Tipping over

[madanthonywayne]

No they won't. Not as long as some people can make money for themselves by defying them.

Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons. Market forces don't prevent it.

You will never see a market-based development of a new basic societal infrastructure. It's not something markets can do.

Utter and complete bunk. Sure, some people can make money by doing what we're doing now. But they, or others, can make even more money by being the first to offer an alternative.

Be the first company to come out with an electric car that sells for say 20k and has a good range (200 miles or more) and you'll make a mint.

Why would market forces not produce such an outcome?

How did we go from the horse and carrage to the car? From candles to lightbulbs? From sliderules to calculators?

Who created and popularized the personal computer when big business and government assumed there was no need or demand for them? Guys in garages like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, that's who. Now they're billionaires via the forces of the free market.

 

[iceaura]

How did we go from the horse and carrage to the car? From candles to lightbulbs? From sliderules to calculators?

Who created and popularized the personal computer when big business and government assumed there was no need or demand for them?

Government resources, government nurturing and investment, government infrastructure. Every single one of those things.

The same way we'll go from fossil fuel to solar power basis - if we do.

 

[Vkothii]

So first, put the market cart in front of the technology horse, to argue a point, then swap them back later?

How was Bill Gates helped by the market to develop his product again? How many investors were interested in him and his garage band of buddies in 1985? Didn't he really just grab hold of an existing technology and re-package it? IBM got the ball rolling with a standard platform, which became the industry vanilla. All Bill Gates did was invent a new topping.

He didn't get any wave going, he was just the first one to catch it.
Like Ford, who saw an opportunity not to make a better mousetrap, but a cheaper one. Bill Gates, however, was able to exploit a product - the machine that someone else invented. He got rich selling fuel for the new engines, but this time around, instead of the machine-makers catching a wave, the fuel-makers did. The technology arrived because it was bound to, not because Bill Gates & co. made it happen.

 

[iceaura]

James Hansen from NASA was jsut in front of Congress, with some interesting numbers. Apparently the speedup in visible effects has changed the likely critical points, and by his latest numbers to avoid a 90% chance of crossing a tipping point we would need to hold the CO2 concentration at 350 ppm or less, from its 285 last century.

It's currently at 385, and rising about 2 per year.

That rise is possibly accelerating.

But maybe he's wrong.

 

[DJ Erock]

For some reason, everyone seems to think that 'saving the environment' is maintaining status quo. The environment has constantly changed in large ways since it developed. I don't really understand how stopping the environment's change is considered doing good. We think we're smart or powerful enough to do what is right for the environment, which people seem to think is to stop it in its tracks. So we're creating this so called 'tipping point' in our own perception by thinking we can stop things from changing, then when it turns out we can't, its this big tragedy.

This is one situation in which we should be reactive, not proactive. We can't do shit against what the environment wants to do, so we should do what we can to go along with it.

 

[iceaura]

This is one situation in which we should be reactive, not proactive. We can't do shit against what the environment wants to do, so we should do what we can to go along with it.

Pumping lots more CO2 out to accumulate in the air is not exactly "going along with what the environment wants to do ".

 

[madanthonywayne]

I agree.
I question our ability to do anything about it regardless of the cost.


IF there is something we can do, we should do it regardless of the cost.

That is just idiotic. Have you ever noticed that when a hurricane hits Guatemala or Nicaragua or some other third world country they'll have thousands of casualties yet when one hits the US we'll have hardly any (but millions of dollars in damage)?

Why are casualties so much higher in poor countries? Because wealthy countries can afford to do things to minimize the damage done by extreme weather.

Now, if we waste trillions of dollars on measures that have no real effect, that leaves us with much less money to adjust to whatever changes occur. That means the people will suffer and die MORE due to expensive half measures than by doing nothing at all.

I just can't take it when people start yelling that some animal population has run rampant (the kangaroos for example) and they need to be culled to save the local environment.
What people seem to miss is that there is a direct parallel with humans. The human species also has run rampant and is destroyed the environment because of their sheer numbers, just like the kangaroos.

Once again, the difference is, WE'RE NOT KANGAROOS!. Our goal should be to maximize the comfort and well being of human beings.

Now it may be that you personally enjoy seeing unspoiled land untouched by man. If so, that's fine. Get together with some like minded fellows and buy up some land and turn it into nature preserves. But don't come around telling other people how to live their lives or that they need to die so that your vision of unspoiled nature can be realized.

 

[iceaura]

Have you ever noticed that when a hurricane hits Guatemala or Nicaragua or some other third world country they'll have thousands of casualties yet when one hits the US we'll have hardly any (but millions of dollars in damage)?

Why are casualties so much higher in poor countries? Because wealthy countries can afford to do things to minimize the damage done by extreme weather.

Now, if we waste trillions of dollars on measures that have no real effect, that leaves us with much less money to adjust to whatever changes occur.

Comparing the serious hurricanes that hit Cuba - direct strike on dense populations - and the US, in a couple of years ago, we saw the opposite pattern.

Apparently, simply saving up big piles of wealth does not prepare a country adequately for the possibilities of disaster.

Now it may be that you personally enjoy seeing unspoiled land untouched by man. If so, that's fine. Get together with some like minded fellows and buy up some land and turn it into nature preserves. But don't come around telling other people how to live their lives or that they need to die so that your vision of unspoiled nature can be realized

Wait a minute: how come these other people can wreck stuff I value, and blight my life, and I can't prevent them from doing that ? They can tell me how to live, and I can't return the favor ? People who want to wreck stuff they don't own are in the right, and people who want to enjoy unwrecked stuff they don't own are in the wrong ? The people who want to mine nickel next to the Boundary Waters don't own the Boundary Waters. The people driving smoky diesels downtown don't own the air.

 

[madanthonywayne]

Comparing the serious hurricanes that hit Cuba - direct strike on dense populations - and the US, in a couple of years ago, we saw the opposite pattern.

Apparently, simply saving up big piles of wealth does not prepare a country adequately for the possibilities of disaster.

Complete and utter bullshit. What was the death toll from hurricane Katrina in the US? 1800 or so, I believe. And that was from the worst hurricane to ever hit New Orleans, our most vulnerable city. Lets compare that with some other (poorer) areas hit by hurricanes or cyclones:

May 3, 2008. Cyclone Nargis, swept along by winds that exceeded 190 kmh and waves six metres high struck the Burmese peninsula and may have left as many as 100,000 dead, according to U.S. estimates.

Oct. 26-Nov. 4, 1998. Hurricane Mitch was the deadliest hurricane to hit the Americas. It killed 11,000 in Honduras and Nicaragua and left 2.5 million homeless.

Aug. 5, 1975. At least 85,000 were killed along the Yangtze River in China when more than 60 dams failed following a series of storms, causing widespread flooding and famine. This disaster was kept secret by the Chinese government for 20 years.

August 1971. An estimated 100,000 died when heavy rains led to severe flooding around Hanoi in what was then North Vietnam.

Nov. 13, 1970. The Bhola cyclone in the Ganges delta killed an estimated 500,000 in Bangladesh. Some put the complete death toll as high as one million.

June, 1938. Nationalist Chinese soldiers, under the direction of Chiang Kai-Shek, blew up dikes around the Yellow River to stop Japanese troops from advancing. More than half a million people died in the resulting flood.

May-August 1931. Massive flooding of China's Yellow and Yangtze rivers led to almost four million deaths from drowning, disease and starvation. The flooding of the Yangtze also killed an estimated 100,000 in 1911 and 140,000 in 1935. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/05/08/f-natural-disasters-history.html

Is it just good luck that none of these disasters resulting in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths occured in wealthy nations? Or, perhaps, do our piles of money do some good, afterall? Perhaps our wealth allow us to build structures that can withstand greater trauma. Perhaps it allows us to have the infrastructure to respond to such emergencies and minimize the deaths. What do you think?

 

[Enmos]

That is just idiotic. Have you ever noticed that when a hurricane hits Guatemala or Nicaragua or some other third world country they'll have thousands of casualties yet when one hits the US we'll have hardly any (but millions of dollars in damage)?

Why are casualties so much higher in poor countries? Because wealthy countries can afford to do things to minimize the damage done by extreme weather.

Now, if we waste trillions of dollars on measures that have no real effect, that leaves us with much less money to adjust to whatever changes occur. That means the people will suffer and die MORE due to expensive half measures than by doing nothing at all.

Uhm.. it's you being idiotic. You read that again..

Once again, the difference is, WE'RE NOT KANGAROOS!. Our goal should be to maximize the comfort and well being of human beings.

Now it may be that you personally enjoy seeing unspoiled land untouched by man. If so, that's fine. Get together with some like minded fellows and buy up some land and turn it into nature preserves. But don't come around telling other people how to live their lives or that they need to die so that your vision of unspoiled nature can be realized.

A typical response from ignorance (I hope it's ignorance).

..or that they need to die so that your vision of unspoiled nature can be realized.

Again, concentrate better when you read my posts.

 

[Enmos]

Complete and utter bullshit. What was the death toll from hurricane Katrina in the US? 1800 or so, I believe. And that was from the worst hurricane to ever hit New Orleans, our most vulnerable city.

Yea vulnerable because you idiots didn't invest in better dikes and stuff.
I understand your government called in the help of the Dutch to do it for them.

 

[Vkothii]

Our goal should be to maximize the comfort and well being of human beings.

All 6.something billion of them? All driving SUVs and living 4 to an 1800 sq ft. house, earning >50k a year. and so on?

That's a dream. pal.

Some humans, maybe, but humans in general? That's complete crap; for some to be rich and happy, others in general have to be poor and miserable - there's a balance. We really can't have everything, you know - there's always only so big a pie to share around.

 

[Cazzo]

Utter and complete bunk. Sure, some people can make money by doing what we're doing now. But they, or others, can make even more money by being the first to offer an alternative.

Governments and the UN in particular can make A LOT MORE money off the "human caused" global warming hype. They'll just use it as an excuse to raise taxes on companies and people to "save Mother Earth"......

Maybe if they get desperate enough, they'll develop time machines to go back in time to visit the multitude of other NATURALLY CAUSED global warmings, and tax the neanderthal men, homo erectus, homo habilis, dinosaurs, etc........

 

[Cazzo]

Some humans, maybe, but humans in general? That's complete crap; for some to be rich and happy, others in general have to be poor and miserable - there's a balance. We really can't have everything, you know - there's always only so big a pie to share around.

That's true, and why we need to start looking at a bigger scope of things, like all the other resources in the solar system (and later, outside the solar system). Nuclear fusion power, solar power, advances in the studies of human survival in space, space travel and human migration to other planets, and humanity will be set for thousands of years to come.

 

[iceaura]

Complete and utter bullshit. What was the death toll from hurricane Katrina in the US? 1800 or so, I believe. And that was from the worst hurricane to ever hit New Orleans, our most vulnerable city. Lets compare that with some other (poorer) areas hit by hurricanes or cyclones:

How about we stick to the comparison with Cuba, which IIRC was hit square by two hurricanes more or less equivalent to Katrina in about a year, and weathered the storms better than than the US did Katrina alone.

Money is not enough. Preparation counts.

 

[Vkothii]

The ludicrous side of a $45 trillion invoice to "save the planet", is it hasn't got a figure on the ledger for the cost of "not doing a thing about it".

What's the bill going to be for the "cost" of business, exploitation of dwindling marine, agricultural, groundwater and palaeowater resources?

There's the thing, business simply does not account for these costs, but "assumes" an unlimited resource, that's the "rational" model we use, it's the "use it" model where the problem of resource depletion is considered to be external to the issues of profit, expansion and that other thing - oh yeah: "growth".
Can we keep tuning the strings up tighter and tighter?

 

[madanthonywayne]

Some humans, maybe, but humans in general? That's complete crap; for some to be rich and happy, others in general have to be poor and miserable - there's a balance. We really can't have everything, you know - there's always only so big a pie to share around.

Typical liberal zero sum game thinking. I don't need anyone to be poor to make me rich. The more money everyone else has; the more they can spend on new glasses, contacts, LASIK, whatever at my place.

By increasing productivity via technology we increase the total amount of wealth. So there's more for everyone. Of course you global warming luddites would have us all living in the stone age in abject poverty.

How about we stick to the comparison with Cuba, which IIRC was hit square by two hurricanes more or less equivalent to Katrina in about a year, and weathered the storms better than than the US did Katrina alone.

Money is not enough. Preparation counts.

The ones I listed were the worst hurricanes/cyclones in history. Note there wasn't a first world country among them.

 

[Vkothii]

The more money everyone else has; the more they can spend on new glasses, contacts, LASIK, whatever at my place.

Money comes from technology, right? People who are poor are technology-poor, give them some money instead, they can only buy what they have available, so money isn't even all that useful, by itself.

Are you saying giving everyone some money so they can go to America and get a LASIK done, is the way to resolve poverty?

Of course technology is the way. But technology is also the way to use everything up - then we won't be able to invent new stuff unless we use the "old stuff" over again. Or you think the human race can use up all the metals, gases, turn them into things they use for a year or so, then bury again?

We probably will have to start digging up the stuff we threw away at some point - it's a long way off, but it's still coming. Something else might happen before then, like in the next century.

In which case there won't be much of a world of money and technology to worry about, for whoever is left, wherever they get left. But I'd think hard about staying in Florida, say, by that stage, seeing how most of it won't be there any more.

 

[Enmos]

Madanthony, how old are you ?

 

[madanthonywayne]

Madanthony, how old are you ?

41. Why do you ask?