Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Dilbert Pretty Much Nails It Today

6 comments:

  1. I don't get all the rationale of some of your poster's. I hope some of these people enjoy this as it seems off the wall sometimes. Are we getting anywhere with this back and forth stuff? Maybe we should all get in a room and get it over with. I am a little tunnel visioned myself I guess on one side or the other.

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  2. ask the japanese...
    they know green.

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  3. I'll take natural gas over atomic energy any day

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  4. Ill take wind solar and biomass over... well.. anything else.

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  5. Where do I begin here?

    MzMontana, while abundant in the U.S. and Canada, natural gas is not as widely available in every location and in dense population areas, nuclear just makes the most sense. Japan for instance really has few options when considering energy sources which is why they turned to nuclear initially. What I don't yet understand is why we all immediately knee-jerk react to the situation in Japan. Remember it was a natural disaster that caused the power outage which ultimately resulted in the inability for the cooling towers to pump water to keep the fuel rods from exposure. This was not a design flaw, except to the extent they were not prepared for the third or fourth strongest earthquake in world history. Who would? California's aren't either and they are within striking distance of the San Andreas faultline.

    When an airplane crash occurs or someone is killed in a car accident, we don't ground all planes and stop all traffic, do we? We investigate what happened in that specific situation, learn from it and adapt and then move on.

    Nuclear is still the cleanest and most efficient energy available and should be part of the energy solution for our nation along with renewables and traditional sources.

    As most of you know I am an advocate for renewables that make sense; however, supportyourlocalfarmers, can I ask why you prefer biomass, wind or solar over anything else?

    Are you aware of the significant cost structure associated with those propositions? Wind like ethanol is severly over incentivised and solar is too. Biomass is interesting but not really a solution because it doesn't work everywhere. I do feel these sources are important, but they are not dependent and therefore cannot realisitcally take the place of fossil fuels. Wind and solar are at best gap fillers so to speak. They broaden the transition from one source to another on the grid and in the case of Montana offer a separate export option for developers such as those being constructed north of Shelby with the power bound for Canada.

    All of the above if we are serious about energy independence. We are uniquely positioned in our energy potential. We have the fossil fuels, we have the ability to grow renewables and the investment ability to construct other sources. Nowhere else in the world is that possible. If you have the money like China you can always buy it, but we have it. It just makes zero sense to continue to cap our wells, stop mining and place all of our eggs in one basket. We tie our hands strategically and economically. It is pure lunacy.

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  6. fukushima sure might have been a design flaw... put the damn thing there in the first place.

    cnn tells us that none of the 104 reactors in our fair land are rated above a 7.5 quake.
    not surprising of course...
    there might have been a "purchased" passage for the nuke folks here and there...
    despite our numerous options, what always matters in the end is the day-nero not people.
    was the nuke industry de-regged along with all the other blessing of that "free market" gem?
    or...
    are the regulatory folk just...
    patsies?
    the stuff is not economically competitive without paying the light bill before the reactor is fired and again after...the word, god forbid, might be, well, subsidy.
    then there is the small item of 20,000 year half-life of the waste which, of course, is also being well handled.
    particularly since the steel cans it is going into just might not last that long.
    hey...
    it's green...
    until it's not.

    quote of the day from a fukushima mother:

    "they have accepted that they will probably die."

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