I would more say my approach is productive and yours is just delaying the inevitable out of the fear of what 'might' happen.
Since you seem to be afraid of quoting me, I don't know what exactly you are referring to, so I assume it's the immigration policy.
My opinion, summed up, is that the immigration policy should match what is best for the country. First that means that some optimal level of population density should be calculated, depending on the food and goods output and the preferred standard of living. If the country cannot survive without outside help (like the UK) allowing mass immigration is an act of massive stupidity. Of course thinks may be different in Australia, I don't know enough about the Australian food production to tell. Second it means to choose what immigrants you let in. I think a very good way of doing that would be to do an IQ-test and only let those in who surpass the average IQ (in that way immigration would raise the average IQ which is good for the country).
But you will find that addressing social problems in the long term usually ends better than throwing around stats and closing the borders.
Really? In New Orleans, Detroit and in numerous places there are hundreds, maybe thousands of places to "address social problems" in exactly the kind of ways you propose. What did it help?
Quite to the contrary. While first generation immigrants do arguably well, the second generation has been conditioned to accept social handouts that they do WORSE than the first generation (at least that's the situation of Mexicans in the USA and Turks in Europe) and are more likely to be on welfare.
That actually shows that social programs are actually counterproductive.
Social programs mean stealing from the productive (with taxes) and giving it to the unproductive. You always get more of what you subsidize so it's pretty logical that you get more unproductive each generation. Before welfare reform (which was ironically done by Bill Clinton) drug addicted welfare moms had a very high rate of fertility.
Even if you think that genetics is racist and everything depends on environment, giving crack mothers the incentive to make more babies is just stupid. Even you have to admit that a crack mother won't give a very good environment for child rearing.
So basically it doesn't matter if you believe in genetics or not. Even if you don't, social programs don't make any sense the way they are implemented now.
Now when we talk about low-IQ immigration, it doesn't cause these problems, but it clearly accelerates them.
Closing the borders usually coincides with closing of minds and ending of freedom of speech.
Actually some European countries (like France or the UK) are ending freedom of speech to keep the borders OPEN.
Other European countries without many immigrants, basically Iceland and Finnland are under the most free countries in the world.
Or am I one because I would enter a black area and say hi rather than hide under the table.
That would make you suicidal. But just go ahead and try it.
Just give them the same rights and same basic respect in society.
LOL, that is actually a rightist, racist and "fascist" point of view.
There were many initiatives in the USA (California and Michigan, probably other states) to abolish affirmative action and really give everybody the same rights. Everytime the media and people like you called these initiatives racist.
I personally think that everybody should have the same rights, but I realize that that will not lead to equal outcomes.
I also have no problem with them screening certain areas more in immigration, because some areas are worse and have more crime.
That is called "profiling" (look it up on Google), another very racist thing (according to the press). Like so many lefties, as soon as the discussion touches some details, you seem to start to embrace views of the right, acc
I wasn't debating the facts I was debating your conclusion that you and your view hold some form of superiority.
Nonsense. That's just your interpretation. I never claimed objective superiority. What I do is claim that our subjective preferred way of live (with democracy, human rights, etc.) will disappear with too much 3rd-world immigration.
Of course you may that the west is evil and does not have a right to survive, well then we have to disagree: I say that the western nations have a right to exist, to defend their way of live on their soil (not in Iraq).
I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing if I left you in the middle of Australia without food or transport and with no roads in sight, the Aboriginal would be far superior to you.
Probably. Aboriginals actually have a larger visual cortex which helps them remember paths in vast deserts (which is why many of them are quite successful as pathfinders) and a couple of other evolutionary adaptations.
You were basing your 'facts' on a test designed for our form of society and deciding that other forms were a problem because they didn't fit the test.
Wrong. The tests are not the "basis" of the facts. The basis are the differences we see in the world everyday (New Orleans blacks shoot at rescue helicopters, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Central Europeans and Chinese don't. (And as a matter of fact, neither did New Orleans whites) Haiti has been transformed from a lush tropical forest land to almost barren rock. Blacks are about 5 to 10 times as likely to commit murder all around the world (be it the USA, South Africa or England). The "achievement gap" is real and documented.
All those real world facts and events are the basis. IQ-tests, brain size, brain chemistry and testosterone levels are merely an explanation for those facts, not the basis.
You on the other hand don't offer ANY connection between your hypothesis and the real world. While I constantly present numerous examples (New Orleans, Detroit, Haiti, Liberia, etc. etc.) you present nothing. Zero. Nada. Your hypothesis does not have any foundation in reality, it's merely a daydream, some kind of utopia which only exists as wishful thinking, not in reality.
So as I said, it is the approach to the people, not the people that is the problem.
You keep believing it, yet you have not a single example of the "correct approach" that actually worked and transformed a majority black or majority aboriginal area into a self-ruled and productive part of industrial society.
We have tonnes of Africans already, we have aboriginals already, what will change if we have a few more?
If you have a FEW more, not much will change.
If you have a LOT more, a lot will change. Just look at Detroit or the infamous Paris suburbs as an example. There is not a single majority-black area that has been under black rule for an extended period of time you want to live in. (If there is, please tell me so. There are numerous examples of black-ruled places which have never been colonies (like Liberia and Ethiopia), have been independent for very long times (Haiti over 200 years).
As a matter of fact, Africa produces many millions of refugees every year, so there is an endless supply and they will keep coming forever as long as either somebody stops them or the target country looks like Detroit or Haiti and is no longer "better off".
Of course you are not honest enough to say that you want to get away from blacks/arabs/other 3rd worlders when you move to the suburbs. You will say that you want to get away from drugs and crime.
If you really believe what you are saying, why don't you move to some area which is majority black and under black rule?
All my observations were based on facts, you know the European tradition (called empirical method, look it up) going back to such evil Nazis like Aristotle.
A funny fact is that the Nazis (like most socialists) forbade all kinds of intelligence testing because Jews got too good scores on them, which contradicted their worldview. So instead of changing their worldview, they just forbade inconvenient facts. Like most socialists, the Nazis ignored many facts and pursued their own ideas which were not based on facts but on opinions.
So if you want to forbid or ignore intelligence tests, brain size, genetics and brain chemistry because you don't like the results you are pretty much on the same side as the Nazis, which I personally think is hillarious.
Come to places like Melbourne and segregation only exists in the form of finding more italian or chinese restaurants on certain streets.
To give an idea of the futility of your comment in Melbourne, here's a quote from wikipedia:
"Today Melbourne is a diverse and multicultural city. Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas, and the city is home to residents from 233 countries, who speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. In 2004, 43.5 per cent were either born overseas, or have a parent who was born overseas."
You didn't quite understand my argument. I specifically spoke about 3rd-world people, which of course is a generalization, but the point is that some integrate better than others into civilized society.
If you put 1000 Europeans from 20 different countries and put them on an island you will get something like Ireland. If you put 1000 East Asians from 20 different linguistic regions and put them on an island you will get something like Taiwan. (In fact Taiwan was founded by Chinese immigrants from many different parts of China whose dialects are not all intelligible) If you put 1000 Africans on an island you get something like Haiti.
Usually Europeans, East Asians and non-muslim Asian Indians are not a big problem. Those countries have a rich history of civilization and culture even if some of them (like East Europe, India, North Korea and China) are very poor. Of course any immigrant will raise population density and will cause pollution and an increased demand for fossil fuels, which of course causes global warming (topic), so overpopulated places like Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands would be better off if they stop all immigration immediately.
But when it comes to criminality and assimilation, poverty is not and never was the problem. The Irish immigration wave was caused by the big famine in Ireland and most immigrants had literally nothing except their clothes. Today many Chinese immigrants in America are dirt-poor and are less criminal than the average White and Chinese as a group already have a higher average household income than the average white household in the USA. After WW2, Germany, Japan and Korea (after the Korean War) were completely destroyed and plagued with famine. There are hundreds of examples of hard-working civilized people who lifted themselves out of poverty without or only with little outside aid.
On the other hand some people get one uplift-program after another and still are unable to integrate into civilization.
You are Australian, so let's look at the Aboriginies. On intelligence tests they score at average IQ 62, their skulls are about 3 times as thick as Europeans and their brain weights 75% of that of an European, or to put in another way, a grown up Aboriginie scores about the same on average as an average 9-year old European on IQ-tests. And being Aboriginal, they don't even fall into the "43.5 per cent were either born overseas, or have a parent who was born overseas" you quote, so it quite clearly doesn't matter where you are born, now does it? Is it really surprising to you that Chinese immigrants who score slightly higher than Europeans (IQ 102 to 105 depending on source) will arrive dirt-poor but be able to build up a business or hold a job and integrate into society while Aboriginies will stay poor even with Affirmative Action and millions spent for uplift programs generation after generation?
So when you have streets with "more italian or chinese restaurants", that's nothing really surprising. What is surprising for me is how you show your leftish pride in boasting how high-IQ foreigners integrated into your society while Aboriginals still live in poverty, even though they certainly are not "foreigners" at all, or are they, noigmn? Shouldn't you be ashamed instead? Or to use leftish rhetoric, shouldn't you be ashamed that you English took away their ancestral lands and now give parts of it to Italians and Chinese so that even less is
After I read "Even after Microsoft took the lead in the video-game wars a year ago with its innovative and powerful Xbox 360 [..]" I knew the article is just hype.
First of all, Microsoft didn't take the lead, Playstation 2 still outsells all versions of XBox combined by a rather large margin.
Second, while XBox360 may be very powerful, it sure isn't innovative. The only things that changed between XBox1 and XBox360 are a faster CPU (pretty much to be expected), wireless controllers (not innovative because the technology has been available in stores for many years) and an improved online service (which arguably may be innovative but in fact is just a little more than a glorified ICQ which is nothing really new either).
I think the PS3 is overpriced, rushed out of the door and overpowered, but it sure is innovative: Cell is a completely new architecture and Blu Ray a completely new storage medium.
Of course innovative doesn't equal "better" - which probably is a very subjective thing. However when it comes to innovation I don't see a lot of it on XBox360.
I think you'll find we have a population density of two people per square kilometer and live on quater acre blocks. It's not like we are running out of space.
Space is not and never was the problem.
The problem is to feed the population. I'm no expert on Australia, but rising oil prices will cause rising costs for fertilizers, fuels and pestizides - which will cause shortages in a lot of industrialized countries - even in some countries which are exporting food right now. In countries like the UK which imports half it's food today it may even cause famines.
Nobody ever said anybody would run out of "space".
And the average Australian is quite welcoming of foreigners, or at least here in Melbourne.
I know for a fact that about 2/3 of people in the USA and western Europe are opposed of mass-imigration from the 3rd world. Of course there is a big difference between having a few immigrants in the city or being swamped by immigrants like in some suburbs in Paris for example.
Also the big multiculturalists like Bill Clinton, Jospin, Blair, Jorge W Bush, Angelina Jolie and all the others all live in areas that are almost purely European. If they think that immigration is so great, why do all the multiculturalists avoid 3rd-world immigrants in real life?
Here in Europe there is not much news about Australia, but I heard about the Lebanese gang rapes and the riots in Australia. So you seem to have the very same problems with the 3rd-world immigrants like every other target country.
I've noticed recently our PM has tryed to make us a bit more racist and unaccepting, but I think now people are pretty bored of it and have settled back into normal life.
LOL. The politicians are busy building their multicultural government with them on top - a bit like the aristocrazy in the middle ages. Or like Brazil or Mexico today. They hate a middle-class, they'd rather have dynasties (like the Kennedys, the Bushes, etc.) on top and some impoverished 3rd-world people on bottom. They look with envy at the leaders of Mexico and Brazil where corruption is so normal that it's accepted.
That's why they are pushing immigration against the will of a big majority of people.
Of course I don't know that much about Australia, but recently even the Australians made the news here:
And I for one salute you for it. You did something many are too afraid to do: To defend your country and not let it get taken over by 3rd-world criminals.
If you compare that to cities like Detroit, New Orleans or parts of New York, London and Paris - where the original inhabitants have fled and the areas have become part of the 3rd world, the Australians seem to have much more backbone than many others, so my congratulations.
[..] stopped support for refugees from oppressed nations [..]
If that were true, I'd certainly vote for him, because being flooded by "refugees from oppressed nations" (translation: population surplus from irresponsibly breeding 3rd world populations) is much worse than global warming.
Just look at what is happening in Paris. Or London. Or Los Angeles. Or Miami. Or any place with a large 3rd-world population.
Or just compare the flooding of New Orleans with the flooding of areas many times bigger (both in area and population) in Taiwan a couple of years ago, Romania last year, Bulgaria 2 years ago or central Europe a couple of years ago.
Global warming will be bad enough as it is. No need to make it worse by importing irresponsibility, criminality, overpopulation and disease from the 3rd world.
Be happy if you are lead by politicians who actually do their job (caring about the people who voted them into office is their job. Caring about 3rd world countries is not)
I know you are joking, but the surprise isn't the sex, it's the shameless questioning of the orthodoxy.
You know, the official orthodoxy about human evolution goes something like this (out-of-Africa hypothesis):
Homo sapiens evolves in eastern Africa
Homo sapiens spreads over the world
Homo sapiens keeps a strict apartheid non-miscenagion policy and exterminates all other humanoids (like Homo erectus and Neanderthals) - that's why we are all equal.
Evolution stops immideately so the equality is preserved all over the globe or alternatively it is claimed that evolution happens too slowly to have any effect in 10000 years.
Of course there are several holes in that hypothesis (and the claimed lack of any miscenagion is one of those - but of course the biggest hole of all is that we don't see a lot of equality but a lot of diversity instead. The supposed lack of evolution in the last couple of thousand years is also a very bold claim that is not supported by any evidence and is actually pretty far-fetched). The problem is only that all the holes are politically very sensitive because you must not question equality.
Actually the theory that humans have interbreed with the various forms of Homo erectus/Neanderthals is nothing really new, some have theorized that the gene of red hair came from the Neanderthals.
With interbreeding, the whole out-of-Africa hypothesis is in danger: After all, with interbreeding there is no single ancestor or small groups of ancestors.
So this is nothing new, what is new is that it's on CNN. And that is IMO a big surprise, probably the journalists didn't quite understand that this questions the fundamental pillar of current political correctness.
Of course with the advances in genetics it is only a matter of time when the out-of-Africa hypothesis gets questioned outright, the evidence is piling up already.
IMO the most important thing would be to prevent further spread of the virus.
Does anybody know wether patients which use the anti-HIV drugs available can still infect others?
Of course we would need mandatory HIV-tests on the border which wouldn't be very politically correct. But if every country would implement those, it would be possible to effectively eliminate AIDS in one country after another.
Most fishing is done within the 200-mile coastal zones which are not "global", but clearly national. But of course some fishing is done in international waters.
The main driver for large families is poverty.
That's nonsense.
For thousands of years, the driver for population growth was wealth as you can feed more kids with more wealth. The introduction of contraceptives has changed this insofar as the responsible reduced their family sizes while the irresponsible continue to breed like there is no tomorrow. (It *IS* irresponsible to have kids if you cannot feed them, regardless of how many kids you already have. If you can support them, it's not irresponsible to have 6 or more kids, but it's irresponsible to have even one child if you are on welfare.)
Anyway, the situation we see in industrialized countries is the actual extinction of the middle class: Because of taxes you need 2 incomes to supoort 1 or 2 kids at an acceptable level so the middle class is far below replacement rate. The poor live off welfare anyway and the more warm bodies they produce, the more welfare they get so they logically have more children. The rich can easily support as many children (even with private school, etc.) as they want, so they too are also above replacement rate.
It's always a matter of resources: The state taxes the middle class to subsidize poverty. Because you always get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax, it's just the logical conclusion that you will have less of a middle class and more poverty in the long term.
The best answer to overpopulation, short of the obvious barbaric ones, is to reduce poverty in poorer countries. To spread wealth and resources around the world more more equitably.
Nonsense again. Spreading resources will only raise population growth - Billions are spread to Africa every year, with the only effect of having more people and more poverty.
Development aid should be striclty in the form of contraceptives and technology, never food. If everybody had access to contraceptives and is told that if they want kids they will have to support them themselves without any help from the state, poverty would be eliminated within 2 human generations.
But of course that will never happen. It just isn't sexy and it's too easy.
Do-gooders want recognizion, invitation to cocktail parties and of course donations. They would get neither for distributing contraceptives, it just isn't sexy. Do-gooders need emotional pictures of dirt-poor people, that is their business, that is what they sell, that is their businessm-model. And of course they pay their own salary and the salaries of their secretary and many others from those donations. They literally live off poverty. Without poverty, they would have to find a real job.
Do-gooders want to FIGHT problems, they will never do anything to SOLVE them. (If they would, they would be out of business. If things would actually get better in their target countries, they would no longer get any donations and all their dreams would shatter: No more parties, no more conferences, no more vacations all around the world, no more jobs as secretaries, assistants and office workers to give to friends and relatives. (You would be surprised how many people are needed to "spread money" who never leave the office. There is a huge buerocrazy involved, I sometimes wonder what they do all the time.))
Just look at all those social do-good organizations: "Fighting poverty", "fighting AIDS", "fighting malaria", etc. Everything they touch is getting worse in the long term, withoug exception.
Quite often they proudly state how many millions of donations they got in the last 10 or 20 years. I always ask: What exactly do they have to show for these insane sums of money? Did anything actually improve in the long term?
Of course the answer is that most things got worse: Instead of tousands starving you have now millions starving. And on top of that they are dependent on food aid.
So what is the answer of the do-gooders? They want even more donations to "spread wealth around the world", what a big surprise.
Immigration doesn't affect world population, you know.
You are wrong in 2 ways:
1) Overpopulation isn't really a global problem, it's mostly a local problem. Overpopulated Bangla Desh doesn't affect us a lot, now does it? Only mass immigration causes overpopulation in areas which otherwise wouldn't have any.
2) Of course it affects world population. If a country lives at or near the carrying capacity and is able to export it's population surplus, the remaining population will just breed more, because of the freed space. Just look at Mexico: Big emigration country, but still huge population growth.
There will be a lot of starvation because of soil degradation and lack of oil-based fertilizers. The immigration politics of the 1st world countries will decide wether those countries will join the 3rd world in things like extreme poverty, famine and diseases.
As I said, it's mostly a local problem. Of course it also has global effects, no doubt about that, but most effects (soil degradation, water pollution, ground-water level, etc.) are on a strict LOCAL level.
If the USB-device gives the key to the computer, all the protection is gone and the contents of the DVD can be ripped. - Except when the computer is "closed", which means the user can no longer freely access the hardware. (Similar to a gaming console nowadays).
However, if the hardware is closed, you no longer need the USB-scheme anyway, so what's the point?
When you talk of providing modern medicine - yes, great. Now look at who rapes who. The "west" (with its extraordinarily tight grip of patents, trademarks, copyrights on most modern drugs) is implicit in the denial of medicine to these countries. Why? Because the corporations of the west will not sell drugs in those countries at the low prices required.
You don't seem to understand the difference between patents, trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks and copyrights are irrelevant for drugs, please get yourself informed.
For patents, just in case you didn't know: They expire in about 15-20 years depending on jurisdiction.
So every drug available in the mid 1980's is patent free today, which means that even without a single patent you could easily get to the state-of-the-art of medicine of the mid-1980's, which is actually pretty good compared to anything Africans ever developed or invented.
But whining about the evil west is easier than actually working on the problem.
I totally agree, it can be an obvious gain; however, injecting the "nanny state" into this discussion is unnecessary. Inertia happens in any society, nanny state or not.
In my opinion, the nanny-state is subsidizing and cultivating stupidity and shortsightedness. The nanny-state causes people to think that they don't have to worry or care about any consequences their actions (or non-actions) have.
It's not an accident that the biggest nanny-states ever (the Soviet Union and most of communist east-Europa) was an environmental hell-hole.
There you go again with the straw man argument. You know damn well I wasn't saying we should do nothing. I actually agree with you on most points. I'm simply saying that in the real world, answers aren't quite so cut and dry as you present them.
The answers actually actually are pretty simple: Just tax the hell out of fossil fuels and let the producers of pollution pay for the damage they cause, so people will find alternatives ON THEIR OWN. There is absolutely no need for some state buerocrat to worry about where to put wind generators.
Part of the solution includes the method in convincing others to work toward a common goal. From a pragmatic standpoint, this can be almost as important as the goal itself. You can feel self righteous all you want, but if you come off as arrogant and dismissive, people will ignore you or contradict you simply because you are personally distasteful to them. This does not help anyone's long-term goals.
OK, however some honesty is also needed - and many facts may not be very pleasant.
As far as stone homes versus wood homes, it is you that is ignoring the problem. Yes, we should be building homes with energy efficiency in mind, stone or not. But you cannot reasonably ignore the existing population of energy-inefficient buildings when discussing solutions. Yes, you can insulate in the attic and install double-paned windows to get an immediate and substantial benefit. But that is a far cry from homes that are built from the ground up to be energy efficient. That's all I'm saying.
And if taxes on energy are high enough, they will at least insulate the attic and install double-paned windows. Yes it's not perfect (nothing is) but it's a lot better than doing nothing until the economy is in shambles. That's all I am saying.
More importantly, your assertion that modern windmills take no maintenance whatsoever is... ummm... questionable. You're telling me that a windmill in a northern state can handle hot days, rainy days, below freezing days, and the like for twenty years and yet need no maintenance and care whatsoever? You're telling me they will work during a thirty-below blizzard with no problems or energy drops? If so, they'd be the first structures in the history of mankind to do so.
Actually most well-built houses will survive all that without maintenance. There are many houses which stand for over 50 years without any structural maintenance at all. (Of course somebody will wipe the floors inside but we are talking about structure here)
The technology is not that new anymore and they are designed for low-maintenance. Otherwise the whole thing wouldn't make any sense.
As for coal, I am no coal advocate, but I can recognize that coal can be shipped. The US has a fairly extensive network of train tracks. This is incidentally how coal power works in the US. It's mined in a few places and shipped out to many other places. Hell, the coal was used for the transportation for a long time through the use of steam engines. This is not the same as wind, and I'm frankly annoyed that you even suggested that. You cannot ship wind and the windmills are useless where there is no wind.
Historically most coal power plants were built near coal mines, of course because some coal mines stopped producing coal, the respective power plant will get shipped coal. However I think electricity is much easier transported than coal, so if we don't wan
Yes, houses should be better insulated. Unfortunately, many homes are quite old and would require a non-trivial amount of money from the homeowner to improve. Since many new homeowners have a fat mortgage, children, a college fund, food bills, etc., a lot of folks will not rush out and do this.
Actually many houses are so badly insulated, that you could get back your investment within only a few years.
But, essentially you are right: It does cost something, sometimes a lot. And in this times in which everybody seems to be dependent on the nanny-state any change is seen as threatening.
But what is the alternative?
Let's ignore global warming completely. What is the alternative?
The alternative is that within 5-10 years Saudi-Arabia will no longer be able to satisfy rising demands and/or China will buy so much oil that there just won't be enough to heat all houses.
If you think that's great, OK.
I don't think that's great and taxing the hell out of all energy would be a big hassle now, but it would soften the blow that will come in the form of Peak Oil.
As far as your "use stone instead of wood houses," that is a red herring. Yes, when starting from scratch, a stone house would be better; however, US homes are overwhelmingly built upon wood construction. Those homes don't just magically go away just because we decide stone homes are better. Even if all new construction were to be stone homes -- a long shot considering that most construction workers are familiar with wood construction, not stone -- it would be a minuscule proportion of the total number of homes.
You are just making excuses to ignore the problem. The sooner you start, the sooner you get results.
In addition, what would you propose for earthquake-prone regions? Stone? I think not. A very good reason to build wood homes is that the wood home will sway in an earthquake instead of crumble. In 1989, a major quake hit my area. Many homes survived, but the chimneys were by and large ruined. You simply can't buy a home around here that doesn't have a cracked or repaired chimney.
Another excuse - and a pretty weak one: Only a "miniscule proportion of the total number of homes" stand in earthquake-prone regions. And of course you can use steel-reinforced concrete in these cases that will survive any earthquake.
The suggestion about smaller, more fuel-efficient cars is actually the most reasonable suggestion you've made. Far more so than the suggestion about wind power. Why? Check out wind density in the US. Wind power completely excludes the south and most of the southwest. Just have one state sell to another? One word: Enron. Not gonna happen.
Of course you install wind power only where it makes sense, that's pretty clear. I fail to see how lack of wind in the south prevents you from using wind power in the north, though.
Also, let's look at your numbers. Possibly up to 10% by 2020 in Germany? In the US, we consume upwards of 4.8 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (with a 't'). The larger windmills generate up to 5 megawatts if the wind is blowing to full potential and the windmill is in perfect working order. That's potentially about 43.8 million kilowatt-hours per year. Those 5 megawatt jobs require about an acre of land apiece (they're really big!). Hmmm... Not only would it require 19,178 of those monsters to handle 10% of the US in the perfect case (hint: we live in the real world where perfect cases don't exist), but you'd have to factor in the maintenance costs associated with keeping such a decentralized power source in good repair. This requires -- you guessed it -- more energy. If you think the repair aspect is trivial, just remember the climate found in those northern states where the wind is so abundant. Hot summers and below freezing winters with hail and sleet in between.
1) Of course they don't need an acre of land, they just need about 30m for the foundation, the surrounding land can be used as farmland j
Environmentalists: [..] gsms cause brain cancer (show me one single case...)
First of all, "environmentalists" are not a single block of people but there are many different opinions. Second, the mobile phone hysteria was bred by esoterics, not environmentalists and even though there might be some overlap, those are different groups. Third, this hysteria is pretty much over already, so you are not knocking down a strawman - it's already knocked down. 4: Even if "environmentalists" said that, being wrong on one thing doesn't make you wrong on everything.
There is not sufficient evidence to really change our policy (this btw, is unfortunately very true)
Actually there is sufficient evidence and a large part of the world DID already change it's policy. Germany is leading in wind power and Sweden wants to be independent of oil within some years. Many other countries do similar things to attack the problem.
Also, do you remember the problem with the ozone-layer? A world-wide effort by most countries (that time including the USA) dealt with the problem and it worked amazingly well. Today the ozone-layer is almost back to normal.
Therefore CO2 does not cause problems (this conclusion may be true, but the honest answer is : we don't know)
There is already a mountain of evidence that it does cause problems, but even if you ignore all that, messing around with something you are dependent on and you don't fully understand is pretty stupid, don't you agree? I think we should use a very conservative approach to environmental issues BECAUSE we don't fully understand it. To say it's "not a problem" because we don't understand it doesn't make the slightest sense at all.
Imho the environmentalist option to be against both oil and nuclear power is not going anywhere, it's just not helpful. You can call all you want for the moon to come down, but regardless it's just not going to happen. Also, you cannot turn of all energy in the country for 5 years until an alternative is developed. It needs to be here now, working and functional, and proven. Obviously you cannot turn over the country to something like wind power.
Things that can be done easily, without new technology and with modest investment:
insolate the houses better to safe heating
Use stone instead of wood houses so you no longer need air-conditioning (heavy stone houses don't heat up so quickly)
Yeah I know, it's a terrible suggestion, but using smaller cars would safe a lot too. There is no need to move 3 tons to transport a 70kg human
BTW, wind power is already covering 4,3% of Germany's electricity (per 2005) and will cover 10% or more by 2020. The USA with a much lower population density could cover a much higher percentage than that.
Having said all that, I'm not really worried about global warming because the very same people who want to "safe the economy" by wasting oil will run the economy right into the ground as soon as Saudi-Arabia hits peak oil. (probably before 2010, but even if they can hold out longer it's merely a question of when, not if)
When attempting this in the middle of an otherwise wealthy and well organized country, there are a VERY different set of problems to be faced. Essentially, Detroit is a city that had no particular reason to BE a city of its size in the modern day, other than the centralization of one particular industry. When that industry left, the city had nothing to fall back on.
If it were only Detroit you might have a point, but if you look at diversity-enriched neighborhoods, no matter wether in Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Paris (France), London (England) or Kinshasa - you get a repeating pattern when it's about education and "high-tech" middle class.
In Africa, there is a lack of a high tech presense, and it's pretty clear that it's coming.
The per-capita income has decreased since independence in almost every sub-saharan country.
Roads and railways were built during colonization and have been falling apart since. For example the democratic republic Congo has only about 10% of it's road-net left it had 40 years ago.
In the 1960's and 1970's Africa exported food and the only country with widespread famine was Ethiopia - which was never a colony (Ethiopia's capital was briefly occupied by Italy for 7 years before WW2, but that is hardly colonization). Now many sub-saharan countries receive food-aid and there is still much more famine than 50 years ago. For some strange reason it is not politically correct to suggest birth control for Africans.
Witchcraft has a made a big comeback in Africa, in many countries like for example Zimbabwe, people are thrown in jail for "witchcraft".
Cannibalism is also coming back big. The pygmies in the democratic republic Congo even plead to the UN in 2003 that they face extintion because both parties in the civil-war treat them like a game-animal. But cannibalism has been reported in many other conflicts all over Africa.
Slavery is already widespread in many west-African countries and even Haiti. (Look for "restavec" on Google) - In fact the only period in which there was NO slavery in Africa was during white colonization, the irony!
Sorry, but nothing in Africa points to the conclusion that high-tech is coming.
Quite the contrary, Africa is heading clearly to a mass-starvation of several hundred millions as soon as 1st-world countries can no longer afford to send huge amounts of food to Africa. With roads falling apart, a comback of tribal superstitions, cannibalism and belief in witchcraft it looks like Africa is going right back to the state before the Europeans started colonizing it in the late 19th century.
I know you were joking, but there are high hopes that the $100 laptop poject will lead to an overall increase in the standard of living in these countries by creating the possibility of a high-tech middle class.
Now it seems you are joking.
Dozens of uplift-programs in Detroit, Washington DC and other divercity-enriched-cities didn't create a high-tech middle class. Washington DC spends almost twice as much per student as the rest of the USA, but the students still score much worse than average on every cognitive test ever created (SAT-scores, IQ-tests, college evaluation tests, you name it.).
I think everybody (including you) knows very well that the 100$ laptop project will fail just like all other uplift programs failed. The only possibility is that the do-gooders (who usually include many politicians who proudly spend the taxpayer's money with both hands) will invite each other to feel-good parties and compliment each other on their "altruism".
I'm thinking the same thing. A lot of people will not want the new interface and will rather use OpenOffice (which is pretty similar to the current MS Office interface) or keep their old version as long as possible than upgrade.
The parent comment may have been incorrect but it was not rude nor did it suggest anyone was stupid or ignorant.
Implying that the time of anybody who uses Linux is without value, is rude.
Not everyone wants the hassle of switching OS or running duel boot systems that does not mean they are stupid, ignorant or "fanboys".
True.
But to talk about printer-setup for a single computer when the topic is a government with 70,000 PCs switching to Linux IS stupid, ignorant and "fanboyish". So I stand to everything I wrote.
It seems that no matter the topic (for example in stories about embedded systems, servers, clusters or big governmental installations) some people are either knowingly (which would be fanboyish) or not knowingly (which would be ignorant and stupid) talk about personal home desktops.
Even you seem to fanatically stick to home desktop systems. OK, maybe I was not clear enough:
This is not about home desktops. Forget dual boot, forget games, forget users failing to install hardware (that's the IT-department's job), forget all that.
Also, it's "dual-boot", not "duel-boot". Nobody is dueling.
Also, just FYI, setting up printers with Linux isn't nearly as difficult as the grandparent wanted to suggest, almost all printers are autodetected. But that is offtopic here.
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Since you seem to be afraid of quoting me, I don't know what exactly you are referring to, so I assume it's the immigration policy.
My opinion, summed up, is that the immigration policy should match what is best for the country. First that means that some optimal level of population density should be calculated, depending on the food and goods output and the preferred standard of living. If the country cannot survive without outside help (like the UK) allowing mass immigration is an act of massive stupidity. Of course thinks may be different in Australia, I don't know enough about the Australian food production to tell. Second it means to choose what immigrants you let in. I think a very good way of doing that would be to do an IQ-test and only let those in who surpass the average IQ (in that way immigration would raise the average IQ which is good for the country).
But you will find that addressing social problems in the long term usually ends better than throwing around stats and closing the borders.
Really? In New Orleans, Detroit and in numerous places there are hundreds, maybe thousands of places to "address social problems" in exactly the kind of ways you propose. What did it help?
Quite to the contrary. While first generation immigrants do arguably well, the second generation has been conditioned to accept social handouts that they do WORSE than the first generation (at least that's the situation of Mexicans in the USA and Turks in Europe) and are more likely to be on welfare.
That actually shows that social programs are actually counterproductive.
Social programs mean stealing from the productive (with taxes) and giving it to the unproductive. You always get more of what you subsidize so it's pretty logical that you get more unproductive each generation. Before welfare reform (which was ironically done by Bill Clinton) drug addicted welfare moms had a very high rate of fertility.
Even if you think that genetics is racist and everything depends on environment, giving crack mothers the incentive to make more babies is just stupid. Even you have to admit that a crack mother won't give a very good environment for child rearing.
So basically it doesn't matter if you believe in genetics or not. Even if you don't, social programs don't make any sense the way they are implemented now.
Now when we talk about low-IQ immigration, it doesn't cause these problems, but it clearly accelerates them.
Closing the borders usually coincides with closing of minds and ending of freedom of speech.
Actually some European countries (like France or the UK) are ending freedom of speech to keep the borders OPEN.
Other European countries without many immigrants, basically Iceland and Finnland are under the most free countries in the world.
Or am I one because I would enter a black area and say hi rather than hide under the table.
That would make you suicidal. But just go ahead and try it.
Just give them the same rights and same basic respect in society.
LOL, that is actually a rightist, racist and "fascist" point of view.
There were many initiatives in the USA (California and Michigan, probably other states) to abolish affirmative action and really give everybody the same rights. Everytime the media and people like you called these initiatives racist.
I personally think that everybody should have the same rights, but I realize that that will not lead to equal outcomes.
I also have no problem with them screening certain areas more in immigration, because some areas are worse and have more crime.
That is called "profiling" (look it up on Google), another very racist thing (according to the press). Like so many lefties, as soon as the discussion touches some details, you seem to start to embrace views of the right, acc
Nonsense. That's just your interpretation. I never claimed objective superiority. What I do is claim that our subjective preferred way of live (with democracy, human rights, etc.) will disappear with too much 3rd-world immigration.
Of course you may that the west is evil and does not have a right to survive, well then we have to disagree: I say that the western nations have a right to exist, to defend their way of live on their soil (not in Iraq).
I don't know this for sure, but I'm guessing if I left you in the middle of Australia without food or transport and with no roads in sight, the Aboriginal would be far superior to you.
Probably. Aboriginals actually have a larger visual cortex which helps them remember paths in vast deserts (which is why many of them are quite successful as pathfinders) and a couple of other evolutionary adaptations.
You were basing your 'facts' on a test designed for our form of society and deciding that other forms were a problem because they didn't fit the test.
Wrong. The tests are not the "basis" of the facts. The basis are the differences we see in the world everyday (New Orleans blacks shoot at rescue helicopters, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Central Europeans and Chinese don't. (And as a matter of fact, neither did New Orleans whites) Haiti has been transformed from a lush tropical forest land to almost barren rock. Blacks are about 5 to 10 times as likely to commit murder all around the world (be it the USA, South Africa or England). The "achievement gap" is real and documented.
All those real world facts and events are the basis. IQ-tests, brain size, brain chemistry and testosterone levels are merely an explanation for those facts, not the basis.
You on the other hand don't offer ANY connection between your hypothesis and the real world. While I constantly present numerous examples (New Orleans, Detroit, Haiti, Liberia, etc. etc.) you present nothing. Zero. Nada. Your hypothesis does not have any foundation in reality, it's merely a daydream, some kind of utopia which only exists as wishful thinking, not in reality.
So as I said, it is the approach to the people, not the people that is the problem.
You keep believing it, yet you have not a single example of the "correct approach" that actually worked and transformed a majority black or majority aboriginal area into a self-ruled and productive part of industrial society.
We have tonnes of Africans already, we have aboriginals already, what will change if we have a few more?
If you have a FEW more, not much will change.
If you have a LOT more, a lot will change. Just look at Detroit or the infamous Paris suburbs as an example. There is not a single majority-black area that has been under black rule for an extended period of time you want to live in. (If there is, please tell me so. There are numerous examples of black-ruled places which have never been colonies (like Liberia and Ethiopia), have been independent for very long times (Haiti over 200 years).
As a matter of fact, Africa produces many millions of refugees every year, so there is an endless supply and they will keep coming forever as long as either somebody stops them or the target country looks like Detroit or Haiti and is no longer "better off".
Of course you are not honest enough to say that you want to get away from blacks/arabs/other 3rd worlders when you move to the suburbs. You will say that you want to get away from drugs and crime.
If you really believe what you are saying, why don't you move to some area which is majority black and under black rule?
All my observations were based on facts, you know the European tradition (called empirical method, look it up) going back to such evil Nazis like Aristotle.
A funny fact is that the Nazis (like most socialists) forbade all kinds of intelligence testing because Jews got too good scores on them, which contradicted their worldview. So instead of changing their worldview, they just forbade inconvenient facts. Like most socialists, the Nazis ignored many facts and pursued their own ideas which were not based on facts but on opinions.
So if you want to forbid or ignore intelligence tests, brain size, genetics and brain chemistry because you don't like the results you are pretty much on the same side as the Nazis, which I personally think is hillarious.
To give an idea of the futility of your comment in Melbourne, here's a quote from wikipedia:
"Today Melbourne is a diverse and multicultural city. Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas, and the city is home to residents from 233 countries, who speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. In 2004, 43.5 per cent were either born overseas, or have a parent who was born overseas."
You didn't quite understand my argument. I specifically spoke about 3rd-world people, which of course is a generalization, but the point is that some integrate better than others into civilized society.
If you put 1000 Europeans from 20 different countries and put them on an island you will get something like Ireland. If you put 1000 East Asians from 20 different linguistic regions and put them on an island you will get something like Taiwan. (In fact Taiwan was founded by Chinese immigrants from many different parts of China whose dialects are not all intelligible) If you put 1000 Africans on an island you get something like Haiti.
Usually Europeans, East Asians and non-muslim Asian Indians are not a big problem. Those countries have a rich history of civilization and culture even if some of them (like East Europe, India, North Korea and China) are very poor. Of course any immigrant will raise population density and will cause pollution and an increased demand for fossil fuels, which of course causes global warming (topic), so overpopulated places like Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands would be better off if they stop all immigration immediately.
But when it comes to criminality and assimilation, poverty is not and never was the problem. The Irish immigration wave was caused by the big famine in Ireland and most immigrants had literally nothing except their clothes. Today many Chinese immigrants in America are dirt-poor and are less criminal than the average White and Chinese as a group already have a higher average household income than the average white household in the USA. After WW2, Germany, Japan and Korea (after the Korean War) were completely destroyed and plagued with famine. There are hundreds of examples of hard-working civilized people who lifted themselves out of poverty without or only with little outside aid.
On the other hand some people get one uplift-program after another and still are unable to integrate into civilization.
You are Australian, so let's look at the Aboriginies. On intelligence tests they score at average IQ 62, their skulls are about 3 times as thick as Europeans and their brain weights 75% of that of an European, or to put in another way, a grown up Aboriginie scores about the same on average as an average 9-year old European on IQ-tests. And being Aboriginal, they don't even fall into the "43.5 per cent were either born overseas, or have a parent who was born overseas" you quote, so it quite clearly doesn't matter where you are born, now does it? Is it really surprising to you that Chinese immigrants who score slightly higher than Europeans (IQ 102 to 105 depending on source) will arrive dirt-poor but be able to build up a business or hold a job and integrate into society while Aboriginies will stay poor even with Affirmative Action and millions spent for uplift programs generation after generation?
So when you have streets with "more italian or chinese restaurants", that's nothing really surprising. What is surprising for me is how you show your leftish pride in boasting how high-IQ foreigners integrated into your society while Aboriginals still live in poverty, even though they certainly are not "foreigners" at all, or are they, noigmn? Shouldn't you be ashamed instead? Or to use leftish rhetoric, shouldn't you be ashamed that you English took away their ancestral lands and now give parts of it to Italians and Chinese so that even less is
First of all, Microsoft didn't take the lead, Playstation 2 still outsells all versions of XBox combined by a rather large margin.
Second, while XBox360 may be very powerful, it sure isn't innovative. The only things that changed between XBox1 and XBox360 are a faster CPU (pretty much to be expected), wireless controllers (not innovative because the technology has been available in stores for many years) and an improved online service (which arguably may be innovative but in fact is just a little more than a glorified ICQ which is nothing really new either).
I think the PS3 is overpriced, rushed out of the door and overpowered, but it sure is innovative: Cell is a completely new architecture and Blu Ray a completely new storage medium.
Of course innovative doesn't equal "better" - which probably is a very subjective thing. However when it comes to innovation I don't see a lot of it on XBox360.
Space is not and never was the problem.
The problem is to feed the population. I'm no expert on Australia, but rising oil prices will cause rising costs for fertilizers, fuels and pestizides - which will cause shortages in a lot of industrialized countries - even in some countries which are exporting food right now. In countries like the UK which imports half it's food today it may even cause famines.
Nobody ever said anybody would run out of "space".
And the average Australian is quite welcoming of foreigners, or at least here in Melbourne.
I know for a fact that about 2/3 of people in the USA and western Europe are opposed of mass-imigration from the 3rd world. Of course there is a big difference between having a few immigrants in the city or being swamped by immigrants like in some suburbs in Paris for example.
Also the big multiculturalists like Bill Clinton, Jospin, Blair, Jorge W Bush, Angelina Jolie and all the others all live in areas that are almost purely European. If they think that immigration is so great, why do all the multiculturalists avoid 3rd-world immigrants in real life?
Here in Europe there is not much news about Australia, but I heard about the Lebanese gang rapes and the riots in Australia. So you seem to have the very same problems with the 3rd-world immigrants like every other target country.
I've noticed recently our PM has tryed to make us a bit more racist and unaccepting, but I think now people are pretty bored of it and have settled back into normal life.
LOL. The politicians are busy building their multicultural government with them on top - a bit like the aristocrazy in the middle ages. Or like Brazil or Mexico today. They hate a middle-class, they'd rather have dynasties (like the Kennedys, the Bushes, etc.) on top and some impoverished 3rd-world people on bottom. They look with envy at the leaders of Mexico and Brazil where corruption is so normal that it's accepted.
That's why they are pushing immigration against the will of a big majority of people.
Of course I don't know that much about Australia, but recently even the Australians made the news here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots
And I for one salute you for it. You did something many are too afraid to do: To defend your country and not let it get taken over by 3rd-world criminals.
If you compare that to cities like Detroit, New Orleans or parts of New York, London and Paris - where the original inhabitants have fled and the areas have become part of the 3rd world, the Australians seem to have much more backbone than many others, so my congratulations.
If that were true, I'd certainly vote for him, because being flooded by "refugees from oppressed nations" (translation: population surplus from irresponsibly breeding 3rd world populations) is much worse than global warming.
Just look at what is happening in Paris. Or London. Or Los Angeles. Or Miami. Or any place with a large 3rd-world population.
Or just compare the flooding of New Orleans with the flooding of areas many times bigger (both in area and population) in Taiwan a couple of years ago, Romania last year, Bulgaria 2 years ago or central Europe a couple of years ago.
Global warming will be bad enough as it is. No need to make it worse by importing irresponsibility, criminality, overpopulation and disease from the 3rd world.
Be happy if you are lead by politicians who actually do their job (caring about the people who voted them into office is their job. Caring about 3rd world countries is not)
Greetings from Austria to Australia.
Actually stores with scarce products and looong lines in front of them is communism at it's finest.
Well, only that it was bread instaed of Playstations people where linnig up to....
You know, the official orthodoxy about human evolution goes something like this (out-of-Africa hypothesis):
Of course there are several holes in that hypothesis (and the claimed lack of any miscenagion is one of those - but of course the biggest hole of all is that we don't see a lot of equality but a lot of diversity instead. The supposed lack of evolution in the last couple of thousand years is also a very bold claim that is not supported by any evidence and is actually pretty far-fetched). The problem is only that all the holes are politically very sensitive because you must not question equality.
Actually the theory that humans have interbreed with the various forms of Homo erectus/Neanderthals is nothing really new, some have theorized that the gene of red hair came from the Neanderthals.
With interbreeding, the whole out-of-Africa hypothesis is in danger: After all, with interbreeding there is no single ancestor or small groups of ancestors.
So this is nothing new, what is new is that it's on CNN. And that is IMO a big surprise, probably the journalists didn't quite understand that this questions the fundamental pillar of current political correctness.
Of course with the advances in genetics it is only a matter of time when the out-of-Africa hypothesis gets questioned outright, the evidence is piling up already.
Does anybody know wether patients which use the anti-HIV drugs available can still infect others?
Of course we would need mandatory HIV-tests on the border which wouldn't be very politically correct. But if every country would implement those, it would be possible to effectively eliminate AIDS in one country after another.
The main driver for large families is poverty.
That's nonsense.
For thousands of years, the driver for population growth was wealth as you can feed more kids with more wealth. The introduction of contraceptives has changed this insofar as the responsible reduced their family sizes while the irresponsible continue to breed like there is no tomorrow. (It *IS* irresponsible to have kids if you cannot feed them, regardless of how many kids you already have. If you can support them, it's not irresponsible to have 6 or more kids, but it's irresponsible to have even one child if you are on welfare.)
Anyway, the situation we see in industrialized countries is the actual extinction of the middle class: Because of taxes you need 2 incomes to supoort 1 or 2 kids at an acceptable level so the middle class is far below replacement rate. The poor live off welfare anyway and the more warm bodies they produce, the more welfare they get so they logically have more children. The rich can easily support as many children (even with private school, etc.) as they want, so they too are also above replacement rate.
It's always a matter of resources: The state taxes the middle class to subsidize poverty. Because you always get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax, it's just the logical conclusion that you will have less of a middle class and more poverty in the long term.
The best answer to overpopulation, short of the obvious barbaric ones, is to reduce poverty in poorer countries. To spread wealth and resources around the world more more equitably.
Nonsense again. Spreading resources will only raise population growth - Billions are spread to Africa every year, with the only effect of having more people and more poverty.
Development aid should be striclty in the form of contraceptives and technology, never food. If everybody had access to contraceptives and is told that if they want kids they will have to support them themselves without any help from the state, poverty would be eliminated within 2 human generations.
But of course that will never happen. It just isn't sexy and it's too easy.
Do-gooders want recognizion, invitation to cocktail parties and of course donations. They would get neither for distributing contraceptives, it just isn't sexy. Do-gooders need emotional pictures of dirt-poor people, that is their business, that is what they sell, that is their businessm-model. And of course they pay their own salary and the salaries of their secretary and many others from those donations. They literally live off poverty. Without poverty, they would have to find a real job.
Do-gooders want to FIGHT problems, they will never do anything to SOLVE them. (If they would, they would be out of business. If things would actually get better in their target countries, they would no longer get any donations and all their dreams would shatter: No more parties, no more conferences, no more vacations all around the world, no more jobs as secretaries, assistants and office workers to give to friends and relatives. (You would be surprised how many people are needed to "spread money" who never leave the office. There is a huge buerocrazy involved, I sometimes wonder what they do all the time.))
Just look at all those social do-good organizations: "Fighting poverty", "fighting AIDS", "fighting malaria", etc. Everything they touch is getting worse in the long term, withoug exception.
Quite often they proudly state how many millions of donations they got in the last 10 or 20 years. I always ask: What exactly do they have to show for these insane sums of money? Did anything actually improve in the long term?
Of course the answer is that most things got worse: Instead of tousands starving you have now millions starving. And on top of that they are dependent on food aid.
So what is the answer of the do-gooders? They want even more donations to "spread wealth around the world", what a big surprise.
I know I shouldn't reply on a troll, but it's about the peak of oil production, not to "run out".
Simplified, peak oil means that you no longer grow.
Since we are so accustomed to growth, we have a word for absence of growth: recession.
That recession will go on for several decades.
You are wrong in 2 ways:
1) Overpopulation isn't really a global problem, it's mostly a local problem. Overpopulated Bangla Desh doesn't affect us a lot, now does it? Only mass immigration causes overpopulation in areas which otherwise wouldn't have any.
2) Of course it affects world population. If a country lives at or near the carrying capacity and is able to export it's population surplus, the remaining population will just breed more, because of the freed space. Just look at Mexico: Big emigration country, but still huge population growth.
There will be a lot of starvation because of soil degradation and lack of oil-based fertilizers. The immigration politics of the 1st world countries will decide wether those countries will join the 3rd world in things like extreme poverty, famine and diseases.
As I said, it's mostly a local problem. Of course it also has global effects, no doubt about that, but most effects (soil degradation, water pollution, ground-water level, etc.) are on a strict LOCAL level.
If you compare the price of an (empty) DVD and a flash-based device of similar size you know why.
However, if the hardware is closed, you no longer need the USB-scheme anyway, so what's the point?
Carthage is in modern-day Tunisia, not Libya, get your facts straight.
You don't seem to understand the difference between patents, trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks and copyrights are irrelevant for drugs, please get yourself informed.
For patents, just in case you didn't know: They expire in about 15-20 years depending on jurisdiction.
So every drug available in the mid 1980's is patent free today, which means that even without a single patent you could easily get to the state-of-the-art of medicine of the mid-1980's, which is actually pretty good compared to anything Africans ever developed or invented.
But whining about the evil west is easier than actually working on the problem.
If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Libya you see that Libya is awfully overpopulated (= the population can only be kept alive with food imports) and getting more so.
As soon as the oil money can no longer buy enough food imports, expect a big famine. The same goes for Saudi-Arabia, BTW.
In my opinion, the nanny-state is subsidizing and cultivating stupidity and shortsightedness. The nanny-state causes people to think that they don't have to worry or care about any consequences their actions (or non-actions) have.
It's not an accident that the biggest nanny-states ever (the Soviet Union and most of communist east-Europa) was an environmental hell-hole.
There you go again with the straw man argument. You know damn well I wasn't saying we should do nothing. I actually agree with you on most points. I'm simply saying that in the real world, answers aren't quite so cut and dry as you present them.
The answers actually actually are pretty simple: Just tax the hell out of fossil fuels and let the producers of pollution pay for the damage they cause, so people will find alternatives ON THEIR OWN. There is absolutely no need for some state buerocrat to worry about where to put wind generators.
Part of the solution includes the method in convincing others to work toward a common goal. From a pragmatic standpoint, this can be almost as important as the goal itself. You can feel self righteous all you want, but if you come off as arrogant and dismissive, people will ignore you or contradict you simply because you are personally distasteful to them. This does not help anyone's long-term goals.
OK, however some honesty is also needed - and many facts may not be very pleasant.
As far as stone homes versus wood homes, it is you that is ignoring the problem. Yes, we should be building homes with energy efficiency in mind, stone or not. But you cannot reasonably ignore the existing population of energy-inefficient buildings when discussing solutions. Yes, you can insulate in the attic and install double-paned windows to get an immediate and substantial benefit. But that is a far cry from homes that are built from the ground up to be energy efficient. That's all I'm saying.
And if taxes on energy are high enough, they will at least insulate the attic and install double-paned windows. Yes it's not perfect (nothing is) but it's a lot better than doing nothing until the economy is in shambles. That's all I am saying.
More importantly, your assertion that modern windmills take no maintenance whatsoever is... ummm... questionable. You're telling me that a windmill in a northern state can handle hot days, rainy days, below freezing days, and the like for twenty years and yet need no maintenance and care whatsoever? You're telling me they will work during a thirty-below blizzard with no problems or energy drops? If so, they'd be the first structures in the history of mankind to do so.
Actually most well-built houses will survive all that without maintenance. There are many houses which stand for over 50 years without any structural maintenance at all. (Of course somebody will wipe the floors inside but we are talking about structure here)
The technology is not that new anymore and they are designed for low-maintenance. Otherwise the whole thing wouldn't make any sense.
As for coal, I am no coal advocate, but I can recognize that coal can be shipped. The US has a fairly extensive network of train tracks. This is incidentally how coal power works in the US. It's mined in a few places and shipped out to many other places. Hell, the coal was used for the transportation for a long time through the use of steam engines. This is not the same as wind, and I'm frankly annoyed that you even suggested that. You cannot ship wind and the windmills are useless where there is no wind.
Historically most coal power plants were built near coal mines, of course because some coal mines stopped producing coal, the respective power plant will get shipped coal. However I think electricity is much easier transported than coal, so if we don't wan
Actually many houses are so badly insulated, that you could get back your investment within only a few years.
But, essentially you are right: It does cost something, sometimes a lot. And in this times in which everybody seems to be dependent on the nanny-state any change is seen as threatening.
But what is the alternative?
Let's ignore global warming completely. What is the alternative?
The alternative is that within 5-10 years Saudi-Arabia will no longer be able to satisfy rising demands and/or China will buy so much oil that there just won't be enough to heat all houses.
If you think that's great, OK.
I don't think that's great and taxing the hell out of all energy would be a big hassle now, but it would soften the blow that will come in the form of Peak Oil.
As far as your "use stone instead of wood houses," that is a red herring. Yes, when starting from scratch, a stone house would be better; however, US homes are overwhelmingly built upon wood construction. Those homes don't just magically go away just because we decide stone homes are better. Even if all new construction were to be stone homes -- a long shot considering that most construction workers are familiar with wood construction, not stone -- it would be a minuscule proportion of the total number of homes.
You are just making excuses to ignore the problem. The sooner you start, the sooner you get results.
In addition, what would you propose for earthquake-prone regions? Stone? I think not. A very good reason to build wood homes is that the wood home will sway in an earthquake instead of crumble. In 1989, a major quake hit my area. Many homes survived, but the chimneys were by and large ruined. You simply can't buy a home around here that doesn't have a cracked or repaired chimney.
Another excuse - and a pretty weak one: Only a "miniscule proportion of the total number of homes" stand in earthquake-prone regions. And of course you can use steel-reinforced concrete in these cases that will survive any earthquake.
The suggestion about smaller, more fuel-efficient cars is actually the most reasonable suggestion you've made. Far more so than the suggestion about wind power. Why? Check out wind density in the US. Wind power completely excludes the south and most of the southwest. Just have one state sell to another? One word: Enron. Not gonna happen.
Of course you install wind power only where it makes sense, that's pretty clear. I fail to see how lack of wind in the south prevents you from using wind power in the north, though.
Also, let's look at your numbers. Possibly up to 10% by 2020 in Germany? In the US, we consume upwards of 4.8 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (with a 't'). The larger windmills generate up to 5 megawatts if the wind is blowing to full potential and the windmill is in perfect working order. That's potentially about 43.8 million kilowatt-hours per year. Those 5 megawatt jobs require about an acre of land apiece (they're really big!). Hmmm... Not only would it require 19,178 of those monsters to handle 10% of the US in the perfect case (hint: we live in the real world where perfect cases don't exist), but you'd have to factor in the maintenance costs associated with keeping such a decentralized power source in good repair. This requires -- you guessed it -- more energy. If you think the repair aspect is trivial, just remember the climate found in those northern states where the wind is so abundant. Hot summers and below freezing winters with hail and sleet in between.
1) Of course they don't need an acre of land, they just need about 30m for the foundation, the surrounding land can be used as farmland j
First of all, "environmentalists" are not a single block of people but there are many different opinions. Second, the mobile phone hysteria was bred by esoterics, not environmentalists and even though there might be some overlap, those are different groups. Third, this hysteria is pretty much over already, so you are not knocking down a strawman - it's already knocked down. 4: Even if "environmentalists" said that, being wrong on one thing doesn't make you wrong on everything.
There is not sufficient evidence to really change our policy (this btw, is unfortunately very true)
Actually there is sufficient evidence and a large part of the world DID already change it's policy. Germany is leading in wind power and Sweden wants to be independent of oil within some years. Many other countries do similar things to attack the problem.
Also, do you remember the problem with the ozone-layer? A world-wide effort by most countries (that time including the USA) dealt with the problem and it worked amazingly well. Today the ozone-layer is almost back to normal.
Therefore CO2 does not cause problems (this conclusion may be true, but the honest answer is : we don't know)
There is already a mountain of evidence that it does cause problems, but even if you ignore all that, messing around with something you are dependent on and you don't fully understand is pretty stupid, don't you agree? I think we should use a very conservative approach to environmental issues BECAUSE we don't fully understand it. To say it's "not a problem" because we don't understand it doesn't make the slightest sense at all.
Imho the environmentalist option to be against both oil and nuclear power is not going anywhere, it's just not helpful. You can call all you want for the moon to come down, but regardless it's just not going to happen. Also, you cannot turn of all energy in the country for 5 years until an alternative is developed. It needs to be here now, working and functional, and proven. Obviously you cannot turn over the country to something like wind power.
Things that can be done easily, without new technology and with modest investment:
BTW, wind power is already covering 4,3% of Germany's electricity (per 2005) and will cover 10% or more by 2020. The USA with a much lower population density could cover a much higher percentage than that.
Having said all that, I'm not really worried about global warming because the very same people who want to "safe the economy" by wasting oil will run the economy right into the ground as soon as Saudi-Arabia hits peak oil. (probably before 2010, but even if they can hold out longer it's merely a question of when, not if)
If it were only Detroit you might have a point, but if you look at diversity-enriched neighborhoods, no matter wether in Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Paris (France), London (England) or Kinshasa - you get a repeating pattern when it's about education and "high-tech" middle class.
In Africa, there is a lack of a high tech presense, and it's pretty clear that it's coming.
Sorry, but nothing in Africa points to the conclusion that high-tech is coming.
Quite the contrary, Africa is heading clearly to a mass-starvation of several hundred millions as soon as 1st-world countries can no longer afford to send huge amounts of food to Africa. With roads falling apart, a comback of tribal superstitions, cannibalism and belief in witchcraft it looks like Africa is going right back to the state before the Europeans started colonizing it in the late 19th century.
Now it seems you are joking.
Dozens of uplift-programs in Detroit, Washington DC and other divercity-enriched-cities didn't create a high-tech middle class. Washington DC spends almost twice as much per student as the rest of the USA, but the students still score much worse than average on every cognitive test ever created (SAT-scores, IQ-tests, college evaluation tests, you name it.).
I think everybody (including you) knows very well that the 100$ laptop project will fail just like all other uplift programs failed. The only possibility is that the do-gooders (who usually include many politicians who proudly spend the taxpayer's money with both hands) will invite each other to feel-good parties and compliment each other on their "altruism".
I'm thinking the same thing. A lot of people will not want the new interface and will rather use OpenOffice (which is pretty similar to the current MS Office interface) or keep their old version as long as possible than upgrade.
Implying that the time of anybody who uses Linux is without value, is rude.
Not everyone wants the hassle of switching OS or running duel boot systems that does not mean they are stupid, ignorant or "fanboys".
True.
But to talk about printer-setup for a single computer when the topic is a government with 70,000 PCs switching to Linux IS stupid, ignorant and "fanboyish". So I stand to everything I wrote.
It seems that no matter the topic (for example in stories about embedded systems, servers, clusters or big governmental installations) some people are either knowingly (which would be fanboyish) or not knowingly (which would be ignorant and stupid) talk about personal home desktops.
Even you seem to fanatically stick to home desktop systems. OK, maybe I was not clear enough:
This is not about home desktops. Forget dual boot, forget games, forget users failing to install hardware (that's the IT-department's job), forget all that.
Also, it's "dual-boot", not "duel-boot". Nobody is dueling.
Also, just FYI, setting up printers with Linux isn't nearly as difficult as the grandparent wanted to suggest, almost all printers are autodetected. But that is offtopic here.