fundamentally I share your pessimism tho for different reasons. Short of getting the population down to under 5 billion (and 11 billion is looking more likely), it's going to end badly. The particular cause is the only question.

But... on a day to day basis, LED bulbs are a win, win, win. High quality light, energy consumption so low they pay off in under a year under normal usage, and instant on.

I also have to say that the possibility for nuclear power is over. It's never been a significant share of world power generation and while nuclear is great- nuclear plus humans has a terrible record- essentially a major accident every 10 to 12 years with a resulting loss of use of real estate for hundreds of years.

Coal is actually worse (seam fires) and results in the loss of entire small towns and hundreds of square miles of real estate but it is well established.

Solar is projected to be down to .36 cents/watt by 2024. At those prices-- why not use it? It's like LED's. Lower than current power generation prices for several countries, it provides energy during the periods of highest power usage, has lower water usage, lower pollution profile (tho I'm wondering what is hidden from us that will become apparent in mass production). It's prices are still dropping rapidly (in part due to temporary subsidies). Installations are rising logarithmically and have passed an inflection point towards exponential growth.

The nice thing is- everyone benefits. If solar cuts oil demand by 5%-- that has a huge effect on the price of oil overall. Same for coal.

Perhaps someday, they will design an inexpensive reactor system that is reliable combined with a breeder reactor to reduce waste to 1-3% quantity. I think smaller would be better. And based on the new autoshut down modules. And with no way stupid or careless humans can fuck things up.

But really- 11 billion people is no meat for most people (which is not as good as vegans project), lower quality of life, and a fairly pointless existence with the high automation we have coming (sitting around consuming food and entertainment- no real work to do for most).

sometimes, it's enough just to say something... even if only a few others (or no one else) gets it.

It's well known that shading a roof lowers air conditioning costs.

However, shading a roof might slightly raise daytime heating costs.

If we don't hit the brakes, we hit the tree at 60mph.
If we do hit the breaks, we hit the tree at 30mph.

Either way, we hit the tree, so why bother braking?

Or we can lock the brakes, go into a skid, flip the car, and burst into flames while rolling down the embankment because we lost control of the car while we were overdoing it.

It's a complex situation. Slowing down fossil fuel usage and output by 10% might be cost effective, slow the curve, give more time for other solutions. Also, producing solar tends to lead to solar being cheaper in the future. Which means it can replace more fossil fuel. As a bonus- inexpensive solar power depresses the price of fossil fuel and so the more expensive oil isn't drilled and pumped yet. So less expensive home heating, fossil electricity, and gasoline.

I'm just saying I can understand why people stop voting when the game is rigged so well that less than 1% of elections matter whether they vote or not (and that was for a state rep position- nothing national).

Sure- some people will play against overwhelming odds- or vote when it rarely matters. But I hope you can see how many just say, "Screw it- I'm going to sleep in, go on vacation, just work over time, stop beating my head against the wall because of some tiny chance that it might make some tiny difference".

Voter turnout is higher when it matters.

I vote. But I can easily understand how disillusioned (and effectively disenfranchised) voters stop voting.

It's clear to most of us when our vote matters (turnout rises) and when it doesn't (low turnout).

In my district- I've had ONE vote in 17 years that mattered. The rest came down just the way the gerrymandering predicted.
I either voted with a 60/40 or higher majority or with a 40/60 or lower minority.

In the one vote, the race was by 31 votes. It was contested and maybe if it had been 30, it might have been contested longer. And turnout was high because it was clear the challenger might unseat the incumbent (and did.. barely).

Perhaps if we had term limits ...

But really modern computers can predict the outcomes from districts fro years at a time.

Silver and Wang predicted almost all of the elections for the last two cycles before the vote.

If it is clear which way the vote is before we go to the polls (and it almost always is) then why go vote?

But you'll be able to get almost a whole book on one little tape.

When we get to VR5, then the tech will be ready.

Cloning introduces hundreds of mutations. Many clones die because of those mutations so it is likely that non fatal mutations would affect performance as well.

Exactly.

We can't competently confirm actual guild and have repeatedly pardoned people on death row as well has evidence that some people executed may have been executed.

Sure-- keeping an innocent person in prison for life is horrific. But killing an innocent person was a big thing the founding fathers were clearly trying to avoid.

My thought is some energy that would have reflected back into space is captured and emitted as heat that can't escape as easily.

It's small now but I don't know how significant a factor it could become if solar became ubiquitous.

actively collecting cats and making sure all cats get fixed would have a greater reduction of bird deaths by orders of magnitude.
cats kill BILLIONS of birds a year in the united states alone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

So perhaps each power plant could fund an animal patrol officers in large cities they serve.

Two years ago my neighbor woke me up because the gas line broke where it entered my house. Quarter inch think steel pipe. 70 years of flexing with the climate. Could have been a huge explosion when I turned off the fluorescent light (apparently that could have caused a spark. fyi!).

And there have been some large neighborhood scale explosions over the last few years (I notice them now on the news after my incident).

The problem with gas is the same with nuclear is not the same with solar.

an aging solar power solution will simply fail to work.

an aging gas or nuclear solution (with designs in place- not the new designs) can fail spectacularly.

If they use the new smaller nuke designs which automatically fail quietly in combination with solar, it might work.

A problem with solar and nuke- is heat pollution. You are taking energy from one area and moving it to another area. The amounts are small compared to the larger climate- but .1degrees is small but can be the difference between water boiling or freezing. There are some signs that wind is having slight effects on climate too. It's extracting energy and moving it elsewhere. That seems similar to a tall forest growing in the same location tho.

I know. And Nuclear is in second place for the amount of land rendered uninhabitable too!

Coal wins that, rendering multiple cities uninhabitable and with multiple Chernobyl sized areas rendered uninhabitable by coal seam fires plus ongoing smoke pollution covering huge areas.

Nuke plants- great in theory.
Nuke plants + Human Operators- an accident waiting to happen. The current average appears to be one major accident per decade.

We need to use smaller nukes with modern designs. And we need to back those up with a few reactors which will consume their waste and reduce it to much smaller quantities.

But when anyone solves the battery problem- nukes are dead dead dead and alternative energy of all kinds makes much more sense.

Actually, parts of california (san diego) are classified as semi arid.

To your comment-

http://extras.mnginteractive.c...

It's been pretty wet since 1600. But it was pretty dry before that.

Humans don't really think on a time scale of 500 year cycles. You can have an entire civilization rise and fall during a 500 year period.