I'd use mirrors to heat sea water, to produce clean water and steam to drive a turbine to produce electricity, and irrigate wasteland for agriculture. — karl stone

Indeed one could do that. But solar-thermal power hasn't taken off. Mirrors can focus a lot of heat, but not on cloudy days, and not at night.

Your solar to H plan is better.

I think we're getting hung up on the word mortgage. — karl stone

Right; I would just drop "mortgage" from your description. It has too many specific connotations connected to purchasing property or getting consumer loans.

There is no political will — karl stone

Where there is no political will, nothing happens. Period. Your plan is going to require plenty of political will too. I don't know exactly when political will is scheduled to arrive. It had better be pretty damn quick or we are totally screwed.

What's the obstacle there? — Jake

No new technology springs out of the box and takes over the market. It tends to take around 50 years (rough figure) for a new technology to fulfill its market potential. Take automobiles: The first autos had few roads designed for autos. There were few service facilities. The machines were not terribly reliable, and in crashes they just shattered (talk about unsafe at any speed). They were not terribly easy to use. One had to turn a crank to get them started. It took more than 30 years for everything to fall 1/2 way into place. A really good auto-friendly highway system wasn't built in this country until starting in the 1950s.

Passenger trains followed a slower course: The good old days of passenger travel were terrible. The railroads didn't make passenger travel comfortable or convenient. Where transfers were necessary one often had to walk quite a ways from one station to another. One might have to stay overnight to catch the next train. Dining cars didn't exist until late in the game. Ditto for comfortable Pullmans. We're talking... roughly 50 years between the first trains and comfortable trains (at least for the hoi polloi.)

The really luxurious trains waited until after WWII. It was a short-lived paradise. Roomettes rather than bunk beds; splendid dining cars; cocktail lounges; sightseeing domes (west of Chicago) and air conditioning were the new standard. this regime starting running down almost as soon as it began. The railroads never made a lot of money hauling passengers, and by the 1960s a lot of the roads were going broke hauling anything. (A long history of bad management finally killed a lot of railroad companies off.)

By 1970? Amtrak was created to take over a ghost of passenger travel. The promise of railroad travel began around 1840. It took about a century to finally become really nice, and then it died (all this only applies to the US.)

Soooo many books, soooo little time. Be aware that you can read a lot and still be stupid, and read sparingly and be quite wise.

Start and stick with the classics. should you read Shakespeare? Don't know. There are other writers contemporary with Shakespeare who wrote some awfully good stuff. Like Love III by George Herbert b. 1593) Just three stanzas. Read often.

James Boswell b. 1740 (dictionary compiler Samuel Johnson's biographer) wrote great prose. In one case (from his Journals) he tried to save a fellow condemned to hanging for theft (this was the 18th century) by attempting to revive the unfortunate fellow after the hanging. Didn't work.

Don't miss Samuel Pepys' diary (b. 1633) for a candid report on the daily affairs of a man on the make.

Tolkien. LeGuin. Many works of science fiction. The short stories of Flannery O'Connor. Emily Dickinson. Henry James. Kurt Vonnegut.

Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot is one of the best Victorian novelists, imho. Dickens, of course.

Hawthorne, Poe, Steinbeck, Philip Roth, Thoreau, some of Walt Whitman (his long poems are a bit much today). Sample stuff from the beats: Some of Alan Ginsberg's poetry is magnificent.

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
... — Allen Ginsberg

Is Cormac McCarthy a great writer? Don't know, but his The Road was one of the most unforgettable apocalypse stories I have read.

How about On the Road by Jack Kerouac? Moderately interesting.

Margaret Atwood's Madd Addam trilogy; the Handmaid's Tale.

on and on.

So you didn't get it right on the first try. So what? — Jake

Visionaries very often work alone. When they start working with other people, they start receiving annoying (but very useful) new information, and their vision or invention improves. I suspect Karl has spent a lot of time working on this alone. It seemed like a compete and perfect idea. The trouble with sharing one's bright ideas is that they aren't always immediately recognized as brilliant. Quite annoying, really.

Crank, your financing plan is built upon an asset with market value, solar generated hydrogen. Karl's financing plan is built upon an asset that can't be used, and thus has no market value. — Jake

I'm hoping that Karl will see there is a real alternative to mortgaging oil in the ground.

I blame primates. Had they opted to stay in the trees and not evolve, we wouldn't have all these problems. Alas, they did. And alas, they didn't evolve far enough fast enough. While we are able to split the atom, spot planets around distant stars, and create many things of beauty and utility, we retain a good deal of our primate nature. (Remember, chimp DNA is almost the same as ours.)

When Lise Meitner was walking through the winter park thinking about whether the atom could be fissioned, it did occur to her that a great deal of power would be released. She, being a very smart primate, was pleased to see that the equations she had sketched out worked. It didn't occur to her to burn her notes and say nothing about it. She reasoned her way to identifying fission as a possibility; others could and would do the same thing, sooner or later. People like Meitner or Rutherford, who discovered the proton earlier in the 20th Century, weren't thinking about bombs. They were just doing their physicist thing. Which is of course what your are pointing out: smart people just doing their thing risks our undoing. That, and completely ill-willed assholes doing their thing...

We primates are capable of worrying about our present situation, and maybe the immediate future of our children -- but we are not capable of practically thinking 100 years or a thousand years into the future. Most of us are "detail" people. Even people who see the Big Picture fail to see a big enough view of what's happening.

Our deficiencies are not personal: they are a feature of the species. If we had 20/20 vision into the future, we'd be paralyzed with fear. We wouldn't be able to do anything. We know that we are primates, but being primates prevents us from fully utilizing that knowledge. Just because we know we belong to the primate family, doesn't mean that we can do anything much about ourselves.

Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology. — karl stone

If solar generated hydrogen is a practical energy source (and let's say it is) then the logical place from which to obtain capital finance is the market. Since the technology is scalable, you don't have to finance the final stage before the first stage is built. IF you built the final stage of the project today, had 300 square miles of solar panels and a plant cranking out hydrogen, and freighters lined up to take it away you wouldn't be able to sell much of it because the industrial base isn't ready to receive and use H. What you would do is finance a 10 square mile solar panel set up, located near the right shore, and start producing electricity, drinking water, and some H. The electricity and water could be sold to the nearby shore (i.e., India). The H would have to find its market. The profit could be plowed back into the operation, or used to pay dividends. When you were ready to expand, additional shares could be sold to finance enlarging the plant. And so on down the line.

The usual way to pay for capital projects is either a national subsidy or the capital market.

Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted — karl stone

The oil mortgage plank in your platform needs clarification.

A mortgage is given by a bank because the value of the property can be cashed out if the loan is not paid. Oil in the ground can indeed be mortgaged as long as there is no barrier to its extraction and sale. IF society decides to leave the rest of the oil in the ground, then it ceases to be a mortgageable property.

Once we pump up the last barrel of obtainable oil, there will still be lots of oil in the ground. It just won't be practically obtainable by fracking or any other method. The unobtainable oil has no more value than the immense and lovely diamonds produced on a planet orbiting a distant star.

Your utopian dream is dead. — Jake

We're done. I will not speak to you again. — karl stone

Philosophers, mind your manners! Gentlemen never walk off in a huff.

You both recognize that we face grave problems. You disagree about methods of avoiding catastrophe. Situation: Normal.

If the way forward were so obvious, and were we so dispassionate as to see with perfect clarity, we would have avoided all our problems. As it happens the way forward has usually not been at all obvious at the moment. That's why we spend so much time hacking our way through dense thorns and nettles, not knowing if we are even hacking in the right direction.

A part of our primate heritage has endured through the stone age of hunting and gathering, through the first grain harvest, through the age of bronze and iron, through the dawn of civilization, on into the present moment: the ape's inability to think about long term consequences. Only with great difficulty can we plan 25 or 30 years into the future. 50 years seems to be about the limit. Hundreds of years is out of the question. And 50 years planning assumes that we even see the necessity to plan that far in advance. Usually we don't.

the problem of equality among workers in a socialist state will not be solved by magic. We are not "equal" in physical and mental attributes, needs, personal liabilities and strengths, talents, and experience. We can, however, feel equal as citizens of a community. We all have an "equal share" of citizenship.

Of course, socialism isn't going to come about by magic, either. The struggle to establish egalitarian, fraternal equality is the revolution. Disposing the reign of the extremely privileged-by-wealth is but a necessary step.

An ethos of equality will have to be developed over time; not a long time, certainly. Equality is an urgent goal.

"From each, according to the abilities; to each, according to their needs" is a recognition that personal assets and needs vary. Equality doesn't mean that everybody gets the same sized peanut butter sandwich.

Brothers and sisters: After the Revolution there will be strawberries for everyone!"
A hand goes up.
"Yes, Comrade?"
"I don't like strawberries."
"Comrade", the commissar says menacingly, "After the Revolution you will like strawberries."

It means there is an equality in finding that their needs are met, and their capabilities are utilized, in as much as they can be. The paraplegic has different needs than the athlete. The parents of 3 young children have different needs than a single man. The scholar can not offer the same thing that a dairy farmer can, and visa versa. There is work enough for everyone, and not the same work. There is no point in the scholar sweeping the streets, or the extremely limited intelligence studying.

There must also be an equality of power: Every worker must participate in the exercise of power which is running the society. That doesn't mean everyone becomes a member of the politburo, or something. It means that everyone participates in a central task of socialism, deciding how to meet the needs of the people. Participation on a given day may mean nothing more difficult than responding to a survey about what kind of public transit the individual prefers.

Most of the managing activity in a socialist society should be about substantive material issues. What kind of food can we grow, what kind of breads should be made, how much cotton do we need, are the trains running on time, etc. If the youth decide that mohawk haircuts are just the thing, the people's congress doesn't need to discuss it. Similarly, if learning Esperanto becomes the national craze, so be it. Big C Culture is worth some time. Little c culture should be left to the people to play with.

Could we say that the pure science was hijacked by ideological interests? — Jake

You probably know this story already:

We could say that the pure science took place in a setting that was inherently ideological: Academic physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered the principle of fission in 1939. Meitner fled Germany in 1938 to escape the murderous anti-Jewish Nazi regime. Meitner and Hahn met secretly once after she fled Germany to plan the experiments that Hahn carried out in Berlin proving the theory. It was Meitner who identified and named the process 'nuclear fission'.

Once the results of Meitner and Hahn's experiments were published, a committee of physicists alerted Roosevelt to the discovery.

Who would make the bomb that Germany, Britain, USA, and USSR now knew was possible?

Some research was conducted beginning in 1939 on nuclear fission. But the US was not at war with the Axis powers, and the mood in the country was still isolationist. After Pearl Harbor, the situation changed, of course. There was some evidence (the business with heavy water from Norsk Hydro, for instance) that Germany was seriously pursuing a bomb. In 1942, when the Manhattan Project was conceived, it was not clear that the Allies would be victorious.

Further, not all of the scientists that were asked were willing to work on the project (several guessed what it was probably about), and quite a few of the scientists who did work on it were quite unhappy about it by the end of the war.

General Groves, the superintendent of the project, insisted on very tight partitions of information about the project. Each participant -- top scientist or lowly lab tech -- was only told as much as they needed to know to perform their job. (This was an anti espionage strategy). Quite a few of the scientists did not know exactly what they were working on till late in the game. For instance, the polonium team in Ohio who were working on making the "trigger" for the bomb, a ping pong sized ball of purified polonium, did not know what the little ball was for. A very few of the managing scientists at Los Alamos knew about the ball, and what it was for. Most of the scientists didn't know until the winter of 1945, when they were closing in on the construction of the two bombs.

Well before the first two bombs were ready, it became apparent that Japan would be the target for the nuclear bombs. This was entirely ideological. Initially, a German atomic weapon was an existential threat. By 1945, neither Japan nor Germany posed existential threats to the Allies.

Nuclear power doesn't produce carbon emissions, but it takes half the energy a nuclear power station will ever produce - to build a nuclear power station. All that concrete and steel is incredibly energy intensive to produce, and that's almost certainly going to be fossil fuel energy. — karl stone

This is part of the problem that James Howard Kunstler points out: a lot of chemicals go into making solar and wind power and all the associated equipment--chemicals derived from petroleum. Once petroleum becomes too scarce and expensive to obtain, it will be very difficult to replace all the infrastructure that was made from and with petroleum: plastics, lubricants, solvents, raw chemicals, finishes, and so on. Things wear out, break, burn up, are smashed, and so forth.

It isn't that nothing will or can be done in the future; it's just that manufacturing will have to re-invented for many products (if it can be).

Making the essential ingredients of concrete, like calcium obtained by heating limestone to a high temperature -- are very energy intensive and extensive. I don't see making the large amounts of portland cement with solar or wind.

There is a reason why we used so much coal and oil: It takes a hell of a lot of energy to build all the infrastructure you see around you. We can not rebuild all of it, or even half of it, on a meagre energy budget. We'll get along, but it will be on much different terms than we operate with now.

See from UN homepages, CHERNOBYL: THE TRUE SCALE OF THE ACCIDENT — ssu

I grew up in the upper midwestern part of the US during the entire period of atmospheric nuclear bomb testing Of course fall out from the tests drifted across the continent given prevailing westerly winds. The Soviets were also doing atmospheric nuclear bomb testing during the same period.

As I recollect, people worried about radiation, but we didn't think we were doomed, and no one was getting sick from radiation. We didn't drink less milk (strontium-90 or not). Minnesota has the best overall health outcomes of all the other states, except Hawaii and Massachusetts, with whom we trade off first place position. Good health outcomes are not owing to more radiation, of course, but to social policies and community norms which have brought about less smoking, less drinking, less fried food, better dentistry and better health care.

As annoying as the facts are, animals do seem to be able to tolerate more radiation than I thought. There are some adverse effects on animals living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, but nothing approaching catastrophic consequences. Wolves--the top predator--seem to be doing well there, despite feeding at the top of the food chain. Some birds have, if I remember correctly, developed a mal-aligned beak, not a beneficial mutation. The wolves may not be attaining the same upper age as they would elsewhere.

I wouldn't for a minute suggest that we should be blasé about radiation. Most mass radiation exposure results from sloppy, incompetent, or "public be damned" behavior in the nuclear plants. A good example is a fire at the Rocky Flats plutonium plant near Denver (maybe 30 years ago). The fire spread to the roof and burnt up a number of big filters which were supposed to capture plutonium dust. The fire resulted in quite a bit of plutonium being scattered over much of the Denver area.

Thus, the Manhattan Project is not a truly scientific endeavor. The motives are purely ideological. The scientists were employees of ideological interests. — karl stone

Right. The Manhattan Project was very "scientish" but was essentially a tremendous technological nuts and bolts project. There was, of course, an ideological goal. The Manhattan Project was intended to build an atomic weapon before Germany did. Germany could have, maybe, built an atomic weapon, but they decided they couldn't produce conventional weapons and atomic weapons at the same time. We didn't know that in 1942 (when the project was conceived). By the time the Manhattan Project was finished, Germany was no longer a threat.

"Saving lives by not invading the home islands of Japan" is a claim undermined by the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared heavy bombing--something most Japanese cities were not spared. The were left in a "pristine" state so they could better serve as a test site to measure the destructiveness of the new weapon.

Having achieved the initial goal, it was decided that we needed to go forward with plutonium/U235 bombs and to build a hydrogen bomb (Edward Teller's favorite project) and achieve world dominance in nuclear weapons. So we did. Our monopoly on nukes was very short. Tens of thousands of bombs later...

It is the difference between science as a tool box, and science as an instruction manual. We've used the tools, but failed to read the instructions. That's what's wrong - with everything! It's why we're burning rain-forests to clear land for palm oil production, and cattle ranching. It makes sense ideologically - but in terms of a scientific conception of reality, it's insane, unnecessary, and ultimately fatal behavior. — karl stone

Exactly.

"Read the instructions as a last resort". Now that we have made a colossal mess of things, we've opened the manual and discovered the really bad news.

I'm arguing that our philosophy needs to be updated to match the technological environment, that we need to adapt philosophically to the new reality. — Jake

Say more about that, would you, please.

every non-white/non-male person suffers from racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry and oppression — VagabondSpectre

Somebody on one of the late night talk shows called these sorts of glittering generalities "deepities". They sound a lot profounder than they are. Another example of a deepity is "There is no such thing as an illegal human." Sounds good -- and is even true, but nobody has called "humans" illegal. Illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, illegal this, that, and the other thing, but no "illegal humans".

Given how perverse the incentive structure seems to have become, can we ever grow out of our newfound/newly imposed obsession with outrage? — VagabondSpectre

I think a lot of the outrage, sturm and drang, incessant meme'ery, and so on are a result of the media. It isn't a plot; it's McLuhan's principle that the medium is the message. The high traffic social media are really narcissistic MEdia--emphasis on ME--and not so much social.

Facebook, twitter, and the like are designed to amplify the personal, so that's what people do with it. Recorded sound, film, radio, and television have various effects on the way we experience life. Those media are mostly 1 way: we receive; we do not send.

The Internet/WWW/browsers/email changed that. Now we could receive and send. This forum is a receive and send site. Philosophy Talk (on the radio) is 99.999% receive and about .001% send (the one or two calls and two or three e-mail questions they feature on the show). Send and receive is much more interesting, generally.

So, until such time as social media stops being MEdia. stops doing what the Internet is good at promoting (connecting), or until we run out of electricity, it will probably continue to generate waves of bullshit outrage.

Thanks for opening this thread.

Compare the treatment John F. Kennedy's, Bill Clinton's, and Donald Trump's sex lives received: Kennedy's promiscuous sex life was considered off limits by the 1960s press establishment. Bill Clinton's affairs received extensive, but reasonably restrained mainline media coverage. Trump's sex life news and views is a three-ring circus. Much of the change is owing to the Internet and the large social media corporations which, unlike the old mass media, are focused on the traffic volume on its sites. The old media like the Chicago Tribune and New York Times had a clear and definite stake in what they printed. (They still do, but it matters less.) Outrage, sturm and drang, and high velocity bullshit make for big social media traffic.

What happens now is rapid amplification of resonant outrages. (Resonant doesn't equal reasonable, of course.) And it isn't only the left that is outraged; the right too is outraged. Everybody is outraged because we too are interested in traffic volume, and mere irritation doesn't garner attention.

So I am saying that media is shaping the message. Outrage and non-negotiable demands fly, where modest proposals land with a thud.

I'm not an anti-natalist because I don't accept the central plank in their platform that "having children under any and all circumstances guarantees continued suffering". I have no desire to see our species vanish.

By "resting place" I merely meant that you have gone as far as you can in the logic of promoting H production at sea by solar power. Once you've proved that 2+2=4, people have to either accept the fact or ignore it. There are quite a few examples of 2+2=4 that people seem quite capable of ignoring. Just a simple example here:

The city of Minneapolis, where I live, collects trash, recyclable material (single stream) and compostable material. All that is a plus. We have found that it is very difficult, apparently, for many people to figure out what the difference is between trash, recyclable, and compostable. Signs with words, signs with pictures, signs with actual examples, someone standing behind the bins telling people where the stuff goes -- none of this seems to work with a certain percentage of the population. I think it should be obvious even to morons that a bin with potato peelings, left-over food from plates, moldy bread, carrot tops, spoiled oranges, etc. IS NOT the right bin for plastic cups and aluminum cans. None the less, some otherwise not apparently too-stupid-to-breathe people still don't get it.

If we can't get people to figure out the difference between rotten oranges and aluminum cans...

Seven tenths of the earth's surface is still as rich in metals as when the earth was new. — karl stone

I would imagine that better than 99.9% of the metals that were ever in the earth are still on earth--somewhere. That doesn't mean that it is even remotely possible (in the imaginable future) to get at these metals for a bearable cost.

How will we overcome the problem of metals becoming harder to find in large, accessible quantities?

Take iron, for example. Iron wasn't extruded by magma or volcanoes. 2 billion years ago iron was mostly suspended in water. As cyanobacteria produced oxygen, the O combined with Fe producing an oxide which settled on the sea floors and, in certain places, was concentrated. Other metal deposits were formed by other geological processes. Other metal deposits are formed more directly by geologic activity, plus precipitation and concentration processes. Large deposits just don't occur everywhere.

True, there may be tiny bits of gold, tin, zinc, silver, rare earths, aluminum, nickel, and so on scattered around the globe, but if they were not concentrated a billion years or two ago (or more) then the chances of us getting our hot little hands on lots of it are exceeding small. We aren't going to run out of iron or aluminum tomorrow, but the reachable supply is by no stretch of the imagination inexhaustible.

Take Uranium as an example of a metal with a limited supply: the available unmined reserves of uranium are reported in "millions of pounds" not millions of tons. Were the world to use nuclear fuel heavily, we would find the supply far short of needs.

Ah, I get it now, you’re anti-progress because you can’t keep pace with it and lost your livelihood. — praxis

That's not at all the impression I obtained from Jake.

We currently have the industrial capacity, the intelligence, the skills, and the capitalist economic scaffolding in place to implement the technology, something we cannot trust will be within reach subsequent to any conceivable 'catastrophe first' strategy. — karl stone

Your point above is a resting place. Society has to decide whether to commit, and to which technology. (Society as a whole isn't going to decide -- it's international finance that will decide.) "They" haven't decided to do much of anything, yet, so... we will all have to stay tuned.

We must act proactively, and decisively now - while the capacity exists - or lose the opportunity that exists in sustainable markets of 10-12 billion consumers by 2100. — karl stone

I can hardly wait for a world with 12 billion people.

No, I don't think it will happen but you are 100% right that we have to act proactively. We should be proactive immediately, like 30 years ago. I do not believe that technology and other human institutions can solve the food/water/energy problem by 2100 for 12 billion people. I find the idea rather like the plot of a science faction novel where human kind somehow manages to establish a footing elsewhere in the solar system or galaxy by 2200. At least in science fiction, one knows one is entering a 'created universe' which one either finds believable or not. If it isn't believable, the book will be tossed into the recycling bin.

I can reject abundance for 12 billion people without rejecting your solar hydrogen plant idea. They are not mutually dependent on each other.

You are as doggéd in your defense of the solar powered hydrogen plant as Schopenhauer1 is of anti-natalism. Doggéd persistence is much more of a virtue than it is a vice, but your abiding interest is likely to outrun other people's enthusiasm. At which point one should move on to another topic.

Actually, we don't need to worry about dark-minded terrorists working in gloomy basement labs to cook up something really really bad. It's as likely that bright, sunny laboratories in various countries -- Russia, China, NK, USA, etc. are already working on it, or already have cooked up the witch's brew.

And so has nature. Not to give anyone any ideas, but ebola would work just fine as a bio-terrorism agent. It's ready to go. There are various bird viruses (e.g. influenza) that can be capable killers. For that matter, just starting forest fires would be very harmful. Or importing novel plant diseases that our monocultures of corn are not resistant to. Or selling heroin and meth. So many ways...

I write about it here, on the foremost philosophy forum listed by google - and yet only get replies from wankers. — karl stone

Come now! You haven't gotten responses from wankers; you have gotten responses from reasonable thoughtful people who disagree with you. That doesn't make this discussion a circle jerk.

There is nothing "wrong" with your hydrogen plan, in itself. It's novel, sophisticated, probably do-able. The downside of the Stone Hydrogen Plan is this: we don't have the lead time to achieve this kind of solution before things get much worse.

The FIRST thing we have to do is sharply reduce CO2 production, and that means reducing consumption. We don't have something like 1 or 2 hundred years to do this; we have to start doing this immediately, and we must succeed at it or we're screwed.

While we reduce CO2 production and reduce consumption (all kinds) we need to immediately increase generation of electricity by solar, wind, and hydro. Even nuclear power takes too long to get up and running to be an immediate solution.

IF we make it, IF we reduce CO2 production and consumption sufficiently within 50 years, we will then have the opportunity to investigate long-term alternatives, like generating hydrogen at sea through solar power.

As a fuel, hydrogen is workable, but all new technologies require a substantial lead time. A rule of thumb is that it takes 50 years to invent, improve, and install major new technological systems. (Not 50 years to start, 50 years start to finish.) Industries can start preparing for hydrogen economy now, should that be a choice we want to make. The decision won't be made here, in any case. But thanks to our pig-headed short-sightedness, the planetary environment is in a crisis and the IMMEDIATE task is CO2 reduction, and that as much and as fast as is humanly possible.

I don't know who deals with issues like this in the UK, but in the US it would be the Department of Energy and industrial engineers who have the wherewithal to think about major technological implementation.

If you want to hang the theologians along with the preachers, OK. You'll just need a bigger gallows.

One almost inevitably generates inconsistencies when talking about religion. If one dismisses the whole thing out of hand, announce that it is all hogwash, then one can avoid inconsistency. When one tries to make sense of the whole thing, one is bound to fall down the rabbit hole, at least for a while.

I have a feeling that some theologians actually don't believe much of what is in the Bible.

citizens feel threatened by mass migration — Maw

One of the unfortunate outcomes of a mass migration threat could be defensive war involving population annihilation. It might be nice if all the destination countries joined in welcoming all comers in a "we're all in the same boat" spirit of camaraderie and compassion. That might happen for a while, as long as the numbers are not too high in the beginning. But it probably wouldn't last long.

I don't think there is any group more or less likely to be infinitely kind (or harsh) in response to really high population movements in their direction. It will depend how the destination population views their own situation. If they feel insecure without high population movements, then they may support an aggressive operation to repel the unfortunate people who must move or die where they are.

Is it possible to repel hundred of thousands of people on the move? It is possible, of course. It would just be extraordinarily savage. But humans are capable of savagery, regardless of how they behave when all is calm, all is right.

So, again: the critical effort to control CO2, methane, and other green house gases. (I don't have much confidence the world can get its collective act together soon enough.)

Trump is reptilian, in any case.

There is no mind-body problem. The body (including the CNS) produces "the mind". "The mind" is the noise the brain makes. No brain: silence.

I haven't met that many theologians running around busily deceiving little children. The work of theologians is to train preachers, evangelists, religious education specialist, and the like in the fine points of the divine plot. The preachers, et al then turn around and deceive the innocent. And the world around, in all sorts of religions, they do a pretty good job. Most people end up believing in the gods that everybody else believes in.

Children are dead wringers for deception and all sorts of deceptions are foisted upon them--various big lies and smaller ones. It's a Miracle that anybody escapes total entrapment in the snares and deceits of religion, but remarkably, some do.

Acknowledging that theologians are experts on theology does not mean that theology is "true". The Genesis theogony says God made the world in 6 days. Most theologians interpret that story without claiming it is literally true. (Some think it is literally true.) Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and were driven from the Garden. Theologians interpret this in very different ways. The flood which Noah survived (to become the second progenitor) is also interpreted in various ways.

What is True is that the story of the Creation, Garden of Eden, and the Flood are in the book of Genesis. The stories are not literally true (most theologians agree). What they mean figuratively is open to debate. It's open to debate because (most people assume) God did not sit down with pens and and a pile of goat skins to write his own story. At best, God inspired humans to write the story down. Many biblical scholars (another group of experts) believe that human writers compiled, elaborated on, and composed the stories from various sources. Whether God inspired their literary efforts is for the individual to decide, because there can be no proof of that.

The Bible is the authoritative source of information about God. It is authoritative, but many people do not believe it is "True." That is, it is not factually true about many matters--like the creation of the cosmos.

Theologians say that belief in God's existence, His infinite goodness, wisdom, authority, and power, depends on faith. (Some have claimed that God's existence can be logically proved, but never mind about that now. Someone else will have to rehearse scholastic logic.) If the Theogony in Genesis is not True, then faith is indeed required to accept the Bible as True.

I think we are horses that can be led to water but MUST decide whether it is fit to drink or not. No matter where we begin, I think we are going to come back to this point: The individual, be that you, me, or Stephen Hawking has to make that decision.

Claiming that God doesn't exist doesn't tread upon the toes of theologians. Theologians interpret the scriptures the best they can. They aren't responsible for the scripture's authorship or truthfulness. Do you understand the Doctrine of the Trinity? Ask a theologian. Do you think the Trinity exists (in any way, shape, manner, or form)? You have to decide that. What does the Resurrection mean? Ask a theologian. Do you believe it? You have to decide that.

There is another "layer" here to contend with. The Bible was not written, printed, and hidden away to be found by the Elect who would read it and believe. It was pretty much written by people who already believed the stories they were writing. This is even more true with the New Testament, which was compiled and edited by the church which was already in nascent form when the thing was put together and on the last page they wrote, "The End". The Church wrote its own founding documents. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. It's just a fact, not a criticism.

So, let us say you produce energy from solar power in the desert. How do you utilize it? It has to be transmitted for many miles, and transmission loss can be significant - up to 10% of power per kilometer. — karl stone

I was an English major, so this is way out of my field, but I think you are referencing losses at low voltage. Transmission across long distances is at very high voltage, and losses are low -- less than 10% over long distances. The very high voltage of long distance transmission is stepped way down for distribution to consumers, and the stepping-down occurs in substations not very far from users.

In much of the world, there would be no need to locate solar plants far from users. Indeed, if the solar panels are on one's roof, or near one's urban area, transmission won't be a problem.

So, wouldn't it be the specialists who are best qualified at determining whether the seam of gold exists or not? And if the specialists claim that it does exist, when they really believe that it does not, can't we say that they are for some reason acting to deceive the home owner?

The matter is not as simple as every person ought to decide for oneself whether or not to belief that God exists, it appears more like a question of whether these theologians, who are the specialists, are trying to deceive us. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're right: the seams of gold or oil wells analogy doesn't work, so I'll edit that out. One would need specialists for that sort of thing from the get-go.

Do theologians try to deceive? Well... I would think not. Not because theologians are always pure of heart, always honest, never deceptive, etc., but because they would have little to gain. As I see it, it isn't the job of theologians to convert anyone; that's the job of evangelists, missionaries, preachers. Theologians are academics, experts. Dishonesty would be no more welcome among theologians than it would be among physicists or medieval history scholars.

I will accept that theologians know more about god-concepts than laymen. That is their field of expertise. A theologian (faculty or field practitioner) can explain, bring understanding, make sense of god-concepts for believers.

Theologians are not of one mind on this point: Some think we are led, like horses, to water and are made to drink (by God); others take the view that we are more like horses and can be led to water, but can not be made to drink. On whatever basis, we have to decide to drink.

My god-concept is that god can pretty much do what he pleases. The horses will drink if that is on god's agenda, but the horses are also free to drink when they thirst, literally and figuratively. So it is that we are free to believe, or not -- until such time as time that god decides otherwise.

I didn't choose to acquire the set of god-concepts that I possess. It was handed to me as part of my childhood education and what followed from early instruction and the community intention that we would believe. I have found theologians very helpful in sorting out ideas about god and religion--because I was a believer in the first place.

I don't know anything about Stephen Hawking's early education. Perhaps he received no instruction then or later. He may have been a horse who never came close to the water trough, so never had to decide whether to drink or not. A theologian would be of little use to him. A theologian might say that "god didn't see fit to lead him to the trough, or god was fine with Hawking's disbelief, or Hawking is now rotting in hell, or Hawking was right and god doesn't exist." But that wouldn't help Hawking because he had no belief for a theologian to explain.

A specialist in French is of no use to someone who has never heard or read a word of French.

EDIT: bad example Whether something exists (or not) is the first question we ask about items for which this is not known with certainty. Anyone can think their house happens to be situated on top of a seam of gold or a pool of fine petroleum. Finding the gold seam or the pool of oil is far more complicated; specialists will be needed.

"justice is when everyone minds his own business, and refrains from meddling in others' affairs" — Bitter Crank

Sure; it's none of my business if you prefer Bach or heavy metal. It's your own affair. I have no stake in your becoming a vegetarian or a Methodist. It's not for me to decide whether you should like cats better than dogs, or guernsey cows more than holsteins.

Sometimes, however, the health and safety of the community requires that we meddle in other people's affairs. When we see probable evidence of potential criminal activity (like traffic patterns that indicate a building may be operating as a whore house, or a crack house, or an illicit drug lab) then we should meddle in that buildings owners' and occupants' affairs so far as reporting to the police what we have observed.

I might consider it my business if you are violating the watering ban during a drought. I might meddle in your green grassy affairs by reporting you to the water district. If you have several cars parked on your yard for several weeks, I might consider it worth while to report you to the housing office to investigate your violations of laws about storing dead cars on yards in residential neighborhoods. If I see your children regularly not being in school, I might want to report you to child welfare.

Don't you think that a theologian is more qualified to make statements about the nature of God than a physicist? — Metaphysician Undercover

Most likely, but the question upon which Prof. Hawking expressed himself was "does god exist?", never mind what the nature of the existing god is. Everyone has to decide whether or not gods exist. Of course, theologians are likely to say that god exists -- that's kind of their bread and butter. Theologians are experts on the nature of the god idea, the history of the god idea, the consequences of the god idea, and so on -- but they, like everyone else, have to decide for themselves whether or not god exists. One can be a theologian and believe that god does not exist.

I don't find Prof. Hawking's pronouncements on the existence of god even remotely compelling.

Professor Hawking is no more qualified than anyone else to express his opinion about god, and no less. I have thought god did exist and I have thought god did not exist. But who am I to know either way?

What is important about Stephen Hawking, or Donald Trump, or the Pope and the Dalai Lama is that they are famous people who are readily recognizable by many people. That's why their opinions are reported -- not because they know more about it than anyone else. (well... I suppose the Pope and the Dalai Lama are thought to know more about it, at least.)

From Wikipedia: Antiquity[edit]
The Latin phrase relates to an old Greek principle of justice which translates literally into English as "to each his own". Plato, in Republic, offers the provisional definition that "justice is when everyone minds his own business, and refrains from meddling in others' affairs" (Greek: "...τὸ τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν καὶ μὴ πολυπραγμονεῖν δικαιοσύνη ἐστί...", 4.433a). Everyone should do according to his abilities and capabilities, to serve the country and the society as a whole. Also, everyone should receive "his own" (e.g., rights) and not be deprived of "his own" (e.g., property) (433e).

The Roman author, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) popularised the Latin phrase:

"Iustitia suum cuique distribuit." ("Justice renders to everyone his due.") - De Natura Deorum, III, 38.
[...] ut fortitudo in laboribus periculisque cernatur, [...], iustitia in suo cuique tribuendo." (" [...] so that fortitude (courage) may be seen in hardship and danger, [...], justice in attributing to each his own".) - De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, liber V, 67.
The phrase appears near the beginning of Justinian's Institutiones: iuris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere. (Inst. 1,1,3-4). (Translated into English: "the precepts of law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, [and] to give to each his own".)

So there's a bit more on the phrase.

NOW: How did Marx et al (whoever?) pervert that?

Nazis love a good book burning but they tend to be unpopular in general. — praxis

Praxis, surely you see that there are more choices here than between nothing and Nazi book burning?

Societies have generally proscribed some knowledge till children reach a certain age, or limit knowledge to a certain class of people, or the inner clique. In very simple or very dense societies (hunter gatherers, small village dwellers, crowded and disorganized urban environments, and so on) children have been able to acquire all sorts of information as soon as they were able. The victorian gutter snipe knew a lot of stuff that maybe wasn't age-appropriate, but inquiring young minds want to know. The hunter-gatherer child likely learned how his society worked from an early age.

If I were going to proscribe something these days it would be gadgets with screens: Television, game consoles, tablets, phones... None of these things are evil, but they are seductive, and adults and children alike are sucked into the corporate schemes for monitoring access to eyeballs. Adults and children alike ought to spend more time interacting with other people face to face and gathering information from stable sources. (Facebook is not a good place to obtain reliable information on nutrition, weight loss, exercise, politics, and so on BECAUSE it's a highly unstable source -- information flows into FaceFuck, freshwater spring and sewer outlet both, without any vetting or control. A newspaper website even if the newspaper is second rate is better because the information offered there has been vetted by a stable source.

Won't people get brainwashed and brain rotted no matter where they go? Not necessarily. People who can read at all can read diverse materials which present contrasting as well as overlapping information (and not just opinion). Libraries are valuable resources because books' information change overnight, depending on some lunatic-in-chief in Washington, D.C. tweeting bullshit.

I use screens a lot to access what I consider stable, vetted, reliable resources, and books. Lots of books. You may not like the New York Times or the Washington post, the Guardian or Libération, that's fine. Locate newspapers that you like better (maybe not the National Enquirer, even though their slogan is "inquiring minds want to know".)

Karl, you are obsessed with hydrogen! Take the simplest possible approach.

Your plan is too complicated, too rococo, too many parts, processes, and potential problems. Back up:

There is sun enough and land which is now, and will remain in the future unproductive. These locations are often near or are the same places that a lot of people live. Put the square kms of solar panels there, and supply the needs for energy at hand. For instance, California (39 million people) has desert land near their large population centers. Texas (28 million) has both sunshine and consistently windy highlands.

Minnesota (population 5.7 million) has a reasonable amount of sun, plenty of roofs, and a steady supply of wind. With wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear we could dispense with fossil fuel (Provided, of course, there was parallel rational use and conservation). Some states like New York and New Jersey (population 30 million) are ill favored for wind, but have solar, hydro, and nuclear. Cities are inherently more efficient than low-density suburban, exurban, and rural. Europe (including UK) have all these resources as well.

Take the simplest possible approach. It may not be as intriguing as hydrogen, but it is faster, cheaper, better.

One of the necessities of the future, whether we like it or not, will be the expenditure of more animal power -- particularly our own esteemed bipedal animal power. We use a lot of energy to avoid expending our own energy and time. The auto is a good example. Even in sprawling suburbs, much of what one needs to travel to obtain (food, clothing, medicine...) is easily reachable by bicycle--especially if we converted to bike/mass transit/and a limited number of cars-on-demand. I'm 72 and can still easily travel a radius of 5 miles on a bike, and can make trips of 12 miles, one way, if it isn't too cold (like below 20º F (-7 C) and its not snowing or raining a lot. (Granted, at some point in the not too distant future the radii are going to shrink).

It isn't just the energy it takes to run cars, appliances, gadgets, and so on; it includes the energy to make the objects in the first place, and build and maintain the factories that produce the stuff. Just take a clothes dryer: hanging clothes to dry outside still works very well. Yes, more work but it uses much less energy. A lot of our clothes can be washed by hand because (at this point) we don't get so dirty that a washing machine is necessary. Yes, more work and more time, but the future doesn't mean dirt. (Well, maybe a little more dirt.) People spend a lot of time and energy traveling to gyms so they can maintain fitness. Well... just do the laundry by hand, mow the totally unnecessary lawn with a push mower, and bicycle or walk to the store and you won't need to go to the gym.

Right: this is pretty extreme. But environmental change is going to push and drag us, kicking and screaming, into this sort of regime. People used to live without extensive energy saving appliances ALL THE TIME and they didn't think they were in hell. Might as well get used to it.

how we'd install solar panels on a stormy ocean — Jake

What about ships running into the floating solar plants and wrecking them. Ships? What ships? Do you think there will still be shipping once we're reduced to collecting electricity on the surface of the ocean?

We need to think much bigger. The kind of cutting edge thinking we need more of is building the space elevator; electricity can be generated in space and sent down the massive cable holding the space elevator.

Once we have the space elevator in place, we will be able to build the large sun shade for the earth. We'll also be collecting asteroids and dragging them into orbit around the earth. They'll be hollowed out and will become Cities In Space where they will be able to provide for all of their needs and wants without having to rely on earth and its sketchy politics.

Next we'll build the Dyson Sphere and then we'll have all the free energy we could possibly want.

So you see, Jake, that with the right approach, global warming is really nothing to worry about.

I don't know for sure -- so why am I bothering to respond then, one might ask? Just to say that it is my impression that hospitality has been part of the general semitic cultural norm for a long time. (Semitic includes both Arabs and Jews). Remember, part of the problem with Sodom and Gomorrah (gay slogan: Sodom today, Gomorrah the world) was a lack of hospitality.

I've listened to NPR for years, but must admit they too have become just more breathless recycling of the latest melodrama.

Best I can tell, BBC has more international coverage, more in depth coverage, and far fewer ads. I just wish they'd learn how to speak proper English without the accents like we Americoons. :smile: — Jake

Of course the BBC programs you are listening to come from the BBC world service, so there should be a lot of international news there. What the local BBC sounds like, don't know. Yes, NPR distributes some good programming, but it isn't as good as it was say, 20 years ago; it wasn't as good 20 years ago as it was in their Watergate heyday. We're probably lucky they exist at all.

But then, I'm not as good as I was 20, 30, or 40 years ago, either.

Maybe what should be missing from political discourse is you and me? — Jake

Emerson thought that reading a newspaper once a month was sufficient. For large topics, like global warming or Washington paralysis, reading a newspaper once a month is still sufficient. If you want to know about the latest disaster, then sure, you need to check in twice a day, at least.

If you want to be informed mass media isn't going to help too much. One has to read carefully selected books. The "knowledge explosion" is more of a fire cracker than an atomic bomb. What has exploded about real knowledge is detail. Evolution was news. What we have been reading about since are the details. Discovering DNA was news. Finding a lot of Neanderthal DNA in British royalty is a detail. I'd rate the Pluto fly-by as news. Launching the Pluto mission many years earlier was a detail. If I start bicycling from Minneapolis to Tierra del Fuego, that's a detail. Actually arriving would be news.

Some disasters are news. The record breaking earthquake off Japan that produced the huge tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant and killed tens of thousands people was news. Hurricanes are news only in so far as they reveal the stupidity of rebuilding cities on flood planes and on low-lying beaches, despite their getting wrecked every now and then.

It might relate to a fluctuating ego also — Andrew4Handel

If I remember correctly (it's been a long time) Freud's concept of the ego was the "I" who negotiated between the rude impulses of the Id, and the demands of the socially oriented Superego. The Id wants what it wants when it wants it, and the Superego is the nagging voice, sometimes shrill, of what we OUGHT to do, because that is what is appropriate, proper, right, good, nice, etc. Id, Ego, and Superego come into conflict because we are social beings, and other people (who also have Ids, Egos, and Superegos) aren't going to let us have just what we want. You may want to eat all the cookies yourself, but so might several other people. If you do eat all the cookies (before others can make a play for the whole batch) you will be denounced.

Other people are not going to let us deviate too far out of the mainline without lettings us know that we risk becoming unacceptable, unlikeable assholes. The Superegos are oriented toward maintaining law and order, and making sure that the rules of etiquette are followed (if at all possible).

So, getting back to your question... why do our egos end up feeling like flat tires? It seems fairly obvious (but "obvious" doesn't mean "easy" or "simple"). If we are not aligned with the demands of society, we will get a lot of negative blowback. We may tend to be excluded from the group we identify with or are surrounded by. We are likely to feel degrees of exclusion, isolation, alienation, anomie, and so on.

Sometimes the only "true, right, and good thing" one can do is buck society but there will be costs, sometimes quite high.

The solution is to find a group with whom we can be congruent. That's not always easy; and besides, groups change, we change, and comfort levels can change.

On a personal note, I've found the most congruence with gay men, socialists, and other 'deviants'. Of course, the society of deviants can be very demanding too. Take the wrong approach and socialists can become very chilly, for instance. I'm kind of an odd ball so I get along best with people who are pretty tolerant.

When I have been immersed in unfriendly crowds (like at some workplaces), my ego has definitely suffered, and I didn't do well, flourish, perform as I might have, and so on.

If there is something wrong with you or me, it might be an unwillingness to align with the dominant paradigm. It may be true, right, and good to remain out of alignment -- but you have to find a way of taking care of your self, and not getting crushed.