AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Then we'll look at it with the companies involved.

Fossil fuels:
We burn fossil fuels
The heat boils water and creates energy (my roommates a better expert at the specifics than I am)
The energy companies have energy
We buy the energy

Renewable energy:
Wind turns a wind turbine
The energy companies have energy
We buy the energy

They both end that same, but the first one involves dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Even if the energy is just going to go to the energy companies who will then sell it to us, we should pick it just so there's not that environmentally detrimental step involved in the process. We'd pay regardless.

Besides, I still can't help but notice that the heart of all of these discussions isn't actully what's being discussed, but actually more along the lines of "companies suck."

I think nuclear power is ultimately gonna be the way to go in the future, they just need to figure out what do do with the leftovers. Nuclear is very clean aside from those depleted radioactive materials.

Just gonna say that wind turbines can never realistically compete with a nuclear power station.

The amount of space you need for a nuclear power station generating say, 2.6 GW is about 1.7 square kilometers - for wind turbines to produce that same output you'd need to dedicate 1200 square kilometers.

But it's not just the space needed for the wind turbines - it's also the material required to build the things over that kind of (1200 sq. km) spread. The amount of metal needed to construct enough wind turbines to compete with a nuclear power plant makes the nuclear power plant more cost-effective by miles.

Wind turbines are not without their own carbon footprint either - sure, nuclear power stations produce toxic waste - but manufacturing the materials for wind turbines also causes an environmental impact - especially when you're talking about filling 1200 sq. km with them. Environmental manufacturing costs (i.e pollution) are one of those things people try to hide from you when they're singing the praises of renewable energy - solar panels are also not without manufacturing concerns regarding toxins, pollution, carbon footprints, etc.

There's also ongoing maintenance costs for wind turbines - and repairing/replacing the daisies things when they fall over or get hit by a strong gust of wind (ironically enough if it gets too windy wind turbines are locked into position/angled to prevent them from being damaged - by the wind!). The amount of moving parts you're talking about when spread over 1200 sq. km makes that scale of wind farm a relative maintenance nightmare compared to maintaining just one nuclear power station.

Wind turbines seem like the way to go if you take the environmentalist's word for it - but the reality of the situation is far, far different if you look into the figures involved.

If you're looking to shoot down nuclear power, geothermal and hydroelectric energies are your only realistic alternatives - also being far cleaner than nuclear power in almost all regards (but not without massive environmental impact/land loss - especially with hydroelectric power). Neither geothermal or hydroelectric are without their own 'catastrophic failure' risks either - and the places they can be implemented is very, very, limited.

On the subject of solar panels: I don't think it's a good idea to construct giant solar farms as they're doing in the US at this point. Solar panel efficiency is still being improved upon and it's still too low to be efficient enough to be solely reliant on it. What we do in Belgium is encourage people to put solar panels on their own roofs through tax benefits. They generate electricity for themselves so that way the energy consumption is effectively reduced.

Also as far as I see wind turbines don't really have any side effects if you place them in place already suitable for them? Some birds will fly into them yes but they actually get painted now to prevent that and most birds can see them and fly around. Really a negligible effect. Of course they also lack the efficiency to be able to solely rely on them, but that's not really the point. They still help reduce the need for other, more polluting or limited sources of energy.

Reyo wrote:If that is how the system does decide to end up, however...well...that'd be pretty silly on their part.

The problem is that at that point there would be nothing you could do to change it back.

Also fine, if you as an American citizen don't care that your government spies on you, fine. But please remind them that they have zero jurisdiction outside of their own country and that they can fuck off.

There's a plethora of social media sources on doing just that, though. That doesn't just mean it's possible, but that society is in some way already mentally prepared for it. I mean hell, there was already that big stink over "anonymous vs government" where people were already testing the system without anything really being wrong. When I say it'd be silly on their part, that's what I mean. So many people are already prepared, even to the point of being eager, for the government to overstep its boundaries.

If you still don't believe me, take a look at the last time gun rights were "threatened". It wasn't even a real threat yet all you'd hear about is how everyone with a gun south of Colorado was preparing for "Civil War: Episode 2" It was silly as shit, but still.

EDIT: As far as jurisdiction in foreign countries is concerned, I agree with you, but I won't even consider getting involved in a discussion over America's worry of foreign governments. Obviously, any tangible threat you can think of is going to come from the outside, so the argument can definitely be made that intelligence on possible threats from the outside are definitely necessary, but something like this i agree would best be served for more domestic surveillance for moral reasons. Then again, the governmen doesn't have the best stereotype for morality.

If you want my own personal opinion, I agree more with what a common hippie would say. All of this shit about "Well America vs Europe and blah blah blah!" is a waste of time. Even from an Evolutionary standpoint we need to start thinking less as a mass of individuals with petty allegiances and more as a unified species. I'm not saying this means the United States should be allowed to then "meddle in your business", but that we ought to stop thinking in terms of "us" and "them" when talking about each other.

No, you still don't get it. At the point where you give your government total control over communications is where you lose the ability to protest. Any dissenting opinion can be sniffed out long before it can spread and gets nullified under the guise of terrorism. Protests and revolution need communication to grow and organise. Going further, with perfect control over information the government could just create the illusion that there's absolutely nothing wrong, thus stopping the vast majority of people from even thinking about protest.

Syobon wrote:No, you still don't get it. At the point where you give your government total control over communications is where you lose the ability to protest. Any dissenting opinion can be sniffed out long before it can spread and gets nullified under the guise of terrorism. Protests and revolution need communication to grow and organise. Going further, with perfect control over information the government could just create the illusion that there's absolutely nothing wrong, thus stopping the vast majority of people from even thinking about protest.

1. You're assuming people have forgotten how to communicate outside of the internet. Even now you see people without so much as a facebook page, and they seem to do just fine with social networking and communication. They have control over the internet, and your phones, but they'd need mind control to look into your actual thoughts or physical conversations with friends. (Or should we stockpile on the aluminum foil?) How do you think it was done way back when, before cell phones where even a thought? Remember that cell phones weren't even a thing until the 90's. How did the Vietnam protests get organised? There are the spy drones now, but there's also anonymity and being inconspicuous. We didn't develop to rule the entire planet by being too easily limited.

2. No amount of masking would ever work just with how paranoid people are when there actually is nothing wrong. I just gave the example on the threat made on "gun rights" a few months back. Nothing actually happened, yet everyone was prepared for another civil war. People think about protesting at the slightest provocation of anything, even when there's nothing to indicate that there's anything wrong. These are the same people we laugh at for "overreacting" to everything.

Every time a revolution breaks out, everyone thinks it impossible except the ones conducting the revolution because of all the technology and politics they have to get around, yet each time it happens, and we read about it later. The French thought the poor too poor and sickly to possibly overthrow the rich and powerful, yet it happened. The British thought the Colonials too inferior to ever be able to face the British Army, yet it happened. To think we're so helpless is just negative thinking.

PS, Also, This isn't just coming from some poli. sci. class I took to fulfill my core curriculum. This is stuff my Dad filed me with right before I left for college. In fact, one of the main reasons he told me to join the military was, and I quote, "This country is going to shit, and when it does, the military is the safest place to be." Of course, I think he was talking more about what was said before about companies fucking people over, but it's sounding like those companies are the ones we're talking about anyway.

Word of mouth only gets you so far in this day and age, because they'll be checking your mail as well. And you'd have to be very clever about it, because if any one you're in contact with slips up and they find out they were involved in "terrorist activity" they'd investigate the entire network of people more thoroughly.

I think you underestimate how dependent people are on other's to enable their actions. Very few people will attempt to organize a protest when they think they're alone in their thoughts.

Well you know what they say about need being the mother of all invention. I never said it would be easy, or simple, just that it's definitely not impossible. I don't know much about how technology works, but some people managed to figure it out (again, anonymous vs the government). People are surprisingly inventive and resilient, especially when rustled about something, even a something that's barely even a threat.

Why would you even want to reinvent a new way of communication just for the sole purpose of having a protest work maybe once and then the government probably takes control of that too? And actually yeah, through encryption and what have you you can already bypass government surveillance but most people aren't clever enough to figure that stuff out, thus making large scale protests and winning sympathy for a cause much harder if not impossible. Why would you ever want to make it so hard to communicate freely though? It's a basic civil right that society has struggled thousands of years for to maintain.

Syobon wrote:Why would you even want to reinvent a new way of communication just for the sole purpose of having a protest work maybe once and then the government probably takes control of that too? And actually yeah, through encryption and what have you you can already bypass government surveillance but most people aren't clever enough to figure that stuff out, thus making large scale protests and winning sympathy for a cause much harder if not impossible. Why would you ever want to make it so hard to communicate freely though? It's a basic civil right that society has struggled thousands of years for to maintain.

You have absolutely no faith in people. You're argument is essentially that people are too stupid, disorganized, and lazy to be able to pull anything like a revolution off, so why should we risk putting ourselves in a situation where we'd have to. If that were actually true, then what fear does the government have to avoid implementing all of these laws and acts to push us all down? Morality? Again, not their most stereotypical attribute. Besides, if you were to join a government foundation, you'd realize they were just as disorganized as us common folk. Remember that it's civilians who become government employees. Yes, there are all of these technologies, but in the end we're just humans typing at keys. The NSA agents are going to have the same lack of cleverness that would plague any normal protester. Yes, there are incredibly stupid people out there, but there are well more than enough intelligent individuals out there as well, individuals who don't work for the government.

When I made the comment about need being the mother of invention, that's because that necessity has a way of bringing motivation out of people. It's the same deal with procrastination. The due date looms over your head, and all of a sudden that ten page paper doesn't seem so hard, and the next thing you know you were able to crack that thing out in just 2 hours...and that's when we talk about the ones society deems "lazy." History is full of these stories. People overcoming these impossible obstacles that then seem trivial 50 years later.

so why should we risk putting ourselves in a situation where we'd have to.

No I'm saying why put ourselves in a situation where it would be much harder, should we have to? And we will have to at one point, history tends to repeat itself.

I'm very much aware that people are able to organize protests, but that was in times where the government wasn't capable of controlling the main means of communication. If you want a similar example, look at China where they have a similar system to what the US government is working towards. There are a billion people there and a whole lot of them are not pop flyin' with the way things are going, but it is incredibly hard for them to get anything done because the government cracks down instantly on any figureheads.

Also the government is just as disorganized as the people? What? Just... you are at least aware there's a hierarchy and rules in a government yes? I mean, I know you're in the military so you should be familiar with these things.

Because while we've been talking about revolution, and overthrowing the government for most of the night, I still feel there needs to be some level of colaboration and trust between the people and its government. If we don't have that trust, then we might as well skip this whole debate and go right into a revolution right now. This new technology is invaluable for catching potential attacks before they ever happen, which would save countless of lives before they ever even came into any tangible danger. If we don't have the trust in our government to use it for its intended purpose, and all we think is going to happen is they'll abuse it, then what we need to do is stop arguing about it altogether and make to where we DO trust who's in our government, which has only ever happened right after a major revolution. I'm not saying blind faith, I'm saying some faith, because the bottom like is that this technology is supposed to be used for good. In school, if your teacher does something you know will fuck everyone over, do you fight the thing she does, or do you fight her? You fight her because if you have no trust that what she does is for your greater good, then just fighting the single event will become a waste of your time when the next single event comes up to replace it.

Also, I'm saying that the government is just as disorganized as us because the people who make up those jobs are just as human as we are. They get up earlier than they'd like to drive in rush hour to get to work, just like we do as civilians. They drink 8 cups of coffee just to keep from murdering everyone around them, just like we do. They hate their jobs just like we do. They come home some days feeling like they should have chosen some different path just like we do. Every office drone has gone through this, just as every government worker has gone through this. Even in the military it's like this. That's not to say they're terrible at their jobs, but that they're human like us. There's a saying that the ones who don't want war the most are the ones most prepared to fight it...and that's true. We train our military to fight for war, both foreign and domestic, but we also pray to god it never has to happen. As horrible as it is to say, if a revolution were to break out, I'd be called up to fight against it, whether I agree with it or not, whether the other people in our unit agree with it or not, and we would fight against it, because that's our duty. And while we'd be proficient at it, there'd be one advantage on the revolutionary side; they'd be the only side who wanted it to happen.

Then it's the revolutionary war all over again, where you have the yankees fighting their hearts out against a government that just want the people to comply. It's the same principle behind our current war. There are people in caves and primitive weaponry fighting off a country that puts more cheddar and effort into its military than any other country in the world, and this has gone on for a good part of a decade. The revolution starts at the motivation of the people, where what motivates them is what leads to their victory. They want to fight. We don't. And while our superior technology gets us so far, it's no longer a war of rifles and artillery, but one where we fight for the hearts and minds of their people. Because at the core of it, it turns out motivation alone is able to fend off the most funded military forces on the planet.

You speak of trust when the only reason you even know your government is doing this is because someone leaked it against their will? You speak of trust when they lie to your face, obscure their inner workings and protect themselves from democratic criticism by invoking obscure legal loopholes? You speak of trust in a supposedly democratic system where you have only two real choices, both controlled by corporate interests? Trust in a government that operates torture prisons despite vowing to close them down? No people should fully trust their government, and no people should allow their government to take away their own liberties for any reason, but I see little reason why the American people should trust their government at all. What has your government done to earn your trust? Did they prevent the economic crash? Did they protect you from terrorist attacks? Do they protect your liberties, or do they seek to take them away?

Perhaps it is as you say then, if there is no more trust, perhaps it is a time for a revolution, or at least for change.

Reyo, if things continue like this, then a revolution IS inevitable. It began with Occupy but it won't end there. The new generation is coming into their own and bringing power with it.

The difference is that the revolution will not be bloody, not likely at least. It will be fought in the public opinion, on the Internet, through protests and demonstrations.

People should not be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of its people.