Me, I am an atheist. Never had any faith, despite being raised in a moderately christian environment. I have met lots of reasonable Christians that have no problem with science, none at all. I have, however, never met an ID proponent that didn't have major problems with science. Mostly on the 'understand what science even means' - side of things.
Well, last year I heard a talk by a economics professor, who quite plausibly argued that patents create a new market for ideas, thereby creating a tool for the valuation of ideas by market forces. The mechanism is certainly there.
Besides, where would you want to go with abolishing patents? It would lead to one situation, and one situation only: Small business Inventions'R'Us develops, say, a new alloy. Galt Assraping Inc. happily buys the first piece made of said alloy, say 'Oh, look, new alloy. Useful that.' and happily starts to produce it. Since Galt Assraping Inc. has no development cost to recover, small business Inventions'R'Us gets undercut and driven out of the market. Galt Assraping Inc. is one step closer to market domination and to the ability to freely dictate prices. Now, who profits there? The people? Yeah, sure.
So, without a class structure, the social mobility in the US is limitless? The chance of someone being born into poverty to raise to being a millionaire is the same as the chance of someone being born son of a millionaire to end up at the poverty line? Because, that is what class ultimately means - being stuck in the same social stratum you are born into.
I take it he means the Siberian Traps supervulcano - a massive flood basalt event lasting for about 1 million years - coincident with the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. I have no idea if the underlying plume is even still there, though.
And Germany tends to file such huge amounts, because, well, we have a shitload of internationally operating manufacturers here, which, mostly, are actually quite innovative. Daimler, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Siemens, Osram, Bosch, MTU, Thyssen - just to name a few of the big ones. In spite of the high filing numbers, though, we don't see much litigation - and if someone wants to question the validity of a patent in court, it is way cheaper than in the US.
I was making the point that the OP didn't even WANT to think about ethics. No, certainly there is no universal set, but that can't stop us from optimizing as good as we can and not just call it quits with statements like "there is no common good". That is just intellectually and spiritually low.
Hubbard's estimates regarding the US reserves were pretty much spot on in the 60s. Don't see why it should be different for other fields. The North Sea peak has been predicted accurately, too. Remember, it is not about the total size of the field, it is about the flow rate you can produce. Sure, the West Texas wells still run as stripper wells producing a handful of barrels per day, but that you can only do on land. No one is gonna run, say, Macondo, in stripper mode.
Well, yeah, ultimately, energy utilization is the limiting factor, not resources. Or rather - entropy compensation. The question is, can we get the relevant techniques up and running fast and economical enough. And the "economical" factor hugely depends on how much me are willing to adapt our system....
Oh please, not abiogenic oil. You have "replenishment" due to slow migration within the reservoir. The most prominent cases are with fields separated by faults, where the fault temporarily isolated part of the reservoir. The oil geologists were all over this - by now the abiogenic guys only have the ones that actually do the field work rolling on the floor laughing when they still bring up their bullcrap.
No, no one came up with a significant technological improvement. Someone came up with another limited resource. We have the planet mapped by now, we know the geology, the geophysics. Unless you are betting your civilization on an unspecified "Future Tech IV" on the tech tree, we are not sustainable. We might make fusion work, perhaps, but apart from that - there is nothing even remotely in sight.
Completely agree that aquifer depletion is as much of a problem. Less in personal focus, though, since the region I live in doesn't depend on that. You are completely right, though.
I would not completely rule out the possibility that you might be right. Then again, out? There's them moose out there, man! They come out of the trees! It's horrible, I tell you, horrible!
Yes, there are people who get it - and there are efforts to implement it, no question. But we seriously need to get our shit together and ramp said efforts up. Massively. That's what is not happening on a reasonable scale. Of course there are sustainable agriculture project, sustainable fisheries - but not remotely in the amount we need. See the food riots happening just last year, because of the strong coupling of food and oil prices. Which in the end, is a consequence of the unsustainable nature of food production and general resource usage we employ at the moment.
You are teaching farmers how to triple crop yields by investing 10 times the energy in form of fossil fuels that you get out as food, all while ruining the soil and pumping the aquifers dry - THAT is the problem. Not food as such. Water, there you are right however, but that appears the most manageable of the problems we are facing.
Oil, aquifers, fisheries, forests, rivers, topsoil, no? Sustainability, yes? It's quite nice that you once read a wikipedia entry on Malthus, but getting accustomed to the facts would help if you really want to lead a discussion. We cannot sustainably feed out population right fucking now - we only drag along because we deplete fossil resources like there is no tomorrow. No one says we are on runaway population growth - the problem is that we are leveling off too late. Way too late.
And with "we have no collective good", you really mean "I am a spineless individual that never heard of anything like 'ethics', but rather stay happily at the developmental level of an amoeba, intellectually".
We won't stop until we finally burned every last available bit of fossil carbon. They are talking about in-situ gasification of coal now - you know, for the several thousand meter deep reservoirs that can't be mined conventionally. Yeah. Fun times ahead.
Ehrlich didn't forsee the massive productivity increase in the agricultural sector in the seventies - however, this increase had an unintended consequence. We now use 9 kJ of oil to produce 1 kJ of food. And guess what - well, don't just guess, just have a look at the oil prices and the production rates of the major fields. We are not starting to drill off-shore in the deep arctic ocean because easily available oil is aplenty.
At the momentary agricultural production rates, yes we probably can supply 10 billion people. But can we do it sustainably? Without depleting oil, drinking water, the top soil, the fisheries? We can't do that right now.
And, for some miraculous reason, coincidental with the stabilization of world population, oil will replenish, as will the aquifers, the fisheries will certainly recover and the eroded topsoil will miraculously be blown back on the land, the salt water invading the coastal fertile lands will draw back, energy will be plenty all of a sudden once more, and, of course, idiots will stop spewing bullshit on slashdot, yes?
Slashdot Mirror
Me, I am an atheist. Never had any faith, despite being raised in a moderately christian environment. I have met lots of reasonable Christians that have no problem with science, none at all. I have, however, never met an ID proponent that didn't have major problems with science. Mostly on the 'understand what science even means' - side of things.
Besides, where would you want to go with abolishing patents? It would lead to one situation, and one situation only: Small business Inventions'R'Us develops, say, a new alloy. Galt Assraping Inc. happily buys the first piece made of said alloy, say 'Oh, look, new alloy. Useful that.' and happily starts to produce it. Since Galt Assraping Inc. has no development cost to recover, small business Inventions'R'Us gets undercut and driven out of the market. Galt Assraping Inc. is one step closer to market domination and to the ability to freely dictate prices. Now, who profits there? The people? Yeah, sure.
So, without a class structure, the social mobility in the US is limitless? The chance of someone being born into poverty to raise to being a millionaire is the same as the chance of someone being born son of a millionaire to end up at the poverty line? Because, that is what class ultimately means - being stuck in the same social stratum you are born into.
Startled by the truth?
I take it he means the Siberian Traps supervulcano - a massive flood basalt event lasting for about 1 million years - coincident with the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. I have no idea if the underlying plume is even still there, though.
And Germany tends to file such huge amounts, because, well, we have a shitload of internationally operating manufacturers here, which, mostly, are actually quite innovative. Daimler, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen, Siemens, Osram, Bosch, MTU, Thyssen - just to name a few of the big ones. In spite of the high filing numbers, though, we don't see much litigation - and if someone wants to question the validity of a patent in court, it is way cheaper than in the US.
I was making the point that the OP didn't even WANT to think about ethics. No, certainly there is no universal set, but that can't stop us from optimizing as good as we can and not just call it quits with statements like "there is no common good". That is just intellectually and spiritually low.
Hubbard's estimates regarding the US reserves were pretty much spot on in the 60s. Don't see why it should be different for other fields. The North Sea peak has been predicted accurately, too. Remember, it is not about the total size of the field, it is about the flow rate you can produce. Sure, the West Texas wells still run as stripper wells producing a handful of barrels per day, but that you can only do on land. No one is gonna run, say, Macondo, in stripper mode.
Well, yeah, ultimately, energy utilization is the limiting factor, not resources. Or rather - entropy compensation. The question is, can we get the relevant techniques up and running fast and economical enough. And the "economical" factor hugely depends on how much me are willing to adapt our system....
Oh please, not abiogenic oil. You have "replenishment" due to slow migration within the reservoir. The most prominent cases are with fields separated by faults, where the fault temporarily isolated part of the reservoir. The oil geologists were all over this - by now the abiogenic guys only have the ones that actually do the field work rolling on the floor laughing when they still bring up their bullcrap.
Ah, well - you brought up the absolutes. Didn't see where I talked about that. Bask in the warming glow of your straw man.
No, no one came up with a significant technological improvement. Someone came up with another limited resource. We have the planet mapped by now, we know the geology, the geophysics. Unless you are betting your civilization on an unspecified "Future Tech IV" on the tech tree, we are not sustainable. We might make fusion work, perhaps, but apart from that - there is nothing even remotely in sight.
Completely agree that aquifer depletion is as much of a problem. Less in personal focus, though, since the region I live in doesn't depend on that. You are completely right, though.
I would not completely rule out the possibility that you might be right. Then again, out? There's them moose out there, man! They come out of the trees! It's horrible, I tell you, horrible!
Yes, there are people who get it - and there are efforts to implement it, no question. But we seriously need to get our shit together and ramp said efforts up. Massively. That's what is not happening on a reasonable scale. Of course there are sustainable agriculture project, sustainable fisheries - but not remotely in the amount we need. See the food riots happening just last year, because of the strong coupling of food and oil prices. Which in the end, is a consequence of the unsustainable nature of food production and general resource usage we employ at the moment.
You are teaching farmers how to triple crop yields by investing 10 times the energy in form of fossil fuels that you get out as food, all while ruining the soil and pumping the aquifers dry - THAT is the problem. Not food as such. Water, there you are right however, but that appears the most manageable of the problems we are facing.
Oil, aquifers, fisheries, forests, rivers, topsoil, no? Sustainability, yes? It's quite nice that you once read a wikipedia entry on Malthus, but getting accustomed to the facts would help if you really want to lead a discussion. We cannot sustainably feed out population right fucking now - we only drag along because we deplete fossil resources like there is no tomorrow. No one says we are on runaway population growth - the problem is that we are leveling off too late. Way too late.
And with "we have no collective good", you really mean "I am a spineless individual that never heard of anything like 'ethics', but rather stay happily at the developmental level of an amoeba, intellectually".
And you realize that for the reasons cited, we only kicked the can down the road for a few decades, without actually coming up with a solution?
We won't stop until we finally burned every last available bit of fossil carbon. They are talking about in-situ gasification of coal now - you know, for the several thousand meter deep reservoirs that can't be mined conventionally. Yeah. Fun times ahead.
Ehrlich didn't forsee the massive productivity increase in the agricultural sector in the seventies - however, this increase had an unintended consequence. We now use 9 kJ of oil to produce 1 kJ of food. And guess what - well, don't just guess, just have a look at the oil prices and the production rates of the major fields. We are not starting to drill off-shore in the deep arctic ocean because easily available oil is aplenty.
My work is done here.
At the momentary agricultural production rates, yes we probably can supply 10 billion people. But can we do it sustainably? Without depleting oil, drinking water, the top soil, the fisheries? We can't do that right now.
And, for some miraculous reason, coincidental with the stabilization of world population, oil will replenish, as will the aquifers, the fisheries will certainly recover and the eroded topsoil will miraculously be blown back on the land, the salt water invading the coastal fertile lands will draw back, energy will be plenty all of a sudden once more, and, of course, idiots will stop spewing bullshit on slashdot, yes?
You know, those fossil fuels might be expensive because, well, we are bloody running out of them? Not like there is an endless amount, dig?