NickDanger3di

NickDanger3di t1_j570eue wrote

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that the school and town bureaucracy made a really, really bad decision and cheaped out when they should have purchased from a reliable and stable source.

School administrations are not famous for their intelligent spending practices; our local small town (15,000 pop) HS had a huge battle spending over $70 million on a new HS in the 90s. When it was done and I went to the big open house, I saw huge round atrium (I think round rooms cost extra?), with cabinets in the offices made from flimsy chipboard that you'd find in cheap home construction, and some other bad choices as well.

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NickDanger3di t1_j0ixqlc wrote

One user suggests they are using evaporative cooling to cool the entire building, which is quite possible. On the other hand, using standard AC units would use zero water, but cost google more money.

Ironically, on the home google page, they proudly state Carbon neutral since 2007. Now we know how they manage that, huh?

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NickDanger3di t1_j0ixay2 wrote

They didn't build a google data center in the 60s, I'm pretty sure. Designing what is basically a warehouse full of computers when they could easily create the system to recycle whatever water they need to cool the CPUs seems rather ecologically unsound for something built recently.

Yes, it would cost google more money to recycle their coolant. That's not an excuse to trash the environment. Not like google isn't making money.

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NickDanger3di t1_j09taif wrote

Disappointing that the average US citizen, and the media, have so little understanding of fusion that this is taken to mean we can start building fusion power plants now. My concern is the funding; US government funding for fusion research is $700 million per year; US government funding for subsidizing fossil fuels (mostly for exploring new sources) is a whopping $20 Billion per year.

Where would fusion be if we started funding fusion research and development for $20 billion every year? NIF has made a breakthrough; they have created the first fusion reaction to ignite here on earth. Proving that it can be done. But with only $700 million a year, it's not going to lead anywhere very quickly. I'm pretty sure we pay more than that to subsidize cheese production, so it can be stored in caverns and get moldy, requiring even more money to dispose of the rotten cheese. Makes me sad and frustrated.

Edit: information available on the whole Government Cheese thing is confusing; but it seems the government is down to a mere 300 million pounds of these days. My knowledge of cheese prices being restricted to the local grocery store, says that's around $1.5 billion at retail prices. So at wholesale, maybe the same as fusion gets?

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NickDanger3di t1_j08ddco wrote

I get it; when conservatives plot to, and proceed to, violently storm the Capitol and seat of national government, to prevent a legit election from being confirmed, it's just an unruly crowd.

Throw some bottles, when a police training center is being built by a regime that has extensive history of violence against poor people, and is damaging the ecology, it's Domestic Terrorism.

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NickDanger3di OP t1_ixzqesu wrote

It seems there's a thing about naming hydrogen a different 'color' depending on how it's generated. But yeah, going from abandoned oil wells to Gold is too much of a stretch. Maybe they just wanted to get ahead of the otherwise inevitable Black Hydrogen name?

Me, the idea of the average joe handling portable tanks of hydrogen to fill their lawnmower or generator, and driving around with much larger tanks of it in their cars, is kinda terrifying.

Back in the 60s, when I was a boy reading Popular Science, I asked my Dad if he was as excited about the coming Flying Cars as I was. he said "Nick, I have enough trouble dealing with all the assholes on the road trying to kill me. The last thing I want is those same assholes flying over my house". Right after I turned 16, I finally understood that.

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NickDanger3di OP t1_ixzmd7t wrote

Submission Statement:

So a company called Cemvita Factory has developed a way to use bacteria to generate hydrogen in depleted and abandoned oil wells. Here's a select bit from the article:

>Cemvita Factory, a biotech firm in Texas, had spritzed a carefully selected combination of bacteria and nutrients down the bore hole. Once inside the well, the microbes began breaking down the residual oil hydrocarbons in there—dregs that would be unprofitable to extract—to generate hydrogen and CO2. This field test in July, though small in scale, was a “huge success,” says chief business officer Charles Nelson.

On one hand, the fact that they have proven the concept IRL, with tangible and measurable hydrogen generation in an existing oil well, bodes well. So many energy generation schemes never get off the paper they are written on (though they do get posted in this sub sometimes). On the other hand, they say this:

>Nelson explains that the firm’s goal is to treat oil wells with bacteria to enable steady, long-term hydrogen production—perhaps lasting for decades.

How do they know this is possible? Also, how is the CO2 generated at the same time dealt with; that's a huge issue. But beyond this, if we ever expect Hydrogen to become a significant source of energy, how do we get it from the production site to the end users? The Infrastructure for hydrogen is a huge and unanswered question. Can it just be pumped via the same pipes natural gas is transported in? Are all the gas stations going to be replaced by Hydrogen Stations? Do we really want the average driver handling hydrogen? All questions that we can discuss and theorize about.

Edit: typo

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