🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <61cgjv$fh0@crl.crl.com>,
Paul W. Cashman <vanyel@crl.crl.com> wrote:
>kym@faraday.ee.latrobe.edu.au (Kym Horsell) writes:
>>Do the "maths" yourself -- something smells when you use naive arguments
>>of the form "X is impossible (because of my long list of unstated
>>and presumably -- in the light of (a) the ``conclusion'' 
>>and the ``facts'' that (b) I'm trying to draw one in the first
>>place, and (c) trying to convince others that I have done so 
>>and that both it and the technique are valid -- incorrect assumptions)".
>
>Moreover, the amount of land area required to mount solar cells to
>equal a typical coal or nuclear (or pumped-storage or....) power plant
>isn't measured in acres, but in SQUARE MILES!     --Dozens of square
>miles, in fact.   Funny; I don't see environmentalists screaming about
>the resulting damage to regional arcologies from such a vast project.
>Wonder why, forsooth?

This argument also won't wash (and is actually of the same general form).

If "amount of land that's used" was an over-riding factor, freeways
would be banned.

Other factors to consider -- why "land"? There's lots of ocean, for
example. 

In any case -- thinking in terms of what you _know now_ (either in
terms of "basic science" or "basic economics") is not a proven way to 
anticipate or attempt to "refute" a given technology. ;-) It would
seem exactly the opposite.

At one time people well-versed in "basic science" were proving things
any modern school child are silly -- i.e. humans can't survive in
an open automobile travelling faster than (say) 100 mph; the sound
barrier will never be broken (a topical one); human-powered flight is
impossible (hey -- we haven't done it for 2000 years -- it will NEVER
be done, and I can prove it MATHEMATICALLY anyway ;-) etc.

Floating around somewhere in cyber space you'll find a neat NY
Times editorial about the impossibility of space flight. Seems the
editors -- using what they understood from high school science --
took objection to some con-artist named "Goddard" who was running around
the country trying to raise money to get his obviously-will-never-work-
and-we-can-PROVE-it liquid-fuelled rockets into space. As the editor
pointed out -- there was no air in space and this was "well know" to
be a requirement of propulsion systems.