Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: "A.G.McDowell" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:03:19 +0100
In article <46fcdd2a$0$45285$d368eab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mike Van Pelt
<mvp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <1190915787.725184.151680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,(with you up to here)
<Hardcowded@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Let's say you're put at the head of a project whose aim is
to halt and reverse as far as possible the environmental
destruction caused by the human race. What we're talking
about is not just a moonshot, but a multinational
megaproject with a twelve figure budget (that is, trillions
of dollars). Leaving aside for a moment the feasibility of
such a project ever being launched, how would you go about
it technically? Thanks alot!
1) Build nuclear power plants. Lots of 'em. Standardize on
a design, and the standard design is pre-approved, from
construction to operation.
2) Waste reprocessing to remove the plutonium and put it
into new fuel rods.
3) Breeder reactors.
4) Phase out burning coal as quickly as 1-3 allows.
5) Lots of research into electrical storage -- new batteryElectric rail is already known to work, and fits into the sort of
technology, super-duper-ultra capacitors, etc.
6) Build electric cars. 1-3 to provide the electricty to
charge that number of cars, 5 so cars that actually
meet most people's needs can be built.
centralised public safety state that would have the confidence to go
fully nuclear (note that I said confidence, not competence). Looks like
transport and energy are under state control, whether as openly
nationalised industries or corporations linked at the hip with the
government. Nearly everything the ordinary person might want to do will
need some sort of permit (to save the environment, of course). Any
further restrictions the government would like will be found to be
necessary to keep all that nuclear power safe. Well, it's better than
wiping out the human race - I think.
7) Space Solar Power satellites.My guess is that such a state would not fund radical change;
8) Work on putting some sort of insolation fine-tuning
infrastructure in the Earth-Sun L1 point. Yeah, this
requires station-keeping, since L1 isn't stable. We are
probably going to want to be able to fine-tune the Earth's
temperature. Be sure provision is made to both decrease
and increase sunlight reaching the Earth; we don't want
an ice age after we quit burning fossil fuels.
deliberately or not, it would freeze radical research and allow only
incremental change, just as the apparently strange dress of many
religious orders is in fact the commonplace dress of some section of
society at the time of their foundation. Of course, even incremental
changes would eventually creep up on it and give it a nasty shock.
--
A.G.McDowell
.
- References:
- What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Hardcowded
- Re: What would you do to save the environment?
- From: Mike Van Pelt
- What would you do to save the environment?
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