Sure certain core characteristics stay the same, but core characteristics that is holding isn't "technology creates more jobs"
The evidence is the story itself: that we have more robots (technology), yet work hours haven't declined. Technology has increased, but jobs haven't.
That is a non sequitur since a non-increase in jobs doesn't follow from a non-decrease in hours worked. And when you consider the number of low tech jobs that have been obsoleted over time, such as sustenance agriculture or the cottage industry, something has been creating a massive number of replacement jobs.
Part of this is because people lapped up the "technology creates more jobs" narrative. People just assume new jobs will be created... by other people of course. They themselves don't create new jobs, but rather use technology to hire less in the name of cutting costs and becoming more efficient. When almost everyone is doing that however you get a tragedy of commons scenario.
When you're not in the developed world, you can start your own business and hire those people who are looking for those new jobs. Just because the developed world has screwed itself up with respect to creating new businesses and new jobs doesn't mean that the rest of the world has shared in the folly.
And people are "lapping up" this narrative because it is based on 500 years of history. It's happening, it's true. I wonder instead about the people lapping up the rival narrative of increasing income inequality, increasing poverty, and such when that is and has long been patently untrue throughout the world.
This idea that we (Who's this "we", anyway? The West? The industrialized world?) have been doing things more or less the same way for 500 years is absurd. I mean, just to pick one example, one-sixth of the entire wealth of the United States 155 years ago was legally owned human beings! We've had to keep changing things, thank God.
We, as in the entire world. Humanity.
And in the above paragraph you illustrate the considerable difference between technological progress of the past half a millennium and the idea of the Roman Empire. We are moving through a long, fluid time and yet, certain core characteristics hold no matter how much things change.
Why the Roman Empire was fundamentally a stagnant ideal which eventually grew unable to deal with the world around it.
all the models we have to predict future behavior are entirely based on what has happened in the past and by definition can't account for events in the future that defy current models
Unless the future events that defy current models never happen. I don't really see the point of defending a solid historical trend against imaginary defying events.
And I should add that the Roman Empire lasted, in one form or another, a hell of a lot longer than 500 years.
Some forms didn't last 500 years. For example, the Western empire almost lasted 500 years with failure of the empire evidence for about a century before it collapsed. And the Eastern Empire (the Byzantium Empire) was slowly falling apart for a thousand years.
In comparison, we've had astounding economic growth for half a millennium with no evidence of slowing down - except recently for a number of developed world countries which have deliberately chosen a variety of ill-thought measures to cripple that economic growth. That has as a side effect enabled the transfer of jobs and manufacturing infrastructure to the rest of the world.
What do you have to back up that assertion (especially that bold "never" part)?
The past five centuries of human history. I'm not the previous poster and I wouldn't go as far as to say that technology always increases jobs - there might be a counterexample somewhere, but it's been a long time job creator for several human lifespans which is about as certain as you're going to get in this area.
I don't know, but if nothing else, it would show the world that they are actually willing to pay what they owe and are trying to act in a fiscally responsible way. Do you have a different plan to offer that has even the slightest chance of working?
Kick Greece out of the EU and let them default. You ought to wonder why the powers that be are so keen on trying to keep Greece in the Union.
If they made it mandatory, including paying back taxes and enforced their tax laws there's no reason that they couldn't pay what they owe, given time.
If they were able to do that, would it be a good idea? These tax laws were passed without considering the consequences and Greek society has been working around them, perhaps in some cases for decades.
I am reminded here of an observation. Everyone involved is interested in their interests, but no one seems to be interested in a Greece with a future. Without substantial reforms that allow for markets and freedom to create businesses, Greece will continue its decline.
I don't see the current agreement as doing a thing to help that. As I've noted elsewhere, I see the current agreement as merely a transfer of wealth from EU taaxpayers to the holders of Greek debt. It doesn't actually force Greece to be a stable, prudent, tax paying country. They can after all revert to default at some future point when the EU money runs out again.
In the long run, of course, it benefits them too. Not only does it pay off their debts, it gets them back into the habit of paying their taxes.
Unless, of course, that isn't true. We all know that Greece isn't going to ever fully pay off these particular debts. The only real question here IMHO is how much of a haircut lenders are going to receive.
I sense you are bothered by something. A relatively dangerous work environment is not "offloading costs onto someone else". After all, the employee could simply choose not to work and they do get paid exceptionally well for the increased risk.
Well, in the previous poster's defense, rule of law is implied - so yes, you had a stupid argument. But you need more than just rule of law. You need laws in place to protect you.
The problem is, it isn't being done safely. The industry routinely has spills which do lasting damage to the environment, and the industry has a death rate that is 7 times higher than all other industries
So what's wrong with that? I'm willing to "look the other way" till the end of time, if we could get that kind of return on investment on everything we did.
They added plenty of bureaucracies. For example, the US has the TSA and a variety of terrorism related spending (such as disaster/preparedness infrastructure building and military donations to police departments).
What this all demonstrates is that the Eurozone needs to become a full fiscal union.
Because we should reward failure? The EU knew what it was getting into when it loaned money to Greece in the first place. A Greek default and taking Greece off the Euro is a better approach than digging the hole deeper and rewarding those who caused the problem in the first place.
Much has been made of Greece's capitulation, but not of the corresponding capitulation of the rest of the EU. The current refinancing is just a transfer of wealth from the EU taxpayer to lenders who knew better.
I came to the conclusion weeks ago that having NATO, or some other group of European nations occupy Greece, enforce the existing tax laws (including prosecuting those who won't pay) and using the resulting revenue to pay off Greece's debts was the only way they'd ever see their money. I also suspect that this will never happen because today's European governments don't have the guts to do what's needed.
Greece might be a huge mess, but there's no way the public there or Greek expatriots elsewhere in Europe will accept foreign occupation which solely benefits foreign powers.
The IPCC (UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the principle demonstration of the reason I think the entire field is screwed up. First, there's all this ritual of consensus with hundreds of climate researchers involved. Second, there is the propaganda-based result of the IPCC's work. The IPCC is notorious for creating aggressive "Summary for Policy Makers" conclusions that exaggerate the research they supposedly summarize. To quote an example I found earlier this year:
[...] the Third Assessment Report of 2001 has in the body an estimate for near future global warming of 0.1 - 0.2 C per decade for an older scenario, "IS92a". That transformed without justification into global warming of 0.1 - 0.3 C per decade in a graph in the respective summary.
I noted this example originally because of a Slashdot argument over whether climate models were accurate or not. The other person had cited work from the body of the report, but somehow that was exaggerated again in the Summary. This is a repeating pattern with work cited in the main body of the IPCC reports relatively accurately and then subtly exaggerated and/or excessively confidence placed on the research in the Summary for Policy Makers in a way as to make "climate change" (which always means AGW) appear worse.
Where are the mass protests from the researchers due to the misuse of their research for blatant propaganda? This is not a small scale problem but the largest argument from authority fallacy that has ever been committed.
Nice back of the envelope calculation! but you're off by a factor of 6.
Solar irradiance is absorbed by the disk area of the earth, pi r^2. But the earth's surface area is 4 pi r^2. And the solar energy absorbed is multiplied by the (1-albedo). So you're off by 4/(1-a), where a is about 0.30 to 0.35.
Thank you.
We know that it doesn't explain the warming this century.
Doesn't fully explain warming this century. And I've already noted that I agree that there is AGW.
With no actual evidence, you are assuming ideological and institutional bias as in input assumption. You're assuming NOAA is biased. NASA is biased. The National Science Foundation is biased. The National Climatic Data Center is biased. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project is biased. The British Met office (formerly the Meteorological Office) is biased. The Climate Research Unit is biased. The Japanese Meteorological agency is biased. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is biased. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization is biased. The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is biased. The Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie is biased
Um, yes.A preponderance of biased organizations doesn't rebut my point.
These have all made models and measurements confirming the greenhouse effect....isn't it slightly stretching credibility that all of these institutions-- and many others-- on four continents, all happen to be biased, and all biased in exactly the same way?
No, IMHO the ideological and institutional biases are global in extent.
But, yes, if you assume that pretty much everybody who has ever studied the field is biased, and you can ignore their work... well, yes, you can ignore a heck of a lot of data, yes indeed.
That's why I'm waiting for future data. There's just too many problems with the current research culture to get good results. If AGW is as bad as the worst case scenarios, we should have clear evidence of that inside of two or three decades which won't be dependent on researchers being unbiased.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure certain core characteristics stay the same, but core characteristics that is holding isn't "technology creates more jobs"
The evidence is the story itself: that we have more robots (technology), yet work hours haven't declined. Technology has increased, but jobs haven't.
That is a non sequitur since a non-increase in jobs doesn't follow from a non-decrease in hours worked. And when you consider the number of low tech jobs that have been obsoleted over time, such as sustenance agriculture or the cottage industry, something has been creating a massive number of replacement jobs.
Part of this is because people lapped up the "technology creates more jobs" narrative. People just assume new jobs will be created... by other people of course. They themselves don't create new jobs, but rather use technology to hire less in the name of cutting costs and becoming more efficient. When almost everyone is doing that however you get a tragedy of commons scenario.
When you're not in the developed world, you can start your own business and hire those people who are looking for those new jobs. Just because the developed world has screwed itself up with respect to creating new businesses and new jobs doesn't mean that the rest of the world has shared in the folly.
And people are "lapping up" this narrative because it is based on 500 years of history. It's happening, it's true. I wonder instead about the people lapping up the rival narrative of increasing income inequality, increasing poverty, and such when that is and has long been patently untrue throughout the world.
This idea that we (Who's this "we", anyway? The West? The industrialized world?) have been doing things more or less the same way for 500 years is absurd. I mean, just to pick one example, one-sixth of the entire wealth of the United States 155 years ago was legally owned human beings! We've had to keep changing things, thank God.
We, as in the entire world. Humanity.
And in the above paragraph you illustrate the considerable difference between technological progress of the past half a millennium and the idea of the Roman Empire. We are moving through a long, fluid time and yet, certain core characteristics hold no matter how much things change.
Why the Roman Empire was fundamentally a stagnant ideal which eventually grew unable to deal with the world around it.
I'm not talking about automobiles, I'm talking about robots.
The difference is only a matter of degree of automation.
all the models we have to predict future behavior are entirely based on what has happened in the past and by definition can't account for events in the future that defy current models
Unless the future events that defy current models never happen. I don't really see the point of defending a solid historical trend against imaginary defying events.
And I should add that the Roman Empire lasted, in one form or another, a hell of a lot longer than 500 years.
Some forms didn't last 500 years. For example, the Western empire almost lasted 500 years with failure of the empire evidence for about a century before it collapsed. And the Eastern Empire (the Byzantium Empire) was slowly falling apart for a thousand years.
In comparison, we've had astounding economic growth for half a millennium with no evidence of slowing down - except recently for a number of developed world countries which have deliberately chosen a variety of ill-thought measures to cripple that economic growth. That has as a side effect enabled the transfer of jobs and manufacturing infrastructure to the rest of the world.
What do you have to back up that assertion (especially that bold "never" part)?
The past five centuries of human history. I'm not the previous poster and I wouldn't go as far as to say that technology always increases jobs - there might be a counterexample somewhere, but it's been a long time job creator for several human lifespans which is about as certain as you're going to get in this area.
I don't know, but if nothing else, it would show the world that they are actually willing to pay what they owe and are trying to act in a fiscally responsible way. Do you have a different plan to offer that has even the slightest chance of working?
Kick Greece out of the EU and let them default. You ought to wonder why the powers that be are so keen on trying to keep Greece in the Union.
And that's nice if the calculation matches reality. I note that you link to a reconstruction not evidence. I'm going to rely on actual evidence.
If they made it mandatory, including paying back taxes and enforced their tax laws there's no reason that they couldn't pay what they owe, given time.
If they were able to do that, would it be a good idea? These tax laws were passed without considering the consequences and Greek society has been working around them, perhaps in some cases for decades.
I am reminded here of an observation. Everyone involved is interested in their interests, but no one seems to be interested in a Greece with a future. Without substantial reforms that allow for markets and freedom to create businesses, Greece will continue its decline.
I don't see the current agreement as doing a thing to help that. As I've noted elsewhere, I see the current agreement as merely a transfer of wealth from EU taaxpayers to the holders of Greek debt. It doesn't actually force Greece to be a stable, prudent, tax paying country. They can after all revert to default at some future point when the EU money runs out again.
In the long run, of course, it benefits them too. Not only does it pay off their debts, it gets them back into the habit of paying their taxes.
Unless, of course, that isn't true. We all know that Greece isn't going to ever fully pay off these particular debts. The only real question here IMHO is how much of a haircut lenders are going to receive.
Your "hit and run" means jack squat to a Predator drone guided equipped with FLIR.
Unless, of course, you're doing the hit and run with the Predator.
I sense you are bothered by something. A relatively dangerous work environment is not "offloading costs onto someone else". After all, the employee could simply choose not to work and they do get paid exceptionally well for the increased risk.
Well, in the previous poster's defense, rule of law is implied - so yes, you had a stupid argument. But you need more than just rule of law. You need laws in place to protect you.
Changes in total solar irradiance is, at most, a small contribution to global warming-- a few percent at most. We agree on this now?
Depends on whether it's a few percent or not. I'm not seeing the evidence to say that it is only a few percent.
Nobody cared about consensus until denialists started claiming that AGW was still a matter of debate.
> If only they cared as much about evidence as they do about consensus.
The problem is, it isn't being done safely. The industry routinely has spills which do lasting damage to the environment, and the industry has a death rate that is 7 times higher than all other industries
So what's wrong with that? I'm willing to "look the other way" till the end of time, if we could get that kind of return on investment on everything we did.
They added plenty of bureaucracies. For example, the US has the TSA and a variety of terrorism related spending (such as disaster/preparedness infrastructure building and military donations to police departments).
And millions of Americans and citizens of the world are addicted to wasting oil in inefficient cars and trucks.
There's another phrase for "addicted to wasting oil" that makes more sense in this context, "doing real and productive work".
What this all demonstrates is that the Eurozone needs to become a full fiscal union.
Because we should reward failure? The EU knew what it was getting into when it loaned money to Greece in the first place. A Greek default and taking Greece off the Euro is a better approach than digging the hole deeper and rewarding those who caused the problem in the first place.
Much has been made of Greece's capitulation, but not of the corresponding capitulation of the rest of the EU. The current refinancing is just a transfer of wealth from the EU taxpayer to lenders who knew better.
I came to the conclusion weeks ago that having NATO, or some other group of European nations occupy Greece, enforce the existing tax laws (including prosecuting those who won't pay) and using the resulting revenue to pay off Greece's debts was the only way they'd ever see their money. I also suspect that this will never happen because today's European governments don't have the guts to do what's needed.
Greece might be a huge mess, but there's no way the public there or Greek expatriots elsewhere in Europe will accept foreign occupation which solely benefits foreign powers.
Reprocessing is an expensive, dirty process, that causes a lot more problems than it solves.
Sounds like we're not out of simple, obvious, and wrong ideas. I suggest engineering. It's known to fix problems and create solutions.
It may make more sense in the future, when robotics and other technologies are more advanced.
What would those do that we couldn't do now?
So why, exactly, should we not have the same expectation of Iran? With a similar outcome?
Why shouldn't we have the same expectation of Pakistan?
[...] the Third Assessment Report of 2001 has in the body an estimate for near future global warming of 0.1 - 0.2 C per decade for an older scenario, "IS92a". That transformed without justification into global warming of 0.1 - 0.3 C per decade in a graph in the respective summary.
I noted this example originally because of a Slashdot argument over whether climate models were accurate or not. The other person had cited work from the body of the report, but somehow that was exaggerated again in the Summary. This is a repeating pattern with work cited in the main body of the IPCC reports relatively accurately and then subtly exaggerated and/or excessively confidence placed on the research in the Summary for Policy Makers in a way as to make "climate change" (which always means AGW) appear worse.
Where are the mass protests from the researchers due to the misuse of their research for blatant propaganda? This is not a small scale problem but the largest argument from authority fallacy that has ever been committed.
Nice back of the envelope calculation! but you're off by a factor of 6.
Solar irradiance is absorbed by the disk area of the earth, pi r^2. But the earth's surface area is 4 pi r^2. And the solar energy absorbed is multiplied by the (1-albedo). So you're off by 4/(1-a), where a is about 0.30 to 0.35.
Thank you.
We know that it doesn't explain the warming this century.
Doesn't fully explain warming this century. And I've already noted that I agree that there is AGW.
With no actual evidence, you are assuming ideological and institutional bias as in input assumption. You're assuming NOAA is biased. NASA is biased. The National Science Foundation is biased. The National Climatic Data Center is biased. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project is biased. The British Met office (formerly the Meteorological Office) is biased. The Climate Research Unit is biased. The Japanese Meteorological agency is biased. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is biased. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization is biased. The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is biased. The Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie is biased
Um, yes.A preponderance of biased organizations doesn't rebut my point.
These have all made models and measurements confirming the greenhouse effect. ...isn't it slightly stretching credibility that all of these institutions-- and many others-- on four continents, all happen to be biased, and all biased in exactly the same way?
No, IMHO the ideological and institutional biases are global in extent.
But, yes, if you assume that pretty much everybody who has ever studied the field is biased, and you can ignore their work... well, yes, you can ignore a heck of a lot of data, yes indeed.
That's why I'm waiting for future data. There's just too many problems with the current research culture to get good results. If AGW is as bad as the worst case scenarios, we should have clear evidence of that inside of two or three decades which won't be dependent on researchers being unbiased.
If libertarians don't want to be constrained by laws, rules or civilised behaviour
Well, then we're good. Because that's not what libertarians don't want.
Yeah, it makes you wonder why anyone ever bothered with unemployment benefits or social security in the first place
Nobody in the US actually does bother with those things. They get covered whether they want it or not.