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Climate Change and Will FUSION Stop it


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2 hours ago, TKMK said:

true.

The oil rig sounds like a good idea. You have made some good points. About the satellites though. How do they work? Im quite curious.

@Terwin So how much 'true' radioactive waste would be left by the end of that which couldn't be dealt with and would have to be launched on starship?

Solar panels do their thing with electricity, the electricity is converted to microwaves, beamed at a massive receiver on Earth, the receiver then converts it back to electricity.

The satellite would be in GEO, so it would hang over the receiver. It would be in near constant sunlight and only be shaded for a short time each year.

Here is a NASA/DOE study about it from the 1970s- http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2016/12/energy-from-space-department-of.html

Note the similarity of the configuration of Boeing's proposed Space Freighter to Starship.

1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

Then again, as @Terwin says, the radioactive energy left in the waste could potentially be put to use rather than throwing it all away. Parking it in high orbit for future prospection would probably be more useful than throwing it into the sun.

I would like to clarify my proposal for everyone as it gets misinterpreted a lot. I am not proposing to launch radioactive waste "into" the sun, I am proposing to launch it into solar orbit around the sun.

Hitting the sun would take enormous amounts of delta-v and be too expensive.

Just as current objects in solar orbit around the sun, like Pioneer 4 or spent S-IVB stages, have virtually zero chance of returning to the Earth-Moon system, the radioactive waste will stay away.

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(Replying directly to the title instead of the OP)

Nothing will stop climate change because the climate is always changing one way or another. Reversing global warming will still cause the climate to change the other way.

That said, fusion can stop global warming, and so can fission. Detonate enough fusion and fission bombs and we’ll be in a nuclear winter. Still not an ideal result though…

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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Cost/kw yall. All this stuff is pie in the sky if it isn’t cheaper than coal. No one will care and it’ll never get off the ground. Even nuclear is doomed. And forget sending the waste into space. If its cheaper to let the casks crumble on site and let the radiation seep into the ground water thats what they’ll do. 

1200px-20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy

Edited by Pthigrivi
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40 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Cost/kw yall. All this stuff is pie in the sky if it isn’t cheaper than coal. No one will care and it’ll never get off the ground. Even nuclear is doomed. And forget sending the waste into space. If its cheaper to let the casks crumble on site and let the radiation seep into the ground water thats what they’ll do. 

1200px-20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy

Thanks for adding the graph. It's been reported that utilities are finding that building  new solar PV installations are cheaper than keeping existing coal plants running

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/renewables-cheapest-energy-source/#:~:text=The report follows the International,major countries%2C the outlook found.

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58 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Thanks for adding the graph. It's been reported that utilities are finding that building  new solar PV installations are cheaper than keeping existing coal plants running

 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/renewables-cheapest-energy-source/#:~:text=The report follows the International,major countries%2C the outlook found.

It's true, but only to cover the difference between peak demand and base load. Energy demand peaks during the day and evening as commercial and industrial draws rise and then people cook dinner, which is good for solar cause thats when the sun is high or can be carried by a 4-6h storage buffer, but you still need something to carry the 50% off-peak demand in the wee hours. Wind certainly helps, but it's intermittent, so you need something steady to smooth out that curve. Nuclear could suit, but it kind of only exists because of massive subsidization of nuclear plant construction during the cold war. Without that and with aging plants and a long, litigious, expensive road to building new plants the cost just isn't going to come down to a competitive level. They'll never secure financing for a losing prospect like that. Most likely that gap will be filled by grid-scale battery storage from Li-ion or Li-S farms down the road. They're already cheaper than nuclear but as mentioned it won't matter until its cheaper than coal and natural gas to cover base load. By then it may be too late to scale up. We'd also benefit greatly from a high voltage DC smart grid shifting energy dynamically from regions with high wind or bright sun to places without to reduce the need and cost of storage, but we've been talking about that since the 90's and nothing ever happens. Fat chance the US gets its act together to do anything remotely sensible for the next several decades. There's too much money to be made burning the world to the ground.

BNEF2Bthe2Bbenchmark2Blevelized2Bcost2Bo

Edited by Pthigrivi
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3 hours ago, TKMK said:

good. They way it should be.

 

i thought the satelites would be LEO. Evidently, i was thinking very hard. Has microwave power been proven yet?

Yup. As far back as 1975, experiments have been done verifying the concept, albeit under the laboratory conditions. No one knows how it would perform in space yet, although demonstrator missions are actually scheduled for launch in the US, Japan, and China sometime this decade.

3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Nothing will stop climate change because the climate is always changing one way or another. Reversing global warming will still cause the climate to change the other way.

Climate change is a proper noun spelled without upper case letters. It is not literal, and refers to anthropogenically caused changes, both hot and cold. It can be applied in local instances (where the variation between cold and hot comes in) or with the average global temperature, which is where the "global warming" phrase comes from.

Just because I say "I have stopped growing" because my height doesn't increase noticeably, doesn't literally mean I will cease to have new skin, cease to have new hair, and have my body eventually fail. Likewise, "stopping climate change" doesn't literally mean keeping the climate in a static state, it means avoiding extreme, unnatural changes that the ecosystem can't handle.

3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

That said, fusion can stop global warming, and so can fission. Detonate enough fusion and fission bombs and we’ll be in a nuclear winter. Still not an ideal result though…

Nuclear winter is a highly unlikely scenario. The evidence for it is pretty garbage.

It was a combination of frustrated anti-nuclear activists trying to string something together to get governments to stop, and the KGB taking advantage of that and fanning the flames to get NATO IRBMs out of Europe.

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59 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Climate change is a proper noun spelled without upper case letters. It is not literal, and refers to anthropogenically caused changes, both hot and cold. It can be applied in local instances (where the variation between cold and hot comes in) or with the average global temperature, which is where the "global warming" phrase comes from.

While we’re talking history “climate change” was a deliberate rebranding coined by American political and communications consultant Frank Luntz, designed to make the slow destruction of the planet at the hands of the fossil fuel industry sound as benign, inevitable, and blameless as possible to the public. Its a bit like coming upon a murder scene and instead of saying “Someone stabbed this man to death” you declared confidently that the victim had experienced “life change”.
 

I’ll add this too-perfect quote:

In a 2007 interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Luntz redefined the term "Orwellian" in a "positive" sense, saying that if one reads George Orwell's essay on language, "To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever."

Edited by Pthigrivi
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"base load" is to a large part an artificial thing, at least in Europe. It is created by advertising, even subsidizing resistance heating or by creating pricing structures to shift consumption to certain times (night), to justify the operation of large thermal power plants.

When dealing with energy consumption in a reasonable way, use heat pumps instead of resistance heating and air conditioning, induction cooking, a smaller car, not using a PC that needs >500w, then there is no such "base load" and most of those plants became even more unprofitable.

 

As to PV, for people who might think about it and need a few more numbers:

A 12kwp installation with 10kva inverters and a 28kwh battery (LiFePO4) costs me around 25 kEuro with all parts and installation. Biggest part was the electronics (all Victron chargers inverters and control units, dedicated network cabling, and all is redundant so that the failure of a battery unit, charger, inverter or panel string doesn't leave me in the dark) but I expect that to hold a long time. Full charging capacity is a little under 240A at 55V DC (losses ignored). Subsidy (not yet included) could be ~10kEuro. I'll run the house off-grid and with heating/ventilation/cooling (subtropic setting) and a small car with it. Utility bill could reach 150,-/month for car charging and everything else, so after 15 years or so I'd be even with that high price setup, 10 years with subsidies and leaving some slack. The only thing I can't take care of is a direct lightning strike, the house is too small for a proper LPS.

An installation that stays connected to the grid doesn't need such a battery and such a redundant setup, the cost can be reduced to less than half with ~5k state/EU funding, paying off much earlier when charging car and washing clothes during the day time.

Edit: just want to add, comparing the 25k investment for 15 years (conservative) to the >50k people spend on cars without questioning, and that maybe every other year, that is ridiculously cheap.

Edited by Pixophir
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Now take that chart and throw out the taxes and fines manually hanged on the fossil and nuke energy and add the discounts manually subtracted from the solar/wind manufacture chain and taxes, and you see that all these charts are just a piece of junk.

The nonsense with "green" and "blue" hydrogen has the same nature.

And the holy energetic plants consist of same amount of carbon as the coal does. Just with  organic admixtures and water to be additionally removed.

(Because the coal is exactly the carbbon of the plant cellulose.)

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11 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Nothing will stop climate change because the climate is always changing one way or another. Reversing global warming will still cause the climate to change the other way.

As said, this has never been a proper argument. Climate change means anthropogenic climate change. We can distinguish pretty well.

11 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

That said, fusion can stop global warming, and so can fission.

Those phrases are mutually contradicting even with the sloppy use of terms. Here, global warming means the abrupt temperature rise caused by anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases.

Repeating publicly available data, anthropogenic climate change will continue for decades even if all emissions are reduced to zero.

Edited by Pixophir
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27 minutes ago, TKMK said:

could hydrogen theoretically produce enough power to electrolyze itself?!?!? Infinte ENERGY YEAH

That would be cool, but I feel physicists clench their fists, and if such e reaction was naturally possible, then how does water form in the first place ? (No, there'd not be fireworks because physics would have to oscillate then)

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11 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

As said, this has never been a proper argument. Climate change means anthropogenic climate change.

Spoiler

 

Humans definitely didn't do that, especially in North America.

 

11 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Here, global warming means the abrupt temperature rise caused by anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases.

Spoiler

 

So didn't this.

***

I'm pretty sure that the Ice Age end is not a human fault, too.

13 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Repeating publicly available data, anthropogenic climate change will continue for decades even if all emissions are reduced to zero.

More of that, even if the humans get extinct. A very sneaky species.

15 minutes ago, TKMK said:

could hydrogen theoretically produce enough power to electrolyze itself?!?!?

If burn heavy hydrogen in a fusion reactor to electrolise the light hydrogen.

Edited by kerbiloid
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1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Now take that chart and throw out the taxes and fines manually hanged on the fossil and nuke energy and add the discounts manually subtracted from the solar/wind manufacture chain and taxes, and you see that all these charts are just a piece of junk.

Those are the unsubsidized, levelized costs over the financial lifetime of the source. Remember that nuclear and fossil sources are also heavily subsidized by the US government. 

2 hours ago, Pixophir said:

A 12kwp installation with 10kva inverters and a 28kwh battery (LiFePO4) costs me around 25 kEuro with all parts and installation. Biggest part was the electronics (all Victron chargers inverters and control units, dedicated network cabling, and all is redundant so that the failure of a battery unit, charger, inverter or panel string doesn't leave me in the dark) but I expect that to hold a long time. Full charging capacity is a little under 240A at 55V DC (losses ignored). Subsidy (not yet included) could be ~10kEuro. I'll run the house off-grid and with heating/ventilation/cooling (subtropic setting) and a small car with it. Utility bill could reach 150,-/month for car charging and everything else, so after 15 years or so I'd be even with that high price setup, 10 years with subsidies and leaving some slack. The only thing I can't take care of is a direct lightning strike, the house is too small for a proper LPS.

Awesome set up. My parents have something similar for their rental house in the Bahamas. And I completely agree on base loads and heatpumps and general efficiency.  Its what we’re recommending for all our clients. All these solutions are available and folks in the EU and even China may get their act together and build up a halfway efficient and resilient energy and transportation system. Sadly the US gave up on investing in its own future and survival sometime in the mid 80s. As prices and demand climb we’ll choke on our own poor planning and inefficiency. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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16 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Climate change is a proper noun spelled without upper case letters. It is not literal, and refers to anthropogenically caused changes, both hot and cold. It can be applied in local instances (where the variation between cold and hot comes in) or with the average global temperature, which is where the "global warming" phrase comes from.

Just because I say "I have stopped growing" because my height doesn't increase noticeably, doesn't literally mean I will cease to have new skin, cease to have new hair, and have my body eventually fail. Likewise, "stopping climate change" doesn't literally mean keeping the climate in a static state, it means avoiding extreme, unnatural changes that the ecosystem can't handle.

i kind of feel like this is loaded language and that such is not specific enough for scientific purposes. part of science is using precise language. they had a similar problem with "global warming" as well, while it was a good description of the trends observed in climate data, it was a bit too generalized and was quickly appropriated by political actors to argue whether it was real or not. the same thing is happening with the term "climate change", who's definition changes depending on which side of the argument its used by. i prefer using specific terms like "natural climate change" and "anthropogenic climate change" and usually give more credibility to those sources. this is probibly not caused by scientists themselves but by the science media being lazy with language for the sake of the scientifically illiterate.  its just a general nitpick i have with the whole issue. 

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Hard to read because improper spelling.

 

Sorry if I come along as trying to talk old ...

@Nuke: Where do see differences between what you call natural and anthropogenic climate change, why are they more specific and than what ? How would you quantify the differences ? What would you call a scientific purpose ? Has science a purpose ? And what kind of credibility do scientific sources need to make them scientific sources that you'd accept ? What makes a thing "credible", to whom, and why ? What is a scientific source at all in your understanding ?

I assume you would accept (though probably not understand, no offence) a Nature or Science paper, maybe PNAS, Royal Society, also EGU, AGU, ... for geoscience related pubs. The IPCC publications have a long appendix of sources. But how about pre-print ? Second and third tier journals ? Are they still "scientific" and "credible", or would one start to treat them selectively ? If so why, and by what criteria ?

 

Natural science doesn't need credibility. It is not a judge nor a preacher. It has its methods. They add to knowledge or not, or do so temporarily until reconsidered. There is no room for belief in a formula. There is room in the interpretation of data, and there are limits to modelling, but that's only for the knowledgeable, and they must communicate it in a generally accepted manner, via peer reviewed publications. Far too often things in discussion or proposed are reproduced in media articles as "scientists have found out". I ignore these, I go to the sources. I can do so.

What do we do with this so clearly presented data ? Do we say "all nonsense I burn fossil fuels" or "I must change my life or it takes a bad ending" ? It looks the world chooses the first option. The IPCC has created pathways to illustrate the outcome of these and things in between, that's their purpose. Many people already feel personally the implications of anthropogenic climate change.

 

I propose a different approach that does not depend and such soft wordings. That is called "sit on your behinds and learn". I mean, not you personally, that's valid for everybody including me when I leave my field of expertise and even when I am in it, though I have once studied the stuff and try to keep me informed. But I also understand enough of social media and forums that I know there is no way to convince people that have made up their opinion. That's why I for instance don't try to argue against "But the climate always change", simply because I have so many things in my mind when I read this, things a non geo-scientist or aficionado can't even imagine.

 

Unfortunately, this subforum is full of science-unrelated stuff. Including the last two posts of this thread :-)

 

Edited by Pixophir
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On the communications front it's really difficult. Im an American, and this country was essentially founded on the idea that each of us is responsible for ourselves and no one else, which sounds nice I guess, except there's nothing really in there about taking care of your neighbors, community, or anyone else. Certainly not the planet or anyone who happens not to have been born here. Those people just make cheap oil and iPhones for us. We are at basic level an incredibly self-centered and irresponsible people. I honestly have no idea how to convince a majority of Americans why they should care about literally anyone but themselves, even their own children. Maybe there's hope elsewhere in the world but I don't see any clever formation of syllables that will convince Americans to make good long term decisions on the behalf of future generations.  We are suffering from a terminal moral cancer and no magic words will cure it. We're not allowed to talk shmolitics here, and honestly we don't have to. Corruption is a time honored, bipartisan tradition in this country. Nothing happens here that isn't in the direct financial interest of top campaign contributors, even when those interests directly conflict with the general wellbeing, prosperity, and basic survival of the voting public. Im sure they'll dump billions into fusion rather than something sensible like high speed rail or home energy tax credits, because if you've got a yacht and a private jet you don't need a train, but you might need something to run hydroponics and killbots from your bunker when the world catches on fire. 

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4 hours ago, Nuke said:

i kind of feel like this is loaded language and that such is not specific enough for scientific purposes. part of science is using precise language. they had a similar problem with "global warming" as well, while it was a good description of the trends observed in climate data, it was a bit too generalized and was quickly appropriated by political actors to argue whether it was real or not. the same thing is happening with the term "climate change", who's definition changes depending on which side of the argument its used by. i prefer using specific terms like "natural climate change" and "anthropogenic climate change" and usually give more credibility to those sources. this is probibly not caused by scientists themselves but by the science media being lazy with language for the sake of the scientifically illiterate.  its just a general nitpick i have with the whole issue. 

You have a fair point, but I will say this- I think this is overthinking it for the sake of people who will be unreasonable no matter what.

”Natural climate change”, to be frank, sounds dumb.

Usually when paleoclimatologists talk about past climate conditions, they just say “this change in the climate” or the “the climate changed” or simply “there was climate change”. If this is the term utilized when speaking about the past in a science that is virtually entirely divorced from politics, it shouldn’t have to change for the present. That is politics interfering in how we interpret data, which seriously compromises the integrity of the results and conclusions. If the past was one thing but it is different now, even just in terminology, we aren’t going to learn anything because we will see ourselves in some special time, immune to the disasters of the past, and perhaps even feel as though we are superior and above everything that happened in the past.

This also presents the problem of categorizing what qualifies as “natural”. Was the asteroid that plunged the Earth into rapid change “natural” just because asteroids are technically part of nature? To say so sounds dumb and confusing, because that event was anything but “natural” as far as likelihood and probability goes- it was a freak event, unnatural. It could even be argued that because Homo sapiens are just animals with very sophisticated capabilities, what we are doing is “natural” because we are doing it to improve our lives.

The politicians you speak of are going to find a way to delegitimize and question climate change anyways- they will, no matter what. If anything, if I was a pro-oil politician I would see the use of such a term as an opportunity- because if “natural climate change” is a thing, I can tell my supporters and potential voters that yes, the climate is changing but it’s natural, so we don’t have to worry about it- and thus avoid looking like a science denier, improving the legitimacy of my position and garnering wider support, while further throwing a wrench into what little exists of the clockwork of the climate change response.

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

On the communications front it's really difficult. Im an American, and this country was essentially founded on the idea that each of us is responsible for ourselves and no one else, which sounds nice I guess, except there's nothing really in there about taking care of your neighbors, community, or anyone else. Certainly not the planet or anyone who happens not to have been born here. Those people just make cheap oil and iPhones for us. We are at basic level an incredibly self-centered and irresponsible people. I honestly have no idea how to convince a majority of Americans why they should care about literally anyone but themselves, even their own children. Maybe there's hope elsewhere in the world but I don't see any clever formation of syllables that will convince Americans to make good long term decisions on the behalf of future generations.  We are suffering from a terminal moral cancer and no magic words will cure it. We're not allowed to talk shmolitics here, and honestly we don't have to. Corruption is a time honored, bipartisan tradition in this country. Nothing happens here that isn't in the direct financial interest of top campaign contributors, even when those interests directly conflict with the general wellbeing, prosperity, and basic survival of the voting public. Im sure they'll dump billions into fusion rather than something sensible like high speed rail or home energy tax credits, because if you've got a yacht and a private jet you don't need a train, but you might need something to run hydroponics and killbots from your bunker when the world catches on fire. 

I don’t really think this is the case. That’s just the way every animal on Earth behaves.

An individual protects their family and community/pack/tribe but beyond that doesn’t do anything, and if anything is completely ready to destroy the other families and tribes if that means ensuring the survival of their own.

Rising above instinct is a feat only a relatively few humans have achieved.

To expect them to do otherwise is like expecting rabbits to stop eating berries if the predators disappear and they can have a field day in the woods. They don’t know when to stop and will keep eating until there are no more berries, and then they will all starve to death.

For all of Homo sapiens’ great achievements, these are all mostly “expansive” type actions, like going out into space or building railroads out into the West. Only in a few instances have their been “regressive” type actions, and only when it is convenient.

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8 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I don’t really think this is the case. That’s just the way every animal on Earth behaves.

Thats because it's a stress response brought on by the lack of access to basic human needs. Right now the wealthiest 1% of the global population controls more than half of all wealth. For reference that's more than 213 trillion USD. We could solve global hunger and poverty at the bargain price of 172 billion per year, or a .08% tax on the most obscenely wealthy people in the world. The reason we don't require that utterly meager sacrifice is not because we are simple animals looking after our kin, but because we have been deliberately deceived by a morally insane ruling class.  

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16 hours ago, Pixophir said:

use heat pumps instead of resistance heating and air conditioning

Just a tiny nitpick, but a heat pump is functionally the same thing as an air conditioner. It's just that an air conditioner can only remove the heat to the outside, while a heat pump can move the heat outside-in or inside-out depending on your need that season.

I'm a huge fan of heat pumps as they are extremely versatile and drastically more efficient than your typical electric resistance heaters - even in freezing temperatures. Ground loop geothermal is basically a big heat pump and should be heavily encouraged at the community level for all new building developments.

Edited by HvP
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20 minutes ago, HvP said:

I'm a huge fan of heat pumps as they are extremely versatile and drastically more efficient than your typical electric resistance heaters - even in freezing temperatures. Ground loop geothermal is basically a big heat pump and should be heavily encouraged at the community level for all new building developments.

I mean if we got serious we could do crazy stuff... community industrial/residential waste heat recycling, engineered mass-timber construction turning every new building into a carbon sink, focused mass-transit infrastructure, and on and on. It's not easy by any means but the solutions are all there if we collectively buckled down and tried.

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Edited by Pthigrivi
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58 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Right now the wealthiest 1% of the global population controls more than half of all wealth. For reference that's more than 213 trillion USD. We could solve global hunger and poverty at the bargain price of 172 billion per year, or a .08% tax on the most obscenely wealthy people in the world. 

How are you going to get your hands on the wealth of the Saudi royal family, or other authoritarian régimes?   They tax others, they themselves do not get taxed, and anyone who wants to try , will need to get past their tanks and soldiers.

Also, how do you take part of the value of a billion dollar chip foundry?  a Skyscraper? It is not like these amounts of money are actually sitting around in bank accounts.

Any funds in bank accounts would just get shuffled into banks in non-compliant countries anyway.

 

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10 minutes ago, Terwin said:

How are you going to get your hands on the wealth of the Saudi royal family, or other authoritarian régimes?   They tax others, they themselves do not get taxed, and anyone who wants to try , will need to get past their tanks and soldiers.

You don't think MBS has taxable assets in the US and Europe? You don't think US and European banks know exactly where the rest is hidden? We could easily squeeze those assets. We don't because we need SA to keep pumping that cheap, earth-choking crude, and we need that because we didn't make real investments in sustainable infrastructure 20 years ago like we should have. We didn't make those investments then because we don't actually make decisions based on the long-term economic and personal prosperity of people. We make them based on maximizing profits for top political contributors. 

These things are all possible. We simply choose not to because we've lost sight of what actually matters in this world. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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