That's the United States of Africa! Only when certain basic democratic institutions and infrastructure are taken continent wide will real prosperity and the means of prosperity have a chance to take hold. It's a vicious cycle. How do we encourage prosperity and investment in areas that are not secure? How do we secure a continent that does not really have the wealth to pay for proper security and peace-keeping missions?
Sadly, while I hope and pray that the USA will eventually form, it seems that we might be forced to wait until multinationals 'buy' African countries and become the meta-nationals of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy.
Unless of course America decides to 'bring peace and democracy' to Africa?;-) (Please, let's have NOOOOOOO more 'bringing democracy' to countries -- for pity's sake!)
We need answers now... peak oil is here.
So I propose Skytran as the answer. Imagine a 'hovering' car (actually gliding on maglev rails) that took you and a friend from one station to the next with full internet and comms access, no traffic jams, no timetable because one was always there when you needed it... AND the whole system was 19 times cheaper than installing light rail? AND it did not eat up the sidewalk but only required a standard service pole system?
http://www.unimodal.com/
Volumes?
Ethanol 'works'... but what volumes can we grow?
CTL 'works'... but how fast can we scale it up? (It'll take 20 years -- see Hirsch report).
Just because something works in the lab does not mean it can actually be scaled up to provide the same enormous VOLUME of oil that the world currently consumes. If the oil the world consumes in one year were placed in an enormous building, that building would be 1 km long and 1 km wide... and 4 km high! Can turkey guts and rice husks really supply that enormous volume of high energy density liquid fuels? I don't think so.
The only real answer to peak oil is to use less oil.
That means massively upgrading public transport, and over the next 20 years rezoning the land around the train and tram stations to New Urbanism to have the population density to justify the public transport.
Sorry, but the only answer is to become "more European than the Europeans" in city design... and Australia and America have a lot of catching up to do.
But seriously, "IF you build it, they will come".
Take the hundreds of hectares of suburban sprawl out in Western Sydney (Australia).
It's hard to believe, but even with all the evidence we had 10 years ago that the world was approaching peak oil, the town planners let MORE of this car-dependent suburbia spread ever further west.
Anyway, how to fix it? Build the trains, trams, and trolley buses... run them well, and an amazing thing happens. Town planners allow density and diversity to spring up around the stations. That's New Urbanism folks.. and it gives something for the surrounding suburbs to plug into.
To get through peak oil and global warming, we've got to stop thinking of our cities as "FINISHED" because they are just not... they are constantly evolving, changing things that we shape.
Simply by rezoning how we plan our cities we can let natural attrition of older homes being demolished but NOT replaced in the same out-of-date suburban plan that they started in, and things change. In 20 years we could have retrofitted most people off oil, in 50 America could be "more European than the Europeans".
Remember, half the energy ever used by a car is used before the car leaves the car lot for the first time! (In building the car and the car infrastructure of highways, parking lots, etc).
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007800.html
So isn't it time we stopped stuffing around with the suburban plan which is bland, boring, sociologically and psychologically detrimental by increasing isolation, and actually created urban hubs running trams, trains, and trolley buses on renewable electricity? This can be done. Peak oil is already rocking the world economy... stop mucking around with petty dinky little EV's that require rare metals that are fast running out, too much energy to build, and maintain a city plan that's bad for us anyway.
New Urbanism and Richard Register's "eco-cities" rock. It's time to stop thinking about energy efficient cars and think about energy efficient cities. As peak oil hits it's going to be a challenge enough to keep the harvesters running, the emergency services patrolling and the post on time. Sacrifices will have to be made. It's time to get serious... so what if you 'like' a car, reality just may not be that accommodating.
If this device floats and interrupts shipping, then I'm supporting CETO's idea instead. The CETO concept also uses compressed high pressure water, but uses submerged Buoy's that just bob up and down and around, dragging the pump and forcing water onto land. The high pressure hoses combine from all the Buoy's and drive a turbine on the land. At night the system can be switched over to provide freshwater instead!
700 Hectares would supply Sydney Australia with all its freshwater and a good chunk of its energy requirements, 2000 hectares with all its water AND energy!
There's no interruption to shipping, no interruption visually, it improves sea-life adding an slightly 'reef' like structure below the surface, and when one considers that visual pollution is a real political problem with renewable energy, I'd be backing CETO.
The best wave energy sites in the world receive consistent swell. CETO operates across a variety of wave heights making CETO a base load renewable energy option.
* Some other advantages of wave energy and CETO include:
* Wave energy is a renewable, zero-emission source of power.
* 60% of the world live within 60km (40 miles) of a coast, removing transmission issues.
* As water is approximately 800 times denser than air, the energy density of waves vastly exceeds that of wind dramatically increasing the amount of energy available for harvesting.
* Waves are predictable days in advance making it easy to match supply and demand. (Wind is predictable hours in advance at best.)
* CETO sits underwater, moored to the sea floor, resulting in no aesthetic impact.
* CETO units are designed to operate in harmony with the waves rather than attempting to resist them. This means there is no need for massive steel and concrete structures to be built.
* CETO wave farms will have no impact on popular surfing sites as breaking waves equate to areas of energy loss. CETO wave farms will operate in water deeper than 15 metres in areas where there are no breaking waves.
* CETO units attract marine life.
* CETO is the only wave energy technology that produces fresh water directly from seawater by magnifying the pressure variations in ocean waves.
* CETO contains no oils, lubricants, or offshore electrical components. CETO is built from components with a known subsea life of over 30 years.
* Wave energy can be harnessed for permanent base load power and for fresh water desalination. The ratio of electrical generation to fresh water production can be quickly varied from 100% to 0% allowing for rapid variations in power demand.
* CETO uses a great multiplicity of identical units each of which can be mass produced and containerised for shipping to anywhere in the world. http://www.ceto.com.au/ceto-technology/advantages.php
Volumes!
Brazil doesn't use anywhere NEAR the amount of oil as the USA so of course they could achieve so called "energy independence". If the USA radically upgraded electric transport options like trains, trams, and trolley buses, and radically increased renewable energy (wind, solar, tidal etc mostly create electricity, not liquid fuels), and then the USA RADICALLY reduced liquid fuels consumption as a result of increased rail (and New Urbanism creeping in around the rail) then MAYBE they'd have a chance of being "energy independent".
Otherwise, it's just wishful thinking.
Do you have a source for this? It sadly sounds like the way the world would work, but I just need to know where it comes from.
An national electric rail system is one of my dreams for Australia. If we invested big money in trains, trams, and trolley buses, we be on our way towards surviving peak oil and global warming. Not only that, but "If you build it, they will come". New Urbanism is attracted to reliable train and tram lines. So building the transport network then becomes the artery for New Urbanism, and New Urbanism encourages further transport efficiencies and communities where you can "work, rest, and play".
Electric transport is the key but are you saying America's taxation or real estate laws are now preventing it?
Biochar has been recommended by "The Weather Makers" author and Australian of the year, Tim Flannery. It's also called Agrichar.
Basically we take agricultural waste, cook it up into synfuel that can maybe run the agricultural sector (not much more... I doubt the fuel volumes will even run farming, but it's worth a try) and then use the charcoal granules to fertilize the soil. The charcoal encourages fungi to grow, and this in turn draws more Co2 out of the air than the charcoal!
It's win win win.
See the ABC's Catalyst or google Biochar for more.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s2012892.htm/
Rather than waste money on this crystals thing don't we need to fund our farmers with fuel and fertilizer as peak oil becomes fundamentally frantic? (Woah, need some sleep.)
If this wave doover has electronics on it out at sea, it is going to be too expensive and uncompetitive with CETO. It took an Aussie ex oil guy to realize that you used the up and down motion of the wave to push water, not generate electricity. His CETO device acts like a giant pump pushing masses of high pressure water onto land, where it pushes a huge turbine. At night when peak electricity demand drops off, the system can also be used to then generate water in a giant desal factory. The float just bobs up and down, under the water, under shipping lanes, probably increasing local biodiversity (acting a bit like a reef).
700 Hectares of ocean wave power = all of Sydney's water.
2000 Hectares of ocean wave power = all of Sydney's energy. It's baseload, 24 hour electricity, and more water than our city can use. Beautiful.
http://www.ceto.com.au/home.php
Omega 3 fatty acids in fish oil have been indicated in a recent study (November 2007) to lower the chance of youth mental illness, and ALSO coat the brain's neuron's in something Goooooood that helps new thought processes and neural pathways start up.
Fish oil all the way baby!
I'm totally with you Apodyopsis.
If REZONED (which is a government responsibility) around New Urbanism and energy efficient cities, we might just get through this Peak oil and climate change thing with some degree of law and order still intact. $150 a barrel anyone? What about $200 ? Here it comes.
You might be right -- I might have a mistake here. I've double checked my figures, and it's not just the rolling resistance of the wheels. Rail is actually 8 times more energy efficient overall.
Railroads are 8 times more energy-efficient than heavy trucks. The US used 19.8 million barrels/day in 2002 with two-thirds for transportation. (Today, roughly 20.7 million barrels/day.) Railroads carried 27.8% of the ton-miles with 220,000 b/day whilst trucks carried 32.1% of the ton-miles with 2,070,000 b/day (2002 data).
Your slow "Ultra" car system looks like the poor little cousin to Skytran! If you don't like trams and go for the individualized, personalized transport of Ultra... why not get the same, but at 100mph?
SkyTran is non-stop, 100 mph personal transit that can totally eliminate commuter congestion in any city, for the same costs of one linear line of light rail.
I think the one area where I do agree with you is that transport must be electrified, but that "ultra" system seems anything but ultra. If we're going high tech individual pods, why not do Skytran? The intra-city stuff is lightning fast, the intercity stuff is even faster and can even do interstate journeys of about 500 miles quicker than airlines!
Intercity SkyTran 150 mph, non-stop travel between major cities will beat Commercial Jet travel times for distances of 600 miles or less. (Over 50% of all jet travel in the USA is for distances of less than 500 miles. Over $25 billion currently planned for USA airport expansions can be saved).
Trams in particular have very short distances between stations, often only 500m or so. Great for getting on and off, it makes them very accessible unlike traditional rail which doesn't get used much because the stations are so far apart, but, because the distance is so short, they literally spend all of their time accelerating, decelerating and stopped.
Now, the most efficient way to run a vehicle is at a constant speed, acceleration is expensive in terms of energy, and the more mass you have, the more energy you expend. Trams almost never reach a constant speed and because they're basically rail, they're extremely heavy as well.
Yes, but the worst way to run a vehicle is on rubber tires on a bitumen road. Trams wheels are 8 times more energy efficient than cars. If it takes one horse to pull a tram with steel wheels on rail, it would take 8 horses to pull the same tram with car tires.
Essentially trams are a square peg beaten into a round hole. Hence the battery kludge to try to make them more efficient.
I disagree. Modern petroleum cars are the petroleum square peg kludging our cities into square expanses of suburban sameness without any sensible planning for local community infrastructure or sense of neighbourhood. If we massively upgrade tram and train networks:-
1. "If you build it, they will come." New Urbanism can then be built around the tram and train stations, making the tram lines economically viable.
2. It runs on electricity. We are seeing record high oil prices, as us peak oilers predicted a decade ago. Right on schedule we crash through the $90 a barrel limit, next year we may see $120 per barrel.
3. Once transport systems are converted to electricity then the "electron economy" will give us a bit of breathing space as we slowly transition from coal and gas into solar thermal, wave, geothermal, and other baseload renewable energy. Getting stuck without a train and tram system as we hit the final oil crisis simply because trams accelerate and decelerate a lot is not a valid argument.
4. America has hardly any trams and trains, and as the highest consumer of oil is also the most vulnerable to the final oil shock as it unfolds before our eyes. The USA uses over 20 million barrels of oil a day, or 25% of the world's oil. That's a lot of trams. Have fun without them!
5. How many times do you stop and start in traffic?;-)
That's interesting because according to Tim Flannery's book "Weather Makers" after 9/11 average temperatures rose a little because of all the jets being grounded, reducing the contrail induced global dimming. Also, scientists calculated the climate effects of the Mt Pinatubo eruption and consequent dimming from sulfuric particulates.
It is a complex business hey?
Why waste so much money? It's now technically and financially feasible to have solar thermal as baseload, with heat reserves for night time and cloud. Indeed, solar baseload could become so cheap that it makes nuclear irrelevant and even competes with coal and gas... and that could be without Carbon Credits.
"We're considering many projects in many states at the moment, and all of them are feasible," explains Mills, estimating that California and Texas alone have the potential to supply 96 per cent of all electricity in the United States. "The amount of area we require to generate all of the United States' electricity is 145 kilometres by 145 kilometres." It sounds large, but put into perspective, it's less area than the amount of U.S. land that's mined for coal.....http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/262069/
An WHUMP Orion WHUMP based WHUMP drive WHUMP can WHUMP be a WHUMP bit WHUMP rough, WHUMP any WHUMP study WHUMP on the WHUMP effects WHUMP on cargo/passWHUMPengers?
Didn't they try this at the end of Niven and Pournelle's "Footfall"? How did they put it...
"God was knocking on the door, and He wanted in, and He wanted in BAD!"
My god, you have no imagination.
Imagine this: Galactica 2010. Galactica reaches earth, and a small scouting party go to Earth to learn about the culture and try to find a place to live. They have cheesy flying motorcycles and the children have superhuman jumping ability. In the last shows of that series, Starbuck, who was presumed dead in the current series, will be found to not have died, but to have crashed on a Cylon-occupied world, and in his effort to survive, repairs and befriends a cylon (maybe they can become mates, who knows?). It'd be a great show! Really!
You mean -- after all that -- Starbuck was actually a MAN!!!????
So what was with that creepy Cylon "prophet" guy that kept seeing them together?
What was with him kidnapping a "human youngling" just to get a kiss of Starbuck?
And what was that brief thing between Gaius Baltar and Starbuck??????
(Baaaarrrrffff)
Just a quick note, did anyone see the Australian science show "Catalyst" on a new yeast that can digest cellulose and C5 sugars? They are saying this sucker could brew up paper and cardboard, all sorts of agricultural waste as well as the left over bagasse waste from the sugar-cane currently used in ethanol production techniques. EG: Double your yields from sugar-cane, but when applied to all that waste paper.... stacks more fuel!
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1763365.ht m/
I ultimately see ethanol as a mere niche market as the environmental risks of degrading more soils are just too great. But if waste-paper is a problem anyway, i say brew it up with this new super-yeast for a bit more fuel. Can't hurt in a world about to be slowed down considerably by peak oil.
I agree... specific subject forums online are the attraction, and I don't care where the person is posting from.
My main interest in location based software is personalized navigation. Rather than our laptop, imagine wearing glasses that project a HUD of your cityscape and shopping center. What kind of personalized interfaces / VOIP commands might we interface with such a device? What kind of "Servailance" preferences would we have set up? When is this "Life Caching" software really going to kick in?
Slashdot Mirror
That's the United States of Africa! Only when certain basic democratic institutions and infrastructure are taken continent wide will real prosperity and the means of prosperity have a chance to take hold. It's a vicious cycle. How do we encourage prosperity and investment in areas that are not secure? How do we secure a continent that does not really have the wealth to pay for proper security and peace-keeping missions? ;-) (Please, let's have NOOOOOOO more 'bringing democracy' to countries -- for pity's sake!)
Sadly, while I hope and pray that the USA will eventually form, it seems that we might be forced to wait until multinationals 'buy' African countries and become the meta-nationals of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy.
Unless of course America decides to 'bring peace and democracy' to Africa?
We need answers now... peak oil is here. So I propose Skytran as the answer. Imagine a 'hovering' car (actually gliding on maglev rails) that took you and a friend from one station to the next with full internet and comms access, no traffic jams, no timetable because one was always there when you needed it... AND the whole system was 19 times cheaper than installing light rail? AND it did not eat up the sidewalk but only required a standard service pole system?
http://www.unimodal.com/
Or see this video
http://www.unimodal.com/PlaySkytran.html
Volumes? Ethanol 'works'... but what volumes can we grow? CTL 'works'... but how fast can we scale it up? (It'll take 20 years -- see Hirsch report). Just because something works in the lab does not mean it can actually be scaled up to provide the same enormous VOLUME of oil that the world currently consumes. If the oil the world consumes in one year were placed in an enormous building, that building would be 1 km long and 1 km wide... and 4 km high! Can turkey guts and rice husks really supply that enormous volume of high energy density liquid fuels? I don't think so. The only real answer to peak oil is to use less oil. That means massively upgrading public transport, and over the next 20 years rezoning the land around the train and tram stations to New Urbanism to have the population density to justify the public transport. Sorry, but the only answer is to become "more European than the Europeans" in city design... and Australia and America have a lot of catching up to do.
But seriously, "IF you build it, they will come". Take the hundreds of hectares of suburban sprawl out in Western Sydney (Australia). It's hard to believe, but even with all the evidence we had 10 years ago that the world was approaching peak oil, the town planners let MORE of this car-dependent suburbia spread ever further west. Anyway, how to fix it? Build the trains, trams, and trolley buses... run them well, and an amazing thing happens. Town planners allow density and diversity to spring up around the stations. That's New Urbanism folks.. and it gives something for the surrounding suburbs to plug into. To get through peak oil and global warming, we've got to stop thinking of our cities as "FINISHED" because they are just not... they are constantly evolving, changing things that we shape. Simply by rezoning how we plan our cities we can let natural attrition of older homes being demolished but NOT replaced in the same out-of-date suburban plan that they started in, and things change. In 20 years we could have retrofitted most people off oil, in 50 America could be "more European than the Europeans". Remember, half the energy ever used by a car is used before the car leaves the car lot for the first time! (In building the car and the car infrastructure of highways, parking lots, etc). http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007800.html So isn't it time we stopped stuffing around with the suburban plan which is bland, boring, sociologically and psychologically detrimental by increasing isolation, and actually created urban hubs running trams, trains, and trolley buses on renewable electricity? This can be done. Peak oil is already rocking the world economy... stop mucking around with petty dinky little EV's that require rare metals that are fast running out, too much energy to build, and maintain a city plan that's bad for us anyway. New Urbanism and Richard Register's "eco-cities" rock. It's time to stop thinking about energy efficient cars and think about energy efficient cities. As peak oil hits it's going to be a challenge enough to keep the harvesters running, the emergency services patrolling and the post on time. Sacrifices will have to be made. It's time to get serious... so what if you 'like' a car, reality just may not be that accommodating.
If this device floats and interrupts shipping, then I'm supporting CETO's idea instead. The CETO concept also uses compressed high pressure water, but uses submerged Buoy's that just bob up and down and around, dragging the pump and forcing water onto land. The high pressure hoses combine from all the Buoy's and drive a turbine on the land. At night the system can be switched over to provide freshwater instead!
700 Hectares would supply Sydney Australia with all its freshwater and a good chunk of its energy requirements, 2000 hectares with all its water AND energy!
There's no interruption to shipping, no interruption visually, it improves sea-life adding an slightly 'reef' like structure below the surface, and when one considers that visual pollution is a real political problem with renewable energy, I'd be backing CETO.
Simple Flash animations of how the system works here.
http://www.ceto.com.au/ceto-technology/what-is-ceto.php
Lastly, a page I love to quote.
The best wave energy sites in the world receive consistent swell. CETO operates across a variety of wave heights making CETO a base load renewable energy option.
* Some other advantages of wave energy and CETO include:
* Wave energy is a renewable, zero-emission source of power.
* 60% of the world live within 60km (40 miles) of a coast, removing transmission issues.
* As water is approximately 800 times denser than air, the energy density of waves vastly exceeds that of wind dramatically increasing the amount of energy available for harvesting.
* Waves are predictable days in advance making it easy to match supply and demand. (Wind is predictable hours in advance at best.)
* CETO sits underwater, moored to the sea floor, resulting in no aesthetic impact.
* CETO units are designed to operate in harmony with the waves rather than attempting to resist them. This means there is no need for massive steel and concrete structures to be built.
* CETO wave farms will have no impact on popular surfing sites as breaking waves equate to areas of energy loss. CETO wave farms will operate in water deeper than 15 metres in areas where there are no breaking waves.
* CETO units attract marine life.
* CETO is the only wave energy technology that produces fresh water directly from seawater by magnifying the pressure variations in ocean waves.
* CETO contains no oils, lubricants, or offshore electrical components. CETO is built from components with a known subsea life of over 30 years.
* Wave energy can be harnessed for permanent base load power and for fresh water desalination. The ratio of electrical generation to fresh water production can be quickly varied from 100% to 0% allowing for rapid variations in power demand.
* CETO uses a great multiplicity of identical units each of which can be mass produced and containerised for shipping to anywhere in the world.
http://www.ceto.com.au/ceto-technology/advantages.php
Volumes! Brazil doesn't use anywhere NEAR the amount of oil as the USA so of course they could achieve so called "energy independence". If the USA radically upgraded electric transport options like trains, trams, and trolley buses, and radically increased renewable energy (wind, solar, tidal etc mostly create electricity, not liquid fuels), and then the USA RADICALLY reduced liquid fuels consumption as a result of increased rail (and New Urbanism creeping in around the rail) then MAYBE they'd have a chance of being "energy independent". Otherwise, it's just wishful thinking.
Will FF3 still run "Unplug" for downloading mpegs, movies, etc?
Hey, when I found out I had to throw my fox onto the fire! (Argh argh argh!)
Do you have a source for this? It sadly sounds like the way the world would work, but I just need to know where it comes from. An national electric rail system is one of my dreams for Australia. If we invested big money in trains, trams, and trolley buses, we be on our way towards surviving peak oil and global warming. Not only that, but "If you build it, they will come". New Urbanism is attracted to reliable train and tram lines. So building the transport network then becomes the artery for New Urbanism, and New Urbanism encourages further transport efficiencies and communities where you can "work, rest, and play". Electric transport is the key but are you saying America's taxation or real estate laws are now preventing it?
Basically we take agricultural waste, cook it up into synfuel that can maybe run the agricultural sector (not much more... I doubt the fuel volumes will even run farming, but it's worth a try) and then use the charcoal granules to fertilize the soil. The charcoal encourages fungi to grow, and this in turn draws more Co2 out of the air than the charcoal!
It's win win win.
See the ABC's Catalyst or google Biochar for more.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s2012892.htm/ Rather than waste money on this crystals thing don't we need to fund our farmers with fuel and fertilizer as peak oil becomes fundamentally frantic? (Woah, need some sleep.)
If this wave doover has electronics on it out at sea, it is going to be too expensive and uncompetitive with CETO. It took an Aussie ex oil guy to realize that you used the up and down motion of the wave to push water, not generate electricity. His CETO device acts like a giant pump pushing masses of high pressure water onto land, where it pushes a huge turbine. At night when peak electricity demand drops off, the system can also be used to then generate water in a giant desal factory. The float just bobs up and down, under the water, under shipping lanes, probably increasing local biodiversity (acting a bit like a reef). 700 Hectares of ocean wave power = all of Sydney's water. 2000 Hectares of ocean wave power = all of Sydney's energy. It's baseload, 24 hour electricity, and more water than our city can use. Beautiful. http://www.ceto.com.au/home.php
Omega 3 fatty acids in fish oil have been indicated in a recent study (November 2007) to lower the chance of youth mental illness, and ALSO coat the brain's neuron's in something Goooooood that helps new thought processes and neural pathways start up. Fish oil all the way baby!
I'm totally with you Apodyopsis. If REZONED (which is a government responsibility) around New Urbanism and energy efficient cities, we might just get through this Peak oil and climate change thing with some degree of law and order still intact. $150 a barrel anyone? What about $200 ? Here it comes.
Your slow "Ultra" car system looks like the poor little cousin to Skytran! If you don't like trams and go for the individualized, personalized transport of Ultra... why not get the same, but at 100mph? http://www.skytran.net/
I think the one area where I do agree with you is that transport must be electrified, but that "ultra" system seems anything but ultra. If we're going high tech individual pods, why not do Skytran? The intra-city stuff is lightning fast, the intercity stuff is even faster and can even do interstate journeys of about 500 miles quicker than airlines! http://www.skytran.net/03Economics/s11.htm
Whatever we do, we've got to do it now. $200 a barrel anyone?
That's interesting because according to Tim Flannery's book "Weather Makers" after 9/11 average temperatures rose a little because of all the jets being grounded, reducing the contrail induced global dimming. Also, scientists calculated the climate effects of the Mt Pinatubo eruption and consequent dimming from sulfuric particulates. It is a complex business hey?
Why waste so much money? It's now technically and financially feasible to have solar thermal as baseload, with heat reserves for night time and cloud. Indeed, solar baseload could become so cheap that it makes nuclear irrelevant and even competes with coal and gas... and that could be without Carbon Credits. "We're considering many projects in many states at the moment, and all of them are feasible," explains Mills, estimating that California and Texas alone have the potential to supply 96 per cent of all electricity in the United States. "The amount of area we require to generate all of the United States' electricity is 145 kilometres by 145 kilometres." It sounds large, but put into perspective, it's less area than the amount of U.S. land that's mined for coal..... http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/262069/
An WHUMP Orion WHUMP based WHUMP drive WHUMP can WHUMP be a WHUMP bit WHUMP rough, WHUMP any WHUMP study WHUMP on the WHUMP effects WHUMP on cargo/passWHUMPengers?
Didn't they try this at the end of Niven and Pournelle's "Footfall"? How did they put it...
"God was knocking on the door, and He wanted in, and He wanted in BAD!"
Just a quick note, did anyone see the Australian science show "Catalyst" on a new yeast that can digest cellulose and C5 sugars? They are saying this sucker could brew up paper and cardboard, all sorts of agricultural waste as well as the left over bagasse waste from the sugar-cane currently used in ethanol production techniques. EG: Double your yields from sugar-cane, but when applied to all that waste paper.... stacks more fuel! http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1763365.ht m/
I ultimately see ethanol as a mere niche market as the environmental risks of degrading more soils are just too great. But if waste-paper is a problem anyway, i say brew it up with this new super-yeast for a bit more fuel. Can't hurt in a world about to be slowed down considerably by peak oil.
I agree... specific subject forums online are the attraction, and I don't care where the person is posting from.
My main interest in location based software is personalized navigation. Rather than our laptop, imagine wearing glasses that project a HUD of your cityscape and shopping center. What kind of personalized interfaces / VOIP commands might we interface with such a device? What kind of "Servailance" preferences would we have set up? When is this "Life Caching" software really going to kick in?