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Comment Re:Unintended consequences (Score 1) 167

That's right, you can't, because nobody has objectively asked and tried to answer that question, not the inventors of such devices and not you. It's a question that ought to be answered BEFORE we add yet another variable to the climate system. not AFTER we have hundreds of thousands or millions of the devices in operation.

Comment Unintended consequences (Score 0, Troll) 167

Just like most every other so-called green solution, this one has a not-so-rosy underbelly: what happens if this becomes a popular device and everyone is using them? What effect will that have on local and global climate to have so much ground-level moisture removed from the air? This is not unlike the underbelly of windmill farms that just happen to kill birds and bats and also alter the local climate by removing energy from the weather system.

Comment Re:China is more capitalistic than the USA (Score 1) 73

That is certainly a significant part of it, an aspect I have observed and described in the past. There's more to it than just that. Socialism gets a bad rap because humans aren't yet evolved to make it naturally work voluntarily on a massive scale; it works well enough at an intimate village scale, but not for an entire nation. That it is voluntary is critical, because what's the point of an ethical economy if unethical force is required to establish and maintain it? That is why Communism fails miserably.

Comment Re:China is more capitalistic than the USA (Score 5, Insightful) 73

You don't say overtly that it's a bad thing that the United States has socialistic constraints on its capitalistic economy... and it's not. Socialism - NOT Communism - done well is a far better economic system for advanced societies than capitalism. Better to call it mutualism or voluntary socialism. In the context of any advanced society pure capitalism can never be done well; it reaches a peak benefit - the United States has passed that point - and then begins to cause irreparable harm that leads to eventual economic and social collapse. It's a cyclic process that repeats as long as capitalism is the economic law of the jungle. We must evolve our species to more naturally cooperate rather than compete and combat.

Comment Re:Couldn't possibly be roads? (Score 1) 70

I'm well aware that we're discussing silicon compounds. I didn't claim that silicon was being vaporized by tire friction; that's silly. However, is it possible that silicon compounds in the road surface that get pulverized finely enough might then become "aerosolized" and disperse in the atmosphere? That is the question I posed.

Comment The "perfect" solar cell... (Score 2) 110

... from whose perspective? At least one perspective holds that the perfect solar cell is one that doesn't even work, a thin strip of plastic made to look like a solar cell that costs a helluva lot less than the real thing:

Today I was walking home from an errand to a store.I saw the remains of a “Dual Power Calculator” in the gutter; it had an intact solar cell in the top.“Cool!”, I thought; “I’m going to rescue that solar cell for some DIY thing.”I grabbed the top part and tossed it in my bag.

When I got home, I dismantled it to remove the “solar cell”.I discovered that it was a fake, a thin strip of plastic separate from the body made to look like a solar cell.

WTF....

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