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Comment Re:Simple economics (Score 1) 77

There is a reason low income people live in places where there is transit and near the places they need to go. If you are an idiot you buy an expensive car, insure it and pay for gas when you can easily live somewhere its a lot cheaper.

Of course some people will do it for a variety of reasons. But we shouldn't plan around them. And those low income people don't buy new cars. They buy junkers if they need one.

Comment Ration registrations (Score 1) 77

The simplest way to limit vehicles is to ration the number that can be registered. Then people who have a car registered can sell their registration to someone who wants to buy a new car. Then someone buying an EV really will be replacing an ICE vehicle instead of just adding one more car to the road.

Comment Speculation (Score 1) 145

Its not clear what that statistic means and the reasons for it seem to be pure speculation. It could be students just want higher salaries than are being offered. It could also be that the market for some jobs, like MBA's, has been saturated with more graduates than it can absorb. The problem isn't less hiring, its more people looking for jobs. It could also be that a lot of workers have become discouraged and stopped looking for jobs, but college graduates are still out there trying. In other words its not that more college graduates who can't find jobs, its that there are proportionally fewer older workers still looking.

Comment Re:Elites took 90 jets (or yachts) to Bezos' Weddi (Score 1) 213

Which is important, but should be targeted by bringing the externalities of damage to the environment into the cost of the fuel, just the same as other fossil fuels. So as to not distort the economic incentives.

How high do you have to raise the price of jet fuel to get Bill Gates to stop flying. That is actually the problem. To raise the price high enough to get the wealthiest folks on the planet to change their behavior will require economically crushing the rest of us. And they are the ones who have created and continue to create most of the emissions as measured by wealth.

Comment Deterrance (Score 2) 111

The point of the fines is to get people to stop shooting off fireworks given the enormous fire danger. Unfortunately you only get fined if you are caught. So this story is threatening people by making getting caught a reasonable possibility.

We live in country where there are people who do things illegal and figure they will just pay the fine if caught. Its just a cost. Some of those people are rich enough that they can afford to risk a very high fine to have a little fun.

So you have to make it more likely they will get caught and the fine has to be very onerous even for the richest among us. Because that is the only way to keep idiots from launching fireworks into the air that can start a fire whereever they land in a tinder dry state.

Comment Re: How to say you don't read the news ... (Score 3, Interesting) 134

I believe China still has lower emissions per person than the United States and the United States is still building natural gas plants. I fear the reality is no one wants to look behind the curtain. All our efforts to stop global warming are woefully inadequate. To stop global warming we have to reduce emissions in the atmosphere, but we aren't. In fact we aren't even reducing the amount of new emissions we add. They are increasing each year. So we measure progress by how much the rate of increase in new emissions is slowing.

Comment Re:The Nuclear Gravytrain Resumes (Score 1) 186

Nuclear power is hardly "phony"

Where is the "electricity too cheap to meter?" Which nuclear power plants were built on time and on budget, or either one?

Nuclear power doesn't need subsidies, they need only permission

This article isn't about permission. Its about the government organizing and paying for investments in the technology.

If collecting on government subsidies is the definition of an energy source lacking in commercial viability then why all the screaming on seeing subsidies cut for wind and solar

Because the tax breaks to encourage more solar investments are trivial compared to the ongoing public subsidies required by the nuclear industry.

Comment Re:My only 'gripe' with nuclear (Score 1) 186

How is solar the answer to the question of *where* to put nuclear waste? We're not going to launch it into the sun. At least follow the conversation. The question was not "what power source do scientists prefer".

The the post I responded to said:

My only gripe with nuclear ... is that no state wants to take the waste.

If you don't have any waste you don't have to put it anywhere. Nor do you have to transport it somewhere thousands of miles away through crowded communities. This isn't a "science" problem. They can't make nuclear waste safe.

We're not going to launch it into the sun.

As I recall, that has been proposed. Don't let Elon Musk hear it, he'll be all over it. There is money to be made. He'll get the process down after a few tries ...

Comment Re:My only 'gripe' with nuclear (Score 1) 186

Government does not need financing, it can finance itself, that's why it can and is supposed to handle huge externalities like say, nuclear waste disposal

In the United States the federal government is responsible for permanent disposal of nuclear waste. You have seen how that has worked.

Comment Re:My only 'gripe' with nuclear (Score 1) 186

why don't we just accept and own it.

Because there is money to be made in the meantime. I think you minimize the extent to which the finance industry dominates government policy. They are really the "we" in why don't "we" own it. Its not clear private industry's control over things changes with government ownership, just the method of control. So the question is whether forcing them to use political processes will get better results or worse. Having taxpayers directly on the hook may make things worse.

Comment Re:Junk Science or Junk Reporting (Score 1) 188

the “some” people the study is referring to are eaters of processed food

You missed the point entirely. "the “some” people the study is referring to are some eaters of processed food". Statistics tell you something about the characteristics of a population, not the individuals in it.

Comment Re:My only 'gripe' with nuclear (Score 1) 186

It doesn't get solved without a shitload of Federal money.

Based on the track record, it doesn't get "solved" at all. The nuclear industry is counting on the taxpayers to pick up the tab for cleaning up the temporary storage mess they are leaving next to all their plants. But it will likely take a major Chernobyl scale disaster at a temporary storage facility for anything to happen.

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