Aw, darn.

Comment by mandolin

A car powered by your brain power Mandolin? I think you’re better off with your plan of farts and gummy bears.

I presume, O Bigmouth, that you are smearing as Anti-American the 70% of your fellow citizens who oppose the war in Iraq? Are you also smearing as unpatriotic the 60% of military families who now oppose the war?

No wonder you rightwing idiots can’t govern: you live in Fantasyland.

Comment by CaptainMantastic — December 22, 2007 @ 12:29 am

This is true – and we did it by exporting our manufacturing industry to China.

I believe the word that best describes your viewpoints is:

IRRELEVANT.

As in, the minority whining cheerleaders of the dumb and dumber.

Comment by O. Bigfoot — December 22, 2007 @ 8:07 am
Too bad 70% of the American people think that you;re a traitor, bigfoot, but enjoy your treason while it lasts. you and mantastic can blow each other in prison.

Hey LP, were talking about George W. Bush, or Hillary Clinton?

Comment by O. Bigfoot — December 22, 2007 @ 7:58 am

Not surprising that you can’t read clear English, only your stupidity explains your treason and proud ignorance of the shambles George Bush has made of America. Hillary Clinton even has the support of her Republican constituents, so, once again, your misogyny rears its ugly head. But, as you are a died-in-the-wool coward, we can understand why Hillary scares you so much.

I believe you lost muckdog at “reciprocating engines”.

The poor chap can barely spell “nuclear”. And he still thinks it’s the latest and greatest technology available.

Very true, but, there’s a fly in the ointment. What’s that?

There are lots of greedy people. Historically, the greedy people in this country have fought, mostly, amongst themselves and things moved along relatively unchanged. Today, however, The greedy people have ticked off the non greedy.

At the risk of sounding like a “leftist”, this “class warfare” is part of the evolution of any society. We are definitely in a class war and there is some indication that we will choose the right path while avoiding armed insurrection.

My guess is that we will know within 3-5 years. Either the neocons will be in prison, or we’ll have fighting in our streets. There are countless other issues, but, that’s the big one. I don’t think it’s ever been more obvious that we need to make sweeping changes in our government. Mostly these changes are in personnel rather than procedure. However, I think term limits would go a long way towards preventing another hostile takeover of our government.

Better? Probably. However, internal combustion reciprocating engines are not terribly efficient. Even a turbine driven “hybrid” (where the mechanical drive-train is replaced with cables and drive motors), or pure electric, would be a better choice. Also, much can still be done to improve the efficiency of, and emissions from, conventional power plants. I don’t think that total elimination of fuel burning plants is a realistic goal but much can be done with existing and developing technologies.

Don’t forget wind, wave, solar, and even geo-thermal.

So, we are left with nuclear. Even though I grew up with “Atomic Mutant” movies, I don’t fear nuclear energy production. I think that America’s rejection of nuclear energy boarders on criminal and will continue to haunt us for the foreseeable future. I’m not even greatly worried about spent fuel storage.

What does worry me is: “Who’s going to be in charge of safety”? I don’t consider glory driven politicians, or profit driven “suits”, to be terribly qualified. That, of course, is the problem with any potentially dangerous technology. All too often the engineers and technologists lose control. That being said, I’m convinced that safe nuclear power is possible and necessary.

We either come together as a people, or we face a certain future devoid of civility and our common humanity. We either lead the planet to genuine freedom or we denigrate into the abyss of an unstoppable nightmare; which will rob future generations of the grand dream of our Founding Fathers.

We are now at a crossroad in our history; regardless whether we recognize it or not, we must ask, where do we go from here, the choice is ours.

Just to follow on the point “fossil fuels will eventually be exhausted”.

One thing that’s seldom mentioned is the other uses for petroleum. Living without gas burning cars would be inconvenient, in the short term, but, what will happen when we run out of cheap plastic?

It sounds like a trivial question, but, it’s not. Much of the modern world, way beyond energy, depends on petroleum products besides gasoline. Personally, I’d like to devote much of the remaining petroleum reserves for those other uses. There are so many alternative fuel sources that it just makes good sense.

I recently read an article (I’ll be danged if I can find a link.) which compared burning gas/oil to setting one’s house on fire for heat. It further stated that a shift away from burning oil would enable us to use those dwindling reserves indefinitely for other uses. The reasoning was that we can still make plastics, and countless other useful things, long after oil production becomes untenable for fuel.

Comment by CaptainMantastic — December 22, 2007 @ 12:29 am

So far the only debate I’ve seen is between the scientists & politicians, or scientists & big Oil. I haven’t seen any debate amongst the scientists over the basic facts that man is having an effect on the warming that is being seen worldwide or that this warming could be very dangerous in the future. The article that this thread discusses is a good example. They take the words of scientists that are debating the degree & consequences of warming, cherrypick through the text and find statements that support the political viewpoint & call that a debate. Add to that some quotes from hacks paid for by companies that will benefit by ignoring GW and you’ve got your so-called debate.

Comment by CaptainMantastic — December 22, 2007 @ 12:29 am

Sorry, but strictly speaking, the “law” of gravity is nothing more than a statistical observation. I could reinforce this “law” based on the natural tendencies of bodies in Minkowski space, but then you’d have to agree with my assertion that the theory of relativity is law…which is again, nothing more than statistical observation.

It is not unreasonable to demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt for a theory before allowing it to dictate our policy. In general, it would be foolish not to exhaust all possible scenarios and theories. However, there is strong evidence that man-made emissions are at least partly responsible for global climate change. Further, fossil fuels will eventually be exhausted, soon by current projections in fact. Coupled with the already known negative effects of greenhouse emissions, the imminent expiration of fuels would make us foolish not to move towards environment-friendly policies which will ween us off of fossil fuels AND foster cleaner energy sources. I am not a climatologist, as such, I realize that I know little enough to defer to the experts, who, by and large, forecast grave changes for mankind should we progress with the status quo. To me, the debate is over.

Comment by CaptainMantastic — December 22, 2007 @ 12:18 am

true, it’s not ideal to rely on something other than strictly scientific data. However, given that that is not always possible, especially in particularly impoverished portions of the globe, we must defer to the next best thing. If data gathered through available methods reinforces what current suspicions are, there is no reason to reject said data. Again, this is just my interpretation of the snippet you put in your post. I urge you to refer to the article in question for further details.