Let's see the cost of developing a new technology to dispose of the waste, as you estimate, would be billions of dollars. How much is it costing to store this waste currently? Who is paying for that?

The cost of storing this waste now has to paid for by the government, and has to cost millions of dollars per year. How much it costs exactly I do not know. We are pretty certain this storage cost will only increase and the waste will continue to be waste until we find something else to do with it.

So, it seems to me that even if there is not a profitable business case to burn this waste in a reactor it does seem logical to me that the government would be able to make the case to at least try developing some of these technologies to dispose of this nuclear waste and potentially extract energy from it.

Even if this expending of billions of dollars does not ultimately prove successful in disposing of the waste we get a few things out of it. We get people trained in dealing with the waste, people get jobs for a few years, and we learn more about the properties of this waste. So, we might not learn how to make the waste go away forever but we should learn a few things on how to at least manage the waste more intelligently.

What has happened though is that this expense is a pretty low risk, a lot of people have already done plenty of research in waste burning reactors. It seems to me that many people are already willing to spend their own money to develop this technology because they see a potential profit if it works. So, the government doesn't need to spend this billions of dollars, they just need to allow private citizens to spend their own billions of dollars.

As one advocate for developing waste burning reactors put it we have thousands of tons of nuclear waste now. They want one ton of this to develop the technology. If it works they turn all that waste into money, if they fail they added a few more tons of waste to the problem. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Personally I believe AGW is a farce. It's a lie from the government to make the government bigger. It's a smokescreen to hide the intent of those in power to grab more power from us and make us feel good about giving them more authority over our lives.

That said, let's assume I am an ignorant paranoid fool and AGW is real. What should we do about it?

We don't burn coal because we are assholes that want to watch the oceans boil from global warming. We burn coal because it is the best means we have to provide the lifestyle we enjoy. It appears to me that a majority of people in the government think that to improve the situation it must tax the coal burners, which makes a profit, and give it to the windmill manufacturers, which only make a profit when handed government subsidies.

The ultimate goal, so it seems, is to tax the coal out of existence so that we can all breathe the cleaner air that drives our windmills. Problem with this is, where do the subsidies come from when there is no more coal to tax?

The current path that the IPCC has laid out for us involves taking money from people that know how to make it and give it to people that can make up a good enough story on how they can stop the rising of the sea with their brand of snake oil. All that does is leave us poorer and rarely produces something actually viable.

I keep hearing how profit is evil from those that claim to be more righteous than me. Profit is not evil, profit is good. Why do you go to work every morning? I say because it is more profitable than staying home. Profit is what allows you to buy the food, shelter, and clothing for your children. If we want to make the air cleaner for our children then we need to make creating cleaner air profitable.

Wind and solar power are "profitable" only so long as it takes profit from others through taxes and gives it to them with subsidies. It cannot produce profit on it's own, barring some unusual circumstances. Advancements in technology may change that but in the here and now profitable wind and solar is rare. Hydroelectric is profitable but there are few places left worth a dam. Coal and natural gas is profitable but that is what is supposedly causing all the trouble we are in. That leaves nuclear power.

Nuclear power is profitable, clean, and safe. Bring up all the nightmare scenarios you want from things like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl but they are all irrelevant. We've learned from those and we don't build nuclear power plants like them any more. Nuclear power is so safe that we put it on submarines. These people live within feet of an operating nuclear power plant for months on end without concern, and have done so for decades.

What about the nuclear waste? Look up "Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor".

We don't need more government. We need more nuclear power.

Any aircraft that obtains lift from a lighter than air gas is an airship or aerostat. An airship that has the ability to propel itself is a dirigible, one that cannot is a balloon. An airship that contains no rigid support structure for the envelope can be called either a blimp or non-rigid. An airship that has the envelope supported entirely by a solid structure is considered a rigid dirigible or a Zepplin, named after the person that developed that style of craft and the company that bears his name that built them.

Since these new Goodyear airships are semi-rigid and built by the Zeppelin company I would tend to call this type of airship a Zeppelin. Perhaps my tendency might conflict with others as it might be more correctly be called a semi-rigid dirigible that happened to be made by Zeppelin.

I agree that these new aircraft are not blimps but they are most certainly dirigibles.

With that said I'm not going to beat anyone over the head for calling them "blimps", everyone will know generally what they are talking about. I might even call them a blimp just because I've heard people using the words "Goodyear" and "blimp" together for so long that I'd have to be reminded that these new crafts are not blimps.

What gets crazy is that some airships are not technically lighter than air. They contain gasses in the envelope that is lighter than air but not enough to provide sufficient buoyancy for lifting the entire weight of the craft. They'd technically be still heavier than air and would require the engines running to leave the ground. I don't know if the Goodyear airships are lighter or heavier than air.

Whatever people want to call them I think these airships are cool. I believe this is a technology that will allow for some very large and heavy lifting aircraft that could compete with many other forms of transport over land, air, or sea.

If "pro" is the opposite of "con" then what is the opposite of "progress"?

The biggest problem I have with man made global warming scare is that the solution always seems to be bigger government and more taxes. These AGW alarmists go running to Congress to ban this or tax that but neither will really decrease AGW. The way to decrease AGW, if it exists at all, is to create alternatives. Give us something better and people will naturally gravitate toward it because it will be in their best interest to do so.

By creating legislation to bar people from doing something does not prevent people from breaking the law. Getting caught with the wrong kind of toilet or light bulb in your house is unlikely and there is no real punishment for doing so. So people will break the law. However, if you can convince people that using the wrong kind of toilet or light bulb costs them money then you have a convert.

What Congress has done is made it difficult to produce energy that is both low in carbon output and profitable. They shut down power plants and coal mines, and stopped issuing permits to drill for oil and gas on federal land. What happened? We buy our oil from other countries where they don't care about spilling oil into the ocean. We put high voltage power lines into Mexico where they don't care how many people die from inhaling the coal soot.

What we should do instead is allow for the creation of alternatives. There has not been a new nuclear reactor built in the USA for four decades. There might be some new ones being built now but all they do is build new reactors on the same site as the old ones. We need nuclear power. Without nuclear power we must choose between the status quo, continued reliance on fossil fuels, or reverting to a caveman lifestyle.

I find it laughable about how people will claim that wind and solar will save the environment and give us all the energy we need. Windmills have been shown to kill endangered Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles but Congress lets that happen because wind power is good. Except that wind power does not make a profit. Its economic viability exists only because of taxes, taxes derived from profitable coal energy. Solar power is no different, it kills birds by blinding or burning them and is only held up by taxing the coal industry.

What happens if Congress is successful in driving the coal industry out of business with taxes? The subsidies for wind and solar energy goes away. Energy prices will triple and people will have to choose between freezing or starving to death. Same goes for gasoline and diesel fuel taxes. If the gasoline and diesel fuel taxes go away then we have no money for the roads.

I believe AGW is a farce. I believe this because the actions of Congress show me that they are not serious about it so therefore they have not been convinced. If they were convinced of the existence of AGW they would not be acting as they do. If they thought that AGW was a real threat to the environment then they'd be building nuclear power plants. If they were concerned about the environment they they would not be building windmills that kill endangered species. What they have shown me is that their greatest concern is growing the size of government. What better way to grow government than to build an economy that depends on government?

Subsidies mean people must do as the government says or they don't have a job. Taxes takes money only from those that know how to make money. The best thing that subsidies can do is take money from those that know how to make money and give it to those that know how to make money, which is no better than not taxing them in the first place. But subsidies don't always give money to those who know how to make money, but it does give money to those who know how to do what the government wants.

If Congress was serious about AGW then they'd stop taxing and spending. Instead they'd provide a legal and economic environment where people with the best ideas on saving the environment and the economy thrive. A good start would be to allow nuclear research to happen. They don't have to give them money, just permission to conduct their work.

I fail to see the distinction. Someone that wants to disarm the public is not going to be concerned about their privacy. In order to get the guns the people in power will stop anyone on a whim to search for weapons. They don't need a warrant to search your house because you might have a gun inside. The gun grabbers will put cameras on your street, they will track where you go, they will record your phone calls. These people are sick, they have a pathology that creates in them a paranoia of others that might share their power and/or authority. They will project this pathology onto others that speak up against them.

Those that want to disarm you want to enslave you.

She's 80 years old and will be 85 when she comes up for re-election again. She can be in office only so long before here own mortality catches up with her. I suspect she will choose not to run again even if she ultimately lives to be 102, her age will give cover for her falling poll numbers.

I'm sure the Democrats will find some other gun grabbing loon to take her place. I'm pretty sure that Californians will elect this as yet unnamed gun grabbing loon.

Right. Problem is that the people that moved out are those wealthy and/or smart enough to move out to avoid the high taxes. The people that move in tend to be those ignorant of the true cost of living (which means they will likely move out once they smarten up) or don't make enough income to pay much in taxes.

What is happening is that the people that know how to make money are leaving and the people that know how to leach off the state move in. If New York and California don't fix this then they will go bankrupt, if they haven't already.

Something like that is done for firearms. It is illegal to sell firearms by mail so what retailers will do is sell a kit that has all the parts of a firearm except the part that is legally the firearm. Problem with your example is that the critical part that makes the collection of parts a firearm is itself legally a firearm. In other words, what keeps the state from defining that part as a "car"? If that part is now legally a car then you are back where you started, Tesla will have to get dealerships to sell the "car part" since it is defined as a car under the law.

Continuing the firearm analogy what people will do is sell an "80% firearm" through the mail. It is lawful to produce your own firearm. It is lawful to sell machined hunks of metal through the mail. So what dealers will do is machine a part that is really close to being a firearm but still requires the drilling of holes or some other critical machining to technically be a firearm.

Tesla doing something like this would be very difficult. They would have to sell a "car kit" with all the pieces required to build a car but lacking some critical machine work so that they are not technically selling a car. The problem is that while people that manufacture firearms for their own use do not have to register them, excepting places like New Jersey where state law requires it, every state requires cars to be registered to be lawfully driven on public roads. That means the person that assembles the car kit would have to go to the state and complete all kinds of paperwork so they can drive their car.

Requiring people to buy a Tesla car kit, assemble it themselves, and go through the paperwork to have it registered would likely have a serious impact on people willing to purchase it. I would also believe this would make a serious support headache for Tesla as they would have people calling about how they could not get their car put together correctly.

In short, people tried that already and the people that wrote the laws have undoubtedly thought of that too.

I recall reading some articles where people did the math on pumped hydro and other electric storage technologies we have now. There currently is no viable grid level power storage, none. There's not enough water for pumped hydro, not enough lead for batteries, not enough holes in the ground for compressed air.

Pumped hydro storage would require a dam nearly the size of Hoover Dam for every nuclear power plant.

Storing electric power is stupid. It makes much more sense to not produce it until you need it. A solution that seems obvious to me is the molten salt reactor. MSRs can load follow, no need for storage. If done right it should be cheaper than wind and solar, and competitive with coal and natural gas. All of our energy could come from MSRs. Nuclear waste from them don't seem to be an issue since they burn up more radioactive material than they produce. They'd actually eat existing nuclear waste.

Nuclear power is the only solution I can think of. Wind and solar are too expensive and unreliable to replace coal. There aren't enough rivers worth a dam for hydro power to replace all the coal plants. Things like wave power and geothermal are mostly theoretical.

If people want to replace coal the solution isn't to buy them out, it's to out compete them. $50 billion could go a long way to get some nuclear power plants built. The biggest hurdle though is not the lack of funds but the government regulations. There are plenty of people willing to invest in nuclear power but the way the laws are written no one can build a nuclear power plant without first getting permission from the federal government, and they aren't giving anyone permission.

I think the states need to have a tiny revolt on federal authority. The states need to tell the federal government that they can manage nuclear power just fine without their help, and then get some nuclear power plants built.

Driving coal power plants out of business without also replacing them with something just as cheap and reliable will leave everyone penniless, cold, and hungry. Coal is what drives our economy. People suggesting replacing coal with anything other than nuclear shows that they are ignorant of technology, economics, or both.

Right, I should have qualified that. Senator Feinstein can make it go away tomorrow with a vote.

Finally someone in Congress speaks up about the overreach of the executive branch. What boggles my mind is why Congress talks so much about it but does so little. These executive agencies exist only because Congress allow them to. If Congress wants them to stop then they should make it stop. One sure way to make it stop is to dissolve the agency responsible.

The issue of government spying is, IMHO, a symptom of professional politicians. Senator Feinstein has spent her entire life in government. She knows nothing about living a life outside of the privileges of a government paycheck. She must think she's "better" than those that voted her into office. That she's "more equal" than the other animals.

I used to think that no one should be able to serve more than two terms in the same office. Now I think that no one should be able to serve more than one. The terms "re-election" and "incumbent" should be foreign to us. There are more than 300 million people in this country, it's nearly statistically impossible that we cannot find someone better for the job than her. She's 80 years old and has served as a Senator for 22 years, it's time she retired.

So, Senator, you don't like the government spying on you? Welcome to the party, there's a lot of us that don't like the government spying on us. The difference between you, Senator, and me is that you can make it all go away with a vote. As a Senator you can have anyone you deem responsible fired, including the President of the United States.

I know you won't though, Senator, because the people that are spying on you work for the same entity that you work for. I don't mean the federal government, I mean the Democrat Party. If there was a Republican POTUS right now you wouldn't be talking to reporters right now, you'd be hauling people in front of a Senate committee and have them answering uncomfortable questions under oath.

Senator, you allowed this beast to be created, now you and I have to live with it. You are the reason we need term limits, you just don't know when to quit. I suspect that you will be like many of your predecessors, the only way you will leave office is feet first. So, FOAD already.

How many of these five million people with security clearances work for or are related to an elected member of Congress, a state government employee, or someone in the federal court system?

Will Congress ignore the executive branch spying on them? I suppose they will, they don't seem to be doing much of anything to keep the federal government from growing out of control.

TSA agents are not law enforcement, they have no authority to arrest.

I disagree that to have a uniform standard for searches that the agents performing the search must be government employees. There are several major airports that go fed up with the poor quality work done by federal employees, and with the complaints from passengers on the federal employees. What they did was hire their own security that had to meet the standards set by the TSA. People were happy as complaints were met with greater interest and care, those being rude or not doing their job were fired or moved away from the passengers. There is still a TSA presence at these airports but they act as inspectors and supervisors, never performing searches themselves.

As to your second question I never did have my colon searched but I have been given additional searches at just about every airport I visit. Might have something to do with my appearance. I'm a pale white farm boy, 240 pounds, 6 foot 5 inches tall, crew cut hair (slightly grayed), eyeglasses, business casual dress, and since I despise checking in luggage I tend to carry two bags on board with me. With my bad feet I tend to carry a cane. And considering that the flights are typically cool I'll carry a long duster style coat. Considering my business I might have a magazine on guns, computers, military, hunting, or flying. Carry on bag may contain a computer, multimeter, safety glasses, gloves, hearing protection, and steel toed boots.

Someone inevitably asks me to step aside so they can poke around through my bags and ask me about where I'm headed, what I plan to do there. I'll talk about high voltage oscillators, fast running pigs, airplanes, and shooting things.

Perhaps they find me interesting. Perhaps they want to make double sure I have nothing sharp on me. Perhaps they want to keep me aware from their women and children are safe from someone so dangerous. I can only guess they have heard of my motion sickness. I drug myself as I board the plane.

I don't know what they look for, whatever its they don' find it.