Most of the advances in physics we did in the 1920s resulted in new technology in the 1960s to 1980s and even today. For example lasers, laser diodes, masks for chip design, transistors, fiber optics, CDs, GPS (and why it did not work at first) and many more. But where did these breakthroughs came from? researches looked at the models present at that time and where not able to explain a lot with them. So they tried to perfect them. They found out that there is no ether. And they found out that light as a fixed speed in vacuum. Without these results there would be no WIFI or mobile phone as we would not be able to calculate all tat antenna stuff we need for it.
At the moment we have a model which is able explain a lot, but it cannot explain gravity and the properties of mass and gravity and how they are related. So further research in that area is still required. What we can spare ourselves is trying to built a fusion reactor. We have one it is work perfectly since -5,000,000,000 B.C. (6000 B.C. for creationists) and it will work in a positive way for the next 2,000,000,000 years. Then we have to find us a new location. So we should work at better collectors for that reactor (e.g. better wind turbines, solar panels etc.)
We already did the first one (mostly). There are not that many burned down houses around me. Honestly I haven't seen any in years (except from TV). And there is an easy way to reduce crime. Care about the poor and do not treat them as second class citizens. That also applies to people in other countries and other countries.
So to say. We already did it. We are just not implementing it.
If you have a problem with Wall Street and think that long term investments in real stuff (e.g. schools, research institutes, health etc.) than you are evil. At least in the US. To be honest if I look at the US media, it seams that the USA is in big trouble. Most of the news is propaganda or disinformation. Especially on Fox News. The US GDP is mostly based on Wall Street (compared to other Western countries) and Wall Street works as a big casino or better some sort of pyramid game. As long as people get money from somewhere else and put it in Wall Street, stocks rise, profits are made, and the sun shines. However, in the end you, US citizens, have to pay all these profits, but you can't your country already has a trade balance deficit.
So I always wonder how you still elect every time the same idiots which are the cause of that mess. However, I also wonder why Germans elected their present government and are now highly disappointed by it. Because the government in Germany is presently doing what they promised before election. Mess with the social security system in favor of banks and insurance companies, make gifts for the well suited, and try to be the egotist in the EU.
BTW: When I look at France or Italy (oh me God) or at Hungary (with they new media law) we are all governed by idiotic egotists. But maybe we are just too disconnected to the real problems in the world. Well see.
And maybe it is enough to have one such super machine available. When we are through with it, we (as in all humans) can built the next one. Preferably in an area with a working electric infrastructure.
When I have to switch to insects from mammals than I would rather stop eating meat at all. I eat that stuff because it is delicious not because it is absolutely necessary to eat meat. So insects are no replacement for a cow or a pig or a chicken or a spring bock or a sheep or a mus or a crocodile (ok chicken and crocodile are no mammals, even though they are delicious).
Math is perceived as some sort of torture in school which serves no real purpose. But math is a formal language which can be a very powerful tool to do a lot of things in different fields. It can help to describe things very, very precise. And because certain properties of mathematics have been analyzed and though about so much, a wide variety of procedures and knowledge exist which can help in deduction.
Set-theory is for example widely used in computer science or biology or medicine to describe knowledge in form of classes and properties and sometimes even rules for these classes and properties. But even when you look at a classic point an click desktop OS. These use folders and files to describe structures which are no mare than sets and elements. And in new system people use tags. Tags can be understood as sets or classes (in a mathematical sense).
Math can help you to find the cheapest pizza fungi-salami in town and it can help you to project the revenue of a new product in your store. As you can first monitor previous sales and establish an curve for normal product sales from the point of introduction to the fading out. This can be helpful to find the right time to order new items.
You can use it with all the FB friends data to learn who you should target with advertising. You could evaluate talks of politicians and prove that they are lying which is much better than just having a feeling that they are telling a lie. The difference is, that you can understand the inclined hidden messages in a slogan, you can put the finger on it which is a big difference to that feeling where you will still memorize parts of the message an believe them.
And math is in general a good training thing for you thinking muscle.
The maestro card is accepted in Europe and I have seen ATMs in South Africa which accepts these cards too. But maybe there are no such ATMs in the US. But you are right when it comes to the influence of the US money and government system.
We shouldn't do business with banks which use our money to speculate, fail and let us bail them out again. And when some whistle blower site does something unpleasant for a government then they through that site out. There are banks, which invest in sustainable project, which do not try to make as much money as possible and externalize the risks to the public. Just lets switch.
How can an encyclopedia taint a verdict? Isn't it the task of a court to understand the vocabulary used in a trial? And what would have happened when had read the article before the trial? Or even before the accused has done anything? However, I do not understand that jury concept in all aspects. As we normally only use two jurors beside one or more judges. And the jurors get prior training before working as jurors. But I know that is a little different in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Money is also a form of power and it is used to implement a wide variety of policies. And BTW adding regulation in a market economy is not implying that we go to a no money society like the Star Trek society.
However, if you find political decision making a bad idea. Consider a total market controlled system. This would rather fast go back to something known as Manchester Capitalism. I honestly hope you are not proposing that.
A good economic system has to support human rights or at least not hinder their establishment (much). A good system has to provide food, a task/job/purpose for every person (even though this cannot be provided as a service, rather it has to give you the opportunity to find such thing), housing, education, health care, security (to some extend) and it shall allow you to form relationships with other people. And free speech should also be possible. Logically.
Everything which serves these purposes is good everything else is bad. And a system which is able to provide these things better than another is better than the other. And I do not care how it is called.
In the enlightenment they came up with three basic concepts which are required for a good society. Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. On top of that they come up with these human rights. Let be these rules the guide to measure a system (economic+political).
However we can list dictatorships as bad. And also top down economics does not work.
Social behavior is learned in groups which implies society. And if you have kids you know that they become very stubborn at a very young age, because they want something and those stupid parents refuse it. This first happens between 2-3 years. And even babies tend to express their needs without considering the situation.
And stealing and greed (which are closely related) where a problem 6000 years ago. Therefor some guy wrote a rule on that subject on a stone tablets.
And 2000 years ago they nailed someone on a tree for talking about the same issue. But maybe it was something else he said. It could be the "be nice to each other" or the "don't do business in the temple"
Yes and no. Yes they are not so much in a scare based society. However, they are also ungreedy. For example. Not everyone can have a shuttle or Galaxy-class starship. However, some of our contemporaries would want to have everything.
We are able to provide every person today with food, clothing and a roof above the head. This is not a technical issue. We have even the technology to run our whole system on sustainable energy. However, we do not implement anything of it.
The major difference between their fictional society and ours is how they handle greed or the exaggerated need for things we have today.
The human is not a purely egoistic machine. This has long be proven. However, he or she can act selfish. States like the USSR or China were not communistic societies even if they proclaimed it. They are communists just like North Korea is a democratic society, but their state is called Democratic People's Republic of Korea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_korea). However, the term communism is so widely used for different theories that it is not save to use it to identify one system.
In most communistic theories the political system is controlled by the people and is some sort of basis democracy or parliamentarian democracy. And the economic system is not based on ownership/titles (which does not necessary mean that you cannot have seizin). For example you may life in a house and can call this you house, however you cannot play landlord.
However, Leninists would disagree with the democracy thing in this concept. As Lenin thought people are too stupid to accept the concept and have to be trained first.
It is however, save to say, that such money less and democratic system is not applicable in the near future and so all of our ST fans will be depressed.
I think we have to fix capitalism (and we just missed that opportunity) so it cannot harm people and destroy the environment. Good ideas in that direction are a basic income, public health care, education for everyone and regulation for the financial sector.
The first three things already exist in EU states (to some extend) and work very well with market economies.
Well yes. Western countries are totally over militarized. And especially the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures if I read this correctly than the US alone contributes with 43 % to the world's military budget. And the other NATO states add up to 19-20% of the budget. So in total NATO spends 62% of the world's military budget. Looks like we are a little over prepared when it comes to self-defense.
They have also a different work motivation. The work to improve them selves and to better society. This is a very altruistic approach and it is totally anti-capitalistic. And I personally do not see any development in that direction. Even more it looks like that there is no lesson learned from the last economic disaster as we did not add any real regulation on the finance market.
Depends where you live. In Irak you might think that there is no difference. Even though GWB is not a super strong and hyper brilliant being with too much ego. He is mostly the opposite.
It is the time line where we didn't blow us up. So Cochrane does not develop the warp drive and we all die out because we use an un-desinfected phone. Oh wait... wrong book. Anyway this reality is the one which hasn't been produced so far. It will be named:
Star Trek @home
and the story is, that the crew stays in San Fransisco in a bar going nowhere. And in the end the leave the convention and go home in a rusty taxi and are hit by a meteor containing Braxton or Dr. Who (but I am not totally sure).
Because such scooters have been developed or to be more precise people tried to invent them before the all digital segway. And they failed. So it is amazing that they were able to do it. It is a little bit an anachronism, because today you try to do all controlling digital. Analog is not precise enough (people think).
Yes I am suggesting that you are not able or not willing to try to understand the effects of flooded coastal regions. You can see the effects of a rising of several centimeters in Bangladesh.
To help you. Look a figure 1.1 and read the text around it. You will see that we had a rise in sea level since 7cm since the 1980s which effects is the flooding of the coastal areas in Bangladesh.
Amsterdam's history is BTW not a good point of comparison, as the Netherlands are rather small and they just needed to build more and higher dikes. Even doing that, they the Netherlands still lost land in that period. And by that time we did not have 6-7 billion people living on earth.
Nowadays we have for example Shanghai with 19 mio people, where the highest point is 4 m above sea level. Their tidal range is approx 2 m. An increase of 770 mm (as states in the wiki article) will most likely increase the risk of flooding significantly. Yes they can build higher dikes. But you have to do this for all coasts around the world.
And you can see in th US that even so proud countries are not really able to manage their dikes properly (e.g. New Orleans). Guess what happens when more countries which even less capacity and stability have to battle floods.
Another problem of the rising sea level is its affect on ground water flows and salt concentrations. This can also have an effect of various thing from plant life to ground structure.
I strongly recommend reading the IPCC report and assume for a moment that they are right.
Even if it did, when will millions of people have to move? Over a 100 year period? Oh no!
Well I assumed that the average/.er knows at least some estimates out of the IPCC report. Therefore I allowed to use additional knowledge (which was not present in the abstract).
When it comes to moving people. In Bangladesh people have to move now. And it is not only moving millions or even billions of people. Infrastructure has to be built too. And we will loose fertile soil to the sea.
How much would it cost to rebuilt NY, L.A., Shnaghai, Peking, etc.? And where will you put all these people? Most parts of the world do not look like Canada with 3.4 people per km while Germany has 229 people per km and Bangladesh has 1026 people per km.
And we will not have to move them over a 100 year period. As we are not starting today (or have you seen anything like that?). Actually in the US they try to built new skyscrapers right now in NY. So it is save to say they will start with the moving part when the water stays high.
I guess you just do not want to change your way of life to fit reality. But that would mean that reality will change your living parameter later, but therefore more drastically.
1. It is a climate change. And there is an increase of energy in the system earth due to this climate change. And it depends highly on your location if it is getting warmer by average or colder. 2. No humans are not responsible for the change, the change takes place because there is more energy in the system. Humans are only responsible for improving the isolation of the planet which causes the increase.
3. RTFM really read it. It has been explained in great detail. And even if you use the most optimistic scenario, people have to move by the millions. Cities have to be rebuilt. The life in the oceans will change dramatically because of the higher CO2 levels which leads to a more acid climate in the oceans. I could go on, but it is already explained in the IPCC report. 4. Is a wrong question. The question is not when will it happen, but when have we to act so we can deal with the outcome in the right way. This implies: 4.1. How can we prevent an increase in the average global temperature by 2 Kelvin? 4.2. What have we to do to master the effects of such an increase? 4.3. What have we to do when 4.1 cannot be done, because we are too lazy and stupid?
BTW: We will not be affected by climate chance right now. And most likely we will not have to suffer from it (in Western countries). However, our children will have a lot of fun swimming in the ruins of New York, Hamburg, Boston, London and Amsterdam. This is a fair trade for loosing the Great Barrier Reef and some atolls.
First, please call it climate change. The term global warming suggests the wrong outcomes. Second, more CO2 may increase plant growth. This is nothing new and has been discussed for some time. There are also publications showing that the growth of plants is not that much stimulated by and increase of CO2 as expected. So this not necessarily a completed discussion in this area of research.
Also CO2 increase means automatically oceans going acid which has a negative effect on plant/plankton growth in the seas. The proposed extension of planted areas through a higher CO2 level is merely an assumption not a proof. However, it is true that at least the climate models from the last decade did not incorporate the "good" vegetation models. But still the results of this work are more in a propositional state.
Furthermore they state (in the abstract) that the increase of CO2 does not have that big effect on the climate than proposed in previous models. As they do not say all previous models, but reference (some) previous studies, there is a missing reference (for us readers). And even though. The system is still increasing its energy level.
This still results in an arctic meltdown, this still does not include men made plant reduction, it does not change the negative effects on the seas and we will still run out of oil. So even if they are totally right and the assumption made by/. are true, than we still hit the wall, but may be a little later. Still a good choice to use the brakes.
He should finance renewable energy. Why give developing countries a legacy technology which produces so much more legacy (and no it does not matter if these are 100 Castors (100t each) per year or only 20. What I cannot understand is how people can be fan of a so much disputed technology which has definitely its problems. Also it cannot be the solution for our total energy needs.
There are cheaper saver and better working alternatives. Just lets use them.
The sun is definitely shining every day. Maybe not in your garden, but some miles away. You could easily generate enough energy in North Africa to power the whole world and definitely Europe and Africa. And the wind is blowing every day. you can see that when you look at those fabulous weather maps. These big cycling thingies are constantly moving which indicates wind. There might not be wind in your garden every day, but I can tell you that there was no day the past 15 years where there were no wind at the complete coast around the North Sea.
On the other hand nuclear power is not clean and it is not save. And it is expensive. And a real problem when a state fails. Oh wait. Western countries never fail. I forgot that. We will exist forever or at least the next 100 000 years or so.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the advances in physics we did in the 1920s resulted in new technology in the 1960s to 1980s and even today. For example lasers, laser diodes, masks for chip design, transistors, fiber optics, CDs, GPS (and why it did not work at first) and many more. But where did these breakthroughs came from? researches looked at the models present at that time and where not able to explain a lot with them. So they tried to perfect them. They found out that there is no ether. And they found out that light as a fixed speed in vacuum. Without these results there would be no WIFI or mobile phone as we would not be able to calculate all tat antenna stuff we need for it.
At the moment we have a model which is able explain a lot, but it cannot explain gravity and the properties of mass and gravity and how they are related. So further research in that area is still required. What we can spare ourselves is trying to built a fusion reactor. We have one it is work perfectly since -5,000,000,000 B.C. (6000 B.C. for creationists) and it will work in a positive way for the next 2,000,000,000 years. Then we have to find us a new location. So we should work at better collectors for that reactor (e.g. better wind turbines, solar panels etc.)
We already did the first one (mostly). There are not that many burned down houses around me. Honestly I haven't seen any in years (except from TV). And there is an easy way to reduce crime. Care about the poor and do not treat them as second class citizens. That also applies to people in other countries and other countries.
So to say. We already did it. We are just not implementing it.
If you have a problem with Wall Street and think that long term investments in real stuff (e.g. schools, research institutes, health etc.) than you are evil. At least in the US. To be honest if I look at the US media, it seams that the USA is in big trouble. Most of the news is propaganda or disinformation. Especially on Fox News.
The US GDP is mostly based on Wall Street (compared to other Western countries) and Wall Street works as a big casino or better some sort of pyramid game. As long as people get money from somewhere else and put it in Wall Street, stocks rise, profits are made, and the sun shines. However, in the end you, US citizens, have to pay all these profits, but you can't your country already has a trade balance deficit.
So I always wonder how you still elect every time the same idiots which are the cause of that mess. However, I also wonder why Germans elected their present government and are now highly disappointed by it. Because the government in Germany is presently doing what they promised before election. Mess with the social security system in favor of banks and insurance companies, make gifts for the well suited, and try to be the egotist in the EU.
BTW: When I look at France or Italy (oh me God) or at Hungary (with they new media law) we are all governed by idiotic egotists. But maybe we are just too disconnected to the real problems in the world. Well see.
And maybe it is enough to have one such super machine available. When we are through with it, we (as in all humans) can built the next one. Preferably in an area with a working electric infrastructure.
When I have to switch to insects from mammals than I would rather stop eating meat at all. I eat that stuff because it is delicious not because it is absolutely necessary to eat meat. So insects are no replacement for a cow or a pig or a chicken or a spring bock or a sheep or a mus or a crocodile (ok chicken and crocodile are no mammals, even though they are delicious).
Math is perceived as some sort of torture in school which serves no real purpose. But math is a formal language which can be a very powerful tool to do a lot of things in different fields. It can help to describe things very, very precise. And because certain properties of mathematics have been analyzed and though about so much, a wide variety of procedures and knowledge exist which can help in deduction.
Set-theory is for example widely used in computer science or biology or medicine to describe knowledge in form of classes and properties and sometimes even rules for these classes and properties. But even when you look at a classic point an click desktop OS. These use folders and files to describe structures which are no mare than sets and elements. And in new system people use tags. Tags can be understood as sets or classes (in a mathematical sense).
Math can help you to find the cheapest pizza fungi-salami in town and it can help you to project the revenue of a new product in your store. As you can first monitor previous sales and establish an curve for normal product sales from the point of introduction to the fading out. This can be helpful to find the right time to order new items.
You can use it with all the FB friends data to learn who you should target with advertising. You could evaluate talks of politicians and prove that they are lying which is much better than just having a feeling that they are telling a lie. The difference is, that you can understand the inclined hidden messages in a slogan, you can put the finger on it which is a big difference to that feeling where you will still memorize parts of the message an believe them.
And math is in general a good training thing for you thinking muscle.
when they have a really working quantum computer which really can decrypt DES. Right now we are at least decades away from such devices.
The maestro card is accepted in Europe and I have seen ATMs in South Africa which accepts these cards too. But maybe there are no such ATMs in the US. But you are right when it comes to the influence of the US money and government system.
We shouldn't do business with banks which use our money to speculate, fail and let us bail them out again. And when some whistle blower site does something unpleasant for a government then they through that site out. There are banks, which invest in sustainable project, which do not try to make as much money as possible and externalize the risks to the public. Just lets switch.
How can an encyclopedia taint a verdict? Isn't it the task of a court to understand the vocabulary used in a trial? And what would have happened when had read the article before the trial? Or even before the accused has done anything? However, I do not understand that jury concept in all aspects. As we normally only use two jurors beside one or more judges. And the jurors get prior training before working as jurors. But I know that is a little different in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Money is also a form of power and it is used to implement a wide variety of policies. And BTW adding regulation in a market economy is not implying that we go to a no money society like the Star Trek society.
However, if you find political decision making a bad idea. Consider a total market controlled system. This would rather fast go back to something known as Manchester Capitalism. I honestly hope you are not proposing that.
A good economic system has to support human rights or at least not hinder their establishment (much). A good system has to provide food, a task/job/purpose for every person (even though this cannot be provided as a service, rather it has to give you the opportunity to find such thing), housing, education, health care, security (to some extend) and it shall allow you to form relationships with other people. And free speech should also be possible. Logically.
Everything which serves these purposes is good everything else is bad. And a system which is able to provide these things better than another is better than the other. And I do not care how it is called.
In the enlightenment they came up with three basic concepts which are required for a good society. Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. On top of that they come up with these human rights. Let be these rules the guide to measure a system (economic+political).
However we can list dictatorships as bad. And also top down economics does not work.
Social behavior is learned in groups which implies society. And if you have kids you know that they become very stubborn at a very young age, because they want something and those stupid parents refuse it. This first happens between 2-3 years. And even babies tend to express their needs without considering the situation.
And stealing and greed (which are closely related) where a problem 6000 years ago. Therefor some guy wrote a rule on that subject on a stone tablets.
And 2000 years ago they nailed someone on a tree for talking about the same issue. But maybe it was something else he said. It could be the "be nice to each other" or the "don't do business in the temple"
Yes and no. Yes they are not so much in a scare based society. However, they are also ungreedy. For example. Not everyone can have a shuttle or Galaxy-class starship. However, some of our contemporaries would want to have everything.
We are able to provide every person today with food, clothing and a roof above the head. This is not a technical issue. We have even the technology to run our whole system on sustainable energy. However, we do not implement anything of it.
The major difference between their fictional society and ours is how they handle greed or the exaggerated need for things we have today.
The human is not a purely egoistic machine. This has long be proven. However, he or she can act selfish. States like the USSR or China were not communistic societies even if they proclaimed it. They are communists just like North Korea is a democratic society, but their state is called Democratic People's Republic of Korea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_korea). However, the term communism is so widely used for different theories that it is not save to use it to identify one system.
In most communistic theories the political system is controlled by the people and is some sort of basis democracy or parliamentarian democracy. And the economic system is not based on ownership/titles (which does not necessary mean that you cannot have seizin). For example you may life in a house and can call this you house, however you cannot play landlord.
However, Leninists would disagree with the democracy thing in this concept. As Lenin thought people are too stupid to accept the concept and have to be trained first.
It is however, save to say, that such money less and democratic system is not applicable in the near future and so all of our ST fans will be depressed.
I think we have to fix capitalism (and we just missed that opportunity) so it cannot harm people and destroy the environment. Good ideas in that direction are a basic income, public health care, education for everyone and regulation for the financial sector.
The first three things already exist in EU states (to some extend) and work very well with market economies.
Well yes. Western countries are totally over militarized. And especially the USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures if I read this correctly than the US alone contributes with 43 % to the world's military budget. And the other NATO states add up to 19-20% of the budget. So in total NATO spends 62% of the world's military budget. Looks like we are a little over prepared when it comes to self-defense.
They have also a different work motivation. The work to improve them selves and to better society. This is a very altruistic approach and it is totally anti-capitalistic. And I personally do not see any development in that direction. Even more it looks like that there is no lesson learned from the last economic disaster as we did not add any real regulation on the finance market.
Depends where you live. In Irak you might think that there is no difference. Even though GWB is not a super strong and hyper brilliant being with too much ego. He is mostly the opposite.
It is the time line where we didn't blow us up. So Cochrane does not develop the warp drive and we all die out because we use an un-desinfected phone. Oh wait ... wrong book. Anyway this reality is the one which hasn't been produced so far. It will be named:
Star Trek @home
and the story is, that the crew stays in San Fransisco in a bar going nowhere. And in the end the leave the convention and go home in a rusty taxi and are hit by a meteor containing Braxton or Dr. Who (but I am not totally sure).
Because such scooters have been developed or to be more precise people tried to invent them before the all digital segway. And they failed. So it is amazing that they were able to do it. It is a little bit an anachronism, because today you try to do all controlling digital. Analog is not precise enough (people think).
No no they are just robots and avatars of the media lab. Females in CS and engineering? Come on do you believe in Santa Clause? Do you?
Yes I am suggesting that you are not able or not willing to try to understand the effects of flooded coastal regions. You can see the effects of a rising of several centimeters in Bangladesh.
but your point is, that you disprove of my statements. So for starters read this: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf
To help you. Look a figure 1.1 and read the text around it. You will see that we had a rise in sea level since 7cm since the 1980s which effects is the flooding of the coastal areas in Bangladesh.
You also might reed this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
Amsterdam's history is BTW not a good point of comparison, as the Netherlands are rather small and they just needed to build more and higher dikes. Even doing that, they the Netherlands still lost land in that period. And by that time we did not have 6-7 billion people living on earth.
Nowadays we have for example Shanghai with 19 mio people, where the highest point is 4 m above sea level. Their tidal range is approx 2 m. An increase of 770 mm (as states in the wiki article) will most likely increase the risk of flooding significantly. Yes they can build higher dikes. But you have to do this for all coasts around the world.
And you can see in th US that even so proud countries are not really able to manage their dikes properly (e.g. New Orleans). Guess what happens when more countries which even less capacity and stability have to battle floods.
Another problem of the rising sea level is its affect on ground water flows and salt concentrations. This can also have an effect of various thing from plant life to ground structure.
I strongly recommend reading the IPCC report and assume for a moment that they are right.
Even if it did, when will millions of people have to move? Over a 100 year period? Oh no!
Well I assumed that the average /.er knows at least some estimates out of the IPCC report. Therefore I allowed to use additional knowledge (which was not present in the abstract).
When it comes to moving people. In Bangladesh people have to move now. And it is not only moving millions or even billions of people. Infrastructure has to be built too. And we will loose fertile soil to the sea.
How much would it cost to rebuilt NY, L.A., Shnaghai, Peking, etc.? And where will you put all these people? Most parts of the world do not look like Canada with 3.4 people per km while Germany has 229 people per km and Bangladesh has 1026 people per km.
And we will not have to move them over a 100 year period. As we are not starting today (or have you seen anything like that?). Actually in the US they try to built new skyscrapers right now in NY. So it is save to say they will start with the moving part when the water stays high.
I guess you just do not want to change your way of life to fit reality. But that would mean that reality will change your living parameter later, but therefore more drastically.
1. It is a climate change. And there is an increase of energy in the system earth due to this climate change. And it depends highly on your location if it is getting warmer by average or colder.
2. No humans are not responsible for the change, the change takes place because there is more energy in the system. Humans are only responsible for improving the isolation of the planet which causes the increase.
3. RTFM really read it. It has been explained in great detail. And even if you use the most optimistic scenario, people have to move by the millions. Cities have to be rebuilt. The life in the oceans will change dramatically because of the higher CO2 levels which leads to a more acid climate in the oceans. I could go on, but it is already explained in the IPCC report.
4. Is a wrong question. The question is not when will it happen, but when have we to act so we can deal with the outcome in the right way. This implies:
4.1. How can we prevent an increase in the average global temperature by 2 Kelvin?
4.2. What have we to do to master the effects of such an increase?
4.3. What have we to do when 4.1 cannot be done, because we are too lazy and stupid?
BTW: We will not be affected by climate chance right now. And most likely we will not have to suffer from it (in Western countries). However, our children will have a lot of fun swimming in the ruins of New York, Hamburg, Boston, London and Amsterdam. This is a fair trade for loosing the Great Barrier Reef and some atolls.
First, please call it climate change. The term global warming suggests the wrong outcomes. Second, more CO2 may increase plant growth. This is nothing new and has been discussed for some time. There are also publications showing that the growth of plants is not that much stimulated by and increase of CO2 as expected. So this not necessarily a completed discussion in this area of research.
Also CO2 increase means automatically oceans going acid which has a negative effect on plant/plankton growth in the seas. The proposed extension of planted areas through a higher CO2 level is merely an assumption not a proof. However, it is true that at least the climate models from the last decade did not incorporate the "good" vegetation models. But still the results of this work are more in a propositional state.
Furthermore they state (in the abstract) that the increase of CO2 does not have that big effect on the climate than proposed in previous models. As they do not say all previous models, but reference (some) previous studies, there is a missing reference (for us readers). And even though. The system is still increasing its energy level.
This still results in an arctic meltdown, this still does not include men made plant reduction, it does not change the negative effects on the seas and we will still run out of oil. So even if they are totally right and the assumption made by /. are true, than we still hit the wall, but may be a little later. Still a good choice to use the brakes.
He should finance renewable energy. Why give developing countries a legacy technology which produces so much more legacy (and no it does not matter if these are 100 Castors (100t each) per year or only 20. What I cannot understand is how people can be fan of a so much disputed technology which has definitely its problems. Also it cannot be the solution for our total energy needs.
There are cheaper saver and better working alternatives. Just lets use them.
The sun is definitely shining every day. Maybe not in your garden, but some miles away. You could easily generate enough energy in North Africa to power the whole world and definitely Europe and Africa. And the wind is blowing every day. you can see that when you look at those fabulous weather maps. These big cycling thingies are constantly moving which indicates wind. There might not be wind in your garden every day, but I can tell you that there was no day the past 15 years where there were no wind at the complete coast around the North Sea.
On the other hand nuclear power is not clean and it is not save. And it is expensive. And a real problem when a state fails. Oh wait. Western countries never fail. I forgot that. We will exist forever or at least the next 100 000 years or so.