Actually, the plan is to "rob" everybody by raisng the price of electricity enough to cover the cost of generating power from sustainable sources.
This would roughly double the price of electric power. Nobody wants this to happen, but nobody wants the Greenland ice-cap to slide off into the sea either, and the readjustment of the economy required to cope with a a gradual doubling of the price of electricity isn't all that dramatic.
We survived a rapid quadrupling of the price of oil during the 1973 oil crisis, so a gradual rise in the price of electricity looks as if it would be emminently surviveable.
Rich is a rather unsophisticated economic commentator.
This is free-market fundamentalist thinking. CO2 emission is a "negative externality" that costs the whole world money by driving anthropogenic global warming. It isn't costing the world all that much money at the moment, because we've only managed to rack up some 0.9C of warming so far, and its effects aren't yet all that dramatic. This is going to change as warming continues, and a the point when we are having our noses rubbed in the consequences of our earlier profligracy it will have become very difficult to do anything about it.
If you take a slightly broader view of the economy, it makes sense to take every opportunity to generate power from sources that don't involve burning fossil carbon and injecting extra CO2 into the atmosphere. Using the fossil-carbon fuelled grid as a back-up battery makes perfect sense once you have got this idea into your head. Replacing conventional coal-fired power stations with coal-fired fired power stations equipped to sequester the CO2 they produce and bury it underground makes even more sense, but that's going to take a while.
And, like every other investment advisor, he's ignoring the fact that if we (including China) keep on burning fossil carbon at an ever- increasing rate, and injecting the CO2 generated into the atmosphere, the real estate market will eventually collapse because anthropogenic global warming will have destabilised the Greenland ice-cap enough to send it sliding off into the ocean, where it will raise the sea level by about six metres, inundating a great deal of highly priced real estate.
The economic consequences of nature pricking that particular investment bubble will take some dealing with. Raising the price of electricity in the US to cover the cost of generating it only from sustainable sources would be trivial exercise in comparison.
Short term thinking - aka excessive discount rates - is an endemic disease amongst those primarily interested in the economy. They learn a lot about money, but very little about the processes that make - and lose - money.
This is a popular idea amongst people who have to get rid of dangerous pollutants.
There are some chemicals where the body can cope with a limited amount but more than that will kill you - the pain-killer paracetamol is a classic example.
Unfortunately, radiation isn't one of them. Radiation damages your DNA by breaking the helix. The body's repair systems patch the break but they don't do a perfect job, and the residual damage makes you more susceptible to cancer - amongst other problems.
There are levels of radiation where the repair mechanism is overwhelmed, but that much radiation kills you in hours, rather than just making susceptible to cancer.
Your physicist pal seems to have a lot in common with your climatologist pal - someone who isn't exactly on top of their profession. Granting the rubbish you peddle here, I'm not all that surprised that your social circle is over-populated with incompetent losers.
Not true. The Green movement's fear of nuclear reactors is perfectly rational; they just place more value on the enviroment that they are leaving for their children than do people like Jim Yanik.
That was when the "free market fundamentalists" decided that the freedom to pollute the environment was fundamental to the unimpeded operation of capitalism, and proceeded to treat environmental science with the same kind of disdain that Lysenko had applied to the facts of evolution when they conflicted with Marxist-Leninism and stopped him telling stali what Stalin wanted to hear.
There's not a lot of radioactive material in fly ash, but it does represent more radioactivity per kilowatt than comes out of an operating nuclear power station. Of course the amount of radioactivity tied up inside a nuclear power station is enormous, and we have yet to find an acceptable way of sequestering the radioactive waste left over after you've decommisioned an old nucear power station. The waste stays radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years - longer than we've been around, and much longer than we are likely to stay around if we keep on trashing our environment as etnusiastically as we are at the moment.
The standard admonitions are based on the presumption that risk is linearly related to dose, which is an extrapolation, and which a practitioner thereof has told me is controversial in the field. I make no claims--I don't know.
Of course radiation damages DNA--thanks for restating the obvious. UV also damages DNA, as does background radiation, as does oxidative damage from ordinary eating. Normal bodies detect and fix these constantly, daily, albeit imperfectly, etc.
All cancer derives from damaged DNA. The question is whether the RMS signal from radon-level dose range combines to create significant additional cancer risk, and whether that risk is linearly related to dose.
Predicting cancer rates as linearly-related-to-dose by extrapolating to ppm from a high-level dose implicitly assumes that defects accumulate unfettered at a rate proportional to dose, regardless of dose. That implies certain assumptions about repair mechanisms, but extrapolated from a dose level where repair is insignificant.
It's the same as calculating a bullet's energy (i.e., an injury that overwhelms repair), then extrapolating that 1,000 ppm as many would die from a scratch delivering 0.1% that energy. T'aint so--that ignores healing.
Again, I make no claims, I'm just reporting what I heard as a starting point for those who might want to delve deeper.
75s: Madeline Kahn / Carly Simon Namibia Fondue Sets Mark Mbutu...Garrett Morris
[Open on black man dressed in African clothing. He speaks in a slow, hesitant manner]
Mark Mbutu: Hello. I'm Mark Mbutu from the newly emerging African nation of Namibia, a former German colony located in southwest Africa. Namibia is an undeveloped nation, and we are appealing to you as world citizens. We need your fondue sets. Many people in the United States received these fondue sets as gifts for anniversaries, birthdays and housewarmings, and often put them up on a shelf and forget about them. There are thousands of Namibian housewives who could cheer up an otherwise dull dinner party with one of these sets. Oh, please think, please give, please send. We already have enough of the little sterna cans for underneath the sets from when the Germans were here, so only send the fondue pots themselves, and the long fark--forks if you have them. [Dissolve to address on green background] Our address is: Fondue Sets For Namibia, Box 180, Namibia, West Africa. [Dissolve back to Mbutu] Oh, and we would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Norman Prager for sending us the Water-Pik and the deluxe toaster oven. [Raises fist] Thank you!
It is actually know from military research that the length of time the dose is delivered affects the lethality. But other factors can be very important airborne dust of alpha emitters is about as nasty as it gets.
In the open literature this site appears to have dose info:
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NB these are wartime emergency exposures.
Like all things the dose makes the poison. People are very wary of nuclear radiation and with good reason. Too many early researchers died nasty deaths and their laboratories required extensive decontamination.
The Radium quack medicine treatment that killed the unfortunate and high profile Eben Byers made the US public paranoid about radioactivity.
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Since it does in effect deliver alpha emitters to the lungs it cannot be a good thing. I expect there is a bandwagon to extract money from the worried well that overplays the risks in the USA.
It probably isn't quite linearly related to dose, but it could be related to total accumulated dose. Since the risk can be eliminated by venting the space under the floor it seems reasonable to do so.
However, lead poisoning still occurs from heavy metal exposure.
Individual susceptability can vary enormously as with other carcinogens. However, it doesn't make any sense to be sloppy about handling radioactive materials. Less damage is always better.
If we ever screw up and have a nuclear war scorpions and cockroaches have the best blood chemistry to survive in post apocalyptic conditions.
Curiously AFAIK most of the WWII UPPu club did not die of cancer. That was nasty stuff a beaker of strong plutonium solution would boil under its own influence and the alpha radiation made the glass go brittle.
Was he being anachronistic? A WW2 reference? Bill, you're 67 right? Had a birthday recently?
Did you pick up the "reserved occupation" term when you were two years old and the war ended?
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A reserved occupation (also known as essential services) is an occupation considered important enough to a country that those serving in such occupations are exempt - in fact forbidden - from military service. [...] Examples of reserved occupations in the Second World War included coal mining [...] Also, many pacifists and conscientious objectors worked in reserved occupations as a compromise or to avoid call-up. [...]
In my draft-age days they were called "deferments".
I was "2-S" while a student at MIT, then "2-B" (reserved occupation) after I joined Motorola and got my security clearance. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
In Memoriam...
James Ralph Thompson
October 12, 1918 - November 7, 2008
I think women have only been (legally) subject to the (US) draft in very recent years. Though I know of none conscripted... only volunteers. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
In Memoriam...
James Ralph Thompson
October 12, 1918 - November 7, 2008
It ends up as lead. Its half life is just about 4 days.
The deaths from radon are just a mathmatical calculation derived from the deaths of coal miners long ago. High concentrations of radon were in some mines. I guess they would have to include coal dust. There is no real evidence how low levels react, but we got radiation from the ground and radiation from the sky. Where do you go ??
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