Clearly I was talking more about post-docs leading scientific endeavors. But don't underestimate grad students. They have not yet been trained in what can't be done, and not yet indoctrinated in how things should be done, and they're even more likely than post-docs to try something truly new and innovative. Of course they will fail most of the time, but failure is valuable. You say "vauge and unrealistic", I say you've been indoctrinated into a set of things which are "unrealistic". Naivety can be valuable.
This is one of those appealingly romantic notions that turns out to be hardly ever true in actual practice. Most of the time, naivety leads to people merely reinventing the wheel--and more commonly, reinventing ancient mistakes. Repeating approaches that have been tried before and failed because of fundamental errors in concept or experimental design is almost never productive, and it's an expensive and inefficient way to learn. Far more commonly, breakthroughs are made by senior researchers who see through to the deep questions and know what approaches have already been tried, working in collaboration with graduate students or postdocs who may not yet be at the point of making major conceptual breakthroughs, but who are developing their creativity by devising methods of optimizing and improving experimental design.
A good postdoc cannot generate original ideas that would take more time than roughly 1/4 their postdoc length to complete. Hence, we just encourage post-docs to chase low hanging fruit harder and faster, rather than encouraging them to pursue more difficult (and important) goals. So their ideas end up being derivative too, because they depend on that recommendation letter for their next job. No one wants to be in the position of searching for a new job with a half-finished project that their mentor isn't quite sure about, it's career suicide.
In a good lab, postdocs are encouraged to develop ideas that will carry them beyond their postdoc, and into their first faculty position. The NIH K99/R00 mechanism works very well for this, and make it possible for postdocs to apply for a faculty position at a point where they already have demonstrated success in grant writing and research money that they can bring with them. Postdocs who have managed to obtain a K99 are highly attractive to departments recruiting junior faculty, and are in a good position to obtain an R01.
Yeah, grad students and post-docs are cheap, but they can't actually do science. They're our best and brightest, and we only allow them to do other people's science.
My experience is that graduate students don't know how to do their own science when they begin. It takes quite a bit of practical experience to conceptualize a research project. When asked to come up with an original proposal, they come up with something that is either derivative of their mentor's work or work they have read, or else vague and unrealistic. But by the time they complete their dissertation research, they know more about their research topic than their mentor, and are starting to generate ideas for original projects. A good postdoc is expected to originate ideas, often ends up carving out a new research direction that he or she takes with him into his future research. By the time they accept their first research position, they are coming up with more ideas than they can carry out personally.
I had a whole long reply written out and inadvertently refreshed the page (along with several other tabs I meant to reload). Since you're obviously not going to get the point I'm trying to make (or consider that maybe the small-scale installations of alternative energy solutions aren't causing problems right now is the same reason small-scale installations of coal, oil, and natural gas generators didn't cause a problem)
But note that we already knew enough about CO2 to anticipate that large scale emissions could change climate. While there were certainly some people who refused to believe it (and some people who still refuse to believe it even now that it has become quite obvious) it did not come as a surprise to scientists. The physical basis of alternative energy and conservation technologies is also well studied and well understood, so there is every reason to believe that we could anticipate a problem with large scale use--just as we did with CO2 emissions.
So which risks do you think are being ignored? The only specific examples you could come up with didn't make sense. Certainly there has been extensive discussion of potential hazards or many alternative energy strategies.
None of the proposed solutions have caused any effects on the proposed scale of the effects of global warming, you are 100% correct. Have you considered that this may be because none of them have been implemented on any massive scale?
Like what? None of the technologies being employed involve an irreversible step into the unknown comparable to producing an increase in atmospheric CO2 that would persist for decades even if we were to abruptly cease burning of fossil fuels. The technologies involved are generally familiar as are the hazards. Probably the riskiest thing on the list of options is nuclear power, and we've already had extensive nuclear testing, some major reactor meltdowns, and nuclear attacks on two cities without disastrous global consequences.
Does it really makes sense to be so obsessed with vague fears of unlikely unforeseeable dangers that we are incapable of taking reasonable measures to deal with an imminent danger that we can foresee?
Indeed waste heat is negligible for these alternative forms of energy, at their current scales of implementation. Scale it up to replace fossil fuels and you might see my point.
Waste heat from is negligible by many orders of magnitude compared to the retention of solar energy produced by CO2 for all forms of energy and all other human activities, present or contemplated.
And how do you smelt the metals used to make the electric burners and/or inductive furnaces used to smelt without producing CO2? You can't heat the metals in the burners enough to melt them without melting the burners, so that's not a solution.
You haven't really thought this through, have you? You could melt metal in a microwave furnace if necessary. But it isn't; the whole issue is foolish because CO2 produced by smelting is negligible compared to that produced by burning of fossil fuels. So we could go on smelting by conventional methods and still save huge amounts of CO2. This is why approaches that involve taxation of CO2 are efficient--really valuable processes that release CO2 in modest amounts will continue to be used, while processes that are most easily and cheaply replaced by carbon-sparing technologies will be modified.
What we replace global warming with might be worse that global warming. Let's make sure we don't do that. You have not addressed this, which has been my whole point from the start, in any way. You've been arguing what you want to argue, in an attempt to invalidate the point I have been trying to make, while completely ignoring that point. I must admit, you've been successful in coaxing me into arguing your point and letting mine slip
That's because you couldn't come up with any plausible notion of what kind of replacement would be "worse than global warming." You can't be blamed for that--nobody else has, either. The best you could do was to suggest that somehow the technology would produce worse global warming (but as we've seen that doesn't make sense). So do you have anything specific, or are you only pitching vague fear of the unknown? If you are going to resort to "well, maybe there's something that nobody knows about with the new technology that will be really bad" you should also consider the that we don't really know all the consequences of climate modification on the scale that we are currently producing with CO2, and in fact, the greatest uncertainty about consequences is on the severe end. Current global warming concerns are based on the most likely consequences--but when you start to worry about Rumsfeldian "unknown unknowns" there are some climate disaster scenarios that are not considered likely, but are nevertheless more plausible than anything you've been able to offer. The industrial processes being used for carbon-sparing technologies are far less likely to yield unexpected irreversible consequences than pushing climate into a new domain; we've certainly had some serious environmental consequences with manufacturing and energy technologies over the years--heavy metal poisoning, radiation release from nuclear reactors, etc.--but these are risks that we have considerable experience with mitigating--and none of them have cause global problems on a scale comparable to the expected consequences of global warming.
How about you detail some of these proposed measures?
Considering that this includes everything from economic measures to encourage conservation of carbon-based fuels to alternative sources of energy to CO2 recapture, you are asking for a book-length treatise. But you can readily find this kind of information on the web (a good starting point would be the IPCC Report on Mitigation of Climate Change. None of them involve large-scale release of greenhouse gasses other than CO2. Which particular measures do you imagine would worsen global warming.
Or, at least, admit that CO2 and methane are not the only possible causes of global warming, even if they're the only two currently-acting factors you are willing to recognize right now?
If you are talking about things that could theoretically affect climate, but that have been conclusively excluded as the cause of the current warming, that is also a long list. A good starting point is the IPCC Report on the Physical Basis of Climate Change
It's not just cars and power generation that release CO2, many industrial processes (which I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring) release CO2 and, in fact, the mere act of breathing releases a fair bit of it.
Some proposed strategies for mitigating CO2 emissions involve some form of fee for CO2 release, which would apply to industrial processes as well as fossil fuel burning. An advantage of this kind of approach (which has been proved successful for mitigating other pollutants) is that this creates an economic incentive for carbon conservation--the most critical (and valuable) uses of carbon will remain, while those that for which more economic substitutes are available will be replaced.
Breathing is not really a factor in the current increase in atmospheric CO2--the total amount of respiratory CO2 release on earth simply has not increased that much.
So we can switch to all nuclear/solar/wind/hydro power, each of which has its own, different, ecological impact that may, on the scale required to meet our current and future power demands, contribute to global warming just as much as the CO2 released from our current power production methods. To wit, the solar cell on your calculator does about as much for global warming as the CO2 in the breath I just exhaled; scale that solar cell up to what would be required to meet the world's power demands.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. These sources of energy contribute appreciably to global warming only to the extent that fossil fuels are involved in their production. If you are worried about waste heat, (a) this is negligible compared to the huge solar energy flux that CO2 affects, and (b) is equally a factor for fossil fuel energy plus the increased retention of solar energy due to CO2.
In fact, it's likely that many of these processes (such as smelting[*4] metals to create wind/hydro turbines and batteries used in electric cars[*5], refining uranium to generate nuclear power[*6], and refining silicon to a degree suitible for solar cell production) may not even have non-CO2-producing counterparts[*7]. So, do we just do away with those processes and the things they allow us to create[*8]?
You are getting silly again. Power to do things like smelting can be obtained from multiple sources, it need not require CO2 production. Anyway, nobody is proposing that every single source of CO2 emissions must be eliminated, just that emissions need to be substantially reduced, so this is a fairly idiotic straw man. In any case, the dominant source of CO2 emissions is power generation. There is no conceivable plausible scenario in which carbon-sparing manufacturing technologies could result in more carbon release.
CO2 is the only factor influencing climate that has changed appreciably,, so it really is the only reasonable candidate for the cause of climat change.
Oh, we could cause global warming by releasing massive quantities of methane, but none of the measures for CO2 release reduction will do that (although there is a real worry that continued warming will cause massive release of trapped methane, which would make everything much, much worse, but that currently is not thought too likely).
Global warming produced by CO2 isn't magical; it didn't come as a surprise--the potential was recognized a century ago. So relax, there is no chance that any of the strategies for reducing CO2 emissions will cause dangerous global warming
We are talking about reducing CO2 emissions, not replacing them, and certainly not with cadmium, so this is just silly. None of the alternatives to massive fossil fuel burning result in massive greenhouse gas emissions
On the contrary, there is conclusive evidence that CO2 is substantially responsible for the warming, and therefore that reducing CO2 will ameliorate it. Almost all of the uncertainty is with respect to the severity of the consequences of failing to do so. We know it will be bad, but there is considerable uncertainty as to just how bad it will be. There is no reasonable possibility that reducing CO2 emissions will make the warming worse.
We know (a) that CO2 in the atmosphere has the capacity to warm the climate (hell, we've known that for a century), (b) that we are releasing a great deal of CO2 into the atmosphere, (c) that much of it is not being absorbed by natural sinks, (d) that the climate is warming, and to about the same extent as predicted based upon the physics, (d) that there are no other plausible explanations for the warming. That's about as close as science ever gets to a slam dunk.
Yeah, I had a first generation MBP. The battery lasted only a couple of hours, that dropped off fast with use (just like every other laptop brand of the time). You had to lug an extra batter for a long plane trip, and you ended up spending considerably more than the cost of replacing a "nonreplaceable" battery on those replacement batteries. On the other hand, I have a first generation MBA. Battery life is still great.
I still have my Amiga. It was a cool gaming machine. But let's face it. The OS was kind of half-baked at introduction (although it got better), with nothing approaching the interface design of a Mac. There's a reason why I did all of my serious work on my Mac instead of my Amiga.
Basically, it comes down to what you are willing to give up for a replaceable battery. Battery life? Batteries that are wrapped around every bit of free space inside the case are not easily replaceable. Weight? Battery doors and batteries that are neatly encased in boxes add more weight. Size? A bigger case is needed to accommodate a replaceable battery.
So you can lug around your thick, heavy laptop with its replaceable battery (and a spare battery so you won't run out of power on air flights). Or you can have a light, thin laptop with long battery life, and pay a few bucks extra when the battery finally wears out (assuming you haven't upgraded by then; I have a first generation MacBook Air and the battery still works fine).
It was the effort to develop a form of insulin that could be prepared on an industrial scale and used to treat diabetes that led to the development of modern, research-oriented commercial drug discovery. The company that first developed a cure for diabetes would become very rich indeed, and it would likely shed few tears as to the plight of other companies--even if it were true that treatment of diabetes is the financial mainstay Big Pharm. Which of course it isn't.
It is unfortunate that some irresponsible news outlets frequently acclaim preclinical research in animal models as a cure for a serious disease, when even if the initial research turns out to be valid and applicable, implementing it in the form of a safe, effective therapy for people will take many years. I've seen many of these miracle cure claims touted in the popular press. I don't think I can remember any one that turned out to be correct.
Doing *anything* about global warming until we have difinitive answers is irresponsible and dangerous.
Unfortunately, doing nothing about global warming until we have definitive answers is even more irresponsible and dangerous. In the real world, there are real hazards, critical decisions often have to be made on incomplete information.
"Isn't that a cliff ahead? Shouldn't we brake?"
"No, maybe there's a gentle decline on the other side of that ridge. What if we skid or something? Let's wait until we can see over the edge before we make any decision"
And frankly, the science is already quite strong. Every major scientific society in the world that has reviewed the data has endorsed its validity. There's really no legitimate doubt anymore that the cliff is ahead. The only real question is how badly we will be hurt if we don't brake now.
No, the long-term warming trend is so strong that it is statistically significant even using rather primitive statistics. You have to do tricks to make it non-significant. One common dodge is to pick a short period of time, since no matter how strong a trend is, it is always, always possible to find a time period short enough to make it fail a significance testing (for example the claim that there has been . It is even easier if you cherry-pick outliers as start or end points. That's why we so often hear claims that global warming stopped in 1998. Why start in 1998? Because 1998 is a warm-year outlier, far above the overall warming trend, so that even if the warming trend is real, regression to the mean will create the illusion of a pause in warming.
Once again, HBO's economic analysis must take account of the range of consumer behaviors. At one extreme, there are the truly ethical individuals, who would rather go without than rip off the people who create the shows that they enjoy, no matter what the price. At the other extreme are the leeches, who will not be dissuaded from piracy at any price that would support the creation of expensive shows like Game of Thrones. In between, there are people who are not completely lacking in ethics, but who are weak, and might be tempted to pirate a show to see it sooner and/or more cheaply. This middle group is the only group that is price-sensitive with respect to piracy. But the increased profits from selling to the middle group will be to some extent offset by reduced profits from ethical customers, some of whom would be happy to pay a higher price to see the show now instead of waiting until next year when the disks will be cheaply available from Netflix or Redbox.
I completely disagree. Comcast's incentive to carry HBO is that people know HBO, they want HBO, and they are willing to pay for HBO.
And the only way that people can get HBO is by signing up with a cable or satellite provider, so that is a substantial incentive for people to sign up for Comcast, particularly in areas where you can get perfect digital network TV for free with a simple antenna. You cannot rationally argue that this is worth $zero to Comcast. And if it is part of HBO's value, taking it away will reduce the fees that HBO can command from cable and satellite providers.
As far as HBOs increased cost, who cares?
HBO, for one. And of course, anybody who enjoys big-budget HBO series like Game of Thrones, because the profitability of HBO determines how much they can afford to spend on a production. Other critically acclaimed HBO series, including Rome and Deadwood, have been canceled because of cost. And of course all of the actors, special effects specialists, artists, costume designers, etc., etc. who work on the series. I imagine that Peter Dinklage cares a great deal.
And if they want to appease the cable companies, then make HBO direct cost more than buying from your cable company. You can get it for $15 from cable, or $20 from HBO.
Well, not quite. If you are perfectly happy with OTA TV and/or various online options (Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc., etc.), except for the lack of access to HBO, then your cost for HBO is the cost of a basic cable subscription plus the cost of adding HBO—which is, of course, just another way of saying that HBO is a big incentive for people to sign up for cable in the first place, and that this is a big part of HBO's value to the cable companies. So to "appease" the cable companies, HBO would probably have to charge something close to the cost of a full cable subscription including HBO. HBO has probably done the market research and figured out that the demand for such an expensive stand-alone service is not that large, and that once they factor in the cost of managing it, they will end up net losers.
But if HBO wants to take the route they are taking, then I guess they can just watch their most long term profitable option slip through their fingers.
There will likely come some point at which enough people decide to abandon cable for various online options that it will become more profitable for HBO to offer their service stand-alone than to maintain their current exclusivity deals with cable and satellite providers. HBO doubtless does its market research and its numbers so it will know when that time comes. HBO has clearly concluded that the time is not now. And there is no reason to think that the option will "slip through its fingers" if they wait until it does indeed make financial sense. In the meantime, they are developing the technology, in the form of HBO GO, so that they will be able to more promptly in that direction when the time comes.
If you get robbed, and everyone tells you to lock your doors and it wont happen, but you don't do it and continue to get robbed, do you have the right to complain?
Absolutely. You are not the one who is choosing to behave in an unethical manner. The fault is with the guys who choose to rip other people off.
and if thats the model they choose that will make them the most money, so be it, but they have to stop complaining about piracy.
So if somebody chooses to run their business in a profitable manner, they have no right to complain about being ripped off? That's pretty strange logic.
The cable company carries out market research, so they have a good idea what the viewership is for all of their channels, which determines what they are willing to pay for each channel. So they won't save any money by denying you access to channels you don't watch--they'll just incur extra costs of managing access on an individual basis
But of course, they would lose the high price that they are able to charge the cable companies for exclusive access to HBO shows. That could easily amount to more of a loss than they would gain by selling the shows separately.
Part of the reason that cable companies are willing to pay a premium price for HBO is because they are paying in part for a window of exclusivity, because access to HBO is an incentive for customers to sign up for cable. If the value of HBO to Comcast is decreased, because HBO is now available in other ways at lower cost, so that HBO is no longer an incentive to have a cable account, then obviously the amount that Comcast will be willing to pay for HBO will be lower. That's basic economics. So HBO would have to be convinced that the amount of money they would make by offering their shows separately will be greater than what they will lose by having to cut their price to make their service attractive to the cable companies. But offering HBO separately from cable adds additional costs for HBO. Instead of Comcast recruiting the customers and handling the billing, HBO will have to do this, which will drive up HBO's costs and further increase the price they will have to charge for separate HBO shows. HBO has likely done the math and concluded that they will end up losing money.
As for #2 in the article, why can't I get a single package with just CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, TCM, Cartoon Network, and HBO?
The cable company would be happy to sell you a single package with just those shows. Small catch: it would cost a bit more than what you are now paying for all the shows. People have the mistaken impression that they should get a discount for the shows that they don't watch. But it costs the cable company nothing extra to deliver those shows to you. You are paying the cable company to deliver the shows that you do watch, same as everybody else. It's just that the cheapest, easiest way for the cable company to deliver everybody the shows they do want is to provide them all with all the shows and let them self select. They would save nothing by not providing you access to the shows you don't want; in fact, providing you with more individualized service would increase the cable company's costs, so clearly they would have to charge more.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of those appealingly romantic notions that turns out to be hardly ever true in actual practice. Most of the time, naivety leads to people merely reinventing the wheel--and more commonly, reinventing ancient mistakes. Repeating approaches that have been tried before and failed because of fundamental errors in concept or experimental design is almost never productive, and it's an expensive and inefficient way to learn. Far more commonly, breakthroughs are made by senior researchers who see through to the deep questions and know what approaches have already been tried, working in collaboration with graduate students or postdocs who may not yet be at the point of making major conceptual breakthroughs, but who are developing their creativity by devising methods of optimizing and improving experimental design.
In a good lab, postdocs are encouraged to develop ideas that will carry them beyond their postdoc, and into their first faculty position. The NIH K99/R00 mechanism works very well for this, and make it possible for postdocs to apply for a faculty position at a point where they already have demonstrated success in grant writing and research money that they can bring with them. Postdocs who have managed to obtain a K99 are highly attractive to departments recruiting junior faculty, and are in a good position to obtain an R01.
My experience is that graduate students don't know how to do their own science when they begin. It takes quite a bit of practical experience to conceptualize a research project. When asked to come up with an original proposal, they come up with something that is either derivative of their mentor's work or work they have read, or else vague and unrealistic. But by the time they complete their dissertation research, they know more about their research topic than their mentor, and are starting to generate ideas for original projects. A good postdoc is expected to originate ideas, often ends up carving out a new research direction that he or she takes with him into his future research. By the time they accept their first research position, they are coming up with more ideas than they can carry out personally.
But note that we already knew enough about CO2 to anticipate that large scale emissions could change climate. While there were certainly some people who refused to believe it (and some people who still refuse to believe it even now that it has become quite obvious) it did not come as a surprise to scientists. The physical basis of alternative energy and conservation technologies is also well studied and well understood, so there is every reason to believe that we could anticipate a problem with large scale use--just as we did with CO2 emissions.
So which risks do you think are being ignored? The only specific examples you could come up with didn't make sense. Certainly there has been extensive discussion of potential hazards or many alternative energy strategies.
Like what? None of the technologies being employed involve an irreversible step into the unknown comparable to producing an increase in atmospheric CO2 that would persist for decades even if we were to abruptly cease burning of fossil fuels. The technologies involved are generally familiar as are the hazards. Probably the riskiest thing on the list of options is nuclear power, and we've already had extensive nuclear testing, some major reactor meltdowns, and nuclear attacks on two cities without disastrous global consequences.
Does it really makes sense to be so obsessed with vague fears of unlikely unforeseeable dangers that we are incapable of taking reasonable measures to deal with an imminent danger that we can foresee?
Waste heat from is negligible by many orders of magnitude compared to the retention of solar energy produced by CO2 for all forms of energy and all other human activities, present or contemplated.
You haven't really thought this through, have you? You could melt metal in a microwave furnace if necessary. But it isn't; the whole issue is foolish because CO2 produced by smelting is negligible compared to that produced by burning of fossil fuels. So we could go on smelting by conventional methods and still save huge amounts of CO2. This is why approaches that involve taxation of CO2 are efficient--really valuable processes that release CO2 in modest amounts will continue to be used, while processes that are most easily and cheaply replaced by carbon-sparing technologies will be modified.
That's because you couldn't come up with any plausible notion of what kind of replacement would be "worse than global warming." You can't be blamed for that--nobody else has, either. The best you could do was to suggest that somehow the technology would produce worse global warming (but as we've seen that doesn't make sense). So do you have anything specific, or are you only pitching vague fear of the unknown? If you are going to resort to "well, maybe there's something that nobody knows about with the new technology that will be really bad" you should also consider the that we don't really know all the consequences of climate modification on the scale that we are currently producing with CO2, and in fact, the greatest uncertainty about consequences is on the severe end. Current global warming concerns are based on the most likely consequences--but when you start to worry about Rumsfeldian "unknown unknowns" there are some climate disaster scenarios that are not considered likely, but are nevertheless more plausible than anything you've been able to offer. The industrial processes being used for carbon-sparing technologies are far less likely to yield unexpected irreversible consequences than pushing climate into a new domain; we've certainly had some serious environmental consequences with manufacturing and energy technologies over the years--heavy metal poisoning, radiation release from nuclear reactors, etc.--but these are risks that we have considerable experience with mitigating--and none of them have cause global problems on a scale comparable to the expected consequences of global warming.
Considering that this includes everything from economic measures to encourage conservation of carbon-based fuels to alternative sources of energy to CO2 recapture, you are asking for a book-length treatise. But you can readily find this kind of information on the web (a good starting point would be the IPCC Report on Mitigation of Climate Change. None of them involve large-scale release of greenhouse gasses other than CO2. Which particular measures do you imagine would worsen global warming.
If you are talking about things that could theoretically affect climate, but that have been conclusively excluded as the cause of the current warming, that is also a long list. A good starting point is the IPCC Report on the Physical Basis of Climate Change
Some proposed strategies for mitigating CO2 emissions involve some form of fee for CO2 release, which would apply to industrial processes as well as fossil fuel burning. An advantage of this kind of approach (which has been proved successful for mitigating other pollutants) is that this creates an economic incentive for carbon conservation--the most critical (and valuable) uses of carbon will remain, while those that for which more economic substitutes are available will be replaced.
Breathing is not really a factor in the current increase in atmospheric CO2--the total amount of respiratory CO2 release on earth simply has not increased that much.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. These sources of energy contribute appreciably to global warming only to the extent that fossil fuels are involved in their production. If you are worried about waste heat, (a) this is negligible compared to the huge solar energy flux that CO2 affects, and (b) is equally a factor for fossil fuel energy plus the increased retention of solar energy due to CO2.
You are getting silly again. Power to do things like smelting can be obtained from multiple sources, it need not require CO2 production. Anyway, nobody is proposing that every single source of CO2 emissions must be eliminated, just that emissions need to be substantially reduced, so this is a fairly idiotic straw man. In any case, the dominant source of CO2 emissions is power generation. There is no conceivable plausible scenario in which carbon-sparing manufacturing technologies could result in more carbon release.
CO2 is the only factor influencing climate that has changed appreciably,, so it really is the only reasonable candidate for the cause of climat change.
Oh, we could cause global warming by releasing massive quantities of methane, but none of the measures for CO2 release reduction will do that (although there is a real worry that continued warming will cause massive release of trapped methane, which would make everything much, much worse, but that currently is not thought too likely).
So we can safely dismiss that particular fear
Global warming produced by CO2 isn't magical; it didn't come as a surprise--the potential was recognized a century ago. So relax, there is no chance that any of the strategies for reducing CO2 emissions will cause dangerous global warming
We are talking about reducing CO2 emissions, not replacing them, and certainly not with cadmium, so this is just silly. None of the alternatives to massive fossil fuel burning result in massive greenhouse gas emissions
On the contrary, there is conclusive evidence that CO2 is substantially responsible for the warming, and therefore that reducing CO2 will ameliorate it. Almost all of the uncertainty is with respect to the severity of the consequences of failing to do so. We know it will be bad, but there is considerable uncertainty as to just how bad it will be. There is no reasonable possibility that reducing CO2 emissions will make the warming worse.
We know (a) that CO2 in the atmosphere has the capacity to warm the climate (hell, we've known that for a century), (b) that we are releasing a great deal of CO2 into the atmosphere, (c) that much of it is not being absorbed by natural sinks, (d) that the climate is warming, and to about the same extent as predicted based upon the physics, (d) that there are no other plausible explanations for the warming. That's about as close as science ever gets to a slam dunk.
Yeah, I had a first generation MBP. The battery lasted only a couple of hours, that dropped off fast with use (just like every other laptop brand of the time). You had to lug an extra batter for a long plane trip, and you ended up spending considerably more than the cost of replacing a "nonreplaceable" battery on those replacement batteries. On the other hand, I have a first generation MBA. Battery life is still great.
I still have my Amiga. It was a cool gaming machine. But let's face it. The OS was kind of half-baked at introduction (although it got better), with nothing approaching the interface design of a Mac. There's a reason why I did all of my serious work on my Mac instead of my Amiga.
Basically, it comes down to what you are willing to give up for a replaceable battery. Battery life? Batteries that are wrapped around every bit of free space inside the case are not easily replaceable. Weight? Battery doors and batteries that are neatly encased in boxes add more weight. Size? A bigger case is needed to accommodate a replaceable battery.
So you can lug around your thick, heavy laptop with its replaceable battery (and a spare battery so you won't run out of power on air flights). Or you can have a light, thin laptop with long battery life, and pay a few bucks extra when the battery finally wears out (assuming you haven't upgraded by then; I have a first generation MacBook Air and the battery still works fine).
It was the effort to develop a form of insulin that could be prepared on an industrial scale and used to treat diabetes that led to the development of modern, research-oriented commercial drug discovery. The company that first developed a cure for diabetes would become very rich indeed, and it would likely shed few tears as to the plight of other companies--even if it were true that treatment of diabetes is the financial mainstay Big Pharm. Which of course it isn't.
It is unfortunate that some irresponsible news outlets frequently acclaim preclinical research in animal models as a cure for a serious disease, when even if the initial research turns out to be valid and applicable, implementing it in the form of a safe, effective therapy for people will take many years. I've seen many of these miracle cure claims touted in the popular press. I don't think I can remember any one that turned out to be correct.
Unfortunately, doing nothing about global warming until we have definitive answers is even more irresponsible and dangerous. In the real world, there are real hazards, critical decisions often have to be made on incomplete information.
"Isn't that a cliff ahead? Shouldn't we brake?"
"No, maybe there's a gentle decline on the other side of that ridge. What if we skid or something? Let's wait until we can see over the edge before we make any decision"
And frankly, the science is already quite strong. Every major scientific society in the world that has reviewed the data has endorsed its validity. There's really no legitimate doubt anymore that the cliff is ahead. The only real question is how badly we will be hurt if we don't brake now.
No, the long-term warming trend is so strong that it is statistically significant even using rather primitive statistics. You have to do tricks to make it non-significant. One common dodge is to pick a short period of time, since no matter how strong a trend is, it is always, always possible to find a time period short enough to make it fail a significance testing (for example the claim that there has been . It is even easier if you cherry-pick outliers as start or end points. That's why we so often hear claims that global warming stopped in 1998. Why start in 1998? Because 1998 is a warm-year outlier, far above the overall warming trend, so that even if the warming trend is real, regression to the mean will create the illusion of a pause in warming.
Once again, HBO's economic analysis must take account of the range of consumer behaviors. At one extreme, there are the truly ethical individuals, who would rather go without than rip off the people who create the shows that they enjoy, no matter what the price. At the other extreme are the leeches, who will not be dissuaded from piracy at any price that would support the creation of expensive shows like Game of Thrones. In between, there are people who are not completely lacking in ethics, but who are weak, and might be tempted to pirate a show to see it sooner and/or more cheaply. This middle group is the only group that is price-sensitive with respect to piracy. But the increased profits from selling to the middle group will be to some extent offset by reduced profits from ethical customers, some of whom would be happy to pay a higher price to see the show now instead of waiting until next year when the disks will be cheaply available from Netflix or Redbox.
And the only way that people can get HBO is by signing up with a cable or satellite provider, so that is a substantial incentive for people to sign up for Comcast, particularly in areas where you can get perfect digital network TV for free with a simple antenna. You cannot rationally argue that this is worth $zero to Comcast. And if it is part of HBO's value, taking it away will reduce the fees that HBO can command from cable and satellite providers.
HBO, for one. And of course, anybody who enjoys big-budget HBO series like Game of Thrones, because the profitability of HBO determines how much they can afford to spend on a production. Other critically acclaimed HBO series, including Rome and Deadwood, have been canceled because of cost. And of course all of the actors, special effects specialists, artists, costume designers, etc., etc. who work on the series. I imagine that Peter Dinklage cares a great deal.
Well, not quite. If you are perfectly happy with OTA TV and/or various online options (Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, etc., etc.), except for the lack of access to HBO, then your cost for HBO is the cost of a basic cable subscription plus the cost of adding HBO—which is, of course, just another way of saying that HBO is a big incentive for people to sign up for cable in the first place, and that this is a big part of HBO's value to the cable companies. So to "appease" the cable companies, HBO would probably have to charge something close to the cost of a full cable subscription including HBO. HBO has probably done the market research and figured out that the demand for such an expensive stand-alone service is not that large, and that once they factor in the cost of managing it, they will end up net losers.
There will likely come some point at which enough people decide to abandon cable for various online options that it will become more profitable for HBO to offer their service stand-alone than to maintain their current exclusivity deals with cable and satellite providers. HBO doubtless does its market research and its numbers so it will know when that time comes. HBO has clearly concluded that the time is not now. And there is no reason to think that the option will "slip through its fingers" if they wait until it does indeed make financial sense. In the meantime, they are developing the technology, in the form of HBO GO, so that they will be able to more promptly in that direction when the time comes.
Absolutely. You are not the one who is choosing to behave in an unethical manner. The fault is with the guys who choose to rip other people off.
So if somebody chooses to run their business in a profitable manner, they have no right to complain about being ripped off? That's pretty strange logic.
The cable company carries out market research, so they have a good idea what the viewership is for all of their channels, which determines what they are willing to pay for each channel. So they won't save any money by denying you access to channels you don't watch--they'll just incur extra costs of managing access on an individual basis
But of course, they would lose the high price that they are able to charge the cable companies for exclusive access to HBO shows. That could easily amount to more of a loss than they would gain by selling the shows separately.
Part of the reason that cable companies are willing to pay a premium price for HBO is because they are paying in part for a window of exclusivity, because access to HBO is an incentive for customers to sign up for cable. If the value of HBO to Comcast is decreased, because HBO is now available in other ways at lower cost, so that HBO is no longer an incentive to have a cable account, then obviously the amount that Comcast will be willing to pay for HBO will be lower. That's basic economics. So HBO would have to be convinced that the amount of money they would make by offering their shows separately will be greater than what they will lose by having to cut their price to make their service attractive to the cable companies. But offering HBO separately from cable adds additional costs for HBO. Instead of Comcast recruiting the customers and handling the billing, HBO will have to do this, which will drive up HBO's costs and further increase the price they will have to charge for separate HBO shows. HBO has likely done the math and concluded that they will end up losing money.
The cable company would be happy to sell you a single package with just those shows. Small catch: it would cost a bit more than what you are now paying for all the shows. People have the mistaken impression that they should get a discount for the shows that they don't watch. But it costs the cable company nothing extra to deliver those shows to you. You are paying the cable company to deliver the shows that you do watch, same as everybody else. It's just that the cheapest, easiest way for the cable company to deliver everybody the shows they do want is to provide them all with all the shows and let them self select. They would save nothing by not providing you access to the shows you don't want; in fact, providing you with more individualized service would increase the cable company's costs, so clearly they would have to charge more.
So are you ready to pay more for fewer channels?