The Green New Deal

[The Shrike]

Yeah there is that. sadly Don't you think education can help though?

In my natural resources department, maybe. But even with our own students, those from ranching backgrounds have a real tough time convincing their dads, uncles, and grandpas to try anything new that's suggested by their liberal*, environmentalist*, college graduate* kid.

*these terms all pejoratives

Meanwhile, there are entire departments in our college force-feeding even bigger classes of students to buy/sell pesticides/fertilizers out the ying-yang, 'cause that's how you raise cows. Getting these folks even acknowledge climate science out loud is a tough sell, because they equate it with being a libtard and that's the worst thing a person can be.

 

[Venom]

Was it a "socialist state" when the top marginal tax rate was close to 90 percent? And in the thick of the rivalry with the Soviet Union to boot

Cause we're nowhere near that nor is anyone proposing that from what I've seen.

 

[kellyb]

It's weird that the Pinto didn't erode trust in cars like Chernobyl did. The loss in trust is due to the shock value of the accident, not the actual safety of the technology. Blame the Soviets for spoiling the whole thing for us.

You can't blame Fukishima on the Soviets...

 

[Belz...]

You can't blame Fukishima on the Soviets...

Why would I blame Fukushima on anyone?

Fukushima is actually a shining example of how a well-built nuclear reactor can survive a catastrophic event. No one died as a result of it.

 

[BadBoy]

Universal Basic Income - if you want that you damn well better build one helluva wall because everyone in the world will want to come here.

Presumably this would not be available to non citizens

What successful financial model will this oncoming socialist state base itself upon, because I don't see one.

What makes you think this is socialist. Some of the rich middle east countries have had or has something similar. Hardly socialist countries.

Suppose there really does come a day where automation takes a significant number of jobs away. What are the people with no jobs going to do?

That is what people are worried about.

Try and make money in other ways? Have some fun? People (until the latest generation) are not wired to sit around and do nothing. [ETA: kill each other!]

You sound like a rich British politician who said once that poor people should grow carrots in their window plant boxes.

Having fun costs money most of the time. But there aren't enough fun venues to handle this huge new crowd of non-workers. We'll need more fun venues which equals more jobs (assumes people will still go outside at all). Maybe restaurants, theaters, casinos. Even if most of these jobs are also automated someone still has to build, own and maintain the business.

We are talking about boring repetitive jobs that robots are good at doing. These people are the ones who may struggle.

We've been automating industry for a very long time and we still have plenty of jobs.

You ever been to Flint Michigan ?

If automation does take over then I'm for killing off people until we reach a perfect jobs:humans ratio. Hell I'm for it now! Stupid people first.

:ironymeter:

I guess I'm kidding about the "killing people" thing, but catch me on the right day...

Very American of you

The single biggest employment segment in the USA (apparently) are drivers. Bus drivers, Taxi Drivers, Delivery Drivers, Tram Drivers, Truck Drivers. Driverless cars are coming.

Some mines in Australia are now fully automated.

Having said that, I have wondered where all the ladies in the typing pools have gone since the 1960's and word processing was introduced. Presumably the people who would have been doing that job are now doing something more interesting?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Why would I blame Fukushima on anyone?

Fukushima is actually a shining example of how a well-built nuclear reactor can survive a catastrophic event. No one died as a result of it.

More than a thousand dead and more than 100K evacuated.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...rity/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties


It's difficult to distinguish an exact list of deaths cause by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident but I can't find any source that attributes less then a thousand deaths to the nuclear accident.

 

[Delvo]

Fukushima is actually a shining example of how a well-built nuclear reactor can survive a catastrophic event. No one died as a result of it.

More than a thousand dead and more than 100K evacuated.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...rity/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx

According to that source: "Official figures show that there have been well over 1000 deaths from maintaining the evacuation, in contrast to little risk from radiation if early return had been allowed."

Measured radiation in the evacuated area would result in a lifetime exposure less than what workers in high-radiation professions (like X-ray, CT, & fluoroscopic imaging) are allowed per year.

 

[tyr_13]

I has probably already been pointed out, but I think it that we need to keep in mind that people don't actually want nor need say, planes. Nor personal cars. Nor the current market of food products exactly. Now, people themselves probably don't realize this, but what they want and need are methods of transport that are safe, reliable and accessible. They want a choice of foods and to be able to afford them. They want freedom of movement. Things like planes are ways to get those things, the tool, the method, and not the thing in and of itself.

Any framing of 'removing x' while ignoring that the actual idea is to 'replace x with something that does it more sustainably' is, at best, mistaken.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Was it a "socialist state" when the top marginal tax rate was close to 90 percent? And in the thick of the rivalry with the Soviet Union to boot

Cause we're nowhere near that nor is anyone proposing that from what I've seen.

No, because we changed our motto from E Pluribus Unum to In God We Trust, thereby avoiding becoming socialist.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Why would I blame Fukushima on anyone?

Fukushima is actually a shining example of how a well-built nuclear reactor can survive a catastrophic event. No one died as a result of it.

Someone should tell the insurance companies this. Maybe then, they would actually insure a nuclear power plant. Instead, these plants are insured by the government because no insurance company will entertain the idea.

 

[Polaris]

You can't blame Fukishima on the Soviets...

You can blame "Fukushima" on an irresponsible media that pushed the notion that the Pacific rim was going to glow in the dark because nookleear is scary scary scary! (Are ya scared yet?)


And this while gleefully forgetting about the thousands of people who actually did die from the tsunami.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

According to that source: "Official figures show that there have been well over 1000 deaths from maintaining the evacuation, in contrast to little risk from radiation if early return had been allowed."

Measured radiation in the evacuated area would result in a lifetime exposure less than what workers in high-radiation professions (like X-ray, CT, & fluoroscopic imaging) are allowed per year.

OK. Not sure what your point is. The fact that handling such a situation in the future better might not lead to deaths doesn't change the fact that this actually killed a lot of people, right?

 

[Delvo]

No, it exposes the fact that it didn't.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

No, it exposes the fact that it didn't.

Disagree.

Nuclear Power in Japan is extremely shady, with a terrible record of problems covered up by corrupt politicians.
Tepco and officials had no choice but to err to the paranoid side, since deaths from the disaster could have spelled the end of Fission in Japan.
You have to consider the public image of your energy in your calculations; just like a death by terror is considered way more serious than one by car accident, death by radiation accident is considered worse than by lung cancer due to polluted air.
A death is a death, but one comes with a higher price in terms of public perception than the other - which leads to a higher price in running a power plant in the first place.
That is why no one in the US wants to invest in Nuclear power, and wants to get out the running reactors as soon as they get promised that they won't be on the hook for the messy decommissioning.

 

[Belz...]

More than a thousand dead and more than 100K evacuated.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...rity/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties


It's difficult to distinguish an exact list of deaths cause by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident but I can't find any source that attributes less then a thousand deaths to the nuclear accident.

Someone should tell the insurance companies this. Maybe then, they would actually insure a nuclear power plant. Instead, these plants are insured by the government because no insurance company will entertain the idea.

Nobody said that nuclear power plants are harmless or risk-free. You're both responding to an argument I didn't make.

The point was that Chernobyl is chiefly responsible, along with Hollywood, for the ridiculous notion that nuclear power is more dangerous than it's worth -- to the point that people think they can blow up like nuclear weapons.

The fact of the matter is that nuclear power is THE safest power generation technology, in terms of death per kwh. Chernobyl is the only incident in which any significant number of people died, and that number, on the low end, is about 50. Any number you see in the thousands is speculation about potential future deaths, and is based on ignorance of the effects of radiations at that level of exposure. The same is true from Fukushima, which is stated in Yuppy's own links.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't take precautions or that there aren't inherent risks to the technology. But I suppose holding both those positions is too complicated for those who want easy answers.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

It would help if the owners of US uranium mines would clean up their **** instead of playing for time.

 

[thaiboxerken]

That doesn't mean you shouldn't take precautions or that there aren't inherent risks to the technology. But I suppose holding both those positions is too complicated for those who want easy answers.

I don't know that anyone is making these assumptions. Nuclear power is too risky on several levels, so risky that it is not insurable.That is a very big reason to phase out that technology.

"The fact of the matter is that nuclear power is THE safest power generation technology, in terms of death per kwh."

Do you have evidence to support this claim?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

"The fact of the matter is that nuclear power is THE safest power generation technology, in terms of death per kwh."

Do you have evidence to support this claim?

It is as long as you pick your externalities right.

 

[Belz...]

Nuclear power is too risky on several levels, so risky that it is not insurable.

The insurance issue is mostly because of perception which, as I said, is mainly based on a single high-profile accident, and lots of propaganda in the form of bad movies and bad reporting.

That is a very big reason to phase out that technology.

In favour of what? There are no remaining alternatives. Coal is unacceptable, hydro and geothermal are only possible in certain places, solar and wind are unreliable, and fusion could be decades away, if it's even possible. So if you remove fission as well, what's your solution? Humans will not want to reduce their quality of life, so your kind of attitude is actually helping coal stick around.

"The fact of the matter is that nuclear power is THE safest power generation technology, in terms of death per kwh."

Do you have evidence to support this claim?

Yes. Didn't Zig post that evidence upthread? This has been discussed to death on this forum and I can't believe you haven't seen it yet.

https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#6ca19673709b

https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

Note that those numbers include the extrapolations for Chernobyl and Fukushima, so they could be even lower.

 

[thaiboxerken]

The insurance issue is mostly because of perception which, as I said, is mainly based on a single high-profile accident, and lots of propaganda in the form of bad movies and bad reporting.

I doubt insurance companies do cost/benefit analysis based on bad press and movies. I'm pretty sure they have researchers find facts and studies to weigh the factors.

In favour of what? There are no remaining alternatives. Coal is unacceptable, hydro and geothermal are only possible in certain places, solar and wind are unreliable, and fusion could be decades away, if it's even possible. So if you remove fission as well, what's your solution? Humans will not want to reduce their quality of life, so your kind of attitude is actually helping coal stick around.

You make plenty of assumptions that are not in evidence. Solar, wind, geothermal are all good alternatives that could very well make up parts of an energy infrastructure along with batteries and a small contribution from fossil fuels.

Yes. Didn't Zig post that evidence upthread?

I have him on ignore, so I didn't see this before. I notice none of these studies include data about solar, wind or geothermal sources.