Hari Sheldon, The Mule, and Global Warming

[tzor]

Hari Seldon is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. In his capacity as mathematics professor at Streeling University on Trantor, Seldon develops psychohistory, allowing him to predict the future in probabilistic terms.

The Mule is a fictional character from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. One of the greatest conquerors the galaxy has ever seen, he is a mentalic who has the ability to reach into the minds of others and "adjust" their emotions, individually or en masse, using this capability to conscript individuals to his cause. Not direct mind-control per se, it is a subtle influence of the subconscious; individuals under the Mule's influence behave otherwise normally - logic, memories, and personality intact. This gives the Mule the capacity to disrupt Seldon's plan by invalidating Seldon's assumption that no single individual could have a measurable effect on galactic socio-historical trends on their own, due to the plan relying on the predictability of the actions of very large numbers of people.

The basic notion is that Hari Sheldon creates a long view of the universe which is considered so infallible that some 300 years later people would rather believe his predictions than the actual facts before their eyes.

And with that, we go to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who apparently still worships a modern day Hari Sheldon, also know as Al Gore.

"[Climate change] is the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and world," Clinton said at the National Clean Energy Summit 7.0 in Nevada on Thursday. "The data is unforgiving no matter what the deniers try to assert."

"Sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, storms and wildfires are wreaking havoc…but if we come together to make the hard choices America can be the clean energy superpower of the 21st century," she added to applause.

Seriously, Mrs. Clinton, I think the current spreading Ebola epidemic, the growing ISIS Caliphate, and perhaps the Russian invasion into the Ukraine might be slightly more challenging than the myth of global warming, especially since the ice caps are not metling Sea level rises have been going on far longer than the industrial revolution and even rose during the “little ice age.” And for wildfires ... yes they are man made “As many as 90 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Some human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, negligently discarded cigarettes and intentional acts of arson.”

Oh and how much global warming are you causing Mrs. Clinton by your constant jetting from one end of the planet to the other complaining about people using fossil fuels? Stop thinking the models of your current Hari Sheldon are infallible gospel and start using your eyes to see what is going on around you. There are far more important stuff going on right now that really have a major threat to destroy the environment and to actually kill lots of people in nasty horrible ways.

[AndyDufresne]

Oh and how much global warming are you causing Mrs. Clinton by your constant jetting from one end of the planet to the other complaining about people using fossil fuels? Stop thinking the models of your current Hari Sheldon are infallible gospel and start using your eyes to see what is going on around you. There are far more important stuff going on right now that really have a major threat to destroy the environment and to actually kill lots of people in nasty horrible ways.

--Andy

[BigBallinStalin]

[notyou2]

You will be recanting when Manhattan is under water Tzor.

[tzor]

You will be recanting when Manhattan is under water Tzor.

Have you been to Manhattan? I've been to Manhattan. I live on Long Island. I once lived in Key West.

"The elevation of Manhattan ranges from 1 to 80 meters (3.3 to 265 feet)."

"Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide." (According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA))

So 80 meters ... that's 80,000 mm ... right? Divided by 3 is ... 26 and 2/3 CENTURIES!

(Yes the highest point on long island is taller than the highest point in all of Florida.)

Now the highest point in Key West is 5 meters, but even then at 3 mm/ year, it's going to be a while.

[BigBallinStalin]

There's some merit to some of tzor's points.

Matt Ridley explains in the wsj:

show

It's about a 5-minute read. I'd recommend it.

[notyou2]

You will be recanting when Manhattan is under water Tzor.

Have you been to Manhattan? I've been to Manhattan. I live on Long Island. I once lived in Key West.

"The elevation of Manhattan ranges from 1 to 80 meters (3.3 to 265 feet)."

"Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide." (According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA))

So 80 meters ... that's 80,000 mm ... right? Divided by 3 is ... 26 and 2/3 CENTURIES!

(Yes the highest point on long island is taller than the highest point in all of Florida.)

Now the highest point in Key West is 5 meters, but even then at 3 mm/ year, it's going to be a while.

Yes I have been to Manhatten, several times in fact.

In my years on this planet, I have definitely seen a change in the weather, in the ferocity of storms, both rain, snow and ice storms.I have seen more damages in my province in the last 10 years than the 40 years preceeding combined. There is definitely something going on. Get your head out of your ass and stop promoting confusion, lies and defending the large conglomerates and oil companies. If we don't do something, the planet is fucked. I am convinced the problems are man made. The world needs to act and quickly. People like you are the biggest problem you pompous fucktard.

[BigBallinStalin]

You will be recanting when Manhattan is under water Tzor.

Have you been to Manhattan? I've been to Manhattan. I live on Long Island. I once lived in Key West.

"The elevation of Manhattan ranges from 1 to 80 meters (3.3 to 265 feet)."

"Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide." (According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA))

So 80 meters ... that's 80,000 mm ... right? Divided by 3 is ... 26 and 2/3 CENTURIES!

(Yes the highest point on long island is taller than the highest point in all of Florida.)

Now the highest point in Key West is 5 meters, but even then at 3 mm/ year, it's going to be a while.

Yes I have been to Manhatten, several times in fact.

In my years on this planet, I have definitely seen a change in the weather, in the ferocity of storms, both rain, snow and ice storms.I have seen more damages in my province in the last 10 years than the 40 years preceeding combined. There is definitely something going on. Get your head out of your ass and stop promoting confusion, lies and defending the large conglomerates and oil companies. If we don't do something, the planet is fucked. I am convinced the problems are man made. The world needs to act and quickly. People like you are the biggest problem you pompous fucktard.

Of all people, you're the kind who really needs to read Matt Ridley's article, but that requires a large effort to remove your head from your ass of Absolute Certainty. Skepticism is useful.

[shickingbrits]

Notyou2, don't you know the difference between weather and climate?

How are the oil companies going to lose from climate change?

Yes, let's do something, support thorium.

[jonesthecurl]

Tzor:
(i) It's Seldon, not Sheldon. Sheldon is the guy on "Big Bang Theory".
(ii) Who is the Mule in your analogy? Mrs C? Cos she'd already be in charge if so...
(iii) A purely incidental point: Asimov was a toilet-head.

[TA1LGUNN3R]

Haha I was waiting for that.

-TG

[Dukasaur]

Tzor:
(i) It's Seldon, not Sheldon. Sheldon is the guy on "Big Bang Theory".
(ii) Who is the Mule in your analogy? Mrs C? Cos she'd already be in charge if so...
(iii) A purely incidental point: Asimov was a toilet-head.

Haha I was waiting for that.

-TG

moi aussi

[notyou2]

I am not talking about global warming. That article seems to discuss global warming under the guise of climate change. I am talking about climate change. The storms I am experiencing used to be 1 in 100 years storms,now they are at 5 year frequencies or less. The weather HAS changed, and not for the better. Sure we have some warm weather in December and January, but we did on occasion in the 70's too. The storms are more frequent AND the intensity is greater. It is the intensities that worry me. We now have rain storms that deposit a lot more water in a shorter period of time than we used to. Same for the snow. But, the worst are the ice storms. We rarely experienced those 30 years ago. Now they are common. They do tremendous damage to the power infrastructure.They scare me. I believe they are increasing in frequency. We see fish in our oceans that used to only be found in the tropics. We see birds that were never native to here from the south. The earth IS changing, and I believe man is the cause.

[BigBallinStalin]

... personal observation is good, but science is better because using it makes you challenge your cognitive bias. Other than that, I don't have much to say about your experiences and concerns.

Your previous post was way outta line.

[notyou2]

Let them eat cake.

[tzor]

In my years on this planet, I have definitely seen a change in the weather, in the ferocity of storms, both rain, snow and ice storms.I have seen more damages in my province in the last 10 years than the 40 years preceeding combined. There is definitely something going on. Get your head out of your ass and stop promoting confusion, lies and defending the large conglomerates and oil companies. If we don't do something, the planet is fucked. I am convinced the problems are man made. The world needs to act and quickly. People like you are the biggest problem you pompous fucktard.

I've been on this planet some 53 years. I've seen many changes in the weather. There are short term patterns, and long term patterns, and patterns that span thousands of years. There have been 4 Cat 4 hurricanes that hit Long Island since I was born in 1961, 1985, 1999, and 2004. The full list is located here.

Are there problems that are "man made?" Sure there are! Lots of them! Things that can actually be measured and verified. But "Global Warming" is based on one thing and one thing only, CO2 in the atmosphere and man's modest contribution to the amount. (Methane is even worse than CO2 but the alarmists don't worry about how much man made methane burps into the atmosphere through large scale animal farms, as well as how the waste from those farms creates whole zones of oxygen deprived waters in our seas and oceans.) What about the impact of urban heat islands to regional and perhaps global warming? What about the total destruction of rainforests?

And now a public service announcement ... oil companies love global warming efforts. Why? Because global warming efforts are mostly directed towards coal. Oil companies can invest in non coal methods which they will claim are "better than coal" such as natural gas. They actually initially invested in renewable energy although this wasn't profitable for them. Never the less, every coal mine shut down and every coal fired power plant does nothing to hurt big oil's bottom line. In fact, as the power grid becomes more and more unstable, organizations that need constant power (like computers) will probably have to have local generators to insure power in the event of an outage (can't have Amazon go down because of a blackout). Guess what those generators will run? Natural gas supplied by big oil.

So it is not better to not do something stupid that might impact the situation in such a marginally trivial way that it can't be measured. The confusion and lies is from the global warming crowd. They don't want an "answer" (in fact that would mean their own unemployment) because they make their money selling panic. They work their little reports from the deep layers of world bureaucracy, peer review their own falsified data and dare call it "science." They are worse than economists (who often make predictions which never get verified and never bother to correlate their theories with real world data) and that is really going to the bottom of the barrel.

[tzor]

Tzor:
(i) It's Seldon, not Sheldon. Sheldon is the guy on "Big Bang Theory".
(ii) Who is the Mule in your analogy? Mrs C? Cos she'd already be in charge if so...
(iii) A purely incidental point: Asimov was a toilet-head.

(i) I typo frequently, even when looking at the tab that has the name. Ironically I had to google it. At last I got Hari right.
(ii) I think ISIS is the mule. Radical Islam has a way of warping ones emotions.
(iii) Asimov was a chemist. He wrote a lot of good science books for children.

I'm reminded of a old contest where people had to write poems that ended in a science fiction writer's last name. I can't recall the whole poem, only the ending. The subject was skinny dipping at a local watering hole.

{quote]But when it comes to swimming,
His clothing me must doff.
Without a moment's hesitation,
Issac Asimov.[/quote]

[notyou2]

You guys keep talking about global warming. I am not talking about global warming. I am talking about climate change. The changes are REAL and we are in trouble. Stick your head in the sand if you wish, but don't spread misinformation and lies.

Coal power plants should be shut down, all of them. We need more passive sysytems such as solar, wind and geo-thermal. China should be the first place they are building these, and the US should be right with them, as well as Russia too, but we all need to do our part.

[shickingbrits]

notyou2,
Solar is getting better, carbon nanotubes seem promising, if the rate of production can be increased.

Traditional solar requires resources which are bottoming out on price even with improvements, there isn't enough material and the payback time is long.

Wind, depends on the site, also uses rare earths. A low speed wind turbine was invented recently in Quebec, if interested I can provide more details. If the government allowed power to be sold to them, I would expect an upsurge in wind generated power.

Geothermal, great, but still uses power. An ETS should really be built into all buildings. For home use, it's still too expensive. On the cheap, you could get it done for 10k, if you had the skills. If you don't, looking up to 40k. Still have to worry about maintenance and run the pump.

The key to renewable energy is storage. That's why they generate most of the power off coal. It is flexible, just shove some more in when you need it.

None of these things are that hard, and I expect to see buildings capturing more passive energy in the future, but Canada and a lot of the west is going to continue to live in old style buildings and use energy as they will.

Thorium is the only viable solution. Uranium reserves will only last another 30-40 years and comes with all the inherent problems. It isn't flexible, but covers a nice base and then you shoot coal off to cover the rest. Thorium could be more flexible, there are 20,000 years worth available, not as many problems as uranium (nuclear is already by far the safest energy).

Anyways, if you ever get the urge to tell folks stop spreading lies, tell them to support thorium R&D instead.

[tzor]

You guys keep talking about global warming. I am not talking about global warming. I am talking about climate change. The changes are REAL and we are in trouble. Stick your head in the sand if you wish, but don't spread misinformation and lies.

Coal power plants should be shut down, all of them. We need more passive sysytems such as solar, wind and geo-thermal. China should be the first place they are building these, and the US should be right with them, as well as Russia too, but we all need to do our part.

OK let's talk about "Climate Change." Define it. In precise terms. Link it to CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Do not use computer models that cannot predict current trends, much less future ones.

So let's go to your alternatives. Let's start with Solar.

Traditional solar plants based on mirrors and heat collection points have a general tendency to locate an incredible amount of heat in a specific location.
The result: many birds get cooked while flying from one point to another.

Modern "Solar Panels" are generally expensive to make, except in China where they throw environmental concerns into the rivers (literally).

Traditional wind turbines put large blades in the air in specific locations.
The result: many birds get hit by the rotating fans while flying from one point to another.

So based on the above, I get the feeling you don't particularly like birds. Save the world; kill the birds. Makes a great slogan, doesn't it?

Geothermal is a wonderful idea. Unfortunately it's not all that common and finding locations where the earth's surface meets the conditions without it either being on an earthquake possible tectonic fault line or a place where a volcano might develop any decade from now is ... well exceptionally rare. But if you know of any large potential geothermal sites that are not being tapped, let me know.

China should be doing something (and give time, because eventually they will do something about it) but they are not. 1/4 of CO2 emissions comes from China. (As opposed to 16% from the US and 11% from the EU.) Russia is 5% (according to the United States Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) for the United Nations as reported on Wikipedia).

Low and middle income nations still account for half of the world's emissions.

If you want to lower emissions, raise world standards. Trying to lower world standards by imposing harsh economic penalties on specific countries who don't tell you to kiss some part of their anatomy (like China) won't help the long term situation.

[AndyDufresne]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

--Andy

[BigBallinStalin]

You guys keep talking about global warming. I am not talking about global warming. I am talking about climate change. The changes are REAL and we are in trouble. Stick your head in the sand if you wish, but don't spread misinformation and lies.

Coal power plants should be shut down, all of them. We need more passive sysytems such as solar, wind and geo-thermal. China should be the first place they are building these, and the US should be right with them, as well as Russia too, but we all need to do our part.

birds

I'm sure people are fine killing more birds in order to reduce perceived consequences of climate change. Wouldn't it be better to argue about perceived consequences and measurement issues?

Interest Rates
For example, a big problem with the climate change debate depends on what interest rate to use. The value of future consequences need to be discounted to present values in order to understand what's at stake from current decision-making. IIRC, using a 2% interest rate implies that future consequences will be huge, while using a 6% interest rate implies that future consequences aren't that bad.

Public Choice and the Political Process
Another issue concerns public choice. Even if all the facts are in, will the political process generate a first-best (or even second-best) policy that would also be superior to 'letting the market figure it out'? Voters are rationally irrational, so having all the facts available doesn't matter; plenty of voters will still behave dogmatically. Politicians are hardly accountable for making poor decisions on specific policies over time. Political policies, no matter how stupid, are hard to remove once implemented, so holding politicians accountable probably won't correct the policy. Some govt. bureaus will push for more envr. control (cuz bigger budgets are at stake) regardless of the inaccuracies of their estimates while other bureaus will fight them over the relatively fixed pie of government revenues. Special interest groups operate at all these levels. All of this can amount to billions of dollars being wasted

(In fact, this political process has resulted in about a trillion dollars of waste on domestic security against terrorism over the past ten years. Nearly all of that spending has decreased the risk of death from a terrorist attack from almost zero to almost zero. Amusingly, voters still think the political process can somehow address climate change properly).

The Market Solution
I'd rather just leave it to people in the market. Use the science of climate change as a marketing tool (which many companies have done by 'going green'). And all that waste from the political process won't occur, so all that wealth has been freed up for more valuable goals--whatever they may be.

The Often Overlooked Moral Qualm
Also, the long-term consequences are unclear, so I'd be hesitant to appeal to a government in order to forcibly compel people to abide by its dictates, which due to public choice problems probably won't be the right dictates anyway.

[Army of GOD]

Why is tzor's name colored?

[jonesthecurl]

He's a media mod. Or should I say Modia med?

[tzor]

Why is tzor's name colored?

I've been assimilated by the Facebook BORG. PLEASE LIKE US ON FACEBOOK.