From: Clinton Alexander (clinton@clintonalexander.com)
Date: Sun Jul 28 2002 - 18:50:06 MDT
I guess I was referring more to the tone of the message. It sounded a
bit pessimistic, but I see that was not your intention.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Mike Lorrey
Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2002 4:02 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: ECO: Saying Nay to the Doomsayers
I never said that. Plenty can be done. Some of the easiest and most cost
effective things to do, the environmentalists don't want done, in my
opinion specifically because they would solve the problem so easily and
would not contribute to their other agenda items that involve further
socialist encroachment on private enterprise.
Clinton Alexander wrote:
>
> You two speak as if there is nothing that can be done. Isn't global
> warming caused by greenhouse gases?
> http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/emissions/index.html Haven't you
> heard about the 'Microbes that can scrub greenhouse gases from the air
> ..."?
>
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020723/sc_nm/science
> _genome_dc_1
>
> Concerning business opportunities: There are only two ways to make
> money. The first way is to solve problems and the second way is to
> invest in people that solve problems.
>
> Clinton
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
> On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
> Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 11:21 PM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: ECO: Saying Nay to the Doomsayers
>
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 02:11:40PM -0600, Doctor Logic wrote:
> >
> > [quote from: Mike on 2002-07-22 at 14:31:24]
> > As resources get scarcer, their market value rises, thus the market
> > incentivises conservation technologies and techniques. The market
> > will
>
> > signal the appropriate amount of capital to direct at such solutions
> > as they become economically feasible. Pushing fiat money at
> > non-problems when they are not cost effective wastes more resources
> > than they save.
> >
> >
> > When high sea levels put most coastal cities under water, are we
> > suddenly going to stop burning fossil fuels? Of course not.
> > There's no constituency for this, and no vendor who will provide a
> > fix for global warming.
> >
> > If sea levels rise, we'll throw up our hands and say, "Darn!".
> > We'll blame the politicians that stood by and did nothing, but
> > there's no one who will be able to sell us a global warming antidote
> > that we will
>
> > realistically pay for.
>
> Aha! Business opportunity! I think that if global warming gets bad I
> will buy up all available supergun mortars and large amounts of
> fine-grained reflective dust. According to the calculations in Martyn
> Fogg's _Terraforming_ it seems quite doable to reduce solar incidence
> this way to ameliorate the problem (sure, I would like to use a solar
> shade at L1, but it is not as cost-effective). Then I would convince
> rich, low-lying countries like Denmark and the Netherlands to pay for
> the project.
>
> Seriously, I think you have a point about supply-demand not solving
> second order interactions. If activity A causes effect B which raises
> costs for some people then there won't be an automatic negative
> feedback causing A to lessen or people to develop new tech to do A
> better; in fact people might go for fixing B - which in some cases
> might be a better idea! Cars are actually a quite good idea, so the
> solution to exhausts isn't to remove the cars but to build
> non-polluting cars. Takes time and is not always feasible, of course.
>
> > So a free market approach doesn't prevent global warming. It raises
> > the rent/property values in areas that are unaffected by global
> > warming. It makes alternative civil engineering practices possible
> > by
>
> > raising the price of conventional practices.
>
> As others have pointed out, the problem is that under the current
> non-free market handling of the atmosphere you can pollute for free as
> long as you are friends with the local kleptocrat.
>
> --
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anders Sandberg Towards
Ascension!
> asa@nada.kth.se
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
> GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+
> !y
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