Those people go into the "terrorist" group. This was a gov't funded study. Those who fail to fit into the left-right pseudo-dichotomy are impossible to manipulate and placate with the trite bread-and-circus show that is modern US politics.
I think it depends on the people. You're right that some people seem to have an innate sense of responsibility, which tempers their immediate self-interest. But some don't.
Obviously there is no example of anyone having made the Earth completely uninhabitable.
But there are certainly examples of collapse of life support systems and civilizations due to profit-seeking with later negative effects. Chernobyl created a 17-mile diameter exclusion zone. Look at Haiti: massive overpopulation, deforestation, and environmental disaster. Slash and burn agriculture is highly destructive in the Amazon as well. Though since most of the rainforest is replaced with corporate-managed permanent crops, it's not immediately obvious that this makes the Earth "less inhabitable". But the same practice on an individual scale is responsible for expansion of the Sahara desert. The Dust Bowl was caused in part by foolish farming practices of over-tilling in arid regions. Desertification is a growing problem in China and elsewhere due to overgrazing. It's plausible that both Easter Island and Rome collapsed in large part due to resource depletion. And one subtle way that risk is passed on is through monocultures of crops that are more susceptible to disease outbreaks, such as in bananas, wheat and even rice. Look at the swine flu: concentrated, high-profit factory farming created the conditions for a potential pandemic. Also consider dams or levees that collapse generations after they were built, such as Johnstown PA or New Orleans in Katrina. Those living in the path are often unaware of the risk they face.
But I think most of the effects of environmental destruction and inter-generational risk transfer have historically been masked by migration and simple warfare. Ecosystems recover relatively quickly. And humans have not yet occupied the entire globe to an extent necessary to see dramatic consequences. I don't think Europe in the dark ages was particularly habitable, prior to colonization of the Americas. I just wonder whether a similar scenario will someday play out on a global scale prior to mass migration off the planet.
You don't seem to get this so I'm going to spell it out, slowly...
Risks that accrue after your lifetime are external. Even if they are 100% certain. Even if you are completely aware of them.
awareness/certainty of risk determines whether or not costs are deemed to be external.
No. Wrong. The timeframe of risk can also determine whether risks are external. In fact, by definition, the only determinant of externality is whether some transaction affects others.
One cannot rationally profit from an uninhabitable earth. (One can, however, profit while the earth remains inhabitable.)
What makes you think these are mutually exclusive?
You seem to be arguing from the position that individuals who are aware of future, collective risks will act to avoid them. This is not the case. If the risk of negative results does not negatively affect the individual whose actions cause the risk, the individual has no incentive to avoid the risky behavior. Even collections of individuals, whose risky behavior only affects future generations and not their own, have no incentive to collectively avoid or prevent this risky behavior.
that predicament would only occur when the risks and their magnitudes are significantly uncertain.
No. That's the point of a negative externality. The person who reaps the benefit, or who takes on the risk, does not bear the cost. So the risk-taking occurs regardless of the magnitude or uncertainty of risk, as long as the costs are borne by others.
Economies of scale in electricity production are not necessarily beneficial enough to make up for the loss of 30-60% of the input energy as waste heat, along with another 5% of the produced electricity in transmission, along with mark-ups from all the middle-men along the way and, as you point out, potential supply disruptions.
Once you start talking about negative externalities that play out over a timescale of multiple generations, then the "some time before that" can occur during the lifetime of a generation that has zero incentive to "alter course" in order to prevent future disaster, because they see none of the negative effects of their actions.
Since a gas turbine plant and a fuel cell are both inarguably more efficient than a (coal fired) base load power plant, I assume you meant "more economical" rather than "more efficient"?
Now, if the Bloomberg fuel cells bypassed the generation of heat and converted the energy content of the Natural gas directly into electrical energy
It does, to an extent. That's the reason the operating temperature is 1000 C instead of the usual natural gas flame temperature of near 2000 C. It is a catalyzed reaction.
Furthermore, ANY electrical power generating plant has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 50% for the energy it consumes.
I'm not sure where you got this but it is not at all true.
Honestly, it's really only greener if they actually sell small "Bloom Boxes" to end-users rather than only to utility companies and large businesses. The fact that they've spent ten years in secret development doesn't really bode well for this outcome.
The technology is safe and quiet and simple enough to put in every backyard. Economical on-site, on-demand power generation is the lynchpin of a revolution in energy efficiency and green technologies, from solar and wind to bio-methanol and simple co-generation.
Large corporations have little incentive to adopt green energy technologies. And governments will not take the necessary steps to ensure renewable and carbon-neutral energy is the norm. But individuals who would rather invest in energy security and environmental responsibility than gamble with their retirement in risky financial markets could be the real drivers behind energy efficiency improvements and green energy adoption.
Natural gas as a fuel will explode (figuratively and literally) in the next decade if there isn't a carbon tax.
I see this repeated often and it is simply wrong. Natural gas emits carbon, yes. But it emits far less carbon than coal or oil and is far, far more abundant than any renewable energy source. So natural gas usage will go up even if there is a carbon tax because it will be the best alternative for cheap, on-demand, transportable energy.
I'm going to ask again, because, you've made this claim here and I'd like to see you justify it. You've done a good job of tapdancing around the question so far.
Gold has a use. If I dig up gold in my back yard, I can use it for things, to build electronics or solar collectors for instance. When I do this, the total amount of gold goes up. Other people have more gold to use for other things. They can use their extra gold to build useful things as well. This is what makes gold wealth.
If I print paper money in my back yard, I can also use it for things. I can use it to buy useful stuff from other people. But instead of other people having more wealth because of this, they have less. They end up with an excess of money, which has no inherent value, and with less useful stuff since it's been sold to me in exchange for the paper money I printed. That's why printing money is frowned upon. And it's also the reason paper money is not wealth.
So, are you going to stick with your original statement? If paper money is wealth, then printing paper money therefore creates more wealth. Is creating wealth a good thing? Do you think printing lots of paper money is a good idea?
His model is absolutely correct. The IRS and US gov't claim that "income" means more than the "clearly realized accession to wealth" that the Supreme Court has ruled it means. They do everything they can to try to trick workers into believing that paper money is "wealth".
If "income" were widely understood to mean "profit", as was intended, rather than any money that changes hands, as the IRS wants you to believe, then the US gov't wouldn't end up owning everything and having to employ or support 60% of US citizens and spend trillions bailing out the economy, because people wouldn't be defrauded into sending the IRS more than they were actually legally authorized to collect.
You're making a false dichotomy between "resources" and energy, which are at a certain level equivalent. An "immortal" molecule could still be alive, and even evolve (change), without consuming any new resources, but only energy.
Actually, you stupid fuck, they are forcing him to. That work study job, and most of the educational system, is funded by tax dollars, which are forcibly extracted from productive workers. When he graduates into the real world and has wages and assets that can be expropriated by a bullshit incompetent gangster government, they will force him to pay in the exact same way, regardless of whether he submits to their Orwellian privacy violations or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Those people go into the "terrorist" group. This was a gov't funded study. Those who fail to fit into the left-right pseudo-dichotomy are impossible to manipulate and placate with the trite bread-and-circus show that is modern US politics.
I think it depends on the people. You're right that some people seem to have an innate sense of responsibility, which tempers their immediate self-interest. But some don't.
Obviously there is no example of anyone having made the Earth completely uninhabitable.
But there are certainly examples of collapse of life support systems and civilizations due to profit-seeking with later negative effects. Chernobyl created a 17-mile diameter exclusion zone. Look at Haiti: massive overpopulation, deforestation, and environmental disaster. Slash and burn agriculture is highly destructive in the Amazon as well. Though since most of the rainforest is replaced with corporate-managed permanent crops, it's not immediately obvious that this makes the Earth "less inhabitable". But the same practice on an individual scale is responsible for expansion of the Sahara desert. The Dust Bowl was caused in part by foolish farming practices of over-tilling in arid regions. Desertification is a growing problem in China and elsewhere due to overgrazing. It's plausible that both Easter Island and Rome collapsed in large part due to resource depletion. And one subtle way that risk is passed on is through monocultures of crops that are more susceptible to disease outbreaks, such as in bananas, wheat and even rice. Look at the swine flu: concentrated, high-profit factory farming created the conditions for a potential pandemic. Also consider dams or levees that collapse generations after they were built, such as Johnstown PA or New Orleans in Katrina. Those living in the path are often unaware of the risk they face.
But I think most of the effects of environmental destruction and inter-generational risk transfer have historically been masked by migration and simple warfare. Ecosystems recover relatively quickly. And humans have not yet occupied the entire globe to an extent necessary to see dramatic consequences. I don't think Europe in the dark ages was particularly habitable, prior to colonization of the Americas. I just wonder whether a similar scenario will someday play out on a global scale prior to mass migration off the planet.
You don't seem to get this so I'm going to spell it out, slowly...
Risks that accrue after your lifetime are external. Even if they are 100% certain. Even if you are completely aware of them.
awareness/certainty of risk determines whether or not costs are deemed to be external.
No. Wrong. The timeframe of risk can also determine whether risks are external. In fact, by definition, the only determinant of externality is whether some transaction affects others.
One cannot rationally profit from an uninhabitable earth. (One can, however, profit while the earth remains inhabitable.)
What makes you think these are mutually exclusive?
You seem to be arguing from the position that individuals who are aware of future, collective risks will act to avoid them. This is not the case. If the risk of negative results does not negatively affect the individual whose actions cause the risk, the individual has no incentive to avoid the risky behavior. Even collections of individuals, whose risky behavior only affects future generations and not their own, have no incentive to collectively avoid or prevent this risky behavior.
that predicament would only occur when the risks and their magnitudes are significantly uncertain.
No. That's the point of a negative externality. The person who reaps the benefit, or who takes on the risk, does not bear the cost. So the risk-taking occurs regardless of the magnitude or uncertainty of risk, as long as the costs are borne by others.
If lomborg had any faith in the veracity of his "science" he would publish it in peer-reviewed journals.
You mean like the peer-reviewed journals that were systematically fixed by pro-AGW scientists in order to exclude dissenting researchers?
Economies of scale in electricity production are not necessarily beneficial enough to make up for the loss of 30-60% of the input energy as waste heat, along with another 5% of the produced electricity in transmission, along with mark-ups from all the middle-men along the way and, as you point out, potential supply disruptions.
Once you start talking about negative externalities that play out over a timescale of multiple generations, then the "some time before that" can occur during the lifetime of a generation that has zero incentive to "alter course" in order to prevent future disaster, because they see none of the negative effects of their actions.
Someone should mod this up. It's absolutely true.
Since a gas turbine plant and a fuel cell are both inarguably more efficient than a (coal fired) base load power plant, I assume you meant "more economical" rather than "more efficient"?
Now, if the Bloomberg fuel cells bypassed the generation of heat and converted the energy content of the Natural gas directly into electrical energy
It does, to an extent. That's the reason the operating temperature is 1000 C instead of the usual natural gas flame temperature of near 2000 C. It is a catalyzed reaction.
Furthermore, ANY electrical power generating plant has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 50% for the energy it consumes.
I'm not sure where you got this but it is not at all true.
the fuels are not being combusted
This is a disingenuous claim. The efficiency is higher, but the result is basically the same as 'combustion'.
Many farmers in the third world, India especially, generate bio-methane from animal wastes that can be used in these fuel cells.
if can be scaled up
The benefit is not in scaling up, but in scaling down.
I'm not sure I want something running at 1,000 C in my back yard
You already have several things operating at temperatures higher than that right in your house.
Honestly, it's really only greener if they actually sell small "Bloom Boxes" to end-users rather than only to utility companies and large businesses. The fact that they've spent ten years in secret development doesn't really bode well for this outcome.
The technology is safe and quiet and simple enough to put in every backyard. Economical on-site, on-demand power generation is the lynchpin of a revolution in energy efficiency and green technologies, from solar and wind to bio-methanol and simple co-generation.
Large corporations have little incentive to adopt green energy technologies. And governments will not take the necessary steps to ensure renewable and carbon-neutral energy is the norm. But individuals who would rather invest in energy security and environmental responsibility than gamble with their retirement in risky financial markets could be the real drivers behind energy efficiency improvements and green energy adoption.
Natural gas as a fuel will explode (figuratively and literally) in the next decade if there isn't a carbon tax.
I see this repeated often and it is simply wrong. Natural gas emits carbon, yes. But it emits far less carbon than coal or oil and is far, far more abundant than any renewable energy source. So natural gas usage will go up even if there is a carbon tax because it will be the best alternative for cheap, on-demand, transportable energy.
Other than saving space, how is this better than solar panels which typically have a 15-20 year payoff period?
It runs their servers when there's a rolling blackout and the sun isn't shining.
instead of platinum, Sridhar uses a cheap metal alloy.
You paint that on either side of this white ceramic to get a green layer and a black layer. And... that's it.
Any guesses?
Happy now?
At least you've admitted that money is not equivalent to wealth.
The question is simple. You've already stated that paper money is wealth. And it seems that you're sticking to that claim.
So does printing paper money therefore create more wealth?
Last time I checked, paper money was wealth.
I'm going to ask again, because, you've made this claim here and I'd like to see you justify it. You've done a good job of tapdancing around the question so far.
Gold has a use. If I dig up gold in my back yard, I can use it for things, to build electronics or solar collectors for instance. When I do this, the total amount of gold goes up. Other people have more gold to use for other things. They can use their extra gold to build useful things as well. This is what makes gold wealth.
If I print paper money in my back yard, I can also use it for things. I can use it to buy useful stuff from other people. But instead of other people having more wealth because of this, they have less. They end up with an excess of money, which has no inherent value, and with less useful stuff since it's been sold to me in exchange for the paper money I printed. That's why printing money is frowned upon. And it's also the reason paper money is not wealth.
So, are you going to stick with your original statement? If paper money is wealth, then printing paper money therefore creates more wealth. Is creating wealth a good thing? Do you think printing lots of paper money is a good idea?
Right, I'm the 7 year old. Your argument is that printing paper money creates wealth?
His model is absolutely correct. The IRS and US gov't claim that "income" means more than the "clearly realized accession to wealth" that the Supreme Court has ruled it means. They do everything they can to try to trick workers into believing that paper money is "wealth".
If "income" were widely understood to mean "profit", as was intended, rather than any money that changes hands, as the IRS wants you to believe, then the US gov't wouldn't end up owning everything and having to employ or support 60% of US citizens and spend trillions bailing out the economy, because people wouldn't be defrauded into sending the IRS more than they were actually legally authorized to collect.
You're making a false dichotomy between "resources" and energy, which are at a certain level equivalent. An "immortal" molecule could still be alive, and even evolve (change), without consuming any new resources, but only energy.
No one is forcing you to.
Actually, you stupid fuck, they are forcing him to. That work study job, and most of the educational system, is funded by tax dollars, which are forcibly extracted from productive workers. When he graduates into the real world and has wages and assets that can be expropriated by a bullshit incompetent gangster government, they will force him to pay in the exact same way, regardless of whether he submits to their Orwellian privacy violations or not.