That has got to be the dumbest most racist site I have ever seen.

If I starter a blog things black people like I'd be pilloried.

I'm not a complete moron and am not a racist unlike the person who runs the blog so I never would.

SOme of the stuff we do is absolutely amazing, I mean mind blowingly cool. But some of it is also just retarded. I wish we lived in a world where the best ideas always won out and get the support they deserved. We just don't. Sometimes people write the date as two number to save time. :)

On the other hand it wouldn't hurt to create something like the strategic oil reserve but for uranium (maybe there already is one?). At the worst it would let us keep our current nurlear power going for a while longer and in the best case it might position us well to transition to a nuclear energy economy if one of those breakthroughs does pan out.

The people who say that are relying on a lot of unfounded assumptions. This paper pretty much breaks it down:

Hm...interesting. Going on EAR-1 resources, using current vanilla technology, if we completely switched to nuclear, we'd have enough for less than 10 years at current levels of energy consumption.

Really? The consensus opinion seems to be that we have enough, especially with the possibility of breeder reactors, to last us quite a while.

The people who say that are relying on a lot of unfounded assumptions. This paper pretty much breaks it down:
Nuclear fuel resources

Anything beyond EAR-I is speculative and anything beyond EAR-II is pretty much wishful thinking. People who talk about limitless supplies of uranium are talking about getting it from seawater, an idea which is a long long ways from being anything but dorm room pot-fantasy.

As for breeder reactors, they are essentially an unproven technology. There's exactly one working breeder reactor in the world right now; its russian, 30 years old, and it requires much more highly enriched rods than your usual reactor. That's not encouraging.

Fuel for nuclear fission is no more plentiful than oil. Now if someone actually develops a cold temperature fusion we can talk, but in the mean time nuclear is a dead end.

Really? The consensus opinion seems to be that we have enough, especially with the possibility of breeder reactors, to last us quite a while.

Obviously, I'm ignoring issues such as nuclear waste, etc. If it means the end of civilization, or accepting significantly higher risk than what I'd like, I'll take the higher risk.

And, before I get accused of being ignorant of basic economics, of course I do not believe that we will wake up one day and be "out of oil". I realize that instead there will be a steady increase in the price of oil, which will spur R&D in better extraction methods, and alternative sources of energy.

The problem is that oil, by itself, fuels so much of our economy and so many aspects of transportation and manufacturing that all you would need is one really big spike in price and the whole system could implode. It wouldn't even have to be that long a spike. How many people on this board could survive a week if gas prices spiked to $20 a gallon? Keep in mind your local store isn't going to have any goods, because they can't afford to with transport costs so high. Do you live within walking distance of farms sufficient to feed your family? Do those farms by any chance use gas powered tractors to harvest their crops?

We've built our infrastructure into a very tall thin tower. It has two legs- coal (for electricity) and oil (for transportation and plastics). it teeters every time there is a minor disruption to the flow of oil. A major disruption will topple it in a heartbeat.

But hey, don't believe me. Listen to the Chinese. A major portion of their military strategy in case of war with the US is to temporarily disrupt our oil supplies, probably with help from the Iranians:

Assassin's mace

I think we can always use nuclear if none of the other technologies work out.

Fuel for nuclear fission is no more plentiful than oil. Now if someone actually develops a cold temperature fusion we can talk, but in the mean time nuclear is a dead end.

So? Are you so much like Chicken Little that you don't read about up and coming advances? Like...Hydrogen fuel cells for cars? Composite materials instead of mining for ore? CD's/DVD's instead of trees made into newsprint and encyclopedias? There's more but refuting this is tiresome.

Okay, John, let's talk about those.

First up Hydrogen fuel cells. You know how much free Hydrogen there is on earth, John? Zero, essentially. Our atmosphere is 0.000055% Hydrogen gas. By comparison we have over three times as much Methane in the atmosphere. SO where do we get the hydrogen for our fuel cells? Well by electrolysis of water mainly. Add energy to water and you break it up into its component parts (Hydrogen and oxygen.

Uh-oh. "Add energy"? Yeah. Now ten minutes with a thermodynamics text book will help you realize that the energy we get out of the hydrogen can't be larger than the enegry we put into liberating it in the first place.

See where this is going? Hydrogen fuel cells accomplish nothing. Hydrogen is a medium for carrying energy from another source, not an energy source of itself.

"Composite materials instead of mining for oars"? Out of curiosity when you say "composite" wouldn't that in fact mean they are made out of two or more other materials? And are by chance these other materials things of limited quantity?

"CD's/DVD's instead of trees made into newsprint and encyclopedias?" Know what CDs are made of? Plastic and Aluminum. Plastic, of course, comes from Oil. Neither oil nor Aluminum are available in limitless quantities. Furthermore despite the the capabilities of CDs and DVDs world use of paper has not declined and in fact is still going up.

BTW, yes, I am aware of a great many of the near future advances, apparently to a far greater degree than you are.

So? Are you so much like Chicken Little that you don't read about up and coming advances? Like...Hydrogen fuel cells for cars? Composite materials instead of mining for ore? CD's/DVD's instead of trees made into newsprint and encyclopedias?

Well, the fuel for fuel cells still has to come from somewhere. Energy is our biggest problem. As long as we have lots of energy, most other resource issues are not so big.

I think we can always use nuclear if none of the other technologies work out. However, I do agree with Tlaloc that much of the carefree talk seems to be based on blind faith, rather than reason.

And, before I get accused of being ignorant of basic economics, of course I do not believe that we will wake up one day and be "out of oil". I realize that instead there will be a steady increase in the price of oil, which will spur R&D in better extraction methods, and alternative sources of energy.

I just don't have a blind faith that the transition will be so smooth that major upheaval will be averted.

Anyway, like I said, at least there is always nuclear. If we didn't have that, I'd be a lot more concerned.

So? Are you so much like Chicken Little that you don't read about up and coming advances? Like...Hydrogen fuel cells for cars? Composite materials instead of mining for ore? CD's/DVD's instead of trees made into newsprint and encyclopedias? There's more but refuting this is tiresome.

Mostly, though, because the Army made me run.

Whites hate the Army.