Just like the so-called global warming crisis is mere statistical noise when measured against the natural background of changes we know have taken place since the dawn of time.
So - If I'm reading this correctly - you are claiming that the Earth's climate is independant of CO2 concentrations (since to dany that human activity changes CO2 levels would be very stupid indeed). That's quite a drastic claim; would you care to substantiate it? For instance, I'd like to hear your explanation of how the late precambrian super glaciation cycle worked without reference to CO2 levels.
All I would ask is that you do the math. In order to replace 20% of current oil usage, you would have to (as an example) chop down all of the remaining African rainforests to make the land; you are talking about a 10 fold worldwide increase in plant oil production. That is what I would term 'An environmental catastrophie'. No realistic environmantalist would advocate biodiesel as currently produced (Desert-farm-algal-biodiesel may have a part to play in that it is the only solution I've seen that actually does scale.
Basing your hopes on solutions that don't scale is a very bad idea indeed, unless you are acting as a spokesman for Exxon. Now, were I spokesman for the fossil fuel lobby, I'd be pressing for more wind, solar, biodiesel and the 'hydrogen economy' right now, as I would look green, attract government subsidies AND sleep easy in the knowledge that my core businesses would be completely unaffected. Nuclear power combined with electric cars would give me nightmares.. but I think we can count on the environmentalists to stop the nuclear industry and GM/Ford to stop electric cars.
In this case, the starting point could be P(G) = 0.5.
But, you can then introduce quite a bit of evidence (Prayer dosen't work, no supernatural occurances are ever observed, churches get hit by lightening, Bill Gates) - that demonstrate a lower probability for P(G). Since things like 'observe' mean, scientifically, P(E) = 0.05, it does not take a great many observations to get P(G) down to near zero.
Even taking 50/50 as a starting point does not do much for believers.
I usually make an effort to be polite and respectful on slashdot, as I find that sarcasm and sniping with ad hominem is counterproductive. Usually.
Nah, when dealing people who combine strong opinions with a poor knowledge of basic science, I find sarcasimm the only way.
Well, at least you included the 'grain' caveat. According to the FOA's statistical database, forestry, livestock, and fisheries comprise over 35% of gross food production.
What do we feed livestock on, again?
Perhaps it was too difficult for you to understand the first time, so I will repeat using smaller words and examples for illustration: When mammals such as human beings digest food, the extraction of available chemical energy from that food is not 100% efficient.
But you relied on it being nearer 0%. In fact (if you did but a bit of research), the majority of calories in faeces are from cellulose, which TDP (or any other process for that matter) cannot convert into oil. You can burn it, although at a cost to soil fertility, but certainly not convert it into oil.
I have stated such, and have referred you to the sources where I've gotten my information - the company holding the patents on this technology, and the scientific press.
I use the same sources, except that I actually have a basic science education. Do I have to direct you to chemistry 101?
If you think the process is not limited in feedstocks, then you may like to explain why they pick such a limited range of examples. Why not paper? Why not wood?
Perhaps proteins are the special biological fats of which you speak, in which case I apologize for my ignorance. Then again, perhaps they are not.
I actually dispair at comments like this. Surely you know that protein and fat are different things? That is really basic nutrition. Basic chemistry will tell you that proteins will depolymerise into Ammonium sulphate (a good fertiliser), ammonium nitrate, methane and CO2. Not, unfortunately, oil.
In contrast to my approach, however, you have made only unsubstantiated assertions. I'm not sure what kind of scientist you are, but "because I say so" is generally considered to be evidence of little weight.
We are talking way, way below the level where references are required; the fact that you proudly state your ignorance like some sort of protective shield does not place me under the burden of teaching you basic chemistry. Do you believe every press release you read?
Of course, there's always zombie outbreaks to think of. Do zombies die of old age?
On the other hand, the extreme population explosion implies (with one or two assumptions) that something like 10% of all the humans who have ever lived are alive today. So we only have a 90% mortality rate, so far.
Well, I'm not a mathematician either, but human beings consume about 25 billion pounds of food per day, and pump about the same weight of oil.
11 Million tonnes/day -> 4 Billion tonnes per year. That seems about twice actual food (grain) production, but I'll let that go..
I have no idea what fraction of the energy content the human metabolism extracts from food by weight, but I assume it isn't fantastically efficient.
That is a very strange comment indeed. Are you seriously claiming that the majority of food you eat is not digested?
Add the remainder (sewage) to the amount of food that goes uneaten and is otherwise wasted or discarded (like turkey guts), and add to that the amount of garbage that _already_ exists in the world (trillions of pounds), and I still remain skeptical about the lack of sufficient feedstocks preventing this technology from being viable.
Sewage is not a useful input to thie TDP process. Garbage is not a useful input to the TDP process. Fats and some polymers are useful inputs. As I said before, TDP CANNOT convert carbohydrates into oil, and hence cannot do much with the vast majority of waste. I didn't claim that the process was not viable - that's more of an economic question - just that there are not enough inputs to make it an oil replacement. I'll happily withdraw that if you can actually come up with numbers on inputs (that will work) instead of vague statements about garbage, but I won't hold my breath.
Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't seem like a 'relative lack of feedstocks' that 'only works for biological fats and some plastics.' Given the scale of garbage, sewage, and agricultural waste produced worldwide (think India and China, not just the USA), I suspect the statement that this 'will never be a large scale replacement for oil' is rash and unqualified.
Well, at least you admit to not being a chemist..
Plastic bottles (plastics), tires (plastics), heavy oil and medical wastes (i.e plastics) all come from oil in the first place; currently about 10% of world oil usage goes into products of one sort or another. Even if half could go through TDP, you are still talking 3% max of overall oil usage.
You may not have noticed, but their apparently very impressive result with municipal liquid waste was 25% waste cooking fat (biological fats).. and the output was 25% oil. Normal sewage would yield traces-to-none. Note that if all the vegtable fat and oil produced in the world was put through this process (with none for human consumption), it would replace about 2% of mineral oil consumption.
Turkey guts have a high fat content, which is what the original process was based on. How many turkeys did you eat today?
The TDP process referenced cannot convert carbohydrates into hydrocarbons. This conversion is in many ways the 'holy grail' of biofuels, but is chemically very, very hard. If the TDP people could do it, they would shout it from the rooftops. Instead they tiptoe around it. As I said, they do not have sufficient feedstocks.
Actually, that 'Anything into oil' process actually only works for biological fats and some plastics (Try actually reading their materials instead of headlines..). Given the relative lack of feedstocks, it will never be a large scale replacement for oil.
Don't associate me with people that claim evolution is fully random.
Well, don't claim it then! (Re-read your own posts).
I'm stating how it can be a scientific theory instead of mystical hand waving or appeals to ignorance. And scientific in that it can be falsified, not that it is true.
Actually, you started out claiming it was true. Now it's a matter of stastitics. Fair enough, read on.
Now, to look at your thought experiment: First, we don't use large animals, for the obvious reason that performing experiments on evolution with a species having a long generation time is a bit boring. There are good reasons for using fruit flies for macroscopic things, and bacteria where possible.
Second, we have quantified mutation rates; this is how (amongst other things) genetic clocks are constructed. However, it is important to realise that mutation rates are themself subject to evolution - a section of your chromosome that benefits from novel variation (i.e. your immune system) will have a much higher mutation rate than a section concerned with basic resperation.
Of course, the above does actually disprove ID by your criteria; we have done enough stastitics on mutation rates to remove any systematic 'intellegent' bias. The evolution of things like antibiotic resistance is exactly in line with the idea of mutations happening randomly (with the above caveats).
Now, this 'ID' hypothesis does, of course, fail the parsimony test compared to evolution, and is hence automatically rejected unless positive evidence is given. So it really isn't a matter of allowing it to be falsified, it is a matter of ID people getting positive evidence. Now, you won't see the ID people doing this, for very good reasons (cf, despite your claims, ID is essentially crationism-lite).
Imagine a random generator. It knocks out / substitutes base pairs in DNA. Then you apply a selective pressure to the resulting creature.
You appear to be forgetting duplications, rearrangements and deletions, but I'll leave that for a moment and merely point out that what you describe is not 'A collection of random processes', is it? It's 'A FILTERED collection of random processes'. There's a difference.
The toxic ones would have a selective pressure applied to them, the baroque ones would not unless they perhaps were so ineffecient so as to give the creature a competitive disadvantage
A baroque one (if genuinely so) will by definition be a competitive disadvantage due to hgigher energy consumption. So I'm not sure what your point is here.
If you are claiming that random processes will always generate the best solution, I want you rolling my dice the next time I go to Vegas
I'm not. You are claiming that you can see the hallmarks of design; stop trying to shift the burden of proof. I'm not sure what your vegas comment is meant to mean, apart from an effort to distract.
Sure, it evolved when there was an oxygen free environment. You keep acting like intelligent design is creationism. It's not.
Then what is it? Seriously, what, exactly IS your argument?
Your argument is basically, "Why didn't the designer/God/Aliens/Whoever do something better?" Which isn't really compelling at all when you think about it.
Actually, it's 'Why does everything look exactly as if it evolved if it was designed? Why the special pleading?'
God, even in the Bible, never showed a strong tendency to explain the Why, of anything.
If evolution is taken as a fact then we should see many examples (or at least some) that lead up to the formation of a new phyla.
We do; there is the whole vendian fauna.
These examples should be slowly developed more many tens of millions of year.
Why?
If you look at the beginning of the Cambrian era, there are from around 20-30 new phyla introduced. For this to fit in with evolutionary theory there would need to be some earlier forms of these phyla, but in fact there is none. In a short timespan (about 3 million years) these new phyla "suddenly" appear in the fossil record.
First, I suggest that you actually get current with the research.
Second (and more fundamentally) evolution is rapid with respect to geological time. The very best time resolution you can possible get in the Cambrian is of the order of 10,000 years. More often you'll get a snapshot followed by a gap of a million years or so; for the small creatures we are talking about, that could be 5 million generations. Now, exactly how shocking is it that you see jumps in the record?
The amazing thing isn't the gaps, it's how much we have been able to piece together given the paucity of the record.
As far as irreducable complexity goes, IC structures analogous to those you describe have been reproduced experimentally, by letting electronic circuits 'evolve'; it's not a particular problem.
And as far as the teching of Evolution goes, what is wrong with presenting scientific ideas which demonstrate weaknesses in current theory?
Nothing. However, presenting hypothises which are not scientific or which have been repeatedly disproven (and the claims of ID would fit into one or both of those) is quite dishonest. Even more dishonest is thb bizzare idea that cutting edge scientific debates should be settled by school boards(!). This should be left to the scientific journals, the same way that anything else gets into the textbooks. However, the ID proponents know that their ideas fall apart under scrutiny, to they won't dare to take that approach.
Darwin's "slow gradual change" is still taught in schools, which the fossil record doesn't (probably) support (with some tolerance being granted from a very spotty fossil record). If you want to yell about something, yell about that.
I would be interested if you were capable of going into more detail on this. Bear in mind you are talking to a qualified geologist. I think the above is deliberately deceptive, or very ignorant.
The point where ID better koshers with observations than life as a collection of random processes
You've lost me here (or are deliberately constructing a strawman). Evolution is not 'a collection of random processes'.
There's an unaccountably low amount of vestigal processes, especially in processes that would have no competitive advantage
Interesting. How many 'vestigal processes' does evolution predict? Where is this prediction made (references, please) so that we can have an 'unaccountable low' number of such processes? Or are you simply making things up so support a conclusion you have already arrived at?
If you claim that biochemical pathways are well designed, here is a question for you:
Ribulose is the enzyme complex used by plants for fixing Carbon Dioxide for sugar synthesis. It is, to put it mildly, extremely important for life on this planet. Yet it has a massive design flaw - it is poisioned by oxygen! Oxygen causes it to run backwards, burning the very sugars a plant is trying to make. This makes sense from the viewpoint of evolution; photosynthesis evolved when there was no atmospheric oxygen, so it was not a problem, and now the ecological niche for photosynthesis is filled; a better solution has no space to evolve. Yet a designer could 'drop in' a complete new pathway at any time; the conspicuous failure of this to happen being a problem for ID, usually dealt with by sidestepping or ignoring.
It's interesting that you would want to ask medical students, who are typically taught huge volumes of facts without much underlying theory (for entirely pragmatic reasons; medicine to biology is basically engineering to physics), instead of palentologists or biologists.
I'm personally convinced that people get so emotional because they don't know how to respond to the ID people and throw up language like this.
Well, here is the problem. The ID people absolutely refuse to engage in real scientific debate, which is how you actually get theories into school textbooks. Instead, they try and force their ideas in relentlessly by any means possible. Hence the reaction is more one of a parent getting angry at a child who will not play peoperly than 'not being able to respond'. ID advocates are intellectually lazy and immature; play by the rues like everyone else or don't play at all.
On the other hand, people didn't disregard Einstien, or Newton, or Faraday, or Darwin..
It is a common misconception that all new scientific theories come from people working 'outside the system' who are then ignored and/or laughed at by 'the establishment' until some irrefutable magic moment of proof comes along. That's hollywood, not reality. And when people start using the 'they always laughed at the wright brothers' argument, it is a sure sign they don't have a leg to stand on. After all the wright brothers didn't claim that a heavier than air machine could fly because people thought they were nuts, they claimed it because they actually DID it.
Who cares? Just keep a few backup gas plants around for when the wind doesn't blow.
Well, here's the dilemma: If you install wind capacity equal to the entire requirements of a country, you will still onl yend up supplying 35% of requirements (ignoring the fact that wind supply may not match demand). So gas would end up supplying 65% at reduced efficiency; in other words, you would save less than 35%. At, I may add, vast expense. And you don't need a few plants, you need enough for the worst case, which means that some would be very rarely switched on indeed.
An all-nuclear solution, by way of contrast, would always be available to supply, AND provide a large amount of very cheap off-peak electricity to run things like fertilizer plants and synthetic fuel facilities (in both cases, saving even more CO2 emissions).
Firstly, it's quite possible for a high pressure system to drop wind speeds all over the UK (And bring in a very cold snap at the same time); not the best scenario for a blackout.
Secondly, the point that I raised about baseload generation was and has not even been addressed. Wind power still gets a 'free ride' at the moment - wheras a gas powered station, for example, can be switched on to provide backup for an unplanned outage elsewhere, a wind farm cannot. So you do indeed need installed nuclear/hydro/fossil capacity equal to total maximum demand+20%. Wind power cannot be counted into this.
Normal thermal power plants act as both contricutor and backup. Wind can only ever be a contributor, unless you implement the system in my first post, which makes it fantastically expensive. Switching NG plants on and off (especially newer combined-cycle ones, ironically), is also quite wasteful even if you can predict when you will do it.
Third, we don't usually try and balance electric grids over too huge a region, as it is very hard from a technical viewpoint. Doing this specifically to accomodate wind power should be chalked up as another extra cost. And in the UK, wind power will add to the existing imbalances - most generating facilities are in the North and West, which are also the best wind sites, and most usage is in the south east.
To summarise: Wind power does require more backup building, unless it only makes a trivial contribution. The article you quote tries to dodge issues more than address them.
The problem with making Wind energy into a baseload power source is it's intermittancy. To overcome this without using a fossil fueled backup system (which completely defeats the purpose of having wind power in the first place, you need a storage and backup system). Probably the most energy efficient backup system we can have is a reversable fuel cell system (H2Electricity), with 70% efficiency. A good wind turbine installation will generate electricity around 33% of the time. Hence the installed capacity required becomes:
N = 1 + ((1-C).(1/(E.R)))/C
Where N = Capacity multiplier, C= Capacity Factor, E=H2 generation energy efficiency, R=Electricity generation from hydrogen efficiency.
Putting in our numbers above, we get:
N= 1+(((1-0.33).(1/0.7x0.7))/0.33)
=1+((1.33)/0.33)
=5
This means that you need to install 5MW of wind turbines to get 1MW baseload power. So you can take wind power cost estimates, and assuming that your fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems are free, multiply the cost by 5 to get a realistic cost.
The above also assumes that hydrogen storage is lossless, which is generally not the case. If, as may well be the case, hydrogen needs to be stored on a season to season basis (i.e more wind in winter), this may make the system physically impossible.
Furthermore, the above uses lab fuel cell efficiencies; reducing to 'real world' 40% efficiencies means that N=13, i.e. no less than 13Mw of wind generators are required for 1MW baseload.
In short, wind power shows no sign of ever being able to economically fulfill our energy requirements.
The only reason we have a 'Nuclear waste problem' is due to short-sightedness and a lack of political will. There is practically nothing that actually needs disposal.
Uranium-238 (depleted Uranium)? This should be used as a fertile element for breeder reactors/IFR reaactors. Spreading it over battlefields is a massive waste of a concentrated energy source, as well as being polluting.
Uranium-235. Should be recycled back into reactor fuel.
Plutonium 239, 240, etc. Cannot be used to make bombs, since near-pure Pu-239 is required, and power reactors make a mix of isotopes. Should be recycled back into reactor fuel and hence disposed of.
Other Actinides (Neptunium, Americum, etc (small amounts only). Should be recycled into reactor fuel for the IFR, and burnt up.
Short life fission products (Krypton, Iodine). Decay away in a few weeks; not a problem.
Medium life fission products (Ceasium-137, Strontium-90). Half life of around 30 years. These should be separated out and made into Nuclear batteries, to give vital infrastructure (Air traffic control, Hospitals, etc) free, always-on UPS. If these have a use, then it is far less likely that they will be lost or forgotton about.
A tiny amount of longer life fission products and actvated container materials. Dilute these down as liquid, and inject them in to underwater, salt-sealed empty natural gas fields (Already leak-tested for >100,000 years, self-sealing). Even if they leak, the effect on overall seawater radioactivity would be undetectable.
Or, we could try to bury used reactor fuel for >100,000 years, at the same time requiring 60 times as much Uranium mining and leaving large amounts of depleted uranium around. Hands up who thinks that that option is clever, or environmentally sound.
"Animals will eat when they're hungry and when there's food around" is trivial.
Pity it's not actually true, since there are frequent cases where (just as an example) a male animal will forego feeding to defend a territory and hence attract more mates. Animals will eat in any situation where it is possible and will improve their reproductive chances.
"All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is non-falsifiable.
Any particular reason why? This could be falsified any time an ocean hot spting is exammined.
"No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
The prediction is a statistical one. This may go a bit over your head.
As for claims..
"Cladistic relationships derived on the basis of morphology will be backed up by independently inferred genetic relationships."
"When royalty start killing off their relatives to ensure a favoured succession, the combined genetic relatedness of those bumped off will not exceed 1"
"Tectonically-driven changes in climate patterns will lead to the rapid emergence of new species assemblages that will remain relatively static as long as the climate does"
How so?
The actual process of reforming methanol into hydrogen and carbon dioxide takes energy, offsetting the greater efficiency of the fuel cell; in both cases the exhaust is Water and carbon dioxide. I'm not sure how you get one cleaner than the other.
The only reason that anyone bothers with the idea of fuel cells in cars is because of the diffculty of storing significant amounts of hydrogen. If you are making the methanol to begin with, then you may as well burn it directly; the greater compression ratio improves the efficiency. And, importantly, the huge time and expense of introducing fuel cells in volume is avoided.
Now, if you are REALLY clever, you can just burn the methanol in a standard IC engine, which has the great advantage as been just as efficient as a on board reformer+fuel cell whilst also being compatible with cars that are already on the road.
You mean 'The same effect that is causing the ice in the center of greenland to grow thicker, whilst the edges thin, causing a net loss of ice and raising global mean sea levels, exactly in line with the predictions of global warming', I presume, and your post just got cut off slightly short.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like the so-called global warming crisis is mere statistical noise when measured against the natural background of changes we know have taken place since the dawn of time.
So - If I'm reading this correctly - you are claiming that the Earth's climate is independant of CO2 concentrations (since to dany that human activity changes CO2 levels would be very stupid indeed). That's quite a drastic claim; would you care to substantiate it? For instance, I'd like to hear your explanation of how the late precambrian super glaciation cycle worked without reference to CO2 levels.
Actually, it is nothing of the sort.
All I would ask is that you do the math. In order to replace 20% of current oil usage, you would have to (as an example) chop down all of the remaining African rainforests to make the land; you are talking about a 10 fold worldwide increase in plant oil production. That is what I would term 'An environmental catastrophie'. No realistic environmantalist would advocate biodiesel as currently produced (Desert-farm-algal-biodiesel may have a part to play in that it is the only solution I've seen that actually does scale.
Basing your hopes on solutions that don't scale is a very bad idea indeed, unless you are acting as a spokesman for Exxon. Now, were I spokesman for the fossil fuel lobby, I'd be pressing for more wind, solar, biodiesel and the 'hydrogen economy' right now, as I would look green, attract government subsidies AND sleep easy in the knowledge that my core businesses would be completely unaffected. Nuclear power combined with electric cars would give me nightmares.. but I think we can count on the environmentalists to stop the nuclear industry and GM/Ford to stop electric cars.
In this case, the starting point could be P(G) = 0.5.
But, you can then introduce quite a bit of evidence (Prayer dosen't work, no supernatural occurances are ever observed, churches get hit by lightening, Bill Gates) - that demonstrate a lower probability for P(G). Since things like 'observe' mean, scientifically, P(E) = 0.05, it does not take a great many observations to get P(G) down to near zero.
Even taking 50/50 as a starting point does not do much for believers.
I usually make an effort to be polite and respectful on slashdot, as I find that sarcasm and sniping with ad hominem is counterproductive. Usually.
Nah, when dealing people who combine strong opinions with a poor knowledge of basic science, I find sarcasimm the only way.
Well, at least you included the 'grain' caveat. According to the FOA's statistical database, forestry, livestock, and fisheries comprise over 35% of gross food production.
What do we feed livestock on, again?
Perhaps it was too difficult for you to understand the first time, so I will repeat using smaller words and examples for illustration: When mammals such as human beings digest food, the extraction of available chemical energy from that food is not 100% efficient.
But you relied on it being nearer 0%. In fact (if you did but a bit of research), the majority of calories in faeces are from cellulose, which TDP (or any other process for that matter) cannot convert into oil. You can burn it, although at a cost to soil fertility, but certainly not convert it into oil.
I have stated such, and have referred you to the sources where I've gotten my information - the company holding the patents on this technology, and the scientific press.
I use the same sources, except that I actually have a basic science education. Do I have to direct you to chemistry 101?
If you think the process is not limited in feedstocks, then you may like to explain why they pick such a limited range of examples. Why not paper? Why not wood?
Perhaps proteins are the special biological fats of which you speak, in which case I apologize for my ignorance. Then again, perhaps they are not.
I actually dispair at comments like this. Surely you know that protein and fat are different things? That is really basic nutrition. Basic chemistry will tell you that proteins will depolymerise into Ammonium sulphate (a good fertiliser), ammonium nitrate, methane and CO2. Not, unfortunately, oil.
In contrast to my approach, however, you have made only unsubstantiated assertions. I'm not sure what kind of scientist you are, but "because I say so" is generally considered to be evidence of little weight.
We are talking way, way below the level where references are required; the fact that you proudly state your ignorance like some sort of protective shield does not place me under the burden of teaching you basic chemistry. Do you believe every press release you read?
And 2% of people don't die??
Of course, there's always zombie outbreaks to think of. Do zombies die of old age?
On the other hand, the extreme population explosion implies (with one or two assumptions) that something like 10% of all the humans who have ever lived are alive today. So we only have a 90% mortality rate, so far.
Well, I'm not a mathematician either, but human beings consume about 25 billion pounds of food per day, and pump about the same weight of oil.
11 Million tonnes/day -> 4 Billion tonnes per year. That seems about twice actual food (grain) production, but I'll let that go..
I have no idea what fraction of the energy content the human metabolism extracts from food by weight, but I assume it isn't fantastically efficient.
That is a very strange comment indeed. Are you seriously claiming that the majority of food you eat is not digested?
Add the remainder (sewage) to the amount of food that goes uneaten and is otherwise wasted or discarded (like turkey guts), and add to that the amount of garbage that _already_ exists in the world (trillions of pounds), and I still remain skeptical about the lack of sufficient feedstocks preventing this technology from being viable.
Sewage is not a useful input to thie TDP process. Garbage is not a useful input to the TDP process. Fats and some polymers are useful inputs. As I said before, TDP CANNOT convert carbohydrates into oil, and hence cannot do much with the vast majority of waste. I didn't claim that the process was not viable - that's more of an economic question - just that there are not enough inputs to make it an oil replacement. I'll happily withdraw that if you can actually come up with numbers on inputs (that will work) instead of vague statements about garbage, but I won't hold my breath.
Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't seem like a 'relative lack of feedstocks' that 'only works for biological fats and some plastics.' Given the scale of garbage, sewage, and agricultural waste produced worldwide (think India and China, not just the USA), I suspect the statement that this 'will never be a large scale replacement for oil' is rash and unqualified.
Well, at least you admit to not being a chemist..
Plastic bottles (plastics), tires (plastics), heavy oil and medical wastes (i.e plastics) all come from oil in the first place; currently about 10% of world oil usage goes into products of one sort or another. Even if half could go through TDP, you are still talking 3% max of overall oil usage.
You may not have noticed, but their apparently very impressive result with municipal liquid waste was 25% waste cooking fat (biological fats).. and the output was 25% oil. Normal sewage would yield traces-to-none. Note that if all the vegtable fat and oil produced in the world was put through this process (with none for human consumption), it would replace about 2% of mineral oil consumption.
Turkey guts have a high fat content, which is what the original process was based on. How many turkeys did you eat today?
The TDP process referenced cannot convert carbohydrates into hydrocarbons. This conversion is in many ways the 'holy grail' of biofuels, but is chemically very, very hard. If the TDP people could do it, they would shout it from the rooftops. Instead they tiptoe around it. As I said, they do not have sufficient feedstocks.
Actually, that 'Anything into oil' process actually only works for biological fats and some plastics (Try actually reading their materials instead of headlines..). Given the relative lack of feedstocks, it will never be a large scale replacement for oil.
Don't associate me with people that claim evolution is fully random.
Well, don't claim it then! (Re-read your own posts).
I'm stating how it can be a scientific theory instead of mystical hand waving or appeals to ignorance. And scientific in that it can be falsified, not that it is true.
Actually, you started out claiming it was true. Now it's a matter of stastitics. Fair enough, read on.
Now, to look at your thought experiment: First, we don't use large animals, for the obvious reason that performing experiments on evolution with a species having a long generation time is a bit boring. There are good reasons for using fruit flies for macroscopic things, and bacteria where possible.
Second, we have quantified mutation rates; this is how (amongst other things) genetic clocks are constructed. However, it is important to realise that mutation rates are themself subject to evolution - a section of your chromosome that benefits from novel variation (i.e. your immune system) will have a much higher mutation rate than a section concerned with basic resperation.
Of course, the above does actually disprove ID by your criteria; we have done enough stastitics on mutation rates to remove any systematic 'intellegent' bias. The evolution of things like antibiotic resistance is exactly in line with the idea of mutations happening randomly (with the above caveats).
Now, this 'ID' hypothesis does, of course, fail the parsimony test compared to evolution, and is hence automatically rejected unless positive evidence is given. So it really isn't a matter of allowing it to be falsified, it is a matter of ID people getting positive evidence. Now, you won't see the ID people doing this, for very good reasons (cf, despite your claims, ID is essentially crationism-lite).
Research punctuated equilibrium then.
Nah, I'll let you explain it. If you are capable.
Imagine a random generator. It knocks out / substitutes base pairs in DNA. Then you apply a selective pressure to the resulting creature.
You appear to be forgetting duplications, rearrangements and deletions, but I'll leave that for a moment and merely point out that what you describe is not 'A collection of random processes', is it? It's 'A FILTERED collection of random processes'. There's a difference.
The toxic ones would have a selective pressure applied to them, the baroque ones would not unless they perhaps were so ineffecient so as to give the creature a competitive disadvantage
A baroque one (if genuinely so) will by definition be a competitive disadvantage due to hgigher energy consumption. So I'm not sure what your point is here.
If you are claiming that random processes will always generate the best solution, I want you rolling my dice the next time I go to Vegas
I'm not. You are claiming that you can see the hallmarks of design; stop trying to shift the burden of proof. I'm not sure what your vegas comment is meant to mean, apart from an effort to distract.
Sure, it evolved when there was an oxygen free environment. You keep acting like intelligent design is creationism. It's not.
Then what is it? Seriously, what, exactly IS your argument?
Your argument is basically, "Why didn't the designer/God/Aliens/Whoever do something better?" Which isn't really compelling at all when you think about it.
Actually, it's 'Why does everything look exactly as if it evolved if it was designed? Why the special pleading?'
God, even in the Bible, never showed a strong tendency to explain the Why, of anything.
That really is pathetic.
If evolution is taken as a fact then we should see many examples (or at least some) that lead up to the formation of a new phyla.
We do; there is the whole vendian fauna.
These examples should be slowly developed more many tens of millions of year.
Why?
If you look at the beginning of the Cambrian era, there are from around 20-30 new phyla introduced. For this to fit in with evolutionary theory there would need to be some earlier forms of these phyla, but in fact there is none. In a short timespan (about 3 million years) these new phyla "suddenly" appear in the fossil record.
First, I suggest that you actually get current with the research.
Second (and more fundamentally) evolution is rapid with respect to geological time. The very best time resolution you can possible get in the Cambrian is of the order of 10,000 years. More often you'll get a snapshot followed by a gap of a million years or so; for the small creatures we are talking about, that could be 5 million generations. Now, exactly how shocking is it that you see jumps in the record?
The amazing thing isn't the gaps, it's how much we have been able to piece together given the paucity of the record.
As far as irreducable complexity goes, IC structures analogous to those you describe have been reproduced experimentally, by letting electronic circuits 'evolve'; it's not a particular problem.
And as far as the teching of Evolution goes, what is wrong with presenting scientific ideas which demonstrate weaknesses in current theory?
Nothing. However, presenting hypothises which are not scientific or which have been repeatedly disproven (and the claims of ID would fit into one or both of those) is quite dishonest. Even more dishonest is thb bizzare idea that cutting edge scientific debates should be settled by school boards(!). This should be left to the scientific journals, the same way that anything else gets into the textbooks. However, the ID proponents know that their ideas fall apart under scrutiny, to they won't dare to take that approach.
Darwin's "slow gradual change" is still taught in schools, which the fossil record doesn't (probably) support (with some tolerance being granted from a very spotty fossil record). If you want to yell about something, yell about that.
I would be interested if you were capable of going into more detail on this. Bear in mind you are talking to a qualified geologist. I think the above is deliberately deceptive, or very ignorant.
The point where ID better koshers with observations than life as a collection of random processes
You've lost me here (or are deliberately constructing a strawman). Evolution is not 'a collection of random processes'.
There's an unaccountably low amount of vestigal processes, especially in processes that would have no competitive advantage
Interesting. How many 'vestigal processes' does evolution predict? Where is this prediction made (references, please) so that we can have an 'unaccountable low' number of such processes? Or are you simply making things up so support a conclusion you have already arrived at?
If you claim that biochemical pathways are well designed, here is a question for you:
Ribulose is the enzyme complex used by plants for fixing Carbon Dioxide for sugar synthesis. It is, to put it mildly, extremely important for life on this planet. Yet it has a massive design flaw - it is poisioned by oxygen! Oxygen causes it to run backwards, burning the very sugars a plant is trying to make. This makes sense from the viewpoint of evolution; photosynthesis evolved when there was no atmospheric oxygen, so it was not a problem, and now the ecological niche for photosynthesis is filled; a better solution has no space to evolve. Yet a designer could 'drop in' a complete new pathway at any time; the conspicuous failure of this to happen being a problem for ID, usually dealt with by sidestepping or ignoring.
It's interesting that you would want to ask medical students, who are typically taught huge volumes of facts without much underlying theory (for entirely pragmatic reasons; medicine to biology is basically engineering to physics), instead of palentologists or biologists.
I'm personally convinced that people get so emotional because they don't know how to respond to the ID people and throw up language like this.
Well, here is the problem. The ID people absolutely refuse to engage in real scientific debate, which is how you actually get theories into school textbooks. Instead, they try and force their ideas in relentlessly by any means possible. Hence the reaction is more one of a parent getting angry at a child who will not play peoperly than 'not being able to respond'. ID advocates are intellectually lazy and immature; play by the rues like everyone else or don't play at all.
On the other hand, people didn't disregard Einstien, or Newton, or Faraday, or Darwin..
It is a common misconception that all new scientific theories come from people working 'outside the system' who are then ignored and/or laughed at by 'the establishment' until some irrefutable magic moment of proof comes along. That's hollywood, not reality. And when people start using the 'they always laughed at the wright brothers' argument, it is a sure sign they don't have a leg to stand on. After all the wright brothers didn't claim that a heavier than air machine could fly because people thought they were nuts, they claimed it because they actually DID it.
Who cares? Just keep a few backup gas plants around for when the wind doesn't blow.
Well, here's the dilemma: If you install wind capacity equal to the entire requirements of a country, you will still onl yend up supplying 35% of requirements (ignoring the fact that wind supply may not match demand). So gas would end up supplying 65% at reduced efficiency; in other words, you would save less than 35%. At, I may add, vast expense. And you don't need a few plants, you need enough for the worst case, which means that some would be very rarely switched on indeed.
An all-nuclear solution, by way of contrast, would always be available to supply, AND provide a large amount of very cheap off-peak electricity to run things like fertilizer plants and synthetic fuel facilities (in both cases, saving even more CO2 emissions).
Firstly, it's quite possible for a high pressure system to drop wind speeds all over the UK (And bring in a very cold snap at the same time); not the best scenario for a blackout.
Secondly, the point that I raised about baseload generation was and has not even been addressed. Wind power still gets a 'free ride' at the moment - wheras a gas powered station, for example, can be switched on to provide backup for an unplanned outage elsewhere, a wind farm cannot. So you do indeed need installed nuclear/hydro/fossil capacity equal to total maximum demand+20%. Wind power cannot be counted into this.
Normal thermal power plants act as both contricutor and backup. Wind can only ever be a contributor, unless you implement the system in my first post, which makes it fantastically expensive. Switching NG plants on and off (especially newer combined-cycle ones, ironically), is also quite wasteful even if you can predict when you will do it.
Third, we don't usually try and balance electric grids over too huge a region, as it is very hard from a technical viewpoint. Doing this specifically to accomodate wind power should be chalked up as another extra cost. And in the UK, wind power will add to the existing imbalances - most generating facilities are in the North and West, which are also the best wind sites, and most usage is in the south east.
To summarise: Wind power does require more backup building, unless it only makes a trivial contribution. The article you quote tries to dodge issues more than address them.
The problem with making Wind energy into a baseload power source is it's intermittancy. To overcome this without using a fossil fueled backup system (which completely defeats the purpose of having wind power in the first place, you need a storage and backup system). Probably the most energy efficient backup system we can have is a reversable fuel cell system (H2Electricity), with 70% efficiency. A good wind turbine installation will generate electricity around 33% of the time. Hence the installed capacity required becomes: N = 1 + ((1-C).(1/(E.R)))/C Where N = Capacity multiplier, C= Capacity Factor, E=H2 generation energy efficiency, R=Electricity generation from hydrogen efficiency. Putting in our numbers above, we get: N= 1+(((1-0.33).(1/0.7x0.7))/0.33) =1+((1.33)/0.33) =5 This means that you need to install 5MW of wind turbines to get 1MW baseload power. So you can take wind power cost estimates, and assuming that your fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems are free, multiply the cost by 5 to get a realistic cost. The above also assumes that hydrogen storage is lossless, which is generally not the case. If, as may well be the case, hydrogen needs to be stored on a season to season basis (i.e more wind in winter), this may make the system physically impossible. Furthermore, the above uses lab fuel cell efficiencies; reducing to 'real world' 40% efficiencies means that N=13, i.e. no less than 13Mw of wind generators are required for 1MW baseload. In short, wind power shows no sign of ever being able to economically fulfill our energy requirements.
Don't use nuclear power: Contains the word 'Nuclear', hence bad.
Don't use fossil fuels: GHGs, Acid rain, particulates et. al.
Don't use Wind: Unslightly, kills birds.
Don't use solar: Too polluting in manifacture.
Don't use biomass: Polluting when burnt, should be compost.
Don't use hydropower: Disrupts water based ecosystems.
Don't use Animal power: Explotitive.
Don't use slaves: Medical costs.
Don't eat animals: Cruel.
Don't live in caves: Caves are fragile ecosystems!
Don't eat live plants: If you listen hard, you can hear them scream.
Don't urinate: Causes eutrophication.
Don't breathe: That's a no-brainer.
Don't cast a shadow: You will be depriving plants of light.
The only reason we have a 'Nuclear waste problem' is due to short-sightedness and a lack of political will. There is practically nothing that actually needs disposal.
Uranium-238 (depleted Uranium)? This should be used as a fertile element for breeder reactors/IFR reaactors. Spreading it over battlefields is a massive waste of a concentrated energy source, as well as being polluting.
Uranium-235. Should be recycled back into reactor fuel.
Plutonium 239, 240, etc. Cannot be used to make bombs, since near-pure Pu-239 is required, and power reactors make a mix of isotopes. Should be recycled back into reactor fuel and hence disposed of.
Other Actinides (Neptunium, Americum, etc (small amounts only). Should be recycled into reactor fuel for the IFR, and burnt up.
Short life fission products (Krypton, Iodine). Decay away in a few weeks; not a problem.
Medium life fission products (Ceasium-137, Strontium-90). Half life of around 30 years. These should be separated out and made into Nuclear batteries, to give vital infrastructure (Air traffic control, Hospitals, etc) free, always-on UPS. If these have a use, then it is far less likely that they will be lost or forgotton about.
A tiny amount of longer life fission products and actvated container materials. Dilute these down as liquid, and inject them in to underwater, salt-sealed empty natural gas fields (Already leak-tested for >100,000 years, self-sealing). Even if they leak, the effect on overall seawater radioactivity would be undetectable.
Or, we could try to bury used reactor fuel for >100,000 years, at the same time requiring 60 times as much Uranium mining and leaving large amounts of depleted uranium around. Hands up who thinks that that option is clever, or environmentally sound.
No, I tell the entire truth; you are the one trying to spin by telling half of it.
"Animals will eat when they're hungry and when there's food around" is trivial.
Pity it's not actually true, since there are frequent cases where (just as an example) a male animal will forego feeding to defend a territory and hence attract more mates. Animals will eat in any situation where it is possible and will improve their reproductive chances.
"All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is non-falsifiable.
Any particular reason why? This could be falsified any time an ocean hot spting is exammined.
"No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
The prediction is a statistical one. This may go a bit over your head.
As for claims..
"Cladistic relationships derived on the basis of morphology will be backed up by independently inferred genetic relationships."
"When royalty start killing off their relatives to ensure a favoured succession, the combined genetic relatedness of those bumped off will not exceed 1"
"Tectonically-driven changes in climate patterns will lead to the rapid emergence of new species assemblages that will remain relatively static as long as the climate does"
How so? The actual process of reforming methanol into hydrogen and carbon dioxide takes energy, offsetting the greater efficiency of the fuel cell; in both cases the exhaust is Water and carbon dioxide. I'm not sure how you get one cleaner than the other. The only reason that anyone bothers with the idea of fuel cells in cars is because of the diffculty of storing significant amounts of hydrogen. If you are making the methanol to begin with, then you may as well burn it directly; the greater compression ratio improves the efficiency. And, importantly, the huge time and expense of introducing fuel cells in volume is avoided.
Now, if you are REALLY clever, you can just burn the methanol in a standard IC engine, which has the great advantage as been just as efficient as a on board reformer+fuel cell whilst also being compatible with cars that are already on the road.
You mean 'The same effect that is causing the ice in the center of greenland to grow thicker, whilst the edges thin, causing a net loss of ice and raising global mean sea levels, exactly in line with the predictions of global warming', I presume, and your post just got cut off slightly short.
Otherwise that post would look a bit silly.