Do you see what is going on in Sudan and Somalia? That is what could very well happen in those states as well.
The big difference, of course, is that if the UAE (to pick an example) decides to have a civil war, or invade Oman, or whatever - we won't necessarily have to intervene. Which would save us quite a bit of money and trouble.
entitlement culture this country is increasingly showing and would force people to actually learn a skill and be productive(at least temporarily). Let people earn their keep instead of simply sitting around waiting for unemployment checks.
Right, because people just love being on unemployment. If what you're saying here is that the government ought to start paying a bunch of unemployed people to do productive work, I'm with you there. We'd get economic stimulus plus make a dent in our giant backlog of needed infrastructure work.
For this to be even remotely feasible, you'd have to be able to produce (renewable) electricity cheaper than we can already do it on earth. And there's just no way you're going to be able to loft a big energy collector into space and then beam the energy back to earth for less money than you can just build regular old ground-based solar PV or wind or whatever.
Nobody. What would actually happen is that whoever controls the satellite would have to sell the power at a price it will sell at, i.e not more than other power generators are selling for.
And there's not the slightest chance you're going to get this thing built and producing power for less than what we can currently produce power for. Which is why no one is seriously pursuing electricity generation in space.
Controlling population growth is less realistic than the freaking space elevator? I've got some news for you: lots of countries on earth are declining in population right now: Japan, Russia, lots of Europe. China has cut population growth enormously. The US is essentially only growing through immigration.
Lowering the earth's population is totally doable. Space elevator? Call me when we can practically make carbon nanotubes longer than a millimeter. Then we can think about a space elevator. In the meantime, continuing to get our reproductive rate under control is something we're absolutely going to have to do.
And while we're still going to need new sources of energy even if we do all the above, someone explain to me how it's going to be more economical to harvest the solar wind in this way than it is to just use existing PV technology on earth. The solar wind project would require 1) tons of R&D to get it in shape to deploy, 2) huge expenses in lofting the collection equipment, building ground stations, etc, and 3) probably a lot of other expenses I haven't thought of.
We can do solar thermal, PV, wind, and nuclear with technology we have RIGHT NOW. We really don't need more exotic technologies to generate electricity.
... is that PV companies can make more money sellling their PV systems than they can save by putting them in themselves. Which is not exactly an indictment of PV systems.
... to all the currently operating PV and wind energy generating systems out there. Seriously, have you ever driven in the US? There are wind farms all over the freaking place. Lots of home solar PV installation businesses are going like gangbusters. And all of this activity is useless (or even against the laws of physics)? I don't think so.
And I have to say I was a little amazed. Geoscientists were surprised to find geothermal activity... in WV? The land of hot springs? Yes, you are correct that hot springs don't necessarily imply good geothermal energy production... but it's certainly suggestive. I still don't understand why anyone found this surprising.
it idiot's who don't RTFA
And speaking of idiots - don't use an apostrophe to form a plural.
While this sounds like a good idea, the problem is that segregating and storing all this stuff would be tremendously expensive (the cost of segregating recyclable materials is one of the main reasons why recycling programs have had somewhat of a checkered history). And there's no guarantee that it would ever pay off. So it would be tough to get anyone to invest in something like this.
Actually, while there are a lot of theories (some of which are discussed in other responses), no one really knows why. It's not really curing any disease... antibiotics make even healthy animals grow faster. So actual answer to your question is no, no one can really explain this.
Ok, grandpa doesn't use google, or apparently, the web browser at all. And if he can't figure out how to type something into the address bar, I doubt he's doing anything really far out and high tech, like, you know, e-mail or word processing. So what does he use it for - a portable heat source? Of course he doesn't call for tech support if he never uses the thing. I question whether this example is really relevant.
"Installing" a Mac mini involves setting it on your desk, plugging in the power and peripherals, and turning it on. Installing Ubuntu: not hard, but certainly harder than that.
The Hiroshima explosion was about 15 kilotons, and it managed to destroy some substantial portion of the city. If 20 megatons is a good estimate for the energy of this thing... well, it'll be bad even if it falls at some distance from a city. If it fell in the US anywhere east of the Mississippi, there'd be a huge number of casualties. So no, not world destroying, but if it hits somewhere even moderately populated... yeah, bad.
It doesn't do tab syncing, but it certainly does bookmark syncing, which seems to be what you really need. As far as I can tell it supports all the major browsers, too.
This thing is going to be too expensive for able-bodied people to have in their home - if you have full use of your body, washing your hair is easy, and this thing would have to cost, what, thousands of dollars? The only use I can imagine is in hair salons and assisted living places. So your wife would still get to go out and interact with people... just not with the hair washer.
How could this thing possibly be cost effective? The stylist at your favorite hair place does the same job for not a very big salary, and he/she can do a lot of other stuff too. I can't help but think these things are mostly publicity stunts, although there's presumably some valuable experience to be gained in solving hard (for robots) problems.
Right, because lots of people want the freedom to waste all kinds of money and generate a lot more pollution. The only reason the government needs to get involved in the first place is because the sticker price on an incandescent was lower than that of a CFL - the lifecycle cost of the CFL was considerably less. And we're getting to the point, because of economies of scale, that even the sticker price on a CFL is not much more than an incandescent... which wouldn't have happened if the gov't hadn't kicked off demand. Not to mention that incandescents aren't even banned - they've just instituted performance standards for light bulbs, and many specialty types of incandescents have been exempted from that.
The government has the right to regulate light bulbs because the use of electricity has very significant negative externalities, which no one is paying for. So could we please stop with the "OMFG teh socialists are coming for our light bulbs! Man the battlements!" crap already?
Many types of incandescent bulb, including heat lamps, will remain available after these regulations come into full effect. I'm not sure where people got the idea that all incandescents are no more, but I am pretty sure that your final sentence is nothing more than totally unfounded propaganda. As another example: CAFE standards for car gas mileage.
Many types of incandescent bulb, including heat lamps, will remain available even after the regulations come fully into effect. As for your question, if the choice is between continuing to send supertankers full of dollar bills to Saudi Arabia, and producing sensible regulations that will at least somewhat cut down on this wholly unnecessary expense, I'm in favor of the regulations.
As usual, the price of incandescent light bulbs does not include the negative externalities their use implies. And also, people typically don't look at the life-cycle cost of the things they buy, just the up-front price. So the market, as is so frequently the case, is broken, and requires government help to get fixed.
CFLs have lower lifetime costs than incandescents, so it's hard to see why they're a hardship for poor people.
All incandescents are not being banned. There are numerous exceptions for bulb types that can't effectively be made fluorescent.
Strictly speaking, incandescents are not being banned at all. The laws/regulations only specify that bulbs need to achieve a certain number of lumens/watt. In practice, incandescents can't meet the standard, but in the unlikely event some new incandescent technology made them wildly more efficient, they could be sold under existing rules.
CFLs are already labeled with their lumen output as well as actual watts consumed (and usually, the wattage of the incandescent that gives the same amount of light, for comparison).
It would help if you understood the current situation regarding bulb regulations better, before prescribing changes.
Practically everyone else on earth would be better off to just leave the CFLs in. And you'd be no worse off (and it would be a lot more convenient) to just get an electric space heater and leave your CFLs in place.
Slashdot Mirror
The big difference, of course, is that if the UAE (to pick an example) decides to have a civil war, or invade Oman, or whatever - we won't necessarily have to intervene. Which would save us quite a bit of money and trouble.
Right, because people just love being on unemployment. If what you're saying here is that the government ought to start paying a bunch of unemployed people to do productive work, I'm with you there. We'd get economic stimulus plus make a dent in our giant backlog of needed infrastructure work.
From orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
For this to be even remotely feasible, you'd have to be able to produce (renewable) electricity cheaper than we can already do it on earth. And there's just no way you're going to be able to loft a big energy collector into space and then beam the energy back to earth for less money than you can just build regular old ground-based solar PV or wind or whatever.
And there's not the slightest chance you're going to get this thing built and producing power for less than what we can currently produce power for. Which is why no one is seriously pursuing electricity generation in space.
Controlling population growth is less realistic than the freaking space elevator? I've got some news for you: lots of countries on earth are declining in population right now: Japan, Russia, lots of Europe. China has cut population growth enormously. The US is essentially only growing through immigration.
Lowering the earth's population is totally doable. Space elevator? Call me when we can practically make carbon nanotubes longer than a millimeter. Then we can think about a space elevator. In the meantime, continuing to get our reproductive rate under control is something we're absolutely going to have to do.
And while we're still going to need new sources of energy even if we do all the above, someone explain to me how it's going to be more economical to harvest the solar wind in this way than it is to just use existing PV technology on earth. The solar wind project would require 1) tons of R&D to get it in shape to deploy, 2) huge expenses in lofting the collection equipment, building ground stations, etc, and 3) probably a lot of other expenses I haven't thought of.
We can do solar thermal, PV, wind, and nuclear with technology we have RIGHT NOW. We really don't need more exotic technologies to generate electricity.
... is that PV companies can make more money sellling their PV systems than they can save by putting them in themselves. Which is not exactly an indictment of PV systems.
Call me when you think of an actual argument.
... to all the currently operating PV and wind energy generating systems out there. Seriously, have you ever driven in the US? There are wind farms all over the freaking place. Lots of home solar PV installation businesses are going like gangbusters. And all of this activity is useless (or even against the laws of physics)? I don't think so.
And I have to say I was a little amazed. Geoscientists were surprised to find geothermal activity... in WV? The land of hot springs? Yes, you are correct that hot springs don't necessarily imply good geothermal energy production... but it's certainly suggestive. I still don't understand why anyone found this surprising.
And speaking of idiots - don't use an apostrophe to form a plural.
While this sounds like a good idea, the problem is that segregating and storing all this stuff would be tremendously expensive (the cost of segregating recyclable materials is one of the main reasons why recycling programs have had somewhat of a checkered history). And there's no guarantee that it would ever pay off. So it would be tough to get anyone to invest in something like this.
Actually, while there are a lot of theories (some of which are discussed in other responses), no one really knows why. It's not really curing any disease... antibiotics make even healthy animals grow faster. So actual answer to your question is no, no one can really explain this.
Ok, grandpa doesn't use google, or apparently, the web browser at all. And if he can't figure out how to type something into the address bar, I doubt he's doing anything really far out and high tech, like, you know, e-mail or word processing. So what does he use it for - a portable heat source? Of course he doesn't call for tech support if he never uses the thing. I question whether this example is really relevant.
"Installing" a Mac mini involves setting it on your desk, plugging in the power and peripherals, and turning it on. Installing Ubuntu: not hard, but certainly harder than that.
The Hiroshima explosion was about 15 kilotons, and it managed to destroy some substantial portion of the city. If 20 megatons is a good estimate for the energy of this thing... well, it'll be bad even if it falls at some distance from a city. If it fell in the US anywhere east of the Mississippi, there'd be a huge number of casualties. So no, not world destroying, but if it hits somewhere even moderately populated... yeah, bad.
It doesn't do tab syncing, but it certainly does bookmark syncing, which seems to be what you really need. As far as I can tell it supports all the major browsers, too.
This thing is going to be too expensive for able-bodied people to have in their home - if you have full use of your body, washing your hair is easy, and this thing would have to cost, what, thousands of dollars? The only use I can imagine is in hair salons and assisted living places. So your wife would still get to go out and interact with people... just not with the hair washer.
How could this thing possibly be cost effective? The stylist at your favorite hair place does the same job for not a very big salary, and he/she can do a lot of other stuff too. I can't help but think these things are mostly publicity stunts, although there's presumably some valuable experience to be gained in solving hard (for robots) problems.
Crush skull, rinse, repeat...
Right, because lots of people want the freedom to waste all kinds of money and generate a lot more pollution. The only reason the government needs to get involved in the first place is because the sticker price on an incandescent was lower than that of a CFL - the lifecycle cost of the CFL was considerably less. And we're getting to the point, because of economies of scale, that even the sticker price on a CFL is not much more than an incandescent... which wouldn't have happened if the gov't hadn't kicked off demand. Not to mention that incandescents aren't even banned - they've just instituted performance standards for light bulbs, and many specialty types of incandescents have been exempted from that.
The government has the right to regulate light bulbs because the use of electricity has very significant negative externalities, which no one is paying for. So could we please stop with the "OMFG teh socialists are coming for our light bulbs! Man the battlements!" crap already?
Many types of incandescent bulb, including heat lamps, will remain available after these regulations come into full effect. I'm not sure where people got the idea that all incandescents are no more, but I am pretty sure that your final sentence is nothing more than totally unfounded propaganda. As another example: CAFE standards for car gas mileage.
Many types of incandescent bulb, including heat lamps, will remain available even after the regulations come fully into effect. As for your question, if the choice is between continuing to send supertankers full of dollar bills to Saudi Arabia, and producing sensible regulations that will at least somewhat cut down on this wholly unnecessary expense, I'm in favor of the regulations.
As usual, the price of incandescent light bulbs does not include the negative externalities their use implies. And also, people typically don't look at the life-cycle cost of the things they buy, just the up-front price. So the market, as is so frequently the case, is broken, and requires government help to get fixed.
It would help if you understood the current situation regarding bulb regulations better, before prescribing changes.
CFLs result in lower lifetime mercury emissions than incandescents.
Practically everyone else on earth would be better off to just leave the CFLs in. And you'd be no worse off (and it would be a lot more convenient) to just get an electric space heater and leave your CFLs in place.