Dr. Fuhrman's writing is based on his reviewing thousands of studies (or so he claims, with the footnotes to prove it in "Eat to Live"). Nutrition is at the root of the "diseases of kings" in the Western world, which seem to include to some high degree obesity, heart disease, diabetes, much cancer, stroke, and perhaps even early dementia. That's seems fairly scientifically proven at this point. The big problem is their is not big profit in prevention or cure through nutrition (including fasting and sunlight), but there are big profits in palliation and endless treatments. So, no one suggests strongly to eat a lot of vegetables to get rid of type II diabetes, while doctors line up to do bariatric surgeries and install insulin pumps.
I've looked at thousands of health documents over the years, and Dr. Fuhman's stuff stands out as the best researched (even if he is not perfect IMHO, but really close).
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/robot-rights.html ""If artificial intelligence is achieved and widely deployed (or if they can reproduce and improve themselves) calls may be made for human rights to be extended to robots," the report says. Warming to its theme, it goes on to say that such rights "would likely include" social responsibilities such as voting and paying taxes."
That's why we need a "basic income", stronger local subsistence communities with solar panels and 3D printers, a stronger gift economy, and/or better participatory democratic government planning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
Ray Kurzweil said much the same thing: http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 "An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense âoeintuitive linearâ view. So we wonâ(TM)t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century â" it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at todayâ(TM)s rate). The âoereturns,â such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. Thereâ(TM)s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth...."
By the way, on what Carter is up to now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/11/president-jimmy-carter-interview "The young Jimmy studied engineering at the US naval academy in Annapolis, and even now he's drawn to practical problems he believes he can solve. The Carter Center, the foundation he and Rosalynn set up to promote and champion human rights, has been quietly working towards eradicating some of the world's nastier diseases. Guinea worm, a debilitating parasite, affected 3.5 million people worldwide when the Carter Center decided to try to eradicate it. Last year there were just 1,797 cases, mostly in South Sudan, and it looks set to be only the second (after smallpox) disease ever eliminated. Also on their hit list is river blindness, trachoma and lymphatic filariasis, otherwise known as elephantiasis. As part of their human-rights efforts, they monitor elections in some of the most troubled corners of the world. "Our basic principle that has shaped us ever since we were founded is that we don't duplicate what other people do," says Carter. "If the World Bank or Harvard University or whoever is adequately taking care of a problem, we don't get involved. We only try to fill vacuums where people don't want to do anything."...
Jimmy Carter approached his career with all the pragmatism of a practical man, and the deep-rooted morality of a religious one. American politics is increasingly dominated by what's called the religious right; conservatives who share an anti-scientific world view, who treat evolution as a heretical theory, and universal healthcare as dangerous socialism. But Carter was of the religious left, a very different beast. He has a profound faith, rooted in his Baptist upbringing. He and Rosalynn read the Bible to each other every night and have done so for "30-something years". (They read in Spanish, so that they can practise their language skills at the same time; they're relentless self-improvers.) "I read a chapter one night," says Rosalynn. "And he reads a chapter the next night."
Politics wasn't so much a life choice he made, as the culmination of a sequence of events. "I was the chairman of the school board, and I was concerned about the public school system," he tells me. "I served as governor for as long as the constitution would permit me, and after that I ran for president in 1975. As you probably know, I was elected."
I heard, I say. Was there really never a master plan?
"Not at all. It was always just the next step. When I told my mother I was running for president, she said, president of what?"...
What he's most proud of, though, is that he didn't fire a single shot. Didn't kill a single person. Didn't lead his country into a war -- legal or illegal. "We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet Union."..."
Nice try, and an impressive bit of calculation, but a few issues: * The energy used beyond electricity is mostly process heat or home heating, and so the 50% conversion losses you implicitly assumed in your scale up don't necessarily apply, so by your worst case figures we are back to 3% (I said about 1%). * Energy efficiency can reduce the demand for power, and in fact US electric power use is predicted to decline in the near future for reasons including energy efficiency. For example, the current state of the art in home design requires no furnace because of good insulation and layout (google on houses without furnaces). * PV uses less land than solar thermal towers you cited, and can easily be put on roofs and possibly roads, and can store power in electric vehicles and other places, so your worst case choice (all solar thermal and that one particular sprawling plant) is not reasonable. * You don't have to size the system for the worst month, because there are other complementary systems like wind, hydro, and even synthetic biofuels or hydrogen that could be produced and stored to cover that 10% extra demand in winter months, and also some energy intensive processes could be run seasonally (like grinding rock to make fertilizer or running some smelters). Also, we could have somewhat more energy capture in the south and send the power up north via electric power lines or fuel pipelines or energy embodies in products like steel or liquid nitrogen. So, your overall base calculations are probably off by a factor of two to four based on those sorts of factors about sizing for the worst part of the year since you are assuming no buffering capacity (which goes with your attempt to argue there is no good energy storage for renewables).
Put these all together, and we are much closer to the 1% figure I suggested (maybe even lower), which could even potentially be handled to a large extent by solar roadways (and right of ways) and rooftops so that nobody even noticed that much. So, this picture is probably accurate: http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
But even if it was 3% or so to split the difference, so what? 50% of US land goes to raising animals that are, essentially, killing us early (google on "rave diet movie"). So, we should get upset that 6% of current agricultural land (which looks like a moonscape much of the year anyway) is solar thermal collectors instead of soybeans intended for factory farms?
That said, if we have a responsible system of governance in the USA, stuff like thorium power, which requires a higher level of oversight than renewables, might be appealing. One reason I tend to support renewables over nuclear stuff is issues about dysfunctional politics and dysfunctional corporate oversight, as renewables in general require less centralized control requiring high levels of trust. Of course, if we had abundant cheap energy, then our politicians might have an easier time of things, too, as a chicken and egg problem? No doubt we will get thorium power eventually for whatever reasons as it is a neat concept -- it's what we should have had instead of TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
"There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen."
How do you explain the price of PV/watt dropping in half over the last couple of years?
Also, when you account for externalities like pollution, risk, health, and defense, renewables (plus energy efficiency like passive solar) have been cheaper since the 1970s, so the current mix is what is "insane" from a capitalist perspective, but is profitable for some who can privatize gains but socialize costs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power "Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"
You are making broad sweeping generalizations, but not providing details. For example, you say solar takes a lot of land but you don't cite how much land coal mining takes,
Why can't we just make hydrogen from wind farms and burn it in turbines when the wind is not blowing to even the load? Or store it in metal hydrides and use it in fuel cells? How much more expensive is it really in current dollars? And how much cheaper is it given you don't have all the health costs of coal burning? Example: http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/17/cost-of-coal-500-billion-year-in-u-s-harvard-study-finds/ "This study lays out in detail the costs the coal industry is NOT PAYING and what everyone else IS PAYING! The paper details all the factors that are not quantifiable, like lost work time when a mother has to take her child to the doctor for an asthma attack or the cost to a family for the loss of a loved one or wage earner.... Each stage in the life cycle of coalâ"extraction, transport, processing, and combustionâ"generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and thus are often considered as âoeexternalities.â We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. We focus on Appalachia, though coal is mined in other regions of the United States and is burned throughout the world."
The amount of land needed to go all solar in the USA is less than 1% -- compare it to, say, animal product production which is what about half the land area in the USA is used for (mostly for animal fodder) where eating too many animal products is overall shortening US life expectancies. http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.ht
Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the post and I hope you look at some of the links.
On the theme you raise, I've also been wondering if many people in the past might have lived longer than we give them credit for, as well (in other words, maybe the infant mortality rates may be off?).
I've seen different estimates of how many people were in North America, so you are right, it might have been higher, although I would think 2 million to 20 million for North American (above Mexico) would be more likely, but I don't know for sure. One source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States "Estimating the number of Native Americans living in what is today the United States of America before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers has been the subject of much debate. A low estimate of around 1 million was first posited by the anthropologist James Mooney in the 1890s, by calculating population density of each culture area based on its carrying capacity. In 1965, the American anthropologist Henry Dobyns published studies estimating the original population to have been 10 to 12 million. By 1983, he increased his estimates to 18 million.[42] He took into account the mortality rates caused by infectious diseases of European explorers and settlers, against which Native Americans had no immunity. Dobyns combined the known mortality rates of these diseases among native people with reliable population records of the 19th century, to calculate the probable size of the original populations.[4][5]"
The general issue is that the further you go from the equator, the more land per person you need for subsistence for various climate and sunlight reasons. So, one acre might support a person by the equator, but you might need 1000 or more up around Northern Canada.
So, yes, I was going with the low end. Of course, our wilderness is more degraded now, as well. Also, if you add in Mexico and below, I think the total for both continents could have been 100 million or so.
Although another aspect of that is that the natural diversity seen in North America of animals during the 1700s and 1800s was also partially a recovery from previously heavy exploitation by natives, who, as you say, often died from introduced disease.
And more on what really happened during the invasion of North America, in the own words of the profit-driven invaders (as well as some accompanying missionaries) who saw the value of the land but not of the alternative society: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
A related theme from Native Americans: http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty "The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always en
This is probably what I was thinking of on efficiency: http://truecostblog.com/2009/01/04/electric-vs-gasoline/ "On a full life cycle basis including power plants and oil wells, electric vehicles manage about 34% efficiency versus only 14% for gasoline vehicles [1]"
OK, so you want to create a big industry (thorium power) over the next twenty years effectively from scratch, and then when solar panels are dirt cheap, we'll say?:-)
How can it be more trouble to add storage to the grid, including by molten salt, than to build thorium or whatever power plants?
Or perhaps we can have solar thermal mainly for night-time and PV mainly for day time?
You can look at the trends for yourself on things like PV. They are reaching grid parity. There is non conceivable reason why, once they do, there won't be tons more research on them to further drop their prices. People are talking about solar paints already, and there will be huge profit motives to make that work eventually as fossil fuels and mainstream nuclear go away for cost reasons.
You're right; you did list some storage options, but then you went on to say there was no viable option to fossil fuels and nuclear for baseline loads. Which is it? Here I've pointed to currently (or near currently) cost-effective PV and solar thermal, with a currently commercially viable energy storage solution for nighttime in use in a real location. Why is that mix not as viable as fossil fuels for handling the load for the grid? You said it takes a lot of land, but so does fossil fuel mining and roads and so on.
Good points overall, and renewable energy advocates have long asked just for a "level playing field". Although I still feel that accountable government is better than government too small to regulate giant wealth concentrations that tend to privatize gains but socialize costs. But how to get there from here is a difficult question. Our market system needs to better price in "externalities": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Still, if you look at those links, you'll find a bit more cause for optimism, even in the "rust belt" pretty soon. The thing is, ignoring externalities, if solar is halving in price every few years, it is still "too expensive" until it suddenly is not. That "suddenly" is about to happen (and is happening in sunnier remoter places like Hawaii). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
Meanwhile everyone just goes on about the "too expensive" bit.
Funny comic on fake press releases for imaginary new green energy technologies, but you can look for yourself at the continually falling cost for PV solar energy like at solar buzz and draw your own conclusions.
Or see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity "First Solar has indicated that its manufacturing cost has fallen in 2009 to 93 cents per watt, down 5% in three months and down 28% in a year. By 2014, it expects to drive down cost per watt to make solar modules to fall to between 52 and 63 cents. The biggest driver of the lower costs is better efficiency.[13]"
Why do people continue to deny the obvious? It is like if I said computer hard drives will probably cost about half as much for the same storage in three years, and people were all over me saying "prove it" or "that's impossible". Look at the industry trends for yourself. And there are some similarities to some degree between Moore's law for chips and what is happening with solar (not quite as pronounced, but both some supporting technology in common).
I knew Carter was a farmer and a bit of a nuclear engineer, but I did not know he was a Bob Dylan fan.:-) Although it is an interesting song Carter mentions, a protest song about protest songs, or maybe something more?:-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie's_Farm
That is a great video on Carter. He really was, morally, the best we could have hoped for as a president. If Carter had gotten four more years, I wonder what our world would be like, as he made mistakes, but might have learned from them?
But in any case, it is sad that such a morel person, Jimmy Carter, lost his bid for re-election in part for blowback for immoral things done by earlier administrations (the original destruction of a democratic government in Iran). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
I had renewable energy newspapers from around 1980-1984 and you could see the change from optimism to despair as Reagan came in and made changes. Otherwise, we might have had this sort of 24 hours a day solar-thermal power plant twenty years ago in the USA: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html
See, for optimism: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm "In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth."
In any case, we will see solutions in other countries (including China which is led by a lot of engineers). http://www.economist.com/node/13496638 "The presence of so many engineer-politicians in China goes hand in hand with a certain way of thinking. An engineerâ(TM)s job, at least in theory, is to ensure things work, that the bridge stays up or the dam holds. The process by which projects get built is usually secondary. That also seems true of Chinese politics, in which government often rides roughshod over critics. Engineers are supposed to focus on the long term; buildings have no merit if they will col
Efficient in what sense? Who cares if half the heat is lost? Car engines lose like 90% of the energy value of fuel and we still use them (although electric cars are better and we will be seeing them -- and electric car batteries could help level the grid load from renewables in various ways).
By the way, just to make gasoline from oil it may take more energy from electricity and natural gas than the gasoline holds: http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Add on 90% conversion losses on top of that, and how is that for "inefficiency"? But look around you and there are probably gas powered cars everywhere (mostly for political reasons at this point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
I'd generally agree with you that if you want heat energy, you are best off collecting solar as heat. However, you stated essentially there are no storage solutions, and I pointed out one that is obviously working and could be used further.
Also, solar electric can be a lot more convenient in a lot of places than solar thermal (like for air conditioning loads that peak with the sun, or charging electric cars during the day, or when you have limited space on your site, or when you want electricity, and so on), so efficiency is relative to what you want to optimize and other constraints.
Another storage medium is creating synthetic carbon-based fuels using solar power and some feedstock.
What does "efficiency" matter in that sense, if the alternative is more Fukushimas or Chernobyls or some Peak Oil Dark age? So, we produce twice as much solar panels to deal with 50% thermal losses. Big deal. PV Solar panels will be dirt cheap (or really, as cheap as leaves) in twenty years. Who cares about 50% efficiency loss in that sense? Even if more storage conversion efficiency would be nice, don't get me wrong, and I'm all for energy efficiency in use as well.
Yes, I know newer nuclear plants (Hyperion?) are supposed to be safer (although they may still have unsafe chokepoints with reprocessing plants), but the point is, there are lots of factors to consider. You said no storage solutions exist, but they do exist. That is a fact, like that solar thermal plant shows, and that has been knows for decades.
Which is more likely to be workable in the short term, using molten salt to store excess wind and PV energy (to smooth the grid) or inventing a whole new nuclear cycle (and even thorium reactors and the related bigger processing cycle are vulnerable to big risks).
If we invested any significant amount of money in refining these ideas, on the order of the scale of the energy problem, so trillions of dollars of investment, we would have amazing solutions. That we have the solutions we do is a tribute to the human spirit of continued innovation despite most energy-related financial resources going to prop up the oil, gas, and mainstream nuclear industries as well as the wars and mining that support them -- either directly or by ignoring externalities like health issues from mercury pollution or defense taxes or nuclear meltdown risk assumed by the government and so on.
There has also been a lot of progress on both hot and cold fusion, even on relatively small budgets, so it may be a lot closer than you think, as may other innovations (many may be BS but it only takes on success -- Hydrogen doing something interesting in Nickel matrix looks interesting, for example): http://newenergytimes.com/ http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
With that said, it is a shame that we did not develop thorium reactors in the 1940s. Peo
Steve Jobs has lived with cancer for a long time. Suzanne Somers also has lived with cancer for a long time. It would seem like these are people with ideas worth exploring (even if neither may have all of the story).
See also my other comment here which has supporting links: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2424522&cid=37382624 "Actually, vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin), Iodine, and eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans are a better bet to prevent (or in some cases cure) cancer."
And you are right to suggest people be active (or even pro-active) about understanding their own health issues. Much of our medical care system, as far as chronic disease, is broken.
It took me years of searching (and reading several books) and several false starts to find out my own health issues (including joint pain) and family health issues were caused mainly by vitamin D deficiency and vegetable deficiency disease (plus food additives etc.).
I'd suggest you keep Googling. Cancer has causes. What are the causes? A. Challenges to your body (food additives like from processed meat but also other sources, acrylamides from typically burned or browned meat, other stuff in your environment). B. You body's immune system's inability to cope with cancer cells that are continually popping up (as a result of challenges or randomness); that inability comes from an immune system weakened by nutritional problems like vitamin D deficiency or iodine deficiency or phytonutrient deficiency, bad stress, or other factors including lack of exercise (exercise increases lymph circulation). People are always getting cancer cells -- the issue is, does the body dispose of them?
Cancer risk can be reduced by reducing challenges (A) as well as boosting your immune system (B).
Once you have cancer, resolving it is more problematical and iffy by nutritional means, but see Dr. Fuhrman for some insights on that (he writes of successes and failures by brave people). http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx "The most recent scientific advancement in the anti-cancer research is the identification of specific foods and food elements that offer powerful protection against cancer. These foods are essential for both prevention of cancer and also increased odds of survival after diagnosis. Harmful foods and supplements have also been identified, and avoiding or minimizing these is equally as important.
Though most people would prefer to take a pill and continue their eating habits, this will not provide the desired protection. Unrefined plant foods, with their plentiful anti-cancer compounds, must be eaten in abundance to flood the body's tissues with protective substances. Vegetables and fruits protect against all types of cancers if consumed in large enough quantities. Hundreds of scientific studies document this. The most prevalent cancers in our societies are plant-food-deficiency diseases. The benefits of lifestyle changes are proportional to the changes made. As we add more vegetable servings, we increase our phytochemical intake and leave less room in our diets for harmful foods, enhancing cancer protection even further. Let's review some of these research findings and then review what a powerful, anti-cancer diet will look like. "
That is based on science.
Of course, science itself has problems as it has been corrupted by financial interests:
Ignoring how there are lots of energy storage solutions that are improving from batteries to hydrogen stored in metal hydrides, what about simple thermal storage in molten salt? http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html "The Gemasolar 19.9-MW Concentrated Solar Power system is a âoepower towerâ plant, consisting of an array of 2,650 heliostats (mirrors) that aim solar radiation at the top of a 140-m (450-ft) central tower. The radiation heats molten salts that circulate inside the tower to temperatures of more than 500 ÂC (932 ÂF). The hot molten salts are then stored in tanks that are specially designed to maintain the high temperatures. This cutting-edge heat storage system enables the power plant to run steam turbines and generate electricity for up to 15 hours without any incoming solar radiation."
Why not just have solar PV heat molten salt, too? So, there are solutions.
Thorium power would be cool, true. But we'll probably have hot or cold fusion soon enough, rendering it obsolete.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/ "We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."
Look into vitamin D Deficiency and vegetable deficiency disease and iodine deficiency (the most common western deficiencies). Also, avoid excesses of other vitamins (too much vitamin A?) and all food additives. Look up Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. John Cannell. Someday we'll have cheap blood tests for nutritional status. Anyway, I'd say an 80% or so chance this advice will help, not even knowing the symptoms, because that is about the percentage of chronic disease that comes from stuff like those deficiencies. If your wife is in the other 20%, well, good luck finding a specific issue.
Things like exercise and gratitude and spirituality and breathing and community can help too -- see Dr. Andrew Weil on that.
First, to anyone who lost loved ones in the disaster, you have my condolences, as grief can still be fresh even a decade later, especially if it was a parent's adult child who died. My main point in writing this is to prevent more such disasters.
My wife flew home on 9/10/2001 from Washington, D.C. I can't think what might have happened had it been one day later. She attended a Genoa I workshop to talk on narrative methods and conflict resolution where someone said, "Maybe we should apply some of these ideas to thinking about that Osama bin Laden guy?" But it was too late to prevent what happened.
I agree with other comments here that in some ways 9/11 was Slashdot's finest hour as it kept working when other sites crashed under the load, and it was where I too turned for news updates. We lived near NYC at the time (we could smell the towers burning) and we lost reception on some TV stations with the loss of the towers. When the first tower fell, besides thinking about the sad loss of people, I recalled all the discussions on Slashdot previously on the attempts at encroachment on civil liberties, and thought, with the fall of the tower, so would fall our civil liberties, as those efforts would get the upperhand finally. I'm glad things have been not quite as bad as they could have been domestically, even if the amount of suffering caused abroad (like in Iraq) by the USA as it lashed out in a blind rage has been enormous (and to what end?).
In the same way that the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D, can help moderate the human immune system, I can think that some sunshine on global issues will ultimately help heal them. But, as Stephen Zunes, a middle east academic scholar said after he tried to make people aware of what was going on with the Middle East and the USA but was accused of all sorts of things: http://www.truth-out.org/legacy-911-and-war-intellectuals/1315608304 "Raising such questions was not popular, however. Detectives investigating a crime trying to establish a motive are generally not accused of defending the criminals. Fire inspectors inspecting the ruins of a building for the cause of the blaze are not accused of defending its destruction. Yet I found myself, along with scores of other Middle Eastern scholars, being attacked for supposedly defending terrorism."
Ironically, while many people still believe "they hate us because we are free" and that terrorists abhor our democratic values, the truth is more that "they hate us because we fund their oppressors" and if we had stuck to our democratic values in crafting our foreign policy, we might not have seen so much blowback. Sadly, the invasion of Iraq based on false information and broad misconceptions has likely spawned a whole generation of terrorists. As Smedley Butler, a Major General in the US Marine Corps, said, "War is a racket". So, some have said, Iraq and even Afghanistan were supposed to be quagmires. http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
9/11 has brought the issue of security into the public consciousness in the USA. A big problem is that our mainstream view of collective security is not very advanced. In the same way Stephen Zunes says we need to think more deeply about the Middle East and our foreign policy, I'd suggest we in the USA need to think more deeply about what our notion of participatory democracy and how it could relate to collective security, including, for slashdotters' contemplation, how to prevent a cyber-9/11.
Towards that goal of moving such a dialog forward, here are some l
Slashdot Mirror
Dr. Fuhrman's writing is based on his reviewing thousands of studies (or so he claims, with the footnotes to prove it in "Eat to Live"). Nutrition is at the root of the "diseases of kings" in the Western world, which seem to include to some high degree obesity, heart disease, diabetes, much cancer, stroke, and perhaps even early dementia. That's seems fairly scientifically proven at this point. The big problem is their is not big profit in prevention or cure through nutrition (including fasting and sunlight), but there are big profits in palliation and endless treatments. So, no one suggests strongly to eat a lot of vegetables to get rid of type II diabetes, while doctors line up to do bariatric surgeries and install insulin pumps.
I agree with you on the need for more research. Dr. Fuhrman is trying to do that:
https://www.nutritionalresearch.org/
Much of the research out there is compromised though by financial interests.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
I've looked at thousands of health documents over the years, and Dr. Fuhman's stuff stands out as the best researched (even if he is not perfect IMHO, but really close).
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/04/robot-rights.html
""If artificial intelligence is achieved and widely deployed (or if they can reproduce and improve themselves) calls may be made for human rights to be extended to robots," the report says. Warming to its theme, it goes on to say that such rights "would likely include" social responsibilities such as voting and paying taxes."
Also:
http://www.metafuture.org/Articles/TheRightsofRobots.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_artificial_intelligence
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article1695546.ece
So, yes, your comment on "slavery" is very insightful.
That's why we need a "basic income", stronger local subsistence communities with solar panels and 3D printers, a stronger gift economy, and/or better participatory democratic government planning.
My presentation on that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
Ray Kurzweil said much the same thing: ..."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
"An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense âoeintuitive linearâ view. So we wonâ(TM)t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century â" it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at todayâ(TM)s rate). The âoereturns,â such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. Thereâ(TM)s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth.
By the way, more on this topic: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/07/renewable-energy-bad-nuclear-power-good.html
By the way, on what Carter is up to now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/11/president-jimmy-carter-interview ... ... ..."
"The young Jimmy studied engineering at the US naval academy in Annapolis, and even now he's drawn to practical problems he believes he can solve. The Carter Center, the foundation he and Rosalynn set up to promote and champion human rights, has been quietly working towards eradicating some of the world's nastier diseases. Guinea worm, a debilitating parasite, affected 3.5 million people worldwide when the Carter Center decided to try to eradicate it. Last year there were just 1,797 cases, mostly in South Sudan, and it looks set to be only the second (after smallpox) disease ever eliminated. Also on their hit list is river blindness, trachoma and lymphatic filariasis, otherwise known as elephantiasis. As part of their human-rights efforts, they monitor elections in some of the most troubled corners of the world. "Our basic principle that has shaped us ever since we were founded is that we don't duplicate what other people do," says Carter. "If the World Bank or Harvard University or whoever is adequately taking care of a problem, we don't get involved. We only try to fill vacuums where people don't want to do anything."
Jimmy Carter approached his career with all the pragmatism of a practical man, and the deep-rooted morality of a religious one. American politics is increasingly dominated by what's called the religious right; conservatives who share an anti-scientific world view, who treat evolution as a heretical theory, and universal healthcare as dangerous socialism. But Carter was of the religious left, a very different beast. He has a profound faith, rooted in his Baptist upbringing. He and Rosalynn read the Bible to each other every night and have done so for "30-something years". (They read in Spanish, so that they can practise their language skills at the same time; they're relentless self-improvers.) "I read a chapter one night," says Rosalynn. "And he reads a chapter the next night."
Politics wasn't so much a life choice he made, as the culmination of a sequence of events. "I was the chairman of the school board, and I was concerned about the public school system," he tells me. "I served as governor for as long as the constitution would permit me, and after that I ran for president in 1975. As you probably know, I was elected."
I heard, I say. Was there really never a master plan?
"Not at all. It was always just the next step. When I told my mother I was running for president, she said, president of what?"
What he's most proud of, though, is that he didn't fire a single shot. Didn't kill a single person. Didn't lead his country into a war -- legal or illegal. "We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet Union."
Nice try, and an impressive bit of calculation, but a few issues:
* The energy used beyond electricity is mostly process heat or home heating, and so the 50% conversion losses you implicitly assumed in your scale up don't necessarily apply, so by your worst case figures we are back to 3% (I said about 1%).
* Energy efficiency can reduce the demand for power, and in fact US electric power use is predicted to decline in the near future for reasons including energy efficiency. For example, the current state of the art in home design requires no furnace because of good insulation and layout (google on houses without furnaces).
* PV uses less land than solar thermal towers you cited, and can easily be put on roofs and possibly roads, and can store power in electric vehicles and other places, so your worst case choice (all solar thermal and that one particular sprawling plant) is not reasonable.
* You don't have to size the system for the worst month, because there are other complementary systems like wind, hydro, and even synthetic biofuels or hydrogen that could be produced and stored to cover that 10% extra demand in winter months, and also some energy intensive processes could be run seasonally (like grinding rock to make fertilizer or running some smelters). Also, we could have somewhat more energy capture in the south and send the power up north via electric power lines or fuel pipelines or energy embodies in products like steel or liquid nitrogen. So, your overall base calculations are probably off by a factor of two to four based on those sorts of factors about sizing for the worst part of the year since you are assuming no buffering capacity (which goes with your attempt to argue there is no good energy storage for renewables).
Put these all together, and we are much closer to the 1% figure I suggested (maybe even lower), which could even potentially be handled to a large extent by solar roadways (and right of ways) and rooftops so that nobody even noticed that much. So, this picture is probably accurate:
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
But even if it was 3% or so to split the difference, so what? 50% of US land goes to raising animals that are, essentially, killing us early (google on "rave diet movie"). So, we should get upset that 6% of current agricultural land (which looks like a moonscape much of the year anyway) is solar thermal collectors instead of soybeans intended for factory farms?
That said, if we have a responsible system of governance in the USA, stuff like thorium power, which requires a higher level of oversight than renewables, might be appealing. One reason I tend to support renewables over nuclear stuff is issues about dysfunctional politics and dysfunctional corporate oversight, as renewables in general require less centralized control requiring high levels of trust. Of course, if we had abundant cheap energy, then our politicians might have an easier time of things, too, as a chicken and egg problem? No doubt we will get thorium power eventually for whatever reasons as it is a neat concept -- it's what we should have had instead of TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
"There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen."
Have you actually looked at the chart here?
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
How do you explain the price of PV/watt dropping in half over the last couple of years?
Also, when you account for externalities like pollution, risk, health, and defense, renewables (plus energy efficiency like passive solar) have been cheaper since the 1970s, so the current mix is what is "insane" from a capitalist perspective, but is profitable for some who can privatize gains but socialize costs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"
You are making broad sweeping generalizations, but not providing details. For example, you say solar takes a lot of land but you don't cite how much land coal mining takes,
Why can't we just make hydrogen from wind farms and burn it in turbines when the wind is not blowing to even the load? Or store it in metal hydrides and use it in fuel cells? How much more expensive is it really in current dollars? And how much cheaper is it given you don't have all the health costs of coal burning? Example: ... Each stage in the life cycle of coalâ"extraction, transport, processing, and combustionâ"generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and thus are often considered as âoeexternalities.â We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. We focus on Appalachia, though coal is mined in other regions of the United States and is burned throughout the world."
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/17/cost-of-coal-500-billion-year-in-u-s-harvard-study-finds/
"This study lays out in detail the costs the coal industry is NOT PAYING and what everyone else IS PAYING! The paper details all the factors that are not quantifiable, like lost work time when a mother has to take her child to the doctor for an asthma attack or the cost to a family for the loss of a loved one or wage earner.
The amount of land needed to go all solar in the USA is less than 1% -- compare it to, say, animal product production which is what about half the land area in the USA is used for (mostly for animal fodder) where eating too many animal products is overall shortening US life expectancies.
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.ht
Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the post and I hope you look at some of the links.
On the theme you raise, I've also been wondering if many people in the past might have lived longer than we give them credit for, as well (in other words, maybe the infant mortality rates may be off?).
I've seen different estimates of how many people were in North America, so you are right, it might have been higher, although I would think 2 million to 20 million for North American (above Mexico) would be more likely, but I don't know for sure. One source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
"Estimating the number of Native Americans living in what is today the United States of America before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers has been the subject of much debate. A low estimate of around 1 million was first posited by the anthropologist James Mooney in the 1890s, by calculating population density of each culture area based on its carrying capacity. In 1965, the American anthropologist Henry Dobyns published studies estimating the original population to have been 10 to 12 million. By 1983, he increased his estimates to 18 million.[42] He took into account the mortality rates caused by infectious diseases of European explorers and settlers, against which Native Americans had no immunity. Dobyns combined the known mortality rates of these diseases among native people with reliable population records of the 19th century, to calculate the probable size of the original populations.[4][5]"
The general issue is that the further you go from the equator, the more land per person you need for subsistence for various climate and sunlight reasons. So, one acre might support a person by the equator, but you might need 1000 or more up around Northern Canada.
So, yes, I was going with the low end. Of course, our wilderness is more degraded now, as well. Also, if you add in Mexico and below, I think the total for both continents could have been 100 million or so.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions:
http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239
Although another aspect of that is that the natural diversity seen in North America of animals during the 1700s and 1800s was also partially a recovery from previously heavy exploitation by natives, who, as you say, often died from introduced disease.
Another angle on that general theme of affluence in the stone age:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
Another related book on the pandemic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
And more on what really happened during the invasion of North America, in the own words of the profit-driven invaders (as well as some accompanying missionaries) who saw the value of the land but not of the alternative society:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
A related theme from Native Americans:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always en
This is probably what I was thinking of on efficiency:
http://truecostblog.com/2009/01/04/electric-vs-gasoline/
"On a full life cycle basis including power plants and oil wells, electric vehicles manage about 34% efficiency versus only 14% for gasoline vehicles [1]"
OK, so you want to create a big industry (thorium power) over the next twenty years effectively from scratch, and then when solar panels are dirt cheap, we'll say? :-)
How can it be more trouble to add storage to the grid, including by molten salt, than to build thorium or whatever power plants?
Or perhaps we can have solar thermal mainly for night-time and PV mainly for day time?
Another related item on molten salt:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/brightsource-energy-to-offer-solar-salt-storage-too/
You can look at the trends for yourself on things like PV. They are reaching grid parity. There is non conceivable reason why, once they do, there won't be tons more research on them to further drop their prices. People are talking about solar paints already, and there will be huge profit motives to make that work eventually as fossil fuels and mainstream nuclear go away for cost reasons.
You're right; you did list some storage options, but then you went on to say there was no viable option to fossil fuels and nuclear for baseline loads. Which is it? Here I've pointed to currently (or near currently) cost-effective PV and solar thermal, with a currently commercially viable energy storage solution for nighttime in use in a real location. Why is that mix not as viable as fossil fuels for handling the load for the grid? You said it takes a lot of land, but so does fossil fuel mining and roads and so on.
We could even make solar roadways if we wanted:
http://www.solarroadways.com/
That evnut page collects a bunch of different calculations and figures, and you are right they do not all agree.
Good points overall, and renewable energy advocates have long asked just for a "level playing field". Although I still feel that accountable government is better than government too small to regulate giant wealth concentrations that tend to privatize gains but socialize costs. But how to get there from here is a difficult question. Our market system needs to better price in "externalities":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
Still, if you look at those links, you'll find a bit more cause for optimism, even in the "rust belt" pretty soon. The thing is, ignoring externalities, if solar is halving in price every few years, it is still "too expensive" until it suddenly is not. That "suddenly" is about to happen (and is happening in sunnier remoter places like Hawaii).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
Meanwhile everyone just goes on about the "too expensive" bit.
Funny comic on fake press releases for imaginary new green energy technologies, but you can look for yourself at the continually falling cost for PV solar energy like at solar buzz and draw your own conclusions.
Or see this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
"First Solar has indicated that its manufacturing cost has fallen in 2009 to 93 cents per watt, down 5% in three months and down 28% in a year. By 2014, it expects to drive down cost per watt to make solar modules to fall to between 52 and 63 cents. The biggest driver of the lower costs is better efficiency.[13]"
Why do people continue to deny the obvious? It is like if I said computer hard drives will probably cost about half as much for the same storage in three years, and people were all over me saying "prove it" or "that's impossible". Look at the industry trends for yourself. And there are some similarities to some degree between Moore's law for chips and what is happening with solar (not quite as pronounced, but both some supporting technology in common).
Thanks for the link and other suggestion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Shark_Hunt
I knew Carter was a farmer and a bit of a nuclear engineer, but I did not know he was a Bob Dylan fan. :-) Although it is an interesting song Carter mentions, a protest song about protest songs, or maybe something more? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie's_Farm
That is a great video on Carter. He really was, morally, the best we could have hoped for as a president. If Carter had gotten four more years, I wonder what our world would be like, as he made mistakes, but might have learned from them?
Don't know if this is true?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy_theory
But in any case, it is sad that such a morel person, Jimmy Carter, lost his bid for re-election in part for blowback for immoral things done by earlier administrations (the original destruction of a democratic government in Iran).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
I had renewable energy newspapers from around 1980-1984 and you could see the change from optimism to despair as Reagan came in and made changes. Otherwise, we might have had this sort of 24 hours a day solar-thermal power plant twenty years ago in the USA:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html
I fear you may be right about gridlock etc., but I can hope you will be wrong. Maybe we will at least see action at a local level?
http://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Power-Localism-David-Morris/dp/0807008753
See, for optimism:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth."
In any case, we will see solutions in other countries (including China which is led by a lot of engineers).
http://www.economist.com/node/13496638
"The presence of so many engineer-politicians in China goes hand in hand with a certain way of thinking. An engineerâ(TM)s job, at least in theory, is to ensure things work, that the bridge stays up or the dam holds. The process by which projects get built is usually secondary. That also seems true of Chinese politics, in which government often rides roughshod over critics. Engineers are supposed to focus on the long term; buildings have no merit if they will col
Efficient in what sense? Who cares if half the heat is lost? Car engines lose like 90% of the energy value of fuel and we still use them (although electric cars are better and we will be seeing them -- and electric car batteries could help level the grid load from renewables in various ways).
By the way, just to make gasoline from oil it may take more energy from electricity and natural gas than the gasoline holds:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
Add on 90% conversion losses on top of that, and how is that for "inefficiency"? But look around you and there are probably gas powered cars everywhere (mostly for political reasons at this point):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
I'd generally agree with you that if you want heat energy, you are best off collecting solar as heat. However, you stated essentially there are no storage solutions, and I pointed out one that is obviously working and could be used further.
Also, solar electric can be a lot more convenient in a lot of places than solar thermal (like for air conditioning loads that peak with the sun, or charging electric cars during the day, or when you have limited space on your site, or when you want electricity, and so on), so efficiency is relative to what you want to optimize and other constraints.
Another storage medium is creating synthetic carbon-based fuels using solar power and some feedstock.
What does "efficiency" matter in that sense, if the alternative is more Fukushimas or Chernobyls or some Peak Oil Dark age? So, we produce twice as much solar panels to deal with 50% thermal losses. Big deal. PV Solar panels will be dirt cheap (or really, as cheap as leaves) in twenty years. Who cares about 50% efficiency loss in that sense? Even if more storage conversion efficiency would be nice, don't get me wrong, and I'm all for energy efficiency in use as well.
Yes, I know newer nuclear plants (Hyperion?) are supposed to be safer (although they may still have unsafe chokepoints with reprocessing plants), but the point is, there are lots of factors to consider. You said no storage solutions exist, but they do exist. That is a fact, like that solar thermal plant shows, and that has been knows for decades.
Which is more likely to be workable in the short term, using molten salt to store excess wind and PV energy (to smooth the grid) or inventing a whole new nuclear cycle (and even thorium reactors and the related bigger processing cycle are vulnerable to big risks).
Compressed air stored in salt caverns is another solution that has been in use for decades in one location.
http://web.ead.anl.gov/saltcaverns/uses/compair/index.htm
If we invested any significant amount of money in refining these ideas, on the order of the scale of the energy problem, so trillions of dollars of investment, we would have amazing solutions. That we have the solutions we do is a tribute to the human spirit of continued innovation despite most energy-related financial resources going to prop up the oil, gas, and mainstream nuclear industries as well as the wars and mining that support them -- either directly or by ignoring externalities like health issues from mercury pollution or defense taxes or nuclear meltdown risk assumed by the government and so on.
There has also been a lot of progress on both hot and cold fusion, even on relatively small budgets, so it may be a lot closer than you think, as may other innovations (many may be BS but it only takes on success -- Hydrogen doing something interesting in Nickel matrix looks interesting, for example):
http://newenergytimes.com/
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
With that said, it is a shame that we did not develop thorium reactors in the 1940s. Peo
Steve Jobs has lived with cancer for a long time. Suzanne Somers also has lived with cancer for a long time. It would seem like these are people with ideas worth exploring (even if neither may have all of the story).
See also my other comment here which has supporting links:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2424522&cid=37382624
"Actually, vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin), Iodine, and eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans are a better bet to prevent (or in some cases cure) cancer."
Another item is the work done by the author of the Rave Diet:
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
I agree with you Google is awesome for health issues -- eventually.
http://www.ginside.com/2007/830/comics-dilbert-to-provide-google-health-plan/
And you are right to suggest people be active (or even pro-active) about understanding their own health issues. Much of our medical care system, as far as chronic disease, is broken.
It took me years of searching (and reading several books) and several false starts to find out my own health issues (including joint pain) and family health issues were caused mainly by vitamin D deficiency and vegetable deficiency disease (plus food additives etc.).
I'd suggest you keep Googling. Cancer has causes. What are the causes?
A. Challenges to your body (food additives like from processed meat but also other sources, acrylamides from typically burned or browned meat, other stuff in your environment).
B. You body's immune system's inability to cope with cancer cells that are continually popping up (as a result of challenges or randomness); that inability comes from an immune system weakened by nutritional problems like vitamin D deficiency or iodine deficiency or phytonutrient deficiency, bad stress, or other factors including lack of exercise (exercise increases lymph circulation). People are always getting cancer cells -- the issue is, does the body dispose of them?
Cancer risk can be reduced by reducing challenges (A) as well as boosting your immune system (B).
Once you have cancer, resolving it is more problematical and iffy by nutritional means, but see Dr. Fuhrman for some insights on that (he writes of successes and failures by brave people).
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx
"The most recent scientific advancement in the anti-cancer research is the identification of specific foods and food elements that offer powerful protection against cancer. These foods are essential for both prevention of cancer and also increased odds of survival after diagnosis. Harmful foods and supplements have also been identified, and avoiding or minimizing these is equally as important.
Though most people would prefer to take a pill and continue their eating habits, this will not provide the desired protection. Unrefined plant foods, with their plentiful anti-cancer compounds, must be eaten in abundance to flood the body's tissues with protective substances. Vegetables and fruits protect against all types of cancers if consumed in large enough quantities. Hundreds of scientific studies document this. The most prevalent cancers in our societies are plant-food-deficiency diseases. The benefits of lifestyle changes are proportional to the changes made. As we add more vegetable servings, we increase our phytochemical intake and leave less room in our diets for harmful foods, enhancing cancer protection even further. Let's review some of these research findings and then review what a powerful, anti-cancer diet will look like. "
That is based on science.
Of course, science itself has problems as it has been corrupted by financial interests:
Ignoring how there are lots of energy storage solutions that are improving from batteries to hydrogen stored in metal hydrides, what about simple thermal storage in molten salt?
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html
"The Gemasolar 19.9-MW Concentrated Solar Power system is a âoepower towerâ plant, consisting of an array of 2,650 heliostats (mirrors) that aim solar radiation at the top of a 140-m (450-ft) central tower. The radiation heats molten salts that circulate inside the tower to temperatures of more than 500 ÂC (932 ÂF). The hot molten salts are then stored in tanks that are specially designed to maintain the high temperatures. This cutting-edge heat storage system enables the power plant to run steam turbines and generate electricity for up to 15 hours without any incoming solar radiation."
Why not just have solar PV heat molten salt, too? So, there are solutions.
Thorium power would be cool, true. But we'll probably have hot or cold fusion soon enough, rendering it obsolete.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."
Too bad we have spend the last thirty years going down that wrong path, and in more ways than energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
But it is not too late to go back... And it is even easier now:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4818
Is GE greenwashing too? http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/06/will-crystalline-solar-kill-thin-film-a-conversation-with-applied-materials-solar-head-charlie-gay.html
Anyway, that's why this article is silly. Solar will displace fossil fuels and nuclear through market forces alone at this point over the next decade. We are passing the tipping point, even though, if you account for externalities like pollution, risk management, and defense costs, renewables have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s or earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
http://www.naturalnews.com/030274_Suzanne_Somers_Michael_Douglas.html
http://www.amazon.com/Knockout-Interviews-Doctors-Cancer-Prevent/dp/0307587460
And see my other comments here on vitamin D, iodine, and veggies...
Look into vitamin D Deficiency and vegetable deficiency disease and iodine deficiency (the most common western deficiencies). Also, avoid excesses of other vitamins (too much vitamin A?) and all food additives. Look up Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. John Cannell. Someday we'll have cheap blood tests for nutritional status. Anyway, I'd say an 80% or so chance this advice will help, not even knowing the symptoms, because that is about the percentage of chronic disease that comes from stuff like those deficiencies. If your wife is in the other 20%, well, good luck finding a specific issue.
Things like exercise and gratitude and spirituality and breathing and community can help too -- see Dr. Andrew Weil on that.
It's maybe more like this?
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
http://newsletter.vitalchoice.com/e_article000728662.cfm?x=b8M6Cmn,b2JyLGgM
http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2011/08/02/new-study-concludes-the-need-for-vitamin-d-repletion-in-systemic-lupus-erythematosis-patients/
http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2011/09/06/vitamin-d-and-more-on-lupus-august-mailbag-pt-2/
Actually, vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin), Iodine, and eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans are a better bet to prevent (or in some cases cure) cancer.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx
http://breastcancerchoices.org/iodine.html
Avoiding food additives and avoiding burned food (acrylamide) will help, too.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Study_finds_burning_your_food_could_cause_some_cancers
And no doubt avoiding some other toxins etc.
First, to anyone who lost loved ones in the disaster, you have my condolences, as grief can still be fresh even a decade later, especially if it was a parent's adult child who died. My main point in writing this is to prevent more such disasters.
My wife flew home on 9/10/2001 from Washington, D.C. I can't think what might have happened had it been one day later. She attended a Genoa I workshop to talk on narrative methods and conflict resolution where someone said, "Maybe we should apply some of these ideas to thinking about that Osama bin Laden guy?" But it was too late to prevent what happened.
I agree with other comments here that in some ways 9/11 was Slashdot's finest hour as it kept working when other sites crashed under the load, and it was where I too turned for news updates. We lived near NYC at the time (we could smell the towers burning) and we lost reception on some TV stations with the loss of the towers. When the first tower fell, besides thinking about the sad loss of people, I recalled all the discussions on Slashdot previously on the attempts at encroachment on civil liberties, and thought, with the fall of the tower, so would fall our civil liberties, as those efforts would get the upperhand finally. I'm glad things have been not quite as bad as they could have been domestically, even if the amount of suffering caused abroad (like in Iraq) by the USA as it lashed out in a blind rage has been enormous (and to what end?).
It has been very sad also to see the USA develop some kind of immune disorder as it attacks itself in various ways (same as with asthma or arthritis) like with a war on the "unexpected".
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
In the same way that the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D, can help moderate the human immune system, I can think that some sunshine on global issues will ultimately help heal them. But, as Stephen Zunes, a middle east academic scholar said after he tried to make people aware of what was going on with the Middle East and the USA but was accused of all sorts of things:
http://www.truth-out.org/legacy-911-and-war-intellectuals/1315608304
"Raising such questions was not popular, however. Detectives investigating a crime trying to establish a motive are generally not accused of defending the criminals. Fire inspectors inspecting the ruins of a building for the cause of the blaze are not accused of defending its destruction. Yet I found myself, along with scores of other Middle Eastern scholars, being attacked for supposedly defending terrorism."
Ironically, while many people still believe "they hate us because we are free" and that terrorists abhor our democratic values, the truth is more that "they hate us because we fund their oppressors" and if we had stuck to our democratic values in crafting our foreign policy, we might not have seen so much blowback. Sadly, the invasion of Iraq based on false information and broad misconceptions has likely spawned a whole generation of terrorists. As Smedley Butler, a Major General in the US Marine Corps, said, "War is a racket". So, some have said, Iraq and even Afghanistan were supposed to be quagmires.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
9/11 has brought the issue of security into the public consciousness in the USA. A big problem is that our mainstream view of collective security is not very advanced. In the same way Stephen Zunes says we need to think more deeply about the Middle East and our foreign policy, I'd suggest we in the USA need to think more deeply about what our notion of participatory democracy and how it could relate to collective security, including, for slashdotters' contemplation, how to prevent a cyber-9/11.
Towards that goal of moving such a dialog forward, here are some l
"you still have to send out ROBOTS in trucks to keep the infrastructure functional."
FTFY.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm