Michael Crichton dead at 66

[bill_mchale]

Actually, any scientist who tells you, that we need to go back to pre-industrial civilization to save the planet is off his rocker. It might be some of the more extreme environmentalists who are making such suggestions.

Ultimately, definite changes would have to be made in the way we live in the world; but most of it would involve our basic sources of energy, not the ultimate use of it. Nuclear , solar, wind and bio energy would all allow us to significantly curb carbon emissions.

Final thought... I think you have a seriously twisted view of the world. The vast majority of scientists work in fields that have nothing to do with raising alarm bells. Heck, climatologists could work for decades just getting better at predicting the weather 6 months down the road (though such short term analysis is tougher than long term trends). Other weather scientists can and do get plenty of work modeling hurricanes, tornadoes and other short term weather phenomena.

Ultimately, believe it or not, most scientists are not working to get on Television. And most of them, when they started their careers in climatology would not have believed that climatology was the science that would get them name recognition (biology and space science would have done far better jobs of that up until about a decade ago).

--
Bill

[rawlus]

i realize this has fallen way way off topic at this point.

and i appreciate the discussion.

i realize nuclear is a source of energy, but there's the nasty side effects of disposal and whatnot. isn't that just a tradeoff for reduced carbon?

bio. i don't know that it is the answer the media makes it out to be. in some studies it costs more energy to produce it than it delivers. and of course, it is already deeply entrenched in politics and pork funding.

wind and solar. wind has been difficullt. i think it works in niche applications, but i cannot forsee it being viable on a large scale. likewise with solar. tech seems to have barely advanced from when i was a child (many decades ago) - i don't forsee us all driving billions of solar-powered cars living in solar-powered house. it is rather crude and inefficient for large-scale use it seems. or perhaps it is just being deliberately held back by politically-minded people.

since the vast amount of the world's energy consumption seems to me to be fossil-related - either oil or gas or NG or coal, i have a hard time seeing any super heavyweights coming into the ring to challenge any of them. nevermind the complications of cost and infrastructure that may make a switch impossible, even if there is a will to do so.

this sort of comes full circle now because in order to effect the type of mindset change that would be necessary to get the population to accept nuclear reactors in their backyard or a farm of 300 windmills along their coastline or mountain ridge view - you would have to create a sense of urgency, a fear of the consequences should they elect not to take those adjustments to their personal standard of living in the interest of the greater good.

it comes back to doomsday scenarios, melting icecaps, flooding island nations, dying crops, etc.

you cannot lead with a headline that says, "scientists predict that the average temp in new england will be approx 1 degree higher over the next 5 years so please support the giant nuclear reactor project and vote yes on the wind farm down by the beach"

you need to paint a picture that threatens the consequences of not approving those nukes and windmills. the headline needs to say "we will all die if this doesn't work"

which i think was what i was originally getting at with regard to the book State of Fear.

it is not so much a scientific journal, a fictionalized interpretation of the science data as much as it is a commentary on the social consciousness and the methods necessary to pull off a ground-breaking shift in the very underpinnings of modern society.

it is about gov't getting involved in personal freedoms and choices and the underpinnings of democracy in a very accelerated and dramatic way. how far could it go? perhaps gov't will tell the auto makers what to make and then tell you what to buy? they may mandate that you can only used gov't approved forms of fuel - you may have a woodlot and a woodstove but those have been banned. your old auto as been banned. perhaps your pets emit an unnecessary carbon footprint with no tangible benefits for society. perhaps electricity and lighting will no longer be at your discretion and option - the grid, if it still exists, may impose caps on how much energy your household can use and when. more likely each instance of energy use will be subject to some manufactured energy tax - presumably to use towards research, but we all know that type of thing never happens.

think about it.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by rawlus

i realize this has fallen way way off topic at this point.

and i appreciate the discussion.

i realize nuclear is a source of energy, but there's the nasty side effects of disposal and whatnot. isn't that just a tradeoff for reduced carbon?

Of course there is a trade off; TANSTAAFL. That being said, the specific problems of nuclear waste are often overstated in part because of how the U.S. deals with the problem. Much of the nuclear "waste" actually could be reprocessed and used over again (a large part of the waste is still U235, another part is plutonium, etc.). The main reason we do not is fear of nuclear proliferation.

Further, there are alternate types of Nuclear Energy that produce less waste. For example, Thorium can be used to generate Uranium 233 which can then be fissioned and produce waste which much shorter half lifes than U235 fission.

bio. i don't know that it is the answer the media makes it out to be. in some studies it costs more energy to produce it than it delivers. and of course, it is already deeply entrenched in politics and pork funding.

Some types of bio-fuel are not efficient. Certainly not corn based ethanol, but Brazil has used sugar cane based ethanol to make up a large portion of its energy needs for more than a decade now. Further, there are more than a few microbes that seem to naturally be able to produce bio-diesel from non-food stocks.

wind and solar. wind has been difficullt. i think it works in niche applications, but i cannot forsee it being viable on a large scale. likewise with solar. tech seems to have barely advanced from when i was a child (many decades ago) - i don't forsee us all driving billions of solar-powered cars living in solar-powered house. it is rather crude and inefficient for large-scale use it seems. or perhaps it is just being deliberately held back by politically-minded people.

direct solar powered cars probably will not be practical, but photo-voltaics are getting better all the time. Combined with batteries, I can see solar making up a significant portion of our electrical needs within a decade or two if people are willing to invest in it. Also, this could be a lot easier if we actually unplug our appliances when we don't use them (because of remote controls lots of devices draw considerable power even when they are not actually "on".

since the vast amount of the world's energy consumption seems to me to be fossil-related - either oil or gas or NG or coal, i have a hard time seeing any super heavyweights coming into the ring to challenge any of them. nevermind the complications of cost and infrastructure that may make a switch impossible, even if there is a will to do so.

Actually, in quite a few European countries, Nuclear energy makes up large percentages of the electricity produced; as of 2006, France, Lithuania, Ukraine and Sweden all get more than half of their electricity from Nuclear Power (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4713398.stm).

this sort of comes full circle now because in order to effect the type of mindset change that would be necessary to get the population to accept nuclear reactors in their backyard or a farm of 300 windmills along their coastline or mountain ridge view - you would have to create a sense of urgency, a fear of the consequences should they elect not to take those adjustments to their personal standard of living in the interest of the greater good.

Frankly, I think the energy crisis of this year, plus the thousands of people who die every year from pollution emitted would be incentive enough. Nuclear power has killed a lot fewer people than coal did (And that might be true even if you include the nuclear bombings of Japan in WWII... though I am not sure about that).

it comes back to doomsday scenarios, melting icecaps, flooding island nations, dying crops, etc.

you cannot lead with a headline that says, "scientists predict that the average temp in new england will be approx 1 degree higher over the next 5 years so please support the giant nuclear reactor project and vote yes on the wind farm down by the beach"

you need to paint a picture that threatens the consequences of not approving those nukes and windmills. the headline needs to say "we will all die if this doesn't work"

which i think was what i was originally getting at with regard to the book State of Fear.

You know, just because a doomsday prediction is made, it doesn't mean that the person making it has any ulterior motives. Isolationists used the same argument to keep the USA out of WWII for two years because they were sure that the claims about the Nazis were simply propaganda so that the "merchants of death" could make a fortune off weapons manufacturing.

it is not so much a scientific journal, a fictionalized interpretation of the science data as much as it is a commentary on the social consciousness and the methods necessary to pull off a ground-breaking shift in the very underpinnings of modern society.

it is about gov't getting involved in personal freedoms and choices and the underpinnings of democracy in a very accelerated and dramatic way. how far could it go? perhaps gov't will tell the auto makers what to make and then tell you what to buy? they may mandate that you can only used gov't approved forms of fuel - you may have a woodlot and a woodstove but those have been banned. your old auto as been banned. perhaps your pets emit an unnecessary carbon footprint with no tangible benefits for society. perhaps electricity and lighting will no longer be at your discretion and option - the grid, if it still exists, may impose caps on how much energy your household can use and when. more likely each instance of energy use will be subject to some manufactured energy tax - presumably to use towards research, but we all know that type of thing never happens.

think about it.

Sigh... conspiracies like this always make my head hurt. The logic behind them just requires too much co-ordination amongst the people wishing to see the changes made.

--
Bill

[rawlus]

i sorta like conspiracy theories. it helps keep things interesting.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by rawlus

i sorta like conspiracy theories. it helps keep things interesting.

I like my conspiracy theories in my books not the real world thank you. Just saying.

[RWJ]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I like my conspiracy theories in my books not the real world thank you. Just saying.

Which is apropos, because State of Fear was a cracking good read. Not high literature, and not science, but a lot of fun to read. Anyone who didn't smile at the fate of the Martin Sheen surrogate has a heart of stone.

Michael Crichton could make anything interesting. Aircraft malfunctions, sexual harrassment as career tactic, improbable genetic engineering - all very fun stories, in his hands. RIP.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rawlus

i realize nuclear is a source of energy, but there's the nasty side effects of disposal and whatnot. isn't that just a tradeoff for reduced carbon?

Not just "reduced carbon", but "zero carbon". Nuclear power generation is currently the only viable "base load" power generation technology that does not produce nasty greenhouse gases. You can't use such things as wind and solar power, because it's not always sunny or windy. Wave power is more reliable, but can only be used in a relatively few locations, as can such things as hydroelectric or geothermal generation too. Nuclear plants can be built anywhere close to a source of water for cooling.

I worked in the UK's nuclear power industry for many years, and I can tell you that waste disposal is a much over-rated "problem". The UK has been successfully reprocessing nuclear fuel for 50-odd years.

since the vast amount of the world's energy consumption seems to me to be fossil-related - either oil or gas or NG or coal, i have a hard time seeing any super heavyweights coming into the ring to challenge any of them. nevermind the complications of cost and infrastructure that may make a switch impossible, even if there is a will to do so.

That's a matter of political will. France, for example, currently generates around 80% of its electricity from nuclear power stations; the UK around 30% (and we're about to start building a new generation of nuclear stations).

The role that government has to play is to educate the public that nuclear power stations are not the "bogey man" that many think they are, and that they can't "blow up" like atomic bombs.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not just "reduced carbon", but "zero carbon". Nuclear power generation is currently the only viable "base load" power generation technology that does not produce nasty greenhouse gases. You can't use such things as wind and solar power, because it's not always sunny or windy. Wave power is more reliable, but can only be used in a relatively few locations, as can such things as hydroelectric or geothermal generation too. Nuclear plants can be built anywhere close to a source of water for cooling.

I would point out that the wind and cloud arguments are not as big a problem for wind and solar power as many might think. The basic reason is that as you scale up your power generation over thousands of locations, you can start accurately predicting what percentage will be able to generate power at any given time.

That being said, Nuclear has some great advantages, the most important being its much smaller actual foot print. I was reading yesterday about a new generation reactor that was about 5 feet across and under 10 feet high and which could power 10-20,000 homes for 10 years before it would need refueling.

I worked in the UK's nuclear power industry for many years, and I can tell you that waste disposal is a much over-rated "problem". The UK has been successfully reprocessing nuclear fuel for 50-odd years.

Yeah, nuclear waste is a much smaller problem once reprocessing fuel is routine.

That's a matter of political will. France, for example, currently generates around 80% of its electricity from nuclear power stations; the UK around 30% (and we're about to start building a new generation of nuclear stations).

The role that government has to play is to educate the public that nuclear power stations are not the "bogey man" that many think they are, and that they can't "blow up" like atomic bombs.

And actually more importantly, the newest generation of nuclear power stations can be made far more safely than the ones constructed in the 60s and 70s.

--
Bill