But interestingly, life expectancy in places like Mexico and India is increasing with increasing industrialization. I don't have data at hand, but I would suspect that industrial pollution is on a downtrend there, too. There certainly is data indicating that, with increased industrialization and life expectancy, birth rates diminish. That certainly seems to be one reason why birthrates in much of Western Europe are below replacement level.
I have two countries in mind that have the world's highest population densities and almost no natural resources, and nearly zero agriculture output. Why are Hong Kong (well, OK, it's part of China now, but with a great deal of autonomy) and Singapore so wealthy?
We put our nastiest plants, appropriately, in Texas.
Are we scaring people off?😉
I have two countries in mind that have the world's highest population densities and almost no natural resources, and nearly zero agriculture output. Why are Hong Kong (well, OK, it's part of China now, but with a great deal of autonomy) and Singapore so wealthy?
We put our nastiest plants, appropriately, in Texas.
Are we scaring people off?😉
planet10 said:
Try to solve a 25-sheet, 500 lines/sheet model that involves linear programmin and solver functions.
EC8010 said:
That is true. However, even before the export of those industries, environmental qualities were considerably better in developed countries, simply because wealthier people put more utility on clear air and water.
I read somewhere that environmental concerns don't get registered until you pass the $2000/person GDP threshold. a good example of that is Japan.
SY said:
because population density and natural resources are just two of many variables that influence wealth. HK won by cheap labor (used to be that way), low/no governmental regulation, no / low tariff, and being the gateway to China and East Asia.
Singapore focused on financial services and high-tech (hard disk manufacturing in particular) by providing a quality labor force - aka the India Model vs. the quantity over quality China model.
That's exactly the point. Overpopulation just isn't the issue, free market economics is. Carrying capacity has increased with time and population at a faster rate than population. And birthrate decreases with increasing wealth. The simpleminded geometric formula works fine for bacteria but not so well when humans are involved.
SY said:
yes and no.
it is overly simplistic to point to HK and Singapore (or Japan) at a given point in time as an exception to the issues of over population. Those countries / regions don't exist in a vaccum and they interact with other regions and rely on other regions for their survival. For us on the earth collectively, we don't have that luxury.
Also, HK/Singapore/Japan may have done well even in isolation for a short period of time (a few decades, a few centuries, etc.) but how well will they do in total isolation in 10 thousand years?
More importantly, you will have to consider depletion of natural resources (gas, water, etc.). There is clearly a limit on the amount of poeple the earth can support over a long period of time. And that number may very well grow with technology advances and productivity improvement. But the fact is that there is going to be a limit.
The more we bump up against the limit, the less comfortable it is going to be for all of us.
tlf9999 said:
Yea that stuff too. I've spent thousands of hours working in both.The biggest advantage Trapeze has is the UI. I can do stuff in Trapeze in an afternoon that takes a week in Excel -- Excel is just very, very clumsy.
dave
EC8010 said:
You ignore human capital. We are unbelievably clever at using resources more and more efficiently and finding substitutes for difficult resources when necessary. The more people there are, the higher the probability that these technological advances will happen. Remember, the smart guys thirty years ago predicted we'd be all out of food now and eating one another. But per capita food production is the highest it's been in human history despite a net decrease in farmed land area. It would be even higher but for the odd superstitions of the Europeans regarding genetic techniques (though no such superstitions regarding the cruder, clumsier, less controlled methods of the past that gave us modern produce).
The major energy threat these days is the preponderance of class A amplifiers. I trust you've dropped the idle current on your big amp...
It's instructive to look at the top 10 countries in terms of population density. It's also instructive to see what actually happens to birthrates, pollution, and life expectancy with increasing industrialization and decreasing government control of the economy.
SY said:
It's not just that were suspicious of genetic engineering, we also note that many of the genetically engineered crops are deliberately sterile - switching to such a crop gives away autonomy of food production. At present, we store a proportion of our production as seed crop for the next year. If we relied upon sterile seed from abroad, we would no longer have any live seed crop reserves and it would take at least a year to produce enough seed crop from whatever traditional crops we had left. In the meantime, we would starve. Food's quite important, you see. We Brits were made keenly aware of the importance of self-sufficiency in agriculture during WWII.
Those older, clumsier methods are tried and tested - the failures have already been rooted out.
Hasn't been switched on for months. But you're right - my attention has been turned to more efficient loudspeakers and smaller amplifiers...
SY said:
thirty years (or thirty thousand years for that matter) is an instant in the history of evolution on this Earth so I wouldn't draw much conclusion from that.
EC8010 said:
this actually raises an interesting question: why do people pay for things they don't use?
a few possibilities:
a) they are stupid: it is tough to argue that everyone in the world is irrational and we are the only smart ones left;
b) there are other reasons for people to buy products with seemingly useless features.
I venture to guess that in a corporate environment, not everyone is as computer-savvy as they would like to be. and it is much costlier for the corporation if a task isn't done because of inefficient tools / software.
One big element of IT costs is user support. so it is conceivable that a software package that is better laid out but with no apparent feature advantage can be a wise investment for a corporation.
tlf9999 said:
You're right, it is an interesting question. I suspect that the answer is in two parts:
(1). They have been heavily influenced by advertising to buy that product as being the "best". Maybe they hope to use its full capabilities later...
(2). They don't know enough about what they are buying. And they don't want to know. They just want to get the job done with the minimum of aggravation. They know the expensive product will do what they want it to do, but they are not prepared to expend their time looking for the cheaper alternative. Computer fear, if you like.
(3). They're thick.
I'd say you're absolutely right about IT knowledge in a corporate environment. I don't consider myself to be very computer savvy, but I have used all of the commands on an engineering drawing package (and provoked some unusual limit warnings), regularly write spreadsheets, footle with graphics, and use a word processor to write proper documents that can be converted with minimum errors. Most people can't. They just haven't been shown how...
By the way, I've never experienced "user support" - they never seemed to know what I was talking about. Logical software with a minimum of bells and whistles is an unusual boon.
tlf9999 said:
No question about that. Sometimes it is an uphill battle as the IT department wants to keep growing, not shrinking (and who does the recommending). A good example is operating systems -- historically the Macintosh requires about 1/10 the support personell as a Windows environment (duck)
dave
planet10 said:
This is something that I published in this thread. This one, the one I started! 😀 This thread--it's a bit off course, now, but my life is a constant run of rambled, jumbled non-sequiters, so I'm certianly fine with this. 😀
Scientists may have predicted this, but I'd wager it originated with the Sci-Fi writers and the scientists picked up on it, and fleshed it out. It's a known effect... it can be correlated to just about any severe social upheaval as well. Like Somalia, Rhwanda, Heck, Poland, the Ukraine, and Bosnia. Extreme enviromental change brings rapid rates of change in human development. For example, the next Einstien or Mozart could come out of Rhwanda.
Of course, I don't personally reccommend this method of change/growth, but it is definitely one way to get there..and likely, no matter how horrifically the average perosn may see it to be, it is likely, by far, the most effective. Stagnency is death, change is growth. Very old axioms.
The original topic was the use of these 'flapper' type devices in ocean current to generate power. This will, of course, have an enviromental impact, but due to the size of the resourse, we may ahve quite some difficulty in assesing that impact. In that light, it is something that would/could likely be used, without too much objection. Until the full reports of it's impact come in, which could take decades. Like oil, nuclear, or anything else.
My question here, is..what's the net impact of wind generation? I hear mumbings here, in this thread, of impact (strong is the feeling I get, as being indicated) of wind power? uh? I'm a bit dense on that one. Too smart to take it at face value, too wise to dismiss such things as idle ramblings.
So, regale me, someone, please... what impact does wind generation have????? If the feeling is that it is visually unpleasing and/or a bit loud, well..that'll only get you a smack of derision on your forehead. 😉 I hope there's more to it than that.
KBK said:
My 1st encounter with the theory was actually Tim Leary (one of the world's most accomplished in his field, but much more notorious for other things). He had a series of books that thraced this kind of thing back into pre-history.
I had never run across it in SciFi (and had read every such book in the local library before starting my own collection) and not really seen it touched on.
dave
planet10 said:
It is a central part of the long running Perry Rhodan series of novels, the whole concept revolves around a "Mutant Corps", given abilities by radiation spread from the atomic bombs dropped in Japan.
But they certainly ain't hard sci-fi, in fact, they probably redefine "Pulp", but I do have a soft spot for them 😀
KBK said:
Well, the greenies in California are pitching a fit over the birds that are being killed as they fly into the windmills.
The folks in the northeast are pitching a fit over the possibilty of having a wind farm just off the coast (but not over the horizon) because "it's too ugly"
As I recall from speaking with a couple of fellows from a nuke plant near Toronto (I think), their 3 megawatt windmill is down for repairs more often than it is generating useable electricity. That thing is absolutely huge too.
http://www.opg.com/envComm/E_greenPower_what.asp
I'll take my forehead smacks now...
Actaully, when you look at the scale required. 3MW is nothing, just a drop in the bucket. The plant I work at turns out 900MW, and the plant right next to ours turns out close to 1300MW. Now if you could see the size of a 3MW windmill and then imagine a farm of these things...Let's just say it would rule the landscape for miles.
It's clear that we will never please everyone. The lesson is, we'd better move to please someone soon or the lights just might not turn on the next time you flip the switch.
So how does the cost of windmills compare with that of a modern nuclear facility when comparing energy output against cost of construction, maintanence, and environmental impact over time? I'm sure bulk size would make a difference in nuclear plants. It seems to me that drawing 1300MW from the wind in a local area might affect weather patterns.
i am actually surprised that the greenies never fought against the windmills: they are such a huge environmental liability that it is crazy to let those things pop up all over the place.
Then, I realized that the greenise must want to kill co2 and nukes that badly that they are willing to do anything for it.
Then, I realized that the greenise must want to kill co2 and nukes that badly that they are willing to do anything for it.
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