It's multiple times over budget

And thanks to inflation, the longer we take to build it, the more it will cost in the end. This is why it needs to get finished as quickly as possible. Build, baby, build!

the California HSR project is...unable to attract any private funding.

Not unable, just not ready to ask for private investment until the project is closer to completion. That was the plan from the very beginning: first get the government to pay for the bulk of construction, then get private investors to pay for the last little bit.

Once passengers have arrived at the train station somewhere in Nevada & found their way to Las Vegas, how are they going to get around there?

How do they get around when they fly there?

There's your answer.

Electricity is a major cost of desalination. So you're right, the question is whether it's cheaper to run the plant when electricity is expensive, such as during a demand response event, or idle it during that time.

0.3 out of 100 possible points doesn't seem like something that could elevate George W. Bush from an idiot to a genius.

But it's often enough to elevate a grade from a B+ to an A-.

We developed agriculture maybe 10,000 years ago, during a period considerably warmer then the present.

Our species survived past warming and cooling cycles because they happened slowly enough that we had plenty of time to adapt.

Obligatory xkcd.

A/C usage mostly coincides with PV generation. From sundown until about 9pm when people are arriving home and turning on their air conditioners is when California's renewables-heavy grid is stressed the most in the summer, but the state already have that short period covered. Adding EVs with bidirectional charging will only stabilize the grid even more.

China use slave labor, it's paid workers have little safety protection, and they have no real environmental laws.

The USA should quantify those subsidies, itemize and charge them as tariffs, and periodically re-calculate them. Then if (when) China wants those tariffs lowered, they will know exactly what they need to do. Until then, the tariffs will help keep the USA's automobile manufacturing healthy, unlike their domestic chip production that they neglected for many years.

It's not clear that using 3rd party ink broke the printer, only that the printer refused to print with the 3rd party ink installed. It's similar to the way videogame consoles refuse to run homebrew.

This is why we need laws that prohibit such arbitrary restrictions.

Let's be consistent here. If agricultural property isn't part of humanity's footprint, then neither are solar and wind farms.

Non-dispatchable energy sources cannot function as base load.

An energy source doesn't have to be dispatchable to function as baseload as long as it provides constant power. For example, coal and nuclear plants take hours to startup so they aren't as dispatchable as a bank of grid batteries, but they provide constant power and that's good enough for baseload.

As for folks' not moving, why is it so wonderful that people move away from their family and friends UNLESS THEY WANT TO DO SO?

That's a strawman argument because nobody actually said it's wonderful that people move away when they don't want to.

I live nowhere near where I was born, nowhere near family and that's fine, it was my choice. But I moved to places I wanted to live, not just to places where I could get work I wanted.

You're like the rich person who says money isn't everything. They do this to maintain social order as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and I can't help but think that's why you wrote that.

I'll happily make a choice to help a poor person and I don't care wha this or her skin color is.

I know your type. You like to give the poor small amounts of charity because it makes you feel better about yourself, and you so resent government taking away their poverty. So you want to keep people poor, because your self-worth depends on feeling superior to others.

"Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: 'Follow the plan. If you can't do your job, I'll fire you and get someone who can.'"

Shouldn't any engineer who goes against their professional ethics be delicensed? Even better would be if the employer could be banned by the engineering guild for making such a threat.