Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Kid with anxiety + world issues

I don't know if this is true. More knowledge is not always reassuring. Sometimes, learning more makes you even more anxious. Frankly, I avoid stories about global warming at this point. I know how it works and what it's going to do, and reading about it makes me feel extremely agitated and upset. We do many, many things to reduce our contribution to it, but I feel deep and overwhelming despair if I read too much about it, and that can be paralyzing. I also avoided the news for a while during the height of the GWB presidency because it was making me intensely depressed about the state of the nation.

What's more, sometimes even firm knowledge doesn't seem to help much. DD has read all kinds of authoritative sources that say the sun is not going to burn out for billions of years, but she still worries about it.

If a child knows some things about an alarming subject but might lack other information that would be reassuring (eg: there are no volcanoes in our home state), then knowledge can be very useful. But I don't think there is a blanket statement to be made here.

You don't want to finally get a chance to colonize Antarctica?

Alternately, you could become a peak oilist. I think that's incompatible with global warming, but I could be wrong.

Well, one place where knowledge = hope is information regarding some of the progress we're making as a society on energy alternatives.

For example, the ability to store energy off the grid, as opposed to the current use-it-or-lose-it system, would greatly improve the efficiency of generated electricity.

This stuff takes captured industrial emissions and turns it into ethanol.

Plus, there is historical precedent to fall back on, where an environmental catastrophe triggered by humans led to a response and solution. We no longer burn coal or whale oil in our homes. Despite producing 25% of the world's commercial timber, US deforestation is no longer an issue, with forest coverage stable since 1907. Etc.

I just want someone to tell me how much energy we can reasonably expect to gather from solar, geologic, and tidal forces on a regular, sustained, and reliable basis.

Some people still burn wood in their homes. I know, because I've given wood (from an unused wood pile) away to wood-burning people. Because they are dirt poor.

We are not running out of oil. Not by a long shot.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/progress-to-unlocking-over-800-billion.html

US economy is far more diversified from oil now that ever before.

And NOTHING is sustainable. Second Law of Thermodynamics. In practical terms, this means that every machine wears out and also require human attention when they do run.

Solar/Wind are terribly inefficient from a thermo standpoint and this is why they are also cost prohibitive.

I was thinking of sustainability in the 4,000 year range.

My background is chemical engineering. I just like to know my general boundary conditions.

I really like geothermal. Iceland is cool.

Thanks! We've told him that, but the TV is flashier and if so many people think that... I'll read your post to him though, hearing it from someone who has been there might help reassure him that it's not just mom and dad trying to make him feel better.

LOL I'd have told him, "Show me the proof. If you believe it and science has proven it, then it should be easy." It would keep him busy for awhile researching.

Just pagan. I don't even enjoy dealing with my own taxes, let alone anyone else's.

Power is, itself, not always reassuring. Though IME it is, moreso, for those who are young enough to have not yet picked up on the concept of circumscribed possibilities.