Posted on 09/10/2003 7:32:46 AM PDT by presidio9
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:16:31 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
You probably even believe that propaganda about airplanes being safer than cars, which are bad enough.
Um, having read your post, I disagree. No you are not a man. A man does not pull his hair out inventing problems and thinking about what could go wrong. Especially when he (or is it she) clearly has no idea.
Most amazingly, you continue to rant and rave about the dangers of nuclear power, yet you still have not outlined any possible threat it could pose. You are unfamiliar with the physics involved, and that scares you, but that is not sufficient justification for cutting off what is currently 40% of the power used by NY City, and destroying our nation's economy.
It is no longer an option to pull the covers over our heads and wait until dawn. Much of life must be lived after dark. Babies are born.
I can't believe you called yourself a man.
Seriously though, please tell us in what way you think nuclear power could be a threat to us. We are all anxious to hear what such an intelligent and completely sane person such as yourself thinks on this matter.
I am done with you.
That's the problem, chimera, it's too complicated for people to understand.
I once planned on being a scientist; I believe I am fairly well equipped to understand much of what you say--but I haven't the time to spend hours giving myself a refresher course on nuclear physics, especially when it isn't necessary: The fact that this is a complex subject invites human error in its execution.
This error can take many forms: from errors in experimentation to errors in calculation to errors in management to errors in construction to errors in how much radiation exposure is harmful to people and to the environment.
I have done all of these things.
And you and your science may indeed be correct.
And maybe utilitiy workers and government inspectors can get lucky and run these reactors without making a mistake as sometimes happens in our utility bills . . .
But experts have often told us something is safe--and then we're all sometimes surprised to learn it is not safe.
So, what is the general public to believe?
The more complex becomes our lives, the less effective democracy becomes--the more we are vulnerable to manipulation, the less empowered is the individual, the more freedom each American will lose.
But no matter: I can see the futility of expecting that anything can stop the march of technology--this country will never stop population growth from immigration, which is the major source of shortages of all kinds, shortages which beg for ever more complex technological solutions.
Immigration won't stop because the elites--who already have the population of this country bamboozled--make their money from immigration.
(As regards by previous post to you: If we cannot live our waking lives between sunset and sundown, then there is something wrong with the way we are living our lives--not that that may be correctable for most of us; but at least let us not diverge further from our evolved path than we must.)
As to uncertainties in designs, calculations, modelling, etc., all of that is true. What we do in engineering, from the aspect of safety of systems and personnel, is to make allowances that incorporate the widest credible range of uncertainty. For example, in nuclear plant design, the systems are designed to withstand seismic stresses that would result from an earthquake at least twice as powerful as any in recorded history for the region the plant is located in. Does that mean that we exclude the possibility that an earthquake more powerful than that would strike? No, but what it does mean is that if such comes to pass, we're probably going to have other concerns than if the nuclear plant containment suffers a hairline crack or two. There are other examples of conservative designs that we could mention.
As to the issue of complexity of technology, individual empowerment, acceptance, and the like, history shows us that public acceptance is something that may take time, whether or not in-depth understanding accompanies that or not, but is not something that we as a people have allowed to limit or halt the development of beneficial technology. Air travel is a good example. I doubt if a significant fraction of the flying public understands things like the Bernoulli Principle, upon which powered flight depends, or things like coefficient of drag, trim, airflow separation, the fundamentals of jet propulation (i.e., what you studied in physics 101, Newton's First Law), and the like. That doesn't stop them from flying in aircraft. Likewise, the early efforts at widespread electrification were met with some measure of fear by the public. There were people afraid to enter rooms where electricity was wired because they feared that electric current would jump out of the conductors and outlets and shock them. Even today, where use of electric energy is taken for granted (and the absence of it, as we've seen recently, is cause for great consternation), relatively few people understand the things you and I do, concepts like potential and the flow of electrons through conductors, Faraday's Laws, which govern the principles of electricity generation, and Maxwell's Equations. Nonetheless, almost everyone accepts the need and uses electricity everyday.
Becuase what is done, consciously or not, is a risk-benefit analysis. Sure, there is a risk to these things, you might get hurt, you might feel a loss of empowerment, a loss of control of your personal destiny (you literally put you life in the hands of the flight crew when you board and fly an airliner), or whatever. But you've accepted those, because in your mind you've done a subconscious analysis of the trade-offs, and concluded that the benefits outweight the risks.
Your perception of the need for energy, now and in the future, is correct. We can't do without it, and in many parts of our land we need it night and day. Where I live, for example, even if I put the family to bed at nightfall, in the middle of winter I'd still need a significant heat source to survive. We're faced now, and will continue to be in the future, with the need to develop and manage energy resources. Nuclear is one of many that we will likely need to rely on. There may be others developed in the future which will replace those we currently use, and those should be explored. Until then, we'll need to make use of what we have in a manner that allows our society to mantain and advance the standard of living we've grown accustomed to and wish for our progeny.
Here's another scenario. Say we stop all immigration at this moment. Nobody else ever comes in from this day forward, now and forver, world without end amen. Further, say we implement population control strategies that keep the US population constant over time, it neither increases no decreses. Further, we implement steps that keep electrical demand constant. That will probably result in a decreased standard of living and/or technological stagnation, but say we do it anyway. So, what happens in the next 20 or 30 years when the existing base of generating capacity is retured because of age. Where doies the replacement capacity come from? Give you a hint: so-called "renewable" aren't going to handle the load.
Which would be bad enough without having to add another 100 to 200 million immigrants over the next fifty years also using things that require electricity.
Say we stop all immigration at this moment . . . . Further, say we implement population control
Stop immigration and we won't need population control: The birth rate among people born in America is at replacement levels at most (thank goodness for that at least).
Further, we implement steps that keep electrical demand constant. That will probably result in a decreased standard of living
Why should it?
I say tax energy consumption, especially gasoline, up the wazoo like Europe does.
Once people are faced with $6 or $10/gallon gas, we'll have more fuel efficient autos, increased use of bicycles and walking (will make people healthier, smarter, more productive, and lower health insurance costs), and development of othe forms of energy, which currently may be too expensive to compete with gasoline.
But before anyone gets excited about taxing gas: We also reduce income taxation in proportion to the taxes collected from the sale of gas.
and/or technological stagnation
Technology of itself is more often a curse than anything else: let stagnate those technologies that we don't need.
Many people have an unconcious assumption that mankind has some kind of mission to advance himself through technology.
Doesn't make any sense: What animal evolves over millions of years without having perfectly adapted to its surrounds?
Is man alone the only animal so ill-adapted to live that he must suffer on and on through countless generations until finally Thomas Edison comes along?
Doesn't make sense.
To alleviate the dangers and discomfort of overcrowding, we must push technology to ever more complex and potentially dangerous unknowns.
Then add to that each individual's increasing imprisonment to "life on the grid"--and individuality, self-reliance are lost.
That's why people living in the artificial surrounds that are big cities are more liberal than those living in more rural areas (except those rural areas where poverty abounds--there's more than one road to liberal thought).
But it still is a bit murky and perhaps you can clarify exactly what your proposition is. Do you advocate some kind of population reduction scheme so that people can just live where their natural abilities allow them, and have no need for any kind of technological advantage? In terms of knowledge and the advancement of technology, are you suggesting some sort of central authority that exercises control over the acquisiton and dissemination of knowledge? Do you think a central authority should be established so that people are operating at a unirform technologcal level? For example, if those with sufficient wealth can afford a technological convenience, like electricity or automobiles, should they need approval from a government agency for such things, or are taxes to be imposed on such things so that no one can afford them?
Then again, maybe you were born a couple of thousand years too late. Here's an idea. If technology is so bad in your mind, set the example for yourself and others by disavowing it. And start with the device you are facing and using right now, your computer. After all, it is using electricity, some of which may have been generated by, *gasp*, nuclear plants. So write your FR opus and sign off. I'll look for it.
That would be like asking the police to demonstrate they are really against violence by getting rid of their guns.
Much of the horrors implicit in your post are enabled by technology (can you really enforce laws with the technology of a spear and a vast expanse of fruitful wilderness for your subjects to melt into? Dictatorship needs a grid.).
As for Technology itself: I consider it a mostly a necessary evil--not a goal.
Many of its apparent benefits are only worth it because there are too many people competing for too few resources to make do without invention.
Absent technology, it would be overpopulation that would caues most of the suffering.
From communicable disease (dense populations are natural breeding grounds for new diseases) to being forced to live in uncomfortable climates to the overharvesting of naturally occurring food, thereby condeming man to the back-breaking work of farming, and with that the necessisty to defend to the last that land which he now cannot leave (and so modern war is born)
Indeed, I might define overpopulation as too high a population density to allow the loser in an altercation room to run away; when there is no running away, the fights become increasingly deadly.
You're a smart fellow--but you're a product of the age (as I was).
Does it not strike you as odd, that humans alone among all life forms, are so often "lazy" about working?
What life form would evolve to dislike what it must do for survival?
Now if what a life form must do for survival, is not what it evolved to do, then yes, you will have an organism that by nature is reluctant to do it.
What mankind calls recreation--fun--are those things directly related to what he evolved to do to survive.
Play, for example, evolved as a means to practice the skills needed for survival.
So what we consider play, is originally a very important part of existence--we were by evolution endowed with a fondness for play that we would be motivated to exercise our mental and physical faculties in preparation the hunt, to name but one necessary activity.
The further removed we become from such an existence, the more frustration and unhappiness mankind will experience.
I can go on--but why?
I advocate an awareness that we will pay an increasingly awful price by continuing to swell America's population via immigration, which swelling requires we rely more on technology to create lower-quality, watered-down, or more dangerous substitutes for those things become too few to supply the larger population.
We will also face larger government because the more people you squeeze in here, the more high-maintenance life becomes.
We will also be governed by more and more laws, as in dense populations, individual behavior must be increasingly regulated--because there is less scope for people going in all different directions all whenever they individually feel like it.
Did you know, that the population density of the couties won by Bush in the last election, was on average one-fourth the population density of the counties won by Gore?
In densely populated areas-with their different set of problems--liberal ideas sound good.
Sorry if I ramble, but this is after all the largest of subjects--in involves the entirty of human existence--and I'm not being paid to write you a well-organized book; I can only throw out enough ideas for someone to connect them without my help.
Not so much the police as the general population, among whom there may be potential murderers who might be tempted to "act out" what heretofore were just fantasies. The technology that began the computer age started with, you guessed it, military applications. The computation of ballistic trajectories of shellfire, for example, or the targeting of surface ships for torpedo attack, encouraged the development of early versions of calculating machines. Since Clinton did away with actual testing, the present-day method of maintaining the nuclear stockpile relies on computer simulations. So, if any technology can be singled out, it might be the development of digital computing, so you should go off-line ASAP, IMO, to be true to your expressed opinions on said "necessary evils".
Maybe you should read the novel "Nature's End", by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka, who also authored an earlier novel, Warday, which was popular in the 1980s. In their latter story, there is a character, Dr. Gupta Singh, alias for Dr. Augusto Melo, whose idea was for an international movement of "Depopulation". He was supposedly concerned about the "fate of the Earth", the need to return to simpler times, use of "sustainable technology", subsistence farming, and the like. The idea was that on a given date, all of humanity would take a dose of a "medicine", one-third of which would be lethal. They called it "The Draft". That would effect immediate population reduction, after which controls would be effected to keep growth a minimal levels. In this way would mankind return to a more "desirable" state.
Needless to say, such ideas out somewhat out of the mainstream. While conerns about immigration policy can be reasonably debated, I'm not sure that such could be reasonably extrapolated to the point of disvowing the advance of human knowledge and understanding, a byproduct of which is the advancement of technology. Certainly wise management of technology is a valid issue, but elimination of such is a bit extreme. Likewise, the use of energy as a beneficial and labor-saving tool can be discussed in terms that are a bit less extreme. Going so far as to advocate a return to a basis wherein people survive only by their natural skills and within the natural environment they are best adapted to is almost like a classic reducto ad absurdum. As we all know, it's fun, easy, and still was a fallacy last time I checked.
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