For that amount of money, you could install photovoltaic panels, solar thermal and a water recuperation system on a significant portion of every roof on the planet. As a bonus, the USA would become a beloved nation and wouldn't need any fighter jet to defend itself.
I tend to agree. But it took me a long time to realize just how much energy is contained in one litre of oil. Before that, I also thought that everything was possible for transport.
The burden of proof is on you. I showed that typical airplanes would need 500m2 of pv panels per passenger in order to fly, even with a perfect propulsion system and maximum solar irradiance. You need to describe a functional airplane that somehow needs about 10 or 100 times less pv panels to fly.
Let's say that a solar plane is white, and a commercial airplane is black. I bet that your "functional airplane" is still very much dark gray : you still need a pilot, copilot, food, toilets, a few luggage and minimum space for feet and belly.
it makes it very clear that it's entirely possible to replace our environmentally destructive planes with solar planes.
Once again : Not, it's not possible. Here's a comment I posted 5 years ago : http://science.slashdot.org/co... The laws of thermodynamics haven't changed much since.
If you try to access google.com from Germany, it automatically redirects you to google.de. If you want the "original" Google from abroad, you need to type google.com/ncr. This link should work the same all over the world : https://www.google.com/?gws_rd...
The thing is, they really get bad symptoms from all this anxiety. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like those people in Ukraine that lives relatively close to Chernobyl. Many think "Shitty life, too much radiation, we have no future". So they all drink, smoke, take weird drugs and live like there's no tomorrow. The radiation isn't high enough to have any direct impact on their body, but they're doomed to die young nonetheless.
Or a slight variation : you want to boot your laptop for a presentation in front of a few hundred people. It's 8:50 in the morning, your presentation is at 9:00. You get a nice blue screen that tells you "Please wait till 30 updates are installed". Then you get "Please wait till 200000 files are updated". It often takes more than 30 minutes to do so.
Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap
on
Recycling Is Dying
·
· Score: 2
It depends on the mentality. In Germany, you pay the county dump to take your stuff. In Italy, just a few hundred kilometers away from Germany, the county dump pays you to take your stuff, because they know that nobody would use it otherwise.
It's hard to reason with homeopathic lovers. Depending on the dilution, you can prove that not a single molecule of the supposedly active stuff has been sold, ever : https://en.wikipedia.org/?titl...
Yes, now we begin to agree. It's true that we could live sustainably, provided we stop using cars and planes for everything, we live in smaller flats, we eat local and seasonal food, and stop buying so much crap. Even though we could, the real question is if we ever will do so before it's too late. The heavy smoker could also stop smoking any day in theory. But in practice?
I hope you're right for the demographic curve. I'm not so optimistic. WW2 didn't change much the demographics curve for example. You really need a shitload of famine/war/drought to kill a few billion people.
I'm talking about a sustainable society. There's not much sustainable about the way we do things right now. It's still too early to say if those people were indeed wrong when they said that it's not possible to feed 7 billion people.
Heavy smokers also tend to think that risks are grossly overestimated, and that there's no problem in smoking one pack a day for 30 years. 5 years later, many are dead after a long and painful illness.
Back to the original point : it's just not possible to sustain 15-20 billion people on Earth. Time will tell if 7 billion are even possible. Moreover, you cannot extrapolate Israel example to the whole world. This country gets a lot of support from the USA and Europe, and doesn't see anything wrong with colonization.
We have plenty of oil, or did you miss the current drop in price?
Yes, a price drop automatically means there will be enough oil for everyone forever. It has nothing to do with OPEC setting prices and the US destroying their environment in order to get the last few drops available.
note that 114x background rate translates to ~225 species going extinct per million years
No. You don't seem to understand this E/MSY unit. If you consider that there are 10 million species on earth (I agree with you, this number is a guesstimate, it could be off by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude), 225E/MSY would imply approximately 2250 extinctions per *year*. If you consider just one species, it would go extinct 225 times over in a million years. In other words, its survival expectancy would be about 4500 years. Shit, how old is our civilization?
And when we don't have enough oil for everybody, we'll have a huge fucking problem. Climate change and peak oil wouldn't be a problem at all with less than 1 billion humans on the planet.
Citation needed. There's an ecological optimum somewhere between a hamlet and a megalopolis. If you live in a remote place, you need to take the car for many basic needs. If you live in a huge city, you need to import all your food, and export all your waste.
You're both correct for X divided by zero. It's simply not defined.
But GP was right for "Y plus red" and "Z times pineapple". Both are defined in a mathematical sense : * If Y is an integer, "Y+red" is defined in the free abelian group on the generator {1,red}. * My math is rusty, but "Z times pineapple" should be defined in a multi-variable polynomial ring. You don't need physics to define any of them. You can draw parallel to physical units, but you don't need to.
Finally, you're free to think that math is a human invention. My personal feeling is that we discover math more than we invent it, but I guess we'll never know for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, found it :
http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
I already used it, but forgot it since.
For that amount of money, you could install photovoltaic panels, solar thermal and a water recuperation system on a significant portion of every roof on the planet.
As a bonus, the USA would become a beloved nation and wouldn't need any fighter jet to defend itself.
Pardon my ignorance, but what does "$@" do?
It's not very googleable.
I tend to agree. But it took me a long time to realize just how much energy is contained in one litre of oil. Before that, I also thought that everything was possible for transport.
The burden of proof is on you.
I showed that typical airplanes would need 500m2 of pv panels per passenger in order to fly, even with a perfect propulsion system and maximum solar irradiance.
You need to describe a functional airplane that somehow needs about 10 or 100 times less pv panels to fly.
Except laws of thermodynamics, that is.
Let's say that a solar plane is white, and a commercial airplane is black.
I bet that your "functional airplane" is still very much dark gray : you still need a pilot, copilot, food, toilets, a few luggage and minimum space for feet and belly.
Once again : Not, it's not possible.
Here's a comment I posted 5 years ago : http://science.slashdot.org/co...
The laws of thermodynamics haven't changed much since.
If you try to access google.com from Germany, it automatically redirects you to google.de.
If you want the "original" Google from abroad, you need to type google.com/ncr.
This link should work the same all over the world :
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd...
That's the right word.
The thing is, they really get bad symptoms from all this anxiety. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's like those people in Ukraine that lives relatively close to Chernobyl.
Many think "Shitty life, too much radiation, we have no future". So they all drink, smoke, take weird drugs and live like there's no tomorrow.
The radiation isn't high enough to have any direct impact on their body, but they're doomed to die young nonetheless.
Or a slight variation :
you want to boot your laptop for a presentation in front of a few hundred people.
It's 8:50 in the morning, your presentation is at 9:00.
You get a nice blue screen that tells you "Please wait till 30 updates are installed". Then you get "Please wait till 200000 files are updated".
It often takes more than 30 minutes to do so.
It depends on the mentality.
In Germany, you pay the county dump to take your stuff.
In Italy, just a few hundred kilometers away from Germany, the county dump pays you to take your stuff, because they know that nobody would use it otherwise.
It's hard to reason with homeopathic lovers.
Depending on the dilution, you can prove that not a single molecule of the supposedly active stuff has been sold, ever :
https://en.wikipedia.org/?titl...
Yes, now we begin to agree.
It's true that we could live sustainably, provided we stop using cars and planes for everything, we live in smaller flats, we eat local and seasonal food, and stop buying so much crap.
Even though we could, the real question is if we ever will do so before it's too late.
The heavy smoker could also stop smoking any day in theory. But in practice?
I hope you're right for the demographic curve. I'm not so optimistic. WW2 didn't change much the demographics curve for example. You really need a shitload of famine/war/drought to kill a few billion people.
I'm talking about a sustainable society. There's not much sustainable about the way we do things right now. It's still too early to say if those people were indeed wrong when they said that it's not possible to feed 7 billion people.
Heavy smokers also tend to think that risks are grossly overestimated, and that there's no problem in smoking one pack a day for 30 years. 5 years later, many are dead after a long and painful illness.
Back to the original point : it's just not possible to sustain 15-20 billion people on Earth. Time will tell if 7 billion are even possible.
Moreover, you cannot extrapolate Israel example to the whole world. This country gets a lot of support from the USA and Europe, and doesn't see anything wrong with colonization.
Yes, a price drop automatically means there will be enough oil for everyone forever.
It has nothing to do with OPEC setting prices and the US destroying their environment in order to get the last few drops available.
As for Israel : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I guess I know where a big part from the other 50% is coming from.
No. You don't seem to understand this E/MSY unit.
If you consider that there are 10 million species on earth (I agree with you, this number is a guesstimate, it could be off by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude), 225E/MSY would imply approximately 2250 extinctions per *year*.
If you consider just one species, it would go extinct 225 times over in a million years. In other words, its survival expectancy would be about 4500 years.
Shit, how old is our civilization?
No it isn't. It's just not possible to sustain our current world population and living standard without oil.
Yes! Israel just takes all the water it wants, and leaves droplets to occupied Palestinian territories. How ingenious!
And when we don't have enough oil for everybody, we'll have a huge fucking problem.
Climate change and peak oil wouldn't be a problem at all with less than 1 billion humans on the planet.
Citation needed.
There's an ecological optimum somewhere between a hamlet and a megalopolis. If you live in a remote place, you need to take the car for many basic needs. If you live in a huge city, you need to import all your food, and export all your waste.
I *love* that song. And boy, look at that wonderful view!
When you say no to beta anal fisting, you still get it very slowly, one finger at a time.
You're both correct for X divided by zero. It's simply not defined.
But GP was right for "Y plus red" and "Z times pineapple".
Both are defined in a mathematical sense :
* If Y is an integer, "Y+red" is defined in the free abelian group on the generator {1,red}.
* My math is rusty, but "Z times pineapple" should be defined in a multi-variable polynomial ring.
You don't need physics to define any of them. You can draw parallel to physical units, but you don't need to.
Finally, you're free to think that math is a human invention. My personal feeling is that we discover math more than we invent it, but I guess we'll never know for sure.