Re: Defining Chi with Judo Terms thread

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:47:09 -0500, "David L. Burkhead"
<dburkhead@xxxxxxx> wrote:

hal@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:43:12 GMT, "David L. Burkhead"
<dburkhead@xxxxxxx> wrote:


and you believe that the answer to poverty is to simply make
everyone rich.

And you believe that lying about your opponent's position somehow
validates yours.

no, really, that's what you said.

No, really, it's not. You have been corrected on exactly this point so
you cannot claim mistake. You are, quite simply, lying.

You said that the answer to global
depletion of natural resources in not the liberal "draconian" response
of birth control,

It's not the idea of birth control I characterized as draconian but the
means used to bring it about. You've really got two choices: create a
situation where people _want_ to have fewer children, or use force to _make_
them have fewer children.

Unless you can create a situation where people want to have fewer
children, what do you plan to do? Forced sterilizations? Maybe oral
contraceptives in the drinking water or in the food supply? How about
forcing abortions on those who get pregnant beyond the legally permitted
level?

you create the culture that demands smaller families, not larger ones.



And even if you get these measures implemented in the US, that don't
accomplish anything. The US's native population growth is already not up to
replacement level. How do you plan to bring, say, Rwanda on board with the
program? What are you going to do when they say "*** you" to the
suggestion that maybe they should insitute a careful census, close
monitoring of the possible pregnancy of all females of childbearing age, and
either force "birth control" or abortions to keep populations under control
(and that's what it's going to take for the subsistence farmer who
knows--doesn't just think but knows--that another child soon means more
hands to work the fields and more food on the table, that each child
_improves_ that family's lot, regardless of any abstractions like "the
greater good of society," to not have that child and not improve their own
life. Tragedy of the commons--you are familiar with tragedy of the commons,
aren't you--writ large)?

What's your solution? How do you plan to bring it about?

The US used to promote birth control as part of aid packages. The
Bush administration banned that for religious reasons.


There are only two choices: create situations where people _want_ to
limit family size, or come in with your brown shirts and deaths head
insignia to _make_ them limit family size.

oh, sure, like simply make everyone rich.


but rather, based on studies that show wealthy

Actually, I said that wealthier _societies_ tend to have lower
birthrates. This is _not_ the same thing. This was explained to you. Your
continued use of this wording is, therefore, a lie.

you said simply "grow wealth". How do you plan on doing that?


have
fewer children the answer was to "grow wealth".

"Grow the economy" rather than "grow wealth" specifically, but close
enough. This is the only point of my position that you got anywhere close
to right.

same thing.


Since wealth is based
on share of resources and consumption,

That turns out not to be the case. "Share" implies a zero sum game
which is not the case. "Consumption" also carries baggage which is
fallacious to reality.

but wealth IS zero sum. That is the whole point. You can't get
wealthy without either consuming more resources or taking someone
else's.


The only critical resource is energy. Given energy any other resource
is endlessly recyclable.

no. Many resources are NOT endlessly recyclable.

Recycling is not done more mainly because the
energy cost is higher to recycle than to make from scratch (making
recycling, for a great many things, uneconomic). That, however, is
self-correcting. As the more easily extracted sources of raw materials are
expended, cost of extraction goes up and recycling becomes more economically
attractive. The real long pole in the tent is energy.

Well, consider a few facts (easily verified online if you doubt my
word).

Pilot plants of Ocean Thermal power systems have been built and
operated. Note that more than 5,000 times the World's total energy use,
from all sources, falls continually onto tropic waters from the Sun.
Capturing a measly 1% of that would provice all the energy we'd need to
create wealth "beyond the dreams of avarice." While too costly to compete
with coal fired plants, the technology for Ocean Thermal Plants is there.
As energy costs rise, they'll start looking more attractive. The process
could be short circuited were the Al Gores, Greenpeaces, and Sierra Clubs of
the world to put their energy into promoting research for technologies to
reduce the cost. Big project? You bet. Something that can be done
quickly. Nope, but the shortest way to finished is through begun. One
thing, however, does seem fairly certain: if we leave it to the Al Gores,
Greanpeaces, and Sierra Clubs of the world it will never happen because
their "small is beautiful" is an end in itself to them, not simply something
they are forced into to avert their foreseen disaster.

You might wonder what kinds of "pollution" comes out of coean thermal
power. Well, the primary "waste products" are three in number:
- Fresh water. The simplest ocean thermal cycle is, basically, a low
pressure low temperature evaporator. It can either be dumped back into the
sea (from whence it came in the first place, so no net effect there) or
piped/tanked to shore for use (such as, for example, in refilling depleted
aquifers).
- Fish. Deep oceans are generally biological deserts. The energy to power
life processes comes from the sun, which is only available near the surface.
The nutrients to serve as building blocks for life, however, sink to the
bottom where the only energy available is that stored in the bodies and
wastes of shallower water denizens and on which a meager ecosystem manages
to eke out an existence. It's no coincidence that the best fishing grounds
are found around natural upwellings where nutrient rich waters from the
bottom rise to where the sun can reach, feeding plankton, which in turn
feeds the fish that feed on the plankton--and the larger fish that feed on
them. An Ocean Thermal Plant would, by its very nature, create the same
conditions, Producing a grazing ground for fish and there's no reason why
those burgeoning fish populations could not be harvested.
- Reduced surface water temperature. One of the things that folk like Al
Gore and the Kyoto people cite is that the rise of ocean temperatures is
harmful to corals and other marine life. A common example is green and
loggerhead turtles developing tumors because of increased water
temperatures. Ocean Thermal plants would act to alleviate any increase in
ocean temperature that may have happened because of anthropogenic causes.
Don't you care about marine life?

So where are the environmentalists calling for aggressive development of
ocean thermal power plants? Why the silence on the subject in their field?
It can't be that they don't know about it: it was first proposed in the
19th century and the first pilot plant was actually built in 1930! So
what's keeping them from jumping on the idea? I have my own suspicions, of
course, but I'm just dying to hear yours.

generating gobs of power does you no good without transmission systems
which unfortunately are made up of metals and hydrocarbons. You with
me here?


Then there's helium cooled pebble bed nuclear fission reactors. They
don't rely on complicated "safety controls" which might, possibly fail.
They get their safety from the laws of physics themselves. They cannot melt
down (overheating _damps_ the reaction rather than enhances it). They
cannot release radioactive material into the environment (helium cannot be
made radioactive outside of an atomic bomb). They are as safe as you can
get and still be alive. But it's the "N" word, which basically means the
verbal diarreah of protests will come out of the "environmentalists" mouths
as a spinal reflex--certainly with no use of higher brain functions.

And so it goes. Of course, what does one expect when the leader of the
California based "Coalition on Public Power Policy" managed to state, with
some pride, "The only physics I ever took is ex lax." The person making
pronouncements on nuclear power is not only completely ignorant of the
subject but proud of that ignorance. One of your "experts" at work.

then your answer for
overconsumption

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Have you ever read James Burke's "Connections"? (Don't be afraid: it's
got lots of pictures.) Back in the 19th century, there was considerable
concern over deforestation. It seems that glassmakers were cutting down all
the trees to make charcoal for their glassblowing furnaces. There had been
some experimentation with the use of coal but the problem was to get enough
coal they needed deep mines. And the deep mines kept flooding. The effort
to run pumps to keep them clear rapidly rose to the point where it became
prohibitive. Newcomen, with his steam engine helped but the engine was so
inefficient and rapidly became more so as it ran. Disaster was forseen. It
is no coincidence that it was not long after this that Thomas Malthus came
along.

But then along came a guy by the name of Watt. He brought some
techniques from cannonmaking (the need to make consistent bores for cannon
_also_ could be applied to making steam engines with tighter tolerances) and
the idea of separating the cylinder from the condensor in the steam engine.
The result was an engine that worked well enough that folk eventually
decided to give his name to a unit for power.

The result is that there are _now_ more trees in England than there has
been at any time since the middle ages. The Malthuses of today are every
bit as blind as old Thomas--predicting imminent doom (and make no mistake,
Malthuses predictions were intended for the immediate future of his time)
while not even seeing what's going on around him. The only real difference
today (and, I admit, it's a big one) is that many of the predictors are
actively working to scuttle the Watts and Newcomens of the world--the people
who might actually change the rules enough that the predictions of doom will
end up as wrong as Malthus'. And yes, Hal, I include you in that number.
If we do run into the doom your "experts" predict, it will be directly
_because_ of you and people like you.

more trees in England has no effect that there are fewer trees on the
planet.

google Liebeg's law.

Hal


is to consume more. Really. that's what you said. I
know, fucking amazing in it's total absurdity. But what you said
nonetheless.

Just because you lie about something doesn't make it so.

--
David L. Burkhead "Dum Vivimus Vivamus"
mailto:dburkhead@xxxxxxx "While we live, let us live."
My webcomic Cold Servings
http://www.coldservings.com -- Back from hiatus!
Updates Wednesdays




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