we must try to found more nonconventional energy resources such as solar energy for creating unlimited electricity consumption. Approaching global warming, it now now necessary to establish solar power plantation plants than conventional [power plantation electricity plants.
The long-haul solution would be either fusion, which nobody knows how to do yet, or space-based solar, which we know how to do, but won't do while we have NASA playing dog-in-the-manger with access to orbit. I suspect that the solution will come from Japan, which has no petroleum, or from some out-of-left-field direction, like Brazil.
No kidding. Got any proposals for how to do that?
Wind farms are going up, left right and center around these here parts. Nimby's are up in arms about them, of course, but I think they're quite attractive structures, and every kilowatt they produce is one less that needs to be produced by fossil fuels.
Cheers, Pete.
Why not just reduce the human population and solve a lot of problems at one time?
Solving the energy problems wouldn't solve all the environmental problems and may well exacerbate them.
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Why give an impractical and sarcastic answer to an earnest, if somewhat nieve question?
The environmental problems you mention - I assume you're including things like melting glaciers, shrinking polar ice-caps, rising sea levels, alteration of oceanic currents, increasing tropical storms, hurricanes, flooding, droughts... all by-products of global warming, all caused (or helped along, at least) by increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, caused by (or contributed to by) BURNING FOSSIL FUELS!!! Reducing the world's dependence on fossil fuels would go a LONG way to solving these problems.
Eventually.
Cheers, Pete.
Well it may be impractical due to our human need to selfishly reproduce in excess - but it damn sure was intended as an earnest response. Would Palestinians just give up and allow Israel to rule because the world had free energy? I think not. Reduce the population to ~7% of its current numbers and you'd automatically reduce the pressure for fertile land, drinking water, and other things political entities fight over.
Reducing the dependence on oil and coal would go a long way to solving problems but it is probably over simplistic or optimistic way of looking at things.
"Every solution contains the seed of other problems."
OK so we have limitless free energy - do we also get limitless free food land water as a result? Imagine a lot of desalinization plants, hydroponics, and people and no other animals . . .
If the limitless free energy is in the form of fusion reactors - how much heat will the reactors themselves add to the ecosystem?
How about the environmental impact of building the means to get the energy? That is an enormous amount of material and would grow as the population grows. Population growth isn't linear, the world population has more than doubled in my lifetime already.
We are in this situation because we never considered the consequences of the "industrial age."
We still aren't committed to doing what needs to be done - there are still some idiots that think it is all a scam because they fear the way it may impact their own lives. AND I can understand that . . . Whatever a government does to limit fossil fuel use will be costly complex and probably won't work - like using corn for fuel - probably costs more now to produce corn than it replenishes in total energy - cost in dollars and energy - but ADM is fat and happy.
The whole discussion may be moot if the climate changes happening now exacerbate the level of carbon in the atmosphere - permafrost contains vegetable matter which will add to CO2 when it decomposes, warming sea temps will release sequestered methane from the oceans - time will tell - water absorbs more heat from the sun than ice - maybe the mechanisms that sequester carbon naturally can ramp up and dispose of the XS faster than it is released from natural stocks, and maybe it won't.
To put it in engineering terms it is like trying to adjust the zero point of a system that has a response time measured in tens or hundreds of centuries.
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A good idea, but remember that legislatures are full of lawyers. By the time they finish law school, they don't have time for much else, and have a megashitload of student loans to pay off. It might be more practical to require a course consisting of a few spectacular examples of the law of unintended consequences. One of my favorite examples is better automobile antitheft systems that led to the rise of violent carjacking. Every law needs to be written with the care of a computer program that will control a machine that can kill people. A government is, after all, just such a machine.
There aught to be an award for laws with unintended consequences. That way there'd be some stigma attached to the idiot that proposed the thing - No more "what idiot came up with that idea?"
I notice that when the press gets a hold of a doozy, the politicians quickly distance their personal involvement as much as possible, then start blaming faulty information, party politics, etc..
We had a beaut some years ago. There was a rise in high school pregnancies - that hit two or three families with members on the "board or education."
They spun it as a rise in teen pregnancy - not sure it was, but there's little oversight or even reporting on the machinations of the board, since any critical comment quickly becomes a "racial issue."
They passed a plan for parenting classes for the children and since that would interfere with regular classes, made the decision to bus the students to a special school/day care center. There was a lot of hype about how special it was and how progressive their thinking - all that self congratulatory BS.
After a sharp increase in post solution pregnancies, they interviewed some of the girls and were told that they only became pregnant to get into the new school.
All the kids just wanted to be special.
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Another classic example from here in Britain - There's a stretch of motorway (I won't say where) where the speed limit for HGV's is limited to
40mph. This is all because a local politician's son was killed by being struck by an HGV after he stupidly tried to cross the motorway on foot. The politician campaigned for a reduction in the speed limit (just for HGV's) in his area, and won his case.Unfortunately, HGV drivers are given a certain amount of time to get to and from destinations, and this is all calculated and costed long before they start their journeys. So any delivery guy travelling through this area has only one option - make up for the forced slow-down by increasing speed to ridiculous levels either side of it.
Result - increased accident rates and road deaths in areas each side of the "safe" area.
Makes you wonder why we bother electing them in the first place.
Cheers, Pete.
Us yanks/colonists use a different lexicon An HGV would be a lorry, Heavy Goods Vehicle? We just call them truckers and they are pretty cowed over here until they can't make profit, then they kinda get all vocal and put the brakes on commerce and often get what they want, or some compromise that fools them.
Exactly, why do we elect them?
Or do we elect them?
Frankly no politician I would vote for has ever made it past the primary elections (assuming they don't drop out long before due to "financing"). I can usually find one or two passionate runners that are saying what I think - but somehow the media takes this and converts it (them) into a "loose cannon."
The system is broke, a loose cannon is no worse than the idiot in charge now.
Perhaps most of the populous votes for the least despicable candidate, or just votes against the ones they find most repulsive. How is that a democracy? I don't think I've ever voted FOR anyone - not in my lifetime. I've only been able to vote for the lessor of evils (as I see it).
Rupert Murdoch rules . . .
Can't get on board with the Radical Muslims - but certainly can't defend what we have done in the mid east either.
Fuck Israel.
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And death due to war famine and pestilence nicely fit the bill too. I guess somewhere along the line I got the idea that humans should strive to rise above their environmentally programmed instincts and adapt to the world rather than the other way around.
You know - "stewards of the environment" rather than "conquer nature."
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Goddess Earth?
or Gaia hypothesis? The latter seems like a high faluten way restating of some of the Christian coalitions fringe elements ideology
- "God created man and Earth and told him to go forth and multiply. Since Man is part of nature man can do nothing outside of nature, anything man chooses to do to the environment is good or justified."
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Goddess Earth as a shorthand way of referring to the feedback mechanisms that ensure environmental conditions remain stable despite human interference. Not *quite* the same as Lovelock's vision (There's nothing "conscious" about it; it's all quite mechanical) but certainly nothing Christian-centric involved either. Just my take on things.
Cheers, Pete.
No doubt in my mind that there are feedback mechanisms in place. They will/can adapt the planet to us.
The problem I have is that we have suddenly (in geologic periods) changed the overall carbon atmosphere balance in favor of carbon and the mechanisms that sequester it move very slow compared to what we add.
So carbon outruns nature, the world (environment) suffers, and our species die off. Doubtless with a lot of macho nationalism, and religious fervor - the spin cycle.
Every bit as same as Lovelock if you don't move fast enough - I don't remember Lovelock entering consciousness into his predictions. He's just on the same roller coaster but is saying it is a fun ride, or normal extension of what we are, and not a ride into oblivion.
Lovelock would have us do nothing at all until we see how the chips fall. And that may be right (I doubt it). But considering what is at stake, I say we start moving and start studying with no bias NOW.
This is an analog integrator with a period of decades or millennia - we (human life) won't get a second chance. Doubtless the ruling class think differently, from their limited colored perspective, but I think nature and engineering will prevail in the end.
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Better efficiency is important too. I use fluorescent lights all through my house. I put a jumper on if cold rather than put on the heating. Heating eats electricity. I run my car at 60mph to use less petrol. I divorced the wife to save money and energy too.
I love the last one. Very funny. Noury Goujjane
ROTFLMAO!!!! But how do the energy savings compare to the costs of the divorce settlement?
Cheers, Pete.
Ask Paul McCartney
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