Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Full disclosure: I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'm pulling this one out of my ass a bit more than usual...

I have the feeling Libertarianism would tell WV, "the coal is all gone, and no one is buying that shit anymore anyway. So fuck you guys." Like that would go over very well.

Not that doesn't need to be said. Or pounded repeatedly into a few thousand skulls.
 
Eriol

Eriol

DarkAudit said:
Full disclosure: I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'm pulling this one out of my ass a bit more than usual...

I have the feeling Libertarianism would tell WV, "the coal is all gone, and no one is buying that shit anymore anyway. So fuck you guys." Like that would go over very well.

Not that doesn't need to be said. Or pounded repeatedly into a few thousand skulls.
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As right as you may be, it doesn't fly, because basically you're telling 1000s (10,000s? 100,000s?) of people that "you're bad, what you're doing is bad, and you need to move to find a job. Oh, and we won't try and re-train you either, so good luck getting a any job better than McDonalds or something because you have no transferable skills (coal mining vs anything else), so we're basically going to destroy your life. Have a nice day." You're surprised when people don't want to hear it? So if somebody else comes and says "I'll stand up for you and your way of life," they'll get the votes. It's not malice, or anything else. People just want to have stable lives and keep on living with what they have.

This is part of the failing of a lot of economic plans that depend on trashing some industries (usually low-skill ones) to try and bring up other high-skill ones. You still have LOTS of unskilled workers whose lives you are destroying. What do you do with them? You need to do something. And re-educating them all doesn't work either, as most of them are in a high enough age bracket (over mid-30s) that they basically know an industry, and that's it. They can't GET the education, as they often have a family to support. Asking them to give up their entire lives on a gamble that what you're retraining them for has jobs isn't usually going to work.

I know I'm not providing solutions here, but that general idea of forcing people out of the only jobs they know does lead to ruin, be it manufacturing (auto at the least, see Detroit), or mining, or anything else. Once those jobs dry up, you've ruined MILLIONS of lives, and it's just "expected" for them to move, but they invariably go DOWN the economic ladder. And that's not good.

Countries need industries that do the following:
  1. Employ LOTS of people.
  2. Low (no) skill requirements
  3. Can support a small family off of.
When you start trashing those types of jobs, LOTS of people suffer.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

You can't have it both ways, though. You cannot worship at the altar of the "free market," and then go crying that those same market forces have "destroyed our way of life" when the market moves elsewhere. And you can't magically put the coal back into a mined out area. Once it's gone, it's gone.

The southern part of the state hitched its wagon to a star that's burned itself out, and had no backup plan. Places like McDowell County are just as bad off now, if not worse, than when the nation was shocked to see the poverty back in 1960 during the famous WV Democratic primary.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

It's the West-European trap, yeah. Belgium, especially, has the highest amount of college/university graduates in the world...And, luckily, plenty of jobs for highly educated workers (that the desired degrees and what unis provide don't always balance out is another problem). However, there are still plenty of people out there without a degree. And, besides cleaning or ironing or collecting trash, there's...Not a lot left for them. All of our industry has packed up and left (mostly to Eastern Europe, which is in the same open economy but half as expensive), and thousands are without a job. Not to mention immigrants who, sadly, usually either don't have a degree, or don't have the language skills to make it useful here - and even if they do jump through all the hoops, people still tend to prefer a doctor with a degree from a "known" university over one with a degree from, say, Ouagadougou.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

That's basically my take on it: coal is basically done. You can cut all the corners and repeal all the laws that you want, but all your doing is entraping the next generation to your fate instead.

The little coal towns need to die. I repeat; the little coal towns need to die. Those communities need to go elsewhere if they want to survive.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

I think pretty much everyone (here) can agree that coal mining isn't the industry of the future - the matter is, how do you do it?
Letting the people die/starve/etc isn't a very humane option. But how do you go about uprooting a whole community? I doubt Stalin-style resettlement is the American way either :p
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Bubble181 said:
I think pretty much everyone (here) can agree that coal mining isn't the industry of the future - the matter is, how do you do it?
Letting the people die/starve/etc isn't a very humane option. But how do you go about uprooting a whole community? I doubt Stalin-style resettlement is the American way either :p
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There really aren't any humane options at this point. They can't even keep a grocery store running in some of these communities because they can't make money; NO ONE has enough money to spend to justify the shipping costs.

So yes, give the people who live in those towns resettlement money and give them an eviction date. Offer them government work or grants for education. To the ones who are too old to retrain, give them a stipend I guess. It's too late to do anything about the problem, so we're kind of stuck just supporting these people or throwing them to the wolves.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

AshburnerX said:
The little coal towns need to die. I repeat; the little coal towns need to die. Those communities need to go elsewhere if they want to survive.
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In 1950, my mom's hometown had a population of 1500. The mine closed in 1958 and so did the town. Everything but one house was torn down.
 
strawman

strawman

Why not let the market manage itself? As coal winds down, companies will shut down operations incrementally, starting with the least productive mines and ending with the most productive. There will be layoffs, but it won't be thousands at once, it'll be dozens and maybe hundreds at a time.

Why is there a desire to control the situation further? In my opinion government interference only leads to worse unintended consequences. I'd suggest that the government interference (ie, coal industry protection and tax benefits) has only hurt the people within by forcing a market into continued existence and for longer than it would otherwise be.

That said, keep in mind that coal still accounts for a full 1/3 of US electrical production. Nothing is getting shut down quickly.

So let the mines close slowly. Those close to retirement will probably choose not to move. As mine closures are announced youth won't move into mining, and instead companies will move people from closing mines to mines that need more workers (due to retirement, workload changes, etc).

A slow taper is always easier to handle than any sort of mandated closure or shutdown.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
stienman said:
That said, keep in mind that coal still accounts for a full 1/3 of US electrical production. Nothing is getting shut down quickly.
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I was gonna say, coal power is still gonna be a thing as long as nuclear expansion is still blocked at every turn by the NIMBYs. Wind and solar still can't even make a drop in the bucket of the power needs of the US.
 
strawman

strawman

GasBandit said:
Wind and solar still can't even make a drop in the bucket of the power needs of the US.
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Solar has already reached a point where payback occurs within 5-10 years for most people. I expect homes to simply come with enough solar to power their basic needs and thus distribute power generation throughout the US over the next decade or two. It may be a drop in the bucket, thinking of building huge solar farms, but if you actually think of it as drops and have some solar on 50% of the houses in a given area, that bucket fills up surprisingly fast.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
stienman said:
Solar has already reached a point where payback occurs within 5-10 years for most people. I expect homes to simply come with enough solar to power their basic needs and thus distribute power generation throughout the US over the next decade or two. It may be a drop in the bucket, thinking of building huge solar farms, but if you actually think of it as drops and have some solar on 50% of the houses in a given area, that bucket fills up surprisingly fast.
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Residential power isn't the big consumer, though.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

stienman said:
Solar has already reached a point where payback occurs within 5-10 years for most people. I expect homes to simply come with enough solar to power their basic needs and thus distribute power generation throughout the US over the next decade or two. It may be a drop in the bucket, thinking of building huge solar farms, but if you actually think of it as drops and have some solar on 50% of the houses in a given area, that bucket fills up surprisingly fast.
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It's almost certain we're going to see solar panels being integrated into housing design on a large scale sooner rather than later. Neighborhoods going forward are going to have them mandated and city municipalities love having to not deal with power outages constantly. Really, the only groups not for them tend to be the power companies themselves, complaining about how they sometimes have to pay their customers for their power output and demanding taxes on people who have them to make up for their lost income.[DOUBLEPOST=1464191578,1464191538][/DOUBLEPOST]
GasBandit said:
Residential power isn't the big consumer, though.
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This is also true though.
 
strawman

strawman

Residential accounts for nearly 40% of electrical consumption. Further, its use occurs at "peak" times, whereas commercial and industrial use are much less "peaky". Power supply has to be rated to handle peak loads, so the power industry can handle much more power than the country uses on average, but because we don't spread our load out, much of that capacity isn't used for nearly half the time.

https://pureenergies.com/us/blog/how-does-residential-solar-fit-into-the-big-picture/

So solar panels on homes will make a much larger impact on our energy structure than the 40% number suggests.

That said, 40% is still not a small number, and commercial and industrial buyers will also choose solar as it becomes cheaper and more profitable to implement.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

In Belgium laws are already in effect stating all newly built houses have to be completely energy neutral / passive. Yeah, building new houses is expensive 'round here, yo :p The USA isn't in the habit of making laws that strong but there'll come a time when its energy efficiency is an important selling point for a house there, as well - though energy is so much cheaper and there's so much free space that it'll be a good while longer, no doubt.
As for solar/wind...Eh. Germany's closing down their nuclear power plants at a high pace, almost 100% green now, and their energy's getting cheaper. Germany's got a whole lot more industry than the US, per capita :p
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
stienman said:
Residential accounts for nearly 40% of electrical consumption. Further, its use occurs at "peak" times, whereas commercial and industrial use are much less "peaky". Power supply has to be rated to handle peak loads, so the power industry can handle much more power than the country uses on average, but because we don't spread our load out, much of that capacity isn't used for nearly half the time.

https://pureenergies.com/us/blog/how-does-residential-solar-fit-into-the-big-picture/

So solar panels on homes will make a much larger impact on our energy structure than the 40% number suggests.

That said, 40% is still not a small number, and commercial and industrial buyers will also choose solar as it becomes cheaper and more profitable to implement.
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Hrm, the numbers I've seen include commercial in that 40%, but I don't see how much is one or the other, but I would assume commercial useage to be at least as great as residential.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=86&t=1
 
Dei

Dei

We got $12 back for 6 months of solar! /rich! It will be interesting to what it looks like after a full year.
 
Dei

Dei

GasBandit said:
Is that net or gross? As in, that's not $12 off your regular bills, right?
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As in we got a $12 refund based on our power production vs. our power usage. That is to say, we made more power than we used.

Still had to pay grid fees though. >.>
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Yeah, "biomass" is ridiculous. They recently cut huge green subsidies to a biomass here after they finally realized the plant wasn't going to be burning local green waste and wood waste but pellets imported from cutting down Canadian forests. "wait, that doesn't sound green. oops!"

As for Germany - yes, it is, but it does prove it's possible. I'm in favor of nuclear power, personally, which is something quite heathen to say around here...But saying it's completely impossible and all green energy is merely a "drop in the bucket" is false.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

stienman said:
The 30% that's produced using "biomass" is funny. I love how green advocates call it "green" even though you're merely converting coal plants into biomass plants. Still burning stuff.

The denuclearization of Germany is a costly mess right now.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nuclear-idUSKCN0SQ1G520151101
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The end goal of switching to biomass is to develop a plant that can be used as biomass that is as close to zero emissions are possible... and the development of such a plant is entirely possible. It's still a bit of a crap shoot though: you'd need massive fields of whatever we end up producing and some of that would inevitably displace food crops, bringing up food prices. It's a trade-off: is improved air and water quality worth the inevitable expansion of farm lands into previously primeval areas?
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dei said:
As in we got a $12 refund based on our power production vs. our power usage. That is to say, we made more power than we used.

Still had to pay grid fees though. >.>
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Sounds better than the $200/mo+ I'm staring down the barrel of this summer.
 
Dei

Dei

GasBandit said:
Sounds better than the $200/mo+ I'm staring down the barrel of this summer.
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Yep, we're going to play the "Will the solar panels out-produce the AC?" this summer. But the summers for the last few years have been pretty cool, so maybe it won't be that hard.
 
strawman

strawman

AshburnerX said:
The end goal of switching to biomass is to develop a plant that can be used as biomass that is as close to zero emissions are possible... and the development of such a plant is entirely possible. It's still a bit of a crap shoot though: you'd need massive fields of whatever we end up producing and some of that would inevitably displace food crops, bringing up food prices. It's a trade-off: is improved air and water quality worth the inevitable expansion of farm lands into previously primeval areas?
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We've already done that with ethanol production from corn. If corn wasn't so heavily subsidized in the US we wouldn't be eating so much corn syrup and wouldn't be driving on so much ethanol. I'm not sure it's the most productive crop for these purposes either, but we've got layers upon layers of laws which aren't going to be changed or picked apart anytime soon.

Land is still cheap, and even in deserts water is cheap, and we haven't tapped all the possible arable land in the US - not even close. So chances are we're going to go quite a way down that road before it actually costs us something.

Other more densely populated areas of the world don't have this advantage.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

My boss set up solar panels at his house and he said he's generated enough this year for five months of electricity. And that hasn't even taken summer into account yet, when he should be getting a lot more.
 
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