If we are going to build a LEO infrastructure, robots (and spacecraft, autonomous and remote controlled) are going to be doing the brunt of the "construction work". Humanoid-style robots are not going to be very efficient at doing so; the human form did not evolve to do that sort of work. As the parent mentions, robots designed specifically for the mission or task that needs to be done will not only be more efficient at that task but a lot cheaper as well - NASA can just adapt existing industrial designs.
I have nothing against manned spaceflight, but if we really, REALLY want to establish a solid and growing LEO presence we are going to have to accept that robots can do most of the repetitive tasks much easier and cheaper than humans can. As a matter of fact robots could take the burden of most of those tasks off of the astronauts, enabling the astronauts to focus on the overall picture and other things that they can do better.
Also, robots will not get spacesick, tired, bored, etc - although they may require repair on occasion (which one task that humans would likely be necessary for).
We already rely on tremendous amounts of automation in our space programs. This is just the next logical step.
Once many years ago, someone I know left two brand-new Windows Millennium Edition boxes in his car while he went to get groceries. When he got back, his car had been broken into, almost all his music CDs were gone*, but there were four more copies of Windows ME on the seat along with a thank you note.
*For some strange reason, his Celine Dion collection was untouched...
'The American people have a right to expect that White House employees are working to advance the public interest and not the interests of the lobby shops who formerly employed them,' Issa noted in the letter.
That's the funniest thing I've read all week. Is he serious? As other posters have noted, he has ties to lobbyists from other industries.
Glass House, Issa.
We really need sane contribution laws here in the US. Like, contributions from corporations are flat out illegal.
The Mutually Assured Destruction plans of the Cold War are outdated...
They sure are. Now every nation-state on the planet with a decent science and industrial base can potentially have more or less the same capabilities. Fun, ain't it?
Terrorists, of whatever stripe, are not necessarily the only potential enemies of civilization.
To be fair, I don't think that Nuremberg was about unjustified invasion of other countries; more about racial genocide, and I don't think the US invasion of Iraq quite falls under that definition.
Unjustified aggression against a sovereign state, definitely; I do agree to some extent with your last point, and I am a US citizen. However from a historical perspective we are hardly the first to do such things just because we can - not that it makes it "right" just "because we can".
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to aggression. Aggression is the path to the dark side..."
(sorry, just had to throw that in there *g*)
"Evil" is a concept that depends on who is doing what to whom. Hence the frequent discussions about whether Microsoft, Google, Sun, IBM, etc are "evil"...
(many people would consider some entity deliberately fucking up their ability to make a living as being "evil". )
True, perhaps - who knows how accurate ICBMs really are nowadays, with modern electronics and guidance? The ones in the know aren't telling, and for good reason. I'd bet a nice sum that modern ICBMs are a lot more accurate than the data anyone in the public has, given the advances in electronics and guidance. I wouldn't be surprised if modern tech has given the ability for 10m accuracy. After all, if we could guide a Apollo capsule returning from the moon to within 10km or so of it's recovery fleet 30+ years ago...
Cruise missiles are also a lot harder to find - but ICBMs are a LOT harder to destroy before they reach their target.
Also, if you manage to detect a cruise missile and shoot it down, it's probably going to crash well short of it's target, but even if you manage to destroy an ICBM after it's entered the atmosphere it's almost certainly still going to land on or near it's target. Given that cruise missiles can't deploy submunitions until they are on top of their target, while ICBMs can deploy submunitions after they enter the atmosphere, ICBMs are a lot more likely to hit their target with at least one of their submunitions. Which considering those submunitions can include nuclear warheads kind of makes the point moot if you're not shooting at a hardened target, doesn't it?
I suspect that the only thing preventing the US military from deploying orbital kinetic kill vehicles right now is launch costs. R&D would be cheap next to the cost of deploying a system that could hit any target in the world on a couple hours notice.
Well, google gives (using EK=mv^2/2):
(this is a quick calc so might not be accurate but the result seems to be of the right magnitude from my reading from many years ago)
((2 800 000 grams) times (6000 kph) times (6000 kph)) divided by 2 = 3.88888889 × 10^9 joules which if I remember right is roughly equivalent to a kiloton of tnt (4.1 gigajoules) - or a very small tac nuke.
But how much is actually released is going to depend on what your kinetic mass weapon is composed of and how it's constructed.
The idea of using orbital kinetic mass kill munitions is more than a half century old - Pournelle proposed it back in the 1950s.
Using submunitions is much more problematical, they have to be able to survive severe g-forces and have integral guidance systems and steering systems that can work at that speed; not outside the realm of our technology, I don't think, but they would not be cheap, and almost certainly would not be used outside of the theater of a major war.
I would think it likely that if one wanted to one could boost enough mass to orbit, with the proper explosive submunition design, that one could thoroughly destroy even a large city, or a fairly thickly concentrated military force, with one single orbital vehicle.
Anyone who would like to chime in with more modern and/or accurate figures please do:)
I have my doubts whether or not average people understand just what the consequences of using nuclear weapons means. I heard a lot of bombastic rhetoric about "nuking the Taliban", etc, back after 9/11. It's ignorant and stupid and while I understand the fury they felt - I felt it myself - I have my doubts about the rationality of such people.
A better analogy? How about, a small group of crazies from the next city down the highway comes and burns down your coffee shop, and in retaliation you firebomb their entire city, crazies, innocents, bystanders and all.
Nah, that still sucks. There are no good analogies when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. Fact is, nobody in these times knows jack shit about how the rest of the world will react, or the long term consequences, if any country - any! - ever uses nuclear weapons in a desperate conflict, let alone a "first strike". Especially not the politicians.
The only argument for it is ro provide "downmass" from the ISS (that is, returning mass from the ISS safely to Earth). All those other fancy capabilities are near useless for what the Shuttle is used for.
Not even that. We could do that much more cheaply (not to mention be able to return much more mass) with an unmanned return craft launched with a heavy lifter.
"There is only one race, and that's the human race."
Edward James Olmos, aka Commander Adama of the Battlestar Galactica
Exactly. This is not a game. It's not a race to see who gets first place. It's a struggle for survival. Right now, it's OUR struggle to survive, the whole human species, against a universe that doesn't have an opinion, doesn't have a bias, that will just kill you if frak up, and will eventually kill you anyway. (you think the universe has a bias? ask it not to kill you the next time you do something stupid. Try it. Won't see you later. )
The universe doesn't have an "opinion" or a bias or any of that superstitious quackery. Quit thinking that it does. That sort of thinking gets you killed. (with apologies to Larry Niven wrt Louis Wu, hardly new but certainly deserves to be said again. Again. Again. )
You think we're special? Next time you are outdoors, on a clear night, look up at the multitude of stars, and the distances between them. Think then on how those stars are only a tiny part of many more much larger communitities of stars. Then tell me just how special we are.
What we have here might not be the only intelligence in the universe - if we can call ourselves that (hubris, indeed) but what we have is uniquely ours. Let's not fuck it up.
... and therefore did the mindcontrolled capture the essence of what ultimately destroyed the civilization that inhabited the third major planet from the star they called "Sol".
What was it, my young padawans, that destroyed their civilization, that had so much promise?
[ tune in next post ]
(argumentum infinitum.) (or in other words, bad latin for this is not a subject that will ever be closed)
All politicians are liars?
Politicians are humans.
Therefore, are all humans liars?
Well, yes. Depends on the question....
Aren't semantics fun? Yoda must have had a whole lot of fun with his students with that question. Of course we all know that Yoda never lied, just told the truth... from a certain point of view:);-SB
You know, I don't know why I bothered to try and engage you in any sort of intelligent conversation about this subject. It's obvious to me that you don't have any idea what you are talking about.
"Anecdotes"? wtf? We're talking about climate change science, not fine points of debate.
I'm not even going to address the rest of your post, it's not worth the effort. Go educate yourself. When you have been following the science behind this for more than a quarter of a century, like I have, you might have something worthy to offer. I've heard your arguments before, some of them, "not very much", many times over the last quarter century, and they sound just like the same bullshit talking points that a lot of the ignorant idiots in the media use. If you want to be taken seriously you might at least learn something about the science involved rather than passing on the crap that others spew.
I feel sorry for you. You can't let go of what others tell you to believe long enough to spend the years involved in learning how to think for yourself.
Sheezus, you can't even post coherently.
Fortunately, none of that really matters, because we don't need anecdotes, we have data. We know that recently the global climate system has been warming at around.12 degrees per decade, unless the temperature record is wrong. So that settles it.
Really,.12 degrees is not very much, and so far nothing bad has happened.
So, genius, at.12 degrees per decade, how much warmer will the planet be in fifty years? Do YOU know what effects that will have around the globe? Do you think that you know more than the thousands of people around the planet who do this for a living? Who have spent their ENTIRE FUCKING LIVES studying this? Are you really that arrogant?
You didn't even bother to read anything else I said, did you? You certainly didn't take any time to examine what I said.
You are an ignorant, arrogant, idiot child who can't think for himself. I feel sorry for you. I hope your descendants are smarter - they will need to be.
Shit, I don't know why I bother. As someone else on this site said not too long ago, I'm getting too old to tilt at windmills.
You will understand that someday, if you're lucky enough to live that long.
My girlfriend (yes, I have one, I'm in my forties, it's allowed:) ) just pointed out to me that much of the debate regarding release of data about global warming is similar to a lot of the arguments regarding release of data from nations that are suffering potential pandemic diseases; those nations (Indonesia, for one) believe that other nations can use that data to their advantage and to the detriment of the nations undergoing the problems. Those people saying that have a point. But!
While the analogy isn't perfect, it does point out one thing; that any data about any phenomenon that can have a global impact should ALWAYS be completely open to all; otherwise it's self-defeating for the ones withholding the data. Eventually any problem that can affect everyone on the planet, affects everyone on this planet. Nobody can know if there might not be a critical piece of data somewhere that will help in providing a solution.
It's unfortunate that in the global climate debate, it's the western nations who seem to be leading the charge; and the western nations who are also just as well known for hoarding data in other fields - and particularly in the medical field - that gives their corporations an advantage.
Perhaps - and this is a long thought - perhaps it's not governments, nor religions, who should be feared in that respect; but international corporations, who hold no allegiances except that of profit. It's hardly a new thought, but I bring it forth here again...
I agree with your first paragraph completely. I posted elsewhere more or less in that respect. However I am not a political animal and as such don't have any proposals that would be rational in that arena - if there is any rationality in that arena, that I doubt;)
The observations I mentioned are, however, global, with a very, very few local places where they aren't happening. Similar local phenomena repeated nearly all over the planet is not just "anecdote".
Please do some research and find out for yourself. I have. I'm not an active scientist but I do read at least a few dozen journal articles a week on the subject, pro, con, in between, and I think I have a fairly broad view of what is happening.
If it makes a difference to you, I was an anthropogenic warming skeptic up until a few years ago - about 2005 - not enough evidence, although there was plenty of evidence of GW to convince me almost twenty years ago. I changed my mind after accumulating enough information.
I do agree that the responses by governments worldwide and other bodies have been extremely foolish. Again, I've posted such elsewhere. I don't believe that at this point any amount of effort can change what we are doing; there is no way to reduce our emissions in the foreseeable future short of total global dictatorship (enforced by a global military) which would actually be extraordinarily counterproductive, considering the resources that would be required for such enforcement. However I do believe that massive global investment in energy efficiency and cleaner energy sources would be a good way to start; it's good to see such things finally starting to happen, and we should have been doing so decades ago.
I also believe that we can start preparing for the changes that are going to happen, moving populations and productive food producing areas and reducing our reliance on regional climates. Thus far I see very few people in positions of power even asking how we can do so. This I find to be stupidity in the extreme.
I'm too old to tilt at windmills. I leave that to the younger folks; I've tilted at anough windmillls in my life to know that resistance is futile.
I've been responding to the latest AGW article elsewhere tonight, and at this point, I find I agree with you completely, not least in the "too old" part. But Bog help us all if all us old geeks quit the fight.;-)
Why this is not modded off topic is beyond understanding. There is one mention of the climate debate, then a few thinly and unreferenced connections to Madoff (who probably doesn't even know what the hell GW means), then a diatribe with terrible analogies.
Mods; please read exactly what the parent wrote before moderating.
Mostly what all this debate has pointed out is how disgustedly ignorant most of the world's leaders - and especially in the western nations - really are; and how ignorant and selfish most humans are. This is a problem that could potentially end civilization, and in the long run, humans as a species that can control it's own destiny.
Global warming is used as a justification to tax (carbon taxes) and control (cap and trade, various environmental regulations.).
Give just about any politician any excuse to extend and embrace control over anybody anywhere, and he or she will use it. Doesn't matter what the real truth of the matter is.
There's a simple fact that some people here, and many people worldwide have already figured out: no matter the truth in the [A]GW debate, people who see potential advantage in the debate itself will find a way to take advantage of it.
It's not the science distracting from the problem, it's the greedy, power hungry assholes distracting from the problem.
You almost had it right, but not quite.
(to the pedants: Yeah, I know my use of "distracting" wasn't semantically correct there, but it's the only word that really fits, even if I'm misusing it. So fuckit.)
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up, he's right.
If we are going to build a LEO infrastructure, robots (and spacecraft, autonomous and remote controlled) are going to be doing the brunt of the "construction work". Humanoid-style robots are not going to be very efficient at doing so; the human form did not evolve to do that sort of work. As the parent mentions, robots designed specifically for the mission or task that needs to be done will not only be more efficient at that task but a lot cheaper as well - NASA can just adapt existing industrial designs.
I have nothing against manned spaceflight, but if we really, REALLY want to establish a solid and growing LEO presence we are going to have to accept that robots can do most of the repetitive tasks much easier and cheaper than humans can. As a matter of fact robots could take the burden of most of those tasks off of the astronauts, enabling the astronauts to focus on the overall picture and other things that they can do better.
Also, robots will not get spacesick, tired, bored, etc - although they may require repair on occasion (which one task that humans would likely be necessary for).
We already rely on tremendous amounts of automation in our space programs. This is just the next logical step.
SB
Once many years ago, someone I know left two brand-new Windows Millennium Edition boxes in his car while he went to get groceries. When he got back, his car had been broken into, almost all his music CDs were gone*, but there were four more copies of Windows ME on the seat along with a thank you note.
*For some strange reason, his Celine Dion collection was untouched...
SB
I can't think of a better place to repeat the old saying:
"All this has happened before, and will happen again."
Great post, Anon, whoever you were. ;-SB
'The American people have a right to expect that White House employees are working to advance the public interest and not the interests of the lobby shops who formerly employed them,' Issa noted in the letter.
That's the funniest thing I've read all week. Is he serious? As other posters have noted, he has ties to lobbyists from other industries.
Glass House, Issa.
We really need sane contribution laws here in the US. Like, contributions from corporations are flat out illegal.
SB
[Previous record holder Scott Safran] died in 1989, due to injuries sustained when he fell from the roof of his Los Angeles apartment.
That's what Centauri wanted everyone to think. Good cover story!
SB
The Mutually Assured Destruction plans of the Cold War are outdated...
They sure are. Now every nation-state on the planet with a decent science and industrial base can potentially have more or less the same capabilities. Fun, ain't it?
Terrorists, of whatever stripe, are not necessarily the only potential enemies of civilization.
SB
To be fair, I don't think that Nuremberg was about unjustified invasion of other countries; more about racial genocide, and I don't think the US invasion of Iraq quite falls under that definition.
Unjustified aggression against a sovereign state, definitely; I do agree to some extent with your last point, and I am a US citizen. However from a historical perspective we are hardly the first to do such things just because we can - not that it makes it "right" just "because we can".
SB
Come on, we just wouldn't be the human race if we didn't use childish analogies as an excuse for holding reprehensible opinions.
Just to take it a bit farther, historically...
SB
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to aggression. Aggression is the path to the dark side..."
(sorry, just had to throw that in there *g*)
"Evil" is a concept that depends on who is doing what to whom. Hence the frequent discussions about whether Microsoft, Google, Sun, IBM, etc are "evil"...
(many people would consider some entity deliberately fucking up their ability to make a living as being "evil". )
SB
True, perhaps - who knows how accurate ICBMs really are nowadays, with modern electronics and guidance? The ones in the know aren't telling, and for good reason. I'd bet a nice sum that modern ICBMs are a lot more accurate than the data anyone in the public has, given the advances in electronics and guidance. I wouldn't be surprised if modern tech has given the ability for 10m accuracy. After all, if we could guide a Apollo capsule returning from the moon to within 10km or so of it's recovery fleet 30+ years ago...
Cruise missiles are also a lot harder to find - but ICBMs are a LOT harder to destroy before they reach their target.
Also, if you manage to detect a cruise missile and shoot it down, it's probably going to crash well short of it's target, but even if you manage to destroy an ICBM after it's entered the atmosphere it's almost certainly still going to land on or near it's target. Given that cruise missiles can't deploy submunitions until they are on top of their target, while ICBMs can deploy submunitions after they enter the atmosphere, ICBMs are a lot more likely to hit their target with at least one of their submunitions. Which considering those submunitions can include nuclear warheads kind of makes the point moot if you're not shooting at a hardened target, doesn't it?
I suspect that the only thing preventing the US military from deploying orbital kinetic kill vehicles right now is launch costs. R&D would be cheap next to the cost of deploying a system that could hit any target in the world on a couple hours notice.
SB
Well, google gives (using EK=mv^2/2):
(this is a quick calc so might not be accurate but the result seems to be of the right magnitude from my reading from many years ago)
((2 800 000 grams) times (6000 kph) times (6000 kph)) divided by 2 = 3.88888889 × 10^9 joules which if I remember right is roughly equivalent to a kiloton of tnt (4.1 gigajoules) - or a very small tac nuke.
But how much is actually released is going to depend on what your kinetic mass weapon is composed of and how it's constructed.
The idea of using orbital kinetic mass kill munitions is more than a half century old - Pournelle proposed it back in the 1950s.
Using submunitions is much more problematical, they have to be able to survive severe g-forces and have integral guidance systems and steering systems that can work at that speed; not outside the realm of our technology, I don't think, but they would not be cheap, and almost certainly would not be used outside of the theater of a major war.
I would think it likely that if one wanted to one could boost enough mass to orbit, with the proper explosive submunition design, that one could thoroughly destroy even a large city, or a fairly thickly concentrated military force, with one single orbital vehicle.
Anyone who would like to chime in with more modern and/or accurate figures please do :)
SB
I have my doubts whether or not average people understand just what the consequences of using nuclear weapons means. I heard a lot of bombastic rhetoric about "nuking the Taliban", etc, back after 9/11. It's ignorant and stupid and while I understand the fury they felt - I felt it myself - I have my doubts about the rationality of such people.
A better analogy? How about, a small group of crazies from the next city down the highway comes and burns down your coffee shop, and in retaliation you firebomb their entire city, crazies, innocents, bystanders and all.
Nah, that still sucks. There are no good analogies when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. Fact is, nobody in these times knows jack shit about how the rest of the world will react, or the long term consequences, if any country - any! - ever uses nuclear weapons in a desperate conflict, let alone a "first strike". Especially not the politicians.
SB
The only argument for it is ro provide "downmass" from the ISS (that is, returning mass from the ISS safely to Earth). All those other fancy capabilities are near useless for what the Shuttle is used for.
Not even that. We could do that much more cheaply (not to mention be able to return much more mass) with an unmanned return craft launched with a heavy lifter.
SB
The disturbance in the Force you are sensing IS Darth Lucas, and yes, it is also the Dark Side. Be afraid, young padawan. Be very afraid.
SB
Well said, thanks. I have more to add.
"There is only one race, and that's the human race."
Edward James Olmos, aka Commander Adama of the Battlestar Galactica
Exactly. This is not a game. It's not a race to see who gets first place. It's a struggle for survival. Right now, it's OUR struggle to survive, the whole human species, against a universe that doesn't have an opinion, doesn't have a bias, that will just kill you if frak up, and will eventually kill you anyway. (you think the universe has a bias? ask it not to kill you the next time you do something stupid. Try it. Won't see you later. )
The universe doesn't have an "opinion" or a bias or any of that superstitious quackery. Quit thinking that it does. That sort of thinking gets you killed. (with apologies to Larry Niven wrt Louis Wu, hardly new but certainly deserves to be said again. Again. Again. )
You think we're special? Next time you are outdoors, on a clear night, look up at the multitude of stars, and the distances between them. Think then on how those stars are only a tiny part of many more much larger communitities of stars. Then tell me just how special we are.
What we have here might not be the only intelligence in the universe - if we can call ourselves that (hubris, indeed) but what we have is uniquely ours. Let's not fuck it up.
SB
What was it, my young padawans, that destroyed their civilization, that had so much promise?
[ tune in next post ]
(argumentum infinitum.) (or in other words, bad latin for this is not a subject that will ever be closed)
All politicians are liars?
Politicians are humans.
Therefore, are all humans liars?
Well, yes. Depends on the question. ...
Aren't semantics fun? Yoda must have had a whole lot of fun with his students with that question. Of course we all know that Yoda never lied, just told the truth... from a certain point of view :) ;-SB
Or people who already live there...
SB
I am so bold as to to say, the conclusions of this type of research is stretched beyond what can safely be predicted of a chaotic system.
And that is why we should be scared. Because that is exactly what the economists do, just with much more narrow models, and with much less real data.
SB
You know, I don't know why I bothered to try and engage you in any sort of intelligent conversation about this subject. It's obvious to me that you don't have any idea what you are talking about.
"Anecdotes"? wtf? We're talking about climate change science, not fine points of debate.
I'm not even going to address the rest of your post, it's not worth the effort. Go educate yourself. When you have been following the science behind this for more than a quarter of a century, like I have, you might have something worthy to offer. I've heard your arguments before, some of them, "not very much", many times over the last quarter century, and they sound just like the same bullshit talking points that a lot of the ignorant idiots in the media use. If you want to be taken seriously you might at least learn something about the science involved rather than passing on the crap that others spew.
I feel sorry for you. You can't let go of what others tell you to believe long enough to spend the years involved in learning how to think for yourself.
Sheezus, you can't even post coherently.
Fortunately, none of that really matters, because we don't need anecdotes, we have data. We know that recently the global climate system has been warming at around .12 degrees per decade, unless the temperature record is wrong. So that settles it.
Really, .12 degrees is not very much, and so far nothing bad has happened.
So, genius, at .12 degrees per decade, how much warmer will the planet be in fifty years? Do YOU know what effects that will have around the globe? Do you think that you know more than the thousands of people around the planet who do this for a living? Who have spent their ENTIRE FUCKING LIVES studying this? Are you really that arrogant?
You didn't even bother to read anything else I said, did you? You certainly didn't take any time to examine what I said.
You are an ignorant, arrogant, idiot child who can't think for himself. I feel sorry for you. I hope your descendants are smarter - they will need to be.
Shit, I don't know why I bother. As someone else on this site said not too long ago, I'm getting too old to tilt at windmills.
You will understand that someday, if you're lucky enough to live that long.
Goodbye.
SB
Extremely well said!
My girlfriend (yes, I have one, I'm in my forties, it's allowed :) ) just pointed out to me that much of the debate regarding release of data about global warming is similar to a lot of the arguments regarding release of data from nations that are suffering potential pandemic diseases; those nations (Indonesia, for one) believe that other nations can use that data to their advantage and to the detriment of the nations undergoing the problems. Those people saying that have a point. But!
While the analogy isn't perfect, it does point out one thing; that any data about any phenomenon that can have a global impact should ALWAYS be completely open to all; otherwise it's self-defeating for the ones withholding the data. Eventually any problem that can affect everyone on the planet, affects everyone on this planet. Nobody can know if there might not be a critical piece of data somewhere that will help in providing a solution.
It's unfortunate that in the global climate debate, it's the western nations who seem to be leading the charge; and the western nations who are also just as well known for hoarding data in other fields - and particularly in the medical field - that gives their corporations an advantage.
Perhaps - and this is a long thought - perhaps it's not governments, nor religions, who should be feared in that respect; but international corporations, who hold no allegiances except that of profit. It's hardly a new thought, but I bring it forth here again...
SB
I agree with your first paragraph completely. I posted elsewhere more or less in that respect. However I am not a political animal and as such don't have any proposals that would be rational in that arena - if there is any rationality in that arena, that I doubt ;)
The observations I mentioned are, however, global, with a very, very few local places where they aren't happening. Similar local phenomena repeated nearly all over the planet is not just "anecdote".
Please do some research and find out for yourself. I have. I'm not an active scientist but I do read at least a few dozen journal articles a week on the subject, pro, con, in between, and I think I have a fairly broad view of what is happening.
If it makes a difference to you, I was an anthropogenic warming skeptic up until a few years ago - about 2005 - not enough evidence, although there was plenty of evidence of GW to convince me almost twenty years ago. I changed my mind after accumulating enough information.
I do agree that the responses by governments worldwide and other bodies have been extremely foolish. Again, I've posted such elsewhere. I don't believe that at this point any amount of effort can change what we are doing; there is no way to reduce our emissions in the foreseeable future short of total global dictatorship (enforced by a global military) which would actually be extraordinarily counterproductive, considering the resources that would be required for such enforcement. However I do believe that massive global investment in energy efficiency and cleaner energy sources would be a good way to start; it's good to see such things finally starting to happen, and we should have been doing so decades ago.
I also believe that we can start preparing for the changes that are going to happen, moving populations and productive food producing areas and reducing our reliance on regional climates. Thus far I see very few people in positions of power even asking how we can do so. This I find to be stupidity in the extreme.
Cheers
SB
I'm too old to tilt at windmills. I leave that to the younger folks; I've tilted at anough windmillls in my life to know that resistance is futile.
I've been responding to the latest AGW article elsewhere tonight, and at this point, I find I agree with you completely, not least in the "too old" part. But Bog help us all if all us old geeks quit the fight. ;-)
At least on this website...
Cheers
SB
Why this is not modded off topic is beyond understanding. There is one mention of the climate debate, then a few thinly and unreferenced connections to Madoff (who probably doesn't even know what the hell GW means), then a diatribe with terrible analogies.
Mods; please read exactly what the parent wrote before moderating.
SB
Yeah, except this is a Front Door ;-\
Mostly what all this debate has pointed out is how disgustedly ignorant most of the world's leaders - and especially in the western nations - really are; and how ignorant and selfish most humans are. This is a problem that could potentially end civilization, and in the long run, humans as a species that can control it's own destiny.
It's fucking shameful.
SB
Global warming is used as a justification to tax (carbon taxes) and control (cap and trade, various environmental regulations.).
Give just about any politician any excuse to extend and embrace control over anybody anywhere, and he or she will use it. Doesn't matter what the real truth of the matter is.
There's a simple fact that some people here, and many people worldwide have already figured out: no matter the truth in the [A]GW debate, people who see potential advantage in the debate itself will find a way to take advantage of it.
It's not the science distracting from the problem, it's the greedy, power hungry assholes distracting from the problem.
You almost had it right, but not quite.
(to the pedants: Yeah, I know my use of "distracting" wasn't semantically correct there, but it's the only word that really fits, even if I'm misusing it. So fuckit.)
SB