For comparative purposes, an incandescent bulb puts out about 52 lumens per watt.
That's the theoretical maximum, that no bulb actually gets near. For example, a typical 60 watt bulb will give you 15 lumens per watt.
...And, somehow....they have to be honored, I mean, people worked their whole lives and are dependent on that as their means of retirement.....Sure, you honor your contracts with those till now, but WTF are we not stopping said practice immediately going forward?
The Preckwinkle gentleman from this article
worked only one day for the state and will wind up with a pension of $108,000 a year. I'm sorry, there are some games that were played that are simply not defensible.
not everyone should be expected to share their work.
Nor should Github be expected to host such repositories for free.
That's true. However, if Github can afford to provide the service for free and chooses to do so, I see no harm in it.
The reason it is +4 insightful is that he was responding to someone who was claiming nuclear is zero carbon but wind and solar are not zero carbon.
And you are correct, nothing will ever be zero carbon.
This is not a victory for renewables, but for democracy. German citizens want to go renewable enough that they are willing to swallow the costs. Germany is a rich enough country to do that, and rich countries can accomplish amazing things when they have the will to do so. That doesn't mean renewable became any more viable economically, or that other poorer countries have any chance of replicating this feat.
I agree with the first part of what you wrote, but not the second. Germany has purchased so much solar PV that it has pushed the PV industry far down the experience curve. This results in far lower PV prices for everyone else.
I've been saying for years now that basically the entire world should be sending a Christmas card to Germany every year. The Germans took a HUGE economic hit that wound up making solar PV much more cost effective for everyone.
Actually, Germany is somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of the percentage of renewable sources in the electricity mix. The problem is that they also consume a lot of electricity (industry and population), so their consumption really matters in absolute terms. That's why it is an important country -- if they can pull it off, it means that other large industrial producers like France and the UK also can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_European_Union
Keep in mind that that report is 2 years old now, and many countries like Spain and Portugal have invested additional resources, with Portugal passing the 50% mark this year.
My, how things can change in just a couple of years. Germany has already blown through the 2020 goal and in the first half of 2012 got 25% of its electricity from renewables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
Solar and wind installations in the last 2.5 years in Germany have been crazy huge. I believe Germany also generated around 6% of their electricity from solar PV so far this year, and that number is also going up quickly.
In this country, executives get paid for performance-- or at least for tweaking the stock price. Unions, with their incessant demands for decent working conditions, interfere with the creation of totemic representations of shareholder value.
That was a joke right? "Shareholder value" when talking about passenger airlines is pretty much zero. The lifetime profit/loss of the industry is a loss. Every legacy US airline has declared bankruptcy at least once. Southwest has not gone belly up, but you would have been far better investing in the S&P 500 over the last five or ten year periods, perhaps longer.
The problem is that owning airlines is "sexy" and way too much money is invested in it. The result is that shareholders are completely and utterly screwed. The problem with airlines is not the execs, the unions, the corporate structure, or even fuel costs. The problem is the "sexy" factor has caused there to be way too much capacity built and no airline can operate at a long term profit because of it.
funny, I go with the lowest bidder for airlines based in other parts of the world and the food, beer & wine, entertainment and courteous service are included. the US airlines *could* do it if money-grubbing scum weren't allowed to get away with excessivly lining their own pockets
Right now, the aviation industry has a net loss for the lifetime of the industry. The stockholders certainly don't see any money, and they keep getting totally wiped out. Compare executive compensation of airline companies and other companies. Airline execs make far less on average than execs at companies of similar sizes. Who is left? Who are the "money-grubbing scum"?
What the hell is electric landing gear?
The summary appears to be accurate and the article is real enough.
As for as partisan fluff, could you please tell me what you are talking about? I don't see it.
We haven't built a new major power plant in a long, long time and we aren't likely to do so anytime soon either.
Look at figure 95 on this page.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/sector_electric_power_all.cfm#powergen
In the accompanying text, the DOE estimates the total new capacity additions to our electric system between 2011 and 2015 will be between 166 and 355 gigawatts.
Yeah, I have to admit that Itunes does really stink up the place. I am regularly astonished at how stupid some of the things it does are.
You wrote " There are quite a number of people out there that would sooner die then choose Apple because of their shiny retarded walled garden approach to computing. I'll go back to a clamshell phone before I choose Apple for anything."
I respect that choice. I personally want that walled garden. Decades ago, before malware came around, I used to spend 5K a year on software. Anything that I thought had a chance of increasing my productivity, I bought it. Malware changed all that. I now have to consider the risk that some cool little utility will utterly screw up my system. Or install stupid tool bars that I have to spend way too much time to get rid of. The result of this is the amount of software I consume has declined by 75% compared to 25 years ago.
The Apple walled garden changed all that. I can install boatloads of things with a very high degree on confidence that they are safe.
My brother in law has a PC that got infected with hundreds of pieces of malware and is unusable. His Iphone and Ipad are going along just fine.
There are a large number of us that very much want a walled garden. Yes, it is not for everyone, but it most certainly is for some of us.
Happiness is twin floppies.
