As a lifelong atheist (I was actually raised this way), I've reached the conclusion that Darwinian forces act on societies (in the same way that they act on genes and individuals) and support those with certain religious dogmas. Religions that tell their adherents to spread the word and have lots of children tend to survive, as do those that offer lots of rewards (many of which are in the afterlife and the religion itself doesn't have to provide). Religion's conflict with science is a particularly interesting one, because both provide benefits to a society, even a modern one. Religion provides motivation to people who, without the promise of an afterlife, would rather drink their lives away than work at Walmart. Meanwhile science provides us bigger and better weapons, newer and better drugs, and other things that have lead to Anglo-Western domination of the planet. (Islamic societies, though they are highly fecund, will never match western ones in science, technology, and economic clout because their culture discourages inquiry.)

"His choice is either Shakespearean or Wagnerian."

"Freudian" would fit in there as well.

I know it sounds like a quibble, but in these times of scientific mushiness and faith-based policy decisions, it's important to keep straight a few basic scientific facts. An isotope of one element is never a different element. Thus calling Polonium an isotope of Uranium is wrong. It is radioactive and is an isotope, but of Polonium, which is more commonly of the 209 atomic weight.

When my parents moved to rural Virginia back in 1976, I was familiar with the DC suburbs and discovered rural life fascinating and full of possibilities. What it lacked, though, was children my own age. Then I discovered the Smiths (yes, that was their actual name). There were six kids, a father collecting disability, and a gigantic manatee of a mother. While the mother lay around watching teevee all day, the kids played in the yard or the neighborhood, making problems for everyone. Cats would turn up shot, mailboxes would mysteriously catch on fire, and nobody seemed to be able to keep any air in their tires. I used to hang out with those kids because I had no choice. We'd sand all the paint off our bikes and then never get around to repainting them. We played in the streams that ran down either side of the driveway, which was paved with used motor oil. Later I discovered that those streams came bubbling up from an improvised septic system the Smiths had constructed. Periodically one of the children would misbehave and Mrs. Smith would shout "Tarry! Fetch me a swuch!" And Terry would go down to the willow tree and cut off the biggest switch he could find, because Robert had fetched a big one when Terry had been whupped.

Eventually one of the Smiths sexually molested my brother and my parents forbade me from going over there ever again.

Sure, oil sands and shales can smooth the decline in oil stocks, but one thing economics cannot do is change a basic thermodynamic reality: oil retrieval must never require more energy than it delivers (unless, of course, the oil is being used for something other than energy). At that point it becomes easier just to use the energy that WOULD have been used for retrieval to supply the energy that the retrieved oil was going to provide. The United States was the Saudi Arabia of its day, and its oil fields still contain plenty of oil. For many fields, however, the energy required to recover that oil is greater than the energy in that oil, and so it must remain in the ground.

This problem plagues many other "new energy" technologies such as biofuels and even solar. If, for example, it takes more energy to make a solar panel than it can ever collect from the sun, of what benefit was it to build it? (This problem plagues some or perhaps all photovoltaic technologies.) There are many technologies that do not have this problem: hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, nuclear, Brazilian sugar-cane-based ethanol, and solar-hydronic. The problem is that they are inconvenient to use, dangerous, or environmentally problematic.

I'm no fan of desalination, since it implies that people are living beyond their hydrological means and should instead do something painless like, you know, practice birth control for Christ's sake - the ultimate and easiest solution to cure absolutely all of our problems. (I know, I know, it's in our genes, and even liberal friends who know better insist on producing additional American consumers who will one day have to live in McMansions of their own.)

But if desalination is what must be done, chances are there isn't much rain in the area and there aren't many cloudy days either. The implication of this article was that to desalinate water you need electricity, and generating electricity with solar energy is expensive. This is true, but using electricity to desalinate is also stupidly inefficient. The better way is to use the solar energy to evaporate the salty water directly, thereby greatly increasing efficiencies (we're talking orders of magnitude here). If done this way, the solar infrastructure is low tech, low price, and low-energy (glass or plastic as opposed to refined silicon attached to glass).