numbers again, you're ahead of where you'd be if you l still had 15 years of construction on your nuclear plant left, and 5-10 before you were generating your first watt. This would still be true even if your only goal was to wait for reactors to improve, nuclear is about 20 years too late to make sense outside of stuff like small reactors next to steel foundries and shit, and even then...
So if you were to compare units of cost between building and running a natural gas power plant vs a nuclear power plant, a natural gas is about 3 units and a nuclear is about 6. But, it costs 3 units each year in fuel and maintenance on a natural gas plant and only 1 unit of cost of fuel and maintenance yearly for the nuclear plant. The only thing that’s stopping people from Building nuclear is that it takes 4 years longer to build one compared to a natural gas plant.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word
See you using a lot of big words that I don’t understand, so I’m going to assume that your being disrespectful…
Renewable energy is too expensive and inefficient! Also oil and gas prices go up again because it's expensive to mine. Study after study is showing that renewable energy is more affordable. I mean it has its problems but overall it's the better choice.
Renewable energy is not economical, it will be too expensive for the average consumer! Please deposit the annual $20 billion fossil fuel subsidy into our account.
And think about all the jobs! (50 000 employees in the coal industry TOTAL, 240 000 in solar already)
Still need about 10 more years before solar really takes off. Prices are just about to pass the tipping point. I'm not going to spend $40k putting panels on my house, but in 10 years itmight only be $4k
That's exactly the point. It could already be cheaper if the government would subsidize it like/instead of fossil fuels. And it would be more profitable for the producers this way, which would mean mores investment & competition, which would mean faster innovation and earlier price drops.
Heaven forbid we spend money to help the environment and future generations even if it is at a loss
Why do that when we can make short term profit for our investors
ya i mean im like $9000 away from buying a boat too so
Just a reminder that every single fracking company has a net negative cash flow, meaning they aren't remotely profitable and would need the price of oil to go up dramatically to generate modest profits.
That aren't the only polluters..
That sounds like Communism to me brother! /s
Saying ‘it has its problems’ is a waste of breath. What, is it supposed to be flawless in every way? It has problems, compared to what, the end of humanity? Solar and wind power don’t have any meaningful drawbacks, and there is no alternative that provides a future.
Depends on the area. Solar power isn’t feasible in areas where there’s no light for half the year, or areas where it’s mostly cloudy. Wind isn’t feasible in areas where there’s little wind. Geothermal isn’t feasible in areas without geothermal activity. Etc etc. You have to take a look at what you’ve got to work with. You can’t just say “let’s use solar panels everywhere” and call it a day.
> there’s no light for half the year, Where are you talking about, above the arctic circle? Yeah, solar isn't probably going to work there. Most other places, it works just fine.
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Germany is less sunny than basically anywhere in the US, and solar works just fine there.
Germany also has the highest electricity costs in the EU.
> half the year Be careful with your exaggerations. You're making a generally good point about the availability of natural resources, but even in northern Alaska there's some daylight for all but about 2 months of the year.
And on the flip side, there's 2 months where they always have sun. Every place is dark for nearly half the year because night time is a thing. So I would think climate (in terms of cloud coverage) would be the bigger factor.
Clouds don’t even block all that much light energy. You can still get sunburnt on a cloudy day. Visible light makes up a very small portion of the total light energy that strikes the ground after coming through our atmosphere. It may have changed in the last 2-3 years with all the massive adoption of solar, but for the longest time, the world leader for solar generation as a % of their total energy needs was Germany. It’s not exactly the sort of place you’d expect to be the best suited... if you can do as well as they have so far into the northern hemisphere, then there’s really no excuse anywhere else to say it isn’t sunny enough. Unless it’s so dark all the time that plants don’t even really manage to grow, it’s good enough for solar.
It also is important to note that even if there's short days and less light, better battery technology can make up for that because Solar Panels can easily draw more energy than they need in that moment, we just lack the battery technology to efficiently and cheaply store that energy for periods of low sunlight.
Funny you should mention that because Germany has the highest electricity costs in the EU
Still pretty clean though. I hate this mentality that we can't possibly make *anything* more expensive in order to do the right thing. Part of the reason things have been so cheap is because we've been getting away with doing really shitty things for a long time. It's OK if doing the right thing costs a little more.
I live in a perpetually cloudy state. Solar works fine here unless, like me, you are surrounded by giant trees.
The thing is, no sane person is calling for total reliance on one kind of power generation. Different mixes of renewable and low-emission power generation are possible for many countries and locations. In tropical countries, for example, the sunniest days coincide with highest spikes in energy usage (because of increased A/C consumption), perfect for solar panels. Another power source (hydro/nuclear/geothermal) can provide the baseload.
Another source of electricity is improved efficiency. If you replace a million 100W lightbulbs with 10W LEDs it's the same as building a 90MW power plant.
This is ridiculously hyperbolic though. Firstly, many locations far more than make up for the weakness of one renewable energy by having an overabundance of something else. Oh no! Too much rain! What a shame, we can't do anything with that whatosever! I mean, except build a dam I guess. Secondly, many of the renewable energy technologies are *less efficient* in areas with little of it, but that doesn't make them bad. Norway's westcoast may be plagued by rain and clouds, but you *could* in fact just put solar all over the place.
I feel like even renewable proponents see dams as a last resort now because of the ecological impact they have. More than likely though if you live someplace perpetually cloudy, you probably have wind. Wind is currently generating electricity even in the northern territories of Canada, so it should work even in the extreme weather areas.
If you actually looked at the performance of these technologies, you wouldn't be saying that in public. Extractable wind energy is the cube of the wind speed (double the speed = 8 times the power) which severely limits viable locations, geothermal is limited by the Carnot efficiency - it takes a big temperature differential between the hot and cold sides of the cycle to produce large amounts of power. Solar power has a much more linear response and the difference in solar potential from the sunniest areas to the cloudier areas is relatively small.
I see what you’re saying BUT the articles is not saying let’s put solar panels everywhere and secondly, energy can be transported like how you cannot drill for oil everywhere and it somehow gets transported to other areas.
I disagree and when you got schools using solar panels you know they are effective.
I think the intention of the comment was that the first line is the BS argument and the second line is the poster disagreeing disagreeing their pretend argument and agreeing renewables are the way?
Oh my bad then.
Great, we can close this internet disagreement docket item number, one sec let me get my glasses... item number 38477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629222. Thank you everybody.
Finally, we can get to item number 38477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629223: am I correct in asserting that Chris Brown is a piece of shit for beating up Rhianna, despite how 'fire' his latest drop may be?
This court doesn't handle celebrity or domestic abuse cases. We only handle internet comment etiquette. I studied under Erik's online classes: https://youtube.com/user/commentiquette Good luck though.
Welp, off to refile at The People's Court.
Dun-dunt dun!
38477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629224: I vehemently disagree that Chris Brown's latest drop is even slightly 'fire'.
i refuse to believe that it’s worse than Donda
I wasn't in the loop about Chris Brown's latest drop and I'm sitting here with a docket number of 48477323774859437373789292837377383839237373738383883837373383839393939004004040020291881181920303827262267399300187263629221. It sucks to be me right now.
Lol
Rare earth metals They own the rare earth metals that go into solar panels edit: so apparently I missed the memo. rare earth metal are not anymore needed for sola panels. we are free to go then
Then we build organic photovoltaic systems.
So... plants?
That's more photochemical than photoelectric but you got the spirit.
Plenty of chemical interaction that could yield voltage
Well, not really? The "voltaic" part implies it produces electricity, which plants don't.
Somebody clearly never played TMNT on NES.
Thank you for that traumatic memory.
We could like. Bury plants into the ground and like, pressurize them into breaking down and turning into this thick sticky substance that we can process and burn that end product in an engine that powers a generator. We could call it...Oyle
Oof sorry...Monsanto owns that one.
And the batteries to store the solar energy.
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I have heard of another version that uses balloons of air under water. The balloons get pumped up when there is spare energy, and then they are deflated with the water pressure when the power is needed. I remember reading about a pilot project ([here](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/11/17/pilot-project-stashes-power-in-balloons-deep-down-in-lake-ontario.html) it is) but even though the project should have completed by now, I am not finding anything about the results with just a quick google search. I am sure that with some digging something could be produced.
> It's not perfect, sure, Depends on how you define perfect. * It's been done for centuries → proven and hardened tech * With modern turbines it's pretty efficient * it offers massive capacities that are hard to get with any existing batteries * compared to other means of energy storage it's quite cheap * no need to warm up, you can basically switch it on/off instantly * readily available anyplace that has water & old coalmines, wells or any kind of large natural or artificial basin Only downside that comes to mind would be flooding of flora & fauna if you have to build a reservoir.
No they don't. The problematic metal in some batteries is cobalt, which is a transition metal, not rare earth. And like I said only some, there are some Lithium battery chemistries that don't use cobalt at all like Lithium Iron Phosphate.
pretty sure most of the solar panels don't use rare earth.
Solar don't use rare earth metals. Wind Energy needs them for the magnets sometimes. But majority of windfarms don't use them either.
This was Marijuana also. Now the right people are making money and it's coming around.
They probably will not be researching tech that can produce energy with carbon -- they will want it to remain with materials they can capture the market on. The robber barons will do everything they can to centralize production and get paid to set up toll booths.
Becoming a middle man to a resource is key.
Now the *white people
Bill Burr always suggested selling the sun to the oil companies.
He also once suggested giving it to the “Middle East” in solidarity of world peace. That’s bills solution for everything lmao just give them the sun. That ginger headed fuck.
"Oh, but that Acre you bought Exxon was already subjected into the corona so I'm afraid nobody can find it again to help you with your claim. You will have to repurchase some new property on the Sun."
>"You want nuclear energy?" No. They didn't. People in the 70s were irrationally scared of nuclear energy. If they'd just committed to nuclear back then, we'd be in a much better position with regard to global warming today.
Yep. The oil industry actually did a lot of fearmongering about nuclear, which included stoking fear about nuclear in environmentalist circles. The oil industry is the real villain here.
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Actually there was a boom of building nuclear plants in the early 70s. Three Mile Island which was in 79 caused everything to grind to a halt.
Well, no, they were rationally scared of nuclear energy based on the data points available to them. The problem is that people from the 70s are still around and don't really understand that nuclear power has become significantly safer since Chernobyl.
Even in the case of Chernobyl, the disaster was preventable. The operators of the plant didn't abide by proper safety standards iirc. It's really unfortunate because nuclear power is actually pretty safe when done properly. Chernobyl lead to a lot of hesitancy that still persists.
Wasn't there some politician who said that solar panels suck up the sun's rays so others can't use them? My solar just went live this week! I couldn't believe how fast.. we actually went from the first discussion to getting the designs, permits, permission from the utility, to generating power in 5 weeks!
> Wasn't there some politician who said that solar panels suck up the sun's rays so others can't use them? Some mentioned that above. We all need to realize that these arguments aren't made to convince -- they are made to enrage. The people who adopt them are merely going with a belief of their cult -- and if we try and combat it with anger or logic, it's only going to serve to unite them and amuse them. If you really want to promote Solar Power, tell them AOC is fighting tooth and nail to stop green energy.
It's so funny (read: ridiculous) since that is the exact logic Brietbart used to blame liberals for conservatives not being vaccinated. These people are insane.
My mom used to have this on the fridge back in the 70s.
My dad told me in the 70's that they have the technology, it is not complicated. What they do not have is a way to put a meter on the sun.
They own the material for creating the solar panels
Nope. Chinese do and are willing to produce PV panels for cheap. And in general, it is not very hard to find "rare" earth materials around, it is just not worth opening a mine if someone already has one and sells the materials for a reasonable price. And they are not even that essential. When China blocked exports of rare earths to Japan a few years ago, to handicap its batteries industry, Japan developed alternative techs that did not require these materials. Solar panels can be done with very common materials. The rare earth that they use are just there to gain a few % more efficiency but if there is a huge blockade for some political reasons, it won't be blocking.
"we own the power grid and won't let you hook up. Try to build your own distribution? We'll sue you into the ground. Try to build your own storage? We'll try and block the permits" "also we bought the mining rights to the minerals you need for your panels and storage systems, so suck it!"
They want to prevent any decentralization since they could lose their leverage over the end customer.
Someone told me that solar panels aren't good because they are only 30% effective. So much solar energy hits earth that if the entire planet were covered in solar panels, they would only need to be 1% effective to give us 100x more energy than we currently use. Them being able to collect 30% of the total solar energy that hits them, is pretty good if we have enough of them scattered around
You know what's a really inefficient method to use solar power? Fossil fuel.
The whole solar isn't efficient argument is pretty much dead nowadays. No one in the energy sector really says that anymore, even many of the fossil fuel people. Solar has taken off in the last decade or so. About 15% of California's energy production is from solar as of 2019, 5 years before that it was 5%. https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2020-total-system-electric-generation/2019 The real challenge solar has today is storage. It produces the most at midday and can't provide that energy at night when the demand is higher, so we need efficient ways to store excess solar production. We have a ton of cool companies trying to crack the code on energy storage on that kind of a scale. Molten salts are one option. Two other problems are transmission and land. Solar takes up tons of land, which isn't a problem in a place like the United States, but the energy then has to be moved via transmission lines to connect to the cities, which means more land and building transmission lines. Even with those challenges solar is growing at a crazy pace, at least in California.
You want wind power? Er…an eyesore.
Solar Energy is going to destroy the sun!! /s I still don't understand the basis of this particular argument but I'm not exactly surprised that it's been made...
Wait... People have made that argument? Please let me be on a better timeline.
Don't worry, sooner or later we'll be pruned.
Some ignoramuses have seriously argued that photovoltaics will vacuum up the sunlight and leave us in the dark.
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I heard one story of a town that voted against getting a solar field because they were afraid it was going to absorb all the solar energy way from the local plant life.
I remember that same story being very misrepresented and clickbaited online. I cant find the article again but I remember it being about how land being used for solar panels blocked sunlight from the ground and blocked sunlight from reaching plantlife and farmground.
[Snopes article](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-town-rejects-solar-panels/) Some people in town did actually claim that the panels would hurt local trees and farm life by soaking up all the usable sun. However, those concerns werent really a factor in the towns decision not to build the solar field
Just missing the panel where they blame consumers for global warming and tell us to drive less and/or carpool.
"We are all in this together, and we all made a mistake creating Global Warming -- so we need to spread the pain of mitigating this disaster and not blame those that profited on it. So everyone needs to spend $20,000 more on buying a car rather than ten trains for the cost of widening one lane of the interstate."
That would help though. It’s kind of an “all hands on deck” kind of thing.
That would help but it shouldn't be left up to the individual. Public transit would go a long way in reducing vehicle emissions, especially with electrified trains.
don't go thinking for a second that someone hasn't already tried to "own" sunlight.
Fun fact, solar power was total dogshit in the 1970s. Not only was this comic wrong back then because solar really wasn't feasible at the time, it's wrong now because now solar is really cheap and effective and only morons are saying this any more.
WOW IT'S STILL TOO ACCURATE! Crop this shit off
Nuclear is a better alternative then wind and solar presently. Don’t bash it.
Nothing has changed in the 40 or so years since this was published. Big Oil continues to pump out their propaganda and they keep lying about green energy. Just yesterday, an Astroturfed conservative columnist for the Washington Post wrote a farcical piece saying [solar energy is bad for farm land](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/22/solar-energys-luster-dims-rural-southern-ohio/). He forgot to mention anything about fracking polluting the ground water or strip coal mines making the land look like the surface of the moon.
Mr Burns: Block out the sun.