Millions of Jellyfish Invade Nuclear Reactors 280
oxide7 writes "A nuclear reactor in Japan was forced to shut down due to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish near the power plant. A similar incident was also reported recently in Israel, when millions of jellyfish clogged the sea-water cooling system of a power plant."
I for one (Score:3, Funny)
praise our new jellyfish overlords.
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Scholl's wants to know: are you jellin'?
Jellyfish love global warming (Score:5, Funny)
I have a theory that jellyfish are alien invaders, here to xenoform our planet. They love basically everything we do to the planet, from pollution to overfishing to global warming. This is just further evidence, but by shutting down nuclear reactors, the only current viable alternative to fossil fuel power plants, they ensure we use more coal and oil power plants, contributing to the environmental change they love.
I think humans are the alien terraformers (Score:3, Funny)
Think about it, within a relatively short time on earth we've multiplied to the billions, with no indication of stopping. We're like the grey goo of nanotech horror, or flying penises of second life!
-Matt
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Except we're clearly from this planet. If you wanted to argue the jellyfish are trying to stop us from spreading to other planets, you may be right. Their efforts thus far to change our environment to suit their own purposes have been quite effective, and may end up destroying us.
We better start fighting back now. Countries such as Germany are already under the influence of jellyfish. We should look for distinctive jellyfish sting marks on the necks of their lawmakers who voted for the nuclear power ban.
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I blame the East Germans. They'll happily push the "non-toxic" jellyfishes out of the way while bathing, they probably deposit brain control chemicals in people!
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Except we're clearly from this planet.
actually many theories exist that life originated from a collision with an asteroid that had the building blocks of life... if this is true then you could argue human life is extra terrestrial in origin and thus the original terra forming program is already spreading to other parts of the universe through out the years
Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically, we didn't have a population problem. China reflects the population growth of the entire world. Until about 1850, population growth was a stable thing, growing fractionally every century or so. After about 1850, we saw this exponential growth.
The reason I picked China as the example, is that China has made a conscious effort to control population. One couple, one child. Negative population growth, which should put China comfortably within the land's capability to support their population within the next 100 years or so. (Sorry, no, I haven't researched projected population figures - I'm just guesstimating that 100 years from now, China's population will be (very roughly) about 1/4 what it is today.)
Roughly half of the rest of the world still practices unrestrained population growth - all of Islam, all of the Catholic people, and much of the third world no matter their religion, politics, or anything else.
I think it's past time that some of those people were brought up to date on the results of unrestricted procreation.
chinas program is an utter failure (Score:5, Insightful)
they have profoundly disrupted the balance between male and female, leading to social unrest and massive mental health problems.
the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things. there is plenty of food, the problem is distribution and marketing. we throw away food every day from supermarkets and restaurants, and people go to jail if they try to dig in the trash for food to eat. there is no food shortage, there is a shortage of low-priced food, and that has nothing to do with the supply of land (except maybe as it relates to ethanol). it has to do with things like the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index Fund and other investment banks and hedge funds attempts to manipulate food markets for profit . . . something that is very old, a good 20th century example being the potato market and NYMEX.
the problem with 'population control' is that someone has to decide what 'sort of people' are 'better' - nobody who thinks they know the answer to that should ever be in any position of power because it is amongst the basest, most primitive and violent impulses of the human species, to 'wipe out the other clan'.
see also. eugenics. t4. genetic health courts. etc etc.
Re:chinas program is an utter failure (Score:5, Insightful)
You're exactly right, that we produce enough food to feed everyone. Inadequate packaging and storage, as well as inadequate distribution channels, corrupt governments, and plain old poverty keeps a lot of it getting to where it needs to go. Much of it spoils before reaching market and much of it gets used as a political and social weapon.
Just recently the UN FAO said we need to double our food output by 2050, when population is expected to reach 9 billion. Well, ignoring the fact that math doesn't make sense, it's missing the point. We can produce food for 6.5 billion right now. Production will need to increase to meet the demands of another 2.5 billion people, but the problem isn't production and never was. So long as there isn't enough refrigeration, pest-resistent procedures and packaging, and the roads and governments in place to distribute it adequately, production is irrelevant.
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We produce enough food, is hardly a sound reason to continue reproducing to the point were we do not produce enough food. At the moment with by far the majority having a bare minimum of access to the resources we exploit and produce, those resources are already being stretched to their limits.
So any judgements should be based upon an equitable share, we all gain pretty much equal access to the resources of the planet, defining what limits need to be put in place to ensure long term livability for human s
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You might be able to use it now, but that might make it completely unusable in future. Land needs to recover, they'd worked that out in the middle ages.
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You might be able to use it now, but that might make it completely unusable in future. Land needs to recover, they'd worked that out in the middle ages.
... which is why modern farming use fertilizers ;-) Oil is a key ingredient in making fertilizers, so if we ever should burn out our oil supply, we better find an alternative, though. Mulching is not enough.
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Some alternatives:
- South-America's ancient cultures used charcoal (which they made by burning trees without oxygen) as a fertilizer.
- In ancient Egypt they used floods of the Nile to fertilize their fields.
- In several places volcanic ashes have been used.
- Also animal dung has been used as a fertilizer.
- It is also effective to use different plants in different years as they have slightly different needs.
- One should also remember that currently a lot of fertilizer is going with the rain down to the sea,
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... which is why modern farming use fertilizers ;-) Oil is a key ingredient in making fertilizers, so if we ever should burn out our oil supply, we better find an alternative, though. Mulching is not enough.
The problem however is that using the land for oil fertilizers kills the soil and makes it incapable of growing food crops again without massive infusions of some other fertilizer. The other problem is that we currently waste the best fertilizer we have — our poop! It should not be called waste, but that's what we do with it in the developed world.
Re:chinas program is an utter failure (Score:5, Interesting)
You might be surprised to know that we don't throw away all human waste.
We buy tandom truck loads (~10 cubic yards) of recycled waste from the waste treatment plant for $125 delivered, consisting of composted wood chips, leaves and sterilized human waste sludge. Many municipalities all over the US sell it. Cost varies from $10 to $15 a yard. This is only slightly cheaper than regular compost, at $15 to $20 a yard. We stack it up and let it "cook off" for another year before using in the garden, although it isn't actually required. This is deep, rich black compost that works perfectly to condition soil for lawns or gardens, and is far superior to standard "compost" you buy due to a higher manure content.
I have also seen people buy just the sterilized effluent for spray fertilizing fields for animal feed. Very powerful stuff. Many waste treatment plants are expanding their ability to produce, as it is a profitable venture, which is reflecting in the fact that the price has gone up as demand has, at least here in North Carolina.
So we don't actually waste our poop in America, like others believe. It is rapidly becoming a PROFITABLE product that makes the community money and reduces landfill usage. We still aren't doing this with all human waste, but we are well on our way as it is rapidly gaining acceptance. If my little town of 20k people are doing it, then any city can. I would be shocked if 90% of human waste isn't done this way within 10 or so years, as it makes money, grows great plants, and costs less than landfilling the material.
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So we don't actually waste our poop in America, like others believe. It is rapidly becoming a PROFITABLE product that makes the community money and reduces landfill usage.
There are a couple problems with this though. One is that the process is incredibly wasteful. Another is that it is only done in a tiny minority of cases. Most of the time it's just landfilled or even incinerated. And even where it is not the processing is horribly wasteful, even though there are alternatives, like AIWPS or simply using composting toilets which are as simple as can be and which save water to boot.
Small towns are overwhelmingly more likely to be using a rational process because the money in
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the idea that there is insufficient land is bogus as long as we are paying farmers to not grow things.
That's only logically true if the land on which nothing is grown could replace the food that is being grown on land that is being cleared (for instance, in the Amazon) for food production. The amount of land subsidized not to grow is about 34 million acres. From various sources, I'm seeing anywhere from 6 to 47 million acres of Amazon rainforest alone being cleared for food production each year. Taking the lowest figure for granted, that 34 million acres of unfarmed land could effectively produce "sustainab
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I think you'd be surprised how many Catholics use artificial birth control.
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It might not be all that surprising to learn that the majority of Catholics do NOT use birth control. There is a reason that Mexico and other Latin American countries are overpopulated, and poor. There is a reason that the illegal aliens in the United States are rapidly repopulating the South West, while the white man is actually seeing negative population growth.
I'll accept that a lot of Catholics in wealthy, educated nations might be practicing birth control methods, but those Catholics are a minority o
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You mean the population on a particular date would be, say, x% more than it was a year previously?
You mean where the population on a particular date would be the base population at some time in the past, multiplied by some number, let's call it ((100+x)/100), raised to a power which corresponds the number of years after the base?
I wonder what biological mutation
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Not subtle enough. The biological mutation you refer to didn't happen. Instead, advances in the field of medicine pretty much wiped out the most common causes of death.
Now, if you're finished mocking, you might actually do a Google search, to see what the earth's estimated population levels were for tens of thousands of years in the past. There most definitely was population growth, all through history and pre-history. But, that growth, overall, was stable. Only in the 1800's do we see that "population
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http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/themes/keytheme1.htm [sdsu.edu]
Catholics (Score:2)
" all of Islam, all of the Catholic people, and much of the third world no matter their religion, politics, or anything else."
You mean like Italy (total fertility rate:1.3), Spain (1.3), Hungary (1.3), Slovakia(1.3), Turkey (2.15), Algeria (1.75)?
But hey, don't bother with the facts!
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Because they come from third world countries?
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95% of Italy and Spain, 90% of Poland, 68% of Slovakia are Catholics, however they all have a total fertility rate of around 1.3 per woman, thus refuting your point.
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The reason I picked China as the example, is that China has made a conscious effort to control population. One couple, one child. Negative population growth, which should put China comfortably within the land's capability to support their population within the next 100 years or so. (Sorry, no, I haven't researched projected population figures - I'm just guesstimating that 100 years from now, China's population will be (very roughly) about 1/4 what it is today.)
And it will have a man/woman ratio of 1 to 0.6.
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A culture's desire for a male or a female offspring is pretty much a separate issue from population control.
However - the fact that the balance is in favor of male offspring only helps to cut the population faster. One couple, one child. It most definitely requires a female to form a couple. So - she has one child, and the extra guy doesn't. I have no problem with that. Seems to me that the males in China would start working hard to make themselves attractive to the females, so that they don't end up a
Re:I think humans are the alien terraformers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah - that could be a problem. But - historically speaking, how many times has China invaded another country? I think that we all recognize that China has a different psychology than much of the rest of the world. When I look at history, I see a lot of nations invading others for food, for wealth, for crazy religious reasons, and to satisfy a desire for conquest and blood lust. China? They have had 1/4 of the world's population for millenia, I guess. Back when the number of warm bodies on the field pretty much decided the battle, they could have expanded anywhere they wanted. But, they didn't.
What I think is more likely to happen is, a lot of young men are going to emmigrate from China. China is right now building something of a financial empire across the rest of Asia, Africa, and reaching into Europe and the Americas, along with Australia. It would be perfectly reasonable for China to export young men to those nations for business reasons. And, while they are out and about, they may find that the local women are rather attractive, with the added benefit that the local governments don't care to much about the number of children you have.
To tell the truth, I think I'd rather face a Chinese army . . .
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Are trying to tell us Soylent green isn't coming from fish in the oceans?
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China has a retirement program?
Seriously - what do you think has happened all through history, and prehistory? The old bastards start dying off. The young bastards dispose of the bodies, distribute the possessions, and get on with their lives. Can you find some point in history when things were different?
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http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/themes/keytheme1.htm [sdsu.edu]
Obviously not the same thing . . .
Re:Jellyfish love global warming (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Jellyfish love global warming (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, Jellyfish are also nearly nutrition-less so people do not try to catch them.
Most Asian cuisines have Jellyfish dishes. Some US fisheries even export Jellyfish to Asian countries.
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Luckily they have no regard for their own lives, as TFA clearly shows they're willing to use suicidal tactics to get us to shut down our alternative energy sources that will halt their advance. If they did care more, they might be pissed off that we're eating them.
Re:Jellyfish love global warming (Score:5, Informative)
Most Asian cuisines have Jellyfish dishes. Some US fisheries even export Jellyfish to Asian countries.
The problem is, preparation of Jellyfish for food is very time and labor intensive, due to the absurdly high water content that needs to be dealt with. Asians eat it, but not as a major dietary protein source like fish. So while it may support some small Jellyfisheries, there will never be huge fleets capable of making a dent in their populations.
Re:Jellyfish love global warming (Score:4, Interesting)
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Huh. Interesting idea, but would it work?
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I wonder if the reason we don't use them as fertilizer has to do with salt content. Residual salt buildup, wherein the salt content in agricultural soil gets fractionally higher each year, is a problem already; if jellyfish fertilizer exacerbates it, that might be why nobody's tried it.
Desalinating something before you use it adds quite a lot of energy to the requirements.
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Desalinating something before you use it adds quite a lot of energy to the requirements.
It's not a big deal if you have empty space, which we do, and sun, which generally coincides with the empty space here. In Japan it's a bit trickier.
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Perfect refference there :)
"Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy [wikipedia.org]
If I had mod points I'd mod you up.
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Um, I'll take the fish, please?
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Increasing water temperatures do correlate with increased jellyfish populations, and they do better in depleted oxygen waters, which pollution causes. More fossil fuels do result in increased jellyfish numbers, it's been shown in a number of scientific studies.
They ARE xenoforming our planet, and we have limited time to stop them before they begin constructing saltwater-filled vehicles to roam the lands and take over.
Re:Jellyfish love global warming (Score:5, Informative)
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/ [nationalgeographic.com]
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yeah but i love McDonalds fish filet (Score:2)
shrug.
did you see american idol last night?
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The jellyfish explosions have been created by two things. Firstly, from massive over fishing in Asian waters. Secondly, from massive waste runoff in oxygen rich fresh waters from China. Its almost completely a problem of both Japan and China's making.
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The norm for them for the past few hundred million years is the fertile ones spawn in the thousands/millions and a few survive to fertile adulthood, the rest get eaten or die for other reasons.
Us eating the big ones is messing things up.
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I for one welcome our new radiated Jellyfish overlords.
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Further evidence – it's systematic. They did it to Torness nuclear plant in Scotland recently too http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-13971005 [bbc.co.uk]
Sayonara Fishies (Score:5, Informative)
We over-fished the oceans, and now jellyfish have all that extra food available to themselves to grow like weeds. Don't act surprised.
This is not flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this flamebait? What Tablizer says is true. The fish that are the normal predators of jellyfish have been overfished, along with a lot of the smaller fish they feed on. What results is an abundance of the food that jellyfish eat along with an absence of predators (including the human predator), which causes a surge in jellyfish numbers.
It is flamebait because some don't want to hear (Score:2)
The flamebait or troll mod is not there to catch flamebait or trolls but to label things as "I don't want to hear this". Take tuna, it is easy to see it is over fished as it has become harder and harder to catch. The people who want to continue catching with no restrictions don't even bother denying it, they just don't want to deal with it. They want their tuna now, if that means no tuna tomorrow, so be it.
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Well then. We have to eat jellyfish now and overfish them too. ;-)
The Abyss (Score:3)
They're just the advance troops sent by the aliens in The Abyss [imdb.com]!
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LOL, ya beat me to it.
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Or, as a better fit, from the novel "The Kraken Wakes" by John Wyndham. Great book.
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And here I was expecting some sort of B movie entitled "Attack of the Giant Radioactive Jellyfish!"
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Two months ago? (Score:2)
Didn't this hit the regular news over two months ago? What's new this time?
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Not to worry. It'll be back again in a year or two.
Also the reactor in Torness, Scotland. (Score:5, Informative)
The Torness reactor was shut down on June 28th because jellyfish clogged the seawater inlet filters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/30/jellyfish-shut-nuclear-reactors-torness
Up Next... (Score:5, Funny)
Up Next:
Radioactive Jellyfish spotted
Up Next after that:
Man stung by radioactive jellyfish, gains superpowers. New crime-fighting "Jellyman" reduces world crime considerably.
Re:Up Next... (Score:4, Funny)
Man stung by radioactive jellyfish, gains superpowers. New crime-fighting "Jellyman" reduces world crime considerably.
Unfortunately he is ultimately beaten by his nemesis, "The Knife", who defeats him easily with the aid of a giant jar of Jif Peanut Butter.
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine used to work as a deep diving welder. Things get pretty cold when you've got that much water between you and the sun, so they'd pump down warm water from the surface to let the divers stay under for as long as possible.
Some of the divers discovered they could get even warmer by sticking the hoses into the neck of their wetsuit. After a few weeks of doing so, a number of jellyfish swam near the surface. You can probably guess what happened next -- one of them got sucked into the pump and shot through the hose, straight down the back of his wetsuit and settling right between his legs.
It took a few days before he was able to walk after that, and probably a week more before he could do it comfortably. I guess he was lucky they weren't a more deadly variety, and that he had a buddy nearby to help him surface and remove his wetsuit.
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Cool story bro
Your story would go over better if it were not so obviously fabricated.
1) Deep waters welders: We almost always wear dry suits not wet suits.
2) When we do wear wetsuits (short shallow dives in warm water) we want the water in our suit to remain constant because our body heat warms it up and it is trapped inside the suit providing insulation. You would be stupid to break your seal to pump in other water as you would loose body heat that way.
US Navy vs Jellyfish (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:US Navy vs Jellyfish (Score:4, Insightful)
What would a military be without some messes for the new recruits to clean up by hand?
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That would almost certainly be against the Geneva Convention.
Bring in some Chinese chefs (Score:2)
One thing we know how to do is kill stuff. One thing Chinese chefs know is to make dish out of almost anything.
Invite some Chinese chefs and take care of the bidnis.
Re:Bring in some Chinese chefs (Score:5, Funny)
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Here's a BIT of detail... (Score:2)
...since TFA had absolutely none whatsoever.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-japan-nuclear-jellyfish-idUSTRE75N0Z520110624 [reuters.com]
great! (Score:2)
Sea water for cooling? (Score:2)
IANANE (I Am Not A Nuclear Engineer), but why is raw sea water being used for cooling water, where it can be blocked by jellyfish?
Or raw lake water, for that matter? ISTR a similar almost-problem at the Davis Besse reactor in Ohio from the (invading) zebra mussel trying to plug things up.
Certainly both sea water and lake water are cheap and plentiful, but if using them allows living creatures to foul the works and cause actual problems (instead of simply costing more money) is it really worth the convenien
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I think it's a multiple stage cooling system. The reactor's excess heat is transferred from the internal cooling loop, to ponds, the ponds are cooled by a separate cooling loop - into yet another pond? Then the pond is hooked up to an open ended system that pulls cool water from the sea, dumping warm water back into the sea. The reactor is isolated from the sea by a couple of stages, but ultimately, the excess heat has to go SOMEWHERE other than another closed loop system.
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Even a closed loop radiator in the ocean would depend on water flowing through it, again, into an open ended system. And - what exactly attracts those pesky jellyfish? The heat? So - the jellyfish drape themselves over and around the ridiculously expensive gargantuan radiators - and we're right back to re-telling the story in the summary. Hmmm - no net gain there, sorry!
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I admit I'd be curious to see the calculations for a forced air cooled heat exchanger... it'd need to draw in roughly 50000 cubic meters of air per second, assuming an exhaust temp of 120*c is acceptable.
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Because the interface for that relatively cool body of water can become readily clogged with jellyfish and/or zebra mussels, as has actually happened in the really real world?
Did you have an actual retort or vindication for the concept, AC, or are you just restating what I already declared as being obvious?
Jellyfish Heaven (Score:2)
Jellyfish heaven
In the big blue sea
Where it's too cold to surf
And it's too warm to ski
Jellyfish Heaven
Is full of dead
Jellyfish
People always saying
"I won't eat jellyfish
'Cause they ain't got no bones
And you can't make a wish"
People always shouting
"Don't go swimming near those things!"
But when they're close to dying
You can hear them sing
Jellyfish heaven
Is not like Japan
Jellyfish heaven
Is not like Thailand
Jellyfish heaven
Is a lot
Like LA
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That's beautiful. Demented, but beautiful.
The message is clear (Score:2)
SHUT
DOWN
EVERYTHING
Seriously, I think the planet is trying to to tell us "You can't contain the nuclear garbage you're making, stop it"
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The spent fuel isn't garbage, it's a gold mine of energy that we can use later to get seven times more power than we have thus far extracted, leaving behind isotopes that will decay on a short scale.
If we stopped power generation as you suggest, human life span would drop to half or more its current value. Overall the industrial age has blessed us with more life, health and
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Yes, anthromorphizing the planet is a bad thing.
I mean, it is just a big rock falling into the sun (and missing).
It could not care less about if he can sustain or not an environment for some life forms. Life forms famous in the galaxy for only being able of either thinking "OMG we are all gonna die" or thinking "These changes do not affect to ME and automagically everything is going to be ok always".
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Why do you think that the planet is trying to tell us anything? If the planet is trying to communicate with us, why does it use swarms of jellyfish as its medium?
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Right out of fiction (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Right out of fiction (Score:5, Funny)
Its Japan, nothing a bunch of scantily clad Japanese schoolgirls cant handle.
It's obvious (Score:3)
Nuclear reactors running amuck, millions of jellyfish swarming to stop them - this is just a promotional gimmick for the next Hayao Miyazaki film.
This was the plot of "Ponyo" (Score:2)
Jellyfish + nuclear reactor in Japan? (Score:2)
Here comes Jellyzilla!
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Re:Been done before (Score:5, Funny)
Three words: Japanese bagpipe music.