Incapable of responding adequately to a gradual longterm crisis?

Well, in a few hours here, it will be the beginning of 2011. Already is 2011 in parts of the world, no doubt.

Today I read a comment that had too much of the ring of accuracy, from what I have experienced. It has been quite an experiment, observing how the world - particularly the industrial and governing folks who pick what to do and what not to do - responded to my concepts for helping the near future civilization, and things have been going pretty much as I predicted but the means for coping with it all that I had shown, are still being sat on by the big boys. Anyway, this is not a post to complain a bit more from an impotent position in affairs, but to point at another person's observation:

"http://www.scientificamerican.com/energypoll/poll8.cfm?WT.mc_id=SA_shell_right-ad-vote_q8

"3. cccampbell38 11:24 AM 12/24/10

" We humans have proven, time and again, that we are incapable of responding adequately to a gradual, longterm crisis such as the one we face in climate change. All of this fuss about alternative sources of energy, eco-responsibility, and the like are like arguing about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If you would like to know what's going to result from all of this just study the history of Easter Island and project it to a global scale. ... "

I have a new hypothesis, little thought out so far, that goes something like this: "People will unconsciously set up the overall ongoing situation as if it were a gigantic never-ending opera, going for the stimulation of maximum drama valence for all to experience, while also arranging to not have it all obliterated as a result ... so as the show can go on."

So, if one cannot get the adequate attention of the pompous directors of the unsinkable Titanic to avoid icebergs ahead ... well, might as well enjoy adjusting the deck chairs for a better view of it all, why not? And, continue trying to get the attention of those pompous directors as to the danger and offer potential well-thought-out solutions, insofar as possible, just to stay responsible.

... So to be responsible thereby, I once again for the last time in 2010 attempt to alert the folks who can make it happen, that the KESTS to GEO transportation concept can utilize mostly existing technology, and definitely easily existing materials, to economically provide the transportation from ground to Geostationary Earth Orbit to built full sized Solar Power Satellites plentiful enough to provide the world's clean electricity needs from then on; we could already be doing it if started back about 1989 when I described it fairly well along with major applications. We could have been building SPS in GEO right now, full sized ones thereby.

But no, the investors in hydrocarbons and nuclear want their profits now big time, and nobody is going to interfere with it if they can help it. And that includes stifling this little mouse trying to squeek. Then later, they can build KESTS to GEO to continue their financial kingdoms, done entirely their way, no mention of this person who made the map, provided the conceptual key's design. Bullies rule; has it ever been otherwise? But there the time element and the inertia of progress, that is of concern here. Well, bullies don't care if they rule from the penthouse via the internet, or if they rule with club from the caves, all that matters is that they rule, nevermind all else. I think it is a mentality comparable to football, where all that matters is the game of doing the best to prevent others' success at what they are trying to do, while also doing the best to do what you want to do; and if anyone thinks it is about the football, they are missing something. To them, "KESTS to GEO" and "civilization's fate" are all merely the football.

In case any reader - who somehow finds this post and does not yet know what this is about - there are technical paper references and descriptions galore on these websites:
http://www.kestsgeo.com
http://www.escalatorhi.com
There are even science fiction adventure versions available from there too, for easy reading, including "Building Up, "The Ark of 1984's Future", "It's Down to Earth", and "The Torus Cities Ice Shields Returning Home." All by J. E. D. Cline (Jim Cline) in paperback and in eBook versions.

I have said it in about as many ways as is possible: on computer networks and on web pages and websites, in blog posts, in technical presentations at formal technical space conferences, and writing and formatting science fiction adventure stories involving the concepts of kinetic energy supported structure and its potentials.

Anyway, Happy New Year, everybody! Enjoy the drama. Practice a bit of uncommon responsibility at times, too. Avoid the bullies where possible. Make love a lot. Wake up to life and make it a bit more beautiful with what you have got and what you can do. Leave each place a little better than you found it.

The energy price of transportation includes the drama involved

Yesterday I had mentioned in email to a friend that the use of a 1 or 2 ton lump of steel to go get a sack of groceries a mile away was grossly inefficient in transportation energy terms, the ratio of the weight of the sack of groceries to the weight of the 1 or 2 ton vehicle that transported a mile over to the grocery store and back home again, lots of consumed energy for no net movement of anything but the sack of groceries; and that process was about as inefficient as the use of rockets to reach space.

But this morning laying awake, I had the insight that that missing energy cost, that I considered waste, actually does something: it powers an immense amount of human drama.

In the case of the sack of groceries, it is Mama taking little Suzy along to teach Suzy how to shop; the hustle and bustle of shopping in the store, lots of people interactions to stir up Mama's drama soup pot; the drama of the grocery line, who else is in there; and the negotiating back out to the big SUV and being seen getting into that big status symbol, and then the driving through the streets, avoiding this and that along the way and happening to see so-and-so doing whatever along the way; then back home, unloading little Suzy and the grocery sack and carrying it back into the house.

Similarly, the use of rockets being chosen over the use of an electrically powered space transportation structure to reach space from the ground, is because the whole complex of rocket industry and academics was where all the prep had gone and was screen-played already for getting a huge amount of human drama for those energy dollars, drama preferentially going to those particular ones already awaiting it, instead of newcomers of the potential transportation structure field.

Clearly the huge amount of extra energy is used for powering human drama, for the vastly greater part; and only a tiny amount to the actual delivery of a penny's worth of energy given to the sack of groceries, or the 73 cents per pound of energy given to mass delivered from the ground up into GEO, the other $9,999.27 per pound going to power the enormous human drama involved.

It may be analogous to the delivery of a football from over in one part of a football field to across the goal line on the other side of the field; the transportation efficiency of the football is not the point, it is all about the human drama that went into that delivery.