In fact, NZ is one of the countries where they inexplicable excluded postwar growth
I don't know if the original research actually doesn't bother to explain this or not. But it's quite a reasonable thing to do since the the post-war growth comes from unusual circumstances that don't apply today. The UK was unusual in that its high debt from the Second World War extended well past 1950.
The Dutch economy is an open economy heavily dependent on the performance of the rest of the world. It doesn't much matter what our leaders do, the rest of the world dictates the state of the Dutch economy.
Heavily dependent doesn't mean that is the only factor. Where's my free windmill and tulip farm? I'm dictating! The Netherlands produce things of value which the rest of the world has to buy. Debt load of the government effects the efficiency of that production.
It is interesting to note that politicians who claim to want the best for big business are NEVER themselves successful big business owners AND that the successful big business owners never ever agree with them. Wallstreet likes the Republicans supposedly (but the two top financial newspapers advised voting against Romney because even a socialist in the white house would be better) but people like Warren Buffet and Richard Branson sing a very different tune. They think the best way to beat a recession is to spend. Not spend recklessly but invest in the future not in handing out tax cuts to buy votes.
Apparently, neither of the top two US financial newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the International Business Times give political endorsements. The Investor's Business Daily endorsed Romney.
I don't know about Richard Branson, but Warren Buffet has two strikes against him. He profits from a complex tax and regulatory environment such as what Obama brings. And second, his main means of legal tax avoidance, undeclared capital gains would remain untouched.
Romney was a successful big business owner contrary to your assertion that such things NEVER happen. Also I think you don't get at all the perverse incentives that exist at the big business level.
And Obama has worked out just fine for a number of big businesses such as the music and movies oligopolies, the companies needing bailouts, the insurance industry, or companies looking for easy money from the renewables programs. I think most of us realize that what is good for big business isn't necessarily good for anyone else especially when it comes to handouts from the federal government or regulatory protectionism.
Be wary of any leader who leads out of an ideology and not what is needed right now. Would you go to a doctor whose every answer is "lets amputate"? No? Then why vote for a politician whose every answer is "cut taxes, spend less, except on the pork project I need to get re-elected"? Real leadership is looking at what needs to be done and then do it. Not just have a one size fits all slogan.
As I see it, real leadership would be cut the debt load because that's what is needed.
These two numbers, 2.4 and -7.6 percent, are given equal weight in the final calculation, as they average the countries equally. Even though there are 19 times as many data points for the U.K."
Why should the UK be given more weight? There's only one such country, not 19 such countries. And the UK data in question is highly correlated (it all comes from the same debt over the same span of time, not 19 different points in the UK's history).
In addition, the rebuttal ignores two stretches of data:
RR examines three data samples: 20 advanced economies over 1946{2009; the same 20
economies over roughly 200 years; and 20 emerging market economies 1970{2009. We repli-
cate the results only from the first sample as these are the most relevant to current U.S. and European policy debates, and they require the least splicing of data from multiple sources.
We focus exclusively on their results regarding means because these have generated the most
widespread attention. On their website, Reinhart and Rogo provide public access to coun-
try historical data for public debt and GDP growth in spreadsheets with complete source
documentation.3 However, the spreadsheets do not include guidance on the exact data series,
years, and methods used in RR.
It's worth noting here that the rebuttal is willing to take data from the period just after the Second World War where a number of countries had high debt and were transitioning from a total war economy (that is, an economy totally focused on winning a particular war to exclusion of everything else, including economic growth) to a normal one - including the 19 year series of the UK mentioned above, and periods of excluded (excluded that is from the original study for unknown reasons) data from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. All of these incidentally show high economic growth combined with high debt.
If we're excluding data series due to their irrelevance to current economies, why should these be counted? The US and Europe haven't been in a total war economy since the end of the Second World War. So it is to be expected that one would not see the economic gain (whether or not the debt is present) that one saw in the immediate post-war period.
The original research seems weak for a number of reasons, but I'm not willing to call it "fishy" on the basis of a rebuttal which makes its own "fishy" assumptions.
What exactly is a "spacelike vacuum"? Is it different from other vacuums? Are there vacuums that are unlike space?
Well, there are levels of vacuum graded by orders of magnitude drop from one atmosphere, according to Wikipedia. But "spacelike" isn't one of them since pressures in space can vary by about eleven orders of magnitude (ignoring here that the transition to "space" from a planetary or stellar atmosphere is arbitrary).
I imagine what they mean is that they were using pressures down to the range seen in low Earth orbit.
You know that crazy person that occasionally uses your Slashdot account? Cut their fingers off. When I read these rational and interesting posts, my head explodes. It's hard to clean from the ceiling; I have to grow a new head; and the natives find it disconcerting. br.
When I saw the phrase "non-GAAP" I knew it was bullshit. It's not that hard to do GAAP accounting. It's not that hard to lie using GAAP accounting. So when someone can't be bothered to do it, that's a huge red flag for me. Not that I'd sink a cent into Yahoo even with GAAP.
Well, their colleagues do. Most other scientists do. But because they disagree with your bumwank they aren't scientists I guess. Science is determined by agreeing with khallow's mastubatory fantasies, not observation and peer review!
So what? Allegedly, the IPCC estimates are supposed to be based on the best available science. In practice, the IPCC is a mouthpiece for AGW-advocacy (as can be witnessed both by who are the gatekeepers for research allowed into the IPCC reports and by the divergence between the actual research covered and "executive summaries" of that research.
So when someone claims that the IPCC is "very conservative", I figure they're merely complaining that the IPCC isn't compromising the few remaining scientific scruples it has. I most certainly don't buy that there's a scientific basis for such an opinion.
As to the rest of your pointless post, I see nothing to rebut.
Math and logic laws aren't natural, at least in the sense that they're causal results from some physical/material/energetic/whatever process. In fact it can be argued it's the other way around, and nature as a whole "follows" the principle of non-contradiction, arithmetic, generalized geometry. That's pretty supernatural for me, in the strict sense of "beyond nature".
Mathematical concepts don't exist in the natural or supernatural sense. They manifest. One doesn't observe the number, "three". One observes three objects.
The power of mathematics is that if reality shows a mathematical pattern, then it is subject to the rules of that pattern.
IPCC predictions that every climatologist calls "very conservative?"
Yes. I don't consider climatologists who call IPCC estimates "very conservative" to be scientists.
"Poverty, preventable disease, that sort of thing" are all amplified by the changing climate.
They are also amplified by proposed fixes to climate change.
Climate change is a 3rd world problem before it's a 1st world problem.
Doesn't work that way. China and India aren't changing their behaviors a bit in response to first world concerns over climate change.
The man who currently holds Sir Isaac Newton's old job, one Stephen Hawking, appears to be convinced that by the year 3000 Earth will have the climate of Venus. Carl Sagan predicted runaway warming as well.
Now, I don't know if they actually did or not. Or if you're just making shit up. But it's just not possible. There's not enough oxygen available to produce that much CO2 (it would be roughly 80 times the Earth's current atmosphere by mass). It's all locked up in rock or water. Similarly, there's not enough carbon available, it's locked up in rock as well.
Japan might not be the tiger it once was, but it's not like it turned into a 3rd world hellhole.
Japan crushed its future. It was on track to overtake the US. Then they somehow dropped the ball. I'd say that the difficult choices they tried to evade in the wake of the 1990-1991 recession and the huge debt they accumulated in the process, hurt them greatly. Even now, they're still accumulating debt faster than they're growing their economy. I don't see it ending well for them, unless they make some major structural reforms.
Greece would be fine if they had their own monetary policy
If by fine, you mean basking in their double digit inflation, sure. If by fine, you mean a long term viable economy, well, I have to disagree on that. And why isn't Japan doing well? They have their own currency after all.
Environmental regulations have a positive return, but not in the same kind of direct way that the market cares about.
You mean the "export to third world countries" kind of way? Believe me markets care about that.
. If you have a sick population and depleted fisheries and land that can't be used due to pollution, that has a cost, a big cost, on society and the market.
Not really. The costs of these sorts of things have been exaggerated. And markets aren't affected by these sorts of things. Especially when such as the cases of sick people and depleted fisheries, markets have been excluded.
There's a lot more money available, a lot more at stake, at lot more potential to exercise that greed in amazing ways.
This is the sort of weaselly bullshit I've come to expect when peoples' prejudices are questioned. You don't have a clue. As I noted, nothing really has changed. It doesn't matter if there are orders of magnitude more money than there are now. That's irrelevant to greed. It scales with quantity of money quite readily. Similarly, the "potential to exercise greed" is grossly overstated. The economy and the many markets have changed in a number of ways over the past century, but not in a way that magically causes greedy people to act differently. What has changed is that now, when you make enormous mistakes, there is a government out there to bail you out.
You say "why should businesses bother when they can get it for free" like it's a bad thing.
Well, is a bunch of short-sighted businesses which can't be bothered to do their own research good or bad? I think it's bad.
"Massive debt" is just a scare phrase used by rightwingers who think that corporate and government economic behaviour is exactly analogous to that of a careful householder who pays their credit card bills on time and never has a mortgage.
Well, someone has to show first that the analogy is broken. How has high debt worked for Japan or Greece?
Or you just have a remarkable inability to listen or care. Social welfare programs, environmental regulations, publicly funded research, education subsidies, rural electrification, roads, etc. etc. etc.
Classic example of what I was talking about. Roads have an obvious return on value (at least when people use them). The rest of your list doesn't. Some of those such as most of the "social welfare" programs, environmental regulations, and educational subsidies even have negative return. Where's defense and law enforcement? Firefighting?
I don't think that the market actually solves overpopulation or poverty per se. It solves poverty for some people, but generally leaves a lot out in the cold, especially when there are other societal biases in play (and let's face it, there are and always will be and the market doesn't care). The market thrives on generating and exploiting abundance until the train runs out. An out of control population is great for a market (more workers, more markets, more money)...until the crash comes.
The number of "some people" which you refer to is currently the world's entire population. Every country on Earth shows increasing wealth building per capita, even in the worst off such as the ever popular example of Somalia. And increasing wealth is negatively correlated with population growth everywhere.
And in the past 50-60 years, our scientific programs have been the envy of the world (also many of these labs lasted well past the time that we started doing a lot of public funding, and they did well in their day...when companies cared -- once downsizing and outsourcing became the motto, R&D become a cost-center -- the fact that gov't was footing some of the bill was just icing on the cake, but not the root of the problem).
Well, what else could do it? Greed isn't any more prevalent now than it was. How we do business hasn't really changed to favor the short-sighted. Government-based shielding of the private world from bad decisions is the big move.
And by not locking up research in private institutions with a profit motive, the fruits of the research can be shared both within the research community and outside of it.
I see you don't get it. There's all this free research going on. Why should businesses bother with R&D when they can get it for free?
Not at all. If it is worth doing, then the private sector eventually does it. I was just responding to the nonsensical argument that we need to squander vast sums of public funds because something isn't being done by the private sector.
in another 20 years we won't have ice in antarctica
That won't be the case even for the Arctic Ocean. If you had read the story in question, it didn't say that the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free all the time, just during the summers.
Clearly, us all roasting to death as most of the planet becomes an inhospitable desert is preferable to violating the tenets of (mumble mumble) other people's money (mumble).
There are more important things vexing us than a slight increase in temperature. I get a bit tired of the angst over first world problems that just aren't that important to anyone rather than huge problems like poverty, preventable disease, that sort of thing.
It is an exceptional person, a saint even, who is reflexively concerned first for the suffering of strangers. A laudable goal, but if we're honest most of us do not live up to such a standard.
Especially when the "standard" in question isn't desirable. Who's helping your suffering while you go rescue everyone else?
Now, if we were to compare renewable energy over the entire developmental history of fossil fuels... we'd see that it cost a lot of money to make small, incremental improvements.
So what? It costs more, if you're spending Other Peoples' Money. Also existing development is a sunk cost. Sure, maybe some renewable alternative would cost less to research than has been spent on a fossil fuel rival. But the latter exists now and doesn't require you to spend more to make it work. That's a powerful advantage.
It points out, though, that the private sector is unwilling or unable to take on these tasks.
There is the default reason - because it isn't worth doing.
Those who insist that the private sector can and will (or already has) solved these kinds of problems are wrong.
You have a reason you say that? I find it interesting how the people who laud the governments' ability to do things have a remarkable inability to argue the value of the things that government does.
The thing is, even without government subsidies we would still have electric cars, renewable energy generation, and a number of other things. These have value even in the absence of government subsidy.
Also government subsidies aren't always a net good. For example, your complaint that free markets don't solve "long term" problems. They solve the big problems like overpopulation and poverty.
And the notorious short sightedness of modern businesses can readily be explained by the incentives that governments provide for short term thinking such as "too big to fail", massive R&D subsidies that crowd out private funding, Keynesian-style economic strategies that reduce the risks of making bad decisions, and the various government incentives for creating various sorts of economic bubbles.
For example, in the US, many private universities and research funding was sponsored by the private sector prior to the Second World War. Similarly, a number of businesses has created powerful R&D groups. Yet most of these activities have died in the past few decades.
Again, not necessarily an indictment of the private sector, but definitely an indictment of those libertarian types who think that a free market left along by government regulation and prodding would produce optimal outcomes for every problem facing civilization.
Like government solved the problem of companies thinking too long term?
Slashdot Mirror
At the very least, you should be comparing growth of (1.024^20 * 100 - 100) = ~60% to -7.6%, rather than 2.4% to -7.6%.
Which is even more of an exaggeration than taking the same data point 19 times.
In fact, NZ is one of the countries where they inexplicable excluded postwar growth
I don't know if the original research actually doesn't bother to explain this or not. But it's quite a reasonable thing to do since the the post-war growth comes from unusual circumstances that don't apply today. The UK was unusual in that its high debt from the Second World War extended well past 1950.
The Dutch economy is an open economy heavily dependent on the performance of the rest of the world. It doesn't much matter what our leaders do, the rest of the world dictates the state of the Dutch economy.
Heavily dependent doesn't mean that is the only factor. Where's my free windmill and tulip farm? I'm dictating! The Netherlands produce things of value which the rest of the world has to buy. Debt load of the government effects the efficiency of that production.
It is interesting to note that politicians who claim to want the best for big business are NEVER themselves successful big business owners AND that the successful big business owners never ever agree with them. Wallstreet likes the Republicans supposedly (but the two top financial newspapers advised voting against Romney because even a socialist in the white house would be better) but people like Warren Buffet and Richard Branson sing a very different tune. They think the best way to beat a recession is to spend. Not spend recklessly but invest in the future not in handing out tax cuts to buy votes.
Apparently, neither of the top two US financial newspapers, the Wall Street Journal and the International Business Times give political endorsements. The Investor's Business Daily endorsed Romney.
I don't know about Richard Branson, but Warren Buffet has two strikes against him. He profits from a complex tax and regulatory environment such as what Obama brings. And second, his main means of legal tax avoidance, undeclared capital gains would remain untouched.
Romney was a successful big business owner contrary to your assertion that such things NEVER happen. Also I think you don't get at all the perverse incentives that exist at the big business level.
And Obama has worked out just fine for a number of big businesses such as the music and movies oligopolies, the companies needing bailouts, the insurance industry, or companies looking for easy money from the renewables programs. I think most of us realize that what is good for big business isn't necessarily good for anyone else especially when it comes to handouts from the federal government or regulatory protectionism.
Be wary of any leader who leads out of an ideology and not what is needed right now. Would you go to a doctor whose every answer is "lets amputate"? No? Then why vote for a politician whose every answer is "cut taxes, spend less, except on the pork project I need to get re-elected"? Real leadership is looking at what needs to be done and then do it. Not just have a one size fits all slogan.
As I see it, real leadership would be cut the debt load because that's what is needed.
These two numbers, 2.4 and -7.6 percent, are given equal weight in the final calculation, as they average the countries equally. Even though there are 19 times as many data points for the U.K."
Why should the UK be given more weight? There's only one such country, not 19 such countries. And the UK data in question is highly correlated (it all comes from the same debt over the same span of time, not 19 different points in the UK's history).
In addition, the rebuttal ignores two stretches of data:
RR examines three data samples: 20 advanced economies over 1946{2009; the same 20 economies over roughly 200 years; and 20 emerging market economies 1970{2009. We repli- cate the results only from the first sample as these are the most relevant to current U.S. and European policy debates, and they require the least splicing of data from multiple sources. We focus exclusively on their results regarding means because these have generated the most widespread attention. On their website, Reinhart and Rogo provide public access to coun- try historical data for public debt and GDP growth in spreadsheets with complete source documentation.3 However, the spreadsheets do not include guidance on the exact data series, years, and methods used in RR.
It's worth noting here that the rebuttal is willing to take data from the period just after the Second World War where a number of countries had high debt and were transitioning from a total war economy (that is, an economy totally focused on winning a particular war to exclusion of everything else, including economic growth) to a normal one - including the 19 year series of the UK mentioned above, and periods of excluded (excluded that is from the original study for unknown reasons) data from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. All of these incidentally show high economic growth combined with high debt.
If we're excluding data series due to their irrelevance to current economies, why should these be counted? The US and Europe haven't been in a total war economy since the end of the Second World War. So it is to be expected that one would not see the economic gain (whether or not the debt is present) that one saw in the immediate post-war period.
The original research seems weak for a number of reasons, but I'm not willing to call it "fishy" on the basis of a rebuttal which makes its own "fishy" assumptions.
What exactly is a "spacelike vacuum"? Is it different from other vacuums? Are there vacuums that are unlike space?
Well, there are levels of vacuum graded by orders of magnitude drop from one atmosphere, according to Wikipedia. But "spacelike" isn't one of them since pressures in space can vary by about eleven orders of magnitude (ignoring here that the transition to "space" from a planetary or stellar atmosphere is arbitrary).
I imagine what they mean is that they were using pressures down to the range seen in low Earth orbit.
You know that crazy person that occasionally uses your Slashdot account? Cut their fingers off. When I read these rational and interesting posts, my head explodes. It's hard to clean from the ceiling; I have to grow a new head; and the natives find it disconcerting.
br. When I saw the phrase "non-GAAP" I knew it was bullshit. It's not that hard to do GAAP accounting. It's not that hard to lie using GAAP accounting. So when someone can't be bothered to do it, that's a huge red flag for me. Not that I'd sink a cent into Yahoo even with GAAP.
my comment was more an observation of the fact that some people believe the only purpose of companies is to make money for the owners.
Who in this thread is one of those people? I didn't see anyone. I still don't get where the "shame" is supposed to be going.
Well, their colleagues do. Most other scientists do. But because they disagree with your bumwank they aren't scientists I guess. Science is determined by agreeing with khallow's mastubatory fantasies, not observation and peer review!
So what? Allegedly, the IPCC estimates are supposed to be based on the best available science. In practice, the IPCC is a mouthpiece for AGW-advocacy (as can be witnessed both by who are the gatekeepers for research allowed into the IPCC reports and by the divergence between the actual research covered and "executive summaries" of that research.
So when someone claims that the IPCC is "very conservative", I figure they're merely complaining that the IPCC isn't compromising the few remaining scientific scruples it has. I most certainly don't buy that there's a scientific basis for such an opinion.
As to the rest of your pointless post, I see nothing to rebut.
Math and logic laws aren't natural, at least in the sense that they're causal results from some physical/material/energetic/whatever process. In fact it can be argued it's the other way around, and nature as a whole "follows" the principle of non-contradiction, arithmetic, generalized geometry. That's pretty supernatural for me, in the strict sense of "beyond nature".
Mathematical concepts don't exist in the natural or supernatural sense. They manifest. One doesn't observe the number, "three". One observes three objects.
The power of mathematics is that if reality shows a mathematical pattern, then it is subject to the rules of that pattern.
You are confusing morphological changes with typological changes.
I see no evidence of this. Also, keep in mind that the Cambrian explosion was a surge by either measure.
What's a shame about it? They're not doing it for free.
Regardless of that hypothetical, do you really not see _any_ way damage can be done through "journalism"?
No. Perhaps you should explain to us what the problems are then rather than ask pointless rhetorical questions?
IPCC predictions that every climatologist calls "very conservative?"
Yes. I don't consider climatologists who call IPCC estimates "very conservative" to be scientists.
"Poverty, preventable disease, that sort of thing" are all amplified by the changing climate.
They are also amplified by proposed fixes to climate change.
Climate change is a 3rd world problem before it's a 1st world problem.
Doesn't work that way. China and India aren't changing their behaviors a bit in response to first world concerns over climate change.
The man who currently holds Sir Isaac Newton's old job, one Stephen Hawking, appears to be convinced that by the year 3000 Earth will have the climate of Venus. Carl Sagan predicted runaway warming as well.
Now, I don't know if they actually did or not. Or if you're just making shit up. But it's just not possible. There's not enough oxygen available to produce that much CO2 (it would be roughly 80 times the Earth's current atmosphere by mass). It's all locked up in rock or water. Similarly, there's not enough carbon available, it's locked up in rock as well.
Japan might not be the tiger it once was, but it's not like it turned into a 3rd world hellhole.
Japan crushed its future. It was on track to overtake the US. Then they somehow dropped the ball. I'd say that the difficult choices they tried to evade in the wake of the 1990-1991 recession and the huge debt they accumulated in the process, hurt them greatly. Even now, they're still accumulating debt faster than they're growing their economy. I don't see it ending well for them, unless they make some major structural reforms.
Greece would be fine if they had their own monetary policy
If by fine, you mean basking in their double digit inflation, sure. If by fine, you mean a long term viable economy, well, I have to disagree on that. And why isn't Japan doing well? They have their own currency after all.
some of the cuts our government has made has resulted in a decrease in economic output which has led to a net increase in debt relative to GDP.
Can you give an example of this? I happen to be of the opinion that this doesn't happen.
Environmental regulations have a positive return, but not in the same kind of direct way that the market cares about.
You mean the "export to third world countries" kind of way? Believe me markets care about that.
. If you have a sick population and depleted fisheries and land that can't be used due to pollution, that has a cost, a big cost, on society and the market.
Not really. The costs of these sorts of things have been exaggerated. And markets aren't affected by these sorts of things. Especially when such as the cases of sick people and depleted fisheries, markets have been excluded.
There's a lot more money available, a lot more at stake, at lot more potential to exercise that greed in amazing ways.
This is the sort of weaselly bullshit I've come to expect when peoples' prejudices are questioned. You don't have a clue. As I noted, nothing really has changed. It doesn't matter if there are orders of magnitude more money than there are now. That's irrelevant to greed. It scales with quantity of money quite readily. Similarly, the "potential to exercise greed" is grossly overstated. The economy and the many markets have changed in a number of ways over the past century, but not in a way that magically causes greedy people to act differently. What has changed is that now, when you make enormous mistakes, there is a government out there to bail you out.
You say "why should businesses bother when they can get it for free" like it's a bad thing.
Well, is a bunch of short-sighted businesses which can't be bothered to do their own research good or bad? I think it's bad.
"Massive debt" is just a scare phrase used by rightwingers who think that corporate and government economic behaviour is exactly analogous to that of a careful householder who pays their credit card bills on time and never has a mortgage.
Well, someone has to show first that the analogy is broken. How has high debt worked for Japan or Greece?
investment can increase growth which will in turn increase tax receipts which will in turn reduce the deficit.
Government spending isn't automagically investment. If you're spending and not increasing growth, then you've just made the problem worse.
Or you just have a remarkable inability to listen or care. Social welfare programs, environmental regulations, publicly funded research, education subsidies, rural electrification, roads, etc. etc. etc.
Classic example of what I was talking about. Roads have an obvious return on value (at least when people use them). The rest of your list doesn't. Some of those such as most of the "social welfare" programs, environmental regulations, and educational subsidies even have negative return. Where's defense and law enforcement? Firefighting?
I don't think that the market actually solves overpopulation or poverty per se. It solves poverty for some people, but generally leaves a lot out in the cold, especially when there are other societal biases in play (and let's face it, there are and always will be and the market doesn't care). The market thrives on generating and exploiting abundance until the train runs out. An out of control population is great for a market (more workers, more markets, more money)...until the crash comes.
The number of "some people" which you refer to is currently the world's entire population. Every country on Earth shows increasing wealth building per capita, even in the worst off such as the ever popular example of Somalia. And increasing wealth is negatively correlated with population growth everywhere.
And in the past 50-60 years, our scientific programs have been the envy of the world (also many of these labs lasted well past the time that we started doing a lot of public funding, and they did well in their day...when companies cared -- once downsizing and outsourcing became the motto, R&D become a cost-center -- the fact that gov't was footing some of the bill was just icing on the cake, but not the root of the problem).
Well, what else could do it? Greed isn't any more prevalent now than it was. How we do business hasn't really changed to favor the short-sighted. Government-based shielding of the private world from bad decisions is the big move.
And by not locking up research in private institutions with a profit motive, the fruits of the research can be shared both within the research community and outside of it.
I see you don't get it. There's all this free research going on. Why should businesses bother with R&D when they can get it for free?
This ends up being a circular argument.
Not at all. If it is worth doing, then the private sector eventually does it. I was just responding to the nonsensical argument that we need to squander vast sums of public funds because something isn't being done by the private sector.
in another 20 years we won't have ice in antarctica
That won't be the case even for the Arctic Ocean. If you had read the story in question, it didn't say that the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free all the time, just during the summers.
Clearly, us all roasting to death as most of the planet becomes an inhospitable desert is preferable to violating the tenets of (mumble mumble) other people's money (mumble).
There are more important things vexing us than a slight increase in temperature. I get a bit tired of the angst over first world problems that just aren't that important to anyone rather than huge problems like poverty, preventable disease, that sort of thing.
It is an exceptional person, a saint even, who is reflexively concerned first for the suffering of strangers. A laudable goal, but if we're honest most of us do not live up to such a standard.
Especially when the "standard" in question isn't desirable. Who's helping your suffering while you go rescue everyone else?
Now, if we were to compare renewable energy over the entire developmental history of fossil fuels... we'd see that it cost a lot of money to make small, incremental improvements.
So what? It costs more, if you're spending Other Peoples' Money. Also existing development is a sunk cost. Sure, maybe some renewable alternative would cost less to research than has been spent on a fossil fuel rival. But the latter exists now and doesn't require you to spend more to make it work. That's a powerful advantage.
It points out, though, that the private sector is unwilling or unable to take on these tasks.
There is the default reason - because it isn't worth doing.
Those who insist that the private sector can and will (or already has) solved these kinds of problems are wrong.
You have a reason you say that? I find it interesting how the people who laud the governments' ability to do things have a remarkable inability to argue the value of the things that government does.
The thing is, even without government subsidies we would still have electric cars, renewable energy generation, and a number of other things. These have value even in the absence of government subsidy.
Also government subsidies aren't always a net good. For example, your complaint that free markets don't solve "long term" problems. They solve the big problems like overpopulation and poverty.
And the notorious short sightedness of modern businesses can readily be explained by the incentives that governments provide for short term thinking such as "too big to fail", massive R&D subsidies that crowd out private funding, Keynesian-style economic strategies that reduce the risks of making bad decisions, and the various government incentives for creating various sorts of economic bubbles.
For example, in the US, many private universities and research funding was sponsored by the private sector prior to the Second World War. Similarly, a number of businesses has created powerful R&D groups. Yet most of these activities have died in the past few decades.
Again, not necessarily an indictment of the private sector, but definitely an indictment of those libertarian types who think that a free market left along by government regulation and prodding would produce optimal outcomes for every problem facing civilization.
Like government solved the problem of companies thinking too long term?