You are one of the few repliers who understood my concern. We humans have raped the planet in the last 200 years, and still no-one seems to get it. Maybe if the Mississippi wipes Louisiana off the map tomorrow, people might start to wake up - we still didn't get the last two "Mother Earth" "messages" to that city (no, I am not a techno-Gaian!)
The shortterm (i.e. today) solution is to cut our own carbon footprint dramatically - and the personal car is step number one, where VAST energy savings are to be made.
Even "green" cars, hybrids etc, still use 100's of hp to simply move humans. Electrobikes are even much better requiring only 200W, instead of >100kW for a car.
If someone invents an electrobike that can take a person weathersafe 15 km, we have an awesome solution.
350 hp=253kW=the energy produced by 1,265 humans sprinting!!!! When are we humans gonna wake up and realize that spending 350 hp to move a human from point A & B is simply irresponsible to the world and future generations, who will curse us for wasting the world's energy resources.
exactly, I tried to play a 3D game with a tiny viewing angle, and the game required me to swing the thing around my head fast to attack a dodging enemy. 10 minutes after I gave up my eyes were still blinking and weeping - and I loved Avatar in 3D.
My house was not expensive at all, 200k$. I have 800 m2 of land. no tax advantages.
and that is why I don't have solar, because it won't work for me - hydro does, but sunny days do really work in winter.
cats and dogs are not herbivorous - so I rule them out completely as pets - however my rabbits are and they only eat grass that I let grow tall, dandelions, daisies, wattle twigs and hazel leaves - all of which grows in abundance on my land - it is now spring and I am using my excess hay from last summer as mulch. I cut the hay in 5 minutes with a hedge trimmer and let it dry in the sun for 4 days last year for the rabbits in winter.
then you see good hope for humanity, and that is great. But that 15TW is not sustainable the way we are making it, and the planet is/will suffering pretty badly for it.
Anyways we humans can't use all the energy, the leaves and bugs need their share too, and the rest needs reflecting so we don't bake!
Blackberry fits into the enterprise structure. The IT guys can lock down the device remotely - all emails/appointments/contacts are instantly synched (Iphone cannot synch appointments to MSexchange) - so that can remote wipe/reset the device if needed. A company knows exactly what they are getting for the device, and that lowers risk. And it is the COO & CIO who makes the decision to get these enterprise solutions - and this is the core of the Blackberry market. You can run your own Android/Gmail/IMAP/whatever "homegrown" solution, but can you convince the CIO of a 1000+ organisation to go with your solution? RIM can.
electrons are electrons. But my cash goes to those who produce electricity from water - and that is where the real difference is, and so yes, an electron is an electron, but my electricity is "certified hydroelectricity".
I am not buying electrons - because noone can own them since they are identical with each other (see Pauli exclusion principle and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles) but rather paying someone far away to move electrons into a wire at their end, and my money goes into their business. So yes, you can buy wind-electricity or methane-electricity which is delivered over the same grid as nuclear or brown coal sourced electricity.
and if you want to be pedantic, "my electrons" are mine, because we all use AC electricity, so the electrons just dance back and forth at 50 or 60 Hz !!! And an electron does not travel very far in 0.02 seconds.
look at Thorium and not Uranium. Uranium is scarce in the Earth and needs to be refined to U235 and then precious little of that is actually burnt in a nuclear reactor. From a kg of U, only miniscule amounts of it actually is turned into energy. Thorium, on the other hand, is as plentiful as lead on the planet, doesn't require isotopic refinement, and is mostly burnt in a reactor. And unlike Uranium at Fukushima, Thorium doesn't do anything by itself - turn off the power or let a tsunami hit it, it will stop immediately. Watch India this year when they get their Thorium reactor running, China announced in March that they are going with Thorium.
Why do we still have U-reactors? Possibly because of cold war politics requiring Plutonium for bombs since the 60s, and the French twisting the EU's arms to use U in Europe in the 80's and later.
Instead of saying "I'd take it over freezing in the dark...", say stuff like "I will change my day-to-day lifestyle to be more sustainable", which is something you can do today and inspire others, and look for technology solutions.
That opens up a whole new area. If we decide it is a good idea that humans live to 80+ on average, how are we going to balance the books? or are we just going on like the USA this week where Obama is trying to get his citizens to understand that the national debt is so horrendous, it cannot be ignored - it will come back and impoverish the USA. and we all are impoverishing the earth, until it sends the debt collector.
And that is exactly the attitude "I won't stop until they stop as well" that destroyed every tree on Easter Island, and caused inaction at Copenhagen.
Instead of ignorantly claiming others to be hyprocrites, do something yourself that you can be proud to tell your grandchildren and inspire others with.
I am not generating carbon with my computer because I pay extra for 100% hydroelectricity (and yes, I know they also buy excess atom energy cheaply at night to pump water into the mountains and sell it the next day as hydro-elec). My job is to save companies energy costs, and I travel to work at less than 50 W of hydro-elec (which is 1.8 cm of solar radiation as I only travel 8 hours/week), but I rather work from home. My house is well insulated, has energy recapture, and doesn't need heating even at -10 if the sun is shining, my chimney is made of plastic because the exhaust has had the heat removed. My house lights are 5 & 15 W and at the moment there is one light on in a house of 5 people. So my lifestyle, work, and daily habits are all contributing.
My herbivorous pets eat what comes out of my garden and in return they fertilize it!
Everybody can look at their own situation and make a difference for themselves. That is where it starts.
Then you had better seriously think about radically changing your lifestyle if the sums don't match!! People have lived for 10,000's of years at your latitude sustainably. If your lifestyle for the last hundred years is not sustainable, then you will destroy Canada or, by proxy, elsewhere on the planet. Because at the moment you have been burning millions of years of stored solar energy (oil) to maintain your current lifestyle for the last 100 - and dumping the waste into the atmosphere.
And if you think that it is not your problem, then think about the Easter Islands destroying all of their trees for the sake of their lifestyle, and what happened to them - http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/Easter_Island/html/tour4.html. Then think about Obama & Co bickering at Copenhagen Climate Summit last year, not being able to come to consensus - everyone saying "we need a global solution", but noone doing anything because they don't want to be disadvantaged.
That 1.36 kW/m2 is your gift of life from the sun. What are you going to do with it? Use your portion of energy to keep the circle of life running, or greedily eat a bigger slice of the pie than is yours to eat.
That is what it all comes down to, and I hopefully imagine that for the 22nd century human that is self-evident, and they will look on us 20th centuryers with disdain, scorn and regret as we looked on previous generations for believing the world was flat, participating in tribal warfare, and dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, etc.
We should all be thinking about how much Phosphorus and Nitrogen we are consuming, and not just Carbon. We are dumping C into the air, P & fixated N into the seas (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology) to sustain our lifestyles, but how are we going to close the P cycle sustainably?
We are going through the periodic table.
The 70's dealt with the Pb (lead) problem of leaded gas. the 80's with Sulpher & Ozone & CL & F into the atmosphere. Now we are talking seriously about C. Next we will realise N & P are also big issues. Today we are also realizing that He is also scarce. And since Fukushima people everywhere are finally realizing that U is probably not the right thing, and maybe the Indians will show us this year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Heavy_Water_Reactor) that Th might really get us somewhere... (The great thing about Thorium is that it is not stored solar energy, and maybe there is enough to go around until we handle solar better)
we are realizing that the wasteful 20th century age-of-power, which burnt dino-juice as if it was endless, is coming to an end. No human should expend more power than falls from the sun on his own "world space", otherwise it is not sustainable. The sun gives us about 1.36 kW/m2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Total_.28TSI.29_and_spectral_solar_irradiance_.28SSI.29_upon_Earth), and each person should only use what sustainably can be obtained from his own available power.
When was the last time you told someone you drove 1 Mm, instead of 1000 km?
Or if you are being pedantic about 4 sig digs - Is the Moon 360,000 km or 360 Mm far away? I bet you say 360,000 km or rather 360 thousand km and don't mean 5 sig digs.
There are standard units and typical domains - and we used mS for these domains.
In computing we have all gotten used to byte, kb, Mb, Gb, Tb and Pb, and translate between them.
But we don't often mix up km, m, cm, mm, um, nm, pm because they are different domains.
I really enjoyed using a website called Google.com to find stuff on the internet, but it seems that it will be blocked in the UK. Now I will have to find another website to find things.
And all you have to do is put all your contact information into a discrete 3d barcode in the corner of the business card, and then read the barcode with your mobile phone camera as you are leaving the meeting. Hightech meets lowtech - best of both worlds.
Here is an Interview and Transcript with Duane Hamacher, the astroarcheologist who wrote his thesis "On the Cultural Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia".
I feel sorry for those poor people who sit in those booths, enduring every weather, and breathing in the fumes of every car that accelerates away. I could never do a job that I know a webcam and boom gate could do better.
I fly and train a lot. Before I fly I load 15 Slashdot stories to read on the plane/train. Now Slashdot consumes 26-35% CPU doing NOTHING, and will flatten my laptop battery before I get to my destination.
Slashdot Mirror
You are one of the few repliers who understood my concern. We humans have raped the planet in the last 200 years, and still no-one seems to get it. Maybe if the Mississippi wipes Louisiana off the map tomorrow, people might start to wake up - we still didn't get the last two "Mother Earth" "messages" to that city (no, I am not a techno-Gaian!)
The shortterm (i.e. today) solution is to cut our own carbon footprint dramatically - and the personal car is step number one, where VAST energy savings are to be made.
Even "green" cars, hybrids etc, still use 100's of hp to simply move humans. Electrobikes are even much better requiring only 200W, instead of >100kW for a car. If someone invents an electrobike that can take a person weathersafe 15 km, we have an awesome solution.
350 hp=253kW=the energy produced by 1,265 humans sprinting!!!! When are we humans gonna wake up and realize that spending 350 hp to move a human from point A & B is simply irresponsible to the world and future generations, who will curse us for wasting the world's energy resources.
You perhaps forgot the energy costs of dredging the salt out of your pond when it gets too shallow.
Actually cremation is the most scariest thing you can do to an islamist, possibly worse than wrapping in bacon.
exactly, I tried to play a 3D game with a tiny viewing angle, and the game required me to swing the thing around my head fast to attack a dodging enemy. 10 minutes after I gave up my eyes were still blinking and weeping - and I loved Avatar in 3D.
wow, 120W is the power of an adult running, or half the power of an electric bike. That is completely mad.
I love SC2, but now you have ruined my day if it requires nearly 1 MW to play because of my 360W + opponent 360W + Battlenet's x W+....
My house was not expensive at all, 200k$. I have 800 m2 of land. no tax advantages. and that is why I don't have solar, because it won't work for me - hydro does, but sunny days do really work in winter. cats and dogs are not herbivorous - so I rule them out completely as pets - however my rabbits are and they only eat grass that I let grow tall, dandelions, daisies, wattle twigs and hazel leaves - all of which grows in abundance on my land - it is now spring and I am using my excess hay from last summer as mulch. I cut the hay in 5 minutes with a hedge trimmer and let it dry in the sun for 4 days last year for the rabbits in winter.
then you see good hope for humanity, and that is great. But that 15TW is not sustainable the way we are making it, and the planet is/will suffering pretty badly for it. Anyways we humans can't use all the energy, the leaves and bugs need their share too, and the rest needs reflecting so we don't bake!
Blackberry fits into the enterprise structure. The IT guys can lock down the device remotely - all emails/appointments/contacts are instantly synched (Iphone cannot synch appointments to MSexchange) - so that can remote wipe/reset the device if needed. A company knows exactly what they are getting for the device, and that lowers risk. And it is the COO & CIO who makes the decision to get these enterprise solutions - and this is the core of the Blackberry market. You can run your own Android/Gmail/IMAP/whatever "homegrown" solution, but can you convince the CIO of a 1000+ organisation to go with your solution? RIM can.
electrons are electrons. But my cash goes to those who produce electricity from water - and that is where the real difference is, and so yes, an electron is an electron, but my electricity is "certified hydroelectricity".
I am not buying electrons - because noone can own them since they are identical with each other (see Pauli exclusion principle and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles) but rather paying someone far away to move electrons into a wire at their end, and my money goes into their business. So yes, you can buy wind-electricity or methane-electricity which is delivered over the same grid as nuclear or brown coal sourced electricity.
and if you want to be pedantic, "my electrons" are mine, because we all use AC electricity, so the electrons just dance back and forth at 50 or 60 Hz !!! And an electron does not travel very far in 0.02 seconds.
look at Thorium and not Uranium. Uranium is scarce in the Earth and needs to be refined to U235 and then precious little of that is actually burnt in a nuclear reactor. From a kg of U, only miniscule amounts of it actually is turned into energy. Thorium, on the other hand, is as plentiful as lead on the planet, doesn't require isotopic refinement, and is mostly burnt in a reactor. And unlike Uranium at Fukushima, Thorium doesn't do anything by itself - turn off the power or let a tsunami hit it, it will stop immediately. Watch India this year when they get their Thorium reactor running, China announced in March that they are going with Thorium.
Why do we still have U-reactors? Possibly because of cold war politics requiring Plutonium for bombs since the 60s, and the French twisting the EU's arms to use U in Europe in the 80's and later.
Instead of saying "I'd take it over freezing in the dark...", say stuff like "I will change my day-to-day lifestyle to be more sustainable", which is something you can do today and inspire others, and look for technology solutions.
Eg. Suggest that your town follows the example of Grossmugl in Austria, by turning off the lights at night, to save energy and reduce light pollution, http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?ie=UTF8&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.starlightoasis.org/&usg=ALkJrhjTZ2SQ3o4rJ3P2u9RyVcU-rSKIlw
That opens up a whole new area. If we decide it is a good idea that humans live to 80+ on average, how are we going to balance the books? or are we just going on like the USA this week where Obama is trying to get his citizens to understand that the national debt is so horrendous, it cannot be ignored - it will come back and impoverish the USA. and we all are impoverishing the earth, until it sends the debt collector.
And that is exactly the attitude "I won't stop until they stop as well" that destroyed every tree on Easter Island, and caused inaction at Copenhagen.
Instead of ignorantly claiming others to be hyprocrites, do something yourself that you can be proud to tell your grandchildren and inspire others with.
I am not generating carbon with my computer because I pay extra for 100% hydroelectricity (and yes, I know they also buy excess atom energy cheaply at night to pump water into the mountains and sell it the next day as hydro-elec). My job is to save companies energy costs, and I travel to work at less than 50 W of hydro-elec (which is 1.8 cm of solar radiation as I only travel 8 hours/week), but I rather work from home. My house is well insulated, has energy recapture, and doesn't need heating even at -10 if the sun is shining, my chimney is made of plastic because the exhaust has had the heat removed. My house lights are 5 & 15 W and at the moment there is one light on in a house of 5 people. So my lifestyle, work, and daily habits are all contributing. My herbivorous pets eat what comes out of my garden and in return they fertilize it!
Everybody can look at their own situation and make a difference for themselves. That is where it starts.
Then you had better seriously think about radically changing your lifestyle if the sums don't match!! People have lived for 10,000's of years at your latitude sustainably. If your lifestyle for the last hundred years is not sustainable, then you will destroy Canada or, by proxy, elsewhere on the planet. Because at the moment you have been burning millions of years of stored solar energy (oil) to maintain your current lifestyle for the last 100 - and dumping the waste into the atmosphere.
And if you think that it is not your problem, then think about the Easter Islands destroying all of their trees for the sake of their lifestyle, and what happened to them - http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/Easter_Island/html/tour4.html. Then think about Obama & Co bickering at Copenhagen Climate Summit last year, not being able to come to consensus - everyone saying "we need a global solution", but noone doing anything because they don't want to be disadvantaged.
That 1.36 kW/m2 is your gift of life from the sun. What are you going to do with it? Use your portion of energy to keep the circle of life running, or greedily eat a bigger slice of the pie than is yours to eat.
That is what it all comes down to, and I hopefully imagine that for the 22nd century human that is self-evident, and they will look on us 20th centuryers with disdain, scorn and regret as we looked on previous generations for believing the world was flat, participating in tribal warfare, and dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, etc.
We should all be thinking about how much Phosphorus and Nitrogen we are consuming, and not just Carbon. We are dumping C into the air, P & fixated N into the seas (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology) to sustain our lifestyles, but how are we going to close the P cycle sustainably?
We are going through the periodic table.
The 70's dealt with the Pb (lead) problem of leaded gas. the 80's with Sulpher & Ozone & CL & F into the atmosphere. Now we are talking seriously about C. Next we will realise N & P are also big issues. Today we are also realizing that He is also scarce. And since Fukushima people everywhere are finally realizing that U is probably not the right thing, and maybe the Indians will show us this year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Heavy_Water_Reactor) that Th might really get us somewhere... (The great thing about Thorium is that it is not stored solar energy, and maybe there is enough to go around until we handle solar better)
we are realizing that the wasteful 20th century age-of-power, which burnt dino-juice as if it was endless, is coming to an end. No human should expend more power than falls from the sun on his own "world space", otherwise it is not sustainable. The sun gives us about 1.36 kW/m2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Total_.28TSI.29_and_spectral_solar_irradiance_.28SSI.29_upon_Earth), and each person should only use what sustainably can be obtained from his own available power.
When was the last time you told someone you drove 1 Mm, instead of 1000 km? Or if you are being pedantic about 4 sig digs - Is the Moon 360,000 km or 360 Mm far away? I bet you say 360,000 km or rather 360 thousand km and don't mean 5 sig digs. There are standard units and typical domains - and we used mS for these domains. In computing we have all gotten used to byte, kb, Mb, Gb, Tb and Pb, and translate between them. But we don't often mix up km, m, cm, mm, um, nm, pm because they are different domains.
He thought "definite" and wrote something else.
Coz Tenet was (and is) in love with the 5th doctor's daughter and is getting married to her http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Moffett#Personal_life
I really enjoyed using a website called Google.com to find stuff on the internet, but it seems that it will be blocked in the UK. Now I will have to find another website to find things.
And all you have to do is put all your contact information into a discrete 3d barcode in the corner of the business card, and then read the barcode with your mobile phone camera as you are leaving the meeting. Hightech meets lowtech - best of both worlds.
WarGames 1983
Here is an Interview and Transcript with Duane Hamacher, the astroarcheologist who wrote his thesis "On the Cultural Astronomy of Aboriginal Australia".
I feel sorry for those poor people who sit in those booths, enduring every weather, and breathing in the fumes of every car that accelerates away. I could never do a job that I know a webcam and boom gate could do better.
I fly and train a lot. Before I fly I load 15 Slashdot stories to read on the plane/train. Now Slashdot consumes 26-35% CPU doing NOTHING, and will flatten my laptop battery before I get to my destination.
i now realize +1 insightful = +1 geekiness!