Riggghhhht. Warner will run for president and nobody will dig out the massive scandal that you have uncovered. I'm willing to accept that there are slimeballs on both sides. I am not willing to accept that one side will escape media scrutiny.
Presumably true, but what if they swallowed the tax burden? Could they recoup enough $$ from local shipping operations and same-day upgrades to cover it?
I see a lot of people suggesting the use of cluster instances on AWS. At first blush this is what they are built for, but it's not a gimme that they are the most cost-efficient option. From the description, the job is not targeting GPU, and it's also not network-bound. Some of the high-cpu instances are more economical if you don't need the gobs of RAM or 10 Gigabit pipes. The cluster instances do have somewhat faster CPUs.
AWS offers a MapReduce layer that supports all of these instance types (http://aws.amazon.com/elasticmapreduce/).
Cluster xLarge (GPU) = $2.10 / hour = $0.26 / hour / core = $0.063 / hour / cpu unit Cluster xLarge = $1.60 / hour = $0.20 / hour / core = $0.048 / hour / cpu unit High CPU - medium = $0.17 / hour = $0.085 / hour / core = $0.034 / hour / cpu unit High CPU - large = $0.68 / hour = $0.085 / hour / core = $0.034 / hour / cpu unit
Throw in:
* Spot instances are discounted by over 50%. If your jobs can work on a range of instances, bid on a variety of cheap CPUs first.
* Reserved instances come out ahead after about 6 months of 24/7 usage, if you're going to use it that way.
All together, you could do something like this, with many possible variation. This gets you roughly 10 CPUs running 24/7 for 6 months, plus 3 hours a day of cluster compute time. And of course you don't pay for any time that you're not running so that could be reallocated.
5000 hours High CPU (medium) = $850 = 10,000 CPU hours 5000 hours High CPU (large) = $3400 = 40,000 CPU hours 250 hours spot instance (Cluster) = $150 = 2,000 CPU+ hours 250 hours spot instance (Cluster GPU) = $200 = 2,000 CPU+ hours --- Roughly 55,000 CPU hours for $4500, leaving about $1800 for bandwidth, storage, or more compute time.
Point being, just like you can customize the heck out of box to buy, you can carefully craft a cloud approach more efficiently that just buying cluster time. If you just throw it at GPU cluster boxes, you could get half the work done (or less)...
That 400 lbs of cargo isn't flown in by magical faeries.
Really?
Hauling in a truck-load of fuel, to move 400 lbs of water, to supply a few soldiers for a day or two, is going to kill FAR more people than just having someone transport supplies to those soldiers by traditional means, or avoiding putting those soldiers so far out there in the first place that they get cut off.
1) Your truck load of fuel can be up to 1000 miles away from your soldiers. Kind of a big deal when you are worried about the danger of "forward positions".
2) You're the only one saying this is just going to carry water. It's not.
3) If you're afraid of risking more soldiers, why are you willing to send them on manned delivery runs, but afraid of the risk of them trucking in fuel 1000 miles away?
And besides lives, you have all kinds of questions of COST, MAINTENANCE, RELIABILITY, etc. If one of these ridiculously low-capacity supply planes means that a dozen Humvees don't get armor because of cost or lack of manpower, then you're making an incredibly stupid mistake.
Well no shit maintenance is an issue. And it's not with Humvees? And who said we were going to make dumb ass judgements on when to use these and when to spend on something else? That's just an assumption based on the idea that they are useless. A bit of a self-fulfilling argument.
In addition, I specifically pointed out that there are alternatives which could do the job INFINITELY better than this far-fetched creation.
This creation doesn't exist yet, so that remains to be seen. You said use one of the vehicles from DARPA. Right. Show me the DARPA vehicle that is going to navigate 1000 miles of a war zone and deliver a 400 lb + payload right now.
What I should have said - if every soldier needed 4 gallons of water *airlifted* in every day, they'd all be dead. Yes, the water needs to come from somewhere - and you certainly can't assume that all missions are in 110 degree mean temperatures (= 43 celsius). Yes, it happens. So really, we're talking about a variety of factors, and not every mission is going to be in Iraq in July.
Laugh all you want at 400 lbs of cargo space, but if that can deliver even 30+ lbs of critical equipment to 12 soldiers who wouldn't otherwise receive it, that could make a huge difference. What if every soldier got new boots, clean socks, extra iodine tablets, fresh hygiene products, etc, that wouldn't otherwise reach them? And heck, an extra gallon of water to supplement a shortage.
The point isn't that 400 lbs is that much per se, the point is that 400 lbs of ADDITIONAL cargo could be a big deal if it requires zero man power to get it there and arrives quickly.
Peter did a whole lot more than just market Magic. If Garfield had something shrink wrapped and ready to go, he wouldn't have come to Wizards of the Coast in the first place.
That's why it's called a *partnership*. Flame all you want, but both sides need each other, and it's juvenile to suppose that anyone who can bring a product to fruition is some sort of soul-less marketing droid. What a miserable, woe is me attitude that is.
"creator" -- a poor choice of words on my part. It would be more accurate indeed to say that Peter brought Magic to market, and that Richard Garfield was the original inventor.
In any case, I think my points about Peter in general stand.
GenCon is owned by Peter Adkison, the creator of Magic and former CEO of Wizards of the Coast. He's a gamer through and through and one of the most approachable guys on the planet of his stature. Peter made plenty off of WoTC's sale to Hasbro to do whatever he wanted - GenCon wasn't lining his pockets by any stretch of the imagination. This is the same man who responded to my unsolicited emails for help starting a gaming company. He answered any question I had, connected me with his personal contacts, and in return - just suggested that I pay it forward. I don't know anything about GenCon's legal issues, but I suspect neither do you.
I don't know the depth of their dealings. But unless you do, perhaps you should refrain from making generalizations. God forbid you ever achieve such a level of success and find people throwing stones at you. Reserving judgement isn't nearly as sensational, but it's often warranted.
I am not sure global warming is inevitable. But if all we do is conserve, it will be. Conservation can't delay enough to matter or mitigate the disasters enough to notice. Massive conservation may be enough to allow some solutions to work, but even then, most solutions will work without it just as easily. It is not a solution, it is a distraction.
Agree: conservation alone is not enough Disagree: it's so worthless that it is actually more of a hindrance than a help
Granted, if we as a society treat conservation as the solution, we're screwed. But that doesn't exclude it from the equation, IMO.
And so far it has distracted us so completely that when a hint of a solution is mentioned, even from someone as respected as Dyson, it is dismissed without discussion. That said, dealing with global warming, without much more info than we now have, would be problematic, on the scale of the Great Depression + WW2, or perhaps the collapse of Rome, only worldwide. A big deal to be sure.
The problem is that Dyson doesn't *have* even a hint of a solution. What kills me is that someone like Dyson can play the ever-so-appealing "heretic" card and suddenly he's a rogue genius who can dismiss all of the world's climatologists out of hand. But then if we question HIS ideas, we're stifling discussion. His right to discuss these issues in unquestionable. Why we should stop and treat him on equal footing with the scores of people more qualified is mind-boggling to me. It's better than reading the latest political pundit spewing his own personal opinion on the matter, but not much.
It would take longer to ram this through just the Senate. That is statistical noise. And no, you don't have to wait 15 years for any benefit, 2 months is the sum of all benefits accumulated over those 15 years.
Well if your estimations are true, then at least I would agree with your conclusions. We agree that it's a 1-ton problem, and that US passenger vehicles are just a few pounds of the solution. It's just that you say the cost is no less than the benefit, and I believe the ratio is far more favorable than that.
There are actually plenty of good reasons for conservation, save money, don't destroy resources needlessly, save forests, etc. It is just that Global Warming is not one of them.
Well at least we agree on those first few things. Maybe we could do it for those reasons while we see how the last one pans out...
These are problems with the changes themselves. I never said that would not be a problem. It is the final result that 'we would be just fine with' - assuming we survived the chaos. (a bit of an assumption I know, civilization can be a bit fragile at times) We need better models - ones that will tell us where and how much it will be raining in 10 years so we can already be there, not running around like idiots. We don't have them. This assumes that global warming is inevitable.
Well I guess that reveals where you are coming from on this. Global warming is inevitable, so let's learn to live with it and forget trying to avoid it. We'll just chase the weather around... become a migrant species. That'll go smoothly. That's not just a little assumption, that's wishful thinking.
Ditto my last paragraph. Also, this is mostly overblown FUD. Billions die? Only if you chain them to their houses now and wait the 20-50 years that it would take for sea levels to rise. Hundreds of thousands I could buy, maby even a few million in floods etc, But people aren't stupid enough to say 'ten years ago the water was up to my knees and I stayed. five years ago it was up to my waist and I still stayed. last year it was up to my neck and I stayed. this year it is over my head and damn it all I am still going to stay!' Far more (millions) could/would die in the massive refugee crisis that would ensue with a 50-100 foot rise in sea levels, especially if nations block their borders like they tend to do, but to imply that billions could die is just plain stupid.
Well look, I'm willing to go with "millions". But there is no doubt it would be a huge disaster, quite likely the largest in human history. It's not long until the world population will exceed 10 billion. And over 50% of that lives in coastal areas. A billion people might not die, but a billion could easily be uprooted, and the domino effect would be ghastly.
Don't be daft. Worldwide transportation is only 14%
I'm not being daft. The principle doesn't just apply to 10% / 90%. It can also be 1% causing 5% of the problem, or 5% causing 10%. But let's move on- I think we probably both understand the principle, but disagree about the costs involved in this application.
A quick look at the number of cars in the US and the total production rates of cars shows that it will take at least 15 years to replace the US auto fleet with your doubled mileage cars. Assume that trains, etc. take that long too. (they will take longer, but K.I.S.S)
From this we learn that current rates of CO2 emissions are rising in excess of 3% per year. Congradulations! The almost impossible task of cutting fuel use in the US by half gains us about 7 months. And it only took 15 years to get there!
Big flippin' deal. We could gain almost 3 times that by trapping half the CO2 and methane released into the air during oil and natural gas extraction. We could do that in much less than 15 years, and it would likely be cheaper. And both wouldn't be near enough - they would still hardly matter.
1) Replacing all of the cars in 15 years... what, we reap no benefit until every car is replaced? Even in 5 years there would be a significant turnover... how many new cars will be put on the road in that time?
2) 2% of oil IS a huge flippin deal. Yeah, if I had to choose fuel economy or addressing the other 86%, I'd choose the 86% every time. But they aren't even remotely exclusive of each other. The thing about fuel economy is that's it trivial to improve. All of the technology already exists, and is IN PRODUCTION. The result might be 2%, but the effort is much less.
Look, you're trying to hang me up on this fuel economy thing. I never said it's the #1 issue. It's not. We could stop driving cars altogether and I realize that it would only make a dent in the problem. This is true. I think where we disagree is the cost, and the idea that it would less
1) It will almost certainly level off sometime. Stabilize greenhouse gases at a specific level and temperatures rise to a specific level and stop there. There is only so much oil and coal to burn.
"Somewhere it will go up 10C and stop raining." and somewhere else that same 10C will cause lots of rain where there was little. Like possibly the Sahara. (*sigh* you didn't read the article, did you?) "Somewhere else an ice shelf might melt." There have been times in earth's history when there were no ice shelves anywhere, and life got on just fine. We would too. Getting there would be a problem. "Somewhere else it might get colder and kill all the crops." Only a problem if we are still planting there. Which we wouldn't once we found out it was too cold there and went somewhere else. And there would be somewhere else to go.
* Sure it will level off "sometime", but that sometime is WAY beyond 1-3C. That was my point. If we burn all of the oil and coal on the planet in the next century, it's not gonna be a 1-3C hit. Not even close.
* If it stops raining somewhere, and starts raining in the Sahara, that's a bad thing. Lots of people would die. People can't just go running after the rain, and the Sahara won't just become inhabitable overnight.
* I read EVERY WORD of the article. That doesn't mean I believe half of it, since I've read way better ones with loads of scientific sources.
* We wouldn't be "just fine" if the ice caps melted. We would die by the millions, possibly billions as our coastal populations were decimated, ocean currents were dismantled, Europe thrown into an ice age, etc, etc, etc. And god knows how many additional natural disasters would be triggered along the way. Yeah, the species might survive. That's not much consolation, if you ask me.
* We're just going to move all of our crops? Do you realize what that would entail, to chase the weather around, even if it was possible? A lot of hunger and suffering, for starters.
2) "the US doesn't have to implement the world's worst fuel economy standards, right?" of course not. We have to implement the renewable/nuclear produced fuel economy as the standard. This is because within 50 years (probably sooner) there will not be enough oil at any price to use as fuel. Even if we had unlimited supplies, better fuel economy is almost pointless. Even a 90% improvement in fuel economy would only slow down the rate we cause global warming - we would need to stop it, since in this scenario your overblown fearmongering "it's going to keep going up" would be the case. And to stop cutting down the rainforests will require expensive changes - just taking away the axes won't solve the problem. (Not that we don't have to do this eventually anyway...this is not really a global warming issue)
We agree that fuel economy standards are not the solution. Where we don't agree is that we shouldn't take positive steps to slow down the problem while we work on the solution. Slowing down the rate of global warming is a big deal. What if we buy ourselves an extra 5, 10 years to work on a solution? That's a long time in technology terms, and a lot is at stake.
How can something be pointless if the benefits greatly outweigh the costs? What exactly are we gaining by having gas guzzling SUVs?
Fearmongering that "it's going to keep going up"? Do you honestly think that humans can only raise the global temperature another degree or two, and then that's it... it will just stop going up? We've maxed out our damage?
Look, I'm not crying from a mountain that the end of the world is coming. I'm just saying that the problem isn't just going to stop on its own.
Agreed that the rainforests need to be conserved with or without global warming. But even with or without global warming the expense will be greater if we don't make changes soon. They are going away FAST.
3) You read me wrong. It is not that 1/2 the cost isn't a good bet. It is tha
Here are three more points among many I could make, that I think address directly some of your thoughts:
1) The rise doesn't stop at 1-3C. It's not going to level off, it's going to keep going up - nevermind if we trigger some out of control feedback loop. And 1-3C is way more significant that you imply. That's the point of climate change vs. global warming. Somewhere it will go up 10C and stop raining. Somewhere else an ice shelf might melt. Somewhere else it might get colder and kill all the crops.
2) The cost of change is high, but a huge portion of it is already attainable. You know that the US doesn't have to implement the world's worst fuel economy standards, right? We don't HAVE to cut down the rain forest to produce beef. No, we can't easily jump to the ideal solution, but we are blatantly spitting in it's face right now.
3) If living sustainably is really 1/2 to 1/3rd of the impact of a 1-3C world, and you choose against it, are you saying that there is more than a 50% chance that temperatures DO NOT rise 1-3C? Because if there is a greater than 50% chance of it happening and ANY chance of something worse, 1/2 to 1/3rd sounds like a good bet to me!
Scientists the world over agree... there is a high likelihood that a rogue comet with obliterate life on Earth on one of it's next two passes by the planet (which occur every 25 years).
It could take 10 years or more to develop a defensive weapon to destroy it.
Shall we build the weapon? Or maybe we should see if we can poke any flaws into the theories, despite the enormous scientific consensus. You know what, let's wait a few years and see if we can get a better handle on this thing.
Do you have any idea how much GOOD science there is out there to support global climate change theories? There are literally thousands of excellent peer-reviewed studies, and they ALL agree that man-made climate change is a reality.
By all means keep open-minded debate flowing, but in the meantime, when is it soon enough to act on the existing science?
If astronomers across the globe told us there was a 90% chance we were going to be obliterated by a meteor, would we sit here questioning their methods or would we build a bomb to deflect it?
That's all well in good if your goal is for the most perfect possible theory. Which is a noble goal.
However, we could potentially all die while we wait to cross from the 90th percentile to the 99th on this issue. So I'd prefer to "risk it" and start doing something about it NOW.
In the meantime, we can happily pursue better experiments in the name of science.
Lastly, don't even try to call all of this pseudoscience just because it's not complete or because there are some studies less pure than others. There is a LOT of very real science going on in this field, led by scientists which are quite aware of the scientific method. We aren't digging ice cores in Antarctica for giggles.
Call me when a single study refuting man-made climate change makes it through peer review. Or tell me that there is a world-wide scientific conspiracy so powerful that they are all being censored.
Absolutely he has a right to call out scientists with a political agenda. As do all of us. But as a scientist, he has the responsibility to support his claims with evidence. Heck, he might even try applying some scientific method to his counterclaims, instead of just spewing at the mouth about a field which he thinks he understands because of his knowledge of physics. I don't see biologists irresponsibly jumping all over particle physics.
The point was that scrapping Big Macs is a small price to pay. It doesn't hurt all that much compared to a heart attack. The parent compared sustainable living to a slew of horrible surgeries.
Yes, living sustainably involves sacrifice. But it's ridiculously overblown by some and pales in comparison to dooming future generations to things a lot worse than inconvenience.
1) your quip about "betting their life" on climatologists being wrong is quite bone headed. People bet their lives every day, and on things much more certain. You bet your life every time you get in a car. Guaranteed 50k people will die this year in the US riding in cars. Why don't you stop betting your life on that "sacred" convenience? How many people is climate change going to kill this year? Even if the "worst case" happens how many people is climate change going to kill? What are the chances you are one of those people? Why should I spend my life's savings buying an electric car, putting solar panels on my roof (that I'll have to replace every 20 years), and in general destroying my standard of living to avoid a calamity that NO ONE can even put anything like a percentage on.
1) If Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami, or oil-driven wars, or land-based civil wars are any indication, climate change is a pretty serious threat to human life already.
2) The "worst" case involves rising ocean levels that could displace and/or kill in the billions. Not to mention world chaos, and maybe an ice age and mass extinctions. Hey, I'm not saying that's what is going to happen - but you asked about the worst case.
3) Eco-friendly cars and/or solar panels don't cost your life savings
4) Sustainable living doesn't ruin your standard of living.
2) Why not assume they are right? Because the costs are astronomical! It's not a "sacred" lifestyle, its a lifestyle that has lengthened life expectancy by 30 years in just 100. You go live "sustainably" for a few years in africa, come back and tell me how that was for you. Modern life requires the use of energy. I would be more than happy to have an electric car, to not use fossil fuels, but, if it means that I have to work longer hours, or harder to maintain the same amount of freedom, then no its not worth it. And that is what it means today because it is way more expensive. Now, if you environmentalists would let us build some nuclear power plants, we could probably solve all the problems.
1) And the costs if they are right are much higher. But hey, makes total sense. If you told me I could either stub my toe now or risk getting shot in the face someday, I'll take the risk too. Stubbed toes hurt!!!
2) Sustainable living has NOTHING to do with going to live in Africa. I thought it was electric cars and solar panels a second ago?
3) Sustainable living won't set your life expectancy back 30 years. I guess modern medicine would have to be sacrificed to reduce CO2?
4) Yep, environmentalists are to blame for not just "solving all of our problems" with nuclear power. Wow.
Larry,
I do think we agree. Some others jumped in this thread that I mistook for the OP (you), but cheers to proper debate and responsible policy as well.
- Brian
Slashdot Mirror
Riggghhhht. Warner will run for president and nobody will dig out the massive scandal that you have uncovered. I'm willing to accept that there are slimeballs on both sides. I am not willing to accept that one side will escape media scrutiny.
I'd be worried they completely overextended on the Kickstarter rewards. They may have raised $5M so far, but they also owe:
* About 8% of that to Kickstarter & Amazon (= $400,000)
* 35,000 consoles and controllers to their backers
Manufacturing and fulfillment on 35,000 consoles is going to take an awfully large bite out of their (so far) $4.6M net from Kickstarter.
Presumably true, but what if they swallowed the tax burden? Could they recoup enough $$ from local shipping operations and same-day upgrades to cover it?
I see a lot of people suggesting the use of cluster instances on AWS. At first blush this is what they are built for, but it's not a gimme that they are the most cost-efficient option. From the description, the job is not targeting GPU, and it's also not network-bound. Some of the high-cpu instances are more economical if you don't need the gobs of RAM or 10 Gigabit pipes. The cluster instances do have somewhat faster CPUs.
AWS offers a MapReduce layer that supports all of these instance types (http://aws.amazon.com/elasticmapreduce/).
Cluster xLarge (GPU) = $2.10 / hour = $0.26 / hour / core = $0.063 / hour / cpu unit
Cluster xLarge = $1.60 / hour = $0.20 / hour / core = $0.048 / hour / cpu unit
High CPU - medium = $0.17 / hour = $0.085 / hour / core = $0.034 / hour / cpu unit
High CPU - large = $0.68 / hour = $0.085 / hour / core = $0.034 / hour / cpu unit
Throw in:
* Spot instances are discounted by over 50%. If your jobs can work on a range of instances, bid on a variety of cheap CPUs first.
* Reserved instances come out ahead after about 6 months of 24/7 usage, if you're going to use it that way.
All together, you could do something like this, with many possible variation. This gets you roughly 10 CPUs running 24/7 for 6 months, plus 3 hours a day of cluster compute time. And of course you don't pay for any time that you're not running so that could be reallocated.
5000 hours High CPU (medium) = $850 = 10,000 CPU hours
5000 hours High CPU (large) = $3400 = 40,000 CPU hours
250 hours spot instance (Cluster) = $150 = 2,000 CPU+ hours
250 hours spot instance (Cluster GPU) = $200 = 2,000 CPU+ hours
---
Roughly 55,000 CPU hours for $4500, leaving about $1800 for bandwidth, storage, or more compute time.
Point being, just like you can customize the heck out of box to buy, you can carefully craft a cloud approach more efficiently that just buying cluster time. If you just throw it at GPU cluster boxes, you could get half the work done (or less)...
Really?
1) Your truck load of fuel can be up to 1000 miles away from your soldiers. Kind of a big deal when you are worried about the danger of "forward positions".
2) You're the only one saying this is just going to carry water. It's not.
3) If you're afraid of risking more soldiers, why are you willing to send them on manned delivery runs, but afraid of the risk of them trucking in fuel 1000 miles away?
Well no shit maintenance is an issue. And it's not with Humvees? And who said we were going to make dumb ass judgements on when to use these and when to spend on something else? That's just an assumption based on the idea that they are useless. A bit of a self-fulfilling argument.
This creation doesn't exist yet, so that remains to be seen. You said use one of the vehicles from DARPA. Right. Show me the DARPA vehicle that is going to navigate 1000 miles of a war zone and deliver a 400 lb + payload right now.
What I should have said - if every soldier needed 4 gallons of water *airlifted* in every day, they'd all be dead. Yes, the water needs to come from somewhere - and you certainly can't assume that all missions are in 110 degree mean temperatures (= 43 celsius). Yes, it happens. So really, we're talking about a variety of factors, and not every mission is going to be in Iraq in July.
Laugh all you want at 400 lbs of cargo space, but if that can deliver even 30+ lbs of critical equipment to 12 soldiers who wouldn't otherwise receive it, that could make a huge difference. What if every soldier got new boots, clean socks, extra iodine tablets, fresh hygiene products, etc, that wouldn't otherwise reach them? And heck, an extra gallon of water to supplement a shortage.
The point isn't that 400 lbs is that much per se, the point is that 400 lbs of ADDITIONAL cargo could be a big deal if it requires zero man power to get it there and arrives quickly.
A marching soldier needs 4 gallons of water per day?
(4 gallons =~ 33 lbs)
I think your point may be valid, but your math a little off. If marching soldiers needed 4 gallons a day each, they'd all be dead pretty quick.
See subject - he was first director of Fermilab, born March 4th, 1914. Letter was received on March 5th.
Also, if you:
1) Take each letter in the middle code, and replace it with its frequency (i.e. F = 3, D = 2, A = 0, etc)
2) Add up groups of 4 numbers in each line
You get:
3103 1132 3232 = 77A = 1914
3112 2231 2233 = 78A = 1930
The 1914 matches Wilson... but seems like a stretch...
After some Google work:
Wilson Hall has a connection to ""Basse oeuvre". See this.
Wilson Hall has 16 floors, and you must have an employee badge to access the 16th floor.Peter did a whole lot more than just market Magic. If Garfield had something shrink wrapped and ready to go, he wouldn't have come to Wizards of the Coast in the first place.
That's why it's called a *partnership*. Flame all you want, but both sides need each other, and it's juvenile to suppose that anyone who can bring a product to fruition is some sort of soul-less marketing droid. What a miserable, woe is me attitude that is.
"creator" -- a poor choice of words on my part. It would be more accurate indeed to say that Peter brought Magic to market, and that Richard Garfield was the original inventor.
In any case, I think my points about Peter in general stand.
Really? Do you know the people who run GenCon?
GenCon is owned by Peter Adkison, the creator of Magic and former CEO of Wizards of the Coast. He's a gamer through and through and one of the most approachable guys on the planet of his stature. Peter made plenty off of WoTC's sale to Hasbro to do whatever he wanted - GenCon wasn't lining his pockets by any stretch of the imagination. This is the same man who responded to my unsolicited emails for help starting a gaming company. He answered any question I had, connected me with his personal contacts, and in return - just suggested that I pay it forward. I don't know anything about GenCon's legal issues, but I suspect neither do you.
I don't know the depth of their dealings. But unless you do, perhaps you should refrain from making generalizations. God forbid you ever achieve such a level of success and find people throwing stones at you. Reserving judgement isn't nearly as sensational, but it's often warranted.
The funny thing is, you DO have to actually use trademarks and file a statement of use -- and they are processed through the same office - the USPTO.
But yet patents, no need...
Agree: conservation alone is not enough
Disagree: it's so worthless that it is actually more of a hindrance than a help
Granted, if we as a society treat conservation as the solution, we're screwed. But that doesn't exclude it from the equation, IMO.
The problem is that Dyson doesn't *have* even a hint of a solution. What kills me is that someone like Dyson can play the ever-so-appealing "heretic" card and suddenly he's a rogue genius who can dismiss all of the world's climatologists out of hand. But then if we question HIS ideas, we're stifling discussion. His right to discuss these issues in unquestionable. Why we should stop and treat him on equal footing with the scores of people more qualified is mind-boggling to me. It's better than reading the latest political pundit spewing his own personal opinion on the matter, but not much.
Well if your estimations are true, then at least I would agree with your conclusions. We agree that it's a 1-ton problem, and that US passenger vehicles are just a few pounds of the solution. It's just that you say the cost is no less than the benefit, and I believe the ratio is far more favorable than that.
Well at least we agree on those first few things. Maybe we could do it for those reasons while we see how the last one pans out...
Well I guess that reveals where you are coming from on this. Global warming is inevitable, so let's learn to live with it and forget trying to avoid it. We'll just chase the weather around... become a migrant species. That'll go smoothly. That's not just a little assumption, that's wishful thinking.
Well look, I'm willing to go with "millions". But there is no doubt it would be a huge disaster, quite likely the largest in human history. It's not long until the world population will exceed 10 billion. And over 50% of that lives in coastal areas. A billion people might not die, but a billion could easily be uprooted, and the domino effect would be ghastly.
I'm not being daft. The principle doesn't just apply to 10% / 90%. It can also be 1% causing 5% of the problem, or 5% causing 10%. But let's move on- I think we probably both understand the principle, but disagree about the costs involved in this application.
1) Replacing all of the cars in 15 years... what, we reap no benefit until every car is replaced? Even in 5 years there would be a significant turnover... how many new cars will be put on the road in that time?
2) 2% of oil IS a huge flippin deal. Yeah, if I had to choose fuel economy or addressing the other 86%, I'd choose the 86% every time. But they aren't even remotely exclusive of each other. The thing about fuel economy is that's it trivial to improve. All of the technology already exists, and is IN PRODUCTION. The result might be 2%, but the effort is much less.
Look, you're trying to hang me up on this fuel economy thing. I never said it's the #1 issue. It's not. We could stop driving cars altogether and I realize that it would only make a dent in the problem. This is true. I think where we disagree is the cost, and the idea that it would less
* Sure it will level off "sometime", but that sometime is WAY beyond 1-3C. That was my point. If we burn all of the oil and coal on the planet in the next century, it's not gonna be a 1-3C hit. Not even close.
* If it stops raining somewhere, and starts raining in the Sahara, that's a bad thing. Lots of people would die. People can't just go running after the rain, and the Sahara won't just become inhabitable overnight.
* I read EVERY WORD of the article. That doesn't mean I believe half of it, since I've read way better ones with loads of scientific sources.
* We wouldn't be "just fine" if the ice caps melted. We would die by the millions, possibly billions as our coastal populations were decimated, ocean currents were dismantled, Europe thrown into an ice age, etc, etc, etc. And god knows how many additional natural disasters would be triggered along the way. Yeah, the species might survive. That's not much consolation, if you ask me.
* We're just going to move all of our crops? Do you realize what that would entail, to chase the weather around, even if it was possible? A lot of hunger and suffering, for starters.
We agree that fuel economy standards are not the solution. Where we don't agree is that we shouldn't take positive steps to slow down the problem while we work on the solution. Slowing down the rate of global warming is a big deal. What if we buy ourselves an extra 5, 10 years to work on a solution? That's a long time in technology terms, and a lot is at stake.
How can something be pointless if the benefits greatly outweigh the costs? What exactly are we gaining by having gas guzzling SUVs?
Fearmongering that "it's going to keep going up"? Do you honestly think that humans can only raise the global temperature another degree or two, and then that's it... it will just stop going up? We've maxed out our damage?
Look, I'm not crying from a mountain that the end of the world is coming. I'm just saying that the problem isn't just going to stop on its own.
Agreed that the rainforests need to be conserved with or without global warming. But even with or without global warming the expense will be greater if we don't make changes soon. They are going away FAST.
Here are three more points among many I could make, that I think address directly some of your thoughts:
1) The rise doesn't stop at 1-3C. It's not going to level off, it's going to keep going up - nevermind if we trigger some out of control feedback loop. And 1-3C is way more significant that you imply. That's the point of climate change vs. global warming. Somewhere it will go up 10C and stop raining. Somewhere else an ice shelf might melt. Somewhere else it might get colder and kill all the crops.
2) The cost of change is high, but a huge portion of it is already attainable. You know that the US doesn't have to implement the world's worst fuel economy standards, right? We don't HAVE to cut down the rain forest to produce beef. No, we can't easily jump to the ideal solution, but we are blatantly spitting in it's face right now.
3) If living sustainably is really 1/2 to 1/3rd of the impact of a 1-3C world, and you choose against it, are you saying that there is more than a 50% chance that temperatures DO NOT rise 1-3C? Because if there is a greater than 50% chance of it happening and ANY chance of something worse, 1/2 to 1/3rd sounds like a good bet to me!
Scientists the world over agree... there is a high likelihood that a rogue comet with obliterate life on Earth on one of it's next two passes by the planet (which occur every 25 years).
It could take 10 years or more to develop a defensive weapon to destroy it.
Shall we build the weapon? Or maybe we should see if we can poke any flaws into the theories, despite the enormous scientific consensus. You know what, let's wait a few years and see if we can get a better handle on this thing.
Do you have any idea how much GOOD science there is out there to support global climate change theories? There are literally thousands of excellent peer-reviewed studies, and they ALL agree that man-made climate change is a reality.
By all means keep open-minded debate flowing, but in the meantime, when is it soon enough to act on the existing science?
If astronomers across the globe told us there was a 90% chance we were going to be obliterated by a meteor, would we sit here questioning their methods or would we build a bomb to deflect it?
That's all well in good if your goal is for the most perfect possible theory. Which is a noble goal.
However, we could potentially all die while we wait to cross from the 90th percentile to the 99th on this issue. So I'd prefer to "risk it" and start doing something about it NOW.
In the meantime, we can happily pursue better experiments in the name of science.
Lastly, don't even try to call all of this pseudoscience just because it's not complete or because there are some studies less pure than others. There is a LOT of very real science going on in this field, led by scientists which are quite aware of the scientific method. We aren't digging ice cores in Antarctica for giggles.
Call me when a single study refuting man-made climate change makes it through peer review. Or tell me that there is a world-wide scientific conspiracy so powerful that they are all being censored.
Please, just let me know when either one is true.
Absolutely he has a right to call out scientists with a political agenda. As do all of us. But as a scientist, he has the responsibility to support his claims with evidence. Heck, he might even try applying some scientific method to his counterclaims, instead of just spewing at the mouth about a field which he thinks he understands because of his knowledge of physics. I don't see biologists irresponsibly jumping all over particle physics.
The point was that scrapping Big Macs is a small price to pay. It doesn't hurt all that much compared to a heart attack. The parent compared sustainable living to a slew of horrible surgeries.
Yes, living sustainably involves sacrifice. But it's ridiculously overblown by some and pales in comparison to dooming future generations to things a lot worse than inconvenience.
Larry, I do think we agree. Some others jumped in this thread that I mistook for the OP (you), but cheers to proper debate and responsible policy as well. - Brian