AWKWARD ZOMBIE

And then Reyo Inadvertantly causes another discussion to sprout

anyway



I'd say that's more a flaw in the design of the project than a flaw in the technology itself, a design flaw that could easily be fixed with "Don't point the wind turbines at the tilled dirt for the solar panels." That's a combination of things going wrong that couldn't have been predicted (well, to be honest, it probably could've been predicted with a little reconnaissance and some forethought, but hindsight is always 20/20). I mean the same thing could be said about sticking a nuclear reactor next to a fault line. Next thing we know, the reactor has a catastrophic meltdown during the next earthquake, but the issue isn't "nuclear energy is bad!" it's "How stupid was it to build this thing next to a faultline?"

To put it in more archaic terms, it's like moving next to a nightclub and then shouting "nightclubs are bad." Nightclubs aren't bad, it's just bad to move next to one if you're a stickler for peace and quiet.



Probably splitting hairs, but I'd hope the insurance company would be smarter than that since they'd know they wouldn't cover a suicide anyway. It'd be more pertinent if they found out you were participating in midnight races, which are highly illegal and dangerous anyway.

You keep basing your thoughts on hopes that companies aren't scumbags. Insurance providers up your rate or drop you completely if you present a risk. They're not in the business to make sure you've got cheddar when something goes wrong, they're in the business to make cheddar off you when you're healthy and deny deny deny when you call on them to honor their side of the contract.

Also, I mentioned wind turbines because we have a lot of wind. It's not the turbines causing the dust clouds, those things don't do anything on their own except chop birds in half, it's the wind that this valley, this desert, has been known to have ever since people first settled here. Valley fever was still a thing then, but it was just a few cases since people kept the dust down.

These solar panels are the biggest solar project in the entire United States. Acres upon acres of loose dirt is being sent into the air and cases of valley fever have grown 70% in the last decade with a sharp spike in the recent years because of it. Your example of a nightclub isn't relevant unless it was more like the nightclub settled in next door to a neighborhood and began disrupting normal life.

On the subject of nuclear reactors, Brekkjern's got it right. With new technology a reactor can withstand a full on quake without issues. This is California, we build everything to withstand a quake. The biggest danger here isn't the buildings collapsing but them sinking into the dirt. However, the last big quake we had was 1994, two decades ago. We are not "due" for another one either, they're not clockwork and fault lines don't mean the most damage. I mean there's a freeway in this city that runs between a faultline and it didn't suffer anything in '94.

I don't mean bodaciously, I used it as a metaphor. You don't blame the new technology on something that's been around forever, and was the result of predictable cause and effect. You don't blame the new solar energy project on what the wind kicks up. If the solar evergy project is what kicked up what the wind is blowing, then you alter the plan, you don't jettison the plan altogether. That's what I'm saying. You monitor it to make sure it runs with the best possible efficiency. If it's killing people, you make it where it no longer kills people. My Dad would always have a morbid saying for this. Basically, if you have a dog that keeps peeing on the carpet, you have one of two choices. You either train it not to pee on the carpet...or you shoot it in the head with your 9mm. Either choice produces the same desired outcome, but ones just a little more insane than the other.

As for having faith in companies, I keep faith in everyone. I do it because if I give in to the thought process that everyone's a dick who's out to get me, I'll have no reason not to join in on the dickery myself, and I owe it to the ones who don't to not assume everyone's a complete asshole. Of course, I won't blindly believe everyone who says they're not a dick, companies included, but I'm not going to make the assumption and give them reason to live up to my mental image of them.

The point is that this kind of information is valuable to companies and they will use it to screw you over if they can get hold of it. Corporations exist to get as much cheddar as possible and they don't do that by being charities. If they can use big data to figure out if you are a high or low risk investment, they will. It's a basic fact of business. If something is going to cost you cheddar, you don't do it unless you will see a significant return on that investment. The ideal setting for an insurance company is to never have to pay any of its customers. They will find any way to make that happen if they can.

You start googling a lot about cancer. You are having frequent visits to the doctor. Maybe I shouldn't insure you because from the looks of it, you got cancer and cancer is expensive...

Then it sounds like we need to reform the way insurance companies do business, which is another discussion in it of itself. I'm not particularly fond of the issue between getting insurance to cover yourself, and then getting fucked when you actually need it, but again that's an issue with the insurance company, not the technology that'd be used to monitor for terrorist activites.

Besides, usually insurance companies mhave to prove why you're a high risk. If they don't, then they run the risk of legal action (at least I'd hope. I'm not a legal expert.) If you walk in and they say they won't cover you, they need to explain why to make sure they're not coming to a false assumption. Like what if I'm researching cancer because I'm a biology student studying the effects of leukemia on your system. If suddenly my insurance company drops me, and they don't tell me it's because they bought my google search results from the government, then they dropped a perfectly healthy client under their own paranoia and greed. Hell, what if I did it on a friends computer because mine was down for some reason. His insurance company does the same exact thing where NEITHER of us are sick.

Point is I'm hoping the insurance companies would be smart enough to be a bit more collaborative, and if not, we need to change them, not the technology to monitor communications.

The issue is that there is never a perfect solution when it comes to these things. There's always drawbacks and sacrifices that have to be made.

It's not necessarily right or the best "morally", but solar and wind power does not negatively impact the entire globe. Yes, it affects plants, birds, and even local communities, but it does not also affect everything else on the planet.

And that's where the greater good comes into play.

Whose greater good though? The company putting up the solar panels is getting electricity to sell while the community its next to is being affected negatively. We're not getting any benefit to this, we're still going to have to pay for the electricity at the same rate, which gets higher every year.

Greater good is an answer, but I oppose anything that has the greater good lining the pockets of companies while causing others to suffer, even if it is in the best interests of the world. A community may be insignificant in the long run, but that's the danger of the greater good argument; to forget that these are people who don't deserve to be shat on by an amoral corporation.

Again, just like fracking. Lined the pockets of the company, poisoned the groundwater for years to come. Do you really think these dust storms won't have an effect on the natural life of the valley? Like animals?

When compared to oil, coal, and gas, not really. Solar panels and wind turbines don't give you cancer.

Why do you act like the community sees none of that energy? I know of farmers who have wind turbines on their property and people who have solar panels on their roof. I don't see anyone with a oil well in their backyard.

Then we'll look at it with the companies involved.

Fossil fuels:
We burn fossil fuels
The heat boils water and creates energy (my roommates a better expert at the specifics than I am)
The energy companies have energy
We buy the energy

Renewable energy:
Wind turns a wind turbine
The energy companies have energy
We buy the energy

They both end that same, but the first one involves dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Even if the energy is just going to go to the energy companies who will then sell it to us, we should pick it just so there's not that environmentally detrimental step involved in the process. We'd pay regardless.

Besides, I still can't help but notice that the heart of all of these discussions isn't actully what's being discussed, but actually more along the lines of "companies suck."

I think nuclear power is ultimately gonna be the way to go in the future, they just need to figure out what do do with the leftovers. Nuclear is very clean aside from those depleted radioactive materials.

Just gonna say that wind turbines can never realistically compete with a nuclear power station.

The amount of space you need for a nuclear power station generating say, 2.6 GW is about 1.7 square kilometers - for wind turbines to produce that same output you'd need to dedicate 1200 square kilometers.

But it's not just the space needed for the wind turbines - it's also the material required to build the things over that kind of (1200 sq. km) spread. The amount of metal needed to construct enough wind turbines to compete with a nuclear power plant makes the nuclear power plant more cost-effective by miles.

Wind turbines are not without their own carbon footprint either - sure, nuclear power stations produce toxic waste - but manufacturing the materials for wind turbines also causes an environmental impact - especially when you're talking about filling 1200 sq. km with them. Environmental manufacturing costs (i.e pollution) are one of those things people try to hide from you when they're singing the praises of renewable energy - solar panels are also not without manufacturing concerns regarding toxins, pollution, carbon footprints, etc.

There's also ongoing maintenance costs for wind turbines - and repairing/replacing the daisies things when they fall over or get hit by a strong gust of wind (ironically enough if it gets too windy wind turbines are locked into position/angled to prevent them from being damaged - by the wind!). The amount of moving parts you're talking about when spread over 1200 sq. km makes that scale of wind farm a relative maintenance nightmare compared to maintaining just one nuclear power station.

Wind turbines seem like the way to go if you take the environmentalist's word for it - but the reality of the situation is far, far different if you look into the figures involved.

If you're looking to shoot down nuclear power, geothermal and hydroelectric energies are your only realistic alternatives - also being far cleaner than nuclear power in almost all regards (but not without massive environmental impact/land loss - especially with hydroelectric power). Neither geothermal or hydroelectric are without their own 'catastrophic failure' risks either - and the places they can be implemented is very, very, limited.

On the subject of solar panels: I don't think it's a good idea to construct giant solar farms as they're doing in the US at this point. Solar panel efficiency is still being improved upon and it's still too low to be efficient enough to be solely reliant on it. What we do in Belgium is encourage people to put solar panels on their own roofs through tax benefits. They generate electricity for themselves so that way the energy consumption is effectively reduced.

Also as far as I see wind turbines don't really have any side effects if you place them in place already suitable for them? Some birds will fly into them yes but they actually get painted now to prevent that and most birds can see them and fly around. Really a negligible effect. Of course they also lack the efficiency to be able to solely rely on them, but that's not really the point. They still help reduce the need for other, more polluting or limited sources of energy.


The problem is that at that point there would be nothing you could do to change it back.

Also fine, if you as an American citizen don't care that your government spies on you, fine. But please remind them that they have zero jurisdiction outside of their own country and that they can fuck off.

There's a plethora of social media sources on doing just that, though. That doesn't just mean it's possible, but that society is in some way already mentally prepared for it. I mean hell, there was already that big stink over "anonymous vs government" where people were already testing the system without anything really being wrong. When I say it'd be silly on their part, that's what I mean. So many people are already prepared, even to the point of being eager, for the government to overstep its boundaries.

If you still don't believe me, take a look at the last time gun rights were "threatened". It wasn't even a real threat yet all you'd hear about is how everyone with a gun south of Colorado was preparing for "Civil War: Episode 2" It was silly as shit, but still.

EDIT: As far as jurisdiction in foreign countries is concerned, I agree with you, but I won't even consider getting involved in a discussion over America's worry of foreign governments. Obviously, any tangible threat you can think of is going to come from the outside, so the argument can definitely be made that intelligence on possible threats from the outside are definitely necessary, but something like this i agree would best be served for more domestic surveillance for moral reasons. Then again, the governmen doesn't have the best stereotype for morality.

If you want my own personal opinion, I agree more with what a common hippie would say. All of this shit about "Well America vs Europe and blah blah blah!" is a waste of time. Even from an Evolutionary standpoint we need to start thinking less as a mass of individuals with petty allegiances and more as a unified species. I'm not saying this means the United States should be allowed to then "meddle in your business", but that we ought to stop thinking in terms of "us" and "them" when talking about each other.

No, you still don't get it. At the point where you give your government total control over communications is where you lose the ability to protest. Any dissenting opinion can be sniffed out long before it can spread and gets nullified under the guise of terrorism. Protests and revolution need communication to grow and organise. Going further, with perfect control over information the government could just create the illusion that there's absolutely nothing wrong, thus stopping the vast majority of people from even thinking about protest.

1. You're assuming people have forgotten how to communicate outside of the internet. Even now you see people without so much as a facebook page, and they seem to do just fine with social networking and communication. They have control over the internet, and your phones, but they'd need mind control to look into your actual thoughts or physical conversations with friends. (Or should we stockpile on the aluminum foil?) How do you think it was done way back when, before cell phones where even a thought? Remember that cell phones weren't even a thing until the 90's. How did the Vietnam protests get organised? There are the spy drones now, but there's also anonymity and being inconspicuous. We didn't develop to rule the entire planet by being too easily limited.

2. No amount of masking would ever work just with how paranoid people are when there actually is nothing wrong. I just gave the example on the threat made on "gun rights" a few months back. Nothing actually happened, yet everyone was prepared for another civil war. People think about protesting at the slightest provocation of anything, even when there's nothing to indicate that there's anything wrong. These are the same people we laugh at for "overreacting" to everything.

Every time a revolution breaks out, everyone thinks it impossible except the ones conducting the revolution because of all the technology and politics they have to get around, yet each time it happens, and we read about it later. The French thought the poor too poor and sickly to possibly overthrow the rich and powerful, yet it happened. The British thought the Colonials too inferior to ever be able to face the British Army, yet it happened. To think we're so helpless is just negative thinking.

PS, Also, This isn't just coming from some poli. sci. class I took to fulfill my core curriculum. This is stuff my Dad filed me with right before I left for college. In fact, one of the main reasons he told me to join the military was, and I quote, "This country is going to shit, and when it does, the military is the safest place to be." Of course, I think he was talking more about what was said before about companies fucking people over, but it's sounding like those companies are the ones we're talking about anyway.