Unfortunately there is a huge cost here in leakage. The big problem with graphene is that it has an intrinsic bandgap of zero, so that it can hardly switch. If you have access to the article you can see that the Ion/Ioff ratio is a measly three! These are more useful as amplifiers than transistors.
A big research goal right now is to engineer a gap in graphene, but no one has succeeded, unless you count carbon nanotubes, of course.
Actually, a quantum hall effect has been observed in epitaxial graphene, and the resistance quantization is four orders of magnitude closer to the quantum h^2/e than in the exfoliated "scotch tape" graphene. You need to keep up on your Nature reading, sheesh!
The real problem is that the band gap is still zero. These things have an on/off ratio of the order of 10 or less, orders of magnitude worse than Si, the material they are supposed to supplement.
That article actually discusses a Paper from 2006, so it's not exactly recent.
Nonetheless I can see why you might get the misconception that this is an issue for the physics community. I assure you that very few of us ever consider free will seriously, much less think that our research has bearing on the issue. Nonetheless, you should allow for some flexibility - their definition of "free will" may not confirm to the latest philosophical dictum, but it is consistent with physics. They are talking about freedom of choice, i.e. whether or not the initial conditions of the universe determine our every action. I think it's perfectly reasonable for physicists to discuss that topic framed in that manner, since that is their area of expertise.
I challenge you to find an instance on a physics paper claiming to "disprove free will" published in a reputable journal. I doubt you can find one, let alone myriad instances which I might expect if I took your "all the time" statement seriously.
Seriously- let's take a look back. Have there been any major advancements in solar energy technology in the last fifty or so years?
Is this a rhetorical question? In less than 30s, using only a bare minimum of energy and thought, I checked the Wikipedia photovoltaic cell article and found out that in 2007 companies began to commercialize the so-called second generation solar cell technology. Clearly, you didn't actually "take a look back". Perhaps you should do some research next time before talking out of your ass about things you quite evidently know nothing about.
It'd be really refreshing to see scientists develop a bit of altruism. It's the ultimate Open Source, and they'd be guaranteed decades, if not centuries, of good will and fame. That's worth a lot more than a few *possible* royalty checks.
Yes, everyone knows that scientists are some of the most selfish of all people, thinking about nothing but their own pocketbooks. Oh wait, you must have scientists confused with technology licensing office clerks. After all, is it not scientists who dedicate their lives to advancing human knowledge? We owe our modern lives to science, don't forget that. You must not have obtained a PhD in science, otherwise you would know that pursuing science involves self-sacrifice in the highest degree. You don't spend 4-8 years in grad school earning nothing if all you care about is money.
Looks like it might have trouble with conducting surfaces. If you short those clamps together all that induced charge/voltage would likely discharge, sending the robot tumbling to the ground and maybe even blowing its power supply.
Any wet wall, or even just a wall with a band of conducting material would still serve as a barrier to the robot.
Fine, but then shouldn't the hero be African as well?
There may be a point here. There is possibly some racial colonization themes portrayed when the protagonist is of European descent and he goes around killing African zombies.
Your tuning fork analogy is valid, but you need to remember that it is a nanometer sized tuning fork that vibrates in response to EM waves, not sound waves, and serves as a field emitter. Good luck doing that with any other material.
In addition, they were not using a "specially" tuned receiver to pick up the movement - the movement is detected through the resulting modulation of the Field Emission Current, which is especially sensitive to the location of the end of the nanotube. The only tuning involved is through a DC field that changes the tension on the nanotube, which in turn changes its resonant frequency. This is a good thing, because it means you can change the channel on the resulting radio.
It's novel and exciting research because the "tuning fork" is on the nanometer scale. Mounting the nanotube in the TEM and observing its vibration is hardly trivial.
OK, granted, you could be correct in stating the unrolling would be easy, however my point still holds. If you can't make the cable in the first place, you can't unroll it!
Unrolling the initial fabric from orbit down to the surface without snagging is a challenge, but hardly an impossible one.
What research do you base this statement on? Currently, we can't even make the fabric, let alone "unroll" it. To have the necessary strength, you need essentially continuous carbon nanotubes extending from space to the ground. You can't use woven fibers because the nanotube-nanotube bonds aren't strong enough. At our current maximumCNT growth rates(0.1 mm/s), it would take millions of years to grow these continuous nanotubes. Perhaps it would be a good idea to take care of this small technological hurdle first before declaring it easy.
Tesla was playing with remote power transmission a century ago. There's still work to be done, but all the major breakthroughs are in place.
This is completely ridiculous. If that's true, why don't we already use wireless power? Powering light bulbs 10 m away is a far cry from tens of thousands of meters away. Tesla did some good work but in the end contributed nothing that we don't already know from Maxwell's equations.
You just set up a straw man argument, I said nothing whatsoever about the alleged crime discussed on vdare. My argument is that capital punishment is enforced in a racist fashion in this country. Using a racist website to help support the case for capital punishment supports my argument.
To address your claim, I said nothing whatsoever about my views on rape, and since I question the validity of the source I have no reason to discuss the "crime".
Wow, you link to a blatantly racist website (vdare) in making a case for capital punishment? I guess it's easier for people like you to use the legal system so you don't have to get your hands dirty... After all lynch mobs are out of fashion.
Mod parent down. Calling ideas "stupid" without supporting data is not "insightful".
In fact, decreasing the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth is not an idea that anyone should dismiss offhand as "stupid". Using a lens at the Lagrange point is an idea that has been seriously considered by the US government. Considering the probable repercussions of global warming discussed in the new report, dismissing good but quirky ideas as you have here could negatively impact billions of people. Luckily, the people seriously trying to solve such problems do not share your knee-jerk, short-sighted attitude.
Your points have been suitably addressed and rebutted, but I couldn't let this pass:
I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in particle physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be affected by magnetic fields. I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetosphere ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere ) due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this?
Are you F*@$ing joking? First, it's very unlikely that you, as an electrical engineer, ever studied particle physics, but if you did you clearly didn't learn anything. I could ask you what you know about quantum field theory (the subject of particle physics), but I'll just say that magnetic fields only effect charged particles' velocities (which you would probably learn in a electromagnetism class). That's right - photons from the sun, the primary source of our heat, are not charged and therfore unaffected by the earth's magnetosphere. Your theory is a joke, and next time you grasp at straws to justify your crackpot beliefs I suggest you at least choose a field you are familiar with.
"Madden for the wii is still madden and people are obsessed over it graphically just as much as the other consoles and it wasn't like it was cheaper to produce the wii version than the other versions."
Riiiighht. How do you know this? I'd like to see you back this up with a link to a budget, at the very least. I don't work at EA, but it stands to reason that the Wii version would be cheaper to develop, because high definition graphics and artwork don't need to be designed.
That's one of the reasons Nintendo's business model is so good for this generation. The Wii will be cheaper to develop for, and therefor more profitable for developers (assuming a lot of people get Wii's). The Wii will foster innovation not only through it's new control scheme, but also through the fact that it will be a less risky platform on which to test unproven ideas.
"A fertilized egg and an 11-month-old baby have two things in common: neither of them is a sentient being"
Oh really? I'll agree with you about the egg, but I'd like to see you produce a medical or biological article that shows that 11-month-old babies lack sentience. Just because they are poor communicators doesn't mean they aren't self-aware.
Aside from sentience, which babies may or may not have, the difference between a baby and a fertelized egg is that the baby is recognizably human. The baby has all the differentiated cells, tissue, and form of an adult human, and like an adult human, can resperate on its own.
A fertilized egg lacks differentiated cells, and in form resembles a single-celled organism. Just like an embryo or fetus, it cannot resperate or provide its own energy without the aid of the mother. It is essentially part of the mother, and thus she gets to be in charge of its existance.
Again though, that tells the game if you have the timing of the swing down, not to mention the acceleration and rotation, but what about the accuracy? How does it know whether the racket (Wiimote) was swung in the right plane so that the ball doesn't go above or below it?
So what happens if in a game if you point the camera away from the sensor bar? For example, in tennis when you swing the remote I would imagine the camera would lose track of the bar at some point during the swing. How does the system know if you're swinging the racket in the right plane? (Or does it even know?)
Just like the market saved the American Bison and the Northwest Atlantic Cod. By the way, in case you're too lazy to click the links, I'm being sarcastic. In those two similar cases, heavy overharvesting of a wild species was not stopped by the market, and in the case of the cod, the species may never recover.
In case that hasn't convinced you that you're not going to revolutionize the field of ecology by applying your free market ideals, take another look at the article, and read this quote:
"That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change."
That's right, an international team of ecologists and economists. You think that maybe, just maybe, they have already considered the laws of supply and demand?
There is no way to know that those same species wouldn't have died out from an Ice Age, volcano eruptions, meteor strikes, or global warming if man wasn't around.
What do you mean by this comment? Of course there's no way to know. Does that mean that we shouldn't try to stop it? Your argument is like saying we shouldn't swerve to avoid the old lady we are about to hit with our car, because if we weren't there she might have got hit by another car anyway (or had a heart attack). Either way, the fact that it's possible they may have died anyway doesn't absolve us of responsibility to act. Your argument is ludicrous.
In terms of probability, you can definately say that the probability is low that we would have had the same kind of die off without man around. We are currently undergoing a mass extinction, the kind that the world hasn't seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, which was most likely the result of a meteor. What is the probability that we would have had another such strike if man hadn 't been around, resulting in a similar die off this century? Approximately zero. As far as I know, humans haven't prevented any asteroid or meteor strikes. Since that's the only thing that has caused similar mass extinctions to the one we have now, I can say with definity that you are wrong, that odds are these species wouldn't have died out without man around.
Instead of making up these bogus arguments so you can continue your irresponsible lifestyle, do some research. You might learn something and become a better person.
Why is this reactionary comment modded insightful? This should be flamebait:
PPS: and if Mr. Orrock, the writer of the article, thinks that the global demise of the human species is a good idea, I invite him to act locally. Very locally.
Where does the writer say that human extinction is a good idea? Nowhere. He doesn't. Why is calling for the death of the writer insightful? This comment is full of hate for those who's views differs from the poster's.
We are not hurting the planet with pollution. We are primarily hurting each other. As TFA notes, we have left very few permanent traces on the earth. Pollution is - or ought to be - a tort.
We are not hurting the planet with pollution. We are primarily hurting each other. As TFA notes, we have left very few permanent traces on the earth. Pollution is - or ought to be - a tort.
Ridiculous. Pollution is primarily hurting humans? Definately not true in terms of fitness, which is the important biological parameter. Think about the number of species that have died, are dying, or will die from pollution and global warming (which stems from pollution). On the other hand, humans continue and will continue to increase in population, despite pollution.
First off, all of the predictions that we see in the article are from Colin Campbell. He's a geologist who represents the fringe of the "peak oil" movement, and founded the association for the study of peak oil and gas. The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak. First it was 1995. It's all the way back to 2007 now. Aaany day now, Colin!
Care to cite any sources for this? It's easy to argue with unfounded assertions. I'm not familiar with Colin Campbell, but he's just one of many people working on peak oil, including British Petroleum, the US DOE, and even T-Boone Pickens. Peak oil is real. Predictions for the year of peak production vary from 2006 to 2040 (see above links), but regardless, it will happen in our lifetime, according to the experts in the industry. The 1995-2007 discrepancy from one single person you discuss is not significant. In fact, some people are saying that it has happened this year already. Perhaps you should stop trying to be cute and research your facts.
The more expensive oil gets, the slower world economic growth occurs, which drastically reduces demand. At the same time, the more expensive oil gets, vast new reserves come online. At current oil prices, Saudi Arabia doesn't have the world's largest reserves: Venezuela does. Venezuela's reserves were once dwarfed by Saudi Arabia's because they're more expensive to produce from. With high prices, a vast amount of Venezuelan oil comes online.
Congratulations, you understand a bit of peak theory. Yes, this is all included. In peak oil theory, when peak oil is reached half of the world's retrievable oil still remains. Peak oil theory states that this half will be much more expensive to extract, which you corroborate here. Of course there are more undiscovered reserves, but the point is that the rate of production will continue to go down, because less and less is discovered per year. Instead of thinking in terms of money (which can be created and destroyed), think in terms of energy (which can't). Once it takes more energy to extract one barrel of oil than the oil provides, the oil becomes useless as an energy source.
But it doesn't stop there. Current prices are high enough to make Canadian tar sands profitable. Shell is leading the way here, and is majorly scaling up their operations. If you count the tar sands, Canada goes up into the world leader position. But hey, why stop there? Coal liquifaction is borderline profitable at current prices. The US has hundreds of years of coal to mine; even if we start converting it to oil, it's a massive energy influx. And do we really even need to get into oil shale, methane hydrates, ethanol (esp. from cellulose), biodiesel, waste polymerization, and vehicles driven by electricity or hydrogen (which, effectively, can be powered by the grid, which means that any potential power source will work).
See above comment. All of the sources you mention here are much more expensive and take more energy to extract.
Yes, prices will rise. So? We've gotten a free ride on ubercheap oil for too long. At current prices, however, countless technologies are either freshly viable or near-viable for energy production -- both for producing petroleum, and for producing petroleum alternatives. If prices rise further, it makes them all the prettier for investors. This peak
Your "insightful" comment betrays a lack of economic understanding. There will be no discontinuity, no moment in the future when we run out of oil and everything grinds to a halt.
You seem good at doling out insults and thumbing your nose, let's see how your rhetoric withstands close scrutiny.
As supply decreases, the price will increase, and at some point something else will reach the cost/benefit ratio of oil. Rising prices will speed that along.
You seem to understand that oil will get more expensive in the future, yet you fail to comprehend the implications. According to Peak Oil theory, once the rate of oil production hits its peak, we will have extracted half the available supply. The remaining half will be more expensive to extract. The problem, which you seem to miss, is that we have no cheap energy source to replace it, nor will one be available in the forseeable future. Once costs rise enough to make other energy sources preferable, energy will be far too expensive to make modern western society feasible. The problem is compounded by the fact that world energy demand is rising and places like China and India want their citizens to have the same quality of life as people enjoy in the US. If we continue to increase our consumption of oil without a suitable cheap replacement, economic and political catastrophe could result.
But even giving you the benefit of "as supply decreases" is not borne out by history. Enviro-types have been telling us for decades that supply is dwindling, yet it increases every year.
Again, you just don't seem to understand the situation. In Hubbert Peak theory, supply will continue to grow until the peak is reached. The problem is that the rate of growth is decreasing, as is easily discerned from this graph. From the rate of growth we can predict the approximate year of production, which is 2006-2010 based on current trends (see above wikipedia article).
So on balance, I have no trouble with society using as much oil as it's worth for us to pay for.
On the balance of what? Poor economic understanding? As I've demonstrated, our current rate of oil consumption could lead us to catastrophe. By conserving, we have the power to change that. Even if you don't think about Peak oil, there's reasons to conserve. The US currently accounts for about 25% of the world's oil consumption, yet only accounts for 5% of its population and 9% of its production. Importing 64% of our oil costs us a lot of capital, and gives countries like Saudi Arabia power and a hold over us that they wouldn't have otherwise. In addition, hydrocarbons are very useful for other things besides energy. Polymers are a cornerstone of our technology, and its in our best interests to keep oil cheap for further breakthroughs.
People like you make me sad. You think the market will magically rescue us and use that to justify a greedy and ignorant lifestyle. I hope that it doesn't come back to bite us in the ass.
Again, returning to my transporter analogy. Your argument is essentially:
"Why don't we fund the transporter. Although we have no chance of building the wormhole, for now we can use the money to construct extremely nice welcome mats. In the future, a wormhole will be made, and the welcome matts will be waiting".
Throwing money at something is a waste if it can't theoretically be done. The money should be spent on CNT growth research, not robots.
Technology does advance, and better material become possible.
What's your basis for this? Why do you think better materials will soon be available? (I assume you mean soon). Think about it this way. If it will take 50 years to get a better material, then why build the robots now? In 50 years, better tech will be available for the robots as well.
You seem to have a poor understanding of science. The scientific method is not:
1. Decide what you want 2. Throw money at it 3. Get what you want.
Until the CNT growth process is better understood, the space elevator is a nothing but a money pit.
Slashdot Mirror
A big research goal right now is to engineer a gap in graphene, but no one has succeeded, unless you count carbon nanotubes, of course.
The real problem is that the band gap is still zero. These things have an on/off ratio of the order of 10 or less, orders of magnitude worse than Si, the material they are supposed to supplement.
That article actually discusses a Paper from 2006, so it's not exactly recent.
Nonetheless I can see why you might get the misconception that this is an issue for the physics community. I assure you that very few of us ever consider free will seriously, much less think that our research has bearing on the issue. Nonetheless, you should allow for some flexibility - their definition of "free will" may not confirm to the latest philosophical dictum, but it is consistent with physics. They are talking about freedom of choice, i.e. whether or not the initial conditions of the universe determine our every action. I think it's perfectly reasonable for physicists to discuss that topic framed in that manner, since that is their area of expertise.
Too bad F != ma for many quantum mechanical systems.
I challenge you to find an instance on a physics paper claiming to "disprove free will" published in a reputable journal. I doubt you can find one, let alone myriad instances which I might expect if I took your "all the time" statement seriously.
Seriously- let's take a look back. Have there been any major advancements in solar energy technology in the last fifty or so years?
Is this a rhetorical question? In less than 30s, using only a bare minimum of energy and thought, I checked the Wikipedia photovoltaic cell article and found out that in 2007 companies began to commercialize the so-called second generation solar cell technology. Clearly, you didn't actually "take a look back". Perhaps you should do some research next time before talking out of your ass about things you quite evidently know nothing about.
It'd be really refreshing to see scientists develop a bit of altruism. It's the ultimate Open Source, and they'd be guaranteed decades, if not centuries, of good will and fame. That's worth a lot more than a few *possible* royalty checks.
Yes, everyone knows that scientists are some of the most selfish of all people, thinking about nothing but their own pocketbooks. Oh wait, you must have scientists confused with technology licensing office clerks. After all, is it not scientists who dedicate their lives to advancing human knowledge? We owe our modern lives to science, don't forget that. You must not have obtained a PhD in science, otherwise you would know that pursuing science involves self-sacrifice in the highest degree. You don't spend 4-8 years in grad school earning nothing if all you care about is money.
Looks like it might have trouble with conducting surfaces. If you short those clamps together all that induced charge/voltage would likely discharge, sending the robot tumbling to the ground and maybe even blowing its power supply. Any wet wall, or even just a wall with a band of conducting material would still serve as a barrier to the robot.
Fine, but then shouldn't the hero be African as well?
There may be a point here. There is possibly some racial colonization themes portrayed when the protagonist is of European descent and he goes around killing African zombies.
Your tuning fork analogy is valid, but you need to remember that it is a nanometer sized tuning fork that vibrates in response to EM waves, not sound waves, and serves as a field emitter. Good luck doing that with any other material. In addition, they were not using a "specially" tuned receiver to pick up the movement - the movement is detected through the resulting modulation of the Field Emission Current, which is especially sensitive to the location of the end of the nanotube. The only tuning involved is through a DC field that changes the tension on the nanotube, which in turn changes its resonant frequency. This is a good thing, because it means you can change the channel on the resulting radio. It's novel and exciting research because the "tuning fork" is on the nanometer scale. Mounting the nanotube in the TEM and observing its vibration is hardly trivial.
OK, granted, you could be correct in stating the unrolling would be easy, however my point still holds. If you can't make the cable in the first place, you can't unroll it!
Unrolling the initial fabric from orbit down to the surface without snagging is a challenge, but hardly an impossible one.
What research do you base this statement on? Currently, we can't even make the fabric, let alone "unroll" it. To have the necessary strength, you need essentially continuous carbon nanotubes extending from space to the ground. You can't use woven fibers because the nanotube-nanotube bonds aren't strong enough. At our current maximumCNT growth rates(0.1 mm/s), it would take millions of years to grow these continuous nanotubes. Perhaps it would be a good idea to take care of this small technological hurdle first before declaring it easy.
Tesla was playing with remote power transmission a century ago. There's still work to be done, but all the major breakthroughs are in place.
This is completely ridiculous. If that's true, why don't we already use wireless power? Powering light bulbs 10 m away is a far cry from tens of thousands of meters away. Tesla did some good work but in the end contributed nothing that we don't already know from Maxwell's equations.
You just set up a straw man argument, I said nothing whatsoever about the alleged crime discussed on vdare. My argument is that capital punishment is enforced in a racist fashion in this country. Using a racist website to help support the case for capital punishment supports my argument.
To address your claim, I said nothing whatsoever about my views on rape, and since I question the validity of the source I have no reason to discuss the "crime".
Wow, you link to a blatantly racist website (vdare) in making a case for capital punishment? I guess it's easier for people like you to use the legal system so you don't have to get your hands dirty... After all lynch mobs are out of fashion.
Mod parent down. Calling ideas "stupid" without supporting data is not "insightful".
In fact, decreasing the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth is not an idea that anyone should dismiss offhand as "stupid". Using a lens at the Lagrange point is an idea that has been seriously considered by the US government. Considering the probable repercussions of global warming discussed in the new report, dismissing good but quirky ideas as you have here could negatively impact billions of people. Luckily, the people seriously trying to solve such problems do not share your knee-jerk, short-sighted attitude.
Your points have been suitably addressed and rebutted, but I couldn't let this pass:
I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in particle physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be affected by magnetic fields. I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetosphere ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere ) due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this?
Are you F*@$ing joking? First, it's very unlikely that you, as an electrical engineer, ever studied particle physics, but if you did you clearly didn't learn anything. I could ask you what you know about quantum field theory (the subject of particle physics), but I'll just say that magnetic fields only effect charged particles' velocities (which you would probably learn in a electromagnetism class). That's right - photons from the sun, the primary source of our heat, are not charged and therfore unaffected by the earth's magnetosphere. Your theory is a joke, and next time you grasp at straws to justify your crackpot beliefs I suggest you at least choose a field you are familiar with.
"Madden for the wii is still madden and people are obsessed over it graphically just as much as the other consoles and it wasn't like it was cheaper to produce the wii version than the other versions."
Riiiighht. How do you know this? I'd like to see you back this up with a link to a budget, at the very least. I don't work at EA, but it stands to reason that the Wii version would be cheaper to develop, because high definition graphics and artwork don't need to be designed.
That's one of the reasons Nintendo's business model is so good for this generation. The Wii will be cheaper to develop for, and therefor more profitable for developers (assuming a lot of people get Wii's). The Wii will foster innovation not only through it's new control scheme, but also through the fact that it will be a less risky platform on which to test unproven ideas.
"A fertilized egg and an 11-month-old baby have two things in common: neither of them is a sentient being"
Oh really? I'll agree with you about the egg, but I'd like to see you produce a medical or biological article that shows that 11-month-old babies lack sentience. Just because they are poor communicators doesn't mean they aren't self-aware.
Aside from sentience, which babies may or may not have, the difference between a baby and a fertelized egg is that the baby is recognizably human. The baby has all the differentiated cells, tissue, and form of an adult human, and like an adult human, can resperate on its own.
A fertilized egg lacks differentiated cells, and in form resembles a single-celled organism. Just like an embryo or fetus, it cannot resperate or provide its own energy without the aid of the mother. It is essentially part of the mother, and thus she gets to be in charge of its existance.
Again though, that tells the game if you have the timing of the swing down, not to mention the acceleration and rotation, but what about the accuracy? How does it know whether the racket (Wiimote) was swung in the right plane so that the ball doesn't go above or below it?
So what happens if in a game if you point the camera away from the sensor bar? For example, in tennis when you swing the remote I would imagine the camera would lose track of the bar at some point during the swing. How does the system know if you're swinging the racket in the right plane? (Or does it even know?)
In case that hasn't convinced you that you're not going to revolutionize the field of ecology by applying your free market ideals, take another look at the article, and read this quote:
That's right, an international team of ecologists and economists. You think that maybe, just maybe, they have already considered the laws of supply and demand?
There is no way to know that those same species wouldn't have died out from an Ice Age, volcano eruptions, meteor strikes, or global warming if man wasn't around.
What do you mean by this comment? Of course there's no way to know. Does that mean that we shouldn't try to stop it? Your argument is like saying we shouldn't swerve to avoid the old lady we are about to hit with our car, because if we weren't there she might have got hit by another car anyway (or had a heart attack). Either way, the fact that it's possible they may have died anyway doesn't absolve us of responsibility to act. Your argument is ludicrous.
In terms of probability, you can definately say that the probability is low that we would have had the same kind of die off without man around. We are currently undergoing a mass extinction, the kind that the world hasn't seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, which was most likely the result of a meteor. What is the probability that we would have had another such strike if man hadn 't been around, resulting in a similar die off this century? Approximately zero. As far as I know, humans haven't prevented any asteroid or meteor strikes. Since that's the only thing that has caused similar mass extinctions to the one we have now, I can say with definity that you are wrong, that odds are these species wouldn't have died out without man around.
Instead of making up these bogus arguments so you can continue your irresponsible lifestyle, do some research. You might learn something and become a better person.
Where does the writer say that human extinction is a good idea? Nowhere. He doesn't. Why is calling for the death of the writer insightful? This comment is full of hate for those who's views differs from the poster's.
We are not hurting the planet with pollution. We are primarily hurting each other. As TFA notes, we have left very few permanent traces on the earth. Pollution is - or ought to be - a tort.
Ridiculous. Pollution is primarily hurting humans? Definately not true in terms of fitness, which is the important biological parameter. Think about the number of species that have died, are dying, or will die from pollution and global warming (which stems from pollution). On the other hand, humans continue and will continue to increase in population, despite pollution.
First off, all of the predictions that we see in the article are from Colin Campbell. He's a geologist who represents the fringe of the "peak oil" movement, and founded the association for the study of peak oil and gas. The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak. First it was 1995. It's all the way back to 2007 now. Aaany day now, Colin!
Care to cite any sources for this? It's easy to argue with unfounded assertions. I'm not familiar with Colin Campbell, but he's just one of many people working on peak oil, including British Petroleum, the US DOE, and even T-Boone Pickens. Peak oil is real. Predictions for the year of peak production vary from 2006 to 2040 (see above links), but regardless, it will happen in our lifetime, according to the experts in the industry. The 1995-2007 discrepancy from one single person you discuss is not significant. In fact, some people are saying that it has happened this year already. Perhaps you should stop trying to be cute and research your facts.
The more expensive oil gets, the slower world economic growth occurs, which drastically reduces demand. At the same time, the more expensive oil gets, vast new reserves come online. At current oil prices, Saudi Arabia doesn't have the world's largest reserves: Venezuela does. Venezuela's reserves were once dwarfed by Saudi Arabia's because they're more expensive to produce from. With high prices, a vast amount of Venezuelan oil comes online.
Congratulations, you understand a bit of peak theory. Yes, this is all included. In peak oil theory, when peak oil is reached half of the world's retrievable oil still remains. Peak oil theory states that this half will be much more expensive to extract, which you corroborate here. Of course there are more undiscovered reserves, but the point is that the rate of production will continue to go down, because less and less is discovered per year. Instead of thinking in terms of money (which can be created and destroyed), think in terms of energy (which can't). Once it takes more energy to extract one barrel of oil than the oil provides, the oil becomes useless as an energy source.
But it doesn't stop there. Current prices are high enough to make Canadian tar sands profitable. Shell is leading the way here, and is majorly scaling up their operations. If you count the tar sands, Canada goes up into the world leader position. But hey, why stop there? Coal liquifaction is borderline profitable at current prices. The US has hundreds of years of coal to mine; even if we start converting it to oil, it's a massive energy influx. And do we really even need to get into oil shale, methane hydrates, ethanol (esp. from cellulose), biodiesel, waste polymerization, and vehicles driven by electricity or hydrogen (which, effectively, can be powered by the grid, which means that any potential power source will work).
See above comment. All of the sources you mention here are much more expensive and take more energy to extract.
Yes, prices will rise. So? We've gotten a free ride on ubercheap oil for too long. At current prices, however, countless technologies are either freshly viable or near-viable for energy production -- both for producing petroleum, and for producing petroleum alternatives. If prices rise further, it makes them all the prettier for investors. This peak
Your "insightful" comment betrays a lack of economic understanding. There will be no discontinuity, no moment in the future when we run out of oil and everything grinds to a halt.
You seem good at doling out insults and thumbing your nose, let's see how your rhetoric withstands close scrutiny.
As supply decreases, the price will increase, and at some point something else will reach the cost/benefit ratio of oil. Rising prices will speed that along.
You seem to understand that oil will get more expensive in the future, yet you fail to comprehend the implications. According to Peak Oil theory, once the rate of oil production hits its peak, we will have extracted half the available supply. The remaining half will be more expensive to extract. The problem, which you seem to miss, is that we have no cheap energy source to replace it, nor will one be available in the forseeable future. Once costs rise enough to make other energy sources preferable, energy will be far too expensive to make modern western society feasible. The problem is compounded by the fact that world energy demand is rising and places like China and India want their citizens to have the same quality of life as people enjoy in the US. If we continue to increase our consumption of oil without a suitable cheap replacement, economic and political catastrophe could result.
But even giving you the benefit of "as supply decreases" is not borne out by history. Enviro-types have been telling us for decades that supply is dwindling, yet it increases every year.
Again, you just don't seem to understand the situation. In Hubbert Peak theory, supply will continue to grow until the peak is reached. The problem is that the rate of growth is decreasing, as is easily discerned from this graph. From the rate of growth we can predict the approximate year of production, which is 2006-2010 based on current trends (see above wikipedia article).
So on balance, I have no trouble with society using as much oil as it's worth for us to pay for.
On the balance of what? Poor economic understanding? As I've demonstrated, our current rate of oil consumption could lead us to catastrophe. By conserving, we have the power to change that. Even if you don't think about Peak oil, there's reasons to conserve. The US currently accounts for about 25% of the world's oil consumption, yet only accounts for 5% of its population and 9% of its production. Importing 64% of our oil costs us a lot of capital, and gives countries like Saudi Arabia power and a hold over us that they wouldn't have otherwise. In addition, hydrocarbons are very useful for other things besides energy. Polymers are a cornerstone of our technology, and its in our best interests to keep oil cheap for further breakthroughs.
People like you make me sad. You think the market will magically rescue us and use that to justify a greedy and ignorant lifestyle. I hope that it doesn't come back to bite us in the ass.
Again, returning to my transporter analogy. Your argument is essentially:
"Why don't we fund the transporter. Although we have no chance of building the wormhole, for now we can use the money to construct extremely nice welcome mats. In the future, a wormhole will be made, and the welcome matts will be waiting".
Throwing money at something is a waste if it can't theoretically be done. The money should be spent on CNT growth research, not robots.
Technology does advance, and better material become possible.
What's your basis for this? Why do you think better materials will soon be available? (I assume you mean soon). Think about it this way. If it will take 50 years to get a better material, then why build the robots now? In 50 years, better tech will be available for the robots as well.
You seem to have a poor understanding of science. The scientific method is not:
1. Decide what you want
2. Throw money at it
3. Get what you want.
Until the CNT growth process is better understood, the space elevator is a nothing but a money pit.