The World As I See It

[megalomania]

The Middle East. 5000 years ago they were the greatest society the world has ever known. They had the most evolved legal system, the greatest technology, the most advanced medicine, but then the world passed them by. Sometime between now and then the Romans, then the Europeans, then the Americans surpassed everything they ever built.

They never got over that, worse still they were no match for European industrialization, it was like they never tried. They still lament this fact even today; once they were great, and now they are not. They went from the most advanced civilization to one of the worst, a cesspool of poverty and antiquated ideas and laws.

I ask myself why we care about them today. I ask why do they care what America does. Have we ever gone to war with them? I don’t think so. Do we have military bases on their land? I would have to say no. Why then, as others have been asking lately, do they hate us, but more importantly why do we care?

At first glance I would say it all leads to oil. Oil is the one reason we so much as glance in their direction. They have no land to raise crops, no trees to make lumber, no lakes to fish, no mountains to mine, no scholars to learn from, no technology to benefit from, nothing but dirt and sand. And oil. The industrialized world depends so much upon oil to run smoothly. We all know what it does for us, so I will not cite statistics that are common knowledge. Oil is important, let’s leave it at that.

Answering my question of why they hate us was easy enough to do with a little research. They resent our wealth and prosperity. They resent that we support the Jews. They resent how our culture corrupts theirs. In short they are jealous. Such is the way of life though. Superior cultures always dominate, that is the law of nations, the law of nature. Technology has made the world a smaller place, and this has allowed other cultures to overtake theirs. Their culture is stagnant and obsolete, try as they might the superior western culture is overtaking them. Nobody said this is right, it is just the way it is.

Ahh, but they have oil, so we all take notice. It is as if we have the guns, but they have the bullets. I believe the Arab problem will soon solve itself though. The days of oil as a fuel source are numbered. Technology leads the way in so many areas, and our dependency on foreign oil chafes us so. We want the bullets and the guns.

How long will it be before our vehicles use hydrogen fuel cells? How long will it be before the hydrogen comes from nuclear power. 20 years, perhaps sooner I would say. It might take longer before we stop using oil completely, but we can still get it from the Americas without the political risks. Once we stop using oil we will forget about the Arabs.

Without all that Western money flooding their country what little they have will wither up and die. They will cry foul, but their cries will fall upon deaf ears. All they will be to us then is consumers. Assuming they have any money to pay for their Big Mac’s and Coke a Cola’s. They will have no power to stop the westernization of their culture. All they can do now is threaten to restrict the flow of oil, without that they have nothing. If they act up we will just ask Israel to fight them for us. Like the Soviets did for the Viet Cong, giving them arms and orders, we will wage war on the Arabs by proxy. The Arabs won’t be able to hide in the desert though, and they will still be using the same weapons the Soviets made in the 60’s.

Their end is coming soon. They can either wallow in self pity, lamenting the glory of 5000 years past, living in the filth of ghetto tents in the slums of Arabia, but still able to practice Islam, or they can cast off their Arab faith and live the successful and prosperous life of an American. There you have it, they can accept abject desolation, or embrace materialism. The choice should be obvious.

[NightStalker]

Don't let Arkangel or (especially) Vulture see this thread. ;) :p

It just isn't politically correct, progressive, or multi-denominational, multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive, or diverse, to say anything bad about muslims/arabs/arabic countries/or anyone inhabiting them, lest it offend them/someone/anyone nowadays.

It's all about the oil, baby!

Without it, they'd be what they were until the '20's of the last century...NOTHINGS!

They have no industry, technology, or infrastructure to develop any once the oil disappears.

And, without oil, they have no natural resources to speak of. This is probably why they never advanced past iron age technology, aside from their inherent stupidity.

And their religion? BLECH!

Whereas there were plenty of christian "heretics" (Gallelio [SP?] comes to mind) to shake things up, how many muslim heretics have their been that have offended "Allah" by saying anything like the world revolves around the sun, or some such? Probably none?

Their religion is holding them back just as much, if not more so, than their geographic location is.

But this is just the opinion of a commie-fearing, muslim-hating, unprogressive, war-mongering, bomb-dropping, arrogant OLD american, so don't mind me. :)

[krimmie]

"And, without oil, they have no natural resources to speak of. This is probably why they never advanced past iron age technology, aside from their inherent stupidity."

Hmm, the Middle East without oil. I'll offer a few suggestions to help them plan for an oil-less future.
1. Start training more taxi cab drivers.
2. Develop better slurpee recipes.
3. Market camel as an alternative to beef(haven't heard of "Mad Camel Disease").
4. They can become the foremost producers of fumed silica.....Cab-o-sil for all!
See, we'll still depend on them for some things.

[TreverSlyFox]

Actually the "Oil Crisis" is slowly desolving as we speak. For the past 18 months a new Ethanol or Bio-Diesel Refinery has opened each month in the Mid-West "Corn Belt" by farmer Co-Ops. Over a 20 year period we could easily convert all vehicles to Bio-Diesel engines and we can expand our corn and soy bean production to meet the needs for fuel production.

The U.S. is actually sitting on rather large stocks of oil, it's just not cost effective to get it unless gas prices go to $3 a gallon. The Arabs are just sitting on easy to reach (cheap) oil. By going to Bio-Diesel and Ethanol we just grow our own and currently Bio-Diesel is only about $0.10 a gallon more expensive than regular Diesel so it's cost on a large scale would be very cost effective. We really don't need to wait until Hydrogen becomes a ready fuel source. Though Hydrogen is the future fuel we could easily do a "Step" program to go from Petroleum fuels to Bio-fuels to Hydrogen fuels over 50 to 75 years. All we really need to do right now is stop Gasoline Engine production and go to Diesel Engine production in passenger cars and light trucks. They'er in limited production right now so there's no big step to meet the needs.

Any true gasoline engine need can be fuled by Ethanol like your Lawn Mower and Weed Eater. All it takes is a commitment by us to tell the Arabs to take their Oil and shove it. Without Oil Dollars the Arabs can't fund any kind of BS to bother us or the rest of the world.

[vulture]

Don't let Arkangel or (especially) Vulture see this thread.

Nice going to hijack this thread on the second post. Unfortunately for you, I won't respond to your provocation.

Do we have military bases on their land? I would have to say no

I don't know what you exactly define as the Arab world, but the US has military bases in Saudi Arabia.

It just isn't politically correct, progressive, or multi-denominational, multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive, or diverse, to say anything bad about muslims/arabs/arabic countries/or anyone inhabiting them, lest it offend them/someone/anyone nowadays.


Political correctness is a damned thing that prohibits honest discussion and I'm certainly not advocating it. However, there's a difference between well based criticism and calling them inferior species because of religion/ideology.

I'm afraid we will be depending on oil for quite some time to come. The oil companies will do everything in their power to keep oil the preferred energy carrier.

Also, there seems to be a trend to shut down nuclear plants, for no good reason IMHO.
But hey, the sheeple wants to be lied to.

In Belgium, the environmentalists managed to get a shutdown of all nuclear powerplants by 2025. Trouble is, we get 60% of our electricity from them. They want to make up for it by windmills. :rolleyes:

All we really need to do right now is stop Gasoline Engine production and go to Diesel Engine production in passenger cars and light trucks.

Diesel engines cause much more pollution compared to Gasoline engines. LPG would be the way to go, it's cheap, envirofriendly and there's plenty of stock left in Russia, The Netherlands, The North Sea, The Kaspian Sea...

All it takes is a commitment by us to tell the Arabs to take their Oil and shove it.

Ethanol is a good alternative, the only problem is that we'd have to sacrifice a great deal of land for its production which could otherwise be used for food agriculture. Diluting gas with ethanol is a good alternative though.

Hydrogen economy is doomed without nuclear energy. Ofcourse, if fusion research would finally get some decent money and the bitching about it's location would stop, we might actually get somewhere. The new reactor to build is believed to be capable of a controlled self-sustained fusion reaction.

A working fusion power plant would turn the geostrategical condition in the world as we know it now upside down. The effects would be simply mindblowing.

[megalomania]

I read a study where the projected landmass required to sustain bioethanol crops would be double that of the current world agricultural acerage. Of course we don't need 100% of our fuel to be ethanol. I read another study that suggested the landmass of useless grassland between highway medians could be used to produce a significant quantity of fuel source. A few years ago a researcher at Stanford University invented a type of yeast that processes cellulose as well as sugars. Ethanol from corn requires a very energy intensive process to convert the cellulose to fermentable sugars, so intensive in fact that ethanol from corn is deemed by many scientists to be uneconomical. Most of the corn cellulose then becomes fuel to fire the boilers that produce the steam that cracks the rest of the cellulose. It is awfully expensive to harvest corn just so it can be burned. This new yeast does the job of eating the cellulose and producing alcohol. This has the effect of quadrupling the amount of fermentable material with no additional cost. Since we are now hovering at the breakeven point, increasing the amount of ethanol so much makes it a clear winner.

Recently I was reading a scientific publication that says President Bush has started a new inititive to build a series of nuclear plants. I believe the first plants will be in operation within 5 years. They use graphite rods as reaction regulators and other materials that make it impossible for a reactor to melt down. Apparently whatever they use now for control rods catches fire and melts everything without coolent eventually leading to zero reaction regulation, hence a meltdown. I applaud this much need innovation to build a new generation of nuke plants.

Other innovations like clean coal technology that use decarbonization and sequesterization to seal away all the CO2 could supplant vast amounts of oil. Wind and solar power should undergo significant improvements over the next 20 years as well. Combining all of these resources together all we need to do is replace the 60% of our oil that comes from foreign sources, the other 40% we can supply ourselves.

Fusion technology has always been 20 years away. 20 years ago they said we would have it in 20 years, every year since then it was always 20 years away. Today it is still 20 years away. See the trend? Some scientists are beginning to realize maybe fusion power is beyond our grasp, at least during the 21st century. I would not count on fusion power within any of our lifetimes. There is one ray of hope, a hybrid fission-fusion reactor that promises to increase nuclear reactor outputs tremendously. It's not sustained fusion, but it's better than fission. We may see this within 20 years.

[vulture]

Apparently whatever they use now for control rods catches fire and melts everything without coolent eventually leading to zero reaction regulation, hence a meltdown. I applaud this much need innovation to build a new generation of nuke plants.

I think you are talking about a pebble bed reactor. The fissionable material is enclosed in small spheres of graphite, which are then stored into large spheres of SiC/graphite.

Helium gas is then blown through the pebbles. These reactors can reach an efficiency of 40%, which is very high compared to the usual 25%.

[gliper]

Just today I read this http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ having looked at From The Wilderness at http://www.copvcia.com/ It seemed about In line with my other reserch on were oil is taking us although his advice seemed dumb. Probems Muslems have had with america theft, slavery, sovernity violations, arming funding and training Isreals ocupation of Palistine, and insulting Islam. Resons to care they have: a thing for vendetas, Ak-47s, WMDs, mony oil and produce the best drugs. If Russia go on their side we may loose everything. I have more links on these sujects, ask if interested.

[megalomania]

Thank's for that oil article, gliper. It supports everything I have read to date about the coming energy shortage. That is a very practical and well writen article to boot. I don't think we will see a sudden oil crash, but instead we will see a vicious progression. America will be the least hard hit, but we will be hit hard. Billions will die from war, famine, and disease in the third world. Pretty much anyone who depends on any kind of "aid" will suffer, be it food aid to the starving in Africa, or social security to the old in the US. All the aid money will dry up to pay for the basic necessities of supporting those who actually contribute to society. It's a hard road, but necessary to sustain a semblance of civilization.

Gas today is $1.50 a gallon thereabouts. What if it was $3.00 a gallon? That is not all that much really, but magnified by the tens of millions of hardworking Americans each week it may mean $60 billion being sucked out of the economy each year. I don't mean $60 billion less for schools and roads, I mean this money comes right out of the pockets of consumers who buy CD's and movie tickets, McDonalds kids meals, and Levi jeans. That is $60 billion taken away from retailers, entertainment, and food. As many as 750,000 jobs may be lost to absorb some of this loss, but those will be mostly low paid unskilled jobs (burger flippers, Wal-Mart stockers, and ticket tearers). This will be just the beginning.

At $1.50 a gallon I don't much mind, but at $3.00 a gallon a fuel cell sounds pretty nice. Most people are dumb enough not to realize this will only cost them an extra $1000 a year, and will promptly plink down an extra $10,000 on a new car. Of course somebody has to drive the new technology forward. My prediction is the technology will just keep pace with the price of gas. Today the average car gets about 25 miles to the gallon. Fuel cell hybrids of 2010 should be capeable of 100 mpg, just in time for $6.00 a gallon gas prices.

Boy, breeder reactors are looking better and better every day.

[vulture]

Gas today is $1.50 a gallon thereabouts. What if it was $3.00 a gallon?

Cheerup! We pay 1€, that is $1.25 per liter!

[ossassin]

Megalomania, I agree with you: I think that the big reason why they resent us is because we support the Jews. The American media, who is Jewish-run, it trying to demonize the Arabs in retaliation. The Americans believe it, too.

[Jacks Complete]

Cheerup! We pay 1€, that is $1.25 per liter!

In the UK, you would have a queue from here to France at that price. We pay 76.9p to 80+p a litre, or about 1.2 € (first time I ever typed that symbol in my life!) a litre.

Any Americans reading this had better sit down - that is 3.7*0.8 = £3 per US gallon - that is a shocking $5.67 a gallon!

[vulture]

Now I understand why TB is so eager to suck up GWB! :D

[JoeJablomy]

Be careful of http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
That guy's too much of a lawyer; he keeps saying that you don't have to trust him (only his interpretation!) to know all this because you can just ask all these experts. I haven't read all the links, but the first one I checked was a NewsMax interview with some crackhead who claimed to know about nanotechnology. His great warning was that China is developing a lead in "nano-assemblers" -little machines that "invade molecules" and rearrange them. Mr. Crackhead might make the excuse that he's just trying to get the word out, but if the real truth isn't scary enough, then it isn't. Period. The same goes for the site author, who warped that article to <I>his</I> own agenda.

As for biofuels, there's no way they can replace our current oil consumption. I don't think anyone has yet mentioned that it takes a lot of energy to grow energy crops and turn them into useful fuels. It takes something like 80% of the energy produced as ethanol to produce the ethanol. The whole system could be made more efficient, but anyone who tells you the ethanol program is anything but a big barrel of pork for the midwest is smoking too much granola, man.
Specifically, if oil-rich crops were grown, the oil extracted and converted to biodiesel, and the left-over cake fermented with any parts of the plant that would help, and the mash then strained out, dried, and burned to power the still, you could probably get some more energy out of it. It still takes a lot of energy just to grow the crop and transport it to the plant. If the plant were solar powered during the day, and there is some progress being made in that field, then the solid residue could be burned to run the equipment at night or just produce electricity. Using solar stills could reduce the processing energy consumption much further, but would obviously require much more capital.
Normal internal combustion engines can be made somewhat more effecient. There seems to be a constant stream of ideas on how to reduce friction losses (hypocycloidal crank), increase thermodynamic efficiency (turbocharge, use direct injection, spray water in the intake of your DI engine, use an uncooled engine, harvest exhaust heat with thermoelectrics, insulate the engine so that it doesn't cool down and have to warm back up when you restart, etc., etc., etc.), etc.
The water thing seems to be of interest to biofuels because a 50/50 mix of water and ethanol can directly replace some amount of diesel fuel, I think 30%. So for all the added cost and complexity of a two fuel car with an electric drivetrain and batteries and a tiny but very efficient turbodiesel, you could drive a green car that might only eat twice as much grain as the farmland can produce, instead of five times as much. It could still help, though.
There might still be hope with all the other technologies being produced. If organic dye solar cells work out, we could see a price drop there. Much residential power consumption can be fed by using solar cell shingles. The total cost would be really high. Really, all of us who live in industrialized countries are incredibly lucky. We have cheap energy, and while there is hope there is no guarantee that will last forever. Road trips might cease to be possible. Food might become the biggest expense again. Someday we all might have to get off our asses just to survive. Internet shopping might end because UPS has to burn a lot of gas, but if UPS is more gas efficient than a big network of stores and shit and driving 50 mi to the factroy outlet, then maybe all those fucking strip malls would finally get bulldozed. Whatever the case, the future seems to continue to be mundane. This is real life. 5 billion people will not die, although given the incredible stupidity 6.3 billion people are generally exhibiting, a few hundred million AIDS deaths and some more millions of starvation deaths and shitloads of poverty and a few wars will probably happen. Not unlike the way it's always been.

Obviously, because the Arab world is even more dependant on oil (oil money for them) than we are, they're gonna be fucked at some point down the road. I think Saudi is investing in jojoba bushes, which supposedly require little water, little maintenance, and produce nuts that are about 50% oil by weight. They're still going to be poor compared to now.
The biggest problem the Arabs have, as far as I can tell, is they insist on believing complete bullshit. So do we, but ours seems to work better. I would be totally on the Palestinians' side with regards to Israel, except rather than having some fucking integrity they lie their asses off. They have many legitimate complaints against Israel, but they lie their asses off. They break agreements, condemn those who try to help them in Arabic while applauding them in English, accuse the Jews of drinking Palestinian blood, and can't even come up with a leader who looks after their own asses rather than his own. The Jews are equally guilty of the fatal crime of irrationality; starting a religious war when they ought to know better, violating innocent human rights in response to theirs being violated by other people entirely, shouting "Never Again!" and getting international help to do what they want when it's painfully clear they only mean "Never Again To Us." But it's the Arabs own fault for being bitches that Israel keeps
kicking their collective ass when there are more of them.
It's been said many times one of the big reasons the Arabs hate us, aside from Wahabism, is that their no-load asshole governments keep blaming their total failures on The Great Satan. This is basically the problem: They keep trying to lie and cheat, but they do it all wrong. This is probably the problem with all 3rd world countries. China, by all accounts, is just as bad, but they're tough bastards and they make it work, whereas the weak and stupid leaders of weak and stupid countries pillage their own economies and have their school systems teach incoherent crap that makes their citizens think capitalism is some incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, and unfair system and aren't they all glad to have a leader who wants to take care of them. [With the Arabs I think it's more about our system being heathen and corrupt and don't they all hate our guts].

Hell, I'd say one of our biggest problems is WE want leaders who will take care of us. Not leaders who will protect our rights and freedoms, but leaders that will sheild us from the consequences of our own supidity. Americans, and Europeans it seems, want to be taken care of. More than that, we want all the pitiful losers in our Great Society to be comforted and taken care of and looked after and gotten out of our ways. What we as a society forget is

To take care of someone, you have to tell him what to do.

Yes, the road to serfdom. If you want to look after someone's needs and see that he lives a good life, you have to give him directions. If you're his parents, you can spank him when he's a kid and can reasonaby be assumed to be less competent than you. If you're a charity, you can give him suggestions and guidance. If you're a politician, you can make a law that will throw the sonofabitch in jail. See the problem with having politicians do it?
Whay do we have gun laws? Because any bastard who can get elected will tell you his first duty is to take care of his people, and they need to be protected from guns. Putting a gun in a civilian's hands is like putting a knife in a baby's. You can't even trust him to know what to do with it, can you? For that matter, what legitimate use could he possibly have for it?
Obviously, the problem is not a factual disagreement about whether gun laws will do good. It's an ideological disagreement: your politician cares about your right not to be scared or offended by other people, and your right to have money to live on even if you didn't save for retirement or won't get a $4.00/hr job to save your ass, and doesn't give a fuck about your freedom. He honestly can't tell that he's presuming to know what's best for you better than you do when he says this. You are a baby, because your inalienable freedoms have been traded in, and you are totally dependant on the system for so many things. And if you're normal, you like it this way because you don't give a shit about freedom and are deathly afraid of having to fend for yourself. That's probably our worst delusion.
We love do-gooders. We admire people who are determinged to change other people's lives. We don't know when to tell them to shut the fuck up, because we do not have the real virtue of being willing to support freedom for anyone other than ourselves. Very few of us really grow up.
Sorry if that was off topic, but it had to be said. It actually applies just about everywhere except the middle east; socialism is popular wherever plain old Balkan-style hate isn't. It's popular to say hate is a great threat to humanity, but if we go all the way down the slippery slope and give up all individual freedom for some perverted form of personal comfort, our species will probably become stagnant.

Mega's probably right. The middle east will westernize or sink into total poverty, whatever part of it isn't already there. I think the Iraq war might actually have a very positive influence, because it shoved reality back in the face of the leaders. They are now much more aware how weak they are and how easily a real country can bury them, and that they don't have very much leverage on us anymore. This may not be enough to make them build their economies while they still have oil money, but it could help. Alternatively, they can keep calling us corrupt, spending their time beating their women, fucking their own industries, grabbing power they don't even have a use for, and blaming it all on immigrants and Jews and Westerners and India and bad luck. It really doesn't bear much debate what happens if they keep on this way.

[Arkangel]

Great Post JoeJablomy

And to avoid breaking the rule about pointless one line posts, I'm acknowledging the rule here, to make it a TWO line post.

My last point was rather off topic but hey, I now have a THREE line post. Gee, wonder how long I could keep this up for

[nbk2000]

Gee, wonder how long I could keep this up for?


To the limit of my tolerance for foolishness. :p

The West is going to be fucked when the oil dries up, true, but it's going to be the rest of the world that going to be FUCKED when that happens.

Oil allowed for all the fertilizers/pesticides/medicines/transportation in the last century that have allowed the world population to triple (or more) what it was at the beginning of the 20th century.

Once it's gone, you'll have 10x/100x/1000x more people per given area than is supportable in that region without the artifical aid of all that oil allows.

Think the africans are dying now? It's nothing compared to what it's going to be like in the next century when there's no foreign food aid (mainly US, BTW), no medicines to treat even the simpilist ailments, no pesticides or fertilizers for the meager crops they can grow natively, and no gas to transport what little they do have left over the hundreds of miles of barren nothingness that is most of sub-saharan africa.

Oh, and count the extinction of probably most every species of mammal larger than a housecat from that continent as a given, as the natives will no doubt proceed to hunt every species they can find into extinction in a futile effort to sustain the unsustainable population of their backward race.

Same scenario for asia, latin america, and most others.

The west will be able to cope with some reduction by increased use of nuclear/fusion/solar/biomass/GE medicines/etc. GE foodcrops won't need pesticides or fertilizers to anywhere what is needed today. So I guess the euros will either have to starve (big loss that would be! :p), since they don't allow GM food in their countries, or suck it up and get with the 21st century and realize that the old way of feeding people will end long before the last well runs dry.

Wars over resources are inevitable, but what happens when starving muds face a modern western army? Think Somalia. More than 1,000 dead for them, and only about a dozen for us. :) And this was just with lightly armed infantry. Don't even start up with what the heavy weapons could do.

And the need for securing VITAL resources, not some obscure concept of "human aid", means there'd be no political withdrawl. Quite the opposite. It'd be a matter of survival for the west to secure what resources that would be left, so the whole society would be geared towards a "Kill 'em all! Let God sort 'em out!" kind of thinking, so slaughtering thousands of third world muds wouldn't be a newsworthy story as it'd be an everyday occurance.

It's going to be like "Mad Max" in most of the world, with only the technological/military/social superiority of the west fending off the starving hordes of the muds.

An interesting analogy I read somewhere was that the (white) west would be traveling through the slum of an oil-less world in the air conditioned comfort luxury of their (technological) limo while the starving (brown) street rabble looked at them passing by as they picked trash for cans.

I liked that one! :D HAHAHAAA!

[vulture]

So I guess the euros will either have to starve (big loss that would be! ), since they don't allow GM food in their countries, or suck it up and get with the 21st century and realize that the old way of feeding people will end long before the last well runs dry.

Quite right. I have no clue why they're being banned exactly, but the tide's about to turn in their favor. As soon as we get rid of those irrational enviroterrorists we'll be eating them before you know it. You can bet your ass those fucks will be the first ones to eat the GM shit when they're starving. :mad:

[nbk2000]

FINALLY! Something we can agree on. :)

[megalomania]

In neo-depression America it will be the muds who will suffer most. With record unemployment of 20%, 30%, 50%, or more those with educations, skills, and job experience will be forced to take jobs packing boxes and working assembly lines for pittance wages. If the educated and experienced must take such jobs, those without education and job skills will be left out cold.

There will be no welfare or social security because those who pay taxes will be so few and making so little that the system could not possibly support the vast hordes without jobs.

The middle class of suburbia will be able to at least grow food in their back yards. WWII victory gardens grew upwards of 60% of the civilian food supply. The muds, though, are heavily concentrated in cities where there are no plots of land to grow more than a single stalk of corn. This will lead to a mass exodus from the cities since there will be no food. Those in the suburbs will not be happy to be invaded by muds, so ethnic violence will break out as suburban homeowners defend their homesteads from rampaging mud vagrants with lethal force.

It boils down to the haves and have nots. If you have an education, skills, experience, there may be a place for you in society. If you own property, have few or no debts, you may have a place to survive. The human race survived up until modern times with no fertilizers to speak of, we will continue to survive. But, human population has always been directly dependant on food production.

Society will continue to thrive in a hybrid 1st world 3rd world mix that nbk described so well in his limo analogy. Business will thrive, technology will continue to be advanced, there will be wealth and luxury as such only the 21st century can provide, but only for a very few. I hope to be one of those few.

[vulture]

BTW, by the time oil dries up Africa won't be a problem anymore. Certainly if they keep listening to the Pope and their medicine man. :rolleyes:

Rather a waste of resources to kill AIDS infested populations, no?

You see, there's nothing wrong about caring for the environment, but for fucks sake, by all means, be rational about it. Banning GM food that helps reducing pesticide use and banning nuclear power is NOT a good thing for the environment. Certainly if you have the most advanced technology for nuclear waste storage in the world and a perfectly suitable clay underground to store it! It drives me mad when the Belgian green party claims it's one of their "accomplishments" that nuclear plants will be shut down in 2025. :mad:

Somehow, glass bottles are also better for the environment than plastic ones. Although 1L glass bottles weigh 100 times as much as plastic ones, produce about 100L of CO2 when making the glass, not mentioning the waste of fuel and the detergents and water used to clean them. But hey, that's just my warped interpretation...

[atlas#11]

Since were talking about energy crisises, has any one here ever heard of a tesla tower, not a tesla coil a tower? Look it up on google, their should be something there. Any ways I can't help but post it's basic desigh and principles.

Basicaly the tesla tower is a massive antenna as high as possible and electricaly isolated from the ground for large voltages. This tower is fitted on top with an electrode which would fire extreemly high voltage arcs directly upwards, these arcs would break down the atmosphere right up to the ionosphere. Of course this would take a tremendous ammount of power initaly but when the air is broken down and ionized it would drain the energy from the ionosphere(basicaly limmitless as long as the solar winds power it!) and right in to the tower. After the air is broken down the high voltage from the electrode would no longer be needed and could be removed. Then the power would be absorbed through this tower and run through a regulation device of some kind and then sent to power the many devices that depend on it before allowing it to return to the earth.

Tesla developed this and when he flooded the electrical grid with the power from this tower the government came and cleaned out his labs and tore down the tower, placed poor Tesla under house arrest and left him there with nothing. This is the story I have heard and it makes sense to me but I don't know how true it is. I learned of these things from the books Atlantis to tesla, the colbrin connection and Planet X commets and earth changes, both by James M. McCanney. Some people would just shrug it off and call it insanity but the phisics back it up too well to not even consider it.

And to add to the ideals of oil and the middle east... I say "let em keep it!" America could start producing vehicles without the need for oil in under a year and the general public, if they had any sense, would have already invested in it. We havent though which both supprises me and pisses me off. This is the Explosives and weapons forum! What could possibly be a more effective weapon than being the most energy efficient, mobile, having the ability to wield unimaginable ammounts of power with not more than a tower, and to not depend on any other group of people on earth? Think about it. What the hell are you going to do with the most advanced tank ont the battle field and not have any gass, or the most accurate, light, rapid fire assualt rifle without being able to produce ammunition or even get to the battle field to use it? Granted, ammunition is not a problem and I doubt we as a nation will have to wory about oil, but we could be so much further than we are now and were not. Without energy were nearly cave men. It makes me sick that were still giving up lives to protect something that we don't even need. Hydrogen is an obvious solution, it is one of the most abundant things on this planet (oceans, (H2)O!) and all it would take to make it work is solar panels(or tesla towers) on the coastlines using electrolisis to release the hydrogen and it wouldn't even need an electrolyte. What was it, one gallon of liquid hydrogen releases as much energy on combustion as 1400 gallons of gassoline?!! I think as an online community we should develop some kind of effecient hydrogen engines and a way of getting this tesla tower to work then we would be "20 years" ahead of the rest of the country. Sounds like fun to me. BTW, I really suggest those books. I think he has a web site, try google, you will probably see what the hell I'm talking about .

[NightStalker]

"were" is not a substitute for "we're", a contraction of the words "we are".

And where's the paragraph breaks?

"Type O's"? It's "typo" or "typos".

Keep going to school, you'll get it right eventually. :D

A gallon of water may have the power of 1400 gallons (if you're correct, which is HIGHLY doubtful), but the hydrogen from that much water would take up a volume of 123 gallons (if I'm calculating it correctly).

If it's equal to gasoline in power/volume, then you'd have the complexity of dealing with highly flammable (more so than gas!) pressurized gas, compared to simple liquid.

There's a reason why hydrogen isn't King of the Hill, and that's complexity. Complex storage, utilization, transportation, distribution, etc.

Plus, you've got bad publicity in the Hindenberg Zepplin disaster. Never mind it wasn't the hydrogen's fault that the zep burned, but rather the nitro-laquered and aluminized fabric skin, but the highly dramatic hydrogen fueled fireball is all the people remember. :(

Mention hydrogen, and that's the exact thing everyone brings up about why hydrogen is so dangerous.

And, as regards Tesla towers, they're death to electronics.

See, back in the early 1900's, Tesla set one up in Colorado where he was at the time, as a test of his wireless power transmission system.

It worked all right...:rolleyes:

Electricity would arc from water facets to the ground, people leaning on fences got shocked, and the powergrid of the time burnt out.

The authorities shut him down as a public menace! All pre-electronic era, too.

Now imagine these effects in an era where life-dependant devices that are susceptible to simple static shock from walking across a carpet. :eek:

Planes falling out of the sky, car brakes not working, lights going out, etc.

Great weapon potential, sucky power scheme.

Hey, there's an idea! Decrease the radiation shielding of the ionosphere so that that solar wind (particle radiation) can irradiate a targeted population nearby. Maybe an airborne generator that flies over a target area to clear a path for a space-based MHD particle beam weapon?

Though it might be useful as a military weapon.

Use it to power your own specially designed electric weapons, with the towers being heavily guarded, as well as being self protecting by wit of it's inherent EMP and ECM capabilites. Your army runs around in silent electric tanks with rail gun cannons, all being fed by solar radiation energy broadcast by TT's.

Anyone attempting to disable the towers will have to get stupidly low-tech to do so, as "smart bomb" brains and jet bombers will have their brains burnt to smoking crisps. :)

Add a ground-based laser system powered by the TT and you have short-range defense against any/all projectile weapons and missiles. :D

Cry "Tesla!" and let lose the dogs of war! ;)

[atlas#11]

Sorry about the illeteracy their, I'd ben up since 4:00 give me a break. the inheret risk of the EMP and other electrical interference could be avoided by placing the towers in third world countries and that would allow them to have a source of income and because they don't have any elecrticity to begin with they wouldn't have to wory about EMP and things of that nature. But your right the weapons applications of this would be endless. To destroy the tower they would have to use a fuse, as an E igniter would go off immediatly on exposure to the EMI and any form of stealth would be imposible as nightvision and radios would be out of the question(unless they can see better than you in the dark).

It's worth testing and trials though. I live near mountians and could probably get a grant or permit to build one up their(the politicle minds of this state are quite stupid to science.), and it could be built quite cheaply and quickly, then the fun would begin. If you were to put up a full farady cage around it it would certianly help and make it a hell of alot safer. It would be better suited to barren mountians that have no vegitation as the lighting would reach all time highs in the area and forest fires would be a problem. If there is a way to make nuclear fission and fusion safe then surely their will be a way to make this safe.

As far as hydrogen goes, I read that about hydrogen being somany times more energetic than gass. They may have been reffering to the fusion potential but to me it sounded like they were talking about the burning of it. There are ways of storing hydrogen chemicaly without the risk of fires and the like. I belive united nuclear had something on it. If there's a will, there's a way. I may get around to building one of these things and seeing what it can do, my only question about it is how on earth can you get a arc of billions of volts of power to go straight up? Most energy wants to get to the ground so wouldn't the bolt just hit the nearest ground?

[tmp]

I remember the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents. Chernobyl
became a deadly accident because the Soviets didn't use containments like
those in the US. The only real casualty at Three Mile Island was the truth.
The US environmentalists hyped it to the point that many ignorant people
thought this accident was releasing radiation levels similar to the atomic
fallout at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My brother was on-site at Three Mile
Island before, during, and after the accident. Despite several medical exams,
he has suffered no ill effects.

I have always supported nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. When was
the last nuclear power plant built in the US ? I read about the new modular
reactor designs that use the pebbles impregnated with fissile material.
This looks promising if the US government(NRC) will start issuing permits for
reactor construction. The energy shortage that occurred in California should
have been a wake up call ! Then-governor Davis blamed the utilities for the
problem instead of faulting the environmentalists who have stood in the way
of all fossil and nuclear energy production.

The environmentalists insist upon alternative technologies such as solar, wind,
hydroelectric, and biomass. I don't have a problem with development of these
alternatives to contribute to overall energy production. The fact is that none
of these alternatives will ever replace fossil or nuclear energy because of
higher production costs and lower energy densities.

If we're ever going to end our dependence on imported oil nuclear reactors
will have to be built in large numbers. I realize that nuclear waste disposal
presents its own problems, however, replacing oil-burning and coal-burning
plants have many benefits such as cleaner air, reduction in trade deficits,
and ending the inherent blackmail that exists by dependence on imported oil.

To the environmentalists, go home, take your Prozac, see your shrink, and
above all else, get the hell out of the way of the business people and
scientists who are actually trying to do something about the problem !

[vulture]

Biomass is big bowl of bullshit. People think it's environmentally friendly because it has "bio" in front of it.

The real facts:

Biomass is natural waste, eg wood chips, dead vegetation, etc. This usually has been decomposing a bit already, during which it already released NH3, H2S and CO2 into the atmosphere. When burnt, this will results in less carbondioxide emission per kg of biomass...BUT the actual amount of CO2 produced per kWh of electricity is actually more!

Damn, biologists, they're so full of bullshit. Recently I heard a biologist claim that we should log the rainforest because it produces as much carbondioxide as it absorbed. Well, well, didn't someone just disprove the law of mass conservation, because wood can apparently be made out of nothing but photons.

Another fuckwit added to that that we should destroy coral reefs, because they're CaCO3, which would then release 3 moles of oxygen gas! :rolleyes:

[tmp]

Vulture, I just read your interesting post. I wonder where the biologist you
mentioned got his training. In basic science I was taught that plants absorb
CO2 to create sugar through photosynthesis and release oxygen in the
process. How did that idiot conclude that a rain forest releases as much CO2
as it absorbs ? And the other idiot you mentioned should study some basic
chemistry because any competent chemist knows that CaCO3 breaks down
into CaO and CO2 and even then only under heat. I hope neither of these
clowns hold any government position ! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[vulture]

I can't speak for all, but the biologists I run into in my uni are just parrots. They learn plants & beasts by hearts and walk around like hippies.

But that's just my highly biased opinion ;) Since biologists and chemists are sworn enemies...

[atlas#11]

Now Now Vulture, real biologists that actualy know what their talking about would have to know chemistry quite well therefore, chemist compatible. These idiots you speak of are not exactly what I would call biologists more like 6 year olds with a growth hormone gland mutation :p . I don't know were the media finds these people but america is the only country on this earth that would have a measurable percentage of people that believe that hype. As far as the enviromentalists go, they are mostly morons. I'm sure a few of them are intelegent but I havent met a smart one yet. Sure I like the planet and would like to see it in good health but going and destroying the forests because you don't know chemistry is totaly irrational.

[tmp]

Through this week a guy named Stewart(I don't recall his last name) has been
arguing with anti-nuclear whackos on The Fox News Channel. The idiots just
about repeated every lie about nuclear power plants that was spewed by the
mainstream media during the 70's. They insisted on alternative forms of
energy only. My blood boils when one of these idiots mentions hydrogen as a
replacement for fossil fuel. How are they going to produce it ? Nuclear power
is the only economical means of generating the wattage necessary to break
down the water molecule. They remind me of the early alchemists who
searched for a way to transform lead(or was it mercury ?) to gold.
Don't misunderstand me - I have nothing against using hydrogen as a fuel.
The whackos still don't get it - there is no free lunch ! :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Hang-Man]

<a href=http://www.ebaumsworld.com/endofworld.html>The world as <b>I</b> see It </a>

[Jacks Complete]

Hang-Man, that was funny!

The way I see it, the whole world is like that film, "The League of Extra-ordinary Gentlemen". If you are five-ten years ahead, you can do what you like, and no-one can stop you.

Compare anything now, with ten years ago. Put it in a stand-and-fight, or a skirmish, and the new one will win. The battery lasts ten times longer, the sensor doesn't burn out, the sensor is steathly now, so the other sensor can't see it, and so on. Compare the M1A3 Abrams now with the A2-HA, and it is a far better tank, just 10 years on. Almost everything has done this. Compare the ability of the venerable .45 1911 Auto with the "next-gen" handguns like the HK PDW, and it stands up well, but we both know you would choose the PDW every time, espcially if you were wearing your CRISAT or PAGST vest, and thought they were too.

Oil-less technology exists, and is doing quite well. Give it another ten years... The Apache now has an oil-less main rotor gearbox! Those in the know realise that the main rotor gearbox on a helicopter is one of the most difficult environments to work in, and they don't even need oil any more. Personally, I think vested interests and customer expectations are the only reasons we still put oil in our cars, aside from fuel.

As for the Africa crisis, why shoot them? Hell, why even bother going over there at all? The USA and UK, and anyone else on an island, is going to be fine. After all, how many starving Ethiopians are going to be able to swim that far? Hell, I propose letting them in if they manage! Just pick one doley/pikey/soap-dodgy on long term unemployment to go back to africa instead - at least the Ethiopian will pretend to want to work!

I am more worried about the local "breeders" - the ones who took the government bribe to have more babies, signed on the dole and the child benefit, and checked out from the normal rules of society. The ones who are having four, or seven, screaming brats, no sense of respect, they just know what their "rights" are, and god forbid if you get in the way...

Give it ten years, and there will be a hellish number of that lot, second generation scum, hitting the streets. It isn't just the pointless laws that have caused the rise in crime, it is the absolute lack of respect for anything, coupled with the extreme ignorance of 4 year olds left to watch the Teletubbies and Pulp Fiction while mommy goes out to score. Then, at the age of 19, when they are given their degree in whatever they put in the box (it proves they can "right") and sign for (proving they can "reed"), then off for a job in whatever PoS place they can find that will hire them. Or for the real dossers, on to the dole office to sign on again, and mug some flash git wearing a Kappa hat and tracksuit on the way home.

Hopefully by then, open season will have been declared on some of this, and the vote will have been taken from them, perimeter security systems will be allowed to do damage, and I will be living elsewhere...

After all, what use will they be? £1000 computers will be far smarter than they will ever be, cost less to employ (no minimum wage or pension) and they will be useless.
What use will they even be as cannon fodder? Modern armies don't even need cannon fodder now - what will it be like when the guns are as smart as the pilots? Packing stuff in boxes? Robot arms! Designing the next gen. of product X? Computers will be doing most of that, too...

What use will the masses be?

This leads to the obvious answers:

1) The ruling elite will keep them as votes, and feed them to an early death, not letting them do anything that is harmful to the ruling elite, but as nasty as they like to the cowering masses. Stripped of anything dangerous, including thoughts. A perfect socialist statism.

or
2) Get rid of them. Mass extermination, until the population is more useful and far smaller, with plenty of chlorine in the gene pool, or just sterilise the lot, and let natural wastage deal with the problem over fourty years. Far left or far right statist.

I prefer the third one, but it isn't going to happen. That we all go off to a nice paradise with all the guns we can carry, and there we choose not to kill one another... I don't think it is going to work out that way, though. There are just too many people...

[Psychlonic]

I agree that one of the reasons we still stick with oil is because of our current attachments to the products it goes in - namingly automobiles.
Take a car buff for example. Sure, the guy can replace the gasoline fueled, supercharged V8 in his 57 Chevy with a hydrogen fueled engine, but do you think he is going to? Doubtful.

[Jacks Complete]

I read some rather fun stuff about the "fuel of the future", Hydrogen.

There is more hydrogen in a litre of petrol than in a litre of hydrogen, whether it is gaseous or liquid, or even slush!

There is no known way of making hydrogen that is even vaguely efficient, meaning that to make it uses up a lot more energy than you get back from burning it. Partly, this is because you are splitting the hydrogen and oxygen apart from water, which is, after all, the ash left behind from burning hydrogen and oxygen! So you get losses all the way though the system!

Hydrogen tanks explode in a really impressive way...

Suffice to say, we won't be using hydrogen as a replacement any time soon, unless we get to the bottom of photosynthesis, and grow ourselves plants that give off hydrogen gas. Currently, Hydrogen looks more like the "fool of the future"...