I suggest checking out that last link in my initial post, to the book by the world-renowned astrophysicist. He seems to take the nano-tech threat a bit more seriously than you do…[/quote]
BB,
I don’t know what all news sources you draw from, but Richard Smalley and Drexler duked the nanotech/gray goo issue out in Chemical & Engineering News:
It’s not a general policy, but when in doubt, go with the guy that has the Nobel.
Seriously, nanotech may be a concern in the future, but right now it’s like worrying about cars causing the end of civilization before the birth of Henry Ford.
I suggest checking out that last link in my initial post, to the book by the world-renowned astrophysicist. He seems to take the nano-tech threat a bit more seriously than you do…
lucasa wrote:
BB,
I don’t know what all news sources you draw from, but Richard Smalley and Drexler duked the nanotech/gray goo issue out in Chemical & Engineering News:
It’s not a general policy, but when in doubt, go with the guy that has the Nobel.
Seriously, nanotech may be a concern in the future, but right now it’s like worrying about cars causing the end of civilization before the birth of Henry Ford.[/quote]
You’re right, of course – but I only said it worried me more than global warming, not that I was pulling my hair out…
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Ah, I’m glad you brought up money and what we should be doing with it.
There are much better ways to spend our money if we want to get bang for the improvement buck – and we can even touch on one of my worries, a possible pandemic virus (think of an AIDS mutation – I only used bird flu as one example):
As to something we can control, I thought we were in agreement that we didn’t know whether we could control it because we didn’t know the causation from either side?
vroom wrote:
Boston,
You are in effect arguing for ongoing wanton carelessness, or negligence, with respect to our impact on the environment. It is simply irresponsible and incurs a lot of risk.
It astounds me that people are so tied to the precise way we do things today that they can’t imagine better ways to do things tomorrow.[/quote]
Actually, that’s exactly wrong. It’s precisely because we can imagine doing things in better ways tomorrow that we don’t see the need to take draconian measures currently. Especially given the lack of a good showing of causation for the observed effect.
[quote]vroom wrote:
The environment can and does change on it’s own, but except for catastrophic events it does so slowly. In fact, you can pretty much define a catastrophic environmental effect by the speed at which the effects are incurred… such that life does not have time to adjust itself and adapt from generation to generation, even if only by survival of those most fit to the new conditions.
There is a huge list of worries, and as the right likes to chant, we can do more than one thing at a time. Money is being spent on pandemic monitoring and research, infectious disease research, cancer research, spaceborn object identification and monitoring and so forth.
Nobody is suggesting that all the money on the planet needs to be redirected into environmental issues, but just that it is an area we do need to start allocating resource to – to attempt to reduce our acceleration of climate change.
That is not the same as trying to keep the environment static! I hope you aren’t going to start playing those word games too.[/quote]
Again, this is the point. Right now, you, Al Gore and the rest of the Kyoto-protocolers claim that we have fewer than 10 years to figure out how to stop global warming. How convenient – we just need to everything and follow the former VP’s prescriptions.
However, most people see global warming as possibly worrisome but not for a long time, which means we can concentrate on more pressing matters - including those I listed, but perhaps more importantly including the ones in the Lomborg article. While you’re correct that we can address multiple problems at once, we do have limited resources, and should focus efforts on items that do the most good. When you factor in the costs to economic growth that would be entailed by enacting carbon limitations on developed countries (becuase China, India, Brazil et al won’t enact them – not that the EU or Canada is keeping up with its commitments to enact them either…), you’re just further shrinking the available resources.
The further problem is that many so-called greens - maybe including vroom but maybe not - are actually what the Limies on the other side of the Pond like to call “watermelons” ? green on the outside, red on the inside. They don’t care especially about carbon limitation – they want to control economic growth and human activity. Watermelons assume that any serious problem requires economic planning and “collective action.” And you wondered where all the Marxists went…
However, let’s concede, solely for the sake of argument, that global warming threatens humanity in the long run. Do we really think the EPA and the U.N. bureaucracy are the people to stop it?
When various historical populations faced extinction because of over-hunting, the ones that invented animal husbandry and switched from hunting to farming survived. Perhaps some Gore-like tribal leaders might have said, “We must eat less deer,” but the smart money was on raising your own livestock. Global-warming alarmists love the self-flagellation that comes with declaring human beings in general and capitalistic Western civilization in particular to be the problem. They’re less keen on admitting that they might be the solution as well.
Rather than trying to undermine the wealth creation and intellectual vitality that come with markets, why not take a fraction of the billions greens/watermelons want to spend on mandatory CO2 caps and announce plan to invest in new technologies aimed at the C02 issues - or even with other possible causes of global warming - with a goal timetable of the middle of this century (like Kennedy with the space race)?
Of course, I rather expect that if people are more watermelon than green, they’ll oppose strenuously any market-based solution that might move us away from imposing statist controls.
[quote]hspder wrote:
Hope you don’t mind, but I think the above comment needs some ellaborating.[/quote]
Depending on how advanced we’d become by the time one of those “super disaster” hit; we might be able to move enough people off planet to avoid all the negative effects. We already can somewhat predict earthquakes and volcano eruptions; enough to be able to move people out of the way. Getting off planet is simply move further away in case of a disaster so huge that there’s no “avoidance zone” left on the planet.
Will there is probably no safe place in the universe, it is likely that you won’t have most inhabited places (assuming more than one planet) endangered at the same time. A bit like how we currently move populations around during hurricane season. And while saving everyone is the obvious goal; managing to save most or at least some is still worthwhile.
Yes. The science, knowledge and technology we’d get back from such an endeavour would probably be worth the investment many times over. Not to mention access to the solar system’s ressources when we start to run out of the non-renewable ones here on earth.
That’s one problem with the Kyoto accord and similar Global Warming initiative. The massive costs involved produce extremely little return, both temperature wise (it will cost many trillions to (maybe) reduce the temperature by 1 degree celsius in 50 years) and technology wise. What new tech has appeared because of Kyoto and the massive cash expenditures?.. Anyone?.. Bueller? It is reasonable to ask the question of whether those trillions might not be better invested elsewhere.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I like how we are supposed to worry about things we can’t influence, but ignore things we can influence… because it might cost us a manageable amount of money.
Sounds a bit nutty.[/quote]
I think “worry about things we can’t influence” isn’t the right way to put it.
It’s more about being aware of dangers we can’t do anything about… YET.
We’re already charting and cataloguing asteroid orbits, just so we’d know if an impact was forthcoming. Why? Well, if put before the indeniable fact of an upcoming impact, I’m sure that’d be a great motivator to find a solution ASAP. If we do nothing, because our asteroid moving technology sucks, and a big enough one hits, well, we’re all dead.
So the point is not to worry uselessly about things we can’t do anything about, but to be aware of possible future dangers so that we can at least plan plausible future solutions for them; and maybe legislate or manage thru treaties reduction of risk for the human made disasters on that list.
I guess that with “ignore things we can influence” you mean Global Warming? The problem with global warming is that it’s become such a heavily politicized issue that it’s nearly impossible to get unbiased data about it. There is also the problem of “a sample of one.” We can’t compare the current Earth to another Earth that has no humans on it and see the differences. A lot of the science involved in Global Warming is tenuous, based on estimates, “best guesses” and a lot of other unverifiable speculation.
The question is not only whether we have an effect (we most surely do), but more to the point: HOW MUCH of an effect do we have; and if we try to correct the global temperature, can we really have enough of an effect to reduce the warming?
I’m not arguing that we should ignore Global Warming as a serious issue; I’m arguing that we should make sure that the money we throw at the problem to reduce or eliminate it is actually having an effect. If it’s not, we need better solutions or we need to realize that we can’t sufficiently reduce the warming and invest the money to prepare to deal with the eventual effects.
Just blindly throwing money at the problem to feel good that we’d doing “something” about it isn’t helpful, unless we make sure we’re getting results.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
Because the notion of spending money to save the environment is lunacy - and should be treated as such. look at the spin put on things by the Earth First crowd. And you want to accuse me of skewing? [/quote]
Again, you are mashing up a bunch of things that don’t seem really related. What has Earth First got to do with anything? What on Earth does “saving the environment” mean?
Are you getting that from my own post or are you just grabbing a bunch of disparate points and arguing against them instead of what other people are saying?
So, is reducing emissions of certain substances a targeted program? Or, do you just not like the scope of programs that involve the cooperation of other nations to eventually succeed?
I liked the bureaucracy boogeyman thrown in there though. Nice touch!
You’re right, of course – but I only said it worried me more than global warming, not that I was pulling my hair out…[/quote]
This was my first impression and I figured you knew better, but the argument with Prof. made me dubious. In this light, I agree with you, IMO, more can be done to avert the catastrophe of gray goo now than can be done to avert the impending catastrophe (if there is one) of global warming.
[quote]vroom wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Because the notion of spending money to save the environment is lunacy - and should be treated as such. look at the spin put on things by the Earth First crowd. And you want to accuse me of skewing?
Again, you are mashing up a bunch of things that don’t seem really related. What has Earth First got to do with anything? What on Earth does “saving the environment” mean?
Are you getting that from my own post or are you just grabbing a bunch of disparate points and arguing against them instead of what other people are saying?
Unless it is a specifically targeted program such as oil spill clean ups, or river reclamation, or somrhting along those lines - all the money will do is create yet another bureaucracy. And when has one of those ever helped do anything but drain pocket books?
So, is reducing emissions of certain substances a targeted program? Or, do you just not like the scope of programs that involve the cooperation of other nations to eventually succeed?
I liked the bureaucracy boogeyman thrown in there though. Nice touch![/quote]
See pookie’s post above. He sums it up quite nicely.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Actually, that’s exactly wrong. It’s precisely because we can imagine doing things in better ways tomorrow that we don’t see the need to take draconian measures currently. Especially given the lack of a good showing of causation for the observed effect.[/quote]
See, now it makes sense. You’ve made up what I’m talking about instead of paying attention to previous discussions or even asking me what I might suggest we do. You think I’m suggesting “draconian” measures?
Whoa. Wait a minute. I think you are arguing against Al Gore. In case you suspect otherwise, I’m not Al Gore hiding behind a screen name, though the thought does having me laughing right now.
Have you seen me say that I thought we had less than 10 years to do anything? The answer to that would have to be “no” since I never had suggested that. How come you are arguing against what you see as the viewpoint of the “enemey” instead of my viewpoint?
Is this your politics showing? Are you getting all the talking points against Al Gore and applying them to me because you think my position must be the same as his, because I don’t agree with you?
Come on Boston, you are much smarter than this…
No, the items you listed, or at least some of them, are a joke. Global warming is a legitimate concern, at this time, though many portions of it are still under debate. Equating it with the import of a joke is an irresponsible thing to do. Perhaps as irresponsible as saying that the sky is falling by implying that we only have ten years to do anything.
Whoa. Did you notice that? I think I just criticised Al Gore! Wow, maybe I’m not lying when I say I am not Al Gore hiding behind a screen name? Something to think about anyway.
See, when you have to go to the political talking points around developing countries not being held to the same standard at first, you show your colors again.
There is a reason that developing countries were given a temporary reprieve during those talks. In any case, if you weren’t blinded by the possibility of unfair economic advantage, you’d see that we could impose duties, sanctions or other measures to “encourage” them to catch up to the rest of us over time.
Ahahahaha. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Look, just because you are a neo-liberal person who worships at the alter of the free market transaction, that doesn’t mean that you too don’t covet control. Free markets can only exist under the control of law which greatly limits many behaviors. Oh no, control of human activity, blah blah, I’m crying now.
I have nothing against economic growth or human activity at all. Fuck, if you’ve ever paid any fucking attention at all you’d know that I’ve come out for more nuclear power stations several times now. That is hardly the stance of someone who is against technology, commerce, industry or anything else you might worship.
Zzzzz. Spare me your paranoia about leftists, communists, marxists or whatnot. While they are out there, they are certainly not going to be in a position to do anything scary to you and I in our lifetime. Maybe some future generation will be less wary, but seriously, you sound silly.
Whether or not some left wing wackos are concerned about global warming, or pretend to be concerned about global warming, has absolutely nothing to do with what we should do if we feel the issue is in fact one that we need to be concerned with.
[quote]However, let’s concede, solely for the sake of argument, that global warming threatens humanity in the long run. Do we really think the EPA and the U.N. bureaucracy are the people to stop it?
When various historical populations faced extinction because of over-hunting, the ones that invented animal husbandry and switched from hunting to farming survived. Perhaps some Gore-like tribal leaders might have said, “We must eat less deer,” but the smart money was on raising your own livestock. Global-warming alarmists love the self-flagellation that comes with declaring human beings in general and capitalistic Western civilization in particular to be the problem. They’re less keen on admitting that they might be the solution as well.[/quote]
My god man, you are truly going nuts. Gore-like tribal leaders? Ahahahaha. Look, an unprecedented conglomeration of nations decided that it was an issue and that they should try to take actions to limit emissions. Sure, in many regards they have failed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from those failures and find means to do so.
You are trying to paint incredible conspiracies and doom and gloom on top of trying to curb the GROWTH of CO2 release (with, yes, some rollback).
I don’t think it matters what way the CO2 growth rate is constrained. Perhaps the way to achieve such constraint is to develop technology that allows such caps to be achieved. Wow, that almost sounds similar to what you are saying. I think you are assuming I want some huge government program which shuts down all industry or something.
What a joke.
Well, we could do some of those things. I think the mirror bet would be the safest one. Releasing bio-engineered algae and having it suck up too much CO2 could be a problem. Release chemicals we think are safe to exert a cooling effect (if possible) could also have unexpected consequences, similar to the ozone depletion effect of the past.
There are dangers with adding our own bright ideas into nature. What people are talking about now is reducing the releases resulting from our technology, in the form of CO2, so that we aren’t fucking around with nature so much. However, I’m certainly not against research into additional ways to deal with the issue.
However, I would suggest, or reiterate, that drastic new actions, which could themselves have unintended consequences we haven’t though of (as most technologies seem to do) would be more dangerous than simply finding ways to restrict our CO2 output over time.
Oh, mirrors in space is a market based control is it?
Anyway, aren’t pollution credits an accepted method of creating a market based solution out of a policy direction? I know they’ve been used in the past anyway.
If you think I’m a so-called “watermelon” you are truly a retard. Maybe if you listened to what people are actually saying sometimes, instead of jumping to the conclusion that they are representing the boogeyman, oh, sorry, I mean Al Gore or the communists, then perhaps you’d have a chance to actually converse rationally with people on some topics.
[quote]pookie wrote:
We’re already charting and cataloguing asteroid orbits, just so we’d know if an impact was forthcoming. Why? Well, if put before the indeniable fact of an upcoming impact, I’m sure that’d be a great motivator to find a solution ASAP. If we do nothing, because our asteroid moving technology sucks, and a big enough one hits, well, we’re all dead.[/quote]
Pookster, I myself have used the above as an example of how we do tend to try to reduce our risks.
Global warming is a risk. We might want to consider doing some of the things we can to manage that risk. Or, we can just ignore it and argue about politics instead.
[quote]I guess that with “ignore things we can influence” you mean Global Warming? The problem with global warming is that it’s become such a heavily politicized issue that it’s nearly impossible to get unbiased data about it. There is also the problem of “a sample of one.” We can’t compare the current Earth to another Earth that has no humans on it and see the differences. A lot of the science involved in Global Warming is tenuous, based on estimates, “best guesses” and a lot of other unverifiable speculation.
The question is not only whether we have an effect (we most surely do), but more to the point: HOW MUCH of an effect do we have; and if we try to correct the global temperature, can we really have enough of an effect to reduce the warming?[/quote]
Pookie, I think you’ll see that in my posts I’m arguing that we should try to reduce our portion of the global warming effect. I’m not arguing that global warming is something that should itself be stopped.
I trust you to see the difference as I know you are a smart man.
[quote]I’m not arguing that we should ignore Global Warming as a serious issue; I’m arguing that we should make sure that the money we throw at the problem to reduce or eliminate it is actually having an effect. If it’s not, we need better solutions or we need to realize that we can’t sufficiently reduce the warming and invest the money to prepare to deal with the eventual effects.
Just blindly throwing money at the problem to feel good that we’d doing “something” about it isn’t helpful, unless we make sure we’re getting results.
[/quote]
Pookie, I think solving the energy crisis and dealing with global warming will be the same solution. Kind of a funny coincedence really, but I think it is time for us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Let’s create serious research and fiscal incentives to businesses and individuals. This is a market based approach that will push people to develop solutions based on an economic incentive.
I am aware this means that our economic structures will shift somewhat, as things like transportation will apparently become more expensive, but it doesn’t represent a cost that we won’t eventually have to bear anyway. However, we also don’t have a gaurantee that we can burn up all the fossil fuels with impunity.
I have also, half jokingly, suggested that we should bring about global warming, because it will enhance Canada’s position in the world… greatly expanding our farmland and reducing our winters. Basically, it’s a good change for us, or at least easily argued, because we are basically sheltered from hurricanes and rising ocean levels anyway.
Somehow I just don’t think that people are even able to let go of their political biases to see the types of things I’m actually saying.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Global warming is a risk. We might want to consider doing some of the things we can to manage that risk.[/quote]
See, that is the whole key to this argument that almost everybody seems to be unable to comprehend.
There seems to be a fundamental counter-intuitiveness about risk management that has puzzled economists for centuries now. One of the Holy Grails of Economics – the equity premium puzzle – revolves precisely around how people perceive and manage risk, or, rather, how people DO NOT manage risk, and rather chose to either avoid or ignore it, which ultimately costs them mounds of money.
I guess Risk Management is simply one of those concepts with which no amount of explanation is able to counteract the fact that it is fundamentally counter-intuitive – even if the payoff, both individually (as Warren Buffett proved better than anyone else) and collectively is tremendous.
BostonBarrister wrote:
Ah, I’m glad you brought up money and what we should be doing with it.
There are much better ways to spend our money if we want to get bang for the improvement buck – and we can even touch on one of my worries, a possible pandemic virus (think of an AIDS mutation – I only used bird flu as one example):
As to something we can control, I thought we were in agreement that we didn’t know whether we could control it because we didn’t know the causation from either side?
vroom wrote:
Boston,
You are in effect arguing for ongoing wanton carelessness, or negligence, with respect to our impact on the environment. It is simply irresponsible and incurs a lot of risk.
It astounds me that people are so tied to the precise way we do things today that they can’t imagine better ways to do things tomorrow.
Actually, that’s exactly wrong. It’s precisely because we can imagine doing things in better ways tomorrow that we don’t see the need to take draconian measures currently. Especially given the lack of a good showing of causation for the observed effect.
vroom wrote:
The environment can and does change on it’s own, but except for catastrophic events it does so slowly. In fact, you can pretty much define a catastrophic environmental effect by the speed at which the effects are incurred… such that life does not have time to adjust itself and adapt from generation to generation, even if only by survival of those most fit to the new conditions.
There is a huge list of worries, and as the right likes to chant, we can do more than one thing at a time. Money is being spent on pandemic monitoring and research, infectious disease research, cancer research, spaceborn object identification and monitoring and so forth.
Nobody is suggesting that all the money on the planet needs to be redirected into environmental issues, but just that it is an area we do need to start allocating resource to – to attempt to reduce our acceleration of climate change.
That is not the same as trying to keep the environment static! I hope you aren’t going to start playing those word games too.
Again, this is the point. Right now, you, Al Gore and the rest of the Kyoto-protocolers claim that we have fewer than 10 years to figure out how to stop global warming. How convenient – we just need to everything and follow the former VP’s prescriptions.
However, most people see global warming as possibly worrisome but not for a long time, which means we can concentrate on more pressing matters - including those I listed, but perhaps more importantly including the ones in the Lomborg article. While you’re correct that we can address multiple problems at once, we do have limited resources, and should focus efforts on items that do the most good. When you factor in the costs to economic growth that would be entailed by enacting carbon limitations on developed countries (becuase China, India, Brazil et al won’t enact them – not that the EU or Canada is keeping up with its commitments to enact them either…), you’re just further shrinking the available resources.
The further problem is that many so-called greens - maybe including vroom but maybe not - are actually what the Limies on the other side of the Pond like to call “watermelons” ? green on the outside, red on the inside. They don’t care especially about carbon limitation – they want to control economic growth and human activity. Watermelons assume that any serious problem requires economic planning and “collective action.” And you wondered where all the Marxists went…
However, let’s concede, solely for the sake of argument, that global warming threatens humanity in the long run. Do we really think the EPA and the U.N. bureaucracy are the people to stop it?
When various historical populations faced extinction because of over-hunting, the ones that invented animal husbandry and switched from hunting to farming survived. Perhaps some Gore-like tribal leaders might have said, “We must eat less deer,” but the smart money was on raising your own livestock. Global-warming alarmists love the self-flagellation that comes with declaring human beings in general and capitalistic Western civilization in particular to be the problem. They’re less keen on admitting that they might be the solution as well.
Rather than trying to undermine the wealth creation and intellectual vitality that come with markets, why not take a fraction of the billions greens/watermelons want to spend on mandatory CO2 caps and announce plan to invest in new technologies aimed at the C02 issues - or even with other possible causes of global warming - with a goal timetable of the middle of this century (like Kennedy with the space race)?
Of course, I rather expect that if people are more watermelon than green, they’ll oppose strenuously any market-based solution that might move us away from imposing statist controls.[/quote]
WOW.
I can’t believe you just said that environmentalists are all just marxists in disguise and are using environmentalism to scare voters into electing them so they can control the economy. You’ve GOT to be kidding me.
…BB, are you really THAT out of touch? True, most environmenalists are left-leaning, and favor a modicom of social welfare, well-funded schools, and a reduced military presence in the world, but that doesn’t mean they want to “control the economy” and stymie growth. Perhaps we want to pass laws that prevent corporations from taking the cheapest possible way out and just polluting like mad, but this is based on precedent that is hundreds of years old, dude… It’s hardly COMMUNISM or even SOCIALISM. I think your paranoia and fear of the left is ballooning to HH-like proportions.
[quote]
vroom wrote:
Global warming is a risk. We might want to consider doing some of the things we can to manage that risk.
hspder wrote:
See, that is the whole key to this argument that almost everybody seems to be unable to comprehend.
There seems to be a fundamental counter-intuitiveness about risk management that has puzzled economists for centuries now. One of the Holy Grails of Economics – the equity premium puzzle – revolves precisely around how people perceive and manage risk, or, rather, how people DO NOT manage risk, and rather chose to either avoid or ignore it, which ultimately costs them mounds of money.
I guess Risk Management is simply one of those concepts with which no amount of explanation is able to counteract the fact that it is fundamentally counter-intuitive – even if the payoff, both individually (as Warren Buffett proved better than anyone else) and collectively is tremendous.[/quote]
I don’t know that anyone has come out against risk management per se – just the specific plan for CO2 reductions, which many people believe will be both ineffective (due to what vroom refers to as “talking points” because it won’t actually reduce CO2 emissions that much because of exceptions for the “developing” countries like China, Brazil and India, along with a host of smaller ones and because we aren’t even a little bit sure about the extent that human-caused CO2 emissions are causing the global-warming effect) and, relatedly, too expensive (because part of why it’s too expensive is that there aren’t definite benefits for the massive expense involved – for the benefit of others reading the post).
There are many other risk-management strategies that could be implemented – I know your point in the past has been that we actually aren’t implementing them, and I agree that is problematic, but that doesn’t mean I’d support Kyoto just because it’s a(n) (allegedly) good-intentioned attempt to “do something.”
Vroom’s hysterics aside, the argument isn’t about “doing something,” it’s about doing something effectively and intelligently.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Pookie, I think solving the energy crisis and dealing with global warming will be the same solution. Kind of a funny coincedence really, but I think it is time for us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Let’s create serious research and fiscal incentives to businesses and individuals. This is a market based approach that will push people to develop solutions based on an economic incentive.[/quote]
I personnally don’t see any realistic way of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. All modern societies and just about every developping one are using more and more energy every year. Here in Canada, we’ve increased our emissions 35% since signing the Kyoto accord by which we agreed to reduce them.
Unless we get a major breakthrough in power production (like the “fabled” fusion reactor, which is always 20 years away apparently) we’re not going to be able to reduce our power consumption by much. Even if every one sold their cars and bought Toyota Yarrises and Jetta TDIs, we’d still require massive amounts of fuel daily. The reduction in demand from the western side would promptly be gobbled up by China and India leaving us with pretty much the same barrel/day need.
Similarly, most companies use more and more computers, cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc. Today’s software requires fast CPUs and often many of them per computers to respond to demand. And while major semiconductor companies such as Intel, IBM, AMD, etc. are developping new technology that reduces the power consumption of the individual chips, those chips are now aggregated on the motherboards. Most new top-of-the-line processors include 2, 3 or 4 cores per chip. Each chip might be individually more efficient, but servers still require 500W power supplies to operate. Similarly with laptops or cell phones; as battery tech evolves (very slowly, but it does) the additional power is not used to extend the duration of operation, but to operate faster chips, bigger hard drives and larger screens. Why? Because you’re more productive with a high-performance laptop or cell phone than you are with a slow, long-lasting one.
Here in Quebec, there has been the past few years numerous increases in the price we pay for electricity. A lot of people are complaining about the high price of electricity, blissfully unaware that we still have about the lowest rate in North America. And each increase in rate is accompanied by commercials by Hydro-Quebec and mailing of flyers detailing ways to reduce electric consumption. The problem is that it’s always the same methods. I’ve implemented all the ones that I can apply at my house (the pool filter is on a timer; my hot water tank is insulated; I’ve changed my washer/dryer for “Energy Star” front-loading ones that use less current and water; I’ve bought a “thermopompe” (not sure what the english term for it is… basically, it’s an air conditionning unit that can run in reverse and produce heat) that allows me to heat the house until late November without requiring the use of the electrical “plates” at the bottom of the walls (ie, I can heat my house using less electricity). I’ve got programmable thermostats so that I can reduce the temperature at night, etc.
Even with all that, if I check my electricity bill, I’m using more kilowatts that I did 5 years ago. Why? Computers, routers, xboxes, HDTVs, sound system… what have you. I haven’t inventoried the electric draw of each of those items, but I’m sure that they use more than my old TV/PS1 setup. Of course, I could turn everything off and read books by candlelight; but realistically, will you convince a large part of the population to do the same? And if you could, will you convince companies to stop using more computers, when their competitors that do get an edge over them? Can you have your sales reps on the road stop at phone booths and convenience stores to make their phone calls? Of course not.
I don’t know if you order the little “1-ton challenge” booklet for the govt. of Canada. I did. Unfortunately, all the “energy consumption tips” in it are the same ones that Hydro-Qc has been giving me for years. I’m sure we could have a small dip if the whole population of Canada implemented them all. It might bring us back 2-3 years; but the energy consumption would still continue to rise. Evolving civilizations use more and more power all the time.
That’s why I’m not in favor of the Kyoto accord; as far as I can see, it sets unrealistic goals and a lot of money is being wasted trying to reach those goals. If the same cash was invested in fusion research, we might get it (for real) within 20 years. As it is, fusion research gets a minuscule fraction of some government’s budgets and still appears to be 20 years away. It’s been 20 years away for about 50 years now… All the other energy alternatives are dependent on fossil fuel in one way or another, or require a large power input than they produce. Fossil fuel, for all it’s problems, is still an incredibly easy way of getting a lot of energy at a relatively cheap price. This site: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ has interesting info about producing energy without oil. Some of it is a bit “out there” environmentalist-extremist conspiracy theory; but many of the basic points made are valid; or can serve for further research from more objective sources.
[quote]pookie wrote:
vroom wrote:
Pookie, I think solving the energy crisis and dealing with global warming will be the same solution. Kind of a funny coincedence really, but I think it is time for us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Let’s create serious research and fiscal incentives to businesses and individuals. This is a market based approach that will push people to develop solutions based on an economic incentive.
I personnally don’t see any realistic way of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. All modern societies and just about every developping one are using more and more energy every year. Here in Canada, we’ve increased our emissions 35% since signing the Kyoto accord by which we agreed to reduce them.
Unless we get a major breakthrough in power production (like the “fabled” fusion reactor, which is always 20 years away apparently) we’re not going to be able to reduce our power consumption by much. Even if every one sold their cars and bought Toyota Yarrises and Jetta TDIs, we’d still require massive amounts of fuel daily. The reduction in demand from the western side would promptly be gobbled up by China and India leaving us with pretty much the same barrel/day need.
…[/quote]
Exactly. If CO2 produces global warming we are locked in.
No amount of hand wringing will change it.
Just saying “we should do something” is utter bullshit. We cannot and will not “do something” without oppressing and or killing most of Earths population.
For this reason (among others)it has been turned into phony politics.
When you add in all the other counter arguments it is a slam dunk case that discussion of CO2 reductions is a non issue. It ain’t gonna happen.
I get somewhat amused when people get concerned that things take more energy put in than they give out (so to speak) with respect to discussion of alternatives.
How much energy does it take to create fossil fuel? A lot, though it was done over time a long time ago.
Look, I’m not arguing that we have to implement Kyoto per se, but I do suggest it is high time we put more than lip service into this issue. There are options available to the world that involve reductions in energy consumption without eliminating technology or industry.
The risks are great enough that it would make sense to create some financial incentives to encourage change in this regard. However, no, we can’t do that because people make foolish arguments about the costs of making changes.
Financial incentives have been created in the past to achieve goals. They leverage the efficiency of the market to solve a task.
Heaven forbid we put any effort into this at all – because we might have to admit we could be taking unwise risks, and that would somehow make the world implode it seems.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
When you add in all the other counter arguments it is a slam dunk case that discussion of CO2 reductions is a non issue. It ain’t gonna happen.[/quote]
Well, this makes it easier to understand why it is so imperative that human caused acceleration of global warming be a myth.
Too bad it isn’t…
Things change over time Zap, even human societies, so I am more optimistic that it can happen, once people recognize the need and have financial incentive.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
When you add in all the other counter arguments it is a slam dunk case that discussion of CO2 reductions is a non issue. It ain’t gonna happen.
Well, this makes it easier to understand why it is so imperative that human caused acceleration of global warming be a myth.
Too bad it isn’t…
Things change over time Zap, even human societies, so I am more optimistic that it can happen, once people recognize the need and have financial incentive.[/quote]
There are only a few things that will reduce the usage of carbon based fuels.
Running out of them.
Death of most of the worlds population.
A masssive one world totalitarian government that forces people to use less.
[quote]vroom wrote:
…Financial incentives have been created in the past to achieve goals. They leverage the efficiency of the market to solve a task.
[/quote]
This is a key point you are forgetting. If Canada and the US have financial incentives to burn less oil it will simply be burned by China, India etc. They will burn it less cleanly than we will causing real environmental problems.
These financial incentives will actually be a burden on our economies.