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Reply to #8: Mark, you really do come from a unique background. The more I learn about it, the more I respect and appreciate your point of view. Much as I love and respect Thom (totally!), I hope he reads your post. You obviously have walked the talk and can speak to this with some authority.
Wonderland, a Big Oil corporate lackey if there ever was one. No comments whatsoever from her on the massive BP oil spill, right here in America, 1.7 million X worse than the Fuku event by actual health effects, that's way ever there in Japan.
But Wonderland loves those top ten Fortune 500 Big Oil companies but hates those public or bottom 100 Fortune 500 nuclear companies. Yep wonderland and "don't let those new kids on the block get a foothold". Gotta support the super rich.
And of course wonderland luvs BP with their BP wind & BP solar divisions - even calling themselves "Beyond Petroleum" for any blithering idiot too stupid to breathe will believe that. Funny there is no BP nuclear. Wouldn't be because ONLY nuclear is the competition to their noxious product, whereas Wind & Solar are an excellent way to greenwash their slime - very effective - Thom & Wonderland have both taken the bait - hook, line & sinker.
More corporatist drivel. Have at it, guys.
The Confederate flag is a realic of history. It belongs in a museum. There is no interference of freedom of speech on the part of individuals, if they want to have the flag on their vehicle or at home or whatever, but retailers have the freedom to stop selling a symbol that represented slavery. The issue of black prejudice toward whites is more of a statement of prejudice toward blacks than anything else. A.M.E. churches welcome people of all races. I believe schools often do a poor job of teaching American history as it applies to slavery, reconstruction, and to the civil rights movement up to the present.
It has been a long term Republican strategy to fill the federal judiciary with disturbingly conservative judges. With control of the Senate, the Republican majority continues to try to keep vacancies unfilled until Obama leaves office. (Despite the rule change re filibuster of nominees.) The President has said little about this usurpation of his presidential function but to allow a further march to the right by the judiciary does not bode well for the prospect of a return to our nation's former democratic function. This issue needs emphasis or the cons will run out the clock on us.
Forbes Article on Brazil from 2013
To be clear, this was 2 years after Tariffs were imposed
In Brazil, Strong Labor Market, Weak Economy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/05/03/in-brazil-strong-labor-...
Notable Quotes:
-The actual economy on the ground is doing quite well. People are getting richer. Lower income earners making minimum wage are watching their paychecks rise by 10% or more. Unemployment is a record low, around 5.5%.
-The continued tightness of Brazil’s labor market in the face of persistently slow growth has become one of the key puzzles in assessing the economy. Despite growth falling from an average of 4.1% between 2008 and 2010 to 2.2% between 2011 and 2013, the unemployment rate has continued to fall.
-Changes in trade, Brazil’s shift to an even bigger consumer society than before, with more jobs available for entry- and mid-level professional and retail service jobs, plus more young people sticking it out in college for higher pay down the road has created a super tight labor market in Brazil.
-For now, Brazil’s labor market will continue to look nothing like the dismal GDP numbers and its boring Bovespa counterpart. If you could trade in Brazil’s job market instead of equities, you might be better off. This is the one aspect of Brazil’s economy that investors can count on to remain solid for years to come.
this is getting worse: just received this message
BREAKING: Republicans sneak Dark Money provision into spending bill
Boehner’s House Republicans just tried to jam a massive handout to the billionaire Koch Brothers in a must-pass spending bill.
The provision -- tucked into a 157-page bill -- would stop the government from defining political activity by dark money groups.
That’s bad news. The Kochs and Karl Rove are going to be more free than ever to spend millions buying elections.
Right now, Republicans in Congress are constantly chipping away at the few laws we have left to stop Billionaires from buying our entire government.
Honestly, we’re mad as HECK about it, and you should be too.
If it wasn’t clear before, these right-wing politicians are bought and paid for by billionaires like the Kochs. We can’t stand idly by while they buy our elections.
E
Wonderland your Germany, after 25 yrs of all out effort on wind & solar, has the 2nd highest emissions per kwh generated in Europe. 9X Nuclear France. 5X Nuclear Ontario. And they have the 2nd highest electricity prices in Europe. And now they are building giant dirt-burning Coal power plants by the dozens. Why aren't they building Wind & Solar instead?
In fact with a trivial 6% of their electricity (< 1% of their energy), their Solar PV installation rate is now on a steep decline. 7.6 GW in 2012, 3.3 in 2013, 1.9 in 2014. So much for solar energy.
And they have to destroy historic towns in order to make way for their enormous lignite strip mines. Large sections of land raped by giant draglines. Makes Fukushima look like a bad rainy day. You like that Acid Rain do you Wonderland?
Yes 14:1 is the minimum energy gain required of the energy supply to sustain a modern industrial civilization. That includes all of the infrastructure that goes into production and distribution of that energy.
The problem with wind & solar is they use large amounts of high energy input materials for the meagre amount of energy they produce, and that energy is of low value, especially wind, since it is intermittent & erratic. So to be useful they need storage. And storage uses large amounts of material and consequently energy to produce, as well losses, expressed by the round trip efficiency, for batteries ~80% efficient.
Long distance transmission further lowers efficiency, since transmission lines are made of high energy input materials, and solar transmission must be oversized by 5-10X, and wind by 3-5X. As well as losses during transmission.
So the EROEI for Wind & Solar, in any practical, significant effort to supply our energy, is too low to be sustainable. In fact flatly impossible. That's the energy economics. We haven't even gotten into the high cost of implementing wind & solar energy. Costs that even at current trivial levels of production, are forcing single moms to choose between feeding their child or paying the electric bill.
Whereas wealthy homeowners are getting huge subsidies to put up solar PV, subsidies taken out of the pockets of the poor, who have no home to install solar panels on, and couldn't afford them if they did.
Wonderland, you really do get angry and even more irrational (if that is possible) when you are proven wrong. So your last ditch effort in mindless repitition of Big Oil's disinformation about Fukushima:
Fact #7: Fukushima incident in total released about 2500 TBq of radiation into the ocean. Almost all of it is Cs-137 with a half-life of 30 yrs and some Cs-134 with a half-life of 2 yrs.
Seawater natural radiation is 14 Bq per liter. Mostly from radioactive potassium 40 with a half-life of 1.3 billion years. So total radiation = 2500 trillion Bq / 14 Bq per liter = 1800 trillion liters equivalent.
So at avg Pacific Ocean depth that surface area is 6.3 X 6.3 kms.
That's a pretty trivial little area. Just a tiny spec of water off of Japan's coast. Yep that sure will affect the west coast of the USA. Do you know what a measurement is? Do you know what cause and effect is? Do you know what a sievert is? You see that is how scientists determine radiation health effects. And using those methods there is no plausible way Fuku radiation had ANY effect on western North America, and highly unlikely anywhere in Japan, that's ever.
BP released 134 to 176 million gallons of crude oil or 453[BP] to 594[Gov] thousand tonnes, into the Gulf of Mexico. LD50 for Rats, Crude Oil is 5 gms per kg or for 75 kg person so that would be 0.4 kg per person. So that’s 594e6/0.4 = 1.5 billion acute lethal doses.
2500 TBq of Cs-137 is 2500/3.4 = 735 gms. 2500 TBq / 10 GBq = 250 thousand acute lethal doses by ingestion. Or 6000X less. If you take into account the much smaller volume of the Gulf vs the Pacific, Fuku is comparitively 1.7 millionX less toxic! Funny all the hype on the MSM is on Fuku health effects, zip on BP oil spill. No ban or shutdown on oil rigs in the Gulf though.
Hey check this out, sunbathing on radioactive beaches in Brazil. Radiation readings higher than anywhere outside the plant gates at Fukushima. In fact many times higher than avg readings in the evacuation zone. Far higher than Japanese authorities allow for its citizens. The locals call this area, Guarapari, the health city. Because locals, including indigenous peoples, have long regarded the radioactive sand a health benefit. Called radiation hormesis and a common belief by many native cultures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvgAx1yIKjg
And I don’t have to go to Thom’s radio show to debate him on energy issues. He can come right here. I will be happy to educate him on energy reality.
Doxastically ugly = believably ugly?
IRV, I'm having trouble understanding this EROEI business. You say we need "14:1 energy gain". I'd presume that's a minimum, but the numbers you give get lower for wind and solar when enery storage is added. And you give numbers on both sides for wind, so we could pick one and it should be good, shouldn't it?
The Confederate constitution (which is easily found on the Internet) was a rip-off of the U.S. constitution. Little was changed, and the only pro-states' rights parts were some stuff about inter-state pacts not needing national permission if they're only about water traffic, and letting states impeach federal judges. But there was also the anti-states' rights part where it forbade states from outlawing slavery.
It was nothing like the Articles of Confederation, which had no executive or judicial branch, and didn't let the central government tax people directly. The Confederacy also made it easier to amend the constitution, and harder to admit new states, though there was oddly no provision for peaceful secession.
Ou812, if you weren't so blinded by corporate pablum you would see renewables as the solution. And remember, you are what you eat.
Dorothy, if you weren't so blinded by anger and hate you would see nuclear is the solution. I have photovoltaic (solar) on one of my homes. It works great during daylight. For pv to work properly, connection to the grid is required. Storage batteries are marginal at best. With the move toward electric cars, the demands on the grid will increase. Nuclear is the only energy source (without CO2 emmissions) capable of meeting these requirements.
Thom educated by YOU? Thanks for the laugh. When all else fails, these blogs are a good source of entertainment.
Renewables have really been catching on in Europe; Germany in particular. We're so far behind the rest of the developed world, and in so many ways, it is simply mind blowing. I hope I live to see the day when fossil fuels and nuclear power are behind us, in the dustbin of history... In the meantime, shills like Instant Jerkoff are best ignored.
It seems to be a difficult time for the channel and so should prepare an estate planning is required by the side from estate planning lawyer Alexandria, VA
I make a monthly contribution to FSTV - this is a good way to donate because it is a reliable income stream and diminishes the need to have fund raising segments as often. I encourage all Thom Hartmann fans to donate monthly for the special gift he gives on a daily basis!
P.S. For the hell of it, I did a google search just now to see what impact that Fukashima nuclear disaster has had on us. Turns out nearly a third of the children born on the Pacific coast of the U.S. are now at high risk for thyroid cancer and other cancers. Radioactive Cesium isotopes from leaking nuclear reactors in Fukashima are the culprit. Now that they’ve reached our Pacific shores and have polluted our air, our ocean, food supply and so on, children both born and unborn are particularly vulnerable.
Just another example to illustrates why I’m opposed to nuclear power. This is not the wave of the future. It's time we leave 20th Century technology behind, and head for greener pastures!
Want more jobs? Think about this.
The tax code can change incentives. Tax codes are social engineering they encourage some things and discourage other things.
In many cases we raise taxes on things that we think are socially destructive (cigarettes and alcohol) and we remove taxes from things we think are good for society (churches and charitable organizations.) Jobs are good for society but we tax them heavily. We should try to remove all of the economic penalties (taxes) from labor.
On the other hand:
If a person does work, they and their employer pay several taxes. If a machine does the work it pays none. When a machine does the work of 10 people then it could be taxed at the same amount that 10 people would be taxed. That would be fair . . . right?
With this system The tax rate could be much lower and I don’t think we would be lacking for jobs. If we have enough "people jobs" available, then the discrepancy in income should be less and a minimum wage might not be necessary.
Workers were responsible for making these labor saving devices (machines).
These devices will replace workers forever. Shouldn't there be some compensation that the machines and their owners, pay back to the workers.
Wouldn't it be reasonable for the machines to at least pay the taxes that would have paid by the workers and employers.
Reply to #30: Save it, jerk. I'm not interested in your crackpot fucking bullshit. I'm not a scientist, I'm no engineer, but I've heard and read plenty through the years, enough to know who to believe and who to dismiss as full of crap on this issue. I do not trust nuclear power, or the people who own it and run it and are supposed to maintain it. After the disasters we've already seen with nuclear power, I want no part of it. So keep right on bloviating if you must, but you'll only have the allegiance of those who already agree with you. If you think you can win hearts & minds with that kind of an attitude, you'd better think again.
And to be brutally frank, I'm not interested in getting sucked into an ongoing verbal fox trot with your arrogant, cocky ass. Sorry to spoil the party. But if you're so damn smart, try calling Thom on his radio show and arguing with him about nuclear power. I dare you. His knowledge on this subject is much more in-depth than my own. I'm sure Thom would be happy to pick apart your argument and expose all its weaknesses.
As for me, I've other fish to fry. (Pun intended.) So 'bye now.
Interestingly, the LA Pacifica station is have a 5 day special program this week called Solartopia. The link is solartopia.org. Chrome seems to not like it. IE has no problem with it.
I have heard it still isnt a done deal, that republicans dont want to take the blame for it,and its still 50/50 it actually becomes law, but we will see, it doesent look good to me so far.
Thom unforunately knows zilch about energy, so getting facts from him on that is close to worthless.
Fact #1: That is called full lifecycle emissions. CANDUs in Ontario are 2 gms CO2 per kwh generated. Nuclear in Japan, Finland, Sweden is 6-26 gms CO2/kwh. Solar PV is 50-95 & Wind is 5.5 to 29 not including their inescable fossil fuel backup. NG is 450-1170, coal is 894 to 975. I would say nuclear wins that hands down.
Fact #2: They are insured, why didn't you read Ou812 above. In fact better insurance than any other industry. And they are less dangerous by far than any other significant energy source:
DEATHS PER TWH OF ENERGY:
Coal: 161
Oil: 36
Biomass: 12
NG: 4
Hydro: 1.4
Wind: 0.15
Nuclear: 0.04
Fact #3: Nuclear waste is minor. A coke can full supplies an American's lifetime electricity needs, vs 70 tons of forever, toxic & carcinogenic Coal solid waste & 2000 tons of gaseous waste. Burn that coke can full in a GenIV reactor, where 97% of the uranium energy remains, and you are down to less than an ounce of waste, and that is valuable short-lived waste. In fact there is enough uranium and thorium in that 70 tons of Coal solid waste to supply 15 American’s lifetime electricity needs if burnt in molten salt reactors.
Fact #4: There was not even one death caused by radioisotope releases from Fukushima. Vs 20,000 due to the tsunami, which the Japan gov't failed to prepare for. There is greatly increased cancer risk due to the thousands of tons of strong carcinogens released by all the oil & gas fires following the Tohoku event, including asbestos, PAHs, dioxins, heavy metals: lead, arsenic, mercury, nickel, cadmium, PCBs, furans, benzene, toluene, the list is long.
In fact by replacing shutdown nuclear energy with coal, oil & LNG the Japanese gov't has murdered about 14 thousand persons in the past 4 years, using WHO mortality numbers for fossil fuels vs nuclear energy.
Fact #5: Having a viable alternative to Big Oil/NG = 6 of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies (top Nuclear is around 440th) is NOT monopolistic. Actually most Nuclear power plants in the world are publicly owned. Which I favor, in general. And I can give you a whole large collection of links pointing to the strong support the super-rich corporate elites, especially Oil Barons & Banksters have for their wind & solar bait-and-switch scam. The oil & gas barons know very well wind & solar = burn more oil & gas. The coal part they don’t care about.
Fact #6: ALL NPPs in California are Pressurized water reactors, Fukushima were ancient Boiling Water reactors, which were soon to be shutdown and replaced. No reactors in Japan (unlike Oil & Gas facilities) were seriously damaged by the world record Tohoku earthquake. Only the Fuku reactors failed because they foolishly had their switchgear, diesel generators and fuel supply located below the record tsunami wave height. Easy fix. Fortunately zero deaths. Expensive & dumb screwup. But so was 9/11. According to your beliefs, after 9/11 all aircraft should be banned. After the idiot Titanic disaster you would say all shipping should be banned. After the Banqiao dam failure killed ~200 thousand people, you would say all Hydro should be shutdown. After the Gulf oil deadly disaster you would say all Oil rigs should be closed.
So what you call Facts are really just fables. I gave you the Truth. And unlike you, I am not a corporate hack (although I will grant that you are likely just an unwitting tool, what corporate elites call "useful idiots".) I will call you uninformed & uneducated in energy issues and I hope I have contributed to your education. I was once a big supporter of wind & solar and an opponent of nuclear energy. I believed what the MSM told all of us about nuclear. Then I decided to learn the facts, and think for myself, and I was astounded to learn that the corporate establishment had totally misled me through their bought and paid for mainstream media outlets.
And actually I support the Zeitgeist Movement and Richard Wolff's Worker Self Directed Enterprises and I am a relentless critic of modern day crony capitalism which is rapidly morphing into fascism. And I do like "socialist" social democratic nations like Norway.
Articles of Confederation? I didn't think the Confederacy wanted to go back to that. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about but I thought the secessionists wanted a government different only in its enshrining of the institution of slavery. I didn't think ANYBODY wanted to go back to the Articles of Confederation, disaster that those were.