GMO's? Really? I have to wonder how much he held out for. What an ass. He needs to do more research. The answers are everywhere. Same with distributed CHP solar. It's cheaper, faster, independent and uses less resources. What a shill.
Homosexual activists understand the power of words.
Please visit my channel to watch a one-minute video clip in which popular atheist author Richard Dawkins admits that homosexual activists "hijacked the word 'gay'".
The word "homosexual" is more appropriate and accurate because it, unlike the word "gay", actually describes the behavior/attraction/relationship being discussed.
The word "gay" helps homosexual activists push their agenda.
Stewart Brand is a just corporatist, he never believed most of the environmentalism stuff he was pushing himself, other than "we are as gods", it has always just been a means to an end of the globalists Malthusian and Agenda 21 plans, no surprise he, Ricky Rood, and other supposed environmentalists are pushing GMO. Brand founded the Global Business Network with oil baron and fellow futurist Peter Schwartz of Royal Dutch Shell and through their propaganda rag Wired are trying to shape the future
@mastifiorulamitongla Nuclear power is the ONLY source that assume responsibilty for it's byproducts, not even the toxic silicon from solar PV is taken care of like nuclear does. That's plenty eco-friendly and your false idol solar companies could learn a thing or two from the nuclear industry.
Very kind of you not to advise to shoot myself. You are dreaming of a happy life, with 20 billion people or more on this planet, all consuming current from finit energy resources and living in futuristic skyscrapers. To you techno-religious fanatics it is heresy to even consider to use up less energy and unthinkable not to have the right to pack the world so full with people, that all problems multiply until they become unsolvable. Luckily people with your kind of attitude are becoming less.
@flamifer1 There have been two periods in human history when mankind's energy consumption have gone down: The great depression and the bubonic plague. The kind of world you dream of isn't anywhere people would want to live.
Your statement about the great depression perfectly reflects your conviction, that mankind could only prosper by using up its finit resources as fast as possible and that overpopulation was a local phenomenon. Prosperity is measured per capita and not by total numbers. In my "dream world" last borns don't have to leave their families' farms to go to the city and work in a sweat shop or prostitute themselves. Why? Because they will not be born. We need more education, not more people.
@flamifer1 Listen to yourself. Last borns, family farms, movin to "the big city." The world was like that, 200 years ago. All you have to do is kill 9 out our 10 people, reintroduce plagues, and remove fancy things like electricity and sanitation. good luck.
Yes, believe it or not: most people even nowadays still live in small communities and live off farming. And most of them are having too many babies. The result of it are growing slums around the cities of the 3rd world. Only birth control can prevent that the whole world will turn into a slum.
>> kill 9 out of 10 people
I am sick and tired of people parroting stupid lies about what birth control is. Please get informed. And try another source than your local preacher too.
@flamifer1 I certainly hope you don't have kids, for plenty of reasons. But they have what your talking about in China of course, where people stuff little girls in bags and drown them because they want a boy and can only have 1 kid. You can have that. Otherwise stfu.
So, in your opinion, it is the fault of the "evil" one child policy, that baby girls in China get killed by their parents? Not, mayhaps, because of the "good" old chinese tradition to prefer boys? Do you support this "great" tradition?
For your info, my poor, uninformed friend: China's 1 child policy has saved the country from permanent famines with yearly tens of millions of deaths. Did it ever occur to you, that there could be grave reasons for such a policy?
@flamifer1 Actually, the one child policy in china is evil. It goes against the basic human nature. The day this country tries to tell someone they can or cant have kids is the day this country burns, Thank god the influence of people like you extends no further than your mother's basement,
Yes, birth control does go against the human nature. It is in the nature of all living species to multiply until more individuals die off of hunger and epidemies than are born. This is the "natural" way you seem to favour.
Thank god, UN-statistcs show, that more and more people are seeing the benefits of having less children. Against bitter resistence of religious fanatics or nazis, who are using well meaning ignorants like you to their sinister ends. Start using your own brain!
@gamble180 Get real. There are already far too many people in the world. 7 billion and this number risks stabilizing at from 10 to 12 billion by 2050 when the planet's biodiversity is already under huge pressure. I'd prefer people to have fewer kids through education and access to contraception but if not, then compulsion. Today, having a large family is an anti-social act.
Yes, let us help them to have even more babies, so that the whole world can turn into a slum. There our children will be able to choose to join the criminal world or the legitimate one and everything in between. We will never be bored by any luxury in this utopia, always busy and very creative. What utter nonsense!
All these people want nothing else but to get out of the slums and the only way it can be done is secular education birth control.
i wonder if he'd be so in love with nuclear after Japan. This guy is a corporatist. the way he talks about the poor as "these people" is really condescending. His little Jerry Brown dig was pointless. We wouldn't have to resort to GM to reduce land use if we stopped eating animals.
i wonder if he'd be so in love with nuclear after Japan. This guy seems like a corporatist. the way he talks about the poor as "these people" is really condescending. eww, eww, eww
"until governments make it (coal and oil) expensive, it won't change" Has he never heard of the invisible hand of free markets? I usually find that academics such as this guy thinks of populations and people in mass. Rather than giving credit to individuals making life better by trade and opportunity.
As for GM, the yields would be achievable by regular agriculture, but would use a far greater area of land. If people are going to keep shagging, we need to feed them whilst impacting as little of the land surface as possible. It's thesame reason they grow tomatoes in greenhouses... The more land we leave undisturbed for natural ecosystems, the more chance the Earth has to fight back using it's own mechanisms. This is the same reason why wind farms aren't viable: Too much land stolen from naure!
Nuclear is the lesser of many evils. The waste is minimal, and radiation doesn't kill people in the way people think. Sites of natural radioactivity actually have more biodiversity than would otherwise be expected, hence Chernobyl has already reforested itself, and there's talk of making it into a National Park to make some money back through tourism. Even if you lived there, the increased radiation exposure would take roughly 7 days of your life expectancy, as opposed to 7 years if you smoke...
@geezzerboy Ayn Rand Objectivist? If I could reliably believe that on the basis of a single Youtube comment (no offense) I'd be clicking off *right* now -and yes, *just* because of that.
@geezzerboy if you think Objectivism or Ayn Rand are right wing loonies. you should just stop talking now because you clearly are an unintelligent troll. go read a fucking book instead of checking the wiki article on it u simpleton.
Anti-genetic engineering has always struck me as being particularly irrational. Humans have been redesigning biological systems for THOUSANDS of years through artificial selection. We've simply found a faster way to do it now.
Imo, nuclear should be a large part of the solution, but it probably wont happen, so it's time to prepare for the warming b/c straight renewables will not get us there w/o rapid innovation (which we cannot assume). if you do want to assume the innovation is likely, then why not assume similar innovation with nuclear is possible?
people against nuclear power please explain your reasoning because I have not heard 1 good argument against it.
I can see slums being encouraged in the assumption that they can improve to sustainable communities that can still manage to have a high living standard. This may be possible with government/industry aid.
Some of what this guy says makes a lot of sense. The more I listened the more I have to agree. I dont think he is encourageing slums he is just accepting that they are happening and will continue to happen but he sees it positively as a route out of depravation.
@JohnnyRawhide I used to think urbanization and and slums were problems that we had to fix. I thought that the farmers were tricked into moving to the cities and then stuck in poverty. After reading Brand's book I've learned not to fear those words. He never argues that slums are "ideal", he just points out that they grow for very natural reasons (not due to greedy rich people), and that they bring some new challenges with them.
It's all horseshit. People are so fucking confused anymore it's mind-boggling.
Yes, let's encourage slums to get bigger, humanity's foot print to increase by billions.. and when all of their waste starts to rape our planet.. we'll just play gods and geoengineer.
Yeah, we'll make mistakes.. but we'll geofix that too!
...SIGH
Liberals think that's good. They don't realize that the elite just want more workers. The workers lives, on the other hand.. will be shit.
Adamredwine's view on viable energy sources is extremely biased because he is a nuclear power professional. His livelihood depends on nuclear power surviving as a viable energy source. While I would hate to see his livelihood damaged, I would rather the world make better decisions and improve the livelihood of all inhabitants and not just the ones that have great vested interests in themselves.
"This is an ad hominem attack. It is stupid. We can just as easily throw it back at greenies. "
Of course. E.g. Greenpeace survives on donations from gullible idiots, they rely on dirty coal power and that means they have to demonize nuclear in order to not have their rice-bowl taken from them.
In the world of motor vehicles, the weight-to-power ratio becomes significantly important. Electrical energy can be stored in the way of fuel cell technology which is an energy dense fuel source, which is ideal of vehicular transport.
A bountiful amount of CSP can be produced both locally and transnationally, distributed by an updated smart electrical grid (ours is almost 100 years old) which can store energy during off peak hours and release it when we need it most. The energy can be stored in electrical, mechanical or chemical capacitors quite efficiently.
Energy storage is an unsolved problem and an achilles heel of solar.
You either lose most of the energy you attempt to store(hydrogen+fuel cell), pay through the nose and use up precious rare earths(batteries), function only in a few specific locations(pumped hydro), can't cope with large scale storage(SMES, capacitors), can't make the economics work without natural gas(CAES) or can't scale fast enough to matter(flywheels).
Oh? Well, there's nothing magical or special about storing solar power vs the power derived from burning fossil fuels - so why is storage an 'achilles heel' for solar power but not an achilles heel for fossil fuel power?
You are ascribing magical attributes to smart-grid technology. At best a smart grid can do some demand shifting(I don't care precisely when the water heater is operation as long as the water is hot when I use it; this gives you some tiny capacity to time shift some of my demand) and some better diagnostics of error conditions.
The smart grid cannot do cheap long-distance transmission nor make up for supply problems. There is no unicorn that shits skittles and rainbows.
Solar energy is our very own nuclear fusion energy, and it has supported all life on earth for billions of years. As long as the sun burns and we have access to it, solar energy is boundless (and if the sun stops burning and/or we lose access to it, well then we'll talk about nuclear fission plants :).
Collected Solar Power (CSP) is cheap to make (does not rely on expensive Photovoltaic technology but rather parabolic mirrors and Stirling engines that can produce both electricity and hot water at the same time), so cheap that it is competitive with fossil fuel energy in terms of its cost-to-energy-output ratio with one enormous difference. IT IS SUSTAINABLE.
CSP is expensive, requires huge land areas, requires sensitive desert eco systems to be sprayed with sticky binder and pesticides, requires more water than coal and nuclear power in the middle of a desert, requires massive HVDC lines that span continents.
CSP is not sustainable. The definition of sustainable is "meets the need of today without comprimising the needs of tomorrow". It fails on meeting the needs of today and producing enough energy for the poor to cope with climate change.
Nuclear power is cheap, but nuclear power plants cost too much (manpower, raw materials, hazards to populations, etc.) to be feasible, not to mention the carbon footprint it leaves in its creation. Furthermore, the amount of nuclear fuel remaining on earth, whether it is 20 years or 600 years worth, is ultimately limited and the energy paradigm would require a complete overhaul at some point in the future.
Nuclear power plants have the lowest resource consumption of any kind of powerplant besides gas turbines.
A tonne of the Earth's crust contains ~3 ppm U and ~10 ppm Th. With the appropriate technology this corresponds to as much usable energy as ~140 barrels of oil per tonne of junk. There is enough fissionable material to sustain 10 billion people until the sun expands and kills all life on Earth.
If you want to go green you should work to reduce immigration!
Changing lightbulbs and having few or no kids is pointless when you let the government bring in millions of immigrants that will then have a dozen kids while you pay taxes to enable them to do so.
Google numbersusa to learn real facts on immigration.
wow, you are fucking stupid. did you not listen to the talk? immigrant workers have nothing to do with it. child reproduction eventually decreases once within cities. besides, there is the benefit of cheap labor that in turn keeps costs down.
why don't you read something that isn't far right propaganda?
Go see the farmer suicides in India over GMO seeds.They are owned by one company and you will soon be owned by that same company, you will pay a tax to eat their food and they will own all GMO foods.This man has some vested interest in the subject, there is over 600, 000 websites that plead for the consumer to get informed about this monstrous practice and most of those sites made from Professors that have left their countries on vessels with their families to get away from these Gods
Soilent Green, lets have mandatory Euthanasia and feed the starving people the old, and polluting humans, that are the smartest mammals on the planet, eat smart, eat green, get rid of the polluters one plate full at a time. This Message Was Brought To You By Your Masters Of the Carnegie and Rockefeller Corporation: Obey and Serve Your Masters.
Did I just hear him say only nuclear and hydro are green??? This guy is a moron! What he says about GMO's just isn't true. His quote: "We are as gods so we have to get good at it"... Ugh, I'll bet the corporate elite just love this guy.
I like the idea of solar and wind power because it is renewable. Rich countries, like the United States, could create so much wind and solar power plants that electricity could be free.
ture but have that extensive of a solar or wind farm has to have a pretty significant environmental impact. i knoe wind turbines effect migratory birds...not sure about solar though.. i like the wave energy idea alot.
I'm not sure about the wind turbines and the birds. There are probably ways to signal the birds to avoid the turbines, and places where the birds don't usually fly.
There was a big propaganda effort to stop the Cape Wind project off of Nantucket.
Kurzweil is a great theoretician with some amazing inventions to his name, but there is no way in hell we will be on complete solar by 2030. Besides, the faster information technology advances, the more demand there will be for electricity. As more applications (for electricity) are found, demand will still increase and has no theoretical maximum limit.
1. Solars price drops at least Three-fold every decade, and has been doing so since 1970,
2. This year solar power reached parity with grid-delivered retail electricity to residential and commercial users if produced on large-scales, ie not just on your familys roof, where it costs twice as much.
3. By or before 2020, Solar will be as cheap as or cheaper than Coal, Oil, Nuclear, or natural Gas (King CONG), even at point of production utility grade wholesale electricity
4. Solars worldwide growth rate of installation last year was 92%; it has consistently exceeded a 45% annual growth rate for a decade
5. At that growth rate, and with the continuing plummeting of the price of solar panels, Solar power will produce < 400% of todays Global Power by 2050
Cost per 1W of solar panels
1970 $100.00
1980 $28.50
1990 $8.50
2000 $3.00
2010 $1.00 (equivalent to CONG retail electricity)
Okay... well, I'm not quite as convinced of Kurzweil's "exponential growth of everything related to IT" theory as you seem to be. Either way, most of the reduction in solar power cost is due to improvements in thermo-solar power not photovoltaics. As I said below, I would like to see solar panels on every roof, but good luck trying to smelt aluminum with it. Physical space is a resource not enough people take seriously. The dessert isn't just "wasteland;" I thought green's knew that already.
That's ridiculous. Free energy is available right now. And he gave a very one-sided explanation of genetic engineering. It's a red flag anytime you hear a word like heresy in relation to science. And let's make sure not to change what we're doing, no, let's just put SO2 into the air to compensate and continue on the our current unstastainable path. What will the long term effects be for putting a billion dollars worth of SO2 in the air?
Nuclear is clean, efficient, safe and does not produce green house gases. A large proportion of the expense is artificial: legal work and meeting ridiculous regulations.
Number of people killed by commercial nuclear power accidents in the US: zero!
If you think you are a "green" you should be pro-nuclear. Period.
Many costs for nuclear power have been deliberately underestimated by government and industry such as the costs for the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes, the "decommissioning" (shutting-down and cleaning-up) of retired nuclear power plants, and nuclear accident consequences. In January, 1994, Commonwealth Edison acknowledged that it had to nearly double its estimate for reactor decommissioning -- from $2.3 billion to as much as $4.1 billion! see N.E.I.S.
Waste disposal is actually quite cheap (again from a technical standpoint). This process has been made much more expensive by lallygagging with Yucca Mountain. The government is now being sued by the power companies because they failed to start accepting waste when they originally promised. The last federal review of nuclear waste disposal costs found that the current tax levied for this purpose was more than adequate. Again, it's just politics.
Thanks for the support. I would add, though, that not all the regulations are "ridiculous." I actually work in regulatory compliance and there are some very good people working in the field. I was talking more about legal challenges by local "environmental" groups that will do anything to keep nuclear out. Materials transport is also a mess that should be streamlined.
Currently we don't have a problem with resources - it's their fair distribution which is not working. e.g. Western ships are massively decreasing fish stock at the shores of Africa, where local villages became "ghost towns" because local fishers couldn't feed their families anymore. Beside that, any resource will be offered to a (Western) consumer, who is able to pay for it (even if he doesn't need it), and not the one, who really needs it (and rather dies of hunger).
True solution cannot be based on consumption exploiting foreign resources or stockpiling them, but on limiting consumption to meet the capabilities of local resources - even in the West. This would also positively influence the pollution caused by the distribution of resources. One oil tanker distributing oil from Saudi Arabia to U.S. causes more pollution then all new "green" car technologies altogether all around the world could save.
GM plants are not a solution,they cannot be naturally replanted using seeds of last crop, as it was done in whole human history, without paying any fees (to nature).
GM-modified seeds are a patented property of a private company, thus fees have to be paid to maintain the "natural" process of seeding. To enforce the patent rights, companies engineer seeds, which are even not able to reproduce at all. These "dead seeds" are just a way of replacing a natural process by profitable products.
There is nothing like "patents" or "fees for seeds" in the nature, so nothing interconnected to these can replace the nature.
The most socially dangerous part of GM crops is replacing the (free-of charge) natural processes by (profitable) business models and creating long-term dependencies of farmers on private companies instead of nature.
Still no safe way of disposing nuclear waste & time scale is 1000's of years! The less depleted uranium available for dirty bombs the better!
Decommissioning costs make it a lot more expensive. Still susceptible to fuel price hikes, unlike renewables. Would a terrorist rather blow up a few wind turbines or a nuclear plant?
If global warming is man made then why are all the other planets in our solar system heating up? Who benefits from Cap & Trade a tax on living?
The reason there is no fully save way right now is because environmentalists won't let them build the facilities they need to properly dispose of nuclear waste. If they got out of the way we'd have a space that would be safe, and secure for 50,000+ years, well beyond the decay rate. If you want to blame anybody for unsafe nuclear, blame greenpeace/friends of the earth.
Not to mention the fact that they are forced to work on reactors that are outdated, and over their life span because they can't get the proper permits to build a new facility due to greenpeace's lobbying efforts.
I wish we would grow up as a society from black and white thinking. Why not be honest with ourselves about risks and benefits and simply acknowledge the risks we have to take?
Then we might be able to reduce them more effectively.
It has seemed to me since the last 8 years, when I started paying attention to public life again, all I see in the media are two people looking at grey and screaming at each other that its either black or white. Thankyou Rupert Murdoch, not.
When I look at the old clips on youtube of news shows such as William F. Buckley and Muhammad Ali having a reasonable exploration of each other's point of view, I am reminded what sanity is, and that we once had it.
Thank you. Yet I believe exactly the furor in the comments here is because of the extremist view Brand is taking of genetic engineering. He's not telling us how to work safeguards into the genetic engineering process, he's adopting a tone of reckless arrogance.
And there has been extensive propaganda. I'm a biochem trained mother of a 19 yr. old. When she was in 4rth grade, I saw a glossy color hand-out that was given to their class that was simply emotionally-based advertisement for GE.
Another problem with this essential refining of our views on GE, is suppression. And its the pro-GE forces who have most of the money and have been guilty of the suppression.
Free-market? Big corporations figured out long-ago how to have the gov't tip the scales ...There's a campaign right now to prevent Ohio from OUTLAWING the factual claims by organic farmers that their milk is rBGH free.
"Call Ohio Governor Strickland and urge him to rescind Executive Order 2008-03S at 614-466-3555"
Solar charges batteries for the night. One of the big problems we have is that so few house and office surfaces collect energy. This would mean we'd all run on home power in the day or store it when away. But at night network power boosted by stations (solar, nuke, wind, whatever) keep us going without worry.
False. Inflation has indeed occurred, however real measures of economic growth reveal quite clearly that prosperity has increased substantially over the past century.
I wouldn't say nuclear power is green. Neither GM crops. These to me, are an easy escape with short term benefits and anything that compromise our future generation's life isn't sustainable.
Everyone knows nuclear waste is hazardous and the story of Monsanto was traumatic. I really can't believe/understand how he would propose these.
My proposal would be more research on renewable energy and biochar.
Technology for renewable energy is there already and available. biogas, pv, wind, you name it. I was referring to researching to make these either cheaper and more efficient. And how to make people understand that their investment in these technology would have a long lasting benefit and positive side effects.
Where would you get the time needed to understand how to control nuclear fusion? It might be too late when the impact hits us. And there's no turning back from this.
do I have to re-emphasize that renewable energy is a real thing and not just illusion? What I would call lazy is giving up on the effort of replacing the end-of-pipe solutions like nuclear power with the closed-loop renewable energies.
Sure, re-re-emphasize it as much as you want, but that won't change a single thing.
The closest thing we have that can produce the power we use and will use in the future is nuclear.
And by focusing on fusion in the future we have our infinite loop.
The amounts of energy we (ab)use is immense, and still growing.
The waist generated by nuclear power reactors won't contribute to the carbon emission problem we have now.. and the time to research a viable solution is something we lack.
So I gather that you agree that the time to lay back and research the so called renewable energy (which is an contradiction by scientific definition) is far behind us?
I said it in my first reply, and and I'll say it again: we have run out of time to research anything new while we discard any solution meanwhile.
And how we get to the holy grail, dunno.. and when? havn't a clue.. but it will take a lot of time before we get there.
Renewable energy might be costly in the investment cost, but through out the life time it'll beat any kind of energy as input cost is zero. The technology is already available, no waste, no side effects.
Nuclear energy is cheap but you agreed that it'll need research to handle the waste. And you have no clue when this will be realized.
Ok as I have traveled the world over and over I have to disregard your mental state and step over you to reality. Solar and wind power is worthless. We can not store the energy nor regulate its flow. There are so many countless flaws in these energies that the thought of running the would off it is at best a joke. The data to anyone whom is a scientist and not a political science voice says that it can not be done. The scientific facts point to wind and solar as being on big joke.
Seems you're behind the times in science then. Numerous workable ways of utilising renewable energy have been suggested by the scientific community. Just because you don't think it's possible, doesn't mean everyone agrees with you.
Anyone whom tells you it will work is a liar. to power the usa solar version would take a battery twice the size of the hole us land mass. Maybe someone without physics or in some other dimension can make it happen but facts are facts. Are you happy with lights and water from only sun up to sun set? Even then you need multiple panels for each home to run it properly.About 6 will do it.Thats at 7k each or you could buy junk. Then they require bimonthly work there is your elecbill.You save nothing
You'r assuming previous technological efficiency, when nanoscaling and other method are already a reality.
Solar plants are already powering 13% of LA.
The very need for batteries only pertains to off grid installations, and the size of the battery has to do with it's energy density, which again is distributed.
Even today we are not even close to the efficiency of photosynthesis, and this ultimate solution will keep on getting better still.
Look little brain the power plant that helps run LA doesn't provide sqwat at night. You can believe any lie ya want but solar power only exists in the daytime without batteries end of story.
The manner in which Monsanto has manipulated organisms should not serve to discourage the general practice of customizing plants and animals to better serve humans while minimizing externalities to the biosphere. As for nuclear energy, there do exist risks, however it is the only viable alternative to coal available at present. Tremendous amounts of capital have been poured into firms developing ultra-efficient solar nano-cells, thus ensuring cost-effectiveness in the near future.
First off nuclear is nice but hemp fuel dominates them all and why don't we talk about it because its kept illegal. These third world countries could create a textile, home, plastic and energy markets equal to the world by simply growing pot. That's facts but none of these big brain talk about that, they just speak of energy types that serve only the elites. Solar my friend will never power the earth never. Well not as it is trying to be used.
Check out nanosolar, panels as thin as a sheet of foil, and can be printed 100x normal solar panels making them highly efficient, easy to ship, store, install, and will be roofing our homes in 10 years providing all the electric we need at about the same price as coal/gas.
As for hemp, I agree that the US was built on it, and it has to be made legal, for many reasons, but to think it is the way to erase dependency is a bit off, it takes a LOT of land to grow it, land we don't have to spare.
First of all Solar energy is already powering the earth, it is the basis of all life that has ever existed on this planet. Including huge imaginary fields of cannabis (alright!).
Harvesting bio-fuel of any kind, is thermodynamically less efficient than harvesting direct sun energy, as e are simply utilizing hydro-carbon fabricated by photosynthesis.
Having said that, the highest convertion ratio of mass to energy (besides black hoels), IS nuclear power. (which I do not support).
Yeah, and the immediate problem with nuclear power is we'd run out of uranium almost immediately anyway. Not to mention the potential environmental consequences.
Of course we will run out eventually, but you have no sense of the scales involved. There is more energy in the uranium in coal than there is in the coal in coal. One fuel assembly (about 2 feet square and 15 feet tall) has more energy than a tanker of oil. Uranium is found in very large quantities all over the world and, as I said, there are other techniques such as thorium burning that have equal potential.
On the "financial crisis" If we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don't think it is possible under capitalism" - Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First! "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsiblity to bring that about?" - Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Program
Did he say nuclear is green?? Is he living on another planet? Is he aware that there is at this time no failsafe way to store nuclear waste, which happens to have a radioactive 1/2 life of 250,000yrs and is capale of mutating the human genome?? So me thinks he is being paid by the Nuke industry. Nikola Tesla had developed free energy a hundred years ao. The current thinking of environmentalists is this " Giving the world abundant cheap green energy is like giving an idiot child a machine gun"
I heard that too - no way do I consider Nuclear to be green but GMO's - omg - does anyone have a clue how dangerous Monsanto is - This is the BS we are being fed by Repukes but then dems ain't much better
Monsanto's agenda is to control the worlds food production and water resources. Their "terminator gene" seeds are good for only one planting, any seeds produced are sterile, so the farmer MUST buy seed from Monsanto again the following season. Monsantos Frankenfoods ae responsible for honey bee wipeouts because they incorporate insecticide secretions in the plants to resist insect attack...duh, bees are insects. So if you control all food & water....you control people 100%. Evil fucks period.
I own two acres, have two hives currently and applied for grant to obtain 10 more. I grow U-pick blackberries, market veggies. The current hives belong to a friend. You sit with me - the world is becoming a very evil place to live - and it seems most of that evil resides here - hypocrites of earth. More nukes, more bioweapons, more ways to destroy humanity than any other nation - we are hypocrites.
I sit with you in more ways than you imagine, I own 20 acres (hobby farm) in tropical northern Australia. The evil resides in the UK, by law the US is still a colony of the UK, the war of independence was a fraud, concieved and funded by the British. Will send you a link to learn al about this. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"
WHAT? ? ? sure hope that aint so, for The Tree of Liberty is the Tree of knowledge, of continuous growth till reaching a stage of maturity and evolves be it from caterpilar to flutterbyes to the blews of having hogged the goods gifted to humanity through the gathering as if drawn, like the Mexican Monarchs, with 3 or 4 generations traveling and just one, get back to the magic spot from wensh their spirit rose in matter, manifest as we each are and those who wear a crown of thorns
Knowlede is power, Wisdom is knowing how to use it.........Do you honestly believe those currently wandering the corridors of power are using their power wisely?? I doubt it, they are the tyrants Thomas Jefferson was referring to in that quote I posted, the real question is where are the Patriots who are defending the tree of liberty from these sociopaths? Here maybe this will help you understand "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root" - Henry Thoreau
I agree with you, knowledge is power and the wisdom in knowing how to use it. No one who walks the corridors of power can use their powers wisely. For the Premise of "the Majority Rule", is in reality a dictorship of he big boys get their way, no matter what. True Democracy has us look after least able. Brains are handed out to do good by and with one another. not to take advantage of one another. I initially continued answering don't think they posted, I did save them so shall try again.
Stewart Brand did such a lot of good things. The Whole Earth Catalog and Review were *awesome* they were not stereotypically environmental or lefty at all. As an adoptee, I was able to penetrate the web of secrecy and find my parents, because of a book on research they endorsed. Brand seems deluded or partially informed in what he is doing now, but I won't demonize him. He either has been manipulated himself, or is lying to himself FIRST, etc. He wouldn't just cravenly sell out.
I usually look forward to Brand's talks. This comes off a bit defeatist in a way,and doesn't bode well. Maybe he's spent too much free time with Hugh Grant ..and I don't mean the actor.
for a reality check on what is really going on with all this GW BS.
The agenda is to push us all into supercities "Human Habitat Zones" and allow the rest "Forbidden Zones" to regenerate. In order for this to work they need to and advocate reducing world population levels by 2/3. They want to tear down dams, all infrastructure and everything man made in the "Forbidden Zones" the only people allowed in these areas will be those tasked with tearing stuff down
Interesting overall talk, but there has been a dearth of safety testing on genetically engineered foods, and in the little that has been done, when health risks have been found, the scientists involved have been suppressed. See the wiki article on biologist and GE critic Arpad Pusztai.
It is disingenous for Brand to claim expertise on the safety of genetic engineering based on a 1960 undergraduate degree, when the rest of his career has been spent in IT and business consulting.
first off, releasing SO2 into the atmosphere would cause rain with lower PH values, so acidic rain... great we want that.
second nuclear power is safe as long as its handled properly, obviously in 3rd world countries they dont have the money yet, and the chances of accidents will be higher.
furthermore, solar power can be very efficient combined with other sources, look it up, we only need about 1% of the earths surface covered in solar panels to cover our energy use
GMO's? Really? I have to wonder how much he held out for. What an ass. He needs to do more research. The answers are everywhere. Same with distributed CHP solar. It's cheaper, faster, independent and uses less resources. What a shill.
tamckissick 1 week ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Homosexual activists understand the power of words.
Please visit my channel to watch a one-minute video clip in which popular atheist author Richard Dawkins admits that homosexual activists "hijacked the word 'gay'".
The word "homosexual" is more appropriate and accurate because it, unlike the word "gay", actually describes the behavior/attraction/relationship being discussed.
The word "gay" helps homosexual activists push their agenda.
lightandbeautiful 1 month ago
Stewart Brand is a just corporatist, he never believed most of the environmentalism stuff he was pushing himself, other than "we are as gods", it has always just been a means to an end of the globalists Malthusian and Agenda 21 plans, no surprise he, Ricky Rood, and other supposed environmentalists are pushing GMO. Brand founded the Global Business Network with oil baron and fellow futurist Peter Schwartz of Royal Dutch Shell and through their propaganda rag Wired are trying to shape the future
TheProlefeed1 4 months ago
um what part of nuclear power is ecofriendly? not the mining or waste disposal parts?
mastifiorulamitongla 7 months ago
@mastifiorulamitongla Nuclear power is the ONLY source that assume responsibilty for it's byproducts, not even the toxic silicon from solar PV is taken care of like nuclear does. That's plenty eco-friendly and your false idol solar companies could learn a thing or two from the nuclear industry.
gamble180 7 months ago
Basically what he says is, that we either have the choice between:
building nuclear power stations (for which we do not have the fuel), genetically altered food and a life in slums
or
birth control, solar energy, natural food and a life in a house with garden and swimming pool
I will go for birth control, thank you
flamifer1 8 months ago
@flamifer1 You are welcome, and even encouraged to use birth control.
gamble180 7 months ago
Very kind of you not to advise to shoot myself. You are dreaming of a happy life, with 20 billion people or more on this planet, all consuming current from finit energy resources and living in futuristic skyscrapers. To you techno-religious fanatics it is heresy to even consider to use up less energy and unthinkable not to have the right to pack the world so full with people, that all problems multiply until they become unsolvable. Luckily people with your kind of attitude are becoming less.
flamifer1 7 months ago
@flamifer1 There have been two periods in human history when mankind's energy consumption have gone down: The great depression and the bubonic plague. The kind of world you dream of isn't anywhere people would want to live.
gamble180 7 months ago
Your statement about the great depression perfectly reflects your conviction, that mankind could only prosper by using up its finit resources as fast as possible and that overpopulation was a local phenomenon. Prosperity is measured per capita and not by total numbers. In my "dream world" last borns don't have to leave their families' farms to go to the city and work in a sweat shop or prostitute themselves. Why? Because they will not be born. We need more education, not more people.
flamifer1 7 months ago
@flamifer1 Listen to yourself. Last borns, family farms, movin to "the big city." The world was like that, 200 years ago. All you have to do is kill 9 out our 10 people, reintroduce plagues, and remove fancy things like electricity and sanitation. good luck.
gamble180 7 months ago
Yes, believe it or not: most people even nowadays still live in small communities and live off farming. And most of them are having too many babies. The result of it are growing slums around the cities of the 3rd world. Only birth control can prevent that the whole world will turn into a slum.
>> kill 9 out of 10 people
I am sick and tired of people parroting stupid lies about what birth control is. Please get informed. And try another source than your local preacher too.
flamifer1 7 months ago
@flamifer1 I certainly hope you don't have kids, for plenty of reasons. But they have what your talking about in China of course, where people stuff little girls in bags and drown them because they want a boy and can only have 1 kid. You can have that. Otherwise stfu.
gamble180 7 months ago
>> in China, of course...
So, in your opinion, it is the fault of the "evil" one child policy, that baby girls in China get killed by their parents? Not, mayhaps, because of the "good" old chinese tradition to prefer boys? Do you support this "great" tradition?
For your info, my poor, uninformed friend: China's 1 child policy has saved the country from permanent famines with yearly tens of millions of deaths. Did it ever occur to you, that there could be grave reasons for such a policy?
flamifer1 7 months ago
@flamifer1 Actually, the one child policy in china is evil. It goes against the basic human nature. The day this country tries to tell someone they can or cant have kids is the day this country burns, Thank god the influence of people like you extends no further than your mother's basement,
gamble180 7 months ago
Yes, birth control does go against the human nature. It is in the nature of all living species to multiply until more individuals die off of hunger and epidemies than are born. This is the "natural" way you seem to favour.
Thank god, UN-statistcs show, that more and more people are seeing the benefits of having less children. Against bitter resistence of religious fanatics or nazis, who are using well meaning ignorants like you to their sinister ends. Start using your own brain!
flamifer1 7 months ago
@gamble180 Get real. There are already far too many people in the world. 7 billion and this number risks stabilizing at from 10 to 12 billion by 2050 when the planet's biodiversity is already under huge pressure. I'd prefer people to have fewer kids through education and access to contraception but if not, then compulsion. Today, having a large family is an anti-social act.
DrZenith 2 months ago
Yes, let us help them to have even more babies, so that the whole world can turn into a slum. There our children will be able to choose to join the criminal world or the legitimate one and everything in between. We will never be bored by any luxury in this utopia, always busy and very creative. What utter nonsense!
All these people want nothing else but to get out of the slums and the only way it can be done is secular education birth control.
flamifer1 8 months ago
@flamifer1 "nuclear power stations (for which we do not have the fuel)"
What about this fuel?: nuclearinfo. net/Nuclearpower/UraniuamDistribution
40 trillion tonnes + 160 trillion tonnes of thorium = enough fuel to feed today's power consumption (16 TW) for 32.4 billion years.
.
Is a 32.4 billion-year fuel supply not large enough?
hitssquad 8 months ago 3
i wonder if he'd be so in love with nuclear after Japan. This guy is a corporatist. the way he talks about the poor as "these people" is really condescending. His little Jerry Brown dig was pointless. We wouldn't have to resort to GM to reduce land use if we stopped eating animals.
thatbitchonskates 10 months ago
@thatbitchonskates "i wonder if he'd be so in love with nuclear after Japan."
Why wouldn't he?
hitssquad 8 months ago 2
i wonder if he'd be so in love with nuclear after Japan. This guy seems like a corporatist. the way he talks about the poor as "these people" is really condescending. eww, eww, eww
thatbitchonskates 10 months ago
6:40 is astonishing. Pretty damn cool too.
TreyRoque 1 year ago
"until governments make it (coal and oil) expensive, it won't change" Has he never heard of the invisible hand of free markets? I usually find that academics such as this guy thinks of populations and people in mass. Rather than giving credit to individuals making life better by trade and opportunity.
Cleopas82 1 year ago
For being so smart, you sure are dumb.
bugsz1 1 year ago
As for GM, the yields would be achievable by regular agriculture, but would use a far greater area of land. If people are going to keep shagging, we need to feed them whilst impacting as little of the land surface as possible. It's thesame reason they grow tomatoes in greenhouses... The more land we leave undisturbed for natural ecosystems, the more chance the Earth has to fight back using it's own mechanisms. This is the same reason why wind farms aren't viable: Too much land stolen from naure!
WarrenWoodcraft 1 year ago
Nuclear is the lesser of many evils. The waste is minimal, and radiation doesn't kill people in the way people think. Sites of natural radioactivity actually have more biodiversity than would otherwise be expected, hence Chernobyl has already reforested itself, and there's talk of making it into a National Park to make some money back through tourism. Even if you lived there, the increased radiation exposure would take roughly 7 days of your life expectancy, as opposed to 7 years if you smoke...
WarrenWoodcraft 1 year ago 6
wow I actuallly though this man was intelligent untill he started talking about climate refugees.
circusboy90210 1 year ago
So sad this dude drank the globalist koolaid.
bearcat648 1 year ago
He didn't mention he is an Ayn Rand Objectivist. A total right-wing loony.
geezzerboy 1 year ago
@geezzerboy Ayn Rand Objectivist? If I could reliably believe that on the basis of a single Youtube comment (no offense) I'd be clicking off *right* now -and yes, *just* because of that.
As it stands I'll hear him out.
polymath7 1 year ago
@polymath7
He once called Rand an "exciting figure" who had influenced his thinking.
He is a significant founding figure in the environmental movement.
He is also the founder of "TED talks".
That kind of intellectual honesty is enough to make any partisan's head explode.
Tapecutter59 1 year ago
@geezzerboy Freedom is so crazy isn't it
masonkiller666 1 year ago
@geezzerboy if you think Objectivism or Ayn Rand are right wing loonies. you should just stop talking now because you clearly are an unintelligent troll. go read a fucking book instead of checking the wiki article on it u simpleton.
smkymcnugget420 1 year ago
this video needs to be updated. it hasn't played well for quite some time.
jamijoelle 1 year ago
Looks like either cancer cells or a petri dish that's full to me and ready to collapse.
Do we really think that this level of human population will exist with decline of oil and climate change?
Perhaps 2 billion souls may float on the boat so to speak.
We overreached our capacity.
Sorry Stew...it will dive like an inverted J curve.
Bigum99 1 year ago
red flag: the only thing he says that explains the contraction of populations into cities is "opportunity"? is it really that simple?
are deserts are growing? is water disappearing? are seeds becoming expensive? ie controlled & patented by mega corps?
hey man, i heard you could earn 90 dollars a year in the city! while living in squalor! come on! lets do it!
bbbleaver 1 year ago
this is scary stuff
cchilder 2 years ago
Anti-genetic engineering has always struck me as being particularly irrational. Humans have been redesigning biological systems for THOUSANDS of years through artificial selection. We've simply found a faster way to do it now.
GlueSniffer4Life 2 years ago
Imo, nuclear should be a large part of the solution, but it probably wont happen, so it's time to prepare for the warming b/c straight renewables will not get us there w/o rapid innovation (which we cannot assume). if you do want to assume the innovation is likely, then why not assume similar innovation with nuclear is possible?
johnsoccer9v 2 years ago
people against nuclear power please explain your reasoning because I have not heard 1 good argument against it.
I can see slums being encouraged in the assumption that they can improve to sustainable communities that can still manage to have a high living standard. This may be possible with government/industry aid.
johnsoccer9v 2 years ago
nuclear is deadly. it might only make a coke cans worth of waste, but that coke will nearly everything it gets near.
how is nuclear a good idea? i get that its cheaper and doesnt case global warming, BUT IT WILL KILL ANYTHING AROUND IT. what did i miss here?
cchilder 2 years ago
Cchilder.
Chernobyl is the worst accident a nuclear plant could possibly have; so what was the consequences?
Well, 56 dead operators and rescue workers, potentially 4000 cancer deaths over the next few decades if the LNT hypothesis is true.
Coal power kills 30 000 per year in the US alone. That's on the order of 7 to 50 Chernobyls per year, every year; and it's not even an accident.
In short, you're an uninformed ass.
soylentgreenb 2 years ago
Some of what this guy says makes a lot of sense. The more I listened the more I have to agree. I dont think he is encourageing slums he is just accepting that they are happening and will continue to happen but he sees it positively as a route out of depravation.
JohnnyRawhide 2 years ago 2
@JohnnyRawhide I used to think urbanization and and slums were problems that we had to fix. I thought that the farmers were tricked into moving to the cities and then stuck in poverty. After reading Brand's book I've learned not to fear those words. He never argues that slums are "ideal", he just points out that they grow for very natural reasons (not due to greedy rich people), and that they bring some new challenges with them.
originalsugarcake 1 year ago 4
Depraved man.
darlingelf 2 years ago
It's all horseshit. People are so fucking confused anymore it's mind-boggling.
Yes, let's encourage slums to get bigger, humanity's foot print to increase by billions.. and when all of their waste starts to rape our planet.. we'll just play gods and geoengineer.
Yeah, we'll make mistakes.. but we'll geofix that too!
...SIGH
Liberals think that's good. They don't realize that the elite just want more workers. The workers lives, on the other hand.. will be shit.
Fucking ignoble dipshits.
complexnothings 2 years ago
dick cheney's 'green' friend?+
mrlowdangle 2 years ago
do some more homework on this guy. he does more good than most people on this earth.
holymolybob 2 years ago
Brilliant talk.
tinosnit 2 years ago
Adamredwine's view on viable energy sources is extremely biased because he is a nuclear power professional. His livelihood depends on nuclear power surviving as a viable energy source. While I would hate to see his livelihood damaged, I would rather the world make better decisions and improve the livelihood of all inhabitants and not just the ones that have great vested interests in themselves.
maxshojiowenohsawa 2 years ago
This is an ad hominem attack. It is stupid. We can just as easily throw it back at greenies.
tinosnit 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
"This is an ad hominem attack. It is stupid. We can just as easily throw it back at greenies. "
Of course. E.g. Greenpeace survives on donations from gullible idiots, they rely on dirty coal power and that means they have to demonize nuclear in order to not have their rice-bowl taken from them.
soylentgreenb 2 years ago
In the world of motor vehicles, the weight-to-power ratio becomes significantly important. Electrical energy can be stored in the way of fuel cell technology which is an energy dense fuel source, which is ideal of vehicular transport.
maxshojiowenohsawa 2 years ago
A bountiful amount of CSP can be produced both locally and transnationally, distributed by an updated smart electrical grid (ours is almost 100 years old) which can store energy during off peak hours and release it when we need it most. The energy can be stored in electrical, mechanical or chemical capacitors quite efficiently.
maxshojiowenohsawa 2 years ago
Energy storage is an unsolved problem and an achilles heel of solar.
You either lose most of the energy you attempt to store(hydrogen+fuel cell), pay through the nose and use up precious rare earths(batteries), function only in a few specific locations(pumped hydro), can't cope with large scale storage(SMES, capacitors), can't make the economics work without natural gas(CAES) or can't scale fast enough to matter(flywheels).
soylentgreenb 2 years ago
Oh? Well, there's nothing magical or special about storing solar power vs the power derived from burning fossil fuels - so why is storage an 'achilles heel' for solar power but not an achilles heel for fossil fuel power?
ExaltedLeader 1 year ago
Because fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro don't need any storage to provide reliable power.
I can't post links so I'll PM you a link to the graph of wind power aggregated over the entirety of Germany.
soylentgreenb 1 year ago
You are ascribing magical attributes to smart-grid technology. At best a smart grid can do some demand shifting(I don't care precisely when the water heater is operation as long as the water is hot when I use it; this gives you some tiny capacity to time shift some of my demand) and some better diagnostics of error conditions.
The smart grid cannot do cheap long-distance transmission nor make up for supply problems. There is no unicorn that shits skittles and rainbows.
soylentgreenb 2 years ago
Solar energy is our very own nuclear fusion energy, and it has supported all life on earth for billions of years. As long as the sun burns and we have access to it, solar energy is boundless (and if the sun stops burning and/or we lose access to it, well then we'll talk about nuclear fission plants :).
maxshojiowenohsawa 2 years ago
Collected Solar Power (CSP) is cheap to make (does not rely on expensive Photovoltaic technology but rather parabolic mirrors and Stirling engines that can produce both electricity and hot water at the same time), so cheap that it is competitive with fossil fuel energy in terms of its cost-to-energy-output ratio with one enormous difference. IT IS SUSTAINABLE.
maxshojiowenohsawa 2 years ago
CSP is expensive, requires huge land areas, requires sensitive desert eco systems to be sprayed with sticky binder and pesticides, requires more water than coal and nuclear power in the middle of a desert, requires massive HVDC lines that span continents.
CSP is not sustainable. The definition of sustainable is "meets the need of today without comprimising the needs of tomorrow". It fails on meeting the needs of today and producing enough energy for the poor to cope with climate change.
soylentgreenb 2 years ago
Nuclear power is cheap, but nuclear power plants cost too much (manpower, raw materials, hazards to populations, etc.) to be feasible, not to mention the carbon footprint it leaves in its creation. Furthermore, the amount of nuclear fuel remaining on earth, whether it is 20 years or 600 years worth, is ultimately limited and the energy paradigm would require a complete overhaul at some point in the future.
maxshojiowenohsawa 2 years ago
Nuclear power plants have the lowest resource consumption of any kind of powerplant besides gas turbines.
A tonne of the Earth's crust contains ~3 ppm U and ~10 ppm Th. With the appropriate technology this corresponds to as much usable energy as ~140 barrels of oil per tonne of junk. There is enough fissionable material to sustain 10 billion people until the sun expands and kills all life on Earth.
soylentgreenb 2 years ago
If you want to go green you should work to reduce immigration!
Changing lightbulbs and having few or no kids is pointless when you let the government bring in millions of immigrants that will then have a dozen kids while you pay taxes to enable them to do so.
Google numbersusa to learn real facts on immigration.
or read
By Edwin S. Rubenstein
Legal Immigration—The Bigger Obamacare Problem
rocketsredglare101 2 years ago
wow, you are fucking stupid. did you not listen to the talk? immigrant workers have nothing to do with it. child reproduction eventually decreases once within cities. besides, there is the benefit of cheap labor that in turn keeps costs down.
why don't you read something that isn't far right propaganda?
contemporarybeatnik 2 years ago
No the biggest problem is southern white male racists supporting right wing psychopaths, lucky that doesn't apply to you eh?...
StunnedByStupidity 2 years ago
He has it mostly wrong.
KensaiAkahige 2 years ago
This speech is amazing and truly opens a new window to the world! Thank you!
Xjotoxti20 2 years ago
Go see the farmer suicides in India over GMO seeds.They are owned by one company and you will soon be owned by that same company, you will pay a tax to eat their food and they will own all GMO foods.This man has some vested interest in the subject, there is over 600, 000 websites that plead for the consumer to get informed about this monstrous practice and most of those sites made from Professors that have left their countries on vessels with their families to get away from these Gods
Jai666666666 2 years ago
Soilent Green, lets have mandatory Euthanasia and feed the starving people the old, and polluting humans, that are the smartest mammals on the planet, eat smart, eat green, get rid of the polluters one plate full at a time. This Message Was Brought To You By Your Masters Of the Carnegie and Rockefeller Corporation: Obey and Serve Your Masters.
Jai666666666 2 years ago
Nice tie!
nikip3 2 years ago
Did I just hear him say only nuclear and hydro are green??? This guy is a moron! What he says about GMO's just isn't true. His quote: "We are as gods so we have to get good at it"... Ugh, I'll bet the corporate elite just love this guy.
annabodhi38 2 years ago 2
I like the idea of solar and wind power because it is renewable. Rich countries, like the United States, could create so much wind and solar power plants that electricity could be free.
It won't be, but it could be.
ArgueExplain 2 years ago 2
ture but have that extensive of a solar or wind farm has to have a pretty significant environmental impact. i knoe wind turbines effect migratory birds...not sure about solar though.. i like the wave energy idea alot.
smkymcnugget420 2 years ago
I'm not sure about the wind turbines and the birds. There are probably ways to signal the birds to avoid the turbines, and places where the birds don't usually fly.
There was a big propaganda effort to stop the Cape Wind project off of Nantucket.
givebirthathome 2 years ago
Nuclear Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
Google Video videoplay?docid=1498918502264826711
RevoBB 2 years ago
100 percent solar will be reached by 2030, nuclear ain't needed.
As Kurzweil says, we are 8 more doublings away from complete solar/wind dominance.
maybememe 2 years ago
Kurzweil is a great theoretician with some amazing inventions to his name, but there is no way in hell we will be on complete solar by 2030. Besides, the faster information technology advances, the more demand there will be for electricity. As more applications (for electricity) are found, demand will still increase and has no theoretical maximum limit.
adamredwine 2 years ago
1. Solars price drops at least Three-fold every decade, and has been doing so since 1970,
2. This year solar power reached parity with grid-delivered retail electricity to residential and commercial users if produced on large-scales, ie not just on your familys roof, where it costs twice as much.
3. By or before 2020, Solar will be as cheap as or cheaper than Coal, Oil, Nuclear, or natural Gas (King CONG), even at point of production utility grade wholesale electricity
maybememe 2 years ago
4. Solars worldwide growth rate of installation last year was 92%; it has consistently exceeded a 45% annual growth rate for a decade
5. At that growth rate, and with the continuing plummeting of the price of solar panels, Solar power will produce < 400% of todays Global Power by 2050
Cost per 1W of solar panels
1970 $100.00
1980 $28.50
1990 $8.50
2000 $3.00
2010 $1.00 (equivalent to CONG retail electricity)
maybememe 2 years ago
2020 $0.30 (cheaper than CONG wholesale electricity; these version 2.0 technologies are already visible)
2030 $0.10
2040 $0.03
2050 $0.01
maybememe dot (0m / search / exponential+solar
maybememe 2 years ago
Okay... well, I'm not quite as convinced of Kurzweil's "exponential growth of everything related to IT" theory as you seem to be. Either way, most of the reduction in solar power cost is due to improvements in thermo-solar power not photovoltaics. As I said below, I would like to see solar panels on every roof, but good luck trying to smelt aluminum with it. Physical space is a resource not enough people take seriously. The dessert isn't just "wasteland;" I thought green's knew that already.
adamredwine 2 years ago
Solar Collectors Covering 0.3 Percent of the Sahara Could Power All of Europe - PopSci
Google it
1% could power the world
- Lithium air batteries 10x more storage
- 150x less copper usage with HDVC cables, and they're virtually loseless
Seems exponential to me :)
maybememe 2 years ago 2
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maybememe 2 years ago
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maybememe 2 years ago
That's ridiculous. Free energy is available right now. And he gave a very one-sided explanation of genetic engineering. It's a red flag anytime you hear a word like heresy in relation to science. And let's make sure not to change what we're doing, no, let's just put SO2 into the air to compensate and continue on the our current unstastainable path. What will the long term effects be for putting a billion dollars worth of SO2 in the air?
manofaction2828 2 years ago
I believe the long term effects of SO2 would largely have to do with acid rain, but I don't think he was suggesting this as a long term solution.
What the hell are you talking about free energy? When you make such claims you just display your own ignorance.
adamredwine 2 years ago
Adamredwine is correct. RevoBB is incorrect.
Nuclear is clean, efficient, safe and does not produce green house gases. A large proportion of the expense is artificial: legal work and meeting ridiculous regulations.
Number of people killed by commercial nuclear power accidents in the US: zero!
If you think you are a "green" you should be pro-nuclear. Period.
HenryOrientJnr 2 years ago
Many costs for nuclear power have been deliberately underestimated by government and industry such as the costs for the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes, the "decommissioning" (shutting-down and cleaning-up) of retired nuclear power plants, and nuclear accident consequences. In January, 1994, Commonwealth Edison acknowledged that it had to nearly double its estimate for reactor decommissioning -- from $2.3 billion to as much as $4.1 billion! see N.E.I.S.
RevoBB 2 years ago
Waste disposal is actually quite cheap (again from a technical standpoint). This process has been made much more expensive by lallygagging with Yucca Mountain. The government is now being sued by the power companies because they failed to start accepting waste when they originally promised. The last federal review of nuclear waste disposal costs found that the current tax levied for this purpose was more than adequate. Again, it's just politics.
adamredwine 2 years ago
Thanks for the support. I would add, though, that not all the regulations are "ridiculous." I actually work in regulatory compliance and there are some very good people working in the field. I was talking more about legal challenges by local "environmental" groups that will do anything to keep nuclear out. Materials transport is also a mess that should be streamlined.
adamredwine 2 years ago
Currently we don't have a problem with resources - it's their fair distribution which is not working. e.g. Western ships are massively decreasing fish stock at the shores of Africa, where local villages became "ghost towns" because local fishers couldn't feed their families anymore. Beside that, any resource will be offered to a (Western) consumer, who is able to pay for it (even if he doesn't need it), and not the one, who really needs it (and rather dies of hunger).
blacksunway 2 years ago
True solution cannot be based on consumption exploiting foreign resources or stockpiling them, but on limiting consumption to meet the capabilities of local resources - even in the West. This would also positively influence the pollution caused by the distribution of resources. One oil tanker distributing oil from Saudi Arabia to U.S. causes more pollution then all new "green" car technologies altogether all around the world could save.
blacksunway 2 years ago
"Limiting consumption to meet the capabilities of local resources" ... isn't that sustainability?
I believe true sustainability is based on limitation and not on any support to cancer-like growth of consumption.
blacksunway 2 years ago
Related links on YouTube (no direct link possible, therefore just codes):
Flow - trailer (LGd9D4J0lag)
Flow: For Love of Water (b2o4RniDCOE)
The World According to Monsanto (c_OJcPKEYDE)
Monsanto: Farmer Suicides in India (jeboa4TR5Qo)
blacksunway 2 years ago
GM plants are not a solution,they cannot be naturally replanted using seeds of last crop, as it was done in whole human history, without paying any fees (to nature).
GM-modified seeds are a patented property of a private company, thus fees have to be paid to maintain the "natural" process of seeding. To enforce the patent rights, companies engineer seeds, which are even not able to reproduce at all. These "dead seeds" are just a way of replacing a natural process by profitable products.
blacksunway 2 years ago
There is nothing like "patents" or "fees for seeds" in the nature, so nothing interconnected to these can replace the nature.
The most socially dangerous part of GM crops is replacing the (free-of charge) natural processes by (profitable) business models and creating long-term dependencies of farmers on private companies instead of nature.
blacksunway 2 years ago
Still no safe way of disposing nuclear waste & time scale is 1000's of years! The less depleted uranium available for dirty bombs the better!
Decommissioning costs make it a lot more expensive. Still susceptible to fuel price hikes, unlike renewables. Would a terrorist rather blow up a few wind turbines or a nuclear plant?
If global warming is man made then why are all the other planets in our solar system heating up? Who benefits from Cap & Trade a tax on living?
sab611 2 years ago
The reason there is no fully save way right now is because environmentalists won't let them build the facilities they need to properly dispose of nuclear waste. If they got out of the way we'd have a space that would be safe, and secure for 50,000+ years, well beyond the decay rate. If you want to blame anybody for unsafe nuclear, blame greenpeace/friends of the earth.
jerseytropics 2 years ago
From what I've heard, another cause of nuclear accidents in the past has been the companies hiring underqualified/undertrained staff to operate them.
givebirthathome 2 years ago
Not to mention the fact that they are forced to work on reactors that are outdated, and over their life span because they can't get the proper permits to build a new facility due to greenpeace's lobbying efforts.
jerseytropics 2 years ago
I wish we would grow up as a society from black and white thinking. Why not be honest with ourselves about risks and benefits and simply acknowledge the risks we have to take?
Then we might be able to reduce them more effectively.
givebirthathome 2 years ago
It has seemed to me since the last 8 years, when I started paying attention to public life again, all I see in the media are two people looking at grey and screaming at each other that its either black or white. Thankyou Rupert Murdoch, not.
When I look at the old clips on youtube of news shows such as William F. Buckley and Muhammad Ali having a reasonable exploration of each other's point of view, I am reminded what sanity is, and that we once had it.
givebirthathome 2 years ago 2
This is very well said!
jerseytropics 2 years ago
Thank you. Yet I believe exactly the furor in the comments here is because of the extremist view Brand is taking of genetic engineering. He's not telling us how to work safeguards into the genetic engineering process, he's adopting a tone of reckless arrogance.
And there has been extensive propaganda. I'm a biochem trained mother of a 19 yr. old. When she was in 4rth grade, I saw a glossy color hand-out that was given to their class that was simply emotionally-based advertisement for GE.
givebirthathome 2 years ago
Another problem with this essential refining of our views on GE, is suppression. And its the pro-GE forces who have most of the money and have been guilty of the suppression.
Free-market? Big corporations figured out long-ago how to have the gov't tip the scales ...There's a campaign right now to prevent Ohio from OUTLAWING the factual claims by organic farmers that their milk is rBGH free.
"Call Ohio Governor Strickland and urge him to rescind Executive Order 2008-03S at 614-466-3555"
givebirthathome 2 years ago
There are safe ways to dispose of nuclear wastes...
As for DU, we could use breeder reactors and turn DU into nuclear fuel.
abram730 2 years ago
Solar charges batteries for the night. One of the big problems we have is that so few house and office surfaces collect energy. This would mean we'd all run on home power in the day or store it when away. But at night network power boosted by stations (solar, nuke, wind, whatever) keep us going without worry.
riftalope 2 years ago
The economy has gone up 80% per capita because the money supply has increased in a similar value, debasing the US dollar.
Since 1913 the USD has been inflated 95%.
This is plain self propaganda, and has nothing to do with energy efficiency or the environment.
Great guy, lame undersatnding of economics.
superdiza 2 years ago
False. Inflation has indeed occurred, however real measures of economic growth reveal quite clearly that prosperity has increased substantially over the past century.
gunman806 2 years ago
Batteries.
trylonperisphere 2 years ago
Comment removed
TdotFunk 2 years ago
I doubt you're even aware of the term oncogene. Be quiet.
gunman806 2 years ago
I wouldn't say nuclear power is green. Neither GM crops. These to me, are an easy escape with short term benefits and anything that compromise our future generation's life isn't sustainable.
Everyone knows nuclear waste is hazardous and the story of Monsanto was traumatic. I really can't believe/understand how he would propose these.
My proposal would be more research on renewable energy and biochar.
kittykattykoo 2 years ago
And where would you get the time needed to research new renewable energy?
The assumption that we have still all the time in the world to combat all diplomatic and social issues regarding these steps are.. well, naive.
Short time benefits.. might be, but it does provide a time laps to tackle the mentioned issues.
Nuclear energy is here, and it will stay until we understand how to control nuclear fusion.
The disarmament of weapons for energy is something that I love, and recycling is good, no?
dominice112 2 years ago
Technology for renewable energy is there already and available. biogas, pv, wind, you name it. I was referring to researching to make these either cheaper and more efficient. And how to make people understand that their investment in these technology would have a long lasting benefit and positive side effects.
Where would you get the time needed to understand how to control nuclear fusion? It might be too late when the impact hits us. And there's no turning back from this.
kittykattykoo 2 years ago
about weapons, I'm agaisnt war anyway. If you turn these into something beneficial and without side effect then why not?
Recycling, however, can't be easily judged. The whole life cycle of the material must be assesed and the carbon balance must be considered.
kittykattykoo 2 years ago
Recycle those weapons onto electricity.. hell, go for it.
The illusion we can fight the surplus of carbon emissions by just doing research and not clinging on to that what we know will help is plain lazy.
Changes don't occur in gigantic leaps, but large and manageable ones. Nuclear power as we know it is a stepping stone to Nuclear Fusion.
As technology progresses we know how to handle nuclear waist, use that knowledge and let the micro energy production grow into something viable.
dominice112 2 years ago
do I have to re-emphasize that renewable energy is a real thing and not just illusion? What I would call lazy is giving up on the effort of replacing the end-of-pipe solutions like nuclear power with the closed-loop renewable energies.
kittykattykoo 2 years ago
Sure, re-re-emphasize it as much as you want, but that won't change a single thing.
The closest thing we have that can produce the power we use and will use in the future is nuclear.
And by focusing on fusion in the future we have our infinite loop.
The amounts of energy we (ab)use is immense, and still growing.
The waist generated by nuclear power reactors won't contribute to the carbon emission problem we have now.. and the time to research a viable solution is something we lack.
dominice112 2 years ago
oh, now look who needs time for research and have uncertainities about closed loop.
kittykattykoo 2 years ago
So I gather that you agree that the time to lay back and research the so called renewable energy (which is an contradiction by scientific definition) is far behind us?
I said it in my first reply, and and I'll say it again: we have run out of time to research anything new while we discard any solution meanwhile.
And how we get to the holy grail, dunno.. and when? havn't a clue.. but it will take a lot of time before we get there.
dominice112 2 years ago
It's too late to become pessimistic.
I'll wrap this up.
Renewable energy might be costly in the investment cost, but through out the life time it'll beat any kind of energy as input cost is zero. The technology is already available, no waste, no side effects.
Nuclear energy is cheap but you agreed that it'll need research to handle the waste. And you have no clue when this will be realized.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend dominice.
kittykattykoo 2 years ago
Ok as I have traveled the world over and over I have to disregard your mental state and step over you to reality. Solar and wind power is worthless. We can not store the energy nor regulate its flow. There are so many countless flaws in these energies that the thought of running the would off it is at best a joke. The data to anyone whom is a scientist and not a political science voice says that it can not be done. The scientific facts point to wind and solar as being on big joke.
Edgrot 2 years ago
@Edgrot
Seems you're behind the times in science then. Numerous workable ways of utilising renewable energy have been suggested by the scientific community. Just because you don't think it's possible, doesn't mean everyone agrees with you.
iamelegy 2 years ago
Anyone whom tells you it will work is a liar. to power the usa solar version would take a battery twice the size of the hole us land mass. Maybe someone without physics or in some other dimension can make it happen but facts are facts. Are you happy with lights and water from only sun up to sun set? Even then you need multiple panels for each home to run it properly.About 6 will do it.Thats at 7k each or you could buy junk. Then they require bimonthly work there is your elecbill.You save nothing
Edgrot 2 years ago
You'r assuming previous technological efficiency, when nanoscaling and other method are already a reality.
Solar plants are already powering 13% of LA.
The very need for batteries only pertains to off grid installations, and the size of the battery has to do with it's energy density, which again is distributed.
Even today we are not even close to the efficiency of photosynthesis, and this ultimate solution will keep on getting better still.
superdiza 2 years ago
Look little brain the power plant that helps run LA doesn't provide sqwat at night. You can believe any lie ya want but solar power only exists in the daytime without batteries end of story.
Edgrot 2 years ago
The manner in which Monsanto has manipulated organisms should not serve to discourage the general practice of customizing plants and animals to better serve humans while minimizing externalities to the biosphere. As for nuclear energy, there do exist risks, however it is the only viable alternative to coal available at present. Tremendous amounts of capital have been poured into firms developing ultra-efficient solar nano-cells, thus ensuring cost-effectiveness in the near future.
gunman806 2 years ago 2
First off nuclear is nice but hemp fuel dominates them all and why don't we talk about it because its kept illegal. These third world countries could create a textile, home, plastic and energy markets equal to the world by simply growing pot. That's facts but none of these big brain talk about that, they just speak of energy types that serve only the elites. Solar my friend will never power the earth never. Well not as it is trying to be used.
Edgrot 2 years ago
Check out nanosolar, panels as thin as a sheet of foil, and can be printed 100x normal solar panels making them highly efficient, easy to ship, store, install, and will be roofing our homes in 10 years providing all the electric we need at about the same price as coal/gas.
As for hemp, I agree that the US was built on it, and it has to be made legal, for many reasons, but to think it is the way to erase dependency is a bit off, it takes a LOT of land to grow it, land we don't have to spare.
jerseytropics 2 years ago
Some physics:
First of all Solar energy is already powering the earth, it is the basis of all life that has ever existed on this planet. Including huge imaginary fields of cannabis (alright!).
Harvesting bio-fuel of any kind, is thermodynamically less efficient than harvesting direct sun energy, as e are simply utilizing hydro-carbon fabricated by photosynthesis.
Having said that, the highest convertion ratio of mass to energy (besides black hoels), IS nuclear power. (which I do not support).
superdiza 2 years ago
Yeah, and the immediate problem with nuclear power is we'd run out of uranium almost immediately anyway. Not to mention the potential environmental consequences.
SmileyWhiplash 2 years ago
Nope, you need to do some more research, there's plenty of uranium.
adamredwine 2 years ago 14
That's what they said about oil. We'll run out of it just like anything else, and we still have to do something with the waste.
SmileyWhiplash 2 years ago
Of course we will run out eventually, but you have no sense of the scales involved. There is more energy in the uranium in coal than there is in the coal in coal. One fuel assembly (about 2 feet square and 15 feet tall) has more energy than a tanker of oil. Uranium is found in very large quantities all over the world and, as I said, there are other techniques such as thorium burning that have equal potential.
adamredwine 2 years ago
Comment removed
hitssquad 8 months ago
@SmileyWhiplash "That's what they said about oil."
There's no oil? Are you sure? What are cars running on?
hitssquad 8 months ago
Stewart Brand owns
cheatdath 2 years ago
For these quotes and more
green-agenda(dot)com
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
Did he say nuclear is green?? Is he living on another planet? Is he aware that there is at this time no failsafe way to store nuclear waste, which happens to have a radioactive 1/2 life of 250,000yrs and is capale of mutating the human genome?? So me thinks he is being paid by the Nuke industry. Nikola Tesla had developed free energy a hundred years ao. The current thinking of environmentalists is this " Giving the world abundant cheap green energy is like giving an idiot child a machine gun"
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
"The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself."
- Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
"We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public's imagination...
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts...
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest."
- Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world."
- Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
The data doesn't matter. We're not basing our recommendations
on the data. We're basing them on the climate models.
- Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.
- Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
"I believe it is appropriate to have an 'over-representation' of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience."
- Al Gore,
"It doesn't matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true."
- Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace
"Unless we announce disasters no one will listen."
- Sir John Houghton,
first chairman of IPCC
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
I heard that too - no way do I consider Nuclear to be green but GMO's - omg - does anyone have a clue how dangerous Monsanto is - This is the BS we are being fed by Repukes but then dems ain't much better
okiedragonlady2 2 years ago
Monsanto's agenda is to control the worlds food production and water resources. Their "terminator gene" seeds are good for only one planting, any seeds produced are sterile, so the farmer MUST buy seed from Monsanto again the following season. Monsantos Frankenfoods ae responsible for honey bee wipeouts because they incorporate insecticide secretions in the plants to resist insect attack...duh, bees are insects. So if you control all food & water....you control people 100%. Evil fucks period.
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
I own two acres, have two hives currently and applied for grant to obtain 10 more. I grow U-pick blackberries, market veggies. The current hives belong to a friend. You sit with me - the world is becoming a very evil place to live - and it seems most of that evil resides here - hypocrites of earth. More nukes, more bioweapons, more ways to destroy humanity than any other nation - we are hypocrites.
okiedragonlady2 2 years ago
I sit with you in more ways than you imagine, I own 20 acres (hobby farm) in tropical northern Australia. The evil resides in the UK, by law the US is still a colony of the UK, the war of independence was a fraud, concieved and funded by the British. Will send you a link to learn al about this. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
WHAT? ? ? sure hope that aint so, for The Tree of Liberty is the Tree of knowledge, of continuous growth till reaching a stage of maturity and evolves be it from caterpilar to flutterbyes to the blews of having hogged the goods gifted to humanity through the gathering as if drawn, like the Mexican Monarchs, with 3 or 4 generations traveling and just one, get back to the magic spot from wensh their spirit rose in matter, manifest as we each are and those who wear a crown of thorns
HamOnCan 2 years ago
Knowlede is power, Wisdom is knowing how to use it.........Do you honestly believe those currently wandering the corridors of power are using their power wisely?? I doubt it, they are the tyrants Thomas Jefferson was referring to in that quote I posted, the real question is where are the Patriots who are defending the tree of liberty from these sociopaths? Here maybe this will help you understand "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root" - Henry Thoreau
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
I agree with you, knowledge is power and the wisdom in knowing how to use it. No one who walks the corridors of power can use their powers wisely. For the Premise of "the Majority Rule", is in reality a dictorship of he big boys get their way, no matter what. True Democracy has us look after least able. Brains are handed out to do good by and with one another. not to take advantage of one another. I initially continued answering don't think they posted, I did save them so shall try again.
HamOnCan 2 years ago
Comment removed
givebirthathome 2 years ago
Stewart Brand did such a lot of good things. The Whole Earth Catalog and Review were *awesome* they were not stereotypically environmental or lefty at all. As an adoptee, I was able to penetrate the web of secrecy and find my parents, because of a book on research they endorsed. Brand seems deluded or partially informed in what he is doing now, but I won't demonize him. He either has been manipulated himself, or is lying to himself FIRST, etc. He wouldn't just cravenly sell out.
givebirthathome 2 years ago 3
I usually look forward to Brand's talks. This comes off a bit defeatist in a way,and doesn't bode well. Maybe he's spent too much free time with Hugh Grant ..and I don't mean the actor.
jojo808 2 years ago
Check out
green-agenda(dot)com
for a reality check on what is really going on with all this GW BS.
The agenda is to push us all into supercities "Human Habitat Zones" and allow the rest "Forbidden Zones" to regenerate. In order for this to work they need to and advocate reducing world population levels by 2/3. They want to tear down dams, all infrastructure and everything man made in the "Forbidden Zones" the only people allowed in these areas will be those tasked with tearing stuff down
OdinsHenchman 2 years ago
Interesting overall talk, but there has been a dearth of safety testing on genetically engineered foods, and in the little that has been done, when health risks have been found, the scientists involved have been suppressed. See the wiki article on biologist and GE critic Arpad Pusztai.
It is disingenous for Brand to claim expertise on the safety of genetic engineering based on a 1960 undergraduate degree, when the rest of his career has been spent in IT and business consulting.
givebirthathome 2 years ago 3
Geothermal.. not nuclear!
Morphixx 2 years ago 2
'informal economy'...
fuck no. we shouldn't bring those in the grey economy into the 'formal economy'! We should JOIN them in the informal economy!
Let the statists tax the sheeple
AGORA
FreiheitKampfer 2 years ago
interesting talk.
first off, releasing SO2 into the atmosphere would cause rain with lower PH values, so acidic rain... great we want that.
second nuclear power is safe as long as its handled properly, obviously in 3rd world countries they dont have the money yet, and the chances of accidents will be higher.
furthermore, solar power can be very efficient combined with other sources, look it up, we only need about 1% of the earths surface covered in solar panels to cover our energy use
riaanzoetmulder 2 years ago 3