I'm never sure whether or not these kind posts are serious. For the sake of argument, lets say you are serious.
I don't think there is any reason to say that people are "more advanced" than monkeys. I mean, it's not like they're version 1.0 and we're version 1.1 or some shit. They simply fill a different ecological niche.
I also don't see any reason to say that we have higher intelligence. Maybe we have higher intelligence by human standards, but they no doubt have higher intelligence by monkey standards. They would tell you this if you could talk to them. They'd say "look how stupid you humans are, you can't even stop us from taking your food!" in fact, this may be the message they are trying to communicate to women and children by harassing them.
Finally, I don't see why being more "advanced" and "intelligent" would mean that we should find a solution without killing. The presence of human civilization, which is likely responsible for your claims of superior human advancement and intelligence, has been brought about in large part by our superior ability to kill all kinds of animals. Why should we stop doing it if it's worked so well for thousands of years?
"I wonder why this is occurring all of a sudden? I'd guess this is the result of human encroachment into the monkeys' former territory or perhaps a local food shortage, perhaps caused by the residents."
Uh, this is obviously a case of monkeys encroaching on peoples land, I don't know why everything has to be our fault all the time. I know that in the US farmers would use shotguns to solve this kind of problem (regardless of the legality), I think a similar approach could work in Kenya.
I've got news for you, bridges have collapsed before and they will again. As for your claim that it needed replacing, it was being considered for repair or replacement, but no one thought it was an urgent need, if they had they would have closed it. Certainly no one thought this bridge was about to fall down.
You are wrong in your assertion that we have the understanding necessary to predict mutations. Assuming that the mechanism of heredity is DNA, mutations result from the quantum-mechanical interactions of electrons. Quantum mechanics relies on probability, as it can not be predicted with certainty. Indeed, quantum mechanical theory states that the interactions of electrons are random and probabilistically determined.
My assertion is that the hypothesis that anything occurs at random (i.e. quantum mechanics) can not be proven false. This is because a truly random process could have any result, therefore no test result can disprove the hypothesis that the process occurs at random.
I didn't day that is is not possible to prove that anything is random, I said that is impossible to prove that anything is not random. This is because a seemingly ordered pattern pattern could theoretically arise from a random (unpredictable) process.
For example, take a series of results from a binomial random variable. Suppose you have a process that produces ones and zeros, you may hypothesize that it is a binomial random variable. First you test it and you get 1, you test it again and you get 0, the series continues 10101010101010101. . . Well, you can calculate the probability that such a seemingly ordered series would arise from a binomial random variable, but that probability would never be zero, no matter how many trials you conducted. You could never disprove your hypothesis of randomness (though you could gather evidence against it).
In other words, it is impossible to prove that the process you are observing is not random. Any series of numbers, and set of data, any set of observations could theoretically result from a random process.
Actually the theory that DNA has random mutations can be falsified. If you have an experiment where have multi generations of organism with exactly the same genotype/phenotype without ever having one arise of a phenotype/genotype different then that which was already in the pool and if it occurred always and in every experiment then that would disprove random mutations as a theory.
It is theoretically possible for a pattern that appears to be ordered to arise from a "random" process, therefore is not possible to prove any process is not random. If you are going hold falsify-ability in such high regard to the process of formulating a scientific hypothesis, you must accept that neither random mutation nor quantum mechanics can be taught as "science" either.
You couldn't make sense of a series of temperatures, times, dates and locations? It's not rocket science.
Here's how I'd do it. First I'd select a baseline year. Then I'd calculate the total land area represented by each data point, and calculate a land area fraction for each point. For the year question, I'd calculate the difference between the current temperature and the temperature of the baseline year, and multiply it by the land area fraction. Then I'd sum up all the data points and see how large the temperature change from the baseline year is (and whether it is positive or negative).
Well, I can't speak for the parent poster, but China does have one (and only one) advantage over the US. They can tolerate human causalities. We lost seven astronauts and didn't fly a shuttle mission for years, but I suspect the Chinese would not have halted flights. They'd just say that the dead astronauts were heroes and keep doing what they'd been doing.
Of course, it's hard to imagine that we'd not beat the Chinese to the moon anyway, as long as the funding remains intact. Even if funding is cut, it's easy to imagine that experienced engineers from nasa could bring their expertise to the private sector and still get the job done before the Chinese. I mean, we've done it before. That's a pretty big advantage.
Yeah, but the CO2 - Temperature correlation is eliminated (at least for the US measurements), since you can't show a consistent upward trend in temperatures associated with the consistent upward trend in CO2 concentrations. So it's more like "gee it's been hot lately, but that's not anything new".
I am much less alarmed to learn that something scary happening now has also happened before and things turned out okay in the end.
"A problem with your arguments is the cost of greenhouse gases is not immediate."
That's true, but we do have projections. Besides, we could come up with a worst case scenario, say all the polar ice melts within 100 years at the current rate of emissions and work from there. Everyone would have to move away from costal regions, so we can estimate the cost of that. We'd have to dam all the existing rivers for flood control and irrigation, again that cost is easy to estimate. Of course, we'd have to spend any money that was gathered immediately, but there won't be projects to spend it on for a while (other than flood control, which is really a small cost) so the remaining money would have to be loaned to the private sector for the construction of new infrastructure (like wind turbines, electric rails, nuclear power stations etc. ..). I think you'd find that this approach would be a lot more effective in spurring action. Plus, this way all our bases are covered, because even if reducing CO2 doesn't help we've built the infrastructure and made plans to deal with the problem.
"force regulations which will bring down CO2 emission to pre-1990 levels or lower"
The reason you don't want to force an arbitrary standard is the havoc it will do to our economy. We don't need to bring our CO2 emission down to pre-1990 levels, we need to bring them down to ZERO to eliminate the continued build-up in greenhouse gasses. But if we stupidly expend all our excess resources in order bring our emissions down to pre-1990 levels now, how are we going to build the infrastructure we need to deal with up-coming world-wide problems which will still eventually come? My way is better, because it still allows us to use oil to achieve our needs if no alternative can be found while simultaneously encouraging the development of alternatives.
"maybe fuel cells would be a better storage mechinism"
The problem is materials, we don't have a membrane that is affordable and reliable, and we may never develop one. Besides, it is always better to focus your efforts on known solutions if they exist. For example, we could replace all our existing power plants with nuclear plants, for something on the order of $1 trillion. That's doable in 10 years. Not much else people are talking about is. Further construction of infrastructure (electric rails, replacement of gas boilers and furnaces with electric) could completely eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions, and no new magic technologies need to be invented. The problem is that people now hold a very negative view of industrial development, and they hold a romantic view of new "light" technology that won't harm the environment, and will be cheap and easy and affordable. Of course this will change once people are starving in the streets, but by then it will be too late.
The problem is that you're disregarding the fact the we can't possibly make enough conventional batteries to fill this kind of demand. Worse still, trying to make this many batteries would be a huge environmental catastrophe. You're not thinking globally, you're thinking locally. This technology will never be able to come close to replacing internal combustion engines.
Another problem with battery powered cars is the lifetime of the batteries. In the tesla roadster, the batteries make up a large portion of the cost, but will need to be replaced periodically. That is not sustainable.
The GM approach of having a $4000 battery and a "back up" engine for long distances is much more practical. The only real purpose conventional batteries may serve in transportation is supplemental, a car will always need the IC engine to achieve good range at reasonable cost.
"If it means making the government force the car companies to adjust production"
That's retarded. If people want to buy gas guzzlers, they should be able to. And car companies should be allowed to sell them. This kind of totalitarian approach to environmental regulation puts companies and private citizens at odds with government and builds resentment as fundamental freedoms are restricted. Moreover, such regulations are almost always arbitrary and meaningless.
They say "we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10%, so we'll just require car companies to have a fleet average fuel economy that is 10% lower". They completely ignore any kind of cost-benefit analysis, or natural market adjustments and set out to achieve an arbitrary standard. This approach will likely be completely unsuccessful in combatting greenhouse gas emissions, since IC engines and coal power-plants are so important to our economy. Enforcing arbitrary standards on this sector of the economy would likely cause so much hardship that people would never think of the environment again (they wouldn't be able to afford to).
A much better approach would be to sum up the costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions (or pollution in general) and charge that cost back to emitters (and use the money gathered to mitigate the effects of the pollution as much as possible). That would decrease pollution, and repair the damage done by it. More importantly, people who feel that they need to emit would still be able to do so (so long as they could afford it).
I mean, is there any benefit to trying to integrate the IT workplace if it's not working, and women don't seem interested in working there? Maybe it's time to admit its a lost cause.
There's a difference between building a few all electric cars, and building hundreds of millions of them. It's not possible to replace most of the IC engines in place with today with alternative technologies available today.
My complaint is that scientists always make these kind of hyperbolic statements about whatever new technology they are promoting, and they're always not even being close to being true. It's true that geothermal itself does not emit CO2, but that does not mean that their environmental impact will be less. Suppose widespread use of geo-thermal means that greater environmental contamination with sulfur, or suppose it contaminates groundwater supplies the way drilling often does. Suppose that the maintenance cycle is very high due to the corrosive environments you'd have to install the piping in.
In five years, when technical difficulties or environmental concerns have proven to be insurmountable, people will ask what happened to geo-thermal, the magic bullet that was going to provide 250 times as much energy with no environmental impact. Just like the fabled electric car, they're depending on technological advances that have not yet occurred and may never occur to make this dream a reality.
I just wish people would hold their tongues and dispense with all the misleading hyperbole.
"could fill the world's annual needs 250,000 times over with nearly zero impact on the climate or the environment"
Apparently, scientists don't realize that the construction and maintenance of power plants and power transmission infrastructure has an environmental impact.
I don't believe the Congress is granted the authority to write laws regulating state treatment of municipal ISPs (I don't see how you could possibly try to shoe-horn this into "regulating inter-state commerce").
"I really get tired of the unquestioned assumption that businesses will be more responsive to their customers than governments will to their citizens"
So I take it you've never dealt with the IRS, DMV, EPA, or most other government agencies that people have deal with on a regular basis. Even ATT is more customer oriented, and it's just about the worst the private sector has to offer.
"Personally, I'd expect a lot better service from a city-owned ISP than from some Not-So-Baby-Bell that's headquartered halfway across the country and has most of its employees halfway around the world, and makes more money in a week than my city council spends in a year."
Well, that's probably because you don't have a lot of experience dealing with underfunded, understaffed, municipal services.
Slashdot Mirror
"they would need to think their way around a .38 bullet"
For small, fast moving critters like monkeys I would use bird shot. It would be hard to hit them with a bullet.
I'm never sure whether or not these kind posts are serious. For the sake of argument, lets say you are serious.
I don't think there is any reason to say that people are "more advanced" than monkeys. I mean, it's not like they're version 1.0 and we're version 1.1 or some shit. They simply fill a different ecological niche.
I also don't see any reason to say that we have higher intelligence. Maybe we have higher intelligence by human standards, but they no doubt have higher intelligence by monkey standards. They would tell you this if you could talk to them. They'd say "look how stupid you humans are, you can't even stop us from taking your food!" in fact, this may be the message they are trying to communicate to women and children by harassing them.
Finally, I don't see why being more "advanced" and "intelligent" would mean that we should find a solution without killing. The presence of human civilization, which is likely responsible for your claims of superior human advancement and intelligence, has been brought about in large part by our superior ability to kill all kinds of animals. Why should we stop doing it if it's worked so well for thousands of years?
"I wonder why this is occurring all of a sudden? I'd guess this is the result of human encroachment into the monkeys' former territory or perhaps a local food shortage, perhaps caused by the residents."
Uh, this is obviously a case of monkeys encroaching on peoples land, I don't know why everything has to be our fault all the time. I know that in the US farmers would use shotguns to solve this kind of problem (regardless of the legality), I think a similar approach could work in Kenya.
I've got news for you, bridges have collapsed before and they will again. As for your claim that it needed replacing, it was being considered for repair or replacement, but no one thought it was an urgent need, if they had they would have closed it. Certainly no one thought this bridge was about to fall down.
Are you insane? How much do you think it costs to replace roads and bridges? I assure you that it is well withing our ability.
It's good to finally see an article about solar cell efficiency improvements where an actual prototype has been built and tested.
You are wrong in your assertion that we have the understanding necessary to predict mutations. Assuming that the mechanism of heredity is DNA, mutations result from the quantum-mechanical interactions of electrons. Quantum mechanics relies on probability, as it can not be predicted with certainty. Indeed, quantum mechanical theory states that the interactions of electrons are random and probabilistically determined.
My assertion is that the hypothesis that anything occurs at random (i.e. quantum mechanics) can not be proven false. This is because a truly random process could have any result, therefore no test result can disprove the hypothesis that the process occurs at random.
"Not possible to prove anything is random"
I didn't day that is is not possible to prove that anything is random, I said that is impossible to prove that anything is not random. This is because a seemingly ordered pattern pattern could theoretically arise from a random (unpredictable) process.
For example, take a series of results from a binomial random variable. Suppose you have a process that produces ones and zeros, you may hypothesize that it is a binomial random variable. First you test it and you get 1, you test it again and you get 0, the series continues 10101010101010101. . . Well, you can calculate the probability that such a seemingly ordered series would arise from a binomial random variable, but that probability would never be zero, no matter how many trials you conducted. You could never disprove your hypothesis of randomness (though you could gather evidence against it).
In other words, it is impossible to prove that the process you are observing is not random. Any series of numbers, and set of data, any set of observations could theoretically result from a random process.
It is theoretically possible for a pattern that appears to be ordered to arise from a "random" process, therefore is not possible to prove any process is not random. If you are going hold falsify-ability in such high regard to the process of formulating a scientific hypothesis, you must accept that neither random mutation nor quantum mechanics can be taught as "science" either.
You couldn't make sense of a series of temperatures, times, dates and locations? It's not rocket science.
Here's how I'd do it. First I'd select a baseline year. Then I'd calculate the total land area represented by each data point, and calculate a land area fraction for each point. For the year question, I'd calculate the difference between the current temperature and the temperature of the baseline year, and multiply it by the land area fraction. Then I'd sum up all the data points and see how large the temperature change from the baseline year is (and whether it is positive or negative).
It'd make the jump, but you might want to try dropping a bus 1.16m before making the determination that it'd be okay.
USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
If they put the word socialist in their name, it's safe to say that that's how they identified themselves, right?
Well, I can't speak for the parent poster, but China does have one (and only one) advantage over the US. They can tolerate human causalities. We lost seven astronauts and didn't fly a shuttle mission for years, but I suspect the Chinese would not have halted flights. They'd just say that the dead astronauts were heroes and keep doing what they'd been doing.
Of course, it's hard to imagine that we'd not beat the Chinese to the moon anyway, as long as the funding remains intact. Even if funding is cut, it's easy to imagine that experienced engineers from nasa could bring their expertise to the private sector and still get the job done before the Chinese. I mean, we've done it before. That's a pretty big advantage.
" That's not a pleasant thought."
Yeah, but the CO2 - Temperature correlation is eliminated (at least for the US measurements), since you can't show a consistent upward trend in temperatures associated with the consistent upward trend in CO2 concentrations. So it's more like "gee it's been hot lately, but that's not anything new".
I am much less alarmed to learn that something scary happening now has also happened before and things turned out okay in the end.
"A problem with your arguments is the cost of greenhouse gases is not immediate."
.). I think you'd find that this approach would be a lot more effective in spurring action. Plus, this way all our bases are covered, because even if reducing CO2 doesn't help we've built the infrastructure and made plans to deal with the problem.
That's true, but we do have projections. Besides, we could come up with a worst case scenario, say all the polar ice melts within 100 years at the current rate of emissions and work from there. Everyone would have to move away from costal regions, so we can estimate the cost of that. We'd have to dam all the existing rivers for flood control and irrigation, again that cost is easy to estimate. Of course, we'd have to spend any money that was gathered immediately, but there won't be projects to spend it on for a while (other than flood control, which is really a small cost) so the remaining money would have to be loaned to the private sector for the construction of new infrastructure (like wind turbines, electric rails, nuclear power stations etc. .
"force regulations which will bring down CO2 emission to pre-1990 levels or lower"
The reason you don't want to force an arbitrary standard is the havoc it will do to our economy. We don't need to bring our CO2 emission down to pre-1990 levels, we need to bring them down to ZERO to eliminate the continued build-up in greenhouse gasses. But if we stupidly expend all our excess resources in order bring our emissions down to pre-1990 levels now, how are we going to build the infrastructure we need to deal with up-coming world-wide problems which will still eventually come? My way is better, because it still allows us to use oil to achieve our needs if no alternative can be found while simultaneously encouraging the development of alternatives.
"maybe fuel cells would be a better storage mechinism"
The problem is materials, we don't have a membrane that is affordable and reliable, and we may never develop one. Besides, it is always better to focus your efforts on known solutions if they exist. For example, we could replace all our existing power plants with nuclear plants, for something on the order of $1 trillion. That's doable in 10 years. Not much else people are talking about is. Further construction of infrastructure (electric rails, replacement of gas boilers and furnaces with electric) could completely eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions, and no new magic technologies need to be invented. The problem is that people now hold a very negative view of industrial development, and they hold a romantic view of new "light" technology that won't harm the environment, and will be cheap and easy and affordable. Of course this will change once people are starving in the streets, but by then it will be too late.
"act locally, think globally"
The problem is that you're disregarding the fact the we can't possibly make enough conventional batteries to fill this kind of demand. Worse still, trying to make this many batteries would be a huge environmental catastrophe. You're not thinking globally, you're thinking locally. This technology will never be able to come close to replacing internal combustion engines.
Another problem with battery powered cars is the lifetime of the batteries. In the tesla roadster, the batteries make up a large portion of the cost, but will need to be replaced periodically. That is not sustainable.
The GM approach of having a $4000 battery and a "back up" engine for long distances is much more practical. The only real purpose conventional batteries may serve in transportation is supplemental, a car will always need the IC engine to achieve good range at reasonable cost.
"If it means making the government force the car companies to adjust production"
That's retarded. If people want to buy gas guzzlers, they should be able to. And car companies should be allowed to sell them. This kind of totalitarian approach to environmental regulation puts companies and private citizens at odds with government and builds resentment as fundamental freedoms are restricted. Moreover, such regulations are almost always arbitrary and meaningless.
They say "we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10%, so we'll just require car companies to have a fleet average fuel economy that is 10% lower". They completely ignore any kind of cost-benefit analysis, or natural market adjustments and set out to achieve an arbitrary standard. This approach will likely be completely unsuccessful in combatting greenhouse gas emissions, since IC engines and coal power-plants are so important to our economy. Enforcing arbitrary standards on this sector of the economy would likely cause so much hardship that people would never think of the environment again (they wouldn't be able to afford to).
A much better approach would be to sum up the costs associated with greenhouse gas emissions (or pollution in general) and charge that cost back to emitters (and use the money gathered to mitigate the effects of the pollution as much as possible). That would decrease pollution, and repair the damage done by it. More importantly, people who feel that they need to emit would still be able to do so (so long as they could afford it).
That's true, but you can do the calculations:
"Population growth rate:
0.894% (2007 est.)
Birth rate:
14.16 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate:
8.26 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Net migration rate:
3.05 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2007 est.)"
just ignore the migration:
(14.16 - 8.26) / 1000 = 0.590%
still much larger than zero
When can I start selling my vote?
I mean, is there any benefit to trying to integrate the IT workplace if it's not working, and women don't seem interested in working there? Maybe it's time to admit its a lost cause.
There's a difference between building a few all electric cars, and building hundreds of millions of them. It's not possible to replace most of the IC engines in place with today with alternative technologies available today.
I think you misunderstood my comment.
My complaint is that scientists always make these kind of hyperbolic statements about whatever new technology they are promoting, and they're always not even being close to being true. It's true that geothermal itself does not emit CO2, but that does not mean that their environmental impact will be less. Suppose widespread use of geo-thermal means that greater environmental contamination with sulfur, or suppose it contaminates groundwater supplies the way drilling often does. Suppose that the maintenance cycle is very high due to the corrosive environments you'd have to install the piping in.
In five years, when technical difficulties or environmental concerns have proven to be insurmountable, people will ask what happened to geo-thermal, the magic bullet that was going to provide 250 times as much energy with no environmental impact. Just like the fabled electric car, they're depending on technological advances that have not yet occurred and may never occur to make this dream a reality.
I just wish people would hold their tongues and dispense with all the misleading hyperbole.
"could fill the world's annual needs 250,000 times over with nearly zero impact on the climate or the environment"
Apparently, scientists don't realize that the construction and maintenance of power plants and power transmission infrastructure has an environmental impact.
I don't believe the Congress is granted the authority to write laws regulating state treatment of municipal ISPs (I don't see how you could possibly try to shoe-horn this into "regulating inter-state commerce").
"I really get tired of the unquestioned assumption that businesses will be more responsive to their customers than governments will to their citizens"
So I take it you've never dealt with the IRS, DMV, EPA, or most other government agencies that people have deal with on a regular basis. Even ATT is more customer oriented, and it's just about the worst the private sector has to offer.
"Personally, I'd expect a lot better service from a city-owned ISP than from some Not-So-Baby-Bell that's headquartered halfway across the country and has most of its employees halfway around the world, and makes more money in a week than my city council spends in a year."
Well, that's probably because you don't have a lot of experience dealing with underfunded, understaffed, municipal services.