FAH and the environment

[alancabler]

Hi Ahavi,
This is OT... will reply to your great post later, when time allows.
I met a Norwegian super- babe here in Oklahoma City and asked her how to pronounce fjord.
I think she said "fewered", but I wasn't really listening...

[7im]

For the sake of this discussion, let's remember that the term "Global Warming" is not defined as "climate warming caused by pollution." Global Warming is only a symptom, while all of the causes are yet to be fully understood. Thanks.

[kyleaz19]

That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard screw the environment.

[Mobius0412]

screw the environment.

Done!

[codysluder]

What was the environment like before all the plants and animals turned into oit? Didn't we have more CO2 that has just been (temporarly ??) stored underground?

[alancabler]

What was the environment like before all the plants and animals turned into oit? Didn't we have more CO2 that has just been (temporarly ??) stored underground?

Yeah, something like 22,000 ppm. Oxygen was poison then, as far as the biosphere was concerned.
The 3% that mankind is adding to the CO2 total is aiding "greening" of the planet, and not a moment too soon.
The biosphere is lusher and "greener" right now than at any time since man has been able to measure such things, which means that there is more food for all creatures, including us.

If you follow the logic of the more strident and/or militant "Greenies", then more food for us to eat is a problem, since, in their view, there shouldn't be so many of "us" and we should be living as our ancestors did some centuries before, or as they do currently in the more wretched enclaves of humanity.

[Ahavi]

That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard screw the environment.

I suggest if we don't have any counter arguments we change the reply to the answer in the initial thread.

[John Naylor]

Well if someone types a reply which actually answers the question in my thread (but incorporates all of your points) then I or the mods will be happy to edit that post... at the moment you just have an argument countering what I and others have written which is fine but cannot be copied in as an answer to that question.

[MstrBlstr]

One could always go to the extreme.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hyd ... R_20080624

[alancabler]

One could always go to the extreme.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hyd ... R_20080624

Created with $400,000 of taxpayer money...

[MstrBlstr]

One could always go to the extreme.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hyd ... R_20080624

Created with $400,000 of taxpayer money...

Yeah, but where are you going to get the other $100,000 from?

I did mention that it was a bit extreme, YES?

[alancabler]

Yeah, but where are you going to get the other $100,000 from?

I did mention that it was a bit extreme, YES?

YES
That's the problem with alternative energy systems right now- the cost. That family's $100,000 cost is out of reach for most people. If their total yearly energy costs were otherwise $3,300, then payback would be 30 years, which could barely be justified as a financial decision and certainly not at the actual cost of $500,000 upfront, not counting maintenance expense.

Things are looking up, though. There have been 2 different low- cost schemes to produce $1/watt photovoltaics reported in this forum and hydrogen- power technology is improving.
Large- scale windgens are already working at $1/watt, which makes them (usually) the cheapest form of electric generation as hydro- power depends so much on land costs and the best places to locate dams have essentially already been taken.
Since mankind's science/technical understanding seems to be accelerating on all fronts at an exponential rate, we should start to see some really exciting breakthroughs and applications within the near future, say 5 years.

The same exponential change (2,4,8,16...1024,2048...) applies to the work we are doing here at F@h. The exponential increase in knowledge is happening, it just takes awhile to move up the curve and then our discoveries and insights and the resultant spin- offs from other people's work will increase very rapidly indeed.

[anandhanju]

Re: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3749

I was wondering about such computers... Is FAH is a position to say we would appreciate you NOT using these for FAH as the cost of running these outweighs the benefits*? I believe with the computational power that FAH is currently generating and harvesting and all the talk of FAH being responsible to the environment, wouldn't it be a good idea to have work done by leaner, swifter and generally more efficient machines and be willing to compensate for the relatively small fraction of work done by these dinosaurs? Nothing against FAH or these machines, just remembered the Pareto principle and was wondering if it makes sense in the FAH-Environment scenario.

benefits = Useful work done by the system when compared to a relatively newer machine.

[codysluder]

Re: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3749

I was wondering about such computers... Is FAH is a position to say we would appreciate you NOT using these for FAH as the cost of running these outweighs the benefits*?

If you are the owner of old technology hardware and you choose to discard it for environmental reasons, that's a choice that you must make yourself, not one that Stanford should dictate to you. I don't think that it's in FAH's best interest to tell you (or anybody else) that they don't want your donations, provided they actually contribute to the advancement of science.

The Electric company will pay me $50 if I have them haul away an old refrigerator that's still working (hopefully to be replace with a more efficient one). Maybe you can convince the Electric company to buy old computers with a similar program.