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7629. iiibbb - 8/3/2008 5:19:42 PM Indeed I hope it works.
The polywell stuff is intriguing as well, but I think that's got some problems.
I'm very hopeful we can eliminate carbon as our main energy source. 7630. alistairConnor - 8/3/2008 7:57:56 PM The problem is, the carbon (oil and coal) is so very very cheap and easy. Even when it's "expensive". I hope I can have a hydrogen fuel cell one day, to hook up to my PV panels. But it's not just the engineering, it's the cost. Will it ever be cheaper than fossil carbon? Only when fossil carbon becomes really rare, I suspect. 7631. wonkers2 - 8/4/2008 3:03:10 AM Those "wackos" are M.I.T. professors. Of course that doesn't mean it will work outside the laboratory in the real world. 7632. iiibbb - 8/4/2008 3:15:05 PM MIT PostDoc...
If it works, I'm sure he'll be a professor soon enough. 7633. thoughtful - 8/4/2008 3:54:35 PM And stanley pons of cold fusion fame was chair of the Univ of Utah Chemistry dept.
Pedigree does not ensure success.
"Harvard University's Judah Folkman electrified cancer researchers 5 years ago when he and his colleagues reported on a new compound that could shrink tumors in mice virtually to nothing by cutting off the blood supply to tumors, rather than by poisoning patients with toxic drugs. Now, as clinical trials of the widely heralded cancer treatment endostatin are about to be expanded, two groups report that they couldn't get it to work." 7634. iiibbb - 8/4/2008 4:24:33 PM "There is no such thing as a free lunch"
Something my undergraduate adviser would repeat over and over and over.
But I don't think that Solar's problem is that it's more expensive than Carbon. The problem that it's start-up cost is so high. If I were in a place I thought I'd be living for the rest of my life I'd definitely spring for it. But I just can't afford it as a short term expense. 7635. concerned - 8/5/2008 12:28:38 AM Re. 7627 -
I have to call 'bullshit' on that, AC.
Of course Greenland has been modeled. And the models say there's a snowball's chance in hell that the mile and a half thick Greenland ice cap will substantially reduce within a millennium regardless of what humans do. Any shorter time frame than a thousand years would require the climate in Greenland to rival that of the tropics. And not even the looniest whackjobs will go that far.
Actually, the last I heard, Greenland is accreting ice.
7636. concerned - 8/5/2008 12:31:35 AM Try not to lose track of the fact, too, that the continental glaciation in NA took over five thousand years to melt even with temperature forcing greater than what is predicted for Greenland.
7637. concerned - 8/5/2008 3:38:17 AM Let's compare: Over 5,000 years to melt the Wisconsin glaciation when presented with largely continental temperate conditions, and along come some LWingnuts who say Greenland will be completely melted in a hundredth the time while exposed to an arctic regime?
I have to call bullshit on this because I have a fuckin' brain that works.
Sorry, AC.
About your brain, that is. 7638. jexster - 8/7/2008 1:33:08 AM Top scientist warns of 4c rise in global temperature
How inconvenient! 7639. concerned - 8/7/2008 2:58:40 AM That's nothing.
I'm warning of a 10C rise in global temperature...
...sometime in the next 4 billion years. 7641. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/11/2008 8:24:45 PM This is amazing computer animation . . .
7642. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/11/2008 8:25:45 PM This is amazing computer animation . . .
7643. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/11/2008 8:26:10 PM ???? 7644. jexster - 8/15/2008 1:57:03 AM Huge New Solar Power Plants Planned for Cahleeefohnia 7645. jexster - 8/15/2008 3:08:22 AM PG&E Aims for 24% Solar by 2013 7646. arkymalarky - 8/15/2008 5:01:12 AM I deleted #7640. Something about it was evidently keeping subsequent ones from showing up.
Did you even notice, Jex? What kinda autopilot you got there? 7647. jexster - 8/17/2008 1:46:35 AM Windpower - Environmental Eyesore?
Worse than oil rigs off Santa Barbara 7648. jexster - 8/17/2008 1:47:45 AM Yea I noticed that. Nothing I could do about Wizzers viral bomb. 7649. jexster - 8/17/2008 1:48:48 AM What do you suggest Arky. Maybe I could post a few hidden requests that someone clean it up!
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