"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."
Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?
I think it might be slightly _more_ maddening, being on top of the mountain in the crappy thin air, knowing what's just a jeep ride away, but you're not allowed to go....
The thing that makes it a non-comparison is that you eventually will be allowed to, or just break the rules and, go... in the little tin box with nothing but death on the other side of the door and no possible escape.... that's hard to get an accurate psychological simulation of.
If we want to, say, explore Mars with a team of ten or so, or set up a colony, that would be the time for the youngsters, IMHO.
I think we're talking along parallel lines, and not that far apart. I'm focused on the "first" missions, because we've never really launched a team of 10 or more, for anything. Those smaller, early missions are still going to require plenty of spacewalking, cumbersome suits, even though the work weights will be low, the mass and inertia will still be high and require strength to get it moving, and stopped. If it's a high radiation hazard, that's not too much different from taking a beachhead in the Pacific - lots of random particles flying around at high velocity, none of them good for your health. Only difference is, in space, the particles are (usually) smaller, faster, and less likely to miss during a "firestorm."
You're not doing your Kurzweil math correctly, order of magnitude harder means twice as long, due to exponential progress in technology, unless we're talking about fusion power, or batteries.
What happened was a funding, and interest, slash in the early 1970s. That happens when people get comfortable that death won't be raining from the sky at any moment. I think we also pulled the plug on Apollo before something gruesome happened - to keep it as an untarnished feather in the cap. To our credit, we did keep slugging away with the shuttles, even after the two "Need Another Seven Astronauts" learning experiences - and that kind of dedication is required if you're going to colonize a new continent in the 1600s, or visit a new planet today.
Man returning to the moon first seems logical to me, even though there are those who would argue that if Mars is the mission the Moon is a distraction. To me, progress should be the mission, and since the first shuttle launches in the early 1980s, I feel like we've been mostly stalled in the "Boldly going" department. That's not saying there wasn't serious risk in the Shuttle program, especially for the astronauts, just that it wasn't bold new risk in the unknown, it was more business as usual risk, which makes the losses even that much sadder.
He's not the diet problem, especially now, his younger brother on the other hand is the sweet tooth with the skin rashes. I got him to like bacon after play-forcing it to him, but mostly he's into cereal, milk, ice cream and french fries.
Funny thing about the older one, he eats almost everything now, except pickles - we (parents) hate pickles too, but I seriously doubt he puts them aside because we do, I saw him taste-test a pickle chip and a quarter slice, and after that, he's done with them.
There most certainly are plenty of healthy people who could go. However, I disagree that younger people could perform better than older people. Okay, the terminally ill would be a poor choice.
In a low (1/6G on the moon, for example), older folks would be just as capable as younger ones to perform low G construction, scientific testing, spaceport management, all kinds of stuff. In fact, many of the jobs necessary in low gravity/free fall would be just fine for those in their late fifties and sixties.
In fact, they would be a wonderful resource for long-term missions to the outer planets as well as helping to engineer space habitats, moon facilities and even martian exploration.
As long as the worker is healthy enough to survive the trip to LEO, they should be perfectly able to perform tasks for which they are trained (how many engineers, scientists and the myriad of other specialties required for space exploration, development and colonization are in that age range? A whole lot). Unless, of course, you think that somehow being older makes you less intellectually capable. The average lifespan of an American is somewhere around 75 years. I ask again, why waste a valuable resource?
What is more, this would obviate many of the evolutionary and ethical issues seen with younger participants.
I'm approaching 50, and I'll let you in on a little secret, we're not as tough as we act at this age. I had better senses, attention span, cognitive speed, reflexes, learning speed, joint mobility, stamina and a host of other useful, animal skills when I was 25 to 35 years old. Of course, I'm still "better with age" but that's basically experience at work, and 99% of what makes me better today than I was 20 years ago can be replaced by a team of experts at the other end of a radio link.
If I were the mission planner and I could have a ground crew of 200, but only 12 on the mission, I'd keep the grey hair down with their families, let 'em work ordinary 8 hour shifts and take normal vacations - you get better people that way, and you want the best people you can get. If you take the brightest, most talented and experienced person and caffeine fuel them for 18 hour shifts, you're still not getting better performance than you would from a team of 3 people who have figured out what's important to them in life and also happen to be experts in their field.
So, I'm saying, put the wunder-kind on the mission vehicle, support them with experienced ground crew. When the pioneers have established a reliable shirt-sleeve living and working environment that doesn't demand too much of the residents, then think about sending the old folks - they'll be able to contribute in great ways; but for pioneers you're better off working with people that don't have heavy family ties, arthritis, kidney stones and the occasional cancer that needs treatment.
There's also issues beyond nutrition. When our older boy was 2 1/2 years we tried to "supplement" his diet of 99% Cheerios and milk with lemon flavored Cod liver oil - it seemed like the right thing to do, biochemically. The lemon masked the odor and initial taste enough for him to trust us to feed him the spoonful, but the aftertaste was enough to teach him to not trust us regarding food again for a very long time.
We've been sending an increasing number of unmanned probes to Mars every "launch window" for the last decade, and the probes have been getting bigger each time. A habitat going to Mars might more resemble an inflatable balloon than a metal box, present tech for radiation shielding looks more at things like polyethelene than lead due to high energy scattering effects. No, the problems aren't all solved yet to an "acceptable level of risk" or "highly economical mission cost", but that doesn't mean they're impossible, or that both those factors won't improve with increased funding to develop better answers.
Apollo 11 happened within a single decade, this time we'd be starting with a lot stronger infrastructure and tools, all it really takes is the devotion of resources.
The fuel to power the air conditioning for U.S. troops in GWII was consuming more money, annually, than NASA's entire budget. All it takes to do a thing like a manned moon landing or Mars mission is the political will to do it.
Well, his diet was (sort of typical for some young kids) very restricted to "preferred foods" - not so much sugar, but peanut butter sandwiches (yes, we tried trading sunflower butter for peanut butter - no changes... apparently not a peanut thing...) certain chips, orange creme yougurt, french fries, etc. then, about a year ago, he started eating EVERYTHING - brussels sprouts, steak, shrimp, chicken, fish, sweet potatoes, broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, rice, beans, corn, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese burgers, etc. etc. He gets quite a bit of fiber now without any problems - general health has improved a bit too, but the communication level is about the same.
Years back, the infamous Dr. Phil had a show where he said "you're the adult, you control what your kid eats," never, ever, has any public figure ever been so full of $&!# as that man on that show. The truer saying is "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" - our kids would literally starve themselves before eating non-preferred foods.
You can take enzyme pills, which are partly effective, but not as effective as abstinence in diet.
The leading explanation of gluten sensitivity (in one community, at least) is permeability of the gut-blood barrier, usually aggravated by an unfriendly colony of intestinal flora... this also tracks with our experience. After long periods (years) of no gluten problems, small intakes of gluten (a slice of pizza here or there) seem not to matter as much, as if the gut has healed, or production of the necessary enzymes has up-regulated in the absence of those things they break down? First sounds more likely than the latter, but who really knows? It seems to be following "semi-classical allergy response" where exposure during active allergy causes insult and higher sensitivity to the allergen, but withholding the allergen for long periods of time allows the body to tolerate it better...
There are myriad explanations, many scientifically based, the real mystery is: what is happening in _your_ child right now? Sometimes administering a treatment strategy for one explanation will also have observable effects if another explanation were true, e.g. did the pro-biotic supplement heal the gut lining, or did they start assisting in enzyme breakdown?
The tax bill per child makes plenty of sense to me (cost of schools, medical care in many cases, etc.) - my grandparents came from a time of 10ish children per family, and a lot of the current tax structure is still holding over from those days, when fast population expansion seemed like a good idea. I also like the baby-allowance trading idea, in principle, though implementation would have many pitfalls. Something along the lines of each person, at ages 20 and 22, receives 0.5 child credits that they can combine or trade with others to have legal children. Children born without proper up front crediting might cost 1.5 credits to "make legal," and parents of non-licensed children might be sentenced to work in public daycare and similar facilities?
War, disease, or government regulation... ugly choices, I preferred life in the early 1970s when we were going to solve overcrowding by terraforming Mars...
Well, for us, for the child it matters for, it wasn't the difference between junk overload and healthy diet - most of what he ate (initially) on the gluten free diet was more "junky" cookies, ice cream, etc. than the Cheerios and bread that we removed from the diet. Also, during the early years, when we would "break diet" - for instance, one serving of regular pancakes, instead of the GF pancakes, we'd see dramatic reversion to the problems for a period of weeks. It's all very mysterious, and many explanations have been offered, the one that seems to fit our child the best is that a long lasting morphine-analog is getting passed into the brain, I'm not sure I 100% buy that, but like I said, of all the wild theories flying around out there, that one comes closest to a believable explanation of our observations.
So, when demand outstrips supply for "basic human rights" items like the right to bear children (or eat healthy food, or breathe clean air...) should the free market economy still rule, giving the supply to those with the cash?
I think the apportionment of medical care in the U.S. is a good example of the free market gone wrong when it comes to the things that are most important to people - it would seem like a bad model to follow if mandatory birth control ever happens.
Some of it comes down to "how do you value people?" Is Angelina Jolie "worth more" than my wife because she has enough money to support 50 kids? Maybe to a lot of people, but not to me.
If you go back to the framing of democracy, there's that "one man, one vote" underpinning - sure it has been modified over the years (race and sex), and you can certainly try, and usually succeed, to buy votes with money, but at its most basic level it is distributing power per capita, not per dollar of disposable income - and every once in awhile, there are laws passed that try to diminish the power of money in elections - slightly more often than there are laws passed to increase monetary influence.
I agree about people having kids who can't afford to take care of them... we, as a planetary society, are having more kids than the planet can afford to take care of, no matter how clever or industrious we are. All the shuffling of numbers in accounts, or little slips of paper or coins of precious whatever don't mean anything when the resources are exhausted, and the basic reason the resources are exhausted is that we have too many people consuming them. Arguments about how many people can live in a primitive Alpine village style vs a San Diego commuter style are basically moot, there's a limit, and as a whole, we're running past it, quickly. Switching everyone from the most consumptive "high CO2 footprint" lifestyles to the cleanest, most environmentally friendly ones will only buy us a generation or two at current birth rates. It's the birth rates that have to change.
China has been pulling it off for a couple of decades now... maybe not as kind and gently as some would like, but they are doing more good than harm with their birth control.... the surplus males coming into puberty right now might disagree, but overall, they're still better off than they would have been with 3.7 children per family being born....
It has to happen sooner or later, no matter what kind of technological wonders we come up with to support population growth, 10 billion, 100 billion, a trillion, at some point there's not going to be enough earth to go around. Personally, I'd rather live in a planet that has 1 billion people, total, than one with 100 billion. The extra 100x people would be spending so much of their time, effort and resources just to stay alive, they won't have time or energy for leisure or luxury activities.
If 90% of us drop dead, that would actually help quite a bit more than any conservation efforts. Aggressive birth control comes in a strong second for effectiveness in the medium (20-40 year) term.
If you take the historical view of humanity's behavior, you'd come to the conclusion that the 1970s were an anomaly, we should have had WW-III, then we'd be dealing with nuclear winter, potentially an ice age, instead of runaway CO2 production.
Either way, we're facing yet another of nature's challenges, whether we as a species are smart enough to achieve a soft transition remains to be seen. Personally, if we can get over the nationalistic and personal competitiveness and lust to control as much as "humanly" possible, I think there's a chance for a soft landing along these lines:
35 years ago, I was a "less than 1%" freak, communicating with friends electronically, using computers on a daily basis, etc. I did it because it came naturally to me and I didn't really give a damn whether or not it increased my overall popularity or social standing.
Well, starting about 5 years ago, I was becoming a "luddite freak" because I didn't carry a smartphone - again damaging my social standing, but this time because I wasn't communicating with friends electronically or using computers as much as all the cool people were.
One of the theories that's kicked around for the upswing in Autism births is the "assortive mating" concept - with match.com and similar services, "afflicted persons" who were unsociable and awkward in the bar/disco scene are able to pass on their genes much more quickly and easily than they were in the recent past.
David Bowie recorded a song "Oh You Pretty Things" back in 1971... read the lyrics with an open mind and tell me what you get from it. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics...
We've got two boys, both diagnosed on the spectrum, apparently from different planets to use your care giver description...
We have tried all kinds of therapy, mostly experiential/interaction based, and a few "bio-medical" interventions, the gluten-free diet made a huge positive impact for the older child, meh for the younger. Also, we did a serious run with MHBOT and saw, among other positive things, a huge improvement in eye contact and ability to tolerate people in general - again for the older child. According to the literature, we're not alone in the eye contact / MHBOT thing.
And, as Tigger told Piglet, you just can't argue with a word like "fraught."
Alaska has different efficiencies than the continental US. Getting a construction crew up there to make a ground based windmill is expensive. Basing anything large in the Alaska soil is expensive, if not impossible in the Permafrost. Fuel costs (away from the pipeline) are high due to transport costs.
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"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."
Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?
I think it might be slightly _more_ maddening, being on top of the mountain in the crappy thin air, knowing what's just a jeep ride away, but you're not allowed to go....
The thing that makes it a non-comparison is that you eventually will be allowed to, or just break the rules and, go... in the little tin box with nothing but death on the other side of the door and no possible escape.... that's hard to get an accurate psychological simulation of.
Because your service in a submarine is still on this planet and eventually your tour ends and you go back home in a few days?
Months. And, after the steak and lobster run out, it is a fair comparison, but steak and lobster rarely run out on the long tour of duty "Boomers."
Fly Southwest.
If we want to, say, explore Mars with a team of ten or so, or set up a colony, that would be the time for the youngsters, IMHO.
I think we're talking along parallel lines, and not that far apart. I'm focused on the "first" missions, because we've never really launched a team of 10 or more, for anything. Those smaller, early missions are still going to require plenty of spacewalking, cumbersome suits, even though the work weights will be low, the mass and inertia will still be high and require strength to get it moving, and stopped. If it's a high radiation hazard, that's not too much different from taking a beachhead in the Pacific - lots of random particles flying around at high velocity, none of them good for your health. Only difference is, in space, the particles are (usually) smaller, faster, and less likely to miss during a "firestorm."
You're not doing your Kurzweil math correctly, order of magnitude harder means twice as long, due to exponential progress in technology, unless we're talking about fusion power, or batteries.
What happened was a funding, and interest, slash in the early 1970s. That happens when people get comfortable that death won't be raining from the sky at any moment. I think we also pulled the plug on Apollo before something gruesome happened - to keep it as an untarnished feather in the cap. To our credit, we did keep slugging away with the shuttles, even after the two "Need Another Seven Astronauts" learning experiences - and that kind of dedication is required if you're going to colonize a new continent in the 1600s, or visit a new planet today.
Man returning to the moon first seems logical to me, even though there are those who would argue that if Mars is the mission the Moon is a distraction. To me, progress should be the mission, and since the first shuttle launches in the early 1980s, I feel like we've been mostly stalled in the "Boldly going" department. That's not saying there wasn't serious risk in the Shuttle program, especially for the astronauts, just that it wasn't bold new risk in the unknown, it was more business as usual risk, which makes the losses even that much sadder.
He's not the diet problem, especially now, his younger brother on the other hand is the sweet tooth with the skin rashes. I got him to like bacon after play-forcing it to him, but mostly he's into cereal, milk, ice cream and french fries.
Funny thing about the older one, he eats almost everything now, except pickles - we (parents) hate pickles too, but I seriously doubt he puts them aside because we do, I saw him taste-test a pickle chip and a quarter slice, and after that, he's done with them.
There most certainly are plenty of healthy people who could go. However, I disagree that younger people could perform better than older people. Okay, the terminally ill would be a poor choice.
In a low (1/6G on the moon, for example), older folks would be just as capable as younger ones to perform low G construction, scientific testing, spaceport management, all kinds of stuff. In fact, many of the jobs necessary in low gravity/free fall would be just fine for those in their late fifties and sixties.
In fact, they would be a wonderful resource for long-term missions to the outer planets as well as helping to engineer space habitats, moon facilities and even martian exploration.
As long as the worker is healthy enough to survive the trip to LEO, they should be perfectly able to perform tasks for which they are trained (how many engineers, scientists and the myriad of other specialties required for space exploration, development and colonization are in that age range? A whole lot). Unless, of course, you think that somehow being older makes you less intellectually capable. The average lifespan of an American is somewhere around 75 years. I ask again, why waste a valuable resource?
What is more, this would obviate many of the evolutionary and ethical issues seen with younger participants.
I'm approaching 50, and I'll let you in on a little secret, we're not as tough as we act at this age. I had better senses, attention span, cognitive speed, reflexes, learning speed, joint mobility, stamina and a host of other useful, animal skills when I was 25 to 35 years old. Of course, I'm still "better with age" but that's basically experience at work, and 99% of what makes me better today than I was 20 years ago can be replaced by a team of experts at the other end of a radio link.
If I were the mission planner and I could have a ground crew of 200, but only 12 on the mission, I'd keep the grey hair down with their families, let 'em work ordinary 8 hour shifts and take normal vacations - you get better people that way, and you want the best people you can get. If you take the brightest, most talented and experienced person and caffeine fuel them for 18 hour shifts, you're still not getting better performance than you would from a team of 3 people who have figured out what's important to them in life and also happen to be experts in their field.
So, I'm saying, put the wunder-kind on the mission vehicle, support them with experienced ground crew. When the pioneers have established a reliable shirt-sleeve living and working environment that doesn't demand too much of the residents, then think about sending the old folks - they'll be able to contribute in great ways; but for pioneers you're better off working with people that don't have heavy family ties, arthritis, kidney stones and the occasional cancer that needs treatment.
There's also issues beyond nutrition. When our older boy was 2 1/2 years we tried to "supplement" his diet of 99% Cheerios and milk with lemon flavored Cod liver oil - it seemed like the right thing to do, biochemically. The lemon masked the odor and initial taste enough for him to trust us to feed him the spoonful, but the aftertaste was enough to teach him to not trust us regarding food again for a very long time.
Then, when they expire, you could strap 'em to the hull for radiation shielding....
Seriously, there are plenty of healthy people - more likely to accomplish the mission objectives and also willing to go.
This isn't John Glenn's joyride on the shuttle, we're talking about actual pioneering - requiring, you know, pioneers....
Make it a click-through on the employment app....
We've been sending an increasing number of unmanned probes to Mars every "launch window" for the last decade, and the probes have been getting bigger each time. A habitat going to Mars might more resemble an inflatable balloon than a metal box, present tech for radiation shielding looks more at things like polyethelene than lead due to high energy scattering effects. No, the problems aren't all solved yet to an "acceptable level of risk" or "highly economical mission cost", but that doesn't mean they're impossible, or that both those factors won't improve with increased funding to develop better answers.
Apollo 11 happened within a single decade, this time we'd be starting with a lot stronger infrastructure and tools, all it really takes is the devotion of resources.
The fuel to power the air conditioning for U.S. troops in GWII was consuming more money, annually, than NASA's entire budget. All it takes to do a thing like a manned moon landing or Mars mission is the political will to do it.
Well, his diet was (sort of typical for some young kids) very restricted to "preferred foods" - not so much sugar, but peanut butter sandwiches (yes, we tried trading sunflower butter for peanut butter - no changes... apparently not a peanut thing...) certain chips, orange creme yougurt, french fries, etc. then, about a year ago, he started eating EVERYTHING - brussels sprouts, steak, shrimp, chicken, fish, sweet potatoes, broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, rice, beans, corn, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese burgers, etc. etc. He gets quite a bit of fiber now without any problems - general health has improved a bit too, but the communication level is about the same.
Years back, the infamous Dr. Phil had a show where he said "you're the adult, you control what your kid eats," never, ever, has any public figure ever been so full of $&!# as that man on that show. The truer saying is "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" - our kids would literally starve themselves before eating non-preferred foods.
You can take enzyme pills, which are partly effective, but not as effective as abstinence in diet.
The leading explanation of gluten sensitivity (in one community, at least) is permeability of the gut-blood barrier, usually aggravated by an unfriendly colony of intestinal flora... this also tracks with our experience. After long periods (years) of no gluten problems, small intakes of gluten (a slice of pizza here or there) seem not to matter as much, as if the gut has healed, or production of the necessary enzymes has up-regulated in the absence of those things they break down? First sounds more likely than the latter, but who really knows? It seems to be following "semi-classical allergy response" where exposure during active allergy causes insult and higher sensitivity to the allergen, but withholding the allergen for long periods of time allows the body to tolerate it better...
There are myriad explanations, many scientifically based, the real mystery is: what is happening in _your_ child right now? Sometimes administering a treatment strategy for one explanation will also have observable effects if another explanation were true, e.g. did the pro-biotic supplement heal the gut lining, or did they start assisting in enzyme breakdown?
The tax bill per child makes plenty of sense to me (cost of schools, medical care in many cases, etc.) - my grandparents came from a time of 10ish children per family, and a lot of the current tax structure is still holding over from those days, when fast population expansion seemed like a good idea. I also like the baby-allowance trading idea, in principle, though implementation would have many pitfalls. Something along the lines of each person, at ages 20 and 22, receives 0.5 child credits that they can combine or trade with others to have legal children. Children born without proper up front crediting might cost 1.5 credits to "make legal," and parents of non-licensed children might be sentenced to work in public daycare and similar facilities?
War, disease, or government regulation... ugly choices, I preferred life in the early 1970s when we were going to solve overcrowding by terraforming Mars...
Well, for us, for the child it matters for, it wasn't the difference between junk overload and healthy diet - most of what he ate (initially) on the gluten free diet was more "junky" cookies, ice cream, etc. than the Cheerios and bread that we removed from the diet. Also, during the early years, when we would "break diet" - for instance, one serving of regular pancakes, instead of the GF pancakes, we'd see dramatic reversion to the problems for a period of weeks. It's all very mysterious, and many explanations have been offered, the one that seems to fit our child the best is that a long lasting morphine-analog is getting passed into the brain, I'm not sure I 100% buy that, but like I said, of all the wild theories flying around out there, that one comes closest to a believable explanation of our observations.
So, when demand outstrips supply for "basic human rights" items like the right to bear children (or eat healthy food, or breathe clean air...) should the free market economy still rule, giving the supply to those with the cash?
I think the apportionment of medical care in the U.S. is a good example of the free market gone wrong when it comes to the things that are most important to people - it would seem like a bad model to follow if mandatory birth control ever happens.
Elizabeth's your Queen, and the bobbies drive TV detection vans around to make sure you're paying the appropriate TV taxes...
Actually, I've read pieces written by ex SVN developers that make this joke believable... many of the devs wouldn't even grumble about it.
Some of it comes down to "how do you value people?" Is Angelina Jolie "worth more" than my wife because she has enough money to support 50 kids? Maybe to a lot of people, but not to me.
If you go back to the framing of democracy, there's that "one man, one vote" underpinning - sure it has been modified over the years (race and sex), and you can certainly try, and usually succeed, to buy votes with money, but at its most basic level it is distributing power per capita, not per dollar of disposable income - and every once in awhile, there are laws passed that try to diminish the power of money in elections - slightly more often than there are laws passed to increase monetary influence.
I agree about people having kids who can't afford to take care of them... we, as a planetary society, are having more kids than the planet can afford to take care of, no matter how clever or industrious we are. All the shuffling of numbers in accounts, or little slips of paper or coins of precious whatever don't mean anything when the resources are exhausted, and the basic reason the resources are exhausted is that we have too many people consuming them. Arguments about how many people can live in a primitive Alpine village style vs a San Diego commuter style are basically moot, there's a limit, and as a whole, we're running past it, quickly. Switching everyone from the most consumptive "high CO2 footprint" lifestyles to the cleanest, most environmentally friendly ones will only buy us a generation or two at current birth rates. It's the birth rates that have to change.
China has been pulling it off for a couple of decades now... maybe not as kind and gently as some would like, but they are doing more good than harm with their birth control.... the surplus males coming into puberty right now might disagree, but overall, they're still better off than they would have been with 3.7 children per family being born....
It has to happen sooner or later, no matter what kind of technological wonders we come up with to support population growth, 10 billion, 100 billion, a trillion, at some point there's not going to be enough earth to go around. Personally, I'd rather live in a planet that has 1 billion people, total, than one with 100 billion. The extra 100x people would be spending so much of their time, effort and resources just to stay alive, they won't have time or energy for leisure or luxury activities.
If 90% of us drop dead, that would actually help quite a bit more than any conservation efforts. Aggressive birth control comes in a strong second for effectiveness in the medium (20-40 year) term.
If you take the historical view of humanity's behavior, you'd come to the conclusion that the 1970s were an anomaly, we should have had WW-III, then we'd be dealing with nuclear winter, potentially an ice age, instead of runaway CO2 production.
Either way, we're facing yet another of nature's challenges, whether we as a species are smart enough to achieve a soft transition remains to be seen. Personally, if we can get over the nationalistic and personal competitiveness and lust to control as much as "humanly" possible, I think there's a chance for a soft landing along these lines:
http://5050by2150.wordpress.co...
35 years ago, I was a "less than 1%" freak, communicating with friends electronically, using computers on a daily basis, etc. I did it because it came naturally to me and I didn't really give a damn whether or not it increased my overall popularity or social standing.
Well, starting about 5 years ago, I was becoming a "luddite freak" because I didn't carry a smartphone - again damaging my social standing, but this time because I wasn't communicating with friends electronically or using computers as much as all the cool people were.
One of the theories that's kicked around for the upswing in Autism births is the "assortive mating" concept - with match.com and similar services, "afflicted persons" who were unsociable and awkward in the bar/disco scene are able to pass on their genes much more quickly and easily than they were in the recent past.
David Bowie recorded a song "Oh You Pretty Things" back in 1971... read the lyrics with an open mind and tell me what you get from it. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics...
We've got two boys, both diagnosed on the spectrum, apparently from different planets to use your care giver description...
We have tried all kinds of therapy, mostly experiential/interaction based, and a few "bio-medical" interventions, the gluten-free diet made a huge positive impact for the older child, meh for the younger. Also, we did a serious run with MHBOT and saw, among other positive things, a huge improvement in eye contact and ability to tolerate people in general - again for the older child. According to the literature, we're not alone in the eye contact / MHBOT thing.
Next stop: Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
And, as Tigger told Piglet, you just can't argue with a word like "fraught."
Alaska has different efficiencies than the continental US. Getting a construction crew up there to make a ground based windmill is expensive. Basing anything large in the Alaska soil is expensive, if not impossible in the Permafrost. Fuel costs (away from the pipeline) are high due to transport costs.