OFF: UK's premier green awareness festival under threat from police and local council.

[Arjan Hulsebos]

On Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:25:32 +0100, Jonathan Jarrett wrote
> On Wed, 5 Aug 2009, M Holmes wrote:
>
> > Such as solar power satellites or nuclear power (fusion preferably, but
> > fission will hold the dam in the meantime). The problem is that the
> > greens themselves are part of the political resistance to this. Green
> > beliefs have become in large part a religious cult rather than a serious
> > search for solutions to the problems facing us.
> 
>  	I think parts of the movement always were like this, and people 
> have been pointing this out since the 1960s but now that green is 
> more mainstream the basic contradictions are beginning to be 
> addressed, as with any ideology that attracts a following. Again,
>  however, as to the necessity of solutions like nuclear power, I 
> agree with you, though my money's on solar-catalysed fuel cells.

Nuclear power isn't green. Stepping over the issue of nuclear waste for a
moment, nuclear power adds energy to the earth's system, thereby increasing
its temperature. Solar (and derivatives, such as wind and tidal) power is the
only source that is energy-neutral over short periods of time (say, weeks).

Biofuels might also fall into that catagory, but that depends on how it's
processed, and what the waste products are.

Just a few words on nuclear waste, fission also produces tons of nuclear
waste. Not directly, but through the bombardment of metals (mainly iron) with
high-energy neutrons.  

>  	As a historian what tends to irk me is that many of the landscapes 
> and zones of natural beauty that conservationists want so much to 
> preserve are themselves the results of centuries of human use. But 
> that's a far smaller issue.

Yes, that is ironic. It also makes you wonder if 200 years from now people
would be fighting to preserve the current-day skyline...

> > Hey, why non halt that too? If it's too hot, we normally put up a
> > sunshade. Let's test-deploy solar sails, then scale 'em up and put 'em
> > out by L1 in the tens of thousands. Build a sunshade for Mother Earth
> > and stop her getting sunburn. *There's* an idea to rally behind.
> 
>  	Ironically, there's no profit in preventing global catastrophe, so 
> funding is hard to assemble... Yours,

Yup, we'd rather make a buck than not go to hell...

Gr,

Arjan H

--------------------------------
Rock in the 70ies:
   substance inhalation, hotel devastation, and amplifier obliteration