* Posts by cesium

9 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2014

Arctic summer ice cover is 31st highest ever recorded

cesium

Always Open to Icebreakers

The Gjoa was strengthed to withstand the pressure of the ice. The Manhattan was an ice breaker and was accompanied by coast guard ice breakers.

The 2015 Arctic minimum extent was about the same as the 2007 and 2011 minimum extents. Wow, look at that rapid recovery.

Sierra Nevada snow hasn't been this bad since 1500AD

cesium

Reg Hack ought to learn something about California before slandering the entire state.

1) The "few dollars a year" per Californian works out to around $40/month (using The Register's figures) per household. A large fraction of the current water bill. This ignores the cost to build desalination plants or pipe the output into city water supplies. This ignores the cost to refill deplenished aquifers.

2) The Register would have California implement a flat tax across all people. Farmers, who use most of the water and need an incentive to use water more efficiently, would be mostly spared. Citizens of Eureka, where water is still plentiful, would be taxed the same amount as citizens of Palm Springs.

3) The Register completely ignores the current use of reverse osmosis in California. Many cities, including the one I live in, recycle their waste water to use it for landscape irrigation. San Diego is close to closing the loop and mixing its recycled water with incoming supplies. Apparently The Register believes you can snap our fingers and hand out a big wad of money and instantly fix all problems.

cesium

Re: it is politics, not a shortage of water

@anonymous coward: Ah, right, killing off all the river wildlife in California permanently due to a three year drought in order to keep unsustainable agricultural practices running for a few more years is the obvious solution to our problems.

cesium

Re: They could solve the drought...

Heh. I'm sure by spending just a few more dollars per Californian per year we can run that desalinated ocean water up to the mountains and spray them full of snow.

How much of one year's Californian energy use would wipe out the drought?

cesium

Re: Nuclear have life

Malarkey. Conniving corporate and political scum are all about making money. If Thorium reactors were profitable, they would be all over it.

cesium

Re: Small issue of infrastructure

Renewable energy is about 20% of California electricity consumption. (http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/)

And, funny thing, the sun reliably shines here on days when people run their air conditioners. Also, in California we have geothermal energy. Works great as base load. They even have it closer to you. In Iceland.

cesium

Re: Small issue of infrastructure @ AC

Ah, well, in that case, Lewis doesn't have a point. San Diego currently recycles its waste water and is moving toward closing the loop and using the recycled waste water as drinking water. It's already quite common for cities to use recycled waste water for landscape watering. It's just a matter of time before most cities are running fully closed loops.

cesium

Re: Not going to happen

Yeah. Can you believe those environmental wackos want to keep the Sacramento river from drying up? Letting the Delta Smelt die off is good. Letting salt water back up from the San Francisco Bay to Sacramento is good. Destroying the crop land between Berkeley and Sacramento is no problem. Destroying the food chain of the delta is no problem. Migratory birds? Screw them. We don't need rivers and salmon and trees, unless they are fruit or nut trees.

Air-slurping solar battery will slice energy costs – boffins

cesium

It's a battery dude. A battery that you recharge by leaving it out in the open during the day time. I dunno about you, but I keep my batteries in a little drawer. I guess I'd keep these solar powered batteries on my window sill. Doesn't seem like all that much land area to me.

And you might want to actually do a bit of research before parading your ignorance. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/electricity_generation.cfm lists PV as 40% more expensive than nuclear.

I don't suppose you've ever wondered why nuclear only provides 20% of our electricity if its so cheap? Imagine a power plant that takes 10 years to build, and, buy the time you get it built, competing forms of electricity have dropped in price by a factor of 2. And you need to run that power plant for the next 40 years to recoup your costs, and during that 40 years, you're expecting competing forms of electricity to drop in price by a couple more factors of 2. That's the situation that nuclear is in compared to wind and solar.