Posts by Andrew Orlowski 1435 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2006
No, *physical* resources are finite, but *economic* resources are just "stuff we use", and contingent on other things.
The environmentalists' semantic trick is to confuse the two meanings. If you look out of the window, you can see who's been right so far.
The argument that "resources are finite" - ie, when we chop down all the trees, and run out of peat to burn, we're fucked - stopped being true several hundred years ago.
No, I merely argue for the continuation of scientific and technological development. The same stuff that got us here.
For some unnamed superstitious justification, you aren't able to see it.
"Of course there are natural limits to resources and energy conversion - it is called the basic laws of physics."
Um. Why do you think anyone would dispute that? The same basic laws of physics were used to oppose the introduction of all kinds of technology. Bedwetting is nothing new.
The proposition is that "resources" are contingent on cheap abundant energy, and you seem to be in agreement.
This might help put things in perspective:
http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/10/29/global_energy.jpg
Now we'd better get busy tapping into that.
Most energy "experts" havea finger in the pie - you do realise that?
The Economist really hasn't done itself any favours recently. The idea that Rudd fell because Australians really, really want his "Super Tax" and he didn't bring it in quickly enough, is pretty far-fetched. It's more likely people started to do the sums. Carbon and consumption taxes are electoral suicide everywhere else, so we're asked to believe that in Australia it's the reverse. We'll see how well Gillard does with the ETS.
"synthesised [fuels] are by definition not fossil"
Yes, obviously. My point is that the transition to synthetics will not require us to live in yurts, or whittle, as the Peakers want. It will probably be so seamless nobody notices. I don't disagree that at some point conventional oil will become too expensive, but creating compatible replacements is really not a great challenge.
" Will it be self-sustaining? Will it require turning more and more of the planet's ecosystem over to growing the biomass needed?"
You're still thinking like an uneducated medieval labourer - in terms of "natural" limits terms of "natural resources" (Praise Gaia!) You need to think in terms of available energy and how well we can harness it, and turn it into useful things.
Now we may or may not be doomed - but we're certainly doomed if we follow you. We wouldn't be here today if our ancestors had. Simple, really.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/20/optimum_population_report/
Happy to help. We've addressed neo-Malthusianism so often we hardly need to do it again. It's been wrong for 200 years, and is self-evidently wrong now. Human fertility isn't a problem - except in that we may not have enough people. Either way the population will never exceed 9 billion, and feeding everyone can be done with current technology.
Population fascism is simply an excuse for creepy people with homicidal tendencies to vent on internet message boards. But hey, it's the Internet! Anyone can pretend to be Pol Pot.
"if the planet's population burns more energy each year than it can replace each year, that is unsustainable"
Well... that would earn you a fail in school, even in a very understanding school for slow children. That was also Malthus mistake: the population doesn't need to "replace" energy, by making sure poo turns to fertiliser, or more trees are planted. You're correct that prosperity depends on our ability to harness energy, which we can then turn into something useful. We're only scratching the surface of how we can do this.
There's a error in your logic. Do you want to bet that we won't be able to synthesize hydrocarbons in a hundred years time? We can synthesize crude already.
http://www.ls9.com/
The Peak Panic Movement is an ascetic political program, largely comprised of the same Malthusians, bedwetters, DIY types etc that "need" irreversible climate change.
What they dread most is a seamless tradition to synthesized hydrocarbons - especially one so smooth nobody notices. Because after that, nobody will want to go whittling with them.
"Get you cameras out and snap away, at least you might be able to show your grand kids what green grass and semi-clean seas and lakes used to look like!"
Silly lad, you're wetting the cot again.
There's lots of green where there used to be deserts. As agricultural productivity goes up, there's more "green space" than ever.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.8436&rep=rep1&type=pdf
That's a good paper, more people should read it. We discussed it back here in "Dismantling a religion":
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/13/bennett_eff_neutrality_analysis/
Oh dear:
"Most of the ISPs are either owned by Murdoch or are also cell phone companies. So no regulation means that the BBC news site will be throttled to say 300baud for Sky customers and emails to people on other networks will cost me extra for Virgin customers!"
But you!! only used one exclamation mark!!!
Kinda illustrates my point about hysteria based on ignorance.
Adam you're on dodgy ground again. This time it's your anti-science, anti-creativity logic creating a self-fulfilling dystopia. You seem doom everywhere (and as with any primitive religion, every natural event is a sign, a portent of doom):
- "Australia *is* running out of water. "
The reservoirs are full.
- "Everyone else *is* running out of oil."
We've been "running out of oil" for as long as I can remember Then we find ways of bringing more to the surface cheaply. Then when synthesizing hydrocarbons becomes cheaper we'll do that. And after that we'll move on to something else.
The point your fail to understand is that the problem has never been a lack of energy, only our technical constraints on accessing it.
"Give it a few years and we might be a bit screwed when it comes to food. This'll be fun."
This is why your viewpoint is called "bedwetting". Food productivity has gone up, and more potentially productive land is available.
The main people keeping modern methods out of Africa are people like you.
ao: "No technology has ever made creators poorer."
sh: "asserting that as true destroys any rational argument for a change in the legal status-quo."
Only if you view historical extrapolations as some kind of immutable physical law, but you strike me as too intelligent to be confused in such an obvious way.
I'll address your wider point.
The people arguing for a significant change in "the legal status-quo" are the groups who (either explicitly or implicitly) argue that creators' rights are unenforceable online, and therefore must be formally repealed. By contrast, copyright term extensions merely reflect the longer life expectancy of creators. They're more of the same, not a new social settlement, which is how the 'tards want to see them. (I am not convinced of the case on term extensions - but that's another story).
This is just one of several mistakes you make in your reasoning.
Another is to view attempts to actually, y'know, enforce creators rights online as some kind of extension of legal power. I can see how, if you think of the internet as a TAZ, free from The Man, you might arrive at such a view. But grown-ups don't think like this - they grow out of such views when they abandon playing with conkers and Action Man.
Now see my earlier comment, which you've chosen to ignore. Freetards *need* to feel *victimised* and *persecuted*. Whether they start out like this and then discover "The Copyright Wars", or whether they become gibbering wrecks from reading BoingBoing every day, I don't know, and it doesn't really matter.
But these two positions are essential to feeling victimised, and they don't reflect a coherent view of technology and markets.
"Here comes the clue-bat - it the mere beginnings of the chilling effect brought about by the culture of fear you and your twat ilk want imposed on the general populace"
Ah, yes.. I've written many times about the peculiar psychological condition that you illustrate here so well.
You desperately *need* to feel persecuted and victimised. You also *need* to feel you're acting altruistically, almost as if you're saving us from ourselves. In this narrative, you're the hero on the run... from The Man.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/06/nesson_fail/
So far you're merely conforming to the BoingBoing-reader stereotype.
No technology has ever made creators poorer. All technologies have created new markets. Despite your self-interested special pleading, there's no reason to believe this one will.
"Given his intentions are unclear I believe the author did the right thing"
Well, passing off is fraudulent behaviour, pure and simple, and then there's copyright infringement.
Are you really unfamiliar with *all* these concepts? It seems so.
There are lots of ways of bringing that article to his readership, but he didn't employ any of them.
"It was you who, following your own particular obsessions, saw this immediately through the prism of 'intellectual property"
Duh, Adam.. that's because (wait for it...) *IT IS* about intellectual property.
(I don't own what I write here, my employer does, it's a cash-for-IP arrangement.)
"Not everyone thinks about this stuff all the time"
Maybe it would help if at least some people thought about it for at least a little time. And your post demonstrates the confusion that arises when they don't.
These are all fairly simple concepts, why do you find them so difficult to respect? Is it a professional inconvenience? Is it a grudge?
Archimedes are always under-represented at fairs. I don't know why. Maybe the hardcore Acorn enthusiasts find hacking the 8bits more of a challenge.
I learned GUI programming on an A310. After that, everything (eg, Motif, Windows, OS/2) seemed needlessly difficult. So I stopped.
Too simple by half, Colin.
"If we dig up and burn these rotten corpses, we release the poison and global warming into our century. This is simple stuff I hope the author can understand."
Dearie me. You're referring to externalities, and in a very emotive and childlike way. We consider fossil fuels to be worth the cost, because they're a fantastic energy source that has been our stepping stone into a modern industrial society. We wouldn't have got the baby incubators and penicillin, and lower infant mortality rates, without this infrastructure.
So ou really should say a little thank-you prayer to fossil fuels.
"it still peeves me that we have to now pay for what Edison and his chums began."
You and only a few other (privileged) people. The problem is not enough have access to it. Try asking expressing your view in Africa.
"I'm being paid 41.3p per Kw/h for everything I generate"
You lucky ducky! It's another middle-class subsidy - "extortionate, useless and deeply regressive" - described nicely here:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/01/a-great-green-rip-off/
"and will last for the next 25 years."
I wouldn't bet on it lasting another 5 years.
frank3
"Of course fossil fuels are cheap: none of the costs are built into the price."
Yes they are, they're called externalities and they're priced into the cost. You must be the only person in Britain who doesn't realise that most of what you pay for petrol is tax.
So do spare us the emotive bollocks and 13-year old's attempt Noam Chomskyisms, if you can't get the basics right.
scatter, you use the word "ample" (which means commenter scatter is sufficiently convinced) several times:
1 - "ample evidence" that industrial CO2 forcings are the primary factor in climate change
(Despite the evidence, namely the absence of a correlation strong enough to indicate causation. Not to mention the tropospheric hotspot that isn't there, or the (supposedly) stored ocean heat that can't be found, etc)
2 - "ample evidence" that cuts in CO2 will work
(Such evident is completely absent. Policies intended to cut CO2 don't even cut CO2 emissions, let alone affect the climate)
3 - "ample evidence" that adaptation harms more people than mitigation.
The opposite is true.
The nub of your argument is this:
"the trajectory that the likes of Lawson and Orlowski would have us tread will make life very very difficult for a large swathe of humanity in the future"
More unfounded speculation. What is not in doubt is that absolute poverty kills people. To make life difficult for a large swathe of humanity, you create as many obstacles as you can to their economic development. Just like we did, they need cheap and abundant fossil fuels to advance from poverty. This appears to be the goal for many "climate change" campaigners. Reducing emissions, rather than the utilitarian goal of lifting humanity out of poverty, is the goal.
I suggest you pay a visit to your local Indian and Chinese embassies and start persuading them to stop building coal powered stations from there. And good luck :)
"Internet radio is a bloody silly idea because it requires the end user to invest in lumps of infrastructure and pay a subscription just to listen to the wireless, whether they want to do anything else with it or not."
No it doesn't.
By the way, I am intrigued to find out what stations does your Mum wants to listen to that she can't receive via FM.
1Xtra? The Asian Network? Panjab FM? The Polish Network? The British Forces Broadcasting Service?
Do tell.
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