The example of certain welfare states shows that this is true only for a time.
No, what it shows that it's true until governments start to pour enormous financial resources into combatting population decline. When they do that, they can achieve a modest rate of population increase. And this effort is only necessary because the country was experiencing relatively low rates of population growth.
(Saying it's only true "for a time" implies that there's some natural process that eventually overcomes the trend, and sets the country back on the road to population growth. In Finland's case, that's not the case.)
And again: if you would simply look at the historical record, including (as I already mentioned) Federalist Paper #41, and look up the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, you will see quite clearly that you are wrong.
The Virginia resolution and Federalist Paper #41 were written by James Madison, and the Kentucky resolution was written by Thomas Jefferson. These resolutions were submitted to the rest of the states, who summarily rejected them (indeed, some states viewed them as evidence of insurrection). Given that the same states and their representatives had recently ratified the Constitution, one cannot claim that these documents represented any sort of political consensus. Had the resolutions actually reflected the will of the states, they would not have been so utterly and completely ignored.
This is, quite frankly, the closest we're going to get to measuring the "outcome" of these debates.
Now, these documents were a rational response to some clear abuses by the Federal government. They represent a justifiable overreaction: the situation is so bad, our political preference is to devastate the Federal government, thus reducing the US to a collection of loosely connected states with a weak central government. Ignoring the fact that these documents aren't legally binding on anyone, I'll repeat what I said before: the adoption of this interpretation would have destroyed the United States and necessitated a new, stronger Constitution. Given the political will of the remaining states (who were willing to send troops to suppress Kentucky and Virginia), this outcome seems fairly clear.
That phrase was (according to the debates at the time, mentions in the Federalist Papers, etc.) never intended to authorize anything that was not allowed by the rest of the document.
Shoot, you slipped and used the wrong word: "debates". In other words, there were debates about whether the Constitution had the meaning you think it does, with some of the Founders coming down on your side, and others vehemently disagreeing. The fact that there were such debates (rather than agreement among the principles) is a major problem with your argument.
Fortunately, the Constitution created judicial and legislative mechanisms to actually resolve those debates, and those mechanisms have overwhelmingly determined that the Federal government does have the power you claim it lacks. (And thank god, too --- given such a weak interpretation of the government's powers, it's pretty clear that the USA would either have had to chuck the Constitution and adopt another, more practical document, or else risk becoming a minor possession of some foreign empire).
(Admittedly, this technique was more effective for debugging the logic in Tim Hartnell's Big Book of Games, which didn't use DATA statements at all. You'd often end up with a Chess AI that wasn't too picky about the rules of the game.)
You mean the way it does with small single-engine airplanes today? In small general aviation craft, an engine failure, electrical failure, or mechanical failure is frequently a serious emergency, with potentially fatal consequences. However, unless you're doing something seriously stupid, a competent pilot is very likely to survive a rather large subset of such failures -- basically anything excluding "wings fall off".
To extend your logical argument, then we don't need to develop flying cars --- we already have them. They're called "single-engine airplanes". Put some road wheels on them and you're done.
However, in practice the concepts are quite different. The canonical "flying car" is expected to be much smaller and maneuverable than an airplane, piloted by a non-expert, capable of flying in a much more crowded environment, and most importantly should not require the use of long runways (ideally it should have VTOL capability). Unfortunately, it's precisely these characteristics that militate against the safety characteristics you describe.
And even without those extreme requirements, small airplanes still get in plenty of trouble.
One guy built the first IC in two months at Texas Instruments, without much help. Several early microprocessors were designed by teams of about 5 people. It took 3,000 people, in grey cubicles in Santa Clara, to design the Pentium Pro/II/III architecture, the first superscalar IC.
The first Texas Instruments IC contained one transistor. The Pentium II contained 7.5 million transistors. I would argue that your anecdote tells a very different story; that in fact you're looking at a nearly 10^7-fold improvement in technological capability, achieved at cost of around ~10^4-fold increase in human effort. That's a productivity improvement of around 1000x.
Now, obviously it's not fair to compare a CPU to the first IC. And even aside from that, transistor count and person-hours are very imperfect metrics. But my basic point is simply that while the problems have become harder, today's researchers have enormously greater resources at their disposal to solve them --- in the form of experience, tools, and organizational skill that their forebears couldn't imagine.
I'm not sure why it should take five steps to change your search engine to the most popular engine on the market. Remember that many, many users are extremely limited in their ability to make "simple" changes to a browser configuration (many will simply expect the browser to use Google, for example).
Is it really not possible for Google to exist in a pre-loaded list (or be downloaded automatically) and just be available as a dropdown?
Keep in mind that most users will go with whatever the default setting is, no matter how easy it is to switch (and later complain about the search quality). So Microsoft already wields enormous market power even if the switch is a snap. Making it a multi-step process (where you have to go online, find the provider, then separately make it the default) is going to exclude a shocking number of novice users. And I can't help but think that Microsoft knows this.
(On second thought, Microsoft has a fiduciary duty to know this --- if you're a stockholder and Microsoft tells you they aren't doing this to screw Google, you'd better be unhappy with them.
The effort is designed to make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.
If your effort has widely become known as the "screw Google" meeting, it seems to me that you're doing a pretty bad job of it. Of course, this is DC... cash can easily substitute for credibility.
In the long run, the laws of econonics ALWAYS win. The US should fix the causes, not the symptoms.
In the long run, the cost of Chinese labor will increase to be roughly the same as US labor, and China will become a modern nation with first-world regulation and all the rest of it. At that point there won't be any advantage to outsourcing.
What we're worried about right now is the short term --- which covers, basically, the rest of your lifespan.
This is by no means the first "wirelessly-monitored" pacemaker. Pacemakers and ICDs have been linked to home monitoring equipment for several years, and that equipment routinely communicates with a central monitoring station (usually via a modem).
Now, if the pacemaker itself was doing the communicating directly (say over any Wifi or cellular network) that would be pretty amazing. But they point out that the pacemaker doesn't have an IP address, and it's only communicating with equipment in the patient's home. That sounds a lot like existing technology, except perhaps that the final link (home monitoring device -> monitoring station) is being performed via IP rather than a phone line. That's nice, but certainly not very exciting. And why does it require a whole new pacemaker to make this upgrade?
Clearly there's something to this article that I'm not seeing...
That's not the only viable argument, although I'm sure you wish it were. There are many other arguments, such as those made by China and India when they decline to throw their economies under the proverbial bus at the urging of those countries that already have the standard of living that the developing countries want to obtain.
I outlined the rational course of action if the goal is long term self-preservation; you're pointing out that people often work against their long-term self interest when there's some short-term benefit. I don't dispute either point. The great challenge of human existence right now is to guide people in the rational direction, and keep human nature from doing us all a lot of harm.
Which is why it will fall disproportionately on us, the most prosperous nations of the world, to accelerate the development of technologies that are cost-competitive with fossil fuels, so India and China don't have to choose between their short term prosperity and long term survival. It also involves making some hard choices about the way we consume, since much of India and China's emissions will go towards making things to sell us.
To some extent this is a leap of faith on our part--- it probably works out fine if we have the political will --- and more to the point--- achieve the same unpredictable rate of technological advance we've see in the past. It definitely doesn't work if we can't even get some consensus among ourselves.
The very cold "consolation" is that under current projections, our suffering could be acute, but it won't be anything near what India and China will experience. That's not actually any consolation at all, but they may be a lot more aware of it than we are. I'd like to think they'll surprise us with their willingness to cooperate if we can offer them anything reasonable at all.
No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word:) We do not have excellent data (gas diffusion in ice cores is a bitch!) and current models lack incredible amounts of algorithmic data which is instead made up as we see politically fit at the moment:) (for example, the influence of clouds). We do not have an unusual trend of global warming at all. On the contrary, there might not be a trend to speak of when removing measurement uncertainties. (http://surfacestations.org should scare anyone who believes the tempereature data we're soon basing our whole economy on)
And in a nutshell, that uncertainty is the argument for taking drastic action to curb carbon emissions.
Basically, if we could predict with certainty that our emissions would lead to no, or a tolerable increase in temperatures, then I would be on your side in this argument. We could take sensible, economically appropriate action to protect ourselves (relocating populations if necessary, building seawalls). Beyond that it would be business as usual. The problem is that we can't make any such statement. We know that we're increasing our atmospheric CO2 by a pretty significant amount, and we know that there are physical mechanisms that should lead to warming (we've also ruled out most possible compensatory mechanisms, like the ocean being an unlimited CO2 sink). From there we have a series of well-studied models that show a possibility of mild warming, and a non-zero chance of catastrophic warming. Despite your calming assertions, we can't even come close to ruling out the extreme possibilities.
Worse, it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to rule out the catastrophic cases any time soon. They're well supported by our best understanding, and nobody's brought anything forth to make them less likely. In fact, scientists have begun to lean more towards them as modeling has become more sophisticated and accurate.
That's why I laugh whenever someone uses the lack of scientific certainty as an argument against doing something about emissions. It's a great argument --- if you're trying to build a case for an aggressive plan to reduce emissions. The only viable argument against taking action is to show conclusively that we can be certain about the effects of our carbon emissions, and that they're entirely manageable. And to be able to defend that result against all challengers. Not some handwaving about how imperfect our information is.
The big threat to properly-designed rigid airships seems to be World War II. Now that it's over, new airships shouldn't have any trouble.
The big threat to properly-designed rigid airships is weather. The advantage Germany held over other countries in the pre-WWII era was not just technology, it was also the ability to forecast and steer around storm systems. Obviously we have even better forecasting capability now, but the basic problem hasn't been solved: a trip from point A to point B could take an entirely variable amount of time (and may not happen at all), plus there's always a small but non-zero chance of an unpredicted weather condition.
It's about more than just hard-core "libre" content. Wikipedia is a huge undertaking and it was designed to outlive Wikipedia.org (which is currently operated by a benevolent non-profit foundation with bandwidth donated by some pretty generous people). For the most part everyone's happy with this situation. But part of the reason everyone's happy with it is that even if someday they're not happy --- e.g., the various maintainers lose interest, or decide they all hate each other --- the site can easily be transferred to a different location and everyone can go on as before. In other words, the point was to build an encyclopedia, not a website.
Once you start admitting content that's only available on Wikipedia.org you're off down a very slippery slope towards building a site, and not a compendium of articles.
The other technical problem is that Wikipedia.org doesn't actually own the content it serves; it was donated by contributors under various licenses (GFDL plus a bunch of CC variants). I confess not to know the legal details (and would be interested if someone does, so I'm not sure if GFDL article + image creates a derivative work, but if so that would require the image to be under a compatible license as well, or else Wikipedia would be violating someone's copyright (I'm not sure if reduced-quality versions fit the bill here). If this is legally the case, then even if only a portion of the article is under GFDL Wikipedia would be restricted from publishing it this way. Nobody wants to go through the hassle of figuring it out, just so a few people can get higher-quality images.
There are already nearly 100 nuclear plants in the U.S. alone, and the people being served by them seem generally fine with it and do not fear it.
It's pretty easy to conduct a poll of residents living within 10 miles of an arbitrary plant in a high-density population center in the US. You'll find that more than 50% are uncomfortable with the plant being there. Tell them about the evacuation plans for their town, the number will go above 80%.
There's a huge amount of NIMBYism involved in the construction of nuclear plants and some of it is justified. I was around for the construction of the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire, and the opposition was widespread. Sure, there were some environmental groups leading the charge (the ubiquitous "Clamshell Alliance"). But the same groups oppose lots of things --- and are completely unsuccessful at preventing most of them. It's only with nuclear that the fringe groups have managed to get mainstream traction.
Or put it another way: environmental groups also oppose coal power plants. They've even managed to stop a few from being built. But plenty of them have been. On the other hand, no nuclear plants have been constructed since the 1980s. There's a reason for the differing levels of success. Now if you define "anyone who doesn't want a nuclear plant near their home" as an environmentalist, then of course you can blame it all on them.
Beyond the NIMBYism, there are plenty of reasons why utilities don't want to build nuclear plants. They tend to drive utilities into bankruptcy, for one thing. Similarly, the existing designs are highly questionable, requiring active (powered) cooling. I've heard about at least three accidental leaks in the last decade (here's a tritium leak in Long Island). None of these are likely to be fatal, but none of them should have happened, either.
Finally, we'd be insane to advocate building more 1970s-era plants now. There's a terrific amount of progress on the horizon. Pebble-bed and passively-cooled reactors are likely to make nuclear plants a lot safer. Proper waste management may come onstream in the next decade. And of course, breeder reactors are the future, not the obsolete "burn it and chuck it" process we're using now.
Too bad the people who oppose it do so without offering any real alternative besides the "renewables" that we've been waiting decades for or the prospect of a lower standard of living.....
I've met the opponents of nuclear energy, and they're not tree-huggers. They're your neighbors. They drive SUVs, have backyard cookouts, and they buy still buy mylar balloons even though so-and-so says the kill whales (the kids love them... what can you do?). In fact, they don't even care about the possible environmental impact of nuclear power plants --- just as long as they're nowhere the hell nearby.
Some people delude themselves into the idea we'd be building nuclear plants everywhere if it wasn't for those environmentalists (and their pesky dog!) In real life, there's about a snowball's chance of nuclear plants being constructed near major population centers. In part that's because the economics suck, but mostly it's because Joe and Jane sixpack don't want them there.
It may feel nice to shout hypocrisy at those evil environmentalists, but it's a mug's game. So get it out of your system, go learn a bit about this great country we live in. Then come back and maybe you can contribute something.
There are literally hundreds of ideas floating around that can be used if the goal wasn't to limit what free people can do by creating massive taxes and government encroachment.
There are a lot of ideas floating around. The general concern shared by economists is that these piecemeal ideas aren't enough to accomplish the massive reductions in emissions that would be necessary to have a significant impact.
Furthermore, many of the proposals in this document amount to specific government subsidies selected by bureaucrats rather than the free market. At a small scale this probably isn't a big deal. Unfortunately, at a small scale it's unlikely to be particularly effective at achieving the desired emissions reductions. Our problem isn't lack of alternative technologies --- it's that businesses aren't using those technologies on a massive scale. Mostly because they're a few percent more expensive (in significant part because they're not deployed in large scale), and that adds up to a huge financial incentive to stick with the current tech.
At the larger scales necessary to make businesses switch, subsidies tend to distort the market and invite a lot of political patronage (see Ethanol). Ironically, I've learned this lesson from observation of failed liberal policies.
The nice thing about cap & trade is that it shouldn't be seen as an alternative to prizes, reasonable subsidies for long-term energy research, etc. The two can be combined (and they are being combined!). The best thing is that if I'm wrong, and modest subsidies/prizes are sufficient to reduce GHG emissions below the capped level, then the cap won't matter, and the effective tax on emissions will be nearly zero. It's only if I'm right that the cap kicks in.
And I realize that you've addressed the oil exploration aspects of this bill, but they go to credibility --- and the success of this plan would depend on a committed government. You cannot get serious about reducing GHG emissions while you're simultaneously promoting the construction of new refineries and more offshore oil exploration. A government that promotes those policies is sending a clear signal that it's not going to make a serious effort to reduce oil consumption and move to other fuels. That tells corporations and manufacturers exactly how seriously they should take all other activities of that government.
(Worse, most experts say they won't significantly reduce the price of oil, at least not for decades. I don't remember the quote, but last fall I recall Russia's foreign minister even laughing about how those policies would make us even more dependent on importing their oil.)
Now the thing that kills me about this is that the Republicans are being given a ton of input into the legislative process. The Democrats are bending over backwards to incorporate their ideas, in the name of "bipartisanship". So this bill could take some of the best GHG-reduction ideas of the Republican bill, and combine them with C&T. If nuclear power is a priority for the Republican party (as opposed to the nuclear 'industry'), we could also be increasing nuclear research subsidies (which I think we are), with particular attention to building the next generation of pebble-bed and breeder reactors. I'd like to see all that happen, rather than another party-line "no" vote or a filibuster.
It's a simple matter to avoid this sort of scrutiny. Give the cell phone in your name to someone else, go commit the crime, and then retrieve the phone.
A surprising number of murders are crimes of passion, i.e., the murderer didn't set out to commit a crime, and didn't plan accordingly. Many of the others are carried out by stupid people.
But yes, I agree. And I would take this further --- if you're ever planning to do something questionable, like cheat on your wife/girlfriend, buy drugs, take clothes/food to an escaped political prisoner who's wanted by your authoritarian government, you should be proactive and take the battery out. There's no telling how long those records will be archived somewhere.
Carrying a cellphone isn't displaying any expectation of privacy. By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
I think you're explicitly granting permission for people to call you, which is not the same thing as knowing where you are. Similarly, just because my cellphone can record audio and video while "off-hook" doesn't mean that I'm explicitly granting permission for people to eavesdrop my day-to-day conversations.
Whew! I did read the document, and there's lots I disagree with in it. Like (as I said before) the idea that you can achieve significant cuts in carbon emissions while promoting a policy of heavy-duty oil exploration. There's some stuff in there about prizes, and a whole bunch of heavy handed government tinkering to promote Nuclear --- an idea which I do support, though it's very easy to cross over from promoting to "subsidizing the shit out of an entrenched industry, one which doesn't have much interest in building new plants even with the subsidies".
You'll forgive me if I read the document and come to the conclusion that it's hyper-timid weak tea bullshit. Or maybe you won't based on the tenor of your last post.
I just spent a couple of weeks in the Big Apple, and the performance there is absolutely miserable. Constant dropped calls, 3G that's so slow it barely works. I have to switch 3G off to get a somewhat reliable calling/data service. Of course, in NYC every third person has an iPhone or Blackberry and AT&T clearly isn't provisioning to handle it.
That Michael Jackson' Cap & Trade Alternative was a joke but seriously, here is a summery of the republican alternatives. You can find out more about the specifics Here and here.
The PDF you link to begins with a a series of programs to promote offshore oil drilling. This is the GOP's strategy for reducing carbon emissions? I do remember something about "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP convention, but I was hoping maybe they were joking.
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The example of certain welfare states shows that this is true only for a time.
No, what it shows that it's true until governments start to pour enormous financial resources into combatting population decline. When they do that, they can achieve a modest rate of population increase. And this effort is only necessary because the country was experiencing relatively low rates of population growth.
(Saying it's only true "for a time" implies that there's some natural process that eventually overcomes the trend, and sets the country back on the road to population growth. In Finland's case, that's not the case.)
And again: if you would simply look at the historical record, including (as I already mentioned) Federalist Paper #41, and look up the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, you will see quite clearly that you are wrong.
The Virginia resolution and Federalist Paper #41 were written by James Madison, and the Kentucky resolution was written by Thomas Jefferson. These resolutions were submitted to the rest of the states, who summarily rejected them (indeed, some states viewed them as evidence of insurrection). Given that the same states and their representatives had recently ratified the Constitution, one cannot claim that these documents represented any sort of political consensus. Had the resolutions actually reflected the will of the states, they would not have been so utterly and completely ignored.
This is, quite frankly, the closest we're going to get to measuring the "outcome" of these debates.
Now, these documents were a rational response to some clear abuses by the Federal government. They represent a justifiable overreaction: the situation is so bad, our political preference is to devastate the Federal government, thus reducing the US to a collection of loosely connected states with a weak central government. Ignoring the fact that these documents aren't legally binding on anyone, I'll repeat what I said before: the adoption of this interpretation would have destroyed the United States and necessitated a new, stronger Constitution. Given the political will of the remaining states (who were willing to send troops to suppress Kentucky and Virginia), this outcome seems fairly clear.
That phrase was (according to the debates at the time, mentions in the Federalist Papers, etc.) never intended to authorize anything that was not allowed by the rest of the document.
Shoot, you slipped and used the wrong word: "debates". In other words, there were debates about whether the Constitution had the meaning you think it does, with some of the Founders coming down on your side, and others vehemently disagreeing. The fact that there were such debates (rather than agreement among the principles) is a major problem with your argument.
Fortunately, the Constitution created judicial and legislative mechanisms to actually resolve those debates, and those mechanisms have overwhelmingly determined that the Federal government does have the power you claim it lacks. (And thank god, too --- given such a weak interpretation of the government's powers, it's pretty clear that the USA would either have had to chuck the Constitution and adopt another, more practical document, or else risk becoming a minor possession of some foreign empire).
Hence the quotes around "worked".
(Admittedly, this technique was more effective for debugging the logic in Tim Hartnell's Big Book of Games, which didn't use DATA statements at all. You'd often end up with a Chess AI that wasn't too picky about the rules of the game.)
Debugging something like
1000 DATA 123, 6, 43, 69, 240, 122, 51
2000 DATA 120, 120, 85, 239, 4
is for suckers
My debugging process --- deleting lines of code at random --- was simple and 100% effective. Sooner or later I always got something that "worked".
You mean the way it does with small single-engine airplanes today? In small general aviation craft, an engine failure, electrical failure, or mechanical failure is frequently a serious emergency, with potentially fatal consequences. However, unless you're doing something seriously stupid, a competent pilot is very likely to survive a rather large subset of such failures -- basically anything excluding "wings fall off".
To extend your logical argument, then we don't need to develop flying cars --- we already have them. They're called "single-engine airplanes". Put some road wheels on them and you're done.
However, in practice the concepts are quite different. The canonical "flying car" is expected to be much smaller and maneuverable than an airplane, piloted by a non-expert, capable of flying in a much more crowded environment, and most importantly should not require the use of long runways (ideally it should have VTOL capability). Unfortunately, it's precisely these characteristics that militate against the safety characteristics you describe.
And even without those extreme requirements, small airplanes still get in plenty of trouble.
One guy built the first IC in two months at Texas Instruments, without much help. Several early microprocessors were designed by teams of about 5 people. It took 3,000 people, in grey cubicles in Santa Clara, to design the Pentium Pro/II/III architecture, the first superscalar IC.
The first Texas Instruments IC contained one transistor. The Pentium II contained 7.5 million transistors. I would argue that your anecdote tells a very different story; that in fact you're looking at a nearly 10^7-fold improvement in technological capability, achieved at cost of around ~10^4-fold increase in human effort. That's a productivity improvement of around 1000x.
Now, obviously it's not fair to compare a CPU to the first IC. And even aside from that, transistor count and person-hours are very imperfect metrics. But my basic point is simply that while the problems have become harder, today's researchers have enormously greater resources at their disposal to solve them --- in the form of experience, tools, and organizational skill that their forebears couldn't imagine.
I'm not sure why it should take five steps to change your search engine to the most popular engine on the market. Remember that many, many users are extremely limited in their ability to make "simple" changes to a browser configuration (many will simply expect the browser to use Google, for example).
Is it really not possible for Google to exist in a pre-loaded list (or be downloaded automatically) and just be available as a dropdown?
Keep in mind that most users will go with whatever the default setting is, no matter how easy it is to switch (and later complain about the search quality). So Microsoft already wields enormous market power even if the switch is a snap. Making it a multi-step process (where you have to go online, find the provider, then separately make it the default) is going to exclude a shocking number of novice users. And I can't help but think that Microsoft knows this.
(On second thought, Microsoft has a fiduciary duty to know this --- if you're a stockholder and Microsoft tells you they aren't doing this to screw Google, you'd better be unhappy with them.
The effort is designed to make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.
If your effort has widely become known as the "screw Google" meeting, it seems to me that you're doing a pretty bad job of it. Of course, this is DC... cash can easily substitute for credibility.
In the long run, the laws of econonics ALWAYS win. The US should fix the causes, not the symptoms.
In the long run, the cost of Chinese labor will increase to be roughly the same as US labor, and China will become a modern nation with first-world regulation and all the rest of it. At that point there won't be any advantage to outsourcing.
What we're worried about right now is the short term --- which covers, basically, the rest of your lifespan.
IBM was the world leader in mechanical computers/counters. Is it that hard to Google this stuff?
This is by no means the first "wirelessly-monitored" pacemaker. Pacemakers and ICDs have been linked to home monitoring equipment for several years, and that equipment routinely communicates with a central monitoring station (usually via a modem).
Now, if the pacemaker itself was doing the communicating directly (say over any Wifi or cellular network) that would be pretty amazing. But they point out that the pacemaker doesn't have an IP address, and it's only communicating with equipment in the patient's home. That sounds a lot like existing technology, except perhaps that the final link (home monitoring device -> monitoring station) is being performed via IP rather than a phone line. That's nice, but certainly not very exciting. And why does it require a whole new pacemaker to make this upgrade?
Clearly there's something to this article that I'm not seeing...
That's not the only viable argument, although I'm sure you wish it were. There are many other arguments, such as those made by China and India when they decline to throw their economies under the proverbial bus at the urging of those countries that already have the standard of living that the developing countries want to obtain.
I outlined the rational course of action if the goal is long term self-preservation; you're pointing out that people often work against their long-term self interest when there's some short-term benefit. I don't dispute either point. The great challenge of human existence right now is to guide people in the rational direction, and keep human nature from doing us all a lot of harm.
Which is why it will fall disproportionately on us, the most prosperous nations of the world, to accelerate the development of technologies that are cost-competitive with fossil fuels, so India and China don't have to choose between their short term prosperity and long term survival. It also involves making some hard choices about the way we consume, since much of India and China's emissions will go towards making things to sell us.
To some extent this is a leap of faith on our part--- it probably works out fine if we have the political will --- and more to the point--- achieve the same unpredictable rate of technological advance we've see in the past. It definitely doesn't work if we can't even get some consensus among ourselves.
The very cold "consolation" is that under current projections, our suffering could be acute, but it won't be anything near what India and China will experience. That's not actually any consolation at all, but they may be a lot more aware of it than we are. I'd like to think they'll surprise us with their willingness to cooperate if we can offer them anything reasonable at all.
No, basically nothing in your post is "true" in any scientific version of that word :) We do not have excellent data (gas diffusion in ice cores is a bitch!) and current models lack incredible amounts of algorithmic data which is instead made up as we see politically fit at the moment :) (for example, the influence of clouds). We do not have an unusual trend of global warming at all. On the contrary, there might not be a trend to speak of when removing measurement uncertainties. (http://surfacestations.org should scare anyone who believes the tempereature data we're soon basing our whole economy on)
And in a nutshell, that uncertainty is the argument for taking drastic action to curb carbon emissions.
Basically, if we could predict with certainty that our emissions would lead to no, or a tolerable increase in temperatures, then I would be on your side in this argument. We could take sensible, economically appropriate action to protect ourselves (relocating populations if necessary, building seawalls). Beyond that it would be business as usual. The problem is that we can't make any such statement. We know that we're increasing our atmospheric CO2 by a pretty significant amount, and we know that there are physical mechanisms that should lead to warming (we've also ruled out most possible compensatory mechanisms, like the ocean being an unlimited CO2 sink). From there we have a series of well-studied models that show a possibility of mild warming, and a non-zero chance of catastrophic warming. Despite your calming assertions, we can't even come close to ruling out the extreme possibilities.
Worse, it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to rule out the catastrophic cases any time soon. They're well supported by our best understanding, and nobody's brought anything forth to make them less likely. In fact, scientists have begun to lean more towards them as modeling has become more sophisticated and accurate.
That's why I laugh whenever someone uses the lack of scientific certainty as an argument against doing something about emissions. It's a great argument --- if you're trying to build a case for an aggressive plan to reduce emissions. The only viable argument against taking action is to show conclusively that we can be certain about the effects of our carbon emissions, and that they're entirely manageable. And to be able to defend that result against all challengers. Not some handwaving about how imperfect our information is.
The big threat to properly-designed rigid airships seems to be World War II. Now that it's over, new airships shouldn't have any trouble.
The big threat to properly-designed rigid airships is weather. The advantage Germany held over other countries in the pre-WWII era was not just technology, it was also the ability to forecast and steer around storm systems. Obviously we have even better forecasting capability now, but the basic problem hasn't been solved: a trip from point A to point B could take an entirely variable amount of time (and may not happen at all), plus there's always a small but non-zero chance of an unpredicted weather condition.
It's about more than just hard-core "libre" content. Wikipedia is a huge undertaking and it was designed to outlive Wikipedia.org (which is currently operated by a benevolent non-profit foundation with bandwidth donated by some pretty generous people). For the most part everyone's happy with this situation. But part of the reason everyone's happy with it is that even if someday they're not happy --- e.g., the various maintainers lose interest, or decide they all hate each other --- the site can easily be transferred to a different location and everyone can go on as before. In other words, the point was to build an encyclopedia, not a website.
Once you start admitting content that's only available on Wikipedia.org you're off down a very slippery slope towards building a site, and not a compendium of articles.
The other technical problem is that Wikipedia.org doesn't actually own the content it serves; it was donated by contributors under various licenses (GFDL plus a bunch of CC variants). I confess not to know the legal details (and would be interested if someone does, so I'm not sure if GFDL article + image creates a derivative work, but if so that would require the image to be under a compatible license as well, or else Wikipedia would be violating someone's copyright (I'm not sure if reduced-quality versions fit the bill here). If this is legally the case, then even if only a portion of the article is under GFDL Wikipedia would be restricted from publishing it this way. Nobody wants to go through the hassle of figuring it out, just so a few people can get higher-quality images.
There are already nearly 100 nuclear plants in the U.S. alone, and the people being served by them seem generally fine with it and do not fear it.
It's pretty easy to conduct a poll of residents living within 10 miles of an arbitrary plant in a high-density population center in the US. You'll find that more than 50% are uncomfortable with the plant being there. Tell them about the evacuation plans for their town, the number will go above 80%.
There's a huge amount of NIMBYism involved in the construction of nuclear plants and some of it is justified. I was around for the construction of the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire, and the opposition was widespread. Sure, there were some environmental groups leading the charge (the ubiquitous "Clamshell Alliance"). But the same groups oppose lots of things --- and are completely unsuccessful at preventing most of them. It's only with nuclear that the fringe groups have managed to get mainstream traction.
Or put it another way: environmental groups also oppose coal power plants. They've even managed to stop a few from being built. But plenty of them have been. On the other hand, no nuclear plants have been constructed since the 1980s. There's a reason for the differing levels of success. Now if you define "anyone who doesn't want a nuclear plant near their home" as an environmentalist, then of course you can blame it all on them.
Beyond the NIMBYism, there are plenty of reasons why utilities don't want to build nuclear plants. They tend to drive utilities into bankruptcy, for one thing. Similarly, the existing designs are highly questionable, requiring active (powered) cooling. I've heard about at least three accidental leaks in the last decade (here's a tritium leak in Long Island). None of these are likely to be fatal, but none of them should have happened, either.
Finally, we'd be insane to advocate building more 1970s-era plants now. There's a terrific amount of progress on the horizon. Pebble-bed and passively-cooled reactors are likely to make nuclear plants a lot safer. Proper waste management may come onstream in the next decade. And of course, breeder reactors are the future, not the obsolete "burn it and chuck it" process we're using now.
Too bad the people who oppose it do so without offering any real alternative besides the "renewables" that we've been waiting decades for or the prospect of a lower standard of living.....
I've met the opponents of nuclear energy, and they're not tree-huggers. They're your neighbors. They drive SUVs, have backyard cookouts, and they buy still buy mylar balloons even though so-and-so says the kill whales (the kids love them... what can you do?). In fact, they don't even care about the possible environmental impact of nuclear power plants --- just as long as they're nowhere the hell nearby.
Some people delude themselves into the idea we'd be building nuclear plants everywhere if it wasn't for those environmentalists (and their pesky dog!) In real life, there's about a snowball's chance of nuclear plants being constructed near major population centers. In part that's because the economics suck, but mostly it's because Joe and Jane sixpack don't want them there.
It may feel nice to shout hypocrisy at those evil environmentalists, but it's a mug's game. So get it out of your system, go learn a bit about this great country we live in. Then come back and maybe you can contribute something.
I hear tin foil works :)
There are literally hundreds of ideas floating around that can be used if the goal wasn't to limit what free people can do by creating massive taxes and government encroachment.
There are a lot of ideas floating around. The general concern shared by economists is that these piecemeal ideas aren't enough to accomplish the massive reductions in emissions that would be necessary to have a significant impact.
Furthermore, many of the proposals in this document amount to specific government subsidies selected by bureaucrats rather than the free market. At a small scale this probably isn't a big deal. Unfortunately, at a small scale it's unlikely to be particularly effective at achieving the desired emissions reductions. Our problem isn't lack of alternative technologies --- it's that businesses aren't using those technologies on a massive scale. Mostly because they're a few percent more expensive (in significant part because they're not deployed in large scale), and that adds up to a huge financial incentive to stick with the current tech.
At the larger scales necessary to make businesses switch, subsidies tend to distort the market and invite a lot of political patronage (see Ethanol). Ironically, I've learned this lesson from observation of failed liberal policies.
The nice thing about cap & trade is that it shouldn't be seen as an alternative to prizes, reasonable subsidies for long-term energy research, etc. The two can be combined (and they are being combined!). The best thing is that if I'm wrong, and modest subsidies/prizes are sufficient to reduce GHG emissions below the capped level, then the cap won't matter, and the effective tax on emissions will be nearly zero. It's only if I'm right that the cap kicks in.
And I realize that you've addressed the oil exploration aspects of this bill, but they go to credibility --- and the success of this plan would depend on a committed government. You cannot get serious about reducing GHG emissions while you're simultaneously promoting the construction of new refineries and more offshore oil exploration. A government that promotes those policies is sending a clear signal that it's not going to make a serious effort to reduce oil consumption and move to other fuels. That tells corporations and manufacturers exactly how seriously they should take all other activities of that government.
(Worse, most experts say they won't significantly reduce the price of oil, at least not for decades. I don't remember the quote, but last fall I recall Russia's foreign minister even laughing about how those policies would make us even more dependent on importing their oil.)
Now the thing that kills me about this is that the Republicans are being given a ton of input into the legislative process. The Democrats are bending over backwards to incorporate their ideas, in the name of "bipartisanship". So this bill could take some of the best GHG-reduction ideas of the Republican bill, and combine them with C&T. If nuclear power is a priority for the Republican party (as opposed to the nuclear 'industry'), we could also be increasing nuclear research subsidies (which I think we are), with particular attention to building the next generation of pebble-bed and breeder reactors. I'd like to see all that happen, rather than another party-line "no" vote or a filibuster.
It's a simple matter to avoid this sort of scrutiny. Give the cell phone in your name to someone else, go commit the crime, and then retrieve the phone.
A surprising number of murders are crimes of passion, i.e., the murderer didn't set out to commit a crime, and didn't plan accordingly. Many of the others are carried out by stupid people.
But yes, I agree. And I would take this further --- if you're ever planning to do something questionable, like cheat on your wife/girlfriend, buy drugs, take clothes/food to an escaped political prisoner who's wanted by your authoritarian government, you should be proactive and take the battery out. There's no telling how long those records will be archived somewhere.
Carrying a cellphone isn't displaying any expectation of privacy. By having it, you're explicitly granting permission for people to find you.
I think you're explicitly granting permission for people to call you, which is not the same thing as knowing where you are. Similarly, just because my cellphone can record audio and video while "off-hook" doesn't mean that I'm explicitly granting permission for people to eavesdrop my day-to-day conversations.
Whew! I did read the document, and there's lots I disagree with in it. Like (as I said before) the idea that you can achieve significant cuts in carbon emissions while promoting a policy of heavy-duty oil exploration. There's some stuff in there about prizes, and a whole bunch of heavy handed government tinkering to promote Nuclear --- an idea which I do support, though it's very easy to cross over from promoting to "subsidizing the shit out of an entrenched industry, one which doesn't have much interest in building new plants even with the subsidies".
You'll forgive me if I read the document and come to the conclusion that it's hyper-timid weak tea bullshit. Or maybe you won't based on the tenor of your last post.
I just spent a couple of weeks in the Big Apple, and the performance there is absolutely miserable. Constant dropped calls, 3G that's so slow it barely works. I have to switch 3G off to get a somewhat reliable calling/data service. Of course, in NYC every third person has an iPhone or Blackberry and AT&T clearly isn't provisioning to handle it.
That Michael Jackson' Cap & Trade Alternative was a joke but seriously, here is a summery of the republican alternatives. You can find out more about the specifics Here and here.
The PDF you link to begins with a a series of programs to promote offshore oil drilling. This is the GOP's strategy for reducing carbon emissions? I do remember something about "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP convention, but I was hoping maybe they were joking.