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User: rrohbeck

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  1. Re:both get it wrong on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    The political will to spend how much? Out of whose pockets?

  2. Re:Yes on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    Agree.

    Under optimal conditions, without major climate change. GMO and breeding has been unable to make the major crops resilient against significantly higher temperatures or drought.

  3. Re:Yes on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    Some of this may be correct - for the richer part of the world only.

  4. Re:Yes on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, if you manage to build a few thousand new reactors that might work but I have a feeling that's not realistic.

  5. Re:Yes on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Basically all of those methods are pipe dreams. It has been shown many times by multiple scholars that there is *no* way to reach today's flow rate from oil with any kind of alternate liquid fuel. The only method that would be remotely effective to get a significant fraction of today's liquid fuel would be CTL at a huge scale, with the accompanying CO2 emissions. My expectation is that people will try that for a while in 20 or 30 years until it will become obvious that it's not feasible.

  6. Re:Yes on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    You forget that the entire "green revolution" is based on liquid fossil fuels. Today agriculture, especially large scale agriculture, is a process of converting fossil fuel into food. There are no developments that would use renewable or nuclear energy for this.

  7. Re:No on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Worldwide energy availability will be some fraction of what it is today. We'll deal with it in some way. How many people can be fed with that amount of energy will be seen. It won't be 9 billion.

  8. Re:It's not energy generation that's the problem.. on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    Where's my shipstone?

    Problem is, physics says that there's only a small factor left in current technologies - Tom Murphy went through all of them. If some completely new technology is needed it won't be available before 20 years from now - in the extreme best case, assuming we find something tomorrow and start a Manhattan Project like effort.

  9. Re:Lead balloon argument on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    The problem is that the answer to the first question is "no" too, and the logical conclusion is that a couple billion people will have to go one way or another - something nobody is willing to touch. Not that we have to - it'll just happen.

  10. Re:Timeframe : on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    It's all about entropy, not energy. We gain usable energy from the differential between high entropy and low entropy. All the energy in the world is useless if it comes in the same form.

  11. Re:both get it wrong on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 2

    But we can't afford the energy (or money, same thing) to build out nuclear. It's called the energy trap and we're in it.

  12. Re:It depends... on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 1

    Yup but the economy won't like those oil prices.

  13. Re:Yes on Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think this graph summarizes it well: http://media.peakprosperity.com/images/A-brief-history-oi-humans.jpg

    The people who do the math come up with numbers around 1.5 to 4 or so billions of humans by the end of the century, simply based on the available resources like energy and raw materials by then. How we get there is left as an exercise to the reader.

  14. Re:Go Arch on Alan Cox: Fedora 18 "The Worst Red Hat Distro," Switches To Ubuntu · · Score: 4, Funny

    I guess you haven't tried Debian experimental.

  15. Re:Organic user interfaces? on The Road To KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 2 · · Score: 1

    Free range electrons and photons.

  16. Re:Where are the screenshots? on The Road To KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 2 · · Score: 1

    I think it says "If you like KDE today, better watch out and don't upgrade until at least 5.2."

  17. Re:This is about information policy on Fukushima's Fallout of Fear · · Score: 1

    How often did we hear "There was no core melt"?

  18. This is about information policy on Fukushima's Fallout of Fear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If officials would reliably issue accurate statements there would be much less reason to stress out.

  19. Re:interesting... on Samsung Won't Release Windows RT Tablet In US · · Score: 2

    All the ones I heard from (including at my own employer) say "Windows 8: No way until MS provides the old UI or an emulation."

    Nobody is going to retrain the entire workforce and face their wrath.

  20. Re:interesting... on Samsung Won't Release Windows RT Tablet In US · · Score: 1

    I thought the confusion between the two is a major marketing tool.

  21. Re:Don't put new wine into old wineskins on Samsung Won't Release Windows RT Tablet In US · · Score: 2

    There was never a problem with netbooks other than that manufacturers faced very low profits after MS forced them to put Windows on them, which didn't run well on the weak hardware.

    With a lean distro an Atom has sufficient power to run all your typical applications like email, browsing, word processing and spreadsheets that aren't humongous. The only problem is with video, which isn't accelerated due to the proprietary PowerVR drivers.

    Those systems are still very viable - they're just called Chromebooks today and are more powerful than ever at the $200 price point. See e.g. this one with a Sandy Bridge Celeron: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215914

  22. Re:Priced themselves out of it. on UC's For-Pay Online Course Draws 4 Non-UC Students · · Score: 1

    You should rather ask who got a big bonus and/or a golden handshake in the meantime.

  23. Re:Useless to non-UC students, and $$$$$??!!?!? on UC's For-Pay Online Course Draws 4 Non-UC Students · · Score: 1

    It should be much more than normal tuition because you can study in the comfort of your home and don't have to get up in the morning!

    After all the UC system isn't about education, it's about money.

  24. Re:Why are we quoting the AAPS? on Indiana Nurses Fired After Refusing Flu Shots On Religious Grounds · · Score: 1

    s/conservative/right wing nut/.

  25. Re:Why are we quoting the AAPS? on Indiana Nurses Fired After Refusing Flu Shots On Religious Grounds · · Score: 0

    But Fox News says otherwise so you must be wrong!