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Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 652

Better insulation to curb heat loss?

Better construction standards to reduce or eliminate infiltration of unconditioned air?

More efficient heating appliances? (Anything over ~10 years old can absolutely be upgraded)

More efficient heating/cooling strategies? (e.g. zoning)

There's absolutely more that can be done with a typical suburban home to reduce energy use. A 60% reduction on an older (30+ year old) home could actually be pretty easy if it hasn't already been renovated.
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Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 2) 652

A typical american could use 1/3rd or down to 1/4th of the energy he uses and the whole country could cut down to 1/10th and no one would realize any difference.

This, I think, is the most important thing to keep in mind; When discussing "quality of life" in terms of energy, we can reframe it of in terms of energy*efficiency. We can lower energy use without reducing QoL by improving efficiency.

Not impressed? Was not meant to impress you. That is per year not per month.

I'd be more impressed if that was per month... it would be nearly three times as much energy as my entire house uses, which is roughly four times the size of your apartment. And I have all electric appliances!

Anyway, at some point in time your energy will be green, and your energy demand will drop and then you have to fight the power companies about: why can it be that my electricity is so expensive when YOU get it for 'free'?

An argument easily won: I'm charging you for "free" green power because it costs me money to build and maintain the infrastructure that harnesses and delivers it to you.

It's kind of like asking why gasoline is so expensive when the oil is available for free, just sitting under the ground.
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Comment Re:So? (Score 1) 488

Our government has backed an expensive and inefficient renewable energy tech - that's the only reason we're even having this conversation.

As opposed to our government backing an even more expensive and inefficient incumbent system?

By subsidizing solar power for domestic installations, that tax money is effectively being put back into the hands of the general public through savings, rather than into the coffers of multi-million dollar, often international corporations where it can further corrupt the system.

And I'd be happy to pay a "road use tax" even though I don't drive an EV (yet...). I figure I pay about $130/yr in gasoline tax, which if I switched to an EV I'd save about four or five times that easily.
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Comment Re:Americans trust science too much (Score 2) 460

If you can cite a study to prove your point you have won the argument.

That's not trusting science too much, that's laziness. Usually the person citing the study has a tenuous grasp of what it really says, and in all but a handful of cases they are betting on the fact that few people will bother to look it up and read it themselves.

You can tell this is what's going on, because it only further polarizes people; if the "study" reinforces their existing view, then it's the best thing ever, and if not then the scientists who did it are clearly corrupt or they're just plain wrong. No attempt to understand, nothing changes, just reinforcement of bias.
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Comment Re:Maybe citizens saw duplicity? (Score 1) 460

For starters, please provide citations for everything you put in quotes.

If scientists were so desperate for money, so easily bought by whoever was willing to pay them, we'd have volumes of studies saying that burning fossil fuels is good for everything from water quality to sex drive, that dumping toxic waste into rivers makes fish taste better, and that tobacco smoking curse cancer.

But we don't. For every study that suggests (or is construed to suggest even though it clearly doesn't) that climate change isn't occurring there's at least a hundred that says it is.

The best explanation I can come up with is that the scientists are not chasing paychecks like some people claim, but are doing their best to honestly study a subject they feel is important and are interested in.
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Comment Re:3D plotter (Score 2) 69

What kind of machine is it?

I agree a teacup should not require support, unless the handle has a loop that dips below the attachment point. But even then only the underside of that loop would need support.

The layering can leave stripes, but a nice material with good print settings on a well made and tuned machine it's more of a texture than actual visual artifacts. They're like grooves on a record; you can feel the individual grooves but unless you look closely or get the light at just the right angle it just appears as a matte finish.

I've only printed an object intended to be liquid tight once, and it worked fine. Again, it comes down to print settings, calibration and good quality material.

So in the interest of improving your 3D printing experience, I'd like to know what machine you have, what material you use and what the settings are.

As for speed, that's also generally a limit of the material... but I've gotten mine up to ~230mm/sec before the heater in the nozzle couldn't provide enough power to melt the filament at that rate.

In practice you have a lot of moving mass which limits your top speeds on complex parts - the forces from accelerations can overwhelm the cheap belt drive systems most hobby-level printers use. Of course, if you want to shell out for better parts you can make something a lot better :)
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Comment Re:I dunno about LEDs, but CFLs don't last (Score 2) 602

I've been using the twirly type CLFs in a ceiling fan "glass ball" light for years (upside-down and enclosed, expressly against the manufacturer's warnings to not use them inverted in enclosed fixtures!).

In fact I've gotten into the habit of dating them with a sharpie before I install: Nov 2011. Since this is in my bedroom it's used for several hours a day, every day. Coming up on 10,000 hours, which is the rated life of the bulb, despite the warranty-voiding installation.

That said, the early generations of CFLs were absolute shit. Don't let that turn you off on the tech, and a few extra bucks for buy a decent brand is worth it.
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Comment Re:How about the "bio-fuels" ? (Score 3, Interesting) 308

Corn ethanol is ridiculously inefficient. Sugar-based biofuels, by contrast, can have a quite good return and are actively used by developing countries in South America that don't have money to waste on things that don't make economic sense (but aren't used in the US because we have relatively little land able to grow sugarcane).

In short, it's more complex than either "all bio-fuels are good" or "all bio-fuels are evil". This shouldn't be a surprise -- few things are so simple.

Comment Re:The article is more extreme than the summary (Score 1) 795

Your entire thesis hinges on the premise that there's a difference between "truth" and "Truth."

If you are unwilling or unable to justify that premise, then you have no argument, and you're just talking out of your ass.

Bald assertions aren't allowing in science or philosophy.
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Comment Re:The article is more extreme than the summary (Score 1) 795

And no I will not define those as they are of no concern or interest to science, that is philosophy.

But you have to define them in order to justify the assertion that science isn't concerned with it.

You are making a distinction between "general truth" and "Absolute Truth" - and you need to back that up or you have no argument beyond "because I say so."
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Comment Re:The article is more extreme than the summary (Score 1) 795

How is it committing a logical fallacy to ask you for a definition and example? Not a definition of science, a definition of "Truth." That seems entirely within the purview of this thread.

As to your supplied "definition" ... Going back to Webster (your own source)

3 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method

Oh look, science is the knowledge of truths obtained though the scientific method. I guess science DOES seek truths!

(This is why citing a dictionary almost always makes you look like a douchbag, BTW.)
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Comment Re:The article is more extreme than the summary (Score 1) 795

I'm not asking the question for my own curiosity - I'm asking you, specifically, to define the difference between "Truth" and "truth."

I'm asking you to do this because you have asserted that "science is not the pursuit of Truth" - which makes me presume that you actually know what "Truth" is at least well enough to define it.

So, please elaborate on what this "Truth" is, so I can better understand why science can not pursue it.
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