mumble mumble afghanistan, part 133

Leonardo had dismissed his cute Dutch girly assisstants some time ago and started using an office next to Boticelli's. Botticelli was in the next office bouncing a tennis ball off three walls and catching it again, occasionally he played with his own balls....

Leonardo wanted to get down to brass tacks -- to the reason he was at Wright Pat... to draw reasonable projections for the Earth's future -- as based on energy consumption and to a lesser extent, water availability. Leonardo started by ascertaining how much oil was left... how much had been used already and how many people and how long that took and calculating how much coal was left to make electricity and took into account China's 10% growth per year, effectively making China double in size every 10 years.... he also took into account the possibility of civil unrest and the need for heavy American military involvement in China and the potential for an all-out war with China including with nuclear weapons.....

Leonardo kept himself buried in these kinds of calculations for a very long time and realized that without question, and obviously to anyone who put their mind to it --- the world was in for a giant meltdown: there would not be enough oil to keep the ball rolling, it would run out and China would easily push the world over that edge, not to mention India and Brazil and the EU and America's needs. Oil would become unavailable which meant that the combustion engine would go the way of the do-do - at least in terms of running on gasoline... but water hydrolisis, the technology that involved inserting a battery into water and separating the hydrogen from it was readily available and currently not being implemented due to 'special interests', which is to say, big oil companies holding technology back.

But was it that simple Leonardo asked himself... if it were true that hydrolisis technology was all that, then certainly it could cover all energy needs and avoid co2 pollution and humans could go on to perfect their birth control pills and sluttiness and alcoholism and stem-cell research and i-pods with idiot music and idiot movies and idiot culture and all the blessed 'happiness' and 'freedom' of the west....

so many things to think about pondered Leonardo.