Ablating the material from the front to slow it down is SLOW. That means it's going to occupy every orbit between here and the ground for several orbits on it's way down. Not good.
And why do you want it down, anyway. You just want it disabled (so it doesn't broadcast) and moved to a safe place. There are several of those around. (Not lots, but more than a few.) Some of them are where things that just drift would eventually end up anyway, so all they're really good for is a junk heap. The problem is to move it to one of those "sufficiently" quickly, and without damaging anything that's valuable. So an ion-rocket would be a good choice. It may not be fast, but it's fast enough. It's relatively light. It takes very little fuel. It can be powered by sunlight. The only real problems are 1) getting it out there, and 2) attaching it. But those would strain the art without killing the budget. (N.B.: A cheap ion-rocket would probably product a few grams of thrust, maybe a bit less. But that's enough if you aren't fighting gravity and aren't in a hurry. In this position we can work with gravity rather than fighting it, as is done at lift-off.)
You'd trust them to keep their word at *this* point?
They've already promised to keep things secret, and then sold them. They'd need something considerably more binding than a mere promise before I'd trust them now. Can't think what would work, but I'm not guaranteeing that there isn't something. E.g., if they offered a public key system, I wouldn't trust them not to, at some point, hack the code. But that doesn't prove that there isn't something they could offer that I'd accept. (I just don't believe it.)
P.S.: FWIW, I never signed up for Facebook in the first place, largely because of doubts as to the honesty of their promises (and otherwise the security of their code).
P.P.S.: This is Google, isn't it? The company who once was known as "Do no evil"?
The Earth-Sun Lagrange points are 60 degrees either ahead of or trailing the Earth in its orbit around the Sun.
But getting from a geosynchronous orbit to an Earth-Sun Lagrange point would require a lot of doing. It would be lots easier to impact on the Moon. And why bother. If you don't want it to be in high Earth orbit, put in in high Lunar orbit. (Say just past the Lagrange point where Earth's gravity balances the Moon's.
I don't think a laser's a bad idea. Of course, you aren't trying to disable it, you're trying to move it outwards. So you don't what a lot of power at any one time, you just want to keep it up for a long time. I'm not sure, however, that it's practical.
Shooting it down with something that fragments it is, as you noted, a REALLY bad idea.
Probably the best idea is to send out an ion-rocket engine, and attach it in such a way that it will move it to a higher orbit. How this could be done isn't clear, but it would definitely strain the art of telefactors and robotics. (And as such is a good idea on it's own.)
OTOH, I've been assuming that it isn't ferro-magnetic. If it is, then the ion-rocket could be attached with a magnet and a cable.
Why do you say it isn't scaling? It scales with the number of people.
Why do you say it stops working? It works clear down to each apartment having it's own repeater.
It only stops being useful if you insist that people subscribe to a particular cell. If it's being run by a municipality, then you can change from repeater to repeater without worrying about "can my system work on the new cell?" It's true that this is a bother if each cell requires a new contract of something, as in "You were in a GTE cell, but now you're in a Verizon cell", but there's no reason a municipal net should have that kind of problem.
FWIW, a municipality could put up cell towers for coverage much more cheaply than the telcos do, because there WOULDN'T be competition for coverage. There would a an attempt at total coverage. The telcos could rent "bandwidth" to run their service over the municipal net, rather like trucks run over the municipal streets. Just imagine what it would cost if each company had to lay it's own streets. (OK, it's not an accurate analogy, but despite ways in which it doesn't fit, it still points at inherent inefficiencies of the current system.)
You may not have a doubt that nuclear power is the way to go, but *I* do.
Mind you, I have no doubt that nuclear power could be made much better than oil. But nuclear plants are, inherently, centralized. As such the foster centralizations of power. This is a clear drawback. (But *IF* you go nuclear, please have all the plants owned by the government. Not by contractors who save money by cutting back on safety.)
Also, if we do go with nuclear as any significant part of our power source, we need to start building breeder reactors QUICKLY!! There isn't that much U235 available in rich ores. That could spark another militaristic foreign policy "to ensure our energy future". Additionally, breeders can consume the fuel down until it's safe. There doesn't need to *BE* any hot waste. (To speak of. Nothings quite perfect.)
But I think that a combination of wind and solar is our best staple power source. OTOH, I'm not totally certain that solar cells are the best for a centralized power plant. Using mirrors to heat a centralized element until it's hot enough to melt sodium has a lot to recommend it. And the, e.g, Sahara could then export a lot of it's heat as power. (Again, though, we end up with a large centralized energy source. Also transmission losses.)
Sorry, but windmills require maintenance. It's not "all gravy" once you get the mill built.
It *IS* true that with well designed equipment the maintenance costs are lower than with oil...but they need to be, because there are other costs. Specifically line ballasts to handle the periods when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. That basically means that you need to store about two weeks usage at the rate if usage of the coldest (or hottest) part of the year. Even that's cutting your margins a little close, but you can probably import power given that much warning. (Which, of course, you don't get. You don't know how long you'll be "becalmed". If I recall correctly occasionally sailing ships would be becalmed for a month or longer.)
Solar cells are a bit more predictable, but the prediction isn't always to their benefit. In some locales you can predict a month or more of overcast per year. (I remember when I was growing up in South San Francisco it seemed like there were years without a single sunny day...though I'm sure that was an overestimation.)
So... you've got to suit your power source to your site, and you need lots of backup power. It's no wonder that oil can coal looked like better solutions, though now they're causing global problems.
Everything has problems. The question is "Which problems are easiest to solve?"
FWIW, I think that a combination of wind and solar is usually the best choice, but it comes equipped with many problems that need to be dealt with. (E.g., as a backup power source, how about you pump a bunch of water into a reservoir in a high location...perhaps with an airtight pressure cover. Then when you want to supplement your power you run some of the water into a lower reservoir via a turbine. It works, but it's not cheap.) Just remember to identify the costs of the problems, and factor them into the cost of your proposed solution. (Yes, it will make you look expensive compared to coal and oil. But they *aren't* including the costs to the problems they cause as a part of their estimated costs. They're insisting that someone else pay those costs.)
That's a reasonable explanation. But it's no kind of excuse at all. If they didn't know that ahead of time they're GROSSLY incompetent.
Hell, *I* knew that cathlates were there*, and were touchy, and could detonate with small changes in temperature or pressure, and I'm no kind of oil expert at all. much less a well engineer.
* Well, not that specific location. But common in deep water abutting the continental shelves.
It scales quite easily. If a cell gets too densly populated, you double the repeaters and drop the power.
Splitting the cell into four blocks is nicer than merely splitting it into two, but whether that's the reasonable approach depends on the population distribution.
Also if the city sprawls instead of packing, you build more repeaters further out.
There are limitations on how much can be transmitted at any given frequency, but a cellular type system of wi-fi could easily be used, probably at 60GHz. (I'm not sure how it is at penetrating walls though.)
Still, there are frequencies that would work. A low-powered cellular system where each repeater could cover, say, 10 blocks. Space them through a city with a 25% overlap, and a municipal network becomes quite plausible. It's no longer the nice, simple, thing that was originally evisioned, but it can work and can scale. Then you need wires to each of the repeaters, but that's a much smaller problem.
And the nice things about this "cellular" system is that the technologies needed have already been developed. But when you think of it as an internet system rather than a phone system, the constraints and options are different. With this system VOIP can really replace the phone...but you may still have delay problems. It's not designed as a real-time system. There's plenty of wavelength to have both systems, though. At worst you need to start placing your cell towers closer together.
OTOH!!! Phones tend to be designed to be usable in times of disaster. Internet and cell phone systems tend to go down at such times. These are design problems, but they are still real problems. It's cheaper to build them for only 97% up time, but...
Unfortunately, when you unpack a tarball, the files unpack with the execute permission bits set (if they were set originally). And unpacking a tarball is the kind of thing it's reasonable to do.
I'll grant that this doesn't automatically execute the software, but it does make it executable. Then just clicking on an misleading file image can execute it. (And who knows that that file labeled "index.html" might do? Though *that* security hole may have been fixed. It doesn't seem to autoexecute anymore.)
Well, several dialogs on Linux optionally remember the root password. Synaptic, e.g., has one like that on my Debian box. I don't think that should be an option, so *I* never select it. (Granted, Synaptic isn't the same as a browser, but it could authorize a new repository, and install software from it. Take a small bit of scripting, but it could easily turn a nearly harmless exploit into a massive one.)
Too many changes have been made to make using things easier without considering the security consequences. E.g., tar files shouldn't be able to unpack files with a "executable" marking. That should require a manually executed shell file...which itself wouldn't unpack with an executable marking.
But notice that this "security" causes a minimal decrease in usability. You've got to take an extra step to install the software. I.e., something equivalent to: "su -c 'sh mark_executable.sh'" or "sh mark_executable.sh" depending on the priviledges required, though one could wrap a nice graphic around that without problems.
But storing passwords needed for execution is dangerous. Generally browsers remembering logon passwords is ok, but this shouldn't be done where the site might be significant. E.g., a slashdot logon/password combo can reasonably be stored by the browser. Your bank's logon/password is much less reasonable. (I won't even do internet banking, and I won't use debit cards. And the credit cards that I use online have a strictly limited credit limit.)
Despite that I feel that Linux is much safer than MSWind. Some bad choices have been made, but not as many. And If I want to use the internet securely, I can do it from an account that only has access to its own files. So far I haven't felt it's worth the bother, but it's readily doable.
Tidal power is usually dubious. Not only are most tides relatively low in rise/fall ratio, but there's lots of maintenance headaches.
Still...there are a few places that might work. The Golden Gate, e.g. The tides might not be high, but we're talking about HUGE quantities of water. Of course, that would probably lead to the SF Bay becoming salty fresh water over time, and water purity would become a real nightmare. I think there's something similar down near LA, possibly one in San Diego. And of course Monterey Bay... (but don't even THINK about the ecological havoc that would be caused).
One thing you can do is build a high water reservoir, and when you're overproducing, you pump water up to it, and when you need more power, you go hydroelectric (into a low reservoir). There are alternatives, but they're generally variations. I suppose you could, say, split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but that process tends to be a bit lossy.
Actually, the theory that bacteria are the source of oil isn't that unreasonable. But that's a lot different from claiming that it replenishes quickly, or that it doesn't suffer changes if it's pushed deeper (aka subduction).
I don't know if anyone really knows the source of oil. But I'd be really surprised if bacteria weren't involved. (I'd also be surprised if it renewed quickly or if it didn't undergo metamorphosis when it was pushed down to where the rocks really heat up. (OTOH, that *could* be the source of diamonds.)
For that matter, the shuttle itself was redesigned to meet political goals. The original version would have had a titanium body rather than ceramic shingles...but our only source of titanium was in a country that was then considered likely to go communist. So the engineers were told to come up with another design. Some other changes were made to make it cheaper to build (rather than maintain). Etc.
If you want to draw a lesson, it should probably be that you don't want bean-counters to design your equipment. Possibly it's reasonable to give them a veto on building it (as in "We can't afford that, sorry."), but no input on the design level. (OTOH, if that had been the case, the shuttle wouldn't have been built. Would that have been better? Perhaps. In that case Saturn would have been kept viable.)
FWIW: For what it's worth
and OTOH: On the other hand are in *quite* wide usage. I'd really be surprised if many people had any more problem with them that with recondite English words. (I'll admit, though, that there was I time when I had no idea what a lorry was, and if someone said "lift" I thought they were talking about elevator shoes rather than an elevator.)
It's not linear (including flat) AND it's not exponential. It's complicated.
There aren't ANY good models for this problem, but the simple one are known not to work.
(OTOH, I'm not expert in this particular field. This is just something blatantly obvious to anyone who reads the popularizations of science, like New Scientist and Scientific American. [Well, it's not blatantly obvious that there aren't any good models, but there aren't. That took a little bit more reading.])
E.g., small spills have large "edge effects" which spread some problems even while mitigating others. These are less significant factors, probably, in larger spills. But, OTOH, since the center of a larger spill has a nearly 100% kill effect, you won't find as large, proportionately, a population of injured animals which *might* be saved. (The area of a circle expands faster than the circumference...not to mention that the center has an actual bit of volume, so you only get a thin film near the edges. P.S.: This is logiced out. I didn't research it, but I'd be real surprised if it weren't true.)
Sorry, but not all of the effects are linear. There are long and complex feedback cycles involved, and the only real answer is "You want me to guess? OK. But it's a guess."
If you wan't me to guess I could guess that the oxygen production of the oceans is cut by 2/3 over the next decade, and slowly recovers over the following century. If you want me to defend it I couldn't. (But the oxygen production is already declining, so the only two questionable parts are: 1) cut by 2/3. That number was clearly picked out of a hat. 2) recovery? There's no reason to presume that. This suggestion is merely an acceleration of existing trends.
(That said, "cut by 2/3" is probably fear-mongering. 1/20 might be more reasonable. Or possibly not.)
Depends on how big it is. This seems large enough that being in the middle of the Atlantic wouldn't allow enough dispersion before it hit the coasts...and then it would hit ALL the coasts.
It may actually be better that it's relatively contained in a relatively small area. (But do notice that better is a comparative, and the following phrase contained the word "relatively" twice.)
FWIW, land based oil spills tend to stay in approximately the same place. Ocean based oil spills tend to circulate around the globe. The scales of disaster aren't commensurate.... And also don't scale equally. E.g., at sea a small oil spill will be diluted so much that bacteria can degrade it to nothing before it's of any significance, but on land even relatively minor spills need to be attended to. But on land most of a large oil spill can be recovered at relatively minor cost, but in the ocean...there really isn't any way of recovering from a major spill, only of minimizing the damage.
OTOH, we're running out of locations to drill land based wells. And the ones that are left are either in remote areas (creating dangerous foreign dependencies) or otherwise undesirable (e.g., in a designated wilderness area).
The clearly best approach is to find an alternative. Or several alternatives. (Probably a mix of wind, water, solar, and nuclear will be optimal. [Do note both that I put nuclear in last place, and that I included it. Both are significant. And I left out some, like geothermal, because they are location specific. Water is intended to include both hydroelectric and tidal generators {and perhaps wave generators too}.])
P.S.: When listing alternate energy sources solar should, perhaps, be given more importance. I can't decide. And a lot depends on what turns up as a ballast. What do you do when it's overcast for a week in winter, and everyone turns on their heater? If you're dependent on solar, you better have a **LOT** of storage.
Well, I pulled a CD of the last RC, and couldn't even boot it. There wasn't any way to report the problem, as I've got no real idea what the issue was. I'm hoping that if I wait a week or two and pull another CD everything will be fixed, but I don't know how to tell.
(It might be that "use nomodeset while booting" problem, but if the CD won't boot into a live system, I don't think I'll trust it on my system. Not even if there *is* a hack that would let me slip past the barrier.)
Slashdot Mirror
Ablating the material from the front to slow it down is SLOW. That means it's going to occupy every orbit between here and the ground for several orbits on it's way down. Not good.
And why do you want it down, anyway. You just want it disabled (so it doesn't broadcast) and moved to a safe place. There are several of those around. (Not lots, but more than a few.) Some of them are where things that just drift would eventually end up anyway, so all they're really good for is a junk heap. The problem is to move it to one of those "sufficiently" quickly, and without damaging anything that's valuable. So an ion-rocket would be a good choice. It may not be fast, but it's fast enough. It's relatively light. It takes very little fuel. It can be powered by sunlight. The only real problems are 1) getting it out there, and 2) attaching it. But those would strain the art without killing the budget. (N.B.: A cheap ion-rocket would probably product a few grams of thrust, maybe a bit less. But that's enough if you aren't fighting gravity and aren't in a hurry. In this position we can work with gravity rather than fighting it, as is done at lift-off.)
You'd trust them to keep their word at *this* point?
They've already promised to keep things secret, and then sold them. They'd need something considerably more binding than a mere promise before I'd trust them now. Can't think what would work, but I'm not guaranteeing that there isn't something. E.g., if they offered a public key system, I wouldn't trust them not to, at some point, hack the code. But that doesn't prove that there isn't something they could offer that I'd accept. (I just don't believe it.)
P.S.: FWIW, I never signed up for Facebook in the first place, largely because of doubts as to the honesty of their promises (and otherwise the security of their code).
P.P.S.: This is Google, isn't it? The company who once was known as "Do no evil"?
Did it say how long "eventually" was? My guess is multiple centuries, but I could be being optimistic. It could take lots longer.
The Earth-Sun Lagrange points are 60 degrees either ahead of or trailing the Earth in its orbit around the Sun.
But getting from a geosynchronous orbit to an Earth-Sun Lagrange point would require a lot of doing. It would be lots easier to impact on the Moon. And why bother. If you don't want it to be in high Earth orbit, put in in high Lunar orbit. (Say just past the Lagrange point where Earth's gravity balances the Moon's.
I don't think a laser's a bad idea. Of course, you aren't trying to disable it, you're trying to move it outwards. So you don't what a lot of power at any one time, you just want to keep it up for a long time. I'm not sure, however, that it's practical.
Shooting it down with something that fragments it is, as you noted, a REALLY bad idea.
Probably the best idea is to send out an ion-rocket engine, and attach it in such a way that it will move it to a higher orbit. How this could be done isn't clear, but it would definitely strain the art of telefactors and robotics. (And as such is a good idea on it's own.)
OTOH, I've been assuming that it isn't ferro-magnetic. If it is, then the ion-rocket could be attached with a magnet and a cable.
Why do you say it isn't scaling? It scales with the number of people.
Why do you say it stops working? It works clear down to each apartment having it's own repeater.
It only stops being useful if you insist that people subscribe to a particular cell. If it's being run by a municipality, then you can change from repeater to repeater without worrying about "can my system work on the new cell?" It's true that this is a bother if each cell requires a new contract of something, as in "You were in a GTE cell, but now you're in a Verizon cell", but there's no reason a municipal net should have that kind of problem.
FWIW, a municipality could put up cell towers for coverage much more cheaply than the telcos do, because there WOULDN'T be competition for coverage. There would a an attempt at total coverage. The telcos could rent "bandwidth" to run their service over the municipal net, rather like trucks run over the municipal streets. Just imagine what it would cost if each company had to lay it's own streets. (OK, it's not an accurate analogy, but despite ways in which it doesn't fit, it still points at inherent inefficiencies of the current system.)
You may not have a doubt that nuclear power is the way to go, but *I* do.
Mind you, I have no doubt that nuclear power could be made much better than oil. But nuclear plants are, inherently, centralized. As such the foster centralizations of power. This is a clear drawback. (But *IF* you go nuclear, please have all the plants owned by the government. Not by contractors who save money by cutting back on safety.)
Also, if we do go with nuclear as any significant part of our power source, we need to start building breeder reactors QUICKLY!! There isn't that much U235 available in rich ores. That could spark another militaristic foreign policy "to ensure our energy future". Additionally, breeders can consume the fuel down until it's safe. There doesn't need to *BE* any hot waste. (To speak of. Nothings quite perfect.)
But I think that a combination of wind and solar is our best staple power source. OTOH, I'm not totally certain that solar cells are the best for a centralized power plant. Using mirrors to heat a centralized element until it's hot enough to melt sodium has a lot to recommend it. And the, e.g, Sahara could then export a lot of it's heat as power. (Again, though, we end up with a large centralized energy source. Also transmission losses.)
Sorry, but windmills require maintenance. It's not "all gravy" once you get the mill built.
It *IS* true that with well designed equipment the maintenance costs are lower than with oil...but they need to be, because there are other costs. Specifically line ballasts to handle the periods when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. That basically means that you need to store about two weeks usage at the rate if usage of the coldest (or hottest) part of the year. Even that's cutting your margins a little close, but you can probably import power given that much warning. (Which, of course, you don't get. You don't know how long you'll be "becalmed". If I recall correctly occasionally sailing ships would be becalmed for a month or longer.)
Solar cells are a bit more predictable, but the prediction isn't always to their benefit. In some locales you can predict a month or more of overcast per year. (I remember when I was growing up in South San Francisco it seemed like there were years without a single sunny day...though I'm sure that was an overestimation.)
So... you've got to suit your power source to your site, and you need lots of backup power. It's no wonder that oil can coal looked like better solutions, though now they're causing global problems.
Everything has problems. The question is "Which problems are easiest to solve?"
FWIW, I think that a combination of wind and solar is usually the best choice, but it comes equipped with many problems that need to be dealt with. (E.g., as a backup power source, how about you pump a bunch of water into a reservoir in a high location...perhaps with an airtight pressure cover. Then when you want to supplement your power you run some of the water into a lower reservoir via a turbine. It works, but it's not cheap.) Just remember to identify the costs of the problems, and factor them into the cost of your proposed solution. (Yes, it will make you look expensive compared to coal and oil. But they *aren't* including the costs to the problems they cause as a part of their estimated costs. They're insisting that someone else pay those costs.)
That's a reasonable explanation. But it's no kind of excuse at all. If they didn't know that ahead of time they're GROSSLY incompetent.
Hell, *I* knew that cathlates were there*, and were touchy, and could detonate with small changes in temperature or pressure, and I'm no kind of oil expert at all. much less a well engineer.
* Well, not that specific location. But common in deep water abutting the continental shelves.
It scales quite easily. If a cell gets too densly populated, you double the repeaters and drop the power.
Splitting the cell into four blocks is nicer than merely splitting it into two, but whether that's the reasonable approach depends on the population distribution.
Also if the city sprawls instead of packing, you build more repeaters further out.
Yes and no.
There are limitations on how much can be transmitted at any given frequency, but a cellular type system of wi-fi could easily be used, probably at 60GHz. (I'm not sure how it is at penetrating walls though.)
Still, there are frequencies that would work. A low-powered cellular system where each repeater could cover, say, 10 blocks. Space them through a city with a 25% overlap, and a municipal network becomes quite plausible. It's no longer the nice, simple, thing that was originally evisioned, but it can work and can scale. Then you need wires to each of the repeaters, but that's a much smaller problem.
And the nice things about this "cellular" system is that the technologies needed have already been developed. But when you think of it as an internet system rather than a phone system, the constraints and options are different. With this system VOIP can really replace the phone...but you may still have delay problems. It's not designed as a real-time system. There's plenty of wavelength to have both systems, though. At worst you need to start placing your cell towers closer together.
OTOH!!! Phones tend to be designed to be usable in times of disaster. Internet and cell phone systems tend to go down at such times. These are design problems, but they are still real problems. It's cheaper to build them for only 97% up time, but ...
Unfortunately, when you unpack a tarball, the files unpack with the execute permission bits set (if they were set originally). And unpacking a tarball is the kind of thing it's reasonable to do.
I'll grant that this doesn't automatically execute the software, but it does make it executable. Then just clicking on an misleading file image can execute it. (And who knows that that file labeled "index.html" might do? Though *that* security hole may have been fixed. It doesn't seem to autoexecute anymore.)
Well, several dialogs on Linux optionally remember the root password. Synaptic, e.g., has one like that on my Debian box. I don't think that should be an option, so *I* never select it. (Granted, Synaptic isn't the same as a browser, but it could authorize a new repository, and install software from it. Take a small bit of scripting, but it could easily turn a nearly harmless exploit into a massive one.)
Too many changes have been made to make using things easier without considering the security consequences. E.g., tar files shouldn't be able to unpack files with a "executable" marking. That should require a manually executed shell file...which itself wouldn't unpack with an executable marking.
But notice that this "security" causes a minimal decrease in usability. You've got to take an extra step to install the software. I.e., something equivalent to:
"su -c 'sh mark_executable.sh'" or "sh mark_executable.sh"
depending on the priviledges required, though one could wrap a nice graphic around that without problems.
But storing passwords needed for execution is dangerous. Generally browsers remembering logon passwords is ok, but this shouldn't be done where the site might be significant. E.g., a slashdot logon/password combo can reasonably be stored by the browser. Your bank's logon/password is much less reasonable. (I won't even do internet banking, and I won't use debit cards. And the credit cards that I use online have a strictly limited credit limit.)
Despite that I feel that Linux is much safer than MSWind. Some bad choices have been made, but not as many. And If I want to use the internet securely, I can do it from an account that only has access to its own files. So far I haven't felt it's worth the bother, but it's readily doable.
It's plausible that my info was wrong. I got it from a newspaper. But that's how it was reported in the press that I read.
I guess I should know better than to report newspaper stories as facts.
Tidal power is usually dubious. Not only are most tides relatively low in rise/fall ratio, but there's lots of maintenance headaches.
Still...there are a few places that might work. The Golden Gate, e.g. The tides might not be high, but we're talking about HUGE quantities of water. Of course, that would probably lead to the SF Bay becoming salty fresh water over time, and water purity would become a real nightmare. I think there's something similar down near LA, possibly one in San Diego. And of course Monterey Bay... (but don't even THINK about the ecological havoc that would be caused).
One thing you can do is build a high water reservoir, and when you're overproducing, you pump water up to it, and when you need more power, you go hydroelectric (into a low reservoir). There are alternatives, but they're generally variations. I suppose you could, say, split water into hydrogen and oxygen, but that process tends to be a bit lossy.
No, it's ok to wash wool in cold water. At least if you don't use detergent.
Actually, the theory that bacteria are the source of oil isn't that unreasonable. But that's a lot different from claiming that it replenishes quickly, or that it doesn't suffer changes if it's pushed deeper (aka subduction).
I don't know if anyone really knows the source of oil. But I'd be really surprised if bacteria weren't involved. (I'd also be surprised if it renewed quickly or if it didn't undergo metamorphosis when it was pushed down to where the rocks really heat up. (OTOH, that *could* be the source of diamonds.)
For that matter, the shuttle itself was redesigned to meet political goals. The original version would have had a titanium body rather than ceramic shingles...but our only source of titanium was in a country that was then considered likely to go communist. So the engineers were told to come up with another design. Some other changes were made to make it cheaper to build (rather than maintain). Etc.
If you want to draw a lesson, it should probably be that you don't want bean-counters to design your equipment. Possibly it's reasonable to give them a veto on building it (as in "We can't afford that, sorry."), but no input on the design level. (OTOH, if that had been the case, the shuttle wouldn't have been built. Would that have been better? Perhaps. In that case Saturn would have been kept viable.)
FWIW: For what it's worth
and
OTOH: On the other hand
are in *quite* wide usage. I'd really be surprised if many people had any more problem with them that with recondite English words. (I'll admit, though, that there was I time when I had no idea what a lorry was, and if someone said "lift" I thought they were talking about elevator shoes rather than an elevator.)
It's not linear (including flat) AND it's not exponential. It's complicated.
There aren't ANY good models for this problem, but the simple one are known not to work.
(OTOH, I'm not expert in this particular field. This is just something blatantly obvious to anyone who reads the popularizations of science, like New Scientist and Scientific American. [Well, it's not blatantly obvious that there aren't any good models, but there aren't. That took a little bit more reading.])
E.g., small spills have large "edge effects" which spread some problems even while mitigating others. These are less significant factors, probably, in larger spills. But, OTOH, since the center of a larger spill has a nearly 100% kill effect, you won't find as large, proportionately, a population of injured animals which *might* be saved. (The area of a circle expands faster than the circumference...not to mention that the center has an actual bit of volume, so you only get a thin film near the edges. P.S.: This is logiced out. I didn't research it, but I'd be real surprised if it weren't true.)
Sorry, but not all of the effects are linear. There are long and complex feedback cycles involved, and the only real answer is "You want me to guess? OK. But it's a guess."
If you wan't me to guess I could guess that the oxygen production of the oceans is cut by 2/3 over the next decade, and slowly recovers over the following century. If you want me to defend it I couldn't. (But the oxygen production is already declining, so the only two questionable parts are:
1) cut by 2/3. That number was clearly picked out of a hat.
2) recovery? There's no reason to presume that. This suggestion is merely an acceleration of existing trends.
(That said, "cut by 2/3" is probably fear-mongering. 1/20 might be more reasonable. Or possibly not.)
Depends on how big it is. This seems large enough that being in the middle of the Atlantic wouldn't allow enough dispersion before it hit the coasts...and then it would hit ALL the coasts.
It may actually be better that it's relatively contained in a relatively small area. (But do notice that better is a comparative, and the following phrase contained the word "relatively" twice.)
FWIW, land based oil spills tend to stay in approximately the same place. Ocean based oil spills tend to circulate around the globe. The scales of disaster aren't commensurate. ... And also don't scale equally. E.g., at sea a small oil spill will be diluted so much that bacteria can degrade it to nothing before it's of any significance, but on land even relatively minor spills need to be attended to. But on land most of a large oil spill can be recovered at relatively minor cost, but in the ocean...there really isn't any way of recovering from a major spill, only of minimizing the damage.
OTOH, we're running out of locations to drill land based wells. And the ones that are left are either in remote areas (creating dangerous foreign dependencies) or otherwise undesirable (e.g., in a designated wilderness area).
The clearly best approach is to find an alternative. Or several alternatives. (Probably a mix of wind, water, solar, and nuclear will be optimal. [Do note both that I put nuclear in last place, and that I included it. Both are significant. And I left out some, like geothermal, because they are location specific. Water is intended to include both hydroelectric and tidal generators {and perhaps wave generators too}.])
P.S.: When listing alternate energy sources solar should, perhaps, be given more importance. I can't decide. And a lot depends on what turns up as a ballast. What do you do when it's overcast for a week in winter, and everyone turns on their heater? If you're dependent on solar, you better have a **LOT** of storage.
Well, I pulled a CD of the last RC, and couldn't even boot it. There wasn't any way to report the problem, as I've got no real idea what the issue was. I'm hoping that if I wait a week or two and pull another CD everything will be fixed, but I don't know how to tell.
(It might be that "use nomodeset while booting" problem, but if the CD won't boot into a live system, I don't think I'll trust it on my system. Not even if there *is* a hack that would let me slip past the barrier.)