[Frank Stearns]

Mxsmanic writes:

John Williamson writes:

At least two casualties, but from steam burns when they were working in
the reactor enclosure. What's scaring the Japanese is the unknown
quantities of environmental damage that may result from the radiation
release, and the way that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they view *all*
nuclear stuff as bad.

The evidence from Chernobyl is that the consequences are not nearly as bad as
feared. Although human beings are still unwilling to enter certain areas,
animals and plants seem to be doing quite well (in part because there aren't
any human beings around to harass them).

Maybe if the tables had been turned and the
Japanese had nuked New York and Washington, the American publiuc would
feel the same way.

The American public already feels the same way, and for no good reason. It's
very disappointing to see Americans ignoring the 19,000 people killed by the
tsunami, in favor of cowering in fright over nuclear bogeymen that have killed
no one and don't even actually exist.

Other countries with more emotion than brains, such as Germany and France, are
making the same mistakes.

The answer is that we all need to use less, starting a decade or three
ago. Keep our buildings closer to ambient temperature, drive smaller
cars, and use public transport and bicycles wherever possible. Long
term, we need to re-arrange society so things and people don't need to
move around so much. Don't replace your home electronics, computer and
cellphone every year or two, but keep them going as long as possible,
which means redesigning them to be repairable.

None of that will help, because the real problem is increasing population. As
long as the population continues to increase, the environment will continue to
deteriorate. Eventually resources will run thin, and there will be wars,
famine, and pestilence to reduce the population. This is inevitable.

With increasing population, no amount of conservation can protect the
environment. Conversely, with a small population, you can waste resources all
you want without doing any lasting harm to the environment. Ultimately, it's
all about population.


IMO, you're quite correct with everything up until the paragraph just above.

Technically the thought is correct, but as a practical matter history proves this
fixed-sized-pie notion not a very reliable model.

In the early 1970s Paul Erlich, et al, predicted dire, terrible things would occur
by the year 2000. Those things -- wide-spread food riots, life spans in 1st World
countries dropping to 45, etc -- never happened.

Just the opposite occurred: we live way longer and are overweight. (Not necessarily
the same groups, but rather as viewed on the societal whole.)

What he and so many others like him fail to consider is the changing nature of
technology and societal trends. Even before huge advances in agriculture, the
carrying capacity of the planet was thought to be 50-60 Billion, where the current
population is around 7B (In 1970 the Zero Population Growth movement had its
collective hair on fire and were predicting a global population of 12B by 2000.)

You could comfortably fit that entire 7B population at suburban densities into a
land mass the size of Texas. Big state, but only a small fraction of the entire
global land mass. As it is now, there are vast, vast stretches of low density rural
settings in many countries.

We are not overcrowded, except in some population centers where that has been the
edict, or the desire of the people who live there. We are not in any way at a
wholesale level of resource depletion, either. And where shortages occur (and as
someone mentioned, signaled via market price spikes), work-arounds or new technology
emerges (assuming its creators have the freedom to make things happen).

Yes, there are finite limits, but we're a long way from many of those limits. By the
time many of the more crucial limits are actually hit, we will have become a
star-traveling race -- assuming we've not done something really stupid, like use
RoHS electronics to control our star ships! g

In terms of trends, many societies are well *below* the replacement bithrate right
now -- Italy and Russia (dangerously so) to name two.

Some of the longer range thinkers view this downward population trend as a major
problem in the next 500-1000 years, but again technology may change those dire
predictions as well.


And if lead is so dangerous, why are car batteries exempt?

Because they go into Green Cars, and boys and girls, don't we all feel good about
Green Cars?

Frank
Mobile Audio
(Another wrist-slap for an OT post.)
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