July 20, 1969 was, possibly justifiably, the biggest national ego-validation event in human history. The problem was after that when it came to national achievement, our eyes were firmly pointed back in time. We no longer do things "because they are hard". We're more focused on cashing in on the achievements of past generations.

When you tell Americans we have a backward mobile telephone system, a technologically primitive electric grid and distribution system, and Internet connectivity that lags behind the rest of the developed world, the reaction is usually disbelief. How can that be? We put a man on the Moon -- although by now it should be "grandpa put a man on the Moon."

Toxic to whom? Bill Clinton left office in 2000 with astonishingly good approval ratings, despite Gingrich's and Co's endless attempts to destroy him.

Now Hillary Clinton is no Bill Clinton, but I don't think the Clinton name in general is nearly as toxic as, say, the Bush name (although, in Jeb's defense, I don't think he's the mumbling bumbling alcohol-fried moron his brother is).

He was also a conspiracy theorist who had the money to indulge his paranoid fantasies.

He had the phones of his own employees tapped. He hired private investigators to spy on his friends and family, and to dig up dirt on friends of his children he didn't approve of. He went beserk when he found out the designer of the Vietnam Memorial was an Asian American, calling her racial slurs and hiring lawyers to harass the veterans who supported her.

This is a man who thinks that both the Carter and Reagan administrations conspired to hide the presence of hundreds of POW in Southeast Asia.

I often tell my kids "there's no kind of dumb like a smart person's dumb." It's a warning against arrogance. Smart people can get too used to being right when other people around them are wrong. But in truth there is a worse kind of dumb: rich person's dumb. That's because money can give ideas instant credibility with people in a way arguments cannot. There's a strong inclination in this country to idolize rich guys.

And from their numbers, it doesn't look like they're using a reasonable estimate for Chernobyl. There've been some ridiculous estimates out there from both sides, ranging from "only the couple dozen who died directly" to "millions".

One can look at the approximately 10% higher mortality rate within the exclusion zone to get a rough sense of the consequences, but without knowing demographics, it's hard to draw conclusions from that. Probably the best (peer-reviewed) analysis I've seen compared doses with the US military's mortality data from exposure to the nuclear bombings in Japan. You get a figure of about 4000 extra deaths with moderate confidence and 5000 with low confidence (the error bars can be in either direction). So very rough ballpark of 9k deaths, plus the first responders and the like.

Yes, even when you include things like that, nuclear's death toll is lower than coal, no question. But it's not as low as they make it out to be. Their bias is obvious.

The deadliest nuclear accident, Chernobyl, was caused by defense department testing.

Yep, nuclear disasters can happen from both man and nature. That's hardly a comfort. Will "defense department testing" cause the next major nuclear accident? Very unlikely. But there almost certainly will be a "next major nuclear accident" - we just don't know what form it will take. It's a "known unknown".

Whereas Fukushima was all user error?

No. But if you're going to include "dam-induced casualties from storms", then you should include "people spared from storms by dams" also, it's only fair. And thus hydro's death count would be strongly negative.

Perhaps it is possible to offset renewables in such a way that they can provide 90% of our power needs, but no one has ever done it.

Speak for yourself. I live in Iceland where over 99,9% of the grid is renewable (primarily hydro). 99,9% renewable baseload at that. There's even serious preliminary work looking into building the world's longest submarine power cable to export power to the UK.

Again, not saying that hydro is my preference - I've stated my preference above. Just pointing out that your claim is wrong.

(Concerning the power cable: I'd support if A) they'd only be adding geo plants and wind to meet the extra power need, and B) the government would tax the power sales to the point where the cable makes just barely enough profit to economically justify its existence... but I'm sure that A) they'd probably just dam up the highlands some more - who gives a rat's arse that we have some of the world's most abundant and cheap geo and wind power that could easily compete on the European market, hydro gives a tiny bit more profit margin!; and B) the government would hardly push back at all on power export royalties because, hey, JOBS! Jobs damming up the highlands!)

No, it's just a problem in a fire zone, which in the USA tend to correspond closely with earthquake zones. Building flammable houses on a grassland or in woods is daft.

Close, but your syllable count is a bit off. Something like this would work:

fuck ink jet printers
fuck all those fucking printers
i fucking hate them

Technically, though, you're supposed to have a connection with nature for it to be proper haiku. So maybe something more like

ink jet printer rests
at the bottom of the bog
piece of shit printer

What world do you live in where mine shafts allow objects to fall for hours, days, weeks, months, or years at a time?

And FYI, this "weak force" is the reason your muscles aren't atrophied and you're stuck to this ball orbiting the sun. It matters.

They did. But first off, to correct the GP: Concrete does not release CO2. It absorbs CO2 (slowly taking back the carbon that was released during the cement's creation). So this messed up their balance equation. Metabolism was supposed to consume O2 and make CO2, while photosynthesis was supposed to consume CO2 and make O2. But with the concrete locking up the CO2, the output of metabolism was being locked up and not being converted back to O2, so the O2 levels declined.

It's a simple oversight, but one that we're very lucky was made on Earth and not on, say, Mars. More foresight could have caught it, but there's always something that slips through the cracks. A number of other issues showed themselves, such as unexpected condensation adding rain to areas supposed to be rainless, less light than anticipated making it into the habitat, certain inspect species proving incompatible with the environment while others proving to be pests, so and so forth. They also had big problems with wild fluctuations in CO2 by time of day and season - they didn't have a massive amount of atmosphere to buffer it, so levels collapsed during the day and shot up at night. A lot of people complained that the project wasn't focused enough on the science, but I think they learned an awful lot of important things that could prove critical if ever trying to grow crops on another planet.

(The psychological aspects and how the crew split into two bitterly divided factions is also a real cautionary tale)

So anyway: after the first Biosphere 2 experiment was terminated, they sealed the concrete and started another one. But the second experiment was more doomed by politics than anything else. The on-site management was foreceably evicted by federal marshals. Former biosphere members broke into the facility so that the people inside could know what was going on outside (in the process, ruining the sealed environment). And then a couple months later the management company was dissolved. Altogether the second mission lasted less than half a year. It was a total disaster.

I will be 50 next year so it is not ageing.
THe thing is that people forget just how bad it was in the past. In the 60s people where sure that the Bald Eagle and the Bison would go extinct. In the 1970s lake Erie was considered dead and a river in Ohio was so polluted that it caught fire. People were predicting that humans would be on the brink of extinction by 2000.
As education and standards of living go up population growth goes down. China forced this issue in ways that I find immoral but Indias population growth will soon start to slow. Recycling of a lot of materials along with new methods of extraction will increase the amount of commodities available. Take a look at historic trends and you will see commodity prices are still going down as a whole. Sure you see spikes now and then but the trend is down.
Frankly I wish I was younger because I think the future is going to be better than the past. But then I am a big history fan and know that it was not all sock hops and malt shops.

Fear motivates and sells.

Just like we stay away from active volcanoes.

Which is why 47 people didn't just die in a Japanese volcanic eruption a couple months ago? In the country with probably the best volcano monitoring on Earth?

Please, do go on about Ukranians. I want to hear about how they crucify children to torture their mothers for revenge.

Yes I do, when he is making money off of my work, I get paid. Let me guess you are one of those complete scumbags that expect friends are your slaves?

Short lived for lead acid? last time I had a solar setup my lead acid batteries lasted 10 years.

And this was 15 years ago, today the newer lead acid tech is even better.

Grid intertie systems are available that failover to local battery storage.

Then the answer is having a couple of military in full battle dress holding guns to the heads of the CEO.

Yes I said heads. One gun pressed into the forehead, the other a shotgun jammed into his junk. The marines must YELL at full volume all the time at him.