Metsfanmax wrote:
. 100 years is just a timetable for when they'll become commercially viable (and a rather pessimistic estimate, at that). And do you know why it's taking so long? Because governments aren't putting much money into it. I'm well aware of the current issues with fusion reactors. That's why we need to continue using nuclear fission reactors until fusion can take over.
And why aren't they commercially viable? Economics. Something you completely dismiss and seem completely ignorant of. It's not because governments aren't putting much money into it, it's because governments don't have the money to put into it.
At least not to the levels you seem to think are needed.
To develop things we have to expend resources, resources that must be diverted from other areas. People want free health care, free housing, free food, free everything, but nothing is free, even the development of technology. Well, what's to be sacrificed? Something has to be sacrificed if you want to develop said project.
But nobody wants to sacrifice anything. Including yourself I'd imagine. At least nothing important (by your own reasoning) that is.
metsfanmax wrote:You seem to be ignorant of the fact that fission energy provides a significant fraction of the world's power needs. The reason why that fraction isn't close to 1 is not because we can't do it. It's because we don't want to (mostly for poor reasons).
You seem to be contradicting yourself. "fact that fission energy provides a
significant fraction of the world's power needs." and then "that fraction
isn't close to 1".
LOL
And it's not because we don't want to, it's because the economic cost doesn't justify it. Conditions may/will change one day, but until then, you think we are going to transition from coal, which powers 1/3 of the US's electricity (hey! That's
substantial, LOL) with fusion which provides, how much did you say? "The reason why that fraction isn't close to 1".
And that's only talking about the US, other places in the world use even more coal.
Good luck with that. You know, if you just turn off the coal, outlaw it and make fusion the only legally available power source, I bet we'd go pretty quick to said power source. Oh, wait, no we wouldn't, because people would riot and hang you from a tree before that would be accepted. And with good reason.
metsfanmax wrote:You're playing semantical games to try and win a pointless argument. The adverb "perfectly" in that sentence implied that it could provide fully 100% of our power needs, not that it would lead to some sort of utopian society and would never have instances of failure.
And you just keep ignoring that the cost to go to 100% power is a more daunting task than even developing truly safe power supplies. You don't seem to appreciate nor understand the cost. How quickly do you think humanity could actually convert?
Lemme give you a hint, you'll be long dead and gone before it ever happens.
metsfanmax wrote:This optimism I have is bred by a much more insidious pessimism;
More like indoctrination I'd suspect the reason for your reverence and religious fanaticism toward technology.
metsfanmax wrote: I fear that we will leave our planet in ruin at the current rate at which we consume natural resources.
It's lucky for you that's your fear. If left to your ideal way then most people would be fearing how they'd find their next meal or keep from freezing to death come winter time.
It's nice to worry about things that you have absolutely no control over. Why don't you do the right thing and consume less resources? I mean that's all you really have the power to do in life, to live as you see fit.
Don't try and justify taking such a thing away from other people. Like your idea of if you were in charge to set mandatory limits to child bearing as if you've even considered the impacts of such a line to take. Which you haven't nor have any idea of.
metsfanmax wrote: Technology may not solve the problem, but it's the only solution we do have that doesn't involve a massive die-off of our population. If you aren't convinced of this fact, then I don't think the extent to which we depend on non-renewable resources has sunk in for you.
You think there's never been a massive die off of the human populations before?
Don't you realize that such die offs are a natural phenomenon? Every species is subject to this truth and human beings are no exception. Should such a thing keep you awake at night?
I should hope not, 'cause you won't ever get much sleep...
metsfanmax wrote:And as a scientist, I have good reason to be faithful in what we can achieve. Humanity has shown time and time again that when we put our best minds on a problem, we get a solution.
Which leads to more problems which leads to more solutions which leads to more problems. It's called life. The things you wish for will come to pass one day, but you won't be able to rush it. You can't legislate it into being as you seem to think. We can't just wave a magic wand and it all comes into existence, into being.
It's a process, you'd rush that process if you could. Which would lead to unimaginably horrible consequences and would not result in the desired outcome. Take some economic classes and consider the allocation of resources and better ways to allocate said resources.
That's the real key, the core issue to our problems (IMO) and until that gets taken care of all the fairy tale stuff you dream of and your Disney lens view of technology will only take that much longer to achieve.
metsfanmax wrote: Sometimes adopting that solution is challenging and dangerous when it first comes into existence. Electrifying the nation led to some accidents too, and people still get electrocuted to this day (far more people than die from radiation). That's the nature of new technology. It will fail sometimes. But we get better and better at managing the risks as time goes on, and the benefits always far outweigh the risks. As a wonderful article I read once pointed out, if you lived near Three Mile Island when its 1979 accident occurred, the chances of you getting cancer and dying from radiation were smaller than the chances of you dying in a car accident while you packed up your things and drove away from the reactor.
Your strawmen dribble still shows a lack of understanding.
You want renewable resources to become economically viable sooner?
Start with the debt based money system the entire world uses. Talk about a challenging and dangerous proposition in enacting, something you probably can't even imagine. Except, there have been times in our history, that is the US's history, when we didn't have a debt based monetary system and guess what it was like?
The Wild West of innovation, new ideas and experimentation.
Ethics were probably a bit lacking, as was safety, but lemme tell ya, people were finally free to pursue ideas and dreams without the massive costs of today.
You wanna fix the rotted house? Start with the foundation. Economics: the production, distribution and allocation of resources. Until you tackle that dog, any idea you have better not only provide a service to humanity, but more importantly, it better show a profit or it ain't ever going to see the light of day. And none of your praying to the Technological Gods will change that until you change the core system of how human beings produce and distribute resources.
Something the Progressive, the liberal, Politicians and general population haven't ever seemed to grasp.
But, in closing, I'm reminded of what Master Chief constantly tells Cortana over and over again-
"It'll be all right"Good words to remember. Stress away your life if you must, but it's gonna be all right. Just concentrate on doing what's right for your life and leave others to do the same.
Gardens grow better when neighbors stay out of each other's gardens.