/sci/ - Science & Math

yep.

LFTR

>>3970453
This and automation + plasma gasification waste disposal.

>>3970459

>>3970453
When?

>>3970494
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Chinese_Thorium_MSR_project

>>3970500
I have to wait until the 30's? Shit.

Kinda

Hah! You Cornucopians would love that, but no. We're instead heading for an era of reinforced scarcity, as Cheap Oil does away with the highly artificial nature of our lifestyles. As the Cheap Oil drains away, a lot of practices will be stranded and generally abandoned.

Perversely for a time population influx into cities will give you stupid shits the impression of continued advancement, but soon enough you'll notice that influx is desperate and asset-poor. They will be coming, looking for jobs, ANY JOBS, and having abandoned the suburbs, they will be decapitalized in general. You then start to notice that they will be trying to save money, and sadly enough for you, a consumer society isn't based on savers.

>>3970515
Yeah, and it's largely going to suck until around 2025.

>>3970525
Violent simians guy?

>>3970525
>implying oil

lol. Get with the program pleb.
see >>3970453

>>3970525

>Cornucopians

lol, that's a new one. Maybe because people are starting to realize you have like fifteen sentences and base everything you write off them?

>>3970525
Mr. Violent Simian, you're debating the same people, on the same topic over and over. If no one can convince you that perhaps you have a rather warped and incorrect view of how the world has worked around you, could we at least convince you stop posting in these type of topics? In your language, this would be 'let the CHEETO-eating CORNUCOPIANS dream about a world NOT POSSIBLE without CHEAP OIL'

We would be, but the powers that be are scared of giving the disenfranchised any power.

Maybe rightly so.

>>3970526
Why?

>>3970550
Rich fucks gonna rich.

>>3970560
cool pic, what's it from?

>>3970560
So we're heading into some kind of depressive dictatorship run by the rich? That's gay.

>>3970520
When will this happen?

>>3970563
Not a clue.

>>3970565
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
'Heading' ?
Where have you been, Mars?
But the thing is it's these combination of certain technologies that seem small and benign come to a point where they really work well together at easily producing abundance, and that makes not the rich poorer, but rather makes the poor person's dollar go a lot further. And that's what is most important.

>>3970525
>ad hom CAPS ad hom CAPS ad hom CAPS AD HOM IN CAPS

>>3970529
> Violent simians guy?

Yep. {waves}

>>3970532
> >implying oil
>lol. Get with the program pleb.

So we're all Plebes. That's the social model. You made no point whatsoever, and your life is as heavily dependent on Cheap Oil is are the other Plebes.

>>3970539
> lol, that's a new one.

No. Kunstler has been using that for a while. If you think the term is new, then you're just uneducated. And that is a lot of /sci/'s problem: Pasty-white basement-dwelling virgin-nerds who mistake high education in physics and chemistry with actual knowledge. I hear your Cheetos bag calling.

>>3970540
> If no one can convince you that perhaps you have a rather warped and incorrect view of how the world has worked around you

How can MY worldview be incorrect? The world runs on ECONOMICS, not on pasty-white basement-dwelling virgin-nerdisms. The mechanized world runs almost exclusively on petroleum; those sectors that don't, run INDIRECTLY on it, and use coal and nuclear.

In contrast, all you pasty-white basement-dwelling virgin-nerds claim is that "things will get better" based on... NOTHING EVIDENTIAL AT ALL.

Look at this Thorium issue that has so enamored you all. The nuclear industry is married to Uranium. PERIOD. Changing the industry to anything else would be a practical impossibility. They will keep using Uranium all the way down to shutdown. After all, Uranium and its product Plutonium are what our militaries use, and since the nuclear power industry was ALWAYS AND ONLY a byproduct of weapons production, their inability to change means our power industry won't be changing.

But that resembles ECONOMICS, which means its an invisible process to you people (ie. violent simians).

>>3970584

>No. Kunstler has been using that for a while. If you think the term is new, then you're just uneducated.

And why should I pay attention to him? What credentials does he have?

>>3970584
>Changing the industry to anything else would be a practical impossibility.
I started giggling
>After all, Uranium and its product Plutonium are what our militaries use, and since the nuclear power industry was ALWAYS AND ONLY a byproduct of weapons production, their inability to change means our power industry won't be changing.
Then I started laughing.

America =/= rest of the world.

>Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents

I thought Violent Simians hated Jews?

>>3970574
> But the thing is it's these combination of certain technologies that seem small and benign come to a point where they really work well together at easily producing abundance, and that makes not the rich poorer, but rather makes the poor person's dollar go a lot further.

In other words, you're moving the industrial practices of consumer electronics (emphasis on CONSUMPTION, meaning said products are used and then thrown away while still operational) onto everything. That's wrong. But then, that takes knowledge of ECONOMICS, which all /sci/tards like yourself reject like religion... making anti-ECONOMIC views of the world simply YOUR FUCKING RELIGION.

While you sit there believing in Santa Claus, the world's economies are shivering from the ever rising expense of petroleum, and there's no backup plan at all for our infrastructures. Billions are alive today purely since they effectively eat oil, by running it through mechanized agriculture and world-spanning transportation systems. Since such systems (by ECONOMICS) can't run on any other fuel extant, then those systems will start to collapse. And those billions will starve. It may take decades to complete the process, but they will still starve. After all, nothing whatsoever replaces petroleum.

> In a 2001 op-ed for Planetizen, he wrote that in the wake of 9/11 the "age of skyscrapers is at an end", that no new megatowers would be built, and that existing tall buildings are destined to be dismantled.

http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/george-stanford/195-the-ifr-vs-the-lftr-an-exchange-of-emails.html

>>3970612
>nothing whatsoever replaces petroleum.
except hemp, geothermal/wind/solar/fusion energy, and antimatter

>>3970631

>antimatter

Bullshit.

>>3970595
> And why should I pay attention to him? What credentials does he have?

Two eyes and an honest brain that's not addled by Cheetos.

Which means you'll never accept what he has to say.

Credentials like you're looking for are part of the problem. You're looking for a man who has adopted the propaganda of Cornucopianism. People who go through Western universities now are head-loaded with total bullshit, hence all these "Occupy" protests. Their demands are totally uneconomic and irrational for the system they all depend on. That never bothers them, since they are like you: Indoctrinated.

In the meantime, today, another 90M barrels of irreplaceable petroleum will be consumed with essentially ZERO plan on what to do when that daily amount must fall, as it must, since no resource is infinite, and such a resource is subject to PEAKING. That peak already passed us, in the mid 2000s. So it's only downhill from here, in a world hungry for the Western, energy-wasting mode of life. A world that's as willing to kill for that, as we are.

>>3970612
>In other words, you're moving the industrial practices of consumer electronics (emphasis on CONSUMPTION, meaning said products are used and then thrown away while still operational) onto everything. That's wrong. But then, that takes knowledge of ECONOMICS, which all /sci/tards like yourself reject like religion... making anti-ECONOMIC views of the world simply YOUR FUCKING RELIGION.
Distills down to:
>MY VIEW IS ECONOMIC YOURS IS NON-ECONOMIC AND LIKE RELIGION

>While you sit there believing in Santa Claus, the world's economies are shivering from the ever rising expense of petroleum, and there's no backup plan at all for our infrastructures.
So why are you here bitching at us and not screaming bloody Mary at every congressman or member of office you can find if you're so obsessed with this problem?

>Since such systems (by ECONOMICS) can't run on any other fuel [petroleum] extant [?], then those systems will start to collapse.
Says you.

>After all, nothing whatsoever replaces petroleum.
Except, y'know...
Biofuels...
Electric cars...with battery energy densities comparable to gasoline yet run on highly-efficient electric motors...
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars
Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors and the fuels they can produce from waste heat...
Y'know, stuff like that which weans us off our dependence and makes the transition a little smoother. Will a few million die from starvation and turmoil caused by scarce oil indirectly? Yes. It's doing it right now. It'll likely get a little worse. But we can get through it because we know how, and when something bites our ass hard we get into gear.

>>3970638

Credentials like you're looking for are part of the problem. You're looking for a man who has adopted the propaganda of Cornucopianism. People who go through Western universities now are head-loaded with total bullshit, hence all these "Occupy" protests. Their demands are totally uneconomic and irrational for the system they all depend on. That never bothers them, since they are like you: Indoctrinated.

I don't even require university. Just a few papers published in peer-review journals.

>>3970631
> except hemp, geothermal/wind/solar/fusion energy, and antimatter

False. Wrong. None of those has the magic combination that petroleum has, hence:

1. Cheap.
2. Energy dense.
3. Practical.

Fusion and antimatter energy production don't even EXIST. And yet you Cornucopians keep pretending that they do. AM production that we can even imagine doing, is in fact VERY energy lossy. And without a space program worth mentioning, nobody's going to go "harvesting" them in some Van Allen belt of ANY world, much less our own.

I'm starting to respect the religious more and more, considering YOU PEOPLE are supposedly their opposition. The religious fags have a big problem, in that they believe in a Giant Sky Daddy. That's worrisome. But YOU PEOPLE claim to be educated in the ways of actual reality, and yet, you can't handle the inarguable facts of Cheap Oil Depletion. Cornucopianism is YOUR religion.

>>3970635
>hurr durp
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html

>>3970658
1. Cheap.
2. Energy dense.
3. Practical.

I know something that has all of those
>>3970453

>>3970658
...Holy shit

Are you that tripfag Atheismisgay from a fairly long time ago? I realized you have almost exactly the same style of writing.

>>3970644
> So why are you here bitching at us and not screaming bloody Mary at every congressman or member of office you can find if you're so obsessed with this problem?

Officials are even worse than YOU PEOPLE, since YOU PEOPLE keep voting for the same flavors of the same singular arm of corporate Petro-Civilization. YOU PEOPLE need to stop believing in the petro-equivalent of Santa Claus. You need to stop voting for people who only promise you MORE.

>>3970674
I think YOU'LL get THROUGH to him BETTER if you MAYBE changed your WRITING STYLE.

SEE how this makes me look more CREDIBLE?

>Kunstler, who has no formal training in the fields in which he prognosticates,[16] made similar dire predictions for Y2K as he makes for peak oil.

>Kunstler has made several failed predictions regarding U.S. stock markets. In June 2005 and again in early 2006, Kunstler predicted that the Dow would crash to 4,000 by the end of the year.[21][22] The Dow in fact reached a new peak of approximately 12,500 by the end of 2006. In his predictions for 2007, Kunstler admitted his mistake, ascribing the Dow's climb to "inertia combined with sheer luck".[23] In January 2009, Kunstler again repeated with Dow 4000 prediction. The Dow, in fact, ended 2009 at more than twice that value.[24]

Let's look at his Y2K predictions:

>Writing this in April of ‘99, I believe that we are in for a serious event. Systems will fail, crash, seize up, cease to function. Not all systems, maybe only a fraction, but enough, and enough interdependent systems to affect many other systems. Y2K is real. Y2K is going to rock our world.
>People will consequently suffer. I don’t know how much. Some people may lose their lives - but more likely at the hands of a disabled medical establishment than because of civil disorder, loss of power, starvation, bad water, or other projected horrors (though these, too, are possible). Some will suffer the loss of fortunes, some of any income whatsoever, and many of something in between.

>>3970671
> I know something that has all of those

No, and not at at 90M barrels a day.

Nothing replaces the CHEAP DENSE PRACTICAL fuel that we've allowed to run everything to the point that billions of people are alive today purely from it.

At least we don't have the Ethanol Idiots around here. Those people are even more annoying that you, if that's even possible.

>>3970682
Hey I heard some lady got like a $25,000 late fee at Blockbuster because of y2k. Obviously he was right, she was SUFFERING.

>>3970665

It's a viable propulsion system, but not a viable energy source, unless you can transport the nanograms mined from the magnetosphere down to Earth.

hurr durp

>>3970677
If it were up to me, I'd have half of Australian parliament dunked in Sydney Harbor for taking it up the ass for gas and mining companies. What i was remarking on is, while there's futile and FUTILE, you might as well do the one that actually might accomplish something. For instance, I like posting about topics relating to the development of space and future technologies, as sometimes I get an intelligent discussion over all that kind of crap. But then there are the people who shout, NO! This will never happen! It will never happen because we're all powerless and primitive! A higher class has bent us to their will and now they will do whatever the fuck they want and you will never change it. Perhaps you should start offering solutions instead of going OH NO THE SKY IS FALLING AND EVERYTHING IS DARKNESS

And there's more!

>I certainly haven’t changed my view in the past year. Only I now see Y2K as the mechanism that will force events to a tipping point much more quickly and surely. Over the next year, many elements of "normal" American life are going to hit a wall of dysfunction. The need to change ways of doing business will butt up against a desperate desire to preserve business as usual. These events will challenge our democratic institutions. Politics will probably become delusional, as is always the case during periods of social stress. There will be a lot of economic losers, including people who thought they had it made, or thought that they were entitled to a lifetime package of goodies called "the American Dream." It’s going to be a hairy time. Y2K is a bitch-slap upside the head of American culture. With a two-by-four.
> If nothing else, I expect Y2K to destabilize world petroleum markets. These disruptions will be at least as bad as those produced by the 1973 OPEC oil embargo (so-called). The aftershocks of that event thundered through the American economy for the rest of the decade, giving us several years of interest rates above 15 percent and a weird malaise that puzzled economists called "stagflation (stagnation + inflation). The OPEC embargo involved a lot of backstage political shenanigans, but apart from these, the actual market shortfall appears to have been about five percent of our imported oil. In 1973 less than half of our oil came from foreign producers. Today, more than half does. Of that, at least 30 percent comes from countries that are considered unprepared for Y2K, countries over which we have no control and limited influence.

>>3970671

I really, really, hate siding with the insane rambling "peak oilz ap0calypse!11!" guy -- but the way some of the guys on sci preach about thorium power is that it's a fucking panacea of power. Not that I'm saying it doesn't have merits, but we went through the damn same thing when steam turbines would give industry the power of giants, hydrodams and solar would yield infinite industry, and uranium an infinitely-sustainable power source.

The way some (or, for all I know, just one or two) of you guys go on about it you'd think you had significant stock in a Throrium-power startup.

>>3970658
>1. Cheap.
1800 liters of ethanol per acre

>2. Energy dense.
serious? solar energy is 8 doublings (energy generation doubles every 2 years) away from meeting every energy need we have. geothermal and wind are potentially limitless energy forms once you install something to harness it.
>3. Practical.
the only thing on the list that isn't 'practical' right now is antimatter, but we're making great progress in storing antimatter for use as energy. once we can store it, it will be trivial to invent applications to capture it in space.

here's a release from earlier this year about storage:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110605132421.htm
just because you can't imagine a future where this stuff is pervasive doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.

>>3970689
Oil is great. Burning oil for cars is not great. Electric car revolution using lithium air batteries with the new carbon nanotube electrodes that allow them to charge within a couple of minutes and we're completely golden. Heck, just with the new batteries you could get 1,000 miles a charge. You knock out a very large part of the consumption, and you've at least doubled the amount of time you have to work around it.

>>3970712
>1800 liters of ethanol per acre
meant to say 1800 liters of ethanol per acre with current refining techniques

>>3970711
I preach about it because if it works, IT'S JUST THAT FUCKING AWESOME.

>>3970716
And pray tell, where the fuck do you think electricity comes from?

>>3970711
>it's a fucking panacea of power.

That's what the guys at Oak Ridge thought, China and India listened. The US is dealing with so much regulatory capture (in the nuclear energy industry, food, banking, and just about everything else), I doubt we'll be in the running for IP rights at all for these things.

Just because the US isn't doing it doesn't mean it won't happen.

>>3970724
Coal, natural gas, and in some nations a large part from hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear.

are you ready for low energy fusion reactors?

andrea rossi just sold his 1MW LENR plant to an unnamed "large US corporation" yesterday after a successful test run of it, which he has been leading up to with several successful test runs of smaller reactors.

a clean energy revolution is upon us

>Midway through the book he offers an extended meditation on how the physics concept of entropy explains "conditions as seemingly unrelated as war, industrial pollution, pornography, mass political murder, the shattering of consensus about the value of money, and incompetent parenting."

>>3970727

This. Just because the West is finished doesn't mean others will follow.

>>3970724
The strong force, nigger.

There are still decades of cheap oil left. Plenty of time to develop alternatives.

We dont already have alternatives because we fucking DONT NEED TO. When that changes, hundreds of billions will be channeled towards thorium and renewables, instead of few billions here and there.

>>3970702
> It will never happen because we're all powerless and primitive!

And that's correct, so you need to plan appropriately. But you don't. You keep making even grander plans based on even grander energy consumption. That's why you will never learn.


> A higher class has bent us to their will and now they will do whatever the fuck they want and you will never change it.

You will never change it since you will never vote for a guy like Ron Paul. You're so terrified of "the other guy" winning from some infinitesimal D or R difference, that you hold your nose and continue to pull the lever for the same Two-Party System.

In 1992, 19% of the popular vote actually went to non-TPS candidate. The TPS underwent a panicked convulsion and then acted to make sure that that sort of threat NEVER happened again. And so it worked. Now Americans are keep in a state of absolute terror of what might happen if they stopped supporting D or R. And that is only hastening the General Collapse.

ONCE AGAIN, I'm here to put a stop to Cornucopianism, which comes FROM THE FUCKING CONSUMERS, which you people are.

>>3970732

Don't you see the West was born from people of European and Eastern backrounds, faiths, beliefs what have you...so really we're all one and the same, we just happened to pick up on some philosophies and works (such as Aristotle, Da Vinci and Newton) that other people inherently missed or failed to grasp.

>>3970732
> Just because the West is finished doesn't mean others will follow.

False. Wrong. We only consume 20M barrels of that daily 90M production. And the world is salivating over becoming like the West. There's only one way that will turn out: While gearing up with highways and SUVs and strip malls and suburbs, the collapse of petroleum right under them will cause them to join in on the USA's initiated Resource Wars.

You know what's even more fucked up? Select American shitbags will get "good jobs" in military industries, to expand the Resource Wars. They will be flying as high as ever, and will come on /sci/ crowing endlessly about our "gloom and doom". And the kilodeaths overseas will evolve into megadeaths.

And then it will get WORSE.

>>3970753
Please. Stop pushing Ron Paul. You aren't doing him any favors.

If anything, he's the guy that WOULD help OUT people THAT think LIKE US. It was said before, regulatory capture is what's holding America back, and huge gub'mint agencies allow it.

>>3970747
> There are still decades of cheap oil left. Plenty of time to develop alternatives.

False. Wrong. The Cheap Oil has already run out. Now we have Not-So-Cheap Oil, and the world is already in a Great Depression II in part from it. The GD2 is only growing in scope, and governments are desperately using BORROWING to cover it all up.

And there are no alternatives to oil, as I never tire of reminding you, since nothing at all has the same characteristics:

1. Cheap
2. Energy dense
3. Practical

Anyone who comes on here and says "biofuel" needs to be slapped bloody. You can't produce 90M dasily barrels of biofuel. You can't use technology to actually CREATE energy. Petroleum was just sitting there in a few trillion barrels, waiting to be used. NOTHING ELSE IS JUST SITTING THERE, WAITING FOR US.

>>3970753

What would Ron Paul do to stop the Resource Wars?

>>3970789
why cant we make millions of barrels? Just need to expand infrastructure

>>3970789
>NOTHING ELSE IS JUST SITTING THERE, WAITING FOR US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Reserves

>mfw

>>3970789
we just need battery tech to advance so electric cars can hold charge for much longer than 100+ miles
or a nuclear reactor small enough (and safe enough) to fit in our cars

>>3970789
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/deliberate-incompetence-makes-for-better-lithium-air-bat
teries.ars

>Malthusian apocalypse fantasies urrvrywhur.

As the pain increases from higher petroleum prices, so will the incentive to replace petroleum. Simple economic substitution will accelerate the development and adoption of alternatives to oil.

It is a reasonable vision of the future for us to have converted/adopted vehicles that run on electricity generated from nuclear, coal, solar/wind/hydro etc. Nitrogen fertilizer can be made in a plethora of ways, such as from natural gas which has become an order of magnitude more plentiful with the advent of fracking.

There will almost definitely be difficult times as the economy shifts to new technologies. Though mass starvation is hardly a threat when the developed world has vast resources in knowledge, capital, and technological innovation.

>>3970813

On top of that we could convert our Highways and roadways into powergrids...using plastics. For example underneath the plastic exterior could be a sun panel...although since Black absorbs more light it might be beneficial to use that. Also it would be beneficial to build our buildings as energy efficient as possible. I've already got some ideas that could improve our households in such manners.

>>3970836

But that would mean that government would have to sell off roads to pay for something like this and you know that means that evil privatization of roads would be pushed by crazy libertarian kooks.

>>3970612
I haven't been on /sci/ in a while, but the content of your posts are nothing but insults and refusal of that which doesn't agree with your narrow world view. You think it is everyone else who is blind because they are looking for solutions to the problem you won't shut the fuck up about. Yes, peak oil is an issue. No, economics will not be able to solve it without working with science. On top of this, the best counter-arguments I've heard to peak oil are directly rooted in economics, we have plenty of alternative energy, they just won't be mobilized until those corporate fucks have milked oil to the last possible drop.

>>3970834
> Though mass starvation is hardly a threat when the developed world has vast resources in knowledge, capital, and technological innovation.

Knowledge, capital, and technology don't actually CREATE ENERGY. How many fucking times do you have to be told that?

>>3970874
The knowledge to build a nuclear reactor, the capital to fund the materials and skilled labor to build it, and the technology required for it to work all literally create energy, Mr. TYPES in CAPS ZoMgS.

>>3970867
> Yes, peak oil is an issue. No, economics will not be able to solve it without working with science.

But it can't be "solved". Your idea of a solution is to continue gulping down more energy than we can economically obtain from the planet. No amount of working with science will arrive at an economical solution.

ECONOMICS is the blind spot of /sci/.

>>3970874
You're a little slow, aren't you? They help develop and improve alternative methods harnessing/converting/capturing energy.

>>3970753
>FROM THE FUCKING CONSUMERS, which you people are.
Posting from a computer that is likely mass-manufactured running on what is more likely a corporate operating system

>>3970886
Except the thing is, you know, that tapping the atom provides more energy than manipulating chemical bonds, by several orders of magnitude.

>>3970886
We aren't even close to the "energy we can economically obtain from the planet" and when we reach that, I intend to move to a bigger scale. This is about the advancement of human technology. Nothing we could ever do would be unnatural, don't stop running till you're sure the race is over. On that note, I have to go to class, wish I could stay.

>>3970882
> The knowledge to build a nuclear reactor, the capital to fund the materials and skilled labor to build it, and the technology required for it to work all literally create energy, Mr. TYPES in CAPS ZoMgS.

All those functions require an oil-fired society to get into motion, which you are rapidly losing. Again, you cannot create energy, retard.

Your growth has clearly stalled and by no coincidence at all, the stall happened at the time of Peak Oil. Really, the first stall happened at the time of American Peak Oil. Then the second stall happened at the time of World Peak Oil. There is no larger entity to take oil from, than the world, hence you're stuck. We're all stuck. It's all downhill from here, with plateaus where more of you will scream "see, it's not declining", and then it all DECLINES again.

The end is already written. Increasing costs, increasing desperation, and then war, War, WAR.

>>3970900
> Except the thing is, you know, that tapping the atom provides more energy than manipulating chemical bonds, by several orders of magnitude.

Inarguably, but that was never the point when I used the term "PRACTICAL" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, to focus your retard-like lack of attention.

If such power sources were so practical, we'd have them everywhere. But they aren't, hence we don't.

And battery tech sucks and will always suck. Battery tech has so lagged other high-tech products that you should hang your retard head in shame at being so obviously conned. HENCE, electricity only has so much use. We're not going to be powering an automotive culture with it. Only a minority will transition to electric cars. The rich will keep using powerful gasoline and diesel. Everyone else will be walking or bicycling.

>>3970919
I think you misunderstand how simple the LFTR is. We don't have them everywhere for a variety of reasons. Namely, the development of nuclear energy during wartime (thorium being a fuel that is horrible at providing material for weapons), and the subsequent regulatory capture of the NRC. It is not in the current nuclear energy industry's interest to deploy these kinds of reactors, keeping in mind they sell the current reactor technology at a slight loss to lock in a fuel contract. They make their money on the Uranium.

Why does this Violent Simians guy not respond to the LFTR guys?

Why does he insist that the oil overlords and general powers that be would be so short sighted as to not fuel and seize research and property on the alternatives themselves to keep afloat?

Why does Inurdaes and the rest of /sci/ keep responding to him if they are convinced that he is an unrepentant troll?

>>3970939
eh, it's good practice for irl conversations. You'd be surprised how many pants-on-head retarded ideas about nuclear are out there.

>>3970939
> Why does he insist that the oil overlords and general powers that be would be so short sighted as to not fuel and seize research and property on the alternatives themselves to keep afloat?

Because they are the most alpha-natured of our Violent Simian race, hence they act the most illogically of all.

Of course, face facts: All the rich believe they are better than the rest of us, and in fact that they have the wealth necessary to escape whatever common doom that arrives for us. And for a minority of them, they are correct. So they all adopt society-killing policies.

>>3970956
>mfw China

Cry moar.

>>3970956
Observe how he ignored the LFTR part of the post.

>>3970789

>The financial crash was not due to lack of foresight, regulation and common sense.

haha.

>>3970910

Imagine if, instead of $3 trillion dollars wasted in Iraq, the US had invested in stirling dishes, which require very few exotic materials, unlike PV panels.

Then you would have absurdly cheap energy and would not be beholden to anyone else in the world for energy.

>>3971033
That's a very interesting observation, I think.

>>3971033

People who keep saying that thorium is the future are just armchair idealists. There's no working thorium reactor to date even though it has been in development for over half a century. Though several countries right now are developing the reactors, they're only experimental.

Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power
http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/thorium2009factsheet.pdf

Electric vehicles have the support of green tech advocates. However, their prohibitive cost and bulky batteries prevent them from being practical, not to mention their poor load-bearing capacity. If they're so efficient in regards to energy consumption, commercial and governmental entities would be the first to use the technology because it would cut costs, but as of yet they're not still being adopted. The shortcomings of battery technology is best illustrated with the electric aircraft that's being developed. Those that can fly long distances are unmanned because of load issues and those that can have pilots can only fly a few kilometers.

One fact that many people keep overlooking that is that almost any technology that is worthwhile and practical will have almost immediate use when it's first discovered and is improved up continuously after development. Examples of such technology are nuclear fission, gasoline engines, and computers. It didn't take long for these discoveries to become commercialized on a large scale. On the other hand, technology like thorium power, solar power, and EVs are still impractical for general use despite a long time of development after their discovery.

>>3971236

www.edison2.com/blog/

Why don't they just hand over projects like solar energy and electric cars to the military instead of civilian research?

>>3971236
http://energyfromthorium.com/ieer-rebuttal/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_ether

I accidentally your whole argument with 2 links, is this bad?

>>3971236
Eh?

It took 100 years to get from babbages difference engine to a working computer.

>confirmed moron

>>3971260
>http://www.edison2.com/blog/
Seems like they're struggling to boost the efficiency figures by improving the aerodynamics and reducing the gross weight of the vehicle. These small optimizations are just horizontal development. I want to see some examples where EVs are put into large-scale commercial use without gov't funding.

>>3971328
>Why don't they just hand over projects like solar energy and electric cars to the military instead of civilian research?
If the military isn't interested in a particular technology, then it's likely not worthwhile.

>>3970939
>Why does he insist that the oil overlords and general powers that be would be so short sighted as to not fuel and seize research and property on the alternatives themselves to keep afloat?

Because we can look and see that they're not doing it.

>>3971372
The computer age really began when electronic computers were first developed and put into practical use. Scalability was main technical hurdle, which had be easily solved and improved upon. But with green tech, the problem is they just don't produce practical results and there is hardly any vertical development. Scientists working on them keep saying that there needs to more testing, development, and funding despite of the obvious dead end.

>>3971413
Why would companies reveal their trade secrets?