Not only can you feel just one degree centigrade difference without any trouble
Yes, if you're stepping from one room where it's 20C into a room where it's 21C you can tell the difference. Most people can't tell the difference between 21C on a spring day, and the same day 15 years ago when it was 20C.
Having fewer children allows you to devote more resources to each of them, giving them a better chance of survival.
First of all, that doesn't apply if you have zero children, like many couples do. Secondly, if you compare couples with 1 child versus couples with 4 children, I don't think you'll find that the survival chances of the four are so bad that on average less than 1 survives. In fact, even among the poorest, the survival chances are pretty decent, and even if you can't afford food or medical treatment, you can find someone else to do it for you.
I have a car, because I have to drive to work. It's expensive to own a car and I'd rather not, but it's much more expensive to live in the downtown core where my office is, and to have my wife stay home with the kids. Therefore we both work, we live in the burbs, and we drive to work and daycare... like everyone else. Not because we want to, but because we have to.
You belong to the top 10% of the world, and you're acting like you have some God given right to be in that position. Pretty funny if it wasn't so sad.
Human population isn't some uncontrollable thing that just increases until all resources are consumed like bacteria.
Yes, it is exactly like bacteria. People who decide not have children, like you find in many developed nations, are unfit and their genes will be removed from the gene pool. Other people, who decide to have 4+ children, are fit and their genes will multiply exponentially. As such, the declining birth rates are only a temporary dip.
12 billion is sustainable if we make sure those people have access to a high standard of living powered by renewable energy and fed through sustainable farming
If you can have 12 billion survive at a high standard of living, that means you haven't reached the maximum population size yet.
The ideal goal would be to advance a transition to the new energy economy at a rate where the costs of doing so are commensurate with the costs of delaying.
I don't think we should do anything based on the March temperature alone. Instead, look at the long term smoothed trend, which shows a rise that's mostly anthropogenic in origin.
A carbon tax sounds like a good plan, as long as it's combined with tax reduction in other places to make it overall tax neutral. The advantage of a carbon tax is that it puts the cost of carbon on the receipt, and lets the actual carbon reduction be done by the free market.
These temperature records are made with thermometers on the ground and in the oceans, not from satellites. You can't really measure the surface temperature from a satellite. At best you can figure out the temperature of the lower troposphere, and even that is really hard to get right.
Sadoway and Ouchi stress that these particular chemical combinations are just the tip of the iceberg, which could represent a starting point for new approaches to devising battery formulations
This is not fusion. Solutions to storage are within reach, but they were never developed because there simply was no need. And in addition to these storage methods, there's still a lot we can with smart grids in combination with electric cars, and flexible manufacturing around cheap energy.
Thanks for that very informative number. Help me understand what that means as it strikes me as too low.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Of course, in real life, you also need to pay for the rooftop installation, and the power inverters for your grid hookup.
And even higher elevations in India will be hit hard when glaciers retreat. The glaciers help buffer the precipitation and provide a year-round relatively constant supply of water. Without glaciers, you'd have periods of heavy floods and periods of drought.
The changes required to hold global temps below 2c rise over 1800 are simply not going to happen, they are way, way too extreme.
Probably true. But maybe we can keep it below 3C rise, or 4C rise, while at the same time shifting away from finite fossil fuels. And you can't make a big step without starting with a smaller one.
Storage isn't an immediate problem. During the day, electricity needs are higher, so solar can help even without storage. And as solar becomes more widespread, there will be plenty of money to be made in storage, so the techniques will be developed.
The private market has decided to focus on near-term R&D and products for the most part. The days of Xerox's GUI-like research are mostly gone (with the notable exception of near-Earth-orbit spaceflight.)
Exactly. But the private market isn't doing this for a lack of money, so adding government money isn't going to fix the underlying problem that the private market just isn't motivated in doing long term research. Instead, the business will take the government handouts, and use it to support a part of their company that wasn't making much profit. They'll come up with some nice looking business proposal that nobody in the government can properly judge on its merits, and the money will be wasted.
The salient point was that the job of the author is simply to create the body of text - not to distribute it, translate it, or such
That's how it used to work, yes. There's no reason why authors can't find better ways now, especially since the cost of electronically distributing books is so much less than printing paper books.
Google is making money off the book without giving money to the author
Google is providing free advertising. It's probably worth more than the handful of books that were bought by libraries.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only can you feel just one degree centigrade difference without any trouble
Yes, if you're stepping from one room where it's 20C into a room where it's 21C you can tell the difference. Most people can't tell the difference between 21C on a spring day, and the same day 15 years ago when it was 20C.
The economic model we employ doesn't operate well with shrinking populations.
Too bad that the population can't grow forever.
Having fewer children allows you to devote more resources to each of them, giving them a better chance of survival.
First of all, that doesn't apply if you have zero children, like many couples do. Secondly, if you compare couples with 1 child versus couples with 4 children, I don't think you'll find that the survival chances of the four are so bad that on average less than 1 survives. In fact, even among the poorest, the survival chances are pretty decent, and even if you can't afford food or medical treatment, you can find someone else to do it for you.
I have a car, because I have to drive to work. It's expensive to own a car and I'd rather not, but it's much more expensive to live in the downtown core where my office is, and to have my wife stay home with the kids. Therefore we both work, we live in the burbs, and we drive to work and daycare... like everyone else. Not because we want to, but because we have to.
You belong to the top 10% of the world, and you're acting like you have some God given right to be in that position. Pretty funny if it wasn't so sad.
If nuclear is the answer, then it will become the cheapest energy source after a carbon tax has been applied to the other sources.
Human population isn't some uncontrollable thing that just increases until all resources are consumed like bacteria.
Yes, it is exactly like bacteria. People who decide not have children, like you find in many developed nations, are unfit and their genes will be removed from the gene pool. Other people, who decide to have 4+ children, are fit and their genes will multiply exponentially. As such, the declining birth rates are only a temporary dip.
12 billion is sustainable if we make sure those people have access to a high standard of living powered by renewable energy and fed through sustainable farming
If you can have 12 billion survive at a high standard of living, that means you haven't reached the maximum population size yet.
Really? you cant? Glad to see you are an expert and the guys at NASA and the NOAA are just a bunch of morons.
Go ahead and show me a surface temperature record made from a satellite.
The ideal goal would be to advance a transition to the new energy economy at a rate where the costs of doing so are commensurate with the costs of delaying.
You mean we should have started 50 years ago.
I don't think we should do anything based on the March temperature alone. Instead, look at the long term smoothed trend, which shows a rise that's mostly anthropogenic in origin.
A carbon tax sounds like a good plan, as long as it's combined with tax reduction in other places to make it overall tax neutral. The advantage of a carbon tax is that it puts the cost of carbon on the receipt, and lets the actual carbon reduction be done by the free market.
You mean that stupid people are less accurate.
These temperature records are made with thermometers on the ground and in the oceans, not from satellites. You can't really measure the surface temperature from a satellite. At best you can figure out the temperature of the lower troposphere, and even that is really hard to get right.
The article says panels for 40 cents/Watt, which projections to 25 cents.
Just because there is a need for better storage doesn't mean it will be found, or found cheaply.
Here's a recent example. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
Sadoway and Ouchi stress that these particular chemical combinations are just the tip of the iceberg, which could represent a starting point for new approaches to devising battery formulations
This is not fusion. Solutions to storage are within reach, but they were never developed because there simply was no need. And in addition to these storage methods, there's still a lot we can with smart grids in combination with electric cars, and flexible manufacturing around cheap energy.
Thanks for that very informative number. Help me understand what that means as it strikes me as too low.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... Of course, in real life, you also need to pay for the rooftop installation, and the power inverters for your grid hookup.
And even higher elevations in India will be hit hard when glaciers retreat. The glaciers help buffer the precipitation and provide a year-round relatively constant supply of water. Without glaciers, you'd have periods of heavy floods and periods of drought.
The changes required to hold global temps below 2c rise over 1800 are simply not going to happen, they are way, way too extreme.
Probably true. But maybe we can keep it below 3C rise, or 4C rise, while at the same time shifting away from finite fossil fuels. And you can't make a big step without starting with a smaller one.
Storage isn't an immediate problem. During the day, electricity needs are higher, so solar can help even without storage. And as solar becomes more widespread, there will be plenty of money to be made in storage, so the techniques will be developed.
With solar, you're polluting at the manufacturing site.
You don't have to.
But, make no mistake, growing silicon consumes a ton of energy
Cost of silicon is now 40 cents per Watt peak. The cost of the energy to grow the silicon is included in that.
and then by the time you mine enough lithium to keep the country going at night,
You wouldn't use lithium for large scale static batteries, but cheap molten salt.
The private market has decided to focus on near-term R&D and products for the most part. The days of Xerox's GUI-like research are mostly gone (with the notable exception of near-Earth-orbit spaceflight.)
Exactly. But the private market isn't doing this for a lack of money, so adding government money isn't going to fix the underlying problem that the private market just isn't motivated in doing long term research. Instead, the business will take the government handouts, and use it to support a part of their company that wasn't making much profit. They'll come up with some nice looking business proposal that nobody in the government can properly judge on its merits, and the money will be wasted.
And therefore? They should let you read it, and still not pay?
They should offer people a reasonable preview so they can decide that it may be worth their money.
The salient point was that the job of the author is simply to create the body of text - not to distribute it, translate it, or such
That's how it used to work, yes. There's no reason why authors can't find better ways now, especially since the cost of electronically distributing books is so much less than printing paper books.
Google is making money off the book without giving money to the author
Google is providing free advertising. It's probably worth more than the handful of books that were bought by libraries.
Government spending is easy. Making sure it doesn't result in people lining their pockets with the money without producing tangible results is hard.
I bet it's done with a real lion and a bunch of mirrors.