Yes there is a good reason to stop producing power when the grid is down...
It's called a system that isn't sized to meet your household needs. Most installed systems aren't sized to meet your household peak usage, so when the grid goes down, if you just disconnect from the grid but still try to run stuff inside, it will not have enough energy to run things.
The other good reason is you don't run your house directly off of your solar arrays. You need a constant source of power, not variable like the array output. In Hybrid systems, this comes from the grid and when that's off, from the *batteries*. The panels only charge the batteries.
The 'Sync' option is to eliminate the sizing requirements and just supply power. Hybrids are more complex, more $$$ but can do more things like what you are talking about.
I won't claim to be an expert but I don't believe your idea will work for a Sync'd system; hybrid yes, but not Sync.
You can't (or shouldn't) run household type appliances straight off your panels. The power produced is variable and lots of electrical stuff doesn't respond well to variances in voltage/amps etc. If the power goes out, likely you aren't home or are sleeping. So we'll assume you have enough panels to fully power your home's peak usage (this is an unusual setup in reality..just to $$$). Except that today it's cloudy and you aren't even getting your average draw of power. What happens to your equipment? you aren't home to power down the non-essentials, the AC kicks on and poof, you have your own personal brownout.
You *can* install things that way, but from what I gathered reputable companies won't do it. The 'Sync' systems are only online when the grid is hot. Anything else requires lots of sizing and configuration issues that result in the hybrid systems that do what you are talking about. Those systems also have a battery bank that supplies *constant* power and is sized to provide your bare minimum power needs for X hours. This also requires a 2nd electrical panel be installed and the bare minimum circuits switched to that panel which can be run by the batteries (which are charged by the solar array).
crap, in the 'Sync'd' option, there are no batteries to store electricity, making it the most cost effective system of the 3.
Off-grid has to be able to supply 100%+ of your daily power needs.
Hybrid has to be able to supply a lowered percent - they wire certain house circuits to the panels and the rest to the grid source so that when the power goes out, you can still run your bare minimums (fridge, some lights, HDTV, mondo gaming rig with 42" muthahumpin plasma.....you know the bare necessities of life!)
Actually, he probably won't have any electricity when the grid is out. We just went to an alternative energy show this weekend and learned the following:
There are 3 types of systems for connecting to the grid:
Off-grid - self explanatory
Hybrid - can use battery power when the grid is out
Sync'd - they must be sync'd so that when the grid is out, the power from the panels is not used..otherwise you'd be trying to feed the grid yourself.
The last is the most common setup since the idea is to conserve electricity usage, not replace the need for the grid. If all the panels in a neighborhood were feeding energy into the, now dark, grid imagine the power company technician trying to work with the wires that are 'live' from the client side. They could shut off power from the distribution source, but it would still live from the residences preventing it from being safe.
I imagine it would be bad to run A/C stuff inverted from a variable DC line as well. If you are trying to run normal household stuff straight off the power output of the panels, as it gets later in the day, you'd start getting your own 'brownouts' in the house wouldn't you? And since this guys setup never produced more power than he needed it was always below demand.
The point of costs is a valid one but not in the way most skeptics of 'green' think. Yes going 'green' costs more 'upfront'. Changing your energy source will do that.
In the long term, however, it will be much much MUCH cheaper. The 'green' fuel is entirely 'free', yes free. You will obviously have upkeep and maintenance of systems, but no more so than you would for the current system of plants and infrastructure.
Just in current figures that is $700 BILLION a year for oil alone. I haven't seen the coal figures but I'd guess it's similarly high. So lets be conservative and say a TRILLION dollars a year. That's decidedly not chump change in terms of savings.
By getting off of fossil fuels, you can stop factoring in the increasing cost of global warming, with rising seas, stronger storms, etc from the CO2 release we've alreeady done. That is the real subsidy of using fossil fuels; the true cost is in the future and not being paid by the users of the fuel.
It doesn't, however, answer the question. How much in donations was collected? Was it enough to actually purchase multiple vehicles that cost well over a $100,000? Replace them? When a truck is destroyed in an accident you can't wait for donations to come in to buy another. That then costs insurance premiums to cover replacements, and that certainly is replacement 'cost' not truck value at time of incident.
Like I said, I'd love to see the numbers, but I just don't believe that much can be raised from any local jurisdiction without it being a tax paid for by everybody.
Do the private corporations also own the trucks and stations? I just can't see a private company absorbing the risks and costs of those types of expenses and running anywhere close to even in terms of money.
Likewise, when it's contracted with the local gov't, it's not really private anymore...they are going to be regulated and provide service to everyone, because everyone pays taxes that go to it. It is in essence a 'utility'.
To me a 'private' company is one that is in business for itself and services it's customers but not people who don't pay for it's services. They don't not go to a fire because that house didn't pay their dues.
There is a difference between outsourcing of a gov't function which is what I would say you describe, and a private enterprise doing business with some people and not everybody. No business deals with *everybody*...except the gov't.
Where I live the fire department is a private volunteer organization.
Really, who paid for their fire trucks? I seriously doubt it was done through standing at lights with a boot asking for spare change...
Many fire depts have volunteer firefighters, that much is true. But that's still a far cry from having a private fire department.
The police force does not protect you or your property, they apprehend and hold for trial those who stole/damaged your property. That doesn't do you any good. The damage is already done.
Not if the public presence of police deters a crime from happening in the first place. Much of police work is after the fact, yes, but some is definitively preventative as well.
I love how the AC gets +5 Informative for regurgitating exactly what I said.
Yes the battery was discontinued, yes it would have been 'difficult' for Toyota to find another supplier - but certainly not impossible.
Had the law not changed, they STILL WOULD HAVE HAD TO PRODUCE AN EV of some kind, whether the RAV4EV or something else; either that or not sell cars in CA - something they weren't likely to do.
The only actual *reason* Toyota stopped making the RAV4EV was because the law changed and they no longer were required to make it - evidenced quite clearly by the cancellation of the vehicle the DAY AFTER the law changed.
source snippet: Discontinuance
Toyota discontinued the RAV4 EV program one day after the passing of new air-quality requirements by CARB. CARB eliminated most of the Zero Emissions Vehicle requirement, substituting a greater number of partial zero-emissions vehicles (PZEVs) to meet the requirement.
Um, seems to me that the reason it was discontinued was because the law made it no longer necessary for car makers to produce them. They only did produce it in the first place because CA required it of them.
The part you probably mean to cite refers to the fact that Chevron discontinued production of the battery. This just meant that Toyota would need a new supplier; no small task indeed. But hardly the reason it was discontinued. The law still stated they had to produce zero emission vehicles, that is until the law changed. The very next day they stopped offering the RAV4EV.
Are you going for "I did not RTNS"? (Read The Next Sentence)
You might want to
Source snippet:
In a November 18, 2008, New York Times editorial, Andrew Ross Sorkin claimed that, counting benefits, each UAW worker receives $74 per hour while Toyota workers receive about $44 per hour.[13] The UAW asserts that most of this labor cost disparity comes from legacy pension and healthcare benefits to retired members, of which the Japanese automakers have none.
The UAW itself says the bulk of the difference is benefits PAID TO OTHER PEOPLE; i.e. all retirees. Current workers do not receive those benefits therefore the entire idea of $70/hour is completely fabricated.
Pressure at 18,000 feet is about half of sea level. Half again at 35,000 ft.
So the last 10% is quite literally punching through a brick at meteor speeds...hench the heat shields we put on shuttles and other re-entry vehicles. And they aren't even going that fast compared with meteors.
Copyright is a mechanism, nothing more, for advantaging certain people and disadvantaging others.
You are aware that copyright is automatically available for *everyone* right? Here's another concept for you. In your world without copyright, what stops the big cartel from ripping off small time music creators? nothing.
The past and current distribution mechanism has been a source of power to those in the system I don't argue. But that is a different concept than copyright. Copyright prevents even more abuse of that power by giving the creators of content leverage over those in the channels. And with the Internet, you're starting the process of removing the power of the distribution channel holders.
A birthday party is *not* at public performance and not subject to royalties.
Depends. Has it been videoed? Has the video been given to others? Are strangers, such as caterers, present?
Well you're getting into the minutia with which I have clearly stated there are problems in the current system. But generally speaking no you can't sue for royalties from a friggin birthday party.
Imagine your world without copyright. I create a business and it does pretty well. But someone else can copy the business better, all of a sudden my time and investment is taken away and someone else gets the rewards since the better performance will draw the consumers. What's fair about that?
Imagine *my* world without copyright? it's your fantasy world, not mine. In *my* world if your work is automatically copyrighted and you can sue the person who took/used it. That's what is fair about that. But you seem to be talking about a 'business' which is *not* copyrightable. Nor should it be. If you make a business producing widget X, and someone else sees your business (i.e. you advertise it) and is able to do it better/cheaper than you...well that's just the free market. If they take something you created and sell it as their own or profit from it, that is unfair, and that's where copyright comes in. You copyright your creation, writing or song or video not the business around it. A 'business' is a different entity. By your definition you can't have more than one business in a field since a 2nd one would be unfair. You can however, *patent*, some business related things and have recourse in that arena; that is a wholly different discussion though.
Please get out of your intellectual rut of assuming that copyright-as-it-is-currently-implemented is the one-true-way (tm). Copyright is a mechanism, nothing more, for advantaging certain people and disadvantaging others. It has little to do with "fairness". In fact it is highly unfair because it enormously advantages those who have access to the economic network effect (those in with the distribution cartel) and disadvantages others, including the vast majority of creators.
I never said our current system was perfect, I clearly stated it wasn't. That doesn't mean abolish copyright entirely, it has and does serve a useful purpose. Reward creativity in the short term through monopolized use, and reward society in the long term by having that creation become public domain. How is that not fair? not the specifics of our system but the concept in general. How is it not fair?
I'll agree there is some semantics involved in calling the human burning of fossil fuels 'unnatural'.
I think most people when talking about this subject would define the 'natural' course to be how the environment would react/evolve without human intervention. We aren't behaving like a 'natural' animal anymore. No other animal builds homes strictly for pleasure, goes on vacations, or spends time and effort building sophisticated means of transportation.
That said, the net effect of our existence here is now making large changes to the atmosphere. These changes may cause profound changes in how we live and survive. We need to start addressing those changes before it's over a tipping point that we can't recover from.
A birthday party is *not* at public performance and not subject to royalties.
In my post I clearly stated that our current system can and has been abused. The copyright extensions are abysmally unfair to the public. 75 years is a crazy amount of time to lock up the rights.
The concept of copyright has been well understood and accepted for centuries. It gives incentives for people, while also rewarding the public in time through new and interesting creations. I'd argue that's a moral explanation.
Imagine your world without copyright. I create a song and sing it pretty well. But someone else can sing it better, all of a sudden my time and investment is taken away and someone else gets the rewards since the better performance will draw the consumers. What's fair about that?
Cow farts: cows are simply reprocessing carbon *recently* taken out of atmosphere, i.e. grass. This is a 'shitload' (sorry, couldn't resist!) less than the amount of *ancient* carbon we're stuffing into the atmosphere every day. That's the real problem. We're changing the equation significantly with those additions. As for the numbers of cows, how many bison used to exist in the Americas? how many other animals no longer exist because exterminated them. The cows don't reflect that much of a change to the situation.
Now, computer models. So your rationale is that because they can't possibly measure everything we shouldn't try to improve them?
Models are extremely complex yes, but as you say, they aren't anything more than the people who programmed them. So your next point is that obviously people can't do this so we shouldn't even try?
I'm loving your positive attitude;-)
Next, if you try and estimate how far away something is, and you are continually coming up short, wouldn't you expect that future estimations would be short as well? And alter your estimation process to be more aggressive? This is what has happened with climate models. We've taken data from 30 years ago and asked to see what 'today' would look like. The results indicate less effects than we actually see. The models are too conservative. So when they predict very severe results in the future, its more than reasonable to say wow maybe the actual results will be even worse than that.
Lastly, your argument for a technical solution is actually my very same one. You expect/hope that a solution in 30 years will make things much cheaper to deal with then. A little too hopeful maybe but not overly so; humans are nothing if not ingenious. Where do you think that this 'solution' will come from? It comes from research and testing and monitoring and 'models' to predict things. Money spent *right now* rather than waiting until you *have no choice* but to make changes. At which point it may be too late and/or cost much more to remedy.
Technology is going to be the answer, simply because our culture isn't going to let it go. But that requires time to figure things out; and it's best to start that process earlier rather than later.
Only one caveat...the article wasn't about the surface currents like the Gulf Stream, which as you say, any sailor will readily testify to their existence. The article was about the undersea currents that supposedly are the reverse effect of the surface currents.
Volcano eruption prediction linky
"A relation between long-period events and imminent volcanic eruptions was first observed in the seismic records of the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia. The occurrence of long-period events were then used to predict the 1989 eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska and the 1993 eruption of Galeras in Columbia. In December 2000, scientists at the National Center for Prevention of Disasters in Mexico City predicted an eruption within two days at Popocatépetl, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Their prediction used research that had been done by Bernard Chouet, a Swiss volcanologist who was working at the United States Geological Survey and who first observed a relation between long-period events and an imminent eruption.[1][2][3] The government evacuated tens of thousands of people; 48 hours later, the volcano erupted as predicted. It was Popocatépetl's largest eruption for a thousand years, yet no one was hurt."
Much the same with weather, the farther out we go the less certain the prediction is. But when you see the results of past predictions and realize they are all 'under' the actual results, it's perfectly reasonable to assume future results will similarly be worse than the predictions.
Weather predictions are different in that they are frequently over and under predicted results hence why the appearance of randomness. The climate models have been consistently under what we've actually seen.
As far as paradigm shits, we've seen orders of magnitude change in exponentially shorter time frames in relation to CO2 levels, i.e. 'the hockey stick' graph. Something is going to have to give, and it likely isn't going to be the earth's environment.
The post you 'quoted': ...Or, at a minimum, cost a trillion dollars to adjust to as it changes.
Your post I called you an idiot for:
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
The OP implied paying the trillion 'now' by definition of as adjusting to changes. You implied that if we just waited, the cost would be the same; a wholly different position. Sorry that's not a reasonable assumption based on *known* factors.
As I said in my post, mitigating a problem/catastrophe is cheaper than waiting for it to fully develop and then try to remedy the situation. Your example of the automobile doesn't work since when the Model T as invented carbon dioxide emissions weren't known to be a problem, nor were the emissions from the vehicles even a remotely measurable portion of human emissions. So no problem known, no action required, no costs increased. Your examples of catalytic converters and such I claim as perfect evidence of my strategy. A problem was noticed and they attempted to solve it before it became overwhelming, and as you say it worked. Certainly cheaper than if we had done nothing until it became worse.
You're next point: Suppose in thirty years we develop a cheap carbon-sequestration technique that allows us to completely control global ppCO2? Or we develop an cheap method of cooling the atmosphere, maybe some variant on this notion of spraying seawater into the air? That would pretty dramatically change your cost assumptions, wouldn't it?
All nice and good but what about if we don't happen to manage those things? But seriously, where do you think your 30 year down the line solutions come from? They come from investment *today*. That's the trillion now versus later.
I will agree the 'trillion' figure is just a reference to the OP and your postings. Any number will do frankly. My point is that the costs of after the fact correction just about always dwarf the mitigation/prevention costs and that includes any 'ongoing' costs. The costs also include a forecast 200 million climate refugees as sea level rises. A trillion dollars annual ends up looking fairly cheap rather than trying to handle that many refugees relocating to new areas. The modern infrastructure to support them alone would be in the trillions.
I will apologize for my tone but as I think I've explained, I think it was a pretty dumb statement to say it would cost the same 50 years from now as it would today. It seemed to me that your comment was intended to curtail the debate precisely by making an unfounded rationalization that its better to just do nothing. I agree with your statement that such inflamatory rhetoric doesn't help the rational discourse and I was, erroneously, responding in kind to what I understood at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes there is a good reason to stop producing power when the grid is down...
It's called a system that isn't sized to meet your household needs. Most installed systems aren't sized to meet your household peak usage, so when the grid goes down, if you just disconnect from the grid but still try to run stuff inside, it will not have enough energy to run things.
The other good reason is you don't run your house directly off of your solar arrays. You need a constant source of power, not variable like the array output. In Hybrid systems, this comes from the grid and when that's off, from the *batteries*. The panels only charge the batteries.
The 'Sync' option is to eliminate the sizing requirements and just supply power. Hybrids are more complex, more $$$ but can do more things like what you are talking about.
I won't claim to be an expert but I don't believe your idea will work for a Sync'd system; hybrid yes, but not Sync.
You can't (or shouldn't) run household type appliances straight off your panels. The power produced is variable and lots of electrical stuff doesn't respond well to variances in voltage/amps etc. If the power goes out, likely you aren't home or are sleeping. So we'll assume you have enough panels to fully power your home's peak usage (this is an unusual setup in reality..just to $$$). Except that today it's cloudy and you aren't even getting your average draw of power. What happens to your equipment? you aren't home to power down the non-essentials, the AC kicks on and poof, you have your own personal brownout.
You *can* install things that way, but from what I gathered reputable companies won't do it. The 'Sync' systems are only online when the grid is hot. Anything else requires lots of sizing and configuration issues that result in the hybrid systems that do what you are talking about. Those systems also have a battery bank that supplies *constant* power and is sized to provide your bare minimum power needs for X hours. This also requires a 2nd electrical panel be installed and the bare minimum circuits switched to that panel which can be run by the batteries (which are charged by the solar array).
I don't think so ;-) MREA search returns stuff out west. I was at a show in Bristow, VA.
linky
crap, in the 'Sync'd' option, there are no batteries to store electricity, making it the most cost effective system of the 3.
Off-grid has to be able to supply 100%+ of your daily power needs.
Hybrid has to be able to supply a lowered percent - they wire certain house circuits to the panels and the rest to the grid source so that when the power goes out, you can still run your bare minimums (fridge, some lights, HDTV, mondo gaming rig with 42" muthahumpin plasma.....you know the bare necessities of life!)
Actually, he probably won't have any electricity when the grid is out. We just went to an alternative energy show this weekend and learned the following:
There are 3 types of systems for connecting to the grid:
Off-grid - self explanatory
Hybrid - can use battery power when the grid is out
Sync'd - they must be sync'd so that when the grid is out, the power from the panels is not used..otherwise you'd be trying to feed the grid yourself.
The last is the most common setup since the idea is to conserve electricity usage, not replace the need for the grid. If all the panels in a neighborhood were feeding energy into the, now dark, grid imagine the power company technician trying to work with the wires that are 'live' from the client side. They could shut off power from the distribution source, but it would still live from the residences preventing it from being safe.
I imagine it would be bad to run A/C stuff inverted from a variable DC line as well. If you are trying to run normal household stuff straight off the power output of the panels, as it gets later in the day, you'd start getting your own 'brownouts' in the house wouldn't you? And since this guys setup never produced more power than he needed it was always below demand.
The point of costs is a valid one but not in the way most skeptics of 'green' think. Yes going 'green' costs more 'upfront'. Changing your energy source will do that.
In the long term, however, it will be much much MUCH cheaper. The 'green' fuel is entirely 'free', yes free. You will obviously have upkeep and maintenance of systems, but no more so than you would for the current system of plants and infrastructure.
Just in current figures that is $700 BILLION a year for oil alone. I haven't seen the coal figures but I'd guess it's similarly high. So lets be conservative and say a TRILLION dollars a year. That's decidedly not chump change in terms of savings.
By getting off of fossil fuels, you can stop factoring in the increasing cost of global warming, with rising seas, stronger storms, etc from the CO2 release we've alreeady done. That is the real subsidy of using fossil fuels; the true cost is in the future and not being paid by the users of the fuel.
Appearing in an AD for a company is not the issue here.
Conducting a supposedly 'unbiased review' of a product, whilst taking money from the manufacturer of said product is a wholly different situation.
I'm glad you donated, it's a good thing.
It doesn't, however, answer the question. How much in donations was collected? Was it enough to actually purchase multiple vehicles that cost well over a $100,000? Replace them? When a truck is destroyed in an accident you can't wait for donations to come in to buy another. That then costs insurance premiums to cover replacements, and that certainly is replacement 'cost' not truck value at time of incident.
Like I said, I'd love to see the numbers, but I just don't believe that much can be raised from any local jurisdiction without it being a tax paid for by everybody.
Do the private corporations also own the trucks and stations? I just can't see a private company absorbing the risks and costs of those types of expenses and running anywhere close to even in terms of money.
Likewise, when it's contracted with the local gov't, it's not really private anymore...they are going to be regulated and provide service to everyone, because everyone pays taxes that go to it. It is in essence a 'utility'.
To me a 'private' company is one that is in business for itself and services it's customers but not people who don't pay for it's services. They don't not go to a fire because that house didn't pay their dues.
There is a difference between outsourcing of a gov't function which is what I would say you describe, and a private enterprise doing business with some people and not everybody. No business deals with *everybody*...except the gov't.
Where I live the fire department is a private volunteer organization.
Really, who paid for their fire trucks? I seriously doubt it was done through standing at lights with a boot asking for spare change...
Many fire depts have volunteer firefighters, that much is true. But that's still a far cry from having a private fire department.
The police force does not protect you or your property, they apprehend and hold for trial those who stole/damaged your property. That doesn't do you any good. The damage is already done.
Not if the public presence of police deters a crime from happening in the first place. Much of police work is after the fact, yes, but some is definitively preventative as well.
Exactly right. The only reason they were making these things in the first place is because without them they couldn't sell any vehicles in CA.
I was simply refuting the OP's claim that they stopped making them because they lost the battery supply.
Who was talking about $14/hour? The average is something like 25-33/hour.
I was talking about how widely debunked $70/hour is.
I love how the AC gets +5 Informative for regurgitating exactly what I said.
Yes the battery was discontinued, yes it would have been 'difficult' for Toyota to find another supplier - but certainly not impossible.
Had the law not changed, they STILL WOULD HAVE HAD TO PRODUCE AN EV of some kind, whether the RAV4EV or something else; either that or not sell cars in CA - something they weren't likely to do.
The only actual *reason* Toyota stopped making the RAV4EV was because the law changed and they no longer were required to make it - evidenced quite clearly by the cancellation of the vehicle the DAY AFTER the law changed.
source snippet:
Discontinuance
Toyota discontinued the RAV4 EV program one day after the passing of new air-quality requirements by CARB. CARB eliminated most of the Zero Emissions Vehicle requirement, substituting a greater number of partial zero-emissions vehicles (PZEVs) to meet the requirement.
Um, seems to me that the reason it was discontinued was because the law made it no longer necessary for car makers to produce them. They only did produce it in the first place because CA required it of them.
The part you probably mean to cite refers to the fact that Chevron discontinued production of the battery. This just meant that Toyota would need a new supplier; no small task indeed. But hardly the reason it was discontinued. The law still stated they had to produce zero emission vehicles, that is until the law changed. The very next day they stopped offering the RAV4EV.
But nice try anyway.
Are you going for "I did not RTNS"? (Read The Next Sentence)
You might want to
Source snippet:
In a November 18, 2008, New York Times editorial, Andrew Ross Sorkin claimed that, counting benefits, each UAW worker receives $74 per hour while Toyota workers receive about $44 per hour.[13] The UAW asserts that most of this labor cost disparity comes from legacy pension and healthcare benefits to retired members, of which the Japanese automakers have none.
The UAW itself says the bulk of the difference is benefits PAID TO OTHER PEOPLE; i.e. all retirees. Current workers do not receive those benefits therefore the entire idea of $70/hour is completely fabricated.
Actually you're wrong. Pressure isn't linear.
Pressure at 18,000 feet is about half of sea level. Half again at 35,000 ft.
So the last 10% is quite literally punching through a brick at meteor speeds...hench the heat shields we put on shuttles and other re-entry vehicles. And they aren't even going that fast compared with meteors.
You make a good point. However, not having new clothes, a car or a cell phone generally doesn't cause epidemics of tuberculosis...
Having *everyone* get preventative care is a benefit to society, far and above material possessions.
Copyright is a mechanism, nothing more, for advantaging certain people and disadvantaging others.
You are aware that copyright is automatically available for *everyone* right? Here's another concept for you. In your world without copyright, what stops the big cartel from ripping off small time music creators? nothing.
The past and current distribution mechanism has been a source of power to those in the system I don't argue. But that is a different concept than copyright. Copyright prevents even more abuse of that power by giving the creators of content leverage over those in the channels. And with the Internet, you're starting the process of removing the power of the distribution channel holders.
Depends. Has it been videoed? Has the video been given to others? Are strangers, such as caterers, present?
Well you're getting into the minutia with which I have clearly stated there are problems in the current system. But generally speaking no you can't sue for royalties from a friggin birthday party.
Imagine your world without copyright. I create a business and it does pretty well. But someone else can copy the business better, all of a sudden my time and investment is taken away and someone else gets the rewards since the better performance will draw the consumers. What's fair about that?
Imagine *my* world without copyright? it's your fantasy world, not mine. In *my* world if your work is automatically copyrighted and you can sue the person who took/used it. That's what is fair about that. But you seem to be talking about a 'business' which is *not* copyrightable. Nor should it be. If you make a business producing widget X, and someone else sees your business (i.e. you advertise it) and is able to do it better/cheaper than you...well that's just the free market. If they take something you created and sell it as their own or profit from it, that is unfair, and that's where copyright comes in. You copyright your creation, writing or song or video not the business around it. A 'business' is a different entity. By your definition you can't have more than one business in a field since a 2nd one would be unfair. You can however, *patent*, some business related things and have recourse in that arena; that is a wholly different discussion though.
Please get out of your intellectual rut of assuming that copyright-as-it-is-currently-implemented is the one-true-way (tm). Copyright is a mechanism, nothing more, for advantaging certain people and disadvantaging others. It has little to do with "fairness". In fact it is highly unfair because it enormously advantages those who have access to the economic network effect (those in with the distribution cartel) and disadvantages others, including the vast majority of creators.
I never said our current system was perfect, I clearly stated it wasn't. That doesn't mean abolish copyright entirely, it has and does serve a useful purpose. Reward creativity in the short term through monopolized use, and reward society in the long term by having that creation become public domain. How is that not fair? not the specifics of our system but the concept in general. How is it not fair?
I'll agree there is some semantics involved in calling the human burning of fossil fuels 'unnatural'.
I think most people when talking about this subject would define the 'natural' course to be how the environment would react/evolve without human intervention. We aren't behaving like a 'natural' animal anymore. No other animal builds homes strictly for pleasure, goes on vacations, or spends time and effort building sophisticated means of transportation.
That said, the net effect of our existence here is now making large changes to the atmosphere. These changes may cause profound changes in how we live and survive. We need to start addressing those changes before it's over a tipping point that we can't recover from.
Try reading up on the Happy Birthday saga
A birthday party is *not* at public performance and not subject to royalties.
In my post I clearly stated that our current system can and has been abused. The copyright extensions are abysmally unfair to the public. 75 years is a crazy amount of time to lock up the rights.
The concept of copyright has been well understood and accepted for centuries. It gives incentives for people, while also rewarding the public in time through new and interesting creations. I'd argue that's a moral explanation.
Imagine your world without copyright. I create a song and sing it pretty well. But someone else can sing it better, all of a sudden my time and investment is taken away and someone else gets the rewards since the better performance will draw the consumers. What's fair about that?
lets start with the fun stuff.
;-)
Cow farts: cows are simply reprocessing carbon *recently* taken out of atmosphere, i.e. grass. This is a 'shitload' (sorry, couldn't resist!) less than the amount of *ancient* carbon we're stuffing into the atmosphere every day. That's the real problem. We're changing the equation significantly with those additions. As for the numbers of cows, how many bison used to exist in the Americas? how many other animals no longer exist because exterminated them. The cows don't reflect that much of a change to the situation.
Now, computer models. So your rationale is that because they can't possibly measure everything we shouldn't try to improve them?
Models are extremely complex yes, but as you say, they aren't anything more than the people who programmed them. So your next point is that obviously people can't do this so we shouldn't even try?
I'm loving your positive attitude
Next, if you try and estimate how far away something is, and you are continually coming up short, wouldn't you expect that future estimations would be short as well? And alter your estimation process to be more aggressive? This is what has happened with climate models. We've taken data from 30 years ago and asked to see what 'today' would look like. The results indicate less effects than we actually see. The models are too conservative. So when they predict very severe results in the future, its more than reasonable to say wow maybe the actual results will be even worse than that.
Lastly, your argument for a technical solution is actually my very same one. You expect/hope that a solution in 30 years will make things much cheaper to deal with then. A little too hopeful maybe but not overly so; humans are nothing if not ingenious. Where do you think that this 'solution' will come from? It comes from research and testing and monitoring and 'models' to predict things. Money spent *right now* rather than waiting until you *have no choice* but to make changes. At which point it may be too late and/or cost much more to remedy.
Technology is going to be the answer, simply because our culture isn't going to let it go. But that requires time to figure things out; and it's best to start that process earlier rather than later.
Only one caveat...the article wasn't about the surface currents like the Gulf Stream, which as you say, any sailor will readily testify to their existence. The article was about the undersea currents that supposedly are the reverse effect of the surface currents.
Volcano eruption prediction linky
"A relation between long-period events and imminent volcanic eruptions was first observed in the seismic records of the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia. The occurrence of long-period events were then used to predict the 1989 eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska and the 1993 eruption of Galeras in Columbia. In December 2000, scientists at the National Center for Prevention of Disasters in Mexico City predicted an eruption within two days at Popocatépetl, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Their prediction used research that had been done by Bernard Chouet, a Swiss volcanologist who was working at the United States Geological Survey and who first observed a relation between long-period events and an imminent eruption.[1][2][3] The government evacuated tens of thousands of people; 48 hours later, the volcano erupted as predicted. It was Popocatépetl's largest eruption for a thousand years, yet no one was hurt."
Much the same with weather, the farther out we go the less certain the prediction is. But when you see the results of past predictions and realize they are all 'under' the actual results, it's perfectly reasonable to assume future results will similarly be worse than the predictions.
Weather predictions are different in that they are frequently over and under predicted results hence why the appearance of randomness. The climate models have been consistently under what we've actually seen.
As far as paradigm shits, we've seen orders of magnitude change in exponentially shorter time frames in relation to CO2 levels, i.e. 'the hockey stick' graph. Something is going to have to give, and it likely isn't going to be the earth's environment.
The post you 'quoted':
...Or, at a minimum, cost a trillion dollars to adjust to as it changes.
Your post I called you an idiot for: If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
The OP implied paying the trillion 'now' by definition of as adjusting to changes. You implied that if we just waited, the cost would be the same; a wholly different position. Sorry that's not a reasonable assumption based on *known* factors.
As I said in my post, mitigating a problem/catastrophe is cheaper than waiting for it to fully develop and then try to remedy the situation. Your example of the automobile doesn't work since when the Model T as invented carbon dioxide emissions weren't known to be a problem, nor were the emissions from the vehicles even a remotely measurable portion of human emissions. So no problem known, no action required, no costs increased. Your examples of catalytic converters and such I claim as perfect evidence of my strategy. A problem was noticed and they attempted to solve it before it became overwhelming, and as you say it worked. Certainly cheaper than if we had done nothing until it became worse.
You're next point:
Suppose in thirty years we develop a cheap carbon-sequestration technique that allows us to completely control global ppCO2? Or we develop an cheap method of cooling the atmosphere, maybe some variant on this notion of spraying seawater into the air? That would pretty dramatically change your cost assumptions, wouldn't it?
All nice and good but what about if we don't happen to manage those things? But seriously, where do you think your 30 year down the line solutions come from? They come from investment *today*. That's the trillion now versus later.
I will agree the 'trillion' figure is just a reference to the OP and your postings. Any number will do frankly. My point is that the costs of after the fact correction just about always dwarf the mitigation/prevention costs and that includes any 'ongoing' costs. The costs also include a forecast 200 million climate refugees as sea level rises. A trillion dollars annual ends up looking fairly cheap rather than trying to handle that many refugees relocating to new areas. The modern infrastructure to support them alone would be in the trillions.
I will apologize for my tone but as I think I've explained, I think it was a pretty dumb statement to say it would cost the same 50 years from now as it would today. It seemed to me that your comment was intended to curtail the debate precisely by making an unfounded rationalization that its better to just do nothing. I agree with your statement that such inflamatory rhetoric doesn't help the rational discourse and I was, erroneously, responding in kind to what I understood at the time.