If it weren't for massive government subsidies and other incentives and regulations
and? Governments dump a lot of money into a lot of things. We don't normally assume that we wouldn't have, say immigration or house building, without a vast government bureaucracy to regulate or subsidize it.
Are you now arguing the Republicans aren't a conservative party in the classic sense?
I notice when you get called on the fallacy of equivocation (that is, shifting between definitions in order to make an argument), only then do you complain that "conservative" is "vague". But here, we see that you are using two different definitions, the "classical" sense and the sense of opposing change in general. The vagueness of the two definitions doesn't excuse your little game here.
So, I should trust you saying that +2C in such a short time frame is frivolous?
You should at least wonder why it should be a problem.
a figure that is expected if we actually do something about it, +3C or +4C fits more with the current exponential CO2 emissions trend
For which there is no actual evidence supporting your claim. I'll note that we don't even have carbon dioxide forcing nailed down beyond a factor of two difference between high and low, and that should be the first thing.
Looks small to you, so you handwave the consequences as small.
You obviously don't need to stop handwaving. It's only an obligation for people who disagree with you.
BTW the huge conspiracy of scientists you point at doesn't exist. It would crumble down in an instant because the way science works. Plus, a scientist who gets caught loses his whole career and credibility, not so much for a blogger or talking head.
And more handwaving from the side that is allowed to handwage. Why would that happen? Keep in mind here that there are at least tens of billions a year currently spent in public funding which depends on AGW perceived as a major danger. That might go up to hundreds of billions a year, if AGW advocates have their way.
If the assumption that 'greater government command-and-control' retards economic growth were true, you may have had a point. Your belief that it is true is not enough.
One merely needs to look at actual government command and control systems. The fundamental problem is that even if governments were economically competent, and they aren't, they wouldn't be competent enough to understand the complexity of everyone's needs and desires and somehow magically come up with a near optimal solution to that. Markets work a whole lot better.
In the real world, the element that slows down progress the most is protectionism by profit-driven oligarchies and monopolies. Imagine how economies around the world would have looked if oil prices hadn't been kept artificially high by the OPEC.
Note here that OPEC is a collection of countries, not for profit businesses.
will mean that their country will no longer exist.
I don't care for some odd reason. They can always move the country somewhere else or figure out how to conduct the business of government in the sea, if they really want to keep it. Maybe they could repurpose a cruise liner for that.
Its not testable at all. Its a prophecy set so far into the future that the modellers will likely be dead before 2050.
But 2050 will happen and it's not that far away as climate time scales go. That the hypothesis can be eventually confirmed or rejected in a reasonable time is enough.
One would have to be pretty naive to think that social problems aptterns from this planet wouldn't follow people to the stars
Ok, name an ecosystem on the Moon or in an O'Neill habitat that needs protecting. As I noted, some problems simply don't exist in space. I have to roll my eyes when someone is telling me that the human race shouldn't go into space merely because some day we might run into an actual extraterrestrial ecosystem and despoil it.
That's almost as bad as the assumption that somehow you can make the human race good enough that we would never revert to our current wicked ways ever again.
Further, some of these problems really are self-eliminating. People who tend to be raving luddites probably aren't going to be on the cutting edge of space development (or any sort of progress at all).
Global warming is very much an underestimated problem, it doesn't help that there exists a denial industry funded by hundreds million dollars in occult, anonymous money.
Underestimated? By whom? You do realize that the pro-global warming side getting tens of billions in public funds each year. That buys a lot of scientific FUD.
As for the timeframe, it's in my lifetime and it's probably the worst thing ever since WW2 or the black plague.
Utter nonsense.If you actually look at the research, they predict things like mild climate changes by the end of the century. Maybe a 2C rise in global temperature (most of the temperature rise occurring around the snow belt), a mild rise in sea level, some mild changes in climate, and so on. Some researchers are willing to claim greater things, but they don't actually back it up with evidence.
the masses of the universe are accelerating away from each other at in increasing rate
Nope. Acceleration is no longer F=m*a here. The space is stretching, but there's no actual change in energy or the thermodynamics of the system except that stuff slides off the edge of the universe which actually makes our entropy issues worse since our universe is losing information at a high rate.
In an advanced enough civilization, the nonsentient machinery might have the power to wipe out our "young stellar empire". Like an automated sprinkler system wiping out said ants.
No one has shown that anthropogenic global warming is going to be a serious problem, let's say, a problem that requires a major adjustments in societies, much less an existential problem, something that threatens our existence somehow. Haven't you actually read the predictions and the time frames that these predictions are made over?
"Dark energy" is just a label for an inherent property of space. It has no bearing on thermodynamics. And there's no evidence of any such energy being added to the cosmos. If it's there, then it's always been there.
I would like to add that we should learn to terraform Earth before advancing to another planet.
What do you think agriculture and cities are? Terraforming by other names. I personally am not in favor of imposing bogus conditions before we attempt great things.
Suppose we had some time ago decided that education should be only for those who demonstrate the ability to learn and already have great moral development? So we make tests to keep out the ignorant, immoral, and lazy. We'd be a lot more ignorant, immoral, and poorer now, if we had tried that.
Sometimes great improvement comes from trying things that we don't know work. So rather than throw up an obstacle that only makes us worse off, perhaps we should encourage people to take chances even when they aren't entirely prepared.
Hawking ought to be more concerned about remaining confined to his chair.
Hawking ought to be long dead by now. And he currently speaks at about one word per minute (via a twitch of a muscle on his cheek). Do you really think he doesn't get that? "Concern" doesn't magically reverse a medical condition for which we have no clue how to cure.
But his concern may help save the human race. I think his priorities are in order.
We'd likely even survive the death of Earth if we really tried hard enough.
By that, I mean the natural death, not the star-engulfed death.
We can survive the star-engulfed death as well by simply not being here when it happens. It just means that one has to live further away from the Sun than Earth currently is.
It is already hanging on by a thread as is
Nonsense. For example, one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the past 26 million years (the Toba supervolcano eruption) happened about 69-77k years ago and didn't come close to ending life on Earth. If life on Earth were truly hanging by a thread, you know, an easy to cut thing, then you'd expect at least a much more profound impact on our environment from global scale disasters like a supervolcano.
Or, learn how to survive on this planet before going out and colonizing another one.
Check, We did that. I'm sure you don't actually mean any reasonable definition of "survive", but some bullshit condition that is far harder to achieve. If we only progressed when random people with arbitrary conditions thought we should progress, we'd still be swinging in trees.
Slashdot Mirror
If it weren't for massive government subsidies and other incentives and regulations
and? Governments dump a lot of money into a lot of things. We don't normally assume that we wouldn't have, say immigration or house building, without a vast government bureaucracy to regulate or subsidize it.
the entropy increase, maintenance or decrease due to dark energy is an ongoing debate.
It may be in a "debate" whatever that means. But if there was a large violation of the Second Law, we would have seen it.
Are you now arguing the Republicans aren't a conservative party in the classic sense?
I notice when you get called on the fallacy of equivocation (that is, shifting between definitions in order to make an argument), only then do you complain that "conservative" is "vague". But here, we see that you are using two different definitions, the "classical" sense and the sense of opposing change in general. The vagueness of the two definitions doesn't excuse your little game here.
You move from 'greater command and control' to 'come up with a near optimal solution'.
If you're not coming up with something near optimal, then you're wasting time and resources.
Here's a thought - we could take you stuff and give it to them. That would at least partially alleviate their loss.
Molon labe. How could everyone wants my stuff rather than just taking modest steps to improve their own lives?
just another mentally unstable individual that fell through the cracks of our selfish "I got mine, screw the rest of you" culture.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, here's another one. Everyone likes a neat and clean story.
So, I should trust you saying that +2C in such a short time frame is frivolous?
You should at least wonder why it should be a problem.
a figure that is expected if we actually do something about it, +3C or +4C fits more with the current exponential CO2 emissions trend
For which there is no actual evidence supporting your claim. I'll note that we don't even have carbon dioxide forcing nailed down beyond a factor of two difference between high and low, and that should be the first thing.
Looks small to you, so you handwave the consequences as small.
You obviously don't need to stop handwaving. It's only an obligation for people who disagree with you.
BTW the huge conspiracy of scientists you point at doesn't exist. It would crumble down in an instant because the way science works. Plus, a scientist who gets caught loses his whole career and credibility, not so much for a blogger or talking head.
And more handwaving from the side that is allowed to handwage. Why would that happen? Keep in mind here that there are at least tens of billions a year currently spent in public funding which depends on AGW perceived as a major danger. That might go up to hundreds of billions a year, if AGW advocates have their way.
As I see it, that buys a lot of science.
Wayland is a change to Linux. Gnome3/Windows 8 is a change to the desktop paradigm towards an entirely new paradigm based on new hardware.
And because "Slashdot" opposes a few changes, it means they oppose change in general? How does that work?
The political manifestation is the Republican party.
Like the Republicans oppose change because it'll lead to sweatshops, union busters, slavery, and social Darwinists wandering the streets?
If the assumption that 'greater government command-and-control' retards economic growth were true, you may have had a point. Your belief that it is true is not enough.
One merely needs to look at actual government command and control systems. The fundamental problem is that even if governments were economically competent, and they aren't, they wouldn't be competent enough to understand the complexity of everyone's needs and desires and somehow magically come up with a near optimal solution to that. Markets work a whole lot better.
In the real world, the element that slows down progress the most is protectionism by profit-driven oligarchies and monopolies. Imagine how economies around the world would have looked if oil prices hadn't been kept artificially high by the OPEC.
Note here that OPEC is a collection of countries, not for profit businesses.
Aside from a century of developing green technology alternatives to fossil fuels, what have the Romans^Wmarkets done for us?
will mean that their country will no longer exist.
I don't care for some odd reason. They can always move the country somewhere else or figure out how to conduct the business of government in the sea, if they really want to keep it. Maybe they could repurpose a cruise liner for that.
Slashdot is also remarkably conservative. You see this regularly in terms of computer technology (anti-Wayland, anti-Gnome, anti-Windows 8....)
I'll bite. What does that have to do with being conservative?
Its not testable at all. Its a prophecy set so far into the future that the modellers will likely be dead before 2050.
But 2050 will happen and it's not that far away as climate time scales go. That the hypothesis can be eventually confirmed or rejected in a reasonable time is enough.
One would have to be pretty naive to think that social problems aptterns from this planet wouldn't follow people to the stars
Ok, name an ecosystem on the Moon or in an O'Neill habitat that needs protecting. As I noted, some problems simply don't exist in space. I have to roll my eyes when someone is telling me that the human race shouldn't go into space merely because some day we might run into an actual extraterrestrial ecosystem and despoil it.
That's almost as bad as the assumption that somehow you can make the human race good enough that we would never revert to our current wicked ways ever again.
Further, some of these problems really are self-eliminating. People who tend to be raving luddites probably aren't going to be on the cutting edge of space development (or any sort of progress at all).
Global warming is very much an underestimated problem, it doesn't help that there exists a denial industry funded by hundreds million dollars in occult, anonymous money.
Underestimated? By whom? You do realize that the pro-global warming side getting tens of billions in public funds each year. That buys a lot of scientific FUD.
As for the timeframe, it's in my lifetime and it's probably the worst thing ever since WW2 or the black plague.
Utter nonsense.If you actually look at the research, they predict things like mild climate changes by the end of the century. Maybe a 2C rise in global temperature (most of the temperature rise occurring around the snow belt), a mild rise in sea level, some mild changes in climate, and so on. Some researchers are willing to claim greater things, but they don't actually back it up with evidence.
Why can't we fund space exploration and colonization while taking better care of the Earth?
You mean like what we do now? I don't have a problem with that.
the masses of the universe are accelerating away from each other at in increasing rate
Nope. Acceleration is no longer F=m*a here. The space is stretching, but there's no actual change in energy or the thermodynamics of the system except that stuff slides off the edge of the universe which actually makes our entropy issues worse since our universe is losing information at a high rate.
In an advanced enough civilization, the nonsentient machinery might have the power to wipe out our "young stellar empire". Like an automated sprinkler system wiping out said ants.
Even then, we may be too late: http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/12/4217786/arctic-ice-free-summer-2050-noaa-study
No one has shown that anthropogenic global warming is going to be a serious problem, let's say, a problem that requires a major adjustments in societies, much less an existential problem, something that threatens our existence somehow. Haven't you actually read the predictions and the time frames that these predictions are made over?
"Dark energy" is just a label for an inherent property of space. It has no bearing on thermodynamics. And there's no evidence of any such energy being added to the cosmos. If it's there, then it's always been there.
I would like to add that we should learn to terraform Earth before advancing to another planet.
What do you think agriculture and cities are? Terraforming by other names. I personally am not in favor of imposing bogus conditions before we attempt great things.
Suppose we had some time ago decided that education should be only for those who demonstrate the ability to learn and already have great moral development? So we make tests to keep out the ignorant, immoral, and lazy. We'd be a lot more ignorant, immoral, and poorer now, if we had tried that.
Sometimes great improvement comes from trying things that we don't know work. So rather than throw up an obstacle that only makes us worse off, perhaps we should encourage people to take chances even when they aren't entirely prepared.
The second law of thermodynamics is only true in a closed system.
The cosmos is a closed system.
Hawking ought to be more concerned about remaining confined to his chair.
Hawking ought to be long dead by now. And he currently speaks at about one word per minute (via a twitch of a muscle on his cheek). Do you really think he doesn't get that? "Concern" doesn't magically reverse a medical condition for which we have no clue how to cure.
But his concern may help save the human race. I think his priorities are in order.
We'd likely even survive the death of Earth if we really tried hard enough. By that, I mean the natural death, not the star-engulfed death.
We can survive the star-engulfed death as well by simply not being here when it happens. It just means that one has to live further away from the Sun than Earth currently is.
It is already hanging on by a thread as is
Nonsense. For example, one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the past 26 million years (the Toba supervolcano eruption) happened about 69-77k years ago and didn't come close to ending life on Earth. If life on Earth were truly hanging by a thread, you know, an easy to cut thing, then you'd expect at least a much more profound impact on our environment from global scale disasters like a supervolcano.
Or, learn how to survive on this planet before going out and colonizing another one.
Check, We did that. I'm sure you don't actually mean any reasonable definition of "survive", but some bullshit condition that is far harder to achieve. If we only progressed when random people with arbitrary conditions thought we should progress, we'd still be swinging in trees.