Radioactive waste seems to be the only downside
That's a real down side.
and that is more a regulatory issue than a technical one
It's not going away. People still regulate things.
What, if anything, would you do for the poor and hungry if this came to pass?
Let them eat chicken.
In what way would that be better than adopting and investing in available technologies?
It's not "better", you do both. It's not clear that there are any technologies which will let us continue deforesting without consequences.
Increasing the price of food doesn't sound like a good alternative to adapting low carbon energy technologies that are already available
Making food's price reflect its cost can only be a good thing.
Unfortunately, algae's rate of conversion has been harmed by increased UV exposure, the algae near the surface is dying off. Most UV is absorbed by the first foot of water, so algae below that are doing fine, but they don't get nearly as much gas exchange there. Oceanic algae is where pretty much all our O2 comes from, in fact, so it's an issue for some significant concern.
Which means, ultimately, the choice we have is to either keep them in Gitmo, or to release them into the USA.
We could transfer them to a prison inside the USA which met at least the standards they have to meet here, which are pretty pitiful as it is. Why aren't we doing that? Answer, because there would be more pressure to treat those people like human beings, with rights.
And we don't want them either....
Then why have we got them? That's bullshit.
This is the argument from apathy. You didn't cause it, so you shouldn't do anything about it.
But the world is chock-full of problems that aren't going to be fixed by those who created them, so you can either throw up your hands and say "fuck it" or you can do something.
It's frustrating to have to clean up other people's messes, but it's depressing to live in a mess.
We could have had a moon base by now,
Wait, really? We don't have a moon base because of political correctness? You're going to have to draw us a map. Please. I can't wait. Making popcorn now.
What happens to the price of beef when grazing land is reforested?
There are more important issues at hand than being about to buy a burger for a buck, like whether production of burgers will even remain a viable proposal for, say, the next generation.
This sounds like a call for farm intensification
Nope. This is a call to graze cattle on native grasses on slopes. And if that means less beef is produced, and it costs more, you're just going to have to get comfortable eating other things — or spending more money on beef. But there's no particular reason why beef should destroy the biosphere.
It's racist to even make that claim.
You could easily think that if you're bound and determined to find racism everywhere. But that's not really thinking. It's just knee-jerking.
Racism is "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."
But that's not what I'm saying.
You're saying that an all white company can't serve as well as one with more black people.
No, I'm saying it won't.
That's racist against whites because you think they can't serve black people on their own,
I think they won't.
and it's racist against blacks because you think they need special accommodations to be adequately served.
No, I think they need to be served by people who understand and care about the issues which affect them in particular. Which, simply by the typically racist and segregationist nature of our society, means other black people. Sure, there's exceptions. Some people are more tuned into other cultures than are other people. That doesn't take away from the general point.
There's nothing racist about observing that black and white people are treated differently in our society, and further, that they are treated differently by black and white people — or, if you like, white and black people. Observing racism is not itself racism. On the other hand, when someone assumes that an observation of racism is racism, I assume that they are racist — because of all the times I've been accused of racism by people who made it abundantly clear that they were racist themselves, typically either in the preceding or following sentence.
I don't know if I've actually gone swimming in the Pacific on Xmas day, but I've certainly done it right around it. The water is actually warmer then, but it's cold as shit all year anyway so who cares? Then you get out and get dressed quick because it's windy.
And as humans become more and more urban, then fields such as astronomy will gradually lose mindshare. Regrettable but probably unavoidable.
Maybe one day we'll solve this light pollution problem. We're already making minor inroads into it by going to more efficient lighting and paying more attention to reflector use and design.
One of the more crazy ideas I have read is to make charcoal then bury it in old coal mines!
It's totally off the nut, bananas crazy, unless the plan is to use thermal solar to cook the charcoal, and to capture the released gases (including CO2!) somehow and use them for something. But hey, maybe that is the plan. Wood gas is a thing. Maybe making charcoal and cooking that stuff out and using it for power is still a good way to sequester carbon.
On the other hand, why would you bury the charcoal? There's lots of demand for it. Then we can stop doing whatever we're doing for charcoal now, which is obviously less efficient since we're not capturing the gases, and probably aren't using direct solar thermal.
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.