Orfamay Quest |
The cost issue doesn't solve the water usage for solar, which I think is going to be one of the biggest deterrents. The best regions for using solar also tend to be dry regions where water is rapidly becoming scarcer.
My understanding is that most of the water usage for solar is up-front, at the manufacturing stages, which does not have to be done anywhere near the actual deployment location.
Lord Snow |
Lord Snow wrote:Quote:Even if Swanson's law does hold true, solar won't be cheaper than coal for another 15 years.Well, it doesn't really need to be cheaper to become viable, mainly in the same price range. It think if solar is 20% more expansive than coal many might still prefer it. 20% is of course an arbitrary number I just came up with but you get the gist of it. Especially if it is aided by governments with preferential taxation, by the way, which can help close some of the remaining gap in costs for individuals and companies.And though any form of subsidy is of course horrific socialism, it really can be justified in the case of coal - just paying for externalities.
Hell, just making coal companies actually do a real job of restoration after mountaintop removal or properly handle the coal ash would probably push the cost of coal way up over alternatives. That's not even counting global warming or subtler pollutions.
Well this depends on the scope you are examining when calculating costs. By shifting around some numbers in their tax policies governments can influence the costs of various energy generation technologies, but that just shifts the burden from the individual citizen to the country itself. And, since I think something has to be done in a global scale to have an impact, it's still worthwhile to examine which technology is overall cheaper for the collective human race, as represented by countries, and not just to individual people.
An easy way to frame what I mean is - governments could provide free solar energy to their people by just throwing enough money on the problem but this clearly is not the most efficient solution to the problem as that money has to come from somewhere.
thejeff |
thejeff wrote:Lord Snow wrote:Quote:Even if Swanson's law does hold true, solar won't be cheaper than coal for another 15 years.Well, it doesn't really need to be cheaper to become viable, mainly in the same price range. It think if solar is 20% more expansive than coal many might still prefer it. 20% is of course an arbitrary number I just came up with but you get the gist of it. Especially if it is aided by governments with preferential taxation, by the way, which can help close some of the remaining gap in costs for individuals and companies.And though any form of subsidy is of course horrific socialism, it really can be justified in the case of coal - just paying for externalities.
Hell, just making coal companies actually do a real job of restoration after mountaintop removal or properly handle the coal ash would probably push the cost of coal way up over alternatives. That's not even counting global warming or subtler pollutions.
Well this depends on the scope you are examining when calculating costs. By shifting around some numbers in their tax policies governments can influence the costs of various energy generation technologies, but that just shifts the burden from the individual citizen to the country itself. And, since I think something has to be done in a global scale to have an impact, it's still worthwhile to examine which technology is overall cheaper for the collective human race, as represented by countries, and not just to individual people.
An easy way to frame what I mean is - governments could provide free solar energy to their people by just throwing enough money on the problem but this clearly is not the most efficient solution to the problem as that money has to come from somewhere.
True, but when considering those costs, you really should be considering the total costs to the country, not just the financial cost to extract the energy. Thus "negative externalities". If you get cheaply priced coal, but destroy mountains, pollute streams, increase smog and impose health costs, like asthma and higher cancer rates, is that coal really "cheap"? Or are those other costs, which are paid by the nation (or more often by certain usually already impoverished sections of the nation), really part of the price you should be considering?
Lord Snow |
Lord Snow wrote:True, but when considering those costs, you really should be considering the total costs to the country, not just the financial cost to extract the energy. Thus "negative externalities". If you get cheaply priced coal, but destroy...thejeff wrote:Lord Snow wrote:Quote:Even if Swanson's law does hold true, solar won't be cheaper than coal for another 15 years.Well, it doesn't really need to be cheaper to become viable, mainly in the same price range. It think if solar is 20% more expansive than coal many might still prefer it. 20% is of course an arbitrary number I just came up with but you get the gist of it. Especially if it is aided by governments with preferential taxation, by the way, which can help close some of the remaining gap in costs for individuals and companies.And though any form of subsidy is of course horrific socialism, it really can be justified in the case of coal - just paying for externalities.
Hell, just making coal companies actually do a real job of restoration after mountaintop removal or properly handle the coal ash would probably push the cost of coal way up over alternatives. That's not even counting global warming or subtler pollutions.
Well this depends on the scope you are examining when calculating costs. By shifting around some numbers in their tax policies governments can influence the costs of various energy generation technologies, but that just shifts the burden from the individual citizen to the country itself. And, since I think something has to be done in a global scale to have an impact, it's still worthwhile to examine which technology is overall cheaper for the collective human race, as represented by countries, and not just to individual people.
An easy way to frame what I mean is - governments could provide free solar energy to their people by just throwing enough money on the problem but this clearly is not the most efficient solution to the problem as that money has to come from somewhere.
As I said in a previous replay to Orfamay Quest, I actually think that correctly calculating such costs is near impossible, BUT... my intuition is with you. It seems likely that hidden costs of green energy vs. burning carbon should at the very least narrow the current gap significantly. I might be letting preset concepts and my general views of the world blind me to specifics, though, and I don't actually have any concrete knowledge to support such a claim.
Orfamay Quest |
As I said in a previous replay to Orfamay Quest, I actually think that correctly calculating such costs is near impossible.
Shrug. I'm not sure if you're using that as an argument in favor of calculating such costs in a knowingly incorrect way, or as an argument against calculating costs at all.
Either way,.... I think I disagree with you. Scientists aren't afraid of a little hard work, and politicians shouldn't be, either.
Joynt Jezebel |
Joynt Jezebel wrote:
And, correct me if I am wrong, immigrants from the former USSR following the collapse of communism are outright hated by many.
That was true 30 years ago, but is mostly over today as they more smoothly assimilated into the wider culture. Most of the racial spite these days is split between Jews of European descent and those of Arab origins, with both groups blaming each other for racism constantly. And, of course, to say that there is tension between Jews and Muslims is quite the understatement.
But more in line with the previous subject, what I consider to be the most important issue currently is the political power and rapidly expanding demographic of the orthodox religious. They are the ones pushing for just about everything I consider bad in Israeli policies, and among other things for religious education. Including a diminishing in any sort of scientific education that does not agree with religious dogma, including but certainly not limited to evolution.
Well, the rush of immigrants from the former USSR certainly increased Israel's stock of top chess players.
And the split between Askenazic and Sephardic Jews is very old. The fact Jews from Europe or the US had a lot more money was a cause of resentment when I was there.
On orthodox Jews trying to force everyone to conform to their views, and trying to enforce a lack of science education in schools- can this be the ethnic group that gave us Einstein and Wittgenstein?
Caineach |
Lord Snow wrote:As I said in a previous replay to Orfamay Quest, I actually think that correctly calculating such costs is near impossible.They can be approximated. Even if they can't be calculated with high precision, treating them as zero isn't a good alternative.
Yeah. The EPA does it all the time, and their calculations have to withstand legal challenge. Its not like it is something new.
Lord Snow |
Lord Snow wrote:Joynt Jezebel wrote:
And, correct me if I am wrong, immigrants from the former USSR following the collapse of communism are outright hated by many.
That was true 30 years ago, but is mostly over today as they more smoothly assimilated into the wider culture. Most of the racial spite these days is split between Jews of European descent and those of Arab origins, with both groups blaming each other for racism constantly. And, of course, to say that there is tension between Jews and Muslims is quite the understatement.
But more in line with the previous subject, what I consider to be the most important issue currently is the political power and rapidly expanding demographic of the orthodox religious. They are the ones pushing for just about everything I consider bad in Israeli policies, and among other things for religious education. Including a diminishing in any sort of scientific education that does not agree with religious dogma, including but certainly not limited to evolution.
Well, the rush of immigrants from the former USSR certainly increased Israel's stock of top chess players.
1)And the split between Askenazic and Sephardic Jews is very old. The fact Jews from Europe or the US had a lot more money was a cause of resentment when I was there.
2)On orthodox Jews trying to force everyone to conform to their views, and trying to enforce a lack of science education in schools- can this be the ethnic group that gave us Einstein and Wittgenstein?
1) More money and, since they were there first, an unshakable hold on all positions of power, both political and cultural.
2) Sure. Jews in general and Israelis in particular are still incredibly over represented in the group of global top thinkers (especially when compared to our neighbors the Arabs), which I could never really figure out a reason for, but never let that stop 99.999% of the population from being as dumb as anyone.
Shrug. I'm not sure if you're using that as an argument in favor of calculating such costs in a knowingly incorrect way, or as an argument against calculating costs at all.
Either way,.... I think I disagree with you. Scientists aren't afraid of a little hard work, and politicians shouldn't be, either.
I think what I'm trying to say is that the margin of error in any sort of cost calculation is a bit wide for me to feel comfortable with basing a policy on such attempts. A far better idea is letting cost be a secondary consideration (within reason) and the primary ones be the speed, viability, and potential for growth in each technology. For example I managed Swanson's Law earlier to show that the rate of improvement on solar panels is exponential, which to me makes them prime candidates for a long term investment, even if that means more resources have to be invested into them.
Orfamay Quest |
I think what I'm trying to say is that the margin of error in any sort of cost calculation is a bit wide for me to feel comfortable with basing a policy on such attempts.
That's equivalent to basing policy on an assumed cost of zero. I'm even less comfortable with that. Especially since part of the policy will need to involve allocating money,.... and you have explicitly refused even to estimate how much money will need to be allocated.
Politics doesn't work that way. If money needs to be spent, someone needs to authorize that spending and move money into a budget line from which it is to be spent.
We literally can't invest resources into an objective without first quantifying the resources that will be invested.
thaX |
Cheaper fuel sources isn't the only option for this bogyman.
There are ways to provide energy that can be produced at the level needed to "replace" the perceived evil power plants that are mostly providing it now. Nuclear power is a safer option now than it was when the meltdowns and such happened. For some areas Hydroplants have been providing power consistently for a long time, but as someone mentioned above, it is a very area specific solution and a huge started up cost to provide.
Solar, however much or little it would cost, is a storage solution that only would supplement the current structure and is not, nor ever will be, a replacement. Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.
Whether or not Climate Change (Global Warming) is "real," man made, or a pattern of weather that is slightly askew, the technologies, restrictions, CAfE standards, and other regulations that are the result of DOOM and GLOOM predictions are not helping anything for it and is resulting in more expense for the average American, for the gas that is artificially high to the energy costs that will go up beyond affordability.
Folks, it doesn't make sense to punish ourselves over a phenomenon that is, at best, scientific soothsaying, and at worst, an outright lie. Going back to colonial times type of living is the overall result if energy costs and regulation keeps going in the direction wanted because of it.
Orfamay Quest |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Going back to colonial times type of living is the overall result if energy costs and regulation keeps going in the direction wanted because of it.
And here's an example of The Industrial Shill That Called Wolf as I mentioned earlier. ("I can't think of a recently proposed health, safety, or security issue that wasn't greeted by industry hacks with cries of how it would destroy the entire profitability of the industry")
If you want this statement to be taken at all seriously, thaX, you will need to provide a hell of a lot of support for it.
Joynt Jezebel |
Joynt Jezebel wrote:
1)And the split between Askenazic and Sephardic Jews is very old. The fact Jews from Europe or the US had a lot more money was a cause of resentment when I was there.2)On orthodox Jews trying to force everyone to conform to their views, and trying to enforce a lack of science education in schools- can this be the ethnic group that gave us Einstein and Wittgenstein?
1) More money and, since they were there first, an unshakable hold on all positions of power, both political and cultural.
2) Sure. Jews in general and Israelis in particular are still incredibly over represented in the group of global top thinkers (especially when compared to our neighbors the Arabs), which I could never really figure out a reason for, but never let that stop 99.999% of the population from being as dumb as anyone.
I don't know why there have been so many extremely smart Jews either. Humans do have a remarkable talent for stupidity, sadly.
There was a time Arab scholarship and technology lead the world, well except for China maybe. And as amazing as it seems in the modern world, treated Jews better on the whole than Europeans.
Don't get me wrong, the propensity of Arab groups to murder Israeli civilians isn't something I approve of, and I don't have to live with it.
Orfamay Quest |
Lord Snow wrote:I don't know why there have been so many extremely smart Jews either.Joynt Jezebel wrote:
1)And the split between Askenazic and Sephardic Jews is very old. The fact Jews from Europe or the US had a lot more money was a cause of resentment when I was there.2)On orthodox Jews trying to force everyone to conform to their views, and trying to enforce a lack of science education in schools- can this be the ethnic group that gave us Einstein and Wittgenstein?
1) More money and, since they were there first, an unshakable hold on all positions of power, both political and cultural.
2) Sure. Jews in general and Israelis in particular are still incredibly over represented in the group of global top thinkers (especially when compared to our neighbors the Arabs), which I could never really figure out a reason for, but never let that stop 99.999% of the population from being as dumb as anyone.
My understanding is that a large factor is European culture. By law, Jews were locked out of most jobs. They were also prevented from owning land across much of Europe, which makes it rather difficult to be a farmer. If you're not going to be a farmer, you're going to need to be in commerce, which means living in a city, with access to the various resources of the city.
A thousand years of both a need for and access to education will do wonders for your (sub)culture's thoughts on education.
Caineach |
Joynt Jezebel wrote:Lord Snow wrote:I don't know why there have been so many extremely smart Jews either.Joynt Jezebel wrote:
1)And the split between Askenazic and Sephardic Jews is very old. The fact Jews from Europe or the US had a lot more money was a cause of resentment when I was there.2)On orthodox Jews trying to force everyone to conform to their views, and trying to enforce a lack of science education in schools- can this be the ethnic group that gave us Einstein and Wittgenstein?
1) More money and, since they were there first, an unshakable hold on all positions of power, both political and cultural.
2) Sure. Jews in general and Israelis in particular are still incredibly over represented in the group of global top thinkers (especially when compared to our neighbors the Arabs), which I could never really figure out a reason for, but never let that stop 99.999% of the population from being as dumb as anyone.
My understanding is that a large factor is European culture. By law, Jews were locked out of most jobs. They were also prevented from owning land across much of Europe, which makes it rather difficult to be a farmer. If you're not going to be a farmer, you're going to need to be in commerce, which means living in a city, with access to the various resources of the city.
A thousand years of both a need for and access to education will do wonders for your (sub)culture's thoughts on education.
They were also able to control a lot of wealth by being the only ones able to charge interest on loans, since it was seen as a sin, so they became the primary moneylenders.
Caineach |
Cheaper fuel sources isn't the only option for this bogyman.
There are ways to provide energy that can be produced at the level needed to "replace" the perceived evil power plants that are mostly providing it now. Nuclear power is a safer option now than it was when the meltdowns and such happened. For some areas Hydroplants have been providing power consistently for a long time, but as someone mentioned above, it is a very area specific solution and a huge started up cost to provide.
Solar, however much or little it would cost, is a storage solution that only would supplement the current structure and is not, nor ever will be, a replacement.
Solar can replace at least 20% of our current infrastructure with current technologies. And I'm not talking about prime locations for solar either, like Arizona.
Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.
Where are you getting your information on wind? Preliminary research to question this claim is showing me that it is somewhere near coal in terms of cost/megawatt, and is vastly more efficient at megawatts generated vs used in production. The data I found was a little old (2012), and predicted that wind could be cheaper than coal at this point.
Whether or not Climate Change (Global Warming) is "real," man made, or a pattern of weather that is slightly askew, the technologies, restrictions, CAfE standards, and other regulations that are the result of DOOM and GLOOM predictions are not helping anything for it and is resulting in more expense for the average American, for the gas that is artificially high to the energy costs that will go up beyond affordability.
The US government subsidizes oil and gas prices. They aren't artificially high because of regulations. Hell, gasoline isn't even taxed enough to pay for the transportation system those taxes are supposed to support.
Folks, it doesn't make sense to punish ourselves over a phenomenon that is, at best, scientific soothsaying, and at worst, an outright lie. Going back to colonial times type of living is the overall result if energy costs and regulation keeps going in the direction wanted because of it.
Bullshit. If conservative estimates of the science are correct, we will be seeing visible negative effects within my lifetime, even if we invest in curtailing the problems. If the worse predictions are correct, we will need drastic investments to remotely maintain our current lifestyles. If the science is wrong, the worst that happens is we develop a more stable and sustainable infrastructure sooner, which is still a win. Not taking action is the only bad choice.
DM Wellard |
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.
In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment,Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.
The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: " Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."
In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Professor Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on Earth since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice. He believes that it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself - increasingly accepted by other scientists worldwide, although they prefer to term it the Earth System - which, perversely, will ensure that the warming cannot be mastered.
This is because the system contains myriad feedback mechanisms which in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they will come together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities such as transport and industry through huge emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ).
It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet's ancient regulatory system will be non-linear - in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably.
He terms this phenomenon "The Revenge of Gaia" and examines it in detail in a new book with that title, to be published next month.
The uniqueness of the Lovelock viewpoint is that it is holistic, rather than reductionist. Although he is a committed supporter of current research into climate change, especially at Britain's Hadley Centre, he is not looking at individual facets of how the climate behaves, as other scientists inevitably are. Rather, he is looking at how the whole control system of the Earth behaves when put under stress.
Professor Lovelock, who conceived the idea of Gaia in the 1970s while examining the possibility of life on Mars for Nasa in the US, has been warning of the dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began nearly 20 years ago.
He was one of a select group of scientists who gave an initial briefing on global warming to Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet at 10 Downing Street in April 1989.
His concerns have increased steadily since then, as evidence of a warming climate has mounted. For example, he shared the alarm of many scientists at the news last September that the ice covering the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast that in 2005 it reached a historic low point.
Two years ago he sparked a major controversy with an article in The Independent calling on environmentalists to drop their long-standing opposition to nuclear power, which does not produce the greenhouses gases of conventional power stations.
Global warming was proceeding so fast that only a major expansion of nuclear power could bring it under control, he said. Most of the Green movement roundly rejected his call, and does so still.
Now his concerns have reached a peak - and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on governments in Britain and elsewhere to begin large-scale preparations for surviving what he now sees as inevitable - in his own phrase today, "a hell of a climate", likely to be in Europe up to 8C hotter than it is today.
In his book's concluding chapter, he writes: "What should a sensible European government be doing now? I think we have little option but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have passed the threshold.We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of [CO2] emissions. The worst will happen ..."
He goes on: "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He believes that the world's governments should plan to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse, and defences against the expected rise in sea levels. The scientist's vision of what human society may ultimately be reduced to through climate change is "a broken rabble led by brutal warlords."
Professor Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol - a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet's northern hemisphere - which is the product of the world's industry.
This shields us from some of the sun's radiation in a phenomenon which is known as "global dimming" and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn, the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards.
One of the most striking ideas in his book is that of "a guidebook for global warming survivors" aimed at the humans who would still be struggling to exist after a total societal collapse.
Written, not in electronic form, but "on durable paper with long-lasting print", it would contain the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity, much of it utterly taken for granted by us now, but originally won only after a hard struggle - such as our place in the solar system, or the fact that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases.
Global warming, caused principally by the large-scale emissions of industrial gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), is almost certainly the greatest threat that mankind has ever faced, because it puts a question mark over the very habitability of the Earth.
Over the coming decades soaring temperatures will mean agriculture may become unviable over huge areas of the world where people are already poor and hungry; water supplies for millions or even billions may fail. Rising sea levels will destroy substantial coastal areas in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, at the very moment when their populations are mushrooming. Numberless environmental refugees will overwhelm the capacity of any agency, or indeed any country, to cope, while modern urban infrastructure will face devastation from powerful extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans last summer.
The international community accepts the reality of global warming, supported by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its last report, in 2001, the IPCC said global average temperatures were likely to rise by up to 5.8C by 2100. In high latitudes, such as Britain, the rise is likely to be much higher, perhaps 8C. The warming seems to be proceeding faster than anticipated and in the IPCC's next report, 2007, the timescale may be shortened. Yet there still remains an assumption that climate change is controllable, if CO2 emissions can be curbed. Lovelock is warning: think again.
Orfamay Quest |
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.
And here's a demonstration of "the various econuts who think we should all go back to a 6th century agrarian economy," just to prove that neither side has a monopoly on irrationality.
Caineach |
DM Wellard wrote:
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.And here's a demonstration of "the various econuts who think we should all go back to a 6th century agrarian economy," just to prove that neither side has a monopoly on irrationality.
He may be a little over the top, but the claims are fairly in line with the high end of reasonable predictions, and his perscriptions are not entirely out of line. Some of them already put us at the point of having enough CO2 in the atmosphere to cause a 2C increase in global temperatures within 100 years, which is generally seen as critical point.
So he is on the fringe, but the only really bad thing is the presentation.
Orfamay Quest |
Orfamay Quest wrote:They were also able to control a lot of wealth by being the only ones able to charge interest on loans, since it was seen as a sin, so they became the primary moneylenders.Joynt Jezebel wrote:
I don't know why there have been so many extremely smart Jews either.
My understanding is that a large factor is European culture. By law, Jews were locked out of most jobs. They were also prevented from owning land across much of Europe, which makes it rather difficult to be a farmer. If you're not going to be a farmer, you're going to need to be in commerce, which means living in a city, with access to the various resources of the city.
A thousand years of both a need for and access to education will do wonders for your (sub)culture's thoughts on education.
That's not as important a factor as you think. There's nothing about being wealthy that makes you smart, as dozens of generations of Christian aristocrats have demonstrated.
Also, the trope of the Jewish moneylender is somewhat overstated. Relatively few Jews were moneylenders, and those who were were usually of the "can you give me two shillings in exchange for me fur coat" pawnbroker variety.
Most wealth was in land, and the wealthy (Christian) landowners found a way to get around the prohibitions on usury. When you mortgaged your land, the harvest also belonged to the person who held the mortgage, so he, and not you, got the income from the land. By the 13th century, there were other workarounds, such as the lucrum cessans, literally "profits given up," which enabled lenders to charge for the money they would have made had they invested the loan money in something else.
The rise of the Jewish plutocrat dates to a much later time. The patriarch of the Rothschild family, for example (Amschel Moses Rothschild) was born in 1710 and made most of his money as a draper, trading in silks and doing a little currency exchange on the side. His son Mayer Amschel was apprenticed to a banker, and he and his sons (Amschel's grandsons) are the ones who built the Rothschild dynasty.
Kirth Gersen |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The uniqueness of the Lovelock viewpoint is that it is holistic, rather than reductionist.
In other words, instead of relying on pesky stuff like science and data, he makes shit up.
I'm fairly well convinced that humans are contributing a great deal to climate change.
I'm also fairly well convinced that Lovelock is a kook.
Orfamay Quest |
Orfamay Quest wrote:He may be a little over the top, but the claims are fairly in line with the high end of reasonable predictions,DM Wellard wrote:
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.And here's a demonstration of "the various econuts who think we should all go back to a 6th century agrarian economy," just to prove that neither side has a monopoly on irrationality.
But his predictions of the effects of climate change are bats--t crazy.
I mean, "a broken rabble led by brutal warlords"? We're talking Mad Max levels of bonkers here.
"One of the most striking ideas in his book is that of "a guidebook for global warming survivors" aimed at the humans who would still be struggling to exist after a total societal collapse.
Written, not in electronic form, but "on durable paper with long-lasting print", it would contain the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity, much of it utterly taken for granted by us now, but originally won only after a hard struggle - such as our place in the solar system, or the fact that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases."
Yeah, that's not how education works. If global warming becomes a problem, it will be a problem that scientists will recognize as its happening. Doctors aren't going to suddenly forget about germ theory, and a rise in refugees needing medical attention will mean more need for doctors, which means more medical training.
Absolutely screaming yellow bonkers.
thejeff |
Caineach wrote:Orfamay Quest wrote:He may be a little over the top, but the claims are fairly in line with the high end of reasonable predictions,DM Wellard wrote:
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.And here's a demonstration of "the various econuts who think we should all go back to a 6th century agrarian economy," just to prove that neither side has a monopoly on irrationality.
But his predictions of the effects of climate change are bats--t crazy.
I mean, "a broken rabble led by brutal warlords"? We're talking Mad Max levels of bonkers here.
"One of the most striking ideas in his book is that of "a guidebook for global warming survivors" aimed at the humans who would still be struggling to exist after a total societal collapse.
Written, not in electronic form, but "on durable paper with long-lasting print", it would contain the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity, much of it utterly taken for granted by us now, but originally won only after a hard struggle - such as our place in the solar system, or the fact that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases."
Yeah, that's not how education works. If global warming becomes a problem, it will be a problem that scientists will recognize as its happening. Doctors aren't going to suddenly forget about germ theory, and a rise in refugees needing medical attention will mean more need for doctors, which means more medical training.
Absolutely screaming yellow bonkers.
I don't think that's for the doctors being trained as things get worse, but for the survivors after the collapse:
Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
....
Over the coming decades soaring temperatures will mean agriculture may become unviable over huge areas of the world where people are already poor and hungry; water supplies for millions or even billions may fail. Rising sea levels will destroy substantial coastal areas in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, at the very moment when their populations are mushrooming. Numberless environmental refugees will overwhelm the capacity of any agency, or indeed any country, to cope, while modern urban infrastructure will face devastation from powerful extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans last summer.
Now, you can certainly argue it's not going to get that bad, that fast, but if his predictions are accurate such records might be very helpful.
I assume, without actually reading his argument, that among the things he's predicting is the trapped methane getting released, which is likely and would be a huge boost to warming.
thejeff |
DM Wellard wrote:
The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.And here's a demonstration of "the various econuts who think we should all go back to a 6th century agrarian economy," just to prove that neither side has a monopoly on irrationality.
Actually, I think he's saying it doesn't matter if we go back to a 6th century agrarian economy, we're screwed anyway based on what we've already done.
He's probably right. In general anyway, if not on the details of the speed and just how bad it's going to get. Barring new tech for getting carbon out of the atmosphere on a massive scale, there's a lot of warming already locked in.Doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep accelerating the rate at which we add more, of course, just that there's no easy way to fix everything.
Dropping back to a 6th century agrarian economy would itself be a disaster, since such an economy couldn't possibly support or feed our current population. That's obviously out of the question.
Irontruth |
Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.
Forbes, a conservative news outlet, talking about the cost of energy.
Wind energy costs almost exactly the same as coal. Are you claiming that coal is economically unviable as energy source? Because if wind isn't profitable, neither is coal.
edit: wait, I'm sorry I forgot you just make stuff up and claim it's true.
Caineach |
thaX wrote:Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.Forbes, a conservative news outlet, talking about the cost of energy.
Wind energy costs almost exactly the same as coal. Are you claiming that coal is economically unviable as energy source? Because if wind isn't profitable, neither is coal.
edit: wait, I'm sorry I forgot you just make stuff up and claim it's true.
Yeah. The problem with wind from a financial standpoint is that you have large up front costs compared to your immediate returns. Operating costs are comparatively negligible, but you pay back your loan slower since you have lower immediate profits, so the opportunity cost is higher and, depending on the interest, that could account for a significant portion of expenses.
They touch on the other issue in that article as well. The number of turbines needed to phase out a single coal plant will take up a large amount of space.
Gregor Greymane |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
My contention is that it doesn't matter at this point whether or not it is happening, and if it is, whether we are impacting it in some manner.
To me, at this point we ought to be taking steps to conserve and preserve resources, cut costs, create more efficient products, use clean and renewable energy, etc. REGARDLESS of whether or not we are impacting climate change and whether or not it is real.
These things are of economic, health, societal, ecological, spiritual, etc. benefit that will be felt for generations to come. We ought to continually think 100+ years ahead when we make decisions for our species and for the planet.
Edit: Purely from an ECONOMIC and perhaps traditionally conservative standpoint - it is in our interest to pursue more efficient methods of existence. The best long-term viability of our economy and profitability is dependent on such.
Gregor Greymane |
thaX wrote:Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.Forbes, a conservative news outlet, talking about the cost of energy.
Wind energy costs almost exactly the same as coal. Are you claiming that coal is economically unviable as energy source? Because if wind isn't profitable, neither is coal.
edit: wait, I'm sorry I forgot you just make stuff up and claim it's true.
The problem with coal is the pollution (despite clean-up/reduction/collection efforts) and the fact that it is NON-RENEWABLE. In the long-run, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc. all MIXED together and strategically placed based upon LOCAL needs and conditions will be best. Other sources of energy may come along. For now, it is time to move past fossil fuels and stop pretending that we can do it without consequence.
Joynt Jezebel |
Joynt Jezebel wrote:I don't know why there have been so many extremely smart Jews either.My understanding is that a large factor is European culture. By law, Jews were locked out of most jobs. They were also prevented from owning land across much of Europe, which makes it rather difficult to be a farmer. If you're not going to be a farmer, you're going to need to be in commerce, which means living in a city, with access to the various resources of the city.
A thousand years of both a need for and access to education will do wonders for your (sub)culture's thoughts on education.
A good theory.
I don't think it explains the extremity of the phenomenon by itself though.
There could be a genetic component.
A disproportionate number of people contributing to thought isn't the only thing about Jews that is unusual. Most ethnic groups assimilate into the dominant group where they live fairly rapidly. Jews don't. And the reason is not religion, you get atheist and Christian Jews, but they are still Jews. They are an interesting bunch.
Orfamay Quest |
Most ethnic groups assimilate into the dominant group where they live fairly rapidly. Jews don't. And the reason is not religion, you get atheist and Christian Jews, but they are still Jews. They are an interesting bunch.
I'd want to see hard data on that before I gave it too much consideration, I'm afraid. The degree of assimilation of (non-Jewish) Jews varies widely between time periods and cultures, and a lot of what people think they know about European Jewry today is filtered through our experiences with the Nazis, who were deeply concerned about Aryan purity in a way that no culture before or since has ever expressed.
For example, the Nuremberg laws incredibly detailed about how to determine if someone was a Jew, based on whether or not their grandparents were Jews... but this, in and of itself, shows that Jews were actually relatively well-integrated into Jewish society, or this kind of analysis wouldn't have been necessary. Even under those laws, if your great-grandfather had converted to Christianity, your grandfather was (legally) Christian and not Jewish.
Until about 1800, being Jewish was a religious test, not a cultural one. The Spanish conversos, for example, those Jews who converted to Catholicism in the wake of the Reconquista, are well-documented to have integrated into society within only a few decades. Jewish children were routinely baptized and shipped to foster homes where they became fine and upstanding (if Christian) members of society. However, Jews who insisted on practicing Judaism weren't even granted citizenship in the various countries where they lived until about 1800, and of course were subject to a whole slew of sumptuary laws that actively prevented them from integrating. Once they were allowed to join society, they tended to assimilate quickly, to the point that by 1930, it took substantial detective work to figure out whether or not any random German 60 year old was Jewish. I don't believe the timing here was coincidental. The German pharmacist in 1930 who was 60 years old had been born in 1870, and his grandparents would therefore have been born in the early 19th century, about the time that Jews were allowed to integrate, so that's when the issue arose... because they had done so.
thejeff |
Joynt Jezebel wrote:
Most ethnic groups assimilate into the dominant group where they live fairly rapidly. Jews don't. And the reason is not religion, you get atheist and Christian Jews, but they are still Jews. They are an interesting bunch.I'd want to see hard data on that before I gave it too much consideration, I'm afraid. The degree of assimilation of (non-Jewish) Jews varies widely between time periods and cultures, and a lot of what people think they know about European Jewry today is filtered through our experiences with the Nazis, who were deeply concerned about Aryan purity in a way that no culture before or since has ever expressed.
For example, the Nuremberg laws incredibly detailed about how to determine if someone was a Jew, based on whether or not their grandparents were Jews... but this, in and of itself, shows that Jews were actually relatively well-integrated into Jewish society, or this kind of analysis wouldn't have been necessary. Even under those laws, if your great-grandfather had converted to Christianity, your grandfather was (legally) Christian and not Jewish.
Until about 1800, being Jewish was a religious test, not a cultural one. The Spanish conversos, for example, those Jews who converted to Catholicism in the wake of the Reconquista, are well-documented to have integrated into society within only a few decades. Jewish children were routinely baptized and shipped to foster homes where they became fine and upstanding (if Christian) members of society. However, Jews who insisted on practicing Judaism weren't even granted citizenship in the various countries where they lived until about 1800, and of course were subject to a whole slew of sumptuary laws that actively prevented them from integrating. Once they were allowed to join society, they tended to assimilate quickly, to the point that by 1930, it took substantial detective work to figure out whether or not any random German 60 year old was Jewish. I don't believe the timing here...
Also to a pretty serious extent the very persecution helps keep them from assimilating. It'll be interesting to see how a few generations without significant persecution and without the strong religious aspect (on both sides) affects assimilation. It already looks like many less religious Jews assimilate nicely into American culture. Sure, the heritage thing is still there, but a few generations of intermarriage?
Joynt Jezebel |
Hey, you two are real skeptics. Meaning you question what you are told.
Climate "skeptics", by contrast, believe near anything that supports their views and near nothing that does not, which is almost the complete opposite.
On what you say, I agree with thejeff. You are not the only person who believes Jews in the US are becoming more assimilated rapidly. Another group in the US that is less assimilated than others is black people. Discrimination [and the fact their identity is really obvious] probably is a big factor there.
In response to Orfamay Quest, I thought I was saying something uncontroversial, its certainly something I have heard stated as a fact. I tried to google up some hard data but got no results quickly.
In Australia we had a wave of Southern European immigration after world war 2 and they were not universally accepted when they arrived. We have things like Greek and Italian clubs. I am near certain such clubs are most important to the immigrants themselves, less so to their children, still less so to their grandchildren and so on. I suspect they will be mostly gone 200 years after the wave of immigration.
Jews by contrast remained a distinct group for nearly 2,000 years after the diaspora. There are other long standing religious minorites, like the Seiks and especially the Jains in India. I don't know enough of the history to tell how comparable the situation is.
Joynt Jezebel |
Hey, you two are real skeptics. Meaning you question what you are told.
Climate "skeptics", by contrast, believe near anything that supports their views and near nothing that does not, which is almost the complete opposite.
On what you say, I agree with thejeff. You are not the only person who believes Jews in the US are becoming more assimilated rapidly. Another group in the US that is less assimilated than others is black people. Discrimination [and the fact their identity is really obvious] probably is a big factor there.
In response to Orfamay Quest, I thought I was saying something uncontroversial, its certainly something I have heard stated as a fact. I tried to google up some hard data but got no results quickly.
In Australia we had a wave of Southern European immigration after world war 2 and they were not universally accepted when they arrived. We have things like Greek and Italian clubs. I am near certain such clubs are most important to the immigrants themselves, less so to their children, still less so to their grandchildren and so on. I suspect they will be mostly gone 200 years after the wave of immigration.
Jews by contrast remained a distinct group for nearly 2,000 years after the diaspora. There are other long standing religious minorites, like the Seiks and especially the Jains in India. I don't know enough of the history to tell how comparable the situation is.
It will be interesting to see what Lord Snow says if he comments.
thaX |
Irontruth wrote:The problem with coal is the pollution (despite clean-up/reduction/collection efforts) and the fact that it is NON-RENEWABLE. In the long-run, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc. all MIXED together and strategically placed based upon LOCAL needs and conditions will be best. Other sources of energy may come along. For now, it is time to move past fossil fuels and stop pretending that we can do it without consequence.thaX wrote:Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.Forbes, a conservative news outlet, talking about the cost of energy.
Wind energy costs almost exactly the same as coal. Are you claiming that coal is economically unviable as energy source? Because if wind isn't profitable, neither is coal.
edit: wait, I'm sorry I forgot you just make stuff up and claim it's true.
My main point is that Wind and Solar are not, despite what any environmentalist believes, the replacement for the evil coal and vial gasoline. We need power plants, not storage facilities. The want is to jettison gas and coal now and try to use this infant battery storage that is older technology than what we already have.
For a car to go further than a couple of blocks, it needs a power source that has a fuel source that is portable. Batteries and electric cars are not it. They were not in the 1900's and they are not the magic solution now. Hybrids can extend the gasoline we use now if we want to pay more for a new car. Some have, and got burned when the batteries life span was shortened and the car blue book was less than the cost to replace those batteries. (This happened at my work)
One windmill costs over so much money. By the time you produce enough electricity to equal that initial payment, you either have a broke windmill, or have paid more money into it for maintenance. Wind was great for milling corn and wheat, but I don't see a future for it as an energy plant.
Orfamay Quest |
One windmill costs over so much money. By the time you produce enough electricity to equal that initial payment, you either have a broke windmill, or have paid more money into it for maintenance.
As has been pointed out repeatedly to you in this thread, with sources, your assessment of the costs of alternative energies is way off. The statement above is simply not true.
Repeating an untrue statement will not make it come true.
Scott Betts |
For a car to go further than a couple of blocks, it needs a power source that has a fuel source that is portable. Batteries and electric cars are not it. They were not in the 1900's and they are not the magic solution now.
It's like you don't even realize that there are people happily driving electric vehicles around, right now, with a range in the neighborhood of 300 miles.
Hybrids can extend the gasoline we use now if we want to pay more for a new car. Some have, and got burned when the batteries life span was shortened and the car blue book was less than the cost to replace those batteries.
There are multiple hybrid drivers in this thread.
Krensky |
The vast majority of 2001 Priuses... Pirii... Whatever... Are still on their original traction battery pack. Replacing said battery at the dealer is more than the bluebook, but that's true for almost any major repair on a fifteen year old car.
You can get a reconditioned battery for, at this point, about the bluebook value of the car. Note that this is in the same category as rebuilding an engine or transmission.
Now for the Gen 2 care, starting in 04, well, almost none of those have failed so far. Plus remember that the maintenance costs from a Pris are lower. No belts, long lasting timing chain, generally you'll never need brakes, etc.
GreyWolfLord |
Cheaper fuel sources isn't the only option for this bogyman.
There are ways to provide energy that can be produced at the level needed to "replace" the perceived evil power plants that are mostly providing it now. Nuclear power is a safer option now than it was when the meltdowns and such happened. For some areas Hydroplants have been providing power consistently for a long time, but as someone mentioned above, it is a very area specific solution and a huge started up cost to provide.
Solar, however much or little it would cost, is a storage solution that only would supplement the current structure and is not, nor ever will be, a replacement. Wind is a storage solution that never pays for the start up cost before the structures that provide are past their lifecycle.
Whether or not Climate Change (Global Warming) is "real," man made, or a pattern of weather that is slightly askew, the technologies, restrictions, CAfE standards, and other regulations that are the result of DOOM and GLOOM predictions are not helping anything for it and is resulting in more expense for the average American, for the gas that is artificially high to the energy costs that will go up beyond affordability.
Folks, it doesn't make sense to punish ourselves over a phenomenon that is, at best, scientific soothsaying, and at worst, an outright lie. Going back to colonial times type of living is the overall result if energy costs and regulation keeps going in the direction wanted because of it.
That's funny.
The reason I push solar is AFTER you pay it off, the energy is 100% free. If you don't need to store the energy, you don't even need to pay for the battery costs.
I know of places that DO run 100% off of solar energy...
The reason it can't do the entire grid now is there aren't enough places with the panels. You put enough panels on each home to power it and each building or factory has the solar generation in a field to power it...you should have MORE than enough energy to power an entire nation.
It may take some changes in lifestyle to adapt to some of the changes in how the power is handled, but overall, there's probably plenty of power if you use the RIGHT type of panels (cloudy days are NO LONGER an obstacle if you have the right panels), and regulate it appropriately.
Lord Snow |
Joynt Jezebel wrote:
Most ethnic groups assimilate into the dominant group where they live fairly rapidly. Jews don't. And the reason is not religion, you get atheist and Christian Jews, but they are still Jews. They are an interesting bunch.I'd want to see hard data on that before I gave it too much consideration, I'm afraid. The degree of assimilation of (non-Jewish) Jews varies widely between time periods and cultures, and a lot of what people think they know about European Jewry today is filtered through our experiences with the Nazis, who were deeply concerned about Aryan purity in a way that no culture before or since has ever expressed.
For example, the Nuremberg laws incredibly detailed about how to determine if someone was a Jew, based on whether or not their grandparents were Jews... but this, in and of itself, shows that Jews were actually relatively well-integrated into Jewish society, or this kind of analysis wouldn't have been necessary. Even under those laws, if your great-grandfather had converted to Christianity, your grandfather was (legally) Christian and not Jewish.
Until about 1800, being Jewish was a religious test, not a cultural one. The Spanish conversos, for example, those Jews who converted to Catholicism in the wake of the Reconquista, are well-documented to have integrated into society within only a few decades. Jewish children were routinely baptized and shipped to foster homes where they became fine and upstanding (if Christian) members of society. However, Jews who insisted on practicing Judaism weren't even granted citizenship in the various countries where they lived until about 1800, and of course were subject to a whole slew of sumptuary laws that actively prevented them from integrating. Once they were allowed to join society, they tended to assimilate quickly, to the point that by 1930, it took substantial detective work to figure out whether or not any random German 60 year old was Jewish. I don't believe the timing here...
Yeah, a lot of the European Jewish population was in advanced stages of assimilation by the time the German National Socialists decided to make an issue of things. I have spoken with plenty of holocaust survivors who discovered they were Jews the day they were taken to a Ghetto (mind, these people were very young children back then).
This isn't the complete picture, though. Even disregarding the many known Jewish public figures (check out, say, 90% of the founders of communism from the 19th and early 20th century), which suggests that the label "Jew" wasn't going anywhere, there was the Zionist movement. The existence of such a movement is essentially the very definition of non assimilation.
Lord Snow |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Also generally speaking I don't buy into the idea of some sort of genetic cause for Jewish over representation in the higher ranks of world thinkers. The exact meaning of "Jew" changes constantly and the people who were considered Jewish were simply to scattered to have all that much of a common genome.
Orfamay Quest |
The exact meaning of "Jew" changes constantly and the people who were considered Jewish were simply to scattered to have all that much of a common genome.
This isn't quite true. The Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews in particular, are in many ways almost a testbed for various theories about the genetic origins of various medical conditions precisely because there's enough difference between them and the mainstream European population. If you are taught about the Founder Effect in college biology, there's a good chance that Ashkenazi Jews provided the example used by the textbook.
As one study put it, "The Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population has long been viewed as a genetic isolate, kept separate from its European neighbors by religious and cultural practices of endogamy. [...] Accordingly, the AJ population is often the subject of Mendelian and complex disease studies. [...]The most compelling genetic evidence of founder events in the AJ population is the elevated frequency of at least 20 rare recessive diseases attributed to genetic drift following bottlenecks."
No one's yet identified a gene for intelligence, and they probably never will, since there's almost certainly too many genes involved in something that complicated for a neat reductive explanation. But that doesn't mean that there's no genetic component. I am inclined to lean toward the cultural in my explanations myself, but I recognize that there's substantal evidence for a genetic difference, and therefore the genetic theory is at least plausible.
Lord Snow |
Lord Snow wrote:The exact meaning of "Jew" changes constantly and the people who were considered Jewish were simply to scattered to have all that much of a common genome.This isn't quite true. The Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews in particular, are in many ways almost a testbed for various theories about the genetic origins of various medical conditions precisely because there's enough difference between them and the mainstream European population. If you are taught about the Founder Effect in college biology, there's a good chance that Ashkenazi Jews provided the example used by the textbook.
As one study put it, "The Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population has long been viewed as a genetic isolate, kept separate from its European neighbors by religious and cultural practices of endogamy. [...] Accordingly, the AJ population is often the subject of Mendelian and complex disease studies. [...]The most compelling genetic evidence of founder events in the AJ population is the elevated frequency of at least 20 rare recessive diseases attributed to genetic drift following bottlenecks."
No one's yet identified a gene for intelligence, and they probably never will, since there's almost certainly too many genes involved in something that complicated for a neat reductive explanation. But that doesn't mean that there's no genetic component. I am inclined to lean toward the cultural in my explanations myself, but I recognize that there's substantal evidence for a genetic difference, and therefore the genetic theory is at least plausible.
The abstract of that research does have the part you quoted in it but then immediately proceeds to note that there is a lot of genetic diversity:
However, paradoxically we also found higher genetic diversity, a sign of an older or more admixed population but not of a long-term isolate...Moreover, Y-chromosome studies, in contrast to mtDNA results, reveal that Y-chromosome diversity in the AJ population is comparable to their non-Jewish European neighbors
I don't know enough about genetics to make much of that other thank take the words I recognize at face value, and it appears that the question of genetic isolation for Jews remains somewhat unresolved. Some Jews mingled more than others, and I guess it's worth checking how many of the really smart ones came from which group.
Besides if you say that Jews are really smart you should agree with me because that makes me really smart! You see? I outlogicked you with me super brain powers right now!
...
...
Errm. What was this thread about?
Gregor Greymane |
Part of the problem with the discussion over energy I believe is that many that argue against current renewable energy sources is that the issue if conservation is ignored.
Not only will it be necessary in the future to find cleaner, more efficient forms of energy, but we will also need to reduce our energy use as individuals and on the larger-scale whole. We will one day have to face a crisis if we cannot first begin to learn to live a bit more simply. The earth cannot sustain 7+ billion people living as Americans and other developed nations do.
The problem with supporting or attacking one type of energy as a solely viable solution is that one source is not the problem, and one source is not the solution. We need to reconsider everything about how we operate day-to-day if we are to successfully move into the future. It will be uncomfortable and inconvenient, but necessary.
It is a combination of renewable energy sources, altered lifestyles, re-designed economies and approaches to everything we do that can ensure success.
For those that argue that renewable energies are in their infancy, yes, that is somewhat true, but the more we invest our resources into the energies, the further along they can advance. Ford considered making a battery operated car. I wonder where we might be today if he had opted to go down that path for his world-changing invention?
The point is that nothing begins perfect. Fossil-fuel energy did not start so perfect, either, and is certainly is not today. It will take time and creative thinking to adopt these on the larger scale and to make it economically viable, but it can be done and must be done.
Orfamay Quest |
The abstract of that research does have the part you quoted in it but then immediately proceeds to note that there is a lot of genetic diversity.
Yeah, like almost everything else in science, the real work is in "how much?" since everything turns out to be partly true, for a sufficiently relaxed value of "true."
The magic line is probably this one: "We calculated the amount of European admixture in the AJ population to be 35 to 55%. Previous estimates of admixture levels have varied widely depending on the chromosome or specific locus being considered, with studies of Y-chromosome haplogroups estimating from 5 to 23% European admixture." That's still nowhere close to homogeneity between Europeans and AJ --- turning it around, that's roughly half (or more) of the genetic variation being strongly tied to Jewish identity.
thejeff |
Part of the problem with the discussion over energy I believe is that many that argue against current renewable energy sources is that the issue if conservation is ignored.
Not only will it be necessary in the future to find cleaner, more efficient forms of energy, but we will also need to reduce our energy use as individuals and on the larger-scale whole. We will one day have to face a crisis if we cannot first begin to learn to live a bit more simply. The earth cannot sustain 7+ billion people living as Americans and other developed nations do.
The problem with supporting or attacking one type of energy as a solely viable solution is that one source is not the problem, and one source is not the solution. We need to reconsider everything about how we operate day-to-day if we are to successfully move into the future. It will be uncomfortable and inconvenient, but necessary.
It is a combination of renewable energy sources, altered lifestyles, re-designed economies and approaches to everything we do that can ensure success.
For those that argue that renewable energies are in their infancy, yes, that is somewhat true, but the more we invest our resources into the energies, the further along they can advance. Ford considered making a battery operated car. I wonder where we might be today if he had opted to go down that path for his world-changing invention?
The point is that nothing begins perfect. Fossil-fuel energy did not start so perfect, either, and is certainly is not today. It will take time and creative thinking to adopt these on the larger scale and to make it economically viable, but it can be done and must be done.
Note that there are a lot of ways to reduce energy use without actually reducing our standards of living. Maybe changing them, but not reducing them. From simple things like buildings, vehicles and other devices designed to be more energy efficient to changes in settlement patterns to encourage less sprawl and denser population - reducing commutes and increasing walkability.