What "Law"? How about "Postulate", or "Theorem"...no, not theorem...how about "conjecture"? How about "cockamamie bullshit"? You could probably make a similar "law" that describes the performance of light bulb technology over the last 100 years..."well, lightbulbs become (sort-of) 5% less expensive to make and 5% brighter every decade! Whoopee!!!"
Everybody's seen the graph. It's not linear. It's not exponential...it's just up. Hit or miss. No "law" involved here at all.
The whole idea that Moore's Law is a Law is stupid from the get-go. Damnit, I wish I could remember the name of the...oh yeah, the IgNobel. They should give the IgNobel to the cat who disproved Moore's Law. I mean, come on people, duh!
This is almost as stupid as those clone-aid wackos...
When a foreign, non-American citizen, comes to the United States to attend a university, it is pretty much in order to obtain a top notch education that could not be obtained at home.
When an American goes abroad to study, it is nominally to fuck off and gain "cultural perspective".
Only the folks who use Carrot Top for collect calls are too stupid to PAY FOR THEIR OWN FUCKING PHONE CALL (you hear me out there? you carrot top enjoying morons!...not you AC).
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the pillar of rock commercials either. They're usually for trucks and jeeps...
I like the new Z commercials. Usually some good trance-like music spliced over the top of a slideshow of black and white stills of the car doing various things...like sitting there...looking way cool...
I believe it was 352...just a guess, I'm away from my TV. I've got the UltimateTV package, and I'm not sure about how other DirecTV packages work, but whenever a new channel is available, it automatically gets added to my guide. I happened to be flipping the other day and saw a channel entitled "BMW". I believe they're doing it for a limited time...if I remember correctly, it was close to the same place on the guide as Bravo.
...unless you're hawking a GM piece of garbage car. BMW films is brilliant because that type of advert appeals to the types of people who enjoy that kind of thing, i.e. film and directing.
I think the Ads are brilliant, and I had seriously considered buying a BMW, it prolly won't happen cuz I like the Audis, but anyhoo, I digress.
Even regular 30 second spots for BMW and Mercedes are not geared to get you to go out and buy a car tomorrow. Ford and GM ads certainly are ("SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAYYYYY!"), but Audi, Mercedes, BMW...those companies are selling user experience, not cars. They want you to see their car climbing switchbacks in the Alps. They want you to see their car flying over railroad tracks and speeding through the streets of San Francisco, London, Berlin, et al.
Also, it's not like those 8 minute films cost $20 million to shoot. I'd almost bet that those fancy Brittney Spears Pepsi ads, with all those elaborate sets and dozens of extras are much more complicated and expensive. A good crew could knock out one of those BMW films in two weeks...mebbe less.
And, distribution of the spot is mainly through word-of-mouth. They'd have been smart to wedge one of those in with the movie trailers, but most of the distribution is done on the Internet. Very cheap. I am pleased that they started playing the shorts, several of them at once in 30 minute blocks, on DirecTV. I enjoy watching them much more on a 32" TV than a 21" computer monitor.
I actually got a chance to do that canal trip a couple of decades ago. I was probably about 7 or 8 years old at the time, mebbe 10, but my family and some other friends rented a barge and travelled several canal-like waterways in northern England for several days. Along the way we saw many castles and I particularly remember a fort, or bunch of walls really, made of what seemed like flint.
Beautiful country.
...side note: Flame-bait? Offtopic? Moderators are idiots. If you want to see an engineering project, go to Yosemite and follow the trail up to the falls...and see where nearly one hundred years ago, men built that trail by hand. Ugh...
If you haven't been to Yosemite National Park in the United States, you absolutely must. A couple of years ago, I went the last week of November for a few days. The beautiful part...no on there...the next best beautiful part...most of the people that were there were not Americans.
I was lucky enough to find a small cadre of folks that were there just for the sheer wonder of the place. Mountain climbers and hard-core hikers. Now, I'm a fat-arsed computer programmer, but I still made it to the top of Yosemite Falls. Got some great pictures.
Also, try not to drive into the valley if you don't have to. It cuts down on pollution to have less cars there, plus, those granite walls are so amazing that it's too hard not to just stop in the middle of the road and look...
Hmmm...that's cool! I've got UltimateTV, so I've just got a button. But that's good to know when the big bad M$ drops their service and I have to go Tivo...
That's not the point, moron.
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Spielberg's Taken
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· Score: 2, Insightful
By saying that he set up his Tivo to watch the rest of it is saying that he enjoyed the show enough to record it all, not that he was going to skip the commercials. Gawd, you sound like an AOL exec, expecting him to "steal" the programming.
By Tivo'ing the show, our dear author will be assured of not missing ANY episodes, because, like me, he probably has no time to slot for several hours worth of programming when Sci-fi chooses to air it.
And, like as not, our dear author is going to watch some of those commercials, because, since Tivo has no 30 second skip function, he will have to see some of them, even in fast forward, and will stop to watch commercials he is interested in. I do it all the time.
Now tack on the fact that the Tivo can track which commercials he is watching and narrowing down the demographic that our dear advertisers need to target, saving them money for not showing commercials to people that don't care about their products, and allowing Sci-Fi to charge more for their time because they can show exactly who is watching what. (assuming they all don't have their heads up their arses, the different companies ought to be doing this...)
So, no, Sci-Fi does not NEED to lose money on Tivo customers, and you are an unenlighted media conglomerate tool.
I know this thread is probably dead, but I'm gonna chime in anyway. You're all wrong. Everything is not political, and it is at the same time.
Eating Tasty Wheat because General Mills (or whoever) supports gay rights (hypothetically) is a political decision.
Eating Tasty Wheat because it tastes good is apolitical. Not everyone, not hardly anyone, bases many of their decisions on the political implications of those decsions.
For instance, supporting the Taliban. Afghans may have supported the Taliban, but it may not have been a political decision. It may have been a life or death decision. i.e. We'll kill you if you don't vote our way, etc.
So, not every decision you make has political ramifications. Especially if you don't buy into the politics. If I buy Tasty Wheat from X Cereal company, and X cereal company dumps industrial waste into the river, but I don't give a shit about it, my decision is NOT based upon politics, it's based on taste buds.
The only thing that makes something political is a politician, whether professional, like a senator, or amateur, like yourself.
I wrote a letter to the San Diego DA (posted it on my web site). You should too. The email address is "publicinformation@sdcda.com". I told a bit of the story, included some hyperlinks and suggested that the DA lay down the law on PanIP. If not for extortion, then for jaywalking, or speeding, or littering, or anything to make these assholes stop extorting money from the public.
...and hook it up to WI-FI and split the cost with your neighbors! It would be a severe pain in the ass if AT&T messed with my bandwidth...I run a web server...don't kazaa at all, but I do sometimes download, say, Oracle9i and RedHat...and at 3 full CD's anymore...that'll bust open a 5GB limit right quick.
I don't know if you caught the Foreign Affairs post that I made, but the article is basically about how drilling for oil in ANWAR isn't a good idea because it will not be economically feasible. That is, to make the drilling worth it, oil must remain at a high price for long periods of time (higher than it is now, I think).
It goes on to say that combined with new drilling technologies, new efficiency technologies will help drive the cost of oil down too. For instance, you'd be surprised to hear about the increases of efficiency in not only vehicles, but electrical appliances during the 80's and early 90's. The increases in efficiencies have not been as pronounced recently due to low oil prices in general, not providing the incentive for efficiency.
I'm almost a bit upset with the article's conclusions, because it means Americans are doomed to suffer decades more of monstrous SUV driving idiots.
The article also gets into fuel efficient vehicles and alternate fuels...email me and I'll see if I can't get you a copy of the article if you like.
It's a fascinating article, and unfortunately, you can only read part of it, but if you do get hooked, you can buy the article, or possibly find the back issue somewhere...library perhaps?
The reason that the rate of discovery of new wells has gone down is primarily due to new technology available to increase the "lifetime" of current wells. Exploration for new wells is expensive, and oil companies are going to put old wells back in service before they try to find new ones.
Traditionally, only a percentage of oil found under the ground has been able to be removed due to whatever reason, geological, mechanical, etc. Technologies that have arisen recently (i.e. the last two decades or so) have allowed currently tapped wells to produce more oil than what was "budgeted" for. Also, wells that had previously "run dry" have now been re-tapped using the new technology.
I also debate your 50 years idea. I'd say that quite a few people understand that humankind really has no idea how much oil is left, let alone how it is produced. There are a few theories that oil is constantly being replenished due to unknow geological action....not that I subscribe to those theories, but I believe the ball is still up in the air on total supplies of oil.
I really wish I had the quote with me, but I leant the copy of Foreign Affairs (article entitled "The Myth of Alaskan Oil") to an environmentalist buddy of mine and have yet to get it back, but my favorite quote was from a prominent Saudi government official, "We will be finished with oil before it is finished with us." Basically meaning that other, cheaper sources of energy will arise before the oil runs out (because they don't think the oil is going to run out any time soon).
Okay...econ 101 here. 100% of the world's oil production fills 100% of the world's demand. If the rest of the world demanded more oil, there would be more oil production and therefore the United States would then use less than 25% of the world's oil production. If oil production were cheaper, worldwide usage would increase, but it isn't, so it doesn't (though it will down the road).
Now, also take into consideration that 100% of the world's oil production does not mean 100% of the world's oil. Not all the oil that the world contains has been discovered, or, that which has been discover is not being harvested. Think Alaskan National Wildlife and Animal Refuge (ANWAR, I think that's what it stands for). Oil we know about, but is unused because the demand for it is not high enough to make it economically feasible to bother drilling for.
So, unless you know, for a fact that all the currently exploited oil wells in the world account for every last drop of oil hidden underneath the Earth's crust, you cannot tell me that we need five more Earths.
Can you not see the flaw in that argument? It's a commonly used argument, but flawed nonetheless. Now, shift your argument to a different resource. Food. The United States produces X% of the world's food, but only consumes Y% of the world's food. Same argument, different resource, equally useless.
You can make the same analogies for many different types of resources...concrete, dynamite/tnt (very useful stuff, if you want to build/mine anything), steel, pollution, etc., etc.
Pollution might be the best example of all. The United States has a GDP that dwarfs several of the next largest GDP countries, and pollutes much less and countries with GDP's much less (China, Russia, et al). So in that situation, the ratio is the exact opposite.
One cannot just make blanket statements such as those made by the paper/essay in question and take them as fact/truth. It is a convoluted use of statistical information...you know, the three kinds of lies, "lies, damn lies and statistics"? (Disraeli)
I had a great histroy teacher in high school that emphasised reading between the lines. The author of this paper has an agenda. That agenda is to further the sense of esthetic that he/she and his/her comrades hold. They want to convince you that the effect of humanity on the Earth is a bad thing, but in this circumstance he/she is using "lies, damn lies and statistics" to try to win your heart.
It is a beautiful example. Though I doubt they all died. Probably moved on eventually. Besides, the culture of Easter was a fishing culture, so they wouldn't have eliminated all food sources (though I have no idea what the annual climate shifts are like...no wood to burn for warmth...that's a problem).
Take into consideration, though, that Easter Island is not a good foil to my stance. The relatively limited number and variety of resources there do not make a good model of the Earth.
I don't believe that pointing out human use of land as a "problem" is an ethical way to satisfy one's sense of esthetics. Because that's what it really boils down to, esthetics.
Everyone knows that eventually human beings are going to cover as much of the planet as possible. That's just how bacterial multiplication works. You multiply until you've reached the limit of the food source. Nice and simple.
Except there are quite a few people out there that view a few acres of trees to be more important than human life. Even a miserable human life.
I happen to love real conservation. You know, more doing things and less bitching about it. You should check out what Ted Turner is doing. He's been buying up ranch land and returning it to what he calls "pre-anglo" form. All the while trying to figure out how to make it profitable, and therefore, sustainable...and the entire time, 100% touched by human hand.
I think the idea, let alone the paper, is full of logical holes through which one could drive an oil tanker or two.:-)
I also don't believe that species conservation is possible on a global scale, nor is it a worthwhile cause (when the end result of such work is detrimental to human life).
I won't whip out the "god created man to be master of all beasts" on you, but I do find human life to be superior to that of animals. It's only a position, no more or less.
In my opinion, the paper is sensationalist tripe. i.e. E.O Wilson, the famous naturalist, claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if all humans consumed at the rate of the average North American. Not only do I find this type of quote offensive, I think it is a lie/untruth/bullshit.
Just because someone "claims" something, even if they are a famous naturalist doesn't make it true. Putting tripe like this in print in a major news outlet is irresponsible. The paper is obviously biased and does not even begin to touch on the reasons why man has touched "83%" of the surface of the Earth.
It almost seems to suggest that this wouldn't be an issue if we killed about three billion people, which is really what it would take to accomplish the goals of the publishing author. Slightly offensive if you take the time to read between the lines for the agenda.
I don't believe I invoked thermodynamic principal, I was just noting that because a particular part of the earth is inhospitable, you cannot remove it from a "surface of the earth" claim and be reasonable at the same time.
I'd also argue that the number of people and the technology (goats) being used to defoliate the landscape in the Sahara probably had about a percent of a percent of an effect on the landscape change, while the climate shift probably did just about all of the work there.
I am intentionally being provocative myself because the issue at hand (as it stands) is hardly worthy of debate. It disgusts me when people trying to argue serious issues do so from an illogical position.
I don't label all "environmentalists" as "whackos", it is mostly an inflammatory term that fits the type of mouths that are willing to perpetrate this nonsense on the public.
I would style myself an environmentalist. I "leave no trace" when I go back-country camping. I try to conserve my water use in a reasonable manner. I don't leave all the lights on if I don't have to. I own a fuel-efficient car...intentionally.:-)
I don't buy many arguments against GM food. Most arguments against it are extemist and not rationalized well. Perhaps there should be and FDA for GM food, yes, but writing it off out of hand is wrong. We've been eating GM food since Gregor Mendel whipped it out in 1822 (and really since man realized that certain types of grains/animals are good to eat and others are not).
The thing about equilibrium is, there is no "third" option. You have two sides of a conflict that will find an equilibrium. A good example would be Europe, and specifically England, back in the Middle Ages. There was a specific point in time where local food production would only support a certain population, and I wish I remembered the specifics, but some technological advances were followed by sharp increases in population, made possible by sharp increases in food production.
People are not going to starve en masse (on the scale of millions and billions). What will happen is certain regions of the world can only support a certain number of people, and once that number is reached, the population will stop growing. The food there is not going to "run out", but its growth rate will...and so will the growth rate of the population.
While there is little scientific data I have to back up my next premise, but there are certain conditions that may inspire a decrease in population other than lack of food. Look to the West specifically.
Birth rates in the United States, Europe and Japan have been falling over the last few decades. In fact, there are several economists that believe that the future outlook of Japan's economy is dire due to the fact that population growth is an essential part of economic growth. Japan's population is in decline, due to lack of land, lack of resources, but probably more like cultural shifts.
As individuals and families are able to derive more resources for themselves, there becomes less of a desire to have many or any children. Very few families in the US are having more than two children, and you may be able to make a case down the road that, except for immigration, the population of the US will be on the decline within our lifetimes.
Do the democratic question: the world has a lot more problems to solve before treaties like Kyoto can truly be enacted democratically. Billions of people live in areas that have not industrialized and they will be hampered by rules made by people who don't live where they do. These societies are going to industrialize, whether you like it or not, and whether you try to shove emmissions controls down their throat from across an ocean.
You cannot view the productivity issue (GM food, robots, use of more oil, etc) from the viewpoint of a Westerner. You must view it from the eyes of a Bangladeshi, or Afghani, or Sahelian. They have absolutely the most to gain from cheap food, oil, cars, clothes, computers, communications, etc. Consumption in the West is nothing compared to what it will be in 50 years. Western consumption will probably decrease, as efficiencies rise, but that will be more than offset by the industrialization of our so called backwaters.
This issue isn't even a concern for Westerners, at least to the extent that anyone in the West is going to starve for lack of home grown food.
No one, no where, no how, is going to solve this "problem" on a global scale. People will address the "problem" of overpopulation and overuse of land on a local level.
No one government has the political (or financial) resources to subjugate every human being to its own idea of how the Earth should be managed.
Are you going to tell the starving people of the Sahel to stop increasing the amount of land that they farm because "we have to have national parks and free places for animals to roam"? No, because the people of the Sahel will tell you to buzz off and mind your business.
No one living there is going to listen to what you or I have to say on the subject at all (unless you happen to live in the Sahel, but if you did, you'd probably be all for expanding the grazing range of your cattle).
People will figure out their own problems and solve them or they will die. Unless you go to where they live and help them directly, they will not listen to you.
Slashdot Mirror
1. You'd think that e-file would save the IRS money.
2. IRS provides the alternative, i.e. paper, for free.
3. Hell, nevermind the savings in filing costs...imagine how much the IRS would save in PRINTING costs if everyone (or a big portion) e-filed.
Why the fsck is a cottage industry built around something we should be getting for free even allowed to exist!!!
I saw http://www.taxact.com/ in another post. I'll pay the $8. It sucks, because it should be free, but it's prolly just about the best bet out there.
Moore's Law, Moore's Law, Moore's Law...Christmas!
What "Law"? How about "Postulate", or "Theorem"...no, not theorem...how about "conjecture"? How about "cockamamie bullshit"? You could probably make a similar "law" that describes the performance of light bulb technology over the last 100 years..."well, lightbulbs become (sort-of) 5% less expensive to make and 5% brighter every decade! Whoopee!!!"
Everybody's seen the graph. It's not linear. It's not exponential...it's just up. Hit or miss. No "law" involved here at all.
The whole idea that Moore's Law is a Law is stupid from the get-go. Damnit, I wish I could remember the name of the...oh yeah, the IgNobel. They should give the IgNobel to the cat who disproved Moore's Law. I mean, come on people, duh!
This is almost as stupid as those clone-aid wackos...
When a foreign, non-American citizen, comes to the United States to attend a university, it is pretty much in order to obtain a top notch education that could not be obtained at home.
When an American goes abroad to study, it is nominally to fuck off and gain "cultural perspective".
So, what was the topic again?
Only the folks who use Carrot Top for collect calls are too stupid to PAY FOR THEIR OWN FUCKING PHONE CALL (you hear me out there? you carrot top enjoying morons! ...not you AC).
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the pillar of rock commercials either. They're usually for trucks and jeeps...
I like the new Z commercials. Usually some good trance-like music spliced over the top of a slideshow of black and white stills of the car doing various things...like sitting there...looking way cool...
I believe it was 352...just a guess, I'm away from my TV. I've got the UltimateTV package, and I'm not sure about how other DirecTV packages work, but whenever a new channel is available, it automatically gets added to my guide. I happened to be flipping the other day and saw a channel entitled "BMW". I believe they're doing it for a limited time...if I remember correctly, it was close to the same place on the guide as Bravo.
...unless you're hawking a GM piece of garbage car. BMW films is brilliant because that type of advert appeals to the types of people who enjoy that kind of thing, i.e. film and directing.
I think the Ads are brilliant, and I had seriously considered buying a BMW, it prolly won't happen cuz I like the Audis, but anyhoo, I digress.
Even regular 30 second spots for BMW and Mercedes are not geared to get you to go out and buy a car tomorrow. Ford and GM ads certainly are ("SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAYYYYY!"), but Audi, Mercedes, BMW...those companies are selling user experience, not cars. They want you to see their car climbing switchbacks in the Alps. They want you to see their car flying over railroad tracks and speeding through the streets of San Francisco, London, Berlin, et al.
Also, it's not like those 8 minute films cost $20 million to shoot. I'd almost bet that those fancy Brittney Spears Pepsi ads, with all those elaborate sets and dozens of extras are much more complicated and expensive. A good crew could knock out one of those BMW films in two weeks...mebbe less.
And, distribution of the spot is mainly through word-of-mouth. They'd have been smart to wedge one of those in with the movie trailers, but most of the distribution is done on the Internet. Very cheap. I am pleased that they started playing the shorts, several of them at once in 30 minute blocks, on DirecTV. I enjoy watching them much more on a 32" TV than a 21" computer monitor.
I actually got a chance to do that canal trip a couple of decades ago. I was probably about 7 or 8 years old at the time, mebbe 10, but my family and some other friends rented a barge and travelled several canal-like waterways in northern England for several days. Along the way we saw many castles and I particularly remember a fort, or bunch of walls really, made of what seemed like flint.
...side note: Flame-bait? Offtopic? Moderators are idiots. If you want to see an engineering project, go to Yosemite and follow the trail up to the falls...and see where nearly one hundred years ago, men built that trail by hand. Ugh...
Beautiful country.
If you haven't been to Yosemite National Park in the United States, you absolutely must. A couple of years ago, I went the last week of November for a few days. The beautiful part...no on there...the next best beautiful part...most of the people that were there were not Americans.
I was lucky enough to find a small cadre of folks that were there just for the sheer wonder of the place. Mountain climbers and hard-core hikers. Now, I'm a fat-arsed computer programmer, but I still made it to the top of Yosemite Falls. Got some great pictures.
Also, try not to drive into the valley if you don't have to. It cuts down on pollution to have less cars there, plus, those granite walls are so amazing that it's too hard not to just stop in the middle of the road and look...
Hmmm...that's cool! I've got UltimateTV, so I've just got a button. But that's good to know when the big bad M$ drops their service and I have to go Tivo...
By saying that he set up his Tivo to watch the rest of it is saying that he enjoyed the show enough to record it all, not that he was going to skip the commercials. Gawd, you sound like an AOL exec, expecting him to "steal" the programming.
By Tivo'ing the show, our dear author will be assured of not missing ANY episodes, because, like me, he probably has no time to slot for several hours worth of programming when Sci-fi chooses to air it.
And, like as not, our dear author is going to watch some of those commercials, because, since Tivo has no 30 second skip function, he will have to see some of them, even in fast forward, and will stop to watch commercials he is interested in. I do it all the time.
Now tack on the fact that the Tivo can track which commercials he is watching and narrowing down the demographic that our dear advertisers need to target, saving them money for not showing commercials to people that don't care about their products, and allowing Sci-Fi to charge more for their time because they can show exactly who is watching what. (assuming they all don't have their heads up their arses, the different companies ought to be doing this...)
So, no, Sci-Fi does not NEED to lose money on Tivo customers, and you are an unenlighted media conglomerate tool.
I know this thread is probably dead, but I'm gonna chime in anyway. You're all wrong. Everything is not political, and it is at the same time.
Eating Tasty Wheat because General Mills (or whoever) supports gay rights (hypothetically) is a political decision.
Eating Tasty Wheat because it tastes good is apolitical. Not everyone, not hardly anyone, bases many of their decisions on the political implications of those decsions.
For instance, supporting the Taliban. Afghans may have supported the Taliban, but it may not have been a political decision. It may have been a life or death decision. i.e. We'll kill you if you don't vote our way, etc.
So, not every decision you make has political ramifications. Especially if you don't buy into the politics. If I buy Tasty Wheat from X Cereal company, and X cereal company dumps industrial waste into the river, but I don't give a shit about it, my decision is NOT based upon politics, it's based on taste buds.
The only thing that makes something political is a politician, whether professional, like a senator, or amateur, like yourself.
I wrote a letter to the San Diego DA (posted it on my web site). You should too. The email address is "publicinformation@sdcda.com". I told a bit of the story, included some hyperlinks and suggested that the DA lay down the law on PanIP. If not for extortion, then for jaywalking, or speeding, or littering, or anything to make these assholes stop extorting money from the public.
...and hook it up to WI-FI and split the cost with your neighbors! It would be a severe pain in the ass if AT&T messed with my bandwidth...I run a web server...don't kazaa at all, but I do sometimes download, say, Oracle9i and RedHat...and at 3 full CD's anymore...that'll bust open a 5GB limit right quick.
I don't know if you caught the Foreign Affairs post that I made, but the article is basically about how drilling for oil in ANWAR isn't a good idea because it will not be economically feasible. That is, to make the drilling worth it, oil must remain at a high price for long periods of time (higher than it is now, I think).
It goes on to say that combined with new drilling technologies, new efficiency technologies will help drive the cost of oil down too. For instance, you'd be surprised to hear about the increases of efficiency in not only vehicles, but electrical appliances during the 80's and early 90's. The increases in efficiencies have not been as pronounced recently due to low oil prices in general, not providing the incentive for efficiency.
I'm almost a bit upset with the article's conclusions, because it means Americans are doomed to suffer decades more of monstrous SUV driving idiots.
The article also gets into fuel efficient vehicles and alternate fuels...email me and I'll see if I can't get you a copy of the article if you like.
...try looking at this:
9 5/ amory-b-lovins-l-hunter-lovins/fool-s-gold-in-alas ka.html
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20010701faessay49
It's a fascinating article, and unfortunately, you can only read part of it, but if you do get hooked, you can buy the article, or possibly find the back issue somewhere...library perhaps?
The reason that the rate of discovery of new wells has gone down is primarily due to new technology available to increase the "lifetime" of current wells. Exploration for new wells is expensive, and oil companies are going to put old wells back in service before they try to find new ones.
Traditionally, only a percentage of oil found under the ground has been able to be removed due to whatever reason, geological, mechanical, etc. Technologies that have arisen recently (i.e. the last two decades or so) have allowed currently tapped wells to produce more oil than what was "budgeted" for. Also, wells that had previously "run dry" have now been re-tapped using the new technology.
I also debate your 50 years idea. I'd say that quite a few people understand that humankind really has no idea how much oil is left, let alone how it is produced. There are a few theories that oil is constantly being replenished due to unknow geological action....not that I subscribe to those theories, but I believe the ball is still up in the air on total supplies of oil.
I really wish I had the quote with me, but I leant the copy of Foreign Affairs (article entitled "The Myth of Alaskan Oil") to an environmentalist buddy of mine and have yet to get it back, but my favorite quote was from a prominent Saudi government official, "We will be finished with oil before it is finished with us." Basically meaning that other, cheaper sources of energy will arise before the oil runs out (because they don't think the oil is going to run out any time soon).
Actually, that was exactly (China) what I was thinking of.
Quite interesting reading. Kept me up an extry half hour!
Okay...econ 101 here. 100% of the world's oil production fills 100% of the world's demand. If the rest of the world demanded more oil, there would be more oil production and therefore the United States would then use less than 25% of the world's oil production. If oil production were cheaper, worldwide usage would increase, but it isn't, so it doesn't (though it will down the road).
Now, also take into consideration that 100% of the world's oil production does not mean 100% of the world's oil. Not all the oil that the world contains has been discovered, or, that which has been discover is not being harvested. Think Alaskan National Wildlife and Animal Refuge (ANWAR, I think that's what it stands for). Oil we know about, but is unused because the demand for it is not high enough to make it economically feasible to bother drilling for.
So, unless you know, for a fact that all the currently exploited oil wells in the world account for every last drop of oil hidden underneath the Earth's crust, you cannot tell me that we need five more Earths.
Can you not see the flaw in that argument? It's a commonly used argument, but flawed nonetheless. Now, shift your argument to a different resource. Food. The United States produces X% of the world's food, but only consumes Y% of the world's food. Same argument, different resource, equally useless.
You can make the same analogies for many different types of resources...concrete, dynamite/tnt (very useful stuff, if you want to build/mine anything), steel, pollution, etc., etc.
Pollution might be the best example of all. The United States has a GDP that dwarfs several of the next largest GDP countries, and pollutes much less and countries with GDP's much less (China, Russia, et al). So in that situation, the ratio is the exact opposite.
One cannot just make blanket statements such as those made by the paper/essay in question and take them as fact/truth. It is a convoluted use of statistical information...you know, the three kinds of lies, "lies, damn lies and statistics"? (Disraeli)
I had a great histroy teacher in high school that emphasised reading between the lines. The author of this paper has an agenda. That agenda is to further the sense of esthetic that he/she and his/her comrades hold. They want to convince you that the effect of humanity on the Earth is a bad thing, but in this circumstance he/she is using "lies, damn lies and statistics" to try to win your heart.
It is a beautiful example. Though I doubt they all died. Probably moved on eventually. Besides, the culture of Easter was a fishing culture, so they wouldn't have eliminated all food sources (though I have no idea what the annual climate shifts are like...no wood to burn for warmth...that's a problem).
Take into consideration, though, that Easter Island is not a good foil to my stance. The relatively limited number and variety of resources there do not make a good model of the Earth.
I don't believe that pointing out human use of land as a "problem" is an ethical way to satisfy one's sense of esthetics. Because that's what it really boils down to, esthetics.
Everyone knows that eventually human beings are going to cover as much of the planet as possible. That's just how bacterial multiplication works. You multiply until you've reached the limit of the food source. Nice and simple.
Except there are quite a few people out there that view a few acres of trees to be more important than human life. Even a miserable human life.
I happen to love real conservation. You know, more doing things and less bitching about it. You should check out what Ted Turner is doing. He's been buying up ranch land and returning it to what he calls "pre-anglo" form. All the while trying to figure out how to make it profitable, and therefore, sustainable...and the entire time, 100% touched by human hand.
I think the idea, let alone the paper, is full of logical holes through which one could drive an oil tanker or two. :-)
:-)
I also don't believe that species conservation is possible on a global scale, nor is it a worthwhile cause (when the end result of such work is detrimental to human life).
I won't whip out the "god created man to be master of all beasts" on you, but I do find human life to be superior to that of animals. It's only a position, no more or less.
In my opinion, the paper is sensationalist tripe. i.e. E.O Wilson, the famous naturalist, claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if all humans consumed at the rate of the average North American. Not only do I find this type of quote offensive, I think it is a lie/untruth/bullshit.
Just because someone "claims" something, even if they are a famous naturalist doesn't make it true. Putting tripe like this in print in a major news outlet is irresponsible. The paper is obviously biased and does not even begin to touch on the reasons why man has touched "83%" of the surface of the Earth.
It almost seems to suggest that this wouldn't be an issue if we killed about three billion people, which is really what it would take to accomplish the goals of the publishing author. Slightly offensive if you take the time to read between the lines for the agenda.
That is my problem with this.
I don't believe I invoked thermodynamic principal, I was just noting that because a particular part of the earth is inhospitable, you cannot remove it from a "surface of the earth" claim and be reasonable at the same time.
I'd also argue that the number of people and the technology (goats) being used to defoliate the landscape in the Sahara probably had about a percent of a percent of an effect on the landscape change, while the climate shift probably did just about all of the work there.
I am intentionally being provocative myself because the issue at hand (as it stands) is hardly worthy of debate. It disgusts me when people trying to argue serious issues do so from an illogical position.
:-)
:-)
I don't label all "environmentalists" as "whackos", it is mostly an inflammatory term that fits the type of mouths that are willing to perpetrate this nonsense on the public.
I would style myself an environmentalist. I "leave no trace" when I go back-country camping. I try to conserve my water use in a reasonable manner. I don't leave all the lights on if I don't have to. I own a fuel-efficient car...intentionally.
I don't buy many arguments against GM food. Most arguments against it are extemist and not rationalized well. Perhaps there should be and FDA for GM food, yes, but writing it off out of hand is wrong. We've been eating GM food since Gregor Mendel whipped it out in 1822 (and really since man realized that certain types of grains/animals are good to eat and others are not).
The thing about equilibrium is, there is no "third" option. You have two sides of a conflict that will find an equilibrium. A good example would be Europe, and specifically England, back in the Middle Ages. There was a specific point in time where local food production would only support a certain population, and I wish I remembered the specifics, but some technological advances were followed by sharp increases in population, made possible by sharp increases in food production.
People are not going to starve en masse (on the scale of millions and billions). What will happen is certain regions of the world can only support a certain number of people, and once that number is reached, the population will stop growing. The food there is not going to "run out", but its growth rate will...and so will the growth rate of the population.
While there is little scientific data I have to back up my next premise, but there are certain conditions that may inspire a decrease in population other than lack of food. Look to the West specifically.
Birth rates in the United States, Europe and Japan have been falling over the last few decades. In fact, there are several economists that believe that the future outlook of Japan's economy is dire due to the fact that population growth is an essential part of economic growth. Japan's population is in decline, due to lack of land, lack of resources, but probably more like cultural shifts.
As individuals and families are able to derive more resources for themselves, there becomes less of a desire to have many or any children. Very few families in the US are having more than two children, and you may be able to make a case down the road that, except for immigration, the population of the US will be on the decline within our lifetimes.
Do the democratic question: the world has a lot more problems to solve before treaties like Kyoto can truly be enacted democratically. Billions of people live in areas that have not industrialized and they will be hampered by rules made by people who don't live where they do. These societies are going to industrialize, whether you like it or not, and whether you try to shove emmissions controls down their throat from across an ocean.
You cannot view the productivity issue (GM food, robots, use of more oil, etc) from the viewpoint of a Westerner. You must view it from the eyes of a Bangladeshi, or Afghani, or Sahelian. They have absolutely the most to gain from cheap food, oil, cars, clothes, computers, communications, etc. Consumption in the West is nothing compared to what it will be in 50 years. Western consumption will probably decrease, as efficiencies rise, but that will be more than offset by the industrialization of our so called backwaters.
This issue isn't even a concern for Westerners, at least to the extent that anyone in the West is going to starve for lack of home grown food.
Okay...blah, blah, blah, I'm done!
Since when was the Earth really a nice place to live? Perhaps about 15,000 years ago, before the rise of the nation-state, but not really since.
No one, no where, no how, is going to solve this "problem" on a global scale. People will address the "problem" of overpopulation and overuse of land on a local level.
No one government has the political (or financial) resources to subjugate every human being to its own idea of how the Earth should be managed.
Are you going to tell the starving people of the Sahel to stop increasing the amount of land that they farm because "we have to have national parks and free places for animals to roam"? No, because the people of the Sahel will tell you to buzz off and mind your business.
No one living there is going to listen to what you or I have to say on the subject at all (unless you happen to live in the Sahel, but if you did, you'd probably be all for expanding the grazing range of your cattle).
People will figure out their own problems and solve them or they will die. Unless you go to where they live and help them directly, they will not listen to you.