[Grovenet] America's Trillion-Dollar Baby

[Steven]

Fine and good. But what about the hard answers? Once you know the rope 
is 50ft long and can hold 1000 lbs, which 5 people will get on the rope 
and what is to happen of the ones who don't get on?
What if it is decided that Montana and Arizona are just too harsh to 
live in economically? What if we have to get rid of an elder for every 
baby born?

David Morelli wrote:
> I don't want the rope to fail with people on it either.  In this  
> parable we differ because you want to check to see if the rope is  
> "strong enough".  Even if it is true, I don't want to hear, "it isn't  
> strong enough because our heaviest person is 200 pounds and the rope  
> won't hold 200 pounds".
>
> I am a technician, I want to know how many pounds it will hold and I  
> want to know its length, because that tells me something useful.
>
> Given the length and strength of the rope we can tailor it to the  
> situation.  If the rope only holds 120 pounds and is 100 feet long,  
> we can safely lower someone less than 120 pounds to a ledge within  
> 100 feet of the top.  Or we can double the rope and lower 240 pounds  
> to a ledge 50 feet from the top.  Or, we can triple the rope and  
> lower 360 pounds to a ledge 33 feet from the top.   When we know the  
> limits of the rope we can look to see if there are ledges on the  
> cliff at the necessary places.  We don't have to leave the "big  
> fella" behind because the rope won't hold him.
>
> We have sun, tide, and ground heat that will last for thousands of  
> centuries.  They support wind, rivers and plants as potentially  
> sustainable energy sources.  We have coal, oil and nuclear as limited  
> stockpiles of dense energy.
>
> The question of "how much do we need?"  can miss the whole solution.   
> During a day in the winter, parts of the Sahara Desert can vary  
> between 32F and 100F.  So how much energy is needed to heat at night,  
> and how much energy is needed to cool during the day?  How many  
> nuclear power plants or solar panels are needed to provide the  
> electricity to run the air conditioning and space heaters like our  
> buildings here?   How much wood or oil is needed to provide the heat  
> for cooking?  How much electricity is needed for lighting?  Wrong  
> questions.
>
> What energy is available?  A flat, black steel plate will maintain  
> 170F to 250F all day.  The average winter temperature is 66F if you  
> have enough thermal mass.  The sun shines 11 to 13 hours every day.   
> They have plenty of available energy, their biggest energy issue may  
> be based on their requirement to pump water or for transportation.
>
> Solutions appropriate to the local climate, and consumption based  
> upon sustained supply of energy.
>
> David
>
>
>
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