I recently came across an old copy of Arthur Koestler’s “The Case of the Midwife Toad”. Originally published in 1971, it’s an exploration of a rather tragic footnote in the history of evolutionary science. Back in the early years of the 20th Century (prior to the understanding of DNA, but after Mendelian genetics had become well known), there was still a remnant of the biological community who preferred the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics over the Darwinian idea of natural selection of random mutations. One of the vanguard for the Lamarckian idea was Paul Kammerer whose specialty was the breeding of amphibians that apparently few others could match. He claimed that he could get his toads and salamanders to acquire characteristics that were useful in the new environments in which he raised his specimens. This was touted loudly (in the New York Times for instance) as proof of Lamarckian inheritance and Kammerer was hailed as a ‘new Darwin’. It all ended very badly when one toad specimen was found to be faked (by who remains a mystery), and Kammerer killed himself shortly afterwards (though there may have been more involved than scientific disgrace).
The details of the experiments and controversy can be read online (with various slants) here and here, and a more modern non-replication of one of his experiments is described here. However, the reason I bring this up here is much more related to how the scientific community and Koestler dealt with this scientific maverick and the analogies that has for the climate science and its contrarians.
There are (at least) four points where the analogies with climate science are strong: First, there were clear philosophical motives for supporting Lamarckism (as there are for denying human effects on climate change) (see below). These are strongly articulated in Koestler’s book, and it is obvious that the author feels some sympathy with that argument. Second, there is idealization of the romantic notion of the scientist-as-hero, sacrificing their all (literally in Kammerer’s case) for the pursuit of truth in the teeth of establishment opposition (cf Svensmark). Third, there is the outrage at the apparent dirty tricks, rumours and persecution. Finally, there is the longing for a redemption – a time when the paradigm shift will occur and the hero will be proven right.
Enough time has passed and enough additional scientific evidence has been gathered however to show that Kammerer’s ideas are never going to be accepted into the mainstream. Therefore, we can use this episode to highlight how people’s misunderstanding of scientific process can lead them astray.
So let’s start with the non-scientific reasons why Kammerer’s ideas had resonance. Martin Gardner in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952) puts it well (p143):
Just as Lamarckianism combines easily with an idealism in which the entire creation is fulfilling God’s vast plan by constant upward striving, so also does it combine easily with political doctrines that emphasize the building of a better world.
The point is that without Lamarckianism, none of the striving and achievement of a parent impacts their progeny’s genetic material. That was a depressing thought for many people (what is the point of striving at all?), and hence there was a clear non-scientific yearning for Lamarckian inheritance to be correct. I use the past tense in referring to these almost 100 year-old arguments, but Koestler’s book and more recent attempts to rehabilitate these ideas tap into these same (misguided) romantic notions. (Odd aside, one of the most positive treatments of this “neo-Lamarckianism” is by Michael Duffy, a frequent climate contrarian Australian journalist). Note that I am distinguishing the classic ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’ from the much more respectable study of epigenetics.
The scientist-as-hero meme is a very popular narrative device and is widespread in most discussions of progress in science. While it’s clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case) and someone has to be the first to make a key observation (e.g. Watson and Crick), the vast majority of scientific progress occurs as the accumulation of small pieces of new information and their synthesis into a whole. While a focus on a single person makes for a good story, it is very rarely the whole or even a big part of the real story. Thus while Koestler can’t be uniquely faulted for thinking that Lamarckianism rose and fell with Kammerer, that perspective leads him to imbue certain events with much more significance than is really warranted.
For instance, one of the more subtle misconceptions in the book though is how Koestler thinks that scientific arguments get settled. He places enormous emphasis on a academic tour that Kammerer made to the UK which included a well-documented talk in Cambridge in which the subsequently-notorious specimen was also in attendance. In fact, Koestler devotes a large number of pages to first-hand recollections of the talk. Koestler also criticises heavily the arch-protagonist in this story (a Dr. Bateson) who did not attend Kammerer’s talk, even though he presumably could have, while continuing to criticise his conclusions. The talk is in fact held up to be the one missed opportunity for some academic mano-a-mano that Koestler presumably thinks would have settled things.
Except that this is not how controversial ideas get either accepted or rejected. Sure, publishing papers, giving talks and attending conferences are all useful in bringing ideas to a wider audience, but they are very rarely the occasion of some dramatic denouement and mass conversion of the skeptical. Instead, ideas get accepted because of the increasing weight of evidence that supports them – and that usually comes in dribs and drabs. A replication here, a theoretical insight there, a validated prediction etc. Only in hindsight does there appear to be a clean sequence of breakthroughs that can be seen to have led inexorably to the new conclusions. At the time, the landscape is far more ambiguous. Thus in focusing on one specific talk, and on its reception by one particularly outspoken opponent, Koestler misses the wider issue – which was that Kammerer’s ideas just didn’t have any independent support. The wider community thus saw his work (as far as I can tell) as a curiosity: possibly his findings were correct, but his interpretation was likely not, and maybe his findings weren’t all that reproducible in any case?
This remains the issue, if Lamarckian evolution were possible, it should have been viewable in hundreds of other systems that were much easier to replicate than Kammerer’s toads (nematodes perhaps?). Absent that replication, no amount of exciting talks will have persuaded scientists. In that, scientists are probably a little different from the public, or at least the public who went to Kammerer’s more public lectures where he was very warmly received.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Kammerer’s more vocal opponents would occasionally give vent to their true feelings. Koestler is particular critical of Bateson who, in retrospect, does appear to have gone a little far in his public critiques of Kammerer. However, Koestler perhaps doesn’t realise how common quite scathing criticism is in the halls of academe. This rarely gets written down explicitly, but it is nonetheless there, and forms a big part of how well some people’s ideas are received. If someone is perceived as an exaggerator, or an over-interpreter of their results, even their most careful work will not get a lot of support.
Koestler ends his book with the familiar refrain that since modern science is incomplete, alternative theories must continue to be pursued. He states that since “contemporary genetics has no answers to offer to the problem of the genesis of behaviour”, the replication the key experiments (which he clearly expected to vindicate Kammerer), would very likely make biologists ‘sit up’ and have a long-lasting impact on the field. This notion fails to take into account the vast amount of knowledge that already exists and that makes certain kinds of ‘alternative’ theories very unlikely to be true. The link between this optimistic expectation and discussions of climate change is persuasively demonstrated in this pastiche.
There is one additional characteristic of this story that has some modern resonance, and that’s the idea that once someone starts accepting one class of illogical arguments, that leads them to accept others that aren’t really connected, but share some of the same characteristics. Some people have called this ‘crank magnetism‘. In Kammerer’s case, he was a great believer in the meaningfulness of coincidences and wrote a book trying to elucidate the ‘laws’ that might govern them. Koestler himself became a big proponent of parapsychology. And today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners. Though possibly this is just coincidence (or is it….?).
Of course, the true worth of any scientific idea is whether it leads to more successful predictions than other theories. So I’ll finish with a 1923 prediction that Kammerer made while he was on a speaking tour of the US: “Take a very pertinent case. The next generation of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced” (NYT, Nov 28).
396 Anne asked, “The $1.4 billion Westinghouse figure is that in- or exclusive of decomissioning costs?”
Don’t forget insurance, whether funded by taxpayers (as in liability exclusions) or business. And fuel costs. And waste storage (again, even if taxpayer-funded). And outages/shutdowns. And terrorist protection. Nukes are $expensive$
RichardC, I did a little digging, starting from your comment about carbon taxes vs. cap and trade.
From (Pizer, 1997): “Uncertainty about compliance costs causes otherwise equivalent price and quantity controls to behave differently. Price controls — in the form of taxes — fix the marginal cost of compliance and lead to uncertain levels of compliance. Meanwhile quantity controls — in the form of tradable permits or quotas — fix the level of compliance but result in uncertain marginal costs. This fundamental difference in the face of cost uncertainty leads to different welfare outcomes for the two policy instruments. . . . This paper applies this principal (sic) to the issue of worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) control, using a global integrated climate economy model to simulate the consequences of uncertainty and to compare the efficiency of taxes and permits empirically. The results indicate that an optimal tax policy generates gains which are five times higher than the optimal permit policy — a $337 billion dollar gain versus $69 billion at the global level. This result follows from Weitzman’s original intuition that relatively flat marginal benefits/damages favor taxes, a feature that drops out of standard assumptions about the nature of climate damages. A hybrid policy, suggested by Roberts and Spence (1976). . . uses an initial distribution of tradeable permits to set a target emission level, but then allows additional permits to be purchased at a fixed “trigger” price. The optimal hybrid policy leads to welfare benefits only slightly higher than the optimal tax policy. Relative to the tax policy, however, the hybrid preserves the ability to flexibly distribute the rents associated with the right to emit. Perhaps more importantly for policy discussions, a sub-optimal hybrid policy, based on a stringent target and high trigger price (e.g., 1990 emissions and a $100/tC trigger), generates much better welfare outcomes than a straight permit system with the same target. Both of these features suggest that a hybrid policy is a more attractive alternative to either a straight tax or permit system.”
#393 Anne van der Bom I am afraid the numbers in your article fail to convince me. The solar & wind numbers are based on real-world, actual projects. The Westinghouse estimate is probably from the marketing department. If Westinghouse signs a deal fixed price/fixed date to deliver a 1GW nuclear plant for $1.4 billion, I will believe their number.
China signed an agreement for 4 AP1000 reactors at $8B, or $2B apiece, and they will be turned on in 2013 and are under construction right now. The Reason article claimed Westinghouse can do it for $1.4B. It would take about 900 of these to power the US, so you should have reasonable faith that if they will build two for $2B each, then indeed they’d build 100 for much, much less. Kind of like buying toilet paper at Costco. The more you buy, the cheaper it gets (to a point).
Now, deeper in the Wiki article there’s a fascinating other number. In the US, Georgia Power Company signed a contract to buy two of the AP1000 reactors for $14B, or $7B each.
So, assuming the reactor designs are exactly the same and they are built exactly the same, the difference is regulatory overhead. In China, the reactor cost is $2B quantity two, in the US, it’s $7B quantity two. It would be interesting to better understand the difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
By the way, the Reason article assumed 100% utilization on the wind figures. Typically, 30% is more likely. So the real cost of wind would be about 3X the stated cost.
I don’t know why Pickens isn’t spending on nuclear. I know that the Chinese are betting on nuclear over wind. They have plans for over 100 of these nuclear reactors.
#396 Anne van der Bom: Oops forgot an inconvenient question: The $1.4 billion Westinghouse figure is that in- or exclusive of decomissioning costs?
Probably it doesn’t. Round nubmers: If a nuclear plant costs $1B, can produce 1000 MW 80% of the time and has a useful life of 30 years, and has a decommissioning cost (today’s numbers) of $250M, then the first year decom cost is 250/30=$8M, while you sold 800 MW * 24 * 365 * 0.10/kwh = $700M/year in electricity. So, the annual decom cost is about 8/700 = 1.1% of revenue. So, perhaps it eats 5% of your sales a year to fund the decommissioning cost.
Seems manageable, assuming my math is right.
#389 Rod: Batteries, Matt are very expensive and difficult when we get to certain power efficiency levels and yes if you are only building 4 vehicles or so a day they are VERY expensive, however, with proper marketing and mass production the prices would have dropped.
No kidding. But consider Tesla. They use a about 6000 standard laptop batteries in a single car. They plan to ship 1200 cars a year, which means they are buying 7.2 million of these standard laptop cells per year.
They do not have any problem negotiating with any supplier with that quantity. And they won’t see the price drop much doubling or tripling their volume. They are about as far down the cost curve as you can be at that volume.
But, consider too, that the entire laptop industry is about 120M laptops/year, and each laptop might have 4 of these cells. So, perhaps the industry makes 500M cells/year.
Tesla need only increase their production from 100/month to 7000/month and suddenly they are using more Lithium batteries than the entire laptop industry COMBINED. See how that is potentially a problem?
The US sells about 15M cars per year. If 80% of those ran off of Lithium batteries, it means the car companies would buy 72B lithium batteries per year. The laptop industry buys 500M. That’s a 144X increase. Yes, buy stock in lithium mining operations. And get ready to see them go big. And hope the mining is done responsibly. And yes, the US is the leader in lithium mining (North Carolina, of all places).
It’s amazing to see how tenaciously one will hang onto their cherished political beliefs …
Matt, the difference isn’t clearly “due to regulatory differences”. Wages are far lower in China (the only reason why “Made in China” is one of the most frequently used phrases in the English language). This will impact not only direct labor costs for construction of the plants, but indirectly in the price of concrete, structural steel, etc etc.
We *know* the price of labor is lower, so we can state this with confidence. The regulatory costs *might* be a factor, and I would guess are, but to state that 1) this accounts for the full 7x price difference and 2) to imply that regulations are bad is … a reach, at best.
402 Kevin, thanks for the info. The hybrid system seems to take the step of adjusting the tax via market forces instead of through a yearly audit. Sounds fine to me. It still leaves the question of what to do with the money raised.
CORRECTION: I stated that CAFE’s tax was $11/MPG. It’s really $55/MPG. Oops! Given that I’m speculating on a near tripling of the CAFE standard, an equivalent tax would be $20/MPG.
405 Matt, batteries are probably not the answer. Flywheels are a better concept. Here’s an article from Discover 1996 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n8_v17/ai_18471043/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
> 4 AP1000 reactors … are under construction right now
Westinghouse submitted Revision 17 to the Design Certification Amendment on September 22, 2008….
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/amended-ap1000.html
matt wrote: “I don’t know why Pickens isn’t spending on nuclear.”
Because even with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, nuclear power is a proven economic failure.
Here’s a couple of updates on the flywheel concept RichardC mentioned.
Right now, aerospace and UPS applications are being realized, apparently–one of these links menions that “initial costs of around $1,000/kWh are about double those of a lead-acid device,” and that that is a deterrent to consumer applications. It seems a really interesting technology, and one that could really help achieve a sustainable energy economy.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=909
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywheel.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2V-4MG6P8C-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=726b555fad4c7bf13937f68b8d1de842
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Thanks, Richard!
dhogaza: We *know* the price of labor is lower, so we can state this with confidence. The regulatory costs *might* be a factor, and I would guess are, but to state that 1) this accounts for the full 7x price difference and 2) to imply that regulations are bad is … a reach, at best.
A nuclear plant is about 400,000 yds^3 of concrete. At $100/yd^3, that’s $40M in concrete cost. Insignificant.
If a reactor takes 1000 workers 3 years, and they average $70K/year, that’s $210M in labor. Insignificant.
Sanity check: Link below indicates materials cost is 1% of total reactor cost.
Thus, it does seem the regulatory cost of building a reactor in the US is 3-5X the reactor cost itself. Yes?
http://seekerblog.com/archives/20080827/cera-construction-costs-for-new-nuclear-plants-up-over-230-since-2000/
> regulatory cost of building a reactor in the US
> is 3-5X the reactor cost itself. Yes?
No.
You don’t know what each individual unique plant costs until it’s been used up and disposed of.
Westinghouse is still working on modifications to the design of the device — yet China’s already building … something.
China’s doing what the US did decades ago, rushing into building to support a rapid growth period, and the costs will be determined later.
The US is looking hard at the longterm costs based on prior experience.
China builds good heavy industrial steel — ocean port shipping cranes shipped to Oakland a while back for example,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?m=/c/pictures/2005/03/06/mn_crane_037_df.jpg&f=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/06/BAGDTBLAIS1.DTL
the largest in the world. By contrast, if you look up “crane collapse” you’ll find that smaller cranes have a terrible safety record recently. Not sure who makes those.
But look at problems with concrete.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/16/asia/AS-GEN-China-Bridge-Collapse.php
or children’s toys, or baby formula.
Complicated things are hard to get right. Complicated radioactive things are hard to repair.
Do it once, do it right, is a hard attitude to inculcate.
Anne I apologize, I misread your statements. It is the end of the school year and I am busy teaching, grading papers, tests, and other projects. I am also spending far too much time here at RC and so I am taking a much needed break. Regarding the batteries, yes it is a tricky technology to improve upon both from an engineering and economic one, but from what I have seen in Britannica and from what my engineering friends tell me and the documentary and the Mashinski technology as well, the capacity to do what I stated from a strictly scientific/applications perspective has been there.I agree that market is not ready for another 10 years or so.
The coaxial cable for digital transfer was invented in the late 1970’s and used in the early 1980’s, so that is where the capacity to apply modern digitally based HD was possible, but analog TV’s did exist long before with high resolution technology and so were the bands for high definition to exist as well, which was applied in military applications.
That’s it, if I made some minor error or misspoke a little, then I will be more clear and cautious in the future, but a lot of technology and the scientific basis for the technology has been around longer than can be found on google; google is great, but not all encompassing.
matt wrote: “I know that the Chinese are betting on nuclear over wind.”
“Betting on nuclear over wind” is a pretty vague statement and it is difficult to know what you mean by it, so it is difficult to know what exactly you claim to “know”.
However, China is certainly “betting on” wind power — and betting large. According to WorldWatch Institute, as of June 2008:
And according to the Global Wind Energy Council, China is expected to become the world’s top wind turbine manufacturer in 2009, with an annual production capacity of about 10 gigawatts per year, which is more than half of the current world market.
matt #403, #404
The Westinghouse & China contract includes exactly what? The complete plant? Only the reactors? Only the core parts? Only the technology? How much local labor and suppliers are used?
What you call ‘regulatory overhead’ I would call ‘higher safety standards’.
For me the $ 7B Georgia Power deal is the actual number. That is a real, tangible contract. With this knowledge the figures from your post #371 should be:
Solar: $3T
Wind: $6T
Geothermal: $2.5T
Nuclear: $6T (excl. decommissioning costs)
#413 jcbmack
Ok. I have already noticed you post a lot here.
Battery technology is improving fast. Of all the chemistries under development, lithium seems the most promising. The current energy density is only a tenth of the theoretical limit. The technology is there, the price is still too high, but heading southward.
Regarding the costs of proposed Westinghouse AP-1000 nuclear power plants in the USA, the Free Press article that I linked to above notes the following (emphasis added):
As always, the only way that private investors, including the utility industry, will go anywhere near nuclear power is if the public is forced to absorb all the costs and all the risks … including the financial risks of the plants being unprofitable to operate once they are built.
This is completely the opposite of the solar and wind energy industries, which are the fastest and second fastest growing sources of new electricity generation worldwide, where private investors are falling over themselves to pour money into the industries.
Reality check on wind & solar.
I’m a big fan of both of these … but their use really depends on where you are, and different countries and parts thereof have vast variabilities. Hence, there may be X good space for something in a country, and you may gear up for that, but some places may still need nuclear.
James Hansen was here at our local Town Center giving a talk last night, and this got discussed both over dinner and during questions after the talk.
See post at BraveNewClimate, and especially check out the world-wide wind-potential maps of Archer &Jacobson and a solar insolation map.
> the coaxial cable for digital transfer
> was invented in the late 1970’s
Really? Something different from
http://www.tech-faq.com/coaxial-cable.shtml
coax used for broadband?
“May 23, 1929 … a patent for broadband coaxial cable, the first broadband transmission medium…. a new kind of wire system … based on the use of a coaxial conductor ….”
http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/29cable.html
#414 SecularAnimist: However, China is certainly “betting on” wind power — and betting large.
And yet you fail to cite what their annual needs are. Which is exactly what the reader needs to put it into context.
China will see 60 GW of nuclear generation by 2020. That will be about 3% of their total generating capacity. Today, they have generating capacity (all sources) of 400 GW. In 2020, they will have nearly 1 TW.
Note that today China has 9 GW of installed nuclear capacity, delivering 62B KWH. That’s about 80% utilization.
The 100GW of power in 2020 that you note is nameplate. In practice, it will generate about 26B KWH.
So, it could be said they are favoring nuclear 2.4:1 between now and 2020. And that’s reasonable. I’m not against wind. But it has to be augmented by something bankable. And dont’ forget, China is in a unique position to make wind more reliable than anyone else because they can build massive energy storage facilities by damming up huge regions that could never happen in north america because of the green lobby.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSL0868760220080308
#415: Anne van der Bom: For me the $ 7B Georgia Power deal is the actual number. That is a real, tangible contract. With this knowledge the figures from your post #371 should be:
Here are some folks that seem in-the-know on the actual costs for a variety of nuclear projects. They claim the AP1000 for China isn’t the full enchilada, and that $5B is the more realistic price.
http://www.reactorscanada.com/?p=14
Fair enough. But that’s still better than wind. And it works (almost) 24×7. If you want wind to be there (almost) 24×7, then you must derate it’s nameplate rating even further. For example, if you want a farm of 1500 KW generators to deliver power with 80% reliability, then you can only count on 20% of the nameplate rating.
So, as you rely on wind for more of your baseload, then the $6T figure for wind must go even higher…nearly twice as high.
See graph on page 56: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
matt (403) says, “I don’t know why Pickens isn’t spending on nuclear… ”
I think you do: two paragraphs up in your own post, maybe! ;-)
Hank (412) says, “You don’t know what each individual unique plant costs until it’s been used up and disposed of.”
True. But the same must be said for turbines, solar, methane plants and coal plants…, and, I suppose, flywheel farms.
Hank, the operative word in “coaxial cable for digital transfer” re the discussion is digital, not coax. Coax has been around for sometime; but high-speed digital transmission channels (T4 and T5 in telephone land), requiring new electronics and encoding scheme, only since early 70s.
Matt, when the rollout of the “inexpensive” nuclear option is paid for, what do you do in twenty years time when you have run out of nuclear? Now, think about when wind will run out. Or solar.
Donald writes:
The actual Christian belief is that “The Earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1, see also Psalm 50). God never told anybody to “exploit” the Earth. And please note that 86 leading American evangelicals have just signed onto a statement asking their congregations to do more to fight global warming. Please don’t stereotype.
[Response: No further discussion of religion please. – gavin]
Ike Solem (158) — to be Lamarckian, it’s not enough that acquired characteristics be inherited, they have to be adaptational. The whole point about Lamarck was that he thought striving drove evolution. The giraffe stretching its neck and passing the trait down to its descendants made the descendants more viable.
tamino — the link to my climate sensitivity page goes to the defunct AOL site — the new site is at http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/ClimateSensitivity.html (remove the hyphen).
Mark says: “Matt, when the rollout of the “inexpensive” nuclear option is paid for, what do you do in twenty years time when you have run out of nuclear?”
The same as you do when the solar panels or windmills have to be replaced, albeit, you don’t have to worry so much about half-lives with these technologies. Everything wears out–or as a reliability physicist I know says, “Failure is not an option… It’s a standard feature.”
Neither Lamarckism nor Darwinism had anything to do with speciation or the creation of any of the higher taxonomic categories. All of creative evolution was preplanned, prescheduled and emergent from the relatively few organisms that were capable of leaving decendents markedly different from themeselves. Natural selection, allelic mutation, and Mendelian (sexual) reproduction were all conservative and anti-evoluitionary, serving only to maintain the status quo for as long as possible.
Furthermore there is not a shred of evidence that creative, progressive evolution is any longer in progress. Just as ontogeny ends with the death of the indivdual, so phylogeny ends with extinction. The present biota seems to be the terminus of the evolutionary sequence and I see no reason to assume evolution will ever resume. In short –
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
For a further discussion and documentation I refer to my weblog –
jadavison.wordpress.com
jcbmack@230,
That’s a reiteration of your claim that “the green movement” is dangerous, not a justification. The major environmental pressure groups employ fully qualified scientists. How about some concrete examples of proposals made by such groups – not random people on the internet – that you claim are unfeasible, with proper justification?
John A Davidson says “For a further discussion and documentation I refer to my weblog -”
Don’t hold your breath.
Rod, what coaxial cable do you imagine was invented in the 1970s that he could be talking about? Maybe he’s thinking about HDMI, which was multiple twisted pair cable. In 2007 there’s a mention of success transmitting HDMI over coax — a distance of a few feet.
If there was an invention there’s a patent.
Or maybe the words mean something different?
#430
Oh good grief, as if it’s not enough that climate change denialists infest this site, now we have evolution denialists as well.
410 Kevin, the other tech trying to replace batteries is the ultracapacitor, which uses static charge to store energy. They are wicked cool, but still wicked expensive.
421 Matt claims, ” And it [nuclear] works (almost) 24×7″
You win the Golden Eyeroll award for that one. If one counts operational reactors, 80% is a good number. If you include the failed reactors, 60% is about right. Here’s Canada’s CANDU’s performance: http://www.cns-snc.ca/media/reliability/reliability.html
About 10% of that is scheduled maintenance so it occurs at non-peak seasons, so bumping the total reliability figure up to 65% is reasonable.
On Evolution and Climate Change: things change once a mechanism for the dominant view is established. Evolution’s line was the discovery of DNA. Climate’s line was the discovery of CO2’s greenhouse effect. Interestingly, Climate’s line came long before the Climate issue became relevant while Evolution’s line came long after the issue was settled. “Some unknown factor” isn’t terribly rational once the line is crossed. Yep, there’s always another level to explore, but to advocate policy based on the vain hope that established science is fundamentally incomplete is stupid. A good analogy is Newton. Relativity proves Newton wrong, but policy based on Newton being correct is still good practice. Newton was correct enough.
Hank, I said coax, a level-1 physical layer was not the question. The transmission and networking layer with its electronics and protocols were the stuff first realized in the 70s. (And not so much generic “protocol”, as encoding schemes to generate high-speed bit streams and, more important, detect them reliably at the receiver.)
Nick (434), not to mention dangerous environmentalists denialists…
“things change once a mechanism for the dominant view is established. Evolution’s line was the discovery of DNA.” – RichardC
Not really. Darwin’s evidence for common descent was already overwhelming, and convinced all serious biologists quite quickly.
Once population genetics was formulated by Fisher, Haldane, Wright and others around 1930, it was clear that natural selection was the main mechanism of evolution. That meant biologists knew what properties the genetic material must have – without that, they would not have discovered the structure of DNA.
Rod B writes:
You do realize, don’t you, that there will be tremendous cost and disruption from NOT mitigating? It’s not a case of doing nothing being the safe course to follow.
matt writes:
It doesn’t have to. Switching to solar thermal power, photovoltaics, wind, geothermal, HDR, cogeneration, and insulating houses can give us a much bigger cut, and will.
I’d like to be the first to state on this blog that I will pay MORE in electric bills if I know the power is coming from renewables, rather than from fossil or solar. It’s worth it to me to screw up the environment and public health less.
[Response: You can already (at least in New York). – gavin]
Barton Paul Levenson wrote: “I’d like to be the first to state on this blog that I will pay MORE in electric bills if I know the power is coming from renewables, rather than from fossil or solar.”
Gavin replied: “You can already (at least in New York).”
I already do, in Maryland — I buy 100 percent wind-generated electricity through the local utility PEPCO. It is more expensive than PEPCO’s “standard” mix which is about 80 percent coal-fired with the remaining 20 percent coming from gas and nuclear (Calvert Cliffs). But as Barton says, it’s worth it.
Also, in the summer of 2007 I replaced my aging gas furnace with an electric heat pump, so now all my HVAC is 100 percent wind-powered. I was warned that the cost of heating during the coldest months would be much higher than with gas, but it has turned out to be only slightly higher, even with the more expensive wind-generated electricity.
HANK # 419, yes, but I was referring to more modern applications of digital transfer.Just like the HD technology from the 1940’s and 1950’s was analog, the coaxial cable was upgraded and found new applications in the 1970’s to 1980’s. I was actually correcting and clarifying myself in this regard. I looked in Britannica again and called a few engineering friends (electrical and computer) and I was more careful in my post wording, careful not to be too long or too vague.Again limited time, but the capacity for the technologies has been there, but the financial drive to develop and market them has been far slower.
Hank # 433, look it up in a scholar technology journal or go to the library and look at an older technology book that is relevant. I am not speaking of HDMI. This will get you started from scholar, where the technology devlopment began in the 1960’s with wide ranging applications: Digital Transmission Systems By David Russell Smith
A Detailed description of modern tv applications and a details on analog: Modern Cable Television Technology By Walter S. Ciciora, James Farmer, Michael Adams
There are many more available, but this will get you started Hank and others interested.
Nick, you are misquoting, I am supportive of green technologies and reducing fossil fuel emissions, but many green websites are misinformed and lack solid science to back them up. I am referring to the “tree huggers.”
I’ll second Nick Gotts’ requests (#430 and 214) for more information about how inaccurate, misguided or dangerous the green groups, websites, or movements are, the more specific the better.
In the US even the opponents of the environmentalists admit the environmentalists have the facts on their side and use them better. See the Luntz Memo. Many of the same people and organizations who misrepresent science also use the same tactics against environmentalists, for example the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Steven Milloy on Junk Science.
recaptcha “lenox fabrication”
> get you started
Jacob, the point of a citation is to get people _there_. Think of later readers of the thread who may wonder what you’re talking about. Or think of the editor of the journal you’re submitting a paper to. Good citation is good practice, and takes practice.
Perhaps you’re recalling hybrid fiber coax?
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4135202.html
Right year; invention; patented; coax; the basis for most modern cable television; in the news lately.
The hybrid fiber-coax architecture covered by U.S. Patent No. 4135202 was invented in the laboratories of Rediffusion, Inc….
http://www.ipdevelopment.com/news2.htm
Citation: give sufficient information that a later reader can find the basis you relied on to make your claim.
I tested whether it was easy to do that for yet another of your claims; ‘t weren’t.
You want to be a reliable source known good? Cite.
If you can’t remember the source for your belief,
and you can’t find a source, and check your belief,
handwaving “exercise for the student” is not optimal.
I see I am not welcome here. That is your loss.
John Davison, On the contrary. Anyone who really wants to learn about climate science usually finds they are welcome here. What is not welcome is spam for a website pushing an anti-science agenda–and yes, creationism/ID is anti-science.
ReCAPTCHA chimes in: men Pescia
Hank my citation is appropriate it verifies what I am saying. I have not performed any hand waving.
BPL (438) says, “You do realize, don’t you, that there will be tremendous cost and disruption from NOT mitigating?…”
If true, yes. Therein lies the rub of playing a very high stakes game. (Pardon the metaphor; it’s instructive, but I admit the AGW issue is far from a game.)