Slashdot Mirror

1. Open source library of knowledge for developing nations (making the world's intellectual wealth available to all)
http://www.oneworld.org/globalp roj ects/humcdrom/
http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/& lt;/a>
http://www.oneworld .or g/globalprojects/humcdrom/copyrigh.htm
http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
; http://www.globalprojects.org/
; http://www.humanitylibraries.net/ http://www.villageearth.org/
http://www.villageearth.org/ATLi bra ry/cdrom.htm

2. Open source knowledge management systems
http://www.bootstrap.org/
http://bootstrap.org/colloquium/ar chi ves.html
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion /

3. Self-replicating space habitats (support trillions of humans in style without overrunning the earth)
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm
http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm
http://www.permanent.com/
http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/
http://www.luf.org/
http://www.ssi.org/
http://www.ssi.org/alt-plan.html http://www.spacedev.com/
http://www.spacehab.com/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

4. Pursue the "Ecocity Berkley" vision in the book by that name by Richard Register and look for related visions of sustainable development
http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob ido s/ASIN/1556430094/
http://www.co-intelligence.or g/y 2k_commtyorgs.html
http://www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter/h ome .htm
http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sust vl. html
http://www.rmi.org/

5. Work towards ending the drug war and pardoning hundreds of thousands of Americans imprisoned on non-violent drug charges. (I believe drug use is wrong and should be avoided, and by all means as it is now illegal, so don't do drugs! But as with alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, drug abuse should be considered a medical problem, not a legal one (except when like DUI it hurts or puts at risk others directly)).
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag es/ frontline/shows/drugs/
http://www.drcnet.org/facts/

6. Teaching tolerance and compassion
http://www.splcenter.org/
http://www.splcenter.or g/t eachingtolerance/tt-index.html

7. Open source educational simulations and simulation construction toolkits (one of the most meaningful ways to use computers in the classroom).
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ http://riceinfo.ri ce. edu/armadillo/Simulations/simserver.html
http://www.creativeteachingsite .co m/edusims.html
http://www.workingmodel.com/
http://www.idsia.ch/~andrea/simtools.h tml

8. Preserving biodiversity (when it's gone, it's gone forever)
http://www.tnc.org/
http://www.environment.about.com/newsissues/enviro nment/library/weekly/aa091700.htm

9. Develop any specific sustainable technology in energy (e.g. solar), recycling (e.g. recycle computers), materials (e.g. plastics from starch), society (e.g. participatory democracy & social justice).
http://www.google.com/sear ch? q=sustainable+technology
http://www.edf.org/issues/Recycling.htm l
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/

10. Make corporations more accountable to human needs
http://www.adbusters.org/inform ati on/foundation/
http://www.adbusters.org/c amp aigns/charter/death.html
Previous link vanished, try instead:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.adbuste rs.org/ campaigns/charter/death.html+corporate+death+penal ty&hl=en
http://www.cwsl.edu/news/n_corpo rat e_death.html
http://monkeyfist.com/articles/340& lt;br> http://www.chaordic.org/

11. Reform the "Intellectual property" laws and their related organizations, perhaps so that copyrights are for a couple decades and most patents are for a dozen years and only for true innovations. Ensure that any IP developed with any government money is immediately put into the public domain.
http://danny.oz.au/fre e-s oftware/advocacy/against_IP.html
(Lots of other Slashot links!)

12. If you don't want to get you hands dirty volunteering your own time, look around and find good people (not organizations, although the people may be in organizations) already doing good things. Pick people with a track record of years of fighting for the common good or who have already made a major accomplishment demonstrating commitment and just anonymously give them $100K without strings attached. Example: Marty Johnson at Isles, Inc.
http://www.isles.org/mileston.html& lt;br> Find people just starting a career of public service or a charitable venture and struggling to do good things and give them $20K and tell them you believe in their promise and cause. Expect a bunch of the money to be wasted but give it anyway and learn how to give effectively. For ideas, look at the grantees list of any foundation. Then ask those people who they know who are just starting out and trying to do a good job.
http://www.beldon.org/grants2000_07.htm l

When I was about thirteen, I got about seven books out of the library on money thinking I wanted to become a millionaire. Six told me how to get rich (start a business and run it well.) One of them asked me "why do you want to be rich?" That is the one whose name I remember and the ideas in it have changed my life. For advice on setting a direction of what to do with wealth, read the Book "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips and Sally Raspberry, especially the chapter on how foundations fail in their mission and how grants go to people who sound good but usually can't deliver (i.e. how hard it is to give money away).
http://www.seeingmoney.com/SevenLaws.ht m
http://www.hallbusi nes ses.com/biographies_primers/1420.shtml

My wife and I are working on a few of these issues ourselves (and a few example links are to our stuff). We make money contracting and spend it to "buy" our own time for making quality software the market can't or doesn't seem to want to pay for. Even without IPO riches, any competent software developer can make $75K-100K in today's market. Graduate students can live on $20K a year, and so can many software developers (kids make it harder) if they follow the path of Voluntary Simplicity. It's a question of priorities.
http://www.life.ca/subject/simplicity .ht ml
http://www.simpleliving.net/slj/ http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/ http://www.thegarden.net/simplicity/

Voluntary simplicity leaves a lot of funds for doing good deeds - even if they are done on your own time by using your own money to take time off and develop open source software or do other worthwhile ventures. Or take a job that doesn't pay as well but involves helping an organization that you believe in.
http://www.idealist.org/

There are awesome things happening over the next twenty to forty years. According to Moore's law, desktop computers in twenty or so years will be a million times faster than today's. Already computers can drive cars somewhat well and identify vegetable better than humans.

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/magazine/199 9/number_3/machine399.html ;

Other breakthrough innovations are happening in technological areas like energy, materials, nanotechnology, communications, agriculture, biotechnology, and robotics. Use your wealth to think deeply about what all this means and do something to ensure human survival with style.

It is saddening to see people spend so much money on less important stuff (another night club in this case). Now if it was a night club where these issues are discussed, then maybe it makes sense.

Capitalism without charity is evil, because capitalism only meets the needs of people with money.

In most states, the power company must pay you for excess electricity the going rate for bulk electiricty- that is, what they would pay another company for electricity in the event of a shortage.

See http://www.eren.doe.gov/ greenpower/netmetering/index.shtml for more.

Many "highland" regions use water and pumps to "store" spare energy, by simply pumping the water up into the hills in large tubes and then when needed let it come back down and through turbines to (re-)create energy. A siple and VERY efficient battery. I challenge You to find a better large scale storage method of energy.

1. This is not useful unless you have a large supply of water close to a much higher area you can use for an upper reservoir. If you don't have the necessary geography, you can't use pumped storage.
   
2. This is not something that coexists well with other uses. Fish tend not to fare well when they go through the pumps.
   
3. The net efficiency is only about 80% at best.
   
4. The systems must be huge to be effective. To store 6 gigawatt-hours (to replace one major powerplant's output during the afternoon hours) with a 200 foot rise takes (6e9 * 3.6e3 / 9.8e3 / 61 ) = 36 million cubic meters of water. That's an area of 2900 acres covered to a depth of ten feet. It can't be used for wildlife habitat or fish or much of anything else because it's always being filled and drained. Here are links to sites for the Ludington MI pumped-storage plant, and one for the Mount Elbert plant. (Note that the Mt. Elbert plant claims a capacity factor of 15% of its rated 200 MW, and that is probably when running on a daily cycle. If it had to even out multi-day variations in supply from e.g. wind, it would be far lower.)

I never said it was CHEAP, I merely said it was possible.

I never said that nuclear power was obsolete. I merely pointed out that it was not a NESSESITY as we have alternatives,

I was refering to CARS

But look at the operating costs of fossil fuel powerplants, and You WILL see that they are obsolete. first of, the sheer cost of rawmeterials WILL increase as the availability of materials decrease (law of supply and demand).

Second look at the environmental impact. The cost of cleaning up the environmnt, reversing the greenhouse effect etc.

Reversing the greenhouse warming (we need the greenhouse effect or the earth freezes solid) needs further tricks. One that I like involves taking the methane clathrate deposits on the continental shelves (which are threatening to decompose to gas, and CH4 is about 200 times as good a greenhouse gas as CO2) and mining them for fuel. Crack the CH4 into H2 and carbon soot, then bury the soot (old coal mines seem appropriate). Burn the H2 in whatever is convenient.

However, MANY countries are right now doing fine wihtout nuclear power, MANY countries (including a lot of US states) are suppling a larger and larger part of their electrical energy from "environmentally safe" powersources

In this DOE table you'll see that the total nameplate capacity of non-hydropower renewable energy generators in the country for 1999 was a whole 2000 megawatts. That is out of a total generating capacity of nearly 700,000 megawatts. The entire nameplate generating capacity would barely replace 2 nuclear plants, and probably have about 1/3 the capacity factor. If it's going to really be an alternative, it has a hell of a long way to go.
--

The only way we can make the concessions that the eco-friendly people want is not to work around them but to work past them.

Fusion reactors baby !!

FUSION ENERGY OVERVIEW

[ Note: I was a Software Engineer at Coleman Aerospace for 3 years ]

Many of the early computers in ballistic missiles and space probes borrowed heavily from the military. Much of the gyros and computing systems were produced by Bendix for the Department of Energy (according to various public documents from about a year ago, Bendix development is still located at the DoE's Kansas City Plant). In case you aren't familiar with how the government works, the DoE was and still is the non-military, government agency tasked with the creation of numerous components of our nuclear arms technology (as well as their normal energy details, a natural tandem role). Looking at their "most advanced computer" in the early 1980s (the Bendix 930 in the Pershing II MRBM), you essentially had a 16-bit CPU and database with 64KB of memory on various cards in a wire-wrapped backplane. And, yes, all the target code for these machines are done in assembler.

Today, both the military and NASA contractors "better, faster, cheaper" attitude of using off-the-shelf hardware, tools and software revolves mainly around the VME architecture (usually for 68300 and, increasingly, PowerPC boards -- military spec/hardening) with WindRiver's VxWorks RTOS. VxWorks is heavily BSD 4.3-based OS with response times in the tens of microseconds (on a 40-50MHz processor). Development is done using GNU development tools using a customized Cygnus GNUPro (now under RedHat's services group) product called Tornado (customized for WindRiver by Cygnus) so it can target various VxWorks architectures with Linux, Solaris and Windows being the most popular host development platforms. [ I personally found Windows to be a real pain if you also install Visual Studio on the same system because which tries to take over your system -- have to be careful you run the right make, etc... binary ].

A well-known 68K/VxWorks-based mission was the Mars Pathfinder. Today, the combo is used in a wide variety of launch and space vehicles. At my former employer, we used it for our ballistic target and booster vehicles for the military and LEO (low earth orbit) launch vehicles for NASA (and they continue to do so). A future mission to the outer planets will be PPC/VxWorks-based, all written with the GNU development system. [ Since Linux nor most other general-purpose OSes cannot guarantee such "hard" real-time response times (let alone no Windows platform can seem to deliver even deliver any "soft" real-times either), it is my hope that Cygnus' (now RedHat's) eCos takes off and cuts into VxWorks' market in the next 5 years). ]

Which brings me to my final point: I think people get caught up with the whole this OS versus that OS issue when the argument should be GNU development versus Microsoft Visual development for "mission critical" purposes. The GNU cross-compilers and tools allow you to target dozens of platforms and massive code reuse whereas Microsoft changes its Visual Studio products on a whim. I mean, it's really harder to port Windows code just for a version change than it is to port to another, completely different architecture with GNU. I personally don't see why Windows developers put up with it because Cygnus makes some damn good IDE and tools for development.

Personally, I think the best remedy for the whole DOJ v. Microsoft trial would be to force Microsoft to support GNU-based development tools for the Windows platform (both target and host) -- and set a time-frame in which they would have to drop their current, non-GNU-based Visual product (e.g., 5 years). This would do several things: actually force the documentation of the API, thus increase overall stability of the Windows platform, finally address multi-user ignorance as the main problem with Windows security (98% of even Microsoft's own applications are multi-user ignorant!), and many, many other benefits to the developers as well as the consumer. Of course no one in the trial has the forsight to see this as the best remedy, and I seriously doubt we will see any discussion of it either.

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

...are you going to have two engines? A hydrogen engine and a gasoline engine for fallback when hydrogen isn't available?

Well, you could use a gas/electric hybrid which are not in great use yet but, I heard that they are supposed to get something like 70mpg.

Hmmm. Try this. The demo looks cool, though it's a windows-only app and requires Matlab and some Simulink program. I know there's Octave but I don't know what Simulink is or if there is a free replacement for *nix for it.

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In most places electric power is just about as bad as gasoline. It's very likely that your local power company is burning fossil fuels to produce your power, mine certainly is, well we do have a nuclear plant, but it is never producing.

What I find amusing is that somehow people think its better to be disconnected from the problem, it's not so much their fault anymore. "Electric is clean, I don't know where it comes from, but my car produces no emmisions."

Personally I believe that the best long term solution is H2 as a fuel source. It's abudant (75% of the Universe's mass is hydrogen, and just about as clean as you can get, with the only byproduct of pure H2 burning being water. It can have the performance of gasoline, and I think that's key. People want a car that performs well. Most don't want the sluggish, egg shaped electric-hybird things I've seen.

The big problem with hydrogen, is that it has a really nasty rap because people think of the Hindenberg when they think of H2. The idea of stepping into anything powered by H2 is scary.

Hydrogen also has the potential to be distilled anywhere. I really wouldn't be terribly surprised if in a century, people produce their own.

Man wouldn't the oil industry hate that?

Check out The H2 information Network

There are research efforts to create a Fuel Cell powered vehicle capable of using gasoline as a fuel. From what I understand a processor will create methane and/or hydrogen from the gasoline to feed the fuel cell.

The goal is to make a flexible-fuel processor that works with many different hydrogen-rich fuels. More can be found here:

Just because internet businesses stand to lose the most doesn't mean that they're the place to work on reducing power consumption. Perhaps they should be working to secure the power grid by investing in areas that are more easily fixed.

For example, what if e-commerce corps started investing in new power plants? Fortunately, the curent energy limits aren't fundamental problems like the speed of light or the minimal thinness of a silicon wafer; they can be solved in a fairly linear fashion simply by doing more of the same. With the assurance of backing from big computer firms, it would be easier for municipalities to issue bonds, thus improving the speed with which new facilities could be built.

Of course, I'd rather see a decrease in power consumption, and computer businesses can help too. Aside from hardware manufacturers making their own products lower-power (Crusoe, anyone?), the computer industry could fund public-service campaigns to decrease energy waste. They could even fund R&D in other high-energy-consumption industries. air conditioning uses up 13% of residential power. I'm not sure how that figure compares to the 12% of all national power that goes to computers, as cited in the CNET article, but it's clearly a big chunk. If making more efficient air conditioners could free up more power-space for computers, perhaps that's something the computer people should be pushing forwards.

- Michael Cohn

To a certain extend, I do see your point. Alot of what I posted is indeed in the article. Next time I will try to add alot more additional info.

Perhaps I should have noted some of the interesting research being done on this:

Physical Limits of Portable Power Storage

Batteries of the 21st Century

Hybrid Electric Vehicle research

In my defense, I do think I pointed out several things that were not obvious (and people were arguing about in the preceeding posts).

I'll try for more content in the future.

-Erik

If you check out this DOE site http://www.em.doe.gov/bemr96/lanl.html you will find an extensive listing of the many cleanups they have going under way at Los Gatos.

Things that come to mind are:

Plants tend to metabolize the hazardous materials in the soil. These plants are now being converted into smoke.
The contaminated soil that is now being dried out by the fire, and dust being swept up into the air.

Casually checking out the page link given I come up with these goodies [there is LOTS more]:

In support of the Laboratory's mission, the Environmental Management program is also investigating approximately 2,100 sites to determine if cleanup is needed. These sites range in size from less than 1 square meter to tens of hectares (a few square feet to tens of acres). Potential residual contamination may exist at these sites as the result of 50 years of Laboratory operation. Contaminants may include radionuclides, organic solvents, metals, and high explosives. Residual contamination may exist in more than 7 million cubic meters (9.1 million cubic yards) of environmental media, primarily soils and sediments.

- - - - -

Field Unit 3 consists of 555 potential release sites associated with ten technical areas. It includes sites where high explosives were developed and processed, initiators for nuclear weapons were tested, and reactor components were developed. The primary constituents of concern are radionuclides, high explosives, volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls, asbestos, pesticides, and herbicides.

Much of the contamination in this field unit resulted from operations established during World War II to develop, fabricate, and test explosive components for nuclear weapons. Various other facilities included areas for photo-fission experiments, a mortar impact area, an air gun firing range, gun firing sites, a burning ground, laboratories, storage buildings, sumps, and material disposal areas. In many of the experiments, beryllium-containing weapons initiators were tested, and in some experiments uranium components were used. A high-pressure tritium facility was also in operation until 1990.

One site in this field unit was used to develop nuclear reactors for propulsion of space rockets. Experiments included structural testing of fuel elements made of uranium-loaded graphite, which were tested until they failed. The site also was used to develop methods for uranium isotope separation and to test lasers for exciting uranium hexafluoride gas of various enrichments. Experimental solar buildings and solar ponds, which have since been converted to sanitary waste lagoons, were built later.

Apparently alot of testing was also open air, especially in the early days, before they knew better, or cared much (take your pick).

Under the right circumstances, Plutonium can burn. See the DOE handbook for details.

1) much like all the comments here your posting neglects to mention berkeleys fruitfly genome sequencing project that did a vast amount of work and without which celeras data wouldn't have been nearly so useful. it certainly wouldn't have made it to finished so quickly without the mapped BACs would it? which leads to point

2) this crap about celera mapping 90% in one year when the public efforts spent 10 years blah blah blah. This really ticks me off, from the very start the plan with the public effort was to spend the vast majority of time developing the technology and techniques necessary to sequence rapidly and accurately, the accelerated curve has been known for ages and our lab went from sequencing apx 2 mb/year to 20 mb in (I think it was) 98 to over 350 mb now seq stats
Considering that massive purchases of 377 sequencers and scientific collaborations by the hgp contributed VASTLY to the development of the 3700 it's rather crass to read the crowing about how celeras kicked ass while the public effort allegedly just sat around twiddling their thumbs. The press releases from the formation of celera at least give credit to the planning of the hgp
Since the inception of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in 1990, a major shift in technology has been anticipated that would allow the entire sequence to be completed

3) The HGP is now likely sequencing FASTER than celera, I know the doe has 80 megabases(equivalent to the 3700), sanger has 100 3700s and a ton of 377s, that's only 40% of the genome project and celera has what, 230 3700s? hrmm, rough unsubstantiated calcs would put total human effort near least 450 3700s ... ouch! Plus MIT now has more than any other group I believe, (although they aren't all working on human) and there's the vast capacity at washU.
while it's true celera has the largest private supercomputer and that will help with assembling, the DOE started the human genome project, is still involved and just happens to have the largest supercomputers period.

4)where you get the 10x oversampling number I haven't a clue. the goals are laid out here and additionally a figure of 6x is generally aimed for before trying to finish the clone, finished is still the bahama definition of I believe no more than 1 error per 10k

yeah, I'll bet you have stock options and I'm sure they don't bias your postings and don't influence your continued use of outdated figures

1) much like all the comments here your posting neglects to mention berkeleys fruitfly genome sequencing project that did a vast amount of work and without which celeras data wouldn't have been nearly so useful. it certainly wouldn't have made it to finished so quickly without the mapped BACs would it? which leads to point

2) this crap about celera mapping 90% in one year when the public efforts spent 10 years blah blah blah. This really ticks me off, from the very start the plan with the public effort was to spend the vast majority of time developing the technology and techniques necessary to sequence rapidly and accurately, the accelerated curve has been known for ages and our lab went from sequencing apx 2 mb/year to 20 mb in (I think it was) 98 to over 350 mb now seq stats
Considering that massive purchases of 377 sequencers and scientific collaborations by the hgp contributed VASTLY to the development of the 3700 it's rather crass to read the crowing about how celeras kicked ass while the public effort allegedly just sat around twiddling their thumbs. The press releases from the formation of celera at least give credit to the planning of the hgp
Since the inception of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in 1990, a major shift in technology has been anticipated that would allow the entire sequence to be completed

3) The HGP is now likely sequencing FASTER than celera, I know the doe has 80 megabases(equivalent to the 3700), sanger has 100 3700s and a ton of 377s, that's only 40% of the genome project and celera has what, 230 3700s? hrmm, rough unsubstantiated calcs would put total human effort near least 450 3700s ... ouch! Plus MIT now has more than any other group I believe, (although they aren't all working on human) and there's the vast capacity at washU.
while it's true celera has the largest private supercomputer and that will help with assembling, the DOE started the human genome project, is still involved and just happens to have the largest supercomputers period.

4)where you get the 10x oversampling number I haven't a clue. the goals are laid out here and additionally a figure of 6x is generally aimed for before trying to finish the clone, finished is still the bahama definition of I believe no more than 1 error per 10k

yeah, I'll bet you have stock options and I'm sure they don't bias your postings and don't influence your continued use of outdated figures

I wouldn't bet on it. A wood fire in a conventional fireplace or wood stove is very dirty. This page has some information from the Department of Energy on pollution from burning wood. I have read EPA literature that states that wood burning stoves are by far the worst polluting residential source of energy.

Recreational coke use.

Serious coke use

Coke use rampant!

The international conspiracy money trail.

What coke did to beer.

These sites only touch on the truth. The true horrors of serious coke use were best documented by Charles Dickens.

I have to admit to recreational coke use. My wife enjoys it also, but she thinks that everyday is just too much. We've had some really great times that way, and she does not think it could ever be a problem. I've heard some horror stories, mostly involving gasoline, but I don't know anyone who has actually died this way.

Serious coke use is very different. It does indeed kill many people in all phases of its exploitation. Production and transportation is supposed to be the most dangerous activity.

Human Genome Project Information:
http://www.ornl.gov/TechRe sources/Human_Genome/home.html

Human Genome Program, Genome Research:
http://www.er.doe.gov/production /ober/hug_top.html

National Human Genome Research Institute:
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/

On a more philosophical note, when those who are in their adolescence find themselves looking at a generation which has had their genes tampered, there will be prejudice. Lots of it. It can't be avoided.

But what about those who got vaccines at birth? Those who never had to worry about smallpox, polio, etc.? Every generation we go through is healthier than the last, constantly improving. Genetic research will be an issue, obviously, but it's not that unbelivable or radical. Just another step in the same direction.
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When I said "I think its the greenhouse risk that is holding back mass use of methane" I meant just that. I didn't know particularly why it wasnt used so much.

These towers would essentially contain permanent thunderstorms. I haven't re-done the author's numbers, but he claimed that the mass-flow rate of such a tower would conservatively be in the thousands of tons per second, and the air leaving the tower would be moving at upwards of 200 MPH. He calculated such things as the fresh water yield of the "rain" inside the tower and the hydropower available from letting it fall down pipes, but the real yield is the airflow itself. I calculated the power available from the moving air, and with (what seemed to me to be) reasonable assumptions about efficiency I got the number of 22 GIGAWATTS. From one tower.

For reference, the total nameplate generating capacity of the generators in the USA is a mere 754 GW, according to the Department of Energy. This means that 40 of these towers, arrayed along our coasts or around the Carribean, could replace every watt from every generator currently feeding the US electrical grid... and then some. They'd also make a hell of a lot of fresh water, and cool off the surface waters somewhat (a boon for heat-stressed coral reefs).

There's a lot more ocean out there than just our coasts, and it's all getting warmer. Tapping energy off it would not only replace fossil fuels directly, it would also do some global-warming abatement by dumping heat above some 8 miles of atmosphere where it has an easier time escaping. I think we could do a lot worse than checking this out in detail again, and if it would work, pushing it like hell.
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Advertisers: If you attach cookies to your banner ads,

We're dealing with the very basic building blocks of reality as we know it - it cannot possibly be safe.

Wind and solar account for only a minuscule proportion of the total electrical grid capacity. DOE figures show that solar and wind together account for only 19 megawatts of the US grid's 750000 megawatt capacity. Worse, they cannot be used for more than about 20% of total capacity before they will require additional backup generators to sub for them when the wind dies and the sun goes down. More than that and you get the likelihood of blackouts.

The problem with solar and wind is that they are intermittent sources and cannot be scheduled. You cannot use them to replace other generating capacity until you can store energy for use later. Pumped storage is expensive and kills fish (see the Ludington, MI plant's records) and batteries are expensive and require maintenance. Batteries are also prone to mishaps, and materials commonly used to make storage cells (like lead and cadmium) are toxic heavy metals. Millions of battery fire hazards with toxic emissions have the potential to be more troublesome than a few large nuclear installations; the smaller number of sites is always going to be easier to inspect and control.

Solar power is still rather expensive, and wind power kills lots of mechanics; they both fall prey to the storage problem. Coal power kills lots of people with sensitive lungs (mostly the old and the very young). Nuclear power in the USA is, by and large, pretty damn safe especially given the silly regulations under which most operational plants were built. We've learned a lot since then; we could build totally fail-safe plants today if we could get past the political obstacles. We could also have disposed of all the spent fuel sitting in pools at nuclear plants by now, except for the anti-nuke political activists who do not want to admit that the technical solutions will work. How about getting out of the way?

So what if you throw some extra coal in the furnace in a coal plant? You'll cough out some extra sulphur because the burning is less clean.

Some extra radioactive Thorium, too...

http://www.em.doe.gov/tie/fall30.html

TANSTAAFL.

There was also a recent report that scientists drilled through a virgin rock shield off Norway, where there should be no oil, and found oil. That rock did not form over any old surface rocks, so the oil must have come from deep in the crust.

Nevertheless, we can convert carbon waste into fuels with a little energy.