> The picture of onerous environmental
> regulations as an unbearable crippling burden is
> a smokescreen thrown up by industry.
It's the death of a thousand cuts. If a thousand and one tiny Peg Bundies eating bonbons sit on your back as you lumber along, causing the economy to limp as if by heavy handed socialism or communism, then the effects will be the same, too.
Ironically, if the science is true, this is one legitimate function of the government. It's the 999 spotted owls and friends that cause the real problems.
> There is no way to isolate the variables. We'll simply never know.
We'll simply go "whew!" and pat ourselves on the back that we prevented an obvious problem detected with 10 years of data on a planet with century, millenia, and eon-based weather cycles.
Not only that, we're foolishly growing food instead of feeding the dead back to ourselves as a complete, workable replacement to farming because we're "squeamish".
We should rename the product and call it something innocuous, some fake name that sounds like it's based on soy beans, and is green and good for the environment.
She's just another "god" that people worship. Unfortunately, since it's not in any historical pantheons, people have an increased fervor for her.
I'm also going to pre-savage any responders who say Gaia is well-defined in ancient pantheons because you're a buffon who is completely missing my point.
Anybody ever use C14 to create a few million cubic yards of CFC, release it, then track the CFC ratio up through the atmosphere through the years to see exactly how fast it gets up there, comparing carefully to premeasured baselines at all altitudes?
Expensive, yes, but far less expensive than the "solution", especially if unnecessary, not to mention virtually irrelevant if it actually is a problem.
> but it takes CFCs 50 years to get to the upper
> atmosphear where it can cause the damage to O3.
Either that, or the 50 years was a number scientists pulled out of their ass when asked why the hole didn't show up earlier, rather than question the theory itself.
For anyone keeping score:
The theory: since we've 40 more years of massive increases in CFC release to go, we're in for a hell of a time!
The reality: Why didn't massive CFC problems show up in the 60's? Umm, they must take 50 years to get up there, not just a few. Pay no attention to the smoke and mirrors.
And of course he's carefully accounted for the general increase in sun bathing over the past 20, 30, 40 years as outfits got skimpier and skimpier and people got insaner and insaner in getting darker.
It would be like trying to correlate UV exposure with obesity and heart disease, with the ever-growing amounts of cheaper and cheaper meats, and greasier, cheaper fast foods.
Because sun bathing would be several orders of magnitude more important, so he's got to be careful.
> CFCs that we should do a better job of not
> creating biodestructive compounds;
Keep in mind that CFC's are one of the least biodestructive compounds of all time. They react with nothing. That's why they were used for aerosols, INCLUDING distribution systems for asthmatics, for whom CFC's were ideal. They don't react with the chemicals they're spraying. They don't react with person's body, including a sensitive person's lungs. That's also why they were used in refrigeration systems, because they didn't corrode the metals, which almost everything does because of the large temperature and pressure differentials inside such a system.
It's only because of the theorized breakdown in the upper atmosphere that they were considered a problem.
> Imagine, China and India burning all their forest
> and using as much energy as western countries, and
> I think we are in big trouble...
And therein lies your fault, and the fault of many others.
Assuming India gets rid of its heavy-handed socialism, and China gets rid of communism, and both go to free markets, should those countries both get a standard of living even half the US's, technology will be rocketting ahead globally so rapidly that all these problems you fear will be trivial to solve.
Together, they are 8-10 times the size of the US. Imagine 8-10 US's working on various problems. Problems like producing gas or something similar artificially, if and when its needed in a few hundred years. How to produce even more food per acre. How to artificially alter weather. Etc. etc. etc.
It is a bizarre, perverted conceit of environmental groups to fear all the other countries of the US living at or near US standards. In reality, the world's technological advancement would be many times what it is now.
Why ISN'T everyone in the US using as much energy as a small nuclear bomb every year? They, and the rest of the world, should be.
All that stuff started up when cable TV started becoming omnipresent, and really took off during the Gulf War as stations slapped labels on things to demonstrate where the video sources came from.
Those systems are not done in six months, a year, or a year and a half. Many computer projects are done on the Herculean Effort schedule, all the while pretending to be on a well-defined develop/test/refine cycle.
If that were only true. I once estimated I needed about 36 hours in a day to get in all the sleep and relaxation I needed to be happy.
Anyone know how to build a Director Xtra C/C++.dll to manipulate the native point arrays, or just "call" a standard.dll therein from a Director script?
You can develop properly, but you have to design modules with all specified functionality in mind -- no last second adding in "oh yeah, don't forget the login system" or "we're gonna want a WOW display attached to the processing so add in all these hack hooks at the last second into the core engine."
If you need that stuff, design it in from the start. Too many programmers worry about general design to make future expansion easier, while leaving out consideration for real, hard requirements that won't be implemented until later in the project.
And to avoid the problem with really bad bugs that are responsible for the (double it and add 5) estimation, take a little extra time to write exhaustive testing (as far as possible) of each module, indeed each function, to make sure it doesn't do something wrong when given values out of "happy path" input range.
> Sure, this has inspired engineered lumber, etc.,
> but only because the cheaper and better
> alternative (the real thing) no longer exists.
> That is one of the cases where we can put a price
> on the loss.
This sums up exactly why capitalism, i.e. freedom, works better than a politician dictating solutions. Nobody ever said new solutions wouldn't be needed.
What they said was that in the end result, people would be better off.
Not cutting down trees would have resulted in Jack Squat, not to mention a slowed economy. But people cut 'em down anyway, and what do we have?
1. Better-developed fast-growth wood forests
2. Alternatives, like the engineered wood I-joists, which I have in my home. They span much longer spans, leading to bigger houses. They're so much stronger than normal 2x12's that the floors built on them squeek a lot less. Lo and behold! They are actually preferred and in demand over plain old 2x12's.
Having a scientist make a first-order panic scream about running out of something or other, acocmpanied by scientifically illeterate politicians leads to bad policy.
What scientist predicted the better results? Not a damned one. Not counting this economic scientist, of course.
A scientist might scream "we're cutting down all the trees!"
Well, why is that bad? "Ummm...."
"Ummm...because we use them to make houses and stuff and we'll run into problems because we'll suddenly run out!"
You see how the scientist now makes an economic judgement, which is completely out of their realm. Humans, which is to say, millions of people solving problems, effortlessly solved this one. New materials, new forms of older scraps (engineered I beams or joists), new forms of trees and forests.
The "price" of preserving your "loss" would have left us with more expensive housing, still using up forests, and less well-developed alternatives.
You may be the brightest person, ever, but no matter how bright you are, you can't possibly be so arrogant as to force your ideas on life down everyone's throat at the point of a gun. Ohh, everyone else will find solutions that your limited philosophy couldn't possibly discover.
That corporations use governments to protect their interests is nothing new. I do question, though, whether such machinations substantially alter the outcome, though.
With no way for England to force their steel here, the English steel companies would have to either produce here, import here, or lose out to domestic development. If the US government decided domestic steel production was in their national interest militarily, which it might very well be, then that is perfectly rational.
Note that during the '80's, even the US Navy bought imported steel from Japan because it was cheaper than domestic. The same people who attack the former position then attacked the latter. You can't win for losing.
They were mowed down in Europe time and time again.
They were mowed down in this country two or three times already. We've filled in huge swamps, too. No problems. People live better lives.
I'll give an analogy. For most of history, almost everyone lived and worked on farms. As the economy got stronger, more people could specialize because farm product got cheaper.
Nowadays, when what, 2%? of the population are farm workers, suddenly we get bent out of shape when another 1/10 of 1% lose their jobs and have to go work in a city. Meanwhile, it's actually just healthy development.
So, too, for forests and swamps. Society will come up with better solutions to do what they do (if what they do is of any real value whatsoever) just as it has been for millenia. Florida doesn't need no steenking swamps, the rest of the country doesn't, including other lowland areas. Even if it caused people to be have to put up better water treatment plants, oh well. The economic benefits do vastly outweigh that.
Slashdot Mirror
> In any case, as far as practical approaches,
> erring on the side of caution would be a prudent
> one.
Or would it?
> The picture of onerous environmental
> regulations as an unbearable crippling burden is
> a smokescreen thrown up by industry.
It's the death of a thousand cuts. If a thousand and one tiny Peg Bundies eating bonbons sit on your back as you lumber along, causing the economy to limp as if by heavy handed socialism or communism, then the effects will be the same, too.
Ironically, if the science is true, this is one legitimate function of the government. It's the 999 spotted owls and friends that cause the real problems.
> I guess it's been about 25 [since CFC ban]? So I
> guess this is about when one would start to notice
> the effects (of a shrinking hole.)
Wrong! It takes 50 years for CFC's to get up there, so we can expect 25 more years of worsening conditions before dreaming of seeing it lessen.
> There is no way to isolate the variables. We'll simply never know.
We'll simply go "whew!" and pat ourselves on the back that we prevented an obvious problem detected with 10 years of data on a planet with century, millenia, and eon-based weather cycles.
Not only that, we're foolishly growing food instead of feeding the dead back to ourselves as a complete, workable replacement to farming because we're "squeamish".
We should rename the product and call it something innocuous, some fake name that sounds like it's based on soy beans, and is green and good for the environment.
She's just another "god" that people worship. Unfortunately, since it's not in any historical pantheons, people have an increased fervor for her.
I'm also going to pre-savage any responders who say Gaia is well-defined in ancient pantheons because you're a buffon who is completely missing my point.
Anybody ever use C14 to create a few million cubic yards of CFC, release it, then track the CFC ratio up through the atmosphere through the years to see exactly how fast it gets up there, comparing carefully to premeasured baselines at all altitudes?
Expensive, yes, but far less expensive than the "solution", especially if unnecessary, not to mention virtually irrelevant if it actually is a problem.
I didn't think so.
> but it takes CFCs 50 years to get to the upper
> atmosphear where it can cause the damage to O3.
Either that, or the 50 years was a number scientists pulled out of their ass when asked why the hole didn't show up earlier, rather than question the theory itself.
For anyone keeping score:
The theory: since we've 40 more years of massive increases in CFC release to go, we're in for a hell of a time!
The reality: Why didn't massive CFC problems show up in the 60's? Umm, they must take 50 years to get up there, not just a few. Pay no attention to the smoke and mirrors.
And of course he's carefully accounted for the general increase in sun bathing over the past 20, 30, 40 years as outfits got skimpier and skimpier and people got insaner and insaner in getting darker.
It would be like trying to correlate UV exposure with obesity and heart disease, with the ever-growing amounts of cheaper and cheaper meats, and greasier, cheaper fast foods.
Because sun bathing would be several orders of magnitude more important, so he's got to be careful.
And he is, right?
Right?
> What happens when pasta and antipasta collide?
I don't know, but I do know that I need to loosen my belt to contain the expanding event horizon.
> CFCs that we should do a better job of not
> creating biodestructive compounds;
Keep in mind that CFC's are one of the least biodestructive compounds of all time. They react with nothing. That's why they were used for aerosols, INCLUDING distribution systems for asthmatics, for whom CFC's were ideal. They don't react with the chemicals they're spraying. They don't react with person's body, including a sensitive person's lungs. That's also why they were used in refrigeration systems, because they didn't corrode the metals, which almost everything does because of the large temperature and pressure differentials inside such a system.
It's only because of the theorized breakdown in the upper atmosphere that they were considered a problem.
> Imagine, China and India burning all their forest
> and using as much energy as western countries, and
> I think we are in big trouble...
And therein lies your fault, and the fault of many others.
Assuming India gets rid of its heavy-handed socialism, and China gets rid of communism, and both go to free markets, should those countries both get a standard of living even half the US's, technology will be rocketting ahead globally so rapidly that all these problems you fear will be trivial to solve.
Together, they are 8-10 times the size of the US. Imagine 8-10 US's working on various problems. Problems like producing gas or something similar artificially, if and when its needed in a few hundred years. How to produce even more food per acre. How to artificially alter weather. Etc. etc. etc.
It is a bizarre, perverted conceit of environmental groups to fear all the other countries of the US living at or near US standards. In reality, the world's technological advancement would be many times what it is now.
Why ISN'T everyone in the US using as much energy as a small nuclear bomb every year? They, and the rest of the world, should be.
Not at all!
The French Foreign Legion is where you go when you want to forget.
The French Fore-gin Legion is where you go when you want to forget, fast.
If religion were a science, standardized testing for the existance of a god would instantly demonstrate no gods (or other supernatural forces) exist.
So, religion, to continue to exist, would have to propose that God deliberately hides whenever we look, and that would make religion look very dopey.
Oh, wait a minute.
Nevermind.
I haven't earned enough money yet to not be having fun.
Think of it not so much that you are being punished for "abusing" others, but rather that you are using your karma to spend it to make a statement.
All that stuff started up when cable TV started becoming omnipresent, and really took off during the Gulf War as stations slapped labels on things to demonstrate where the video sources came from.
They should at least be extremely translucent.
> Lastly, why didn't this sudden catastrophy kill
> off mammals then?
Because when the darkness killed off all the plants, the mammals, which need much more food than reptiles to survive,
Oh, wait. That argument doesn't work.
Let's face it, though. It's a rather arbitrary distinction on our part to distinguish the dinosaurs from what went before them.
Those systems are not done in six months, a year, or a year and a half. Many computer projects are done on the Herculean Effort schedule, all the while pretending to be on a well-defined develop/test/refine cycle.
If that were only true. I once estimated I needed about 36 hours in a day to get in all the sleep and relaxation I needed to be happy.
.dll to manipulate the native point arrays, or just "call" a standard .dll therein from a Director script?
Anyone know how to build a Director Xtra C/C++
You can develop properly, but you have to design modules with all specified functionality in mind -- no last second adding in "oh yeah, don't forget the login system" or "we're gonna want a WOW display attached to the processing so add in all these hack hooks at the last second into the core engine."
If you need that stuff, design it in from the start. Too many programmers worry about general design to make future expansion easier, while leaving out consideration for real, hard requirements that won't be implemented until later in the project.
And to avoid the problem with really bad bugs that are responsible for the (double it and add 5) estimation, take a little extra time to write exhaustive testing (as far as possible) of each module, indeed each function, to make sure it doesn't do something wrong when given values out of "happy path" input range.
> Sure, this has inspired engineered lumber, etc.,
> but only because the cheaper and better
> alternative (the real thing) no longer exists.
> That is one of the cases where we can put a price
> on the loss.
This sums up exactly why capitalism, i.e. freedom, works better than a politician dictating solutions. Nobody ever said new solutions wouldn't be needed.
What they said was that in the end result, people would be better off.
Not cutting down trees would have resulted in Jack Squat, not to mention a slowed economy. But people cut 'em down anyway, and what do we have?
1. Better-developed fast-growth wood forests
2. Alternatives, like the engineered wood I-joists, which I have in my home. They span much longer spans, leading to bigger houses. They're so much stronger than normal 2x12's that the floors built on them squeek a lot less. Lo and behold! They are actually preferred and in demand over plain old 2x12's.
Having a scientist make a first-order panic scream about running out of something or other, acocmpanied by scientifically illeterate politicians leads to bad policy.
What scientist predicted the better results? Not a damned one. Not counting this economic scientist, of course.
A scientist might scream "we're cutting down all the trees!"
Well, why is that bad? "Ummm...."
"Ummm...because we use them to make houses and stuff and we'll run into problems because we'll suddenly run out!"
You see how the scientist now makes an economic judgement, which is completely out of their realm. Humans, which is to say, millions of people solving problems, effortlessly solved this one. New materials, new forms of older scraps (engineered I beams or joists), new forms of trees and forests.
The "price" of preserving your "loss" would have left us with more expensive housing, still using up forests, and less well-developed alternatives.
You may be the brightest person, ever, but no matter how bright you are, you can't possibly be so arrogant as to force your ideas on life down everyone's throat at the point of a gun. Ohh, everyone else will find solutions that your limited philosophy couldn't possibly discover.
That corporations use governments to protect their interests is nothing new. I do question, though, whether such machinations substantially alter the outcome, though.
With no way for England to force their steel here, the English steel companies would have to either produce here, import here, or lose out to domestic development. If the US government decided domestic steel production was in their national interest militarily, which it might very well be, then that is perfectly rational.
Note that during the '80's, even the US Navy bought imported steel from Japan because it was cheaper than domestic. The same people who attack the former position then attacked the latter. You can't win for losing.
What are they needed for?
They were mowed down in Europe time and time again.
They were mowed down in this country two or three times already. We've filled in huge swamps, too. No problems. People live better lives.
I'll give an analogy. For most of history, almost everyone lived and worked on farms. As the economy got stronger, more people could specialize because farm product got cheaper.
Nowadays, when what, 2%? of the population are farm workers, suddenly we get bent out of shape when another 1/10 of 1% lose their jobs and have to go work in a city. Meanwhile, it's actually just healthy development.
So, too, for forests and swamps. Society will come up with better solutions to do what they do (if what they do is of any real value whatsoever) just as it has been for millenia. Florida doesn't need no steenking swamps, the rest of the country doesn't, including other lowland areas. Even if it caused people to be have to put up better water treatment plants, oh well. The economic benefits do vastly outweigh that.
No, Wizards get disintigrate like at level 60 or something, and by that time their Int is 200, not 20.