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Oscar Wehmanen's avatar

Combining Carbon with Oxygen taken from the air produces heat that with some mechanical wizardry moves us from place to place (or warms us or ...). It also uses up some oxygen and creates some pollution. Any self contained system that does not use the atmosphere (or any other environmental asset) has a real energy disadvantage. So our carbon/oxygen energy system has a real energy advantage, which results in a weight advantage, And a pollution disadvantage! The nuclear solution is frightening and undeveloped. Batteries are heavy and developing. Carbon capture is developing and energy wasting. Direct electric connection (eg. Streetcars) have limited applicability. Direct microwave energy transmission ???

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TV Yellow Melody Maker Reissue's avatar

Whatever the US ultimately decides to do with its power grid, it’ll be difficult to do without Wyoming. We got uranium, natural gas, coal, the best producing winds farms, and vast swaths of undeveloped land prime for solar farms. And the normal people out here are just happy to be of service to the nation at large, no matter the energy resource in question. Dumb ones around here are screaming about coal plant layoffs, smart ones around here are taking killer jobs in wind energy.

I think Gordon is about as decent as a Republican Governor from a single dominant party state is gonna get.

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Boogie Mama's avatar

Sorry to be reading this a day late! Wyoming could really boom with clean energy... and it wouldn't bust, leaving toxic ghost towns (looking at you, Jeffries City). But the ignorant and oppositional have really been emboldened to hate on anything but loving fossil fuels unconditionally. I present my favorite WY political quotation:

https://substack.com/@desertabundance/note/c-21697584?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=b2vrq

Side note, there's been so much fed $$ for clean energy infrastructure in red states that all these perfomative assholes keep turning up their noses at, my mom's goofy housewife climate klatch got some umpty million dollars for building a huge solar transit center with electric busses in Jackson Hole, the last place that needs any money. I mean, good, great, go mom! But these dopes are missing out on economic opportunity & free money. I saw that MTG is blathering about not wanting Biden to open new factories in Georgia. "We're the Bible belt, not the battery belt," she assured her constituents.

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bluePNWcats's avatar

I read that same thing and had that same horrified realization that this idiot woman was literally advocating to her constituents against new employers coming to the area. Great representation there marg. 😳🤯

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Ella Hyland's avatar

I lived in east Tennessee in the early 2000s (which is also part of the Bible Belt) and "My uncle might get me a job at the Ratheon plant" was a pickup line. I know it's not the same as a battery plant but it's similar. In some areas these jobs are the only ones better than Walmart and as usual MTG is an idiot.

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Menotsure's avatar

As long as cows fart Wyoming will never be carbon neutral.

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Zyxomma's avatar

Ta, Dok. There are better ways to create steam than with nukes.

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Mart's avatar

No nukes, 3 mile, Fukushima, Ukraine.

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Gary Seven in Space's avatar

OOoooohhhweeeee My second, are you listening, Children of Kali post!

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Hooker P Tape skipping dipshit's avatar

Red Green. It's already been done. See 'CBC" in Canadia.

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Jeff, still got my guitar's avatar

"Mr Peabody's coal train done hauled it away "

We all miss John Prine.

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Maureen's avatar

Indeed we do. I'd looked forward to growing old(er) with Mr. Prine.

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Lefty Wright's avatar

I thought Red Green was already taken with reruns on YouTube.

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Resource NW's avatar

Of course, no one but old farts mention how Wyoming's near surface strip mines have destroyed the water sources for what used to be the other big industry there. Cattle ranches can survive a lot, including bad weather and reduced grazing permits but bad water kills them dead.

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Spleen Victoria's avatar

Cattle takes too much water anyway. Bring back bison. It’s tastier anyway.

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Lefty Wright's avatar

Along with underground mines for ore that continues to leach out. In West Virginia it just kills aquatic life and people though, not real big money producers like cattle.

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abbienormal's avatar

Yep.

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tegrat's avatar

I suspect there's a fuckton of geothermal/hydrothermal potential in Wyoming, be good to spend some $ pursuing that as well.

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Boogie Mama's avatar

Thermopolis enters the chat.

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John Thorstensen's avatar

Well, there is Yellowstone, but that's Yellowstone. I don't know my Wyoming geography well enough to know whether there's a lot more. All I know is that it is a bitch to guess on Statle because its outline can't be distinguished from that of Colorado ...

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El Duderino's avatar

I didn't know 60 Minutes was still on the air. I will always associate the sound of the show's opening with "Shit it's Sunday night and I haven't finished my homework"

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Hooker P Tape skipping dipshit's avatar

Tick, tick, tick, tick, ...

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jltympanum's avatar

Just a reminder, for those who have forgotten: everything Bill Gates is involved in is evil, no matter how good it may look at first glance.

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Nick Sr.'s avatar

If you’re gonna convince people that Bill Gates is evil, offering a single example would really help take your argument to the next level.

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Aquaman, Real Estate Investor.'s avatar

Yeah! Ending malaria! That's evil!

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tempusfugit's avatar

Because he's never lied before, so why wouldn't he be ending malaria totally right now?

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Anarchy Pony's avatar

Yes, let's take him entirely at face value on claiming that he's ending malaria.

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Lefty Wright's avatar

He has been big on developing vaccines and making them available in poorer countries. So he may be one of the better evil tech moguls. Beats the hell out of Musk and some other MAGA assholes with billions of dollars to throw around on anti-social crap, thinking they are smarter than everyone else.

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Anarchy Pony's avatar

Except that it's mostly empty posturing, dedicated more to creating largely unaccountable private sector influence operations than anything actually effective.

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Nemo's avatar

This is a good place to share the story about how Edward Teller (one of several inspirations of Dr. Strangelove) explained to the American Petroleum Institute in 1959 that they had a problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming

Frank Ikard, who a few years later was head of the API was definitely paying attention. And Frank Press, an awesome genius of geophysics was well aware of the problem, and explained it in detail to Jimmy Carter whose background in nuclear engineering allowed him to understand all the details. So many missed opportunities.

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El Duderino's avatar

When the father of the H-bomb warns you that your business will destroy the world, that should be a reality check

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Runfastandwin's avatar

60 Minutes reached its sell by date in like 1975...

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Notorious J.I.M.'s avatar

Andy Rooney was fun to watch right up til the end of his run on the show.

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Runfastandwin's avatar

Agreed!

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