We should be "stuck with a serial programming model". If your program runs too slow on a single 1 GHz CPU, lack of multicore techniques is the last thing you should be concerned about. The first thing you ought to do is optimize your damn code! There are very few applications that are CPU-bound, and in those that are, only one or two inner loops need parallelizing. The overwhelming majority of slow code is slow because you wrote it badly. So fix the software before blaming the hardware!
>> I would argue that it is a very different effect. > You would lose that argument.
Of course I would, since neither of us has any data:)
>> I am not [using the study to support my prejudice] > Yes, you are. Why is it that prejudiced people try to pretend they're not prejudiced?
See original context in brackets.
And yes, I'm "prejudiced". Prejudice is science. In science you classify objects into groups and try, on the basis of available data on past behavior, to predict their future behavior, with your classification being required due to difference in behavior between the different groups. It is no different with people, except that people tend to resist being judged, thinking that as long as nobody things ill of them, they stay perfect. That's a classification group, by the way.
I would argue that it is a very different effect. I was speaking of selection effect, where calmer people tend to pick cats. You are speaking of the socialization with dogs producing health effects. I bet if you took into account the patient's personality, you'd notice that type-A people get more of a benefit. Any man benefits from interaction with creatures like him, be they human or animal. I, for one, would get a very negative effect from the company of dogs, since I hate the damn critters passionately.
> Please stop using studies like these to reinforce your prejudices.
I am not. IMO, all studies of these nature are complete and utter bullshit, including the ones you cited. Looking for correlations is fine, but if you do not seek the underlying cause as well, you are not doing science.
Stress-prone type-A personalities are more likely to own dogs than cats, since dogs have a loud and obnoxious personality such people can relate to. Quiet and calm type-B people tend to own cats, because cats are quiet, calm, and clean, just like their owners. From this it's obvious that cats would tend to correlate with less stress, leading to healthier and longer life. Causation is really the other way around.
Well, buying a console means playing on your TV. Game graphics appearing on the TV of the average consumer will make you cry for 320x240 on a PC monitor. There is an equally large gap between people who have six foot HD TV screens and the average consumer.
Not everybody is a member of the "I WANT IT NOW!" generation. Most of us are still not particularly bothered if we can't get to some particular piece of information right this second. Some of us still remember how to go to the library. And some of us actually have interests that do not include being online. I know, it's hard to understand, but I don't think I could talk any faster. I'm conditioned that way.
Even in the previous scenario, although the Earth "made it out", it was most definitely not in habitable condition, so I don't see why anyone cares one way or the other.
>> So why not just take a placebo then? You'll save a load of money. > Because if you're not feeling the pain of the unlubed pharma ass-rape, it's a giveaway that it's not real.
With an attitude like that, it's no wonder you are depressed!
> Assuming he killed Nina (a pretty safe assumption, on the face of it)
Assuming that he is guilty until proven innocent is a very dangerous assumption indeed. Not just for him, but for you and all the rest of us in the near future.
Ok, this is becoming a book. So I'll drop the more involved subjects, like health care, since all I can offer is my personal experience, which you clearly don't care about. Concerning the free market, you are a fool:) feel free to read up on it and you'll find out that it really does work the way I describe and will lead to decreased costs and better living. There are huge books written on the subject covering the very objections you raise here and explaining how those problems are solved.
I'll just answer the part about the planetoid.
> The people living there are going to be EXTREMELY energy hungry to maintain the > internal environment and do all the manufacturing.
No they won't. If you locate the planetoid at the correct distance from the sun, you will not need ANY energy to maintain the internal environment. It will simply stay at the proper temperature without any interference from you once you balance the heat input with the output radiation. These are mostly structural and location considerations, not machinery, and they do not "break down". The power consumption of planetoid residents will be much lower than on Earth. Most of the energy here is used for heating, as you ought to know if you read your electric bill. Because the planetoid's internal temperature remains constant at all times and at already human levels, no heating or cooling would be needed, saving plenty of electricity.
Same goes for the manufacturing. Access to zero-g and vacuum simplifies many industrial processes and will very likely lead to substantial energy savings. At worst, it will be no different than it is on Earth.
> Plus they will have a relatively finite amount of materials, > especially volatiles for propulsion and attitude control.
Just because you live in a can, doesn't mean you are isolated from the rest of the universe. In space you are far away from the resources on Earth, but you are at a comparable distance to resources in Sun's orbit. On the solar system scale it doesn't matter how far something is; what matters is how much delta v it takes to get it. From any planetoid you have far easier access to the asteroid belt and the gas giants, providing you with potentially unlimited amounts of material. On the practical side, you'd probably want to recycle most of what you have because there's only so much space in your can. It will require some adjustment from your planetside thinking, but once you do, the situation is just different, not any worse.
> Therefore it makes excellent sense to locate your planetoid closer in for the increased solar flux.
Gathering solar energy in space is extremely simple. You can make solar farms very cheaply due to lack of maintenance for weathering. Moving in closer buys you a little, but you will be able to gather enough power even at the asteroid belt.
> Farther out and you have to expend fuel and other volatiles to get fusion fuel.
If you are mining volatiles somewhere, you can use those same volatiles to send the payloads to their destination.
> So since you are closer in your flares DO become a significant problem. > They can wipe out your solar cells, your space factories and for days
Bullshit. If you are close enough to be affected by a solar flare, you're inside Mercury's orbit. Like I said, solar flares are big, but they are very very small compared to the regular output of the Sun. So no, they will not "wipe out" anything.
> Or say an asteroid...the earth is bombarded by car sized meteors every day. > One even half that size would cause huge damage and probably spring a leak.
You are thinking of the current space stations, which are little more than thin aluminum cans. The planetoid has a shell 100m thick, made of stainless steel (what the Earth is mostly made of). It is a thousand kilometers long with a huge mass. A car sized meteor will not bother it much, since its mass is comparatively very very small. Scale really does
> It "just works". No need to hope that the generators, refueling robots, etc. don't break down.
Perhaps. However, you have to look for a habitable planet. There is also no guarantee that it will stay habitable. Not all stars are as placid as our Sun. I can build my planetoids in any star system, including a system that doesn't have any planets, and I don't care if the star starts acting up; 100m of radiation shielding will stop anything short of a nova.
> External atmosphere. Meteors burn up before they punch a hole in the crust.
The crust will be made of stainless steel (that's what most of the Earth is, nickel and iron). Good luck trying to punch a hole through a hundred meters of it. Secondly, large asteroid strikes are extremely rare. It would be millions of years between strikes, and even when it does strike, you are at a disadvantage on a planet. I can move my planetoid with comparative ease, since it is a small target and a small mass. If you're on a planet when that asteroid strikes, good luck! You'll be going by the way of the dinosaurs. The worst I'd get is an "earthquake" and a new mountain range:)
> Fail-soft. Said meteor does not result in the contents of the atmosphere whooshing out the impact site. > Also much more resilient against the jackass who "knows" there's a pot of gold underneath the crust, > if only he can drill through that one metallic layer.
See above. 100m of steel will kinda protect you from this sort of thing. Even on Earth, drilling is outrageously expensive, and we only drill through limestone and the like. If you really like, I can put a hardened steel layer just under the soil to frustrate the jackasses:)
Also, you could put pressure loss detectors inside and despin the cylinder if a leak is detected. You can further reduce the danger by reducing atmospheric pressure. Remove nitrogen and you can go down to only 3psi. (No this is not a fire hazard, since the partial pressure of oxygen stays the same). This way a puncture, unlikely as it is already, would not result in any appreciable loss.
> I doubt that'll satisfy the people who suddenly find themselves shooting > out a hole or floating in the air or what have you.
We have natural disasters on Earth too. Much more often, I might add. And much more dangerous. Here we have hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, lightning, forest fires, droughts, tsunamis, plagues, to name a few. Some of these happen every year. The others at least once a decade. All I have to worry about in my planetoid are large asteroids every million years or so. Take your pick.
> Bussard polywells are actually progressing very well.
If by "progressing" you mean "generating monthly reports" and "scientific papers". I highly doubt they have made any actual progress toward breakeven. Both my parents are scientists. I know all about academics and their ideas of "progress", but if you haven't had much contact with academic researchers I guess you might be mislead:)
> Why don't you take a rock to cement...it breaks farily easily.
Ha ha ha! I dare you to take a rock and break down an 8in thick reinforced concrete wall. I dare you! Go ahead! Make sure you've got the camera rolling and post it on youtube. 'Cause I'd love to watch how you break your hand and have to call the paramedics with your good one.
Really. Extracting rebar from reinforced concrete is probably the worst possible way to get metal. You can melt clay for aluminum with less effort than that.
> The rocky mountains are eroding even though they are much harder than most industrial concrete.
Rocky mountains are not harder than concrete. Well-poured reinforced concrete is far stronger and more durable. And consider that what you see in the rocky mountains has been there for a hundred million years. Then look at the Appalachians and you'll see what the Rockies will look like after two hundred million years. Dinosaurs roamed the Earth only 65 million years ago. Oldest records of civilization are only eight thousand years old. Weathering happens on geological time scales, which is millions of years. Humans can't wait that long.
> Resources beyond wood and stone weren't in much demand except for specialty items until about 500 years ago.
Metal was always in demand. Every ancient civilization was ultimately based on its availability. The demand rose after the industrial revolution because it provided such an incredible increase in supply. When metal was scarcer, it was naturally used less, but it could not be dispensed with. Without metal we'd be in the stone age.
> Remember bouency...oil floats on water PLUS rock will actually wick it up given time.
All the active oil reservoirs are already full of water on the bottom. That's how you get the oil out after the natural pressure is not sufficient to bring it up. Pumping in the water also shortens the life of the oil field by driving the oil into unreachable pockets or forcing it into porous rock where it gets stuck. The reason oil is so cheap is that it is so concentrated and easy to pump. The moment you have to work to extract it, it becomes economically unfavorable to use it. And, of course, with twelfth century technology, it is totally unreachable.
> Increased CO2 encourages the growth of marine algae and it's entire food chain. > the rest sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is sequestered...all by itself!
Actually no, it doesn't. Nitrogen supply is the limiting factor for marine culture growth. CO2 is not very important by comparison. Most algae growth, and, of course, the rest of the food chain, occurs in places where deep ocean water is forced to the surface, or where the outflow from rivers brings in nitrogen from land. You could take advantage of this to fight global warming by building lots of OTECs. Read more about this plan in The Millenial Progect by Marshall Savage.
> I freely admit that I have not run the numbers.
Well, when you do, you'll find out that the problems you imagine are not as serious as you think:)
> I can run some numbers for other disasters if you like but my point still stands.
Why don't you try that and when you come up with a realistic catastrophe, I'll be happy to show you why you're wrong;) Really, a planetoid is so much safer and stable than a planet, it's not even a contest.
> People form large governments BECAUSE they provide services small ones can't
Uh, no. First of all, people don't form governments. Ambitious power-hungry bastards form governments:) Maybe there are a few exceptions, but all governments end up being run by ambitions power-hungry bastards, regardless of who formed them. Second, government services are not something anybody needs. As I said elsewhere, only the lazy need government handouts. The rest of us can make it on our own thank you very much! Third:
> Your scenario is all well and good until two planetoids decide they want to kill off a third and take the resources.
This happens just as easily on Earth, so at worst, you are no worse off. However, conquest is again only possible by government. If there was no government, there'd be no wars, only local aggression. In a free market economy you don't need to conquer anyone; you can just buy what you need.
> But some where along the line their ancestors got extra power and then shut down the competition.
Yes, I admit I do not have a foolproof solution on how to prevent formation of government. When I find one, I'll let you know:) For now I'm just making the assumption that one ought to look for such a solution due to the problems any form of government inevitably brings to society. I will, however assert strongly that capitalism has nothing to do with this. It is an economic system, not a political one. While it does not prevent escalating violence, it certainly goes a long way toward making it unnecessary by defining a non-violent way for people to deal with each other through contracts and monetary exchange.
> Central planning CAN work, it just only works for simply and not particularly industrial economies.
You really need to read the book. It goes into great detail, explaining exactly why socialism in any form can not work. I really don't want to retype the whole thing.
> The AMA and FDA: How to put this...you are a fool.
Good! We're down to name calling. That means you are really paying attention now:)
> This may sound elitist but not everyone can be a doctor. It takes high intelligence (about > top 1/3 of the population) and a special mentality. It takes 8-12 YEARS of training, the > first 4 costing $150K and the last 4-8 you get paid as much as a waiter.
Not to insult your high intelligence, but this is bullshit. Yes, you might need a eight years of training to be a neurosurgeon. You don't need any training to sit in the office and diagnose strep throat, indigestion, the flu, acid re
> Fusion, there is no "technological stagnation." The advancement has proceeded apace > even though the next larger Tokamac is still under construction.
Building larger copies of ideas that don't work does not count as "advancement". We are no closer to breakeven today than we were in 1980. As I said, research is not a high priority during a depression, and this depression looks worse every day.
> Remember what the vast amount of re bar is used for...lattice work in concrete. > It is not going to rust until the concrete is weathered away.
Very funny. The rocky mountains are made of what is more or less like concrete and they are 100 million years old. See much "weathering away"? Are you willing to wait a million years for each piece of rebar? Oh, sure, you can try to dig it out before that. With your flint axe. Good luck with that!
> Current projects suggest that buildings will be useful sources of materials for
Small sources. Don't forget, I'm talking about industrialization here. You can't have industrial production on a few kilograms of rebar you can chisel out of the walls in a day.
> well over 500 years...more than enough time to recover from a collapse.
The Dark Ages lasted from about 500AD until the Renaissance in the fifteenth century. And they had plentiful resources by comparisons. Ore was still so abundant, you could go to any little hill and find some. Try reading Agricola's De Re Metallica for an amazing overview of metallurgy in that period.
> As far as oil goes...how much petroleum was used in the 12th century? > All the demand for oil was created over the last 150 years.
By industrialization, which is what I was talking about. Not sailing ships and wooden plows.
> Plus the easily accessible oil is "easily accessible" because it is close to the surface. > Give it a few hundred years and it will redistribute itself and partially refill those easy areas.
Remember gravity? Oil flows down, not up. Down is away from the surface, so there will be no "redistributing", unless you believe those crackpot theories that oil just seeps up from the center of the Earth...
> Finally "proven" reserves mean they AREN'T guessing. Proven reserves are used on > corporate balance sheets and are independently verified.
If you believe that makes them an absolute truth, I have a nice bridge in Brooklin I'd like to sell you:)
> (Sorry to pick on you but your statments are a bit too Malthusian for the facts.) > We are going to develop a reliable renewable energy source (probably fusion and solar) before we trully "run out."
And yours are too optimistic. We've been in technological stagnation since 2000 and it's only going to get worse from now on. Research is not a high priority during a depression, and we are definitely heading for one now. I rather doubt we'll have fusion. For one, nobody is seriously working on it. The few projects in existence are just token government efforts "to be doing something". I do not expect them to succeed.
> Plus the mined resources aren't gone...they are in buildings.
Yes, they are. They are also in dirt. The reason we have ore mines is not that iron doesn't exist anywhere else, but that it's concentrated there and is in an easily extractable form. Abandoned skyscrapers will indeed have iron, but at a very low density. Most of it is embedded in concrete as rebar, making it very hard to extract by hand, and impossible to extract on industrial scale. The iron that's out in the open will rust after a few decades of exposure. How long will your house stand if you never fix roof leaks? Once it's rusted, the energy required to extract it becomes enormous. Industrial ores today are sulfides, which are easily melted. Melting rust is very very difficult by comparison.
> they are just harder more expensive to tap.
But that's the whole point. To us they are too expensive to tap now. To a civilization at 12th century level of technology it is impossible to reach at any cost. In fact, even that level requires abundant metal to reach. With all the surface metal gone, civilization might not be able to leave stone age. How will you build a modern mine with a flint axe and a wooden shovel? Or an oil well under the sea? The further you fall, the harder it becomes to climb back. If our civilization falls into stone age, it would quite likely just stay there.
> Actully whe have more proven reserves now than we did 50 years ago,
I would take the official "proven reserves" figures with a very large grain of salt. Some of them are just guesses. Others are outright lies. No, I don't have links, sorry:)
Slashdot Mirror
We should be "stuck with a serial programming model". If your program runs too slow on a single 1 GHz CPU, lack of multicore techniques is the last thing you should be concerned about. The first thing you ought to do is optimize your damn code! There are very few applications that are CPU-bound, and in those that are, only one or two inner loops need parallelizing. The overwhelming majority of slow code is slow because you wrote it badly. So fix the software before blaming the hardware!
It's close enough for non-technical people.
> They have conquered WWW and Email, now FTP, next on their list... NTP!
Uh, no. Next on this list would be uucp.
git merge gamer
> And buying a PC means having to buy three more PCs so that people can play with you.
You're on Slashdot. We don't have access to physical people.
>> I would argue that it is a very different effect.
:)
> You would lose that argument.
Of course I would, since neither of us has any data
>> I am not [using the study to support my prejudice]
> Yes, you are. Why is it that prejudiced people try to pretend they're not prejudiced?
See original context in brackets.
And yes, I'm "prejudiced". Prejudice is science. In science you classify objects into groups and try, on the basis of available data on past behavior, to predict their future behavior, with your classification being required due to difference in behavior between the different groups. It is no different with people, except that people tend to resist being judged, thinking that as long as nobody things ill of them, they stay perfect. That's a classification group, by the way.
> Dogs have similar effects on health.
I would argue that it is a very different effect. I was speaking of selection effect, where calmer people tend to pick cats. You are speaking of the socialization with dogs producing health effects. I bet if you took into account the patient's personality, you'd notice that type-A people get more of a benefit. Any man benefits from interaction with creatures like him, be they human or animal. I, for one, would get a very negative effect from the company of dogs, since I hate the damn critters passionately.
> Please stop using studies like these to reinforce your prejudices.
I am not. IMO, all studies of these nature are complete and utter bullshit, including the ones you cited. Looking for correlations is fine, but if you do not seek the underlying cause as well, you are not doing science.
> because of some huge stress in their lives.
Stress-prone type-A personalities are more likely to own dogs than cats, since dogs have a loud and obnoxious personality such people can relate to. Quiet and calm type-B people tend to own cats, because cats are quiet, calm, and clean, just like their owners. From this it's obvious that cats would tend to correlate with less stress, leading to healthier and longer life. Causation is really the other way around.
Well, buying a console means playing on your TV. Game graphics appearing on the TV of the average consumer will make you cry for 320x240 on a PC monitor. There is an equally large gap between people who have six foot HD TV screens and the average consumer.
Well, if you could deliver things to your cellar, one of those things could be fiber.
You go right ahead. I'm just going to keep beating the dead horse.
Or the consequences of these wonders, which all home chemists need to consider before trying to make them or anything else.
Not everybody is a member of the "I WANT IT NOW!" generation. Most of us are still not particularly bothered if we can't get to some particular piece of information right this second. Some of us still remember how to go to the library. And some of us actually have interests that do not include being online. I know, it's hard to understand, but I don't think I could talk any faster. I'm conditioned that way.
Free stolen money! Free stolen money! Get yours while it's hot!
Even in the previous scenario, although the Earth "made it out", it was most definitely not in habitable condition, so I don't see why anyone cares one way or the other.
>> So why not just take a placebo then? You'll save a load of money.
> Because if you're not feeling the pain of the unlubed pharma ass-rape, it's a giveaway that it's not real.
With an attitude like that, it's no wonder you are depressed!
> I don't care if it is a placebo - and I doubt it is - but I'm glad I finally went on Prozac
So why not just take a placebo then? You'll save a load of money.
> Assuming he killed Nina (a pretty safe assumption, on the face of it)
Assuming that he is guilty until proven innocent is a very dangerous assumption indeed. Not just for him, but for you and all the rest of us in the near future.
And after the baseball does it in, the cost of replacing the super-duper high-tech nanotechnology four layer glass windshield will do you in.
Ok, this is becoming a book. So I'll drop the more involved subjects, like health care, since all I can offer is my personal experience, which you clearly don't care about. Concerning the free market, you are a fool :) feel free to read up on it and you'll find out that it really does work the way I describe and will lead to decreased costs and better living. There are huge books written on the subject covering the very objections you raise here and explaining how those problems are solved.
I'll just answer the part about the planetoid.
> The people living there are going to be EXTREMELY energy hungry to maintain the
> internal environment and do all the manufacturing.
No they won't. If you locate the planetoid at the correct distance from the sun, you will not need ANY energy to maintain the internal environment. It will simply stay at the proper temperature without any interference from you once you balance the heat input with the output radiation. These are mostly structural and location considerations, not machinery, and they do not "break down". The power consumption of planetoid residents will be much lower than on Earth. Most of the energy here is used for heating, as you ought to know if you read your electric bill. Because the planetoid's internal temperature remains constant at all times and at already human levels, no heating or cooling would be needed, saving plenty of electricity.
Same goes for the manufacturing. Access to zero-g and vacuum simplifies many industrial processes and will very likely lead to substantial energy savings. At worst, it will be no different than it is on Earth.
> Plus they will have a relatively finite amount of materials,
> especially volatiles for propulsion and attitude control.
Just because you live in a can, doesn't mean you are isolated from the rest of the universe. In space you are far away from the resources on Earth, but you are at a comparable distance to resources in Sun's orbit. On the solar system scale it doesn't matter how far something is; what matters is how much delta v it takes to get it. From any planetoid you have far easier access to the asteroid belt and the gas giants, providing you with potentially unlimited amounts of material. On the practical side, you'd probably want to recycle most of what you have because there's only so much space in your can. It will require some adjustment from your planetside thinking, but once you do, the situation is just different, not any worse.
> Therefore it makes excellent sense to locate your planetoid closer in for the increased solar flux.
Gathering solar energy in space is extremely simple. You can make solar farms very cheaply due to lack of maintenance for weathering. Moving in closer buys you a little, but you will be able to gather enough power even at the asteroid belt.
> Farther out and you have to expend fuel and other volatiles to get fusion fuel.
If you are mining volatiles somewhere, you can use those same volatiles to send the payloads to their destination.
> So since you are closer in your flares DO become a significant problem.
> They can wipe out your solar cells, your space factories and for days
Bullshit. If you are close enough to be affected by a solar flare, you're inside Mercury's orbit. Like I said, solar flares are big, but they are very very small compared to the regular output of the Sun. So no, they will not "wipe out" anything.
> Or say an asteroid...the earth is bombarded by car sized meteors every day.
> One even half that size would cause huge damage and probably spring a leak.
You are thinking of the current space stations, which are little more than thin aluminum cans. The planetoid has a shell 100m thick, made of stainless steel (what the Earth is mostly made of). It is a thousand kilometers long with a huge mass. A car sized meteor will not bother it much, since its mass is comparatively very very small. Scale really does
> It "just works". No need to hope that the generators, refueling robots, etc. don't break down.
:)
:)
Perhaps. However, you have to look for a habitable planet. There is also no guarantee that it will stay habitable. Not all stars are as placid as our Sun. I can build my planetoids in any star system, including a system that doesn't have any planets, and I don't care if the star starts acting up; 100m of radiation shielding will stop anything short of a nova.
> External atmosphere. Meteors burn up before they punch a hole in the crust.
The crust will be made of stainless steel (that's what most of the Earth is, nickel and iron). Good luck trying to punch a hole through a hundred meters of it. Secondly, large asteroid strikes are extremely rare. It would be millions of years between strikes, and even when it does strike, you are at a disadvantage on a planet. I can move my planetoid with comparative ease, since it is a small target and a small mass. If you're on a planet when that asteroid strikes, good luck! You'll be going by the way of the dinosaurs. The worst I'd get is an "earthquake" and a new mountain range
> Fail-soft. Said meteor does not result in the contents of the atmosphere whooshing out the impact site.
> Also much more resilient against the jackass who "knows" there's a pot of gold underneath the crust,
> if only he can drill through that one metallic layer.
See above. 100m of steel will kinda protect you from this sort of thing. Even on Earth, drilling is outrageously expensive, and we only drill through limestone and the like. If you really like, I can put a hardened steel layer just under the soil to frustrate the jackasses
Also, you could put pressure loss detectors inside and despin the cylinder if a leak is detected. You can further reduce the danger by reducing atmospheric pressure. Remove nitrogen and you can go down to only 3psi. (No this is not a fire hazard, since the partial pressure of oxygen stays the same). This way a puncture, unlikely as it is already, would not result in any appreciable loss.
> I doubt that'll satisfy the people who suddenly find themselves shooting
> out a hole or floating in the air or what have you.
We have natural disasters on Earth too. Much more often, I might add. And much more dangerous. Here we have hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, lightning, forest fires, droughts, tsunamis, plagues, to name a few. Some of these happen every year. The others at least once a decade. All I have to worry about in my planetoid are large asteroids every million years or so. Take your pick.
> Bussard polywells are actually progressing very well.
:)
If by "progressing" you mean "generating monthly reports" and "scientific papers". I highly doubt they have made any actual progress toward breakeven. Both my parents are scientists. I know all about academics and their ideas of "progress", but if you haven't had much contact with academic researchers I guess you might be mislead
> Why don't you take a rock to cement...it breaks farily easily.
Ha ha ha! I dare you to take a rock and break down an 8in thick reinforced concrete wall. I dare you! Go ahead! Make sure you've got the camera rolling and post it on youtube. 'Cause I'd love to watch how you break your hand and have to call the paramedics with your good one.
Really. Extracting rebar from reinforced concrete is probably the worst possible way to get metal. You can melt clay for aluminum with less effort than that.
> The rocky mountains are eroding even though they are much harder than most industrial concrete.
Rocky mountains are not harder than concrete. Well-poured reinforced concrete is far stronger and more durable. And consider that what you see in the rocky mountains has been there for a hundred million years. Then look at the Appalachians and you'll see what the Rockies will look like after two hundred million years. Dinosaurs roamed the Earth only 65 million years ago. Oldest records of civilization are only eight thousand years old. Weathering happens on geological time scales, which is millions of years. Humans can't wait that long.
> Resources beyond wood and stone weren't in much demand except for specialty items until about 500 years ago.
Metal was always in demand. Every ancient civilization was ultimately based on its availability. The demand rose after the industrial revolution because it provided such an incredible increase in supply. When metal was scarcer, it was naturally used less, but it could not be dispensed with. Without metal we'd be in the stone age.
> Remember bouency...oil floats on water PLUS rock will actually wick it up given time.
All the active oil reservoirs are already full of water on the bottom. That's how you get the oil out after the natural pressure is not sufficient to bring it up. Pumping in the water also shortens the life of the oil field by driving the oil into unreachable pockets or forcing it into porous rock where it gets stuck. The reason oil is so cheap is that it is so concentrated and easy to pump. The moment you have to work to extract it, it becomes economically unfavorable to use it. And, of course, with twelfth century technology, it is totally unreachable.
> Increased CO2 encourages the growth of marine algae and it's entire food chain.
:)
;) Really, a planetoid is so much safer and stable than a planet, it's not even a contest.
:) Maybe there are a few exceptions, but all governments end up being run by ambitions power-hungry bastards, regardless of who formed them. Second, government services are not something anybody needs. As I said elsewhere, only the lazy need government handouts. The rest of us can make it on our own thank you very much! Third:
:) For now I'm just making the assumption that one ought to look for such a solution due to the problems any form of government inevitably brings to society. I will, however assert strongly that capitalism has nothing to do with this. It is an economic system, not a political one. While it does not prevent escalating violence, it certainly goes a long way toward making it unnecessary by defining a non-violent way for people to deal with each other through contracts and monetary exchange.
:)
> the rest sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is sequestered...all by itself!
Actually no, it doesn't. Nitrogen supply is the limiting factor for marine culture growth. CO2 is not very important by comparison. Most algae growth, and, of course, the rest of the food chain, occurs in places where deep ocean water is forced to the surface, or where the outflow from rivers brings in nitrogen from land. You could take advantage of this to fight global warming by building lots of OTECs. Read more about this plan in The Millenial Progect by Marshall Savage.
> I freely admit that I have not run the numbers.
Well, when you do, you'll find out that the problems you imagine are not as serious as you think
> I can run some numbers for other disasters if you like but my point still stands.
Why don't you try that and when you come up with a realistic catastrophe, I'll be happy to show you why you're wrong
> People form large governments BECAUSE they provide services small ones can't
Uh, no. First of all, people don't form governments. Ambitious power-hungry bastards form governments
> Your scenario is all well and good until two planetoids decide they want to kill off a third and take the resources.
This happens just as easily on Earth, so at worst, you are no worse off. However, conquest is again only possible by government. If there was no government, there'd be no wars, only local aggression. In a free market economy you don't need to conquer anyone; you can just buy what you need.
> But some where along the line their ancestors got extra power and then shut down the competition.
Yes, I admit I do not have a foolproof solution on how to prevent formation of government. When I find one, I'll let you know
> Central planning CAN work, it just only works for simply and not particularly industrial economies.
You really need to read the book. It goes into great detail, explaining exactly why socialism in any form can not work. I really don't want to retype the whole thing.
> The AMA and FDA: How to put this...you are a fool.
Good! We're down to name calling. That means you are really paying attention now
> This may sound elitist but not everyone can be a doctor. It takes high intelligence (about
> top 1/3 of the population) and a special mentality. It takes 8-12 YEARS of training, the
> first 4 costing $150K and the last 4-8 you get paid as much as a waiter.
Not to insult your high intelligence, but this is bullshit. Yes, you might need a eight years of training to be a neurosurgeon. You don't need any training to sit in the office and diagnose strep throat, indigestion, the flu, acid re
> Fusion, there is no "technological stagnation." The advancement has proceeded apace
:)
> even though the next larger Tokamac is still under construction.
Building larger copies of ideas that don't work does not count as "advancement". We are no closer to breakeven today than we were in 1980. As I said, research is not a high priority during a depression, and this depression looks worse every day.
> Remember what the vast amount of re bar is used for...lattice work in concrete.
> It is not going to rust until the concrete is weathered away.
Very funny. The rocky mountains are made of what is more or less like concrete and they are 100 million years old. See much "weathering away"? Are you willing to wait a million years for each piece of rebar? Oh, sure, you can try to dig it out before that. With your flint axe. Good luck with that!
> Current projects suggest that buildings will be useful sources of materials for
Small sources. Don't forget, I'm talking about industrialization here. You can't have industrial production on a few kilograms of rebar you can chisel out of the walls in a day.
> well over 500 years...more than enough time to recover from a collapse.
The Dark Ages lasted from about 500AD until the Renaissance in the fifteenth century. And they had plentiful resources by comparisons. Ore was still so abundant, you could go to any little hill and find some. Try reading Agricola's De Re Metallica for an amazing overview of metallurgy in that period.
> As far as oil goes...how much petroleum was used in the 12th century?
> All the demand for oil was created over the last 150 years.
By industrialization, which is what I was talking about. Not sailing ships and wooden plows.
> Plus the easily accessible oil is "easily accessible" because it is close to the surface.
> Give it a few hundred years and it will redistribute itself and partially refill those easy areas.
Remember gravity? Oil flows down, not up. Down is away from the surface, so there will be no "redistributing", unless you believe those crackpot theories that oil just seeps up from the center of the Earth...
> Finally "proven" reserves mean they AREN'T guessing. Proven reserves are used on
> corporate balance sheets and are independently verified.
If you believe that makes them an absolute truth, I have a nice bridge in Brooklin I'd like to sell you
> (Sorry to pick on you but your statments are a bit too Malthusian for the facts.)
:)
> We are going to develop a reliable renewable energy source (probably fusion and solar) before we trully "run out."
And yours are too optimistic. We've been in technological stagnation since 2000 and it's only going to get worse from now on. Research is not a high priority during a depression, and we are definitely heading for one now. I rather doubt we'll have fusion. For one, nobody is seriously working on it. The few projects in existence are just token government efforts "to be doing something". I do not expect them to succeed.
> Plus the mined resources aren't gone...they are in buildings.
Yes, they are. They are also in dirt. The reason we have ore mines is not that iron doesn't exist anywhere else, but that it's concentrated there and is in an easily extractable form. Abandoned skyscrapers will indeed have iron, but at a very low density. Most of it is embedded in concrete as rebar, making it very hard to extract by hand, and impossible to extract on industrial scale. The iron that's out in the open will rust after a few decades of exposure. How long will your house stand if you never fix roof leaks? Once it's rusted, the energy required to extract it becomes enormous. Industrial ores today are sulfides, which are easily melted. Melting rust is very very difficult by comparison.
> they are just harder more expensive to tap.
But that's the whole point. To us they are too expensive to tap now. To a civilization at 12th century level of technology it is impossible to reach at any cost. In fact, even that level requires abundant metal to reach. With all the surface metal gone, civilization might not be able to leave stone age. How will you build a modern mine with a flint axe and a wooden shovel? Or an oil well under the sea? The further you fall, the harder it becomes to climb back. If our civilization falls into stone age, it would quite likely just stay there.
> Actully whe have more proven reserves now than we did 50 years ago,
I would take the official "proven reserves" figures with a very large grain of salt. Some of them are just guesses. Others are outright lies. No, I don't have links, sorry