"Scientist" is a woefully ambiguous term. As I scientist, I think GMO food is perfectly safe. I am a nuclear scientist and know little about the GMO process, but that doesn't matter. My opinion does.
Good point. The glaring assertion that the sanctity of scientific authority would carry forth across disciplines, and that those in different branches of science carry more weight than say --- a layman who has put effort to research a specific subject --- is dubious.
One might even say this tabloid appeal to authority is religious... but I would not grace it like that. I have too much respect for my religious friends. I may not share their faith but I can easily see that they deliberately and carefully choose their sources of information (such as the Bible, ancient text and modern sermons) and consider the messenger with each message. They would not inherently revere a reverend with 'priest' rubber-stamped on the forehead any more than we should defer to the results of a poll whose categories are drawn from the presence or absence of a University degree in fields the pollsters considered to be 'sciency'.
Whatever the criteria for being one, scientists are part of the demographic 'public' in the real world.
There is also the fact that people who have read a fair amount in certain fields may understand the questions in a poll but because of their background they may have different perceptions as to the meaning. For example, when I saw the article "Americans Support Mandatory Labeling of Food That Contains DNA"... I did NOT spot it a mile off as a malicious trip-wire question to expose duh-idiots (which it apparently was). I recalled the recent scientific controversy over whether microRNA uptake in digestion might change gene expression in a harmful way, and whether any specific GMO food (by virtue of its narrow genetic origins) might, as an unintended consequence, be able to deliver such a payload. It was all over the news in the US a few years ago and the 'public' had every right to be concerned. Though the science is pretty well settled (see this excellent article) it turns out that the hysteria was fed partly by a failure of the scientific process, among other things. Years ago when the microRNA article was published it was refuted, too casually, even though its implications if true may be dire. Our DNA mechanisms are well-adapted to deal with these fragments and they are indeed very prevalent. This was never explained well enough to the public, who were thinking in terms of a new type of man-made 'contaminant' that had suddenly appeared in the food supply.
It is the "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend Trident Sugarless Gum for their patients who chew gum" phenomenon, where the fifth dentist's opinion does not fit the message and is not even revealed. Could the fifth dentist have known or glimpsed something that would have blown all the others away, convinced them or shamed them? (the survey was actually 1,700 dentists).
If you show most anyone -- including 'scientists' --- a list of major Yellowstone eruptions over time and point out that it has been ~640,000 years since the last, and asked the question "Would you say that an eruption is overdue?" they will tend to say YES. They may even sense it is a trick question. But a geologist would shout "NO!!" and if another Geologist says yes, they would form a mob with pitchforks-mob and march to the door. Geologists are aware of the fuzziness of geologic time scales but above all, their too-casual answers have been used to dupe-scare people.
These polls have been taken before. And the tendency is to perceive them as a sort of exposé of how stupid the 'public' is. But for a few of
Let technology lead where it may, and don't try to put premature labels on stuff.
Yesterday I was arms and elbows in a water meter box scooping out clay and wet mud from to expose all the fittings, to check for a leak.
So I reached for my trusty Sonic Screwdriver that I can point into the box with a setting that ultrasonically loosens and separates the clay from the metal and plastic, or give the handle a twist to another setting that reads relative concentrations of free chlorine molecules in the air near the tip with a series of beeps as they dissociate from the drinking water, the beeping faster as you bring it towards the leak. No chlorine? It's just rain water, no leak here.
But I grabbed my "Internet of Things" screwdriver by mistake. The little LED flashed orange for 20 seconds as it established a Wifi and cloud connection to Scandinavia then turned blue. Laying on the dashboard of the truck, a smartphone played a little tune and its screen cleared and said, "Welcome to Screwdriver 1.0 please select clockwise or counter-clockwise and click 'Submit'."
So like any clever monkey prying into an ant nest, I used the IoT screwdriver to stab into the clay and work it loose from under the fittings so I could fish them out in globby clumps. Then I stooped there watching everything for drips, while reflecting on the marvels of modern technology and how Big Solutions are imagined in giant tanks of Think thousands of miles away, and these solutions reach globally outward looking for Little Problems to solve.
We need more people at work to design a true Sonic Screwdriver. The Industrial Age is not complete until we have one. When it is perfected it could be connected to the Internet for access to p0rn.
Get used to being increasingly confused by a world you increasingly will never understand.
Been there, done that. I used to cry myself to sleep and have bizarre dreams because I was wasting my time learning Linux and Internet protocols and running an ISP while my professional peers were out there making six figure salaries exploring the awesome potential of Microsoft Dot Net and making embedded Corporate Widgets that harnessed the power of ten thousand suns, to deliver sleek desktop solutions to a world desperate for answers.
"But it's all gibberish!" I would shout at the angry skies as gale force winds whipped my tattered robe. "It is like living inside a Dilbert cartoon! The buzzwords come in fast and thick but to me it is just Microsoft-centric Vertical Market software of no specific kind, and your market is people who know they need software automation but don't know why!"
"WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW?!?" thundered the sky as a lightning bolt rent the knoll upon which I was standing, sending forth rivers of money that would always be just out of reach. "You are merely a PLUMBER of the Information age. We are the CODERS."
And the storm would part and a rainbow spanned the sky. Bluebirds would appear to help bind the perfect hair of Software Developers into blue and pink ribbons --- and we --- the ones who had bound the Internet together with sticky-tape and protocols and C would for ever gather around their feet like pigeons waiting for crumbs. But yet, at least there was a place for us.
Until the dot com bubbles burst and they migrated outward with their pretty resumes and took over our Network and Sysadmin jobs. And the telecoms swallowed all the regional ISPs to replace them with centralized warrens of cubicles.
Today I am attending a Special Needs class trying to learn Microsoft Dot Net. So far, every app I try to make always turns out to be an ashtray.
No, family is not (and historically has not been) the general arbiter or source of most information. You're confusing family with society, especially pre literate society.
Where did family come in to it? And how did literacy creep in? "I speak not of a direct and simple connection with one's parents and grandparents, but ongoing dialogue with anyone 20+ years older."
The term 'generation gap' was coined to describe a general oppositional stance or ideological disagreement between the generations. This is a NEW type of 'generation' gap, it is a lack of communication of any meaningful form between the generations.
Looks like my "Call your mom" quip hit some nerves and got more attention than the rest of it. Should have left it out.
This disconnect has only become possible in developed countries in this modern age, where doting parents have provided their children -- from a young age --- with tools that let them reach out to their peers 24x7. So they do, and it goes on into the teenage years. And beyond.
I'm not placing blame here, just trying to illuminate a trend that I perceive as negative. I am probably part of the problem. Over the years I have not introduced my own children to enough adults.
If you are a parent, ask yourself: how many interesting people over the years have I brought my children to, made a formal introduction (disarming that 'strangers' thing) and placed them if not in the care of these people, in the least given exposure to what they do and who they are?
It's a tribal thing dating back to that proverbial village that raises a child. What form does our so-called 'modern' village take? Children are segregated from adults in the general population as surely as by Jim Crow. They are warned about strangers but not told to seek out adults doing interesting things. They are reared in kid-stuff, 'forced' to be with other kids until... it becomes natural I guess.
My own childhood was so different. I was a free range child and the only rule was that my parents wanted to know where I was (a phone call from each place). After school I would make the rounds around town to hang out with adults who were doing interesting things. From the age of 8 I was a regular visitor at a radio station where I had free run of the production room when it was not in use, the telephone company where an engineer let me play with the IBM 5100 where I learned a bit of APL and BASIC, another computer place, a watch repairman (one of the world's last), an alarm company where my friend taught me how to solder, the local newspaper where my parents worked. In every place I gained access just be introducing myself and being respectful. Every one of the adults in these places welcomed my presence and felt free to discuss what they were doing, even assigning me tasks of organization or cleanup (I suggested it, referred to it as "earning my keep").
So in the modern time I actively sought to apprentice myself to these folk, each in a small way. My upbringing was more in line with the 'village' concept than anything I have seen emerge since.
And I think it is a shame.
What remains to be seen is whether those disconnected-from-adults kids are gathering a degree of useful tribal knowledge in the same manner that children always have --- for some 'new' type of tribe. If so, I hope it works out for them. The demographic is well represented on Slashdot and I think one or more tossed an -1 Overrated onto my GP comment because, among other things, they have little tolerance for anyone suggesting that this provincial Internet connected Universe is anything less than ideal for everybody.
This appears to follow the general pattern that people will lie to interviewers to seem more smart, educated, or intellectual than they are.
There is some phenomenon at work. School curriculum seems to contain the essentials of literacy and a general sense that a modern world exists to be explored and understood, but for a great many children now and their twenty-something parents, there seem to be great gaps of knowledge... it is as if a great pool of historical and practical trivia such as that which would be imparted by oral tradition as conversation and interaction with elders, has gone 'missing'.
Perhaps it is not the educational system that has failed us, but a knowledge-transfer process between the generations. I speak not of a direct and simple connection with one's parents and grandparents, but ongoing dialogue with anyone 20+ years older.
From pre-school through college children are becoming independent at younger ages and are managing to slice out their own separate social lives. We encourage this, shape it even. It is possible for them to maintain contact principally with others their own age right into adulthood. Their parents are typically distracted and engaged with work, and everyone has their own directed entertainment to immerse in at the end of the day. Are sundown get-togethers between generations a thing of the past?
Until the post-war '50s there was little in the way of a teen-age subculture. Even before graduation there were life choices to make. You would typically be home by sundown, a great deal more interaction with adults and steady pressure for at least one of the younger to adopt the traditions and vocations of parents was real. Who will manage the farm, who will be the first apprentice at the clock shop? Who will join the Marines, who will be the teacher?
Throughout the Nuclear Age the nuclear family has been in steady decline. Where we had once been paced by the animals and family tradition we were increasingly paced by tides of external stimuli. Diverse political ideology, lifestyle options and the fossil fuel-rich economy encouraged far migration. Today families span more geographical distance on average than at any time in history.
Modern technology helped this to happen. We are a push-button society and kids push buttons as well as anyone. This extends to push-button entertainment and distraction. Maybe we've spent the last three decades of pushing separate buttons instead of spending long hours talking to one another about the little things and the big things.
Who really gives a shit about some metaphorical doomsday clock?
I do and so should you. I've been following the Doomsday clock from my teenage years, when it advanced from 7, 4, 3 minutes to midnight at the culmination of the cold War. The existential threat posed by the clock was real and terrifying. At that time scientists were debating a worst-case scenario of Nuclear Winter.
I've been on board with these folks for many years and as such hold them to high standards. One such standard is that of defining each existential threat as complete as possible, and the other is to identify clearly which threats contribute the most risk for the forward clock adjustment. This is done by rank.
Their standard has slipped.
In their statement the issues were presented as follows: Climate change, leading off with the 2014 Hottest Year statistical flapdoodle, declaring it an issue that "world leaders must face head on, immediately." And if they have some spare time left over, Nuclear modernization programs threaten to create a new arms race. The leadership failure on nuclear power. Hear, hear! Dealing with emerging technological threats. Ebola (technological? huh?), cyberattacks, AI killer drones, "dual-use technologies" (box cutters?), the kitchen sink.
The Bulletin's ranking is important. If you applaud this headlining of climate change just because you personally feel strongly about it...
Then perhaps you should catch up on the current nuclear weapons counts and capabilities. If a conflict anywhere in the world goes nuclear, do you feel assured that the current leadership of your own country or the closest nuclear power is capable of restraining itself to the use of none --- or at most tactical weapons? If you're one of those folks who like to shout "nuke 'em!", bear in mind that some countries that the United States plays cheeky hardball with, such as Iran, contain resources that China considers to be vital to its National Security. Also since the former Soviet Republic dissolved, Russia and China are becoming more geopolitically allied with one another. Over time perhaps, an alliance will form that is stronger than either one has with the United States. It would be awful indeed to realize this as missiles are crossing in the air.
Perhaps you should evaluate the recent response to Ebola's emergence beyond its historical areas, and ask yourself how prepared even the most developed countries are on this day --- and what could have happened had the outbreak been even slightly less contained. This is ranked towards the end??
Of course, none of these threats, save perhaps a more virulent successor to Ebola with a 100% rate of death or reproductive damage (greetz to Vonnegut) might truly be considered existential. Life would go on and human life especially. Technically we are beyond survival. Even the most ludicrous global warming effects imagined do not convincingly paint a picture of 'mass extinction'; rather, a re-ordering of species numbers, purpose and precedence as nature has done for time uncounted.
But or modern way of life as we know it --- that is truly what is at stake. And it is worth preserving because as a species we are still learning to do better. While there are hot nuclear pickles ready to deploy we cannot be free and clear of the nuclear adolescence posed by Carl Sagan. With Ebola still in the wild without a clear vaccine or some way to deactivate it in its quiescent animal hosts, we cannot be said to have survived that either. And sad to say, a civilization reliant on base load wind and solar is not modern either, especially after a single continent-wide freeze. It's a pa
"Are you recording this, or can you set a flag that will cause this call to be flagged for review? Do it now."
"You're calling because I have a listed phone at an address that used to have Dish Network. Yes, there is a Dish dish on the roof; two of them in fact. Despite asking you not to call, you keep calling on average every two weeks. Clearly you hope that those dishes will be turned on again right now. There is no chance of that, but if you call again here's what will happen. I will climb onto the roof and unbolt both dishes, then toss them over the edge onto the driveway. Then I will bust them apart with a sledgehammer and set fire to what parts can burn. Then I will put out the fire by pissing on it. I will save a souvenir, something with the Dish logo on it, and plant it on a pike in my front yard as a warning to Dish sales representatives. Or if you stop calling it the dishes can stay up there and wait for the next tenant. For the last time, please don't call again. Got it?"
I got a laugh from the lady representative and she said 'Got it!" They didn't call again.
I love how you delved deep, deep into your bowels in order to conjure up some argument as to how you are correct. 25%? Brilliant work. "At any point in history" - genius stuff.
Congratulations! Since it's obvious that you hold a well-considered contrary view (though you did not express it) it's obvious that you too are in that ~25% who come to their own conclusions, rather than the ~75% "we're not ready for this/perhaps everything will turn out alright" majority that just lets things happen. And you have bowels too? It's amazing what we have in common.
Deer Trail's drone hunting license may seem like it was about dudes with shotguns who wanted to destroy others' property... at least that is a fun way to look at it if you want to make a political cartoon.
But it was to be a test case, a town where 23% of the people expressed a desire that it become a drone "no-fly zone". Do they have the same right do this --- and for the same reasons --- as the White House and Capitol, for example? And if they do not have that right to decide... then for what reason is this right/privilege denied them? Regardless how it turned out, it would have been interesting to see these questions debated and decided.
If NSA thinks they are so great... why don't they shut off the power supply in North Korea, or the water pump in Mosul, Iraq?
Because North Korea and Mosul are probably more technologically advanced than we, using things called 'mechanical switches and controls' and 'operators'.
In the early days of infrastructure there existed in this country an elite class of operators whose job was to personally attend to the various modern contrivances that make our way of life possible. They worked in shifts around the clock, played cards and listened to the radio, but they were not surrounded by indicators, dials and levers. Every now and then one of them would get up and take a tour of the plant. While many of the simple conditions that might arise had simple mechanical switches that automatically tripped on, such as the clever liquid level switch with adjustable hysteresis, they would be on the move, visiting all the places on the lookout for things such as unusual vibrations or leaks. There were also gauges to read and readings to log, which they would enter into a primitive spreadsheet known as a gridded paper form on a clipboard. Every now and then an adjustment was necessary, moving a lever or a two handed grasp on a wheel to open or close a valve.
As technology progressed electric motors and solenoids were designed into the main control points, with gauge readings carried by wire (as varying voltage from a rheostat) to a main control room. The clipboard now sat on the control console next to the deck of cards, and readings or adjustments was a simple matter of glancing up at the remote gauges and flipping a switch. Inspection tours were still performed hourly, or so the log says. This reduced level of vigilance persisted well into the late 1970s.
In the 1980s things slipped rapidly downhill. The control system was digitized, so that the various sensors and actuator circuits now terminated at a SCADA blinky-box and in place of a massive bundle of wires leading to the control console, where each one can be traced or replaced, now there was a single point of failure device managing the controls, and the console was an electrical fabrication, a HMI device, which was a single point of failure that when it did not fail, presented readings to the operators and monitored the 'switches'. When things worked they worked better than ever. When they didn't operators were groping in the closet for the old walk-around checklist, which instructed them where in the plant to run (not walk) to monitor and make hand adjustments, until the blinky-box was fixed.
In the 1990s the new high speed modem and dedicated telecom circuits, with an additional single point of failure blinky-box which muxed and demuxed everything, made it possible for the HMI to be sited anywhere else. So they did. The decade saw the emergence of Regional Control Centers, where the most skilled operators could gather and play multi-hand poker whilst surrounded by the HMI blinky-lights of several remote locations, that had formerly been fully staffed. In each of these lonely places a lonely operator might play a hand of solitaire and make inspection tours (or so the log says), waiting for that fateful day when the telecom link went down with alarms beeping, and the operator might get to operate for a little while. Most of the time it never did.
In the year 2000 or so, SCADA engineers discovered that via Internet protocol and using various tools such as Java, could map that gargantuan HMI panel with 50+ controls and 50+ indicators onto a single 1024x768 pixel computer screen, and tunnel the complete functionality into a single application with a jittery ball mouse, sticky keyboard and various 'one-touch' key shortcuts that could launch a mechanical plant hundreds of miles away into a triple-alarm condition of catastrophe. And this functional SCADA interface could be presented
destroying other people's property based on them is unlikely to go well for you.
I'd lay odds that the Secret Service will be their first customer because unidentified drones cannot be tolerated in their controlled area, and they try to avoid sniping things unless a clear threat is in progress.
It's a cryin' shame that Deer Trail, Colorado voted down its proposed $25/year drone hunting license. Of 181 votes cast ~73% were against. This makes perfect sense to me, because at any point in history it seems only ~25% of any given population seems able to spot and move against certain trends that would take us down a bad road. And I'm not just talking about the guv'mint.
Up to now paparazzi, peeping toms and criminals casing potential victims and whole neighborhoods have had to grace their target areas with their physical presence, which has held them greatly in check.
I'm sure many are excited at the prospect of Amazon deliveries and pizzas buzzing through the skies -- or just exploring -- just for the novelty of how cool it would be. Hell, whole generations of us were enthralled by the "drone footage" at the beginning of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and how it would show a bird's eye view as he left home to visit his neighbors. Or perhaps you imagine something like this. Reality is a lot messier as they become commonplace. Drone operators will be watching their objectives on the ground and zooming their lenses as they fail to spot each other, power lines and aviation.
They will be crashing down onto busy roadways. As their payloads become heavier and their motors stronger there is potential for real harm to bystanders. When signal is lost or power is low they will go into autonomous descent without regard to the hazards below (such as fast moving traffic). It is inevitable that the use of 'cheap' drones is to become a favored method of terrorists. All of these things will happen by degrees.
We put pilots through the wringer and hold aircraft to ultra-high standards of reliability for good reason. We must not brush these things off lightly, and allow the the skies to become filled moving with objects of unknown purpose and origin. Unless we are really, really excited about putting pizza delivery folk out of work.
Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.
If there's a drone hovering over my land, or my 'charge' if I am hired security, it is guilty until proven innocent.
We did not build fences and walls -- and for that matter -- start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather. We developed personal boundaries and we even invisibly project them around us when we move. If you've ever been asked "What're YOU lookin' at?" by someone, you know this even extends to where you are gazing in public. A common stumble in across cultures is violating staring rules. Expected behavior and perceived intent matters.
One of our sharpest instinctive startle-reactions is the sudden appearance of eyes in places where eyes were not expected, or where eyes should not be. This has evolved with us from a predator mechanism, where swift action becomes necessary, and it is why spotting glowing eyes around a campfire generates a moment of apprehension. Modern humans have correctly characterized drones as eyes in the sky. Unlike helicopters which strive to spend their time beyond the dead man's curve drones are close and personal and quiet.
You can also follow this eyes in the sky phenomenon in history. Even friendly nations felt it necessary to go on alert when their neighbors unexpectedly entered their airspace for reconnaissance flights, and during the Cold War these incursions were considered acts of war. The Treaty On Open Skies was the culmination of 50 year effort to declare aerial surveillance a mutually beneficial activity. Originally proposed by Eisenhower, this treaty was like a 'cease and desist' order for those who sought to keep aerial photography out of reach of the common man, just as there are those who would try to keep secure encryption from the public, oh holy shit President Obama why are you starting this Clipper crap again, sorry about that, and has paved the way for the Google Earth we all know and love to browse.
Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.
So scale this eyes where eyes are not supposed to be thing down to the personal level as part of a right to privacy. The problem is that predatory paparazzi are assholes and bullies, and the people who read tabloid magazines are their silent enablers. For every measure, a suitable countermeasure. That is the market, and you can bet if I was on a security detail one of these would be on my Xmas list.
If you are comforted to be watched over by machines of loving grace... smile, you're on Candid Camera.
NOAA and NASA use SATTELITES to get the SURFACE TEMPERATURE?
No, troposphere.
See Spencer RW, Christy JR. Precise monitoring of global temperature trends from satellites. Science 1990 for an early discourse which suggests preferring satellite measurements over ground based thermometer networks for global climate studies. The idea that a few precise instruments with truly global coverage will give the most accurate picture of global change over time. It's a no brainer really. Even if there is a discrepancy with actual temperatures, one adjustment would be necessary and relative anomaly over time would remain spot-on. A better tool.
"[Spencer] Global temperatures have generally been estimated from surface temperature records, but there has been much debate regarding, for example, whether these data provide evidence of recent greenhouse warming. The primary source of uncertainty is the relatively sparse distribution of thermometers over the surface of the earth. [...] Our data suggest that high-precision atmospheric temperature monitoring is possible from satellite microwave radiometers. Because of their demonstrated stability and the global coverage they provide, these radiometers should be made the standard for the monitoring of global atmospheric temperature anomalies since 1979. Their use will allow relatively precise monthly determinations of the locations and magnitudes of temperature change events. The resulting data should provide a greater focus of scientific debate on why temperature anomalies occur rather than whether they occur."
Also, Tropospheric temperature trends:history of an ongoing controversy (Peter W. Thorne et. al.) 2010 which revisits the debate, gives a nice introduction to various homogeneity adjustments ('retroactive' adjustments that attempt to reconcile instrument and site to reality) applied to both satellite and ground datasets. They basically 'punt' in the end, saying in effect that global temperature measurement is a Big Tent and there's room enough for everybody, we'll all just massage it a bit here and there until it's perfect.
Why would NASA jump into that Big Tent, join with NOAA and others to incorporate surface measurements into a final product that they use to issue statements like "2014 Was the Warmest Year In the Modern Record" by an amount that is within the range of statistical error, when their own satellite data shows otherwise?
Here is where I become openly bitter and say flat out: there is a hysteria party going on and anything that doesn't fit the narrative gets tossed into the margins. Perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with accurately measuring tropo temps by high resolution satellite. If there is, it hasn't 'surfaced' yet. In fact, everyone agrees that they are in almost perfect concordance with other sources. Almost. And what form does this almost take?
The satellites say no warming over the last 18 years. I believe the satellites.
I have a more difficult time believing the aggregate result of the Big Tent, which puts a heavy weight on dozens of disparate instrument types placed in thousands of places, where is the instrument's own drift, local weather variables, with a product that is subject to a raft of adjustments, (take no prisoners: ON) presented by a group of people who seem to be (unscientifically) personally and emotionally vested in selling anthropogenic catastrophe. What is the aggregate error of the Big Tent? Enough that announcing a temperature record by 0.02C is an irresponsible and disingenuous thing to do?
THAT is why even here on Slashdot, the brief snipe dissing Judith Curry get modded +I INSIGHTFUL and my comment pointing out the existence of statistical error is awarded -1 TROLL
It's shameful. Frankly, I'm amazed that the folks here on Slas
I'd be leery of a series of greeny globalwarmy newsy 'Hottest Year' claims that are weighted heavily on surface thermometer readings and beat the previous record by "a tiny, effectively unmeasurable 0.02C" that is (conveniently, suspiciously) not divulged in the press release, an amount which is within the margin for error... lest people suspect that they are being emotionally manipulated in a very unscientific way. When you responsibly consider statistical error, 2014 is a tie year.
Replace all the people with LEGO people. Little LEGO people seem to have no gender-specific issues, since the differences are just painted on. Even better would be to use bricks to assemble giant LEGO people, because then on the anatomical level everything would fit into everything else.
Wow, you don't know much about ICs are made, do you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?f... Now read that again. "For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy" Feel silly? You should. Put down that K. Eric Drexler nonsense and wake up.
That Todd Fernandez HOPE09 talk on IC manufacture is AWESOME, thanks!! Yes, I feel silly. That shit is indeed indistinguishable from magick.
But because I am incorrigible and dislike car analogies, I will merely extend my bathroom analogy.
1. harness the properties of useful stuff as cowpies and turds 2. fine-tune the diet to maximize useful properties in turds 2.5 fart on silicon wafers (Atomic Layer Deposition) and poke it onto the surface with photons to make useful patterns (present level of technology) 2.6 Discover more delicate ways to fart and more pokey ways to poke. [...]
IC manufacture will always be about aggregation of functional component layers with successively higher and more conceptual function layers, and 2D lithography is a great way to do it. But the closest Fernandez comes to envisioning the Steelypips is during the QA after the lecture, when he is asked about the future of FIB (Focused Ion Beam) technology and more specifically Electron beam-induced deposition... with its ~0.045nm focus and the ability to deposit ~0.7nm Dippin' Dots, would make it the pokiest way to poke. But most exciting, the possibility to build out in three-dimensions.
But the article is not so concerned with these high level structures, it's firmly at the poop level, a challenges of materials science to improve the desirable properties of graphene to produce turds with more carbon surface area. Better cowpies make better batteries.
To do this you refine the traditional methods of simply incorporating naturally occurring granules of carbon into your poop, which is analogous to the consumption of corn, to a better one where the bonds form structures like dandelion seeds so that the same mass has more surface area.
The superior area:mass ratio is what allows dandelion seeds to float, and mixed materials more chemically reactive. This makes the same volume of poop poopier, it's like turning poop inside out from a lump into a poop flower. That is indistinguishable from magic too -- if you were a classical chemist from the age of alchemy, unaware that your dumps were full of clumps, you'd think this was some kind of amazing Poop-TARDIS.
The Steelypips I envision in GP can maneuver an individual atom into place, stand back and examine their work (a form of electron tunneling that does not destroy the specimen) and decide, "let's put it there instead."
A feat analogous to bending over and farting out a candle across the stage. To this day it is always done with trickery.
Glad to see the potential for a new revolution in electronics. Assembling precise crystalline structures is the best way to harness properties of any material. For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy, where chemicals' properties are known in a general sense. Elements are combined and set into clumps of useful stuff.
The two prevalent forms of stuff-clumps used in electronics have been the cowpie, a dollop of stuff placed into container in which electrodes or plates are suspended to yield useful properties of storage or electron transfer, perhaps selectively doped to generallly control the dance of the little electrons in their shells... and the turd, an extruded mass of stuff in which its length or composition determines the property, and electrodes are fixed to either end.
1. harness the properties of useful stuff as cowpies and turds 2. fine-tune the diet to maximize useful properties in turds (present level of technology) 3. flocculate the turd juice into tiny turdlets (the innovation described in TA) 4. assemble lattices of turdlets via electrostatic or acoustic means (think phi and eye of dragonfly) 5. bit by bit assembly, such art as has been mastered by the Steelypips,
"Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine..." ~~Stanislaw Lem
Of course, a few of the folks here are going to go on to suggest that this process will some day become giant disposable batteries the size of skyscrapers that are built and lovingly installed like 2001: Monoliths, for the express purpose of storing a year's worth of solar and wind grid energy so that if the clouds roll over and the wind dies down, it will power our modern civilization for ten minutes. At which point I will lose my temper.
The human race (at our favored levels of population density) has evolved past the point where a natural state of good health can be maintained without access to bulk electricity, which equates to drinkable tap water. This is a greater factor than access to doctors or medicine. We pledge 'aid' to help to help countries around the world but so much of that help is NOT building infrastructure.
What China is doing is building a modern China from scratch in record time. They have the blueprints in hand. They even know that they are making mistakes (eg, coal) but they're focused on the prize. Cuba trades doctors for useful things. China will be able to trade everything for things.
To me it seems our major export these days are Financial Instruments and Financial Middlemen, and the structured debt that arises in their wake. But not to worry, the principal of these loans do not tap your hard-earned taxpayer dollars, many of which go toward repayment of interest on our own national debt. This is magical unicorn money that will come from World Investment Funds and Bank perpetual money machines that are backed by International Corporate Banks that bought shitloads of worthless paper and were bailed out by Bushobama with the Fed minting virtual money that saved the banks' balance sheets from ruin, and Treasury Bonds purchased by the Chinese who have said fuck-it and have decided to decouple and give Africa (for example) their time and especially their money directly, some of which would ultimately come from us as repayment on debt to China with China becoming Africa's direct partner in infrastructure instead. This does not make sense on so many levels.
The United States has shown the world what it means to have access to so much energy and surplus income: property, personal transportation, washing machines, treated water and sewage, road trips, stocked supermarkets.
And yet, nothing presently "made in America" could prevent its decline. Not only have most of its factories closed, the basic blueprint for every consumer item and industrial process which supports the modern lifestyle is shared throughout the world. This is a done deal.
For a price --- China is now fully equipped to build an 'America' anywhere in the world it chooses. From surveying to road building to farm machinery to industrial process and infrastructure, electricity plants and grids, telecommunications, water distribution and treatment. Everything from rivets to houses, the mailbox, the picket fence and the white paint. Everything.
And why wouldn't they? They have begun taking steps to decouple their economy from our own [bloomberg.com]. At this point in time the US cannot afford to be parlaying with Malthusian governance artists who seize on theories of environmental catastrophe and leverage 'affluence guilt' to tax everyone (YOU first). The ONLY thing that can save us is to do something extraordinary, something that changes the game. Something made in America (first) that changes the world.
Such as some form of base load energy that is cheaper than coal. At this point anything else the United States could offer the world, or China, is worth less than a fart in a high wind.
I am Sam. Uncle Sam I am. That Uncle Sam, that Uncle Sam, I do not trust that Uncle Sam. Do you like backbone voice/data taps and bulk retention? I do not like them, Uncle Sam. They're just tools for blackmail, thugs and future despots. They am. Would you like them here or there? What bullshit, Sam. You put them everywhere. Would you like it bound by Charter? Can I promise to do no evil? Tartar? We tried that, Sam. The old folks have retired and it's run by young sociopaths who don't see anything wrong with even tapping their own poor children. They're smart-stupids, blinded by the buck and the tech, they do not realize what a sorry-ass country this could become WHEN that stuff falls in the wrong hands. Then introduce a bill into the House. Ask your senator, man... or mouse? Mumble National Security mumble, they say. I think they are under blackmail, today. Then will you, won't you, take it to the Judge? [wink] We did, in Hepting vs. AT&T. The only case that would have exposed, in the discovery process, the true extent of domestic telecom surveillance. The Ninth Circuit dismissed the case by citing a law that was enacted AFTER the case was filed. The Supreme Court refused to hear it. Miscarriage of justice, much? Your bitter phrases take lots of time, you cannot even make them rhyme. That's because I trying to communicate something REAL, asshole. Should I put NSA in a box? Guard the hen house with a fox? You mean, appoint a Director that goes before Congress under oath, pretends to know nothing and needs both hands to find his ass in the dark?? We've tried that too. I thought it was unlawful to lie to Congress, guess not. Would you like it on a boat? Would you like it with a goat? That's the kind of transparent childish misdirection we've come to expect from you people. Like that stupid false metadata conundrum, a limited hang-out where you 'pretend' to relinquish voluntary data sharing agreements, and fill everyone's ears with talk of metadata. When all the while the backbone taps ensure you will obtain all that by other means, and more besides. You do not like Big Brother, so you say, Try it! Try it! And you may. Fuck off.
It's been tried, Stalin would be proud of what we have built already. The TRUE extent of our domestic spy apparatus is, by now, probably hidden and partitioned into layers. The folks who built it out knew full well it would not pass Constitutional muster, and so they have probably created a series of interlocking pieces and black-funded faux-telecom 'private' companies that have title of the 'assets'. It may require a massive de-funding and deconstruction effort, and the sociopaths that have built this thing may 'turn turtle' and put their legs in the air... but that will NOT be enough. We're back to Hepting vs. AT&T again, it is the private telecommunications technicians that must come forward en masse and help identify these interconnect points.
I wish I could trust you, Uncle Sam Can I interest you in some... spam?
Claiming that wind and solar can't do this job is spectacularly stupid because this is a job ideally suited to wind and solar.
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. I could be thick as a brick... yet still capable of imagining a continent-wide Winter storm that begins with freezing rain, leaving a shell of crystalline ice, drifts of fluffy snow and a hard freeze condition lasting a week or more. I don't mean just a little wave of storms, such as the ones that caused NextEra to shut down wind farms that were supposed to last '20 years' or more... I'm talking about real weather. It has happened before. It will happen again.
It's all a big FAIL, an idea that should have been laughed out of the room years ago, by people with more power of imagination than intelligence.
Taking critical base load power generation outside and raising it up on giant stalks, with millions of precision moving parts exposed to the elements, is stupid. It's an engineering nightmare. Staking your very survival on the combined output of acres of solar panels is beyond stupid. It's gone further still into the realm of the 'ridiculous'.
Don't quote happy spreadsheets claiming that the happy Chinese are willing to buy more happy bonds and sell us thousands of turbines with tons of happy molybdenum magnets, to put in places distant from people and all these small (but happy!) 3MW contributions of power are going to add up to a happy aggregation of happy survival.
Just try to imagine a single giant ice storm. A really SAD one.
Generating gigawatts of electricity inside a seismically hardened building by a process that can keep a few years' worth of fuel on-hand --- that's not even smart. It's a no-brainer.
> Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here Yeah, if by "around here" you mean "on earth".
I know you're trolling me, but do you really know how far off the mark you are? People want (reliable, affordable, clean) energy. Those attributes are in their proper order of preference because people are practical and parents have little mouths to feed. And NO generation has ever ethically concluded that their own children were entitled to less available energy and fewer choices than their own.
Are you so enamored of coal and natural gas, so convinced they will save your ass, that you feel comfortable dabbling in unworkable ideas? Coal and gas are not renewable. They too will fall prey to this massive ice storm, as gas distribution networks suffer power outages and coal trains stop running. Solar and wind are not 'renewable' either, they are 'disposable', as in failed experiment, money and precious time wasted.
If any of those anonymous contributors who modded my GP 'interesting' have deep pockets, how 'bout we go full frontal John Galt and all gather some where in the world that is not populated by hysterical radiophobes, and place as much of a priority on the perfection and scaling of molten salt technology as say, we did for steam, rail and other things.
Sure, a few trees would help. But do you want to twerk around and do a dinky bit of dis and a little of dat, of do you want to get the job done?
We're not lost lambs in the field trudging around looking for tender shoots of clover and going "Baaaa!" when we cannot find any. We are human sheep! We harnessed and domesticated clover, made it grow in rows where it is sucked into great machines and stored in tanks and all we do is stick our muzzles into clover dispensers and glorious compacted clover product shoots into our mouths! Then we spill hot clover juice on our lap and we SUE!
We can do the same for energy, because that's really all that matters, finding new and better sources. With a grand surplus of energy anything becomes possible. Want to absorb 50 POUNDS of carbon a year? Plant a tree. Want to absorb several TONS of carbon per day? Then build a single carbon sequestration plant on the edge of town. Why are people on a technological forum discussing planting trees to solve a simple problem of chemistry and applied industry?
You should be ashamed of yourselves!
I see folks advocating solutions like re-terraforming the Earth with invasive monocultures to make fuel, sequester CO2 or perhaps just to annoy the locals, because everyone on Earth is presently surrounded by plant species they cherish and are evolved to their own area. Or by proposing efforts that might get off the ground in a miniscule way and doing practically nothing, people are just pushing walk-away solutions for salving their conscience.
1. develop and scale a massive, reliable source of carbon-nuetral energy 2. do anything you want with it, including capturing CO2 3. If you make synfuel with captured CO2, at least you break even when it burns.
If you're proposing wind and solar as that energy source, you may as well start planting trees. For all the good it will do. And there's only one possible source of energy that could scale and meet these challenges:
Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here and suggesting anything besides wind and solar tends to get a flood of Beavis and Butt-head responses. Perhaps we are seeing the human race split into two races --- the Eloi, their numbers few, devolved into wandering berry and leaf eaters as they graze in overgrown fields among the rusted wind turbines and vine-encrusted solar panels... and the Morlocks, proud stewards of mankind's technological heritage as we whiz around in our electric cars powered by clean, boundless energy.
Proud to be a Morlock. That cannibalism thing is just a rumor we spread around to keep them off our lawns.
Wow, someone just now noticed that animals can easily detect incoming low pressure fronts and hide from the weather.
Humans have many unique abilities too.
We are the only ones with the gift to see in dark grey waves of clouds the furrowed brows of an angry gods, whom we anger further by murmuring profane incantations about dew point and pressure gradients. Only we gaze down from our satellites and perceive that the hurricane is looking back. In the magnificent gyres of natural phenomena we may discern an uncanny alien intelligence. We alone feel that it is scrutinizing us, judging us, finds us wanting. "We are naked in the dark. Sam, and there is no veil between us and the wheel of fire. We begin to see it even with our waking eyes, and all else fades..."
We alone knock on wood to summon for its friendly assistance to combat invisible foes, and yet we are capable of perceiving that even that would never be enough. We are unique in the ability to summon demons from the underworld, the empty reaches of space, even a wry comment overheard on Thanksgiving.
Animals fear the unknown, but we also fear the unknowable, as we seek to discover the limits of what can be known, that we may dwell on the unspeakable horror of the nether region where even the quest for knowledge abandons all hope. We soften up our children with bedtime stories of violence and dreadful danger, neglect and cannibalism, comfortable things with which all animals are familiar, then we go on to describe covalent bonds and antimatter, quantum mechanics and relativistic time dilation, that they become mired in seas of madness, to seek solace in Dragonball Z.
Animals hide under a rock for practical reasons. I fear the rock itself. There is no place to hide. Join me, friend, let us dance in hysterical abandon, and infect the whole Universe with our neurosis.
If you enjoy this, feel free to sample our other fine products.
Slashdot Mirror
Darn... saw the article and raced here to post something pithy and brief with 'Duh' in the subject. Too late.
"Scientist" is a woefully ambiguous term. As I scientist, I think GMO food is perfectly safe. I am a nuclear scientist and know little about the GMO process, but that doesn't matter. My opinion does.
Good point. The glaring assertion that the sanctity of scientific authority would carry forth across disciplines, and that those in different branches of science carry more weight than say --- a layman who has put effort to research a specific subject --- is dubious.
One might even say this tabloid appeal to authority is religious... but I would not grace it like that. I have too much respect for my religious friends. I may not share their faith but I can easily see that they deliberately and carefully choose their sources of information (such as the Bible, ancient text and modern sermons) and consider the messenger with each message. They would not inherently revere a reverend with 'priest' rubber-stamped on the forehead any more than we should defer to the results of a poll whose categories are drawn from the presence or absence of a University degree in fields the pollsters considered to be 'sciency'.
Whatever the criteria for being one, scientists are part of the demographic 'public' in the real world.
There is also the fact that people who have read a fair amount in certain fields may understand the questions in a poll but because of their background they may have different perceptions as to the meaning. For example, when I saw the article "Americans Support Mandatory Labeling of Food That Contains DNA"... I did NOT spot it a mile off as a malicious trip-wire question to expose duh-idiots (which it apparently was). I recalled the recent scientific controversy over whether microRNA uptake in digestion might change gene expression in a harmful way, and whether any specific GMO food (by virtue of its narrow genetic origins) might, as an unintended consequence, be able to deliver such a payload. It was all over the news in the US a few years ago and the 'public' had every right to be concerned. Though the science is pretty well settled (see this excellent article) it turns out that the hysteria was fed partly by a failure of the scientific process, among other things. Years ago when the microRNA article was published it was refuted, too casually, even though its implications if true may be dire. Our DNA mechanisms are well-adapted to deal with these fragments and they are indeed very prevalent. This was never explained well enough to the public, who were thinking in terms of a new type of man-made 'contaminant' that had suddenly appeared in the food supply.
It is the "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend Trident Sugarless Gum for their patients who chew gum" phenomenon, where the fifth dentist's opinion does not fit the message and is not even revealed. Could the fifth dentist have known or glimpsed something that would have blown all the others away, convinced them or shamed them? (the survey was actually 1,700 dentists).
If you show most anyone -- including 'scientists' --- a list of major Yellowstone eruptions over time and point out that it has been ~640,000 years since the last, and asked the question "Would you say that an eruption is overdue?" they will tend to say YES. They may even sense it is a trick question. But a geologist would shout "NO!!" and if another Geologist says yes, they would form a mob with pitchforks-mob and march to the door. Geologists are aware of the fuzziness of geologic time scales but above all, their too-casual answers have been used to dupe-scare people.
These polls have been taken before. And the tendency is to perceive them as a sort of exposé of how stupid the 'public' is. But for a few of
Let technology lead where it may, and don't try to put premature labels on stuff.
Yesterday I was arms and elbows in a water meter box scooping out clay and wet mud from to expose all the fittings, to check for a leak.
So I reached for my trusty Sonic Screwdriver that I can point into the box with a setting that ultrasonically loosens and separates the clay from the metal and plastic, or give the handle a twist to another setting that reads relative concentrations of free chlorine molecules in the air near the tip with a series of beeps as they dissociate from the drinking water, the beeping faster as you bring it towards the leak. No chlorine? It's just rain water, no leak here.
But I grabbed my "Internet of Things" screwdriver by mistake. The little LED flashed orange for 20 seconds as it established a Wifi and cloud connection to Scandinavia then turned blue. Laying on the dashboard of the truck, a smartphone played a little tune and its screen cleared and said, "Welcome to Screwdriver 1.0 please select clockwise or counter-clockwise and click 'Submit'."
So like any clever monkey prying into an ant nest, I used the IoT screwdriver to stab into the clay and work it loose from under the fittings so I could fish them out in globby clumps. Then I stooped there watching everything for drips, while reflecting on the marvels of modern technology and how Big Solutions are imagined in giant tanks of Think thousands of miles away, and these solutions reach globally outward looking for Little Problems to solve.
We need more people at work to design a true Sonic Screwdriver. The Industrial Age is not complete until we have one. When it is perfected it could be connected to the Internet for access to p0rn.
Get used to being increasingly confused by a world you increasingly will never understand.
Been there, done that. I used to cry myself to sleep and have bizarre dreams because I was wasting my time learning Linux and Internet protocols and running an ISP while my professional peers were out there making six figure salaries exploring the awesome potential of Microsoft Dot Net and making embedded Corporate Widgets that harnessed the power of ten thousand suns, to deliver sleek desktop solutions to a world desperate for answers.
"But it's all gibberish!" I would shout at the angry skies as gale force winds whipped my tattered robe. "It is like living inside a Dilbert cartoon! The buzzwords come in fast and thick but to me it is just Microsoft-centric Vertical Market software of no specific kind, and your market is people who know they need software automation but don't know why!"
"WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW?!?" thundered the sky as a lightning bolt rent the knoll upon which I was standing, sending forth rivers of money that would always be just out of reach. "You are merely a PLUMBER of the Information age. We are the CODERS."
And the storm would part and a rainbow spanned the sky. Bluebirds would appear to help bind the perfect hair of Software Developers into blue and pink ribbons --- and we --- the ones who had bound the Internet together with sticky-tape and protocols and C would for ever gather around their feet like pigeons waiting for crumbs. But yet, at least there was a place for us.
Until the dot com bubbles burst and they migrated outward with their pretty resumes and took over our Network and Sysadmin jobs. And the telecoms swallowed all the regional ISPs to replace them with centralized warrens of cubicles.
Today I am attending a Special Needs class trying to learn Microsoft Dot Net. So far, every app I try to make always turns out to be an ashtray.
No, family is not (and historically has not been) the general arbiter or source of most information. You're confusing family with society, especially pre literate society.
Where did family come in to it? And how did literacy creep in? "I speak not of a direct and simple connection with one's parents and grandparents, but ongoing dialogue with anyone 20+ years older."
The term 'generation gap' was coined to describe a general oppositional stance or ideological disagreement between the generations. This is a NEW type of 'generation' gap, it is a lack of communication of any meaningful form between the generations.
Looks like my "Call your mom" quip hit some nerves and got more attention than the rest of it. Should have left it out.
This disconnect has only become possible in developed countries in this modern age, where doting parents have provided their children -- from a young age --- with tools that let them reach out to their peers 24x7. So they do, and it goes on into the teenage years. And beyond.
I'm not placing blame here, just trying to illuminate a trend that I perceive as negative. I am probably part of the problem. Over the years I have not introduced my own children to enough adults.
If you are a parent, ask yourself: how many interesting people over the years have I brought my children to, made a formal introduction (disarming that 'strangers' thing) and placed them if not in the care of these people, in the least given exposure to what they do and who they are?
It's a tribal thing dating back to that proverbial village that raises a child. What form does our so-called 'modern' village take? Children are segregated from adults in the general population as surely as by Jim Crow. They are warned about strangers but not told to seek out adults doing interesting things. They are reared in kid-stuff, 'forced' to be with other kids until... it becomes natural I guess.
My own childhood was so different. I was a free range child and the only rule was that my parents wanted to know where I was (a phone call from each place). After school I would make the rounds around town to hang out with adults who were doing interesting things. From the age of 8 I was a regular visitor at a radio station where I had free run of the production room when it was not in use, the telephone company where an engineer let me play with the IBM 5100 where I learned a bit of APL and BASIC, another computer place, a watch repairman (one of the world's last), an alarm company where my friend taught me how to solder, the local newspaper where my parents worked. In every place I gained access just be introducing myself and being respectful. Every one of the adults in these places welcomed my presence and felt free to discuss what they were doing, even assigning me tasks of organization or cleanup (I suggested it, referred to it as "earning my keep").
So in the modern time I actively sought to apprentice myself to these folk, each in a small way. My upbringing was more in line with the 'village' concept than anything I have seen emerge since.
And I think it is a shame.
What remains to be seen is whether those disconnected-from-adults kids are gathering a degree of useful tribal knowledge in the same manner that children always have --- for some 'new' type of tribe. If so, I hope it works out for them. The demographic is well represented on Slashdot and I think one or more tossed an -1 Overrated onto my GP comment because, among other things, they have little tolerance for anyone suggesting that this provincial Internet connected Universe is anything less than ideal for everybody.
This appears to follow the general pattern that people will lie to interviewers to seem more smart, educated, or intellectual than they are.
There is some phenomenon at work. School curriculum seems to contain the essentials of literacy and a general sense that a modern world exists to be explored and understood, but for a great many children now and their twenty-something parents, there seem to be great gaps of knowledge... it is as if a great pool of historical and practical trivia such as that which would be imparted by oral tradition as conversation and interaction with elders, has gone 'missing'.
Perhaps it is not the educational system that has failed us, but a knowledge-transfer process between the generations. I speak not of a direct and simple connection with one's parents and grandparents, but ongoing dialogue with anyone 20+ years older.
From pre-school through college children are becoming independent at younger ages and are managing to slice out their own separate social lives. We encourage this, shape it even. It is possible for them to maintain contact principally with others their own age right into adulthood. Their parents are typically distracted and engaged with work, and everyone has their own directed entertainment to immerse in at the end of the day. Are sundown get-togethers between generations a thing of the past?
Until the post-war '50s there was little in the way of a teen-age subculture. Even before graduation there were life choices to make. You would typically be home by sundown, a great deal more interaction with adults and steady pressure for at least one of the younger to adopt the traditions and vocations of parents was real. Who will manage the farm, who will be the first apprentice at the clock shop? Who will join the Marines, who will be the teacher?
Throughout the Nuclear Age the nuclear family has been in steady decline. Where we had once been paced by the animals and family tradition we were increasingly paced by tides of external stimuli. Diverse political ideology, lifestyle options and the fossil fuel-rich economy encouraged far migration. Today families span more geographical distance on average than at any time in history.
Modern technology helped this to happen. We are a push-button society and kids push buttons as well as anyone. This extends to push-button entertainment and distraction. Maybe we've spent the last three decades of pushing separate buttons instead of spending long hours talking to one another about the little things and the big things.
What if this simple, sad message of generational estrangement as voiced by Harry Chapin... could be applied to a whole country?
Perhaps it's not too late to open those channels again.
Call your Mom.
Ask her what DNA is.
Who really gives a shit about some metaphorical doomsday clock?
I do and so should you. I've been following the Doomsday clock from my teenage years, when it advanced from 7, 4, 3 minutes to midnight at the culmination of the cold War. The existential threat posed by the clock was real and terrifying. At that time scientists were debating a worst-case scenario of Nuclear Winter.
I've been on board with these folks for many years and as such hold them to high standards. One such standard is that of defining each existential threat as complete as possible, and the other is to identify clearly which threats contribute the most risk for the forward clock adjustment. This is done by rank.
Their standard has slipped.
In their statement the issues were presented as follows:
Climate change, leading off with the 2014 Hottest Year statistical flapdoodle, declaring it an issue that "world leaders must face head on, immediately."
And if they have some spare time left over,
Nuclear modernization programs threaten to create a new arms race.
The leadership failure on nuclear power. Hear, hear!
Dealing with emerging technological threats. Ebola (technological? huh?), cyberattacks, AI killer drones, "dual-use technologies" (box cutters?), the kitchen sink.
The Bulletin's ranking is important. If you applaud this headlining of climate change just because you personally feel strongly about it...
Then perhaps you should catch up on the current nuclear weapons counts and capabilities. If a conflict anywhere in the world goes nuclear, do you feel assured that the current leadership of your own country or the closest nuclear power is capable of restraining itself to the use of none --- or at most tactical weapons? If you're one of those folks who like to shout "nuke 'em!", bear in mind that some countries that the United States plays cheeky hardball with, such as Iran, contain resources that China considers to be vital to its National Security. Also since the former Soviet Republic dissolved, Russia and China are becoming more geopolitically allied with one another. Over time perhaps, an alliance will form that is stronger than either one has with the United States. It would be awful indeed to realize this as missiles are crossing in the air.
Perhaps you should evaluate the recent response to Ebola's emergence beyond its historical areas, and ask yourself how prepared even the most developed countries are on this day --- and what could have happened had the outbreak been even slightly less contained. This is ranked towards the end??
Of course, none of these threats, save perhaps a more virulent successor to Ebola with a 100% rate of death or reproductive damage (greetz to Vonnegut) might truly be considered existential. Life would go on and human life especially. Technically we are beyond survival. Even the most ludicrous global warming effects imagined do not convincingly paint a picture of 'mass extinction'; rather, a re-ordering of species numbers, purpose and precedence as nature has done for time uncounted.
But or modern way of life as we know it --- that is truly what is at stake. And it is worth preserving because as a species we are still learning to do better. While there are hot nuclear pickles ready to deploy we cannot be free and clear of the nuclear adolescence posed by Carl Sagan. With Ebola still in the wild without a clear vaccine or some way to deactivate it in its quiescent animal hosts, we cannot be said to have survived that either. And sad to say, a civilization reliant on base load wind and solar is not modern either, especially after a single continent-wide freeze. It's a pa
"Are you recording this, or can you set a flag that will cause this call to be flagged for review? Do it now."
"You're calling because I have a listed phone at an address that used to have Dish Network. Yes, there is a Dish dish on the roof; two of them in fact. Despite asking you not to call, you keep calling on average every two weeks. Clearly you hope that those dishes will be turned on again right now. There is no chance of that, but if you call again here's what will happen. I will climb onto the roof and unbolt both dishes, then toss them over the edge onto the driveway. Then I will bust them apart with a sledgehammer and set fire to what parts can burn. Then I will put out the fire by pissing on it. I will save a souvenir, something with the Dish logo on it, and plant it on a pike in my front yard as a warning to Dish sales representatives. Or if you stop calling it the dishes can stay up there and wait for the next tenant. For the last time, please don't call again. Got it?"
I got a laugh from the lady representative and she said 'Got it!"
They didn't call again.
I love how you delved deep, deep into your bowels in order to conjure up some argument as to how you are correct. 25%? Brilliant work. "At any point in history" - genius stuff.
Congratulations! Since it's obvious that you hold a well-considered contrary view (though you did not express it) it's obvious that you too are in that ~25% who come to their own conclusions, rather than the ~75% "we're not ready for this/perhaps everything will turn out alright" majority that just lets things happen. And you have bowels too? It's amazing what we have in common.
Deer Trail's drone hunting license may seem like it was about dudes with shotguns who wanted to destroy others' property... at least that is a fun way to look at it if you want to make a political cartoon.
But it was to be a test case, a town where 23% of the people expressed a desire that it become a drone "no-fly zone". Do they have the same right do this --- and for the same reasons --- as the White House and Capitol, for example? And if they do not have that right to decide... then for what reason is this right/privilege denied them? Regardless how it turned out, it would have been interesting to see these questions debated and decided.
If NSA thinks they are so great ... why don't they shut off the power supply in North Korea, or the water pump in Mosul, Iraq?
Because North Korea and Mosul are probably more technologically advanced than we, using things called 'mechanical switches and controls' and 'operators'.
In the early days of infrastructure there existed in this country an elite class of operators whose job was to personally attend to the various modern contrivances that make our way of life possible. They worked in shifts around the clock, played cards and listened to the radio, but they were not surrounded by indicators, dials and levers. Every now and then one of them would get up and take a tour of the plant. While many of the simple conditions that might arise had simple mechanical switches that automatically tripped on, such as the clever liquid level switch with adjustable hysteresis, they would be on the move, visiting all the places on the lookout for things such as unusual vibrations or leaks. There were also gauges to read and readings to log, which they would enter into a primitive spreadsheet known as a gridded paper form on a clipboard. Every now and then an adjustment was necessary, moving a lever or a two handed grasp on a wheel to open or close a valve.
As technology progressed electric motors and solenoids were designed into the main control points, with gauge readings carried by wire (as varying voltage from a rheostat) to a main control room. The clipboard now sat on the control console next to the deck of cards, and readings or adjustments was a simple matter of glancing up at the remote gauges and flipping a switch. Inspection tours were still performed hourly, or so the log says. This reduced level of vigilance persisted well into the late 1970s.
In the 1980s things slipped rapidly downhill. The control system was digitized, so that the various sensors and actuator circuits now terminated at a SCADA blinky-box and in place of a massive bundle of wires leading to the control console, where each one can be traced or replaced, now there was a single point of failure device managing the controls, and the console was an electrical fabrication, a HMI device, which was a single point of failure that when it did not fail, presented readings to the operators and monitored the 'switches'. When things worked they worked better than ever. When they didn't operators were groping in the closet for the old walk-around checklist, which instructed them where in the plant to run (not walk) to monitor and make hand adjustments, until the blinky-box was fixed.
In the 1990s the new high speed modem and dedicated telecom circuits, with an additional single point of failure blinky-box which muxed and demuxed everything, made it possible for the HMI to be sited anywhere else. So they did. The decade saw the emergence of Regional Control Centers, where the most skilled operators could gather and play multi-hand poker whilst surrounded by the HMI blinky-lights of several remote locations, that had formerly been fully staffed. In each of these lonely places a lonely operator might play a hand of solitaire and make inspection tours (or so the log says), waiting for that fateful day when the telecom link went down with alarms beeping, and the operator might get to operate for a little while. Most of the time it never did.
In the year 2000 or so, SCADA engineers discovered that via Internet protocol and using various tools such as Java, could map that gargantuan HMI panel with 50+ controls and 50+ indicators onto a single 1024x768 pixel computer screen, and tunnel the complete functionality into a single application with a jittery ball mouse, sticky keyboard and various 'one-touch' key shortcuts that could launch a mechanical plant hundreds of miles away into a triple-alarm condition of catastrophe. And this functional SCADA interface could be presented
Actually we did start wearing clothes only to keep out the weather.
You're right of course. And to keep the bugs in.
destroying other people's property based on them is unlikely to go well for you.
I'd lay odds that the Secret Service will be their first customer because unidentified drones cannot be tolerated in their controlled area, and they try to avoid sniping things unless a clear threat is in progress.
It's a cryin' shame that Deer Trail, Colorado voted down its proposed $25/year drone hunting license. Of 181 votes cast ~73% were against. This makes perfect sense to me, because at any point in history it seems only ~25% of any given population seems able to spot and move against certain trends that would take us down a bad road. And I'm not just talking about the guv'mint.
Up to now paparazzi, peeping toms and criminals casing potential victims and whole neighborhoods have had to grace their target areas with their physical presence, which has held them greatly in check.
I'm sure many are excited at the prospect of Amazon deliveries and pizzas buzzing through the skies -- or just exploring -- just for the novelty of how cool it would be. Hell, whole generations of us were enthralled by the "drone footage" at the beginning of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and how it would show a bird's eye view as he left home to visit his neighbors. Or perhaps you imagine something like this. Reality is a lot messier as they become commonplace. Drone operators will be watching their objectives on the ground and zooming their lenses as they fail to spot each other, power lines and aviation.
They will be crashing down onto busy roadways. As their payloads become heavier and their motors stronger there is potential for real harm to bystanders. When signal is lost or power is low they will go into autonomous descent without regard to the hazards below (such as fast moving traffic). It is inevitable that the use of 'cheap' drones is to become a favored method of terrorists. All of these things will happen by degrees.
We put pilots through the wringer and hold aircraft to ultra-high standards of reliability for good reason. We must not brush these things off lightly, and allow the the skies to become filled moving with objects of unknown purpose and origin. Unless we are really, really excited about putting pizza delivery folk out of work.
Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.
Unless you play Minecraft.
If there's a drone hovering over my land, or my 'charge' if I am hired security, it is guilty until proven innocent.
We did not build fences and walls -- and for that matter -- start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather. We developed personal boundaries and we even invisibly project them around us when we move. If you've ever been asked "What're YOU lookin' at?" by someone, you know this even extends to where you are gazing in public. A common stumble in across cultures is violating staring rules. Expected behavior and perceived intent matters.
One of our sharpest instinctive startle-reactions is the sudden appearance of eyes in places where eyes were not expected, or where eyes should not be. This has evolved with us from a predator mechanism, where swift action becomes necessary, and it is why spotting glowing eyes around a campfire generates a moment of apprehension. Modern humans have correctly characterized drones as eyes in the sky. Unlike helicopters which strive to spend their time beyond the dead man's curve drones are close and personal and quiet.
You can also follow this eyes in the sky phenomenon in history. Even friendly nations felt it necessary to go on alert when their neighbors unexpectedly entered their airspace for reconnaissance flights, and during the Cold War these incursions were considered acts of war. The Treaty On Open Skies was the culmination of 50 year effort to declare aerial surveillance a mutually beneficial activity. Originally proposed by Eisenhower, this treaty was like a 'cease and desist' order for those who sought to keep aerial photography out of reach of the common man, just as there are those who would try to keep secure encryption from the public, oh holy shit President Obama why are you starting this Clipper crap again, sorry about that, and has paved the way for the Google Earth we all know and love to browse.
Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.
So scale this eyes where eyes are not supposed to be thing down to the personal level as part of a right to privacy. The problem is that predatory paparazzi are assholes and bullies, and the people who read tabloid magazines are their silent enablers. For every measure, a suitable countermeasure. That is the market, and you can bet if I was on a security detail one of these would be on my Xmas list.
If you are comforted to be watched over by machines of loving grace... smile, you're on Candid Camera.
NOAA and NASA use SATTELITES to get the SURFACE TEMPERATURE?
No, troposphere.
See Spencer RW, Christy JR. Precise monitoring of global temperature trends from satellites. Science 1990 for an early discourse which suggests preferring satellite measurements over ground based thermometer networks for global climate studies. The idea that a few precise instruments with truly global coverage will give the most accurate picture of global change over time. It's a no brainer really. Even if there is a discrepancy with actual temperatures, one adjustment would be necessary and relative anomaly over time would remain spot-on. A better tool.
"[Spencer] Global temperatures have generally been estimated from surface temperature records, but there has been much debate regarding, for example, whether these data provide evidence of recent greenhouse warming. The primary source of uncertainty is the relatively sparse distribution of thermometers over the surface of the earth. [...] Our data suggest that high-precision atmospheric temperature monitoring is possible from satellite microwave radiometers. Because of their demonstrated stability and the global coverage they provide, these radiometers should be made the standard for the monitoring of global atmospheric temperature anomalies since 1979. Their use will allow relatively precise monthly determinations of the locations and magnitudes of temperature change events. The resulting data should provide a greater focus of scientific debate on why temperature anomalies occur rather than whether they occur."
Also, Tropospheric temperature trends:history of an ongoing controversy (Peter W. Thorne et. al.) 2010 which revisits the debate, gives a nice introduction to various homogeneity adjustments ('retroactive' adjustments that attempt to reconcile instrument and site to reality) applied to both satellite and ground datasets. They basically 'punt' in the end, saying in effect that global temperature measurement is a Big Tent and there's room enough for everybody, we'll all just massage it a bit here and there until it's perfect.
Why would NASA jump into that Big Tent, join with NOAA and others to incorporate surface measurements into a final product that they use to issue statements like "2014 Was the Warmest Year In the Modern Record" by an amount that is within the range of statistical error, when their own satellite data shows otherwise?
Here is where I become openly bitter and say flat out: there is a hysteria party going on and anything that doesn't fit the narrative gets tossed into the margins. Perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with accurately measuring tropo temps by high resolution satellite. If there is, it hasn't 'surfaced' yet. In fact, everyone agrees that they are in almost perfect concordance with other sources. Almost. And what form does this almost take?
The satellites say no warming over the last 18 years. I believe the satellites.
I have a more difficult time believing the aggregate result of the Big Tent, which puts a heavy weight on dozens of disparate instrument types placed in thousands of places, where is the instrument's own drift, local weather variables, with a product that is subject to a raft of adjustments, (take no prisoners: ON) presented by a group of people who seem to be (unscientifically) personally and emotionally vested in selling anthropogenic catastrophe. What is the aggregate error of the Big Tent? Enough that announcing a temperature record by 0.02C is an irresponsible and disingenuous thing to do?
THAT is why even here on Slashdot, the brief snipe dissing Judith Curry get modded +I INSIGHTFUL and my comment pointing out the existence of statistical error is awarded -1 TROLL
It's shameful. Frankly, I'm amazed that the folks here on Slas
I would be leery about listening to Judith Curry. She is often wrong: https://www.skepticalscience.c...
I'd be leery of a series of greeny globalwarmy newsy 'Hottest Year' claims that are weighted heavily on surface thermometer readings and beat the previous record by "a tiny, effectively unmeasurable 0.02C" that is (conveniently, suspiciously) not divulged in the press release, an amount which is within the margin for error... lest people suspect that they are being emotionally manipulated in a very unscientific way. When you responsibly consider statistical error, 2014 is a tie year.
For a more reasoned compilation of sources on temperature data related to this announcement, check the sources cited on this evil page of devil-spawn skepticism at Climate Depot.
These announcements are good for only two things:
1. scaring people for political purposes
2. playing THE HOTTEST YEAR EVER! drinking game
We have a winner. Let's all have a drink.
Replace all the people with LEGO people. Little LEGO people seem to have no gender-specific issues, since the differences are just painted on. Even better would be to use bricks to assemble giant LEGO people, because then on the anatomical level everything would fit into everything else.
Wow, you don't know much about ICs are made, do you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...
Now read that again.
"For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy"
Feel silly? You should. Put down that K. Eric Drexler nonsense and wake up.
That Todd Fernandez HOPE09 talk on IC manufacture is AWESOME, thanks!! Yes, I feel silly. That shit is indeed indistinguishable from magick.
But because I am incorrigible and dislike car analogies, I will merely extend my bathroom analogy.
1. harness the properties of useful stuff as cowpies and turds
2. fine-tune the diet to maximize useful properties in turds
2.5 fart on silicon wafers (Atomic Layer Deposition) and poke it onto the surface with photons to make useful patterns (present level of technology)
2.6 Discover more delicate ways to fart and more pokey ways to poke. [...]
IC manufacture will always be about aggregation of functional component layers with successively higher and more conceptual function layers, and 2D lithography is a great way to do it. But the closest Fernandez comes to envisioning the Steelypips is during the QA after the lecture, when he is asked about the future of FIB (Focused Ion Beam) technology and more specifically Electron beam-induced deposition... with its ~0.045nm focus and the ability to deposit ~0.7nm Dippin' Dots, would make it the pokiest way to poke. But most exciting, the possibility to build out in three-dimensions.
But the article is not so concerned with these high level structures, it's firmly at the poop level, a challenges of materials science to improve the desirable properties of graphene to produce turds with more carbon surface area. Better cowpies make better batteries.
To do this you refine the traditional methods of simply incorporating naturally occurring granules of carbon into your poop, which is analogous to the consumption of corn, to a better one where the bonds form structures like dandelion seeds so that the same mass has more surface area.
The superior area:mass ratio is what allows dandelion seeds to float, and mixed materials more chemically reactive. This makes the same volume of poop poopier, it's like turning poop inside out from a lump into a poop flower. That is indistinguishable from magic too -- if you were a classical chemist from the age of alchemy, unaware that your dumps were full of clumps, you'd think this was some kind of amazing Poop-TARDIS.
The Steelypips I envision in GP can maneuver an individual atom into place, stand back and examine their work (a form of electron tunneling that does not destroy the specimen) and decide, "let's put it there instead."
A feat analogous to bending over and farting out a candle across the stage. To this day it is always done with trickery.
Glad to see the potential for a new revolution in electronics. Assembling precise crystalline structures is the best way to harness properties of any material. For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy, where chemicals' properties are known in a general sense. Elements are combined and set into clumps of useful stuff.
The two prevalent forms of stuff-clumps used in electronics have been the cowpie, a dollop of stuff placed into container in which electrodes or plates are suspended to yield useful properties of storage or electron transfer, perhaps selectively doped to generallly control the dance of the little electrons in their shells... and the turd, an extruded mass of stuff in which its length or composition determines the property, and electrodes are fixed to either end.
1. harness the properties of useful stuff as cowpies and turds
2. fine-tune the diet to maximize useful properties in turds (present level of technology)
3. flocculate the turd juice into tiny turdlets (the innovation described in TA)
4. assemble lattices of turdlets via electrostatic or acoustic means (think phi and eye of dragonfly)
5. bit by bit assembly, such art as has been mastered by the Steelypips,
"Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ..."
~~Stanislaw Lem
Of course, a few of the folks here are going to go on to suggest that this process will some day become giant disposable batteries the size of skyscrapers that are built and lovingly installed like 2001: Monoliths, for the express purpose of storing a year's worth of solar and wind grid energy so that if the clouds roll over and the wind dies down, it will power our modern civilization for ten minutes. At which point I will lose my temper.
The human race (at our favored levels of population density) has evolved past the point where a natural state of good health can be maintained without access to bulk electricity, which equates to drinkable tap water. This is a greater factor than access to doctors or medicine. We pledge 'aid' to help to help countries around the world but so much of that help is NOT building infrastructure.
What China is doing is building a modern China from scratch in record time. They have the blueprints in hand. They even know that they are making mistakes (eg, coal) but they're focused on the prize. Cuba trades doctors for useful things. China will be able to trade everything for things.
To me it seems our major export these days are Financial Instruments and Financial Middlemen, and the structured debt that arises in their wake. But not to worry, the principal of these loans do not tap your hard-earned taxpayer dollars, many of which go toward repayment of interest on our own national debt. This is magical unicorn money that will come from World Investment Funds and Bank perpetual money machines that are backed by International Corporate Banks that bought shitloads of worthless paper and were bailed out by Bushobama with the Fed minting virtual money that saved the banks' balance sheets from ruin, and Treasury Bonds purchased by the Chinese who have said fuck-it and have decided to decouple and give Africa (for example) their time and especially their money directly, some of which would ultimately come from us as repayment on debt to China with China becoming Africa's direct partner in infrastructure instead. This does not make sense on so many levels.
The United States has shown the world what it means to have access to so much energy and surplus income: property, personal transportation, washing machines, treated water and sewage, road trips, stocked supermarkets.
And yet, nothing presently "made in America" could prevent its decline. Not only have most of its factories closed, the basic blueprint for every consumer item and industrial process which supports the modern lifestyle is shared throughout the world. This is a done deal.
For a price --- China is now fully equipped to build an 'America' anywhere in the world it chooses. From surveying to road building to farm machinery to industrial process and infrastructure, electricity plants and grids, telecommunications, water distribution and treatment. Everything from rivets to houses, the mailbox, the picket fence and the white paint. Everything.
And why wouldn't they? They have begun taking steps to decouple their economy from our own [bloomberg.com]. At this point in time the US cannot afford to be parlaying with Malthusian governance artists who seize on theories of environmental catastrophe and leverage 'affluence guilt' to tax everyone (YOU first). The ONLY thing that can save us is to do something extraordinary, something that changes the game. Something made in America (first) that changes the world.
Such as some form of base load energy that is cheaper than coal.
At this point anything else the United States could offer the world, or China, is worth less than a fart in a high wind.
I am Sam. Uncle Sam I am.
That Uncle Sam, that Uncle Sam, I do not trust that Uncle Sam.
Do you like backbone voice/data taps and bulk retention?
I do not like them, Uncle Sam. They're just tools for blackmail, thugs and future despots. They am.
Would you like them here or there?
What bullshit, Sam. You put them everywhere.
Would you like it bound by Charter? Can I promise to do no evil? Tartar?
We tried that, Sam. The old folks have retired and it's run by young sociopaths who don't see anything wrong with even tapping their own poor children. They're smart-stupids, blinded by the buck and the tech, they do not realize what a sorry-ass country this could become WHEN that stuff falls in the wrong hands.
Then introduce a bill into the House. Ask your senator, man... or mouse?
Mumble National Security mumble, they say. I think they are under blackmail, today.
Then will you, won't you, take it to the Judge? [wink]
We did, in Hepting vs. AT&T. The only case that would have exposed, in the discovery process, the true extent of domestic telecom surveillance. The Ninth Circuit dismissed the case by citing a law that was enacted AFTER the case was filed. The Supreme Court refused to hear it. Miscarriage of justice, much?
Your bitter phrases take lots of time, you cannot even make them rhyme.
That's because I trying to communicate something REAL, asshole.
Should I put NSA in a box?
Guard the hen house with a fox?
You mean, appoint a Director that goes before Congress under oath, pretends to know nothing and needs both hands to find his ass in the dark?? We've tried that too. I thought it was unlawful to lie to Congress, guess not.
Would you like it on a boat? Would you like it with a goat?
That's the kind of transparent childish misdirection we've come to expect from you people. Like that stupid false metadata conundrum, a limited hang-out where you 'pretend' to relinquish voluntary data sharing agreements, and fill everyone's ears with talk of metadata. When all the while the backbone taps ensure you will obtain all that by other means, and more besides.
You do not like Big Brother, so you say,
Try it! Try it! And you may.
Fuck off.
It's been tried, Stalin would be proud of what we have built already. The TRUE extent of our domestic spy apparatus is, by now, probably hidden and partitioned into layers. The folks who built it out knew full well it would not pass Constitutional muster, and so they have probably created a series of interlocking pieces and black-funded faux-telecom 'private' companies that have title of the 'assets'. It may require a massive de-funding and deconstruction effort, and the sociopaths that have built this thing may 'turn turtle' and put their legs in the air... but that will NOT be enough. We're back to Hepting vs. AT&T again, it is the private telecommunications technicians that must come forward en masse and help identify these interconnect points.
I wish I could trust you, Uncle Sam
Can I interest you in some... spam?
Claiming that wind and solar can't do this job is spectacularly stupid because this is a job ideally suited to wind and solar.
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. I could be thick as a brick... yet still capable of imagining a continent-wide Winter storm that begins with freezing rain, leaving a shell of crystalline ice, drifts of fluffy snow and a hard freeze condition lasting a week or more. I don't mean just a little wave of storms, such as the ones that caused NextEra to shut down wind farms that were supposed to last '20 years' or more... I'm talking about real weather. It has happened before. It will happen again.
It's all a big FAIL, an idea that should have been laughed out of the room years ago, by people with more power of imagination than intelligence.
Taking critical base load power generation outside and raising it up on giant stalks, with millions of precision moving parts exposed to the elements, is stupid. It's an engineering nightmare. Staking your very survival on the combined output of acres of solar panels is beyond stupid. It's gone further still into the realm of the 'ridiculous'.
Don't quote happy spreadsheets claiming that the happy Chinese are willing to buy more happy bonds and sell us thousands of turbines with tons of happy molybdenum magnets, to put in places distant from people and all these small (but happy!) 3MW contributions of power are going to add up to a happy aggregation of happy survival.
Just try to imagine a single giant ice storm. A really SAD one.
Generating gigawatts of electricity inside a seismically hardened building by a process that can keep a few years' worth of fuel on-hand --- that's not even smart. It's a no-brainer.
> Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here
Yeah, if by "around here" you mean "on earth".
I know you're trolling me, but do you really know how far off the mark you are? People want (reliable, affordable, clean) energy. Those attributes are in their proper order of preference because people are practical and parents have little mouths to feed. And NO generation has ever ethically concluded that their own children were entitled to less available energy and fewer choices than their own.
Are you so enamored of coal and natural gas, so convinced they will save your ass, that you feel comfortable dabbling in unworkable ideas? Coal and gas are not renewable. They too will fall prey to this massive ice storm, as gas distribution networks suffer power outages and coal trains stop running. Solar and wind are not 'renewable' either, they are 'disposable', as in failed experiment, money and precious time wasted.
If any of those anonymous contributors who modded my GP 'interesting' have deep pockets, how 'bout we go full frontal John Galt and all gather some where in the world that is not populated by hysterical radiophobes, and place as much of a priority on the perfection and scaling of molten salt technology as say, we did for steam, rail and other things.
All aboard for Galt's Gulch!
Sure, a few trees would help. But do you want to twerk around and do a dinky bit of dis and a little of dat, of do you want to get the job done?
We're not lost lambs in the field trudging around looking for tender shoots of clover and going "Baaaa!" when we cannot find any. We are human sheep! We harnessed and domesticated clover, made it grow in rows where it is sucked into great machines and stored in tanks and all we do is stick our muzzles into clover dispensers and glorious compacted clover product shoots into our mouths! Then we spill hot clover juice on our lap and we SUE!
We can do the same for energy, because that's really all that matters, finding new and better sources. With a grand surplus of energy anything becomes possible. Want to absorb 50 POUNDS of carbon a year? Plant a tree. Want to absorb several TONS of carbon per day? Then build a single carbon sequestration plant on the edge of town. Why are people on a technological forum discussing planting trees to solve a simple problem of chemistry and applied industry?
You should be ashamed of yourselves!
I see folks advocating solutions like re-terraforming the Earth with invasive monocultures to make fuel, sequester CO2 or perhaps just to annoy the locals, because everyone on Earth is presently surrounded by plant species they cherish and are evolved to their own area. Or by proposing efforts that might get off the ground in a miniscule way and doing practically nothing, people are just pushing walk-away solutions for salving their conscience.
1. develop and scale a massive, reliable source of carbon-nuetral energy
2. do anything you want with it, including capturing CO2
3. If you make synfuel with captured CO2, at least you break even when it burns.
If you're proposing wind and solar as that energy source, you may as well start planting trees. For all the good it will do. And there's only one possible source of energy that could scale and meet these challenges:
Thorium has become sort of a in-joke around here and suggesting anything besides wind and solar tends to get a flood of Beavis and Butt-head responses. Perhaps we are seeing the human race split into two races --- the Eloi, their numbers few, devolved into wandering berry and leaf eaters as they graze in overgrown fields among the rusted wind turbines and vine-encrusted solar panels... and the Morlocks, proud stewards of mankind's technological heritage as we whiz around in our electric cars powered by clean, boundless energy.
Proud to be a Morlock. That cannibalism thing is just a rumor we spread around to keep them off our lawns.
___
For the straight poop, watch Thorium Remix and see my letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Come see the Battle of the Appliances! Coming to a home near you!
Been there, done that. In 1971. Push em over! Here's where Robot's Rules of Order don't apply... at Hideo Nut's Bolt-A-Drome! ... as seen on "Who Asked For It" ... strap on your servo-mitts and pit your nettle against common household appliances ... step right up ... think you can go three rounds with this water heater sailor, looks easy! But sealed in the back of this metal Mother is a Radar Activated Stamping and Siezing Module that will keep a man punchin' ... until he's drunk with power ... a man like YOU ... all up inside for Hideo Nut's Bolt-A-Drome...!
Kid, I dreamt I went there once, but fightin' is out of style now.
Wow, someone just now noticed that animals can easily detect incoming low pressure fronts and hide from the weather.
Humans have many unique abilities too.
We are the only ones with the gift to see in dark grey waves of clouds the furrowed brows of an angry gods, whom we anger further by murmuring profane incantations about dew point and pressure gradients. Only we gaze down from our satellites and perceive that the hurricane is looking back. In the magnificent gyres of natural phenomena we may discern an uncanny alien intelligence. We alone feel that it is scrutinizing us, judging us, finds us wanting. "We are naked in the dark. Sam, and there is no veil between us and the wheel of fire. We begin to see it even with our waking eyes, and all else fades..."
We alone knock on wood to summon for its friendly assistance to combat invisible foes, and yet we are capable of perceiving that even that would never be enough. We are unique in the ability to summon demons from the underworld, the empty reaches of space, even a wry comment overheard on Thanksgiving.
Animals fear the unknown, but we also fear the unknowable, as we seek to discover the limits of what can be known, that we may dwell on the unspeakable horror of the nether region where even the quest for knowledge abandons all hope. We soften up our children with bedtime stories of violence and dreadful danger, neglect and cannibalism, comfortable things with which all animals are familiar, then we go on to describe covalent bonds and antimatter, quantum mechanics and relativistic time dilation, that they become mired in seas of madness, to seek solace in Dragonball Z.
Animals hide under a rock for practical reasons.
I fear the rock itself. There is no place to hide.
Join me, friend, let us dance in hysterical abandon,
and infect the whole Universe with our neurosis.
If you enjoy this, feel free to sample our other fine products.