A friend in San Francisco is an AI catastrophist, as least as far as the economy is concerned. He’s not worried about robots taking over and, after reflecting on the damage that humans say that humans have caused to Mother Earth, killing all of the humans. He’s concerned about the value of his three-unit building in San Francisco. I said, “Why don’t you become a climate change catastrophist? You won’t have to worry about the trajectory of the U.S. economy if all cities except Denver are inundated by melting in Greenland and Antarctica.”
As a starting point towards transitioning (always a beautiful process!) from AI Doomer to Climate Doomer, here’s a 2015 article on how even Orlando (100′ above sea level) is doomed once Greenland and Antarctica melt:
I think Greta T. is working bottom up, and needs to return to top down. We may be past the Middle East enrichment tipping point, farther past the point of no return than global warming. We probably should have started reducing the flow of money into OPEC in the 1970s, and found alternative sources of energy. Giving the Middle East so much money just refueled and reinvigorated the thousands of years of apparently irreconcilable squabbling. Our interference, furthermore, brought their wrath to our own shores. An entire generation of activists doesn’t remember 911, as they welcome further incursions.
Some of the best political and military minds have tried to establish stability, with techniques from diplomacy to brute force to precision bombing, and failed. Even the mighty power of youth activists on flotillas of rafts ain’t gonna do jack squat. (I suppose there is some fun and enrichment for the hawkish set to light shit up.) If we could establish energy independence and find ways to bleed out the money that remains there, we might have a chance. Go back to treating them like Africa. How many trillions in surplus would we have if we didn’t have to police this region?
Mr. Neo Hippy, you comment that the U.S. should have “started” to reduce the flow of money into OPEC in 1970s by finding “alternative” sources of energy. You will be glad to know that not only did the U.S. “start” this reduction, but it was finished years ago. The U.S. became a net *exporter* of natural gas in 2017 and a net exporter of crude oil and crude products in 2019/2020. The U.S. is now the largest global producer of oil & gas.
@Mr. Ham
Thanks for your minor correction. I should have stated the entire free world needed to immediately and aggressively reduce our dependence on fossil fuels from anywhere, and develop a system which payed some heed to the conservation of energy instead of the worship of entropy and fat pocketed oil-ogarchs. I was sitting in my parents giant-ass car in the 1970s, breathing partially combusted hydrocarbons, CO, lead as an 10 year old boy, a mile out from the gas station, thinking there has to be a better way.
Correct me if I’m wrong again, but isn’t the “productivity” in domestic output due to fracking? The foundation in my house cracked from earthquakes with the epicenter hundreds miles away in Oklahoma (it’s OK!) Still lining the pockets of big oil, actors perfectly willing to cause the world to crumble to pieces. OPEC has big reserves (cough, cough Venezuela, which we can meddle in without consequences, of course). You know that sound when you are at the end of your soft drink? Hi OPEC, I’m back again, out of fizzy sugar water.
Perhaps I should note that the U.S. still feeds OPEC $100 million per day (8% of our consumption, 16% and 2.7 million barrels in Europe, now America’s foil what is their freaking excuse), which buys a lot of fireworks and Jihads. Europe has kinda been bitten in the ass by Middle East oil addiction. Would you please disclose your ties to big oil? Mine are none, except as a co-conspirator due to my consumption of it, and being partially not uninformed.
It’s kind of funny to use Neo Hippy as a dog whistle. I’m actually sadly missing Buckley and The Review more every day. I was just thinking today how Trump really has deflated, if not defeated yet another dictator, “Ghengis Woke”. Maybe an end to the “Women and bLACKS have no voice!” monopoly of opinion under penalty of cancellation. Best, friend.
P.S.
Ditch A.I., the 1971 Cadillac of computing tech.
Mr. Neo Buckley-ite Hippy, my ties to “big oil” are simple. I am the billionaire chief executive of Continental Resources. Apologies for the Oklahoma temblors. I rather enjoy them (now and then) as they remind me of American exceptionalism and capitalism at work as it provides Americans with affordable, domestically produced energy.
Neo Hippy, your desire to substitute simple, readily available, cheap sources of concentrated energy with expensive, jittery and not yet available is definitely interesting.
It would carry more weight if you dropped blog commenting and concentrated on cold fusion reactor design.
@Mr. Ham-Bone
Love the cute ruddy cheeks, justa wanna pinch em. Remind me of good old fashioned American alcoholism.
@Mr. Hamm
Sir, I’m sorry for the ad-hominem attacks, real Republicans would never resort to that (see W.
Buckley versus Vidal Gore, or the Big Guy on Twitter). I had a few too many oil cans of Fosters made in Texas last night.
@perplexed
We might have made some progress on the “unknown”, if again we had “Big Energy” instead of “Big Oil”. (Blogging at Phil’s pays better than cold fusion, currently.) I never understood the idea of big oil not wanting to replace itself with an alternate, think of the ROI on replacing the whole system. If I were young, and really interested in helping solve the problem (as Phil points out sometimes, we activists are sometimes slightly hypocritical), I would probably look at what biology does, i.e. photosynthesis and the ATP/ADP cycle. Greta’s parents should probably send her back to uni to study chemistry or computer modeling instead of just yelling at everybody.
Phil > He’s not worried about…after reflecting on the damage that humans say that humans have caused to Mother Earth, killing all of the humans.
Back to the point of my top post in this thread. And you are right, perplexed, I do need to drop web commenting; I’m just enjoying the freedom to voice my opinion as an dissenting Republican for a change. We can dissent in our own party can’t we?
> If I were young, and really interested in helping solve the problem (as Phil points out sometimes, we activists are sometimes slightly hypocritical), I would probably look at what biology does, i.e. photosynthesis and the ATP/ADP cycle.
Could you elaborate on the biology bit please?
@PhilG Fan
Biologic metabolic processes, including plant and animal, are a very stable energy solution to motion (flying and galloping) and computation (which thought up cars). Of course evolution doesn’t necessarily generate global minima, but has created a demonstrably good working solution on our planet, pre-human. So, studying this wouldn’t give “the solution”, but would be an fruitful and interesting comparative analysis with the “built world”. Off hand, I think ATP has much less density by volume and weight than gasoline, say. But the problem is multidimensional, including vehicle material properties, safety of the energy supply, on and on. Come to think of it, this might be a great use for modern machine learning, the heart of which is high-dimensional linear regression. (ML really needs better explanatory, “symbolic” adjunct reasoning.) They probably already are doing this, I hope we listen to them and not the guys with the biggest bucks. HTH
Neo Hippy, re photosynthesis.
Big oil/gas.coal uses it. Photosynthesis builds trees from sun and air, then they dies, decompose, then compost gets compressed and becomes coal. Or some other energy chain that starts with photosynthesis that feeds other things that become gas/oil.
All free, organic and done by mother nature. Green energy.
@perplexed
I see. So are the spark plugs in my ICE car like little cave men striking flint to make fire? You’ve convinced me that evolution of the pre-historic tradition of burning is indeed the way forward!
It was interesting to see the energy density of antimatter:
Antimatter: 90,000,000 MJ/kg
Gasoline; 30 MJ/kg
What could go wrong with antimatter cars?
Neo Hippy, you use hippy math! Antimatter’s strength as a energy source, at least around our solar system, comes that it is unstable as it perfectly annihilates ubiquitous regular matter. Total energy released is given by Einstein’s formula E=mc^2 . So 1 kg of antimatter annihilates 1 kg of matter and, lazy me, my AI says 1.8 x 10^17 joules of energy is released or 18 000 000 000 000 MJ per 1 kg of antimatter. Sounds a little conservative for a hippy. If you were not a hippy I would suggest you working on regular thermonuclear fusion reactor. But I suggested to you something more peaceful, cold fusion reactor, no extra destructive energy needed. Thought it suits a hippy best. That’s how I imagine hippies: smoking weed in the fields of Woodstock, dreaming up alien encounters and researching crop circles. Cold fusion reactor fits perfectly with a hippy of my imagination. Sorry that you took my comment as a personal attacks
Correction: 180 000 000 000 MJ per 1 kg of antimatter, still 2 000 times of @New Hippy’s estimate
@perplexed
First I thought Wikipedia was smoking weed, then my A.I. was smoking weed, then I saw my empty gummy package. Mea culpa — like a democrat on weed doing budget calculations $1 billion = $1 trillion. Who cares?
My sober (well maybe a couple of giga-Coulombs at happy hour) A.I. quipped:
Per gram: 9.0×10^13 J g−1 (≈ 21 megaton TNT)
I’d rather have a gram of weed. /ducks
(Seems like WordPress is smoking weed today. Comments appearing, disappearing.)
I really don’t care what they burn, as long as they would put mufflers on the damn things. I’ll just move north. Awakened at the crack of dawn by a lawn trimmer that sounded like a Huey fully wound.
Some relevant “Media of the Day”:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Operation_Argus.webm
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Adam_Simmons%2C_Swaffham_Raceway%2C_2017-03-11.JPG
Out.
@Neo Hippy, units matter! You original comment was per kg, now you watered it down to 1/1000 of your original claim? Thought your were stockpiling antimatter in your WV van.
Even sober AI is as good as its prompt. Even just 1g of antimatter will lay safely in your WV van until it meets at least 1 g of regular matter, if it accidently leaks to the real world from a hippy van. So 2 grams should be in the calculation, it will double your final result.
> A friend in San Francisco is an AI catastrophist, as least as far as the economy is concerned. He’s not worried about robots taking over and, after reflecting on the damage that humans say that humans have caused to Mother Earth, killing all of the humans. He’s concerned about the value of his three-unit building in San Francisco.
He’s the right kind of alarmist. If one needs to invest emotions into something, it better be something that they have real control over. Analyzing climate change, and issues one almost has no control over is fine, but investing emotions in them, is not very smart IMO. I have seen this kind of attitude in retirees and children, and always found it something that I should learn from.
Where is this sudden acceleration of sea level rise due to “global warming” we keep hearing mindlessly repeated?
What does The Science™ say?
http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/Articles-Main/ID/20306/Data-vs-Hype-Honolulu-NOAA-Chart-Shows-Sea-Level-Rise-is-a-False-CrisisI
These models they use can’t even predict the past, much less the future.
CCReed, why do feel compelled to be such a hater?
I love you, Greta. We gotta stick together, girl friend (I wish, ha, ha.) Lotta hate against me here too by these meanies. Billionaires, confused Phil G. readers, etc. At least their leader, Big Oil Phil wasn’t beating me up today (just provoking everybody).
BTW, I know a hair stylist. 📞k?
Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn
Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice
That yet a remnant of your race survives.
— W. Cowper, The Task
> BTW, I know a hair stylist. 📞k?
LOL!
Did the sandal wearing hippies used to get beaten up, back in the day Dr. Greenspun? My prof was telling me they were discriminated against more subtly like with “No shoes, no entry” boards.
My thought for climate change in the U.S. is always that the U.S., through many years of reforms, generates a low overall percentage of climate change in total amongst all the nations, or at least lower than it could be. Countries in Eastern and southeastern Asia generate a lot more and are continuing to do so. Why don’t we police them? If we super optimize our, say, 10% contribution down to 5%, will that stop China and India’s combined say 65% contribution? It makes no sense for us given our position of power. If it’s such a real problem, why not go and solve the problem where it is?