[Rezwan]

Happy Monday!

This thread is now officially capped, per our new GW Policy.

[Rezwan]

Happy Monday!

This thread is now officially capped, per our new GW Policy.

[Rezwan]

Mining plasma. Hmmm.

Just saw a trailer for “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” which included a sequence of learning how to toss plasma balls.

Also, a trailer for “Pu 239” – fission theme. Disgruntled, radiation exposed Russian scientist tries to sell plutonium.

[Rezwan]

vansig wrote:
As recent, general traffic on the forum site seems to be covering the AGW debate, and movies, and games, better than real progress toward exceeding unity, I’m finding myself suddenly deeply dissatisfied.

I find the AGW stuff dissatisfying because it goes nowhere. The games and movies are about public outreach and have a purpose. There is no relevance for the AGW talk, except that achieving net energy would help make the conflict moot.

I have threatened to shut down that conversation in the past. But I’m from Iran, and have a real hard time with censorship, since it’s what I fight over there. Then again, we’re not censoring anyone, they are free to express themselves elsewhere. We are trying to keep the topic here focused.

OK. I’ve been dithering long enough. Time to shut it down.

: )

[Rezwan]

Phil’s Dad wrote:
Accepting your premise I would caution that (I believe) we evolved over millions of years during which time there have been some quite significant shifts in what might have been thought comfortable (or normal). (Not to mention, for now, the dangers of run-away geoengineering). Where do you set the thermostat? Who sets it? What if I like it warmer/cooler than you do? Which bit of the world are you setting it for?

It has been argued that those significant, uncomfortable shifts are what led to human civilization because they forced human beings to be far more resourceful and to yearn for more control. Ever raging against the gods. It’s turned us into air conditionalists. People who seek to dampen fluctuations. Anti-rollercoasters.

Basically 2 types of skills are required here: adaptation (to fluctuations), and the more challenging – climate control (show the fluctuations who’s boss).

The argument here isn’t really about the science, it’s about the response to the capriciousness of weather. It’s about confronting the gods. The climate control group is quite arrogant, in a fascinatingly human way that I appreciate.

Even if the GW group is off on the science, and it’s not CO2, their activities are helping to develop mass scale response skill sets which might come in handy for other emergencies. They’re getting people to learn how to make do with less, to live in harsher climates, to reduce their footprint of carbon or waste or anything – which will translate handily to a future living in space where resources truly are limited.

The AGW-ers try to argue this problem away – but are they arguing all such possibilities away? Are they advocates for helplessness – for just letting chips fall where they may? Do they have a lot of faith that we live on an inherently stable planet? Or are they worried we’re not seeing the bigger menaces behind GW and not nearly prepared enough for what might befall us?

Inherently unstable planet. Preparation drills. That’s what this is about.

[While they believed it was CO2] Most of humanity was in happy denial of the larger, uncontrollable issues.

Should we leave them there? No uncomfortable arguments with entrenched views. No risk of being on the recieving end of name calling. Ignorance is bliss.

Well, yes. It’s enough of a threat to rally people to take the development of appropriate emergency skill sets seriously, to not be lulled.

Anything more would be overkill.

Are you saying the GW crowd doesn’t go far enough in alarmist rhetoric? You’re unhappy with GW because it doesn’t raise the scarier arguments? Are you taking issue with people getting entrenched in only one particular form of doom?

You spend a lot of time arguing the specifics of the emergency that will face people. Does it matter what the impending catastrophe is going to be? Even the GW-ers don’t know if a big shift will result in more warming, or a sudden onset of an ice age.

No harm in getting people on their toes.

You can’t really control the uncontrollable. I’m reminded of the story of the …was it Hopi Indians? Some group. Used to do human sacrifice because it would prevent the end of the world. Then one day a hero showed up to tell them they didn’t need to do this. So they didn’t – and none of the dire things they were worried about occurred. The world didn’t end.

Then, 50 years later, Chris Colombus landed in Hispaniola.

Don’t you bet they wished they had built bio-domes and advanced weaponry and anything they could develop?

Fear and doom are important components of human creativity. AGW-ers are missing the point of the global warming rallying exercise. People are spending all kinds of creative energy right now trying to figure out how to strain energy out of turnips or leap over mines with fancy shoes or grow food in chimneys. This frenzy of activity will all come in handy one day.

Sure, a lot of it seems wasteful now – but it’s not.

[Rezwan]

Phil’s Dad wrote: We actually want to be responsible for this mess. It makes us feel significant. It also explains why people get so upset if their little bit of control is threatened by alternative explanations.

That’s one way to look at it. Another is to say we’re problem solvers. Tamers. We’ll stop at nothing to shape this world into something comfortable for us.

I think it’s perjorative to call the Global warming crowd “environmentalists”, because an environmentalist might have said, let the C02 go crazy and throw us all into chaos, and let the next order emerge from the chaos.

The global warming crowd should actually be called “Global Air Conditionalists”. Because they are actually trying to have a climate controlled earth, trying to regulate C02 to keep it within a certain range that we happen to be comfortable at right now. (And this seems natural enough. Every creature tries to shape its environment. Fir trees spitting toxins into the dirt to keep other trees off, or, more to the metaphor, Redwood forests regulating temperature.)

Air conditioning the earth is a pretty ambitious activity.

Meanwhile, what do the denialists actually want? I suppose as a counterpoint to your statement above, Denialists DON’T want to feel responsible. They DO want to feel insignificant. And they get upset when…their little bit of helplessness is threatened by alternative explanations?

No, that can’t be it. Well, they don’t want the guilt associated with the responsibility (rather than seeing it as control). And the often state they want to prevent the expenditure of a lot of human resources to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.

I don’t know if you see the irony here.

The global air conditionalists wanted to be responsible for something they thought was at least manageable. At least they have confidence in our air conditioning abilities. But this all hinged on it being a C02 problem, which is easy to solve (once you allegedly arrest and murder all the denialists in the totalitarian regime that you establish).

This cosmic ray thing will be a bit tougher to solve.

Speaking of hooks and lines, do you see the can of worms this opens? Most of humanity was in happy denial of the larger, uncontrollable issues. But by trying to calm global warming c02 fears, this just creates newer, more dramatic and less controllable fears.

Just because they’re more dramatic and less controllable, doesn’t mean air conditionalists won’t try to control them. It will just cost a lot more.

Well, really, time to stockpile the AK47s and MREs. Things could get ugly at some random date that we have no idea about.

Public relations nightmare.

[Rezwan]

msmith wrote: Henrik Svensmark
The Cloud Mystery 1/6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKoUwttE0BA

OK, I watched this first one. Pretty scary stuff.

We have much less control over space and solar and cosmic ray emissions than we do over C02! Actually, no control – except maybe we can try human sacrifice.

This makes us sitting ducks to the vagaries of stellar chaos. If this is the alternative, I prefer the “man-made” concept. Human culpability at least means human control. Responsibility is empowering.

And I’m wondering, if this idea gets in vogue, what kind of money has to be spent to build something that protects us from these whacked out rays. Imagine the government spending for a cosmic ray regulation program. Or cosmic ray mitigation schemes. Imagine the fraudulent programs that would pop up for that.

Also, all you have to do here, if you’re a “cut c02” enthusiast, is then say – “well, whatever, so it’s cosmic rays. Now we need to cut c02 even more to balance out the cosmic rays. Or send a magnagibious missile into the sun – but that seems a might risky.”

And then, when you’re finished imagining the new influx of schemes and taxes this new idea suggests, just relax and realize whatever theory comes up, there will be costs associated with it, and money wasted and people trying to control you.

While thought and energy should always be spent to try and figure out what is really, honest to gosh, going on, there’s no need to stop the world and the flawed schemes currently emerging, while you do this.

Just try to leverage the emerging schemes (however wrongheaded you think they are) to the greater good.

So, if you think it’s cosmic rays and not human co2 – well, fine. But cutting co2 also increases creativity and develops alternatives which helps diversify an economy, so it can’t be all bad. And so on.

[Rezwan]

Recycle away! In fact, I shall now twitter this.

Recycling is a noble tradition.

[Rezwan]

Breakable! Cypress? Random. What’s it like?

Also, for all you travelers out there, http://www.couchsurfing.org/ will take you off the hotel grid.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: You are not. Taking precautions against CO2 controls is essential, and must be pushed immediately with every resource at our command.

And to ensure that we have every resource at our command available to take precautions against CO2 controls, we must establish a rigid, exhaustive resource control program. I shall call Al Gore immediately to get started on this.

[Rezwan]

So many raging debates converge here.

The other rager is uncertainty and predictability. Some attempts are made to be very logical, in an area where logic…falters.

An event of interest: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/limits-of-understanding

This statement is false. Think about it, and it makes your head hurt. If it’s true, it’s false. If it’s false, it’s true. In 1931, Austrian logician Kurt Gödel shocked the worlds of mathematics and philosophy by establishing that such statements are far more than a quirky turn of language: he showed that there are mathematical truths which simply can’t be proven.

Whatever that means. And Taleb’s quote is also amusing:

A scientist talking about uncertainty, incompleteness, unknowledge, & ignorance, is like a psychopath talking about compassion.

and

Saying “the mathematics of uncertainty” is like saying “the chastity of sex” -what is mathematized is no longer uncertain, & vice versa.

I think it really gets down to humoring people in the face of uncertainty. Some people need to be humored more than others.

Some see the possibility in these wacky, uncertain propositions, finding it an excellent excuse to clean house and try something differently.

[Rezwan]

vansig wrote: by the way, this topic is supposed to be “Focus Fusion effect on the “Economic Limit” of depleted Oil Wells.”

You sound like a moderator. I haven’t been following this topic. Is there a point at which it should be split? What point, and what should the new topic be called?

[Rezwan]

dennisp wrote: “Cap-and-trade is dangerous precisely because it gives that lot, and other similar bodies, authority over the valuation of every productive activity on the planet, almost.”

Once we have a fusion-based economy that will no longer be remotely true.

Again with the fusion ex machina. Which is fine, but won’t make the preceding any more or less “true”. “Moot”, perhaps. “Unresolved”.

Cap and Trade isn’t any more dangerous than drilling for oil, I suspect.

As to giving “that lot” authority over the valuation – not quite. That’s what’s left up to markets to determine. “That lot” sets the cap, and then all the trading (market-based valuation exercise) begins. Knowing that only x amount of pollutant can be produced, trades occur to bring about the most beneficial (per the market) use.

So people, in their amazing, flexible, market oriented way, find substitutions and carry on their merry ways.

This is the kind of thing you need for water (so people don’t demand some kind of G*d given right to use up every drop of water, even though it’s more expensive to clean that water later – or to replace groundwater) and so forth.

We only have x amount of water – so let’s work out the most lucrative use for it and find ways to conserve elsewhere. Sounds reasonable.

Of course, this is said in the context of a world where the market is artificially propped up in so many ways with corporate welfare rampant, water rights completely insane and so forth.

To even begin to try and get people to make an honest living or evaluate their true costs – well, that just sets everyone to howling.

[Rezwan]

Great summation, Ivy Matt!

You know, they’re having a “Science of Star Trek” panel discussion at the World Science Festival, NYC.

Friday, June 4, 2010, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Galapagos Art Space

The original Star Trek and its numerous successors were far ahead of their time, but just how far? Will science eventually catch up to this series’ nearly five-decade-old creations? With Lawrence Krauss and moderator Faith Salie, explore the plausibility of scientific phenomena from the Star Trek universe, including warp speed, time travel, humanoid aliens and whether anyone in our universe will be “beamed up” by transporter anytime soon.

Perhaps I should crash the panel and raise the issue of the gap – getting from now to then, and ways sci-fi community could be more proactive in shining a light on emerging technologies, especially fusion.

Anyone else out there want to go? All part of networking.

[Rezwan]

epimenide wrote:
FarmVille: As it has been said, it’s quite dumb: no real knowledge of how a real farm is built, it will not get any better while you proceed in the game, nor there’s any connection with real-world agriculture as a whole… Still, people like to play it (and its clones): why then? Well, my personal answer is that there’s pleasure and entertainment in the sheer beauty and harmony of your creation! Showing it off to the other players, and searching cooperation for the most difficult tasks, is part of the “social” side, still the small adjustments here and there have little purpose other than make everything look as pretty as possible to one’s own eye.

This is an overlooked facet here. There are hundreds of reactor designs and I’m sure that for an initial, broad-based appeal game, just tinkering with reactors will be absorbing enough. (And we need a “wilt” equivalent. If you don’t keep tinkering with your reactor – it will…short circuit?)

Here’s a paper by Simon Woodruff that lists the hundreds of machines out there. Another thing I’m thinking about is baseball cards so we can keep track.

Here’s another Woodruff summary of ICC’s. This one has pictures. Both files are pdf’s

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