Interferes with the execution of legitimately purchased software
Monitors activities on the machine, even those not related to games tied to it
Sends private data to a third party
Consumes PC resources and negatively impacts performance
Provides no benefit to the owner of the PC (subjective)
From here, it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
Citation please for points 1-3.
I call bullshit on your fourth point, Steam doesn't consume any meaningful amount of system resources. Since my last reboot steam has consumed 0.03% of available cpu resources and presently consumes 0.37% of available RAM.
"Courage"? WTF are you talking about. I find your post insulting and offensive. Why the fuck should they restrict themselves for your benefit? Jedi is just as likely to be true as any of the other fantasy options.
I'm personally surprised there are not more professed Cthulhu worshipers.
What I expect a scientist NOT to do is scaremongering like:
1950's Peak oil; no more oil in 1970... never happened
Peak oil doesn't mean no more oil. And peak oil happened in the 1970s; for US production. BTW which definition of peak oil are you referring to? 1) Maximum oil production has been attained, and it will decrease from now 2) Demand for oil surpasses production or 3) Rate of new discoveries fall below rate of consumption?
both 2 and 3 happened in the 1970s, but only temporary
1960's Big freeze; a new ice age was about to start (because of constantly FALLING global temperatures)... nothing happened
New ice age? We're still in an ice age.
1970`s Acid rain will wipe us all out by 1985... never happened
Human extinction was never suggested as a possible outcome of acid rain. Enormous amount of money and international agreements reduced the problem to a manageable level. By listening to the scientists we avoided a major ecological crisis.
1970's Overpopulation will lead to famines and mass extinction of humans... nothing happened
Overpopulation has caused famine and mass death of humans in Africa every year since 1970.
1970's The ozone layer will disappear. CFC's were banned; the ozone layer is still growing... nothing spectacular happened
Enormous amount of money and international agreements reduced the problem to a manageable level. By listening to the scientists we avoided a major ecological crisis.
1980's AIDS will wipe all the gay's out... later replaced by 'will wipe us all out'... nothing happened
Nothing happened? Infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa are approaching 10% in several countries; with rates approaching 50% of the adult population in some areas.
2000's Peak Oil; no more oil in 2020... bit early to tell... but I have a hunch
Yeah, nothing will happen. Oil will still cost $20 a barrel just like in 1999. It's obvious we'll never run out. Global increase in crude oil production has been 0.5% from 2000-2011, and prices have increased from $20 to $90, with peaks close to $150.
Get a 'shopping bag for life' and a 'special light bulb' if you really believe that it will make a difference, but leave me in peace please.
When you have a planet to yourself, you can do what you like. As long as you're sharing with the rest of us, you'd better learn to behave responsibly.
Compared to 20000 years ago, we have had a +10C temperature increase and a 120m rise in sea levels
It's a +6C change over several millennia (http://pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/schneider_etal_grl_2006.pdf) A quite gradual change, compared to a timescale of less than a century. Apples and oranges.
http://fisnua.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/4-degrees-hotter.pdf gives a brief overview consequences of a +4C rise in temperature. The documents contains references to the peer reviewed paper it is based on. It's not a pretty picture. Several of the papers point to a estimated carrying capacity of 0.5-1 billion people after a +4C rise.
Mark Lynas wrote a book 5 years ago detailing changes up to +6C, it's a meta-study of peer reviewed articles relating to likely consequences of agw. The results for +6C strongly suggest that +10C could be the end of us.
There's no sudden change anywhere in my arguments. In the context of the article it should be obvious that the scenarios are related to the 2100 year goal of not exceeding +2C, which now seems overly optimistic. If that has been unclear we have not been discussing the same thing. As stated earlier, the new best case seems to be +4C, with a worst case in the +10C range (up from +4C). +10C in a bit over 80 years would be an extinction level event. We *might* survive it, but it's very far from certain.
Given the timescales involved in the Eocene optimum, I have no doubt we would find a technological solution to the problem and avoid most of the problems (unless some runaway feedback loop does us in). This is after all a period longer than our civilizations current age.
Please note that the +10C in ~88 years is not my prediction, it's set forth as a new possible worst case scenario after several indicators points to reaching the +2C goal (among them the numbers mentioned in the summery) seems to be too optimistic. We're in serious trouble if the +4C best case prediction is to optimistic too and we are heading for the +10C scenario. (+4-6 have been put forward as possible extinction level events earlier, back around the Kyoto talks, but that seems overly pessimistic; however it might put a strain on our society past it's capacity to withstand, causing widespread hunger, wars and significant reduction of the population)
There's so many factual errors in your post that there's hardly any point in continuing.
Humans in our current form, or any of our close ancestors have not lived through "several ice ages". The last ice age started over 2.5 million years ago, and is still upon us. If your thinking about glacial periods, there's only one relevant (for any meaningful definition of human). The last one started over 100 000 years ago, and ended a bit over 10 000 years ago. The human exodus from Africa was during this period, and at no time during that period was the average global temperature +10C compared to today. Both your claims are completely wrong.
Besides, when you talk about the Eocene optimum the timescale is completely different. The rise in temperature was gradual over at least several hundred millenia; giving ample room for adaptation. There is nothing to suggest we or the plants and animals we are dependent on would be able to adapt in the timeframe needed. It's wishful thinking, with no basis in reality.
(Not that it's important to the discussion, but humans are less efficient at converting starch to usable energy than herbivores; and we cannot use cellulose at all)
You severely underestimate the changes a +10C increase would bring. Unless we build closed-loop habitats for ourselves well in advance, there is very little chance of the human race surviving. None of our domesticated plants or animals would survive.
Our evolutionary advantage, our intelligence, comes at a very high price. We are fragile and we require a lot of energy in a very specific form. We are not very good at converting starch to usable energy.
I would agree with you if we were discussing a +4C scenario; we would probably manage to adapt in time; but maybe be reduced to 0.2-2 billion.
Let's take this from the top. * Increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to increased CO2 in the water - do you dispute this point? * Increased CO2 in the oceans leads to acidification of said oceans - elementary chemistry * Acidification leads to coral death - reported steadily at least the past 15 years; chemistry of the coral skeleton supports the conclusion * Increases in temperature also causes coral death - also widely reported the past 15 years. * A significant portion of all marine lifeforms live at or near coral reefs - 1 million different species dependent on coral reefs * Corals are important breeding grounds for our marine protein sources (or their prey).
The link you provided has this text: Earth's largest extinction killed 57% of all families, 83% of all genera and 90% to 96% of all species.
My source says 95%, yours says 90-96%.
I'm curious as to what argument was demolished? During the last maxima a lot of species went extinct, all significant change cause extinctions. That some thrived doesn't disprove that others went extinct.
There is no political will to do this, and not enough resources to build them for a significant portion of the population. It might actually be easier to build domes on mars than to defend the domes from the 99% of the population not in domes.
I suggest you read the link again. We're approaching a tripping point in the biosphere. Such a rapid shift would lead to mass extinction.
And if the consensus-based IPCC report is too pessimistic in its estimates, then it's likely that these other predictions are also too high.
Sea level changes in line with tor exceeding the worst case scenario seems to indicate it's the other way around.
There's no evidence that even the worst claimed temperature increases can break human civilization or even that we would notice them. Keep in mind that they aren't occurring overnight. There's plenty of time to adapt.
A few decades or half a century is not plenty of time. When it comes to adapting to a new environment it's an extremely short time. There is no way of providing evidence for predictions that on a large part depends on how humans both as individuals and countries will react to global food shortages, mass starvation, etc. but there's a reason why the initial goal was to limit warming to +2C; anything beyond that was assumed to be outside our ability to mitigate.
The increase in extreme weather, food prices and starvation caused by the very small changes we already are observing points to extreme difficulties handling even a 2C increase. Currently the areas most affected are already very poor, and increased starvation in and refugees from these areas will not have a significant desalinization effect. But do not expect China, India, Pakistan and other nuclear powers to sit idly by while their population succumbs to starvation.
As for my last point: I was strictly talking about AGW and other environmental damage we as humans do. While AGW is a significant factor in acidification of the ocean, destruction of breeding grounds for fish and the reduction of arable land, it doesn't play a significant role in your transaction with Starbucks.
Stopping the collapse of our source of marine proteins is extremely important, and the most important action required right now is regulation of fishing in south-east and east Asia. Reducing CO2 levels in the ocean comes 2nd (possible shared with reduction of mercury pollution). But unless we do all of it we will get serious problems down the line.
This has happened before; it doesn't lead to an extinction of land-based animals, and it doesn't even lead to significant extinction of higher animals in the oceans. All that goes extinct is calcareous animals, and they come back when pH drops again. Not a big deal. This has happened many times before.
The previous changes did lead to extinctions, but not extinction of *all* higher order sea animals. Rate of change is much higher now than it has ever been before; there will be significantly less time for the higher order animals to adapt to changing environments. Breeding grounds around the coral reefs are in danger of disappearing, this will lead to significant reductions in some of the largest sources of marine protein for humans.
Marine protein accounts for something like a third of all proteins humans consume. Any significant reduction in availability will have a huge impact on our ability to feed ourselves.
On balance, arable land isn't destroyed by climate change, it merely moves around. In fact, arable land may well increase due to climate change, with huge areas of Europe, Siberia, Canada, and Alaska thawing and becoming arable.
This is simply wishful thinking, some areas will become more arable, but the idea that we will somehow end up with more arable land has no basis in reality.
It "could" do that for many reasons other than climate change. It also doesn't cause extinctions of homo sapiens because rapid, abrupt climate change has happened many times since homo sapiens evolved and we didn't go extinct. Furthermore, sea level rise simply cannot happen abruptly, no matter what the temperatures do; it's physically impossible.
There's never been change anywhere close to the rate we are talking about in this case. Changes that we have previously adapted to over millennia will happen in decades. Abruptly in this case is within a few decades; another 10 cm might be enough to destroy large areas of arable land in south-east Asia.
Neither land mammals nor humans are going to go extinct even if the polar ice caps melt completely and we have another Eocene maximum. We know that because mammals and primates didn't go extinct last time this happened, they thrived.
We have never had rapid global average temperature change of 10C while mammals have been around. Change has never happened on such a compressed timescale as we are working with today. Mammals adapt, some go extinct others thrive. I'd rather humans weren't added to the list of those who didn't survive.
Last time there was a 6C increase 95% of all species went extinct. Some survived and thrived, most didn't.
The climate on this planet just isn't stable; it has never been and never will be. Anthropogenic carbon emissions are pushing the climate in a particular direction and arguably may increase risks and costs somewhat. It's worth thinking about that and it's worth talking about, although there's not much that can be done about it anyway.
Not all previous climates on earth would be compatible with a complex human society like we have today. It is in out best interest to keep the climate withing the range we know how to deal with. "Increase the risks and costs somewhat" doesn't even begin to cover the risk we are taking by not addressing this; large changes in a short time period could cause a complete biosphere collapse. A 4C increase could very easily become a deal breaker for our civilization. A 10C increase would almost certainly mean the extinction of nearly all currently living species of mammal. If the change is slow enough more species will evolve and adapt instead of going extinct, but to believe we have the technology and political will to ensure our survival (either as a civilization or as a species) is self delusion.
No one has presented any threat related to AGW that is significant enough to cause human extinction.
Extinction level events caused by AGW have been part of the debate the past ten years at least. Maybe you weren't paying attention? It's been played down because we don't know enough about the mechanisms to accurately predict what level of change is required to kick rapid shifts in the biosphere off; but it has happen before. Nature had an article concerning this earlier this year: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html?a_aid=3598aabf
The sea level rises are in line with the worst case scenarios from the consensus based IPCC report. If the estimates in the IPCC report are shown to be too conservative with regards to sea level rise, it's likely the other predictions also are too low. It has been estimated previously that changes up to +2C will be manageable with our current technology and within the current political framework. Anything above that would cause long term harm, +4C has been viewed upon as the breaking-point for human civilization. Other reports recently suggests a best case scenario of +4C temperature increase, and worse case in the 8-10C range. The later is likely extinction level changes.
The main mechanisms for the fall of civilization (it's not caused by AGW alone, it's a combination of several factors that come together faster than we will be able to mitigate): * Collapse of sea-based proteins caused by:
- water acidification, caused by increased CO2 in the water
- over-fishing * Destruction of arable land, caused by:
- Increase in temperature directly
- Deforestation - causing soil erosion
- Increased atmospheric energy leading to more extreme weather, both increase in droughts and storms
- Flooding caused by sea level rise
Depending on how bad it gets, a significant portion of the worlds food production could collapse in a matter of years.
The entire human exodus from Africa was during the last glacial period. And it almost did wipe us out. At some point about 70 000 years ago (in the middle of the last glaciation period) the total human population shrunk to 2 000 individuals - that's one flu outbreak from extinction.
The changes we are facing now are of a much more dramatic than the gradual cooling over millennia during the last glaciation (4-5 degrees cooling over millennia vs 4-10 degrees increase in less than a century). Absolutely best case if we don't do anything now is +4C in less than 100 years, that's a civilization ending change. Worst case places +4C in 30 years, and +10C within 100 years - that's an extinction level event. - And that's without the possible feedback loops from ocean CO2 release and methane release from the tundras.
With extinction looming on the horizon if we do nothing, I doubt your risk reward function is working properly if you think we might end up hurting more people by doing something now.
At this point it looks like anything slightly worse than the best case scenario is going to cause the collapse of civilization. There is no "adapting" to that.
We are possibly facing a extinction level event unless significant change is made in the short term.
But, it *still* *completely* *LEGAL*. Unfair, unethical, but legal.
That depends on the laws in the actual country. If the transactions are not REAL transactions, but just paper transactions it would in effect just be cooking the books and would be illegal both under tax laws and bookkeeping/auditing laws (most places).
Where I live we have tax laws that state that *ANY* action where the main effect is reducing the tax burden, is illegal. Sadly this law is mainly used against individuals and small companies.
Fixing the laws should be a high priority, but I don't think international cooperation would be necessary. As long as the multinationals are represented in a country, new laws that tax their activity could be implemented by any single nation. A very simplified example is adding an provision that states that 1/3 of the profit from any service or product sale is taxable in the country of sale. The counties where the product or service is produced could implement a similar tax scheme (at the risk of the company moving production).
Usually you don't know what legal and illegal before it's been through the courts.
A lot of the multinationals hide their net profits by buying "services" from sister companies located in tax havens. If these transactions are not real two-way transactions (for instance if the value of the service is zero or significantly lower than the price paid), this is no longer tax avoidance it's tax evasion and clearly morally wrong and illegal in most countries.
The problem is not moving the money around. Where the money is located doesn't affect the tax burden. Corporate tax is payed where the money is earned.
What Google, Amazon etc. are doing is "buying" services from an other branch of the organization, located in a tax haven. For some companies, like Microsoft, this means that the immaterial goods they sell are "owned" by the branch (actually a separate company) located in a tax haven, and are sold to the UK or AU branch at close to retail price. Difficult to do anything about, since something of value actually is transferred between the two branches. It is still morally wrong, but doing anything about it is very difficult.
For a lot of other companies, and I guess this is where it goes wrong for Google and Amazon, the "service" they buy from the branch located in a tax haven is not real. It's a fake sale with no real value transferred to the buying branch. The "loss" incurred is entirely fictional and the whole transaction is done entirely to avoid taxes. This is clearly wrong and can easily be made illegal if it's not already.
These tax avoidance schemes play a significant role in the current global financial crisis, and the debt problems of countries like the US. It also represents an highly unfair competitive advantage for large multinationals in competition with smaller national-scaled companies.
No real market works in the way you suggest; no real market say anything about the optimal configuration of actors, it doesn't self regulate like that in the real world. The market might self regulate to a state that's better than some other forms of market regulation, but it will never (in the real world) achieve optimal configuration.
The free market theory postulates a strict set of pre-requisites for an ideal market that are NEVER present in any real market. Some of the factors missing in a real market include: * All market actors act rationally * All market actors (or at least all buyers) have perfect market knowledge Those two factors alone precludes any market where any actor engages in any form of marketing from achieving an optimal market configuration through self regulation.
Marketing generally could be said to have two main modes of operation: 1) Informing potential buyers; this is not necessary in an ideal market, all buyers already have perfect market knowledge; spending money on marketing in this setting is irrational and inefficient use of resources 2) Creating an emotional response to your product - if this action is successful the market ceases to be ideal, since all actors no longer act rationally.
Furthermore; it can be shown mathematically that any ideal market with fluctuations in supply and demand will be in an not-optimal state most (or all) of the time. There is nothing in the feedback loops that suggests that the market will be in a near optimal state while it corrects itself.
Why dedup? Those VMs should not require more than 500MB-2GB each. Deduplication (inline) only adds complexity and sources of latency you don't need or want. Any small pizza box with 2x146GB drives (or 2x256GB ssd) in RAID1 should be able to handle any number of virtualized small utility guests without any deduplication.
Slashdot Mirror
I count 36 games.
While not a lot, it's not none.
From here, it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
Citation please for points 1-3.
I call bullshit on your fourth point, Steam doesn't consume any meaningful amount of system resources. Since my last reboot steam has consumed 0.03% of available cpu resources and presently consumes 0.37% of available RAM.
Your fifth point ... lol
The assumptions underlying the theory of market determined prices are for the most part not present in the mobile phone market.
"Courage"? WTF are you talking about. I find your post insulting and offensive.
Why the fuck should they restrict themselves for your benefit?
Jedi is just as likely to be true as any of the other fantasy options.
I'm personally surprised there are not more professed Cthulhu worshipers.
Nice anti-science rant.
What I expect a scientist NOT to do is scaremongering like:
1950's Peak oil; no more oil in 1970... never happened
Peak oil doesn't mean no more oil.
And peak oil happened in the 1970s; for US production.
BTW which definition of peak oil are you referring to?
1) Maximum oil production has been attained, and it will decrease from now
2) Demand for oil surpasses production
or
3) Rate of new discoveries fall below rate of consumption?
both 2 and 3 happened in the 1970s, but only temporary
1960's Big freeze; a new ice age was about to start (because of constantly FALLING global temperatures)... nothing happened
New ice age? We're still in an ice age.
1970`s Acid rain will wipe us all out by 1985... never happened
Human extinction was never suggested as a possible outcome of acid rain. Enormous amount of money and international agreements reduced the problem to a manageable level. By listening to the scientists we avoided a major ecological crisis.
1970's Overpopulation will lead to famines and mass extinction of humans... nothing happened
Overpopulation has caused famine and mass death of humans in Africa every year since 1970.
1970's The ozone layer will disappear. CFC's were banned; the ozone layer is still growing... nothing spectacular happened
Enormous amount of money and international agreements reduced the problem to a manageable level. By listening to the scientists we avoided a major ecological crisis.
1980's AIDS will wipe all the gay's out... later replaced by 'will wipe us all out'... nothing happened
Nothing happened? Infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa are approaching 10% in several countries; with rates approaching 50% of the adult population in some areas.
2000's Peak Oil; no more oil in 2020... bit early to tell... but I have a hunch
Yeah, nothing will happen. Oil will still cost $20 a barrel just like in 1999. It's obvious we'll never run out.
Global increase in crude oil production has been 0.5% from 2000-2011, and prices have increased from $20 to $90, with peaks close to $150.
Get a 'shopping bag for life' and a 'special light bulb' if you really believe that it will make a difference, but leave me in peace please.
When you have a planet to yourself, you can do what you like. As long as you're sharing with the rest of us, you'd better learn to behave responsibly.
Compared to 20000 years ago, we have had a +10C temperature increase and a 120m rise in sea levels
It's a +6C change over several millennia (http://pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/schneider_etal_grl_2006.pdf)
A quite gradual change, compared to a timescale of less than a century. Apples and oranges.
http://fisnua.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/4-degrees-hotter.pdf gives a brief overview consequences of a +4C rise in temperature. The documents contains references to the peer reviewed paper it is based on. It's not a pretty picture. Several of the papers point to a estimated carrying capacity of 0.5-1 billion people after a +4C rise.
Mark Lynas wrote a book 5 years ago detailing changes up to +6C, it's a meta-study of peer reviewed articles relating to likely consequences of agw. The results for +6C strongly suggest that +10C could be the end of us.
There's no sudden change anywhere in my arguments.
In the context of the article it should be obvious that the scenarios are related to the 2100 year goal of not exceeding +2C, which now seems overly optimistic. If that has been unclear we have not been discussing the same thing.
As stated earlier, the new best case seems to be +4C, with a worst case in the +10C range (up from +4C). +10C in a bit over 80 years would be an extinction level event. We *might* survive it, but it's very far from certain.
Given the timescales involved in the Eocene optimum, I have no doubt we would find a technological solution to the problem and avoid most of the problems (unless some runaway feedback loop does us in). This is after all a period longer than our civilizations current age.
Please note that the +10C in ~88 years is not my prediction, it's set forth as a new possible worst case scenario after several indicators points to reaching the +2C goal (among them the numbers mentioned in the summery) seems to be too optimistic. We're in serious trouble if the +4C best case prediction is to optimistic too and we are heading for the +10C scenario. (+4-6 have been put forward as possible extinction level events earlier, back around the Kyoto talks, but that seems overly pessimistic; however it might put a strain on our society past it's capacity to withstand, causing widespread hunger, wars and significant reduction of the population)
There's so many factual errors in your post that there's hardly any point in continuing.
Humans in our current form, or any of our close ancestors have not lived through "several ice ages". The last ice age started over 2.5 million years ago, and is still upon us. If your thinking about glacial periods, there's only one relevant (for any meaningful definition of human). The last one started over 100 000 years ago, and ended a bit over 10 000 years ago. The human exodus from Africa was during this period, and at no time during that period was the average global temperature +10C compared to today. Both your claims are completely wrong.
Besides, when you talk about the Eocene optimum the timescale is completely different. The rise in temperature was gradual over at least several hundred millenia; giving ample room for adaptation. There is nothing to suggest we or the plants and animals we are dependent on would be able to adapt in the timeframe needed. It's wishful thinking, with no basis in reality.
(Not that it's important to the discussion, but humans are less efficient at converting starch to usable energy than herbivores; and we cannot use cellulose at all)
You severely underestimate the changes a +10C increase would bring.
Unless we build closed-loop habitats for ourselves well in advance, there is very little chance of the human race surviving. None of our domesticated plants or animals would survive.
Our evolutionary advantage, our intelligence, comes at a very high price. We are fragile and we require a lot of energy in a very specific form. We are not very good at converting starch to usable energy.
I would agree with you if we were discussing a +4C scenario; we would probably manage to adapt in time; but maybe be reduced to 0.2-2 billion.
Next you'll demand evidence for water being wet.
Let's take this from the top.
* Increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to increased CO2 in the water - do you dispute this point?
* Increased CO2 in the oceans leads to acidification of said oceans - elementary chemistry
* Acidification leads to coral death - reported steadily at least the past 15 years; chemistry of the coral skeleton supports the conclusion
* Increases in temperature also causes coral death - also widely reported the past 15 years.
* A significant portion of all marine lifeforms live at or near coral reefs - 1 million different species dependent on coral reefs
* Corals are important breeding grounds for our marine protein sources (or their prey).
Now why should be not try to fix this again?
The link you provided has this text:
Earth's largest extinction killed 57% of all families, 83% of all genera and 90% to 96% of all species.
My source says 95%, yours says 90-96%.
I'm curious as to what argument was demolished?
During the last maxima a lot of species went extinct, all significant change cause extinctions. That some thrived doesn't disprove that others went extinct.
There is no political will to do this, and not enough resources to build them for a significant portion of the population.
It might actually be easier to build domes on mars than to defend the domes from the 99% of the population not in domes.
I suggest you read the link again. We're approaching a tripping point in the biosphere. Such a rapid shift would lead to mass extinction.
And if the consensus-based IPCC report is too pessimistic in its estimates, then it's likely that these other predictions are also too high.
Sea level changes in line with tor exceeding the worst case scenario seems to indicate it's the other way around.
There's no evidence that even the worst claimed temperature increases can break human civilization or even that we would notice them. Keep in mind that they aren't occurring overnight. There's plenty of time to adapt.
A few decades or half a century is not plenty of time. When it comes to adapting to a new environment it's an extremely short time.
There is no way of providing evidence for predictions that on a large part depends on how humans both as individuals and countries will react to global food shortages, mass starvation, etc. but there's a reason why the initial goal was to limit warming to +2C; anything beyond that was assumed to be outside our ability to mitigate.
The increase in extreme weather, food prices and starvation caused by the very small changes we already are observing points to extreme difficulties handling even a 2C increase. Currently the areas most affected are already very poor, and increased starvation in and refugees from these areas will not have a significant desalinization effect. But do not expect China, India, Pakistan and other nuclear powers to sit idly by while their population succumbs to starvation.
As for my last point: I was strictly talking about AGW and other environmental damage we as humans do. While AGW is a significant factor in acidification of the ocean, destruction of breeding grounds for fish and the reduction of arable land, it doesn't play a significant role in your transaction with Starbucks.
Stopping the collapse of our source of marine proteins is extremely important, and the most important action required right now is regulation of fishing in south-east and east Asia. Reducing CO2 levels in the ocean comes 2nd (possible shared with reduction of mercury pollution). But unless we do all of it we will get serious problems down the line.
This has happened before; it doesn't lead to an extinction of land-based animals, and it doesn't even lead to significant extinction of higher animals in the oceans. All that goes extinct is calcareous animals, and they come back when pH drops again. Not a big deal. This has happened many times before.
The previous changes did lead to extinctions, but not extinction of *all* higher order sea animals.
Rate of change is much higher now than it has ever been before; there will be significantly less time for the higher order animals to adapt to changing environments. Breeding grounds around the coral reefs are in danger of disappearing, this will lead to significant reductions in some of the largest sources of marine protein for humans.
Marine protein accounts for something like a third of all proteins humans consume. Any significant reduction in availability will have a huge impact on our ability to feed ourselves.
On balance, arable land isn't destroyed by climate change, it merely moves around. In fact, arable land may well increase due to climate change, with huge areas of Europe, Siberia, Canada, and Alaska thawing and becoming arable.
This is simply wishful thinking, some areas will become more arable, but the idea that we will somehow end up with more arable land has no basis in reality.
It "could" do that for many reasons other than climate change. It also doesn't cause extinctions of homo sapiens because rapid, abrupt climate change has happened many times since homo sapiens evolved and we didn't go extinct. Furthermore, sea level rise simply cannot happen abruptly, no matter what the temperatures do; it's physically impossible.
There's never been change anywhere close to the rate we are talking about in this case. Changes that we have previously adapted to over millennia will happen in decades. Abruptly in this case is within a few decades; another 10 cm might be enough to destroy large areas of arable land in south-east Asia.
Neither land mammals nor humans are going to go extinct even if the polar ice caps melt completely and we have another Eocene maximum. We know that because mammals and primates didn't go extinct last time this happened, they thrived.
We have never had rapid global average temperature change of 10C while mammals have been around. Change has never happened on such a compressed timescale as we are working with today. Mammals adapt, some go extinct others thrive. I'd rather humans weren't added to the list of those who didn't survive.
Last time there was a 6C increase 95% of all species went extinct. Some survived and thrived, most didn't.
The climate on this planet just isn't stable; it has never been and never will be. Anthropogenic carbon emissions are pushing the climate in a particular direction and arguably may increase risks and costs somewhat. It's worth thinking about that and it's worth talking about, although there's not much that can be done about it anyway.
Not all previous climates on earth would be compatible with a complex human society like we have today. It is in out best interest to keep the climate withing the range we know how to deal with. "Increase the risks and costs somewhat" doesn't even begin to cover the risk we are taking by not addressing this; large changes in a short time period could cause a complete biosphere collapse. A 4C increase could very easily become a deal breaker for our civilization. A 10C increase would almost certainly mean the extinction of nearly all currently living species of mammal. If the change is slow enough more species will evolve and adapt instead of going extinct, but to believe we have the technology and political will to ensure our survival (either as a civilization or as a species) is self delusion.
You are probably right. My point was that we came very close to extinction.
No one has presented any threat related to AGW that is significant enough to cause human extinction.
Extinction level events caused by AGW have been part of the debate the past ten years at least. Maybe you weren't paying attention?
It's been played down because we don't know enough about the mechanisms to accurately predict what level of change is required to kick rapid shifts in the biosphere off; but it has happen before. Nature had an article concerning this earlier this year: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html?a_aid=3598aabf
The sea level rises are in line with the worst case scenarios from the consensus based IPCC report. If the estimates in the IPCC report are shown to be too conservative with regards to sea level rise, it's likely the other predictions also are too low. It has been estimated previously that changes up to +2C will be manageable with our current technology and within the current political framework. Anything above that would cause long term harm, +4C has been viewed upon as the breaking-point for human civilization.
Other reports recently suggests a best case scenario of +4C temperature increase, and worse case in the 8-10C range. The later is likely extinction level changes.
The main mechanisms for the fall of civilization (it's not caused by AGW alone, it's a combination of several factors that come together faster than we will be able to mitigate):
* Collapse of sea-based proteins caused by:
- water acidification, caused by increased CO2 in the water
- over-fishing
* Destruction of arable land, caused by:
- Increase in temperature directly
- Deforestation - causing soil erosion
- Increased atmospheric energy leading to more extreme weather, both increase in droughts and storms
- Flooding caused by sea level rise
Depending on how bad it gets, a significant portion of the worlds food production could collapse in a matter of years.
The entire human exodus from Africa was during the last glacial period. And it almost did wipe us out. At some point about 70 000 years ago (in the middle of the last glaciation period) the total human population shrunk to 2 000 individuals - that's one flu outbreak from extinction.
The changes we are facing now are of a much more dramatic than the gradual cooling over millennia during the last glaciation (4-5 degrees cooling over millennia vs 4-10 degrees increase in less than a century). Absolutely best case if we don't do anything now is +4C in less than 100 years, that's a civilization ending change. Worst case places +4C in 30 years, and +10C within 100 years - that's an extinction level event. - And that's without the possible feedback loops from ocean CO2 release and methane release from the tundras.
With extinction looming on the horizon if we do nothing, I doubt your risk reward function is working properly if you think we might end up hurting more people by doing something now.
At this point it looks like anything slightly worse than the best case scenario is going to cause the collapse of civilization. There is no "adapting" to that.
We are possibly facing a extinction level event unless significant change is made in the short term.
But, it *still* *completely* *LEGAL*. Unfair, unethical, but legal.
That depends on the laws in the actual country.
If the transactions are not REAL transactions, but just paper transactions it would in effect just be cooking the books and would be illegal both under tax laws and bookkeeping/auditing laws (most places).
Where I live we have tax laws that state that *ANY* action where the main effect is reducing the tax burden, is illegal. Sadly this law is mainly used against individuals and small companies.
Fixing the laws should be a high priority, but I don't think international cooperation would be necessary. As long as the multinationals are represented in a country, new laws that tax their activity could be implemented by any single nation.
A very simplified example is adding an provision that states that 1/3 of the profit from any service or product sale is taxable in the country of sale. The counties where the product or service is produced could implement a similar tax scheme (at the risk of the company moving production).
Usually you don't know what legal and illegal before it's been through the courts.
A lot of the multinationals hide their net profits by buying "services" from sister companies located in tax havens. If these transactions are not real two-way transactions (for instance if the value of the service is zero or significantly lower than the price paid), this is no longer tax avoidance it's tax evasion and clearly morally wrong and illegal in most countries.
The problem is not moving the money around. Where the money is located doesn't affect the tax burden.
Corporate tax is payed where the money is earned.
What Google, Amazon etc. are doing is "buying" services from an other branch of the organization, located in a tax haven.
For some companies, like Microsoft, this means that the immaterial goods they sell are "owned" by the branch (actually a separate company) located in a tax haven, and are sold to the UK or AU branch at close to retail price. Difficult to do anything about, since something of value actually is transferred between the two branches. It is still morally wrong, but doing anything about it is very difficult.
For a lot of other companies, and I guess this is where it goes wrong for Google and Amazon, the "service" they buy from the branch located in a tax haven is not real. It's a fake sale with no real value transferred to the buying branch. The "loss" incurred is entirely fictional and the whole transaction is done entirely to avoid taxes. This is clearly wrong and can easily be made illegal if it's not already.
These tax avoidance schemes play a significant role in the current global financial crisis, and the debt problems of countries like the US. It also represents an highly unfair competitive advantage for large multinationals in competition with smaller national-scaled companies.
The original article quotes the father saying the download failed; so she might have downloaded a torrent file with no client to open it with.
No real market works in the way you suggest; no real market say anything about the optimal configuration of actors, it doesn't self regulate like that in the real world. The market might self regulate to a state that's better than some other forms of market regulation, but it will never (in the real world) achieve optimal configuration.
The free market theory postulates a strict set of pre-requisites for an ideal market that are NEVER present in any real market.
Some of the factors missing in a real market include:
* All market actors act rationally
* All market actors (or at least all buyers) have perfect market knowledge
Those two factors alone precludes any market where any actor engages in any form of marketing from achieving an optimal market configuration through self regulation.
Marketing generally could be said to have two main modes of operation:
1) Informing potential buyers; this is not necessary in an ideal market, all buyers already have perfect market knowledge; spending money on marketing in this setting is irrational and inefficient use of resources
2) Creating an emotional response to your product - if this action is successful the market ceases to be ideal, since all actors no longer act rationally.
Furthermore; it can be shown mathematically that any ideal market with fluctuations in supply and demand will be in an not-optimal state most (or all) of the time. There is nothing in the feedback loops that suggests that the market will be in a near optimal state while it corrects itself.
Why dedup? Those VMs should not require more than 500MB-2GB each.
Deduplication (inline) only adds complexity and sources of latency you don't need or want.
Any small pizza box with 2x146GB drives (or 2x256GB ssd) in RAID1 should be able to handle any number of virtualized small utility guests without any deduplication.