Is Rice Being Thrown Under The Bus?

[Supsalemgr]

Thanks for a pretty much responsible post. The disparaging remarks were somewhat limited for Vrede which is definitely an improvement.

So, am I to take for from the post that Vrede thinks Obama has received the "green" vote and doesn't really give a damn about their agenda now?

[O Really]

Contrary to the imaginations of the extreme right, Obama is pretty much a pragmatic centrist. Sure, he may personally have lefty leanings, but in his official capacity has managed to ride a middle of the road path. So sure, he isn't going to be everything the "greens" would like to see, and sure, he knows that. He's not everything those who support a single-payer healthcare system would like, either. He's not everything that gay rights people would like. But the leftys aren't everybody in the US, and he knows that too. If anyone wants to think of middle of the road pragmatism as "not caring" about a given group, so be it.

[O Really]

...He's not everything that gay rights people would like...

Pretty close, now.

Ended DADT.
Guaranteed hospital visitation rights for gay partners, expanded healthcare surrogate choices.
Stopped defending DOMA.
Personally supports gay marriage.

Not much left for a POTUS to do other than pushing for repeal of DOMA if SCOTUS doesn't strike it down. Well, he could say he's bi.

Speaking of the Supreme Court with regard to the same-sex marriage issue, I need to start a thread for predictions. Let everybody get on record as to what they think the Court will rule. Just for fun, I think I'll make a list of what I think our BRDF members will guess, and then compare that to what they say. I haven't quite decided on the Cali case yet - there are at least three alternatives - but I'm going on record to guess that DOMA is dead.

[Supsalemgr]

Ms Rice has now submitted a letter to the POTUS asking that she be removed from consideration for SOS. One less 2013 headache for the leader.

[O Really]

Ms Rice has now submitted a letter to the POTUS asking that she be removed from consideration for SOS. One less 2013 headache for the leader.

"Somebody" said at the start of this thread that there was no, and no need for, any great conspiracy theory involving nefarious Obama witchisms if Rice were to be removed from consideration. "Somebody" said the conversation would be more like "Susan, I'm sorry, but you've accumulated too much baggage for us to expect you to be confirmed." "Somebody" was right. That would be me.

[Stinger]

Ms Rice has now submitted a letter to the POTUS asking that she be removed from consideration for SOS. One less 2013 headache for the leader.

"Somebody" said at the start of this thread that there was no, and no need for, any great conspiracy theory involving nefarious Obama witchisms if Rice were to be removed from consideration. "Somebody" said the conversation would be more like "Susan, I'm sorry, but you've accumulated too much baggage for us to expect you to be confirmed." "Somebody" was right. That would be me.

A "contest" between you and Soupy Sales just isn't a contest, I don't care how much you handicap it.

I'm just pissed that a highly intelligent, very capable person ducks out because a senile old fart and a couple of retreads drew a line in the sand in a partisan pissing contest.

Oh, well. Such is Washington D. C.

[mike]

"Is Rice Being Thrown Under The Bus?"

In short ... yes ... sad thing, that ...

[Wneglia]

Even though all things nuclear have been totally demonized in the US, Westinghouse is moving forward with plans for a Thorium reactor in Norway, and while it isn't the ideal design, IMHO, they are doing the correct design in China. It is a shame that this proven technology was shelved from Oak Ridge National Laboratory almost 50 years ago.

Both of your examples are state-owned - socialized - projects. Here, all nuke power is also either state-owned - socialized - or subsidized far more than any other energy source - corporate welfare.

Fukushima was just demonization by tree huggers and private enterprise cons?

Thorium Update

With Obama killing the coal industry, we better start looking for alternatives (aside from windmills)

[billy.pilgrim]

Even though all things nuclear have been totally demonized in the US, Westinghouse is moving forward with plans for a Thorium reactor in Norway, and while it isn't the ideal design, IMHO, they are doing the correct design in China. It is a shame that this proven technology was shelved from Oak Ridge National Laboratory almost 50 years ago.

Both of your examples are state-owned - socialized - projects. Here, all nuke power is also either state-owned - socialized - or subsidized far more than any other energy source - corporate welfare.

Fukushima was just demonization by tree huggers and private enterprise cons?

Thorium Update

With Obama killing the coal industry, we better start looking for alternatives (aside from windmills)

are you referring to the Wyoming coal industry that leases public owned coal on public owned land on the powder river for 1/2 its value and plans to run 500 to 1,000 train cars a day to the coast for shipment of the previously American taxpayer owned coal to china, or did faux miss that story?

[rstrong]

The Secretary of State would have little to do with the pipeline, since importing the oil is already a done deal. Without the pipeline the oil gets shipped anyway, by rail. (Have the environmentalists really thought this through?)

Or alternatively to Asian markets through Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines or Kinder Morgan's Trans-Mountain line, or development is slowed, or Canada builds its own refineries, or etc. Rail importation to the US is not an absolute, that's just TransCanada's claim. So many lies, like how many jobs would be created, have already been exposed.

There's only about 20 refineries left in Canada. At least five - including the one here in Winnipeg - shut down in the early 1980s.

The oil in the train that derailed in Quebec this weekend came from North Dakota as was heading for a refinery in New Brunswick.

Oil shipments by rail soar 28,000 per cent in four years

Driven by the development of unconventional energy sources, the railway group expects a similar increase in traffic in the coming years...
[...]
The Quebec disaster is the fourth freight-train accident under investigation involving crude-oil shipments since the beginning of the year

[rstrong]

rstrong, not counting the contribution to AGW Canada is entitled to make it's own decisions re tar sands development, refinery closings and construction, and rail vs. pipeline as BC just did in stopping a pipeline. However, Canadian train wrecks do not confer a responsibility on America to abet Canada's poor choices.

I agree completely. Had we kept some of those refineries, or had we already built that planned new refinery in Alberta, there would be a less shipping of oil around the country. Not to mention more energy independence.

I would point however that the train wreck this weekend belonged to an American company, and was carrying America oil from North Dakota to a refinery in New Brunswick. As opposed to the original plan of sending it south though the Keystone Pipeline. Those poor choices were jointly made.

I doubt that the folks in and around Lac-Mégantic will stand for any more oil shipments through their towns. Woe betide any political figure who suggests that shipments resume.

The North Dakota oil may have to be shipped to refineries in the south through Keystone as originally planned. And until that pipeline is built, by train. (Much to my surprise, it turns out that shipping oil by train is cheaper than sending it by pipeline. And long-term contracts aren't needed, as they are for pipelines.) As for Canada, until and unless we get the new Alberta refinery, we'll probably - finally - start piping western oil to eastern refineries.

And so while American pipeline protests have forced rail to be used instead, Canadians rail protests will be forcing pipelines to be used instead.

[neoplacebo]

How did Rice turn into oil? And does Supsalemgr still hate America? I just don't know.

[neoplacebo]

Well, I suppose it's ok, then. I've rationalized it in my own mind that there's probably oil under the bus, as well as a "made in China" label for the outright America haters and the ones who tend to sway that way.

[Wneglia]

Fracking is killing coal. Treehuggers and Obama could only hope to be as effective at ending our addiction to this heavily subsidized (direct and externalized costs) industry's job security for Wneglia's cancer medicine colleagues.
The Human Cost of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

...Thor Energy is currently testing the new technology on the small scale. A prototype reactor will power a paper mill in the town of Halden, Norway for the next five years. If the fuel proves to be commercially viable during that test, we could see a sea change in nuclear power by the end of the decade.

"five years", then larger scale testing, then permitting, then raising the enormous amounts of capital - usually from taxpayers if history is a guide (corporate welfare) - then lengthy construction of a plant far more complex than off-the-shelf alternatives, then testing, then electricity production if one of a thousand things haven't failed to meet expectations along the way, then we're still saddled with a costly, dangerous, vulnerable and highly centralized energy source. Seems like pie in the sky to me and not very tasty pie at that.

(Thorium) Disadvantages as nuclear fuel

“NEW” NUCLEAR REACTORS: SAME OLD STORY

...Thorium’s proliferation, waste,
safety, and cost problems differ only in detail
from uranium’s: e.g., thorium ore makes less
mill waste, but highly radioactive U-232
makes fabricating or reprocessing U-233 fuel
hard and costly. And with uranium-based nu-
clear power continuing its decades-long eco-
nomic collapse, it’s awfully late to be thinking
of developing a whole new fuel cycle whose
problems differ only in detail from current
versions.

Spent LWR fuel “burned” in IFRs, it’s
claimed, could meet all humanity’s energy
needs for centuries. But renewables and effi-
ciency can do that forever at far lower cost,
with no proliferation, nuclear wastes, or major
risks. Moreover, any new type of reactor
would probably cost even more than today’s
models: even if the nuclear part of a new plant
were free, the rest--two
-thirds of its capital
cost--would still be grossly uncompetitive
with any efficiency and most renewables,
sending out a kilowatt-hour for ~9–13¢/kWh
instead of new LWRs’ ~12–18+¢. In contrast,
the average U.S. wind farm completed in
2007 sold its power (net of a 1¢/ kWh subsidy
that’s a small fraction of nuclear subsidies)
for 4.5¢/kWh. Add ~0.4¢ to make it dispatch-
able whether the wind is blowing or not and
you get under a nickel delivered to the grid.

Most other renewables also beat new thermal
power plants too; cogeneration is often com-
parable or cheaper, and efficiency is cheaper
than just running any nuclear- or fossil-fueled
plant. Obviously these options would also
easily beat proposed fusion reactors that are
sometimes claimed to be comparable to to-
day’s fission reactors in size and cost. And
unlike any kind of hypothetical fusion or new
fission reactor--or LWRs, which have a mar-
ket share below 2%--efficiency and micro
power now provide at least half the world’s
new electrical services, adding tens of times
more capacity each year than nuclear power
does. It’s a far bigger gamble to assume that
the nuclear market loser will become a winner
than that these winners will turn to losers.

Bill Gates is a believer, like me.

[billy.pilgrim]

why don't any of the cost statistics for nuclear power include the cost of waste maintenance and disposal

the costs are real - shouldn't they be considered, or has big business already decided that the wastes should be socialized and the responsibility turned over to the citizenry

[rstrong]

why don't any of the cost statistics for nuclear power include the cost of waste maintenance and disposal

It's not that nuclear power doesn't have problems. It's that nuclear has far lesser problems than coal.

That includes waste disposal. Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there's so much *less* of it than, for example, the nasty poisonous mercury-laden sludge from the stack scrubbers of a coal power plant, that it is much less of a problem per unit of power.

Likewise, the problems of lakes killed off by acid rain, areas rendered uninhabitable by open pit coal mines, or by sinkholes from abandoned mines, or by underground fires in coal seams, have also been socialized and turned over to the citizenry.

[billy.pilgrim]

why don't any of the cost statistics for nuclear power include the cost of waste maintenance and disposal

It's not that nuclear power doesn't have problems. It's that nuclear has far lesser problems than coal.

That includes waste disposal. Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there's so much *less* of it than, for example, the nasty poisonous mercury-laden sludge from the stack scrubbers of a coal power plant, that it is much less of a problem per unit of power.

Likewise, the problems of lakes killed off by acid rain, areas rendered uninhabitable by open pit coal mines, or by sinkholes from abandoned mines, or by underground fires in coal seams, have also been socialized and turned over to the citizenry.

maybe it sorta kinda makes me a con, but I absolutely believe in that "let the market decide" thing that they always talk about, but don't seem to understand.
nuclear, with its 500,000 year waste problem
coal with its own clean up and extraction problems
oil with its wars and pollution problems of its own
all have to be evaluated based on all the benefits and problems of each

when you start looking at the whole picture, solar and wind start to look a lot more competative

but then, what con is going to actually use the "market" to make decisions when it is so much more fun to talk about their utopian market when they want to rationalize some new privatization of the commons profit scheme

[Troll Patrol]

why don't any of the cost statistics for nuclear power include the cost of waste maintenance and disposal

It's not that nuclear power doesn't have problems. It's that nuclear has far lesser problems than coal.

That includes waste disposal. Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there's so much *less* of it than, for example, the nasty poisonous mercury-laden sludge from the stack scrubbers of a coal power plant, that it is much less of a problem per unit of power.

Likewise, the problems of lakes killed off by acid rain, areas rendered uninhabitable by open pit coal mines, or by sinkholes from abandoned mines, or by underground fires in coal seams, have also been socialized and turned over to the citizenry.

maybe it sorta kinda makes me a con, but I absolutely believe in that "let the market decide" thing that they always talk about, but don't seem to understand.
nuclear, with its 500,000 year waste problem
coal with its own clean up and extraction problems
oil with its wars and pollution problems of its own
all have to be evaluated based on all the benefits and problems of each

when you start looking at the whole picture, solar and wind start to look a lot more competative

but then, what con is going to actually use the "market" to make decisions when it is so much more fun to talk about their utopian market when they want to rationalize some new privatization of the commons profit scheme

UMM? So why does the market keep choosing coal, oil and nuclear over wind and solar?

[rstrong]

UMM? So why does the market keep choosing coal, oil and nuclear over wind and solar?

That'd be because they only deal with the profits. The loses - the problems like acid rain and other pollution - are somebody else's problem.

Also, coal, oil and nuclear are a complete energy solution. Wind and solar, since they don't have steady power output, are *part* of a solution. For example Wisconsin, when the wind is blowing, sells power to Manitoba. Manitoba in turn sends less water through its hydro dams, storing energy upstream. When the wind stops in Wisconsin, Manitoba increases the water through the dams and sells power to Wisconsin.

Increasingly, the market is choosing wind and solar. We'll still need a steady source like nuclear, but we'll be able to get by with a lot less of it.

[billy.pilgrim]

why don't any of the cost statistics for nuclear power include the cost of waste maintenance and disposal

It's not that nuclear power doesn't have problems. It's that nuclear has far lesser problems than coal.

That includes waste disposal. Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there's so much *less* of it than, for example, the nasty poisonous mercury-laden sludge from the stack scrubbers of a coal power plant, that it is much less of a problem per unit of power.

Likewise, the problems of lakes killed off by acid rain, areas rendered uninhabitable by open pit coal mines, or by sinkholes from abandoned mines, or by underground fires in coal seams, have also been socialized and turned over to the citizenry.

maybe it sorta kinda makes me a con, but I absolutely believe in that "let the market decide" thing that they always talk about, but don't seem to understand.
nuclear, with its 500,000 year waste problem
coal with its own clean up and extraction problems
oil with its wars and pollution problems of its own
all have to be evaluated based on all the benefits and problems of each

when you start looking at the whole picture, solar and wind start to look a lot more competative

but then, what con is going to actually use the "market" to make decisions when it is so much more fun to talk about their utopian market when they want to rationalize some new privatization of the commons profit scheme

UMM? So why does the market keep choosing coal, oil and nuclear over wind and solar?

duh - because the taxpayer subsidizes the socialized interests of coal, oil and nuclear over wind and solar
As I said, because only the coal, gas and nuclear profits are considered in the comparison. If the real cost (free market) were considered (waste) as part of the picture (rather than dumped onto the taxpayer), renewables would be more likely to compete
If thoughtful intelligence were used, we would likely decide (as citizens responsible for leaving a thriving country for our children) that moving the current subsidies 1) from oil would lessen our dependence on foreign sources and keep us out of these ongoing oil wars, 2) from coal would improve the quality of our environment and 3) from nuclear would decrease the taxpayer burden to store these wastes for 500,000 years.
Seems simple enough to me, either put renewable on equal competitive ground, or accept there use as an improvement and give them a competitive advantage
Either way, it makes no sense to subsidize these never ending wars, pollution and big business