Say no to Fossil Fuels.

Birddawg says:

"Exactly. correct me if I'm wrong, but nuclear waste is "recycled" into nuclear warheads, right?"

It can be. You can also make the recycled nuclear waste into fuel for another reactor or nucleotides for medical purposes.

"But, nuclear waste is just that: nuclear waste. Nobody wants it in their back yard."

TANSTAAFL, Birddawg. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Nuclear waste is a bad thing, but it is not nearly a bad a thing as the waste from billions of kilograms of burning hydrocarbons, which are linked to global warming, cardiopulmonary disease, cancer and genito-urinary ailments, erosion of granite and marble buildings as a result of acid rain, decreased visibility, and all around plain ugliness of the landscape and the air.

And let's not forget the way we are forced to damage the land in our extractive efforts, our transportation efforts (remember the Exxon Valdiz?) our refineries, and the ground pollution as that oil and gasoline sinks out of their underground tanks into the aquifer.

And did I mention that the people who have the most of of the oil are foreigners, which is killing our balance of trade?

And that those people are jacking their prices up and down on a weekly basis as they adjust their extraction to reach their own agendas, which can and does impact our entire economy?

How about the fact that most of those people don't like us very much and never did, and they will adjust their pumping sometimes for the sole purpose of screwing us over, and that large portions of their dollars they took from us seems to find its way into the hands of Really Bad Guys who want to kill us all?

And perhaps I forgot to mention that this appears to be a finite resource and sooner or later it is going to go away -- maybe not in my lifetime, but probably in yours and your kids'?

"Look at the nuclear waste spread out over south western Russia at Chernobyl, and the rest of the world for that matter"

Actually, Chernobyl is in Ukraine, not Russia, but your point is well taken. If you have sloppy engineering and questionable safety procedures, coupled with paranoid secrecy which leads to not warning the rest of the world when such a disaster strikes, then we are all going to pay a price.

But that's an indictment of bad design and engineering, not of the existence of nuclear fission. I mean, do you blame the pollution on Prince William Sound on the hydrocarbon industry -- or the fact that the Exxon Valdiz was poorly designed without a double hull and the captain was drunk? Probably the latter.

If you want to use a nuclear fission incident as representative of reality, why not mention Three Mile Island? Just about everything that could go wrong from a procedural point of view did go wrong, and what was the health upshot?

There wasn't any! None of the radiation escaped the Containment Building!

Sure, the plant had to be shut down and the operators (and customers) lost millions of dollars. But the bottom line was that, through sound engineering, TMI did not turn into a giant bomb and blow us and kill us all; indeed there were no deaths, long-term or otherwise, tied to the accident at TMI.

Birddawg, there is no magic bullet.

There is no such thing as a cheap, non-polluting, and reliable energy source. Even leaving science fiction stuff such as "ZPE" out of the picture, all the substitutes mentioned: PV, wind turbines, Stirling-cycle engines, tidal hydroelectric, etc., simply aren't cost effective.

We have to start phasing in other power sources now, so we won't get caught with our toes in the wringer when the oil starts to go away.

Why on Earth would you argue against nuclear power, given that it's the only feasible replacement for hydrocarbons?

Give me a "Mr. Fusion" and a hovercar conversion, and I'm sold, hehe... (ala Back to the Future)...

Wind Power LMAO

Research conducted at some Canadian University has found that windfarms can cause climate change and increase global warming.

Do a google search on the toronto star paper. It wasn't more than 1 month ago that I read that article.

Originally posted by websurfer
Wind Power LMAO

Research conducted at some Canadian University has found that windfarms can cause climate change and increase global warming.

I don't see how, considering trees do pretty much the same thing (block wind) and we have considerably fewer trees than we did 400 years ago, here in America. I can tell that study is crap without even reading it..

A bunch of home systems using wind/solar complimented by something else sounds like the way of the future to me.. or perhaps some yet-to-be discovered/implimented chemical process for home electric-generating units. Still gonna take a wake up call to get people to shell out the cash.

I'm working hard on halving gas usage in automobiles, semi-trucks, trains, etc. I'm making a lot of progress too. I hope there are enough people dedicating themselves to large scale power production.

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Also, since we're still talking about nuclear power, it is of significance to point out that the world supply is much more than what can be mined, since it can be gathered from the ocean. This is being done in Japan, and I'm sure it is being researched in other countries. There is 3 times more Uranium to be "mined" from the ocean than from land. I say this because the supposed short-supply of Uranium is often pointed out when it is idolized as a replacement for fossil fuels. It still won't last long enough, it's just a delay until the inevitable happens or a better solution is formed.

The better solution is probably simply to make everything energy-efficient so that so much power won't be needed in the first place. I mean, once-upon-a-time no one used any kind of air-conditioning at all, besides burning wood.