I'm not worried about our diplomats carrying insufficient clout. I am worried about the victims of our numerous pointless wars in the past and present. I do not see the world as a giant game of monopoly where we are endlessly seeking to increase our power and wealth. The world is full of people who all share a common desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, yet millions die for the pointless greedy ambitions of a few powerful men.
As people gifted with technical skills we cannot let ourselves be blinded to what is going on in the world, for an opportunity to play with expensive toys and use our skills to develop weapons that kill innocent people. We cannot afford to have a frail grasp on how our actions fit into the bigger picture when a few lines of code can be part of a machine used to murder for political ambition.
That is quite simply not true for all (or even most) biofuel production. My knowledge is specifically with making biodiesel from Canola and Algae in the NW United States. There are several farms that are able to produce significantly more than the amount of biodiesel fuel they use on the entire farm (enough to run all of their equipment), by growing Canola on a small portion of their land. In many areas the Canola will grow without any petroleum fertilizer, and without water and the biodiesel plants use very little electricity (generating all of the power for the plant by burning a small amount of the fuel produced in a generator is possible). So where is all this petroleum that is supposedly being used to make biofuels (which cost less to make then petroleum fuels) coming from, and who is paying for it?
There were several scientifically flawed studies Pimentel and Patzek that I think are the sources you are basing your statements on. If you search you will find several sources pointing out the flaws in these articles. Here is one:
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/pressreleases/gen/20050721_pimentel_response.pdf
The concept of a negative or positive "energy balance" for fuels is flawed and meaningless. Do you avoid using rechargeable batteries because the energy they produce is less than the energy it took to charge them? I doubt that you would like to have a digital camera that can only take pictures of things that happen to be near electrical outlets. The same is true for biofuels, you must evaluate them in terms of their comparison to other technologies (such as batteries, petroleum, etc.) in terms of sustainability, economics, social responsibility and usefulness.
Biofuels, just like ALL energy "sources" (because of thermodynamics) take more energy to produce than is stored in the fuel. The benefit is that they do this in a way that converts energy that we cannot use directly in a vehicle (sunlight, electricity, etc.) to one that is easily stored, and can be used in a vehicle.
I can tell you from my own personal research as a physics student who studies alternative energy, that it is possible to produce biodiesel in the state of Oregon by using significantly less useful energy (fuel, power grid electricity, etc) than you produce when done properly. Other studies already published show that it is possible to do so with ethanol, and with biodiesel in other regions and with other crops. It just depends on what crops you use, how you farm it, where you grow it, and how you make fuel from it. Obviously some studies will show that there are inefficient ways to make biofuels, but that doesn't show that this is true for all biofuels.
What Bennett Haselton (the author) is calling a "mathematical argument" is simply the basic form of a logical argument, as used in philosophy since ancient greece, and not something invented by the author. You start with a series of premises, and then logically build your conclusion from those premises. If someone wants to disagree with you, they must disagree with one (or more) of the premises and/or the logic that builds to the conclusion. It's a very important tool that has been used to have productive arguments for thousands of years. I think the author should consider taking some philosophy courses, or joining a debate club. There he can find other people who will argue with him constructively for free...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument
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I'm not worried about our diplomats carrying insufficient clout. I am worried about the victims of our numerous pointless wars in the past and present. I do not see the world as a giant game of monopoly where we are endlessly seeking to increase our power and wealth. The world is full of people who all share a common desire to live a happy and fulfilling life, yet millions die for the pointless greedy ambitions of a few powerful men. As people gifted with technical skills we cannot let ourselves be blinded to what is going on in the world, for an opportunity to play with expensive toys and use our skills to develop weapons that kill innocent people. We cannot afford to have a frail grasp on how our actions fit into the bigger picture when a few lines of code can be part of a machine used to murder for political ambition.
Why put intelligence and effort into "future combat systems" when that same intelligence and effort could be used to work on preventing future combat?
That is quite simply not true for all (or even most) biofuel production. My knowledge is specifically with making biodiesel from Canola and Algae in the NW United States. There are several farms that are able to produce significantly more than the amount of biodiesel fuel they use on the entire farm (enough to run all of their equipment), by growing Canola on a small portion of their land. In many areas the Canola will grow without any petroleum fertilizer, and without water and the biodiesel plants use very little electricity (generating all of the power for the plant by burning a small amount of the fuel produced in a generator is possible). So where is all this petroleum that is supposedly being used to make biofuels (which cost less to make then petroleum fuels) coming from, and who is paying for it?
There were several scientifically flawed studies Pimentel and Patzek that I think are the sources you are basing your statements on. If you search you will find several sources pointing out the flaws in these articles. Here is one: http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/pressreleases/gen/20050721_pimentel_response.pdf
The concept of a negative or positive "energy balance" for fuels is flawed and meaningless. Do you avoid using rechargeable batteries because the energy they produce is less than the energy it took to charge them? I doubt that you would like to have a digital camera that can only take pictures of things that happen to be near electrical outlets. The same is true for biofuels, you must evaluate them in terms of their comparison to other technologies (such as batteries, petroleum, etc.) in terms of sustainability, economics, social responsibility and usefulness. Biofuels, just like ALL energy "sources" (because of thermodynamics) take more energy to produce than is stored in the fuel. The benefit is that they do this in a way that converts energy that we cannot use directly in a vehicle (sunlight, electricity, etc.) to one that is easily stored, and can be used in a vehicle. I can tell you from my own personal research as a physics student who studies alternative energy, that it is possible to produce biodiesel in the state of Oregon by using significantly less useful energy (fuel, power grid electricity, etc) than you produce when done properly. Other studies already published show that it is possible to do so with ethanol, and with biodiesel in other regions and with other crops. It just depends on what crops you use, how you farm it, where you grow it, and how you make fuel from it. Obviously some studies will show that there are inefficient ways to make biofuels, but that doesn't show that this is true for all biofuels.
What Bennett Haselton (the author) is calling a "mathematical argument" is simply the basic form of a logical argument, as used in philosophy since ancient greece, and not something invented by the author. You start with a series of premises, and then logically build your conclusion from those premises. If someone wants to disagree with you, they must disagree with one (or more) of the premises and/or the logic that builds to the conclusion. It's a very important tool that has been used to have productive arguments for thousands of years. I think the author should consider taking some philosophy courses, or joining a debate club. There he can find other people who will argue with him constructively for free... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_argument