Food Riots Made in the USA

That's not true E.D., ever hear of Chernobyl?

And as far as efficient goes, how efficient is a system that produces waste that is so toxic and long lasting that we are having trouble finding places to put it?

Did you know that to counter the growing waste problems they are selling the depleted uranium to weapons manufacturers? With it they are making bombs that will kill and deform innocent civilians well into the next century from all the isotopes they are spewing into the air and ground? If not, please read this.

A valid point. So long as provisions can be made for safe storage of nuclear waste. That being said, its Nevada's white whale, they don't want it, but they wanna keep getting money for it.

Just don't replace your old furnace to save energy.
The old furnaces 70 to 78% efficient, not 50% efficient.
They hardly ever broke down. Parts were cheap.
The new furnaces break down regularly and the parts are modular, meaning that we throw out a module with good parts to remove a bad part. A waste of energy. Modular parts cost more.
So, parts cost more, more service calls, more wasted energy.
In case you wonder how I got to this conclusion.
I have been in the heating business for over 30 years.

rbrazys,

"They have to be held accountable," Rokke said, naming President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and British prime minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons and "totally disregarded the consequences."

Thanks for that link, wow, that is a crime against humanity. All the while Bush is warning us of the evildoers dropping dirty bombs on us, he's been using them on our own troops over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why is it, that with everything this administration claims the enemy is doing, we find out it's really us that's doing it?

Not to mention that the Soviets had virtually no regulatory system in place at all. There were no safety precautions taken, pretty much like most Soviet programs...

Fair enough, I missed 'US', but saying because nobody has died from it doesn't make it safe.
Nobody has died from smoking marijuana but that's considered dangerous isn't it?

I guess my point is that it's the possibility for major catastrophe that makes me think we shouldn't be building new nuke plants at will.

Way to take off on a tangent there. Don't care to respond to the actual point I was making.. maybe you started puffing again...

I agree, they are safer and cleaner but it's also my opinion that until they can implement nuclear fusion in the plants (instead of the messy fission) that we should continue to hold off building more.

In the meantime there are other alternatives that are even cleaner and more sustainable than nuclear power.

Hehe, This conversation has tailed off into one going on here.

We should get back to talking about food shortages, yeah?

Relatively speaking, I would agree that solar is a relatively new technology. However, Solar has come a long way since the 70s. I think at this point another 20-30% cost reduction in solar panels and it can be cost effective and competitive with oil and coal. As for wind, humans have been harnessing wind power for a long time, windmills anyone? Both areas are promising soon and should be promoted by subsidies or tax credits to consumers using green energy. I don't say that these and other ideas are in and of themselves a panacea, but with good planning it can reduce our dependence on external energy resources. Also, wind and solar are not universally applicable, but they do have competitive advantage in certain places, eg Solar in the Southwest, wind in Michigan and parts of the intermountain region, etc.

Now I'm moving from a cold place to a very hot place, does anyone have some good advise for me?

Buy a house with tall ceilings if you can afford one.
Use ceiling fans or really any fans to move air, it feels cooler with less AC.
If you are moving to dry and hot use heat pumps, super efficient for cooling but don't work as well in humidity.
The opposite of wearing a sweater indoors, strip :)
Put shade trees around your house the more the merrier.
South facing windows need blinds or heavy drapes, maybe treated windows anything to cut down letting the sun shine in and roast the inside. In college I put tin foil like stuff in the window and it worked great kinda like you get in cars for the windshield.

I've lived mainly in Texas and for awhile Saudi Arabia so I know a bit about living in the heat.

Thanks Kyle. I've cut and pasted your advise to my scrap file. So far I have installed tinted double glazing on all windows. The place is Hainan, Southern China and humidity is formidable. Heavy drapes? I'd never have guessed, I though they'd just store the heat.

How about developing nuclear fusion and then we all will have enough clean energy for a million years.

Right space guy, fusion reactors are the way to go. And we have to remember that current designs are much safer and more efficient than those of the past...

You want to reflect it back out the window, so heavy and black would be bad but heavy (solid non-transparent) and white would be good. Many white drapes are the little flimsy see through stuff and that doesn't do much good. I use blinds, plastic (pseudo-wood) and thick overlapping so when they are closed it's a fairly solid white wall behind the window.

Hotels do this usually with heavy drapes with white plastic backing so the part facing the window is white plastic and the part you see is some dark pattern. That probably works good, I haven't personally tried it at home.

I like the duel approach, cut my energy requirements in passive ways like building design. Then invest in research for fusion or build outs of nuclear plants to get prices down (amongst other research). I don't think cutting out what we do is a smart way to go about things, we need an advanced and working society to provide the surplus that allows for science advances. Severely cutting mobility, and quality of life is going to reduce what we can spend on science and act as a reinforcing drain until we get nowhere and are all miserable at the same time.

Actually it started with the enviros a few years ago but now the run screaming from any mention of it. Just like the bumper stickers I remember from the 70's during the anti-nuclear craze then. "Split Wood Not Atoms" was popular and it was supporting anthropogenic global warming and clear cutting of forests.

Not real bright.

-we just shouldn't blow things out of proportion and come up with fixes that turn out to be more harmful than the original problem. Or just plain useless.

No indeed, that's what we have Congress for!

Pamela

Sometimes you are just priceless!

(I mean that in the good way just to make sure that you know)