That would be coppicing, which I already mentioned as the more likely outcome of cutting a mature standing tree in winter.  If, and only if, the stump dies; would I then bury it and use it in this manner.

I wasn't talking about the uranium fuel cycle, I was talking about the thorium fuel cycle.  Even with U235, up at least until the latest screwup in Japan, and likely even afterwards, all of the radioactive materials released into the environment by all of the nuclear power facilities, all over the world and since the dawn of the nuclear age is less than the radioactive materials that are released into the environment every single year bye the burning of coal worldwide.  Yes, burning coal is known to be worse for ratioactive waste materials than the entire nuclear power industry, and that doesn't even consider all of the other bad effects of burning bitumous coal for power.  The accumlation of nuclear waste is a well known problem; and is handled (or not handled, as one may look at it) in the US the way that it is for a particular, strategic reason.  Europe and most of the rest of the world will generally "process" spent fuel rods to remove the 'hot' fission byproducts from the fuel, and then recycle the remainder of the useable fuel back into their domestic fuel cycle; as a typical reactor fuel rod will still be about 1.5 to 2% fissile U235 when the critical reaction can no longer be maintained for useful power production, no matter what the concentration was at the beginning of the fuel rod's service life.  So Europeans generally encase the fission products into leaded glass balls about the size of a softball, and store those products forever.  The amount of long term storage space, using this method, is incrediblely small; however the term period is incrediblely long, considering the high concentration of risk.  In the US, we (deliberately) don't process spent fuel rods, instead we just pretend to store them forever.  The reason for this is strategic, not economic.  You see, the US does not have any viable uranium mines from which to extract weapons fuel in the (considered rather remote at the time, and it still is) event that we are cut off from our primary source allies, Canada and Australia.  The massive 'long term storage facility' that has never been opened in Nevada isn't really intended for storage of materials for 10K years, nor would that be neccesary.  The storage facility is basicly an artificical mine, that the US military could draw upon under such very unlikely conditions.  If those conditions are never met, it's highly likely that the US nuclear power industry would demand access to the stored materials in the future, in the event of some 'uranium energy crisis' if the cost of refining and importing refined fuel from other nations ever exceeds the cost of simply processing and re-refining the stored 'spent' fuel.

However, since thorium is three times as abundant than uranium in the Earth's crust, and 100% of thorium is fissile (compared to roughly 1.2% of uranium) switching to a thorium fuel cycle, again a tech that we have known about for 40 years, would easily power our modern industrial economies for 10's of thousands of years at the current burn rate, even if every human being on earth today consumed energy at twice the rate of the average American today.


Actually, that's generally true; there are no technological (and likely no economic) barriers torunning the entire world on renewable resources.  But while there are no barriers, that doesn't mean that there are no limits.  The greatest issues are political & social.  While it is scientificly possible to power all of the world using only a km wide band around the whole of the equator of solar cells, it's not actually possible to build that many solar cells using the science that we have and the resources that we are aware of.  The problem here is that almost all electronics require trace elements commonly called "rare earth minerals" in order to manufacture the semiconductors required.  Solar cells, and some kinds of modern batteries, require an awful lot of these rare minerals.  This is one reason that China is the only place affordable solar cells are produced, because of all of the "rare earth" mines in the world, over 90% of the known resources happen to exist within the borders of the Middle Kingdom.  If you thought our dependency on oil was a geopolitical conundrum, this is way bigger.  NASA literally cannot build a spacecraft without underpaid miners in China, and no one else can either, because the "rare earth" mines in the US, Europe and Russia are tapped out or nearly so.  The problem is similar for windpower, due to the need to use fancy inverters to produce mains power from unpredictable wind resources.  Waterpower isn't so affected, but then the 'low hanging fruit' of productive capacity in this arena has long been utilized; and further projects face a case of diminishing returns, particularly with regard to the popularity of harming natural ecosystems with flooding for reserviors for power storage.  Some site can, and many already do, use 'run of river' waterpower methods, but these suffer from the similar issues with weather unpredictablity as windpower.

And none of that even considers the NIMBY social issues that any grand scale geoengineering projects would have to overcome first.  One of the most promising wave energy sites has been tied up legally for over a decade because construction would disrupt the view from the beachhouse of a US senator.  Renewable energy projects of the scale required would, quite literally, be everywhere.  Good luck with that.

Honestly, TECSHARE, it doesn't much matter whose idea it was.  You don't have a monopoly on ideas.  It's called competition, and is generally considered a good thing around here.

As for who is scamming whom, I care not at all.  Let the buyer beware.  If anyone sends either of you any funds at all, let it be known that they take the risks.  Don't get the idea that mods filter out scams.  We don't.

And anyone offering a service, but self-moderates his advertising thread to remove detractors, deserves negative trust IMHO.

We've had the technology to do this for forty years.  It's just not being developed, and it won't in the current geopolitical environment.  It's wishful thinking to believe that wind, water and solar are ever going to be able to run our modern industrial economies.  Nuclear power is simply required if we really desire to move away from using coal.

I don't know where you got this idea, but that's not true.  I know of no argument to imply that a free market would produce more than the current market. It might, or it might not; depending on the desires and needs of the people.  The difference would be that productivity would not be siphoned off by an ever more needy state, and those who are dependent upon the state would have to learn how to produce something of value as well.

No, no; this wasn't it.  If there is nothing else I'm sure of, it's that the FedReserve will not do anything that will end the game early.  They know the con at least as well as outsiders, and they are dependent upon it's continuance.  They will do and say anything they can to fix it, even if that means completely backtracking on prior statements and actions.  If the trigger is monetary in nature, it can only be because Congress did something to deliberately disrupt the Fed's power, and I think too many of them know the score to consider such an action either.  Whatever the trigger is, it won't be directly due to monetary policy of the US.  Much more likely is that the trigger be related to the monetary policy of Japan or China, either of them could break the US Treasury now, it's just not been in their interests.  The Failure-to-deliver chart for US treasury bonds has tripled in the past three weeks.  The last time that has happened, Leaman Brothers was hung out to dry.  And that distraction barely worked the first time.

Well, I've been expecting it within the next couple years for a decade already, and recent events make me wonder if we have more than a couple months.  But again, we never know in advance what the 'last straw' will be.  For the Brazilians, it was a 10 cent bus fare hike; for the founders of the United States, it was a 3 pence per pound tax on tea.  When a society is being attacked with a thousand cuts, it's hard to tell when you hit that last one.

The amazing thing about such things is the amount of inertia that faith in the system has to keep things going for a time, yet when faith in the system is lost change happens quite rapidly, and sometimes violently.  Look at Brazil over the past several days; they've been having economic issues for a long time, and have a government openly determined to suppress the trade value of the fiat currency for well over a year, but in the end it was a 10 cent hike in the price of public transit that was the trigger.  No leadership to arrest, no common theme, just a million people across the country that suddenly all had enough crap at once.  The United States has been running on public faith inertia since at least 2000, but the rash of federal scandals is severely undermining that faith.  When that 'faith bubble' finally pops, what happens next is anyone's guess.

Indeed.  Government is the disease that it attempts to cure.

Democracy is the idea that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

More curious.  What's in Montana?

Yes, you are preaching to the choir; but those in this world who have studied Praxeology have seen this kind of breakdown coming for some time.  Ron Paul has been quoted as saying that this is the kind of stuff that prompted him to run for congress, back in 1974.  There is an entire book, website and newsletter series that I know of devoted to investing under these collapsing conditions, and thus profiting from the misfortunes of society at large; and they have been around for some time.  One such website is http://www.chaostan.com/

While none of us knows quite how the 'great correction' is going to play out, some things are certainly predictable.  One such thing is that Americans are going to throw a hissy-fit once they learn that they can no longer afford to drive their pretty SUV's everywhere they go.  Another is that particular classes of investments are forever; such as alcohol, guns, ammo and uncontaminated land.  And strange as it may seem, common table salt if you live more than 100 miles from a shoreline.

Gold, on the other hand, is pretty much useless unless you already have at least one of the first four things above.  It's also wise to stock up on gardening books, and perhaps take up beekeeping as a hobby.

Personally, I've already done all of these things.

Actually, I did kill one post in this thread earlier today, and it might have been yours.  Can't remember for certain.  So let's say I did it.

Heh.  Well that 'paid mods' thing is fairly recent, and is based upon some kind of participation algo, so it can't be argued as a method of favortism.  People get funny when money is involved, even at the very small amounts we are talking about here.  I've been a mod here for a couple years, never really thought about getting paid for it.

The clock is no longer ticking.

The Punisher?  No.  I've literally never banned anyone on this forum, at least not personally.  It's never come to that for me.  The problem that I have is that the only tool I have is a nuke-ban, which is such an over the top action that it seems entirely disproportionate to the kinds of offenses that I generally see.  If I had a more intermediate action that I could take, such as a term limited posting ban, I'd use that I expect; but AFAIK only Theymos has such fine control of punishments.  I have, however, pulled Theymos into conflicts wherein I felt that a response was required, but a full nuke-ban was overkill.  He really doesn't like playing judge, though, and I can't say as I blame him.

More entertaining than many, not as entertaining as some.  I've noted to others in the past, the skill of the troller in entertaining me is one of the reasons that some people get away with it.  I'm not shy about admitting I'm biased in favor of clever trolling.


Thank you, apology accepted.

Pretty much all of the mods are libertarians of some flavor, I assumed you were referring to myself because I'm the one here.

I've given away much money, and bus tickets, etc to a great many people; so I suppose it's possible.  I'm much more likely to give money to a bum with an old high & tight or a pair of jungle boots than a tail.


A snipe is a bird in my world, what does it mean in your native tounge?


No.

Feel free to clarify.

 I was refering to you in the third person because I was answering someone else's charges.  I wsn't even talking to you, but if you feel degraded by it, good.

As to the point about my assumptions, I'd call them educated guesses.  Are you going to assert that my conclusions are incorrect?  Or are you just attacking my methods?


The irony of that statement is that, yes, I've given you much of my time and consideration. Case in point, you're not banned, yet.  You walked into our house and took a grand shit on our kitchen table, and I've let you continue to do so.  As Rassah has pointed out, I literally have to suffer fools as a mod on this forum; but there is only so much I'll take.  And you in particular, have leveled slander against me that you show no inclination towards either supporting or correcting.  If you've read your PM's today, you know that you have a time limit, and the clock is ticking.  So you need to choose; either prove your claims, withdraw your claims, or you can go completely bonkers until I pull the pin.  And no, I have not deleted any of my own posts, so whatever you think you saw is still there.  If you feel you've been unfairly treated, I'm sure Theymos would just love to hear your gripes.  

Go ahead.  Don't forget, you're here of your own free will.  So you must get something out of all this.


Okay.

EDIT:  BTW, those bitcoin transactions you note on your facebook page, that's capitalism.  How do you not hate yourself?