Lucky Accident

Any chance you'd consider Sister America starting to wear a pink hat with kitty ears?....

(such a hat is called by a slightly different name here...)

@KimOnClinton I upvote this idea so hard (and her little dog, too).

@KimOnClinton Oh, YES please!

@KimOnClinton PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE....People need to know that over half of the country isn't like our leader.

@KimOnClinton Yes yes yes! I'm wearing mine right now!

@KimOnClinton Yes! This would give us a chance to show the world that most of America is against Trump, I've never seen so many protests in all my life as an activist. We're trying to take him down by protesting, there's leaked info that it makes him furious and obsessive when there are big demonstrations against him.

@Kaceytbh Yeah, keep on protesting freedom while the REAL Americans are working to expose the elites and the pedophiles that have encroached on our lands. The same ones that funded womens march.

as america we thank you for showing off sister some, as brother america is having a bit of a psychotic breakdown right now

Thank you.

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouiloveyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!

Thank you for deliberately looking elsewhere than Washington and the utter clusterf*** happening there. For months, every day has brought some new terror (that, until two weeks ago, was merely "imminent"), so much so that I'm almost completely desensitized now...I should still be getting terrified; but it's just lapsed into constant low-grade fear and loss of energy. Don't even have enough left to get indignant, and there's not a way in he'll the actual news can be laughed off.

So thank you, SATW, for giving a defeated Texas Liberal something to smile about.

<3

@AllVoicesAnonymous
"Texas Liberal"
Buddy, I think i found your problem. :P
I, a conservative, have the exact opposite problem here in Michigan, a traditionally liberal state. Seeing Michigan vote red would be nice... but why oh why did it have to vote orange.

@Dalenger I think every state's asking that question now. Either that, or they're California

@Dalenger

I live in Michigan also, and the answer was petty clear why people voted Orange. He promised to bring jobs back. He'd be the greatest, the best, at job creation.

We'll see how that pans out,

Just curious, what's your litmus test for being conservative? The state government is controlled by Republicans, and they set the fiscal and social agenda for state monies. As to local county level government that is also reliably republican/conservative except for the southeastern region around Detroit, and the wishy washy chunk around Lansing.

@AllVoicesAnonymous Texas liberal?!? I thought I was the only one!

@txag70 Nope! We're just shouted down so much that we all often feel alone. Whereabouts, if I might ask?

@AllVoicesAnonymous Couldn't tell by the name? College Station :P

Not for long though. I am about to graduate (WHOOOOOOOP!), and I got a job in Idaho. So... possibly an even redder state? lol

@txag70 Ain't gonna make any assumptions about an A&M attendee.

@AllVoicesAnonymous You're not telling me you went to that nasty orange school up the road, are you? I mean Trump got his skin color from t.u.! ;)

All joking aside though, Austin is a great city.

@txag70 No, no, though I'm the only member of my family not to. No, my alma's the second-tier university in San Marcos.

@AllVoicesAnonymous *Frat boy voice* T-STATE!!!!!!!

Sorry.... I had to

@txag70 No worries, it's got that rep for a good reason.

@AllVoicesAnonymous "It has been roughly 2 weeks and Terrified Americans are beginning to grow exhausted," ~ Morbo the Annihilator.

@ehkrickor Oh, how I wish that weren'the the case. But it is; and eventually, that thing that was novel (contacting my senators and congressmen daily) grows into rote routine.

Hello people who already reading this strip and curious about what it refer to, as I was.

Here is a reference:
https://www.wired.com/2013/08/tesla-model-s-crash-test/

Credit goes to @mecha for finding it. I'm simply relaying it.

upvotes so that it won't sunk into heap of comments. Thanks.

@Seraphirate But according to this article, the Tesla S did NOT receive high marks in crash tests, as the "driver's" head hit the steering wheel.... http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/31/tesla-bmw-fall-short-in-electric-vehicle-crash-tests.html

@ColoHarpare Impacts to the steering wheel usually don't occur consistently when multiple tests are done on the same model. Because of seatbelt designs, and hte fact that the head and hands are the least-controlled areas of the driver's body during a crash, random chance plays a big part in how the dummy's head connects with the airbag. Generally, problems of head impacts are corrected by changes in the top of the steering column, the seatbelt top anchor, and the seat.

I think it was the older Tesla S car since I've been told that the newer Tesla S were having some issues. @ColoHarpare

Nothing wrong is happening. Everything is fine. I'm not in denial. I'm fine. Everything is perfectly fine.

I still hate Teslas. But that's because I am a mechanical engineer.

YOU CAN TAKE MY RIP-ROARING V8 ENGINE FROM MY COLD, DEAD, HANDS!!!

seriously though, electric cars don't fix the problem unless your power source is clean, like nuclear or renewables. In fact if the electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants, it's worse than a normal internal-combustion engine car. And that doesn't take into account the lithium mining and processing, and all the other toxic materials used to make batteries, and recycling them...

This topic really interests me, I've written papers on it.

@txag70 Yeah I got to admit that electric cars, while practical in many ways, are not very sexy.

@txag70
Yeah, all that clean nuclear waste that we totally can get rid of...
Not to mention how failsafe the technology is. It's not like Tchernobyl, Sellafield, Three Mile Island or Fukushima are a thing.

@Narf Well, to be fair Chernobyl happened because the soviets deliberately took it beyond it's safety limits because they were bored.
Fukushima on the other hand was built in the least tectonically stable place in the world, Japan, a terrible place to build a nuclear plant in general. In general modern nuclear plants are rather safe, the only thing I'd personally worry about would be the nuclear waste, though even that is much less of a problem to the planet at large than the carbon emissions from coal plants and such.

@Mulisa And Three Mile Island worked as intended, no radiation ever escaped. The news media at the time overblown the event, making it sound much worse than it ever was.

Fukushima may have survived if the plants designers were smart enough to place the generators on the roof, and not at sea level. Also, reports were that they took shortcuts in the design of the reactor.

BTW, what's Sellafield?

@Mulisa The Fukushima reactor was an ancient one designed and built in the 1960s, and TEPCO was negeligent in maintenance.

This is true about chernobyl.

'@Narf' nothing beats living 40km away from same type of reactor that was used in Chernobyl.
Well, at least they upgraded it to prevent same thing from happening.
Now they're building a replacement plant with four newer reactors, and knowing quality of work done by newer generation of engineers I sometimes feel... uneasy.

@comrade_Comrade Nuclear power plants are far safer and less cancerous than coal plants. There has been a lot of propaganda against nuclear energy.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

@txag70 True, but considering how badly some of the old cold war type reactors have failed it's hard to blame people for being sceptical against nuclear power in general.

@Rogers While Gen I and II reactors have their problems, I'd argue the reason for failures have been poor engineering of auxiliaries (Fukushima) and poor management/communism (Chernobyl)

Fukushima was due to an earthquake and tsunami combination knocking out the diesel coolant pumps. That was poor engineering of the pumps, not the reactors. Three Mile Island should be a reason why nuclear power is good (no damage done to anyone, and reactor 1 is still running to this day and is planned to keep running until 2034). Heck, even the other 3 reactors at Chernobyl kept operating through the 1990s.

Even with a worst-case scenario (literally Chernobyl), the death toll for nuclear is far below fossil fuels and even below solar in terms of deaths per kilowatt-hour.

People are scared of nuclear energy because bombs. I understand that fear, given the levels of destruction they can cause (and, due to the people in charge of them... How on earth did my country elect that jackass?!?).

Speaking of, have you heard of the megatons to megawatts project? What it did was take old Soviet nukes and convert them into fuel for American reactors. Nuclear power is actually able to help reduce arms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

Unfortunately, all types of electrical energy generation will cause environmental issues or fatalities in some manner. It is up to us to choose the correct combination that minimizes the damage.

@txag70 Fear is not rational. It's a fact we must accept. This is exploited by the fossile fuel lobby against nuclear power. It's all very unfair and unfortunate for both enviroment and economy but I belive there is reason to be positive about the future. The next generations of nuclear power plants will eventualy win the trust of Average Joe.

Yes I heard about how you turn old nukes into something more usefull. Quite awesome in many ways.

'@txag70' yep. It's just easy to joke about quality of government projects after recent successes like "dancing bridge" or both Proton and Soyuz being suspended because apparently no one bothered to check if right alloy was used for brazing. Last thing you'd want is for someone to cut corners during design or construction of nuclear power plant.

@comrade_Comrade I am not sure how well-regulated Rosatom is, but the US has a regulatory agency to keep nuclear plants pretty safe. It's called the NRC. If there is not sufficient oversight to any major infrastructure, including a power plant, things will go wrong. Cutting corners anywhere on large-scale projects for profit is "penny wise and pound foolish". It sacrifices long-term tragedy for short term gain.

@Narf As others mentioned, some of those nuclear problems were due to things unrelated, directly, to nuclear technology, and the main meltdown that was wasn't so much of a meltdown as a cough, and the cough-mask the plant had worked.

Modern nuclear tech is very safe, with the waste being its biggest concern, so long as the technology is used as intended. A bunch of our reactors were built in the 70s or 80s, with technology from that era or earlier. And are still pretty safe if used properly. Newer reactors with state of the art tech, would be even better.

Also, thorium. It's plentiful, efficient, and much cleaner for use as a nuclear fuel, but can't be used to make a bomb. There's a reason corporate and government interests have suppressed it.

And even if it isn't as nefarious as corporate greed interests, because uranium is more rare and thus more expensive, it still boils down to resistance to change. Too often people look for ways to patch the system so they can keep using it, and only rarely do they step back, look at the system as a whole, and critically decide whether or not it's actually worth keeping, or fundamentally flawed in some way. We used uranium first, because it could be used to make bombs, so we keep using uranium today. Lazy.

@Narf I work in the nuclear waste industry. We have areas to store it -- Yucca Mountain has been built and was studied for DECADES to make sure it was safe. (If you have issues with places like this, consider where existing nuclear waste is stored -- at the plants themselves). If you don't like storage, recycling nuclear waste to bring the half life down from 10,000 years to 500 years.

Many of the fears about nuclear energy come from the fossil fuel industry trying to displace it.

@txag70
How about full insurance and reinsurance by the private sector for the whole life-cycle of the nuclear energy industry? One pop in Europe is estimated to cost 6 trillion EUR.

@ThorsomeTarmukas Why must the nuclear industry provide insurance and reinsurance? No other energy sector must do this.

@txag70
So do you admit that the nuclear industry does not have insurance for the full lifecycle?

As to why, you should demand similar insurance for other industries as well.
It is yet another example of externalities not accounted for. Profits internalised, costs externalised.

@ThorsomeTarmukas Of course the nuclear industry does not have insurance for the full lifecycle. No industry does!

@txag70
All industries should have it.
The lack of ti is the reason for many of the market distortions.

@Narf 0 people died from Three Mile Island. 0 people died from Fukushima's nuclear accident (the preceding earthquake and tsunami, yes). The WHO confirmed this.

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78218/1/9789241505130_eng.pdf

The amount of deaths per kilowatt-hour are the lowest for nuclear and hydropower, even lower than solar energy. Even then, check out the Banqiao Dam disaster that killed far more than Chernobyl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

@txag70
Lies and statistics.
From that Fukushima WHO report:
[ None of the seven reported deaths among workers is attributable
to radiation exposure1.]
[1. The causes of these deaths have been reported as disaster-related (two cases), heart attack (three cases), sepsis (one case) and leukaemia (one case for which the time of the onset was shorter than the minimum latency period for radiation-induced leukaemia).]

You can't easily rule off the possibility of Fukushima impact on any one individual.
Such death cases would have to arise above the noise level of regional death statistics.

As to Chernobyl,
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/14/geography-in-the-news-chernobyls-legacy/

@ThorsomeTarmukas You claim that what I submitted were lies and statistics? Your NatGeo article sources the World Nuclear Association, which says that all but nine children of the original 4,000 people who got thyroid cancer immediately following Chernobyl were successfully treated. That's a really good success rate.

Furthermore, Chernobyl should be an indictment of Soviet-era communism, not of nuclear power. The reactor was ancient, the workers had removed the safety backup systems to perform unnecessary tests, and the government of the USSR did not respond quickly.

Was Chernobyl a tragedy of epic proportions that should highlight what can go wrong? Yes. And I do not wish to offend anyone who has been negatively affected by this. But check out the Banqiao Dam accident or the thousands that die every year due to lung cancers as a result of coal burning.

The anti-nuclear protestors (and industries that fund them) suggestion of stopping all nuclear power generation because of Chernobyl and Fukushima would be similar to suggesting that because cars from the 1960s and 70s are unsafe, inefficient, and pollute more should be a good reason for everyone never to use any cars at all.

@txag70
I was referring to the figure of 1 million death casualties:
[New and controversial research in 2009, (Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment), however, reported the premature death toll from Chernobyl between 1986 and 2004 at about 985,000.]

Newer estimates are for 1,5 million death casualties.

[You claim that what I submitted were lies and statistics?]

I claim that you cannot make your claims based on the reference you gave.
Model estimates are just model estimates. Each model is based on assumptions. To test the model one needs a large sample of cases.

[But check out the Banqiao Dam accident or the thousands that die every year due to lung cancers as a result of coal burning.]

Sure. Which is why all externalities should be accounted for IN THE PRICE.

@ThorsomeTarmukas So the WHO lied, but your study is 100% factual? Even anti-nuclear greenpeace puts their estimate at an already-ridiculous 90,000. 1 million death casualties is laughably silly.

From your "new and controversial research": http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/32/2/181/pdf;jsessionid=2B8C7FDF36C97E329A67E6B3F3450412.ip-10-40-2-120

The article you are sourcing is saying that the main conclusions of Yablokov are an odd mixture of established facts and uncorroborated claims of mass mortality. That one study you have sourced is at odds with the WHO, the IAEA, UNSCEAR, UNDP, and UNICEF. The article itself states that the study is overestimating by at least 800,000.


Sounds like you support carbon taxes if you want to include externalities. I do too.
But are you suggesting we should hold all power companies' feet to the fire and force them to insure against all disasters?

@txag70
[ 1 million death casualties is laughably silly. ]
Different numbers arise from different assessment approaches.
The "precautionary principle" versus the "business as usual" (BAU) principle.

[ But are you suggesting we should hold all power companies' feet to the fire and force them to insure against all disasters? ]

Basically, yes.
And not just power companies.

@ThorsomeTarmukas Would that we could. I would love to see corporate responsibility for disasters, especially ecological ones. But how do we go about doing that? If the disasters are internalized, the company can just declare bankruptcy (Example: the Takata airbag company is paying far less in fines than VW, even though Takata's poor products have directly killed several people, but if Takata goes bankrupt the supply chain for airbags gets distorted to the point where automakers will not be able to purchase enough to put in their cars). If there is a large cost of insurance based on risk, there might not be the same level of competition, which could bring forth inefficiencies in the market.

It's not an easy problem. But I am glad that we can agree internalized risk should not be constrained to nuclear power.

@txag70
[ But how do we go about doing that? ]

By requiring an insurance. That insurance payment would become part of the price.

[ If there is a large cost of insurance based on risk, there might not be the same level of competition, which could bring forth inefficiencies in the market. ]

Well, if one nuclear pop would cost about 6 trillion EURos and there are hundreds of reactors, then the fossil fuels industry is responsible for about 1000+ trillion EUR / USD.
So I'd call it a horse race.

And yes, if the risks are too high, it makes perfect sense to have a slower development rate.

@ThorsomeTarmukas Is the insurance government provided, or is there a corporation for the insurance? Also, really high risks and subsequently high insurance premiums may cause inefficient competition. This is a major issue with US health care -- doctors pay eye-wateringly high malpractice costs (yes, I support single payer but that ain't gonna happen here). If we applied that to the energy sector, would it lead to monopolies or quasi-monopolies due to high costs of entry?

These are really good ideas.

@txag70
[ Is the insurance government provided, or is there a corporation for the insurance? ]

More like corporations. For private reinsurance one needs many corporate entities.

[ Also, really high risks and subsequently high insurance premiums may cause inefficient competition. ]

Again, that is to be expected. Other alternative industries with lower risk premiums thus get an advantage. Also, the state could interfere to avoid or break monopolies.

@Narf Nuclear energy is either the safest or second safest besides wind power, and it provides so much more energy then wind. Also we totally can get rid of the waste safely, its just that the media has popularized the waste as being far harder to contain and the measures to contain it as far less safe then they actually are.

@txag70 Living in Iceland I already have access to clean energy, but we also have the IDDP (Iceland Deep Drilling Project) which if all goes well could mean access to geothermal energy not just in Iceland but all around the globe, which could mean clean energy for all. Clean cars, clean energy, I'm hopeful for the future.

@Ellert0 Fusion, glorious fusion!

@ShirBlackspots Thorium, lovely thorium reactors!

@Ellert0 Geothermal could work in certain areas in the USA (Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Alaska) where there are enough volcanos, wouldnt it be expensive to do it where there aren't thermal hotspots?

@txag70 We've managed to drill down 5km now, which would be about enough to drill through the Earth's crust where it's thinnest at various locations at the bottom of the ocean, now where it's thickest on the continents is about 70km, so we'd only need to drill 14 times deeper than we have now and let's not forget you don't need to drill through the entire crust to get to enough heat for energy. I'm optimistic about our ability to improve on the achievements of today in the future. It really seems like people can achieve just about anything if they put their minds to it. So the question is, will there be locations on the planet in the future that we can't tap into geothermal energy from?

@Ellert0 Perhaps another question might be, is it more practical to drill down in those locations or transmit power from places where we can easily tap for power?

The issue at depths beyond 5km would most likely be materials science. We might not have materials (or we might have only extremely expensive ones) that are capable of withstanding the tremendous pressure at depths like that.

@Ellert0
I'm skeptical.
Geothermal relies on a temperature differential to work. You can't just throw a machine in lava and expect it to convert heat into electricity. Instead, you half to throw one half the machine in lava, and the other half in ice.
Or just fresh air, or any other medium cooler than the lava.
(Theoretically, you could use lava as a coolant for something that was REALLY hot. I think I recall reading of some reactor using a liquid metal as a coolant.)
All heat engines work this way.
Any geothermal plant, regardless of where or how it works, is going to produce waste heat. You enjoy some really nice steam heating options because you've been smart about not wasting the waste heat.

At least until someone breaks that law of thermodynamics that says you can't just turn heat back into usable energy.

Further, how much heat can you retain pumping that water to the surface? How much energy are you using just circulating that water through a multi-kilometer vertical pipe?

And, yes. I know you don't need to dig down until you hit magma. I'm using molten rock as an example of something really hot.

You can't throw one of those Peltier junction cell phone charger camp furnaces in a fire and expect it to produce heat, either, even if you could keep it from melting. It only works when one side, (the inside,) is cooler than the other side, (the outside,) and works by tapping that differential for electricity while the differential equalizes, (while the outside gets hot.)

@SeanR
I said that wrong.
Peltier junction pocket stoves only work when the inside is HOTTER than the outside.
The other way would work, in theory. What matters is the temperature differential, but I don't see someone roasting the outside while the inside stays cool by comparison.

@txag70 The idea is a step in the right direction... until you see pretentious hybrid drivers.

@Schiffy Assholes exist everywhere. If you've ever been to the south, I am sure you've seen the idiots that drive lifted trucks with thin tires and nothing in the bed spewing out diesel smoke. Even the gearheads have their share of idiots, which makes me sad.

But yes. People who drive in Priuses that aren't even environmentally friendly (nickel mining for batteries) can be the most pretentious assholes around.

@txag70

I question the statement that the coal-fired plants are worse. Gasoline cars only use up about 20% of the energy in the gas, while most coal plants are closer to 33%, 40% with the newer models. When adding in transmission and battery losses, the electric car still comes out slightly ahead.

@CorruptUser Don't forget about the losses over the grid from the plant through to hundreds of power stations. Grid loss is a big issue. Not to mention the other emissions that occur from coal burning (sulfurs) that are worse than gasoline.

@txag70 As far as general emissions, I agree. Coal needs to be abandoned. That said, geothermal and solar are the future, not petroleum.

Gasoline is made from petroleum or a mix of oil and bitumen. Liquid hydrocarbon is very difficult to clean up when spilled. If the recent spills in Saskatchewan had been into the Missouri River instead of a river that flows into Hudson Bay, I think it would have become a bigger scandal. In that case, how much longer would the petroleum industry even have?
http://saskatoon.ctvnews.ca/in-photos-oil-spills-into-north-saskatchewan-river-1.2999215

@niauropsaka If geothermal and solar is the future that is unfortunatley quite far away. The more renewable power the better of course but it won't be enough to replace fossile fuel anytime soon.

@Rogers
I wonder what the ROI would be for an orbital solar farm and receiving station. The idea isn't a new one, and even cheap solar panels get more juice outside the atmosphere than under this sea of light-scattering and absorbing air.

I'm pretty sure the solar panels could be made cheaply enough, in the absolute sense. I'm less sure about the gallons of kerosene and LOX to get them up there.

@SeanR When launching things to orbit will get cheaper we will probably have orbital solar farms.

But perhaps we shouldn't concentrate too much on these big fancy large scale projects. The combined effect of many small windmills and solar panels on many already existing rooftops could be massive. But of course the power distributors don't like that as they prefer to sell us power rather than buying it.

@Rogers
While on the surface, rooftop power makes very good sense, the current generation of solar panels depends on toxic chemistry to manufacture and are generally not cheap enough to compete with grid power.
As I understand it, where Solar shines is in places that are too expensive, or too mobile, to connect to the grid.
Some places subsidize solar panel placement, but this just hides the actual cost from the end-consumer. It's like subsidizing corn for ethanol, only in this case it's subsidizing an overseas manufacturer and not even a domestic farmer.
I have heard of a technology that allowed Solar panels to be printed, and there was a manufacturer in New England that banked a lot on that technique. The US Army was interested, as they could print camouflage pattern solar tents. The resulting solar panels had a lower efficiency, but were also far cheaper to manufacture. Ultimately, the company went bankrupt, as many bleeding edge companies do. http://machinedesign.com/news/solar-cells-will-double-camouflage talks about it, but DO NOT follow the link you find there to the company in question. It's not dead, but rather the URL has been claimed by something that my AV just blocked. Still, in eight years or so when the patent's have lapsed, maybe someone else can give this idea a shot.

Wind, on the other hand, has its own problems. Efficient motors involve not-so-rare "Rare Earth" metals, that are toxic to work with, (which is why China has a lock on the production, not because they have the only deposits but because they're willing to cut more corners in producing it,) and are involved in bird strike deaths. I suspect, in concentration, we'd find some rather interesting weather changes, as well. You can't tap an energy source without reducing it.
Fortunately, they're not THAT tall. Storm clouds still ride above them. But ground wind patterns will probably be effected. That's not necessarily a bad thing. We planted trees one hundred years ago to temper the winds in order to offset the effects of our tillage practices of the day.

@SeanR Sun and wind power can be improved a lot, that is true, but if we don't start using it the producents of power will stick to coal just because it's easier to just keep doing what worked yesterday. There are many interesting ideas about renewable energy that I think are worth a try. There are for example many bizarre looking ideas for bird and storm safe wind turbines. Most of who will probably never be a great sucess but you never know. Sometimes strange things work.

@Rogers
This is true.
That said, it's cheaper to take a long technological step than to keep retooling with a bunch of shorter steps. It's why the US, one of the first to fly airplanes, (arguably the first, but I understand there are "alternate truths" about that...), has such an out of date traffic control system. We invested early, and now we're stuck with what was available then, until we can brace ourselves for the cost of a new system.
CFL's are more efficient than incandescent, but I'd have rather we'd stuck with incandescent until LED was mature. LED lighting doesn't have toxic mercury in it.

Possibly the most effective approach for bird-proofing wind farms would be to use the very sort of dirty tricks that make lasers and airports such a bad combination. (Temporarily) blind the birds so they don't fly into the field. Of course, this would require a fairly robust computer system to recognize when a to be protected bird needed to be warned off with a few bright flashes straight into the eyes, but that's probably more effective than painting a spiral on the hub of a turbine with 116ft, (35m) long blades.

@niauropsaka I am not in favor of gasoline cars (in the long run. I am a gearhead but I understand they are probably not a wise way to go). I was simply pointing out though that electric cars which get their power from coal plants are no better.

Electric cars with power sourced from nuclear power? Now that's the way to go (until we can get solar and geothermal figured out).

@txag70 That reminds me of the nuclear powered car they used to dream about back in the pre Tjernobyl era. Putting the reactor in the car and you can cut out the distribution of electricity. It's not as stupid as it sounds, tiny reactors and rad shielding already exists.

On the other hand it would give the nutcases material for a dirty car bomb so let's play it safe with batteries instead.

@Rogers The Ford Nucleon was one of those concepts from the 50s if my memory serves.

Security would be insane. Plus you'd need a way to distribute nuclear fuel -- that's a big no-no from a security standpoint.

@txag70 If memory serves me right there was a rumour about a soviet prototype nuclear car. It wouldn't suprise me if the rumor was true, the soviets were not very concerned with safety.

No doubt people in the near future will laugh at some things we fantasise about just as we laugh at things like the nuclear car.

@txag70

Transmission losses are typically around 7% (I used to work in electric pricing), but if we are going down that road we have to also include the processing involved in petroleum. The manufacture of coal is "cleaner" in the sense that you just mine the stuff and it's burnt in a power plant pretty close by or shipped by rail, whereas oil is very pollution intensive to collect and process.

Coal/electric cars are somewhat better than gas cars, and it's still a step forward, even if it isn't a giant leap.

However, the US is sitting on the world's only terrain that is practically designed to create tornadoes. Really, the entire midwest is perfect for onshore wind power, and we could solve maybe 1/4 of the energy problems just by building wind turbines everywhere there.

@CorruptUser
Working on it.
Obama apparently gave out a lot of tax incentives for wind power.
As I understand it, most of them are owned by off-shore interests.
From my observation, they tend not to get used much. Sitting idle most of the time I drive by, or there will be one windmill tuning VERY slowly while all the rest are standing still.
Yes. I'm in Tornado Alley.

@txag70 And then there's me, who fantasizes about driving a steam powered car that if crashed in just the right way, will explode its boiler.

Fun to take a break from all of the bad shit going down in EU and America right now, I came here for history in comics, not current shitty events. This made me laugh! Let's see more of this!

Yeah, it's hard to really joke about what Carrotman's done in his first month as president. He's been trying to find ways to weed "disloyalists" out of government positions; he's been giving key positions to loyalists with the express purpose of them gutting the departments they're in charge of; we're all well aware that he's drummed up quite a few scapegoats for all the country's woes... All of this before he's even started his second month in office.

But hey, at least we know he isn't going to build a secret police force.

...That was taken care of for him by Dubya.

Looking more and more, every day, like the US has elected its first genuinely fascist dictator.

'@Grubadubdub'
Trump is far too incompetent to pull of a fascist takeover thankfully.
And has already made enemies of the CIA and to some extent the armed forces. Actually I'm not really sure if he's made any friends at all.
If you don't have the backing of the army or espionage people, you're right sexual intercourseed if you actually attempt some sort of dictatorial coup.

Man this comic doesn't even cover half of the accidental safety the tesla has...

During the crash test (a different one) the whole front of the car acted as a crumple zone, because it didn't have a big bulky engine in it, thus making it far safer to crash in.

Then, during a crush test, the frame of a tesla was SO sturdy, it BROKE the machine it was testing on.

The tesla is the only car in existence to get a rating of 11... out of a possible 10.

Sister America represents the non-horrible parts of America? ... that's really fitting, I'm down with that!

@ZeroiaSD That is a bit harsh I think. Brother America is not horrible even though he is orange at the moment.

@ZeroiaSD https://satwcomic.com/gay-eggs

I refer you to the description of this comic. They're personifications of clichés, so they're both dumb, but brother America is a right-wing dumbhead and sister America is a left-wing dumbhead.
Trump is right-wing, so as long as everybody goes crazy over Trump, Humon will use brother America for Trump things and sister America for non-Trump things that don't require a right-wing character.

@Wortel Trump is hardly right-wing. That's why they use the new term "alt-right". It's hard to say where Trump fits on the American political spectrum. He does seem to favor border security like the American right. And he has made a Supreme Court pick that the right likes. And his choice for education secretary favors school-choice to help kids get out of failing schools.
On the other hand, he is very friendly with Russia and uses moral-equivalence to excuse Russian behavior which has long been a left-wing thing. He seems to have little knowledge or regard for the Constitution or for traditional restraints on government which is again a left-wing thing. He called an American (born and raised American) judge a "Mexican" which is something the American left loves to do (separating us into identity groups based on ancestry rather than just calling us all "Americans").
He doesn't fit neatly into either camp.

@LoveIsGood ah. I see!