I was just waiting for someone to point out that my invention would accelerate the eventual distruction of the Earth/Moon system by increasing tidal drag. We have to think of the poor hungry children who will have to deal with the results of our greed 12 billion years from now.

....breast milk.....good 'ne....Pennink!


I'm confident Cleo will have some fandangled recipe for marvelous boobiecakes, probably a complimentary side for oopsie rolls.

Ya-know I can always tell when Cleo has visited a thread....


Sorry....continue with earth/moon desctruction stuff.

Here in my home province [Saskatchewan] we are the Saudi Arabia of uranium. We have a newly elected provincial government who is spearheading mining it --finally--. We need to take advantage of the science and opportunities around our uranium wealth.

The premier spoke recently saying he envisions an ambitious project involving the federal government, SaskPower and one of the uranium companies located in the province that would see Saskatchewan playing a lead role in the research and development of nuclear power.

Way beyond high-time.

Other things like needing more food, needing more energy, and generating more polution?

With 6.7 BILLION people around, I wonder how many more people are needed to save us. Seven billion? Ten billion? Considering how much energy 6.7 billion use and how much more energy ten billion will need, isn't there a point of diminishing returns?

I said: "The more food we grow, the more people we have." Baerdric responded:



I was thinking global population. With international trade, it is not necessary to GROW food to HAVE food. It is, however, essential to have FOOD to grow PEOPLE.



Not sure what your point is here, but I was reminded of:





No, I disagree. I was only pointing out that if innovation can help us, it has failed us in this instance.



Hrm, I hate the science fiction answers. Are we just dumb that we don't spend the trillions of dollars probably needed to mine the moon? Heat from the earth's core seems to be a bit less expensive; why isn't anyone actually doing it?

Speaking of science fiction, here's a guy who was no stranger to brilliant ideas OR science fiction:





Quicker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom-Brookes_postulate

You response is what is usually called "Cooking the books". You average together all systems, in which bad ones predominate, then blame the poor "global" average on the good systems.

Those countries in which there is the most Freedom, Education and Technology have the lower population rates, the higher standards of living and the more food. Those that don't have adequate Freedom, Education and Technology are overpopulated and hungry. It's not because we don't ship tons and tons of free food to poor people, it's because no amount of free food provides Freedom, Education and Technology.

Not to mention that free food often causes fecundity.

Yes.

Although mining the Asteroids is a much better answer, as is space platforms for solar energy, nuclear power and conservation. If we had started at the begining of "The War on Poverty", poverty would be begging for a cease-fire by now.

So the answer is for everyone to buy a HumVee. I'm for it.

I think I love you

Heh. I like to call it "multi-agent, complex adaptive systems analysis", if only because people who do it for a living know what I'm talking about.



Well, I never averaged together all systems, the systems themselves did that. And I don't really think that I'm blaming, but if I am, I'm blaming the bad systems.



Not to mention? That's all I've really been saying.



So what?



They considered it 30 years ago, and deemed it not a genuine alternative because they thought oil was going to last forever, or some science fiction would save us. It takes ten years to build a nuke plant. The single facility fabricating reactor containment structures can crank one out in three months. Can someone figure out how many hundreds (thousands?) of nuke plants would be needed in the United States to replace current fossil-fuel generation? And how many more hundreds (thousands?) to supply electricity to hundreds of millions of electric cars?



A single nuke plant in California kills about 50 tons of commercial fish per year in the seawater intakes alone.

In addition to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_pollution

It's been interesting talking to you. Very illustrative.

Any solution which does not involve forcing everyone else to adhere to the standards set by those who believe they know best how everyone else should live, will be ridiculed, nitpicked, slandered or ignored.

I find the virtual ignore button to be useful.

Heh! Where can I buy one of those?!?!

Actually, I find certain styles of rethoric entertaining even beyond the point where communication becomes one way. It's rare for me to be unwilling to read, albeit with a sense of rue, even the worst of frantic ideologues. But since I usually take extra time and effort to compose and edit my posts, I am learning to respond only when dialog is occuring.

I usually have a busy day, even though I get many chances to check in.

I've been known to make many young women swoon, usually right after a lot of screaming, crying and mumblings of "No, no, oh God, please make it go away!"

It's a talent.

::snort::

A capitalist pirate with a sense of humor. I am married to one of those. Like I tell hubby....

"Talk freedom to me baby!"

I love this thread.

I've just had a brief go at this and the answer seem to be "Not very many". The advantage is to Electricity because you don't need to replace all the energy contained in gasoline, just the energy needed to run the car. As you probably know, but didn't put into your "adaptive synthetic analysis", while gasoline cars turn ~90% of their energy into non-motive heat, electic cars use ~90% directly for movement. So nuclear power plants only have to power the equivant of ~10% of the cars on the road, not even counting the fact that some electric cars of today are 50% lighter than IC autos.

Then some smart guy like you should figure out how to harvest them first, instead of using this distortion of the general picture to advocate against nuclear.

That's how Freedom, Education and Technology can win against authoritarianism, propaganda and neo-luddism.

People often try to compare the reactors of 30-40 years ago with the <say> photovoltaic cells of 30-40 years from now. They say that if we just put the money into this unproven technology, innovation will happen (innovation which somehow gets more than 1000 watts per square meter) and it will out produce this "inherently evil" proven technology.

Then they turn around and tell you that no amount of innovation will fix the admitted problems with nuclear. They call it "Science Fiction" as if we weren't living in the age of Science Fiction, typing away at our PERSONAL COMPUTERS and sending instant messages across SPACE SATELLITES from our hand held CAMERA PHONES for goodness' sake.....