climate humor

Liquid hydrogen would work fine, but it's bulky. You'd need funny-shaped aircraft to make it work, and they'll take a while to develop.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

[%X]

Did I miss something here? Has a nuclear disaster ever been caused by software yet? If so, I would like the references to the incident reports.

I would think that personages like James Lovelock would have given this matter a great deal of thought, yet he is in favour of Nuclear Energy as a source of electrical power for the globe. He would prefer that Fusion was closer to the point of generating electricity but we don't expect that will happen until about 2040 (still some way off and it is the Material Science that has to catch up with proposing the better materials for Fusion Reactors). [%X]

One thing is certain. For humanity to survive long term (billions of years into the future) we have got to get off this planet and most likely out of this solar system. If we do not, then humanity will die here within the next billion years or so (from what Astro-physicists have determined will happen to our own sun). To enable our departure to happen we know we will need lots of energy as well as science, engineering and mathematical skills to help solve the problems to getting to that point. We need to do it all in such a way that we do not poison ourselves out of existence before we can try and if we have to deal with an ever expanding population on the planet then we will need to resolve the best possible solutions to supporting that.

So, how many of you are STEM Ambassadors, promoting such skills to our younger generation and enticing them into such careers with sufficient enthusiasm to carry them through?

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. Weapons potential? Just don't. It

Then why are countries as North Korea and Iran wanting to get nuclear weapons?

Dan

Ammonia might be better.

Cheers

--
Syd

"This reminds me of people saying..."

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Les Cargill

It might be in our neighborhoods rather than in our homes. Depends on the technology. As it is now, it's nearly impossible to deploy any nukes because of FUD. Not unjustified FUD, but we won't make any progress unless we figure out wa way past this.

I don't see that at all.

1) Breeders are a technology for managing waste. 2) Breeders are nasty, so you need good physical plant security. 3) Don't make weapons out of Pu produced by breeders.

No, I think it'll self-limit because the desire to procreate is already being attenuated. Babies are inconvenient.

I don't think it'll be for Malthusian reasons, and a loss of energy infrastructure would be more Malthusian than other causes.

Not really. There's factor substitution, tight control logistics, even the manner in which bulk grain markets operate.

Where are we exactly resource constrained? Answer: we're not. We have noisy signalling for production and that causes more problems.

I'd say that's simply false, and this is what I mean by "the Apocalyptic narrative".

Maybe. So it goes. But I'd call it unlikely.

I disagree more than I misunderstand. Pretty sure I do understand you. There is too much that is going right to be wrapped up in just the failures.

I do. The mass shift from rural to urban in just America over the last hundred years has meant that the carrying capacity of the planet keeps rising.

The population crash in Japan is also a bellwether.

That's one...

"When" could be millennia out. If we can behave ourselves. That, right now, is not going that well.

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Les Cargill

There has been no use of nukes in anger since Nagasaki.

Nukes are like battleships - they have extremely limited tactical value because replacement is nearly impossible. They're also essentially a war crime.

Who ended WWI? The German Navy, through mutiny. Because battleships turn out to be great symbols but lousy weapons.

That's how MAD works; nobody wants to take the first shot.

--
Les Cargill

I'm not up on Iran's internals. My guess is they want a seat at the big table, and they see nukes as a ticket to that. I don't think Iran has the resources to develop any sort of coherent military presence.

For the Norks:

--
Les Cargill

You'd need a heck of a container.

--
Les Cargill

I don't know that the latter actually wants to get them, but nukes do appear to act as an effective deterrent against a belligerent foe wishing to blackmail a nation or attack them directly with conventional weapons.

Don't worry though, it still leaves financial attack/sanctions, cyber attack (aka cyberterrorism when someone else does it), covert attack/terrorism, proxy wars and plenty of other ways to make war.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

I agree. My approach is to find ways of dealing with the technological problems first, then deploying nuclear power. Until then it seems like we are creating huge problems and putting off dealing with them to give future generations something to focus their attention on.

Do you think there is a reason why we don't put nuclear power plants near large cities?

Breeders don't solve the waste problem.

You need to look again. China put in place a mandate limiting how many children a couple can have. It has not been practical so they are backing off from it. India has not even considered reducing their population growth. Between them they account for over a third of the world population.

Are we on the same planet? How about Pacific bluefin tuna and the many other types of fish that have been overfished? What about the forests that are being cut down and tree species that have been decimated by over logging?

Look into the global availability of copper not to mention oil.

"I'd say..."??? Who are you to judge facts? You are simply in denial.

Lol.. ok.

World population is not a matter of what we are doing right or wrong. We are reaching the limit of what the world can support. In fact it is unlikely that the current population can continue to thrive on this planet for more than decades without significant changes to lifestyle. With the current rates of growth it will happen sooner rather than later.

You are free to stick you head in the sand because we won't be affected ourselves.

That makes no sense whatsoever. It doesn't matter where people live, they still consume and do so in ever increasing amounts. Larkin is the poster child for the "I want, so I get" attitude.

You just aren't working with facts. Of course if you assume the world population crashes, then yes, we won't have a problem feeding people. But with China and India still in exponential population growth that is not very likely.

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Rick

On Sat, 01 Nov 2014 17:09:21 +0000, Syd Rumpo Gave us:

Ion propulsion with some actual, workable thrust capacity would be nice.

Just don't get lined up with the output stream.

"Yeah, man... But it's a dry heat..." --Hudson, from Aliens

No one cares about the *last* use of nuclear weapons. Who will use the

*next* one? It doesn't have to be a superpower. Many countries have nuclear weapons including some very unstable ones and even non-countries can find access to nuclear fuel.

--

Rick

I think it was oversold - "too cheap to meter" and then by the '70s, all the suspended disbelief and cognitive dissonance from "we could be vaporized at any moment" congealed into dread that was expressed by the "no nukes" movement.

So that makes the pro and anti people at loggerheads , and it becomes heat and not light.

Throw in that the contractors who built these things are now on the defensive... and may not have provided the best possible designs in every case...

At some point with Fukishima, it should have been possible to say "that needs to not be there any more" but it just wasn't. And, as someone else said, that tsunami was outside the envelope of historical data - we kind of couldn't have known.

It's not easy to have rational discussion with people who have already made their minds up. Without that, it's not likely we'll learn.

Some of the new tech reactors, like molten salt, claim that they're self-regulating. I'd like to see us give that a try at least. But we need to be very deliberate about it.

They are part of a solution-set for the waste problem. Anything you can do to make things last longer means there will be more options in the future.

Yes they did. But they had also been through an artificial Malthuisian nightmare because of the Great Leap Forward.

No, they have not - as an *action*, but there is material out there that shows birthrates are declining.

Yep. As a rough guess, I keep reading that replacement birthrates are expected by 2100. That's obviously a projection and will be off, but it's like that.

Dire poverty - as opposed to simply being poor - has declined *a lot*, and this generally produces lower birth rates.

But those don't constrain growth. There are other, substitutable goods. And in cases, there's been actual management of fishing, with populations recovering well. It's also implemented as self-regulation. with buyers being the ones who won't buy 'unlicensed' fish.

There are Vast sections of the US with lots and lots of trees. They may be old-growth, they may not be. I'm not a Druid so it's all the same to me.

There are much more pernicious problems with water in the Western US. That's been building for a long time.

Demand finally plummeted as the mania for Chinese apartment building subsided. Gas substitutes for oil easily and we are swimming in it.

I identify the blurb as apocalyptic, and dismiss it because nearly all apocalyptic stories are bogus.

This is the narrative fallacy with additional hot sauce on it.

:)

That's debatable. My bias is to say "no, we can support a great many more". Just fly over New Jersey some time; one of the most populous states in the US. It's mostly empty.

We'll have changes in lifestyle. But most of these actually move *away* from consuming consumables to smaller, lighter and cleaner stuff.

I just don't think so. I think "everything is awesome and nobody is happy." It's a ...quandary.

But the *nature* of consumption changes as less-resource-intensive goods replace older and uglier. The increase in value becomes more ephemeral.

This is not Panglossian; it's just observable from the evidence.

I think away to "prove" this is to look at the prices of antique furniture, mad with old-growth wood. It's astronomical. Part of that is numismatic, but part of it is the wood cost alone.

There's a book's worth of examples, really.

But I am.

It's projected ( by whoever makes these projections ) to converge on replacement around 2100.

They both are experiencing declines in the rate of increase.

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Les Cargill

No, more like magnitude 8. They were *big* quakes, felt from the Gulf coast to Quebec.

"Due for" in geology means "I need funding to study...". ;-)

are

So not the same as never used.

That is a distortion of the reality i do believe.

all it

Maybe not. Maybe it was, 'They used them in war already, we must presume that they can and will do it again. Are we ready to do that?' More of a detente than a true MAD.

?-)

"going to be" != "have been".

It's the singular point of nearly every history I've ever read of the thing. It's born out by documentary evidence.

Mutiny in the Kaiserliche Marine set him on his heels and he never recovered.

Also possible. If you'll think about this, that does not destroy the game theory at all; quite the opposite. Even reducing the game theory to a prisoner's dilemma with tit-for-tat, the beleif in retalliation increases stability.

It was very likely part of Kruschev's calculus in October 1962.

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Les Cargill

Your thinking is about that old too. You do realize there are other players in the game who have nothing to lose, right? Once you have nothing to lose the only thing stopping you is the lack of technology, or more accurately, the lack of fissionable material.

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Rick

No, I don't realize that at all. Because it's pretty far from true.

There is one whale of a lot more to it than that. This ain't no truck bomb.

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Les Cargill