Various people have explained at length and you didn’t even comprehend what was being said. So what’s the point? Very briefly, the innovations will be on the consumption side, not the generation side. The problem, as before, is to get around the political roadblocks preventing them from being used.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just the standard human imperative to protect one’s pathetic bit of turf at the expense of everybody else.
We’re posting messages on an expat forum, not drafting a thesis. Anyhow, I picked up that thread and wrote you a response.
And I really believe that this is what you really think needs to happen before renewables really take off. Meanwhile, in reality, this is really not the case at all.
We’re posting messages on an expat forum, not drafting a thesis. Anyhow, I picked up that thread and wrote you a response.[/quote]
I know Xeno, I was talking to Vay.
But to ask for stats in a science and society related thread in which numerous charts and graphs have been posted and numbers compared is asking for someone to draft a thesis? I think not.
Concrete example, fred:
With the technology available right now, today, you could construct a PRT network for €20K-50K/km, plus about the same again for a 5m clearway at €10/m2; say €100K/km. Vehicles would be ~€2-5K each in modest production quantities (1000s), depending on features. Ballpark figure of €25m for 100km of roadway and 3000 vehicles. There are plenty of private corporations able and willing to stump up that kind of cash. Elon Musk spent only a bit more than that building a space company: building glorified Mini Mokes should be a walk in the park, right? No: it’s next-to-impossible.
You can’t build PRT networks through people’s back yards, or even alongside existing roads. The bureaucracy is simply insurmountable unless you have much deeper pockets and lots of patience. Even if you get 99 landowners to sell you the required clearway, there’s always one asshole who wants four zillion dollars for his worthless bit of scrubland, and he knows he can fuck up the entire project if he doesn’t get it. Then you’d have an army a lunatics with clipboards telling which planning laws prevent you from installing X, Y, or Z at points A, B or C, and you have to move them to point D instead. Nobody is going to bother with all that. It’s just too much hard work. Governments could cut through all of that by - for example - asserting eminent domain. But they don’t want to.
In places where there are no existing roads or power sources, governments expend a great deal of energy making sure no development of any kind can occur. I know you think I’m making this up: it has to be seen to be believed. Something you can verify for yourself from online sources: it is illegal, in many third-world countries (and even a couple of modern ones) to compete with monopoly power generation. Transport companies have to have special licenses from a dozen different government departments, which means a dozen very large bribes have to be paid (usually at frequent intervals; and even then, there’s no guarantee the local mayor won’t decide to requisition your brand-new transport network “for the public good”, and promptly run it into the ground.
Of course, I don’t have fred smith’s political acumen, but they seem to me to be political issues, not technical ones.
I thought that people like you supported strict environmental regulations? Wanna talk about the stalled Keystone Pipeline? what’s your point? OH! I SEE! The political aspects of this should be easier because “you and your friends have a good idea?” But the same strict regulations should remain in place to protect you and your friends from “bad ideas that won’t work.” Right? Gotcha!
Did you even read what I wrote? Nothing to do with environmental regulations. There would be little or no problem there.
There are eminent domain laws on the books regarding seizure of private land/property for the public good. Do you think that your ideas should trump these laws? because they are yours and ergo “good?” And does your project involve any kind of construction? if so, then it DOES involve environmental laws. And are you suggesting that “you” have the “right” to supercede these because your ideas are “good?” Just checking…
Obviously 
However, constructing a PRT system is much less invasive than building a road of equivalent capacity and would therefore have less trouble with approvals.
Ideas that are demonstrably NOT good get approved and assisted all the time. Just saying that any government so inclined could help move technology forwards, as they did 100 years ago with railways and electrification.
Of course, what was good for the early 20th century is still good today, so no need to do anything, right?
Scrolling back I note that it was you who said and I quote “This has nothing to do with environmental regulations.” You really haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about, do you?
So if there is “less trouble” with approvals, why are you complaining and suggesting that this is some conspiracy politically to keep green energy from moving forward.
Indeed, and those “good” ideas of yours never get approved and thus for the “good” of all, you will be the one to decide how and what moves through the legal and bureaucratic process and when. Wow!
This is becoming a much-mouthed petulant refrain of yours. I don’t get my way! Not fair! The whole system is to blame! Don’t agree with me and it is because you are an enemy of technology! and want to stop progress! Jesus! Time to give your Betsy-wets-herself doll a new diaper.
Try and hold more than one thought in your head at a time. I’ll try again: the overwhelming problem for a private company installing a large, distributed system like a PRT network is land rights and compliance with the associated regulations. Environmental compliance is a part of that, but a very small part, that’s easy to deal with in the case of a low-impact project. It’s easier for a government not because they can ignore the law, but because they can leverage laws that apply only to them, on the basis that they are entrusted with the public good. And last time I checked, I am not the government. Simply pointing out here (a) what’s theoretically possible, and (b) contrary to your assertion that we don’t have the technology to do this, it’s been hanging around for decades, mothballed, waiting for someone to at least give it a commercial tryout.
Anyway, this is getting a bit tedious, fred. You don’t like all this new-fangled modern technology and you don’t think anybody else should either. I get it. Getting back on-topic, here’s some interesting bumf from those well-known liberals and communist fellow-travellers, the USGS:
pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2012/3053/FS12- … hiopia.pdf
TL;DR version: Ethiopia’s climate is changing and rainfall patterns are becoming less predictable. In some areas (not all) that also means “less frequent”, and the country will need to modify the methods and locations used for growing food.
This sort of thing is pretty important because it could end up causing wars, and lunatics with cheap weapons then start causing trouble all over the place. At some point the US thinks it has to get involved and spends a shitload of cash on emergency aid and/or bombing something. Addressing the actual problem - climate change - might be cheaper and easier.
[quote]TL;DR version: Ethiopia’s climate is changing and rainfall patterns are becoming less predictable. In some areas (not all) that also means “less frequent”, and the country will need to modify the methods and locations used for growing food.
This sort of thing is pretty important because it could end up causing wars, and lunatics with cheap weapons then start causing trouble all over the place. At some point the US thinks it has to get involved and spends a shitload of cash on emergency aid and/or bombing something. Addressing the actual problem - climate change - might be cheaper and easier.[/quote]
Gosh. I’ll bet the Horn of Africa is quaking… why there has been nothing but peace stability and prosperity there since the 1960s… oh wait! 
Finley, so you are implying that human GHG emissions are responsible to some significant degree to what is happening with the climate in Ethiopia?
Let us all recall that it was during the relatively cool 1970s that the Sahel and Horn of Africa suffered severe multi-year drought.
The USGS report points out a correlation. Correlation is not causation, of course. Ethiopia is also heavily deforested - one of the most common causes of rainfall disruption and soil degradation.
My point is, it doesn’t actually matter.
We could spend the next ten years navel-gazing, and another few million $ on studies … or, we could try and get a bit of international co-operation going and fix what’s fixable. In the past 10 years, Ethiopia has gone from being a AGW-denying basket case to a slightly more enlightened basket case: trade and investment is being encouraged and 100% import tax on solar panels was recently dropped. Reality on the ground might be as fucked-up as it ever was, but I’m still convinced that Africa in general is going to see some massive benefits from ‘green’ technology … as will the countries who can sell it to them. Finger-pointing (or self-flagellation) is irrelevant and unproductive.
So? You agree with me now?
Sounds good.
So denying or admitting AGW will, in turn, govern whether the country suffers from climate change issues?
How does that fit in with the climate change alarmist paradigm? I thought that we were supposed to source more locally to reduce DANGEROUS carbon emissions?
And?
From a trade perspective possibly… as a source of additional energy in hard-to-reach areas, possibly… but given that the climate change issue is a GLOBAL one, why are you suggesting that Africa is going to see massive benefits from green technology? You do realize that you have raised this issue in the context of climate disaster that will cause wars. Do you think solar panels in Ethiopia will stop climate change in Ethiopia and thus prevent fights over resources that “may lead to war???”
Fingerpointing is what you were doing with regard to why these special projects that you support were not getting government support in the US, no? How does that relate to self-flagellation? Are you suggesting that fingerpointing (and self-flagellation) are the same things? Are you suggesting that you were really pointing the finger of blame at yourself the whole time in some supremely ironic posture? and what do you mean by “finger-pointing” is “irrelevant?” What do you mean by “irrelevant?” I don’t see how this gauges anything with regard to finger-pointing. Now, fingerpointing can be “unproductive” as you have suggested but “irrelevant?” And, if by some supreme effort you are able to convince us that it is “irrelevant” then what do you have to say about all of your pointedly critical comments throughout these past threads? “irrelevant?” or “just unproductive?” I would be happy to go with either assessment.
Because they have no other viable alternatives. Have you ever been to a place where buying a screwdriver or a truckload of PVC piping is a major adventure? How do you suppose anybody would ever build a power station - of any kind - in the Ethiopian highlands? How would you run cables to nomadic populations or small villages? PV panels can fit in the back of a Toyota Hilux and can be installed by anybody with half a brain.
Then there’s farming. There is one, and only one way to farm in an area with erratic rainfall and fragile soils, and that’s agroforestry. Broadacre chemical-fed farming fails miserably, so companies who know how to do it properly are going to make big profits.
Not all by themselves, obviously. Can you please stop objecting just for the sake of objecting? If you have a point to make, do so. If you’re just attention-seeking, stop it.
Actually, there are many viable alternatives. That is why every 10 days both China AND India are constructing a new coal or fossil fuels based power plant. That is two countries. What about the others?
Yes, but how is this relevant? Are you suggesting that development is important? I agree. But then… wait… that is supposed to lead to the kind of climate change that alarms you.
The same way they have built airports, roads, dams, bridges, mines, railways and yes power plants in other remote areas.
Well, nifty then! I guess the whole world can look forward to PV panels on the back of a Toyota Hilux… which no doubt will be an ELECTRIC Toyota Hilux as well?
Agroforestry… the only way to farm? I suggest that you need to get out a bit more. You may not LIKE the way corporate farming is done but, in fact, it is the norm and that has nothing to do with political interests looking out for their interests and blocking interests of enlightened people such as yourself who have their interests and everyone else’s in mind.
Now, before you need to change the diaper on your Betsy wets herself doll AGAIN… I am not against any of these proposals. I merely take exception with the suggestion that they are going to be feasible on a global level and will provide the productive capacity to meet existing methods and that these will continue to remain largely in place and that this will have little to do with nefarious corporate interests smacking down the commonsense solutions of the Honest Joe and his sixpack…
DO, however, look at where your meandering little mind has taken us… first, it is global warming will cause war in the Horn of Africa to solar panels will be great and then to agroforestry and… and… one lives on the edge of something wondering where your next response will take us… Oh great Ulysses… where next on this subjective Odyssey? Might I be so bold as to suggest something daring! something Beckettian in its pebble-sucking mentally strained retarded stream-of-conscious reverse Satrian (impressionism) to suppressed (expressionism) drivel?
Whatever fred. You’ve got your rock-solid beliefs and nobody’s ever going to modify them in the slightest. You have no interest in facts or reality outside of la-la land in your head. Sometimes I don’t mind poking fun at you, but it’s really getting boring. Stop it, please. The thread is about climate change impacts. The underlying assumption is that Climate Change exists and has impacts. Since you do not accept either assertion, you have nothing to contribute.
Finley, if green technology can help Africa develop that is cool. And reducing GHG is good too.