so 20 million years, does that mean if it's 2% (fraction of atmosphere) too high it's it's going to take 400 thosand years to recover that 2% ?
(of course if the decline didn't start at 100% CO2, the linear recovery will be slower)
Is there some reason I should find that comforting?
-- umop apisdn
too high it's going to take 400 thousand years to recover that 2% ?
ill
None at all. John Larkin's "linear decline" in atmospheric CO2 ignores the wobbly bit over the last four million years - when we started having ice ag es (when the atmospheric CO2 level sits at about 180ppm) and interglacials (when the CO2 levels sits at about 270ppm, unless some irresponsible life-f orm starts digging up fossil carbon and burning it for fuel).
What seems to have been going on is that the Tibetan plateau got high enoug h about 20 million years ago to start eroding rapidly, and the finely divid ed rock being ground off it by river and glaciers has been soaking up CO2 e ver since.
Eventually the carbonate rocks formed will get subducted, and when they get deep enough - and hot enough - the CO2 will be returned to the atmosphere by a local volcano. This process is rather slow.
A responsible life-form might grind up a bit more rock and soak up some mor e CO2, but that would cost money, energy and effort, and you'd have to unde rstand the problem before you saw the point of doing something about it.
John Larkin has yet to evolve to the point where he can see the sense in ba shing rocks together ...
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
s without having to waste time on using mutations to generate lots of varia tions that might work and selection to get rid of the ones that don't.
ns successful. You don't seem to be one of them.
u.
viewed publications has got 19 citations (only two of them by me). That's a different kind of success. I'm probably not as prosperous as he is, but eq ually, not as vulnerable to changes in fashion - if I actually wanted to dr ive around in an Audi I could do it.
convenient amount of anthropogenic global warming, condemning the third >wo rld to getting it's energy that way would be sticking them with an expensiv e >power source when a cheaper one is becoming available.
re is not much help.
building up any kind of infra-structure on a country-wide scale takes time (which they've got) and capital investment, which takes as least as long t o organise as the construction.
aper in the near future, rather than buying into the exploitation of a dimi nishing and progressively more expensive resource.
On the same logic, you've just convinced me that we should immediately ceas e using copper, cobalt, indium, selenium, gallium, chromium, nickel, silver, and gold.
Cheers, James Arthur
nts without having to waste time on using mutations to generate lots of var iations that might work and selection to get rid of the ones that don't.
mans successful. You don't seem to be one of them.
you.
reviewed publications has got 19 citations (only two of them by me). That's a different kind of success. I'm probably not as prosperous as he is, but equally, not as vulnerable to changes in fashion - if I actually wanted to drive around in an Audi I could do it.
inconvenient amount of anthropogenic global warming, condemning the third > world to getting it's energy that way would be sticking them with an expens ive >power source when a cheaper one is becoming available.
ture is not much help.
- building up any kind of infra-structure on a country-wide scale takes ti me (which they've got) and capital investment, which takes as least as long to organise as the construction.
heaper in the near future, rather than buying into the exploitation of a di minishing and progressively more expensive resource.
ase
,Your grasp of logic is at about the krw level.
Cobalt and nickel are just above iron on the periodic table, and chromium i s just below it. Gallium and Selenium are in the same row, so the primordia l supernova generated similar quantities of all of them (give or take the i diosyncrasies of neutron capture). Indium and silver are on the next row do wn, so they are rarer, and gold is yet another row lower.
Chemistry being what it is, in some applications you've got to have the rig ht element - and pay the going price to get that element - and in others yo u can get by with something else.
Energy is much more negotiable. You don't care where you get it, so long as it is cheap. Burning fossil carbon looks cheapish at the moment, but it is a diminishing resource, and we aren't paying the real cost of dumping CO2 in a finite atmosphere.
Wind power already delivers energy as cheaply as burning fossil carbon, and nobody is going to raise the price of wind. Solar cells are on track to de liver power as cheaply - the last couple of ten-fold expansions in producti on capacity have each halved the capital cost per kilowatt of capacity, and there's room for a least one more.
Not for the first time, you've completely missed the point.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
ments without having to waste time on using mutations to generate lots of v ariations that might work and selection to get rid of the ones that don't.
humans successful. You don't seem to be one of them.
n you.
r-reviewed publications has got 19 citations (only two of them by me). That 's a different kind of success. I'm probably not as prosperous as he is, bu t equally, not as vulnerable to changes in fashion - if I actually wanted t o drive around in an Audi I could do it.
future is not much help.
ow - building up any kind of infra-structure on a country-wide scale takes time (which they've got) and capital investment, which takes as least as lo ng to organise as the construction.
cheaper in the near future, rather than buying into the exploitation of a diminishing and progressively more expensive resource.
cease
er,
is just below it. Gallium and Selenium are in the same row, so the primord ial supernova generated similar quantities of all of them (give or take the idiosyncrasies of neutron capture). Indium and silver are on the next row down, so they are rarer, and gold is yet another row lower.
ight element - and pay the going price to get that element - and in others you can get by with something else.
as it is cheap. Burning fossil carbon looks cheapish at the moment, but it is a diminishing resource, and we aren't paying the real cost of dumping CO
2 in a finite atmosphere.nd nobody is going to raise the price of wind. Solar cells are on track to deliver power as cheaply - the last couple of ten-fold expansions in produc tion capacity have each halved the capital cost per kilowatt of capacity, a nd there's room for a least one more.
No, you did.
They're non-renewable.
Cheers, James Arthur
:
onments without having to waste time on using mutations to generate lots of variations that might work and selection to get rid of the ones that don't .
e humans successful. You don't seem to be one of them.
han you.
eer-reviewed publications has got 19 citations (only two of them by me). Th at's a different kind of success. I'm probably not as prosperous as he is, but equally, not as vulnerable to changes in fashion - if I actually wanted to drive around in an Audi I could do it.
an >inconvenient amount of anthropogenic global warming, condemning the thi rd >world to getting it's energy that way would be sticking them with an ex pensive >power source when a cheaper one is becoming available.
e future is not much help.
now - building up any kind of infra-structure on a country-wide scale take s time (which they've got) and capital investment, which takes as least as long to organise as the construction.
be cheaper in the near future, rather than buying into the exploitation of a diminishing and progressively more expensive resource.
y cease
lver,
um is just below it. Gallium and Selenium are in the same row, so the primo rdial supernova generated similar quantities of all of them (give or take t he idiosyncrasies of neutron capture). Indium and silver are on the next ro w down, so they are rarer, and gold is yet another row lower.
right element - and pay the going price to get that element - and in other s you can get by with something else.
g as it is cheap. Burning fossil carbon looks cheapish at the moment, but i t is a diminishing resource, and we aren't paying the real cost of dumping CO2 in a finite atmosphere.
and nobody is going to raise the price of wind. Solar cells are on track t o deliver power as cheaply - the last couple of ten-fold expansions in prod uction capacity have each halved the capital cost per kilowatt of capacity, and there's room for a least one more.
But can be recycled. Completely, if necessary. It's a rather more fundament al difference.
Energy can't be renewed or recycled, but the sun's going to keep churning i t out for the next few billion years, so it really is a different ball game . If we were going to look that far ahead, we might start thinking about as teroid mining, which does change the nature of the transition metal resourc es available.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
--- Not so.
For example, charismatic leaders are like catalysts in that with very little "doing" on their part their effort has a multiplicative effect on those they influence.
1) The output is still the vector sum of the individual outputs. 2) Charismatic leaders can also get everyone scattered ('community disorganizer'), or all going the wrong direction.
But yes,
3) a leader that sets a good direction has enormous returns,and 'yes' to a big multiplier on that effort.
Cheers, James Arthur
Charisma should be illegal. Much of the world's misery was and is caused by charismatic sociopaths.
But the GDP is the sum of billions of small transactions. We have what we can build, borrow, or steal. Macroeconomics seems to ignore this basic fact.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Rather, perhaps it should be illegal to listen to a charismatic person. I want to see how you're going to codify either without becoming the sociopath you're railing against. Education seems to be a better solution but that's not what the charismatic sociopaths that run the government want.
It clearly isn't what the charismatic sociopaths that run the US government want, but the Finnish and Germany governments both spend a lot of tax mone y on their education systems, with admirable results.
Denmark spends heavily on retraining the un-employed so they can get some d ifferent kind of job from the one they lost - often because it ceased to ex ist. The effects of that program also seem pretty good.
Denmark, Germany and Sweden have proportional representation, so the people that get elected are elected by people who voted for them, rather than by those who wouldn't vote for their opponent or the single alternative party (which is what you tend to get stuck with with first-past-the-post voting s ystems).
It does tend to produce more constructive governments, mostly coalitions - which depend on rationally negotiated reality-driven post-election compromi ses.
Charisma doesn't have as much effect.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
-- Agreed, but Larkin stated: "Simple arithmetic", and his 'sume' implies Y = A + B instead of Y = k(A + B)
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