Crop yields have their limit. Advances in the field of farming are mainly geared toward reducing the expense of growing food, not increasing the amount of food that can be grown. It can not increase forever, no matter what new technologies are developed.
"we create wealth"
What exactly is wealth? The numbers on your bank statements don't mean a thing if you can't use them to buy what you need.
We have a bad habit of looting future generations. People today are forced to take on large amounts of debt in order to "get started" (student loans, mortgages, short term debt). This is the result of older generations seeking a guarantee of available resources from younger generations. They are essentially enslaving us. What we won't pay willingly, we will be forced to pay through taxes (as the bailout confirms). It's only a matter of time before this situation leads to large-scale unrest or disillusionment.
Additionally, we consume large amounts of oil (which is a scarce and precious resource) for dubious purposes. Right now, it acts as the foundation of all our technology. But it will continue to be harder to extract from the earth at time goes on. Eventually it will not be worth the cost require to remove it from the ground (if the environmentalists don't shut it down first, that is). That's kind of like building your house on a shifting beach. Any idiot can see that it won't last forever.
"Technology usually comes from a pressing need."
I can't really think of a non-military technology of which that is true. This is not true of the steam engine, nor the IC engine. These two technologies are commonly required to make all other modern technologies practical.
The roman empire could not have continued to grow. They ran into problem when they ran out of new lands to conquer. But even if they hadn't, the earth itself is only so large.
The problem today is the same. The earth only has so much arable land, and that can only sustain so many people. It doesn't help that environmentalists are continually placing new artificial restrictions on what land can be farmed.
People today have a bad habit of expecting new technology. It may be possible to produce food more efficiently from bacteria or artificial proteins or some such technology, but then again it may not be. We should wait until we actually have the technology before we plan on using it. Depending on future technologies to solve our problems, when we could solve them with today's, is foolish.
That's true, but I'm not talking about just the US. I'm referring to the US, Western European nations, Japan and other countries which have a central banking system similar to our own.
Also, I don't think a crash is inevitable. I think that as long as we exercise restraint, everything will be okay. People are too detached from the value of their money, they don't know how much labor goes into the things they buy. If they did, they would realize how wasteful they are being, and they would probably stop.
Another problem is lending. Right now most people will take out mortgages to buy a house which will take them 20 to 30 years to pay off. This is despite the fact that it only costs around $50,000 to build a fairly nice house. Because the land resources are scarce, the prices of houses are elevated. But when you throw lending into the picture, you dramatically increase the level to which prices may rise. Especially when people decide that they can sell their house when they buy the next and make a profit. This is obviously a ponzi scheme (look where the money comes from). The entire excess value of the house is not real. Moreover, we have a society of people who have to work, or else they will lose their homes. If we all saved to buy our homes, the prices would be much lower.
Did you notice how the government was willing to spend 700 billion dollars buying bad mortgage securities, but refused to spend $25 billion on auto manufactures. That's because they know that the 700 is fake, there to make us feel better, But the 25 is real and we can't afford it.
We'd do better just to get rid of the whole system. People have become too detached from reality, and we can't make rational decisions anymore.
The problem isn't that people don't assign value to the forest. The problem is that they assign more value to human life. People act like farmers who move in and clear cut forests have nothing but evil intentions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many of these people are starving to death, and their only goal is to produce food so that they may go on living.
In the US and Europe, we have already cut down all the trees necessary to use all the potential farmland. We all have plenty to eat as a result. It is unreasonable to expect people in other countries not to do the same. Who wants to starve to death?
The environment is important, because it filters our air and our water and provides us with food. Some would argue that it has "intrinsic" value. In my opinion, most of the really beautiful places on earth will remain untouched because they are so inaccessible or they have nothing of value.
I think it makes sense to safeguard the environment, but I don't think that means it has to remain untouched. If we can use wood from the forest to build houses, and the forest will grow back, we should do so. If we can use oil to build functional, sustainable infrastructure we should do so. If we can build dams to get water for agriculture, we should do that too. It's okay to make changes to the environment. We're humans and that's what we do. We only need to be careful to make sure we do it in a responsible, sustainable way.
The death of the roman empire was certain before it was born. The whole empire survived on the labor of others. But by looting those other people, they were slowly destroying the source of their livelihood. They starved people to build the colosseum and their aquanauts and to supply their grand army. It was continued growth that sustained them, but once they had expanded as far as they could, the rot set in. It was only a matter of time before the barbarian hordes invaded, but Rome was long gone by that time.
This is not unlike our financial market which is basically a ponzi scheme dependent on continued growth to guarantee returns and sustain many people's needlessly lavish lifestyles. Of course it will come crashing down! Do you really think it can grow forever? There are only so many people and so many resources on the earth, and we have nowhere else to go.
In 2000 years, our space faring decedents may say the same thing about space travel. "They put this space capsule on the moon and these robots on mars, it's too bad that all that intellectual progress was reversed in the 1000 years to follow".
But the technology we have today isn't really capable of space travel (look how expensive and impractical it is). These Greek and Roman inventions are the same. You can't really use that steam engine to do any work, and it is impractical to build those kind of structures with your hands or with animal power.
Today's steam engines, and internal combustion engines, on the other hand, can really make building those kind of structures possible on a large scale.
Deforestation is almost exclusively the result of agricultural expansion. It makes no sense to say that saving paper = saving forests.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the matter:
In simple terms deforestation occurs because forested land is not economically viable. Increasing the amount of farmland, wood extraction and, infrastructure expansion are all important factors in driving deforestation in different regions with mining also an important cause. There is considerable interplay between these factors. For example logging(wood extraction) or mining requires roads to transport the timber(infrastructure expansion) and farmers use these roads to move into previously unreachable areas of forest (agricultural expansion). The ultimate cause of most deforestation is increased food production. Cattle, permanent crops, shifting cultivation and colonization are all equally important to global tropical deforestation
Even when deforestation is the result of lumber harvesting activities, it is primarily because the roads used to access the lumber make it easier for farmers to move in and use the land.
While forest area is on the decline in the US, it is due to urbanization, not timber harvesting activities (the same article discusses this).
I always think it's funny when people discuss putting the laws of robotics into practice. They seem to forget (or perhaps did not notice) that Asimov's short stories concluded that such laws and rules won't work. I think in this case it is a very apt comparison.
It works well as long as you aren't too dependent on it or too obsessed with it. We often hold ourselves and others to an unreasonable standard of perfection.
I see. I was thinking about the generally known deposits of uranium. This seawater thing sounds like a reasonable approach, but that's not how it is done today.
The billions of years number will be valid, if/once they find a good way to get the uranium out of the ocean. I agree with the author that it could be a workable solution, though it is really just a hypothetical possibility today.
"They also fail to mention that, with reprocessing, there is enough nuclear fuel to last for billions of years"
Not quite. More like several thousand if you burn up all the uranium and the thorium we can reasonably extract and don't waste any of it. Also, thorium reactors are experimental, and the jury is still out on whether or not breeding is actually commercially feasible with them. If not, you can only use the Uranium, and you're down to under a thousand years. Still, that is a very long time. It would give us the time and energy we need to build a viable solar/wind power infrastructure.
"All in all, this paper does not belong in any sort of science journal. It is that bad."
How many journals have you read? This seems to be par for the course, as far as my experience goes.
I don't think that's right. I'm pretty sure GE and Westinghouse are major players in the world Nuke market. They just haven't built any of them in the states in a while. . .
It's called installed cost. Wind and solar have about 10 times more of it than coal and nuclear. So all things being equal (and they aren't, the operating costs are also a little higher for wind and solar) 1000 mw of wind or solar will take 10x as long to pay back their investment.
As to reliability. We could build electrolysis plants to produce hydrogen, and combined cycle generators to turn that back into electricity. It would only be about 40% efficient (maybe 50% if we use high-temperature electrolysis) but it would work.
Slashdot Mirror
Crop yields have their limit. Advances in the field of farming are mainly geared toward reducing the expense of growing food, not increasing the amount of food that can be grown. It can not increase forever, no matter what new technologies are developed.
"we create wealth"
What exactly is wealth? The numbers on your bank statements don't mean a thing if you can't use them to buy what you need.
We have a bad habit of looting future generations. People today are forced to take on large amounts of debt in order to "get started" (student loans, mortgages, short term debt). This is the result of older generations seeking a guarantee of available resources from younger generations. They are essentially enslaving us. What we won't pay willingly, we will be forced to pay through taxes (as the bailout confirms). It's only a matter of time before this situation leads to large-scale unrest or disillusionment.
Additionally, we consume large amounts of oil (which is a scarce and precious resource) for dubious purposes. Right now, it acts as the foundation of all our technology. But it will continue to be harder to extract from the earth at time goes on. Eventually it will not be worth the cost require to remove it from the ground (if the environmentalists don't shut it down first, that is). That's kind of like building your house on a shifting beach. Any idiot can see that it won't last forever.
"Technology usually comes from a pressing need."
I can't really think of a non-military technology of which that is true. This is not true of the steam engine, nor the IC engine. These two technologies are commonly required to make all other modern technologies practical.
The roman empire could not have continued to grow. They ran into problem when they ran out of new lands to conquer. But even if they hadn't, the earth itself is only so large.
The problem today is the same. The earth only has so much arable land, and that can only sustain so many people. It doesn't help that environmentalists are continually placing new artificial restrictions on what land can be farmed.
People today have a bad habit of expecting new technology. It may be possible to produce food more efficiently from bacteria or artificial proteins or some such technology, but then again it may not be. We should wait until we actually have the technology before we plan on using it. Depending on future technologies to solve our problems, when we could solve them with today's, is foolish.
That's true, but I'm not talking about just the US. I'm referring to the US, Western European nations, Japan and other countries which have a central banking system similar to our own.
Also, I don't think a crash is inevitable. I think that as long as we exercise restraint, everything will be okay. People are too detached from the value of their money, they don't know how much labor goes into the things they buy. If they did, they would realize how wasteful they are being, and they would probably stop.
Another problem is lending. Right now most people will take out mortgages to buy a house which will take them 20 to 30 years to pay off. This is despite the fact that it only costs around $50,000 to build a fairly nice house. Because the land resources are scarce, the prices of houses are elevated. But when you throw lending into the picture, you dramatically increase the level to which prices may rise. Especially when people decide that they can sell their house when they buy the next and make a profit. This is obviously a ponzi scheme (look where the money comes from). The entire excess value of the house is not real. Moreover, we have a society of people who have to work, or else they will lose their homes. If we all saved to buy our homes, the prices would be much lower.
Did you notice how the government was willing to spend 700 billion dollars buying bad mortgage securities, but refused to spend $25 billion on auto manufactures. That's because they know that the 700 is fake, there to make us feel better, But the 25 is real and we can't afford it.
We'd do better just to get rid of the whole system. People have become too detached from reality, and we can't make rational decisions anymore.
The problem isn't that people don't assign value to the forest. The problem is that they assign more value to human life. People act like farmers who move in and clear cut forests have nothing but evil intentions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many of these people are starving to death, and their only goal is to produce food so that they may go on living.
In the US and Europe, we have already cut down all the trees necessary to use all the potential farmland. We all have plenty to eat as a result. It is unreasonable to expect people in other countries not to do the same. Who wants to starve to death?
The environment is important, because it filters our air and our water and provides us with food. Some would argue that it has "intrinsic" value. In my opinion, most of the really beautiful places on earth will remain untouched because they are so inaccessible or they have nothing of value.
I think it makes sense to safeguard the environment, but I don't think that means it has to remain untouched. If we can use wood from the forest to build houses, and the forest will grow back, we should do so. If we can use oil to build functional, sustainable infrastructure we should do so. If we can build dams to get water for agriculture, we should do that too. It's okay to make changes to the environment. We're humans and that's what we do. We only need to be careful to make sure we do it in a responsible, sustainable way.
The death of the roman empire was certain before it was born. The whole empire survived on the labor of others. But by looting those other people, they were slowly destroying the source of their livelihood. They starved people to build the colosseum and their aquanauts and to supply their grand army. It was continued growth that sustained them, but once they had expanded as far as they could, the rot set in. It was only a matter of time before the barbarian hordes invaded, but Rome was long gone by that time.
This is not unlike our financial market which is basically a ponzi scheme dependent on continued growth to guarantee returns and sustain many people's needlessly lavish lifestyles. Of course it will come crashing down! Do you really think it can grow forever? There are only so many people and so many resources on the earth, and we have nowhere else to go.
I suppose you could argue that using hemp paper leads to deforestation. But we mostly use wood pulp for paper.
In 2000 years, our space faring decedents may say the same thing about space travel. "They put this space capsule on the moon and these robots on mars, it's too bad that all that intellectual progress was reversed in the 1000 years to follow".
But the technology we have today isn't really capable of space travel (look how expensive and impractical it is). These Greek and Roman inventions are the same. You can't really use that steam engine to do any work, and it is impractical to build those kind of structures with your hands or with animal power.
Today's steam engines, and internal combustion engines, on the other hand, can really make building those kind of structures possible on a large scale.
Deforestation is almost exclusively the result of agricultural expansion. It makes no sense to say that saving paper = saving forests.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the matter:
Even when deforestation is the result of lumber harvesting activities, it is primarily because the roads used to access the lumber make it easier for farmers to move in and use the land.
While forest area is on the decline in the US, it is due to urbanization, not timber harvesting activities (the same article discusses this).
They should try this in Yellowstone National Park. What could possibly go wrong?
I always think it's funny when people discuss putting the laws of robotics into practice. They seem to forget (or perhaps did not notice) that Asimov's short stories concluded that such laws and rules won't work. I think in this case it is a very apt comparison.
It works well as long as you aren't too dependent on it or too obsessed with it. We often hold ourselves and others to an unreasonable standard of perfection.
Nevertheless, construction costs and operating costs should be considered in any economic comparison. Otherwise the numbers are meaningless.
So you would view any out of court settlement as legally sanctioned racketeering? Because most potential civil suits are settled out of court.
For those you who don't get it, watch Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog.
The hammer is my penis.
That computer and all it's software was made by a person. . .
I see. I was thinking about the generally known deposits of uranium. This seawater thing sounds like a reasonable approach, but that's not how it is done today.
The billions of years number will be valid, if/once they find a good way to get the uranium out of the ocean. I agree with the author that it could be a workable solution, though it is really just a hypothetical possibility today.
It would also eliminate the manpower needed to generate said energy. People seem to forget that.
"They also fail to mention that, with reprocessing, there is enough nuclear fuel to last for billions of years"
Not quite. More like several thousand if you burn up all the uranium and the thorium we can reasonably extract and don't waste any of it. Also, thorium reactors are experimental, and the jury is still out on whether or not breeding is actually commercially feasible with them. If not, you can only use the Uranium, and you're down to under a thousand years. Still, that is a very long time. It would give us the time and energy we need to build a viable solar/wind power infrastructure.
"All in all, this paper does not belong in any sort of science journal. It is that bad."
How many journals have you read? This seems to be par for the course, as far as my experience goes.
Getting the highly enriched Uranium or Plutonium is the hard part.
I don't think that's right. I'm pretty sure GE and Westinghouse are major players in the world Nuke market. They just haven't built any of them in the states in a while. . .
I noticed that your estimates don't include the operating cost, nor the construction cost. Why is that?
It's called installed cost. Wind and solar have about 10 times more of it than coal and nuclear. So all things being equal (and they aren't, the operating costs are also a little higher for wind and solar) 1000 mw of wind or solar will take 10x as long to pay back their investment.
As to reliability. We could build electrolysis plants to produce hydrogen, and combined cycle generators to turn that back into electricity. It would only be about 40% efficient (maybe 50% if we use high-temperature electrolysis) but it would work.
"I was under the impression we could just slap some solar panels on our house and take ourselves . . . off the grid"
You can, as long as you don't mind that it won't work all the time.
"Do you mean clouds?"
I think he is referring to the time of day when the sun is behind the earth. . .
But we eat the cows, right? So it will still effect our food supply.