Reducing Births

Mina said:
Popularity is entirely relevant to my point. I'm trying to figure out a practical way forward to an environmentally sustainable energy future. Options that are unpopular (e.g., we should give up on the idea of single-family homes and just move everyone into big, energy-efficient apartment buildings) may work just fine on paper, in terms of the economics and the science, but if they're political non-starters, then it's all just theoretical chatter. Solar is popular and growing more so, and that makes an environmentally sustainable future with it more realistically achievable than trying to reverse massive momentum against nuclear to revive and then grow that dying industry.
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Solar isn't popular. It's being forced on people through government mandates and subsidies. Try selling your house if you have leased solar panels on it. You'll be hating solar in a second.



Yes -- and those sources can include things like pumped storage.
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And when people are paying triple what they are now for electricity, it won't be very popular either. Look at California. What will people in colder areas heat their homes with? They can't afford solar to do it.
You know what the same people wanting solar so badly have come up with in Europe to heat their homes? Wood pellet stoves. There's an environmental disaster and a half. Making the pellets is so environmentally bad and onerous, that the European counties have turned to places like the US to do the manufacturing.

Yes, and solar is so cheap now that it remains economically viable even after considering that duplication.
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Name a country where the cost of electricity went down as the amount of solar production went up. The most expensive electricity worldwide is in the nations leading in solar usage. The same is true in the US. California leads in solar usage and has some of the highest priced electricity in the US now.

I advocate for both. But when it comes to solar, I'm urging along a phenomenon that already has accelerating momentum behind it, which makes me hopeful it really will be a big part of the medium-term solution. With nuclear, it's more like trying to slow a rapid move in the opposite direction. Trying to create momentum for new nuclear generation is like trying to push a vehicle up and icy hill into a headwind with the parking brake on. Even if I can manage to get that brake to disengage, it's still a lot of effort that may see no return.
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I advocate for what works and that is not solar. It is the single worst way to generate electricity there is. Enthusiasm for nuclear goes way up when people see what solar really costs. Like so much else the Left does, they push what they want not what works. When it fails, as it almost always does, the Left walks away from the wreckage as if it never happened.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Solar isn't popular. It's being forced on people through government mandates and subsidies.
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It's popular enough among those needed to get those mandates and subsidies in place, and those who vote for them, that it's actually happening. Nuclear, by comparison, is unpopular with the voters and the politicians, and has been going nowhere for decades. If you have a plan to change that, I'm all ears, but I haven't seen anything to suggest a viable path.

Name a country where the cost of electricity went down as the amount of solar production went up
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The promise isn't that electricity won't go up. It's that it will go up moderately, while emissions will come down, which will be a net gain for society.

It is the single worst way to generate electricity there is
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Not even close. Check out tar sands or coal. The issue there is that they disperse their negative effects broadly, while internalizing their savings, which convinces people who want to ignore those negative effects that they're fine. But they're a climate disaster and also a health disaster.
 
Mina said:
It's popular enough among those needed to get those mandates and subsidies in place, and those who vote for them, that it's actually happening. Nuclear, by comparison, is unpopular with the voters and the politicians, and has been going nowhere for decades. If you have a plan to change that, I'm all ears, but I haven't seen anything to suggest a viable path.



The promise isn't that electricity won't go up. It's that it will go up moderately, while emissions will come down, which will be a net gain for society.



Not even close. Check out tar sands or coal. The issue there is that they disperse their negative effects broadly, while internalizing their savings, which convinces people who want to ignore those negative effects that they're fine. But they're a climate disaster and also a health disaster.
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No, electricity prices will between triple and quadruple using solar and wind. That's been the case everywhere it has been pushed. Electricity becomes unaffordable.

Tar sands produces oil and coal is cheap to for electrical production. Solar and wind are environmental disasters too. Look at the Ivanpah "bird cooker." Or, the decimation of bat and bird populations by wind turbines. Or the destruction of environment both cause as they gobble up huge tracts of land to be put on. Rooftop solar creates more urban heat island effects and ozone. Here in Arizona, Solara the largest solar array in the state is also the state record holder for the largest environmental fine ever levied by the state against a company.

The problem right now is that the environmental retards are calling the shots. Every time--EVERY TIME-- I meet that sort at political get togethers, rallies, townhalls, etc., I get the same thing from them. The minute I start pulling out the math, data, facts, and then point out that nuclear and natural gas are the solution, they roll their eyes and act like I'm from another planet. There's no articulate rebuttal, no counter facts, nada, nothing. It's just insults and ad hominem from them.

They have nothing to support their arguments for solar and wind except desires and emotion. They can't even discuss nuclear power intelligently. Beyond "It's bad" they know nothing. This is who is setting our energy policies today.
 
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T. A. Gardner said:
No, electricity prices will between triple and quadruple using solar and wind. That's been the case everywhere it has been pushed
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Could you give an example of a place where electricity costs quadruple what it did before solar and wind?

Tar sands produces oil and coal is cheap to for electrical production
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Tar sands produce horrific air pollution and climate change. We're not talking, there, about a focused, geographically narrow impact, as with wind turbines taking out birds and bats. It's a global impact that causes devastation everywhere.

The problem right now is that the environmental retards are calling the shots.
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No. The problem right now is that too many climate-change deniers are involved in calling the shots, which means we're trying to save the coal industry, ramping up tar sands, and doubling down on the strategy of long-term natural gas use. Yes, nuclear could be part of the solution if a certain kind of environmentalist were less effective (mostly graying Three-Mile-Island era activists). But I think the reason they're so effective isn't any particular PR brilliance on their part -- and certainly not because they had massive money behind them. Rather it's because their message harmonizes with the public's perceptions. The public is quick to regard nuclear power as horribly dangerous, facts notwithstanding. I don't know how to change that, but until it changes, I'm wary of putting our climate eggs in a basket that relies on a new mindset forming among the public.
 
Mina said:
It can be frustrating that childless people and people with only one kid wind up subsidizing families with more kids (by way of child tax credits, benefits that are more available for people with more kids, and higher payments for things like public schooling, etc.) Yet, at the same time, we don't want to punish innocent kids by letting them sit in functional poverty just because their parents decided to have a "quiverfull" without an income to afford that without help.

So, here's an idea for a solution: give parents an option of whether or not to claim any benefits for kids beyond the first two (e.g., whether to claim them for child tax credit/welfare purposes, whether to send them to public school, etc.) If the parents opt-in, then they get those things the same as today.... but, in exchange, the parents have their Medicare/SS full eligibility age postponed by 5 years for each such kid.

So, if you want to claim four kids for tax purposes, and send four kids to public school, and so on, that's fine and is your choice. However, you'll effectively pay back the rest of society for your disproportionate take by way of postponing retirement. You'll work until 77 before the government gives you full SS benefits, where most get then them at 67. Want 6 kids? Fine, we'll help out with that, too -- but expect to work until you're 87 (or dead). It sort of takes the form of a loan, where the extra benefits your kids suck up when they're young wind up being partly reimbursed by you in your elder years.

That would discourage people from burdening the environment by overbreeding, but would ultimately leave that decision to the individual. It would avoid punishing the kids. And it would help to prop up SS and Medicare funding.
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dammit, mina, focus your intellect on growing the organic economy instead of these marginal wonkish bullshitty topics.
 
AssHatZombie said:
dammit, mina, focus your intellect on growing the organic economy instead of these marginal wonkish bullshitty topics.
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With a global economy that currently puts out vastly more pollution than is ecologically sustainable, and which thus drives us towards catastrophe, this is the exact opposite of a marginal topic. It's absolutely crucial -- it's a more important topic, in fact, than 99.999% of what gets discussed here. We're not talking about some petty pissing and moaning about something trivial like having to endure slightly-above-average inflation rates for a year or two thanks to supply chain snags. We're talking about something that matters on an historic scale.
 
Mina said:
With a global economy that currently puts out vastly more pollution than is ecologically sustainable, and which thus drives us towards catastrophe, this is the exact opposite of a marginal topic. It's absolutely crucial -- it's a more important topic, in fact, than 99.999% of what gets discussed here. We're not talking about some petty pissing and moaning about something trivial like having to endure slightly-above-average inflation rates for a year or two thanks to supply chain snags. We're talking about something that matters on an historic scale.
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all this is lies to justify a nazi mass murder agenda.

please wake up and stop believing nazi propaganda.
 
AssHatZombie said:
all this is lies to justify a nazi mass murder agenda.
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No. It's scientific fact, and I'm not arguing in favor of mass murder. I'm arguing in favor of economically incentivizing people to use birth control to have smaller families -- rather than our current situation, where unlimited child tax credits and other subsidies for children incentivize large families.
 
Mina said:
No. It's scientific fact, and I'm not arguing in favor of mass murder. I'm arguing in favor of economically incentivizing people to use birth control to have smaller families -- rather than our current situation, where unlimited child tax credits and other subsidies for children incentivize large families.
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No it isn't.

it's enviro-nazi propaganda.

shove your nazi bullshit in your skank hole.
 
AssHatZombie said:
for any propagater of overpopulation hysteria,

what is the optimal carrying capacity of planet earth, according to your science?
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I've never met a propagator (or propagater, for that matter) of overpopulation hysteria. However, for those who recognize the role a large population has in making it harder to attain a sustainable pollution output level, there's no fixed number, because it depends on technology. One of the toughest parts of the climate equation to solve is carbon output. It's what you get when you multiply carbon output per capita with population. If you address the first part of that equation, you get more leeway on the second. So, for example, if we were to develop a highly economical, scalable, low-carbon energy generation technology, that would allow us to have generalized prosperity at a low per-capita carbon output, and thus we'd be able to get away with a much larger population. With current technology, though, we can't even get away with current population, because the per-capita carbon output is just too high to be environmentally sustainable when multiplied across the current population.
 
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