Talk-Polywell.org

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http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/794/40874

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This is mostly about IFRs. But fusion is in the mix. We will be getting a lot of opposition from Greens if we start to get positive results.

And you all know the deal. Any source of cheap neutrons is a proliferation risk.

Naw, the greens will just make sure that we end up buying all of our energy from Asia.

I good conspiracy novel would have as the plot the Chinese government paying anti-nuclear activists and other assorted greens to block the development of nuclear (and other technologies in the West) whereas the Chinese furiously develop them themselves to advance themselves beyond the West.

kurt9 wrote:Naw, the greens will just make sure that we end up buying all of our energy from Asia.

I good conspiracy novel would have as the plot the Chinese government paying anti-nuclear activists and other assorted greens to block the development of nuclear (and other technologies in the West) whereas the Chinese furiously develop them themselves to advance themselves beyond the West.

See the villain in the latest James Bond movie - a Green Corp.

I've noticed a slow increase in snide attacks on "true believer Green" rhetoric in the popular culture over the last year.

djolds1 wrote: See the villain in the latest James Bond movie - a Green Corp.

I've noticed a slow increase in snide attacks on "true believer Green" rhetoric in the popular culture over the last year.

There are two kinds of "greens" in this world. There are those who are concerned about clean air, clean water, protecting the oceans and rainforests, and who look for positive-sum solutions. I am one of these people.

Then, there are the "greens" who are into using the issue to promote socialism, de-industrialization, and limiting technological innovation and who generally despise positive-sum solutions. These are the people whom I feel are creating problems for western civilization. I feel nothing for these people, whatsoever.

Kurt, right on, the Greens I hang out with are crossing their fingers that Polywell works bigtime. I've met a few of the de industrialize-ers, and some balk at the idea of man never going into space when really pressed.

If I wants to go baxx to olden times I can become a reeinactor at Medevil Times.

kurt9 wrote:

djolds1 wrote:See the villain in the latest James Bond movie - a Green Corp.

I've noticed a slow increase in snide attacks on "true believer Green" rhetoric in the popular culture over the last year.

There are two kinds of "greens" in this world. There are those who are concerned about clean air, clean water, protecting the oceans and rainforests, and who look for positive-sum solutions. I am one of these people.

Then, there are the "greens" who are into using the issue to promote socialism, de-industrialization, and limiting technological innovation and who generally despise positive-sum solutions. These are the people whom I feel are creating problems for western civilization. I feel nothing for these people, whatsoever.

I doubt those who have appropriated the title "Green" would permit you into their ranks. Clean Air/Water, Toxic Clean Up and Endangered Species were all achieved in the '70s. Sane efficiency increases are only sensible. But Kyoto and its type are the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder version of "cleanliness."

djolds1 wrote: But Kyoto and its type are the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder version of "cleanliness."

Or the "useful idiot" version.

KitemanSA wrote:

djolds1 wrote: But Kyoto and its type are the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder version of "cleanliness."

Or the "useful idiot" version.

Or how about "environmentalism" is the cover.

This debate - green vs right-wing free enterprize - all comes down to what you think of the human race.

Greens think that losing 90% of the planet's biodiversity is not worth it just so that humans can live a little longer, or have a few more children. They don't (in the moral scale of things) rate the human race much more highly than any of the hundred's of thousands of species that we force to premature extinction.

The right-wing crowd basically value humans, and reckon that we therefore can do what we like with the lesser creatures.

I have to say that I have no opinion morally as to whether a thousand species of invertebrates are better or worse than one primate species.

I suppose that stops me from being green.

On the other hand, whilst I like humans very much - most that I know are decent, kind, admirable in many ways - en masse, especially when faced with any sort of resource scarcity - human civilisations behave particularly stupidly, and nastily. (Easter island etc).

So does that make me green, red or blue?

Tom

tomclarke wrote:Greens think that losing 90% of the planet's biodiversity is not worth it just so that humans can live a little longer, or have a few more children. They don't (in the moral scale of things) rate the human race much more highly than any of the hundred's of thousands of species that we force to premature extinction.

The right-wing crowd basically value humans, and reckon that we therefore can do what we like with the lesser creatures.

Correct.

tomclarke wrote:I have to say that I have no opinion morally as to whether a thousand species of invertebrates are better or worse than one primate species.

I suppose that stops me from being green.

On the other hand, whilst I like humans very much - most that I know are decent, kind, admirable in many ways - en masse, especially when faced with any sort of resource scarcity - human civilisations behave particularly stupidly, and nastily. (Easter island etc).

So does that make me green, red or blue?

Red. In the proper, classical meaning of the word.

The fact that you do not value the human species above subsapient life is disturbing.

Freeman Dyson hit the nail on the head:

Beyond the specific points of factual dispute, Dyson has said that it all boils down to “a deeper disagreement about values” between those who think “nature knows best” and that “any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil,” and “humanists,” like himself, who contend that protecting the existing biosphere is not as important as fighting more repugnant evils like war, poverty and unemployment.

Dyson has always been strongly opposed to the idea that there is any such thing as an optimal ecosystem — “life is always changing” — and he abhors the notion that men and women are something apart from nature, that “we must apologize for being human.” Humans, he says, have a duty to restructure nature for their survival.

hundred's of thousands of species that we force to premature extinction.

We have done in smallpox. Care to name ten or twenty other species we have done in recently (say the last 50 years). Or better yet point to a list of even 1,000.

I think over the history of the human race (100,000 years) the number is under 50. Maybe under 20.

If I'm in error educate me.

And we are coming to the point in our understanding of biology that if we are short of species we can make more.

It is generally accepted that rain forest destruction causes large numbers of species extinctions. Estimates vary widely but are all large.

For example here is some literature on tree extinction. Of course, there are also an extraordinarily large nyumber of insects etc, species adapted to very prcise ecological niches, which will go extinct. I don't feel particlaularly moral about this, though it is a shame. But we should look clearly at the affect of human actions.

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/suppl.1 ... f_ipsecsha

New roads, agricultural projects, logging, and mining are claiming an ever greater area of once-pristine Amazonian forest. The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment (MA) forecasts the extinction of a large fraction of Amazonian tree species based on projected loss of forest cover over the next several decades. How accurate are these estimates of extinction rates? We use neutral theory to estimate the number, relative abundance, and range size of tree species in the Amazon metacommunity and estimate likely tree-species extinctions under published optimistic and nonoptimistic Amazon scenarios. We estimate that the Brazilian portion of the Amazon Basin has (or had) 11,210 tree species that reach sizes >10 cm DBH (stem diameter at breast height). Of these, 3,248 species have population sizes >1 million individuals, and, ignoring possible climate-change effects, almost all of these common species persist under both optimistic and nonoptimistic scenarios. At the rare end of the abundance spectrum, however, neutral theory predicts the existence of ≈5,308 species with <10,000 individuals each that are expected to suffer nearly a 50% extinction rate under the nonoptimistic deforestation scenario and an ≈37% loss rate even under the optimistic scenario. Most of these species have small range sizes and are highly vulnerable to local habitat loss. In ensembles of 100 stochastic simulations, we found mean total extinction rates of 20% and 33% of tree species in the Brazilian Amazon under the optimistic and nonoptimistic scenarios, respectively.

But note such estimates are problematic, a later paper:

Unrealistic assumptions invalidate extinction estimates
Kenneth J. Feeley,1 and Miles R. Silman


Hubbell et al. (1) estimated the number of Amazonian tree species threatened with extinction due to habitat loss predicted under 2 development scenarios for the Brazilian Amazon (,2). Unfortunately, their analysis suffers from several critical weaknesses that render the results suspect, if not meaningless, for conservation. Hubbell et al. (1) model species ranges as circles or ellipses, the areas of which are based solely on theoretical population abundances derived from the neutral theory of biogeography. As such, there is the implicit assumption of an invariant relationship between population size and range size. This is contrary to a central result of biogeography, that there are multiple forms of rarity (,3) in which species can have low total abundances because of small ranges or because of low densities across large ranges. Hubbell et al. (1) also disregard the fact that many species have ranges extending beyond the Brazilian Amazon. Even facing a complete loss of habitat within the study region, these species will not automatically go extinct as assumed in Hubbell et al.'s calculations (1). Finally, Hubbell et al. ignore strong gradients in Amazonian species richness (4–,6), with diversity being highest in western Amazonia and along the Amazon River and lowest through the more seasonal Cerrado in southeastern Brazil. Predicted habitat loss is greatest in the Cerrado (,2), precisely the area with the lowest diversity. This is all potentially good news for conservation but bad news for Hubbell et al.'s (1) analysis; by not incorporating well-established spatial patterns in species ranges and diversity, Hubbell et al. (1) almost certainly exaggerate species extinctions.

Or if you feel more strongly about "cuddly" well studied species. (Personally, anything we have studies we also have DNA and its extinction is therefore less of a loss, but still...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4522044.stm

Best wishes, Tom

djolds1 -

I just don't want to be "holier than thou" over such grand issues.

Christianity (which I do not myself subscribe to but which in many ways informs my moral outlook) has something to say on the matter about specks and beams in eyes.

Value humans? Human civilisations, all cultures, all epochs, have consistently treated human life as of less importance than many other things - riches for the few, national pride, religious precepts, etc, etc.

This is fact, not personal opinion. You sound like a well-meaning liberal who does not see the dichotomy between intention and reality. I expect however, from your characterisation of me, that any such metaphor would make you uncomfortable?

You view me as an old-fashioned Marxist (I think this is your import) because I am ideologically uncertain and unwilling to make grand pronouncements about what is right in hypothetical situations. Surely such ideological certainty is exactly what characterises the destructive isms of the 20th Century, whether right or left wing?

Tom