[Bored chemist]

As for vaccines eliminating viral disease, they can only do so where the host in uniquely human.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest

[Bored chemist]

I think not. There are about 1500 thunderstorms happening worldwide at any moment, about 15,000,000 per year, and each one releases about  as much energy as a 20 kt nuclear bomb. And thunderstorms are just a tiny part of a weather system.

And yet, you don't think we can collect enough energy from that massive store to supply our needs.

[Bored chemist]

When you say that, it brings up a point that worries me about these modern vaccines.

Might they not be generating "change" in the viruses, by stimulating them to become more active and aggressive.

Most of what vaccines do is reduce the number of susceptible human hosts.
In doing that, they reduce the number of viruses produced and thus they reduce the chances of any particular mutation happening.

So vaccination programs drive down the number of "variants".

[alancalverd]

I think not. There are about 1500 thunderstorms happening worldwide at any moment, about 15,000,000 per year, and each one releases about  as much energy as a 20 kt nuclear bomb. And thunderstorms are just a tiny part of a weather system.

And yet, you don't think we can collect enough energy from that massive store to supply our needs.

If you knew where and when the thunderstorms were occurring, and had some means of capturing their energy, storing it and distributing it where you wanted it, no problem.  Rocket science is two equations: rocket engineering is a lot more complicated. And we don't even understand the maths of thunderstorms.

[alancalverd]

As for vaccines eliminating viral disease, they can only do so where the host in uniquely human.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest

Attention smartarses: I meant human disease. Obviously.

[Bored chemist]

I think not. There are about 1500 thunderstorms happening worldwide at any moment, about 15,000,000 per year, and each one releases about  as much energy as a 20 kt nuclear bomb. And thunderstorms are just a tiny part of a weather system.

And yet, you don't think we can collect enough energy from that massive store to supply our needs.

If you knew where and when the thunderstorms were occurring, and had some means of capturing their energy, storing it and distributing it where you wanted it, no problem.  Rocket science is two equations: rocket engineering is a lot more complicated. And we don't even understand the maths of thunderstorms.

if you were smart enough you would realise that since most of the energy isn't in the thunderstorms.

And thunderstorms are just a tiny part of a weather system.

I was referring to the other energy- hydroelectric, solar and wind.
Broadly speaking we do know where they are.

Attention smartarses: I meant human disease. Obviously.

"human disease" (in the singular) is significant.
Only two diseases have been eliminated- Smallpox and Rinderpest.


However, the point is that rinderpest has wild carriers, but we eliminated it anyway.
So, by whatever magic we applied there, we should be able to eliminate human diseases with wild carriers.


Surely, even you would recognise that saying "we can only do ..." based on a sample size of 1 is pushing it.

[Bored chemist]

Rocket science is...

irrelevant.

[alancalverd]

I was referring to the other energy- hydroelectric, solar and wind.
Broadly speaking we do know where they are.

(a) not much in the British Isles or indeed in the most populous (flat) areas of the world.
(b) rarely in the British Isles and never at night anywhere.
(c) mostly already exploited in the British Isles (probably the second best place to find it after New Zealand), and often completely absent for weeks at a time.

But this thread is about controlling (or being controlled by) the climate, not exploiting the weather.

[alancalverd]

However, the point is that rinderpest has wild carriers,

Large land mammals which are susceptible to and debilitated by the disease. Eliminating a disease that is endemi=c and tolerated in bats is a different ball game. Face it,  even in  a small, well-developed country like Britain we have not managed to control squirrel pox.

[Bored chemist]

we have not managed to control squirrel pox.

Did we try?
I mean Really try?

[Bored chemist]

(b) rarely in the British Isles and never at night anywhere.

It is always daytime.

[alancalverd]

Your secret is revealed! You are a Vulcan, now living on the sunny side of Venus. Live long and prosper.

[alancalverd]

we have not managed to control squirrel pox.

Did we try?
I mean Really try?

Grey squirrels have been listed as vermin for as long as I can remember and the virus was isolated about 50 years ago. The EU funded red squirrel conservation for several years and there is at least one vaccine development program ongoing, so AFAIK there has at least been enthusiasm if not much progress.

It sort of underlines my point. Compared with bats in a tropical forest, grey squirrels are relatively easy to trap and kill in a British orchard or market garden, so I don't see the natural pool of COVID or any other novel zoonoses endemic in large populations of small animals, being economically eradicable. We can only hope that governments wake up to the need to urgently and effectively control human movement when humans next become vectors for something new and nasty.  Fat chance.

[Bored chemist]

Your secret is revealed! You are a Vulcan, now living on the sunny side of Venus. Live long and prosper.

No, I'm a human.
But not a flat earther, so I know the sun is shining somewhere.

[alancalverd]

A long as it is shining in a place inhabited by humans who want to travel, they won't sell you their solar electricity whenever you want it and in whatever quantity you desire. I suppose you could send a gunboat but those foreign johnnies have become a bit uppity since the death of dear Queen Victoria. Running new cables across Europe won't be welcome since we stopped subsidising our neighbours, and our American cousins and Asian owners are still using unfashionable coal.

Anyway I'm pleased that they still remember Dean Swift on the banks of the Isis

. . He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt in eight years more, that he should be able to supply the Governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low . . . since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers. I made him a small present. . . .

I'm off to plant some cucumbers.

[Bored chemist]

A long as it is shining in a place inhabited by humans who want to travel, they won't sell you their solar electricity whenever you want it and in whatever quantity you desire.

In general, if they want money and they have spare capacity, they will.
It's a bit like selling oil.
It's even more like selling oil if you convert it to some sort of fuel for transport.

[alancalverd]

But won't they also want electric cars? Selling oil is OK because a small well can produce a lot more energy than can be consumed locally, but renewable electricity is a very dilute product with a much smaller return on capital so it tends to be used by the producers with little to spare.

[William Hardy]

The human population continues to rise most rapidly in flood-prone, low-lying coastal zones at the same time as sea levels are increasing.

[Petrochemicals]

The human population continues to rise most rapidly in flood-prone, low-lying coastal zones at the same time as sea levels are increasing.

Speed of sea level change - 20 cm per century.
Rate of building replenishment - once every 60 years
Speed of person walking - 6km per hour

[Bored chemist]

with a much smaller return on capital

Currently, but the oil is running out, and there's plenty of desert.