> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Andrew Crystall > Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 6:43 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: RE: This is not a False Alarm... > > On 9 Apr 2007 at 16:39, Dan Minette wrote: > > > > Assuming zero gains from the technology deployed, true. > > > > I'm certain that the analysis included ordinary increases in > technological > > efficiencies....but not breakthroughs (which can't be scheduled). For > > Actually, no, the 50 billion figure does not. 35 billion, yes, at > todays levels of efficientcy. > > > reference purposes, Moore's law would reflect the former, but the > > breakthrough of QM based physics did not. > > Moore's law has never applied to reducing the poloution we have > created...
Sure, but that's not what I was getting at. What I was alluding to is the fact that chip size has been a very rich area for improvements...but that I don't see the some sort of potential in the area of energy. Fusion power and widespread cheap solar power have both been about 30 years away the corner for the last 30 years or so. As we continue to invest money in research in this area, we continue to see new problems that must be solved. > > Haven't processes been getting more efficient all along? Haven't > greenhouse > > gases still increased tremendously. > > Corperations and governments look to the short term bottom line. Not > that a decade in the future, or even further. But, that's not really true. Drug companies put billions of dollars into the development of drugs that may never make them a dime....but would need 20 year payoffs to really work. Utilities build power plants with 50 year lifetimes. The interstate highway system was designed to last decades. What is common among these examples is the relative predictability of the future. In every case, there is reason to believe that, five years down the road, the investment would not be considered foolish. In other areas, however, such long term thinking would be costly. Japan's investment in "fifth generation computers" in the '80s was a waste of billions. Companies that invested heavily in the oil boom of the early '80s went bankrupt. Reading the average futurologists from 20, 30, 50, 100 years ago is usually good for a laugh (but, of course, there are enough predictions so some are right on by chance alone. You stated that, given the technology we have now, the cost of going green has dropped from 50 trillion to 35 trillion. My counter is that, given such improvements, we should be able to see some tangible evidence....like lowering of costs for green power sources that are being used now. Using the computer analogy again...if we were in a regime where efficiencies improved like computers, we would see the same type of expansions that we saw with computers. New technologies would be developed for niche markets, and then expand out of them as cost/benefits improvements increase the potential market. This has been played out repeatedly in high tech. consumer goods. Such niche markets have existed for solar power, for example, for decades. Yet, solar power provides a smaller share of the US energy supply than it did a decade ago. > > It is only now finally approaching the boundary where alternate > methods are cost-effective. But, they are still only borderline, even at these prices. Biofuel now consumes _half_ of the US corn crop, and it barely makes a dent. Indeed, soybean prices are going up because of land that has been switched from soybeans to corn. >There simply has not been the political > will in America to push for environmental protection, as you know. Actually, there has been. I remember what pollution was like 40 years ago compared to now. For example, we have accepted a very significant decrease in the efficiency of our cars in order to cut pollution. There is not the political will to spend the kind of money needed to stop greenhouse gases...but that's at least partially because we are talking orders of magnitude more in spending. (The other big part is that local action does not produce proportional local improvement.) By most measures: air quality, water quality, topsoil retention, etc. things are much better than they were in the '60s. Greenhouse gasses are a major exception to this. > The attitude is that there are new sources of oil. And there will be. > But at a cost both in money and to the environment. This is a good place to refer to my example of the improvements in the cost of finding oil. One of the reasons that oil supply exceeded demand for about 20 years is the fact that the cost of finding oil has dropped over that time. Friends of mine developed technology that cut $2.50/barrel off the price of finding oil (estimate from an Atlantic Monthly article "The New Old Technology"). They spent about 5 million dollars developing this technology, which saves the world about 200 million/day. A very good question is why this technology can be developed for such a small amount of money, while tens of billions invested by governments in alternate energy have not resulted in similar improvements. > Yes, I'm eco-realist, but I've never thought that in the end we will > have a soloution. This is what I believe is the answer to Fermi's > Paradox, quite frankly. It is quite clear that our government and > legal systems are not even remotely in step with the environmental > and societal changes... My argument is that, using present day technology, the cost of stopping global warming will be larger than the cost of cutting it as we can and adapting to the rest. You seem to indicate that the cost of the latter is the end of the human race. Nothing I see from reasonable sources, such as scientific bodies, the UN report, etc. indicates that there is any risk of that. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
