The mind has problems multitasking - not too different from a CPU. The brain does a lot of things in parallel. In fact, each neuron is independently doing it's own thing, muh like each transistor in a CPU...
I believe you are referring to this. And no, this gene study does not prove it wrong. RTFA, and you will see that there were no gene samples from the eastern seaboard, where the Solutreans would have landed, and only one group from eastern north america - in canada no less. In other words, if there is Solutrean DNA in native americans, this study would almost certainly have missed it. That the bulk of native americans came from Siberia is common to both theories/studies.
Comprise and compose are opposite sides of a coin.
Just like flammable and inflammable, right?
When comprise and compose become one word, we have to say "50 states make up the union".
And I have to say 'it will not burn' instead of 'it is inflammable'. No big deal really.
Yes, this is a product of ignorance. And that is one of the prime ways that languages do evolve.
In the end, the word means what the writer/speaker meant - not what some dictionary says, and not necessarily what someone else may have meant when he used another word that sounds/is spelled the same. This is the nature of language.
Wot ye not that human speech doest alter from year to year, and generation to generation? Wherefore then art thou distraught over 'comprised'? Pray then, do not let thine fondness of the past nor desire to linger therein prove a thorn in the side of thine fellow man, nor an hindrance to his future.
I wonder if you're aware that Muslim scientists were not only able to determine the fact that the world was round, but calculate its circumference within an accuracy of 10%
Umm, since they had only to duplicate what the Greeks had done centuries earlier, using the records that the Greeks left, this is hardly a stunning achievement. Especially since (depending on the actual length of the stadion) Eratosthenes had as close as a 2% error.
"Easily answered with "Threaten me like that, and I'll bring the Feds to your door for Election Tampering".
That doesn't work if they are the feds. Nor is it likely to work very well if you are in a town of 5000 or less, and those making the threat are the local police. Should you actually get the feds to come, and someone is convicted of election tamperig, you may be subjected to vandalism, harassment, drive-by shootings etc. It is best to not have a receipt.
Also this opens up more fraud possibilities. Don't like how the election went? Forge your receipt and claim there was fraud.
Try to think out of your own personal position - not everybody is like you, lives where you do, etc.
For a company where all employees (or just a majority) telecommute, this robot is pointless - for the reasons you stated. A virtual world makes more sense - or simply videoconferencing. This is good for one or two telecommuters and a bunch of people at the office. It makes a lot of sense for that.
Your excuse for steering the robot around? Sure the robot doesn't drink water - but your co-workers do, and you need to interact with them to do your job effectively. You don't drive your robot around to tell a joke any more than you walk across the building to tell a joke. but if a joke comes to mind, and he just happens to be walking by.... Conversations that wouldn't have otherwise happened occur, and important stuff gets said.
"What he's doing there is nothing more than adding a robot to move the camera and screen around. It's solving a problem we had already solved, and adding an unnecessary layer to it.
Only, you see, videoconferencing didn't work well enough, and allowing the camera and screen to move, that worked better. A cheap webcam at every PC? And the lunchroom, and the hallway, and the conference room, with screens to match? The robot is cheaper, less invasive of privacy, and works better.
What (else) does the robot add? instead of calling you and instantly getting your #@$% voicemail, I can go find you and chat with Joe along the way, which I would never have done otherwise. Maybe Joe then tells me something important too, or I can help him.
It almost sounds to me like the reason you see no use for this robot, is because you see no use for talking to your co-workers without an issue to discuss. You aren't the manager by chance are you?
"How exactly is this different from calling someone up ? (Except for visual contact )
Chatting in the lunch room? Joining a conversation already happening - in the lunch room?
Most people don't call someone else to say the same joke that they call over the cubicle walls, and this helps people get to know each other, and work together. BTW the idea for this robot started as a joke just like this.
Oh, and the visual contact matters a lot - as TFA said, seeing what others scribbled on the whiteboard.
I don't have the reference handy, but the original proposal written by Madison that became the second amendment clears up most of the misunderstanding. He used 'nation' not state. And it is perfectly clear that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." is the part that is the law. The rest just gives the reason for it. Oh, and 'militia' just means 'all the people'. The national guard is what would at the time been called a select militia, with no real distinction from a regular army. Not what they had in mind as the militia.
The logic used in the writing of the second amendment goes like this:
Nations need defenses against foreign governments and oppressive domestic governments
A standing army works well against foreign, but not oppressive governments, not good enough
The militia, aka 'the people' therefore need to have the weapons necessary to
defeat or stall foreign invasions long enough for regular armies to be formed, and,
defeat oppressive domestic governments
They saw no need to differentiate arms that were from those that were not useful to these tasks, since there weren't really any that weren't suitable at the time.
Nukes and biological weapons are suitable for offensive wars and MADD only with a possible exception for tactical nukes. (oh, and they are also good for terrorism, genocide and other crimes!) and chemical weapons have limited use in defense. OTOH tanks, fighter jets, machine guns, grenades, artillery, etc. are useful and should be permitted under the second amendment.
That said, since the second amendment has not been updated to reflect this, nukes should be legal until the second amendment is updated - the law is the law. And it should be updated, not ignored. Anyone who has ever really studied the history knows that the 'collective rights' theory of the second amendment is a recent invention. (yes, I studied it for a paper in school, and yes the ACLU is wrong on this.)
Not necessarily. You basic idea that we need enough people working on the idea is sound. But having more people does not guarantee more people working on solutions. They have to be educated and properly motivated too. Also more people on earth is not the only way to have more people developing new tech - We have lots of people on the planet that are not contributing anywhere near as much as they could be. Maybe we could educate and motivate them?
You can't forget economic issues either - those scientists and engineers directly working on new tech need to eat, wear clothes and have tools/labs/materials to work with, so we do need an economy to provide this too. That takes lots of people too.
Again, your basic idea is sound, a population of X is limited to a max tech of Y, and a max tech advancement rate of Z. Actual rates/levels depend on many other factors. You just left out a bunch of those details.
I am not sure global warming is inevitable. But if all we do is conserve, it will be. Conservation can't delay enough to matter or mitigate the disasters enough to notice. Massive conservation may be enough to allow some solutions to work, but even then, most solutions will work without it just as easily. It is not a solution, it is a distraction. And so far it has distracted us so completely that when a hint of a solution is mentioned, even from someone as respected as Dyson, it is dismissed without discussion. That said, dealing with global warming, without much more info than we now have, would be problematic, on the scale of the Great Depression + WW2, or perhaps the collapse of Rome, only worldwide. A big deal to be sure.
I think I see what you mean now about the 10/90 split. Per person, the US is a much greater chunk of the problem than anyone else. There is some poetic justice in making those people fix it. But - the climate doesn't care about per person metrics, only emissions. The conservation side also largely does not care about the per person metric either. Cutting US emissions in half is not much easier than cutting Europes - dispite Europe having more than twice as many people.
All of the technology already exists, and is IN PRODUCTION.
Nope. Well, if you are talking about passenger cars, maybe. But you can't replace a Semi truck with a Prius, an electric power company Truck with a TDI diesel or a delivery van with a scooter. Personal vehicles are less than half of the automobile use in the US, which is only part (75%?) of the transportation sector. Replace only personal vehicles and that 7 months is now about 2 months. It would take longer to ram this through just the Senate. That is statistical noise. And no, you don't have to wait 15 years for any benefit, 2 months is the sum of all benefits accumulated over those 15 years.
You are correct that it would take precious few scientists to fix US fuel standards. It would take engineers, and lots of political efforts. Those are things we need for any real solution too. That is still a cost for no measurable benefit.
The smaller changes don't add up enough to matter. Let's go nuts and get rid of the US completely. These are 2003 numbers, China has now passed the US but, whatever, 21%. 0.79 at 3%/year is about 9 years. Eliminating the US buys us 9 years. Ok, so that starts to look like something. Not a whole lot, and not a solution, but it is some time. But then you remember that this conservation measure went from 'plausible' past 'barely possible' and well into 'wishfull thinking' Even so, if we don't start looking for real solutions, 9 extra years isn't enough. It may in fact be worse than nothing, because the population will have had 9 more years to grow. More people means bigger problems.
There are actually plenty of good reasons for conservation, save money, don't destroy resources needlessly, save forests, etc. It is just that Global Warming is not one of them.
So you think improving efficiency is a 'positive step'. It barely makes it out of the 'statistical noise' status. I'll address some of your other points, then tell you why this is the case.
* Sure it will level off "sometime", but that sometime is WAY beyond 1-3C. That was my point. If we burn all of the oil and coal on the planet in the next century, it's not gonna be a 1-3C hit. Not even close.
Yes, it probably would be higher that 1-3C. But, due to the many things missing from our models, missing because we don't know them yet, we have no idea where. And we know even less about precicely what climate changes there will be. The models are just good enough to tell us we are probably (90%) the cause of the current temperature changes, and that they will likely continue. That is about it.
* If it stops raining somewhere, and starts raining in the Sahara, that's a bad thing. Lots of people would die. People can't just go running after the rain, and the Sahara won't just become inhabitable overnight.
* We're just going to move all of our crops? Do you realize what that would entail, to chase the weather around, even if it was possible? A lot of hunger and suffering, for starters.
These are problems with the changes themselves. I never said that would not be a problem. It is the final result that 'we would be just fine with' - assuming we survived the chaos. (a bit of an assumption I know, civilization can be a bit fragile at times) We need better models - ones that will tell us where and how much it will be raining in 10 years so we can already be there, not running around like idiots. We don't have them. This assumes that global warming is inevitable.
* We wouldn't be "just fine" if the ice caps melted. We would die by the millions, possibly billions as our coastal populations were decimated, ocean currents were dismantled, Europe thrown into an ice age, etc, etc, etc. And god knows how many additional natural disasters would be triggered along the way. Yeah, the species might survive. That's not much consolation, if you ask me.
Ditto my last paragraph. Also, this is mostly overblown FUD. Billions die? Only if you chain them to their houses now and wait the 20-50 years that it would take for sea levels to rise. Hundreds of thousands I could buy, maby even a few million in floods etc, But people aren't stupid enough to say 'ten years ago the water was up to my knees and I stayed. five years ago it was up to my waist and I still stayed. last year it was up to my neck and I stayed. this year it is over my head and damn it all I am still going to stay!' Far more (millions) could/would die in the massive refugee crisis that would ensue with a 50-100 foot rise in sea levels, especially if nations block their borders like they tend to do, but to imply that billions could die is just plain stupid.
90/10 is exactly right. US transportation IS the "10%" eating up the "90%" of resources.
Don't be daft. Worldwide transportation is only 14%
Statistical Noise:
(apologies in advance, this is a bit harsh) 5% of the worlds oil. You think that matters. Let's go one farther. 50% better efficiency in the entire US transportation sector. (cars trucks trains ships - everything)
Transportation fuels are almost all oil related - so we will drop the 'almost' (I want to make my math much easier) You say that the US uses 25% of the worlds oil - so of that 14% (please refer to the link) 3.5% is the US. We cut that in half, 1.75% of global greenhouse gases.
A quick look at the number of cars in the US and the total production rates of cars shows that it will take at least 15 years to replace the US auto fleet with your doubled mileage cars. Assume that trains, etc. take that long too. (they will take longer, but K.I.S.S)
1) It will almost certainly level off sometime. Stabilize greenhouse gases at a specific level and temperatures rise to a specific level and stop there. There is only so much oil and coal to burn.
"Somewhere it will go up 10C and stop raining." and somewhere else that same 10C will cause lots of rain where there was little. Like possibly the Sahara. (*sigh* you didn't read the article, did you?) "Somewhere else an ice shelf might melt." There have been times in earth's history when there were no ice shelves anywhere, and life got on just fine. We would too. Getting there would be a problem. "Somewhere else it might get colder and kill all the crops." Only a problem if we are still planting there. Which we wouldn't once we found out it was too cold there and went somewhere else. And there would be somewhere else to go.
2) "the US doesn't have to implement the world's worst fuel economy standards, right?" of course not. We have to implement the renewable/nuclear produced fuel economy as the standard. This is because within 50 years (probably sooner) there will not be enough oil at any price to use as fuel. Even if we had unlimited supplies, better fuel economy is almost pointless. Even a 90% improvement in fuel economy would only slow down the rate we cause global warming - we would need to stop it, since in this scenario your overblown fearmongering "it's going to keep going up" would be the case. And to stop cutting down the rainforests will require expensive changes - just taking away the axes won't solve the problem. (Not that we don't have to do this eventually anyway...this is not really a global warming issue)
3) You read me wrong. It is not that 1/2 the cost isn't a good bet. It is that we can't afford to make mistakes,[1] and we do not know enough to avoid them yet. In fact I would say that there is a much better chance that the currently proposed solutions are either
not enough to change anything, and we can't afford them + deal with global climate change, Or,
Even more expensive than dealing with global climate change, due to bad economic ideas and not addressing the problems in an effective, efficient way (think optimizing the 90% of the code that runs 10% of the time instead of the 10% that runs 90% of the time) We don't know enough yet.[2]
[1] Unless the global warming advocates are totally wrong and we are having no effect on the climate at all and there is no warming trend. Neither of us buy that.
[2] Some cheap and easy things should be done though, like turn off the lights when you leave the room, find other uses for waste heat, install better insulation, etc. These are good ideas even ignoring global warming - they are cheaper in the long run anyway.
The problem with global climate change isn't the end results. The Earth has been much warmer than it is now, and life go on just fine then. A warmer planet (say global temps 1-3C higher, would be as nice, if not nicer for us than what we have today. That was one of the points that Dyson made in the essay. (you did read it right?)
The problem with global climate change is the changes that would have to happen between now and then. We would have to figure out which places can grow which crops, since that will change, and rebuild the infrastructure to grow them. We will need to find new sources of water, since there will be new ones and we will lose old ones. We will need to either move us from the old to the new, or the water from the new to the old. Expensive either way. We may have to abandon current coasts altogether. And do this without crashing economies. All this will be complicated horribly by those artificial boundaries called national borders (you think we have an immigration problem now? Ha!)
I am sure you can fill in more details of the changes. My point here though is that it is the change that is the trouble, not the temprature - a warmer earth is likely better for us in the long run. "dooming future generations" is "ridiculously overblown" FUD, not reality. But, you see, "living sustainably"[1] will also require significant change. My off the cuff estimate is about 1/3 to 1/2 as much as adjusting to a 1-3C warmer world. And while this cost is certainly overblown by some, it is also understated by others. We also mostly don't know how to do this. Tell me how to replace the transportation abilities of just the automobile/truck. I'll make it easy and just say without oil, not without greenhouse gases - since we need to do that anyway. Keep in mind that this is only part of oil use, which is only part of total CO2 emissions.
Since both changes are costly, we need to know which to choose. We likely can't handle both. Have we reached a point of no return? if so don't bother trying to stop it, we can't afford it. If not, how close are we to a tipping point? The cost of "living sustainably" will be much less if we have 50 years vs 15. How much CO2 can we get away with? half current levels? 1/3? It makes a big difference. To answer these questions we need much more info than current models - assuming Dyson is wrong and the models are accurate. And from Dyson's essay, I am sure the models aren't accurate. Not in the effect of CO2 on temperature, but in how the planet will react to temperature, and how that will affect CO2 - and us. Dyson's essay reads to me like a call for much more basic research on the nature of the system we live in - 'cause we have to know how the whole system will react, not just the limited parts that current models take into account.
[1] I assume by this you mean 'living so that we don't change the climate'. That is distinctly different from 'living in a way that won't run out of critical stuff in a few hundred years or so'
Except in the global warming case, cutting out the Big Macs will hurt, regardless of who is right. Your analogy doesn't fit the reality you are modeling it with. Scrap it. Better yet - find a better one!
Slashdot Mirror
You are confusing 'brain' with 'mind'.
The mind has problems multitasking - not too different from a CPU. The brain does a lot of things in parallel. In fact, each neuron is independently doing it's own thing, muh like each transistor in a CPU...
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I believe you are referring to this. And no, this gene study does not prove it wrong. RTFA, and you will see that there were no gene samples from the eastern seaboard, where the Solutreans would have landed, and only one group from eastern north america - in canada no less. In other words, if there is Solutrean DNA in native americans, this study would almost certainly have missed it. That the bulk of native americans came from Siberia is common to both theories/studies.
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Or how about Peter Pan ?
It was children smoking the pipe.
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I have yet to hear of a case where the BMI is totally wrong, except bodybuilders.
Can any body inform me otherwise? Or is there any reason not to just put that as a disclaimer and get on with it?
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Just like flammable and inflammable, right?
And I have to say 'it will not burn' instead of 'it is inflammable'. No big deal really.
Yes, this is a product of ignorance. And that is one of the prime ways that languages do evolve.
In the end, the word means what the writer/speaker meant - not what some dictionary says, and not necessarily what someone else may have meant when he used another word that sounds/is spelled the same. This is the nature of language.
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Wot ye not that human speech doest alter from year to year, and generation to generation? Wherefore then art thou distraught over 'comprised'? Pray then, do not let thine fondness of the past nor desire to linger therein prove a thorn in the side of thine fellow man, nor an hindrance to his future.
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That is because you aren't Adam.
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Umm, since they had only to duplicate what the Greeks had done centuries earlier, using the records that the Greeks left, this is hardly a stunning achievement. Especially since (depending on the actual length of the stadion) Eratosthenes had as close as a 2% error.
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Close enough. And it sounds a lot like UNIX too. Go figure.
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"Easily answered with "Threaten me like that, and I'll bring the Feds to your door for Election Tampering".
That doesn't work if they are the feds. Nor is it likely to work very well if you are in a town of 5000 or less, and those making the threat are the local police. Should you actually get the feds to come, and someone is convicted of election tamperig, you may be subjected to vandalism, harassment, drive-by shootings etc. It is best to not have a receipt.
Also this opens up more fraud possibilities. Don't like how the election went? Forge your receipt and claim there was fraud.
Try to think out of your own personal position - not everybody is like you, lives where you do, etc.
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Or better yet, the 767 itself cost around $130 million. 100x the cost of the parking spot.
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For a company where all employees (or just a majority) telecommute, this robot is pointless - for the reasons you stated. A virtual world makes more sense - or simply videoconferencing. This is good for one or two telecommuters and a bunch of people at the office. It makes a lot of sense for that.
Your excuse for steering the robot around? Sure the robot doesn't drink water - but your co-workers do, and you need to interact with them to do your job effectively. You don't drive your robot around to tell a joke any more than you walk across the building to tell a joke. but if a joke comes to mind, and he just happens to be walking by.... Conversations that wouldn't have otherwise happened occur, and important stuff gets said.
"What he's doing there is nothing more than adding a robot to move the camera and screen around. It's solving a problem we had already solved, and adding an unnecessary layer to it.
Only, you see, videoconferencing didn't work well enough, and allowing the camera and screen to move, that worked better. A cheap webcam at every PC? And the lunchroom, and the hallway, and the conference room, with screens to match? The robot is cheaper, less invasive of privacy, and works better.
What (else) does the robot add? instead of calling you and instantly getting your #@$% voicemail, I can go find you and chat with Joe along the way, which I would never have done otherwise. Maybe Joe then tells me something important too, or I can help him.
It almost sounds to me like the reason you see no use for this robot, is because you see no use for talking to your co-workers without an issue to discuss. You aren't the manager by chance are you?
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"How exactly is this different from calling someone up ? (Except for visual contact )
Chatting in the lunch room? Joining a conversation already happening - in the lunch room?
Most people don't call someone else to say the same joke that they call over the cubicle walls, and this helps people get to know each other, and work together. BTW the idea for this robot started as a joke just like this.
Oh, and the visual contact matters a lot - as TFA said, seeing what others scribbled on the whiteboard.
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"Meanwhile, other telecommuting employees at iAnywhere, a subsidiary of Sybase Inc., have expressed interest in getting their own robots,"
Can't they share? Wouldn't that be easier than having those things crashing into each other all the time?
I like the 'robot' anyway, sounds like a good solution.
This version of the Flame War requires win2k or better, or OSX. There is a linux port, but it needs 2.6.x, and is still in beta.
Sorry 1995, you can't have this one.
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I don't have the reference handy, but the original proposal written by Madison that became the second amendment clears up most of the misunderstanding. He used 'nation' not state. And it is perfectly clear that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." is the part that is the law. The rest just gives the reason for it. Oh, and 'militia' just means 'all the people'. The national guard is what would at the time been called a select militia, with no real distinction from a regular army. Not what they had in mind as the militia.
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They saw no need to differentiate arms that were from those that were not useful to these tasks, since there weren't really any that weren't suitable at the time.
Nukes and biological weapons are suitable for offensive wars and MADD only with a possible exception for tactical nukes. (oh, and they are also good for terrorism, genocide and other crimes!) and chemical weapons have limited use in defense. OTOH tanks, fighter jets, machine guns, grenades, artillery, etc. are useful and should be permitted under the second amendment.
That said, since the second amendment has not been updated to reflect this, nukes should be legal until the second amendment is updated - the law is the law. And it should be updated, not ignored. Anyone who has ever really studied the history knows that the 'collective rights' theory of the second amendment is a recent invention. (yes, I studied it for a paper in school, and yes the ACLU is wrong on this.)
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Not necessarily. You basic idea that we need enough people working on the idea is sound. But having more people does not guarantee more people working on solutions. They have to be educated and properly motivated too. Also more people on earth is not the only way to have more people developing new tech - We have lots of people on the planet that are not contributing anywhere near as much as they could be. Maybe we could educate and motivate them?
You can't forget economic issues either - those scientists and engineers directly working on new tech need to eat, wear clothes and have tools/labs/materials to work with, so we do need an economy to provide this too. That takes lots of people too.
Again, your basic idea is sound, a population of X is limited to a max tech of Y, and a max tech advancement rate of Z. Actual rates/levels depend on many other factors. You just left out a bunch of those details.
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I am not sure global warming is inevitable. But if all we do is conserve, it will be. Conservation can't delay enough to matter or mitigate the disasters enough to notice. Massive conservation may be enough to allow some solutions to work, but even then, most solutions will work without it just as easily. It is not a solution, it is a distraction. And so far it has distracted us so completely that when a hint of a solution is mentioned, even from someone as respected as Dyson, it is dismissed without discussion. That said, dealing with global warming, without much more info than we now have, would be problematic, on the scale of the Great Depression + WW2, or perhaps the collapse of Rome, only worldwide. A big deal to be sure.
I think I see what you mean now about the 10/90 split. Per person, the US is a much greater chunk of the problem than anyone else. There is some poetic justice in making those people fix it. But - the climate doesn't care about per person metrics, only emissions. The conservation side also largely does not care about the per person metric either. Cutting US emissions in half is not much easier than cutting Europes - dispite Europe having more than twice as many people.
Nope. Well, if you are talking about passenger cars, maybe. But you can't replace a Semi truck with a Prius, an electric power company Truck with a TDI diesel or a delivery van with a scooter. Personal vehicles are less than half of the automobile use in the US, which is only part (75%?) of the transportation sector. Replace only personal vehicles and that 7 months is now about 2 months. It would take longer to ram this through just the Senate. That is statistical noise. And no, you don't have to wait 15 years for any benefit, 2 months is the sum of all benefits accumulated over those 15 years.
You are correct that it would take precious few scientists to fix US fuel standards. It would take engineers, and lots of political efforts. Those are things we need for any real solution too. That is still a cost for no measurable benefit.
The smaller changes don't add up enough to matter. Let's go nuts and get rid of the US completely. These are 2003 numbers, China has now passed the US but, whatever, 21%. 0.79 at 3%/year is about 9 years. Eliminating the US buys us 9 years. Ok, so that starts to look like something. Not a whole lot, and not a solution, but it is some time. But then you remember that this conservation measure went from 'plausible' past 'barely possible' and well into 'wishfull thinking' Even so, if we don't start looking for real solutions, 9 extra years isn't enough. It may in fact be worse than nothing, because the population will have had 9 more years to grow. More people means bigger problems.
There are actually plenty of good reasons for conservation, save money, don't destroy resources needlessly, save forests, etc. It is just that Global Warming is not one of them.
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So you think improving efficiency is a 'positive step'. It barely makes it out of the 'statistical noise' status. I'll address some of your other points, then tell you why this is the case.
Yes, it probably would be higher that 1-3C. But, due to the many things missing from our models, missing because we don't know them yet, we have no idea where. And we know even less about precicely what climate changes there will be. The models are just good enough to tell us we are probably (90%) the cause of the current temperature changes, and that they will likely continue. That is about it.
These are problems with the changes themselves. I never said that would not be a problem. It is the final result that 'we would be just fine with' - assuming we survived the chaos. (a bit of an assumption I know, civilization can be a bit fragile at times) We need better models - ones that will tell us where and how much it will be raining in 10 years so we can already be there, not running around like idiots. We don't have them. This assumes that global warming is inevitable.
Ditto my last paragraph. Also, this is mostly overblown FUD. Billions die? Only if you chain them to their houses now and wait the 20-50 years that it would take for sea levels to rise. Hundreds of thousands I could buy, maby even a few million in floods etc, But people aren't stupid enough to say 'ten years ago the water was up to my knees and I stayed. five years ago it was up to my waist and I still stayed. last year it was up to my neck and I stayed. this year it is over my head and damn it all I am still going to stay!' Far more (millions) could/would die in the massive refugee crisis that would ensue with a 50-100 foot rise in sea levels, especially if nations block their borders like they tend to do, but to imply that billions could die is just plain stupid.
Don't be daft. Worldwide transportation is only 14%
Statistical Noise:
(apologies in advance, this is a bit harsh) 5% of the worlds oil. You think that matters. Let's go one farther. 50% better efficiency in the entire US transportation sector. (cars trucks trains ships - everything)
Transportation fuels are almost all oil related - so we will drop the 'almost' (I want to make my math much easier) You say that the US uses 25% of the worlds oil - so of that 14% (please refer to the link) 3.5% is the US. We cut that in half, 1.75% of global greenhouse gases.
A quick look at the number of cars in the US and the total production rates of cars shows that it will take at least 15 years to replace the US auto fleet with your doubled mileage cars. Assume that trains, etc. take that long too. (they will take longer, but K.I.S.S)
From
1) It will almost certainly level off sometime. Stabilize greenhouse gases at a specific level and temperatures rise to a specific level and stop there. There is only so much oil and coal to burn.
"Somewhere it will go up 10C and stop raining." and somewhere else that same 10C will cause lots of rain where there was little. Like possibly the Sahara. (*sigh* you didn't read the article, did you?) "Somewhere else an ice shelf might melt." There have been times in earth's history when there were no ice shelves anywhere, and life got on just fine. We would too. Getting there would be a problem. "Somewhere else it might get colder and kill all the crops." Only a problem if we are still planting there. Which we wouldn't once we found out it was too cold there and went somewhere else. And there would be somewhere else to go.
2) "the US doesn't have to implement the world's worst fuel economy standards, right?" of course not. We have to implement the renewable/nuclear produced fuel economy as the standard. This is because within 50 years (probably sooner) there will not be enough oil at any price to use as fuel. Even if we had unlimited supplies, better fuel economy is almost pointless. Even a 90% improvement in fuel economy would only slow down the rate we cause global warming - we would need to stop it, since in this scenario your overblown fearmongering "it's going to keep going up" would be the case. And to stop cutting down the rainforests will require expensive changes - just taking away the axes won't solve the problem. (Not that we don't have to do this eventually anyway...this is not really a global warming issue)
3) You read me wrong. It is not that 1/2 the cost isn't a good bet. It is that we can't afford to make mistakes,[1] and we do not know enough to avoid them yet. In fact I would say that there is a much better chance that the currently proposed solutions are either
[1] Unless the global warming advocates are totally wrong and we are having no effect on the climate at all and there is no warming trend. Neither of us buy that.
[2] Some cheap and easy things should be done though, like turn off the lights when you leave the room, find other uses for waste heat, install better insulation, etc. These are good ideas even ignoring global warming - they are cheaper in the long run anyway.
T
The problem with global climate change isn't the end results. The Earth has been much warmer than it is now, and life go on just fine then. A warmer planet (say global temps 1-3C higher, would be as nice, if not nicer for us than what we have today. That was one of the points that Dyson made in the essay. (you did read it right?)
The problem with global climate change is the changes that would have to happen between now and then. We would have to figure out which places can grow which crops, since that will change, and rebuild the infrastructure to grow them. We will need to find new sources of water, since there will be new ones and we will lose old ones. We will need to either move us from the old to the new, or the water from the new to the old. Expensive either way. We may have to abandon current coasts altogether. And do this without crashing economies. All this will be complicated horribly by those artificial boundaries called national borders (you think we have an immigration problem now? Ha!)
I am sure you can fill in more details of the changes. My point here though is that it is the change that is the trouble, not the temprature - a warmer earth is likely better for us in the long run. "dooming future generations" is "ridiculously overblown" FUD, not reality. But, you see, "living sustainably"[1] will also require significant change. My off the cuff estimate is about 1/3 to 1/2 as much as adjusting to a 1-3C warmer world. And while this cost is certainly overblown by some, it is also understated by others. We also mostly don't know how to do this. Tell me how to replace the transportation abilities of just the automobile/truck. I'll make it easy and just say without oil, not without greenhouse gases - since we need to do that anyway. Keep in mind that this is only part of oil use, which is only part of total CO2 emissions.
Since both changes are costly, we need to know which to choose. We likely can't handle both. Have we reached a point of no return? if so don't bother trying to stop it, we can't afford it. If not, how close are we to a tipping point? The cost of "living sustainably" will be much less if we have 50 years vs 15. How much CO2 can we get away with? half current levels? 1/3? It makes a big difference. To answer these questions we need much more info than current models - assuming Dyson is wrong and the models are accurate. And from Dyson's essay, I am sure the models aren't accurate. Not in the effect of CO2 on temperature, but in how the planet will react to temperature, and how that will affect CO2 - and us. Dyson's essay reads to me like a call for much more basic research on the nature of the system we live in - 'cause we have to know how the whole system will react, not just the limited parts that current models take into account.
[1] I assume by this you mean 'living so that we don't change the climate'. That is distinctly different from 'living in a way that won't run out of critical stuff in a few hundred years or so'
T