Fun fact to consider

From: Cardinal Vertigo <vertigo@alexandria.cc>
Date: Fri, Jul 2, 2004

There have been 6,256 American casualties so far in Iraq, including 862
fatalities.

--
"Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else,
and that's the idea that when the troops are in combat everybody has
to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle,
and that rifle was malfunctioning and troops were dying as a result.
I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak
up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy
that's getting just as many troops killed?"
- Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.), former CENTCOM C-in-C, 21 May 2004

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Anachron" <AnachronNospam@neo.rr.com>

Yes but look at what has been achieved...
uh...
well...

Let's talk about tax cuts for the wealthy instead.

--
Anachron

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Cardinal Vertigo wrote:
> There have been 6,256 American casualties so
> far in Iraq, including 862 fatalities.

Note: a LOT of Russians and Chechens have
died since October of last year.

http://tinyurl.com/2x5zm

Date Dead Dead
Russian Chechen
Soldiers Soldiers
--------- -------- --------
Oct 1999- 21,566 4,987
Oct 2003

Average 14.9 3.4
Per Day

Average 447 102
Per Month

--
"Getting shot at was not that bad,
just the getting shot part sucked"
-- U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Villafane

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Cardinal Vertigo <vertigo@alexandria.cc>

nu-monet v6.0 wrote:
> Cardinal Vertigo wrote:
>>There have been 6,256 American casualties so
>>far in Iraq, including 862 fatalities.
>>
> Note: a LOT of Russians and Chechens have
> died since October of last year.
[snip]

Yes, that sucks too, but I'm not sure of your point.

--
"This is an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some
people call you the elite, I call you my base."
- George W. Bush, speaking at a fundraising dinner

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

I think it proves several things. First and foremost,
we did not go over there to kill Iraqis and conquer
them and take their stuff. We went over there to depose
an unpopular tyrant and madman who had the resources,
the desire, and the will to use WMDs against Israel,
causing a massive nuclear war; or against the US, killing
a lot of us. A guy who had been shooting at our planes
on a weekly basis since 1991.
And WE had to do it, because everyone else were so totally
useless, corrupt, ineffectual and comfortable with having
a madman they could do *business* with, that they would
sit on their fat asses until a nuclear weapon had been
detonated in Paris, Berlin or Moscow. With pretty much
the same attitude as they now have about Iran, not having
learned a goddamn thing.

By invading that country, we also put the blocks to the
nuclear ambitions of several other rogue states, and not
just for right now, but for the medium term future, by
putting ourselves smack dab in the middle of where one
hell of a lot of trouble was going to be cycloning.
It was either FORCE things to happen, or let the entire
region blow up. And yes, you personally WOULD feel one
hell of a lot of pain if oil went up to $200 a barrel.

What was gained is the good chance that Iraq will become
a reasonably stable and peaceful democracy, and that
every other tyranny in the region has been destabilized
and are now being forced into democratic reform, and
that the US has a massive forward base to influence events
in not only the middle east and northern Africa, but also
most of Central Asia. And, last but not least, the world's
oil supply is safer, helping to avoid the billion-plus dead
following a collapse of the world's economy.

And we did it at the cost of an average of 1.8 lives a day
for a total of about some 470 days. An unbelievable
accomplishment at a tiny cost, resulting in massive amounts
of GOOD for the world.

Now, compare that with the Russian invasion of Chechnya, a
rotten place full of people deported to Siberia by Stalin
because they were one giant criminal gang. The Russians
had no pretense of doing anything other than keeping the
Chechnyans under their thumb, and did so with the intent to
kill and crush as many Chechans as possible, destroying
their country and indifferent to their lives. A hateful
place filled with hateful people invaded purely out of hate.

And since 1999, a place where Russians have died at a rate
of about 15 a day. Accomplishing nothing except death and
destruction. No higher good, no strategic importance, no
humanitarian designs. Just bitter murder.

It makes you glad to be American, where at least you
know you aren't them.

--
"Mars was destroyed with weapons from the future.
There, does that make you feel any better?"
-- nu-monet

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Cardinal Vertigo <vertigo@alexandria.cc>

Okay, I see your point now. Don't mistake recognition for agreement,
though.

On a tangent, I know that a human population of 10-15 billion (give or
take) is widely cited as the biological carrying capacity of the Earth
assuming current agricultural techniques.

Has anyone ever worked out what that carrying capacity would be if
petroleum-based agriculture became financially infeasible or practically
impossible? Are there any trained researchers out there who understand
the severity of the Peak Oil problem, and have they got any funding to
do decent studies?

--
"You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities
they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination."
- Charles de Gaulle

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Cardinal Vertigo wrote:
> Has anyone ever worked out what that carrying
> capacity would be if petroleum-based agriculture
> became financially infeasible or practically
> impossible? Are there any trained researchers
> out there who understand the severity of the
> Peak Oil problem, and have they got any funding
> to do decent studies?

Yumpin' Yiminee. That is one of the biggest research
subjects on the planet right now, and has been since
WWII. I'm talkin' every single conceivable angle to
that subject.

Here are just some of the latest twists:

First of all, the entire oil producing middle east is
going bananas trying to diversify their economies *away*
from oil. Half of them are trying to become regional
air travel hubs by building huge airports, and many of
the others are investing tens of billions in, of all
things, tourism.

Why? Mostly fuel cells. About 10 years ago, a
Saudi Sheik ex-oil minister, regarded as one of the top
international oil experts, predicted the basic scenario:

1) The developed world converts to fuel cells, big time.
2) Demand is still sky high, but the third world cannot
meet high prices, so oil markets drop precipitously.
3) The oil producing world just makes pennies in profit
where it used to make dollars.

BTW, to put fuel cells into perspective, guesstimate how
many 'AA' batteries it would take to run an mp3 player
at full volume for 20 hours. Eight? Ten? You can get
the same energy output with 2cc's of Methanol in a fuel
cell. Now extrapolate that efficiency to inefficient
internal combustion engines. 100mpg? 200mpg? I've no
idea.

Second consideration: ammonium sulfate, a by-product of
oil refining, is a major fertilizer used throughout the
world. A great drop in oil prices would also mean an
equivalent drop in other materials derived from cracking
crude oil. Oil refineries are constantly adjusting their
processes to produce more of what the market wants.

Since most of what they currently produce is gasoline,
there would be great drops in the price of things like
jet fuel, plastics, diesel (not just for trucks, but also
for trains and ships). But back to fertilizer, and to
your question.

Much of the marginal land on the world would become quite
productive with ammonium sulfate added. GM crops that
required much less pesticide would also staggeringly
increase the amount of food available. Then there is
just the problem of getting it to market--and having the
fresh water to grow it.

Fuel cells again. To say that desalinization plants are
our future is an understatement. Almost every temperate
or tropical country that has ocean coast will need at
least several. Using oil to power those plants is very
expensive, however, so fuel cells are the way to go.

This is really just the tippy tip tip of the iceberg on
this subject.

--
Two headed people are the future.
Get used to it, single head.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: eric@webmethods.com (Eric van Bezooijen)

nu-monet wrote:
> BTW, to put fuel cells into perspective, guesstimate how
> many 'AA' batteries it would take to run an mp3 player
> at full volume for 20 hours. Eight? Ten? You can get
> the same energy output with 2cc's of Methanol in a fuel
> cell. Now extrapolate that efficiency to inefficient
> internal combustion engines. 100mpg? 200mpg? I've no
> idea.

You do realize that fuel cells just act like a battery and
are not a SOURCE of energy, correct? And that cars require
many orders of magniture more energy to run than an MP3 player?

MP3 player 100 mA @ 1.5 V = .15 Watts (just a guestimate but probably
isn't that far off)
100 hp electric motor car = 100 * 745 watts = 74500 watts

That's about 500,000 times more power. So using your numbers (which
won't scale because fuel cells for cars and mp3 players are wildly
different things) you would need 500,000 times more methanol to run
a car for 20 hours which would mean 500,000 x 2 cc = 1,000,000 cc =
1,000 liters

So in order to run my car for 20 hours I would need a 1000 liter gas
tank,
which translates to 266 gallons. That doesn't sound practical. Feel
free to correct any errors in my quickie calculations.

Methanol's energy density is, I believe about half that of gasoline,
but fuel cells combined with an electric motor will probably be more
efficient than gasoline engines so the above is not true. Of course,
fuel cells for cars are too expensive to be practical at the moment.

> Second consideration: ammonium sulfate, a by-product of
> oil refining, is a major fertilizer used throughout the
> world. A great drop in oil prices would also mean an
> equivalent drop in other materials derived from cracking
> crude oil. Oil refineries are constantly adjusting their
> processes to produce more of what the market wants.

Oil prices are going up, not down. Fuel cells will not make oil
prices go down since you need energy to make the fuel for the fuel
cell!

> Since most of what they currently produce is gasoline,
> there would be great drops in the price of things like
> jet fuel, plastics, diesel (not just for trucks, but also
> for trains and ships). But back to fertilizer, and to
> your question.

Peak oil is the belief things are moving in the opposite way.

[ snip ]

-Eric

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Fun fact to consider
From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.atheism,alt.atheism.holysmoke
Reply-To: like.excess@sex.org
Date: Sun, Jul 4, 2004 6:24 PM
Message-ID: <40E8839C.7EF7@succeeds.com>

Eric van Bezooijen wrote:
> Peak oil is the belief things are moving in
> the opposite way.

Not exactly. Peak oil is a law of diminishing
returns point, that is, when we are no longer able
to continue to increase production to meet demand;
*and* what this results in.

The second part, when we *can't* continue doing
things the way we are doing them now is the real
meat of the argument. It doesn't mean that oil
production comes to a halt--in fact, oil production
continues at maximum. What *is* affected is the
price and availability of "marginal" oil. That
would be *new* oil demand. There would be no more
availability for new demand *at the same price*, so
it would have to duke it out with current consumption
at a higher price.

Now the first world can adapt itself to all kinds of
alternative energy, *and* conservation, *and* tech
that saves them from having to contend for marginal
oil.

But this leaves poor countries to face higher prices
for marginal oil--prices that they just can't pay, no
how. Which means that the vast majority of oil is
still typical, and nobody wants to buy marginal oil
at peak oil prices.

Another factor, since when the first world goes over
to some degree of alternative energy, while still
glutting on oil, mind you, they don't make much of
an impact, since you have so many countries that will
snap up freed up oil at below marginal prices. So
oil continues to flow at 100% production.

And after the first jolt, oil prices *descends* to
the level that the third world can pay.

--
"Mars was destroyed with weapons from the future.
There, does that make you feel any better?"
-- nu-monet

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: eric@webmethods.com (Eric van Bezooijen)

"nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com> wrote:
> Eric van Bezooijen wrote:
> > Peak oil is the belief things are moving in
> > the opposite way.
> >
> Not exactly. Peak oil is a law of diminishing
> returns point, that is, when we are no longer able
> to continue to increase production to meet demand;
> *and* what this results in.

The poster implied that oil prices were going to drop
because fuel cells was going to make oil irrelevant.

Peak oil implies that the amount of oil produced will
come to a maximum and then decline. This will make
oil more, not less valuable. This is the opposite of
that post.

> The second part, when we *can't* continue doing
> things the way we are doing them now is the real
> meat of the argument. It doesn't mean that oil
> production comes to a halt--in fact, oil production
> continues at maximum. What *is* affected is the
> price and availability of "marginal" oil. That
> would be *new* oil demand. There would be no more
> availability for new demand *at the same price*, so
> it would have to duke it out with current consumption
> at a higher price.

A peak implies a maximum followed by a reduction, not a
plateau.

>
> Now the first world can adapt itself to all kinds of
> alternative energy, *and* conservation, *and* tech
> that saves them from having to contend for marginal
> oil.

As long as oil and natural gas are easier than the alternatives,
then that will rule.

> But this leaves poor countries to face higher prices
> for marginal oil--prices that they just can't pay, no
> how. Which means that the vast majority of oil is
> still typical, and nobody wants to buy marginal oil
> at peak oil prices.
>
> Another factor, since when the first world goes over
> to some degree of alternative energy, while still
> glutting on oil, mind you, they don't make much of
> an impact, since you have so many countries that will
> snap up freed up oil at below marginal prices. So
> oil continues to flow at 100% production.
>
> And after the first jolt, oil prices *descends* to
> the level that the third world can pay.

This makes no sense. Why would the price descend if the
demand increases? If you think Western countries will just
give up on oil when the price goes too high and quickly
switch to alternatives, you are mistaken. They will fight
over every spare drop.

-Eric

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Artemia Salina <y2k@sheayright.com>

Cardinal Vertigo wrote:
> There have been 6,256 American casualties so far in Iraq, including 862
> fatalities.

The son of the Baskin Robbins empire (something Robbins, can't remember
his name) once did a study and determined that America produces 12,000
gallons of human excrement per MINUTE. Double that amount if you include
the output of Fox News.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

Cardinal Vertigo wrote:
> There have been 6,256 American casualties so far in Iraq, including 862
> fatalities.

Considering that there have been over 30,000 Iraqi fatalities so far in
Iraq, one wonders just how many of them have been blinded, crippled, or
had their hands blown off in the cause of freedom.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Cardinal Vertigo <vertigo@alexandria.cc>

nenslo wrote:
> Cardinal Vertigo wrote:
>
>>There have been 6,256 American casualties so far in Iraq, including 862
>>fatalities.
>
> Considering that there have been over 30,000 Iraqi fatalities so far in
> Iraq, one wonders just how many of them have been blinded, crippled, or
> had their hands blown off in the cause of freedom.

Well, if the ratio is the same for them as it is for the Americans,
it's... uh, over 217,726. It's probably less since the Americans wear
Kevlar and the Iraqis don't, and armor tends to make injuries out of
what would otherwise have been fatalities.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Cardinal Vertigo <vertigo@alexandria.cc>

Over 187,726. Sorry.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Fredric L. Rice wrote:
> Factor in the use of depleted uranium munitions
> and over the next 30 years the number will exceed
> 2 million Iraqis, it seems likely...

Sorry, DU is about as toxic as eating a half teaspoon
full of dir.

From "The Lancet", the preeminent British medical
journal:

"...It can be safely concluded that at any conceivable
level of uptake depleted uranium will have no appreciable
radiological or chemical carcinogenic potential. Moreover,
even if cancers were to be produced, they would occur
many years after intake, because of the lag period
between damage to sensitive cells and the appearance of
recognisable tumours.

In man, for chronic irradiation from an internally
deposited alpha-emitting radionuclide, these latency
periods would typically lie in the range of 10 years to
several decades. In view of this latency, tumours in
individuals exposed for shorter periods--eg, in
servicemen exposed to depleted uranium in the former
Yugoslavia within the past decade--cannot be attributed
to radiation from depleted uranium. Finally, the only
chemical toxic effect expected would be reversible
damage to the kidney."

--
"We're going to take things away from
you on behalf of the common good."
-- Hillary Clinton

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Jez wrote:
> Fuck the lancet......they're all paid off by
> drug companies these days....

http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/

GOOD LORD! (Gasp!)

They've GOTTEN TO the National Institute of Health!

And the SCIENTISTS! And the OTHER EXPERTS!

MY GOD, THE ONLY ONES LEFT TO TRUST ARE
THE KOOKS, CRACKPOTS AND NUTZOIDS!!!

(The previous is a paid message sponsored by
the Forces Of THEM Corp., makers of ALAR,
saccharine, and other fine products.)

--
"We're going to take things away from
you on behalf of the common good."
-- Hillary Clinton

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Original file name: Fun fact to consider.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05