Another reason is the efficiency of solar panels is questionable at best. ie. the embodied energy is so high that it's better for the environment not to use them.
Myth. Even with the older models, the break-even point for energy generation is four years.
While you are right that the PV industry doesn't currently have the capacity to put solar panels on every new building, there's nothing stopping us from building that capacity. Jumping in with both feet first is exactly what we should be doing. That's what will stimulate the demand for the product, which will focus effort on refining the technology. The fact that PVs will be more efficient in the future doesn't negate the fact that they're already economically competitive (especially when you factor in the externality that is CO2 emissions), the same way that you don't avoid buying a computer today just because Intel will have something ten thousand times more powerful in 2050.
Solar tech will not be refined with "more time," so much as "more experience."
I think "carbon negative" (in this instance) just means that you're releasing less carbon than you'd get if you burned fossil fuels. So I would argue that while it's not technically correct to use the term, it does make sense in the sense that, because of the existence of a given solar panel, there is X tons of carbon not being released into the atmosphere to create that power.
The area argument is a bit of a flop, because of the sheer volume of area (did I just say that?) that isn't being used. If you put a moderate-sized solar array on top of every big box store in the country, we'd probably increase our solar power production by... okay, I don't have any figures. But it's a lot of area, and it's not being used for anything. They've also been experimenting with decorative photovoltaic facings on skyscrapers. In short, we can do a lot with solar power without setting aside any new land for it.
According to Jeffrey Sachs, Ethiopia and Mauritius are such countries. According to Transparency International's ratings, Tunisia and Mauritius rank way higher than a lot of our more beloved trading partners. A quick squint at their map seems to say that corruption in Africa isn't obviously better or worse than corruption in Asia, which has been doing substantially better in the economic development department.
It's difficult to make the case that government corruption is the biggest impediment to fighting poverty in Africa. My belief is that we've been providing too little aid, and when we do give we pay too much attention to what we think countries need, rather than what they actually say they need. We're especially guilty of using foreign aid to promote harmful, "self-sacrificing" fiscal policies on third world nations (see Stiglitz).
"Charity doesn't work in Africa?" Saying that is like giving the guy on the street corner a buck every few days, and wondering why he isn't going to college after your generous injection of cash.
Yes, there are several dictators in Africa who enrich themselves at the expense of their people. But there are also many governments in Africa with responsible leadership and relatively little corruption. These are places that know exactly what they need to do to end poverty in their countries, but just don't have the wealth available to invest in themselves. Some are hamstrung by debts to First World countries, and others are stuck with disastrous contracts with multinational corporations arising from past mistakes or simply bad bargaining positions.
Of course, giving good money to bad governments means that little of that money will reach the intended beneficiaries. But there are programs that have shown themselves very effective, and saying "charity doesn't work in Africa" is less a measured analysis of the problems of the region, and more an unreasoned battle cry for the apathetic. Yes, education works, but it's only part of the solution.
The debate over how best to approach the problems of Africa are complex and fascinating ones. If you're interested in getting informed about these issues, I'd recommend Jeffrey Sachs' "The End of Poverty", Joseph Stiglitz' books, and (as a counterpoint to my own ideologies) "White Man's Burden," by William Easterly.
Actually, murder is a pretty normal thing. I've seen estimates that the homicide rate for prehistoric societies is about fifty times that of the U.S. today. If that's even remotely true, it's hard to imagine that relatively normal people didn't often resort to murder.
It's just plain crap to say that, just because a person committed murder, they must be incapable of empathy towards another human being. The victim may have done something that, in the killer's mind, ejected that person from the realm of sympathy. I'm thinking of things like murder, rape, child molestation, blackmail, etc. If somebody kills one of his children, a perfectly normal person might be willing to kill in revenge. Though it's not socially uplifting behavior, it's not evidence that the person never belonged in society in the first place.
Your "and this was his wife" crack makes me wonder what sensory deprivation chamber you've spent most of your life in. I've seen some pretty awful, destructive marriages. In an ideal world, "his wife" would mean "the woman he loved and cared for more than any other person on the face of the Earth." In reality, it often means, "the woman he legally bound himself to after a drunken party in Vegas." Too often, a spouse is just someone that people take their frustrations out on. The only thing that you can be sure of is that a spouse is someone who can probably elicit stronger emotions than anybody else in the world.
This is why, even if it turns out to be true, I wouldn't be afraid to meet Hans Reiser in a dark alley. You can go on believing that murderers are creatures wholly apart from the human condition. But if one day you find yourself staring down at your own bloody hands, horrified by what you've just done, I do hope society shows more understanding to you than you've exhibited here.
And remember, kids: every time you say, "It's that simple," an angel gets its wings ripped off.
[preemptive response: Where the hell did I say murderers should get off scott free?]
Peak food is a possibility. The vast gains of the so-called 'Green Revolution' are primarily based on petroleum-derived fertilizers. As oil becomes more expensive, industrial agriculture will do so as well.
Fortunately, we do have the (perhaps distasteful to some) option of switching to a primarily vegetarian diet, which vastly reduces the total number of calories we need to grow. Cue chubby American whining in five... four... three...
If it stays at $60 for ten years, then that's a pretty good sign that all the $40/barrel oil has disappeared off the face of the Earth. I don't think it will ever hit $150 for any extended length of time, because at that price, all sorts of renewable resources beat oil mercilessly. There simply won't be a reason to bother.
I think it will be a catastrophe if they find a way to extract significant supplies of oil from tar sands at a price below the tipping point for renewables. The quantity of available oil is huge, we have to burn half of it as part of the extraction process (which means your car will effectively put out twice as much CO2 as actually comes out of the tailpipe), and we won't cut back until all that tar has passed through the economy and entered the atmosphere.
Simply put, if we could just institute a hefty carbon tax on every barrel of oil we import or extract, then we could easily redirect all that greedy motivation towards pursuits that will be in our long-term interests.
So we're really supposed to not worry about the end of our civilization just because another one will rise in a few hundred years to take its place?
Your interpretation of the historical record is very much not reasonable. We don't always overcome our problems. Sometimes our problems overcome us, and the result is fire and bloodshed and mass starvation. Just because such events eventually settle into some sort of equilibrium doesn't mean that "we adapted," but that nature adapted us to fit its realities, in the most brutal way imaginable.
The sad fact is that this time around we've burned up many of the resources that a resurging civilization would need. Rome at its peak wasn't obliterating non-renewable resources the way we are.
Finally, need I point out that the dinosaurs showed amazing adaptability and survivability for about a hundred million years? Runs of luck far longer than ours have ended badly.
As far as I can tell, Intel's offering lacks two of the most highly touted features of OLPC's laptop. There is no mention of mesh networking capabilities, and no ability to recharge it without an external power source. So despite the beefier specs, there are places where OLPC can work, but Intel cannot.
I'm also having trouble finding any confirmation of the claim that India is no longer interested in buying laptops from OLPC.
Finally, the OLPC project has the openness advantage. The design, the software, and the hardware are all as open as they can make them (I understand their reasons for using the Marvell wireless chip). The Linux thing is a no-brainer, as licensing costs for 'mainstream software' will be an enormous burden for any government trying to get computers to young students.
It's good that there is competition in the field. I doubt that the computer you're touting would even exist if not for OLPC giving Intel a kick in the pants.
If I had to guess, I'd say it would be closer to 25%.
You overlook a vast amount of research and scholarship that was never intended to further any militaristic pursuits. The Wright Brothers didn't build their plane to gain tactical superiority over North Carolina, Einstein didn't develop relativity as a weapon, and Leeuwenhoek didn't discover microbes with the intention of infecting enemy troops.
Now, if you claim that you really meant that 99% of technology eventually gets turned to some military purpose, then the counterpoint is that 99% also gets turned to non-military purposes as well, for a grand total of 198%. That turns your impressive-sounding claim into something far more trite.
So, what is your rebuttal to the movie? You've claimed, despite the movie, that the market has "proven" that people don't want electric cars. You've claimed that the guy is "easily impressed" for being impressed with the movie. You've ignored that there is a small but avid bunch of people out there who want these converted cars desperately enough to do it themselves. You've even claimed that the batteries alone will cause more pollution than all the gasoline they were meant to replace.
Seriously, these statements each require justification. I would especially love to see a trustworthy source for the last one.
No, I'm not an expert, but maybe I can sound like I make sense.
Transmission over power lines is about 85% efficient (over very long distances). A good internal combustion engine is (if I recall correctly) about 10-20% efficient. Plus, it takes a whole lotta batteries to equal the weight of the engine block plus the half-full gas tank.
Peeking around the tubes, the estimates I've been finding for EV fuel efficiency is about 1 or 2 cents per mile (compare to 7.5 cents per mile for a car that gets 40mpg at $3.00/gallon). Another benefit is that your electric car becomes more environmentally friendly every time someone puts up a new wind farm. Finally, slapping pollution controls on a handful of power generation facilities is much much more efficient than trying to convert a fleet of millions of vehicles.
The point of ethanol, (CO2-wise) is that before it's manufactured, growing plant matter is supposed to pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere, and burning it just puts it back in.
But at least with corn-based ethanol, oil is pulled out of the ground and turned into fertilizer to grow the corn. So never mind.
I'm not sure what the motivation for SoH is. I think the whole "getting a sponsor" thing was just a joke. I think part of it is an attempt to lampoon the msm's attempts at "hard-hitting interviews" (and overbearing graphics). Asking a clearly rigged question is sometimes a cheap stand-in for tough journalism.
True, SoH blows. Though the look on Bill Clinton's face when Stewart asked, "Will Hillary run in 2008, and if so, what is the key to defeating her?" was pretty priceless.
I don't think it's worth it, from a save-the-world perspective. It seems that putting $9000 into some professionally managed wind power program would end up doing a lot more to reduce emissions.
$9000 -> personal windmill : 100,000kWH $9000 -> Blue Sky ($1.75/100kWH) : 514,300kWH $9000 -> windpower.utah.edu : 3,000,000kWH (I'm still not sure how they're managing this)
Then there's the fact that windmills aren't ideal for every house, but anyone with money can support the latter projects.
I also think adopting early in the hopes of driving down the price for later adopters might be a risky strategy. You have to assume that there are already places where $.09/kWH makes perfect economic sense (off-grid uses, especially). It seems to make more sense to let those drive early demand.
But your own personal wind farm has an advantage that a professional system doesn't: personal energy independence. There is something compelling about knowing that even if society fails and the grid goes dark, your generator will be spinning away, making it possible for you to reheat your frozen burritos.
Another advantage is that it can act as a conversation starter in a way that a check to some company won't. Of course the conversation might be, "When will you be taking down that ugly-ass windmill?" Personally, I find them attractive, but there's no accounting for taste.
Tasteless joking aside, people really ought to read the chapter in Jared Diamond's 'Collapse' where he convincingly argues that much of the genocide in Rwanda was motivated by the pressures of overpopulation.
Oh, yes. I keep forgetting that Malthus is a discredited hack. My mistake.
The major population problem facing the developed world (and even China) is not over-population...
Peak oil, global warming, suburban sprawl... need I go on? I consider all of these symptoms of overpopulation.
Solving the 'older population' problem seems a simple matter of keeping people working longer (and by implication, keeping them healthy enough to be productive for a larger fraction of their lives). In Japan (where you see the graying problem at its near-worst) they're working like crazy on automation and robotic technologies, which holds the promise of turning heavy labor jobs into button-pushing jobs. Graying can also be ameliorated by shifting towards walkable communities (currently in America, a person's independence drops dramatically when they're no longer capable of driving).
Solving environmental problems is going to take a major refactoring of our entire economy, and a reprioritizing of our values. That seems like a much bigger change.
I don't think Malthus is just alive on Slashdot. Everyone thought the Green Revolution buried him dead, but now his zombified corpse is walking the land, getting ready to feed on juicy brains. We must kill him with the shotgun of environmental responsibility. Sorry, I have a tendency to take analogies way too far.
It's not even clear what you're claiming, but it's certainly not the case that the U.S. gets three times more output for every unit of energy input than the rest of the world. I'm not calling you a liar, but I am suggesting that you may be bad at math.
Anyhow, what does 'productivity' mean? For example, during the mid-nineties, Japan had a laundry list of export industries that kicked the U.S.'s butt when it came to productivity. But per-capita productivity of the overall country was about 77% of ours. Why was this? Because Japan chose the path of low unemployment by creating all sorts of highly inefficient, easily automated jobs. This required high taxes on corporations, which certainly pressured corporations to move work overseas. But it also created a society where everyone had a reasonably well-paying job, and therefore everyone felt that they had a stake in society.
In Europe, rather than 'be more productive' by working longer hours, they take more vacation. Which sounds like a trade I'd be happy to make. Per-worker productivity is only the roughest approximation for quality of life, and per-hour productivity is only a little closer.
No, I wasn't arrogantly assuming I knew what that poster was really thinking. I was arrogantly assuming I could speak for the whole "oh, just talk with them and have a good relationship with them, that's all you need to do" crew (as you called them).
As the one who initially categorized the AC as such, you don't have any grounds for criticizing me for it.
You're totally misunderstand our position, if you think that's what we're arguing. To the extent that I can speak for anyone but myself, we're not saying that all kids are good people until their sexually repressed parents get through with them. We're not saying that a good relationship is sufficient to ensure a good outcome. We're not even saying that there is a way to ensure a good outcome.
What we're saying is this: There is no better source of information about your child's thoughts, motivations, and actions than the child herself. Further, childhood isn't just about keeping them away from bad things until they're no longer your problem. Part and parcel of child-rearing is exposing them to a wide variety of experiences, while teaching them principles that will help them know what to do in the face of novel situations. The only way to navigate the rocky terrain is to be able to see it through the kid's eyes, and that means they need to be communicating in detail.
Some parents try to solve the dilemma by keeping the child away from anything remotely dangerous. When you live your life according to cut-and-dried rules, you raise your kids according to a simple, easily enforced program that does nothing to prepare them for the real world. For example, you can say, "No alcohol, period." Maybe the child obeys, and never has any problems with alcohol her whole life. But if she does have reason to start exploring alcohol usage (whether in high school or in college) then she has no clear concept of the terrain she's crossing, and the only thing she can rely on is Rule #1: Don't tell the parents what you're doing. Because her parents never told her how much it takes to get drunk, or that it's especially important to not get drunk in a house full of strangers. Hell, she might not even have been aware that being drunk can be fun. She's young and dumb enough to throw herself headlong into new experiences, and all you know about her is that she's either following your directives, or trying like hell to hide that she isn't.
I can't see any value in your kid seeing these pictures, or taking cues about his sex life from a seventeen year old. But I do see some value in having clear lines of communication, and I don't know if the value of protecting your son from weird pictures is worth the loss there. I'd much rather have a kid who finds weird stuff on the 'Net and thinks, "maybe the parents can tell me what's up with that," instead of, "how do I get my hands on more without the parents finding out?" But maybe it's overly optimistic to think that most kids could ever see their parents as reliable sources for information about sex.
I'm curious: did you have a good talk with the kid about why he was interested in these pictures, and why you didn't feel that they were appropriate for someone of his age? Probably you did. Maybe he understood your reasoning. Maybe he agreed with it. Maybe he's following the rules. But it seems to me that, so long as the interest is there, that the situation isn't fully resolved. And if he doesn't even feel safe in telling you that he's still interested, I think it has a snowballing effect on your relationship, multiplying the number of things that he doesn't feel comfortable discussing with you.
All I'm really saying is that even twelve year olds have some concept of sexuality, and a desire to figure it out. If you can make him comfortable telling you what's going on in his mind, without getting judged or humiliated, then you've got a better shot at protecting him from the really dangerous things.
Slashdot Mirror
While you are right that the PV industry doesn't currently have the capacity to put solar panels on every new building, there's nothing stopping us from building that capacity. Jumping in with both feet first is exactly what we should be doing. That's what will stimulate the demand for the product, which will focus effort on refining the technology. The fact that PVs will be more efficient in the future doesn't negate the fact that they're already economically competitive (especially when you factor in the externality that is CO2 emissions), the same way that you don't avoid buying a computer today just because Intel will have something ten thousand times more powerful in 2050.
Solar tech will not be refined with "more time," so much as "more experience."
I think "carbon negative" (in this instance) just means that you're releasing less carbon than you'd get if you burned fossil fuels. So I would argue that while it's not technically correct to use the term, it does make sense in the sense that, because of the existence of a given solar panel, there is X tons of carbon not being released into the atmosphere to create that power.
The area argument is a bit of a flop, because of the sheer volume of area (did I just say that?) that isn't being used. If you put a moderate-sized solar array on top of every big box store in the country, we'd probably increase our solar power production by... okay, I don't have any figures. But it's a lot of area, and it's not being used for anything. They've also been experimenting with decorative photovoltaic facings on skyscrapers. In short, we can do a lot with solar power without setting aside any new land for it.
According to Jeffrey Sachs, Ethiopia and Mauritius are such countries. According to Transparency International's ratings, Tunisia and Mauritius rank way higher than a lot of our more beloved trading partners. A quick squint at their map seems to say that corruption in Africa isn't obviously better or worse than corruption in Asia, which has been doing substantially better in the economic development department.
It's difficult to make the case that government corruption is the biggest impediment to fighting poverty in Africa. My belief is that we've been providing too little aid, and when we do give we pay too much attention to what we think countries need, rather than what they actually say they need. We're especially guilty of using foreign aid to promote harmful, "self-sacrificing" fiscal policies on third world nations (see Stiglitz).
Don't worry, most of that money is going straight back into the pockets of hard-working Americans, like the CEO of Halliburton.
"Charity doesn't work in Africa?" Saying that is like giving the guy on the street corner a buck every few days, and wondering why he isn't going to college after your generous injection of cash.
Yes, there are several dictators in Africa who enrich themselves at the expense of their people. But there are also many governments in Africa with responsible leadership and relatively little corruption. These are places that know exactly what they need to do to end poverty in their countries, but just don't have the wealth available to invest in themselves. Some are hamstrung by debts to First World countries, and others are stuck with disastrous contracts with multinational corporations arising from past mistakes or simply bad bargaining positions.
Of course, giving good money to bad governments means that little of that money will reach the intended beneficiaries. But there are programs that have shown themselves very effective, and saying "charity doesn't work in Africa" is less a measured analysis of the problems of the region, and more an unreasoned battle cry for the apathetic. Yes, education works, but it's only part of the solution.
The debate over how best to approach the problems of Africa are complex and fascinating ones. If you're interested in getting informed about these issues, I'd recommend Jeffrey Sachs' "The End of Poverty", Joseph Stiglitz' books, and (as a counterpoint to my own ideologies) "White Man's Burden," by William Easterly.
Actually, murder is a pretty normal thing. I've seen estimates that the homicide rate for prehistoric societies is about fifty times that of the U.S. today. If that's even remotely true, it's hard to imagine that relatively normal people didn't often resort to murder.
It's just plain crap to say that, just because a person committed murder, they must be incapable of empathy towards another human being. The victim may have done something that, in the killer's mind, ejected that person from the realm of sympathy. I'm thinking of things like murder, rape, child molestation, blackmail, etc. If somebody kills one of his children, a perfectly normal person might be willing to kill in revenge. Though it's not socially uplifting behavior, it's not evidence that the person never belonged in society in the first place.
Your "and this was his wife" crack makes me wonder what sensory deprivation chamber you've spent most of your life in. I've seen some pretty awful, destructive marriages. In an ideal world, "his wife" would mean "the woman he loved and cared for more than any other person on the face of the Earth." In reality, it often means, "the woman he legally bound himself to after a drunken party in Vegas." Too often, a spouse is just someone that people take their frustrations out on. The only thing that you can be sure of is that a spouse is someone who can probably elicit stronger emotions than anybody else in the world.
This is why, even if it turns out to be true, I wouldn't be afraid to meet Hans Reiser in a dark alley. You can go on believing that murderers are creatures wholly apart from the human condition. But if one day you find yourself staring down at your own bloody hands, horrified by what you've just done, I do hope society shows more understanding to you than you've exhibited here.
And remember, kids: every time you say, "It's that simple," an angel gets its wings ripped off.
[preemptive response: Where the hell did I say murderers should get off scott free?]
Peak food is a possibility. The vast gains of the so-called 'Green Revolution' are primarily based on petroleum-derived fertilizers. As oil becomes more expensive, industrial agriculture will do so as well.
Fortunately, we do have the (perhaps distasteful to some) option of switching to a primarily vegetarian diet, which vastly reduces the total number of calories we need to grow. Cue chubby American whining in five... four... three...
If it stays at $60 for ten years, then that's a pretty good sign that all the $40/barrel oil has disappeared off the face of the Earth. I don't think it will ever hit $150 for any extended length of time, because at that price, all sorts of renewable resources beat oil mercilessly. There simply won't be a reason to bother.
I think it will be a catastrophe if they find a way to extract significant supplies of oil from tar sands at a price below the tipping point for renewables. The quantity of available oil is huge, we have to burn half of it as part of the extraction process (which means your car will effectively put out twice as much CO2 as actually comes out of the tailpipe), and we won't cut back until all that tar has passed through the economy and entered the atmosphere.
Simply put, if we could just institute a hefty carbon tax on every barrel of oil we import or extract, then we could easily redirect all that greedy motivation towards pursuits that will be in our long-term interests.
So we're really supposed to not worry about the end of our civilization just because another one will rise in a few hundred years to take its place?
Your interpretation of the historical record is very much not reasonable. We don't always overcome our problems. Sometimes our problems overcome us, and the result is fire and bloodshed and mass starvation. Just because such events eventually settle into some sort of equilibrium doesn't mean that "we adapted," but that nature adapted us to fit its realities, in the most brutal way imaginable.
The sad fact is that this time around we've burned up many of the resources that a resurging civilization would need. Rome at its peak wasn't obliterating non-renewable resources the way we are.
Finally, need I point out that the dinosaurs showed amazing adaptability and survivability for about a hundred million years? Runs of luck far longer than ours have ended badly.
As far as I can tell, Intel's offering lacks two of the most highly touted features of OLPC's laptop. There is no mention of mesh networking capabilities, and no ability to recharge it without an external power source. So despite the beefier specs, there are places where OLPC can work, but Intel cannot.
I'm also having trouble finding any confirmation of the claim that India is no longer interested in buying laptops from OLPC.
Finally, the OLPC project has the openness advantage. The design, the software, and the hardware are all as open as they can make them (I understand their reasons for using the Marvell wireless chip). The Linux thing is a no-brainer, as licensing costs for 'mainstream software' will be an enormous burden for any government trying to get computers to young students.
It's good that there is competition in the field. I doubt that the computer you're touting would even exist if not for OLPC giving Intel a kick in the pants.
99%?
If I had to guess, I'd say it would be closer to 25%.
You overlook a vast amount of research and scholarship that was never intended to further any militaristic pursuits. The Wright Brothers didn't build their plane to gain tactical superiority over North Carolina, Einstein didn't develop relativity as a weapon, and Leeuwenhoek didn't discover microbes with the intention of infecting enemy troops.
Now, if you claim that you really meant that 99% of technology eventually gets turned to some military purpose, then the counterpoint is that 99% also gets turned to non-military purposes as well, for a grand total of 198%. That turns your impressive-sounding claim into something far more trite.
So, what is your rebuttal to the movie? You've claimed, despite the movie, that the market has "proven" that people don't want electric cars. You've claimed that the guy is "easily impressed" for being impressed with the movie. You've ignored that there is a small but avid bunch of people out there who want these converted cars desperately enough to do it themselves. You've even claimed that the batteries alone will cause more pollution than all the gasoline they were meant to replace.
Seriously, these statements each require justification. I would especially love to see a trustworthy source for the last one.
I want to know how to go about converting my 18-speed. Going thirty miles an hour uphill would be teh aw3some.
No, I'm not an expert, but maybe I can sound like I make sense.
Transmission over power lines is about 85% efficient (over very long distances). A good internal combustion engine is (if I recall correctly) about 10-20% efficient. Plus, it takes a whole lotta batteries to equal the weight of the engine block plus the half-full gas tank.
Peeking around the tubes, the estimates I've been finding for EV fuel efficiency is about 1 or 2 cents per mile (compare to 7.5 cents per mile for a car that gets 40mpg at $3.00/gallon). Another benefit is that your electric car becomes more environmentally friendly every time someone puts up a new wind farm. Finally, slapping pollution controls on a handful of power generation facilities is much much more efficient than trying to convert a fleet of millions of vehicles.
The point of ethanol, (CO2-wise) is that before it's manufactured, growing plant matter is supposed to pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere, and burning it just puts it back in.
But at least with corn-based ethanol, oil is pulled out of the ground and turned into fertilizer to grow the corn. So never mind.
Cornanol is a sucker's game.
I'm not sure what the motivation for SoH is. I think the whole "getting a sponsor" thing was just a joke. I think part of it is an attempt to lampoon the msm's attempts at "hard-hitting interviews" (and overbearing graphics). Asking a clearly rigged question is sometimes a cheap stand-in for tough journalism.
True, SoH blows. Though the look on Bill Clinton's face when Stewart asked, "Will Hillary run in 2008, and if so, what is the key to defeating her?" was pretty priceless.
You've just given me a wonderful idea for a Firefox plugin.
I don't think it's worth it, from a save-the-world perspective. It seems that putting $9000 into some professionally managed wind power program would end up doing a lot more to reduce emissions.
$9000 -> personal windmill : 100,000kWH
$9000 -> Blue Sky ($1.75/100kWH) : 514,300kWH
$9000 -> windpower.utah.edu : 3,000,000kWH (I'm still not sure how they're managing this)
Then there's the fact that windmills aren't ideal for every house, but anyone with money can support the latter projects.
I also think adopting early in the hopes of driving down the price for later adopters might be a risky strategy. You have to assume that there are already places where $.09/kWH makes perfect economic sense (off-grid uses, especially). It seems to make more sense to let those drive early demand.
But your own personal wind farm has an advantage that a professional system doesn't: personal energy independence. There is something compelling about knowing that even if society fails and the grid goes dark, your generator will be spinning away, making it possible for you to reheat your frozen burritos.
Another advantage is that it can act as a conversation starter in a way that a check to some company won't. Of course the conversation might be, "When will you be taking down that ugly-ass windmill?" Personally, I find them attractive, but there's no accounting for taste.
Tasteless joking aside, people really ought to read the chapter in Jared Diamond's 'Collapse' where he convincingly argues that much of the genocide in Rwanda was motivated by the pressures of overpopulation.
Oh, yes. I keep forgetting that Malthus is a discredited hack. My mistake.
Solving the 'older population' problem seems a simple matter of keeping people working longer (and by implication, keeping them healthy enough to be productive for a larger fraction of their lives). In Japan (where you see the graying problem at its near-worst) they're working like crazy on automation and robotic technologies, which holds the promise of turning heavy labor jobs into button-pushing jobs. Graying can also be ameliorated by shifting towards walkable communities (currently in America, a person's independence drops dramatically when they're no longer capable of driving).
Solving environmental problems is going to take a major refactoring of our entire economy, and a reprioritizing of our values. That seems like a much bigger change.
I don't think Malthus is just alive on Slashdot. Everyone thought the Green Revolution buried him dead, but now his zombified corpse is walking the land, getting ready to feed on juicy brains. We must kill him with the shotgun of environmental responsibility. Sorry, I have a tendency to take analogies way too far.
Source?
It's not even clear what you're claiming, but it's certainly not the case that the U.S. gets three times more output for every unit of energy input than the rest of the world. I'm not calling you a liar, but I am suggesting that you may be bad at math.
Anyhow, what does 'productivity' mean? For example, during the mid-nineties, Japan had a laundry list of export industries that kicked the U.S.'s butt when it came to productivity. But per-capita productivity of the overall country was about 77% of ours. Why was this? Because Japan chose the path of low unemployment by creating all sorts of highly inefficient, easily automated jobs. This required high taxes on corporations, which certainly pressured corporations to move work overseas. But it also created a society where everyone had a reasonably well-paying job, and therefore everyone felt that they had a stake in society.
In Europe, rather than 'be more productive' by working longer hours, they take more vacation. Which sounds like a trade I'd be happy to make. Per-worker productivity is only the roughest approximation for quality of life, and per-hour productivity is only a little closer.
Eh?
Oh. I see.
No, I wasn't arrogantly assuming I knew what that poster was really thinking. I was arrogantly assuming I could speak for the whole "oh, just talk with them and have a good relationship with them, that's all you need to do" crew (as you called them).
As the one who initially categorized the AC as such, you don't have any grounds for criticizing me for it.
You're totally misunderstand our position, if you think that's what we're arguing. To the extent that I can speak for anyone but myself, we're not saying that all kids are good people until their sexually repressed parents get through with them. We're not saying that a good relationship is sufficient to ensure a good outcome. We're not even saying that there is a way to ensure a good outcome.
What we're saying is this: There is no better source of information about your child's thoughts, motivations, and actions than the child herself. Further, childhood isn't just about keeping them away from bad things until they're no longer your problem. Part and parcel of child-rearing is exposing them to a wide variety of experiences, while teaching them principles that will help them know what to do in the face of novel situations. The only way to navigate the rocky terrain is to be able to see it through the kid's eyes, and that means they need to be communicating in detail.
Some parents try to solve the dilemma by keeping the child away from anything remotely dangerous. When you live your life according to cut-and-dried rules, you raise your kids according to a simple, easily enforced program that does nothing to prepare them for the real world. For example, you can say, "No alcohol, period." Maybe the child obeys, and never has any problems with alcohol her whole life. But if she does have reason to start exploring alcohol usage (whether in high school or in college) then she has no clear concept of the terrain she's crossing, and the only thing she can rely on is Rule #1: Don't tell the parents what you're doing. Because her parents never told her how much it takes to get drunk, or that it's especially important to not get drunk in a house full of strangers. Hell, she might not even have been aware that being drunk can be fun. She's young and dumb enough to throw herself headlong into new experiences, and all you know about her is that she's either following your directives, or trying like hell to hide that she isn't.
Accusations of naivete are a two-way street.
Prude!
What? You told me to.
Okay, stupid joke.
I can't see any value in your kid seeing these pictures, or taking cues about his sex life from a seventeen year old. But I do see some value in having clear lines of communication, and I don't know if the value of protecting your son from weird pictures is worth the loss there. I'd much rather have a kid who finds weird stuff on the 'Net and thinks, "maybe the parents can tell me what's up with that," instead of, "how do I get my hands on more without the parents finding out?" But maybe it's overly optimistic to think that most kids could ever see their parents as reliable sources for information about sex.
I'm curious: did you have a good talk with the kid about why he was interested in these pictures, and why you didn't feel that they were appropriate for someone of his age? Probably you did. Maybe he understood your reasoning. Maybe he agreed with it. Maybe he's following the rules. But it seems to me that, so long as the interest is there, that the situation isn't fully resolved. And if he doesn't even feel safe in telling you that he's still interested, I think it has a snowballing effect on your relationship, multiplying the number of things that he doesn't feel comfortable discussing with you.
All I'm really saying is that even twelve year olds have some concept of sexuality, and a desire to figure it out. If you can make him comfortable telling you what's going on in his mind, without getting judged or humiliated, then you've got a better shot at protecting him from the really dangerous things.
A lot of adults think that a lot of kids think that a lot of adults think that they're a lot smarter than they think they think they are.
Or something like that.