As far as I know, that prediction is compatible with all religions.
I choose to believe that my atoms will return and be the substance known as stars eventually.
That long-term view is a more pleasant way to put it than the short-term outlook some atheists state: "We're going to be nothing more than food for worms."
* Jesus is God, but is evil... * Jesus is God, but is not all powerful... * Jesus existed but was just a man... * Jesus is a syncretic myth...
There are some possibilities that you missed. This one, for example:
* God is a good experimentalist, and like all good experimentalists, he rarely intervenes with the way things play out in his creation/experimental system. He sits back and passively observes, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time, and Jesus is the product of "Ok, I'm tired of the dynamic that the most intelligent carbon units have gotten into; let's see what happens if I have one of them teach some ethical principles to the others."
When I coded up an orbit propagator, a lot of math was involved. Oh how I wish I had consulted with Olga Khazan, to learn her math-less way of doing it.
Rational investment decisions are made on the basis of whether the risk/reward ratio is low enough. Higher capital gains taxes reduce the reward (the denominator in that ratio) as a first-order effect, and increase the risk as a second-order effect.
Buffett's folksy aphorisms are irrelevant (and in this case, wrong). There are sometimes good reasons to raise tax rates, but stimulating investment is never one of them.
Given the following facts, how can you can argue that rising CO2 is bad for the environment?
* During the vast majority of Earth's history, there were no polar ice caps at all. The only reason our planet currently has ice caps is because we are still emerging from the most recent ice age. When the earth is in its "more normal" state of having no permanent ice, sea level is about 610 feet (186 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago, and 210 feet (64 meters) higher than it is today.
* When Antarctica iced up there was a large-scale extinction event. The creation of the Antarctic ice cap was NOT good for life.
* "Millions of years ago, Antarctica was warmer and much wetter, and supported the Antarctic flora, including forests of podocarps and southern beech." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) "During the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event about 34 million years ago, CO2 levels have been found to be about 760 ppm and had been decreasing from earlier levels in the thousands of ppm." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
* So there you have it: when life was thriving, the CO2 level was thousands of parts per million. The CO2 level in June 2015 (as humans are well along in the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels): 402 parts per million
* Also keep in mind that every species that's alive today, including polar bears, survived the comings and goings of dozens of ice ages.
During the vast majority of Earth's history, there were no polar ice caps at all. The only reason our planet currently has ice caps is because we are still emerging from the most recent ice age. When the earth is in its "more normal" state of having no permanent ice, sea level is about 610 feet (186 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago, and 210 feet (64 meters) higher than it is today.
When Antarctica iced up there was a large-scale extinction event. The creation of the Antarctic ice cap was NOT good for life.
More fascinating truth about climate: "Millions of years ago, Antarctica was warmer and much wetter, and supported the Antarctic flora, including forests of podocarps and southern beech." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) "During the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event about 34 million years ago, CO2 levels have been found to be about 760 ppm and had been decreasing from earlier levels in the thousands of ppm." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#Climate )
Imagine! When life was thriving, the CO2 level was thousands of parts per million. The CO2 level in June 2015 (as humans are well along in the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels): 402 parts per million
Driverless changes everything forever in ways we can't yet even imagine.
Something you didn't touch upon: I'm guessing the average privately-owned car is in motion 40 minutes per day; that means it sits around doing nothing 97% of the time. Not good to have so much of society's capital tied up in idle assets! If we could quickly summon driverless cars to get us around, those cars would have much higher utilization rates -- maybe they would be in motion for 13 - 16 hours per day -- in theory, driving the cost of personal transportation way down, with none of the drawbacks of mass transit (like having to walk a mile to a bus stop, and being tied to its fixed schedule).
Watch the AQI loop around New York, and you can see air pollution rising and falling along the commuter roads into the City in lock step with the morning commute. I can't even imagine a New York with 50-80% fewer gas-powered cars on the road.
I've been watching air quality around Denver for 20 years. The used to be thick smog over the city every day. Now, thanks to cleaner-burning engines, it takes a rare, severe weather inversion for that to happen. So I can easily imagine a Denver with no internal combustion engines, because pollution-wise, we've effectively made it 95% of the way to that destination.
Autonomous cars should benefit everyone (resulting in both lower premiums for drivers, and higher profits for insurers). If not, someone is doing it wrong.
Here's how that works: when a business's costs increase, it tends to pass some but not all of the increase along to the consumer. Some, so that its profits don't bear the brunt of 100% of the cost increase, but not all, because that would make it less competitive.
The same thing happens in reverse when a business's costs decrease (such as when an insurer finds itself paying out fewer claims): it tends to pass some but not all of the savings along to the consumer. If it pockets 100% of the savings in the form of higher profits, it will lose market share to competitors who don't do that. If it pockets 0% of the savings, the owners are not acting in their own interest.
It won't be the government that pushes people towards autonomous cars. It will be insurance companies.
That depends on how quickly both insurance companies and government notice that accident rates decline when humans are no longer in control. Ludditism will make a lot of people refuse to believe, and must first be overcome.
The car lobby and car culture in the US has been successful at limiting the options for biking.
My observation is that Europe developed a "bike culture" out of necessity because it was economically devastated by two world wars. The resources just weren't available to effect the same high rates of car ownership as in the U.S. The pressure continues to this day, with fuel prices of $6 - $10 per gallon (after converting from Euros and liters).
That's hilarious... the explanation I laid out is the only thing that's relevant every time the oil industry is bashed with the old "subsidies" red herring.
the benefit of subsidizing the early expensive iterations of solar panels
One question: when do the "early expensive iterations" come to an end?
40 years ago I was playing with photovoltaic cells. Today, they are orders of magnitude less expensive than they were then.
Rational people like me would support subsidies, if they weren't open-ended; i.e., if hard-and-fast criteria were established for ending those subsidies.
Maybe that's because the oil industry has never been subsidized. It has received tax breaks, perhaps, but not subsidies. Learn the difference:
* A subsidy is money transferred from government to an unprofitable enterprise, so it can continue to operate. Example: Amtrak, which has never paid taxes. (Only profits are taxed, and Amtrak has never made a profit.) * A tax break is a reduction in the amount of money transferred from a profitable enterprise to the government.
If tax breaks are the same thing as subsidies, then Amtrak has received tax breaks. And it's impossible for an entity that has never paid taxes to have its taxes reduced. From this it should be obvious that tax breaks are not the same thing as subsidies.
Robots need a large supporting infrastructure of humans to:
* lubricate them, replace worn-out parts, and otherwise maintain them * ensure a supply of feedstock or raw materials is brought to the robot * transport finished products away from the end of the assembly line * maintain the power grid and/or backup generating system to ensure reliable supply of electric power * monitor the "health" of the robots (watch for warnings / diagnostic codes) * design efficient workflows for the robots * perform each robot's initial site-specific programming * make improvements to each robot's initial site-specific programming * re-program each robot when the line switches to production of a new model * market, sell and install new or used robots; salvage and recycle obsolete robots * design the next generation of robots * Google even has a team of lawyers that lobbies legislatures to ensure robotic (driverless) cars will be legal, and won't be subject to undue amounts of liability that would snuff out the technology. (Theoretically, driverless cars will be involved in far fewer accidents that human-driven cars, and therefore should receive favorable legal treatment and be less costly to insure. Accidents involving human-driven cars are so common, there is rarely a thorough investigation. But the rare accident involving a robotic car will be investigated very thoroughly, and likely result in a software patch that makes the whole fleet even safer.)
As you can see, this long list of jobs supporting the the robotics industry involves a nice mix of unskilled, semi-skilled, and professional workers. And that's just what I came up with off the top of my head... surely I've missed many jobs.
Well, I'll give one more good-faith try, even though you don't reciprocate.
The economy has been based on endless expansion. That is not sustainable.
If the economy cannot endlessly expand, there must be some upper limit to its size. I called that upper limit "X": "the size of the economy can never exceed X"
Basic logic that you seem to be unable to follow.
Go do something else, like searching for navel lint.
Uh huh... I suspected that more substance-free ad-hominem attacks was all you had to offer.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, you must know Olga's secret!
But I, for one, don't know how to program an implementation of this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
without getting into the math.
If our decomposed remains remain on Earth, they'll be vaporized when the sun becomes a red giant. http://www.universetoday.com/1...
As far as I know, that prediction is compatible with all religions.
I choose to believe that my atoms will return and be the substance known as stars eventually.
That long-term view is a more pleasant way to put it than the short-term outlook some atheists state: "We're going to be nothing more than food for worms."
either:
* Jesus is God, but is evil...
* Jesus is God, but is not all powerful...
* Jesus existed but was just a man...
* Jesus is a syncretic myth...
There are some possibilities that you missed. This one, for example:
* God is a good experimentalist, and like all good experimentalists, he rarely intervenes with the way things play out in his creation/experimental system. He sits back and passively observes, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time, and Jesus is the product of "Ok, I'm tired of the dynamic that the most intelligent carbon units have gotten into; let's see what happens if I have one of them teach some ethical principles to the others."
When I coded up an orbit propagator, a lot of math was involved. Oh how I wish I had consulted with Olga Khazan, to learn her math-less way of doing it.
Parent post had a dumb typo in the subject line.
I pointed a high-gain antenna at my desired source, and didn't get nearly the range I was hoping for.
they may even consider using the default Windows icon for Word on the OpenOffice/LibreOffice launcher/quote?
Technically wouldn't that be a copyright violation, because the Word logo is a proprietary little piece of artwork?
Does the job title "Information Commissioner" immediately bring Orwell to mind for anyone else?
Rational investment decisions are made on the basis of whether the risk/reward ratio is low enough. Higher capital gains taxes reduce the reward (the denominator in that ratio) as a first-order effect, and increase the risk as a second-order effect.
Buffett's folksy aphorisms are irrelevant (and in this case, wrong). There are sometimes good reasons to raise tax rates, but stimulating investment is never one of them.
Greetings, rare person with a smaller UID than mine.
I'd like to see a semi-anonymous mode, where you show up as A.C. but are still able to track replies.
Tokamaks are so unworkable that even a tenfold improvement leaves them wanting. My money's on Lockheed's design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Given the following facts, how can you can argue that rising CO2 is bad for the environment?
* During the vast majority of Earth's history, there were no polar ice caps at all. The only reason our planet currently has ice caps is because we are still emerging from the most recent ice age. When the earth is in its "more normal" state of having no permanent ice, sea level is about 610 feet (186 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago, and 210 feet (64 meters) higher than it is today.
* When Antarctica iced up there was a large-scale extinction event. The creation of the Antarctic ice cap was NOT good for life.
* "Millions of years ago, Antarctica was warmer and much wetter, and supported the Antarctic flora, including forests of podocarps and southern beech." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) "During the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event about 34 million years ago, CO2 levels have been found to be about 760 ppm and had been decreasing from earlier levels in the thousands of ppm." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )
* So there you have it: when life was thriving, the CO2 level was thousands of parts per million. The CO2 level in June 2015 (as humans are well along in the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels): 402 parts per million
* Also keep in mind that every species that's alive today, including polar bears, survived the comings and goings of dozens of ice ages.
I can't defend sugar, but I can defend CO2.
During the vast majority of Earth's history, there were no polar ice caps at all. The only reason our planet currently has ice caps is because we are still emerging from the most recent ice age. When the earth is in its "more normal" state of having no permanent ice, sea level is about 610 feet (186 meters) higher than it was 20,000 years ago, and 210 feet (64 meters) higher than it is today.
When Antarctica iced up there was a large-scale extinction event. The creation of the Antarctic ice cap was NOT good for life.
More fascinating truth about climate: "Millions of years ago, Antarctica was warmer and much wetter, and supported the Antarctic flora, including forests of podocarps and southern beech." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) "During the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event about 34 million years ago, CO2 levels have been found to be about 760 ppm and had been decreasing from earlier levels in the thousands of ppm." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#Climate )
Imagine! When life was thriving, the CO2 level was thousands of parts per million. The CO2 level in June 2015 (as humans are well along in the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels): 402 parts per million
I've installed 167 Flash updates, each one of them claiming to provide better security... there can't possibly be any vulnerabilities left in Flash!
Driverless changes everything forever in ways we can't yet even imagine.
Something you didn't touch upon: I'm guessing the average privately-owned car is in motion 40 minutes per day; that means it sits around doing nothing 97% of the time. Not good to have so much of society's capital tied up in idle assets! If we could quickly summon driverless cars to get us around, those cars would have much higher utilization rates -- maybe they would be in motion for 13 - 16 hours per day -- in theory, driving the cost of personal transportation way down, with none of the drawbacks of mass transit (like having to walk a mile to a bus stop, and being tied to its fixed schedule).
Watch the AQI loop around New York, and you can see air pollution rising and falling along the commuter roads into the City in lock step with the morning commute. I can't even imagine a New York with 50-80% fewer gas-powered cars on the road.
I've been watching air quality around Denver for 20 years. The used to be thick smog over the city every day. Now, thanks to cleaner-burning engines, it takes a rare, severe weather inversion for that to happen. So I can easily imagine a Denver with no internal combustion engines, because pollution-wise, we've effectively made it 95% of the way to that destination.
Autonomous cars should benefit everyone (resulting in both lower premiums for drivers, and higher profits for insurers). If not, someone is doing it wrong.
Here's how that works: when a business's costs increase, it tends to pass some but not all of the increase along to the consumer. Some, so that its profits don't bear the brunt of 100% of the cost increase, but not all, because that would make it less competitive.
The same thing happens in reverse when a business's costs decrease (such as when an insurer finds itself paying out fewer claims): it tends to pass some but not all of the savings along to the consumer. If it pockets 100% of the savings in the form of higher profits, it will lose market share to competitors who don't do that. If it pockets 0% of the savings, the owners are not acting in their own interest.
It won't be the government that pushes people towards autonomous cars. It will be insurance companies.
That depends on how quickly both insurance companies and government notice that accident rates decline when humans are no longer in control. Ludditism will make a lot of people refuse to believe, and must first be overcome.
The car lobby and car culture in the US has been successful at limiting the options for biking.
My observation is that Europe developed a "bike culture" out of necessity because it was economically devastated by two world wars. The resources just weren't available to effect the same high rates of car ownership as in the U.S. The pressure continues to this day, with fuel prices of $6 - $10 per gallon (after converting from Euros and liters).
Each experiment so far basically said "we measured a small amount of thrust... so small that we're not sure if we measured any thrust at all."
The theory behind these devices says that thrust will increase by orders of magnitude if a superconducting RF cavity is used.
So why not do that? The results would be unambiguous, for a change.
Enjoy your irrelevancy.
That's hilarious... the explanation I laid out is the only thing that's relevant every time the oil industry is bashed with the old "subsidies" red herring.
the benefit of subsidizing the early expensive iterations of solar panels
One question: when do the "early expensive iterations" come to an end?
40 years ago I was playing with photovoltaic cells. Today, they are orders of magnitude less expensive than they were then.
Rational people like me would support subsidies, if they weren't open-ended; i.e., if hard-and-fast criteria were established for ending those subsidies.
Funny, never once heard that complaint about oil
Maybe that's because the oil industry has never been subsidized. It has received tax breaks, perhaps, but not subsidies. Learn the difference:
* A subsidy is money transferred from government to an unprofitable enterprise, so it can continue to operate. Example: Amtrak, which has never paid taxes. (Only profits are taxed, and Amtrak has never made a profit.)
* A tax break is a reduction in the amount of money transferred from a profitable enterprise to the government.
If tax breaks are the same thing as subsidies, then Amtrak has received tax breaks. And it's impossible for an entity that has never paid taxes to have its taxes reduced. From this it should be obvious that tax breaks are not the same thing as subsidies.
They completely replace humans, eh?
Robots need a large supporting infrastructure of humans to:
* lubricate them, replace worn-out parts, and otherwise maintain them
* ensure a supply of feedstock or raw materials is brought to the robot
* transport finished products away from the end of the assembly line
* maintain the power grid and/or backup generating system to ensure reliable supply of electric power
* monitor the "health" of the robots (watch for warnings / diagnostic codes)
* design efficient workflows for the robots
* perform each robot's initial site-specific programming
* make improvements to each robot's initial site-specific programming
* re-program each robot when the line switches to production of a new model
* market, sell and install new or used robots; salvage and recycle obsolete robots
* design the next generation of robots
* Google even has a team of lawyers that lobbies legislatures to ensure robotic (driverless) cars will be legal, and won't be subject to undue amounts of liability that would snuff out the technology. (Theoretically, driverless cars will be involved in far fewer accidents that human-driven cars, and therefore should receive favorable legal treatment and be less costly to insure. Accidents involving human-driven cars are so common, there is rarely a thorough investigation. But the rare accident involving a robotic car will be investigated very thoroughly, and likely result in a software patch that makes the whole fleet even safer.)
As you can see, this long list of jobs supporting the the robotics industry involves a nice mix of unskilled, semi-skilled, and professional workers. And that's just what I came up with off the top of my head... surely I've missed many jobs.
Well, I'll give one more good-faith try, even though you don't reciprocate.
The economy has been based on endless expansion. That is not sustainable.
If the economy cannot endlessly expand, there must be some upper limit to its size. I called that upper limit "X": "the size of the economy can never exceed X"
Basic logic that you seem to be unable to follow.
Go do something else, like searching for navel lint.
Uh huh... I suspected that more substance-free ad-hominem attacks was all you had to offer.