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Comment Re:Great... Instead of CO2 we get CO (Score 2) 133

Problem with that is, vegetation rots eventually, releasing methane - a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Sure, you can flame it off, but then you're still releasing that captured CO2 back to the atmosphere. Only by increasing the forest footprint of the world, or causing massive algae blooms in the oceans can you really sequester CO2 in vegetation.

Comment Re:Sounds about right... (Score 3, Insightful) 441

> Home owners can't really lose with solar PV

Unless, of course, you happen to live somewhere other than Southern California or Arizona, where weather conditions don't permit the sun to shine at sufficient intensity over the whole year. Here in the mid/upper midwest, the payback period for a solar installation on my house works out to be 17 years. Wind, on the other hand, can be cost effective if you have sufficient land space to put up a tower. I see a few of my rural neighbors with wind turbines on their properties.

Comment Re:Temporary (Score 1) 274

Your timeline for that is a bit optimistic, I think. Robot factories - sure. Simple stuff like individual parts and toys from 3d printers - ok. For things like durable goods, there are too many dissimilar, complex parts made from varying materials, each processed in a different way, to make this a reality any time soon. You'd need a universal constructor - and that's at least 150 years out. We need to master far too many high level concepts first, like quantum physics.

Comment Re:In civilized countries... (Score 4, Insightful) 169

See, what happened to those days was that gradually, colleges realized they could keep raising prices past what the government could pay, because they knew families of students could pay more. Colleges built palaces to "education", dormitories with gold plated faucets, gymnasiums, new buildings that were completely unnecessary simply because they could. All the while, tuition kept going up - the government saw that tuition was increasing at universities, so they'd raise the amount of subsidy, then the college would raise tuition above that to the point where families were bled just as much as before. Eventually, the bottom dropped out, the government said enough is enough, and held or dropped subsidies. Colleges, so used to 10% pay raises for tenured professors and unwilling to live with 20 year old dorms, screamed - "they're cutting our funding!" - so they just saddle their students with the maximum loan allowance they can - because they know they can get it - just to keep the gravy train coming. The more the government allows students to borrow, the more money colleges will charge.

It's economics at work. It's called Rent Seeking Behavior. If there is money to be gotten, it will be.

Here's a journal paper someone wrote on it.

Here's a bunch of resources on this from a think tank.

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