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Comment The actual experts do say that. (Score 1) 436

by ReedYoung (#35692100) Attached to: US Competitiveness Chief Immelt's GE Tax Bill: $0
Krugman's predictions (many others said the same thing) about the insufficient amount of spending in the Recovery Act have proven true, for example. Roubini and Taleb are also worth following, particularly Roubini in my opinion. Robert Reich is sensible. But you seem to be talking about, well obviously actual "headline" writers, but I'm inferring you also mean the CNN etc purveyors of common "wisdom" and announcers of recently released facts such as unemployment, stock market or housing starts data. Absolutely, those airheads are worthless. Expecting useful, accurate information from the corporate media is reasonable in the sense that that is what they owe us, but they're just not competent to deliver a quality news product. And I can't resist saying, the facts of economics are not conservative.

Comment Try again, this time using REAL numbers. (Score 1) 964

by ReedYoung (#35692040) Attached to: Americans Favor Moratorium On New Nuclear Reactors
Stop lying. Page 5 does not say what you claimed it says.

“Firm capacity” is the fraction of installed wind capacity that is online at the same probability as that of a coal-fired power plant. On average, coal plants are free from unscheduled or scheduled maintenance for 79%–92% of the year, averaging 87.5% in the United States from 2000 to 2004 (Giebel 2000; North American Electric Reliability Council 2005).

Not 92%, which was your lie.

Figure 3 shows that, while the guaranteed power generated by a single wind farm for 92% of the hours of the year was 0 kW, the power guaranteed by 7 and 19 interconnected farms was 60 and 171 kW, giving firm capacities of 0.04 and 0.11, respectively.

So that's at least 11% for 19+ wind farms, not 4%-11%. You have both exaggerated coal's firm capacity and understated that of large numbers of interconnected wind farms. Maybe you just enjoy coal pollution, but the more likely motivation of your behavior is that you are a paid coal / petroleum shill.

Furthermore, 19 interconnected wind farms guaranteed 222 kW of power (firm capacity of 0.15) for 87.5% of the year, the same percent of the year that an average coal plant in the United States guarantees power. Last, 19 farms guaranteed 312 kW of power for 79% of the year, 4 times the guaranteed power generated by one farm for 79% of the year.

Finally, nobody believes we will decommission all coal plants any time soon. But wind is capable of adding to baseload instead of adding more coal plants or more nuclear plants. That is the relevant fact for the present situation. All new capacity should be clean, which means only wind and solar, and that is quite feasible using wind and solar thermal for baseload and pv solar for peak.

Comment Re:Misdirection (Score 1) 114

by ReedYoung (#35673402) Attached to: McAfee's Website Full of Security Holes

How do you know the McAfee home page is not one giant honeypot? After all they know hackers will be going after them. That's what I'd do if I were them...

Never attribute to competence that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. [ Krugman's Razor ]

And we all know what happens when you use someone else's razor...

Depends on whom you use it.

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