Do a comparison between previous releases of NOAA data and newer releases.
Yes, some of it has been changed. The reasons for this (identification and elimination of calibration errors) have been published, and the methods too. If you have a problem with the methodology, rather than just bitching about the results, then be more specific.
There are systematic trends introduced.
Your opinion. Some calibrations have enhanced (not introduced) an existing trend, some have mitigated it. But the results are what they are; unless you can provide better data, or at least offer a convincing (to real climatologists) explanation as to why the calibrations performed cannot be valid, then there's no reason to suppose they reduce the data quality, instead of enhancing it as claimed.
NOAA is the source of their data
And yet, the HadCRUT, GISTEMP, and BEST datasets are also freely available, many analyses are based on these, and all agree closely with NOAA's results. A huge array of different, independent lines of observations all confirm and substantiate their conclusions. Again, where is your data?
do you understand the meaning of the word "Lysenkosim"
Lysenko had political support but no data. Climate change has a huge amount of data behind it, from many different nations. Claiming political interference in the process from all these governments (with nothing more than unsubstantiated claims about "undesirable" research being underfunded) just makes you look like another yet loony conspiracy theorist.
There's no shortage of evidence of private and corporate millions being funnelled to discredit AGW, so funding obviously isn't the hurdle you claim - yet so far the only serious attempt by sceptics at providing an "impartial" analysis ended up backing the mainstream conclusions anyway. Data talks; bullshit has to resort to FUD on the internet.
Uncertainties are hugely important.
Of course, but neither do they render results "useless" - particularly when confirmed by other, independent lines of evidence. Even large uncertainties can provide clear evidence of a trend; only the degree of that trend is still uncertain.
TCS is observable, and we now have 36 years of measurements
How? Cite these TCS "measurements", please.
ANY values that are contra to the hypothesis invalidate the hypothesis
First, we still only have your baseless opinion that any hypotheses have been invalidated, as you have yet to cite specific data (or even a specific hypothesis - are you really still claiming the world has not been warming?).
Second, the vast majority of climatologists remain entirely unconvinced by any supposedly-contrary points argued by the "sceptics"; why is this? You claim they're all in a global conspiracy. Far more likely that they simply know something you don't (as they should, since they've spent considerably more time in their field than you).
Third, in any complex field relying on statistical models, whether climatology or particle physics, outlier values always exist. In fields where underlying randomness is a major factor and probabilistic analyses are required to establish evidence, then a handful of values that don't fit cleanly into the centre of the bell-curve do not disprove anything - and claims that suggest that show nothing more than wilful oversimplification. A full analysis of all the data is required to establish the trends behind the randomness - and so far, every such comprehensive analysis has supported the warming trend.
Do you know that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has determined that CAGW is not happening?
Wrong, and your claim (no doubt parroted from Heartland via Watts et al) was
Man, did you even read that stuff you posted? "warm section of space", really? The two links even contradict each other.
There's billions being made here. What would you do for a million?
No no, there's trillions being made here - what would an Oil CEO do for a hundred-billion-dollar slice of that?
Ask yourself, who is selling the carbon itself? Who stands to lose the most if governments start getting serious about climate change? The energy markets make the carbon-credit markets look like lost change.
Climate denial will exist so long as there's money to made from fossil fuels - regardless of the cost to the rest of us. Don't eat everything the oil barons feed you.
According to whom? Their results agree with all the other major research groups, so either their "corruption" actually made the data more accurate (as they say), or maybe they're just one part of the vast global conspiracy of climate scientists to perpetuate a massive hoax, against their own best interests, and somehow leaving no hard evidence anywhere..
did you see the uncertainty bars? they are so huge one can't say anything
Nonsense, you don't need to know the exact figure to say the tropospheric temperatures are clearly going up. Maybe not by much - or maybe even faster than we think.
observations refute the predictions made by CAGW proponents
Which observations? Please cite them. If you're referring to the TCS, that's not "observed", that's calculated from the models - and there's been a wide range of calculated values for it.
Claiming that one or two cherry-picked measurements somehow refutes the last 40+ years of peer-reviewed evidence from a vast array of sources shows exactly the blinkered willingness to ignore the contra-evidence you're accusing others of. Get back to me when you can cite actual studies that not only contradict but explain all the evidence that's been summarised in the last few IPCC reports, like a real sceptic would. Making unsubstantiated claims and trying to cast doubt on existing data while providing none of your own just pigeonholes you firmly into the "another loonier denier" camp
ps. your political straw-man comments are entirely irrelevant to the science. Galileo had evidence; you've shown nothing.
'Proponents'? Do you mean the scientists who are pointing out what's happening in the real world? Or the people who are suggesting we listen to the scientists and maybe decide on some action to solve the problem?
ask for a lot. They state they want hundreds of billions of dollars
They do? Who has asked for that much money, and when? Certainly not the scientists.
Some studies have calculated the cost of a few proposed solutions, which in some cases could cost that much over the next few decades. Though those same studies also showed that such action would save considerably more money than that too, over similar lengths of time.
although it is not clear what for.
Not clear to you, perhaps. The IPCC reports spell out the problem fairly clearly though, and you can read the above studies for some suggested solutions.
They leave unstated that the only way humanity can continue to live at its current level of development, is to either develop a source of energy that is as of yet still science fiction (fusion), or to vastly reduce the number of humans on the planet, or to vastly reduce the energy usage per human
Unstated, because it's not true, and the only people stating it are spouting straw-man claims like this one.
No sci-fi energy sources are needed when the entire world's energy needs can be met by a fraction of the sunlight falling on the Sahara alone. We've long had the technology to collect this energy, distributed in numerous ways (solar, wind, wave etc) and places, and also to even out supply (through cross-linked grids and assorted storage solutions). By transitioning away from fossil fuels we can easily produce as much clean energy as needed for our populations, without the huge costs to our societies and the environment - and the resultant indirect costs to our economies. Again, check out the many studies that show this is not only completely practical but actually cheaper in the long run.
The only answer government seems to have is to raise taxes.
On whom? The fossil-fuel industries that have been offloading their massive external costs on to the rest of us for so long? Cry me a river. When they raise their prices, that will just encourage the clean (and thus untaxed) generators to scale up faster, and thus speed the transition. But even without a carbon price, this is already happening.
Other government proposals you seem to have missed are diverting subsidies to cleaner technologies, and stricter emissions limits to force polluters to clean up their acts. We could even just let the market take its course, which would work out in the end I'm sure - albeit at a much higher long-term cost to everyone, but that's still better than deliberately slowing our response by all this denial.
"The science" is actually a mass of utterly impenetrable papers
Stop projecting your own ignorance, and give up on the FUD attack. I don't see you bitching about how hard it is to understand quantum thermodynamics or general relativity, when those fields have also had massive impacts on our way of life. Maybe because, in those fields as well, the scientists are simply revealing the world's workings to us, and it's actually up to the rest of us what we do with that knowledge.
Conflating scientific results and political solutions is irrational. Instead of attempting to deny the problem and shoot the messenger, how about promoting a solution that fits better with your own political ideologies, if you don't like the suggestions so far? Keeping your head stuck firmly in the sand only ensures you get left behind as the world keeps changing.
The whole article reeks of "fake effects were so much realer in my day". While his underlying point about ongoing desensitisation in society is valid, the focus on "pixels" as the new bad guy is merely echoing the same old complaints about new-fangled technology that we've heard since Plato.
At the time, when spectators saw red stuff, they saw blood.
No, they saw fake blood, as stated a couple sentences earlier. Imagine how much more genuine the actors' expressions would've been with REAL blood! But that isn't used because it has a few notable drawbacks, so a realistic fake is acceptable. Does it really matter what medium is used to produce the fake effect, if it's realistic?
Take explosions. People have been blown up (unconvincingly) in movies for a long time, but because setting off large pyrotechnics next to your talent is generally frowned upon by their agents, those are shot separately and composited later despite the extra acting challenge this requires. But if modern CGI allows us to send limbs flying without crippling insurance payouts, could this not be more realistic than practical effects?
But it's the movie examples TFA gives that really undercut the whole argument. Claiming that the biggest problem in Bats vs Supes was the pixels is going to induce severe rolling-eyes damage in anybody who's actually watched it.
Nope, this is used for more efficient VR support in the Unreal & Unity engines. Though the same hardware feature can be used for foveated rendering too.
Well, sure his prototype Dynabook was a portable, rechargeable, personal computer with GUI, multimedia, and wireless communications, and it's undeniably true that his 1972 design was highly influential on Xerox's later UI work (and thus Apple's), and he may indeed be one of the true fathers of modern computing - but his invention didn't have "flat rectangular panels with rounded corners", did it? So no dice.
Another person who thinks taxes are the government "taking" your money. It's an exchange - in return, you get roads, security, stability, infrastructure, many public services, and a range of safety nets if/when you are no longer able to earn money.
And yes, you have a choice. You're free to opt out of this social contract at any time, by leaving the country. (Also by making your income low enough to avoid taxes, or high enough to avoid taxes.)
Anyone suggesting that eliminating CO2 completely is even on the table is an obvious troll.
And yet the/. hivemind rated him +5, Insightful.
Wait, you're serious? You actually believe that's what he meant? How on earth did you manage to interpret his comment to mean something that is so obviously impossible? Can you not even see the possibility that when he said "eliminating CO2", he meant "eliminating some CO2", not "all CO2"?? I could only assume your misinterpretation was deliberate.
But nowhere do they say *all* of it. Just enough to get it back to comfortable levels, like 300ppm.
Actually, it would probably be better to set it to higher levels.
Perhaps if you were blinkered enough to see only the benefits, none of the downsides, and completely overlook the massive adaption costs and human suffering along the way.
That way, we can grow enough crops to feed the population
Case in point. CO2 is just one essential input for plant growth, along with water, oxygen, nutrient-rich soil, and lots of sunlight. Increasing only CO2 without also increasing the others will do nothing, except perhaps in tropical forests where the other necessities are over-abundant. It would certainly have no effect in most farmland in the mid-West or Europe, where crops are mostly water- and sunlight-limited, respectively.
The fact that you think adding even more CO2 will make up for insufficient soil nutrients (currently provided by those fertilisers you apparently feel are toxic) shows that you really haven't thought this through.
AM/FM radio still has commercials and does in fact pay the music industry
In theory, at least. In practice, perhaps the other way around. Payola has a history as old as radio itself.
The foremost concern of music publishers is control of their market. Ad-hoc free internet streaming undercuts that. They only want free services that are under their thumbs, where they can shape demand to funnel buyers towards income collectors.
I do have some sympathy for artists like Reznor though, as they're the first to suffer when the publishers feel the squeeze. Well, and before then too. And maybe not so much Trent himself, but all the lesser-known artists who had to sign punitive contracts in order to be heard at all in the publisher-controlled market.
Interesting to hear your perspective. Do you have any references that show more general examples? I'm going on the various LCoE studies that all show onshore wind to be already competitive with coal and gas, even without any carbon price, which would appear to contradict your experiences. These tables show that while wind maintenance is indeed more than coal or gas, this is more than offset by the savings on fuel and other variable costs.
Solar PV is not far behind, and is already considerably cheaper than solar thermal (and getting cheaper still -"Capital costs have fallen 60% in the past four years and could drop a further 40% reports Deutsche Bank"). Small-scale solar PV is of course less efficient, but still provides attractive payback times to consumers and free power for many years to come - while coal LCoEs are only projected to increase, especially if carbon costs are considered (as they need to be).
Do you have any sources I can follow up? I'm just going on the various popular reports of his work from the last few years, most of which more or less say what I said. I know there has been a pretty wide range of reactions from musicians though; certainly some disliked his work, even getting angry.
I'm no musical expert myself though, so I'm interested in learning more specific details and criticisms.
Has it occurred to you that the main reason existing fossil energy is cheap is mostly just because of scale and infrastructure?
After all, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal etc all have zero fuel costs - no mining, no fuel storage and transport, just maintenance (and even that's usually a lot less). The great majority of the cost is construction - and that always gets cheaper with scale (just look at solar's price curve for the last few years). There's also still plenty of room for technological efficiency improvement. These factors also apply to storage, where required. So there's certainly no reason to assume that renewable energy is inherently more expensive than fossil fuel; generallytheopposite.
Check out David Cope's work. He deconstructed Bach's music into an underlying grammatical theory, generalised it to other composers, then built EMI, a program to analyze music for stylistic patterns, then to use his musical grammar to create a full composition in that style. Later he wrote Emily Howell, which can do grammar-based compositions in its own synthesised style. You might be surprised how good the pieces are.
Google is taking a very different approach, and time will tell how successful it will be. Clearly it's not yet up to other work in algorithmic music, but given their notable recent successes in intuitive computing fields like Go, I will be watching developments eagerly.
so where is the revenue from the now defunct dirty polluters going to come from, the revenue that was promised to the people to offset the costs of going green?
That's a ways off yet, but by then, the industry adaption schemes will be done with, the renewables early-investment subsidies won't be needed any longer (as the market will have matured to cover the whole energy sector), and the consumer tax cuts can be slowly scaled back, if needed.
Remember also that getting off coal will save hundreds of billions annually in the US alone, mostly in avoided health costs ($1.7 trillion over the whole OECD). So overall we'll be significantly better off.
I absolutely agree - you can't shut down big polluters overnight; as you say, it's the workers that suffer the most. Adaption schemes are essential to a stable economy, and any reasonable approach will take years to slowly phase in any big changes to the rules.
We can't keep heedlessly burning coal now that we know so much more about what it's costing our health, let alone environmental impacts, so those workers are just going to have find new jobs, if they can - but we can and certainly should make the transition as easy for them as possible. Common decency, as you say.
Apparently these symbionts didn't adapt quickly enough; much of the coral is dead.
However, it's not unheard of for reefs to recover faster than expected, if the water quality is good enough, so there's still some hope that any remaining symbionts will be more resilient in future. Unless they get hammered again too quickly...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually a lot of the excess brine is being used to help refill the Dead Sea.
This is a global issue. The globe is losing about 3% per year, net, of its forest area - particularly in the tropics. Luckily this is slowing.
No, but Israel's desalination plants are operating at under $0.40 / 1000L. Costs have come down a lot.
Do a comparison between previous releases of NOAA data and newer releases.
Yes, some of it has been changed. The reasons for this (identification and elimination of calibration errors) have been published, and the methods too. If you have a problem with the methodology, rather than just bitching about the results, then be more specific.
There are systematic trends introduced.
Your opinion. Some calibrations have enhanced (not introduced) an existing trend, some have mitigated it. But the results are what they are; unless you can provide better data, or at least offer a convincing (to real climatologists) explanation as to why the calibrations performed cannot be valid, then there's no reason to suppose they reduce the data quality, instead of enhancing it as claimed.
NOAA is the source of their data
And yet, the HadCRUT, GISTEMP, and BEST datasets are also freely available, many analyses are based on these, and all agree closely with NOAA's results. A huge array of different, independent lines of observations all confirm and substantiate their conclusions. Again, where is your data?
do you understand the meaning of the word "Lysenkosim"
Lysenko had political support but no data. Climate change has a huge amount of data behind it, from many different nations. Claiming political interference in the process from all these governments (with nothing more than unsubstantiated claims about "undesirable" research being underfunded) just makes you look like another yet loony conspiracy theorist.
There's no shortage of evidence of private and corporate millions being funnelled to discredit AGW, so funding obviously isn't the hurdle you claim - yet so far the only serious attempt by sceptics at providing an "impartial" analysis ended up backing the mainstream conclusions anyway. Data talks; bullshit has to resort to FUD on the internet.
Uncertainties are hugely important.
Of course, but neither do they render results "useless" - particularly when confirmed by other, independent lines of evidence. Even large uncertainties can provide clear evidence of a trend; only the degree of that trend is still uncertain.
TCS is observable, and we now have 36 years of measurements
How? Cite these TCS "measurements", please.
ANY values that are contra to the hypothesis invalidate the hypothesis
First, we still only have your baseless opinion that any hypotheses have been invalidated, as you have yet to cite specific data (or even a specific hypothesis - are you really still claiming the world has not been warming?).
Second, the vast majority of climatologists remain entirely unconvinced by any supposedly-contrary points argued by the "sceptics"; why is this? You claim they're all in a global conspiracy. Far more likely that they simply know something you don't (as they should, since they've spent considerably more time in their field than you).
Third, in any complex field relying on statistical models, whether climatology or particle physics, outlier values always exist. In fields where underlying randomness is a major factor and probabilistic analyses are required to establish evidence, then a handful of values that don't fit cleanly into the centre of the bell-curve do not disprove anything - and claims that suggest that show nothing more than wilful oversimplification. A full analysis of all the data is required to establish the trends behind the randomness - and so far, every such comprehensive analysis has supported the warming trend.
Do you know that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has determined that CAGW is not happening?
Wrong, and your claim (no doubt parroted from Heartland via Watts et al) was
Man, did you even read that stuff you posted? "warm section of space", really? The two links even contradict each other.
There's billions being made here. What would you do for a million?
No no, there's trillions being made here - what would an Oil CEO do for a hundred-billion-dollar slice of that?
Ask yourself, who is selling the carbon itself? Who stands to lose the most if governments start getting serious about climate change? The energy markets make the carbon-credit markets look like lost change.
Climate denial will exist so long as there's money to made from fossil fuels - regardless of the cost to the rest of us. Don't eat everything the oil barons feed you.
NOAA has been found corrupting their data
According to whom? Their results agree with all the other major research groups, so either their "corruption" actually made the data more accurate (as they say), or maybe they're just one part of the vast global conspiracy of climate scientists to perpetuate a massive hoax, against their own best interests, and somehow leaving no hard evidence anywhere..
did you see the uncertainty bars? they are so huge one can't say anything
Nonsense, you don't need to know the exact figure to say the tropospheric temperatures are clearly going up. Maybe not by much - or maybe even faster than we think.
observations refute the predictions made by CAGW proponents
Which observations? Please cite them. If you're referring to the TCS, that's not "observed", that's calculated from the models - and there's been a wide range of calculated values for it.
Claiming that one or two cherry-picked measurements somehow refutes the last 40+ years of peer-reviewed evidence from a vast array of sources shows exactly the blinkered willingness to ignore the contra-evidence you're accusing others of. Get back to me when you can cite actual studies that not only contradict but explain all the evidence that's been summarised in the last few IPCC reports, like a real sceptic would. Making unsubstantiated claims and trying to cast doubt on existing data while providing none of your own just pigeonholes you firmly into the "another loonier denier" camp
ps. your political straw-man comments are entirely irrelevant to the science. Galileo had evidence; you've shown nothing.
No no, that's been shown to actually improve road safety.
The climate change proponents
'Proponents'? Do you mean the scientists who are pointing out what's happening in the real world? Or the people who are suggesting we listen to the scientists and maybe decide on some action to solve the problem?
ask for a lot. They state they want hundreds of billions of dollars
They do? Who has asked for that much money, and when? Certainly not the scientists.
Some studies have calculated the cost of a few proposed solutions, which in some cases could cost that much over the next few decades. Though those same studies also showed that such action would save considerably more money than that too, over similar lengths of time.
although it is not clear what for.
Not clear to you, perhaps. The IPCC reports spell out the problem fairly clearly though, and you can read the above studies for some suggested solutions.
They leave unstated that the only way humanity can continue to live at its current level of development, is to either develop a source of energy that is as of yet still science fiction (fusion), or to vastly reduce the number of humans on the planet, or to vastly reduce the energy usage per human
Unstated, because it's not true, and the only people stating it are spouting straw-man claims like this one.
No sci-fi energy sources are needed when the entire world's energy needs can be met by a fraction of the sunlight falling on the Sahara alone. We've long had the technology to collect this energy, distributed in numerous ways (solar, wind, wave etc) and places, and also to even out supply (through cross-linked grids and assorted storage solutions). By transitioning away from fossil fuels we can easily produce as much clean energy as needed for our populations, without the huge costs to our societies and the environment - and the resultant indirect costs to our economies. Again, check out the many studies that show this is not only completely practical but actually cheaper in the long run.
The only answer government seems to have is to raise taxes.
On whom? The fossil-fuel industries that have been offloading their massive external costs on to the rest of us for so long? Cry me a river. When they raise their prices, that will just encourage the clean (and thus untaxed) generators to scale up faster, and thus speed the transition. But even without a carbon price, this is already happening.
Other government proposals you seem to have missed are diverting subsidies to cleaner technologies, and stricter emissions limits to force polluters to clean up their acts. We could even just let the market take its course, which would work out in the end I'm sure - albeit at a much higher long-term cost to everyone, but that's still better than deliberately slowing our response by all this denial.
"The science" is actually a mass of utterly impenetrable papers
Stop projecting your own ignorance, and give up on the FUD attack. I don't see you bitching about how hard it is to understand quantum thermodynamics or general relativity, when those fields have also had massive impacts on our way of life. Maybe because, in those fields as well, the scientists are simply revealing the world's workings to us, and it's actually up to the rest of us what we do with that knowledge.
Conflating scientific results and political solutions is irrational. Instead of attempting to deny the problem and shoot the messenger, how about promoting a solution that fits better with your own political ideologies, if you don't like the suggestions so far? Keeping your head stuck firmly in the sand only ensures you get left behind as the world keeps changing.
So they still made more money.
I never understood why that's supposed to be a good thing, from the consumer's perspective.
Where do you think all that money is coming from?
The whole article reeks of "fake effects were so much realer in my day". While his underlying point about ongoing desensitisation in society is valid, the focus on "pixels" as the new bad guy is merely echoing the same old complaints about new-fangled technology that we've heard since Plato.
At the time, when spectators saw red stuff, they saw blood.
No, they saw fake blood, as stated a couple sentences earlier. Imagine how much more genuine the actors' expressions would've been with REAL blood! But that isn't used because it has a few notable drawbacks, so a realistic fake is acceptable. Does it really matter what medium is used to produce the fake effect, if it's realistic?
Take explosions. People have been blown up (unconvincingly) in movies for a long time, but because setting off large pyrotechnics next to your talent is generally frowned upon by their agents, those are shot separately and composited later despite the extra acting challenge this requires. But if modern CGI allows us to send limbs flying without crippling insurance payouts, could this not be more realistic than practical effects?
But it's the movie examples TFA gives that really undercut the whole argument. Claiming that the biggest problem in Bats vs Supes was the pixels is going to induce severe rolling-eyes damage in anybody who's actually watched it.
Nope, this is used for more efficient VR support in the Unreal & Unity engines. Though the same hardware feature can be used for foveated rendering too.
Well, sure his prototype Dynabook was a portable, rechargeable, personal computer with GUI, multimedia, and wireless communications, and it's undeniably true that his 1972 design was highly influential on Xerox's later UI work (and thus Apple's), and he may indeed be one of the true fathers of modern computing - but his invention didn't have "flat rectangular panels with rounded corners", did it? So no dice.
Welp, he's got them by the short & curlies there.
Another person who thinks taxes are the government "taking" your money. It's an exchange - in return, you get roads, security, stability, infrastructure, many public services, and a range of safety nets if/when you are no longer able to earn money.
And yes, you have a choice. You're free to opt out of this social contract at any time, by leaving the country. (Also by making your income low enough to avoid taxes, or high enough to avoid taxes.)
Anyone suggesting that eliminating CO2 completely is even on the table is an obvious troll.
And yet the /. hivemind rated him +5, Insightful.
Wait, you're serious? You actually believe that's what he meant? How on earth did you manage to interpret his comment to mean something that is so obviously impossible? Can you not even see the possibility that when he said "eliminating CO2", he meant "eliminating some CO2", not "all CO2"?? I could only assume your misinterpretation was deliberate.
But nowhere do they say *all* of it. Just enough to get it back to comfortable levels, like 300ppm.
Actually, it would probably be better to set it to higher levels.
Perhaps if you were blinkered enough to see only the benefits, none of the downsides, and completely overlook the massive adaption costs and human suffering along the way.
That way, we can grow enough crops to feed the population
Case in point. CO2 is just one essential input for plant growth, along with water, oxygen, nutrient-rich soil, and lots of sunlight. Increasing only CO2 without also increasing the others will do nothing, except perhaps in tropical forests where the other necessities are over-abundant. It would certainly have no effect in most farmland in the mid-West or Europe, where crops are mostly water- and sunlight-limited, respectively.
The fact that you think adding even more CO2 will make up for insufficient soil nutrients (currently provided by those fertilisers you apparently feel are toxic) shows that you really haven't thought this through.
But nowhere do they say *all* of it. Just enough to get it back to comfortable levels, like 300ppm.
Anyone suggesting that eliminating CO2 completely is even on the table is an obvious troll.
AM/FM radio still has commercials and does in fact pay the music industry
In theory, at least. In practice, perhaps the other way around. Payola has a history as old as radio itself.
The foremost concern of music publishers is control of their market. Ad-hoc free internet streaming undercuts that. They only want free services that are under their thumbs, where they can shape demand to funnel buyers towards income collectors.
I do have some sympathy for artists like Reznor though, as they're the first to suffer when the publishers feel the squeeze. Well, and before then too. And maybe not so much Trent himself, but all the lesser-known artists who had to sign punitive contracts in order to be heard at all in the publisher-controlled market.
Musk's argument has no bearing on whether he is or is not a genius, since he did not originate it.
It does not even show that he believes it, only that he finds it interesting enough to bring up in an interview.
Interesting to hear your perspective. Do you have any references that show more general examples? I'm going on the various LCoE studies that all show onshore wind to be already competitive with coal and gas, even without any carbon price, which would appear to contradict your experiences. These tables show that while wind maintenance is indeed more than coal or gas, this is more than offset by the savings on fuel and other variable costs.
Solar PV is not far behind, and is already considerably cheaper than solar thermal (and getting cheaper still -"Capital costs have fallen 60% in the past four years and could drop a further 40% reports Deutsche Bank"). Small-scale solar PV is of course less efficient, but still provides attractive payback times to consumers and free power for many years to come - while coal LCoEs are only projected to increase, especially if carbon costs are considered (as they need to be).
Do you have any sources I can follow up? I'm just going on the various popular reports of his work from the last few years, most of which more or less say what I said. I know there has been a pretty wide range of reactions from musicians though; certainly some disliked his work, even getting angry.
I'm no musical expert myself though, so I'm interested in learning more specific details and criticisms.
Has it occurred to you that the main reason existing fossil energy is cheap is mostly just because of scale and infrastructure?
After all, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal etc all have zero fuel costs - no mining, no fuel storage and transport, just maintenance (and even that's usually a lot less). The great majority of the cost is construction - and that always gets cheaper with scale (just look at solar's price curve for the last few years). There's also still plenty of room for technological efficiency improvement. These factors also apply to storage, where required. So there's certainly no reason to assume that renewable energy is inherently more expensive than fossil fuel; generally the opposite.
Check out David Cope's work. He deconstructed Bach's music into an underlying grammatical theory, generalised it to other composers, then built EMI, a program to analyze music for stylistic patterns, then to use his musical grammar to create a full composition in that style. Later he wrote Emily Howell, which can do grammar-based compositions in its own synthesised style. You might be surprised how good the pieces are.
Google is taking a very different approach, and time will tell how successful it will be. Clearly it's not yet up to other work in algorithmic music, but given their notable recent successes in intuitive computing fields like Go, I will be watching developments eagerly.
so where is the revenue from the now defunct dirty polluters going to come from, the revenue that was promised to the people to offset the costs of going green?
That's a ways off yet, but by then, the industry adaption schemes will be done with, the renewables early-investment subsidies won't be needed any longer (as the market will have matured to cover the whole energy sector), and the consumer tax cuts can be slowly scaled back, if needed.
Remember also that getting off coal will save hundreds of billions annually in the US alone, mostly in avoided health costs ($1.7 trillion over the whole OECD). So overall we'll be significantly better off.
I absolutely agree - you can't shut down big polluters overnight; as you say, it's the workers that suffer the most. Adaption schemes are essential to a stable economy, and any reasonable approach will take years to slowly phase in any big changes to the rules.
We can't keep heedlessly burning coal now that we know so much more about what it's costing our health, let alone environmental impacts, so those workers are just going to have find new jobs, if they can - but we can and certainly should make the transition as easy for them as possible. Common decency, as you say.
Apparently these symbionts didn't adapt quickly enough; much of the coral is dead.
However, it's not unheard of for reefs to recover faster than expected, if the water quality is good enough, so there's still some hope that any remaining symbionts will be more resilient in future. Unless they get hammered again too quickly...