elusiveat

Article: Renewable energy tops nuclear power in the US
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/07/renewable-power-booms-in-developing-world-as-it-tops-nuclear-in-the-us.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

It sounds exciting, but after a careful read, I'm less optimistic.

Electricity generated by nuclear plants has held steady at about 8,400 quadrillion BTUs for the last several years, while renewables have experienced strong growth, reaching just over 8,000 Quads last year.

This figure includes biomass, which has seen significant growth over the last decade, as has wind. So far, solar is barely registering, but several major utility-scale projects are in the works, both photovoltaic and concentrated solar, so that may change before too long.

[Emphasis added]

While in principle biomass could be renewable, that really depends on how it is managed. I'd be really curious to see how the accounting was done. Does this include corn biproducts? How was the energy required to produce biomass in the first place factored into these calculations, if at all?

Serious biologists talk about getting meaningful energy out of specific high-productivity organisms, notably poplars, tall grasses, and algae. But research projects to evaluate biomass energy sources for policy recommendations often still look at corn as an energy source because of the political importance of corn. This is unfortunate because the scientific consensus has been clear for at least a decade that corn is simply not going to pay off as an energy source.

I'll let you know if I can find out more about how the accounting was done in this case.

* * *

As a side remark, a bunch of the commenters responded by saying "This just proves we need more nuclear." I am absolutely not opposed to considering nuclear as an energy source, especially if we can set up facilities that reuse the spent fuel. But I am quite troubled by this obsession with a single technology to solve our problems.

So you've heard a good case for nuclear. That's fine. It may well be a solution to the question of how to obtain clean energy. But when we start to treat any technology as *the* solution to the point of dismissing other energy sources, we set ourselves up for inflexible practices in the future.

Original entry at dreamwidth.org. I'd be delighted if you could post your comments there (Count=). But please feel free to comment below if you prefer.

To do:
1) Create a public-persona username on dreamwidth. Done: http://myfirstname-mylastname.dreamwidth.org
2) Create LJ syndication of public-persona dreamwidth blog. Done: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/myfirstname-mylastname/
3) Make elusiveat.dreamwidth and elusiveat.livejournal into friendslist/accesslist-only accounts. Revision: Leaving posts relevant to LJ -> DW switch unlocked.
4) Cross-post recent public journal posts to new public account.
5) Publicize new account via Facebook.
6) Post future public posts to new account ONLY. Continue to post personal (locked) stuff to elusiveat accounts.

Please comment if you have any thoughts, concerns, or input. If all goes well, I will probably be using elusiveat as a dry-run for potential public posts, and will be soliciting feedback on specific posts at that time.

So, the Dreamwidth folk seem to be of the view that if they permit OpenID commenters to include html hyperlinks then the site will be taken over by spammers. If you have an opinion on this, you might want to take a look here:
http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/183199.html

It's actually very easy to get logged onto Dreamwidth using OpenID. (Although as Squirrelitude notes there are apparently some bugs regarding RSS subscriptions through OpenID.

The following steps are actually rather self-explanatory after you get past step 2, but I included all of them just in case.

Here's what you do:
1) Go to http://www.dreamwidth.org/update
2) Click on the link to the right of the log in text box that says "Log in with OpenID"
3) This takes you to a page with a bit of information about OpenID and what it is. Enter your OpenID URL in the textbox (if you're using LJ for your OpenID, you should be able to use username.livejournal.com.
4) Click the "Login" button, which redirects you to livejournal.com, where you can log onto your account to confirm that it really is you trying to log on to Dreamwidth.
5) Click one of the "yes" buttons.
6) (Optional) Comment here to confirm that it works!

1) I'm going to try in earnest to switch over to Dreamwidth as my primary blogging site.

2) I have three invite codes for Dreamwidth accounts. Comment if you would like one.

3) I am also trying to start actually using an RSS aggregator so that I read blogs outside of DW/LJ, rather than just pretending I'm going to.

4) What blogs should I subscribe to? What non-LJ blogs do you guys have that I should be reading?