Comment Re:it could have been an accident (Score 5, Insightful) 737
Once someone is willing to die to accomplish their goal, I maintain that there is no 100% foolproof method for preventing an attack (either on themselves or others).
Why invest in short term solutions?
Yes, why do anything ever if there is something better eventually behind it? You are starting to skirt the edge of stupidly fanatical. If we have a technology NOW that allows us to effectively halt our contribution to climate change, we do that. While we are doing the thing that we know how to do, we're also researching how to do the thing that we'd like to be doing - solar in the near term (100 years), fusion out past that.
My point about coal & natural gas is made to illustrate the huge gains to be made in divorcing ourselves from coal as rapidly as possible. Almost anything is better. "Better" is what we're all supposed to be working towards - my better is a drastic reduction in dispersed pollutants from energy production (mercury, ash, atmospheric uranium, CO2, etc.). What's yours? Solar isn't worth doing just for solar's sake, there needs to be a reason.
All this is irrelevant. Uranium, is limited in supply, even if it's a large supply. This limit means we will eventually have to stop using it and use something else. So why bother starting?
Whilst living on this planet the sun will provide us with all the energy we need if we can just work out how to harness it effectively. Save the Fissile materials for when we *really* need them, like if/when we get into deep space exploration.
There are enough fissile materials for 100,000 years worth of power, once you put thorium and breeders and non-traditional uranium sources into the mix. Even if this is off by an order of magnitude, a 10,000 year supply of power lasts longer than recorded human history. To me, this is a reliable enough supply (and one that can be used TODAY) that I support its use until we bridge to some form of terrestrial fusion, and/or solar energy.
Let me ask you this: If we started now and built even just enough natural gas plants in the US to replace every erg of coal power that are currently used here, what would the effect on US carbon emissions be? Don't sweat the limits of the gas supply, it's a thought exercise. And this doesn't even attempt to consider all of the other crap that coal puts into the environment.
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse
