Population to reach 7 billions this year

Population growth going down everywhere.


Also fertility rate.


Good article:
The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic

De bonne idée pour le transport en commun au Québec.

Le Monorail TrensQuebec comme entreprise nationale de transport.
http://www.trensquebec.qc.ca/

Building a modular nuclear power plant in a 11 weeks!

Looking at what we accomplish in the 1960's, we wonder why today it takes 10 years and billions to build a nuclear power plant?

In seventy-seven days, the Army team assembled the prefabricated reactor. Just nine hours after fuel elements containing forty-three pounds of enriched Uranium-235 were inserted into the reactor, electricity was produced.

WARNING: STRONG POLITICAL VIEW IN THIS VIDEO.


More info:
The US Army Nuclear Power Program was created to develop small nuclear power reactors for use at remote sites. Most were based on existing US Naval reactor designs. Eight reactors were built in all, and six of the eight produced useful power. The nuclear reactor at Camp Century was the first of the US Army's portable reactors to actually produce power.

The portable nuclear power plant at Camp Century was designated PM-2A. Its designation indicates: “P” for Portable; “M” for Medium Power; “2” for the sequence number; and the letter “A” indicates field installation. The PM-2A was rated two megawatts for electrical power and also supplied steam to operate the water well. The PM-2A was built by Alco Products, Inc. of Schenectady, New York. The USNS Marine Fiddler transported the reactor from Buffalo, New York to Thule Air Base in Greenland, arriving on July 10, 1960. Up to this time, it was the most valuable cargo ever shipped out of the port of Buffalo. In addition, the Army flew one of the three blast coolers to Thule on a C-124 Globemaster to demonstrate the practicality of air transport. Four hundred tons of pipes, machinery, and components were then carefully transported over the ice in twenty-seven packages. Special care was taken not to damage the parts, since intensely cold metal can become dangerously brittle. As a credit to superb packaging, a ceramic top to a lab cabinet was the only item damaged during transport.

In seventy-seven days, the Army team assembled the prefabricated reactor. Just nine hours after fuel elements containing forty-three pounds of enriched Uranium-235 were inserted into the reactor, electricity was produced. It was soon discovered that additional shielding would be necessary. This shielding was accomplished by adding a layer of two inch thick lead bricks to the primary shield tank. Except for downtime for routine maintenance and repairs, the reactor operated for thirty-three months, until July 9, 1963, when it was deactivated pending a decision to remove it. This decision stemmed from plans to discontinue year-round operations at Camp Century to reduce costs. In addition, the tunnel support structure sheltering the reactor was suffering from reoccurring damage due to compacting snow. A conventional diesel powered plant would have consumed over one million gallons of fuel over the same period. While the power plant was designed to provide 1560 kilowatts of power, Camp Century's power needs peaked at 500 kilowatts, and gradually declined from there. During the reactors operational life, a total of 47,078 gallons of radioactive liquid waste was discharged into the icecap. The PM-2A was removed in the summer of 1964 by the 46th Engineers based at Fort Polk, Louisiana. No military service was willing to accept the plant at another location so the PM-2A's components were put into storage. The reactor vessel was subjected to destructive testing in order to study neutron embrittlement of carbon steel. Phillips Petroleum Company conducted the testing for the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1966. After extreme testing, it was found to be much more durable than expected. Failure of the vessel finally occurred at minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit and 4,475 pounds per square inch pressure after hydrochloric acid was added to a machined defect.

Dr. Edward Calabrese: The Fraud of LNT and Future of Radiation

Like I explained before, the LNT or Linear No Threshold seems to be based on fraudulent science.  Dr. Calabrese explain the history of the LNT and the future of radiation if our policies would be based on science.

If Vermont Yankee had an Incident like Fukushima

Good presentation on nuclear radiation and related topic.

Jones Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society.

"If Vermont Yankee had an Incident like Fukushima, What Would be the Responsibilities and Public Expectations of the Scientific Community?"

Presented by Harold Swartz, Dartmouth Medical School.



source


  The purpose of this presentation is:

1. To understand the medical implications of a total body exposure of an individual to high levels of ionizing radiation (greater than 1 Gray), and also, potential long-term effects.
2. To understand how to interpret the information and counsel colleagues and the public about radiation exposures in the environment.
3. To understand public health implications and actions that should be taken when there are potential exposures of large numbers of individuals to ionizing radiation as might occur with a major accident from a nuclear power plant or an attack by terrorists that involves ionizing radiation.
4. Delineate and differentiate between medical needs and risks between a nuclear device and an incident at a nuclear power plant.
5. Provide guidance for your responses to a radiation event (because people will believe you!).
6. Explain context and needs for dosimetry in large scale event.
7. Describe our current research and activities in responses to major radiation events.

About the Speaker

Harold Swartz, MD, MSPH, PhD is a Professor of Radiology, Medicine (Radiation Oncology), Physiology, Community and Family Medicine, Chemistry, and Engineering and the director of the Dartmouth EPR Center and the Dart-Dose CMCR. He is an internationally recognized biophysicist and radiation biologist who has especially been involved in the development of magnetic resonance for preclinical and clinical applications. He has done research and teaching on the biological effects of ionizing radiation since 1962 at Walter Reed, Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Dartmouth. The EPR Center at Dartmouth is especially focused on developing and applying in vivo EPR for measurements of physiologically and pathophysiological parameters in vivo. He has developed, at Dartmouth, the first clinical program in EPR, which has a special emphasis on using the technique to measure radiation dose after the fact for purposes of triage and to advance cancer treatment by using repetitive measurements of oxygen to optimize delivery of cancer therapy. He has founded and directed national EPR Centers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and at Dartmouth. He is the PI of one of the CMCR Centers, DART-DOSE CMCR, focusing on Physical Biodosimetry. He is the author/coauthor of approximately 450 papers and four books. He has received several international awards including the Zavoisky prize.

GreenPeace: Anti Science, Fear, Anti Nuclear, Climate Alarmists

Following some story about greenpeace... Click on the links for the full stories.

Patrick Moore: From Greenpeace Dove to Nuclear Power Phoenix
Summary

If energy, food and education are the building blocks of civilization, Greenpeace Cofounder Patrick Moore is using his role of "sensible environmentalist" to build support for the concept of sustainable power generation. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Patrick proposes that industry and government work together to advance nuclear power in the United States as the most effective way to supply continuous energy to homes, businesses and institutions.

Excerpt

They [GreenPeace] are more aptly described as political or social activists, which is fine in its own right, but when you are starting to deal with complex issues of chemistry and biology, you do need a little grounding in science in order to make good decisions.

Greenpeace tended to take a more black-and-white approach to many of these issues, and today they are opposed to all nuclear energy, even though it's a safe and clean alternative to fossil fuels. They are opposed to genetic engineering even though this could help eliminate micronutrient deficiency or malnutrition around the world. They are opposed to sustainable forestry, even though it's the most renewable resource in the world. They are opposed to farming fish in the ocean, which is a way of taking pressure off of wild stocks, which are overfished.

I think we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons. Our original campaign was against nuclear war, and we painted everything nuclear as evil. Today that makes no sense at all to me. Nuclear medicine is obviously not evil. Those nuclear isotopes used in nuclear medicine are created in nuclear reactors. That's one of the things we can do with nuclear technology. Another one is to make energy that's clean and safe. 

Why is the New York Academy of Sciences allowing its name to be used in an anti-science FUD campaign?
Summary:

Greenpeace wrongly used a published volume from the NYAS (New York Academy of Sciences) to support unproven claims that close to 1 million people died from the Chernobyl disaster. The real number of deaths directly attributable to the materials released by the accident will end up to be very close to 50.

Excerpt

Greenpeace claims that “based on now available medical data, 985,000 people died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.” The authority for this statement is “the book recently published by the New York Academy of Sciences.” That death-toll is not supportable by scientific evidence.

A 2005 review of the data by an informal group call the Chernobyl Forum, included a suggestion that, based on the LNT premise (that even a single gamma ray could cause a cancer), 4000 additional deaths might ultimately occur. Since there is no indication that these deaths are likely, and since “prediction” of deaths by adding up of thousands of small individual radiation doses has been repeatedly forbidden as scientifically unsound, the suggested 4000 deaths has not been widely accepted.

Greenpeace’s Fear Machine

Summary:

Art Horn, writing at the Energy Tribune, calls our attention to a Greenpeace document titled The Climate Time Bomb. It was written 17 years ago – in 1994 – but it may as well have been yesterday.
The dramatic language, the glass-is-always-half-empty perspective on the world, the blind faith in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – it’s all there.

Excerpt:

One of the more distressing parts of that 1994 Greenpeace report is the section on human health. It’s important to remember that the IPCC’s first health chapter didn’t appear until 1995. It was so badly botched that Paul Reiter, who has devoted his entire professional life to the study of diseases spread by mosquitoes – including malaria – later described it as “amateurish.”Nevertheless, in 1994 Greenpeace just knew that climate change would lead to more disease. Its report includes a closeup photo of a person with a large open sore on their face, and declares that: 

Our health is threatened by climate change. Malaria, asthma, encephalitis, tuberculosis, leprosy, dengue fever and measles are all expected to become more common.

How does Greepeace know this?

• because Australian officials “believe hotter summer temperatures may be contributing” to an increase in malaria
• because US researchers think the discovery of a new strain of mosquito suggests that these mosquitoes “may spread rapidly in a global warming world” 
• because a UK government report “suggests that malaria and other tropical diseases, and even bubonic plague, could be reintroduced to the UK as a result of global warming.

This is all that Greenpeace requires. Beliefs and suggestions – nothing more. Greenpeace is happy to take mere possibilities and translate them into the confident statement that Our health is threatened by climate change. It feels no shame in adding a lurid photograph which, one supposes, is intended to imply that we’re all fated to become disfigured if we don’t get with the Greenpeace program.

Nuclear risk management - Testimony by John D. Boice

Source

Testimony on Nuclear Energy Risk Management after Fukushima, May 13, 2011

John D. Boice, Jr., Sc.D.
Professor of Radiation Epidemiology
Department of Medicine
Vanderbilt University

United State House of Representatives
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
Subcommittees on Energy & Environment and Investigations and Oversight

Washington, DC
May 13, 2011

Testimony for the Record

Good morning, Mr. Chairmen, ranking Members, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to discuss the possible health implications of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan. Just a few days before the natural disasters struck on March 11, 2011, I was in Hiroshima, Japan as a member of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation's Science Council, reviewing the study of atomic bomb survivors. I would like to begin by expressing my heartfelt sympathy for the families of the tens of thousands who lost their lives as a result of the tsunami and earthquake and for the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced from their homes and livelihoods. The health consequences associated with the radiation exposures emanating from the Fukushima Daiichi plant pale in comparison.

As background, I am a radiation epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University and Scientific Director of the International Epidemiology Institute. I have spent my career studying human populations exposed to radiation, including Chernobyl clean-up workers, patients receiving diagnostic and therapeutic radiation, underground miners exposed to radon, nuclear energy workers, atomic veterans, persons living in areas of high background radiation and U.S. populations living near nuclear power plants and other facilities. I am also a commissioner of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, an emeritus member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and a member of the Congressionally-mandated Veterans Advisory Board on Dose Reconstruction.

My remarks will cover five areas:

• Fukushima is not Chernobyl.
• The health consequences for Japanese workers and public appear to be minor.
• The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent.
• We live in a radioactive world.
• There is a pressing need to learn more about the health consequences of radiation in humans when exposures are spread over time at low levels and not received briefly at high doses such as in atomic bomb survivors.

Fukushima is not Chernobyl
The Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, resulted in massive radiation exposures, both to the emergency workers putting out the ensuing fire and to the environment. There was no containment vessel and after the explosion a fire burned for ten days and spewed radioactive particles continuously into the environment. The emergency workers, the first responders and fire fighters, received so much radiation that 28 of them died of acute radiation sickness within a few months of exposure. Those who survived developed cataracts at a high rate and several subsequently died of myelodysplastic disorders. Radioactive iodines were deposited on large areas throughout the Ukraine, Belarus and Russian Federation and were ingested by cows who gave milk that was drunk by children, and an epidemic of thyroid cancer ensued beginning about five years after the accident. Over 520,000 recovery workers were sent to clean up the environment and build the so-called sarcophagus to contain the damaged nuclear reactor. To date there is little conclusive evidence for adverse health effects associated with radiation received during these clean-up operations. There have, however, been indications of severe psychological stress and increased rates of suicide.

In contrast, while the radiation releases from Fukushima are estimated to be up to 10% of that from Chernobyl, there appears to be substantially less worker and public exposure. The Japanese authorities relaxed the allowable annual limit of worker exposure from 2 to 25 rem for this emergency situation, but only about 21 workers received more than 10 rem and only two workers received between 20 and 25 rem. These levels are far below the hundreds of rem needed to cause acute radiation sickness. Those workers who experienced levels over 10 rem to their entire body, however, have an increased lifetime risk of developing cancer of about 1-2% over the expected normal lifetime rate of about 42%. There were reports of high radiation fields in the vicinity of the damaged reactors and spent fuel storage ponds and with the contaminated water, but apparently the Japanese authorities rotated workers in such a way that cumulative exposures to individuals were minimized. Three workers received beta particle exposures to their legs from an estimated 200-300 rem to the skin, but the health consequences of these localized exposures were minimal and resulted in only a reddening of the skin.

Exposure to the public was minimal in large part because of the prevailing winds and the quick action taken by the Japanese authorities. The prevailing winds were generally to the east and over the ocean and thus did not result in meaningful radiation exposures to the Japanese public. In contrast to the circumstances around Chernobyl where the authorities failed to alert or evacuate the surrounding populations until several days had passed, the Japanese government quickly evacuated persons living within 20 km of the Fukushima Daiichi plant and recommended that those living within 30 km stay indoors to minimize any possible exposure to radioactive releases. In addition, they immediately monitored the food and water supplies and banned the shipment of foodstuffs and milk where the radiation levels exceeded allowable standards.

These protective action measures, including the distribution of stable iodine pills (or syrup for children), minimized public doses and suggest that there will be minimal health consequences associated with any radiation exposures to the Japanese public. This is borne out in one survey of over 1,000 children who had their thyroids measured for possible uptakes of radioactive iodine. Not one child had a measurement above detectable limits. This is in contrast to children living near Chernobyl for whom large numbers had extremely high levels of radioactive iodine detected in their thyroids from drinking contaminated milk shortly after the accident.

Nonetheless, some of the prevailing winds did blow toward populated areas shortly after the accident and during the hydrogen explosions, and to the north-west in particular. Rain, snow and hail deposited radioactive particles in certain regions, including some beyond 20 km, and these areas will be a concern for remediation before allowing public access or return. The Japanese authorities are considering regular medical examinations for workers and inhabitants who received more than 10 rem. To reduce anxiety, they are considering medical check-ups for those who may have received between 2 to 10 rem. They are also grappling with important issues as to when and how to allow evacuated inhabitants to return to their homes. Childhood exposures are of particular concern and topsoil is already being removed from some school playgrounds.

Thus, while Fukushima is clearly a major reactor accident, the potential health consequences associated with radiation exposures in terms of loss of life and future cancer risk are small, particularly in contrast with those resulting from the Chernobyl accident some 25 years ago.

For completeness, the 1979 reactor accident at Three Mile Island did not release appreciable amounts of radioactive substances into the environment, and public and even worker exposures were minimal. The average dose to people in the area was only about 1 millirem, or about what would be received in three days from sources of natural background radiation to the surrounding population.

The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent
Fukushima is 5,000 miles away from the United States and the radiation that has been detected was substantially diluted after traveling such a long distance. The detection of trace amounts of radiation speaks more about the extreme sensitivity of our radiation detectors than about the potential health consequences from the radiation itself. In addition to EPA’s RadNet system that monitors water, milk and the atmosphere, the Department of Energy has radiation monitoring equipment that can detect minute quantities of radioactive particles from the other side of the world as part of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The tiny amounts of detected radioactive materials from Fukushima pose no threat to human health. They represent, at most, only a tiny fraction of what we receive each day from natural sources, such as the sun, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the houses we live in.

It is impressive that radiation monitors can detect levels of radioactive iodine-131 as low as 0.03 Bq/L (0.8 pCi/L) in milk in Washington State; this is the decay of one radioactive atom per second in about 33 gallons of milk. Such a level is 5,000 of times below the Derived Intervention Level set by the Food and Drug Administration to trigger concern over radionuclides in food. An infant would have to drink hundreds of gallons of milk to receive a radiation dose equivalent to a day’s worth of natural background radiation exposure. Such tiny levels of radiation are inconsequential compared with the levels we experience in daily life.

Interestingly, the radiation monitoring stations in Washington State had to detect radionuclides other than iodine-131 in order to distinguish radiation from Fukushima from that at any local hospital in the area. Most nuclear medicine departments use radioactive iodine for imaging the thyroid and to treat thyroid diseases, and patients are discharged shortly after intake and remain radioactive for several months, releasing small but detectable levels of radioactive iodine into the environment.

The trivial levels of radiation from Japan, while detectable, should not be of a concern and Americans should not take stable iodine (potassium iodide pills, KI) as a preventive measure to block the thyroid’s uptake of radioactive iodine. There are potential adverse health effects from taking KI pills and these risks have to be balanced against a nonexistent benefit.

We live in a radioactive world
To place the radiation levels from Fukushima in brief perspective, it is important to recognize that we live in a radioactive world. A banana, for example, has 10 Bq of activity, that is, 10 radioactive potassium atoms decay every second. All the foodstuffs we eat that contain potassium also contain a small amount of radioactive potassium, a primordial element with a billion year half-life. There are no concerns and no health consequences from such exposures.

We breathe radioactive radon which contributes over the year to about 210 millirem of natural background radiation. Bricks and granite contain radioactive materials that result in radiation exposures to the public (20 millirem). The Capitol Building was constructed with granite and is frequently cited as having some of the highest radiation levels in all of the United States, about 85 millirem per year. Water contains small amounts of radioactive radium, thorium and uranium, all within allowable limits.

Not only do we live in a radioactive world, our bodies are radioactive (30 millirem per year). Each second over 7,000 radioactive atoms in our bodies decay and can irradiate those sitting next to us. The atoms are largely radioactive potassium in our muscles and carbon-14 in our tissues. The amount of radiation we receive each year from medical sources (300 millirem), such as CT and medical imaging, equals the amount received from natural sources (300 millirem). International travel increases our exposure to cosmic rays and space radiation. A roundtrip from Dulles to Tokyo would result in 20 millirem. Living in Denver for a year results in 450 millirem of radiation dose, or 35% more than the U.S. average of 310 millirem from natural sources. About 2.5 million Americans (0.8% of the population) receive more than 2,000 millirem per year from natural sources.

These examples are not to minimize the health consequences of high-level exposures which are clearly demonstrable in human populations and include acute radiation sickness at very high doses in excess of 200 rem and an increase in cancer at moderate doses above about 10 rem (10,000 millirem). The examples do indicate, however, that we live in a world of low-level radiation for which the possible health consequences are of little concern. The exposures to the U.S. population from Fukushima are tiny and thousands of times below U.S. standards or guidelines where remedial action would be triggered.

What research is needed?
Although we know much about the health effects of high levels of radiation when received briefly, as was the case for atomic bomb survivors, the risk following exposures experienced gradually over time is uncertain and remains the major unanswered question in radiation epidemiology.

One untapped opportunity is to study our own U.S. radiation workers and veterans. The Low Dose Radiation Program within the Department of Energy had the foresight to initiate pilot investigations of over one million such workers and this comprehensive work should continue. Cooperating agencies include the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others. The study populations include early DOE and Manhattan Project workers, atomic veterans who participated in nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear utility workers, medical workers and others involved in the development of radiation technologies, as well as nuclear navy personnel.

Such a large study in the United States is critically important to understand scientifically the health consequences of low-dose radiation experienced over time and is directly relevant to the setting of protection standards for workers and the public; the assessment of possible risks from enhanced medical technologies such as CT and nuclear medicine imaging; the expansion of nuclear power; the handling of nuclear waste; the compensation of workers with prior exposures to radiation; and even the possible consequences of the radiation released from reactor accidents such as at Fukushima. To date, no direct study of these issues has been large enough to provide convincing answers and extrapolations from the atomic bomb exposures in 1945 have to be relied upon.

Summary
Fortunately, the health consequences from the radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant appear to be minimal and are of little importance with regard to the U.S. public. The Japanese authorities acted quickly to evacuate over 200,000 inhabitants living near the damaged reactors; they monitored food and water and took rapid action to ban foodstuffs with increased radiation levels; they distributed stable iodine pills and syrup; and they made measurements on over 175,000 persons. The lasting effects upon the Japanese population will most likely be psychological with increased occurrence of stress-related mental disorders and depression associated not necessarily with the concern about reactor radiation, but with the horrific loss of life and disruption caused by the tsunami and earthquake. There is a need for better public understanding and better communications on the health effects of radiation exposures. Finally, there is now the opportunity in the United States to learn directly about low-dose, long-term radiation health effects by studying our workers and veterans.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I welcome any questions that you may have.

Relevant References
Boice JD Jr. Lauriston S. Taylor lecture: radiation epidemiology--the golden age and future challenges. Health Physics 100(1):59-76, 2011.

Christodouleas JP, Forrest RD, Ainsley CG, Tochner Z, Hahn SM, Glatstein E. Short-Term and Long-Term Health Risks of Nuclear-Power-Plant Accidents. New England Journal of Medicine, April 20, 2011.

Idaho National Laboratory. Oversight Program: Guide to Radiation Doses and Limits. [http://www.deq.idaho.gov/inl_oversight/radiation/radiation_guide.cfm]

International Atomic Energy Agency. Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log
[http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html]

National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, NCRP Report No. 160, Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population of the United States, March 2009.

Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Washington, D.C. (The Kemeny Commission Report), October 1979.

Smith J. A long shadow over Fukushima. Nature, April 5, 2011.

UNSCEAR. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes, Volume II, Annex D, health Effects due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident (United Nations Publications, New York), 2011.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. [http://www.lrb.usace.army.mil/fusrap/docs/fusrap-fs-uranium-2008-09.pdf]

Wakeford R. And now, Fukushima (editorial). Journal of Radiological Protection (in press).                  

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, opening statment of the Atucha II Nuclear Power Plant.

It's quite rare these days to witness those speeches by a leader.

Listen to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president of Argentina, on the opening of a nuclear power station.

Topics in one speech on:

• Nuclear power
• Sovereignty rights of a nation
• Putting an end to debt with the IMF preventing the development of a nation
• Restructuring the debt of a sovereign nation
• Workers being the custodians of nation sovereignty
• Nuclear power being the most important bastions of technological development
• Foreign interference preventing preventing a nation from having nuclear power
• A nation govern by itself

More info:

Attucha nuclear power:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atucha_II_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fern%C3%A1ndez_de_Kirchner

How the IMF Sank Argentina
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0127-03.htm

Terranova, can we do better?

There's a new show on TV.  

Terranova: another doom and gloom, end of the world scenario where the show start with a view on a polluted city, people with mask to breathe and a population control coops kidnapping the third kid of a family, because it's outlawed to have more than 2. The kids never saw an orange or clouds.. give me a break!

In the year 2149, the planet Earth is a disaster, and most of the plant and animal life has become extinct. Scientists can't reverse the

 damage, but have found a way to travel back to prehistoric times to save the human race.

I am so tired of those shows where humans can only do bad things and the only solution is to go back and live like crazy, unlawful armed farmers.

For starter overpopulation is a myth.. see:

http://simonfiliatrault.blogspot.com/2009/07/overpopulation-myth-or-reality.html

Secondly, we know that by bringing wealth and education to population, their growth rate stabilize.

http://drtimball.com/2011/climate-change-threat-is-continuation-of-malthusian-population-claims/

Third, we know that better technology, cleaner power sources, gives us a cleaner air.  The only task left for humanity is to move from coal power to nuclear power. From what I know, people downtown England breath better today then when they where burning coal in houses.

So I don't believe in those dooms day scenarios, humans are better than that, period.