My country is going to commit economic suicide ...

[nctnico]

Everywhere on earth within an hour, yeah right.

I flew yesterday, checkin required to arrive two hours early:
Checkin, luggage checkin, customs, wait, boarding at gate entering plane: 2 hours 15 minutes

Flight took 3 hours 15 minutes

Checkout wait for luggage to arrive, bags, customs, airport:  1 hour

So efficiency 50%  wait time and protocol total three hours, flight time three hours total 6 hours.

Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.

[bd139]

I haven't found it any different to the 1990s. There's smartphones now though which gives you something to do while you're trying to sleep on the airport floor because you missed your connecting flight because someone had gone mental in the first one and they had to delay take off by 2 hours to lever him out of the toilet (this actually happened)

[Kjelt]

Is Boeing not developing some kind of 5 times the soundbarrier plane for 2040 or so?

[f4eru]

Is Boeing not developing some kind of 5 times the soundbarrier plane

Nope.

[SiliconWizard]

Kjelt is probably talking about this project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-51_Waverider

Boeing is definitely working on applications for this, but what exactly...

[mtdoc]

Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.

No, I'd say it's giving the Neocon's justification to waste at least $5 Trillion dollars and many thousands of lives on destructive and pointless wars in 5 countries, hastening the decline of the American empire.  IMHO of course...

[nctnico]

Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.

No, I'd say it's giving the Neocon's justification to waste at least $5 Trillion dollars and many thousands of lives on destructive and pointless wars in 5 countries, hastening the decline of the American empire.  IMHO of course...

But that doesn't bother me at all. Trump is doing an excellent job by detaching the USA economy from the rest of the world so the USA can go under without causing trouble for the rest.

[mtdoc]

Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.

No, I'd say it's giving the Neocon's justification to waste at least $5 Trillion dollars and many thousands of lives on destructive and pointless wars in 5 countries, hastening the decline of the American empire.  IMHO of course...

But that doesn't bother me at all. Trump is doing an excellent job by detaching the USA economy from the rest of the world so the USA can go under without causing trouble for the rest.

Well the demise of the US empire was (is) inevitable.

But the needless suffering and loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the squandering of US taxpayer money that could be used to do good things are highly regrettable and bother me greatly.

It would be nice to think the evaporation of the US empire will proceed peacefully and not cause trouble for others - but history says that is unlikely.  Trump is a symptom, not the disease.

[IanMacdonald]

Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.

Which is the objective of terrorism:

• To kill people?
• To cause disruption to the targeted country?

Answers on an Arabic 727 flight manual to a cave in Afghanistan.

[Harb]

Energy is the basis of every type of success a country can have, and there is only one way to go........Thorium based molten salt reactors......and the sooner we start accepting that and start to build them, the sooner we will get past this major stumbling block we have built ourselves...........Here in Australia we are in probably the best position to exploit this, and yet we dance around jumping at shadows.........just stupid.

[Marco]

I disagree, too many known unknowns. Lead cooled fast reactor is much more realistic, breeder reactors won't run out of Uranium any time soon. If you're going to go breeder, just forget about the Thorium. It's a distraction. Molten salt reactors are for dreamers, liquid sodium is for pyromaniacs.

[Jan Finkel]

Agree, sodium-cooled fast breeder reactors are the future of the energy producing. Stil there are only few builded and still in operation and they are all in Russia, Beloyarsk afaik.

[f4eru]

Thorium based molten salt reactors..

Yeah. Dangerous as hell.
Obsolete.
Won't happen.

Here in Australia we are in probably the best position to exploit this

You probably meant PV. Australia is probably in one of the best position to exploit PV.

[Marco]

Thorium based molten salt reactors..

Yeah. Dangerous as hell.
Obsolete.

There's one reason to build a couple fast reactors at least, to get rid of the existing waste. We don't even have certified long term storage solutions for contemporary high burn up fuel ... that shit's nasty.

[IanMacdonald]

With only one or two exceptions all the major nuclear accidents have been due to chemical or physical processes getting out of hand, not the nuclear fuel itself. Pressurised water, zirconium (flashbulb metal) fuel cladding, liquid sodium.

[james_s]

Yes, that is IS' and Al quaida's greatest accomplishment: make flying a long and tedious process.

This is something that has bothered me all along. Al Quaida unequivocally won, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in causing tremendous disruption, fear, and an overall great reduction in our personal freedoms. The few thousand people killed on 9/11 were but a drop in the proverbial bucket. The buildings and airplanes can be replaced, the economic cost directly from the attack was minimal in the grand scheme of things.

The freedom is gone forever, the disruption and inconvenience will have lasting costs through the foreseeable future, the changes referred to as the "post-9/11 world" are permanent and the costs of the resulting wars in both money and lives absolutely dwarfs the attack. Yet people seem completely blind to this and absolutely oblivious to the fact that the only effective fight against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized and continue on with life as usual. Ignore the bully and eventually they will give up, because a fight is precisely what they want.

[IanMacdonald]

There certainly seems to have been a change in the response to terrorism in the last two decades. Back in the era of the Irish Troubles the UK suffered more terrorism than now, but it didn't stop any vital services from functioning, at least not for any longer than it took to clean up from an incident. The security services were there, but they worked low-profile, doing their job silently and efficiently without creating undue public anxiety.

One factor we need to be cautious of is that a whole high-profile security industry has sprung up around counter-terrorism, and that it now benefits that industry to spread FUD so as to sell their products and services. 

[Kleinstein]

Thorium based molten salt reactors..

Yeah. Dangerous as hell.
Obsolete.

There's one reason to build a couple fast reactors at least, to get rid of the existing waste. We don't even have certified long term storage solutions for contemporary high burn up fuel ... that shit's nasty.

A fast reactor to reduce the existing waste might be an option - but an expensive one and only a partial solution. It would only reduce the long term radio toxicity by some amount not getting away with all of it. It also still needs lots of development and certification. So far the fast reactors are not so well behaving. New fuels need special test before - so you can't just dump any junk inside - every fuel type needs testing and certification. It also needs chemical processing before some of the trans-uranium elements could be burned off. That chemical part is kind of dirty, producing large volumes of contaminated materials. However there seem to be already a significant supply of already separated reactor grade plutonium they could get essentially for free.

With a limited amount of wast from the existing reactors it may not be worth developing it. 

[Terry01]

There certainly seems to have been a change in the response to terrorism in the last two decades. Back in the era of the Irish Troubles the UK suffered more terrorism than now, but it didn't stop any vital services from functioning, at least not for any longer than it took to clean up from an incident. The security services were there, but they worked low-profile, doing their job silently and efficiently without creating undue public anxiety.

One factor we need to be cautious of is that a whole high-profile security industry has sprung up around counter-terrorism, and that it now benefits that industry to spread FUD so as to sell their products and services.

.....and remember too now you have the PC brigade to make sure no one upsets the terrorists while they go about their "buisiness" then someone to make sure no one upsets the PC brigade while they make sure no one upsets the terrorists then someone to make sure.......you get where this is going...oh and don't forget someone will need paying for all this and i wonder who will foot the bill....

That's a whole other story my friend! 

[peteb2]

At least in wee New Zealand, in the city i live at least i can still heat my home with a wood burner but i worry for how long. The city council we have has a wonderful way of making living in this city as horrible as possible with its current subterfuge of forcing people out of their cars onto a useless unreliable virtually non-existent public transport. Techniques like removing car parking completely to increasing petrol by 11.5cents (promising the money will only be used to better the public transport system but in actual fact spending the vast chiunks on ridiculous quarter million dollar expensive art installations that break the next day and need further funding to be repaired).

The other hilarity is that the country earns most of its nations income from the Farming Sector. Presently that's dairy as in 100s of thousands of cows being milked. Sadly in the same breathe with with our stupid MMP System of Government meaning political parties than weren't even voted for ending up running the country (with zero clue) we've the likes of the Green Party demanding a stop to things like the farming cows because they belch out too much methane....

Add to the Party's deluded demand on "CLEAN ENERGY" windfarm construction, solar highways (i kid you not) and electric cars.... while being completely ignorant to the fact the core materials used in such mechanisms are expensive and have affected the environment some other place on the planet... (think about the mining and refining of copper as example).

And a funny thing about my neighbour whose lectured me on the wood burner being bad for pollution, his two year old heat-pump heat exchange unit originally placed near the fence close to the lounge of my properly is already on a death spiral. The piece of junk makes an awful constant loud thump, thump, thump probably worn out bearing set in the compressor motor. Neighbour says it isn't making enough heat now and will replace it soon....

Sometimes i wonder if the powers that be really have the proper facts when it comes to what energy generation forms we can use...

[cdev]

They can get five times more selling natural gas in Asia than they now sell it for in the US. There is an almost limitless desire for it there. Its probably three times more than they can get in the EU. Can you blame them for wanting to sell it there?

----

re 'post 9-11 world'  Ha!

The changes we are seeing are a delayed reaction by TPTB to the gains of the 20th century. They are all getting together and pushing back.

They're united now, against the normal folk.

They're just pretending to argue.

[james_s]

And a funny thing about my neighbour whose lectured me on the wood burner being bad for pollution, his two year old heat-pump heat exchange unit originally placed near the fence close to the lounge of my properly is already on a death spiral. The piece of junk makes an awful constant loud thump, thump, thump probably worn out bearing set in the compressor motor. Neighbour says it isn't making enough heat now and will replace it soon....

Without actually hearing the sound I can't say for sure, but from the description it sounds like a bent or unbalanced fan in the outdoor unit. Compressors can fail but that's fairly rare and is usually catastrophic. My heat pump is 12 years old and still going strong, the one I installed in my mother's place is about the same age. Recently replaced the motor run capacitor in mine but otherwise it has been very dependable.

I still like my wood stove too, but the heat pump is nice, mostly for the air conditioning in the summer.

[Mr. Scram]

You should follow our solution

Granted, the UK economic suicide solution is quite effective.

[Marco]

The piece of junk makes an awful constant loud thump, thump, thump probably worn out bearing set in the compressor motor. Neighbour says it isn't making enough heat now and will replace it soon....

Just don't buy one from shortlived companies with shit warranty, caveat emptor. No HVAC company with history can survive with compressors which can't go the distance.

While short lived machinery is bad for the environment on a global scale, at least on a local scale it still won't fuck your kids lungs. Old fashioned wood burning stoves are the bunker oil of heating, you can build decent ones ... most of the existing ones aren't. An entire village with open fireplaces in winter with a lack of wind and you get Bejing quality air.

[james_s]

At least out here the regulations on efficiency and whatnot are such that there are only so many corners that can be cut and even the lower end equipment is mostly ok. As long as you get something that has a Copeland or other reputable brand of compressor it will usually hold up pretty well.

Properly used, wood is a reasonable source of heat. It's a renewable resource that is carbon neutral and good seasoned firewood burns pretty clean in a modern sealed wood stove. The nasty smoke often associated with fireplaces is often due to burning green wood, scraps of lumber that are painted or treated, or other random garbage. A lot of people simply don't know any better.