Harold Squared

Right willingly, can you point me in the right direction, please?

Fine. Put a big sign on your front lawn saying, "No guns here, rob and rape with impunity." Nobody will shoot you for having such an enlightened point of view, they will respect your desires and confine themselves to clubs and knives which will not kill you nearly as dead. WAIT, are not criminals professional lawbreakers by definition? Maybe they would not be so considerate, after all. It does seem incongruous to imagine Chainsaw Vinnie saying, "Rocco, I cannot pull dat bank job wit youse on account of my handgun permit has expired."

Crickets? But it is hard to see what the Spanish or the French would get out of such a deal, so maybe he is trying to work out these aspects. Time will tell.

No electricity is pretty much equivalent to no computing capacity unless you are using slide rule or abacus. Coal heap approach is being used in Germany with high rates as a consequence, explain that. Not so. Moore's Law is dependent upon putting more circuit capacity in the same area. The ANALOGY is spot on, sir, in that both devices are electrically operated on demand, ergo, a reliable source of current is vital. Thanks for the link to the Canadian household. Looking at their records I see quite a few days in the early part of the year where very little power was produced. I also notice that it is very rare for output to match advertised nameplate capacity and wide variations according to the caprices of the weather. This would be fine if the Canadians and the Germans adjusted their consumption of power to match such caprices, but guess what? THEY DON'T. Your Canuck buddies gleefully admit that the grid acts kind of like a giant battery. A FREE BATTERY, in the sense that they didn't have to pay for it, and they can sell lots of sunshine to the folks who built and maintain the freaking thing at retail rates. This depresses the profitability of that wonderful battery until guess what? It isn't there anymore.

It is less a matter of energy availability as it is of conversion to a useful form. Traditionally fuel is produced by natural means, wood, coal, oil, gas or mountain streams. It is then harvested or transported via dams or surface transportation. Finally it is converted to electricity and powers this discussion.

Agreed, sir. It will be of great interest to us both to see such devices operating as designed, I am sure. To answer your most intelligent and topical question, I hope you will bear with me as I direct you to the ResearchGate article "Nuclear Thermal Rocket(NTR) Propulsion With a Kick: The LOX Augmented NTR Concept" by S.K. Borowski A reusable vehicle with such capabilities would be a tremendous asset to Lunar exploration and development, I should think. As usual, the toughest bit is getting into Earth orbit. Indeed. Total volume of carbon would be small, but very effectively sequestered from Earth. In order to develop space resources, such biospheres must be well understood. As the Moon is convenient for evacuation purposes it would make an excellent laboratory site. Perhaps a small installation tended by teleoperated machinery would be a good start. Obviously food plants would be a top priority but many such plants are pleasing to the eye as well as the palate, such as ginger and nasturtiums.

The observation is made on the data you have presented. The level continues to rise at pretty much the same rate regardless of all measures taken to date, as any child of four can plainly see. Widespread reliance upon nuclear energy has not been tried of course, but would in all probability prove more effective than intermittent resources such as solar and wind which require supplementation of some kind, to date generally based upon carbon combustion. An example of the magnitude of fossil energy required to back up renewables in the absence of nuclear power is the extra 300 million tonnes of CO2 expected by 2020 in Germany, source world-nuclear.org "Nuclear Power in Germany" updated July 2015. No mention of solar power imported from Spain can be found in the report.

Eventually terraforming the Moon may be a possibility, but to begin with it might be more modest to construct a biosphere, more or less self sustaining, as a refuge and recreational facility for persons working on the Lunar surface. All food raised in space represents a cost savings versus transporting an equivalent mass of food off Earth, as well. Astronauts have documented the morale benefits of being in the presence of living plants on various missions. You are quite correct that nitrogen and other elements will be necessary, but at least in the case of nitrogen some can be spared from Earth as it is our most abundant atmospheric gas. Thank you both for responding, gentlemen. I think in the beginning it would be best to start with common terrestrial food plants of a perishable nature, lettuce, raspberries, that sort of thing, plus the soil bacteria needed to enable them to thrive. Eventually pollination will become a problem and a strain of stingless bees will need to be introduced as the number and variety of plants introduced progresses. Certain modifications to the plant genomes will suggest themselves in time, leading to a distinct Lunar biota. A most interesting link, thank you. Such research may very well help us anticipate the presence of life elsewhere in space.

Thank you for the link, sir. As said link reveals, various models of such devices have been not only been designed, but built and tested, something which cannot be said for more speculative space drives such as antimatter rockets.

I don't know about that last bit. That seems more connected to our hideous foreign policy.

In terms of a retreat from sanity, maybe. If somebody tried to sell me a computer or even a toaster that only worked in fair weather I wouldn't buy it and would tell them to get lost.

A "revolution" in terms of what, exactly? Moore's Law applies to microprocessors, not to big diodes, which is all that PV panels amount to. Panels which cannot produce a single watt after sunset or much more than that on a cloudy day, any more than those produced decades ago could. So maybe the fanfare should wait for the next "revolution", hopefully one a bit more impressive.

Overtone had suggested about a week back that Germany might reduce its dependence on lignite coal for electricity generation by importing solar energy from Spain. I regard this as an intriguing idea that he is invited to develop on its very own thread, submitted for your approval and scrutiny. My apologies in advance if I have misstated the particulars.

Damned mess alright. Menace to navigation and progress. Perfect issue for the spacefaring nations to tackle together as a common woe, if you ask me. A magnetic sail might be better than a rocket, as it might better manipulate ferrous debris and would need no reaction mass. Just a suggestion. Brilliant idea recycling materials already in orbit, good job bringing it up.

No, not on that scale, of course. It was pretty modest. Actually, as your data seem to indicate, all efforts at CO2 emissions moderation to date seem to have been abysmal failures, hence my little suggestions on the smoke and mirrors thread. This is another topic altogether, barring the particulate emissions aspect, which doesn't seem to be the main focus.

Take off your shoes and you will have another ten digits at your service. Back in the sixties chemical rockets went to the Moon and nuclear rocket engines were built and proven to work. Why they were not put to good use is a political rather than a technical question. How have you been, it is nice to see you again, my most acerbic friend. Last time I checked, two oxygen atoms outweighed one carbon atom. And there's that word again, "significant". What would you define it as? Again, your interest is most welcome.

There was a downturn in CO2 levels after Pinatubo, wasn't there? I forget. Anyway, the release of CO2 from warming oceans probably trumps volcanic effects.

An interesting question. We will have to define our terms better first. To begin with we can ignore the "dioxide" bit since oxygen is most convenient on the Moon and does not require transportation thither. The volume of terrestrial carbon required to establish an independent biosphere on the Moon is dependent upon the requirements of the colonists and visitors. In all probability to begin with it would be quite modest but very effectively sequestered from the Earth biosphere. Thank you for your interest.

Ooo, tough crowd. Gladly, if you will furnish the date and explain how posing a simple question qualifies as "trolling".Please. Soooo... the Tipping Point is in, what, October or something? I wouldn't want to miss it. Will your millions of Chinese internal refugees be there at the party?

It is incorrect to state that I have put all metaphorical "eggs" in any similar "basket" moreover, as you are no doubt aware by now, Harold is a nuclear power advocate as well. Trimodal nuclear thermal rockets can get people and supplies to the Moon in 24 hours, minimizing exposure to the hazards of space travel.

Sir I am completely sincere. I truly do respect you all for your constructive criticism and am having fun. Unfortunately I have other plans for the remainder of the weekend and as previously stated hope to find you all well on Monday. Again, many thanks and best wishes all around. I apologize again for the limitations of my hardware. In response I point to the fact that Germany depends upon coal for about half of its electricity needs and that the curve of the measured CO2 at Mauna Loa does not seem to be affected to date. Again, thank you all, I must go.

"...a few hours", now, was it? I think a person of your formidable abilities would have much less trouble tracking it down than that. Thanks for the link, and enjoy a fine weekend. I plan to return Monday. Thanks to all for their participation and time expended on this discussion, I am honored and wish you all the best life has to offer.

CORPORATE SHILL ALERT! Is this the same swansont who was grumbling about "bias" only yesterday? Okay, make your fortune in solar PV, buy all the shares you want. Just remember to save for a rainy day, or a week's worth of them...

Lol...they especially like dirty diapers according to my sources in Ketchikan. Or fish guts, road kill, unwary drunks, they are aaalll pretty smelly, but edible. Evidently these Majestic Creatures of the Northern Wilds have no clue how noble they are. In Churchill, Manitoba, the town dump had to be closed because the bears were eating car batteries and Styrofoam, among other delicacies. "Wikipedia." He replied laconically.

We are really off topic here but I will accommodate you as best I can. The trillion euro figure is a (presumably German) "government estimate" as quoted in the World Nuclear Association Profile on Germany, third bullet point from the top. The confusion over tenses stems from my own uncertainty regarding how much of this sum remains to be squandered. Go to world-nuclear.org and check out the country profiles, grouped in oops, FIVE sections. Germany leads the second section, voilà, you are there. Lots of history, politics, and hideously expensive lawsuits, plus the pitiful capacity factors of wind and solar and the systemic threat they represent to the national distribution network. Enjoy. 1.and2.) In Germany the effects so far include increased reliance on lignite coal rather than electricity from sunny Spain, which of course I cannot see from Houston, and Spain does not appear to be one of the countries Germany has as electricity trading partners, though France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland and Czech Republic are all potential trading partners. Interestingly, Spain is pretty much isolated from the rest of Europe's electricity grid apart from exports to Portugal(even more insular, evidently) and trade with Morocco and France. Even in sunny Spain, "renewables" cannot compete, as the Spanish government can no longer afford to subsidize them and is turning to nuclear power. 3.) In this case, it would very much appear otherwise. 4.) iNow has provided evidence that it is already too late for this to have an effect. We're doomed, man, DOOMED!