I never thought there'd be a way to look like even more of a douche than missing the point entirely and posting inappropriately smug and condescending comments on Slashdot. Oh wait, there isn't.
The biggest problem is that nobody will touch the technology with a ten foot pole as far as funding just because the original researchers did such a poor job of their documentation, and others were completely unable to produce anything.
A commonly held myth among apologists for the scientific establishment.
The reality is that CalTech, MIT and Harwell all attempted to replicate P&F's results nearly a year prior to P&F's experimental protocol being published, and P&F were restricted, by University of Utah legal counsel, from making any disclosures beyond their "preliminary notes" issued along with the press conference.
It is generally recognized, even by the pseudo-skeptic "authorities" such as the DoE's chair of its cold fusion panel, Huizenga, that for all practical purposes, the prestigious institutions' failure to produce "nuclear products" (even though P&F IN THE ORIGINAL PRESS CONFERENCE said that neutrons were a factor of a billion too small to be explained by conventional nuclear fusion) closed out the entire affair WITHIN FIVE WEEKS of the press conference.
The claim that these ridiculous "experiments" (using speculative protocols), conducted to ridiculous expectations (totally ignoring evidence of excess heat), somehow "falsified" P&F's experiments is triply corrupt:
You can't claim to attempt to replicate an experiment for which you don't even know the protocol.
You can't "falsify" in the P-pperian sense, an experiment with another experiment. P-pperian falsification applies only to theories being falsified by experiment.
Looking for a phenomenon that is a factor of a billion smaller than another, clearly measurable (not to mention practically valuable) phenomenon -- HEAT -- while ignoring that other phenomenon, smacks of precisely the kind of "pathological science" that the pseudo-skeptics accused P&F of promoting.
There is simply no excuse for the scientific establishment's handling of this affair.
Institutional incompetence defends itself by portraying all observation of its effects as "Conspiracy Theories". This defense mechanism is now, itself, an institution. Moreover it is an institution that is extraordinarily effective at protecting incompetence in all institutions (including itself).
Part of the problem is that almost all institutional incompetence derives from faulty incentive structures, so it is easy to impute to the critic the claim that such incompetence is not incompetence at all but, rather, is self-interest. The critic is hard-pressed to deny this (except insofar as such self-interest is unenlightened hence incompetent in that meta-sense) and is thence imputed to "theorize" a "conspiracy" of self-interested individuals as the basis for the maintenance of the institutionalized incompetence. Again, the critic may not have put forth nor even have thought of such a theory but he is hard-pressed to disprove that a "conspiracy" -- in some sense -- is at work so he cannot very well vigorously deny such a theory. This vulnerability of the critic is then viciously attacked. This all goes on within a subtext of the conversation so it is a rare critic that recognizes how the burden of proof has been shifted from the institutionally incompetent needing to prove that the critic has theorized a "conspiracy" (which, of course, would require defining "conspiracy") to the critic needing to prove that such a "conspiracy" (the definition of which is, after all, in the mind of the institutionally incompetent) is clearly out of the question despite the vagueness of the term multiplied by the lack of information with which to support or deny even a clear definition.
So, the institution of "Critics are crazy people." successfully defends all institutional incompetence.
While this is merely part of the problem, its effectiveness in promoting institutional incompetence leads to a rather undesirable state of affairs.
As an extreme illustration let me describe a fictional dialog between Pol Pot and a government funded "physicist" regarding the "cold fusion" debacle.
First a bit of background on this conversation between Pol Pot and a government funded "physicist":
January 26, 1990, the journal Nature rejected Oriani's empirical validation of Pons and Fleischmann's 1989 announcement of "excess heat" on the grounds that he didn't provide evidence of nuclear ash and, besides, others were having difficulties replicating the experiment. It is no exaggeration to say this rejection established the foundation for all future claims that there had been no replication of Pons and Fleischmann's announced results -- hence the summary rejection of virtually all submissions related to so-called "cold fusion": Nuclear "physcists" must be satisfied in their irrational standard of conformance to expectation before any experimental results would be published.
Then we are treated to the statement by the DoE's chairman of the panel appointed to investigate cold fusion, John Huizenga:
"Although the McKubre experiment is considered by many advocates to be the premier evidence for excess heat, no nuclear reaction products were reported."
Huizenga is not a Nobel Laureate but a co-chair who was a Nobel Laureate, Norman Ramsey had to threaten to resign if the conclusion of the panel was to cut off future research -- as was Huizenga's agenda. Ramsey managed to prevent a prohibition on future research funding -- and a recommendation that such research should focus on replication of the calorimetery, hence excess heat. That is all he was able to accomplish with his ultimatum. There was no positive recommendation that funds be put forth. Hence, no research was funded.
These two events created an environment in which it was career death for anyone to request funds for "cold fusion" research, let alone so-allocate discretionary funds.
For a complete account of the premature and enduring attack on "cold fusion" research, see "Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research P
Take this for example: "This is especially true, we think, considering we chose to test only the syntax in Perl that is relatively common across a number of languages (e.g., if statements, loops, functions, parameters). Considering that Java syntax, which many would arguably consider to be easier to understand than Perl, uses similar syntax, we are curious how it would perform. Given this interesting first result, we plan to test a number of additional languages using the same procedures."
If you ask a novice to sit down and learn the tool chain it takes to write "hello world" in Java vs just about any other language, you'll be conducting a fair test that is actually relevant to novices.
Ah, the voice of reason! You'll have to forgive me while I fantasize your being dropped down in the middle of your fantasy of a pre-Christian Anglo Saxon forest where you call the first guy you see, 10-inch sward strapped to his thigh, a "girl" and then, as he reaches for it tell him you were just joking and then quickly reach for the Esc key that isn't there.
Horseshit. You said: "Upgrading the power? What are you blathering about, power is power. Its the rate of change of energy over time." thereby betraying your inner moron. Saying you were mocking my use of "upgrading" as betraying my unfamiliarity with the technical world just greases you up goatse style in addition to bending you over as far as you can go, since "grade" is the root word of "gradient" and it is clear that higher spatial gradients of power is exactly what I was talking about.
Obviously, to you, a terawatt of power is a terawatt of power "grade" is a silly concept, whether it is available as unpredictably intermittent sunlight scattered over large areas of rough terrain or in an arc furnace processing vast flows of lunar materials.
Such is moron math...
The shuttle was a technosocialist piece of shit comparable to what we have ended up with if Langley could have set up a bike shop in Ohio to put the Wright Brothers out of business.
Oxygen is abundant in lunar rock. Human-breathable atmosphere is a plus for humans but is a minus for the industrial processes upon which modern technological civilization is increasingly founded. A hard vacuum is more desirable and human-breathable atmosphere is achievable with those processes. The black body temperature of the universe is cryogenic and the temperatures easily achievable by a gossamer parabolic reflector in zero gravity experiencing no weather is near that of the surface of the sun. If you think 1.5 is the insolation factor gain, you failed completely to understand the importance of continuous availability in a zero gravity environment with no weather -- which goes beyond a mere gain (much more than 1.5) in insolation, but includes much lower costs of upgrading that power to industrially useful levels.
As for the so-called "space station" -- again, it is as though you think bureaucrats building advanced devices in space is somehow representative of what is achievable. Much better models are available in the advancement of flight subsequent to the Kelley Act and the advancement of satellite communications subsequent to the NASA act that barred NASA from competing with the private sector in communications satellites.
How many people a day are placed into flight miles above the Earth today? How many were there a hundred years ago?
The energetics of getting to orbit are about the same as a transcontinental flight.
As for the various places on earth you find so much more attractive, consider that these places are not all that hospitable to technological civilization compared to a very predictably high energy flux environment (over 1kW/m^2 constant) with options for zero to any amount of constant gs (via rotation).
Technological civilization is a control freak. It wants out of the biosphere.
My opinion is that dispersing into space will recreate conditions that led to the evolution of man -- which I see as recovery of individuality from the hunting packs of Africa. The advent of civilization as been a regression to Africa. Space habitats of thousands of people will be a temporary arrangement as people are weaned off of civilization. At that point, there will be single combat and natural hazards limiting growth. On Earth man's presence seems to be compatible with the biosphere only to the extent that he recovers the natural duel that so characterizes males of other species.
Start with:
O'Neill, Gerard K.; Driggers, G.; O'Leary, B. (October 1980). "New Routes to Manufacturing in Space". Astronautics and Aeronautics 18: 46–51.
That is the math behind exponential partial self-replication utilizing lunar materials with a very short doubling time.
"The High Frontier" by Gerard O'Neill has the numbers for per-area energetics and material costs leading up to estimates of the limits to growth based on asteroidal materials.
O'Neill, Gerard K.; Driggers, G.; and O'Leary, B.: New Routes to Manufacturing in Space. Astronautics and Aeronautics, vol. 18, October 1980, pp. 46-51.Several scenarios for the buildup of industry in space are described. One scenario involves a manufacturing facility, manned by a crew of three, entirely on the lunar surface. Another scenario involves a fully automated manufacturing facility, remotely supervised from the earth, with provision for occasional visits by repair crews. A third case involves a manned facility on the Moon for operating a mass-driver launcher to transport lunar materials to a collection point in space and for replicating mass-drivers.
The energetics have been worked out since the 1970s and by the time the Space Shuttle was coming in insanely under advertised performance, the energetics were even further reduced.
This guy is ridiculously illiterate. Do the math, indeed!
The one area the US government was prohibited from competing with private sector companies in by the act that established NASA was satellite communications.
That relegated other areas of economic development of space to a communist model of government run services. It is no surprise, then, that the Soviets were more efficient in developing launch capabilities and indeed manned space presence -- they were professional communists: If their communist bureaucracies didn't function, they didn't eat. Contrast that with the US where government institutions can fail continually and the private sector can still provide the necessities. It is virtually guaranteed that once the vital national interests of the space race were realized by the Apollo Program, that NASA would degenerate into a far worse failure mode than the Soviet Union's space program. We are just now starting to enter the age of private launch services as a result.
To, in this context of communist domination of space launch services, point to the failure of space programs to develop the economic potential of space is tendentious to say the least. How many people had flown at the time the Kelly Act privatized air mail?
The math has been done and it is clear:
Habitats fabricated in free space can provide thousands of times more habitable surface area than Earth.
The only question is whether technological civilization should leave Earth to ecological remediation.
The Free State project is a nonstarter for the simple reason that there are no border controls between States. Mutual consent implies the freedom not to consent and that includes not consenting to undesired immigration. If you think that is evil, then go argue with a biologist who is trying to conduct an experiment and is running evil control experiments that practice the politics of exclusion of environmental contaminants.
Moreover the US Federal Government takes 10 times the tax revenue of the State governments and its laws determine virtually all functions of the States. State governments can do little but rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Politics is primarily about the social sciences such as economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, etc. In broad terms politics is about human ecology.
The problem is everyone in politics KNOWS what the causal laws are that govern human ecologies. Indeed, everyone in the social sciences KNOWS what the causal laws are that govern human ecologies.
They don't.
What they have are correlations and, as every sophomore knows "Correlation doesn't imply causation."
The hard sciences get around this with experimental controls but it seems that the political class equates the political equivalent -- the Laboratory of the States -- as some how being a violation of the 13th amendment (or at least on the slippery slope to same). They prefer to slug it out with rhetoric and propaganda to see who can get their hypothesis in human ecology imposed on all States at once in the guise of "liberal democracy" which, in operational terms, is merely tyranny of the majority restrained only by a vague laundry list of selectively enforced "human rights".
Such "liberal democracy" is de facto theocracy whose canons are dictated by the equivalent of religious wars.
It is much more important to any real notion of human rights that people be able to vote with their feet, than vote in the ballot box. Assortative migration of mutually consenting adults sharing strongly held working hypotheses in human ecology is what the world needs -- not more centralized government ruled by a "scientific" elite. If a minute fraction of the dollars spent on wars was spent, instead, on such assortative migrations, not only would people be able to enjoy genuine consent of the governed, but the science of human ecology would be, for the first time, genuine science as the groups into which they assort would function as control groups, discovering the causal laws politicians and professors guess at and then preach at the populace and the pupils.
Of course -- the only time "science" is trotted out by the central government guys is when there are no options for control groups: global atmospheric concerns.
Yes, it is true that of the various soft-scientific views, atmospheric ecology is the strongest justification for centralized governmental controls. That's why we are NOT given the option of global assortative migrations but ARE given the option of global central authority controlling anyone who affects the atmosphere.
So, yes, Bob, you're right. You and your globalist theocrats do have a reasonable justification for imposing your belief system about global warming on the rest of the world. But you would be a LOT more credible among the "populists" if you put a fraction of the effort you put into global governance of atmospheric ecology into "regime change" that promoted a genuine Laboratory of the States so that when it comes to other political issues, you guys can just STFU and let people live their strongly held beliefs in human ecology among mutually consenting others.
Oh, but that would "open the door to 'State's Rights' Nazis!!!" The truth be damned. Consent of the governed be damned. Scientific ethics be damned.
"...we can still recover it at a later date very simply.”
Every carbon capture technology has one slight problem:
The amount of energy required to release the CO2 thereby recycling the capture material.
Yeah... "very simply" given infinite energy.
TFA says nothing about how much energy is required to "recover it at a later date" but we are assured it is "simple". Nor does the scientific journal article's abstract state the energy requirement. It, too, is stupid.
The Shuttle payload was 23,000kg to LEO and by NASA's own estimate, that 23,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)450billion.
Ignoring the entirely rational argument that a private launch service industry, without fear of government-subsidized competition supported against bankruptcy by fear of political embarrassment and loss of special interest votes, would follow a normal industrial learning curve:
We here speak merely of the government launch capability was at the end of the Apollo program:
The Saturn V payload was 120,000kg to LEO and, again, by NASA's own estimate, that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).
Doing the math for you, just in case you are stupid as well as ignorant:
The Shuttle program set back access to space and kept it from recovering. It'sbeen a decades-longeffort to get NASA out of the space transportation business but it may finally be happening due in no small part to the fact that NASA is perceived by the Obama administration, however inaccurately, as competing for minority preference civil service jobs.
Its understandable that people confuse the assertion that "college is a waste of time" with anti-intellectualism. After all, it is true that college costs both time and money but what people seem to ignore is the damage to critical thinking done to youthful developing brains by college. If people ignored the idea of "waste" and focused on the brain damage done, it would be harder to characterize such criticisms of college as "anti-intellectual".
PS: I'm not here trying to say that academia does more damage than media, mind you -- but it does make the damage a bit more difficult to cure since it has the veneer useful knowledge.
US students are ineducable wanna-be gangsta-rappahs, yo'. Tech employment should be outsource to the developing world where people are intelligent and diligent!
The University of Western Washington is just facing reality. Really, all of US higher education should just give up.
Slashdot Mirror
I never thought there'd be a way to look like even more of a douche than missing the point entirely and posting inappropriately smug and condescending comments on Slashdot. Oh wait, there isn't.
A commonly held myth among apologists for the scientific establishment.
The reality is that CalTech, MIT and Harwell all attempted to replicate P&F's results nearly a year prior to P&F's experimental protocol being published, and P&F were restricted, by University of Utah legal counsel, from making any disclosures beyond their "preliminary notes" issued along with the press conference.
It is generally recognized, even by the pseudo-skeptic "authorities" such as the DoE's chair of its cold fusion panel, Huizenga, that for all practical purposes, the prestigious institutions' failure to produce "nuclear products" (even though P&F IN THE ORIGINAL PRESS CONFERENCE said that neutrons were a factor of a billion too small to be explained by conventional nuclear fusion) closed out the entire affair WITHIN FIVE WEEKS of the press conference.
The claim that these ridiculous "experiments" (using speculative protocols), conducted to ridiculous expectations (totally ignoring evidence of excess heat), somehow "falsified" P&F's experiments is triply corrupt:
There is simply no excuse for the scientific establishment's handling of this affair.
Part of the problem is that almost all institutional incompetence derives from faulty incentive structures, so it is easy to impute to the critic the claim that such incompetence is not incompetence at all but, rather, is self-interest. The critic is hard-pressed to deny this (except insofar as such self-interest is unenlightened hence incompetent in that meta-sense) and is thence imputed to "theorize" a "conspiracy" of self-interested individuals as the basis for the maintenance of the institutionalized incompetence. Again, the critic may not have put forth nor even have thought of such a theory but he is hard-pressed to disprove that a "conspiracy" -- in some sense -- is at work so he cannot very well vigorously deny such a theory. This vulnerability of the critic is then viciously attacked. This all goes on within a subtext of the conversation so it is a rare critic that recognizes how the burden of proof has been shifted from the institutionally incompetent needing to prove that the critic has theorized a "conspiracy" (which, of course, would require defining "conspiracy") to the critic needing to prove that such a "conspiracy" (the definition of which is, after all, in the mind of the institutionally incompetent) is clearly out of the question despite the vagueness of the term multiplied by the lack of information with which to support or deny even a clear definition.
So, the institution of "Critics are crazy people." successfully defends all institutional incompetence.
While this is merely part of the problem, its effectiveness in promoting institutional incompetence leads to a rather undesirable state of affairs.
As an extreme illustration let me describe a fictional dialog between Pol Pot and a government funded "physicist" regarding the "cold fusion" debacle.
First a bit of background on this conversation between Pol Pot and a government funded "physicist":
January 26, 1990, the journal Nature rejected Oriani's empirical validation of Pons and Fleischmann's 1989 announcement of "excess heat" on the grounds that he didn't provide evidence of nuclear ash and, besides, others were having difficulties replicating the experiment. It is no exaggeration to say this rejection established the foundation for all future claims that there had been no replication of Pons and Fleischmann's announced results -- hence the summary rejection of virtually all submissions related to so-called "cold fusion": Nuclear "physcists" must be satisfied in their irrational standard of conformance to expectation before any experimental results would be published.
Then we are treated to the statement by the DoE's chairman of the panel appointed to investigate cold fusion, John Huizenga:
"Although the McKubre experiment is considered by many advocates to be the premier evidence for excess heat, no nuclear reaction products were reported."
Huizenga is not a Nobel Laureate but a co-chair who was a Nobel Laureate, Norman Ramsey had to threaten to resign if the conclusion of the panel was to cut off future research -- as was Huizenga's agenda. Ramsey managed to prevent a prohibition on future research funding -- and a recommendation that such research should focus on replication of the calorimetery, hence excess heat. That is all he was able to accomplish with his ultimatum. There was no positive recommendation that funds be put forth. Hence, no research was funded.
These two events created an environment in which it was career death for anyone to request funds for "cold fusion" research, let alone so-allocate discretionary funds.
For a complete account of the premature and enduring attack on "cold fusion" research, see "Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research P
If you ask a novice to sit down and learn the tool chain it takes to write "hello world" in Java vs just about any other language, you'll be conducting a fair test that is actually relevant to novices.
If it weren't for the guys from IIT, none of the following inventions would have occurred:
Ah, the voice of reason! You'll have to forgive me while I fantasize your being dropped down in the middle of your fantasy of a pre-Christian Anglo Saxon forest where you call the first guy you see, 10-inch sward strapped to his thigh, a "girl" and then, as he reaches for it tell him you were just joking and then quickly reach for the Esc key that isn't there.
Horseshit. You said: "Upgrading the power? What are you blathering about, power is power. Its the rate of change of energy over time." thereby betraying your inner moron. Saying you were mocking my use of "upgrading" as betraying my unfamiliarity with the technical world just greases you up goatse style in addition to bending you over as far as you can go, since "grade" is the root word of "gradient" and it is clear that higher spatial gradients of power is exactly what I was talking about.
Obviously, to you, a terawatt of power is a terawatt of power "grade" is a silly concept, whether it is available as unpredictably intermittent sunlight scattered over large areas of rough terrain or in an arc furnace processing vast flows of lunar materials. Such is moron math...
Oxygen is abundant in lunar rock. Human-breathable atmosphere is a plus for humans but is a minus for the industrial processes upon which modern technological civilization is increasingly founded. A hard vacuum is more desirable and human-breathable atmosphere is achievable with those processes. The black body temperature of the universe is cryogenic and the temperatures easily achievable by a gossamer parabolic reflector in zero gravity experiencing no weather is near that of the surface of the sun. If you think 1.5 is the insolation factor gain, you failed completely to understand the importance of continuous availability in a zero gravity environment with no weather -- which goes beyond a mere gain (much more than 1.5) in insolation, but includes much lower costs of upgrading that power to industrially useful levels.
As for the so-called "space station" -- again, it is as though you think bureaucrats building advanced devices in space is somehow representative of what is achievable. Much better models are available in the advancement of flight subsequent to the Kelley Act and the advancement of satellite communications subsequent to the NASA act that barred NASA from competing with the private sector in communications satellites.
The energetics of getting to orbit are about the same as a transcontinental flight.
As for the various places on earth you find so much more attractive, consider that these places are not all that hospitable to technological civilization compared to a very predictably high energy flux environment (over 1kW/m^2 constant) with options for zero to any amount of constant gs (via rotation).
Technological civilization is a control freak. It wants out of the biosphere.
My opinion is that dispersing into space will recreate conditions that led to the evolution of man -- which I see as recovery of individuality from the hunting packs of Africa. The advent of civilization as been a regression to Africa. Space habitats of thousands of people will be a temporary arrangement as people are weaned off of civilization. At that point, there will be single combat and natural hazards limiting growth. On Earth man's presence seems to be compatible with the biosphere only to the extent that he recovers the natural duel that so characterizes males of other species.
Start with: O'Neill, Gerard K.; Driggers, G.; O'Leary, B. (October 1980). "New Routes to Manufacturing in Space". Astronautics and Aeronautics 18: 46–51. That is the math behind exponential partial self-replication utilizing lunar materials with a very short doubling time. "The High Frontier" by Gerard O'Neill has the numbers for per-area energetics and material costs leading up to estimates of the limits to growth based on asteroidal materials.
O'Neill, Gerard K.; Driggers, G.; and O'Leary, B.: New Routes to Manufacturing in Space. Astronautics and Aeronautics, vol. 18, October 1980, pp. 46-51.Several scenarios for the buildup of industry in space are described. One scenario involves a manufacturing facility, manned by a crew of three, entirely on the lunar surface. Another scenario involves a fully automated manufacturing facility, remotely supervised from the earth, with provision for occasional visits by repair crews. A third case involves a manned facility on the Moon for operating a mass-driver launcher to transport lunar materials to a collection point in space and for replicating mass-drivers.
You use solar thermal collectors to process nonterrestrial materials, primarily from the moon and secondarily from Earth approaching asteroids to bootstrap to the asteroid belt with a very small seed infrastructure lifted to the moon from earth.
The one area the US government was prohibited from competing with private sector companies in by the act that established NASA was satellite communications.
That relegated other areas of economic development of space to a communist model of government run services. It is no surprise, then, that the Soviets were more efficient in developing launch capabilities and indeed manned space presence -- they were professional communists: If their communist bureaucracies didn't function, they didn't eat. Contrast that with the US where government institutions can fail continually and the private sector can still provide the necessities. It is virtually guaranteed that once the vital national interests of the space race were realized by the Apollo Program, that NASA would degenerate into a far worse failure mode than the Soviet Union's space program. We are just now starting to enter the age of private launch services as a result.
To, in this context of communist domination of space launch services, point to the failure of space programs to develop the economic potential of space is tendentious to say the least. How many people had flown at the time the Kelly Act privatized air mail?
The math has been done and it is clear:
Habitats fabricated in free space can provide thousands of times more habitable surface area than Earth.
The only question is whether technological civilization should leave Earth to ecological remediation.
Rossi stands on the shoulders of giants.
Moreover the US Federal Government takes 10 times the tax revenue of the State governments and its laws determine virtually all functions of the States. State governments can do little but rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The solution to the causation conundrum in the social sciences is available to policy makers but the reality is they don't want to know the truth and they don't want government to be truly consensual.
The problem is everyone in politics KNOWS what the causal laws are that govern human ecologies. Indeed, everyone in the social sciences KNOWS what the causal laws are that govern human ecologies.
They don't.
What they have are correlations and, as every sophomore knows "Correlation doesn't imply causation."
The hard sciences get around this with experimental controls but it seems that the political class equates the political equivalent -- the Laboratory of the States -- as some how being a violation of the 13th amendment (or at least on the slippery slope to same). They prefer to slug it out with rhetoric and propaganda to see who can get their hypothesis in human ecology imposed on all States at once in the guise of "liberal democracy" which, in operational terms, is merely tyranny of the majority restrained only by a vague laundry list of selectively enforced "human rights".
Such "liberal democracy" is de facto theocracy whose canons are dictated by the equivalent of religious wars.
It is much more important to any real notion of human rights that people be able to vote with their feet, than vote in the ballot box. Assortative migration of mutually consenting adults sharing strongly held working hypotheses in human ecology is what the world needs -- not more centralized government ruled by a "scientific" elite. If a minute fraction of the dollars spent on wars was spent, instead, on such assortative migrations, not only would people be able to enjoy genuine consent of the governed, but the science of human ecology would be, for the first time, genuine science as the groups into which they assort would function as control groups, discovering the causal laws politicians and professors guess at and then preach at the populace and the pupils.
Of course -- the only time "science" is trotted out by the central government guys is when there are no options for control groups: global atmospheric concerns.
Yes, it is true that of the various soft-scientific views, atmospheric ecology is the strongest justification for centralized governmental controls. That's why we are NOT given the option of global assortative migrations but ARE given the option of global central authority controlling anyone who affects the atmosphere.
So, yes, Bob, you're right. You and your globalist theocrats do have a reasonable justification for imposing your belief system about global warming on the rest of the world. But you would be a LOT more credible among the "populists" if you put a fraction of the effort you put into global governance of atmospheric ecology into "regime change" that promoted a genuine Laboratory of the States so that when it comes to other political issues, you guys can just STFU and let people live their strongly held beliefs in human ecology among mutually consenting others.
Oh, but that would "open the door to 'State's Rights' Nazis!!!" The truth be damned. Consent of the governed be damned. Scientific ethics be damned.
Every carbon capture technology has one slight problem: The amount of energy required to release the CO2 thereby recycling the capture material. Yeah ... "very simply" given infinite energy.
TFA says nothing about how much energy is required to "recover it at a later date" but we are assured it is "simple". Nor does the scientific journal article's abstract state the energy requirement. It, too, is stupid.
Read the post again, idiot.
Ignoring the entirely rational argument that a private launch service industry, without fear of government-subsidized competition supported against bankruptcy by fear of political embarrassment and loss of special interest votes, would follow a normal industrial learning curve: We here speak merely of the government launch capability was at the end of the Apollo program:
The Saturn V payload was 120,000kg to LEO and, again, by NASA's own estimate, that 120,000kg to LEO cost $(2011)1.11billion ($(1969)185billion).
Doing the math for you, just in case you are stupid as well as ignorant:
The Shuttle program set back access to space and kept it from recovering. It's been a decades-long effort to get NASA out of the space transportation business but it may finally be happening due in no small part to the fact that NASA is perceived by the Obama administration, however inaccurately, as competing for minority preference civil service jobs.
PS: I'm not here trying to say that academia does more damage than media, mind you -- but it does make the damage a bit more difficult to cure since it has the veneer useful knowledge.
The University of Western Washington is just facing reality. Really, all of US higher education should just give up.