BillWoods6

BillWoods6 t1_jegn5ci wrote

Your representative ('s staff) will take note of your opinion, but more-or-less in proportion to the effort you make.

  • Click on an on-line petition: eh.
  • Call and give a brief statement: okay (there's probably a dozen other constituents of the same opinion).
  • Write a letter, and print it, and mail it: wow, this guy cares (there's probably hundreds of others).
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BillWoods6 t1_jeg5gdu wrote

It takes the Earth 24 hours to turn on its axis once. Or, as it seems to us, for the Sun to go across the sky and come back around. So at points 15 degrees apart in longitude, solar noon will occur an hour apart.

On the equator, the Earth is about 40,000 km around. So at points 1 km apart, solar noon will occur 2.16 seconds apart.

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BillWoods6 t1_je295xg wrote

> Suspension bridges at a basic level only required a rope to be pulled across a river, and that can easily be done with a boat.

Or by other methods.

> Ellet's brainstorming sessions with his men raised several ideas that could enable a line to be suspended across the gorge; these included firing cannonballs with the line attached, towing it across the river with a steamer, and tying it to a rocket that would then be launched across the gorge. ... Ellet also took the opportunity to generate publicity for his project. Organizing a kite-flying contest, he offered $5[nb 6] to any boy who flew a kite across the gorge and secured the kite string to the other side.[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls_Suspension_Bridge#Charles_Ellet_Jr.'s_temporary_bridge

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BillWoods6 t1_j9747gw wrote

Uranium-235's half-life is 700 million years. It's not even warm to the touch. Fissioning it releases much more energy than it would decaying to lead, and much, much, much faster. So that's useful for human purposes.

I wouldn't say it's a large amount of spent fuel, considering the amount of energy released. Each fuel pellet -- the size of a fingertip -- releases about as much a ton of coal.

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BillWoods6 t1_its90wu wrote

> ... the world population has increased by nearly 100x since then and growth seems to be accelerating rather than slowing down.

It isn't.

> Peak population growth was reached in 1968 with an annual growth of 2.1%. Since then the increase of the world population has slowed and today grows by just over 1% per year.

Ironically, 1968 is also the year The Population Bomb was published.

> By the end of the century – when global population growth will have fallen to 0.1% according to the UN’s projection – the world will be very close to the end of the demographic transition.

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

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