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More people are alive today than all humans who have ever died.

That's an urban myth (how you defend it with flawed math probably nicely demonstrates our propensity to attaching to ourselves undue importance). 100+ billion homo sapiens dead already:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead
http://www.prb.org/pdf/PT_novdec02.pdf
http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

It's probably just to pay for the fancy NASA space pens. We all know the Russian technology of pencils break American health and safety regulations and they probably refuse to fly without them.

Actually; (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen)
There exists a common urban legend claiming that the Americans spent millions of dollars developing the Space Pen, and the Russians used a pencil.[1] In fact, NASA programs have used pencils (for example a 1965 order of mechanical pencils[1]) but because of the danger that a broken-off pencil tip poses in zero gravity and the flammable nature of the wood present in pencils[1] a better solution was needed.

NASA never approached Paul Fisher to develop a pen, nor did Fisher receive any government funding for the pen's development. Fisher invented it independently, and then asked NASA to try it. After the introduction of the AG7 Space Pen, both the American and Soviet (later Russian) space agencies adopted it. Previously both the Russian and American astronauts used grease pencils and plastic slates.[2]

[1] http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=9CF01C5C-E7F2-99DF-3EEFFCD06138AEC4
[2] http://history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html

I also note that extremely conductive/flammable graphite powder is not what you want floating around in side any spacecraft...

No research or objective evaluation of empiric data used as a basis for this claim; pure conjecture.

Research and data are available in the link to another article which makes essentially the same point.

If things are that simplistic what happens with a child that receives no praise? Or different sort of praise for different tasks? Or praise one day and none the other.

Yes, the research included a control case. I previously saw this idea in an article that is now only available for subscribers. The evidence is clear: praising children based on effort is effective, while praising for intelligence is highly counterproductive.

Oh, I'll readily admit some of what I referencing when I said that was superficial, in particular the rants on ending research on bear dna and fruitfly research without actually taking the time to figure out why the projects were proposed in the first place. And those didn't even contradict any popular faith. Once again, I know those examples were superficial in the sense that the research was carried out regardless, but that's the message I hear from the leaders of the right: If it sounds boring when reduced to a sentence fragment, it's not worthwhile.

Now if we wanted to look at their stance on evolutionary biology, was it really necessary to try to ban Richard Dawkins from the state of Oklahoma? Or there's the global warming position where Michelle Bachmann's science lecture in Congress 'proved' that it can't be happening because CO2 is 'natural' and is already 3% of the atmosphere (for reference, it's 0.04% CO2). That's why I think of them as having an anti-science perspective.

Oh, I'll readily admit some of what I referencing when I said that was superficial, in particular the rants on ending research on bear dna and fruitfly research without actually taking the time to figure out why the projects were proposed in the first place. And those didn't even contradict any popular faith. Once again, I know those examples were superficial in the sense that the research was carried out regardless, but that's the message I hear from the leaders of the right: If it sounds boring when reduced to a sentence fragment, it's not worthwhile.

Now if we wanted to look at their stance on evolutionary biology, was it really necessary to try to ban Richard Dawkins from the state of Oklahoma? Or there's the global warming position where Michelle Bachmann's science lecture in Congress 'proved' that it can't be happening because CO2 is 'natural' and is already 3% of the atmosphere (for reference, it's 0.04% CO2). That's why I think of them as having an anti-science perspective.

Nosema seems to be just a part of the equation - not the solution to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee_depopulation_syndrome#Nosema

A study reported in September 2007 found that 100% of afflicted and 80% of non-afflicted colonies contained Nosema ceranae.

Link to the September 2007 SciAm article about the study:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=bees-ccd-virus&page=1

This story is in direct disagreement with a recent article in SciAm, where they find colony collapse is MORE like caused by IAPV, and NOT the nosema parasite.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=saving-the-honeybee

And since the scientists in the SciAm article looked at a lot more than two apiaries, I am gonna have to give them a lot more credence.

Morbo voice: Decompression does not work that way!

If you don't exhale, your lungs burst and rather than blood rushing *out* of your circulatory system, air rushes *in*. Which kills you, of course. If you do exhale, you get to die through a combination of dehydration, freezing, and asphyxiation. Water sublimates in a vacuum. Moisture in your skin, eyes, and mouth goes straight to vapor. The capillaries are permeable, so moisture leaves them too (especially in your lungs), thickening your blood and causing severe acidosis. It also pools under your skin and in the muscles, severely bloating you. Evaporation of water rapidly reduces body temperature (especially on the skin). Nitrogen bubbles up in your bloodstream, a painful condition known as The Bends. Your stomach, bowel, and bladder contents can empty. Seizures occur. At the same time, your lungs work in reverse concerning oxygen -- it leaves your bloodstream. So not only are you not getting new oxygen, but you're losing your existing oxygen. Your brain shuts down in 15-30 seconds. The thickening blood and gas bubbles stop blood flow. You die after a couple minutes.

And... back to the original topic... the freezing of your senses and loss of blood shuts them down.

China is building up powerful clean power-stations, while the US is wasting billions on bullshit projects intended to keep people working, rather than doing something useful.

Why aren't we building these stations so as to be able to stop polluting the atmosphere with coal and whatever else gets burned to produce electricity here? The Chinese bloggers suspect, we aren't sure of the technology and want to test it in China first, but the truth is much less sinister — and much more worrying...

We have simply lost the drive and our ability to take bold steps and initiatives. Would I like a nuclear plant in my backyard? Yes, as a matter of fact, I would certainly prefer it to a coal-burning one (with its radioactive smoke) or to a wind-turbine, which would take up the entire plot to produce enough electricity for a single light-bulb.

...Kurzweil suggests we'll all be in robot bodies before the century's end...

I think I would rather have the robot augmentation than chance stem cells turning on me.

From the above link;
Then he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005. That tumor, it turns out, grew out of the stem cells, obtained from at least two aborted fetuses, used in his brain.

Besides can stem cells give you telescopic vision? Now that would be cool!

You're right, I did mean 1Hz. I was thinking in terms of Minutes.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=not-just-a-pump
Visionaries were seduced by the simplicity of the natural organâ(TM)s designâ"which really is just a four-chambered pumpâ"and somewhat naive about its dynamic complexity. Says Alfred Bove, vice president of the American College of Cardiology: "The God-given heart is a dynamically balanced, finely tuned organ, with the capacity to generate force, raise and lower pulse. Itâ(TM)s not possible to get that in an artificial heart."

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/ozpage1.php
One of the big challenges we are going to have with these axial flow pumps is trying to figure out what happens to the human body when you loose the heartbeat. ... The study of the heart has focused on this internal cadence or metronome.

And Define "fine". Breast feeding has been linked to IQ in numerous studies. Some studies show an increase in intelligence for each additional month the child was breastfed. (With additional sources linked). There are plenty of people who lead perfectly 'fine' lives with an IQ of 90. But if it came to a point where everyone had an IQ of today's 90. Well go watch Idiocracy.

transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb ...

I was replying to the person that I hit 'Reply' to. If you look at the legislation, it states 'non-human womb'. That probably includes artificial ones.

What makes you think there's something special about a chemical process that we'll never be able to replicate it?

HFCS. Chemically it should be the same, but there have been more than a few links with obesity. It's just a corn sweetener right? I mean how hard could getting around sugar tariffs be?

The "green gap" is just about to go away: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=dawn-of-miniature-green-lasers

you of course left out a few steps in the electric, IE electric power plant 40% efficient, power grid 95% efficient, (not to mention the costly endeavor in land and materials of maintaining the growing need for more grid) and of course the wasted effort of carrying a 800 pound battery instead of a 16 pounds of gas+ 40 pound generator. I am sure you would say something about charging by night or solar, that works as long as only a few cars and eventually... currently renewable energy is taxed over 100% with natural gas/coal needing burned 24/7

And you left out a few steps too, from well head to tank.

As far as renewables being taxed, correctly if I'm wrong but I'll take that to mean they can't provide all the electrical needs. If so, SciAm's article "A Solar Grand Plan" says solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs by 2050. Another abundant source of energy is wind. The Rocky Mountains along have enough potential wind power to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details wind potential in various regions of the US. As a baseload geothermal energy can be used.

Falcon

Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing. We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Citation needed.

More nuclear power plants are not needed. Alternative energy sources can generate plenty of electricity, even for electric vehicles. According to the article "A Solar Grant Plan" in SciAm by 2050 solar electricity can provide 69% of the US's energy. And the wind potential in the Rockies is enough to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity as well. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details by region the wind potential of the US. And for a baseload geothermal can be used, though the SciAm article also goes over energy storage.

Falcon

you seem to be the only one framing climate change as something only humans are doing

Oh. I see. I'm imagining the reporting on the subject .

All we need to do is generate solar fusion eruptions by directing highly energetic particle beams (see article) onto the sun's surface thereby causing a superfluid gas eruption.

NASA? The same NASA that went 7 years without ever noticing a problem with their methodology that was detectable with an open source statistics package?

7 years? How could Nasa have missed "that 1934 and not 1998 was the hottest year in the US" for 7 years in 2007, when they said in 2001 that "1934 was the hottest year in the US"? Well, sorry, but before you criticize NASA, you should get your own numbers up to date.

NASA?

The same NASA that went 7 years without ever noticing a problem with their methodology that was detectable with an open source statistics package?

The discovery of the real problem was made almost immediately after NASA GISS finally revealed their methods for public scrutiny.

The same qualities that makes open source good are the same reasons that all of these scientists should open up their work. We re talking about publicly funded science here.. its not supposed to be secret.

They dont get a free pass just because they are NASA, especialy because they've fucked it up before.

Nuclear is (or should be), without a doubt, the biggest part of the picture.

No, solar and wind should be the biggest part of our energy supply.

In it's current form it's relatively clean and safe.

There's no waste and no mining?

We should be breaking ground on dozens of new reactors, not looking to stick windmills in the middle of the atlantic.

If private businesses want to then they can without government subsidies. However without subsidies nuclear power would not be profitable.

Solar and wind have their place, but they're simply not a viable alternative if your goal is to stop burning fossil fuels.

TFA says wind farms in the Atlantic can provide a quarter of the US's electricity, what it does not say is that the Rockies can provide all of the US's electricity. And the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States lists more good places. In "A Solar Grand Plan" the writers say solar can provide 69% of the US's electricity by 2050. Solar and wind are vary viable.

Falcon

Also, even if there is enough wind out there to meet our energy needs in the most technical sense (something like the same kWhs in wind per year as the US uses in a year), it doesn't account for daytime peak and seasonal usage changes.

While TFA says offshore wind farms in the Atlantic can provide a quarter of the US's electricity it doesn't say the Rockies can provide all of the need for electricity. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States lists more wind potential. Then the Sciam article "A Solar Grand Plan" details how solar power can provide 69% of the US's electricity by 2050. Add geothermal and tidal and alternative energy sources can provide all the electrical needs of the US.

We need a mix of power plant types in order to function.

Agreed!!!

base load

Geothermal can be used as a base load. And the Sciam article covers energy storage from solar.

Falcon

Frankly I'm getting a bit tired of all the links to things that cause autism/asperger etc. Every day its a new thing.

So far we have:
Weather
Premature Birth
Environment
PVC
MMR vaccine
Genes
Vinyl Flooring
Shampoo
(There are probably a lot more)

As a parent of a autistic boy, I'm frankly tired of these so called empirical 'studies' which quite frankly don't prove a thing. The only thing that has helped with my son is ABA. I wish the editors would stop putting each and every one of these on the front page.

Frankly I'm getting a bit tired of all the links to things that cause autism/asperger etc. Every day its a new thing.

So far we have:
Weather
Premature Birth
Environment
PVC
MMR vaccine
Genes
Vinyl Flooring
Shampoo
(There are probably a lot more)

As a parent of a autistic boy, I'm frankly tired of these so called empirical 'studies' which quite frankly don't prove a thing. The only thing that has helped with my son is ABA. I wish the editors would stop putting each and every one of these on the front page.

Are plastics immune to electromagnetic radiation or something? The magnetron gets all the atoms jiggling as Feynman put it. The atoms and molecules that constitute food heat up faster than the plastic or stoneware but not always. I had a coffee cup that looked like all my other coffee cups but would be untouchable for minutes after microwaving. It was the one I insisted my unwelcome house guests use for their morning coffee. Too bad it broke.

wow, what a comment. my point is that not a single one of your views has any scientific backing. that dr. Watson says blacks are less intellegent proves what? That India and china regularly beat every western country at intelligence tests but are so far economically behind the west says what?

it is a foolish notion to think that just because some averages on tests stand at a certain level in a certain country we have determined anything. that is sociology, not biology. Watson said we "may" find genes for intelligence in the next 10 years.

here is real science on that very search:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=searching-for-intelligence-in-our-genes

you also fail in economics. migration is a great way to increase economic activity, lower prices for the vast majority of people, and allow for greater specialization in an economy. The less migration and diversity allowed, the less efficient your economy will be. A simple example would be international trade in capital (not money, means of production). at the end of the day, that is all people are and open borders allows for efficient flow of the most important form of capital, human capital. Any barriers you erect will inevitably harm global prosperity.

but I digress. my point was you lack any and all scientific research to back your claim. that doesn't make it false or unpalatable, just unproven and unsupported. IQ tests fail to be a reasonable indicator for several reasons, and truly your statistics are only correlation (ie meaningless) and not causation(what we would like to study because the data goads us with the correlations that it has).

again, it could be true, but there is no scientific research to make me believe your position any more than the PC position (and frankly, I don't believe either. I'm comfortably agnostic about this).

Darwin was not a psychologist! He was a med-student who eventually earned a degree in theology(!) after he neglected his medical studies.

But he didn't blindly accept a literal interpretation of the bible for a vague explanation of how life works. He got off his ass, collected empirical data, and formed hypotheses. And he was a lifelong naturalist.

See this. Scientific American also have a series of great articles for Darwin's 200th birthday, you may want to check 'em out.

When Republican governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal took to TV immediately after President Obama's address to the Joint Session of Congress last month, he whined that the government funded volcano monitoring is "wasteful spending". Of course he was lying, since he said "$140M for volcano monitoring", when that money is for USGS "facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities", all kinds of important stuff for running and protecting our country.

Then Jindal went into some kind of weird story about his standing for sanity during Hurricane Katrina (which he was lying about, too - and it was a story about the lone Democrat getting things done, surrounded by Republicans including Jindal doing nothing but flapping their lips). Reminding us what happens when the government doesn't monitor predictable local natural disasters that kill thousands and destroy cities.

This was the official Republican response. Maybe they just want to keep secret their main competition for spewing filthy hot air that kills Americans.

Oh please. I bet you're the sort of person who believes that we can replace all our coal plants with Wind and Hydro by 2015 if we spent enough money.

In "A Solar Grand Plan" Sciam lays out how Solar power could provide 69% of the USA's electricity by 2050, about 35 years after your 2015. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States by the Renewable Resource Data Center (RReDC) of the government's National Renewable Energy Lab details the potential wind power of various areas of the US. As T Boone Picken's Picken's Plan lays out the Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind energy to also provide electricity to the 48 continuous states.

First you have to get the liscensing for all these power plants. For Hydro, this is mostly impossible since someone will stand up and say that the turbines chew up fish at a ridiculous rate and destroy the river. For wind, people will complain about the birds. These drawbacks were true in 1960 but they aren't anymore. You'll be tied down for at least 3 years trying to get the permits and approval to build. And that's being optomistic.

Dams do mess up rivers. However some years ago there was a story on /. about how hydro can be used to generate electricity without dams. Instead water mills like egg beaters are lowered from a boom into the river then the moving water spins the mills. I wonder what's happened with that, I haven't heard anything about it since. What's stopping wind, especially offshore wind farms in places like Cape Cod in so called "liberals", who are not liberal, backyard are NIMBYs. And I bet many of them say they're environmentalists.

Coal is mostly clean now

Coal is no where near being clean, and never will be. Sure emissions from coal-fired power plants may be cleaner than before but coal mining is not clean what so ever.

As for natural Gas, its completely clean.

Gas is not clean either. Sure, like coal, CO2 may be captured and stored. Nitrogen oxides also have to be captured. Gas, at least Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG, also needs the same sort of infrastructure as oil.

I *want* one of these plants in my backyard.

I'd rather have PVs on my roof and a wind genie in my backyard.

If you want to turn this country into Vermont, maybe you should just move to Vermont.

No, the state for the Free State Project is New Hampshire, next door.

Falcon

i also submitted this story this morning so since this made it i guess mine will be scrapped. because of this i can also give you a few links. This is great technology no doubt.

USM Main Website

Scientific American had a hit on this.

School of Polymers and High Performance Materials Link

Marek W. Urban is the principle chemist and researcher for the project and was the co-author of the findings and its current research publication in the journal Science.

Video of an actual test after scratching a surface.

Sorry if i am a little excited but its nice to be personally linked to a university that is about 15 minutes from where you live.

Wait, why won't nuclear work?

There is a blurb in a recent Scientific American that states there is tens of thousands of years of uranium in the ocean. There isn't currently technology that can obtain the uranium, but if it comes down to a choice between your sad-face distopia and some radiation, do you really think people are going to choose a distopia?

Here's the blurb:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last

Much of the logging that is done leads to tree farms, but not all of it (for instance, the majority of North America has been logged at least once). This is somewhat related to it being rather difficult to farm hardwoods (they die a lot, and grow funny, mitigating the benefits of nice neat rows).

Even if logging ceased, there are all sorts of more subtle things to worry about, like worms:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=invasive-earthworms-denude-forests

This is the second relatively invariant influenza target antigen identified now. The previous one being the M2 protein, which has given rise to great hopes of a universal flu vaccine.

As for which one seems more promising, I think we'll definitely see results from the M2-based work first. It has a substantial head start (I think there are some candidates in Phase II testing already), and it doesn't look like there are any fundamental obstacles popping up yet.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered-a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.

Two technologies could greatly extend the uranium supply itself. Neither is economical now, but both could be in the future if the price of uranium increases substantially. First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium-a 60,000-year supply at present rates. Second, fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors, which generate more fuel than they consume, would use less than 1 percent of the uranium needed for current LWRs. Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies.

Using the seawater-derived fuel plus the NEA estimate of currently-available fuel in breeder reactors gives 8.5 MILLION years of power at current demand.

Now where have I heard this before? Oh yeah! http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-aliens-among-us

The article in Wired seems to be a 'dumbed down for public consumption' version of an article that appeared in Scientific American in August 2007. The original was authored by Dr Susana Martinez-Conde and Dr Stephen L Macknik, and referred to a study they had completed in 2006. There is a preview available here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=windows-on-the-mind

unfortunately one would have to pay for the whole article as they are a subscription magazine. But the proof is in the preview, and if anyone should want more, I would encourage them to go to their local library and find the magazine there. The article in Scientific American is much more educational.

Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.

Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things:
1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count
2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.

The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before

Wrong! It is pretty clear that autism is more common than before and it seems to be something in the environment, but we do not know what, from Scientific American:

The California researchers concluded that doctors are diagnosing autism at a younger age because of increased awareness. But that change is responsible for only about a 24 percent increase in children reported to be autistic by the age "A shift toward younger age at diagnosis was clear but not huge," the report says. Also, a shift in doctors diagnosing milder cases explains another 56 percent increase. And changes in state reporting of the disorder could account for around a 120 percent increase. Combined, Hertz-Picciotto said those factors "don't get us close" to the 600 to 700 percent increase in diagnosed cases.

Read more here: New Study:>Autism Linked to Environment: Scientific American

You obviously haven't heard of concentrated solar thermal/electric power. All it takes is some concrete and steel, glass (SiO2), maybe aluminum for mirrors, and optionally molten salt for storage.

I have heard of it, and have posted links to concentrated solar thermal power myself. One of the most frequent links I've posted is for SciAm article "A Solar Grand Plan". However solar is not the baseload, the salt is.

Falcon

The solar energy concentration is not sufficient to convert the amount of energy we need with the technology we have without bulldozing half of the available landmass.

According to SciAm's "A Solar Grand Plan" all of the electricity used in the US in 2006 would take less land than in the Southwest to produce. But you're smarter than they are right?

If it were as easy as you think, it would already be solved, for Pete's sake.

Until you add vested interests.

Brazil contemplating how much of the rain forest they could knock down to grow corn

Except Brazil doesn't use corn, Brazil uses sugarcane which is a better feedstock than corn. An even better feedstock than sugarcane is Switchgrass.

Falcon

One day, far in the future, we'll look back at the past (c. 2050), and shake our heads, and wonder why people thought a "commonwealth" society could work. All it encourages is parasitism of the slothful upon the industrious.

That's a pervasive myth, but it turns out, it's not true.

Sorry economics is not even close to being a science.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes

Wow. You are just hell bent on relying on journalists that have no understanding of anything but the arrangement of words for you information.

That entire diatribe is based on the 19th century view of economics theory. He in no way mentions the developments of Keynes, Friedman, the Austrian school, etc. He insists on debunking economics based on what the theories were when the science first emerged. If that's a fair way to assess a branch of science, I can easily say that climate science is not science because those idiots claimed that we were entering an ice age back in the 1970's, when the Earth has been clearly warming.

He cites no sources, illustrates a complete misunderstanding of modern economics and is using total misinformation to promote his view of things. The article is nothing about a rant on a subject that the author obviously has no understanding of. He challenges it on the ideas that it adopted from physics at the time, which he himself admits was incomplete. He could easily argue that physics is not science either using the reasoning he laid out. However, he does at least admit physics evolved through study and experimentation. What he fails to acknowledge is that Economics has done the same.

Economics IS a science. It's much younger than the sciences of Physics and Chemistry, so it makes sense that it wouldn't be as completely developed yet. It's also a social science, which in and of itself makes it a more difficult endeavor to undertake.

Anyone that doesn't believe that Economics is a science must also take the position that psychology, sociology, anthropology and all the other social sciences are not science either.

It's science and is universally defined as such.

Sorry economics is not even close to being a science.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes

I'm reminded of a study over a decade ago which linked bras to breast cancer. It was published in a book with complete data on about 4700 women, roughly half with breast cancer and half without. What it found, in brief, is that women who wore bras rarely or for very short periods had about the same breast cancer rates as men (who also don't wear bras). Here's an article about it:

http://www.007b.com/bras_breast_cancer.php

It is not a strict, peer reviewed study. There's a criticism of it here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-underwire-bras-cause-cancer

However, notice that there's no evidence presented against the idea, only vague dismissals of "unlikely" or "far-fetched". The book's original authors admit that it's not definitive, but meant to be a basis for further investigation.

http://www.selfstudycenter.org/doctor.htm

What strikes me as odd is that there's been no followup studies at all. Even if the idea of bras causing cancer is wrong, that study stumbled across something which may be the cause of over 99% of breast cancers, and I would be very interested to find out what it was. And I'm sure a lot of women who's lives have been devastated because of it would like to know that too (those who died from it probably would have also been interested).

But not only is preventing breast cancer not profitable, the prevention itself could cost a fortune, if it's that simple. Much like the fight to prevent the prevention of lung cancer has been fought to absurd lengths by the tobacco industry. Here's an article by one of the original authors of the bra/cancer study on the opposition to even presenting the idea and (scant, but growing) evidence to the public.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Bras-and-the-Breast-Cancer-Cover-Up&id=795041

This certainly supports the view that the money is all in the treatment after the fact, not in the prevention, so prevention will never get the same effort put into it as both promoting the disease (McDonalds) and treating it (cholesterol reducing drugs). Billions of dollars are deafening even when they whisper.

You WANT the tank to store hot water overnight, even if you never use the electric elements.

No I don't, by keeping water warm you're wasting energy, heating only the water used at the point of use saves energy.

That $420 Billion would provide almost 3,000 gigawatts with PV technology, a lot more than even 400 Gigawatts.

Source? I was simply using the number quoted by the 'grand plan'.

The link I provided, it's the print version of the SciAm article. Check where it says "Photovoltaic Farms", the second paragraph below it. "In our plan, by 2050 photovoltaic technology would provide almost 3,000 gigawatts (GW), or billions of watts, of power." Then about half way down to "Stage One: Present to 2020", in the paragraph below it says "The cumulative subsidy would total $420 billion" This would be spent between now and 2020 after which solar would become competitive.

Falcon

Sorry for the delay, had work to do and felt the need to review your linked material. I was listening to NPR talking about how reducing CO2 emissions 80% by 2050 won't be enough. Coal->NG doesn't save 80% on CO2 emissions, and I'm still skeptical about the practicality of various sequestriation activities. Basically, I view them as time bombs as large or larger than nuclear waste would be.

They are after all only meant to serve for when alternative sources do not provide enough energy

You're touching on part of the problem for renewable energy - once you start getting above 20%, you need substantial amounts of standby power generators. The highest efficiency NG turbines are both too expensive and don't start fast enough. Nuclear power CAN scale up and down fairly quickly, just not off and on - it's like an idling car motor, you can still coast on it.

Between hydro, wind, and solar, we should be able to supply ~50-60% of our electricity needs. Why not supply the other 40% with nuclear?

Properly insulated building reduce if not eliminate the need to heat with LNG. There are other ways to heat as well. Former President Bush used geothermal heating to heat his Crawford, Texas ranch. People in New York City use geothermal heating. People also use solar thermal heating, even in Northern Europe.

I'm all for insulating buildings, I think I even mentioned tearing down and rebuilding houses occasionally making a lot of sense. Still, that's a long term solution at the fastest. My house already has all the insulation that's practical given it's design(though new windows would help some), I honestly assess it to be at the 'tear down and build fresh' state(for a multitude of reasons). I'm just saving up a practical downpayment to do it. It'll not only be highly insulation(thinking about earthen construction, actually), it'll also have a ground source heat pump for heating/cooling. I've recommended solar water heating to my relatives down in florida, but given my latitude and the resulting extra costs for solar water heating, I think I'll stick to using the heat pump to provide hot water. Especially since they make ones now that can turn on to provide the hot water when necessary. If I stay in the state when I leave my current job, I won't need the cooling part often, so it'll help when I want hot water in the summer.

Another point would be that I think we should concentrate on getting people off of oil heating first - like my grandparents in upstate New York. By the way, they live on a mountain, so you can't get very deep before you hit bedrock, making geothermal a bit difficult. Given the lattitude and weather, they'll need a backup over solar heating. So what would you suggest?

As for geothermal off of NG provided electricity - the top NG plants are only about 60% efficient at transforming NG into electricity, vs 97% for direct burning for heat. You get about a 3-1 advantage with geothermal, so we're at 180% - but we have the cost of building the power plant and tens of thousands for the heat pump, to only get double the heat per unit of NG. It's far cheaper, only a couple thousand, for putting in a burner system at the home. Things get worse if you're using a 40% or lower efficiency NG plant like most converted coal facilities.

Keep in mind that I'm also looking towards how we're going to power a future generation of electric vehicles.

Only if LNG were to replace coal and nuclear, but not if it is only used as a baseload.

What do you think Nuclear/Coal is used for? As the cheapest sources of electricity they're used almost universally for baseload. Natural Gas is the biggest source of peak power at this time. I'm somewhat disregarding hydro, of course, since it's pretty much maxed in this country.

A So

Coffee grounds have a high oil content and can be turned into biodiesel:
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=could-coffee-be-the-alternative-fue-2008-12-10

Okay, in advocating that there's enough NG to replace coal and nuclear you post a link that says "but LNG will not be a panacea for North American natural gas shortfall" ?

It wasn't meant as a permanent replacement for coal or nuclear, only as a way LNG can be used until there is a better method of generating a baseload of energy.

Second link - aren't we trying to gain energy independence from the middle east?

Both the first link and third list places where LNG come from that are not in the Middle East. The first one lists Trinidad and Tobago which is in the Caribbean. The third lists Barents Sea which is between Greenland and Northern Europe.

Besides - Natural Gas Imported To US For Electricity Generation May Be Environmentally Worse Than Coal.

That's for the link, I didn't see that before. However as you quoted in your post as a baseline capacity it should not matter if LNG plants operate at a low capacity. They are after all only meant to serve for when alternative sources do not provide enough energy.

By the way, that also increases costs for people trying to heat their homes with 97% efficient NG systems.

Properly insulated building reduce if not eliminate the need to heat with LNG. There are other ways to heat as well. Former President Bush used geothermal heating to heat his Crawford, Texas ranch. People in New York City use geothermal heating. People also use solar thermal heating, even in Northern Europe.

We'd need 27 trillion cubic feet per year to replace the coal & nuclear plants.

Only if LNG were to replace coal and nuclear, but not if it is only used as a baseload. That means when alternative energy sources do not provide enough energy. However as I said earlier SciAm has the article "A Solar Grand Plan" that says "solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." For wind power, the Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to supple electricity to the 48 continuous states. On the East Coast Cape Cod, Cape Hatteras, and points in between the Carolinas and Mass are good places for offshore wind farms. On the West Coast, between British Columbia and southern California there are also good sites for wind, and solar power.

People like you are looking for the next big thing in energy when a bunch of different technologies can be used instead. You're focused on one solution when there are many others.

Falcon

If you covered every inch of the US desert with solar panels you still wouldn't generate the electricity we need to power this country. Wind/Solar is a nice addon but that is all.

"A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050."

The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the 48 continuous states: Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States

Falcon

Scientific American just had an article on fast neutron reactors that get around the waste issue and don't create any weapons grade material: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste&page=1

SciAm has another article, "A Solar Grand Plan" which along with Picken's Plan shows why nuclear power isn't needed.

Falcon

Scientific American just had an article on fast neutron reactors that get around the waste issue and don't create any weapons grade material: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste&page=1

SciAm has another article, "A Solar Grand Plan" which along with Picken's Plan shows why nuclear power isn't needed.

Falcon

I think I remember that; but I don't remember it being a coal mine

'

It was coal, "".

Well, roofing is one of the more dangerous jobs in the USA, if you go installing solar panels on all the roofs in the USA you're bound to get some accidents.

Solar panels don't need to be cited on all roofs, though I'd more roofs with them. SciAm's "A Solar Grand Plan" details how PVs can be cited in the deserts of the Southwest. There'd be few if any roofs to climb.

As for the semiconductors, the main use for a nuclear plant would be control computers - and a single roof's worth of solar panels would be far more silicon than is needed in a nuclear plant.

However neither solar nor wind genies need much concrete and steel whereas nuclear power plants require vast amounts of both. And they are high in embedded energy.

GenIII plant will be something like 1.2GW vs You need a lot of steel/concrete for 300 some odd 198 meter tall towers and 126 meter wide blades.

First off, maybe you typed the first link above wrong, I get "requested URL not found". As for the DailyKos link, I'd like to see where those numbers come from. Footings for wind turbines might take up more space than a nuclear power plant but they can be spread around. With big enough backyard, you can put one in your backyard, which I'd like to do, along with PVs on my roof.

Oh, there's one more thing I keep on forgetting. I read an article I think in SciAm that nuclear power plants need more water than any other type of power plant. Throughout the world aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be recharged. Where is the water need to run nuclear power plants going to come from? However it is, nuclear power would not be profitable and Wall Street would not pay for it if government did not subsidize it.

Falcon

Except that there are not any safer viable alternatives.

BS, solar and wind are safer.

More radioactivity has been released into the atmosphere through burning coal than has ever been released by Nuclear means. More deaths have occurred due to Fossil fuels than nuclear energy.

I can imagine, just look at how many die in mining accidents. However uranium mining is also nasty.

No more than 20% of a countries supply can be powered by wind and have a stable grid (frequency fluctuations).

Improving energy storage can help. However increasing the efficiency of power plants can have a big impact. "American Scientist" has an article in the current issue, January-February 2009, about this. "Getting the Most from Energy: Recycling waste heat can keep carbon from going sky high" goes into how inefficient power generation is today in the US. Literally gigawatts of power go up smoke stacks, when a lot of that power can be captured.

That leaves 80% to be made up by Solar, Water and Geothermal.

SciAm had an article, "A Grand Solar Plan" about how solar power can provide 69% of the US's electricity by 2050. That's not enough? The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential wind power to supply all 48 continuous states with electricity. Several places in NYC are already using geothermal power for heating and cooling. With a properly insulated building though body heat is enough to keep a room warm. Check out the "American Scientist" article linked to above. More than 100 years ago Thomas Edison's ConEd's power plants were more efficient than many plants are today. Not only did the plants produce electricity but they also provided heat to buildings with Combined Heat-power Plants, CHP, today called Cogeneration.

Falcon