I actually don't doubt the Daily Mail about this particular story. Mining abuses in Africa include some of the worst crimes committed by Western civilization (vide: the concept of "Western Civilization" may be outdated), over things some of us in technology would consider essentially valueless today.
Chocolate is almost as serious a concern as cobalt and diamond. The legacy of colonialism created a food and infrastructure vacuum in Africa which is typically filled by mineral extraction and labor exploitation.
Cryogenic engines burn hydrogen from electrolysis and their fuel can be produced from renewable resources. All their atmospheric fuel is returned to the ocean by the water cycle, so little fuel is lost to the vacuum. Engine tuning limits greenhouse emissions. Magnetic projectiles can reach escape velocity with the right design.
Instead of one giant rocket, imagine swarms of small, reusable, low-emission projectiles whose payloads assemble into larger apparatuses in space.
I think the point is that sufficiently-advanced economies manifest bizarre micro-economies, but that these aren't necessarily earth-shattering. Like, Etherium Cats might be the 21st century Dutch tulips, but perhaps nations don't rise and fall on the values of "delicacies."
Too many variables. I would say, grow the most-energy dense, least land & water intensive crops possible. For the US my understanding is that that would probably entail GM corn, tepiary beans, and squash, on rotation or with companion planting, no till, dryland farming as much as possible.
But then there are economies of luxury and scale, people like fruit, and meat, and spices, and stuff which can't be grown nearby. People cultivate the jackfruit instead of maize, Brazil's trying to extirpate a "jackfruit infestation," and olive trees are sometimes considered "weeds" in Australia.
The Neolithic Revolution is bonkers, basically.
I'm not an experienced farmer, everyone's land is different, and just today I learned that there are parts of the world where bushland edibles are so plentiful that the locals see no reason to farm at all. So perhaps I should shut up now :)
Yes, it is so. Consider that corn was modified to be more resilient but its pollen may be compatible with nearby plants. Hybridization of transgenics with local flora may have unintended and far-reaching consequences. That's why the "Terminator" traits are typically outlawed. No one (eh...citation needed) desires a world where growing the food requires a proprietary compound. I doubt a civilization with a food supply like that could remain stable.
However! I read an interesting study that claimed Bt transgenics are better for food production & the environment because they kill crop pests but the carnivorous field fauna (spiders, horseflies, etc.) flourish with humankind's helping hand.
Whereas I typically purchase non-GMO foods, this revelation caused me to question, and to become ambivalent. No doubt pests would tolerate Bt with time, but in humans Bt is a non-toxic pesticide, and the germlines of the crop pests would probably never recover from the trait's proliferation. At the same time, the carnivorous "worker arthropods" which eat the crop pests would also experience a huge acceleration in their development.
Directed breeding in animals is an issue which has a tighter grip on my heart--some of the stuff that's been done to dogs and cats to "get them to look a certain way" is really messed up. Maybe some look at the fields the same way.
I do not know. It is not my choice. I am glad for that.
when you think about it, it's a bad simulacrum of the social encounter and experience. i use mine as a blog for issues and feelings that have provoked a big response in me but it's far from ideal
Bear in mind that electricity has only been around as a resource for a little while, and civilization will necessarily reorganize to use less and less of it as time continues.
The Jevons Paradox suggests precisely the opposite, so long as electricity becomes cheaper to consume.
That is: the lower the cost of a thing, the greater the induced demand, and hence, the greater to total use.
William Stanley Jevons, an engineer and economist, first observed this concerning coal, in the 1860s.
You'll find this expressed in Jevons' preface to the 2nd edition of his book:
A further class of opponents feel the growing power of coal, but repose upon the notion that economy in its use will rescue us. If coal become twice as dear as it is, but our engines are made to produce twice as much result with the same coal, the cost of steam-power will remain as before. These opponents, however, overlook two prime points of the subject. They forget that economy of fuel lead to a great increase of consumption, as shown in the chapter on the subject; and, secondly, they forget that other nations can use improved engines as well as ourselves, so that our comparative position will not be much improved.
To some extent we are radioactive material on the surface streets of the major cities, because we have consumed soil!! Even our steel tools can be somewhat radioactive, refinement concentrates point sources.
However, containment vessels like that are usually for refined ores, which end up in reactors, smoke detectors, medical devices, radiotherapy machines, you name it. Too expensive and possibly hazardous to airlift.
As far as I know, production of atomic weapons has stopped in this country and we're not even sure if they still work (half-lives--they rot). Could've been materiel for a stewardship program at the Hanford Site, or waste being evacuated from the Hanford Site.
Generally speaking, the remaining atoms transported and transmuted are for peace. That's why Russia brokers Uranium to the States, and why people in Kazakhstan and elsewhere continue to mine fissile ore.
If you were to shut down the remaining fission plants of Planet Earth, civilization as we know it, would end almost immediately, such is our need for these fuels. It would not be pretty--consider the amount of electric heat, the number of electric stoves with 50+ year duty lifetimes. That's why Japan recycles spent fuel at the French reactor.
Waste from the Hanford Site? Why would it be necessary to transport it through the most populous area of WA state? (I'm asking as somebody who has lived near Hanford as well as in the Seattle metro area)
Eh, it also doesn’t make sense since Hanford is a waste storage site...where else could the waste be going, and even if it’s high grade, why does that involve the Pacific Ocean rather than a trip to Utah or neveda in the other direction? I’ll assume that whatever it was, it was unrelated to Hanford, more likely something to do with nuclear submarines or the training reactor they had at UW.
US production has resumed, according to Wikipedia, as Cobalt 60 is coproduced and useful for medical sterilization.
As an aside: There are some people who are very skeptical of both atoms and space exploration. I'm not sure what their motives are but given the amount of steel necessary to produce wind turbines, I'm unconvinced that "renewable" is actually "greener."
"over 20 years, a three-megawatt wind turbine can
deliver 80 times more energy than is used in its production and maintenance." [0]
Beyond that, Steel is 100% recyclable^, and that accounts for over 65% of US steel production. Recycled steel can be done in arc furnaces, requiring no coal coke. [1]
Downvote me if you like but our fuel mix in this country is still ~40% combustion and the calculations on wind power say that at current power requirements civilization will harvest enough energy from the air currents to change the climate again. Maybe it stops hurricanes, I have no idea.
Also, steel, like atomic fuel, is toxic to produce and reprocess!
I know it is much-despised by but I am curious as to the lifetime energy footprint of a fission reactor facility with onsite fuel-reprocessing and waste transmutation. And then? Tokamak. Won't even need a turbine!!
Parts of that system don't even exist yet but me I believe one day there will be clean atoms, fission or fusion, and they will require even less energy to produce and maintain than the wind and solar grid.
But then, I have lived among the fission reactors my entire life. Perhaps I am "mad from the rads" ;)
> the calculations on wind power say that at current power requirements civilization will harvest enough energy from the air currents to change the climate again
?
Wind doesn't circulate through the atmosphere forever with perfect efficiency, it eventually dumps its energy into the ground via friction.
There's no difference between slowing wind down with a wind turbine and slowing it down with a tree, they both end up as heat eventually.
Chocolate is almost as serious a concern as cobalt and diamond. The legacy of colonialism created a food and infrastructure vacuum in Africa which is typically filled by mineral extraction and labor exploitation.