Other sources of ethanol are only now beginning to be developed. It is very reasonable to expect that some of the sources will be crops that can grow on land that isn't well suited to growing foodstuffs. Second, that 19% is the amount of land actually under active cultivation, not the amount that could be brought under cultivation. It took me a while to run that down, but look at page 3 of this pdf http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_pro files/agr_cou_840.pdf [wri.org]. Third, you assume that the same land - even the same crop - can't generate both foodstuff and fuel. Think about using cornstalks as a driver for fuel. Fourth, you make the assumption that the yield will remain constant. In only the last few years the yield from corn has gone from 400 g/acre to over 500 g/acre. Some people expect that the yield will rise to 2000 g/acre in the next 20 years. Last, you make the assumption that the inputs will only be crops. Non-agricultural inputs can also be applied. For instance, suburban lawn clippings and leaves.
This is exactly why Julian Simon destroyed those who see the solution as government intervention. There are thousands of engineers, businessmen, and scientists working on the problem at every possible step of it, from cheaper oil (new mining, new searching techniques, artificial production) to new fuels (ethanol, LPG, electricity, fuel cells, Mr. Fusion), to totally new engine types, to who knows what else.
The intellectual power working to solve it greatly outweighs temporary shortages (as measured by price increases in an otherwise free market) and the counter-intuitive result is that the situation repairs itself, while government regulation and even rationing just yields more shortages.
Imagine the idiocy of a "BTU" tax -- it would penalize newer forms of energy production that produced more for less cost -- and thus would yield the opposite effect as to what is intended.
It's similar to the old wive's tale that Congress was gonna tax data transfer based on # of bytes -- you'd end up with a purely text-only internet, as a 30 cent email would turn into a $5 billion charge for downloading a movie.
There are sometimes shortages of RAM chips, of new processors, etc. I don't see any of the computer nerds around here clamoring for a government takeover of the design and manufacture of new computer chips.
A wise man once noted that nobody signs up for "holistic muffler repair" or "alternative medicine Boing 747 mechanical maintenance" -- people know crap when they see it.
So who's with me, fellas? Government rationing and granting and directing research into new ways to produce computer chips?
Correction: It is not economically feasible yet. Your gas-guzzler in your garage will run fine on ethanol or LPG with a few tweaks. There's nothing hard about it in any scientific sense.
> Oil is leaving us. It is going to be HARD.
If by "hard" you mean high gas prices in the US this year have driven an explosion in industrial-sized ethanol plants in the US. Sounds like the free market is working as intended, no government intervention or subsidies needed.
BTW, it was gas prices considerably cheaper than European, government-mandated high prices, even of a few years ago, that have driven this.
> And without the political will... It's not going to happen.
No political will necessary -- just pure, natural greed and the government getting out of the way.
It's sad that it takes "shortages" like this to get the government to brush aside environmental laws standing in the way of new power plants, purification plants, etc. But that's a different issue. The economy doesn't care how good your intentions are with your government intervention -- the baby cries when stuck by the immunization needle.
Boy! Your system sounds awesome! It's as if a free market economy was total crap compared to systems of massive government intervention.
If'n only we'd'a just come out of, oh, I don't know, a century of hundreds of different economic "experiments" demonstrating government intervention caused greater shortages in commodities and products than doing nothing in an otherwise free economy.
> . The world cannot produce as much oil as it used to at a given > price, while the consumers of the world want more oil today > (at yesterday's price) than they bought yesterday.
Which is why the price is only just now getting to a point where investment in ethanol factories is getting to be worthwhile, and conversion to ethanol vehicles desirable by consumers.
And we're still way less than European, government-inflated gasoline prices.
Julian's theories, working as planned
Fear the government intervention to "save you", don't fear the free market.
Hint: Julian Simon shot down all the "shortage" chicken-littles in the '70's and '80's. But, like people who follow Sylvia Browne and John Edwards, there's always new "truths" to be found in "shortage woo-woo-ism".
Repeat it enough, you'll win the politics even if the theories, and the theories, implemented are demonstrated false again and again and again.
> It may be an imminent event now. It may not be. That doesn't make it any less of a threat
Far and away the most disasterous effect on humanity has been government intervention in economies. "Good intentions" do not make good outcomes. If you are looking for a threat that will degrade the quality of your life, look to the government intervening in the production of commodities, rather than "shortages" that a free market will deal with. Our "outrageuos" gas prices in the US, with war atop hurricanes, was still $1+ cheaper than Euro prices from several years ago.
It will not be an imminent event, now, or ever, as long as the economy is free to respond to things, and develope alternative sources, and alternative substitutes from fuel, to engine types, to full-blown transportation types, to things as yet unthought-of.
Your mental model of reality is flawed in that it presumes there aren't tens of thousands of businessmen and engineers and scientists in every industry all trying to think up ways to privide things more cheaply, so they can get more money in their own pockets. Such a concept is foreign to one who thinks in terms of command-and-control solutions to problems, and the need for rationing and government intervention.
On the other hand, YouTube increases Google's risk of copyright infringement, opening the door for significant liability...if Google cannot solve this issue. Will their planned video 'fingerprinting' be enough, or just a billion dollar mistake?"
Reminds me of Yahoo taking over egroups or whatever it was -- a huge, burgeoning message group community. Burgeoning largely because of its easily searchable, content-unrestricted group mechanism. Read: pr0n.
A few weeks later, people complained, and they clamped down on the pr0n. Now it's dead and largely worthless.
If you ran a legitimate, fully legal, website here in the States and someone in Russia sued you, would you go and defend yourself? I didn't think so. So how is this any different???
If Russia was in charge of ICANN, and would order them to wipe you out, then that's how it is different. In all juristictional fights, the authority of the juristdiction is only as powerful as its ability to enforce its judgements.
And [Dr. Evil raises pinky to his mouth] the US...wins.
The US is the home of even worse -- the SLAPP lawsuit -- Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Say you're a company producing a dangerous drug, or a charlatan publishing fraudulent alternative medicine books, etc. Someone "outs" you. What do you do? Spend millions trying to sue them into oblivion, hoping they will shut up for fear of the money needed to defend themselves.
As long as it isn't leeching into the air or water or whaver and getting into the US, then no, the US is without recourse because the Canadians can do whatever the hell they want with their land.
And if it did leech, that would be a case for existing or future negotiations, with threats of military action a last resort (and one of pracical considerations as well -- is it worth it, is success likely, etc.)
However, there is a lot of precedence that US courts feel it's their right to apply judgement worldwide. Several Canadian executives, for instance, can't travel through the US because their company does business in Cuba -- and the US doesn't like Cuba, therefore Canadian businesses don't have the right to do business in Cuba. Or so some American judges think.
A Canadian business can do business in the US, or in Cuba, but if you do business in Cuba and in the US, US laws let you sue Canadian businesses also operating in the US for damages, such as Cuba's seizure of private property.
So if you want the financial goodies of the US, you'd better think twice about doing business in Cuba, or pay the US's penalty for operating in both.
As a businessman, it's your choice, consider it the cost of doing business in both countries.
I would like to see the US extradite someone to another country for something done in this country that isn't illegal here.
Especially something related to free speech. I'd bet that part of the extradition law would be thrown out of court before the SC would let someone be extradited.
"Despite the fictions, many of the themes of Spore are immensely valuable ones, particularly in an age of environmental crisis: the fragility of life, the connection between micro- and macro- scales, the complex networks of ecosystems and food webs, the impact of new technology on social systems
I wonder if the "civilization level" unit of Spore studies the immeasurably more immensly valuable theme of massive governmental intrusion into a freedom-based economy and how it leads to far more miserable lives for its citizens than all those other things going haywire put together?
You know, I see this kind of post often when discussion turns to the war. The thing is, I read that as you sounding all hurt that he would dare do such a thing. I believe ANY dad would do the same given the opportunity and ability. I know I sure would if my son was going into harms way. And, if you think any different you aren't much of a dad. Call me a liar.
That's fine. The problem is in the hipocracy of it all. To do such a thing, then sit later on as Commander-in-Chief, well, it's a tad on the, perhaps technically not unethical side, but certanly a bit hipocritical...
The US Constitution has a clear definition of "declaring war", and that document ain't it. And that's part of the problem.
Congress won't declare a war for several reasons: Lack of clear opponent, lack of clear definition of victory, declaring war means insurance policies that are void on "acts of war" no longer need be enforced and Congress doesn't want to take the heat for that with a bunch of pissed off constituents...
> 1. McClellan's incompetence was responsible for some of the largest losses of human > life during the Civil war, including the battles of Manassas. He was given multiple > chances to successfully engage Lee and failed miserably on every case. Intellectual > ability doesn't matter a damn if you can't apply it.
Of him, Lincoln made one of his most famous quotes, "He snatches defeat from the jaws of victory." And McClellan's incompetence was so great there are no shortage of historians who harbor serious suspicions he was a southern sympathizer.
As for IQ, Jimmy Carter was one of the brighter presidents, and arguably the only one since Jefferson to be marginally trained in sciences. Lot of good that did with "stagflation" and the hostage crisis...
> Why do that when the multi-billion dollar terrorist movements it > supports could easily do it for them with plausable deniability?
A few years back the US made it clear to Russia and China that "plausible deniability" does not exist in the realm of nuclear weapons. This was when both were having problems possibly keeping their nukes from getting on the black market for valuable western cash. "If you are having a tough time tracking them, let us help you track them. For if one of them gets into the hands of terrorists, well, if your nukes are gonna destroy our cities one way or another, we're 'gonna get into it with you directly'"
It's conceivable that all smaller nations that have nukes and might help terrorists will be sundered in a whirlwind "just in case", if the US is hit by a terrorist nuke.
Part of both Iraq and Afghanistan was to tell the world that if you start this up, diplomatic "business as usual" was over.
This is the downside of slashdot altering link code to prevent people from posting a link pretending to be something useful, but is actually a link to goatse.cx. A lack of education in this arena! >:(
An odd statement given the US government is spending $2 trillion (with a T, not a B or M) per year, a rate that, adjusted for inflation, exceeds per capita any other year in history except for one year during WWII, in which we were engaged in two major war fronts simultaneously and were building a major capital ship per week.
> since the distance can only be measured relatively indirectly via Cepheid [wikipedia.org] variable stars.
Well, if you can get a rough estimate of the size of our galaxy, you could judge the distance to the Andromeda galaxy via angular size, assuming they are roughly in the same ballpark of size.
Slashdot Mirror
So running a 16-player Quake game violates the MS EULA?
Like that fingeriffic neck massager, I give an ETA of four and a half minutes before someone strips down and wears the vest the wrong way.
This is exactly why Julian Simon destroyed those who see the solution as government intervention. There are thousands of engineers, businessmen, and scientists working on the problem at every possible step of it, from cheaper oil (new mining, new searching techniques, artificial production) to new fuels (ethanol, LPG, electricity, fuel cells, Mr. Fusion), to totally new engine types, to who knows what else.
The intellectual power working to solve it greatly outweighs temporary shortages (as measured by price increases in an otherwise free market) and the counter-intuitive result is that the situation repairs itself, while government regulation and even rationing just yields more shortages.
Imagine the idiocy of a "BTU" tax -- it would penalize newer forms of energy production that produced more for less cost -- and thus would yield the opposite effect as to what is intended.
It's similar to the old wive's tale that Congress was gonna tax data transfer based on # of bytes -- you'd end up with a purely text-only internet, as a 30 cent email would turn into a $5 billion charge for downloading a movie.
There are sometimes shortages of RAM chips, of new processors, etc. I don't see any of the computer nerds around here clamoring for a government takeover of the design and manufacture of new computer chips.
A wise man once noted that nobody signs up for "holistic muffler repair" or "alternative medicine Boing 747 mechanical maintenance" -- people know crap when they see it.
So who's with me, fellas? Government rationing and granting and directing research into new ways to produce computer chips?
> We have not left oil because it is HARD.
Correction: It is not economically feasible yet. Your gas-guzzler in your garage will run fine on ethanol or LPG with a few tweaks. There's nothing hard about it in any scientific sense.
> Oil is leaving us. It is going to be HARD.
If by "hard" you mean high gas prices in the US this year have driven an explosion in industrial-sized ethanol plants in the US. Sounds like the free market is working as intended, no government intervention or subsidies needed.
BTW, it was gas prices considerably cheaper than European, government-mandated high prices, even of a few years ago, that have driven this.
> And without the political will... It's not going to happen.
No political will necessary -- just pure, natural greed and the government getting out of the way.
It's sad that it takes "shortages" like this to get the government to brush aside environmental laws standing in the way of new power plants, purification plants, etc. But that's a different issue. The economy doesn't care how good your intentions are with your government intervention -- the baby cries when stuck by the immunization needle.
Boy! Your system sounds awesome! It's as if a free market economy was total crap compared to systems of massive government intervention.
If'n only we'd'a just come out of, oh, I don't know, a century of hundreds of different economic "experiments" demonstrating government intervention caused greater shortages in commodities and products than doing nothing in an otherwise free economy.
Golly!
There's an old saying, If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
> . The world cannot produce as much oil as it used to at a given
> price, while the consumers of the world want more oil today
> (at yesterday's price) than they bought yesterday.
Which is why the price is only just now getting to a point where investment in ethanol factories is getting to be worthwhile, and conversion to ethanol vehicles desirable by consumers.
And we're still way less than European, government-inflated gasoline prices.
Julian's theories, working as planned
Fear the government intervention to "save you", don't fear the free market.
Hint: Julian Simon shot down all the "shortage" chicken-littles in the '70's and '80's. But, like people who follow Sylvia Browne and John Edwards, there's always new "truths" to be found in "shortage woo-woo-ism".
Repeat it enough, you'll win the politics even if the theories, and the theories, implemented are demonstrated false again and again and again.
> It may be an imminent event now. It may not be. That doesn't make it any less of a threat
Far and away the most disasterous effect on humanity has been government intervention in economies. "Good intentions" do not make good outcomes. If you are looking for a threat that will degrade the quality of your life, look to the government intervening in the production of commodities, rather than "shortages" that a free market will deal with. Our "outrageuos" gas prices in the US, with war atop hurricanes, was still $1+ cheaper than Euro prices from several years ago.
It will not be an imminent event, now, or ever, as long as the economy is free to respond to things, and develope alternative sources, and alternative substitutes from fuel, to engine types, to full-blown transportation types, to things as yet unthought-of.
Hmmm, link didn't work.
Let's try again...
"If you made a mistake, well, you should have used a more modern BBS system with an "Edit" button."
Bzzzt! Thanks for playing, please come again.
Your mental model of reality is flawed in that it presumes there aren't tens of thousands of businessmen and engineers and scientists in every industry all trying to think up ways to privide things more cheaply, so they can get more money in their own pockets. Such a concept is foreign to one who thinks in terms of command-and-control solutions to problems, and the need for rationing and government intervention.
Which, of course, is what drives up the scarcity.
Reminds me of Yahoo taking over egroups or whatever it was -- a huge, burgeoning message group community. Burgeoning largely because of its easily searchable, content-unrestricted group mechanism. Read: pr0n.
A few weeks later, people complained, and they clamped down on the pr0n. Now it's dead and largely worthless.
If Russia was in charge of ICANN, and would order them to wipe you out, then that's how it is different. In all juristictional fights, the authority of the juristdiction is only as powerful as its ability to enforce its judgements.
And [Dr. Evil raises pinky to his mouth] the US...wins.
If Iran had a "poison pill" like ICANN that they could force the US company to take, then, yes, they should go there to defend themselves.
The US is the home of even worse -- the SLAPP lawsuit -- Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Say you're a company producing a dangerous drug, or a charlatan publishing fraudulent alternative medicine books, etc. Someone "outs" you. What do you do? Spend millions trying to sue them into oblivion, hoping they will shut up for fear of the money needed to defend themselves.
As long as it isn't leeching into the air or water or whaver and getting into the US, then no, the US is without recourse because the Canadians can do whatever the hell they want with their land.
And if it did leech, that would be a case for existing or future negotiations, with threats of military action a last resort (and one of pracical considerations as well -- is it worth it, is success likely, etc.)
A Canadian business can do business in the US, or in Cuba, but if you do business in Cuba and in the US, US laws let you sue Canadian businesses also operating in the US for damages, such as Cuba's seizure of private property.
So if you want the financial goodies of the US, you'd better think twice about doing business in Cuba, or pay the US's penalty for operating in both.
As a businessman, it's your choice, consider it the cost of doing business in both countries.
I would like to see the US extradite someone to another country for something done in this country that isn't illegal here.
Especially something related to free speech. I'd bet that part of the extradition law would be thrown out of court before the SC would let someone be extradited.
I wonder if the "civilization level" unit of Spore studies the immeasurably more immensly valuable theme of massive governmental intrusion into a freedom-based economy and how it leads to far more miserable lives for its citizens than all those other things going haywire put together?
That's fine. The problem is in the hipocracy of it all. To do such a thing, then sit later on as Commander-in-Chief, well, it's a tad on the, perhaps technically not unethical side, but certanly a bit hipocritical...
The US Constitution has a clear definition of "declaring war", and that document ain't it. And that's part of the problem.
Congress won't declare a war for several reasons: Lack of clear opponent, lack of clear definition of victory, declaring war means insurance policies that are void on "acts of war" no longer need be enforced and Congress doesn't want to take the heat for that with a bunch of pissed off constituents...
> 1. McClellan's incompetence was responsible for some of the largest losses of human
> life during the Civil war, including the battles of Manassas. He was given multiple
> chances to successfully engage Lee and failed miserably on every case. Intellectual
> ability doesn't matter a damn if you can't apply it.
Of him, Lincoln made one of his most famous quotes, "He snatches defeat from the jaws of victory." And McClellan's incompetence was so great there are no shortage of historians who harbor serious suspicions he was a southern sympathizer.
As for IQ, Jimmy Carter was one of the brighter presidents, and arguably the only one since Jefferson to be marginally trained in sciences. Lot of good that did with "stagflation" and the hostage crisis...
> Why do that when the multi-billion dollar terrorist movements it
> supports could easily do it for them with plausable deniability?
A few years back the US made it clear to Russia and China that "plausible deniability" does not exist in the realm of nuclear weapons. This was when both were having problems possibly keeping their nukes from getting on the black market for valuable western cash. "If you are having a tough time tracking them, let us help you track them. For if one of them gets into the hands of terrorists, well, if your nukes are gonna destroy our cities one way or another, we're 'gonna get into it with you directly'"
It's conceivable that all smaller nations that have nukes and might help terrorists will be sundered in a whirlwind "just in case", if the US is hit by a terrorist nuke.
Part of both Iraq and Afghanistan was to tell the world that if you start this up, diplomatic "business as usual" was over.
This is the downside of slashdot altering link code to prevent people from posting a link pretending to be something useful, but is actually a link to goatse.cx. A lack of education in this arena! >:(
I'd be willing to bet a virgin who can afford $110,000 for a model probably isn't a virgin, from gold diggers if nothing else.
> In an era where there's no funding for anything
An odd statement given the US government is spending $2 trillion (with a T, not a B or M) per year, a rate that, adjusted for inflation, exceeds per capita any other year in history except for one year during WWII, in which we were engaged in two major war fronts simultaneously and were building a major capital ship per week.
> since the distance can only be measured relatively indirectly via Cepheid [wikipedia.org] variable stars.
Well, if you can get a rough estimate of the size of our galaxy, you could judge the distance to the Andromeda galaxy via angular size, assuming they are roughly in the same ballpark of size.