Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for November 30, 2015

I would say at least a few hundred gazillion dollars.

Worth leaving alone maybe?

Wilderness is everything, it’s the mother of life, life develops always new from natur!

Developing of life is a great wonder!!

From the mouth of babes.

Well, Calvin is not interested the sustaining wonder of nature; he wants to “value” it and probably sell it. Never mind getting other nations to adhere to some sane planet preserving plan, it’s people like Calvin (I know he’s a comic character!) to convince that is the problem.

Develop everything. Some rational entrepreneur will purchase beautiful land to sell tickets. No need for dictators.

Interesting how conflicts over protecting the environment so often become a matter of dollars and cents … all non-cents in the end.

@gweedo: great idea but it would take massive energy inputs to implement, creating more of the problem.

7+ billion and growing exponentially. Till you slow that down, all else is insignificant.

Wasn’t all electricity supposed to be generated by nice clean atomic power before the end of the century? so we could limit burning fossil fuels to motor vehicles? And that’s not even considering the idea of electric cars, which were more science fiction than practical in the 50s/60s because battery technology was nowhere near ready. (Even science fiction electric cars envisioned some kind of fuel cell with ultra-efficient combustion, not battery power. And if you have cheap electricity to separate water and carry pure oxygen/hydrogen for fuel cells, you’ve got efficiency and convenient refueling and zero mobile pollution all in one handy package.)

A nice choice for today’s strip, on the opening of the climate talks in Paris where world leaders might actually take Calvin up on it.

Hobbes better watch out for helicopters with politicians carrying guns.

Easy – grow trees.

Calvin is often cynical but not in this case – a cynic being, in the words of Oscar Wilde, someone who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Do you think we could use Soylent Green to fuel our homes, factories, and transportation? Who wants to volunteer?

Apparently, Alaska is worth a few dollars.

On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.That is about $108 million it 2015 dollars. I’m betting that we could get a fairly good Profit if we could find a buyer.

Seward nailed it!

Deforestation and the proliferation of asphalt are the real culprits. Fewer trees=less CO2 being converted in O2. Areas covered with asphalt (not surprisingly) have a much higher temperature than those covered with grasses, which in turn are warmer than those covered by trees.

“Zillion Jillion Bagillion”

Wow. It only takes 3 words for Calvin to get his point across.

xxx

For some reason, I’m reminded of the notion that a cynic is one who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Well, that’s it! I’m going back to the shop and work some more on that damn fusion reactor!

But, I gotta go get a case of beer first…

Enter thorium. Natural thorium, which is fairly cheap and abundant (more so than uranium), doesn’t contain enough fissile material (thorium-231) to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. By mixing thorium oxide with 10% plutonium oxide, however, criticality is achieved. This fuel, which is called thorium-MOX (mixed-oxide), can then be formed into rods and used in conventional nuclear reactors. Not only does this mean that we can do away with uranium, which is expensive to enrich, dangerous, and leads to nuclear proliferation, but it also means that we finally have an easy way of recycling plutonium. Furthermore, the thorium-MOX fuel cycle produces no new plutonium; it actually reduces the world’s stock of plutonium. Oh, thorium-MOX makes for safer nuclear reactors, too, due to a higher melting point and thermal conductivity.And it’s half-life is 30 years, compared to u235’s 708 million.

Can we stop dragging Politics into Calvin’s world? Some of us are just here for the nostalgia!

Things that are very old are cheaper.

Sadly, too many refuse to even admit there is a problem with the priceless, and are more than willing to sell it off.

Good stewards, we often are not.