But we can not micromanage evolution for every species on earth EVEN IF we might have impacted them in the past.
We do it for quite a few already for thousands of years : -> humans (obviously, houses, medicine, roads...) -> cows (a few hundred species of them) -> pigs -> sheep -> chickens -> turkey ->...
Add to that the basically extinct species that still live in zoos : -> at least 2 species of elephant -> some 4/5 species of tiger -> 2 species of lions ->... (this list is, according to the UN, already a few thousand species long)
On the bright side, as cellular charges rise, wifi becomes a compelling alternative. We are seeing a lot of Skype-capable handhelds coming on the market, notably Android-powered phones, and one can foresee the day (hopefully soon) when dozens of generic Android handsets are available for cheap, that can make Skype calls at any hotspot. That may spell the end of the cellular industry's dominance in this country. If I were AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile, I would be investing in wi-fi so as to be on the winning side of that game.
Wifi's price will rise to, after all the government will protect it's revenue streams using guns. Obviously the carriers will demand "protection" (or they will go under, and then govt will lose their revenue, necessitating new taxes*).
So if what you say is true, one of two things will happen : 1) tax on wireless, slightly larger than the price hike of cellular 2) no more cellular, and extra tax on everybody (e.g. raised income tax,... ) 2)
* obviously the necessitating new taxes part is only true under democrats
But, if you auction it off, with the proceeds going to government, the price will have to be in line with what companies think they can afford. The market makes a balance between maximizing service income versus spectrum price.
Thereby enabling both low-cost cell service and some amount of income to govt while not forcing the prices up more than people find reasonable.
By contrast, Obama's new tax on the poor does not accept any feedback from the market. The companies have no choice.
In addition, it will provide a $550 million per year per spectrum stimulus to government to prohibit "general use" spectrum. So say bye-bye to UWB and maybe even to some wireless spectra.
Your acting like climate science is a positive science, where we can do experiments and do direct event correlation.
We can't. We don't know -at all- what is causing climate behavior. All we have are statistical models... and 80% of that model is the following brilliant rule :
"the weather doesn't change" (= about 80% of any climate model)
And while I may agree that statistically this is, without any argument, correct, it is not a solid basis for predicting the weather a long time from now (or even more than a week).
In addition to that, the sun's been acting up rather badly (google "sunspot cycle 24"). Now when a 2960 billion petawatt fusion reactor does something unexpected, the consequences are... severe. 1% difference in output and we'll have the mother of all ice ages next year. Right now we have about 4% difference (the sun's corona is 4% cooler - in absolute value, than the value climate models currently use, nobody knows why, or when it will change). If that doesn't change fast, no amount of co2 in the athmosphere is going to save us from the mother of all winters coming up real soon. And if it does change, it will -once again- render all climate predictions invalid.
The point is, it is not inhabitable (for humans) without technological interventions.
Since things like heated homes are obviously interference, artificially keeping the species alive in an area that nature would forbid to them, we should destroy those interventions, by which I mean destroy their houses, cities, roads, cars, and even any fires they may try to make, and "let nature take it's course" (ie. killing probably every last alaskan and the large majority of canadians).
That's not how it works. If you save a species, you have to expend resources to do that, reducing your own likelihood of survival.
You see, "God"(/nature/natural selection), simply keeps a tab.
Of course you don't want to know what happens when you can't pay the tab anymore. In fact, that alone is probably enough reason to make one believe in creationism.
Preserving species that are not fit for their environment seems the wrong approach to me. The chance of ever totally eradicating this fungus is nil, and if the most numerous amphibian population around is a
So we should let all alaskans die, and most of canada ? After all, most of that place would not, without massive human intervention, be habitable for humans.
Perhaps you should terminate civilization ? Force humans, including you of course, to survive without houses, without cities, without walmart, and above all, without agriculture.
99% of people, at least, would obviously die in the first few weeks. But nature is resilient, isn't it ?
It is not wrong to fight death. After all, you're statement basically states that any artificial immunity, both against physical problems and against other species is wrong.
So treating someone for a virus infection is wrong. So it putting a roof over someone's head to prevent him from freezing to death.
Tell me, do you live in a house ? Wouldn't it be better to let all humans that need houses die off ? That would, obviously, probably include you. But isn't that better ?
Natural selection is a horrible, horrible basis for moral judgements. Obviously we, as humans, want to interfere with nature, and interfere bigtime. And that's just the way it should be.
After all, without massive intervention in nature by humans, there would be no slashdot for us to have this discussion in the first place.
And because reality is that evolution is a cruel, horrible game involving more death than anyone can tolerate.... and therefore it is something that should, especially when it affects humans, be stopped at any cost.
You should realize by now that most "nature lovers", "evolutionists", and many other words thoroughly represented at the left end of the political spectrum really don't appreciate all this "survival of the fittest" crap. Evolution, protecting nature, environmentalism,... these are all words. You would do well to NOT ever remind anyone of their meaning.
After all, that might lead to people asking "does Al Gore really thing he'll bring down co2 production by buying 2 new yachts, and flying around the globe in private jets ? By the way, how much energy does his house use ?". That would make people really uncomfortable.
People especially don't like nature, and evolution, the way nature works even less. They hate it when applied to little cute (or horrible) animals, and certainly, above all, hate it when applied to them.
Ever notice how just about every "evolution is good" person uses condoms ? They probably don't even realize the utter stupidity of that. These people are NOT interested in nature, or natural processes. And they certainly don't want to get confronted with what happens to people who fail the natural selection thingy. They also don't want to be told that they, just like anyone else, might fail that little natural selection thing.
And of course, that little detail is the very central part of evolution theory. Evolutionists, or environmentalists complaining about extinction (even due to human interference) is a bit like physicists complaining about gravity and falling apples.
So remember. You need to care about the little cuddly things, and say nice things about the guys "trying to save the species" (while they're killing many others of course, watching huge tv's, turning up the heating to the maximum and so on). You should not -EVER- point out that if pollution is a problem for many species, nature will adapt. This "adaption" will of course, like any natural adaption, be a massive, massive field of dead animals, something no "nature lover" has the least tolerance for. Do not point out that saving them is basically equivalent to sabotaging their genes (while, ironically, things like gene splicing is helping them).
Just because someone is hit by fallout does not mean he gets irradiated (esp. with the newer "devices").
Add to that that you'd need to damage people enough to prevent procreation, meaning a huge radiation dose is required. Radiation decreases with the square of the distance (so a 160 megaton nuclear warhead does about double the damage of a 40 megaton on, or about 4 times the damage of Hiroshima). Giving someone cancer, 50 years after the explosion, is technically considered damage. It would not make a big difference in that person's life : he/she could still live, work, have children,... Unfortunately you're going to find that preventing that is rather hard to do, especially with nuclear devices.
For example the "worst nuclear disaster in the world", Chernobyl, caused 54 people to lose their lives. Only 32 of those 54 were actually prevented from procreating. (Not that the "died from cancer 50 years after the fact" numbers are much higher : less than 200).
If you really want to kill huge amounts of people, nuclear explosions are not the way to do it. Just go in with knives and start stabbing, and keep it up for a few dozen years.
Just read the history of the middle east once. That will provide ample illustration of how to kill really, really large amounts of people : irresponsible immigration + economic recession = civil war = huge amounts of dead. Worked every time.
For a planet to "shed" anything except perhaps hydrogen or helium, that stuff has to overcome escape velocity, which (until rockets were invented in the 20th century), requires an (volcano or meteorite) that would incinerate any complex organic compounds and render DNA a fine ash.
Those arguments may be true, but it's been proven that bacteria do get blasted out of earth's orbit without getting cooked.
Furthermore, for both spores and viruses the getting cooked is simply not a problem. (viruses contain dna which could fall into a pool of organic but dead compounds and start life, it doesn't matter that the virus itself is dead)
There have been spores tested, and the verdict is that they can survive at less than 10cm to an atomic explosion. This means that moulds that formed on the inside of the detonator of a nuclear bomb would probably contain a few things that will survive the blast*. Undoubtedly viruses can do the same.
(4 billion years) * (2 billion tons per day) / (5.9736Ãf--10^24 kg) in percent
Less than 1% of Earth's mass is at a temperature that even permits life to exist. As for the part that actually consists of life, you can measure it in parts per million and still need scientific notation.
This would not be a problem (even though you're obviously right that the amounts quoted are ridiculous), since earth receives constant doses of dust from space and loses "dust" (with probably life in it) to space. The net mass change of the earth over long periods would be negligeable, in fact it would probably gain mass slowly, despite regularly blasting tons of life into space.
* even though atomic bombs have nowhere near the killing capacity they're rumored to have. One atomic bomb can kill, at best, about 50000 people, in a dense city block less than 1 square kilometer. To kill of "all" humans you'd therefore need to set off 148 million atomic bombs, or about 25 million 150 megaton hydrogen bombs (and there would still be survivors)
I'm talking about the full krebs cycle efficiency. Meaning the effiency of the process creating sugars on the edge of the chloroplast.
Those efficiency ratings differ from species to species (depending e.g. on their height : trees are vastly more efficient than grass, but at the obviously rather high cost of maintaining an enormous support structure which is not deducted from their photosynthesis efficiency ratings)
So this figure has to be divided by a factor between 100 or 10000 before we're talking about a potato on your plate (and if you want to get anywhere near 100, you'd best be a farmer in congo, without access to fertilizer), and by a factor of at least a 100000 if we're talking meat.
That said, the efficiency of using sunlight to create sugars in plants ranges between 0.2% and 6%. Here are a few sources :
This is the "theoretical number". What electrical food production would need to attain to beat out plants for food on people's plates, is obviously much less. To beat out plants it would need an efficiency of less than 1/1000th of a percent, especially if this could be done at the place of consumption. To beat out meat... well even al gore "30000$ a month - wait till you see my yacht !" would be a more effecient consumer than meat production.
Let's take Pfizer. Profits are 36.9% of revenues. And that profit is about 1/4th of it's assets (for which rent is due). Pfizer pays for itself in 4 years.
Now let's say that it would be "good enough" to keep a viable company if it pays for itself in 20 years. That means profits could be lowered to about 8% of revenues.
Which would reduce the prices of pills therefore about 25% (yes, those figures are less than their sum... that's because they're multiplications, not sums).
That 25% would, obviously be only deducted from a fraction of the cost of the pill. It would make zero difference to transporting companies, distribution companies,... the works.
For a "normal" commodity producer profit is about 1/3rd of the final sale price. So the total amount pills would actually drop in price, if Pfizer made just marginal profit is not 25%, but rather 8%.
Do you think these people are talking about asking 8% less sale price in Africa, which would support your argument, or do you think they're selling them at half price, or even 1/10th, which could not possibly support your argument ?
So no, the company wouldn't survive re-importation of these pills. No company, except those with extreme profit margins could.
And, unfortunately, there are very, very few companies with extreme profit margins (ironically the "oil giants" have very little profit compared to revenue. That's why democrats and communists like chavez are always avoiding talking about "oil profits" in terms of percentages. They're never talking about profits in absolute numbers. Given that nearly 1/3rd of global wealth is spent on oil, obviously those amounts are huge, but so are the resources these companies need)
Also, if you're going to do this, why not remember that plants photosynthesis is about 2% efficient (2% of the energy it captures it gets transformed into food, which is then processed into plant material at about 30% or-so efficiency).
So 0.6% efficiency energy -> food is the absolute upper limit on these things. I think we can do better chemically.
We can't do so cheaper than agriculture (with cheap, abundant oil available), but that's the future, of course : synthetized food.
Simply co2+h2o+electricity -> starch, sugar,... Preferably at more than 2% efficiency.
We can beat plants when it comes to food production. Of course the need vitamins and such will necessitate additives of meat and real plants for a few hundred years to come, but the next agricultural revolution is beyond obvious :
That's of course the reality. Future cities will look much like today's. One thing's for sure, given population trends : food is either going to be "engineered" using energy from another source than the sun, and directly synthesized from co2 and h2o, or we're going to be badly fucked and kill 90% of the population.
Any such farm will therefore simply be a large solar panel (over 80 times more efficient than plants) and a factory floor. The solar panel's optional.
Of course, such an arrangement is only possible if people respect the "licence" (contract that is a prerequisite of the sale) of the pills.
That contract is going to specify that export to richer countries is not permitted.
Suppose this after-sale contract were to be ruled void (which is quite possibly the correct way for a judge to rule given current law), and import allowed, the pharma "giant" will be competing against itself, resulting in massive losses.
Those massive losses, that stem from not respecting the "licence" of the pills, will either prevent the pharma company from offering those pills, or they will kill the company.
Great initiative ! I truly hope it will last, but I fear for it's viability.
Slashdot Mirror
But we can not micromanage evolution for every species on earth EVEN IF we might have impacted them in the past.
We do it for quite a few already for thousands of years : ...) ...
-> humans (obviously, houses, medicine, roads
-> cows (a few hundred species of them)
-> pigs
-> sheep
-> chickens
-> turkey
->
Add to that the basically extinct species that still live in zoos : ... (this list is, according to the UN, already a few thousand species long)
-> at least 2 species of elephant
-> some 4/5 species of tiger
-> 2 species of lions
->
What's the problem with adding one more ?
On the bright side, as cellular charges rise, wifi becomes a compelling alternative. We are seeing a lot of Skype-capable handhelds coming on the market, notably Android-powered phones, and one can foresee the day (hopefully soon) when dozens of generic Android handsets are available for cheap, that can make Skype calls at any hotspot. That may spell the end of the cellular industry's dominance in this country. If I were AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile, I would be investing in wi-fi so as to be on the winning side of that game.
Wifi's price will rise to, after all the government will protect it's revenue streams using guns. Obviously the carriers will demand "protection" (or they will go under, and then govt will lose their revenue, necessitating new taxes*).
So if what you say is true, one of two things will happen : ... )
1) tax on wireless, slightly larger than the price hike of cellular
2) no more cellular, and extra tax on everybody (e.g. raised income tax,
2)
* obviously the necessitating new taxes part is only true under democrats
But, if you auction it off, with the proceeds going to government, the price will have to be in line with what companies think they can afford. The market makes a balance between maximizing service income versus spectrum price.
Thereby enabling both low-cost cell service and some amount of income to govt while not forcing the prices up more than people find reasonable.
By contrast, Obama's new tax on the poor does not accept any feedback from the market. The companies have no choice.
In addition, it will provide a $550 million per year per spectrum stimulus to government to prohibit "general use" spectrum. So say bye-bye to UWB and maybe even to some wireless spectra.
-1 inconvenient truth
So those don't use fire ? Those don't build houses ? They don't have technology ? They don't interfere with their "natural" surroundings ?
Think for a second before you say stuff.
Your acting like climate science is a positive science, where we can do experiments and do direct event correlation.
We can't. We don't know -at all- what is causing climate behavior. All we have are statistical models ... and 80% of that model is the following brilliant rule :
"the weather doesn't change" (= about 80% of any climate model)
And while I may agree that statistically this is, without any argument, correct, it is not a solid basis for predicting the weather a long time from now (or even more than a week).
In addition to that, the sun's been acting up rather badly (google "sunspot cycle 24"). Now when a 2960 billion petawatt fusion reactor does something unexpected, the consequences are ... severe. 1% difference in output and we'll have the mother of all ice ages next year. Right now we have about 4% difference (the sun's corona is 4% cooler - in absolute value, than the value climate models currently use, nobody knows why, or when it will change). If that doesn't change fast, no amount of co2 in the athmosphere is going to save us from the mother of all winters coming up real soon. And if it does change, it will -once again- render all climate predictions invalid.
The point is, it is not inhabitable (for humans) without technological interventions.
Since things like heated homes are obviously interference, artificially keeping the species alive in an area that nature would forbid to them, we should destroy those interventions, by which I mean destroy their houses, cities, roads, cars, and even any fires they may try to make, and "let nature take it's course" (ie. killing probably every last alaskan and the large majority of canadians).
That's not how it works. If you save a species, you have to expend resources to do that, reducing your own likelihood of survival.
You see, "God"(/nature/natural selection), simply keeps a tab.
Of course you don't want to know what happens when you can't pay the tab anymore. In fact, that alone is probably enough reason to make one believe in creationism.
Yes, but if you're going to play that card, then "humans rescuing frogs from disease" is also part of nature.
EXACTLY. We can make the earth the way we see fit. We can make it a very nice place for humans to live in.
There is nothing wrong with that. Isn't there something about that even in the bible ? We've known this for quite a while.
Preserving species that are not fit for their environment seems the wrong approach to me. The chance of ever totally eradicating this fungus is nil, and if the most numerous amphibian population around is a
So we should let all alaskans die, and most of canada ? After all, most of that place would not, without massive human intervention, be habitable for humans.
Perhaps you should terminate civilization ? Force humans, including you of course, to survive without houses, without cities, without walmart, and above all, without agriculture.
99% of people, at least, would obviously die in the first few weeks. But nature is resilient, isn't it ?
Fighting natural selection isn't wrong. At all.
Which part of it is not natural ? A disease (fungus) was carried by a host organism to a new place where it infected a vulnerable organism.
The transporter was not affected by the disease.
We're just lucky we were the transporter in this case. In the case of malaria, we're the vulnerable organisms.
Humans are part of nature.
It is not wrong to fight death. After all, you're statement basically states that any artificial immunity, both against physical problems and against other species is wrong.
So treating someone for a virus infection is wrong. So it putting a roof over someone's head to prevent him from freezing to death.
Tell me, do you live in a house ? Wouldn't it be better to let all humans that need houses die off ? That would, obviously, probably include you. But isn't that better ?
Natural selection is a horrible, horrible basis for moral judgements. Obviously we, as humans, want to interfere with nature, and interfere bigtime. And that's just the way it should be.
After all, without massive intervention in nature by humans, there would be no slashdot for us to have this discussion in the first place.
You know, once you realize the obvious, that humans are part of nature, your statement stops making sense.
Every breath any human takes "interferes with nature", for obvious reasons.
And obviously, having 6 billion very big animals alive interferes a lot.
And because reality is that evolution is a cruel, horrible game involving more death than anyone can tolerate. ... and therefore it is something that should, especially when it affects humans, be stopped at any cost.
You should realize by now that most "nature lovers", "evolutionists", and many other words thoroughly represented at the left end of the political spectrum really don't appreciate all this "survival of the fittest" crap. Evolution, protecting nature, environmentalism, ... these are all words. You would do well to NOT ever remind anyone of their meaning.
After all, that might lead to people asking "does Al Gore really thing he'll bring down co2 production by buying 2 new yachts, and flying around the globe in private jets ? By the way, how much energy does his house use ?". That would make people really uncomfortable.
People especially don't like nature, and evolution, the way nature works even less. They hate it when applied to little cute (or horrible) animals, and certainly, above all, hate it when applied to them.
Ever notice how just about every "evolution is good" person uses condoms ? They probably don't even realize the utter stupidity of that. These people are NOT interested in nature, or natural processes. And they certainly don't want to get confronted with what happens to people who fail the natural selection thingy. They also don't want to be told that they, just like anyone else, might fail that little natural selection thing.
And of course, that little detail is the very central part of evolution theory. Evolutionists, or environmentalists complaining about extinction (even due to human interference) is a bit like physicists complaining about gravity and falling apples.
So remember. You need to care about the little cuddly things, and say nice things about the guys "trying to save the species" (while they're killing many others of course, watching huge tv's, turning up the heating to the maximum and so on). You should not -EVER- point out that if pollution is a problem for many species, nature will adapt. This "adaption" will of course, like any natural adaption, be a massive, massive field of dead animals, something no "nature lover" has the least tolerance for. Do not point out that saving them is basically equivalent to sabotaging their genes (while, ironically, things like gene splicing is helping them).
Great ! Now we can all go bankrupt the open source way ! Isn't open source grand ?
Just because someone is hit by fallout does not mean he gets irradiated (esp. with the newer "devices").
Add to that that you'd need to damage people enough to prevent procreation, meaning a huge radiation dose is required. Radiation decreases with the square of the distance (so a 160 megaton nuclear warhead does about double the damage of a 40 megaton on, or about 4 times the damage of Hiroshima). Giving someone cancer, 50 years after the explosion, is technically considered damage. It would not make a big difference in that person's life : he/she could still live, work, have children, ... Unfortunately you're going to find that preventing that is rather hard to do, especially with nuclear devices.
For example the "worst nuclear disaster in the world", Chernobyl, caused 54 people to lose their lives. Only 32 of those 54 were actually prevented from procreating. (Not that the "died from cancer 50 years after the fact" numbers are much higher : less than 200).
If you really want to kill huge amounts of people, nuclear explosions are not the way to do it. Just go in with knives and start stabbing, and keep it up for a few dozen years.
Just read the history of the middle east once. That will provide ample illustration of how to kill really, really large amounts of people : irresponsible immigration + economic recession = civil war = huge amounts of dead. Worked every time.
For a planet to "shed" anything except perhaps hydrogen or helium, that stuff has to overcome escape velocity, which (until rockets were invented in the 20th century), requires an (volcano or meteorite) that would incinerate any complex organic compounds and render DNA a fine ash.
Those arguments may be true, but it's been proven that bacteria do get blasted out of earth's orbit without getting cooked.
Furthermore, for both spores and viruses the getting cooked is simply not a problem. (viruses contain dna which could fall into a pool of organic but dead compounds and start life, it doesn't matter that the virus itself is dead)
There have been spores tested, and the verdict is that they can survive at less than 10cm to an atomic explosion. This means that moulds that formed on the inside of the detonator of a nuclear bomb would probably contain a few things that will survive the blast*. Undoubtedly viruses can do the same.
(4 billion years) * (2 billion tons per day) / (5.9736Ãf--10^24 kg) in percent
Less than 1% of Earth's mass is at a temperature that even permits life to exist. As for the part that actually consists of life, you can measure it in parts per million and still need scientific notation.
This would not be a problem (even though you're obviously right that the amounts quoted are ridiculous), since earth receives constant doses of dust from space and loses "dust" (with probably life in it) to space. The net mass change of the earth over long periods would be negligeable, in fact it would probably gain mass slowly, despite regularly blasting tons of life into space.
* even though atomic bombs have nowhere near the killing capacity they're rumored to have. One atomic bomb can kill, at best, about 50000 people, in a dense city block less than 1 square kilometer. To kill of "all" humans you'd therefore need to set off 148 million atomic bombs, or about 25 million 150 megaton hydrogen bombs (and there would still be survivors)
I'm talking about the full krebs cycle efficiency. Meaning the effiency of the process creating sugars on the edge of the chloroplast.
Those efficiency ratings differ from species to species (depending e.g. on their height : trees are vastly more efficient than grass, but at the obviously rather high cost of maintaining an enormous support structure which is not deducted from their photosynthesis efficiency ratings)
So this figure has to be divided by a factor between 100 or 10000 before we're talking about a potato on your plate (and if you want to get anywhere near 100, you'd best be a farmer in congo, without access to fertilizer), and by a factor of at least a 100000 if we're talking meat.
That said, the efficiency of using sunlight to create sugars in plants ranges between 0.2% and 6%. Here are a few sources :
http://www.upei.ca/~physics/p261/Content/Sources_Conversion/Photo-_synthesis/photo-_synthesis.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
This is the "theoretical number". What electrical food production would need to attain to beat out plants for food on people's plates, is obviously much less. To beat out plants it would need an efficiency of less than 1/1000th of a percent, especially if this could be done at the place of consumption. To beat out meat ... well even al gore "30000$ a month - wait till you see my yacht !" would be a more effecient consumer than meat production.
That's a valid point. Let's see some data.
Let's take Pfizer. Profits are 36.9% of revenues. And that profit is about 1/4th of it's assets (for which rent is due). Pfizer pays for itself in 4 years.
Now let's say that it would be "good enough" to keep a viable company if it pays for itself in 20 years. That means profits could be lowered to about 8% of revenues.
Which would reduce the prices of pills therefore about 25% (yes, those figures are less than their sum ... that's because they're multiplications, not sums).
That 25% would, obviously be only deducted from a fraction of the cost of the pill. It would make zero difference to transporting companies, distribution companies, ... the works.
For a "normal" commodity producer profit is about 1/3rd of the final sale price. So the total amount pills would actually drop in price, if Pfizer made just marginal profit is not 25%, but rather 8%.
Do you think these people are talking about asking 8% less sale price in Africa, which would support your argument, or do you think they're selling them at half price, or even 1/10th, which could not possibly support your argument ?
So no, the company wouldn't survive re-importation of these pills. No company, except those with extreme profit margins could.
And, unfortunately, there are very, very few companies with extreme profit margins (ironically the "oil giants" have very little profit compared to revenue. That's why democrats and communists like chavez are always avoiding talking about "oil profits" in terms of percentages. They're never talking about profits in absolute numbers. Given that nearly 1/3rd of global wealth is spent on oil, obviously those amounts are huge, but so are the resources these companies need)
Also, if you're going to do this, why not remember that plants photosynthesis is about 2% efficient (2% of the energy it captures it gets transformed into food, which is then processed into plant material at about 30% or-so efficiency).
So 0.6% efficiency energy -> food is the absolute upper limit on these things. I think we can do better chemically.
We can't do so cheaper than agriculture (with cheap, abundant oil available), but that's the future, of course : synthetized food.
Simply co2+h2o+electricity -> starch, sugar, ... Preferably at more than 2% efficiency.
We can beat plants when it comes to food production. Of course the need vitamins and such will necessitate additives of meat and real plants for a few hundred years to come, but the next agricultural revolution is beyond obvious :
not relying on plants anymore
That's of course the reality. Future cities will look much like today's. One thing's for sure, given population trends : food is either going to be "engineered" using energy from another source than the sun, and directly synthesized from co2 and h2o, or we're going to be badly fucked and kill 90% of the population.
Any such farm will therefore simply be a large solar panel (over 80 times more efficient than plants) and a factory floor. The solar panel's optional.
Neither of those developers are well-paid. Nor are there anywhere near enough developers on either type of projects.
So sorry, yes it helps what they do, no it does not constitute the equivalent of microsoft's boss telling the hiring manager "money is no object !".
The problem with those techniques is the accidents they generated by not working with sterile materials.
Little incidents ... and the plague. Let's reintroduce that ! It's going to be really popular.
Of course, such an arrangement is only possible if people respect the "licence" (contract that is a prerequisite of the sale) of the pills.
That contract is going to specify that export to richer countries is not permitted.
Suppose this after-sale contract were to be ruled void (which is quite possibly the correct way for a judge to rule given current law), and import allowed, the pharma "giant" will be competing against itself, resulting in massive losses.
Those massive losses, that stem from not respecting the "licence" of the pills, will either prevent the pharma company from offering those pills, or they will kill the company.
Great initiative ! I truly hope it will last, but I fear for it's viability.