It looks like this subforum is dead.........................
Offline I guess there are too many people worried about making actors from ridiculous TV shows look ridiculous. So, to kick things off.........
1. Hybrids and high mpg cars are going to really help curb oil consumption and thus drastically reduce global warming.......wrong......Did anyone ever consider that the oil that is anywhere from 500 to 10,000 feet beneath the surface of the earth, for some reason, has a need to be there? Like maybe, help cool the earth like engine oil in your car?
2. Solar power.........almost useless without batteries. Visit a battery manufacturing plant sometime.
3. Wind power............great if you live in an area that receives constant wind, otherwise, you need batteries for your electricity.
4. Mass-scale hydroelectric power................great if you don't mind destroying ecosystems and rivers and spawning grounds.
The best answer is for people to stop driving cars, stop using electricity and electrical items, START growing their own food supply, and if they don't want to be vegetarians, either become ranchers serving themselves with animals they kill themselves, or become hunters.
Oh....that's too hard.....thats not realistic.....and it's not, I agree.....but don't delude your mind with the idea that you are doing something positive or that you are more conscientious than Joe Blow by buying organic grapeseed mayo while he or she buys Hellmans.
The fact is....everyone reading this could do without electricity. It won't kill you. You could also do without your phone. You could also do without going to the grocery store, even if you live in an apt. complex.
but no one will. so don't think you are doing something. you aren't. and neither am i at the moment. I am as lazy as you are.
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That's a bold statement, sir.
I am incredibly lazy.
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
And the development of fuel cells will make local renewable power generation more than viable. I think a single processor/interface/entertainment complex, highly robust and enhanced by firmware upgrade could resolve many of the worries about endless technological upgrade. Optical comms and processors will improve and clean up computing technology.
I think regionalising population is the key and to achieve that and productivity will depend on telecommuting.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Hybrid and pure electric cars allow us to use energy sources that are not suitable for direct use in transport, such as wind, solar, and wave power.
The more wind and solar systems we get set up, the less we will need storage. we can use transmission lines to distribute power to areas that need it.
Large scale storage of the energy from such sources doesn't depend on batteries; there is pumped water storage, compressed gas, thermal storage, etc.
Even if there is significant quantity of oil still below the surface it is irrelevant to heat flow from inside the earth, any more than the oil in an engine contributes much to cooling a car. Even if it is there, it would have to free to circulate on a large scale to do anything about heat flow, and all indications are that oil is normally trapped in cracks in the rock.
The Global warming problem is dominated by the balance between Solar input and radiative loss to space.
Without electricity there would be no-one reading this.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yeeeah I'm pretty sure the internet is a good thing.
" The fact is....everyone reading this could do without electricity. It won't kill you."
On the contrary. Not using a car and growing a garden is one thing, doing away with power altogether would make life such a drag that it'd not be worth living anymore. I need my entertainment.
Especially since we'd be giving up on our collective future as a species to do so. No power, and we're stuck here until the inevitable.
Not to mention all the ways in which electricity does in fact save lives. From fires to policing to health services to military application, without electricity there'd be a lot more dead people. There might be less living people, but that's not certain. Not with everyone growing their own crops.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
There are many ways modern technology - computers, cell-phones - are enabling communities in the 'developing countries'.
Education is helped a lot.
Quick access to information allows them to plan their crop plantings and harvesting better, by keeping them up to date with weather and market conditions.
It is much easier to bring phones to these communities via wireless technology of all kinds than the old way of running physical cables, which are much more expensive to install and maintain in many of the environments in places like Africa and India.
They are finding many ways to make small businesses based around cell-phone technology. The power demands of communication technology are significantly less than transportation, and it can actually reduce the need for travel.
So it is not smart to advocate abandoning all modern technology.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
So everyone here commenting is affirming what I am saying. That no one is really going to do anything.
I used to be good friends with a guy in Alaska who had watched TV maybe ten times total from 1962 to 2001, when he died by drowning in the Tatonduk River. He barely knew what the internet was, and talked on the phone maybe once or twice a year. He was, to say the least, unencumbered by modern society, and his mind and wit were the beneficiaries. He grew up a Quaker of all things, but was an atheist for no telling how long, and graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a Bachelors in Geology. For as long as I knew him, the only vices he gave in to in regards to technology were chainsaws and a 12volt generator that powered a single light bulb that hung from the ceiling in his log cabin. There was a book written largely about him called "Coming into the country" by John McPhee.
and what I am getting at is that no one "needs" all of this nonsense. I have gone 8 months a year, for many years at a time, without electricity or any indoor plumbing or even seeing another person. All of these so-called conveniences are really hindrances if you really think about it. Circumstances beyond my control have me living in the biggest city in America right now, but I really can't wait to leave electricity, the internet, house payments, electric bills, and everything else behind. You would be pleasantly surprised at just how gratifying it is to leave the world as you know it completely behind, whether you go to Thailand and live on the beach, or pitch a tent at the base of a big mountain and spend a summer climbing everyday, or going to Alaska and heading out in the woods.
the internet and cable TV and all that will still be there if you decide to return.
We need to discourage wasteful usage of natural resources. So if your electricity use requires a large amount coal to be burned, rivers to be dammed, etc... You would pay a hefty tax for this. If your electricity is from cleaner sources, much less tax. And get rid of income and profit taxes to encourage investment and work in the environmentally technologies areas. If you invent or innovate now, you are punished through higher taxes.
The problem is the religious right doesn't care to much about this. They are only concerned with being fruitful and multiplying because Mr. Invisible will take care of their big families. The corporate right is happy with the status quo of taking advantage of limited natural resources and an abundance of unskilled labor.
The left wants to encourage people to stay poor, lazy and ignorant and have lots of kids the state is supposed to take care of via the welfare state. They support labor unions that stand in the way of change. They want to heavily tax innovation and hard work.
So with both, we get overpopulation of low skill workers and no development or implementation of technologies to solve these problems.
There needs to be a third political alternative of rationalists for environment responsibility and population control within the limits of what our resources and infrastructure can sustain.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
... maybe if he had spent just a little more time on the internet...
>.>
*snicker*
What Would Kharn Do?
I think the so-called "left" and "right" have the same ultimate goal, complete control of everything and everyone.
I also think they have already achieved this goal. the only people they haven't completely corralled are Muslim fanatics in the Middle East.
The crazies in Africa, all you have to do is throw money at them and they will come around, but no one cares about them, otherwise, we would either be over there killing them or treating them like we do Israel.
An "overpopulation of low-skilled workers"? you mean like farmers, carpenters, plumbers, cobblers, ranch hands, tour guides? those are all lower-skill jobs according to a variety of different means of calculating things. Payscale and time required to learn to name a few. In other words, people who work really hard in fields that don't require technological mastery. The more I think about communism in relation to large-scale society, the more I think that Marx was very close to realizing a real utopia.
the only reason that people who excel at math, chemistry, and engineering are so well paid is that they help further the technological advances that are making a small amount of people incredibly rich. and I am not saying that out of complete jealousy. I graduated college with a bachelors in Biology and a while later, I was going back to school for Fluid Mechanics, which is not an easy field, but I dropped out for personal reasons.
I will say one more crazy thing. Ted "the unabomber" Kaczynski could have killed a lot of people. thousands and thousands easily. instead, he only killed a few people, and who were they? Mathematicians, chemists, and engineering professors at major colleges. there was a reason. and there is also a reason why the government doesn't let him speak to the media whatsoever, while people like Charles Manson can practically call up CNN or Fox News at will from prison to rant and rave about whatever is on their mind. it is because they are pretty much harmless.
there is also a reason why the OK City bomber only spent a couple of years on death row before he was executed, with no media contact. for one, he didn't have very much to do with it, and two, they didn't want him to speak. every other person on death row spends an average of 17 years there.
This world is a big sham. the sooner you realize that the sooner you can stop pretending about everything you thought was true.
I have lived without electricity. It's boring as hell. It certainly wasn't uplifting or a release of any kind.
And electricity has done me worlds of good. Probably 90% of everything I know is directly or indirectly thanks to electricity.
With the simple fact that power generation is not necessarily any dirtier than we are in general, and can be much cleaner than it is, I will never support a movement to return our species to a pre-industrial state where old wives tales once more have more weight than scientific discovery and application.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
So, doing without electricity means that most people will go back to believing "old wives tales" like spitting at black cats who cross your path and burning witches? the morons of the world are going to do that anyway. electricity has nothing to do with the ability to gain or retain knowledge. the person who supposedly discovered electricity, benjamin franklin, never lived with electricity as a source of his livelihood, nor did anyone before the early 1900's. Darwin never knew what electricity was, and neither did Thoreau or Emerson or Aristotle or Newton.
as to a pre-industrial state, the industrial "revolution" is the worst thing to ever happen to this planet and it's inhabitants, as it closed our minds and opened our wallets, delivering the very few into incredible wealth and the uncountable masses into abject poverty and hard labor. Not to mention the fact that in the last hundred years the introduction of almost unheard of things like cancer, pollution, world wars, and genocide on a scale that is hardly fathomable to someone of any sensibility and conscientiousness.
"So, doing without electricity means that most people will go back to believing "old wives tales" like spitting at black cats who cross your path and burning witches? the morons of the world are going to do that anyway. electricity has nothing to do with the ability to gain or retain knowledge."
Quite the contrary. We have electricity to thank for disposing of those ridiculous concepts en masse. Today anyone can go on a computer and look up if kissing can get you pregnant. Were you around before the internet? I was, and I can tell you the average knowledge level of our species has skyrocketted since the internet became popular.
"the person who supposedly discovered electricity, benjamin franklin, never lived with electricity as a source of his livelihood, nor did anyone before the early 1900's."
No, they lived even dirtier, burning oil directly. Which used, and wasted, more energy than does a light bulb.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
"as to a pre-industrial state, the industrial "revolution" is the worst thing to ever happen to this planet and it's inhabitants,"
Quite the opposite. The industrial revolution was our greatest accomplishment of the time. Thanks to it, we have the potential to leave Earth, allowing us to potentially outlive our homeworld. Not to mention the ability to defend ourselves from random and dangerous events. Maybe you'd like to go the way of the dinosaurs, but I don't.
"as it closed our minds and opened our wallets, delivering the very few into incredible wealth and the uncountable masses into abject poverty and hard labor."
In case you hadn't noticed, there was a bigger discrepancy between rich and poor before the revolution. A lot more labour too. Child labour even.
"Not to mention the fact that in the last hundred years the introduction of almost unheard of things like cancer, pollution, world wars, and genocide on a scale that is hardly fathomable to someone of any sensibility and conscientiousness."
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Cancer and pollution BOTH existed before the revolution. In fact, it's because of the revolution that we even know about them in the first place. Genocide too. And the only difference between pre WW wars and post WW wars is scale and killing efficiency. There were still global conflicts. England Vs France being one of the most prominent.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
clearly indicates which of us is doing the babbling here, chum.
Just imagine a computer whose fundamental properties of operation are so perfect that it never needs replacing and whose future enhancements are based wholly on software upgrades.
They give you one at birth and all through your life you can get online and slap people over the head with your manky opinions. What's so hard to understand about this? No need for a new one every 2 years.
It's obvious that people should live and work and support themselves in the same place. To do this means a regional population so every one has enough room for the job. Of course, society
still needs to function and there's no reason most computer-based work can't be conducted anywhere there's Internet connection - wired or wireless. That's telecommuting. It saves petrol, see?
I'm an extremist because I'd like all fundamentalist muslims and christians to fall down dead, not because I agree with your improbable amish fantasies. And I like solar power, not nuclear.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Personally I'm glad for technology, but I agree that being wasteful is wrong. I believe in people growing their own food, and once I settle down and get an actual house insted of living from apartment to apartment I do plan to do so. I wish people wouldn't drive when they don't need to. Americans especially could use the exercise. I think things wouldn't be so out of hand if people in general would stop letting themselves be convinced that they always need NEW stuff and MORE stuff. Cars, clothes, computers, televisions, furniture... Of course, I'm poor so hand-me-downs are all I can afford anyway, but still...
I just wish folks would stop complaining about technology by using the technology they're complaining about. Electricity is where we can really be mind-bogglingly efficient. It's the use of chemical fuels where we need to most radical changes.
Technology is never the enemy. In fact, it is what makes our species what it is. We're tool users. We really can't live at all well without it: Clothing, weapons, shovels, reach-extension, food utensils, shelter, and all that. If someone really wants to stop using technology they really only have one choice: Die. Not many will go for that option, methinks.
The best answer is to understand the consequences of our choices, and plan for our future.
By the way: Those ecosystems are doomed, even if humans never arose on the planet. Nature is hardly static. We should more carefully choose how to deal with these ecosystems, without getting caught up in the idea of preservation - rather keep in mind adaptation.
i can't type now except with 1 hand, so this will be short. i crashed brutally on my bike and ripped a couple of my fingers up. thanks to this POS health system we have, I was refused at the hospital in katy for lack of insurance, they told me to go to the downtown med center, 45 minutes away.
Mate - hope all well and you can come back and earbash us some time soon.
Yeah sorry about that dude. Get well soon!
It's about pushing their own "rights" at the expense of others. Getting something for nothing a free lunch. The 'right' demands it's irrational rights so then the left believes it must push it's own set of entitlements without a rational basis or a real social contract. The right responds in kind it's a vicious cycle.
The consumer must set the value of products otherwise you end up with overpriced crap being produced. People must have a steak in the success of business. You can't allow people to lead an easy life if the don't produce products and services consumers want. I don't see how communism addresses this. It just seems like stealing from producers to reward non-producers. I do agree that no one should have a monopoly on the means of production. Therefore natural resources should not be private, but should be used for the benefit of all.
It's also supply and demand. If it was easy to excel at these, everyone would do it. Also the tax structure heavily penalizes these people and rewards the very poor and very rich. Technology has also gone to the masses as well, look at computers, cell phones, etc...
Presently, the development of technology is not geared toward being environmentally friendly or solving problems in education, overpopulation, etc... It's to provide convenience or pleasure to consumers. Changes in the tax code and government management could easily remedy this.
Agreed. I think rationally minded people must make a stand against BS concepts like religion, absolute morality, compassion, unselfishness, bravery, etc... Then perhaps rational solutions with rational technology could begin to be implemented.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Fortunately time heals those wounds. We look forward to your healing.
The last time I was in a bike accident was when I had the brilliant strategy of putting my foot in my front wheel to avoid having to go to school back in grade 2 or 3. The results were a bit more than I'd anticipated. Though the goal was satisfied, I couldn't enjoy it as I had intended to.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I own two cars and a motorcycle. One car gets good gas mileage, the other doesn't.
The motorcycle, on the other hand, runs on electricity and is a blast to ride. It goes about 40 miles on 3.5KWh of electricity. And today I made 10.6KWh.
This "renewable energy" stuff is really pretty simple, as is not wasting so much electricity in the first place. Even with the electric motorcycle, I use 75% less electricity than the average person where I live, and my house of filled with high-tech gadgets.
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
If I were a General Electric commercial I'd say things like "In the future, electricity will be so plentiful we'll be able to waste it." Which I think we will be able to do, but only those of us who make our own. The rest of the carbon fuel power masses will be forced to ration power. Bwhahahahahaha!
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
Heh.
Right now I'm using right at 240 watts in the entire house. That's 3 computers (two with monitors that are off right now, but the computers are on, the third is my laptop), 2 electric guitar amps (they are "on" because my son and I forgot to turn them off and I remembered just now that they are on), several electric guitar pedals (amps were off -- lights were from his pedals) much of the house completely lit, three televisions, two cable TV boxes (the one in the guest room died), two stereos on "Standby", wired and wireless network gear, etc. I've used 9.1KWh today and made 9.5KWh. It's 7:30pm, so I'll use a couple more KWh before midnight. If I recharge the motorcycle overnight (son is staying by my house, so we might go riding tomorrow) I might make it up to 40% of what the average person uses. If I don't recharge the motorcycle, much less. And I did two loads of laundry, which is 25% of what I used.
The secret is turning stuff completely off when not in use. That's the big secret. That and CFL light bulbs. So much of the electricity that is used in a house is completely and totally wasted. I can get my house to where it is using so little power that the power meter (how I know how much I'm using right now) I have doesn't measure any.
As for the waste, I'm going to turn an electric space heater on in the bathroom shortly so I can get a shower and the bathroom will be roasty-toasty. As little electricity as I've used today, I figure being decadent and having an extra warm bathroom is something I can afford. And still use less electricity than most of y'all.
(And now to go turn the amps off on account of I've got a dinner date with my son and need to start getting ready
)
(Hey, the strike-through tag didn't work. I think the editor has issues. Prolly 'cuz the code was written by ATHEISTS!)
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
That's pronounced "Stealing". "Saving" has some of the same letters. Like, S, A, I, N and G. But otherwise, not at all the same.
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
I like Gary Busey's idea the best. Just go around putting "Hybrid" stickers on suburbans and hummers and cadillacs. it makes as much sense as pretending you are actually making a difference.