Ah, just commented on your post about ACs earlier, but also notice that you clearly have at least one psychotically obsessed stalker who posts AC. Yeah, I can see how that could certainly color your opinion about ACs. Of course, even without the AC option being available, they would almost certainly just use a revolving cycle of the sock puppet accounts they use to mod stalk you to post anyway. They might need to use more accounts to accomplish it though. Actually, that's one thing I'm not sure of in the Slashdot moderation system: whether you can downmod ACs and have those affect the actual account that posted AC. It really should now that ACs have to be real accounts, but I'm not sure offhand.

AC posting is a natural consequence of the moderation system and the ability to easily create an account though. If there were not ACs, people would effectively post AC by just creating new sock puppet accounts all the time. If people have lots of sock puppet accounts anyway, it's a gateway towards abuses of the moderation system, etc. Plus new accounts get the benefit of the doubt in terms of posting level, ACs, both back in the past when they did not need an account and now, when they do, are already automatically downgraded. Basically you can't really run any sort of online forum without making some sort of compromises about how people can communicate. My daughter was watching me post the other day and was wondering why there was no edit feature for posts. I explained that it can be like rewriting history, especially if people have already replied, but also if they have read it and are contemplating a reply, etc. While it would be nice if there could be a mechanism to update a post (without removing the original, but to add corrections or updates) without having to create a sub-post, obviously Slashdot made a specific compromise for that. Basically, for the features available for posting, Slashdot picked a certain set of options and, while imperfect, it is hard to say that another choice would have been objectively better.

True, but there are all sorts of things that we could do, but we don't because, well because we just don't. There are a number of things that come to mind. One is that novel solutions to problems often come from someone scratching an itch. The problem is, they have to notice the itch in the first place, but the problem domain of, well, basically saving the Earth, is broad and it is hard to see the forest for the trees. The problems to solve for space exploration can be much more focused, and I think that does actually tend to drive people towards developing solutions that can then be applied to broader problems. In other words, for invention usually specific to general seems to work better than general to specific. There is also the matter of drive. Not that drive does not exist for researchers working to deal with environmental issues, but still there might be a tendency for the space fanatic to also be able to maintain better focus. Overall, even if what is developed is never used in space at all, I think that working towards the space-focused form of these technologies might actually bear fruit that can be highly useful here on Earth.

Some of the technologies that would enable space exploration could also help us with the goal of repairing our biosphere though. Among our issues here on Earth is our reliance on fossil fuels. Hydrocarbons for energy make little sense pretty much everywhere we might go in space, however. All that energy storage potential for hydrocarbons is completely reliant on a massive supply of free oxygen being there for the taking. That means that basically all technology used for space either needs to not burn fossil fuels, or use systems with self-contained oxidizers. So those technologies are potentially useful for Earth. Beyond that, nearly everything you might do in space is more resource constrained than Earth, so you need to find methods of re-using the same methods over and over. Reclaiming wastewater and turning into fresh water again, recycling, scrubbing and replenishing atmospheric gases, etc. One interesting area is growing crops in limited space and with limited or no light. A more compact, direct way to grow food could massively reduce the area needed for farming on Earth and reduce the environmental cost. Processes to make steel and produce other metals in space, or to produce concrete in space could greatly reduce the energy waste and pollution of the versions of those methods used on Earth. Methods for local in situ manufacture of more goods would reduce the environmental cost of transporting those goods such long distances.
Basically, self-sustaining space exploration would involve the development of a whole host of technologies that would also help back on Earth. Space exploration and mitigating damage to/repairing the biosphere are not necessarily mutually incompatible goals.

MASTER BLASTER rules UNDERTOWN!

There are at least some situations where this could be valid medically. However, they would generally involve cases of organ failure requiring some form of dialysis like kidney failure or liver failure so the point would be to remove blood products from the patient containing the toxins that the liver or kidneys would normally remove from the blood and replacing them with clean versions. In that case, you're basically using other human beings as a dialysis machine, just in installments. Of course, for it to be useful, you would need to have a lot of donors who donate very frequently and you would need to do a very large number of exchanges. Otherwise, you could use a single donor in something like a traditional dialysis setting and pump blood out of the patient and the donor, run them through separate filtration and centrifuge processes, producing different sets of blood components, then put some of them, like red and white blood cells, back into the person they originally came from after mixing with other products, like plasma coming from the other person. That way you could use the kidney and/or liver from another human being as a replacement for a non-functional organ in another human being. In some ways, I expect it would work better than traditional dialysis machines in some ways because natural organs are self-regulating and require less guesswork and estimation than dialysis machines to achieve homeostasis and also because they remove more things and do it better. Of course, they still could not replace functions like producing bile (since it would not travel to the patient through blood), or regulating blood cell production as the kidneys do since the kidneys regulate that based on how many red blood cells there are so hormone production would be based on the high levels in the donor's blood rather than the low levels in the patient. Of course, I suppose there still would be more red cell generating hormones in the donor's blood anyway, so that should cross over and stimulate red cell production a little in the patient. Also, you could reduce the red blood cells returned to the donor during the session to match the patient and, over a long enough session, the donor kidneys would produce more hormones... In other ways of course, replacing it would probably represent an unacceptable risk of immune reactions in both patient and donor, even with separating the blood into components and only transferring some of them.

So, there is a situation where you could use another human (preferably a young, healthy one) as essentially a piece of medical equipment, but it would probably mostly be better just to use the actual piece of technology if available since the pros come with some potentially serious cons. As far as rejuvenation goes... There have been studies in mice that do show an effect from blood from younger mice into older mice. Of course, though I don't recall all the specifics, chances are that those mice were very closely genetically related (as in the product of multiple generations of mice born to cousin-siblings) if not outright clones. Plus, of course, they are mice which, among other things, have very short lifespans as well as not necessarily having analogues in humans to their biological reactions. Ultimately, there may be health benefits (along with some risks), but any effect is likely small. There is definitely no vampiric fountain of youth here.

That reminds of something... I can't remember what it was actually from, but it was something sci-fi themed, maybe an online comic. In any case it has one character from an advanced alien civilization who has a device that employs switches and buttons and another character who is almost angry that the advanced alien technology just uses interface elements like that instead of voice control, neural interfaces, isn't embedded internally, etc. The alien replies that their civilization is technologically hundreds of times older and has gone through all of that stuff but, in the end, buttons and so forth simply work. Of course, later, the tactile controls on that same device are not actually available, and the alien just talks to it instead to operate it. It turns out that it does actually have voice control and probably other interface options as well.
Anyway, to me that seems like maybe the right way to go. Make other possibilities options, but don't just jump ahead and say everything must be this new fad interface now instead of the old way and that the old world must burn to make way for the new! That, unfortunately, seems to be the way this society driven by fads and marketing seems to operate.

Charity through local organizations, religious or otherwise is a problematic proposition. There are a number of issues, but most of them involve inconsistent coverage. For example, the city near you may have excellent support from a Christian rescue mission. However, even if they don't exclude anyone, or have rules or other factors that lead to some people falling through the cracks and not getting help, can you say that every locality has an organization like that available? Consider for example, the problem of structural unemployment. Let's say there is a factory in town that employs a third of the people in town. It goes out of business or just moves and suddenly, not only do all of those employees not have jobs, but many of the businesses that need the financial support of those employees to earn enough to stay in business are suddenly out of luck. Suddenly, you have a lot of needy people. The local religious charity, which is used to supporting maybe half a percent of the town's population, suddenly has to worry about tens of percentage points of the population. At the same time, local donations to the religious organization drop through the floor.

Basically, though there are a lot of aspects of charity that can work well at the local level (obviously, local volunteers are needed in many cases), there tends to be much better coverage with a widespread system that uses society-wide resources to deal with trouble spots. Kind of like how it works out better if businesses rely on the fire department rather than each business hiring one firefighter part time for two hours three days a week.

In other words, risk-pooling, like the insurance industry.

Aren't you making the assumption that the AC you are replying to does not donate or volunteer for charity though? It's not like they said either way, or asked. They just implied that the religious charities are using the charity to proselytize. Whether that is true or not depends, of course. Some religious charities definitely do, requiring prayer and other religious devotions or even joining their congregation, going through religious ceremonies like baptism, etc. in order to receive charity. Others just give out charity to anyone and everyone without discriminating. The argument from some is of course that spiritual salvation is far more important than even staying alive (not really mathematically valid reasoning of course since if you keep someone who does not believe in your religion alive longer when they would die otherwise, even if they refuse to convert, etc. that gives them more time to choose to convert to your religion, so, statistically it's the better choice even when conversion is your goal). Anyway, it's a spectrum and Christians (as well as other religions) do fairly frequently have at least some coercive intent when doing charity. It's a spectrum.

Well, I have to say for Gattaca, it was very, very, very heavily stylized in a way that it's pretty certain the world will never look like that. I mean, a number of futuristic movies have used a retro 40's/50's style like Gattaca, but it took it more than a couple of steps further with astronauts launching wearing business suits, etc. The reason was that it was a stylized exercise in examining obsession with status and appearance: financial success, genetics, athleticism, good looks, etc.

The "good" should be just like that, in quotes. I frequently hear the argument from some religious people that, if it were not for rules from a higher power, everyone would be killing, stealing, raping, etc. Whenever I hear that from someone, I have to wonder if, in their minds, they are just holding themselves up as an exception, or if they genuinely would be killing, stealing, raping, etc. if they did not have those rules. Various religious scholars have grappled with that, of course. Some, like Paul and Jesus, depending on interpretation, saying that the ten commandments were actually built into the hearts of humans by God. Conveniently explaining away the fact that heathens still seemed to have some of the same basic moral rules, but sort of invalidating the point of Moses spending all that time chiseling on a mountain.

Anyway, the point there is that the "good" people referenced are "good" according to the moral beliefs of whichever mode of their particular religious sect they operate under. In other words, if god commands that you shall not suffer a witch to live, then "good" people can burn their neighbors at the stake for having a black cat and a wart and not only remain "good", but actually be extra "good" unlike those morally suspect people, who said that maybe they shouldn't burn a harmless old lady alive because some people claimed to have had magical dreams where the accused performed magic (I've always found it really weird how much of the "evidence" in those cases came from sources that seem a heck of a lot like witchcraft from my perspective).

So, from my point of view anyway, that quote was about structural evil, where social norms can make people do things that are pretty evil from a rational perspective, because they are caught up in a distorting moral framework. Of course, I disagree with the quote that only religion can do that. Although I might buy at least a bit into the argument that if some framework does that, maybe you can call it a religion even if it is technically secular. For example, other posters have brought up massacres committed under ostensibly communist regimes. It is worth noting however that there is incontrovertible evidence (as in, direct statements by the architects) that the powers that be in those regimes were fully aware of the ability of religion to redefine moral values and explicitly sought to emulate religion as a form of social control.

Geographical distribution of wind, an interconnected grid, and storage can be used to overcome intermittency. Storage can be hydro where practical (with definitely a decent amount of capacity in Germany) and battery.

No, I am not. Have you even bothered to read the paper you linked to? Don't just link to things and expect me to read them for you. For starters, let's look at the measures that paper uses. It employs LUIE which is hectares/TWh/year... So, in other words, hectares/TJ*hour/second/year or, in other words hectares/TJ*3600 seconds/second/31,556,926 seconds. I mean, seriously, just cancel all the unnecessary terms and numbers and you get hectares/114,079.55 Watts or, in other words 1 hectare per/114.07955 MW. I mean, seriously, it's just reinventing the concept of units of area/per Watt with pointless extra terms and a pointless multiplier. I mean, I have come to accept that the power sector measures quantity by taking Watts, which are just a rate of 1 Joule per second, then multiplying by an hour, where the time terms are really in seconds, just that an hour is 3600 seconds, so they should cancel to Joules and a multiplier. I complain about it, but I accept that those units are there. But then adding yet another time term, this time years, which is also just seconds and a multiplier!? I have a hard time accepting the intelligence and rationality of anyone who blithely use such a term. I will use it if I have to, but only under protest. In any case, in this system, they give nuclear a score of 7.1 (using the median figure), meaning that, 1 GWe actual would be the average production of a 62.24 Hectare nuclear plant, or 0.6224 K. In other words, adjusting for a 93% capacity factor, it would be 0.5788 square kilometers for a 1 GWe nameplate nuclear plant. That is obviously a load of crap since it is so far off commonly reported figures and real-world observations.

As far as wind goes, their figure is 130. So that would be 11.40 square km for actual production of 1 GWe from wind. With a 34% capacity factor, that means a nameplate 1 GWe farm would be 3.88 square km. If we look at the 11.4 square km figure, with 5 MWe nameplate wind towers (producing 1.7 MWe actual), it would take 588 to produce 1 GWe actual. So, that would be 19,388 square meters per wind tower. In other words 1.94 hectares. Or, in other words, converted to a circle, a diameter of 157 meters. The blades of a 5 MW nameplate wind turbine are only about 130 meters. That is obviously wrong. Put in other terms, it's about 5 American football fields. Clearly wrong. It also ignores the fact that, for a wind turbine, you can use the land pretty much right up to the steel of the tower itself for farming and other uses.

Looking at the paper and how they got their figures, for nuclear they claim to have used land use for uranium mining in their figures. Considering that their area per GW comes out as far lower than standard claims that do not even take mining into consideration and that the mining for a nuclear plant over its lifespan takes up considerably more space than the plant itself, that reduces the credibility of their methodology and/or data quite a lot. They are also pretty vague about certain aspects of the data collection and they don't really show much actual detail about how they came up with their numbers in the paper itself. Also, just reading that section, there's some language that makes them seem like apologists for nuclear power that you don't see in the other power sources. For Wind, among other things they mention including the area of access roads and a perimeter. This by itself is invalidating. In dual use scenarios, such as farming, access is necessary even if there is no wind farm there, so that is pretty invalidating by itself. They also mention that "For spacing area, we traced the perimeter of the entire wind farm, including all the space in between turbines.". I could basically replicate all of their work to draw more conclusions and form a very detailed rebuttal, but that would be a huge waste of time. It's clear just from these details that their study is basically invalid.

Of course, I did look into the background and affiliations of the authors a bit (though, once again, not going to spend weeks on it) and there are lots of red flags regarding the authors impartiality. I would say that I tried to outline the tree of affiliated organizations and sponsors, but it is less of a tree and more of a connected graph. The Breakthrough Institute pops up various times, there are nuclear engineering organizations, etc. Notably, Bill Gates, the subject of TFA comes up as being one entity behind this. Basically, there is a ton of evidence that this is a paper written to favor a predetermined conclusion.

If you want to argue that, you can make points from the paper and go back to the primary data, but don't just spit out numbers from the paper. Their statistics seem to be just fine, but the methods they used to generate the numbers to plug into the statistics are seriously suspect.

My conclusion is that my analysis of the land area actually consumed by wind towers is rough, but correct. Also that the area consumed by wind farms is less than the area consumed by nuclear plant in terms of actual output.

The wikipedia entry for Palo Verde reads like ad copy: "It is a critical asset to the Southwest...", etc. Aside from that, it is not a good example, because it uses water for cooling. The water is treated sewerage mostly from Phoenix, which gets its water by unsustainably draining the Colorado, Salt, and Verde rivers. In other words, it uses a "massive source of fresh water" (the water could be used for crops instead). So no, this is actually an example of a power plant using a large fresh water source. Also, it generates 3.64 GW actual, and takes up 16.5 square km, so it is 4.54 km per GW actual in terms of land usage. So this is not a good example of low land usage or of the ability of nuclear plants to operate without large water sources. It uses 65 million gallons of water per day.

Once again, nonsense. You are using a cherry-picked definition of "anywhere" with your own chosen granularity. I can tell because I know you will backtrack and claim that you meant "country" specifically if I pointed out individual homes or towns, etc. that get all of their power from renewables. The simple fact is that, as time goes on, the only way you will be able to support your position will be through increasing levels of contortion of the facts. It seems like, if you want to make a geographic argument, you will just end up gerrymandering your definition and pointing to regions with arbitrary boundaries that have not decarbonized their electricity generation to your arbitrary standards yet. I am not, of course, defending how long it is taking nations to decarbonize, but your claims that they have "failed" because they are en route to the goal but not there yet reek of desperation.

I am sure that electricitymaps is a worthwhile project, but it is not up to me to join their project because they don't have up to date information. I have enough other projects I am already involved in. As for a citation, here:

-- World nuclear Association: Nuclear Power in France
In case you need me to. That's 17.7 TWh from natural gas equating to 3%, then biofuels/waste, oil, and coal adding up to 21.2, which is about another 3%. 3% plus 3% adds up to 6%. Burned fuels produce around 450 grams or higher of CO2 per kwh, so 6% of that is at least 27 grams of CO2 per kWh, as I wrote.

Once again, can you at least make an attempt to show that you understand why there might be problems with using "a rolling estimate of yearly output? One that includes last month days after the month ended"? I mean, aside from questions about the reliability of the information on the site, you have to see the problem with that, right?

Well, I can't seem to find it. Perhaps you can help me out? All I can find is that the data is aggregated from hourly results and that their methodology uses "raw production data from public, free, and official sources. They include official government and transmission system operators' data", but it doesn't actually list the sources, just notes that it runs it through its own algorithm which does not seem to be detailed under methodology.

You really like to repeat yourself don't you? The point is, with such radical changes, apparently just from shifting the rolling window by one month, it should be clear that your numbers are neither precise, nor accurate. You might want to state a degree of certainty along with these numbers. Note that I wouldn't be so strict if you weren't trying to, metaphorically speaking, cut things finely with a rolling pin.

There is definitely an approximate order of magnitude difference between the CO2 per kWh of France and Germany. That is not in doubt. The variability of the numbers you insist on, however, is obviously wide enough that your apparent confidence in the numbers appears foolish. For example, when asked, you cited a threshold of 50 g per kWh of CO2, but we can't even say for certain that France is actually within that threshold given your own methodology.

Oops. Errata. I did in fact make an error in that post on the vaporization of the rivers. I plugged in the wrong multiplier. Looks like I was off by a factor of about 6.87X in the total. So much less of the Mississippi would have been vaporized with the 500 GWe, though it would have been completely vaporized with the full primary power production. It would not have been enough to completely vaporize all of those rivers, they would have just boiled with a relatively small fraction vaporizing. I mean, it would still be enough to pretty much wipe out all the life except for extremophiles, so the point about thermal pollution being a real problem still stands, but I did make an error for which I apologize.

I don't need a better idea. They already exist. I think you've forgotten in all these posts that the whole point of this was noting that Flamanville is smaller than the average which is a little over 3 sq km per GW for nuclear power plants. Nuclear plants using ocean water can use various techniques that more or less fit into your list. For example, they can evaporate ocean water in a cooling tower, so that it gets absorbed mostly by a phase change and then goes into the atmosphere For oceanside plants though, a common method is to have a large number of cooling ponds or canals taking up a lot of ground area. Some of the heat goes into the atmosphere, some goes into the ground, etc. The point is that the water cools down first, then is returned to the ocean. Once through systems like Flamanville save on space and on cost, but they are also recognized as sources of pollution. Plenty of studies have confirmed that dumping massive amounts of hot water into the ocean is indeed harmful.

As for your other examples like into the air. That is done through two main methods. One is pure air cooling, which takes a lot of infrastructure and extra land and cost, but is really the only realistic option without a massive water source. Another uses those flowing water sources you mentioned and cooling tower where water is evaporated (pluses: doesn't heat the water source like once-through and uses less water, minus: the water is removed from the fresh water supply, which denies it to those downstream. The once-through method with flowing water sources of course adds heat pollution. To get an idea of how much, consider some of the rivers in the US by flow rate:
Mississippi (number one by flow rate): About 16.8 million liters per second. So that means that if a 1 GWe electric plant uses the whole river for cooling and the heat is distributed evenly (which does not happen, of course, they take a tiny fraction and it gets released in a hot spot), then the river is heated by about 0.179 C. Not massive, but not nothing.
Skipping the St. Lawrence because of complicated water rights issues since it is mostly Canadian.
Ohio (number three): 8 million liters per second. So a 1 GWe plant raises the whole river by 0.376 C.
Niagara (number seven): 5.8 million liters per second. So, 1 GWe plant raises the whole river by 0.517 C
Missouri (number ten): 2.44 million liters per second. S0, 1GWe plant raises the whole river by 1.23 C
Of course, that's just a 1 GWe plant. If all of the approximately 500 GWe of Electricity the US uses were generated by nuclear plants and cooled by these rivers, (assuming a 15 C starting point), the Mississippi river would be raised to 100 C and 90.5% of it would be totally vaporized to steam. Any other single US river would be totally vaporized.
If, instead of just electricity, but all approximately 3,500 GWe of US primary power the US uses were generated by nuclear plants and cooled by rivers, the top 38 rivers in the US (with the last one being the Colorado river, with about a 27th of the flow rate of the Mississippi oh, and including the full flow rate of the St. Lawrence, ignoring Canada's rights), representing probably most of the flowing water in the US (hard to find exact figures on and even the numbers I am using here probably double count a lot since some of these rivers flow into the others), would be completely vaporized. Just to note, for the above, I am taking enthalpy of vaporization into consideration.

So, the entire point is that Flamanville is not really a good example of the typical size of a nuclear plant because it gets to cheat on size by dumping heat pollution into the English channel. Plants like that get by with a grandfather exception, but new plants can't get away with that. As the analysis shows, the heat dumped by these plants is not insignificant.

You realize that's a "the solution to pollution is dilution" argument, right? The problem is not the heating of the entire Atlantic ocean. Do you now that the house I live in is built on the Earth. That's a pretty huge thermal mass. If my house catches fire, it's not going to be noticeable in how it affects the heat of planet Earth. I might have some reasons to be concerned about the local effects, however. So, if you're not sure about the analogy there, the problem is locally where the hot water, which rises, heats the top layer of water.

Also, I should note that the _electrical_ output of Flamaville is 1.3 GW, but that translates to a _thermal_ output of about 4 GW. That's enough to raise the temperature of nearly a million liters of water by 1 degree C every second. Or say an area of 1 square km and one meter deep (once again, hot water tends to rise to the top) by 3.6 degrees C every hour. It is not trivial for the area around the outlet and, combined with all of those phosphate and iron containing pollution you mentioned, certainly risks creating giant, toxic algal blooms that kill off mass numbers of local sea life. Basically, it is clear that this nuclear station only exists because it is grandfathered. It's not like the other pollution you mentioned is OK, either, but there are good reasons not to allow this sort of thing