First-to-file is irrelevant. It only clarifies who legally invented something first. Here, we know that A invented first, and we know that B didn't know it was already invented.
Yes, and then B is hosed. How is this supposed to be just? And of course first to file is relevant here.
What I understand is that you want your family to be rich at the expense of society, and that patents is how you envision this to come true. Thank you for making again a compelling case against patents in general.
"I've spent 5 years inventing this Widget, but I'm not a shrewd businessman who's well-connected to suppliers and fabricators. I guess I shouldn't be inventing."
As things stand nowadays, I have no problem agreeing with that sentence. You know why? Because the way this actually plays out outside of fairy tales is that some moron that doesn't know anything about a field "invents" and patents some old and well known stuff to those skilled in the art. Armed with a patent and his sense of entitlement, this "inventor" is just going to be a parasite, a nuisance, and a general net negative for everybody except himself. Just look at all the madness related to software patents, where courts keep ruling in favor of the sociopaths with patents and against those creating real value.
Before you answer, ask a patent lawyer whether "prior art" is a good defense or not (hint: it almost never works, even when it is blatantly true).
I want empowerment of people who invest their time and money inventing things. I'm one myself, and so's my uncle, my father, great-grandfather, and more of my inlaws than I can recall. Not one of our patents have ever been trollish, or done anything but contribute to their field (though the portable chiropractic table is debatable).
People who want a patent are well empowered as it is. Actually, well beyond what is sane. Look at all the absurd patents and all the patents on trivial stuff.
Beyond that: I do not agree with the notion that people deserve to be rich just by having an idea. I do not agree with the notion that, just by having an idea, "inventors" deserve the right to harass people left and right that had the same idea because it actually was easy and obvious, as most ideas, and the vast majority of patents, are.
As it stands, it is possible to corner huge markets with pretty minor contributions by just being shrewd in ways that have nothing to do with the technology itself
Congratulations, you've discovered marketing. Welcome to the last millennium.
Of course I was meaning things like patents that are central in standards. I guess it says something about you that you deliberately chose to misunderstand that.
By allowing patents to be secret until they're protected, the inventor doesn't need to rush into license and production negotiations, because the cloning company can't sprint past them. When they do start negotiations, the inventor has a bit more leverage, because their technology is patented, rather than just pending.
As far as I am concerned, that is a bad thing. I want cloning companies to sprint past "inventors", so that they can keep single players from holding back progress. If sprinting past them is even possible, then the "inventor" has no business getting a patent. Period.
What you want is further empowerment of trolls. This is downright evil, and I have no choice but assuming that you work for a patent troll or are one yourself.
Further, I reject the notion that making things more convenient for "inventors" is a good thing. As it stands, it is possible to corner huge markets with pretty minor contributions by just being shrewd in ways that have nothing to do with the technology itself. This type of privilege is something that has to be taken away sooner rather than later, not made more convenient for the budding patent troll.
First of all, thanks for your thoughtful response.
In reality, I suspect rmstar respects the philosophy of Paul, rather than Jesus.
Well, I'm back here to say that yes, I meant the "love and peace stuff". Also, that I don't admire Jesus Christ enough for this to be considered a religious or pseudo-religious feeling. I just think that, from all I know, Jesus himself was probably a nice chap, and that a nice chap is better than a murderous warlord any day.
And that's the end of that story.
Belief in gods was a much more reasonable position back then, because humanity understood so little about the world. So that he believed in some of that doesn't bother me nor do I care.
"But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me."Jesus Christ. Luke 19:27
No, that's a missquote. Well, actually he said that, but he was relating what someone else said, so it is not something he meant. And if you had studied the guy a little, you would realize that that kind of phrase wasn't really his style, to say the least.
Christ is not the problem, IMO. He was a great guy, that much I am sure of. The problem is the belief in a personal god, and the oppressive power machine that the church is.
1) The fed dampens the problems of an FRL by printing/removing money from the system. Without the fed, the 2008 crisis would have truly nuked the economy of the US and the rest of the world.
2) Without FRL, you have no banking and no economy to speak of. Without FRL, all trade is essentially barter, and that doesn't go anywhere interesting.
As I said, learn some economy, and not from a right-wing nutjob.
And the flaw with getting rid of The Fed, i.e. a private company that prints paper that it then loans to the government, putting the govt tens of trillions of dollars in debt and devaluing the dollar to one cent in the past 100 years is?
The flaw is that it would lead to major economic mayhem. Learn some economy some day, but please not from a right wing nutjob.
Good C++ programmers know not to make those messes by using natural barriers in the language to create barriers in their design patterns in which different styles of code to solve different types of subproblems don't mix and spaghettify with each other.
Good brainfuck programmers can make beautiful programs that are easy to mantain. That is not the point.
Having to know all the superfluous arcana you need to know to be a good C++ programmer is a huge burden. That's the reason why C++ should be avoided like the plague.
To put it bluntly, when one complains that a language is stupid, it is worth considering whether it's really the language that's stupid.
Well, yes, I agree. With C++ it is clear: it is a stupid language that empowers the stupid so that together they can make an epic mess. I'd rather have a language where that isn't so easy. Industry agrees, and that's why java is so big.
Maybe we can just agree to disagree on the relatively minor point of what you wrote or meant. Instead, it's your unbridled pessimism that is the key issue. That said, I see no need for the abrasive tone.
We could drop it. But we have the custom here of being rude to Anonymous Cowards because, you know, posting anonymously is really a coward thing. I think that is a good custom. So, why don't you log in?
In case you missed it, here's a different take on fusion. Of course, it's from the researchers involved, so maybe you would assume their grant-seeking motivations must necessarily override their ethics.
I didn't miss that post, nor have I missed the advances in fusion technology. However, if you did read that thing carefully, then you would have noticed that the question for commercial reactors was answered with something on the line of "technical-technical meh-whatever maybe-someday keep-us-funded". So, no. As far as I can tell, their take isn't really different if you know how to read between the lines. And that projection of where fusion would be given enough funding is just ridiculous - as if you could bribe the gods to rewrite the laws of physics for you.
The issue with grant money may sound cynical, but it is not. Highly motivated people wake up one day completely committed to a hopeless field with kids to feed. What can you seriously ask from them? The cynical part is expecting scientists to fix things like dependency from oil. Sorry, but we just cant bend the laws of physics and chemistry that much. The cynical part is expecting scientists to make things true which aren't, and call them a failure when they don't. Maybe some day we will be able to travel faster than light, and maybe we will someday have cheep fusion reactors. But I don't expect this to happen this century.
(And, there are fields of science which are so utterly fucked up that sane people leave long before finishing their PhDs, and thus are populated by the insane. They are rare, and I don't think fusion research is like that. But I have seen this play out.)
IMO, the SA article gives enough coordinates to follow up, and as far as I can tell, mentions the central problems accurately.
I consider myself as being generally pessimistic (and pretty cynical, too), but you've outpaced me there. I think we're making progress on multiple fronts, just not nearly as fast as I'd like.
I don't see any point in gathering information, and then dismissing conclusions based on "that would be too pessimistic". That just isn't sound thinking.
We are really not making any real progress anywhere.
My point is that there are languages that are mature that are capable of doing a lot of what people actually want to do already. If there are weaknesses in that language, a discussion on why replacing that language with another is helpful.
In my experience, this type of discussion is rarely helpful.
I like C++, even though I like C, because at least C++ chose to address some issues in C and improve upon them, rather than going, "I HATE C! I AM GOING TO WRITE A WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE!"
You know, I like C. But I think C++ is a point in case for why the second approach, the one you ridicule, would have been better. C++ is a hideous mess in many ways, and one of the big reasons is backwards compatibility with a language that simply wasn't prepared for Bjarne did to it. A clean start may have been better in so far as the language is concerned.
You are an idiot. Read again what I wrote. At that point I hadn't claimed anything, which was the point we are dissecting here. Then I looked at the publications, and 80% was pretty good.
Biofuels are not an answer. Massive, well planed society reengineering is, but that is something homo sapiens is not about to do.
Well, I actually thought you were simply pessimistic, but that sounds like polite phrasing for "reducing the excess population". I hope that's not what you meant - this site has too many of those already.
No, that's not what I meant. At least not of the kind, "reducing excess population by killing people" (however, controling population levels is also something we are pretty much unable to do). I meant things like converting the US, and other countries, into places where public transportation is the default (saves lots of oil). Or getting our act together so that we are less wasteful than we are with hydrocarbons. Lifting a sizable portion of the population out of poverty before their numbers explode would also be great. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what we are up to.
I fear that the outcome will simply be that lots of people will die in horrible ways because we simply do not get our act together in time. Biofuels play an important role, as being a good excuse for not doing anything. You know, as in ''we'll just use ethanol instead". If this comes, it will come at the expense of food and consequently will lead to famine.
A bunch of idiots believe that boiling some beans is going to substitute oil.
That statement is a terrible misrepresentation of the current research (and researchers).
No, the research is sound. It is people who believe that this is the solution that are a bunch of idiots. Of course, researchers won't be too open about it, because of grant money and stuff. Same thing BTW with all that smart grid bullshit. That is not going to happen, due to massive NP-hardness and humans being too chaotic for it. Fusion, BTW, is also an illusion: see here. Same thing with hydrogen.
There is simply nothing on the radar that comes even close to being a workable substitute for oil.
Another funny thing is that Microsoft fled from Germany for the Netherlands fearing patent issues related to Motorola. This is raising quite a few eyebrows over in the EU already.
Look at the quote history and assert again that you didn't claim the 80% figure
I don't know who you are, mr AC, but you fail reading comprehension too. I said, "IF you need 80% of your switchgrass ethanol etc.". Now say again that I claimed an 80% anything. Moron.
I would say you are unlikely to have understand whatever you did read, so I leave my point standing. Biofuels are not an answer. Massive, well planed society reengineering is, but that is something homo sapiens is not about to do.
Look, I'm all for improving our efficiency, particularly for autos, but if you appear to be stubbornly negative about reasonable expectations of near-term and long-term improvements in biofuel yields, people will be less likely to heed your concerns. People have a tendency, right or wrong, to reject an entire argument once they see that one part of it is needlessly dismissive. You're harming your own advocacy.
A bunch of idiots believe that boiling some beans is going to substitute oil. Someone remarks that this is utterly ridiculous, but his opinion is dismissed on the grounds of being overly negative. Welcome to planet earth.
Keeps my point intact: we are unlikely to solve our problems like that.
I've never understood why does USA have such a complex system that the government doesn't know how much they should pay taxes...
See? You trusted the government and now you look what a communist hellhole of a country you have to endure! Ever read the road to serfdom?
On a more serious note, there is a lot about the US that nobody can really understand. I imagine in your country there is also a pretty reasonable health care system. Or - have you seen a paper cheque lately? Or, to reference a recent/. posting, you can probably block/unblock your mobile via a web interface. Etc.
Since your post was certified insightful, maybe you could help me with a question that I have: who or what will solve humanity's problems, if humanity won't?
No one, of course. That does not preclude humanity failing at solving its problems.
Coal liquification is more expensive. And that's going to bring about a bit of change.
Yeah, right. A tiny little bit.
If you want to know how expensive coal liquefaction actually is, you have to look at 1) the effort that is invested in pulling out oil from improbable places and 2) at what cost, putting it in perspective with 3) the amount of fuel produced by coal liquefaction.
This article, and YOUR POSTS, are just self-diluted fear-mongering. Stop that.
I didn't get the part with the self-diluted. What the fuck was that?
My posts, and this article, are intended to create awareness of the scale of the problem.
if you need 80% of your switchgrass ethanol to keep up switchgrass production
Source that 80% number or you're just talking out of your ass.
Let's evaluate your performace. Logic: Fail. Sense of proportion: Fail. And now? reading comprehension: Fail. Manners: Fail. Are you proud?
You know, I never claimed that 80% number. But now I've looked it up. See here:
Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production.
That gives the 80% figure rather exactly.
From the same article:
biodiesel yields 93% more.
Unfortunately, that means you still have to spend 50% of the energy you harvest to keep up production. Remember: land is a limiting factor too.
With a little work, there's also Hydrogen, compressed air (for really short ranges), and there's always the totally renewable option of burning wood in steam powered cars. Not ver convienient, but it *is* an option.
Unfortunately, none of this even begins to be remotely competitive with oil as soon as it has to scale, that is, as soon as it has to be a viable substitute for everybody. Oil is an incredible resource, and there is nothing remotely comparable. If you want, a gift of the gods to get our civilization bootstrapped.
Compressed air: you need energy to compress it, and to build the tanks that hold enough of it. When you add all of this together, it stops making sense. Hydrogen? Unfortunately, the numbers do not add up either. And: it is notoriously hard to store. This is one of the reasons why you can buy battery cars but none that run oh H2.
As to burning wood - there is the thing. There isn't nearly enough wood (not by a large, large margin) to even begin to cover a tiny fraction of the oil we consume. Our current energy consumption is just so way off scale that it is off scale squared.
I have discovered the solution! This miraculous machine is the most energy efficient form of transportation ever invented, it's so simple a child can repair it, and everybody loves to drive it. Not only that, driving it actually makes you healthier, encourages friendly bonding between strangers (i.e. society building) and naturally reinforces the local economy. It's called a bicycle.
I have a lot of sympathy with your point of view, although it is tragically wrong. Remember, we need energy also for shipping food around to millions and millions of people. Bikes won't cut it.
My god man, reacting to issues and shifting to alternatives is what's going on. I mean, if you want to have a downright retarded model, if I continue my current trend, I'll die by next Sunday due to dehydration.
A researcher builds a complex model to understand the implications of current actions and you come with this. Clearly, way beyond what you can grasp.
Something wrong with coal liquefaction that I'm not aware of? Did you miss that?
It doesn't scale. Nowhere near what it should be to even begin to be a substitute. It is a common error to underestimate the amount of energy we are consuming as a matter of course. Oil is fantastic stuff. High energy density, cheap, and easy to handle. We will miss it badly.
If you have to use switchgrass ethanol to produce switchgrass ethanol then - well, maybe try to do the math some day.
Yeah, there's a net gain in the end. What? Did you REALLY think that it took more energy to produce than we got out?
Sure, so what? Not only your logic is lacking, but also anything like a sense of proportion. This:
Now, it's not that economical right now, and we are probably never going to have ALL of our oil needs replaced by ethanol, there's simply not enough capacity.
Is a monstrous understatement. Slowly for you: if you need 80% of your switchgrass ethanol to keep up switchgrass production then... do you get it? Consider what is said on that link about corn ethanol (which has a better yield). You simply can't get nearly enough out of biofuels to do much of interest. It's a sad reality. There simply isn't enough capacity by many orders of magnitude.
what should they have assumed instead if what they wanted to do is predict what would happen if we go on like this? Eh?
Well, they could do their freaking JOB and model a shift to predictable alternatives.
I am sorry to hear that logic is not for you. I guess that explains the rest of your post. BTW, we are doomed precisely because we have so many ignorant people willing to believe whatever they want to believe. You really are part of the problem.
there are a lot of different substitutes, but none of them are as cheap as oil used to be. We can liquify coal. We can turn switch grass into ethanol. Electricity is a pretty good alternative energy. We can scoot around on battery packs. It's storable density is a bit of an issue but it's getting better all the time. (Or we can, oh, I don't know, WALK PLACES.)
You may believe you did, but in fact you didn't mention one single viable substitute for oil. Nothing of what you mentioned is even close to be just "not as cheap as oil used to be" in the sense that it would not be possible to sustain more than a tiny fraction of modern energy consumption with them, not even combined.
For example, on ethanol, here is a summary that pretty much is on the lines of most serious research. Ignoring the land issue, there remains a major problem with all of your purported "alternatives". That problem is that they consume insane amounts of energy during their production, which also has to come somewhere. If you have to use switchgrass ethanol to produce switchgrass ethanol then - well, maybe try to do the math some day.
And calling the storable density of batteries "a bit of an issue" is pretty funny.
I do not think it is impossible to solve the problems humanity is facing. I just think humanity will not do it.
That's because you're old, cynical, grumpy, and have watched too much fox news.
No, I am just being realistic (while you are being an asshole, btw. Thought I'd mention it).
Is they assume that we will go on like business is usual. As soon as scarcity of a resource gets past a point we go and find alternatives.
Since your post was certified insightful, maybe you could help me with a question that I have: what should they have assumed instead if what they wanted to do is predict what would happen if we go on like this? Eh?
We tend not to deplete a resource if possible, but when it gets scarce enough we go for alternatives. If pork or cattle get to expensive we go with less resource needed chickens or turkeys.
The problem here is oil, not pork. There is at the moment no viable substitute for oil. People would like to believe that there is, but it is not true. The Prius, and all these other things are just a distraction. They only work in the current environment because they are the exception, and not the rule. It is simply not realistically possible to replace all internal combustion cars with battery-powered ones.
I do not think it is impossible to solve the problems humanity is facing. I just think humanity will not do it.
it just feels corny as if your family were acting out the script in front of you.
I think that's the center of the middle of the core of the issue. It's called lack of cultural self esteem, and is rather widespread. In parallel universes, people find it corny unless it looks as if their family were acting out the script in front of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and then B is hosed. How is this supposed to be just? And of course first to file is relevant here.
What I understand is that you want your family to be rich at the expense of society, and that patents is how you envision this to come true. Thank you for making again a compelling case against patents in general.
As things stand nowadays, I have no problem agreeing with that sentence. You know why? Because the way this actually plays out outside of fairy tales is that some moron that doesn't know anything about a field "invents" and patents some old and well known stuff to those skilled in the art. Armed with a patent and his sense of entitlement, this "inventor" is just going to be a parasite, a nuisance, and a general net negative for everybody except himself. Just look at all the madness related to software patents, where courts keep ruling in favor of the sociopaths with patents and against those creating real value.
Before you answer, ask a patent lawyer whether "prior art" is a good defense or not (hint: it almost never works, even when it is blatantly true).
People who want a patent are well empowered as it is. Actually, well beyond what is sane. Look at all the absurd patents and all the patents on trivial stuff.
Beyond that: I do not agree with the notion that people deserve to be rich just by having an idea. I do not agree with the notion that, just by having an idea, "inventors" deserve the right to harass people left and right that had the same idea because it actually was easy and obvious, as most ideas, and the vast majority of patents, are.
Of course I was meaning things like patents that are central in standards. I guess it says something about you that you deliberately chose to misunderstand that.
As far as I am concerned, that is a bad thing. I want cloning companies to sprint past "inventors", so that they can keep single players from holding back progress. If sprinting past them is even possible, then the "inventor" has no business getting a patent. Period.
What you want is further empowerment of trolls. This is downright evil, and I have no choice but assuming that you work for a patent troll or are one yourself.
Further, I reject the notion that making things more convenient for "inventors" is a good thing. As it stands, it is possible to corner huge markets with pretty minor contributions by just being shrewd in ways that have nothing to do with the technology itself. This type of privilege is something that has to be taken away sooner rather than later, not made more convenient for the budding patent troll.
First of all, thanks for your thoughtful response.
Well, I'm back here to say that yes, I meant the "love and peace stuff". Also, that I don't admire Jesus Christ enough for this to be considered a religious or pseudo-religious feeling. I just think that, from all I know, Jesus himself was probably a nice chap, and that a nice chap is better than a murderous warlord any day.
And that's the end of that story.
Belief in gods was a much more reasonable position back then, because humanity understood so little about the world. So that he believed in some of that doesn't bother me nor do I care.
No, that's a missquote. Well, actually he said that, but he was relating what someone else said, so it is not something he meant. And if you had studied the guy a little, you would realize that that kind of phrase wasn't really his style, to say the least.
Christ is not the problem, IMO. He was a great guy, that much I am sure of. The problem is the belief in a personal god, and the oppressive power machine that the church is.
(Note: I am an atheist)
"Perverse Parrot"
would have been rather nice indeed.
1) The fed dampens the problems of an FRL by printing/removing money from the system. Without the fed, the 2008 crisis would have truly nuked the economy of the US and the rest of the world.
2) Without FRL, you have no banking and no economy to speak of. Without FRL, all trade is essentially barter, and that doesn't go anywhere interesting.
As I said, learn some economy, and not from a right-wing nutjob.
The flaw is that it would lead to major economic mayhem. Learn some economy some day, but please not from a right wing nutjob.
Good brainfuck programmers can make beautiful programs that are easy to mantain. That is not the point.
Having to know all the superfluous arcana you need to know to be a good C++ programmer is a huge burden. That's the reason why C++ should be avoided like the plague.
Well, yes, I agree. With C++ it is clear: it is a stupid language that empowers the stupid so that together they can make an epic mess. I'd rather have a language where that isn't so easy. Industry agrees, and that's why java is so big.
We could drop it. But we have the custom here of being rude to Anonymous Cowards because, you know, posting anonymously is really a coward thing. I think that is a good custom. So, why don't you log in?
I didn't miss that post, nor have I missed the advances in fusion technology. However, if you did read that thing carefully, then you would have noticed that the question for commercial reactors was answered with something on the line of "technical-technical meh-whatever maybe-someday keep-us-funded". So, no. As far as I can tell, their take isn't really different if you know how to read between the lines. And that projection of where fusion would be given enough funding is just ridiculous - as if you could bribe the gods to rewrite the laws of physics for you.
The issue with grant money may sound cynical, but it is not. Highly motivated people wake up one day completely committed to a hopeless field with kids to feed. What can you seriously ask from them? The cynical part is expecting scientists to fix things like dependency from oil. Sorry, but we just cant bend the laws of physics and chemistry that much. The cynical part is expecting scientists to make things true which aren't, and call them a failure when they don't. Maybe some day we will be able to travel faster than light, and maybe we will someday have cheep fusion reactors. But I don't expect this to happen this century.
(And, there are fields of science which are so utterly fucked up that sane people leave long before finishing their PhDs, and thus are populated by the insane. They are rare, and I don't think fusion research is like that. But I have seen this play out.)
IMO, the SA article gives enough coordinates to follow up, and as far as I can tell, mentions the central problems accurately.
I don't see any point in gathering information, and then dismissing conclusions based on "that would be too pessimistic". That just isn't sound thinking.
We are really not making any real progress anywhere.
In my experience, this type of discussion is rarely helpful.
You know, I like C. But I think C++ is a point in case for why the second approach, the one you ridicule, would have been better. C++ is a hideous mess in many ways, and one of the big reasons is backwards compatibility with a language that simply wasn't prepared for Bjarne did to it. A clean start may have been better in so far as the language is concerned.
You are an idiot. Read again what I wrote. At that point I hadn't claimed anything, which was the point we are dissecting here. Then I looked at the publications, and 80% was pretty good.
No, that's not what I meant. At least not of the kind, "reducing excess population by killing people" (however, controling population levels is also something we are pretty much unable to do). I meant things like converting the US, and other countries, into places where public transportation is the default (saves lots of oil). Or getting our act together so that we are less wasteful than we are with hydrocarbons. Lifting a sizable portion of the population out of poverty before their numbers explode would also be great. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what we are up to.
I fear that the outcome will simply be that lots of people will die in horrible ways because we simply do not get our act together in time. Biofuels play an important role, as being a good excuse for not doing anything. You know, as in ''we'll just use ethanol instead". If this comes, it will come at the expense of food and consequently will lead to famine.
No, the research is sound. It is people who believe that this is the solution that are a bunch of idiots. Of course, researchers won't be too open about it, because of grant money and stuff. Same thing BTW with all that smart grid bullshit. That is not going to happen, due to massive NP-hardness and humans being too chaotic for it. Fusion, BTW, is also an illusion: see here. Same thing with hydrogen.
There is simply nothing on the radar that comes even close to being a workable substitute for oil.
I really wish I had a book like this as a kid.
Another funny thing is that Microsoft fled from Germany for the Netherlands fearing patent issues related to Motorola. This is raising quite a few eyebrows over in the EU already.
I don't know who you are, mr AC, but you fail reading comprehension too. I said, "IF you need 80% of your switchgrass ethanol etc.". Now say again that I claimed an 80% anything. Moron.
I would say you are unlikely to have understand whatever you did read, so I leave my point standing. Biofuels are not an answer. Massive, well planed society reengineering is, but that is something homo sapiens is not about to do.
A bunch of idiots believe that boiling some beans is going to substitute oil. Someone remarks that this is utterly ridiculous, but his opinion is dismissed on the grounds of being overly negative. Welcome to planet earth.
Keeps my point intact: we are unlikely to solve our problems like that.
See? You trusted the government and now you look what a communist hellhole of a country you have to endure! Ever read the road to serfdom?
On a more serious note, there is a lot about the US that nobody can really understand. I imagine in your country there is also a pretty reasonable health care system. Or - have you seen a paper cheque lately? Or, to reference a recent /. posting, you can probably block/unblock your mobile via a web interface. Etc.
If he were the drug dealer in a ghetto it is likely he'd see things a little differently.
No one, of course. That does not preclude humanity failing at solving its problems.
Yeah, right. A tiny little bit.
If you want to know how expensive coal liquefaction actually is, you have to look at 1) the effort that is invested in pulling out oil from improbable places and 2) at what cost, putting it in perspective with 3) the amount of fuel produced by coal liquefaction.
I didn't get the part with the self-diluted. What the fuck was that?
My posts, and this article, are intended to create awareness of the scale of the problem.
Let's evaluate your performace. Logic: Fail. Sense of proportion: Fail. And now? reading comprehension: Fail. Manners: Fail. Are you proud?
You know, I never claimed that 80% number. But now I've looked it up. See here:
Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production.
That gives the 80% figure rather exactly.
From the same article:
biodiesel yields 93% more.
Unfortunately, that means you still have to spend 50% of the energy you harvest to keep up production. Remember: land is a limiting factor too.
Unfortunately, none of this even begins to be remotely competitive with oil as soon as it has to scale, that is, as soon as it has to be a viable substitute for everybody. Oil is an incredible resource, and there is nothing remotely comparable. If you want, a gift of the gods to get our civilization bootstrapped.
Compressed air: you need energy to compress it, and to build the tanks that hold enough of it. When you add all of this together, it stops making sense. Hydrogen? Unfortunately, the numbers do not add up either. And: it is notoriously hard to store. This is one of the reasons why you can buy battery cars but none that run oh H2.
As to burning wood - there is the thing. There isn't nearly enough wood (not by a large, large margin) to even begin to cover a tiny fraction of the oil we consume. Our current energy consumption is just so way off scale that it is off scale squared.
I have a lot of sympathy with your point of view, although it is tragically wrong. Remember, we need energy also for shipping food around to millions and millions of people. Bikes won't cut it.
A researcher builds a complex model to understand the implications of current actions and you come with this. Clearly, way beyond what you can grasp.
It doesn't scale. Nowhere near what it should be to even begin to be a substitute. It is a common error to underestimate the amount of energy we are consuming as a matter of course. Oil is fantastic stuff. High energy density, cheap, and easy to handle. We will miss it badly.
Sure, so what? Not only your logic is lacking, but also anything like a sense of proportion. This:
Is a monstrous understatement. Slowly for you: if you need 80% of your switchgrass ethanol to keep up switchgrass production then... do you get it? Consider what is said on that link about corn ethanol (which has a better yield). You simply can't get nearly enough out of biofuels to do much of interest. It's a sad reality. There simply isn't enough capacity by many orders of magnitude.
I am sorry to hear that logic is not for you. I guess that explains the rest of your post. BTW, we are doomed precisely because we have so many ignorant people willing to believe whatever they want to believe. You really are part of the problem.
You may believe you did, but in fact you didn't mention one single viable substitute for oil. Nothing of what you mentioned is even close to be just "not as cheap as oil used to be" in the sense that it would not be possible to sustain more than a tiny fraction of modern energy consumption with them, not even combined.
For example, on ethanol, here is a summary that pretty much is on the lines of most serious research. Ignoring the land issue, there remains a major problem with all of your purported "alternatives". That problem is that they consume insane amounts of energy during their production, which also has to come somewhere. If you have to use switchgrass ethanol to produce switchgrass ethanol then - well, maybe try to do the math some day.
And calling the storable density of batteries "a bit of an issue" is pretty funny.
No, I am just being realistic (while you are being an asshole, btw. Thought I'd mention it).
And - Fox news? Huh?
Since your post was certified insightful, maybe you could help me with a question that I have: what should they have assumed instead if what they wanted to do is predict what would happen if we go on like this? Eh?
The problem here is oil, not pork. There is at the moment no viable substitute for oil. People would like to believe that there is, but it is not true. The Prius, and all these other things are just a distraction. They only work in the current environment because they are the exception, and not the rule. It is simply not realistically possible to replace all internal combustion cars with battery-powered ones.
I do not think it is impossible to solve the problems humanity is facing. I just think humanity will not do it.
I think that's the center of the middle of the core of the issue. It's called lack of cultural self esteem, and is rather widespread. In parallel universes, people find it corny unless it looks as if their family were acting out the script in front of them.