I saw a lecture in 1991 about the issues of living on the moon, and the underground habitat was a given. The issues that were showstoppers (among other things) were 1) water, 2) ability to manufacture concrete, 3) ability to safely do construction (power, tools, people moving things around in spacesuits). This talk was geared to a large scale habitat, something much bigger than the Mars One.

With no atmospheric shielding, heat transport via radiation energy is still very high. If the sun is shining on an object that doesn't have 100% reflectivity (or zero adsorption), it'll get hot.

I'm in my early 40's, and I'm just now seeing the Powers That Be (PTB) do and monitor things that I had only envisioned in my paranoid fantasies in the 80's when I first read '1984.' Throughout the whole time I was always modestly comforted by the 'safety in numbers' idea; if I'm not out shooting people or blatantly planning the overthrow of the government, then the PTB won't have the human resources to go after me and I should be left alone.

But now it's getting scary because the PTB don't have to watch me, the digital monitoring, and more importantly the digital analysis, has made it to where they can keep tabs on everything you do without spending human resources to do it. There is no longer safety in numbers because the algorithms can build the list and it can be executed efficiently.

So what's next? I'm not thrilled with some of my activities prompting which browser ads that I see, but I am bothered that companies could change their pricing strategy based on whether or not I'm motivated enough to change to another vendor when I'm not satisfied. I'm even more bothered that insurance companies know my private health records and could deny me coverage because of them, even if they were obtained with the expressed statements that conversations with your doctor are private.

Crap, I always used to roll my eyes at the Wearers of the Tin Foil Hats, but maybe technology has caught up to their paranoia. It's not going to be long before a fly lands in a printer and someone mistakes my name for someone else and my life is ruined.

“Gentlemen, the officer who doesn’t know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless.” -- General George S. Patton, USA

Remember before criticizing the US Army, it's considered the best in the world, largely because of quartermaster capabilities.

In theory, everything works in practice. In practice, it doesn't.

One where I see it is 'Hay Day' on the iPad. I downloaded it to play with my nieces and nephews (the Daughter loves it too at five years of age). It's a farm resource management game, and they have inventories that can only be upgraded when you randomly receive objects. However, if you pay for diamonds and money, you get the upgrades. Only once did I pay to get my daughter something, and I realized that this would be a never-ending money pit.

It is a pretty fun game if you're into that genre though.

Heh, me too. My first read on that potential haiku made me think he was a jazz drummer.

According to NREL, it varies but is roughly 8 acres per megawatt for large stations. 22 gigawatts is 22,000 megawatts, so that's about 176,000 acres of land.

Re 5: The CO2 concentration is controlled by the temperature and pH of the oceans. The pH is not driven by CO2 as it's a weak electrolyte, and the overall pH of the ocean is about 8.0 (which is alkaline). CO2 equilibrated water pH is about 5.5. If air CO2 concentration is rising, it's because the ocean (which may be warming from something like undersea volcanic activity or dozens of other natural phenomena) belches it out.

Re 6: False. Check the data (http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/the-carbon-cycle_a224#). Natural sources are 90 gigatons from the ocean interactions, 60 gigatons from land based sources. 10 gigatons at most from human interaction. There are 750 gigatons in the air.

Nobody said the climate isn't warming, we're in a 10,000 year warming period compared to recent history. The question is what humans have done to influence it, and that question is far from resolved. I agree it warrants further study, and the overall the effects of reducing pollution are positive, but let the questions be answered by the scientific method, not rhetoric and politics.

It's not a mystery. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing temperature (dissociation constant of water increases, increasing hydrogen ion concentration, which pushes the equilibrium of carbonate towards molecular H2CO3, then CO2). Anyone who has opened a can of cold soda and let it get to room temperature has seen this.

Regarding inventories: The ocean inventory is 155,000 gigatons with 1,000 gigatons in the thermocline, and there is 150 gigatons annually of exchange. Human contribution is 10 gigatons annually, which would be in the measurement error of the other sources.

We need to reduce pollution, so if the climate change arguments will drive a large population that is generally uninformed towards greater efficiency, then great. But don't slaughter legitimate scientists for being appropriately skeptical. That is, after all, the fundamental tenant of the scientific method.

The question is not only if the climate is changing, but if it's directly related to CO2. Robert Essenhigh's point is quite interesting. http://bit.ly/11IsUri

If I travel from the West Coast (my home) to the East Coast (where many of my customers work) each week for a month, I'm toast. If I travel to Europe, I'm toast for three days afterwards. If I travel to Asia, I'm toast for four days.

If I travel to the East Coast once, I'm tired the next day.

Economic burdens too. Natural gas is much cheaper than before (about half from 2008), and as it was the most expensive fuel for the major generating stations, its cost basically controlled the minimum profit obtainable (the plants are relatively cheap to build on a per megawatt basis compared to coal, nuclear, wind).

The grid is a conduit from the generating station to the customer, and is effectively a capital expense that is most likely paid for already. The grid operating costs are very small compared to the generation costs, and there wouldn't be a revenue source for a grid company if they were forced to separate (if there were it would be artificial and in unregulated markets they would eventually zero this value out). Note that because storage isn't really practical yet, any time there is a change in electricity demand, the generating station needs to follow the load by increasing/decreasing the fuel that is consumed and reducing the generator load. This would have to happen regardless of who ran the grid, and the same operating challenges would be present, it wouldn't help solar adoption. The best way for solar to be adopted more readily is to make the solar panels cheaper.

Let's say they start datamining and storing whether or not a child has received mental health care. Then what? Kids and their parents will prevent their children from getting the needed health care in order to prevent their child from being classified as 'aberrant' by what is well-known to be an inconsistent psychological practices.

Even worse. It will hurt redemption stories. In my own experience, I probably had too much fun when I was a kid. My grades were good but my friends were a varied lot, and some of them were not well-regarded by The Powers That Be (note I was in a small town, nails that stick out get hammered down). But I got wise, worked hard and smart on my education, and I'm doing well for myself. Would this have been possible if I were tracked during high school and automatically relegated to 'one of those ruffians?'

The parents are right to complain about this, much more harm than good comes from it.