>> Moreover, in the long term, fossil fuels will run out far sooner than fissile fuel.
>Where do you get your figures from?
I've run into various estimates on fuel reserves (quick google seach turned up all sorts of contradictory ones), and I'm not sure which to trust. What I do know is that we can build breeder reactors to get more fuel, and we can use Thorium fuel (which we don't use now). We cannot extend our fossil fuel supply, and I would much prefer we stop using them anyway (at least as fuel). If we need combustable hydrocarbons, we should invest in biodiesel for the long term.
>> see Dyson's theories, as well as conservation of energy and thermodynamics
>You think using solar and wind energy will contribute more heat than using nuclear or fossil fuel?
No. The theory in question (source of the famous "Dyson sphere" concept) stated that at no point in history has any human society reduced its requirements for power except by collapsing. Whether that power is provided by human or animal muscles, chemical combustion or nuclear fission/fusion, the energy input required increases, indefinitily. What that means for us is that, in all probability, we will never lower our net power consumption. We could maintain our present levels for a long time by conservation, but at some stage we would need a means of active power generation (like coal or nuclear).
Passive power generation requires an abundant source of otherwise untapped energy. Solar, wind and hydro, for instance, make perfect sense in some places. We cannot rely on those means of generation everywhere, however, and tranporting the power from its place of generation would itself require more power. The net amount of energy available to the earth on a day to day basis is finite, and we probably can only ever tap a fraction of it with any degree of effeciency, barring the construction of a Dyson sphere.
Thermodynamics in this context has more to do with moving energy than it does with waste heat.
>There are many choices to choose from renewable energy. Why discount them because they're not widely used?
On this, I agree. But you'll note that I specified power sources _presently_ available in my original post, not sources still under development or yet to be proven effective. I was only comparing fission to fossil fuels and established passive power (ie, hydro). Otherwise I would advocate fusion, since it would replace nuclear power with a cleaner alternative. Fusion and advanced alternative energy are still a ways off, and even then they aren't magic bullets.
>> While I agree that nuclear power is dangerous, and the waste products are a long term issue, many people (myself included) view it as the lesser of two evils
>Which waste products are you referring to? I'll bet you're referring to spent fuel. Thus, if you live near one of these places, I'd love to hear your support for nuclear fission.
Spent fuel rods, contaminated equipment, decommisioned reactor cores; all of the above. We can contain those waste products, whereas the waste from burning coal and oil is _already_ loose in the environment. And for the record, coal plants release far more radioisotopes that were previously trapped in the coal than a nuclear plant does (since the nuke plant keeps its' waste indoors).
As for storage, why simply stow the stuff when it can be used up? The fuel rods can be reprocessed (and are, outside the US), the nastiest shit is generally short lived, and the rest can be buried beneath the water table, or in a subduction zone.
Well, the radioactivity is increased by fissioning the fuel. By chain reacting the stuff you've sped up the nuclear reactions, even after the fuel has been removed from the core. So the net radiation in the environment _would_ increase (temporarily - this would cool in time to background levels).
But in terms of "ideal" waste disposal, why go to all that trouble? Most of the nastier waste products can still be used as fuel (after reprocessing). Even the ones that can't be used up could be safely amassed deep underground and used to power something very like a geothermal generator. We could bury the stuff in a geological subdcution zone, and simply wait.
Even in terms of final disposal using modern technology, burying the waste far below the water table in a geologically stable region would do the trick. After all, as long as it goes _down_, and doesn't find its way back up, it hardly matters how concentrated it is. Place the waste "dump" at a subduction zone with a geothermal generator, and you've got waste containment, power generation and eventual disposal by geological means. Best of all worlds.
Spraying the stuff around would work, but you'd never get people to agree on where to spray it. Even ignoring the environmentalists, no one would want to be anywhere near the hypothetical dumping zone. NIMBY and all that.
True, but water vapour condenses out of the atmosphere as precipitation. There are hyrdological and carbon cycles that dictate equilibrium for greenhouse gases.
We actually wouldn't have a problem with carbon dioxide emissions if they were a part of the carbon cycle. Biodiesle would not contribute to the greenhouse effect, since the amount of CO2 released and the amount absorbed by the plants producing the fuel would be in equilibrium. However by burning trapped fossil material, which has been out of the carbon cycle and buried for millions of years, we are altering the environment.
Carbon dioxide is normal in the air; animals emit it, plants consume it. Add more total carbon to the system, by depleting an ancient carbon sink, and the net level of CO2 in the air rises. Since the hydrogen you get from electrolysis comes from water, you aren't adding to the net levels of water vapour. For every ounce of water you're releasing into the hydrological cylce, you're taking an ounce out at the other end to get the hydrogen in the first place. No disruption in the hydrological cycle, no warming.
While I agree that nuclear power is dangerous, and the waste products are a long term issue, many people (myself included) view it as the lesser of two evils.
Ignore, for a moment, advanced passive power generation and fusion power. What do we have now to power our civilization? Fossil fuels and nuclear energy. If we could reduce our power consumption, or rely more on existing passive generators (like solar and hydro), then we would need less actively generated power. We could never reduce our power requirements to zero without our civilization collapsing (see Dyson's theories, as well as conservation of energy and thermodynamics). This means that we're still stuck with waste products, nuclear or otherwise.
Given only those two choices, I choose nuclear. I recognize the risks and long term hazards of it, but it is still a better alternative to climate change and air pollution. Moreover, in the long term, fossil fuels will run out far sooner than fissile fuel. My hope is that we get working fusion power, and alternative energy sources, but in the meantime nuke plants are the better route.
I have _done_ research on fusion. You ever get interested in a topic enought to research it independantly for your own amusment? I was working from memory; I remembered that D/T has the lowest activation temperature, D/D next and D/He3 after that. I remembered the byproducts of D/T (He4 + spare neutron), and the byproducts of D/He3 (He4 + spare proton), but I could not remember what you get from D/D. If you have a factual quibble with what I wrote, then post it.
As for "I know better than everyone", did you even RTFA? They didn't mention other forms of fusion available; in fact your average joe might come away with the conclusion that He3 is _needed_ for fusion. It isn't, and that was my only point. The only reason that D/He3 is preferable is reduced radioactivity, and bluntly I don't accept that it is enough of a difficulty disposing of minimally dangerous waste to require such extraordinary workarounds. Fusion using easier to fuse, terrestrial fuel would be far simpler, and the only reason I can see for using lunar helium is the public phobia surrounding the word "radioactive". You disagree? Fine, then post your counter argument, instead of simply saying that I don't know what I'm talking about.
However, that would leave you with the problem of getting the power back to earth. The article is talking about build reactors groundside, and transporting the fuel back, not building them on the moon and beaming back tht power. If we could beam the power back, why not build solar stations in orbit (a la SimCity) and save ourselves some effort? Granted, they'd be less powerful, but also a hell of a lot cheaper, and since real estate in space is not an issue, we could build as many as we liked. And we would probably need to man reactor stations with people or robots, whereas we could leave the satellites unmanned except for repairs and maintainence.
That's right, the only way to get the fuel in qauntity without mining it is to build fusion reactors to make it (I think you can get it as a byproduct of pure deuterium reactions). So why not eliminate a step and just use the He3 breeder plants to produce electrical power in the first place?
Terrestrial helium is almost all He4, which is not a viable option for fuel. Helium 4 is stable, rare and cannot be converted into helium 3. The reverse does not apply; it's easy to turn He3 into He4, by simply adding a neutron (which is why He4 is more common).
Remember that helium is an element, not a chemical compound, so getting it or changing it into anything else requires a nuclear reaction of some sort. And the only reactions that produce helium 3 use fusion of hyrogen atoms (which is what would power a fusion reactor).
I touched on neutron activation in my post. And yes, He3 is much to be preferred from a radioactivity standpoint.
But to go all the way to the moon, build extraction facilities there, build more complicated reactors here, and transport the fuel back to earth just to avoid a little radioactivity? Sorry, that just seems excessive. If we established moonbases for other reasons, like purely scientific research, and wanted to build cleaner reactors earthside using imported lunar fuel, it would make more sense. Likewise, building He3 powered reactors on the moon to power facilities there would make sense. I just think that the whole idea makes no sense _now_, especially since we've yet to build a working power station using a fusion reactor.
Oh, and you're right btw, ITER is a D/T design. So was the JET facility in the UK. D/T is the easiest reacion to achieve, so consequently most first generation plants will probably use it.
Well, for one, hybrid cars use technology designed for efficient transportation. They don't produce energy, they merely make more efficient use of existing fossil fuel energy.
For another, the technology in question is fusion power, which is desirable as a replacement for existing nuclear or fossil fuel power as a means of generating electricity. We could build fusion power plants with terrestrial fuels (see my other post) but people are advocating He3/D fusion because it produces no dangerous radioactivity.
I'm pro green technology, so I understand your point, but there are various energy needs to be met, and hybrids (and biodiesel, and passive power generation) only solve part of the problem. We could have extensive distributed solar power, efficient cars and appliances, renewable chemical fuels with zero net carbon emmissions, hydro/geothermal/wind power where applicable, and no fossil fuels at all, and we would still need some means of active power generation. And, as I said in my other post, we actually don't need to go offworld to get fusion fuel (although lunar He3 is renewable, and safer than terrestrial fusion fuel; it's just harder to get and harder to fuse).
... is that the energy in question comes from thermonuclear fusion, and fusion can be done with terrestrial elements. We don't _need_ he3 to build fusion power plants; we can build them with deuterium/tritium fuel, or even just deuterium alone. Moreover, D/T fusion only requires plasma temperatures about a tenth those of D/He3 fusion. IIRC D/D fusion is also somewhat more attainable than D/He3 (and uses an incredibly abundant fuel available on Earth - deuterium is a stable hydrogen isotope available in quantity from seawater).
The only disadvantage of hydrogen isotope fusion is radioactivity. D/T spits out fast neutrons, while D/D can produce radio-isotopes (I think - someone correct me if I've remembered wrong). Neither technology produces hazardous nuclear waste however, and the radioactivity in question would be very short lived, cooling in decades to centuries, rather than millennia. Moreover, in D/T reactor designs, the only radiation is in the core itself, and said neutron radiation can be used to "breed" tritium fuel. Disposing of fusion waste long term, either by sealing the decommissioned cores, or storing the D/D reaction products, is easier than importing he3 fuel from the moon.
>Since everyone who has been shut down by this was probably involved in violating the software's EULA
Some, at least, claim to be innocent. I won't defend the pirates, since they are in the wrong legally, but my point was that valve has overstepped their bounds. By remotely disabling cdkeys, which is what they're alleged to have done (and notice I said "alleged"), they've possibly taken punitive action against legitimate users. I don't _trust_ a corporation, even a fairly reputable one, to appoint themsleves judge and jury. And I really dislike being treated like a criminal when all I want to do is play the fscking game.
It's not that they are taking anti-piracy measures that I have a problem with, it's the heavy-handedness with which they're employing those measures. It sets a bad precedent for DRM usage, it treads into an ethically murky area, and it illustrates whats wrong with the present way EULAs are implemented. I really do hope that the way comanies license game software eventually leads to legal reform in this area; as it stands now the power is way too one sided.
Unfortunately, that's not strictly true. You need to have steam installed to play. Note that, after activation, you can play offline, but nevertheless the system takes away your control of the game; if valve goes under, or decides to arbitrarily ban you from multiplayer (which also requires steam to run), there really isn't much you can do. Also, if I'm reading the complaints correctly, they can remotely disable a "pirated" copy without the user's consent if steam is online.
That last part scares me, since it indicates to me that the game has some sort of malware built into it, and because it would require valve to reenable wrongly disabled cd keys. Bluntly, I don't trust any corporation to find me innocent or guilty of any crime. That's a matter for the courts. I like halflife, but I kinda hope this doesn't catch on, or if it does become widespread, it gets shot down legally.
Well, they eat roots... I think the metamorphisis is supposed to be brought about by a symbiont that lives within the tree-of-life roots though, not the roots themselves (a virus if memory serves, but I could be mistaken). Oh, and the whatever it is that initiates the change requires Thallium Oxide as part of its ecology, so the plants need that in the soil to support a Pak population (and Earth is Thallium poor, which was a major plot point in the book).
You may be thinking of Brenner in Protector, who grew terrestrial yams that had been bred to host the symbiont. He didn't have tree-of-life, so he needed a human alternative.
Ok, first I don't want to get a flame war going, especially not a creationist one. Ironically, the original post that I reposted was someones attempt at poking fun at _another_ such flamewar months ago. So, for the sake of maturity, I apologize for implying you are an idiot. Lets keep this civilized.
FTR, you may have missed the parody humour; the joke is meant to be absurd as an anti-creationist argument. It is not a valid argument, in fact it isn't really an argument at all, and it makes both sides look ridiculous.
In other words, I think the original poster was very deninitely tounge-in-cheek, and was poking fun at both sides of the flamewar. He (I assume it was a "he" - this is/.) might have been serious, but the way it's presented I highly doubt it. Reread the post if you don't believe me. You took it seriously, as did some others in all probability, but the gist of it is subtle absurdity.
As for the supercontinent argument, sorry, but it really is a seperate issue. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the theory of evolution, nor is it particularly important from a biologist's standpoint. The fact that some people who beleive in one also beleive in the other is immaterial; I believe in the scientific validity of evolution and relativity, but that doesn't connect the two sciences in any way. You may be mixing up "evolutionists" with paelentologists (who study fossils, and support evolution as scientists - and also supercontinent theory). Sorry, but it really irks me when I hear someone lump two unrelated fields of science into an argument; it's like somebody wondering how come scientists can put a man on the moon but can't cure cancer.
Oh, and for the record "evolutionist" is pretty antagonizing. People who accept a given scientific theory are not the same as a religious group, nor are they a single group. Generally, any attempt to lump people who disagree with your point of view into a single entity is bound to give people the idea that you're closed minded and unwilling to listen to reason. At least avoid making the matter "us vs them"; I didn't assume you were a christian when I responded, did I?
What part of "this is not original" to me was lost on you? I was merely reposting someone else's argument that I had saved when I first read it and found funny (hint: it's meant as a semi-serious joke, at least I think).
As for the factual stuff, I bluntly don't care how big it was, it's still too damn small. The whole point of the joke is that arguing over a religious interpretation of history, complete with deluges, miacles and creation myths, is like arguing over klingon anatomy among star trek nerds; it wastes your time and starts pointless contradictory flamewars. As for the supercontinent theory, that's geology buddy, not biology. If you can't tell the difference between the two, then the public school system really has failed you. Saying "evolutionists" (which isn't the right term in any case) have a theory about _tectonic_ drift makes you look like a real idiot. You want to tell me to read a bible so I'll understand it's "history"? Then you go read a textbook and get back to me when you have some basic understanding of the different sciences.
For the biblical literalists who seem to find there way onto/. these days:
(this is not original to me btw, and I found it hilarious when I first read it).
"Let me ask you something. I'm assuming that you are one of those people who believes the bible is literally historically accurate. Based soley on the number of land animal species that taxonimists have identified (and we're talking tens of millions to date), and factoring in all of the extinct fossil species that you believe could not have evolved (hundreds of millions at an archeologists guess), what would the dimensions of Noah's Arc have to be? "Two of every animal" would require a phenominally huge superfreighter, and that's not including food and fresh water for forty days (remember that most water is not drinkable due to salt content). An arc, remember, that was supposedly fourty cubits and built by one man.
Moreover, how did land animals subsequently migrate from the Arc's hypothetical landing site to their present habitats? How exactly did the South American primates get from Eurasia to South America. And let's not forget Austrailia, which is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, yet has plentiful land animals that cannot posssibly swim (and you say could not evolve)."
Remember that majority opinion does not equal reality. And the united states is not the entire world; there are scientifically literate nations that have no religious right to speak of and no problem with evolution. Stick to a fundamentalist interpretation of a broze age text, and you will be left behind.
Yes, I've heard that too. The writer (might've been Sagan) explaining the idea used the analogy of "sonar onomatapia", like children calling a dog a bow-wow. As I understand it, they might send the sonar reflection of a shark in order to say "shark". While I think it's an interesting idea, it seems a bit far fetched.
Regardless, dolphins and other marine mammals clearly communicate to some degree, and have a high order intelligence. I tend to favour animal rights for higher mammals (rights awarded on the basis of intelligence, higher rights for higher intellect) since I beleive that our brains are the only thing that make us special (I'm not religious, and in any case a "soul" is not a quantifyable measure). Speach to me shows evidence of intelligence, but is of no value in itself; an animal that can commumicate is not the same as a person, unless it can be proved that said animal is as intelligent. So I would tend to argue that the rights of a hypothetical "chimera" be based on how intelligent we've made it, not how much of our DNA we've given it, or whether it can speak.
Oh, and for the record, since I touched on the subject in my original post, I'm relatively OK with euthanasia for brain dead vegetables, and abortion, as long as no brain activity is present in the neocortex. Ideally the law should extend rights and protections to any human who can think, and any animal that shows it can as well. However the rights in question must reflect the reality of the situation; arguing that it's unethical to do experiments on lab rats is bullshit, as is opposition to stem cell research, at least from my point of view. YMMV of course.
No offence, but that's simply nonsense. "Speach", as you define it, requires a human vocal arraignment. This means we need a dedicated section of the brain, highly specialized vocal chords, and a trachea/esophagus system that allows us to use it for speach. None of these features are in any way related to intelligence. We could engineer a creature or artificial intelligence that possessed greater cognitive capabilities than a typical human, yet lacked the ability to speak. How would you deal with a chimp granted supernormal intelligence by splicing it's brain tissue with the genetic material required for a human neocortex? It can't speak (chimps can learn sign language btw, but cannot physically speak), but it's mute becasue it lacks sophisticated vocal chords or a speach center. Conversely, programmers have written programs capable of simulating complex conversations with users, which, according to your narrow definition of personhood, should qualify as people provided they are equipped with audio.
Personhood presently is defined as humanity. If we find or create intelligence that is not human, then we will need a new definition. I would much rather that criteria be based on something substantial, like complex independant reasoning, rather than something as specific and unrelated as speach. Yet that won't happen for some time, since we do not yet have an example of such intelligence, and when we get there, doubtlessly people will cling to the old human definition, and resist change on the basis of emotion or religion.
As a side note, primates and cetacians (dolphins etc) have been shown to have language. In fact, there is a considerable body of evidence supporting the conclusion that dolphins "speak', using their sonar system. Chimps, as I've already mentioned, have shown that they can learn and intelligently use sign language. Defining speech as language, and using your definition of personhood, whould higher mammals such as these qualify? They can speak in a way, and they have demonstrable intellect. If we set a threshold for personhood based on speach, dolphins would qualify, at least. If we used a definiton based on human level intelligence, they would not (but neither would fetuses or the severly mentally disabled, which opens up a major political can of worms, not to mention an ethical debate of huge proportions). There is a valid ethical question here, and genetic engineering is only going to complicate it further. To quote someone whose name I've forgotton "For every complex question there is an answer that is simple, elegant and wrong."
I'll admit my experience in MMORPG's is slim, but having played WoW I can honestly say it really is all that its cracked up to be. I got lucky; my gf was in the open beta this past month, so I played a bit on her account. The _only_ thing I had to complain about is lag and server overload. Other than that it was really impressive, and clearly done in Blizzard stlye (complete with practical joke humour - on the last day of the beta the GM's set demons loose in the major cities and turned many players into chickens).
She plays EQ, and says WoW blows it outta the water. Having played it enough to know I like it, and considering the half million who signed up for the beta, I'd bet heavily on it's success.
Just my.02 cents.
RsG (lvl 16 paladin "Brage" in the beta, test server 2)
As someone else pointed out already, the emissions from coal plants are from radioactives in the coal, which get released by burning it. Nuclear waste (hopefully) doesn't leave the core, so we say it's "less radioactive" meaning less radiation is released from the plant itself.
As for disposing of nuclear waste, we already have at least two or three tried and workable ways to do it that don't release anything into the environment. Reprocessing, and waste fed power plants can use up most of the fissile material. The final leavings and contaminated waste products (by this I mean things like used radiation suits, which are classified as waste) can be disposed of or contained; they're much less dangerous than, say, spent fuel rods.
As a bonus, the stuff that lasts the longest is typically either high order wastes (which can be used up) or isn't very radioactive at all, while the most deadly stuff that can't be recycled in some way is typically short lived. So the long lived reprocessable stuff gets used, the short lived leftovers get stored for decades or centuries, and what's left can get heaved/dumped/buried/whatever. It's not perfect but it would work.
Even if we could, we'd still have to deal with the problem eventually. Since we're talking, what, five billion years or so now, why don't we look at the consequences of putting off the apocalype? You take out the he4, and the mass of the sun diminishes. Take out enough to prevent expansion into a red giant (given enough time), and you'll lower the mass to the point where fusion slows and the sun cools somewhat. Continue "mining" the sun, and fusion will stop altogether (this happens in proto stars that "fizzle"; they fusion long enough to warm up, then cool to dead dwarfs, all in a fraction of the usual time and withour expanding into a giant). No matter what you do entropy claims all in the end, so we'd be better off leaving Sol behind and migrating elsewhere. For the kind of effort your talking about, why not build a dyson sphere around a small new star far away and move there? I'm sure in a billion years that'll be a viable option:-).
Helium is a noble gas (no puns please). The term has to do with electron shells and ionization. All noble gasses are chemically non-reactive; they aren't poisonous or otherwise dangerous. And the amount of helium produced in fusion reactions is tiny, even over the course of millenia. Besides we release terrestrial helium into the atmosphere now, and it isn't doing anything (and don't tell me that's different from waste helium; we don't get our sources from the air now, so we are changing the atmospheric equilibrium, abeit infintesimally).
Slashdot Mirror
>> Moreover, in the long term, fossil fuels will run out far sooner than fissile fuel.
>Where do you get your figures from?
I've run into various estimates on fuel reserves (quick google seach turned up all sorts of contradictory ones), and I'm not sure which to trust. What I do know is that we can build breeder reactors to get more fuel, and we can use Thorium fuel (which we don't use now). We cannot extend our fossil fuel supply, and I would much prefer we stop using them anyway (at least as fuel). If we need combustable hydrocarbons, we should invest in biodiesel for the long term.
>> see Dyson's theories, as well as conservation of energy and thermodynamics
>You think using solar and wind energy will contribute more heat than using nuclear or fossil fuel?
No. The theory in question (source of the famous "Dyson sphere" concept) stated that at no point in history has any human society reduced its requirements for power except by collapsing. Whether that power is provided by human or animal muscles, chemical combustion or nuclear fission/fusion, the energy input required increases, indefinitily. What that means for us is that, in all probability, we will never lower our net power consumption. We could maintain our present levels for a long time by conservation, but at some stage we would need a means of active power generation (like coal or nuclear).
Passive power generation requires an abundant source of otherwise untapped energy. Solar, wind and hydro, for instance, make perfect sense in some places. We cannot rely on those means of generation everywhere, however, and tranporting the power from its place of generation would itself require more power. The net amount of energy available to the earth on a day to day basis is finite, and we probably can only ever tap a fraction of it with any degree of effeciency, barring the construction of a Dyson sphere.
Thermodynamics in this context has more to do with moving energy than it does with waste heat.
>There are many choices to choose from renewable energy. Why discount them because they're not widely used?
On this, I agree. But you'll note that I specified power sources _presently_ available in my original post, not sources still under development or yet to be proven effective. I was only comparing fission to fossil fuels and established passive power (ie, hydro). Otherwise I would advocate fusion, since it would replace nuclear power with a cleaner alternative. Fusion and advanced alternative energy are still a ways off, and even then they aren't magic bullets.
>> While I agree that nuclear power is dangerous, and the waste products are a long term issue, many people (myself included) view it as the lesser of two evils
>Which waste products are you referring to? I'll bet you're referring to spent fuel. Thus, if you live near one of these places, I'd love to hear your support for nuclear fission.
Spent fuel rods, contaminated equipment, decommisioned reactor cores; all of the above. We can contain those waste products, whereas the waste from burning coal and oil is _already_ loose in the environment. And for the record, coal plants release far more radioisotopes that were previously trapped in the coal than a nuclear plant does (since the nuke plant keeps its' waste indoors).
As for storage, why simply stow the stuff when it can be used up? The fuel rods can be reprocessed (and are, outside the US), the nastiest shit is generally short lived, and the rest can be buried beneath the water table, or in a subduction zone.
Well, the radioactivity is increased by fissioning the fuel. By chain reacting the stuff you've sped up the nuclear reactions, even after the fuel has been removed from the core. So the net radiation in the environment _would_ increase (temporarily - this would cool in time to background levels).
But in terms of "ideal" waste disposal, why go to all that trouble? Most of the nastier waste products can still be used as fuel (after reprocessing). Even the ones that can't be used up could be safely amassed deep underground and used to power something very like a geothermal generator. We could bury the stuff in a geological subdcution zone, and simply wait.
Even in terms of final disposal using modern technology, burying the waste far below the water table in a geologically stable region would do the trick. After all, as long as it goes _down_, and doesn't find its way back up, it hardly matters how concentrated it is. Place the waste "dump" at a subduction zone with a geothermal generator, and you've got waste containment, power generation and eventual disposal by geological means. Best of all worlds.
Spraying the stuff around would work, but you'd never get people to agree on where to spray it. Even ignoring the environmentalists, no one would want to be anywhere near the hypothetical dumping zone. NIMBY and all that.
True, but water vapour condenses out of the atmosphere as precipitation. There are hyrdological and carbon cycles that dictate equilibrium for greenhouse gases.
We actually wouldn't have a problem with carbon dioxide emissions if they were a part of the carbon cycle. Biodiesle would not contribute to the greenhouse effect, since the amount of CO2 released and the amount absorbed by the plants producing the fuel would be in equilibrium. However by burning trapped fossil material, which has been out of the carbon cycle and buried for millions of years, we are altering the environment.
Carbon dioxide is normal in the air; animals emit it, plants consume it. Add more total carbon to the system, by depleting an ancient carbon sink, and the net level of CO2 in the air rises. Since the hydrogen you get from electrolysis comes from water, you aren't adding to the net levels of water vapour. For every ounce of water you're releasing into the hydrological cylce, you're taking an ounce out at the other end to get the hydrogen in the first place. No disruption in the hydrological cycle, no warming.
While I agree that nuclear power is dangerous, and the waste products are a long term issue, many people (myself included) view it as the lesser of two evils.
Ignore, for a moment, advanced passive power generation and fusion power. What do we have now to power our civilization? Fossil fuels and nuclear energy. If we could reduce our power consumption, or rely more on existing passive generators (like solar and hydro), then we would need less actively generated power. We could never reduce our power requirements to zero without our civilization collapsing (see Dyson's theories, as well as conservation of energy and thermodynamics). This means that we're still stuck with waste products, nuclear or otherwise.
Given only those two choices, I choose nuclear. I recognize the risks and long term hazards of it, but it is still a better alternative to climate change and air pollution. Moreover, in the long term, fossil fuels will run out far sooner than fissile fuel. My hope is that we get working fusion power, and alternative energy sources, but in the meantime nuke plants are the better route.
>unless you want a car the size of a small office block
:-)
Have you seen the sales figures for the Hummer?
I have _done_ research on fusion. You ever get interested in a topic enought to research it independantly for your own amusment? I was working from memory; I remembered that D/T has the lowest activation temperature, D/D next and D/He3 after that. I remembered the byproducts of D/T (He4 + spare neutron), and the byproducts of D/He3 (He4 + spare proton), but I could not remember what you get from D/D. If you have a factual quibble with what I wrote, then post it.
As for "I know better than everyone", did you even RTFA? They didn't mention other forms of fusion available; in fact your average joe might come away with the conclusion that He3 is _needed_ for fusion. It isn't, and that was my only point. The only reason that D/He3 is preferable is reduced radioactivity, and bluntly I don't accept that it is enough of a difficulty disposing of minimally dangerous waste to require such extraordinary workarounds. Fusion using easier to fuse, terrestrial fuel would be far simpler, and the only reason I can see for using lunar helium is the public phobia surrounding the word "radioactive". You disagree? Fine, then post your counter argument, instead of simply saying that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Good point.
However, that would leave you with the problem of getting the power back to earth. The article is talking about build reactors groundside, and transporting the fuel back, not building them on the moon and beaming back tht power. If we could beam the power back, why not build solar stations in orbit (a la SimCity) and save ourselves some effort? Granted, they'd be less powerful, but also a hell of a lot cheaper, and since real estate in space is not an issue, we could build as many as we liked. And we would probably need to man reactor stations with people or robots, whereas we could leave the satellites unmanned except for repairs and maintainence.
Sure it's possible. Know how it's done? Fusion.
That's right, the only way to get the fuel in qauntity without mining it is to build fusion reactors to make it (I think you can get it as a byproduct of pure deuterium reactions). So why not eliminate a step and just use the He3 breeder plants to produce electrical power in the first place?
Terrestrial helium is almost all He4, which is not a viable option for fuel. Helium 4 is stable, rare and cannot be converted into helium 3. The reverse does not apply; it's easy to turn He3 into He4, by simply adding a neutron (which is why He4 is more common).
Remember that helium is an element, not a chemical compound, so getting it or changing it into anything else requires a nuclear reaction of some sort. And the only reactions that produce helium 3 use fusion of hyrogen atoms (which is what would power a fusion reactor).
I touched on neutron activation in my post. And yes, He3 is much to be preferred from a radioactivity standpoint.
But to go all the way to the moon, build extraction facilities there, build more complicated reactors here, and transport the fuel back to earth just to avoid a little radioactivity? Sorry, that just seems excessive. If we established moonbases for other reasons, like purely scientific research, and wanted to build cleaner reactors earthside using imported lunar fuel, it would make more sense. Likewise, building He3 powered reactors on the moon to power facilities there would make sense. I just think that the whole idea makes no sense _now_, especially since we've yet to build a working power station using a fusion reactor.
Oh, and you're right btw, ITER is a D/T design. So was the JET facility in the UK. D/T is the easiest reacion to achieve, so consequently most first generation plants will probably use it.
Well, for one, hybrid cars use technology designed for efficient transportation. They don't produce energy, they merely make more efficient use of existing fossil fuel energy.
For another, the technology in question is fusion power, which is desirable as a replacement for existing nuclear or fossil fuel power as a means of generating electricity. We could build fusion power plants with terrestrial fuels (see my other post) but people are advocating He3/D fusion because it produces no dangerous radioactivity.
I'm pro green technology, so I understand your point, but there are various energy needs to be met, and hybrids (and biodiesel, and passive power generation) only solve part of the problem. We could have extensive distributed solar power, efficient cars and appliances, renewable chemical fuels with zero net carbon emmissions, hydro/geothermal/wind power where applicable, and no fossil fuels at all, and we would still need some means of active power generation. And, as I said in my other post, we actually don't need to go offworld to get fusion fuel (although lunar He3 is renewable, and safer than terrestrial fusion fuel; it's just harder to get and harder to fuse).
... is that the energy in question comes from thermonuclear fusion, and fusion can be done with terrestrial elements. We don't _need_ he3 to build fusion power plants; we can build them with deuterium/tritium fuel, or even just deuterium alone. Moreover, D/T fusion only requires plasma temperatures about a tenth those of D/He3 fusion. IIRC D/D fusion is also somewhat more attainable than D/He3 (and uses an incredibly abundant fuel available on Earth - deuterium is a stable hydrogen isotope available in quantity from seawater).
The only disadvantage of hydrogen isotope fusion is radioactivity. D/T spits out fast neutrons, while D/D can produce radio-isotopes (I think - someone correct me if I've remembered wrong). Neither technology produces hazardous nuclear waste however, and the radioactivity in question would be very short lived, cooling in decades to centuries, rather than millennia. Moreover, in D/T reactor designs, the only radiation is in the core itself, and said neutron radiation can be used to "breed" tritium fuel. Disposing of fusion waste long term, either by sealing the decommissioned cores, or storing the D/D reaction products, is easier than importing he3 fuel from the moon.
That's not true! Keanu Reeves has at least two facial expressions (two and a half if he grows a beard). :-)
>Since everyone who has been shut down by this was probably involved in violating the software's EULA
Some, at least, claim to be innocent. I won't defend the pirates, since they are in the wrong legally, but my point was that valve has overstepped their bounds. By remotely disabling cdkeys, which is what they're alleged to have done (and notice I said "alleged"), they've possibly taken punitive action against legitimate users. I don't _trust_ a corporation, even a fairly reputable one, to appoint themsleves judge and jury. And I really dislike being treated like a criminal when all I want to do is play the fscking game.
It's not that they are taking anti-piracy measures that I have a problem with, it's the heavy-handedness with which they're employing those measures. It sets a bad precedent for DRM usage, it treads into an ethically murky area, and it illustrates whats wrong with the present way EULAs are implemented. I really do hope that the way comanies license game software eventually leads to legal reform in this area; as it stands now the power is way too one sided.
Unfortunately, that's not strictly true. You need to have steam installed to play. Note that, after activation, you can play offline, but nevertheless the system takes away your control of the game; if valve goes under, or decides to arbitrarily ban you from multiplayer (which also requires steam to run), there really isn't much you can do. Also, if I'm reading the complaints correctly, they can remotely disable a "pirated" copy without the user's consent if steam is online.
That last part scares me, since it indicates to me that the game has some sort of malware built into it, and because it would require valve to reenable wrongly disabled cd keys. Bluntly, I don't trust any corporation to find me innocent or guilty of any crime. That's a matter for the courts. I like halflife, but I kinda hope this doesn't catch on, or if it does become widespread, it gets shot down legally.
Well, they eat roots... I think the metamorphisis is supposed to be brought about by a symbiont that lives within the tree-of-life roots though, not the roots themselves (a virus if memory serves, but I could be mistaken). Oh, and the whatever it is that initiates the change requires Thallium Oxide as part of its ecology, so the plants need that in the soil to support a Pak population (and Earth is Thallium poor, which was a major plot point in the book).
You may be thinking of Brenner in Protector, who grew terrestrial yams that had been bred to host the symbiont. He didn't have tree-of-life, so he needed a human alternative.
-Mmm microscopically thin and blocks things smaller than a virus.
:-)
Angstrom ribbed... for atomic pleaure!
Sigh
/.) might have been serious, but the way it's presented I highly doubt it. Reread the post if you don't believe me. You took it seriously, as did some others in all probability, but the gist of it is subtle absurdity.
Ok, first I don't want to get a flame war going, especially not a creationist one. Ironically, the original post that I reposted was someones attempt at poking fun at _another_ such flamewar months ago. So, for the sake of maturity, I apologize for implying you are an idiot. Lets keep this civilized.
FTR, you may have missed the parody humour; the joke is meant to be absurd as an anti-creationist argument. It is not a valid argument, in fact it isn't really an argument at all, and it makes both sides look ridiculous.
In other words, I think the original poster was very deninitely tounge-in-cheek, and was poking fun at both sides of the flamewar. He (I assume it was a "he" - this is
As for the supercontinent argument, sorry, but it really is a seperate issue. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the theory of evolution, nor is it particularly important from a biologist's standpoint. The fact that some people who beleive in one also beleive in the other is immaterial; I believe in the scientific validity of evolution and relativity, but that doesn't connect the two sciences in any way. You may be mixing up "evolutionists" with paelentologists (who study fossils, and support evolution as scientists - and also supercontinent theory). Sorry, but it really irks me when I hear someone lump two unrelated fields of science into an argument; it's like somebody wondering how come scientists can put a man on the moon but can't cure cancer.
Oh, and for the record "evolutionist" is pretty antagonizing. People who accept a given scientific theory are not the same as a religious group, nor are they a single group. Generally, any attempt to lump people who disagree with your point of view into a single entity is bound to give people the idea that you're closed minded and unwilling to listen to reason. At least avoid making the matter "us vs them"; I didn't assume you were a christian when I responded, did I?
What part of "this is not original" to me was lost on you? I was merely reposting someone else's argument that I had saved when I first read it and found funny (hint: it's meant as a semi-serious joke, at least I think).
As for the factual stuff, I bluntly don't care how big it was, it's still too damn small. The whole point of the joke is that arguing over a religious interpretation of history, complete with deluges, miacles and creation myths, is like arguing over klingon anatomy among star trek nerds; it wastes your time and starts pointless contradictory flamewars. As for the supercontinent theory, that's geology buddy, not biology. If you can't tell the difference between the two, then the public school system really has failed you. Saying "evolutionists" (which isn't the right term in any case) have a theory about _tectonic_ drift makes you look like a real idiot. You want to tell me to read a bible so I'll understand it's "history"? Then you go read a textbook and get back to me when you have some basic understanding of the different sciences.
For the biblical literalists who seem to find there way onto /. these days:
(this is not original to me btw, and I found it hilarious when I first read it).
"Let me ask you something. I'm assuming that you are one of those people who believes the bible is literally historically accurate. Based soley on the number of land animal species that taxonimists have identified (and we're talking tens of millions to date), and factoring in all of the extinct fossil species that you believe could not have evolved (hundreds of millions at an archeologists guess), what would the dimensions of Noah's Arc have to be? "Two of every animal" would require a phenominally huge superfreighter, and that's not including food and fresh water for forty days (remember that most water is not drinkable due to salt content). An arc, remember, that was supposedly fourty cubits and built by one man.
Moreover, how did land animals subsequently migrate from the Arc's hypothetical landing site to their present habitats? How exactly did the South American primates get from Eurasia to South America. And let's not forget Austrailia, which is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, yet has plentiful land animals that cannot posssibly swim (and you say could not evolve)."
Remember that majority opinion does not equal reality. And the united states is not the entire world; there are scientifically literate nations that have no religious right to speak of and no problem with evolution. Stick to a fundamentalist interpretation of a broze age text, and you will be left behind.
Yes, I've heard that too. The writer (might've been Sagan) explaining the idea used the analogy of "sonar onomatapia", like children calling a dog a bow-wow. As I understand it, they might send the sonar reflection of a shark in order to say "shark". While I think it's an interesting idea, it seems a bit far fetched.
Regardless, dolphins and other marine mammals clearly communicate to some degree, and have a high order intelligence. I tend to favour animal rights for higher mammals (rights awarded on the basis of intelligence, higher rights for higher intellect) since I beleive that our brains are the only thing that make us special (I'm not religious, and in any case a "soul" is not a quantifyable measure). Speach to me shows evidence of intelligence, but is of no value in itself; an animal that can commumicate is not the same as a person, unless it can be proved that said animal is as intelligent. So I would tend to argue that the rights of a hypothetical "chimera" be based on how intelligent we've made it, not how much of our DNA we've given it, or whether it can speak.
Oh, and for the record, since I touched on the subject in my original post, I'm relatively OK with euthanasia for brain dead vegetables, and abortion, as long as no brain activity is present in the neocortex. Ideally the law should extend rights and protections to any human who can think, and any animal that shows it can as well. However the rights in question must reflect the reality of the situation; arguing that it's unethical to do experiments on lab rats is bullshit, as is opposition to stem cell research, at least from my point of view. YMMV of course.
No offence, but that's simply nonsense. "Speach", as you define it, requires a human vocal arraignment. This means we need a dedicated section of the brain, highly specialized vocal chords, and a trachea/esophagus system that allows us to use it for speach. None of these features are in any way related to intelligence. We could engineer a creature or artificial intelligence that possessed greater cognitive capabilities than a typical human, yet lacked the ability to speak. How would you deal with a chimp granted supernormal intelligence by splicing it's brain tissue with the genetic material required for a human neocortex? It can't speak (chimps can learn sign language btw, but cannot physically speak), but it's mute becasue it lacks sophisticated vocal chords or a speach center. Conversely, programmers have written programs capable of simulating complex conversations with users, which, according to your narrow definition of personhood, should qualify as people provided they are equipped with audio.
Personhood presently is defined as humanity. If we find or create intelligence that is not human, then we will need a new definition. I would much rather that criteria be based on something substantial, like complex independant reasoning, rather than something as specific and unrelated as speach. Yet that won't happen for some time, since we do not yet have an example of such intelligence, and when we get there, doubtlessly people will cling to the old human definition, and resist change on the basis of emotion or religion.
As a side note, primates and cetacians (dolphins etc) have been shown to have language. In fact, there is a considerable body of evidence supporting the conclusion that dolphins "speak', using their sonar system. Chimps, as I've already mentioned, have shown that they can learn and intelligently use sign language. Defining speech as language, and using your definition of personhood, whould higher mammals such as these qualify? They can speak in a way, and they have demonstrable intellect. If we set a threshold for personhood based on speach, dolphins would qualify, at least. If we used a definiton based on human level intelligence, they would not (but neither would fetuses or the severly mentally disabled, which opens up a major political can of worms, not to mention an ethical debate of huge proportions). There is a valid ethical question here, and genetic engineering is only going to complicate it further. To quote someone whose name I've forgotton "For every complex question there is an answer that is simple, elegant and wrong."
I'll admit my experience in MMORPG's is slim, but having played WoW I can honestly say it really is all that its cracked up to be. I got lucky; my gf was in the open beta this past month, so I played a bit on her account. The _only_ thing I had to complain about is lag and server overload. Other than that it was really impressive, and clearly done in Blizzard stlye (complete with practical joke humour - on the last day of the beta the GM's set demons loose in the major cities and turned many players into chickens).
.02 cents.
She plays EQ, and says WoW blows it outta the water. Having played it enough to know I like it, and considering the half million who signed up for the beta, I'd bet heavily on it's success.
Just my
RsG (lvl 16 paladin "Brage" in the beta, test server 2)
As someone else pointed out already, the emissions from coal plants are from radioactives in the coal, which get released by burning it. Nuclear waste (hopefully) doesn't leave the core, so we say it's "less radioactive" meaning less radiation is released from the plant itself.
As for disposing of nuclear waste, we already have at least two or three tried and workable ways to do it that don't release anything into the environment. Reprocessing, and waste fed power plants can use up most of the fissile material. The final leavings and contaminated waste products (by this I mean things like used radiation suits, which are classified as waste) can be disposed of or contained; they're much less dangerous than, say, spent fuel rods.
As a bonus, the stuff that lasts the longest is typically either high order wastes (which can be used up) or isn't very radioactive at all, while the most deadly stuff that can't be recycled in some way is typically short lived. So the long lived reprocessable stuff gets used, the short lived leftovers get stored for decades or centuries, and what's left can get heaved/dumped/buried/whatever. It's not perfect but it would work.
Even if we could, we'd still have to deal with the problem eventually. Since we're talking, what, five billion years or so now, why don't we look at the consequences of putting off the apocalype? You take out the he4, and the mass of the sun diminishes. Take out enough to prevent expansion into a red giant (given enough time), and you'll lower the mass to the point where fusion slows and the sun cools somewhat. Continue "mining" the sun, and fusion will stop altogether (this happens in proto stars that "fizzle"; they fusion long enough to warm up, then cool to dead dwarfs, all in a fraction of the usual time and withour expanding into a giant). No matter what you do entropy claims all in the end, so we'd be better off leaving Sol behind and migrating elsewhere. For the kind of effort your talking about, why not build a dyson sphere around a small new star far away and move there? I'm sure in a billion years that'll be a viable option :-).
Helium is a noble gas (no puns please). The term has to do with electron shells and ionization. All noble gasses are chemically non-reactive; they aren't poisonous or otherwise dangerous. And the amount of helium produced in fusion reactions is tiny, even over the course of millenia. Besides we release terrestrial helium into the atmosphere now, and it isn't doing anything (and don't tell me that's different from waste helium; we don't get our sources from the air now, so we are changing the atmospheric equilibrium, abeit infintesimally).