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Domain: cia.gov
Stories and comments across the archive that link to cia.gov.
Comments · 2,355
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Re:NASA's budget doesn't match its jobs.1) Sorry, I thought the "non-strategic" meant non-nuclear. But with a yield of up to 150 kilotons, that's definitely not conventional.
2) No, I'm not off my rocker. I'm not even sure why you should think so. Looking at history, this period of relative peace looks highly unusual. You ignore how rapidly the US and the USSR entered the previous arms race. China has considerably more economic power and technology now than the USSR at its peak. It probably could already support a super-power sized assortment of nuclear weapons.
Looking at purchasing power parity of GDP's as the CIA does, China's economy is effectively 60% of the size of the US economy. I think it's irrational to assume that these two powers won't be in conflict in the not so distant future.
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Re:NASA's budget is HUGE!
I agree with what I think you're saying here, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, where we had a defense budget of somewhere just over $200 billion about 4-5 years ago, we now have one of about $400 billion. Meanwhile, it seems like NASA, as well as everyone else's budget, has been hacked down in the process.
I'd be all for cutting the DOD budget back down to the $200 billion area and distributing the funds around to our other programs that could make better use of it. The DOD would still have more than enough to operate (Check the CIA World Factbook for defense budgets of other countries around the world. We'd still be basically outspending the top 10 and some change.), and we could get some money into more useful areas. And just for the record, I'm all for a strong military, but it seems like our current structure seems to blow a lot of money, but that's another topic.
I think the only reason the ISS is pointless (I have to agree, it's Skylab 2 as far I'm concerned.) is that it got planned with great enthusiasm, but then got horribly neglected. Had it actually been fully realized, it would have been quite useful. In it's current state though, it's a waste of money. The shuttles have been very good to us, but they're just to damn old and do need to be replaced, no argument there. While expensive, Cassini is a perfect example of what happens when projects are properly funded. It's functioning perfectly and we're already learning new things from it, and it's actual work component of its mission has basically just begun. It's just like with Galileo that went to Jupiter a few years ago. When projects are actually well funded, they succeed with great results. -
Re:VOTE LIBERTARIANKuwait is not the same as ALL of Europe. Not by mass, population or any other measure.
Sorry, I didn't realize there was a death toll limit where suddenly a tyrants oppression warrants our involvement.
Plenty of dictators have invaded non-hostile countries and the US didn't much care.
Yeah? Name one.
Easy answer, Hitler killed more people and took extra lengths to dehumanize them for years before the final solution.
Ah. So we should wait until after somebody kills a few million people before we do anything about it?
After the first war, Iraq's minority groups enjoyed many freedoms and were largely self-governing.
You mean, when Saddam wasn't sending his armies up to crush the rebellions and slaughter innocent civilians?
We did not step in to stop Stalin's purges, or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, or any of the other human rights violations that involved more people than Saddam's killings.
We were not in a position to stop Stalin or Pol Pot when they were slaughtering millions.
Saving the Iraqi people was not a sales point until the WMD threat was revealed to be bullshit.
First of all, it still isn't a sales point. The whole point of the Iraq war is and has always been to eliminate the threat that Saddam Hussein and his WMD posed to our national security. Second, nobody has revealed that the WMD threat was non-existent. Quite the contrary. The Iraqi Survey Group found that the WMD threat was still very much real. From the report:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later
Among the things found by ISG:Several dozen chemical warheads containing Sarin, Mustard, and other blister agents
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi
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Re:not just HatchI hate the shinnanigans in the United States government, but I also despise misinformation.
The deficit is the largest it's been in history, however it is one thousand times smaller than your claim of 500 trillion to the tune of 500 billion. To put it in another perspective, according to The CIA World Factbook, your dollar figure of the deficit is nearly fifty times the gross domestic product of the United States, and ten times the gross world product. So unless the United States government is buying ten times more than everything annually produced on the entire planet, your figure would be wrong.
The FBI, CIA, and The Department of Homeland Security most certainly do work in the same field, however they have differing focus, jobs, and responsibilities. Your argument is analogous to one claiming that the transportation manufacturing field is overly redundant because there are airplane manufacturers AND auto manufacturers. There certainly is large amount of waste because of bureaucratic redundancy, but for gods sake, use specific factual examples instead of thinking that "Look, they're in the same field!" means a damn thing.
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Re:not just HatchI hate the shinnanigans in the United States government, but I also despise misinformation.
The deficit is the largest it's been in history, however it is one thousand times smaller than your claim of 500 trillion to the tune of 500 billion. To put it in another perspective, according to The CIA World Factbook, your dollar figure of the deficit is nearly fifty times the gross domestic product of the United States, and ten times the gross world product. So unless the United States government is buying ten times more than everything annually produced on the entire planet, your figure would be wrong.
The FBI, CIA, and The Department of Homeland Security most certainly do work in the same field, however they have differing focus, jobs, and responsibilities. Your argument is analogous to one claiming that the transportation manufacturing field is overly redundant because there are airplane manufacturers AND auto manufacturers. There certainly is large amount of waste because of bureaucratic redundancy, but for gods sake, use specific factual examples instead of thinking that "Look, they're in the same field!" means a damn thing.
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Re:Similarities between democrat party, communistsIf you don't want to bother keeping up with the news, don't act all high and mighty when others who do decide to speak.
It is you, my friend, who has not bothered keeping up with the news.
Bipartesian committee says there were 10 instances where Al Queda could have been foiled in the months leading up to 9/11
I don't think that is in dispute. Obviously we didn't do enough to prevent the 9/11 attacks because they happened. The 9/11 commission lays blame on our entire system, from intelligence to the legislature. This isn't a shot at any single politician (past or present).
Also says that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq, though most of the hijackers did move through Iran. Bush makes vague threats about Iran.
President Bush has also said that there is no plausable connection between 9/11 and Iraq. It has been very clear from the beginning that 9/11 was the sole responsibility of Al Quada. However, the war against terrorism isn't just a war against the people who attacked us on 9/11. Its a war against all terrorism. If you want to argue that Iraq did not have any ties to terrorism, good luck. They were on the state department list of state sponsers of terrorism for well over 2 decades.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about?
And you want me to "keep up with the news"? The proof of the threat of WMD is not in question. For crying out loud, the world watched Saddam use WMD on multiple occasions. He was under international order to destroy WMD that we knew he had, and for 13 years he lied to us and was caught in every lie.
Don't believe me? Here is the interim report given by the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) led by David Kay. This report is now nearly 10 months old, and the new ISG report (due in September) is said to contain even more details about what we have found since Baghdad fell. David Kay said:
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.
Some highlights of things they have found:A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was m
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Anarchy as information control?
...throughout the book, Siva contrasts two very different regimes of information control: oligarchy and anarchy.
Perhaps this is explained in the book, but I don't think it's obvious how anarchy is a "regime of information control."
If you have that messy sort of anarchy - the type that usually just means no central authority in what people still want to consider a state - then it's not really the anarchy that's controlling your information, it's the control structures that have taken hold in the absence of central power.
This is probably just a case of lazy writing, but I wish there were an explanation of what the reviewer meant here.
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Re:Great
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No illicit drugs for sale?from the CIA factbook: "...for years from the 1970's into the 1990's, citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea (DPRK), many of them diplomatic employees of the government, were apprehended abroad while trafficking in narcotics. In recent years, police investigations in Taiwan and Japan have linked North Korea to large illicit shipments of heroin and methamphetamine, with the attempt by the North Korean merchant ship Pong Su to deliver 125 kg of heroin to Australia in April 2003 the most recent example of Pyongyang's involvement in the drug trade. All indications point to North Korea emerging as an important regional source of illicit drugs targeting markets in Japan, Taiwan, the Russian Far East, and China."
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Re:Pointless Prosecution
>>Heck, Yugoslavia doesn't even EXIST anymore. It's kind of a moot point.
This isn't true... yet:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ yi.html
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Re:Inevitable
why is this insightful? could the high tax rate in canada be due to the low population and the low relative cost of living from a combination of subsidised farming and efficient (cost cutting) production and distribution to a larger population in the US?
You cannot deduce that high taxes (or even higher taxes) in Canada are the direct result of *universal* health care through cause and effect.
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Re:The flip side of the coin.
"If there's no way of knowing, then isn't it impossible to say exactly whether it was a good or bad decision?"
You are taking a common saying that means "A whole lot" literally. In fact there are ways to estimate the number of casualties as we did many amphibious assaults. For instance this document from the cia discusses such a thing.
The invasion of Okinawa had, at a low count, 122,000 deaths (including Japanese and American). Japan's main island was much more hardened and expected to fight harder over.
From a small search (so it may be off, there were several numbers thrown around so I took the largest) there were estimated 210,000 deaths from the bombs over 5 years.
Well over a million were estimated for just the first few islands around mainland Japan.
There is also the argument that we could starve them from a blockade. Maybe - but it is questionable wich is worse, starving millions or nuking thousands.
There is the argument that Japan was going to surrender anyway. Maybe. Even after the bombs the Emporer had a tough time convincing many in the military to surrender. It would depend on which faction won.
If it was justified more depends on your political views. No, I don't mean conservative or liberal, I mean what you place value on and which way you feel things would go.
"The hardest part, by far, is obtaining enough fissile material. Luckily for terrorists and not so lucky for there targets, the cold war left behing lots of fissile material, some of which has gone missing according to the news."
Another hard part is sneaking it in. It's not something that you put in a 2 litre bottle and drive around with.
A more likely terrorist weapon (the most likely is still conventional stuff though) are some chemical weapons. When a chemical requires
One of the main problems with these is that they require a certain level of sophistication to transport and detonate - usually those people are the leaders and have no intention of putting themselfs in that much harms way. Chemical weapons are generally easier to deal with. Though if any ever gets used in a populated area the destruction would be VERY bad. -
at odds with the facts
Bogus odds: their first factoid is "Grow up to be President: 10M:1". that would mean that of the 293M USA population, 60.836M , 6 will become President. No president has ever been >80y, so those odds say that 6 people will become president in their cohort's 65-80 years of eligibility, during which there will be between 12-20 presidents, not counting the lifetime extensions expected in the next 65 years. Add up the margins of error, and a kid's chances to grow into the Oval Office are a lot better than they think in Oregon. The rest of the odds seem wrong, too, but not as much fun to correct. And the odds of meteorite catastrophe at all are different kinds of odds when talking about a "certainty" like a presidential inauguration. So I'm not willing to commit to antiasteroid defense on their say-so.
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Re:Four bucks a cup!
Nice, I'm from the small town (~80.000 ppl) Gavle in Sweden (which is Northen Europe for you that dont know) where Gevalia was founded and have its roots, it's only roastery is located here at one side of the river that runs thru the town. It's as you know well known all over the world for its excellent high-quality coffe.
Gävle / Sweden -
The web makes it more and more difficult to lie...
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The web makes it more and more difficult to lie...
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Re:South Africa is an exception
What about median income (Nigeria vs. South Africa)?
The GDP per capita is
Nigeria: $800
South Africa: $10700
There are other indicators there that may give a better view of the distribution of the wealth in the countries. -
Re:South Africa is an exception
What about median income (Nigeria vs. South Africa)?
The GDP per capita is
Nigeria: $800
South Africa: $10700
There are other indicators there that may give a better view of the distribution of the wealth in the countries. -
Re:Illiteracy
The growing illteracy in this country is a major problem. We sould be embarased about having higer illteracy rates than Iraq and Cuba, let alone most of europe.
Parts of Europe and possibly Cuba has higher literacy rates than the US, but I highly doubt Iraq. From the CIA World Factbook:
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 40.4%
male: 55.9%
female: 24.4% (2003 est.) -
Re:Illiteracy
Don't forget tadjikistan.
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Re:zerg
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Re:i've always wondered...i wrote some nice php extensions while travelling with ca 300km/h
300 km/h is impressive and is easily 3x what most trains in the US can do. But it's also only 1/3 the speed of a common airplane. Some people in the US commute from DC to New York City, or take one-day business trips from New York to Los Angeles. At 300 km/h, it would take about 12 hours to get from NY to LA -- assuming you don't stop.
For long distances, planes win hands-down. It costs something like $1200 per passenger and takes several days for a train to get from Florida to California. A plane can do it for under $300 per passenger in 5-6 hours.
Trains really only work in high-density areas. The northeast has decent trains, as do parts of California. But out west, where population density can fall below one person per square km? Bah. Trains just aren't practical there. Even planes aren't, outside of major cities.
America is 30x as big as Germany, with barely 3x the population. The World Factbook says Germany is the size of the state of Montana, with an astounding 80x Montana's population. Do you think you could design a sustainable passenger rail system for Montana?
all the intercitys of the deutsche bahn have 220V [thats normal current here btw
So do some American planes. Well, 12V, not 220. Plane and train rides are still mostly time wasted.
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Re:i've always wondered...two reasons:
- americans love their cars
- we have alot more land
Another practical consideration is that Germany is approximately the size of Montana and all of Japan's islands add up to about as space as California. So a national system of high-speed public transporation such as a maglev train would require a much larger area of coverage than either of those two countries, and require a larger number of people using it on a regular basis to sustain it.
personally i love public transportation (unless i've got people jammed into my armpits (I'm tall) in a bus or subway, which of course happens occasionally) and i'm all for more of it, but there are cultural and practical issues we must take into consideration.
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Re:i've always wondered...two reasons:
- americans love their cars
- we have alot more land
Another practical consideration is that Germany is approximately the size of Montana and all of Japan's islands add up to about as space as California. So a national system of high-speed public transporation such as a maglev train would require a much larger area of coverage than either of those two countries, and require a larger number of people using it on a regular basis to sustain it.
personally i love public transportation (unless i've got people jammed into my armpits (I'm tall) in a bus or subway, which of course happens occasionally) and i'm all for more of it, but there are cultural and practical issues we must take into consideration.
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500,419 Fraudsters
jeez half a million , that's a significant chunk of their population</kidding>. but seriously, not that significant, how many people knew there were 137 million people in Nigeria?
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Unfortunately your believing it...
...does not make it true (293m). It always facinates me how many Americans don't know the population of their own country. Or perhaps the CIA is just hiding the other 300m people
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Re:Let the flamewar....COMMENCE!
$200B/250m = ~$800 for each man woman and child. (That's the total USA cost of the war so far, divided by the population of the USA.)
While the number is outrageous, I think yours is a little high.
Cost Of War
Which means we could have spent over $4000 per person relocating every citizen of Iraq to Someplace Else.
Iraq
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Re:Quick note..
Sorry dude, but "Republique Francaise" isn't the name of my country. France is however.
While France may be the short form name of your country, the long form name of your country is actually La Republique Franciase. Did you know your country is a republic? Maybe you should check
here (see "Official Name" on right) or here (see Local Long Form), or here, a French Government site.
Maybe it's time for you to learn a bit about your own country. And I can site a few hundred more examples if you'd like, as well as plenty for "Repubblica Italiana". So, before you start telling me what's wrong with the name of MY country, get familiar with the name of your own! -
Re:Canada? Why bother?
So, assuming that Cisco had to stop selling in Canada and instead sold in just the United States and Europe (ignoring Asia, Australia, etc., entirely), their sales would decrease by less than 5% (35/708)
Well, a pop. of 35 mil. (Canada) is basically equivalent to California (33 mil.). But California has a Gross State Product of $1.4 Trillian (source), whereas Canada's was only $960 billion (source). So it'd probably be a sales hit of even less than 5%. -
Canada? Why bother?
Interestingly, this case is being brought in Canada, where the defense needs to prove its case.
Population of Canada: 35 million
Population of the United States: 293 million
Population of Europian Union: 380 million
So, assuming that Cisco had to stop selling in Canada and instead sold in just the United States and Europe (ignoring Asia, Australia, etc., entirely), their sales would decrease by less than 5% (35/708). Wouldn't it be reasonable for them to just ignore this lawsuit, and in the meantime continue selling in Canada? If the government eventually forces them to stop, it'd really be no particularly big loss, except to Canada--who would no longer have access to Cisco technology. Which would therefore make the government unlikely to stop Cisco from selling there. Seems like Cisco holds all the cards, here. -
Canada? Why bother?
Interestingly, this case is being brought in Canada, where the defense needs to prove its case.
Population of Canada: 35 million
Population of the United States: 293 million
Population of Europian Union: 380 million
So, assuming that Cisco had to stop selling in Canada and instead sold in just the United States and Europe (ignoring Asia, Australia, etc., entirely), their sales would decrease by less than 5% (35/708). Wouldn't it be reasonable for them to just ignore this lawsuit, and in the meantime continue selling in Canada? If the government eventually forces them to stop, it'd really be no particularly big loss, except to Canada--who would no longer have access to Cisco technology. Which would therefore make the government unlikely to stop Cisco from selling there. Seems like Cisco holds all the cards, here. -
Re:Holy crap..If the war is fought on terms other than those of the US government, it will take only one of those industrialized nations.
More detail available here.
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Re:Developing countriesMore info about Slovenia from
Oh and the conference for anyone interested was the HAIP conference.
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Re:I wonder why...
Yeah, with Sprint, instead of the heavy Indian accent, you get a heavy Ebonics umm...accent? They're just as hard to understand and much less likely to be able to read.
I'm not sorry to be harsh when it's the truth based on not only my experience, but also that of everyone I know and everything I've read.
From the CIA Factbook entry for the United States
literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
female: 97% (1979 est.)
male: 97%
total population: 97%
There, now you've read something that contradicts your "truth". Most Americans know how to read. Maybe you'll be less harsh now? And by the way, if you can't understand people from your own country speaking the same language as you that's probably your fault rather than theirs. Next thing you'll tell me is that they should only hire members of your race with the same level of education as you (no higher or they'll talk too "smart") who live within 2 miles of you (but not in that part of town) to do customer service for you. -
Re:Outdated Stats
I believe there are many areas in Brazil where they do not speak Portuguese. If Wikipedia wasn't currently offline, you could read more there. This site says that only 158,000,000* (out of 165,851,000*) people in Brazil speak Portuguese. "There are also more than 100 indigenous languages." With Portugal only having 10,102,022 people, the total from these 2 countries is just under 170,000,000. What other major populations speak Portuguese? (Most of my world-languages geography knowledge has atrophied.) The data in the list may not be so out-of-date after all.
* 1998 - United Nations -
Re:Question of the day : food or music ?
China, population below poverty line 10%, USA, er, oh, wait, erm, 12.7%. Did I get those the wrong way round, oh, let me check again, aha, oh no. USA has 12.7% of it's population below the poverty line.
So, as I was saying, you're in south central, and you think, tunes or medical provision, what are you going to choose, hmmm... hard choice but I'll download Outkast.
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Re:Question of the day : food or music ?
China, population below poverty line 10%, USA, er, oh, wait, erm, 12.7%. Did I get those the wrong way round, oh, let me check again, aha, oh no. USA has 12.7% of it's population below the poverty line.
So, as I was saying, you're in south central, and you think, tunes or medical provision, what are you going to choose, hmmm... hard choice but I'll download Outkast.
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Re:ipod
They'll sell less than they do in the US. Chinese GDP per head: $4,700. US GDP per head: $36,300
Now, you can bet your bottom dollar that less of the GDP in China gets back to the workers, so something maks me think that although they have 1 billion people there, not many of them will be toying with the idea of getting an iPod, iTunes or an iMac or any other Apple device... -
Some Facts
50,000.00 JPY = 451.859 USD, about 5422.30 USD per year
per capita GDP is $28,700 (2002 est.)
factbook on japan
Matsumoto said one U.S. toy manufacturer offered his company about $10 million (about 1.1 billion yen) for the rights to market merchandise featuring the characters of an animated cartoon his company hadn't even completed. The figure was particularly eye-popping for Matsumoto because it was 100 times what animated films earn on average from broadcasting rights in Japan. - One has to wonder why their aren't any regulations regarding corperate responsibility and minimun wage laws on this matter. -
Re:Rehtorical question?
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Re:Rehtorical question?
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Re:Criticism without Solution
France derives almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power.
Glad someone brought this up. Other countries have also gotten rid of fossil fuel as their main electricity source. Switzerland and Sweden have cut their fossil fuel energy prodction rates to next to nothing with a combination of Nuclear and Hydroelectric power. Finland and Austria have done the same with Hydro-electric alone. (source CIA World Factbook). Of course most countries can't go all hydro-electric; they just don't have the geography for it. However, it does serve to demonstrate that we have realistic alternatives to Fossil Fuel based electricity production.
There is something else that hasn't been brought up yet that I think is pertainent to this discussion. Lovelock says that it is a question of time, that renewable energy is all well and good, but that we don't have time to set it up as a main source of energy. He contends that we have time (just barely) to go nuclear and diminish the consequences of global warming.
My question is, assuming that we decided that it was the right course of action, just how fast could we go nuclear? -
Re:Criticism without Solution
France derives almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power.
Glad someone brought this up. Other countries have also gotten rid of fossil fuel as their main electricity source. Switzerland and Sweden have cut their fossil fuel energy prodction rates to next to nothing with a combination of Nuclear and Hydroelectric power. Finland and Austria have done the same with Hydro-electric alone. (source CIA World Factbook). Of course most countries can't go all hydro-electric; they just don't have the geography for it. However, it does serve to demonstrate that we have realistic alternatives to Fossil Fuel based electricity production.
There is something else that hasn't been brought up yet that I think is pertainent to this discussion. Lovelock says that it is a question of time, that renewable energy is all well and good, but that we don't have time to set it up as a main source of energy. He contends that we have time (just barely) to go nuclear and diminish the consequences of global warming.
My question is, assuming that we decided that it was the right course of action, just how fast could we go nuclear? -
Re:Criticism without Solution
France derives almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power.
Glad someone brought this up. Other countries have also gotten rid of fossil fuel as their main electricity source. Switzerland and Sweden have cut their fossil fuel energy prodction rates to next to nothing with a combination of Nuclear and Hydroelectric power. Finland and Austria have done the same with Hydro-electric alone. (source CIA World Factbook). Of course most countries can't go all hydro-electric; they just don't have the geography for it. However, it does serve to demonstrate that we have realistic alternatives to Fossil Fuel based electricity production.
There is something else that hasn't been brought up yet that I think is pertainent to this discussion. Lovelock says that it is a question of time, that renewable energy is all well and good, but that we don't have time to set it up as a main source of energy. He contends that we have time (just barely) to go nuclear and diminish the consequences of global warming.
My question is, assuming that we decided that it was the right course of action, just how fast could we go nuclear? -
Re:Criticism without Solution
France derives almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power.
Glad someone brought this up. Other countries have also gotten rid of fossil fuel as their main electricity source. Switzerland and Sweden have cut their fossil fuel energy prodction rates to next to nothing with a combination of Nuclear and Hydroelectric power. Finland and Austria have done the same with Hydro-electric alone. (source CIA World Factbook). Of course most countries can't go all hydro-electric; they just don't have the geography for it. However, it does serve to demonstrate that we have realistic alternatives to Fossil Fuel based electricity production.
There is something else that hasn't been brought up yet that I think is pertainent to this discussion. Lovelock says that it is a question of time, that renewable energy is all well and good, but that we don't have time to set it up as a main source of energy. He contends that we have time (just barely) to go nuclear and diminish the consequences of global warming.
My question is, assuming that we decided that it was the right course of action, just how fast could we go nuclear? -
Re:Recession = cost doubling?
Sure, it'll take a number of reactors. But nuclear reactors can be scaled like coal plants. And we already have huge numbers of them...
If anything, it there's an 'effeciency' point for the nuclear plants, build that size close to the consumers. That should cut down on transmission costs. When the fuel only takes a Semi-load a year, you don't have to build next to a mine to get your fuel efficiently.
Did a lookup on some sites. From this site, a 1000 megawatt capacity seems about fair, as I see capacities running from about 800-1200 megawatts. They list their Megawatt hours at 8-9 million MWh a year. USA consumption is 3.602 trillion kWh (2001)
Doing the math, this comes out to 400-450 nuclear plants to power the USA, or 8-9 plants a state. Hardly an unsustainable number. -
Surprising nobody noted thisChina develops parallel standards for everything because they could not afford the "standard" standards.
Forking out millions of US$ in licences would ruin any chinese company. Hell, do you know what 500$ US means for a chinese person? ONE THENTH of the per-capita GDP! and it won't even buy a single PC with Windows on it.
To those of you paranoiacs who still think Communism Is The Red Menace: communism has nothing to do with this issue. In fact, the Chinese are applying by-the-book capitalism to IP: get the cheapest source avaliable, and use it.
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China Info
Well according to This The population is only 1,286,975,468. And 10% of that is below the poverty line.
There are some good facts about China here.
We all know there is a lot of cheap labor there in China, the question that I have...Can China price point these standards so everyone can afford them??
And does these new standards work better then what we have???
CS....
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Re:eye four won
Ahhh but there is an Isle of Man
Here it is [CIA -
Re:Something good may yet come out of thisI have found that most Europeans don't really understand how BIG America really is.
Take Great Britain, where many posts like the parent come from. The UK has 60 million people living in an area of 244,000 sq km. The US has 290 million people spread across 9.6 million sq km. The UK is slightly smaller than the state of Oregon.
It takes lots of roads and energy to move people and goods around in the US. We have 6.3 million km of highways, while the UK has 371,000 km. [CIA World Factbook].
You can't just build a public transportation infrastructure that connects all of those people to where they need to go. You lose some economies of scale when people are more spread out.
Yes, Americans use more energy than the average European (more driving by necessity, bigger houses, more consumption -- also more production per capita), and we could certainly stand to see some improvement. But direct comparisons to Europe just don't apply.
Also, since this thread is really about oil, note that the per capita use of oil in the UK is about 10.4 bbl per year, while in the US it is 24.7 bbl per year. We are only using slightly more than twice the OIL per capita (and that's not just gasoline, that's everything you make from refining crude).