A Shortage of Sand

[Quadibloc]

A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
of certain trade agreements.

The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
are common in many places around the world. China had no
monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
factors.

Now this:

https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html

Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
any country to be able to monopolize.

And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
place to reduce pollution!

So China is a country that can put the world's economy in turmoil
by unintentionally monopolizing the world's most plentiful and
un-monopolizable resources! My, what would we face if they ever
got upset with us?

John Savard

[Branimir Maksimovic]

On 2021-10-04, Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
> So China is a country that can put the world's economy in turmoil
> by unintentionally monopolizing the world's most plentiful and
> un-monopolizable resources! My, what would we face if they ever
> got upset with us?
>

Don't worry, they are lost without political commissar guidance :P

> John Savard


--

7-77-777
Evil Sinner!
to weak you should be meek, and you should brainfuck stronger
https://github.com/rofl0r/chaos-pp

[MitchAlsup]

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
> of certain trade agreements.
>
> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
> are common in many places around the world. China had no
> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
> factors.
>
> Now this:
>
> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>
> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
> any country to be able to monopolize.
>
> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
> place to reduce pollution!
<

Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
onto the grid ??

>
> So China is a country that can put the world's economy in turmoil
> by unintentionally monopolizing the world's most plentiful and
> un-monopolizable resources! My, what would we face if they ever
> got upset with us?
<

Greed is what got all those industries into China !
What motivation will get us out ?
>
> John Savard

[Branimir Maksimovic]

On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
><
> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
> What motivation will get us out ?

Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
China firms are not welocome in the west :P

>>
>> John Savard


--

7-77-777
Evil Sinner!

with software, you repeat same experiment, expecting different results...

[Quadibloc]

On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:

> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> onto the grid ??

Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.

Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
for Trump.)

I think that the reason some are driven to deny the obvious science of
the greenhouse effect is clear:

- people who aren't climate scientists don't know for sure that a
global warming catastrophe will happen if we don't change our
ways (although now we're starting to see the evidence...)

- but they do know for sure that if we drastically cut our energy use,
two things will happen:

1) the economy will be throttled, and lots of people will be thrown
out of work, and

2) America's industrial base will be weakened, and therefore its
ability to defend itself against the totalitarian powers (Russia and
China).

So the way to win over this segment of the population is to have a
*positive* plan for going carbon free, one that promises unlimited
supplies of energy.

And we've got that. We've got a proven technology that can be used
to produce just about as much electricity as anyone could want for
hundreds of years. Nuclear power. With reprocessing (and, hence,
breeder reactors).

Of course, some people think that nuclear reactors are unsafe.
As they tend to be liberals, though, that could just be sold as
another way to "own the libs", so I think it can be managed.

Also, it's claimed that nuclear power is expensive. Some of that
is because nuclear power projects often get hindered by
attempts to block them. The applicable laws can be streamlined.
Also, subsidies to big companies in the military-industrial
complex aren't considered "socialism", so they're acceptable in
the American political context.

John Savard

[BGB]

On 10/7/2021 11:33 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>
>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>> onto the grid ??
>
> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>

Or existing ones.

In premise, NiFe cells could be well suited to this use case, or even
NiMH. LiON cells are ill-suited to grid-level energy storage.

Something like Sodium Ferrocyanide cells (Na-Ion) could offer a
reasonable compromise (similar properties to LiON, but cheaper materials
and potentially more stable).

> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
> for Trump.)
>

I suspect many people would probably much rather mod their large lifted
pickups with dual smokestack exhausts and driving around doing the whole
"rolling coal" thing, ...

Yeah, we could build a bunch of molten salt nuclear reactors and similar.

And maybe some concentrating solar plants for good measure.


More likely, people will just try to build "biomass" plants, but then
use word wrangling to try to reclassify coal as a type of biomass, and
thus "green".

They could be like "it is not coal, it is carboniferous timber".


When the air gets bad, this is then a new marketing opportunity, they
start hermetically sealing houses, installing house-wise HEPA, HEGA, and
ULPA filters (integrated into the existing HVAC systems), and eventually
Sabatier reactors to reprocess the CO2 from the indoor air, ...


Then everyone will be like "not my problem" when all the world's plant
and animal life starts dying off... They come up with a new catchy name,
like Permian 2.0, or something...


We still get the skies of dark haze, and bare dirt free of vegetation,
just with more big pickups still driving around spewing smoke from their
smoke-stack exhaust systems.

All because, you know, going nuclear is too scary sounding, and coal is
cheaper, ...

...

[Thomas Koenig]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:

> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>
>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>> onto the grid ??
>
> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.

That claim has been made numerous times, and so far I have not seen
anything approaching a clear plan of what this should look like.

At the moment, "dream" sounds more appropriate.

[David Brown]

On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>> <
>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>> What motivation will get us out ?
>
> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
> China firms are not welocome in the west :P

Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA". Most of the west is happy to
work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.

The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them. The
real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds. Currently,
China is the favourite enemy of the USA. I don't mean that China does
/not/ pose a threat, economic, diplomatic and military, to the USA or
other countries - merely that the USA exaggerates it for its own purposes.

The rest of the west is caught up in the USA's chest-beating. They have
to side with the USA, while at the same time trying to be more
cooperative trade partners with China, because that's what makes most
economic sense.

[David Brown]

On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>
>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>> onto the grid ??
>
> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>

It is not just storage. There is transport, distribution, updates to
infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
materials and production of replacements, etc. And then there is the
/real/ big issue - which country controls the resources. Big, powerful
countries like the USA, Russia and China would rather destroy the planet
with overheating than accept African desserts covered with solar panels
as the powerhouse of the world.

There /is/ scope to get enough power from solar power in deserts, or
wind power from mountainous areas, Antarctica, jet streams, etc. But it
is in the wrong places. And there is not enough of the raw materials
currently needed - lithium, rare earth metals, quality silicon, etc., -
to make it work.

> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
> for Trump.)

Conservative Americans are a small proportional of world population, but
they are a serious PITA for any kind of progress. There are subgroups
of them who fully understand that humans are a big influence on global
warming, pollution, war, epidemics, and everything else bad in the world
- but they /want/ that, because bringing on the end of the world is a
step towards "rapture" and the "second coming".

>
> I think that the reason some are driven to deny the obvious science of
> the greenhouse effect is clear:
>
> - people who aren't climate scientists don't know for sure that a
> global warming catastrophe will happen if we don't change our
> ways (although now we're starting to see the evidence...)
>

The evidence for global climate change has been clear for a good while
now, and it is getting clearer at an increasing rate. At this stage,
the question is not if a catastrophe will happen if we don't change our
habits - but if the catastrophe can be avoided if we /do/ change.

> - but they do know for sure that if we drastically cut our energy use,
> two things will happen:
>
> 1) the economy will be throttled, and lots of people will be thrown
> out of work, and
>
> 2) America's industrial base will be weakened, and therefore its
> ability to defend itself against the totalitarian powers (Russia and
> China).

When you say "they know for sure", I take you mean these anti-science
conservatives are convinced that they know this. You don't mean to
imply that these are facts.

>
> So the way to win over this segment of the population is to have a
> *positive* plan for going carbon free, one that promises unlimited
> supplies of energy.
>

Yes, that sounds good.

> And we've got that. We've got a proven technology that can be used
> to produce just about as much electricity as anyone could want for
> hundreds of years. Nuclear power. With reprocessing (and, hence,
> breeder reactors).
>

Agreed. In particular, you want higher temperature molten salt reactors
that make far more efficient use of their fuels and are safer (you can't
get meltdowns in a system that is molten already), and you want thorium
as the fuel since it is plentiful, safe, is not suitable for weapons,
and is found in nice countries.

> Of course, some people think that nuclear reactors are unsafe.
> As they tend to be liberals, though, that could just be sold as
> another way to "own the libs", so I think it can be managed.
>

That won't work in the USA - not at all. You have to have a solution
that both sides of your ridiculous political rift can agree upon.
Otherwise you'll have one president starting to build new nuclear power
plants, then four or eight years later the next one will tear them down
just as they are ready to go online.

[Branimir Maksimovic]

On 2021-10-08, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>> <
>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>>> What motivation will get us out ?
>>
>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
>
> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA". Most of the west is happy to
> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
>

Yeah, China is pure slavery to it's own workers...

[Stephen Fuld]

On 10/7/2021 5:21 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>> of certain trade agreements.
>>
>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>> factors.
>>
>> Now this:
>>
>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>
>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>
>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>> place to reduce pollution!
> <
> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> onto the grid ??

Sure. The utility companies to begin with. We can generate as much
electricity as we can foreseeably need "on average". We are still
working on the storage problem to reasonably handle the peaks.

>> So China is a country that can put the world's economy in turmoil
>> by unintentionally monopolizing the world's most plentiful and
>> un-monopolizable resources! My, what would we face if they ever
>> got upset with us?
> <
> Greed is what got all those industries into China !

I suppose you could call it "greed", but I prefer a less derogatory term
like maximizing profits. It has been the basis of capitalism for
centuries, as explained by Adam Smith. It generates the "wealth of
nations".

> What motivation will get us out ?

Same thing. As we learn the costs of supply interruptions, etc. to
profits companies will react accordingly.



--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

[Stephen Fuld]

On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>> <
>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>>> What motivation will get us out ?
>>
>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
>
> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA". Most of the west is happy to
> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
>
> The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
> means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them. The
> real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
> than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.

Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out". See
Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if the
Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.

> Currently,
> China is the favourite enemy of the USA. I don't mean that China does
> /not/ pose a threat, economic, diplomatic and military, to the USA or
> other countries - merely that the USA exaggerates it for its own purposes.

Or, conversely, Europe downplays it for its own purposes. It's a matter
of perspective.

>
> The rest of the west is caught up in the USA's chest-beating. They have
> to side with the USA, while at the same time trying to be more
> cooperative trade partners with China, because that's what makes most
> economic sense.

Yes, at least in the short term.

[MitchAlsup]

On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>
> > Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> > come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> > energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> > onto the grid ??
> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
<

So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
(130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
and as industries consume more energy.)

>
> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
> for Trump.)
<

If no more carbon was emitted into the atmosphere starting tomorrow,
the earth will continue to warm through 2300 !! probably close to 5ºC.
{Science news a few weeks ago}

>
> I think that the reason some are driven to deny the obvious science of
> the greenhouse effect is clear:
>
> - people who aren't climate scientists don't know for sure that a
> global warming catastrophe will happen if we don't change our
> ways (although now we're starting to see the evidence...)
>
> - but they do know for sure that if we drastically cut our energy use,
> two things will happen:
>
> 1) the economy will be throttled, and lots of people will be thrown
> out of work, and
>
> 2) America's industrial base will be weakened, and therefore its
> ability to defend itself against the totalitarian powers (Russia and
> China).
<

This has already happened ! We import most semiconductors, we import
100% of the lead used to make bullets, titanium, chromium, ....
We exported all kinds of small scale manufacturing, taking middle
class jobs and converting them to subsistence jobs.

>
> So the way to win over this segment of the population is to have a
> *positive* plan for going carbon free, one that promises unlimited
> supplies of energy.
<

It is a strategy, I agree--an impossible to pull off strategy, but a strategy
none-the-less.

>
> And we've got that. We've got a proven technology that can be used
> to produce just about as much electricity as anyone could want for
> hundreds of years. Nuclear power. With reprocessing (and, hence,
> breeder reactors).
<

Going to be a tough sell to the Greens.

>
> Of course, some people think that nuclear reactors are unsafe.
> As they tend to be liberals, though, that could just be sold as
> another way to "own the libs", so I think it can be managed.
>
> Also, it's claimed that nuclear power is expensive. Some of that
> is because nuclear power projects often get hindered by
> attempts to block them. The applicable laws can be streamlined.
> Also, subsidies to big companies in the military-industrial
> complex aren't considered "socialism", so they're acceptable in
> the American political context.
<

You underestimate the backlash by 2 orders of magnitude.
And I am on your side.
>
> John Savard

[Stephen Fuld]

On 10/8/2021 4:03 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>
>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>> onto the grid ??
>>
>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>
>
> It is not just storage. There is transport, distribution, updates to
> infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
> materials and production of replacements, etc.

Most of those are just money, e.g. we know how to make electric cars,
update the grid, etc. Storage is still the big technolgical problem.

> And then there is the
> /real/ big issue - which country controls the resources. Big, powerful
> countries like the USA, Russia and China would rather destroy the planet
> with overheating than accept African desserts covered with solar panels
> as the powerhouse of the world.

I don't see anyone in the US objecting to solar panels in Africa. And,
yes, the US is number one or two in greenhouse gas emissions, partially
due to its economic development history. But we are starting to deal
with it, albeit more slowly than many of us, including me, would like.
I don't know anything about Russia's or China's position on that issue.

> There /is/ scope to get enough power from solar power in deserts, or
> wind power from mountainous areas, Antarctica, jet streams, etc. But it
> is in the wrong places. And there is not enough of the raw materials
> currently needed - lithium, rare earth metals, quality silicon, etc., -
> to make it work.
>
>> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
>> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
>> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
>> for Trump.)

Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the effects of global warming become
more and more apparent, the tide is turning more toward doing something
about it. Again, not fast enough for me, but it is moving.

> Conservative Americans are a small proportional of world population, but
> they are a serious PITA for any kind of progress. There are subgroups
> of them who fully understand that humans are a big influence on global
> warming, pollution, war, epidemics, and everything else bad in the world
> - but they /want/ that, because bringing on the end of the world is a
> step towards "rapture" and the "second coming".

That group is a truly tiny proportion. The people who don't want to
address the problem because it will cost them money or restrict their
freedom are a bigger problem. But fortunately, as I said above, that
proportion is shrinking.

There are several alternative nuclear power plant technologies, Each
has its proponents. Clearly, none of them has won out. Development
continues on many of them, even supported by the US government.

>
>> Of course, some people think that nuclear reactors are unsafe.
>> As they tend to be liberals, though, that could just be sold as
>> another way to "own the libs", so I think it can be managed.
>>
>
> That won't work in the USA - not at all. You have to have a solution
> that both sides of your ridiculous political rift can agree upon.
> Otherwise you'll have one president starting to build new nuclear power
> plants, then four or eight years later the next one will tear them down
> just as they are ready to go online.

While I agree that our current political situation is very harmful, if
that were the cause of lack of progress in nuclear power, you would
expect lots of new nuclear plants in other countries. Not only isn't
that happening, but some European countries are shutting theirs down.

>
>> Also, it's claimed that nuclear power is expensive. Some of that
>> is because nuclear power projects often get hindered by
>> attempts to block them.

Agreed. But the key word is "some". By their nature, current nuclear
plants are more expensive to build than other technologies.

[David Brown]

On 08/10/2021 17:22, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>> <
>>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>>>> What motivation will get us out ?
>>>
>>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
>>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
>>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
>>
>> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA".  Most of the west is happy to
>> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
>> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
>>
>> The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
>> means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them.  The
>> real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
>> than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.
>
> Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
> until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out".  See
> Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if the
> Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.
>

These can be looked at in /many/ ways. Perhaps it is best not to go
there in this thread - suffice to say that the views held by Americans
who were brought up on American history lessons are not the same as the
views held by Europeans brought up on European history lessons. It
doesn't matter what you have learned about history - if you think you
have learned the whole objective truth, you are wrong.

>
>> Currently,
>> China is the favourite enemy of the USA.  I don't mean that China does
>> /not/ pose a threat, economic, diplomatic and military, to the USA or
>> other countries - merely that the USA exaggerates it for its own
>> purposes.
>
> Or, conversely, Europe downplays it for its own purposes.  It's a matter
> of perspective.
>

I wasn't trying to suggest that Europe is right here, merely that the
USA is wrong!

>>
>> The rest of the west is caught up in the USA's chest-beating.  They have
>> to side with the USA, while at the same time trying to be more
>> cooperative trade partners with China, because that's what makes most
>> economic sense.
>
> Yes, at least in the short term.
>
>
>

What democracy has ever thought in terms other than the short term? A
government or ruler can do little else, when they are judged every few
years by people who typically have very little idea of the big picture.

(I don't mean other forms of government are better - a despot may be
able to work in the longer term, but that doesn't mean doing a better
job. Communist five year plans and ten year plans were not unmitigated
successes!)

[David Brown]

On 08/10/2021 17:47, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 10/8/2021 4:03 AM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 08/10/2021 06:33, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>> onto the grid ??
>>>
>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>>>
>>
>> It is not just storage.  There is transport, distribution, updates to
>> infrastructure, replacement of existing devices (like cars), raw
>> materials and production of replacements, etc.
> Most of those are just money, e.g. we know how to make electric cars,
> update the grid, etc.  Storage is still the big technolgical problem.
>

We don't know how to make reliable or sustainable electric cars. We can
make petrol cars that last twenty years, but some electric cars seem to
suffer endless problems, and many get scraped after small impacts
because it costs too much to fix battery packs. (The statistics on dead
electric cars are depressing.)

We don't know how to make electric car batteries that are efficient,
light, safe, and quick to charge. In particular, we don't know how to
make usable car batteries that are remotely sustainable or
environmentally friendly to produce.

We can make hydrogen production, hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen storage,
hydrogen transport, hydrogen distribution - we have all the technology
for making a hydrogen fuel based transport system except for one issue.
We don't know how to make good hydrogen fuel cell catalysts out of
something that won't run out long before there is a significant fleet of
hydrogen vehicles.

We don't know how to make electric vehicles that can be maintained and
repaired without highly specialised parts, equipment and training -
making them useless for less well developed countries and areas.
(That's becoming a problem for petrol and diesel cars too.)

I'd agree that money is a large factor here, but it is not the only
challenge.

>
>> And then there is the
>> /real/ big issue - which country controls the resources.  Big, powerful
>> countries like the USA, Russia and China would rather destroy the planet
>> with overheating than accept African desserts covered with solar panels
>> as the powerhouse of the world.
>
> I don't see anyone in the US objecting to solar panels in Africa.  And,
> yes, the US is number one or two in greenhouse gas emissions, partially
> due to its economic development history.  But we are starting to deal
> with it, albeit more slowly than many of us, including me, would like. I
> don't know anything about Russia's or China's position on that issue.
>

There is a (perfectly understandable) view that countries want to be
mostly self-sufficient for their power. We've had enough wars over oil,
and enough weaker countries taken over by stronger countries for their
fuel resources. We've had enough corruption, greed and inhumanity all
along the way. We don't want to repeat it all over new power sources.

>
>> There /is/ scope to get enough power from solar power in deserts, or
>> wind power from mountainous areas, Antarctica, jet streams, etc.  But it
>> is in the wrong places.  And there is not enough of the raw materials
>> currently needed - lithium, rare earth metals, quality silicon, etc., -
>> to make it work.
>>
>>> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
>>> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
>>> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
>>> for Trump.)
>
> Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the effects of global warming become
> more and more apparent, the tide is turning more toward doing something
> about it.  Again, not fast enough for me, but it is moving.
>

Too little, too late - but it's better than nothing at all.

>
>> Conservative Americans are a small proportional of world population, but
>> they are a serious PITA for any kind of progress.  There are subgroups
>> of them who fully understand that humans are a big influence on global
>> warming, pollution, war, epidemics, and everything else bad in the world
>> - but they /want/ that, because bringing on the end of the world is a
>> step towards "rapture" and the "second coming".
>
> That group is a truly tiny proportion.  The people who don't want to
> address the problem because it will cost them money or restrict their
> freedom are a bigger problem.  But fortunately, as I said above, that
> proportion is shrinking.
>

I hope you are right.

The politics of actually getting something done, however, is often
harder (in all countries, not just the USA - I'm just using it for
examples here). In the USA, the solid majority of people want hugely
stricter gun control and they want a public health service and public
education system in line with most of Europe. I realise the path to
getting there would be long and difficult, but there are no American
politicians willing to take the first step despite public opinion. The
majority of people want the government to "do something" about climate
change. What makes you optimistic that politicians will handle this one?

Yes - I don't think we need to consider the technical details here.

>
>>
>>> Of course, some people think that nuclear reactors are unsafe.
>>> As they tend to be liberals, though, that could just be sold as
>>> another way to "own the libs", so I think it can be managed.
>>>
>>
>> That won't work in the USA - not at all.  You have to have a solution
>> that both sides of your ridiculous political rift can agree upon.
>> Otherwise you'll have one president starting to build new nuclear power
>> plants, then four or eight years later the next one will tear them down
>> just as they are ready to go online.
>
>
> While I agree that our current political situation is very harmful, if
> that were the cause of lack of progress in nuclear power, you would
> expect lots of new nuclear plants in other countries.  Not only isn't
> that happening, but some European countries are shutting theirs down.
>

A lot of European politicians are totally spineless when it comes to
nuclear power - the USA does not have a monopoly on political problems
or navel-gazing policies. Some countries /are/ making progress in
nuclear power - India and China, in particular.

We suffer from a great deal of misunderstanding and short-sightedness in
terms of the environment. The majority of environmental activists are
concerned with here and now - they want to shut down coal-fired power
stations in their own country, even though it means importing
electricity generated elsewhere by dirtier coal. They want to ban
petrol cars on their streets, regardless of the environmental harm done
in mining the lithium to run the electric cars. They want to eat
"organic" food, without a care that it means running rivers dry for the
extra water needed compared to using non-organic farming methods.

I have been gladdened by some of the statements from one of our
traditionally extreme environmental groups here in Norway. There is a
new copper mine underway in the north of the country, and the plan is to
dump the waste rock in the fjord - as you can imagine, there have been
endless protests about it. But this group have said they think it is a
great idea, and a big boon for the environment - because the world needs
that copper if they are going to reduce fossil fuels. And the
alternative to controlled and monitored mining in Norway is corrupt and
uncontrolled mining in an African jungle where forests get burned down,
water supplies polluted, and warlords and corrupt politicians pocket the
profit. Mining in Norway is not good in itself, but far better than the
alternatives.

[MitchAlsup]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 11:46:39 AM UTC-5, David Brown wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 17:47, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> > That group is a truly tiny proportion. The people who don't want to
> > address the problem because it will cost them money or restrict their
> > freedom are a bigger problem. But fortunately, as I said above, that
> > proportion is shrinking.
> >
> I hope you are right.
>
> The politics of actually getting something done, however, is often
> harder (in all countries, not just the USA - I'm just using it for
> examples here). In the USA, the solid majority of people want hugely
> stricter gun control and they want a public health service and public
> education system in line with most of Europe. I realise the path to
> getting there would be long and difficult, but there are no American
> politicians willing to take the first step despite public opinion. The
> majority of people want the government to "do something" about climate
> change. What makes you optimistic that politicians will handle this one?
<

There is the problem of that second amendment thing:: first one has to
pass the amendment to amend the 2nd amendment, then 2/3rds of the
states have to ratify. Right now there is no chance of even getting 25 states
to ratify, let alone 34.
<
Secondly, right now the supreme court will not allow, and this will continue
to be the case for another 30 years.
<
So, even though 70%-odd want stricter/better gun laws--it is not realistic
to assume anything in this direction will happen for decades.

> >

> >
> >
> > While I agree that our current political situation is very harmful, if
> > that were the cause of lack of progress in nuclear power, you would
> > expect lots of new nuclear plants in other countries. Not only isn't
> > that happening, but some European countries are shutting theirs down.
> >
> A lot of European politicians are totally spineless when it comes to
> nuclear power - the USA does not have a monopoly on political problems
> or navel-gazing policies. Some countries /are/ making progress in
> nuclear power - India and China, in particular.
<

A bit more than a decade ago the world thought the Japanese had Nuclear
power under good control.......

>
> We suffer from a great deal of misunderstanding and short-sightedness in
> terms of the environment. The majority of environmental activists are
> concerned with here and now - they want to shut down coal-fired power
> stations in their own country, even though it means importing
> electricity generated elsewhere by dirtier coal. They want to ban
> petrol cars on their streets, regardless of the environmental harm done
> in mining the lithium to run the electric cars. They want to eat
> "organic" food, without a care that it means running rivers dry for the
> extra water needed compared to using non-organic farming methods.
<

If people were simply content to live in 1950, all of our problems would vanish.
But they are not content, and they have the votes to slow/prevent/hinder/.....

>
> I have been gladdened by some of the statements from one of our
> traditionally extreme environmental groups here in Norway. There is a
> new copper mine underway in the north of the country, and the plan is to
> dump the waste rock in the fjord - as you can imagine, there have been
> endless protests about it. But this group have said they think it is a
> great idea, and a big boon for the environment - because the world needs
> that copper if they are going to reduce fossil fuels. And the
> alternative to controlled and monitored mining in Norway is corrupt and
> uncontrolled mining in an African jungle where forests get burned down,
> water supplies polluted, and warlords and corrupt politicians pocket the
> profit. Mining in Norway is not good in itself, but far better than the
> alternatives.
<

Without big finds of copper ore, the EV world cannot materialize.

[Ivan Godard]

It took the Depression to give FDR the landslide he needed. Hoover in '24!

[chris]

I've been monitoring the climate change issue for over a decade, and
it's not so clear cut as those with an agenda would claim. Climate
change ?, yes, but no evidence for a climate emergency. We have decades
to sort this out and humanity will fix it just as they always have in
the past, through advances in the sciences and the political will to
push the R&D. Instead, most of the western world running round like
headless chickens, while the likes of China and India carry on business
as usual and are unlikely to change.

The we have Guardian readers wavng arms about, talking wind farms and
battery storage, in complete ignorance of science and engineering
reality. Madness indeed...

Chris

[MitchAlsup]

Only let those with an IQ above 120 vote !
>
> Chris

[Stefan Monnier]

> I've been monitoring the climate change issue for over a decade,

AFAIK the climate change issue started in the 70s (when the oil
companies's own studies found it out).

> and it's not so clear cut as those with an agenda would claim.

Not sure what that means. AFAICT climate denial is mostly backed by
large corporate interests, whereas climate crisis doesn't have nearly as
much money behind it.

So what kind of agenda do "those" have, you think?

> Climate change ?, yes, but no evidence for a climate emergency.

As computer scientists, we should be well aware of the way exponential
growth of something means that the transition from "usable" to
"unusable" hits very hard.

I'm not sure how urgent the situation is, but I know that I don't want
to get anywhere near that transition.

> We have decades to sort this out

When sorting this out may imply quite fundamental changes in the way our
societies and economies work (and not just in one or two countries, but
really worldwide), I think "decades" is an extremely short amount
of time.

> and humanity will fix it just as they always have in the past,

AFAIK in cases of crisis what tends to happen is war.

It may ultimately be beneficial in terms of emissions, if it kills
a large enough fraction of the population and industry, but in the
short/medium term it's one of the worst forms of pollution and
greenhouse gas emissions.

So I'm not sure it's one of those "will fix itself". It's think it's
much more likely to be one of those unstable systems that gets even
more worse when it gets worse.

> through advances in the sciences and the political will to push the
> R&D.

AFAIK there has been virtually no case in humanity's history where
technological progress has reduced consumption of resources (any
improvement in efficiency has always resulted in matching increase in
use).

Science may still be part of the answer, but I think the answer can only
come from very conscious political decisions to mandate specific changes
(and not just to fund R&D).

> Instead, most of the western world running round like headless
> chickens,

I see a fair bit of talk, but not much in terms of concrete actions.
Definitely nothing like "running".


Stefan

[MitchAlsup]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 1:57:10 PM UTC-5, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I've been monitoring the climate change issue for over a decade,
> AFAIK the climate change issue started in the 70s (when the oil
> companies's own studies found it out).
<

The most surprising thing about climate change is that nothing about the
conclusions reached have changed since the 1950's.

<
> > and it's not so clear cut as those with an agenda would claim.
> Not sure what that means. AFAICT climate denial is mostly backed by
> large corporate interests, whereas climate crisis doesn't have nearly as
> much money behind it.
>
> So what kind of agenda do "those" have, you think?
> > Climate change ?, yes, but no evidence for a climate emergency.
> As computer scientists, we should be well aware of the way exponential
> growth of something means that the transition from "usable" to
> "unusable" hits very hard.
<

If no more carbon was emitted into the atmosphere starting tomorrow,

the earth will continue to warm until at least 2300 (278 years from now).
<
The point of no return was at least 15 years ago.

>
> I'm not sure how urgent the situation is, but I know that I don't want
> to get anywhere near that transition.
> > We have decades to sort this out
<

We have closer to -2 decades to figure this out than +2 decades.

<
> When sorting this out may imply quite fundamental changes in the way our
> societies and economies work (and not just in one or two countries, but
> really worldwide), I think "decades" is an extremely short amount
> of time.
> > and humanity will fix it just as they always have in the past,
> AFAIK in cases of crisis what tends to happen is war.
<

Which, after a short period of time, reduces the population to where
that population is sustainable.

>
> It may ultimately be beneficial in terms of emissions, if it kills
> a large enough fraction of the population and industry, but in the
> short/medium term it's one of the worst forms of pollution and
> greenhouse gas emissions.
>
> So I'm not sure it's one of those "will fix itself". It's think it's
> much more likely to be one of those unstable systems that gets even
> more worse when it gets worse.
<

20 years ago I had hope, now there is none.

<
> > through advances in the sciences and the political will to push the
> > R&D.
> AFAIK there has been virtually no case in humanity's history where
> technological progress has reduced consumption of resources (any
> improvement in efficiency has always resulted in matching increase in
> use).
<

Energy use continues to increase as technological progress continues.

>
> Science may still be part of the answer, but I think the answer can only
> come from very conscious political decisions to mandate specific changes
> (and not just to fund R&D).
<

Good luck getting large populations to vote themselves into poverty.

<
> > Instead, most of the western world running round like headless
> > chickens,
> I see a fair bit of talk, but not much in terms of concrete actions.
> Definitely nothing like "running".
<

You mean concrete actions like reducing the population of the planet by 80% ??
>
>
> Stefan

[Terje Mathisen]

Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>> <
>>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>>>> What motivation will get us out ?
>>>
>>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
>>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
>>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
>>
>> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA".  Most of the west is happy to
>> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
>> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
>>
>> The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
>> means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them.  The
>> real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
>> than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.
>
> Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
> until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out".  See
> Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if the
> Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.

Norway and the rest of NATO all depend on having the US as the big
brother in the group, that's obviously correct.

OTOH, the only time the common defense part of the NATO charter has been
used was after 9/11 when all the NATO countries came to the aid of USA.

A "funny" side effect of that was the American general who revealed the
existence of the FSK, a Norwegian elite special force that had existed
since shortly after WW2, hiding in plain sight among the "regular"
well-known special forces, like the navy underwater demolition divers.
(I believe they trace their history & inspiration back to the group that
blew up the heavy water plant in Rjukan, without firing a single shot.)

I'm a reserve officer and I had never heard a single rumour about such a
unit, which is pretty well done since every prime minister and his/her
minister of defence all had to be briefed about them, over a 50-year
time span.

BTW, FSK are experts on long-duration missions in winter/cold/high
altitude, they went into Iraq very early in the build-up to the invasion.

Terje


--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

[BGB]

Sometimes I wonder if everyone around here thinks I am kind of an idiot
sometimes, and I still feel like one sometimes, but apparently I am in
the general area around 140 or so.


I wonder then how more normal people function, or what sort of world
they live in. I suspect whatever it is, it is possibly a little
different than my own.


Like, even for mundane things like "What religion am I?"
Well, I can give a label, but beyond this, things are not quite so simple.

It isn't easily reduced to a set of yes/no answers to whether or not I
believe certain things to be true or false, but rather like I am stuck
in a sort of winding possibility space, where several different
religions exist as locations exist within this possibility space, and I
seemingly exist on both sides of the various "theological questions you
are not allowed to ask" at the same time, seeing other possible
structures within this greater "theological possibility space" which
would possibly cause many conservatives to lose their crap if even
hinted at as possibilities, ...

Then I end up generally backing down from saying much. Most people
either wont care, and for those which might, it ends up with needless
conflict, and I am still left with the issue that the labels don't work.


So, each label is like planting a flag and being like "I am here, I will
not move from this spot", but therein lies the problem:
One can claim to be a Christian, but this doesn't feel honest;
Don't really fit in the Judaism camp either;
Being agnostic is probably more accurate but needlessly exclusive;
Not atheist either, but will admit to wandering through this space.

Agnostic fits in the sense that I will not claim to have a solid or
definitive answer, but tends to also be associated with people who bury
their heads in the sane and declare that it is unknowable, which isn't
quite right either (as opposed to someone who sort of lives the
experience of being, in a sense, within all four categories
simultaneously; and whose interpretation of some points can't be reduced
to simple yes or no answers).


Or, basically, what if one mentally navigates the theology space in a
similar way to how one might navigate the possibility space within a
programming task?... Or, at least for me, I don't move from "point A" to
"point B" in discrete steps, so much as spreading out into the space and
then converging in on an answer that looks like it has an interesting
outcome (or, in an abstract sense, almost like "sailing a boat within
the thought space").



But, at the same time, I am (probably by definition) not really able to
imagine how people smarter than myself might deal with all of this.

And, even with as smart as I may or may not be, my existence sometimes
still seems pretty much worthless and otherwise rather pathetic.

But, well, at least writing code is something I can do sorta OK.



Well, or coming up with stuff to put into scifi stories, eg:
Colonizing the Moon with domes made mostly out of Silicone and Aramid;
Various types of plasma thrusters;
More crazy stuff, like trying to use a cyclotron + linear accelerator as
an engine (to eject a plasma stream at relativistic speeds);
...

Then sitting around expecting people to be like "What the hell? That
wont work!".

In my mind, it is like one just sorta imagines the structures, and
imagines how the waves of a VHF source might propagate through the
structure and drag the ions along with it (and how the interactions
between the plasma and magnetic fields within the structure might incur
kinetic forces on the structure, ...).

Like, in these cases, the signals would be moving fast enough that
conventional electronics or coils wont work, and instead the "logic" or
"mechanics" of the device are mostly based on how the electromagnetic
wavefront would propagate through the structure.

Then ends up imagining something which kinda resembles 4 isochronous
cyclotrons (resembling octagons made out of curved sections) glued
together and feeding into a linear section which resembles a
copper+steel helix with a pair of copper rails on the outside. In their
imagination, the wave travels along the rails and through the helical
segments, dragging the plasma along in small bundles along the path of
the wave, and seeing the propagation of the wave fronts moving the ions
along in the circular paths within the cyclotron sections (and how they
would need to be in counter-rotating pairs to keep the structure from
going into a spin), ... One can also imagine various wave guides within
the structure used to help direct RF energy and modify its phase, ...

Well, and part of the structure would also need to contain some (fairly
large) neodymium magnets (mostly so that the cyclotrons can do their
thing), and some curved iron sections (which merge the fields from one
cyclotron to the next, causing the whole thing to function like a
singular circular magnetic field passing through all 4 cyclotrons).

...


But, then wonders, what would most other people imagine in this
situation?...

I am left to wonder if for many people, stuff like this falls outside of
what they can imagine (like, not so much whether or not it could be
built in reality, or "actually work", but whether they could imagine
such a structure in the first place). This thought seems almost sad in a
way...

But, in a way, someone smarter might see defects in the structure, or
realize why such a thing could never work, ...


Or, as can also be noted, people tend to remain painfully unaware about
how plainly obvious the limits in their thinking are to everyone around
them, but like, no one says anything out of trying to be respectful
(well, since this is sort of a trap for which there is no escape).

So, in my case, I can't exactly rule out this situation either.

But, like, I make no claims other than "Well, I am, basically, what I am".

...

[anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl]

Stephen Fuld <sf...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
> > On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
> >> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
> >>> <
> >>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
> >>> What motivation will get us out ?
> >>
> >> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
> >> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
> >> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
> >
> > Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA". Most of the west is happy to
> > work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
> > rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
> >
> > The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
> > means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them. The
> > real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
> > than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.
>
> Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
> until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out". See
> Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if the
> Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.

If you look at actions threat was USA. In period of 1950-1990 USA
conducted several military interventions:

Korean War
Gwatemala 1954 intervention
Bay of Pig invasion
Dominican 1965 intervention
Wietnam War (with bombing of neigbours)
Grenada 1983
Panama 1990

In that period I know of 4 soviet intervention:

Soviet air force in Korean War
intervention in Hungary 1956
intervention in Czechoslovakia 1968
Afganistan War

And while USA happlily threatens and attacks other countries to this
day, soviet system collapsed after (and partially due to) Afganistan
War: important part of "soviet package" was preserving peace.
With Afganistan war this was broken and caused significant drop
in popular support for sovoer regime.

Of couse, soviet block had plans to attack "west". But realistically,
west and USA in particular always had much stronger forces.
And reality of modern war is that army which refuses to attack
looses. Soviet block could hope that in case of war western
losses would be high enough to deter attack and that apparently
worked, we had peace in Europe for long time.

In Poland, where I live we do not have much sentiment for Soviet
Union, it was percevied as foreign force exploiting Poland and
forcing Soviet interest on Poland. But now we replaced this
by USA forcing their interest on Poland. Of couse, dependence
on USA has some advantages compared to dependence on Soviet
Union. but USA policy is not so nice as USA propaganda tries
to claim.

> > Currently,
> > China is the favourite enemy of the USA. I don't mean that China does
> > /not/ pose a threat, economic, diplomatic and military, to the USA or
> > other countries - merely that the USA exaggerates it for its own purposes.
>
> Or, conversely, Europe downplays it for its own purposes. It's a matter
> of perspective.

I read recent article about increase of China naval forces. According
to ariticle China is a threat because now US Navy no longer is stronger
in sees surrounding China. In other words, USA can no longer
realistically threaten China with naval intervention on China shores,
so China is a threat to USA. This kind of logic is ludicrous to
unbiased observer, but apparently USA policy is/was based on it...

--
Waldek Hebisch

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 11:58:19 AM UTC-6, chris wrote:

> I've been monitoring the climate change issue for over a decade, and
> it's not so clear cut as those with an agenda would claim. Climate
> change ?, yes, but no evidence for a climate emergency.

Although I haven't crunched the numbers for climate change myself,
my understanding is that climate change is the outcome of an
increased carbon dioxide level changing the Earth's equilibrium
temperature.

The Earth's _actual_ temperature has, at this time, increased enough
to lead to noticeable changes in our climate.

As it takes a considerable _time_ for the Earth's average temperature to
move to a new equilibrium value, this leads me to suspect that if
present-day carbon dioxide levels stopped increasing, the world would
still continue getting warmer for quite some time to come, and, thus,
the ultimate result of today's carbon dioxide levels will be more serious,
likely much more serious, than anything we see today.

Plus, I *don't* define a "climate emergency" as, say, having to evacuate
New York City because it is about to be undersea due to rising sea
levels. Instead, multiple famines in tropical countries due to crop
failures caused by a warmer planet is enough of an emergency to me
to justify drastic measures to avoid it.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 12:28:11 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:

> Only let those with an IQ above 120 vote !

I suppose I *could* tell you to Google
"literacy tests" voting "United States"
for how that might work out in practice.

Not that I don't share the sentiment, even if some might call it
elitist. I'd settle for something achievable, though:

1) Only let people who have graduated high school vote, and
2) Ensure the high school curriculum once more educates
graduates to at least the level that was expected back in the
1950s or 1960s.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 1:06:32 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 1:57:10 PM UTC-5, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> > AFAIK in cases of crisis what tends to happen is war.

> Which, after a short period of time, reduces the population to where
> that population is sustainable.

Historically, the amount by which even the most major wars reduced
the population sizes of the countries involved can best be described
as "negligible", with the exception of the War of the Triple Alliance
against Paraguay.

Of course, if the war is of the "global thermonuclear" variety, significant
reductions in the human population could be achieved, but they would
be accompanied by additional reductions in the carrying capacity of
the planet. Thus, it might be that most of the credit would go not to the
war itself, but to the mass famines that happen afterward.

John Savard

[EricP]

Western countries always short changed their millitary and depended
on nukes as a fall back. The US neutron bombs were specifically designed
to enhance neutron radiation giving a lethal dose to Soviet tank crews.
This would force the Soviets to break up their tank attack
but also forces the US to go nuclear almost immediately.

Soviets knew, as did everyone else, that if they attacked that the West
would be forced to resort to nukes within 48 hours, probably on west
soil at least at first (which many West Germans figured out and
therefore were none too pleased with this tactic, thus the protests).

So the US saved gobs of money by putting themselves in a position
where they were forced to use nukes almost immediately in West Germany.
This effectively neutralized the 10,000 Soviet tanks because when Soviets
asked themselves 'Are the Americans willing to sacrifice West Germany
to stop our tanks?' the answer was yes they would.

And since everyone knew the Soviets would probably respond to nukes
with nukes, and everyone assumed it would escalate to US vs Russia ICBMs
(because both sides viewed their arsenals as "use it or lose it"
and had launch on warning policy (because the flight time of a submarine
launched missile from Atlantic coast to Washington DC is 5 minutes so
the whole launch decision has to be made within that 5 minutes))
it was a Mexican standoff and no one was going to cross that border.

There is a wonderful 2013 documentary called "The Man Who Saved the World"
about a Soviet nuclear missile commander who in 1983 refused to launch
a counter attack against the US because he believed the launch detect
warning systems signaling an attack were giving false signals (they were).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World

> In Poland, where I live we do not have much sentiment for Soviet
> Union, it was percevied as foreign force exploiting Poland and
> forcing Soviet interest on Poland. But now we replaced this
> by USA forcing their interest on Poland. Of couse, dependence
> on USA has some advantages compared to dependence on Soviet
> Union. but USA policy is not so nice as USA propaganda tries
> to claim.

But no more Lada's so that's a plus.

[EricP]

EricP wrote:
>
> There is a wonderful 2013 documentary called "The Man Who Saved the World"
> about a Soviet nuclear missile commander who in 1983 refused to launch
> a counter attack against the US because he believed the launch detect
> warning systems signaling an attack were giving false signals (they were).
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_the_World

After the fall of the Soviet Union the former missile commander
Stanislav Petrov goes to the US to meet Kevin Costner and tours about.
The documentary is about the almost launch, the aftermath for him,
and that trip to the US and tour his old adversary.

There is a full copy on youtube. 1h 45m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TNdihbV5go

[John Levine]

According to Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>:

>> Which, after a short period of time, reduces the population to where
>> that population is sustainable.
>
>Historically, the amount by which even the most major wars reduced
>the population sizes of the countries involved can best be described
>as "negligible", with the exception of the War of the Triple Alliance
>against Paraguay.

World War I wiped out a generation of young men in Europe.

Out of a total German population of 67 million, 11 million were in
the military, 1.7 million died, 4.2 million wounded, 1.1 million
prisoners or missing

France, population 41M, 8.4M in military, 1.3M killed, 4.2M wounded,
.5M prisoners or missing. Similar for Britain, Austria-Hungary, Russia,
and other smaller countries. US casualties were much less since we
skipped the first 3/4 of the war.

It's not Paraguay but it was a huge chunk of the working age population.

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[Stephen Fuld]

Yes. And I, for at least one, and many others are most appreciative.
And for what it is worth, I think President Biden handled the pull out
from Afghanistan very poorly, particularly with regard to consultation
with our NATO allies. We owed you better than that.

> A "funny" side effect of that was the American general who revealed the
> existence of the FSK, a Norwegian elite special force that had existed
> since shortly after WW2, hiding in plain sight among the "regular"
> well-known special forces, like the navy underwater demolition divers.

I did not know about that. Then shame on us.

> (I believe they trace their history & inspiration back to the group that
> blew up the heavy water plant in Rjukan, without firing a single shot.)

You may recall some years ago I sent you a link to an American
documentary about that. It was great work.

[Stephen Fuld]

If you want to say that the US is far from perfect; that we sometimes
don't act in ways consistent with the image we have of ourselves and try
to project to others, and that we make mistakes, then I certainly agree.

> And while USA happlily threatens and attacks other countries to this
> day,

I disagree with the characterization of "happily". And I don't think we
have attacked any country in the last say 15 years (Since Iraq, which
was a bad blunder for us). And I think we really aren't threatening
anyone today who isn't threatening us or our allies.

> soviet system collapsed after (and partially due to) Afganistan
> War: important part of "soviet package" was preserving peace.
> With Afganistan war this was broken and caused significant drop
> in popular support for sovoer regime.

Agreed.

> Of couse, soviet block had plans to attack "west". But realistically,
> west and USA in particular always had much stronger forces.
> And reality of modern war is that army which refuses to attack
> looses. Soviet block could hope that in case of war western
> losses would be high enough to deter attack and that apparently
> worked, we had peace in Europe for long time.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what point you are making here. Clearly
the deterrence of NATO prevented the Soviet Union from expanding their
dominance in eastern Europe to western Europe.

> In Poland, where I live we do not have much sentiment for Soviet
> Union, it was percevied as foreign force exploiting Poland and
> forcing Soviet interest on Poland.

OK.

> But now we replaced this
> by USA forcing their interest on Poland.

In what way is the US forcing its interests on Poland? I confess to not
a lot of knowledge about the subject. My impression, drawn mostly for
western media, is that Poland, after a period of growth of democracy and
its economy, is experiencing a period of more populist, anti democratic
positions, and that both the US and western Europe are "concerned".

You are obviously much closer and more knowledgeable about the
situation, so please tell us what we should know.

> Of couse, dependence
> on USA has some advantages compared to dependence on Soviet
> Union.

How is Poland dependent on the US?

> but USA policy is not so nice as USA propaganda tries
> to claim.

I wouldn't doubt that, but I don't have much knowledge. What are we
doing that isn't "nice"?

>>> Currently,
>>> China is the favourite enemy of the USA. I don't mean that China does
>>> /not/ pose a threat, economic, diplomatic and military, to the USA or
>>> other countries - merely that the USA exaggerates it for its own purposes.
>>
>> Or, conversely, Europe downplays it for its own purposes. It's a matter
>> of perspective.
>
> I read recent article about increase of China naval forces. According
> to ariticle China is a threat because now US Navy no longer is stronger
> in sees surrounding China. In other words, USA can no longer
> realistically threaten China with naval intervention on China shores,
> so China is a threat to USA.

I don't think anyone in the US is worried about naval intervention on
China's shores, unless they attack Taiwan. On the other hand, there is
evidence that Australia is worried about China's navy. Clearly China is
building up its Navy. The question is why and what are they planning?

BTW, I am aware that this is all very OT for comp.arch. I am willing to
pursue it further, (I enjoy learning other's perspectives.) but if
others object, I understand and will stop.

[Thomas Koenig]

Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:

> On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 1:06:32 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>> On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 1:57:10 PM UTC-5, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>
>> > AFAIK in cases of crisis what tends to happen is war.
>
>> Which, after a short period of time, reduces the population to where
>> that population is sustainable.
>
> Historically, the amount by which even the most major wars reduced
> the population sizes of the countries involved can best be described
> as "negligible", with the exception of the War of the Triple Alliance
> against Paraguay.

Thirty Year's war, that reduced the population of Germany by 20-45%.

[David Brown]

On 08/10/2021 23:06, Terje Mathisen wrote:
> Stephen Fuld wrote:
>> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>> <
>>>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
>>>>> What motivation will get us out ?
>>>>
>>>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
>>>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
>>>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
>>>
>>> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA".  Most of the west is happy to
>>> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
>>> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
>>>
>>> The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
>>> means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them.  The
>>> real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
>>> than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.
>>
>> Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
>> until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out". 
>> See Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if
>> the Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.
>
> Norway and the rest of NATO all depend on having the US as the big
> brother in the group, that's obviously correct.

Equally, the US depends on Norway and the rest of NATO for defence
against the old USSR (modern Russia is a lot less of a military threat
these days - they have found it is cheaper, safer and more effective to
manipulate elections and that kind of thing).

Europe can certainly be glad the USA eventually joined WWII, and that
they are in NATO. But don't imagine that the USA did it to be nice to
Europeans, or that we owe them anything - the USA did it because it was
best for the USA, and Europeans get nothing free here. Don't
misunderstand me - I think that is absolutely fine. A good agreement,
alliance, trade deal, etc., is when all sides get something good for
them. Just don't imagine that the USA is a kind big brother looking out
for us little people in Europe - the USA entered WWII and NATO for their
own benefit.

>
> OTOH, the only time the common defense part of the NATO charter has been
> used was after 9/11 when all the NATO countries came to the aid of USA.
>

You forgot the quotation marks around "aid".

> A "funny" side effect of that was the American general who revealed the
> existence of the FSK, a Norwegian elite special force that had existed
> since shortly after WW2, hiding in plain sight among the "regular"
> well-known special forces, like the navy underwater demolition divers.
> (I believe they trace their history & inspiration back to the group that
> blew up the heavy water plant in Rjukan, without firing a single shot.)
>
> I'm a reserve officer and I had never heard a single rumour about such a
> unit, which is pretty well done since every prime minister and his/her
> minister of defence all had to be briefed about them, over a 50-year
> time span.
>
> BTW, FSK are experts on long-duration missions in winter/cold/high
> altitude, they went into Iraq very early in the build-up to the invasion.
>

They also did a lot of recognisance and other missions in the
Afghanistan mountains, AFAIK.

[Ivan Godard]

reconnaissance?

[cla...@hotmail.com]

David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> writes:

> On 08/10/2021 23:06, Terje Mathisen wrote:
>> Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>>>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>>> <

[..]

>
> Equally, the US depends on Norway and the rest of NATO for defence
> against the old USSR (modern Russia is a lot less of a military threat
> these days - they have found it is cheaper, safer and more effective to
> manipulate elections and that kind of thing).
>
> Europe can certainly be glad the USA eventually joined WWII, and that
> they are in NATO. But don't imagine that the USA did it to be nice to
> Europeans, or that we owe them anything - the USA did it because it was

I'm confused. here ^^ (who are we?)

> best for the USA, and Europeans get nothing free here. Don't
> misunderstand me - I think that is absolutely fine. A good agreement,
> alliance, trade deal, etc., is when all sides get something good for
> them. Just don't imagine that the USA is a kind big brother looking out

^^^^ (who are them?)

> for us little people in Europe - the USA entered WWII and NATO for their

^^ (who are us?)
> own benefit.
>

I don't quite remember wher you are, originally, from (before defecting
til Norge that is)

[..]

P.S. this post assumes monospaced-ligaless font (for carrets to line up /
make sense)

[David Brown]

I appreciate that changing gun laws for the better is difficult and
time-consuming. Some kinds of laws take a long time to change, and you
also have to change practices - you'd be greatly reducing a significant
industry and retail system, and you have to figure out how to get guns
out of criminals' hands, not just how to stop them getting more so
easily. Yes, it would be a matter of decades to get the USA into a more
civilised place with respect to guns.

But the point is, it will take decades from the time the process is
started - and no politician will start it.

>>>
>
>>>
>>>
>>> While I agree that our current political situation is very harmful, if
>>> that were the cause of lack of progress in nuclear power, you would
>>> expect lots of new nuclear plants in other countries. Not only isn't
>>> that happening, but some European countries are shutting theirs down.
>>>
>> A lot of European politicians are totally spineless when it comes to
>> nuclear power - the USA does not have a monopoly on political problems
>> or navel-gazing policies. Some countries /are/ making progress in
>> nuclear power - India and China, in particular.
> <
> A bit more than a decade ago the world thought the Japanese had Nuclear
> power under good control.......

I recommend learning from mistakes - our own and other peoples' - rather
than panicking and throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It's
important to note that Japan's massive over-reaction to the Fukushima
disaster killed a lot more people than the reactor did.

[David Brown]

Twice in two days! Maybe someone has swapped out my coffee for decaf.

[David Brown]

On 09/10/2021 11:23, cla...@hotmail.com wrote:
> David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> writes:
>
>> On 08/10/2021 23:06, Terje Mathisen wrote:
>>> Stephen Fuld wrote:
>>>> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
>>>>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
>>>>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> <
>
> [..]
>
>>
>> Equally, the US depends on Norway and the rest of NATO for defence
>> against the old USSR (modern Russia is a lot less of a military threat
>> these days - they have found it is cheaper, safer and more effective to
>> manipulate elections and that kind of thing).
>>
>> Europe can certainly be glad the USA eventually joined WWII, and that
>> they are in NATO. But don't imagine that the USA did it to be nice to
>> Europeans, or that we owe them anything - the USA did it because it was
>
> I'm confused. here ^^ (who are we?)

Europe.

>
>> best for the USA, and Europeans get nothing free here. Don't
>> misunderstand me - I think that is absolutely fine. A good agreement,
>> alliance, trade deal, etc., is when all sides get something good for
>> them. Just don't imagine that the USA is a kind big brother looking out
> ^^^^ (who are them?)
>

Everyone involved in an alliance (in this case, NATO).

>> for us little people in Europe - the USA entered WWII and NATO for their
> ^^ (who are us?)

Europeans.

>> own benefit.
>>
>
> I don't quite remember wher you are, originally, from (before defecting
> til Norge that is)
>

Scotland.

> [..]
>
> P.S. this post assumes monospaced-ligaless font (for carrets to line up /
> make sense)
>

Of course - why would anyone use anything else in emails?

[David Brown]

The problem is not people's IQ or their general education. The problem
is how much people know about the issues they are voting on, and how
much of what they "know" is actually based on reality and objective
facts (to the extent that objectivity can be determined).

I think you either have to say that politics should be left in the hands
of trained professionals, with a system of specific education, tests,
accreditation, etc., such as you have for doctors and lawyers - or you
accept that you have a poor quality but fair system and let (almost)
everyone vote equally. Anything in between and you'll still have people
voting based on "gut feeling", habit, or something they read on
Facebook, and it won't even be fair or representative.

[cla...@hotmail.com]

Hah! When i had a brief gig in .no, the second floor of the house where
the company i was employed by rented the first one for me and my
colleague, were rented by Scottish construction workers who worked on
Bergen's hospital renovation. I thought to myself then - Norwegians must
be really loaded if they can afford to hire Brits for construction work
the idea was solidified when a Finn has referred to them on IRC as -
"those oil barons"

>
>> [..]
>>
>> P.S. this post assumes monospaced-ligaless font (for carrets to line up /
>> make sense)
>>
>
> Of course - why would anyone use anything else in emails?

;)

[Stefan Monnier]

>> What motivation will get us out ?

> Same thing. As we learn the costs of supply interruptions, etc. to profits
> companies will react accordingly.

The "magical market" tends to have problems managing short term gains
versus long term costs, sadly.


Stefan

[Stephen Fuld]

I certainly agree with that. And, as I said elsewhere, we are far from
perfect. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that e.g. western
Europe with its US "influence", was far better off than eastern Europe
with its Soviet "influence". And just ask the people of Hong Kong about
Chinese "influence". :-(

[Stephen Fuld]

True. But we are seeing some movement. To bring this back to some
relation to this NG. Intel is investing tens of billions of dollars
into new fabs, mostly in the US, and one in Europe. Other industries
are doing similar, albeit on a much smaller scale.

[David Brown]

No doubts there!

[Quadibloc]

On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 11:43:45 PM UTC-6, Stephen Fuld wrote:

> And for what it is worth, I think President Biden handled the pull out
> from Afghanistan very poorly, particularly with regard to consultation
> with our NATO allies. We owed you better than that.

The Afghan people were the most seriously affected by the precipitous
nature of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since Canada had already
withdrawn all its forces at that time, we, at least, can hardly complain
about being directly affected by any lack of consultation.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 4:08:00 AM UTC-6, David Brown wrote:
> or you
> accept that you have a poor quality but fair system and let (almost)
> everyone vote equally.

I do believe that we cannot stray very far from that principle,
since the point of democracy is to hold the government
accountable to the people.
People may not be experts, but they can, and will, vote to
protect their vital interests.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 2:37:33 AM UTC-6, David Brown wrote:
> On 08/10/2021 23:06, Terje Mathisen wrote:

> > OTOH, the only time the common defense part of the NATO charter has been
> > used was after 9/11 when all the NATO countries came to the aid of USA.

> You forgot the quotation marks around "aid".

Canada's airport in Gander, Newfoundland was helpful to some individual
Americans, but that has nothing to do with common defense.

Canada and the United Kingdom, at least, sent combat troops to Afghanistan,
even if Canada did not send any troops to Iraq. Our contribution may have
been small, but it was real.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 2:37:33 AM UTC-6, David Brown wrote:

> Just don't imagine that the USA is a kind big brother looking out
> for us little people in Europe - the USA entered WWII and NATO for their
> own benefit.

That is... _largely_ true.

However, on December 7, 1941, it was _Japan_ that bombed Pearl
Harbor. The United States _chose_ to issue an ultimatum to Nazi
Germany to either declare war on Japan, or face war with the
United States; presumably, it could have fought with Japan alone,
and ignored events in Europe - or at least only insisted that Germany
break its alliance with Japan, and not aid it in any way to avoid war
with the U.S..

When it comes to the Cold War...

That was indeed a conflict between the United States and the Soviet
Union, and preventing the latter from acquiring additional territory in
Europe was to the United States' benefit.

The Korean War, for example, was comparable to... World War II
starting, with the involvement of the United States, within days of
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Of course, _that_ didn't
happen.

Why was the course of the war against the Axis so different from
the course of the Cold War? Anyone familiar with the Red Scare of
the 1920s and McCarthyism will have no problem understanding
the reason: business elites in the United States viewed Communist
ideology as directly threatening, while other dictatorships conquering
their neighbors was... their neighbors' problem, which the United
States could safely ignore.

NATO was a response by the United States to something that was
politically percieved as a threat, but not to a threat to the United
States' own vital security interests. It went considerably above what
was necessary for those, even if the motive was not to look after
the people of Europe any more than it was to look after the people of
Korea and Vietnam.

John Savard

[Stephen Fuld]

There was also the not so small matter of early WW2 activity could be
regarded by many in the US as "Europe's problem". One which we could
safely ignore. Once the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons, we
couldn't ignore the threat as "only affecting far away countries".

> NATO was a response by the United States to something that was
> politically percieved as a threat, but not to a threat to the United
> States' own vital security interests.

I think WW2 showed the US that threats to Europe were threats to the US
vital interests.

[John Dallman]

In article <5b31fbcb-20c9-4841...@googlegroups.com>,

jsa...@ecn.ab.ca (Quadibloc) wrote:

> However, on December 7, 1941, it was _Japan_ that bombed Pearl
> Harbor.

OK so far.

> The United States _chose_ to issue an ultimatum to Nazi
> Germany to either declare war on Japan, or face war with the
> United States; presumably, it could have fought with Japan alone,
> and ignored events in Europe - or at least only insisted that
> Germany break its alliance with Japan, and not aid it in any way
> to avoid war with the U.S..

Citation? The usually accepted view is that Germany (and Italy) declared
war on the USA first, which responded by declaring war on them. They were
not obliged to declare war on the USA by any treaties or other
obligations to Japan.

John

[MitchAlsup]

I gave up voting for things that would have cost me money about a decade ago
when the people of Texas continuously voted against their better interests
{better schools, better vocational training, better treatment by the police, and
higher <low> wage pay.} Instead they vote for Gods, Guns, and against Gays.
<
Some people vote for their better interests, others don't bother to pay enough
attention to decide is Pol[a] is pulling their leg or not as long as what Pol[a] say
superficially seems to be what they might have wanted if voter[v] had bothered
to look at the fine details.
>
> John Savard

[BGB]

Yeah.

One has a tradeoff.

On one hand, one can have an autocracy / oligarchy / ...

Or, on the other hand, one can have a democracy which reduces down to
unfiltered public opinion. Whichever position can win over the masses
better, wins.


Arguably, a "representative democracy" is a reasonable compromise, as
one can assume that the representatives have at least some level of
merit to get into the position of being elected into a position of
authority.

Though, in the latter, one then has to distinguish between whether the
votes determine the results directly, or whether the votes are treated
more like public-opinion polls. People might get upset and consider
their vote useless if it is regularly ignored.


But, at the same time, if the representatives only act within the the
bounds of the public vote, then it reduces to a similar situation to the
direct democracy. In this case, the number of officials elected per a
given area and population may come into play, ...

Then one may end up with people in more densely populated areas
complaining that they have less representation than those in less
densely populated areas, since under this system, ...

...


So, at least, in these senses, the current system in the US would appear
to be reasonably sensibly designed.

Though one major flaw with a system like this:
It reduces down to two parties almost invariably;
At some point, an instability may develop, and one of the parties may be
effectively evicted from the system (reducing it to a single party system,).

Once it collapses to single-party rule, a march towards oligarchy seems
almost inevitable, short of being able to pull a "hard reset" on the
whole system.

It seems like the founders who came up with the system were aware of all
of this, though in this case it is unclear why they didn't specify the
use of a cumulative voting / weighted voting at all levels, which would
likely have been more stable over a longer time-frame than the use of a
"winner takes all" system.

...


Though, I will admit that, in any case, I am not terribly optimistic
about the longer term future. I suspect it may be partly a case of
"people don't realize yet just how badly everything is hosed...".

Or, metaphor:
"No! you can't save a sinking ship with little more than a sump pump and
a spare car battery!",
"Hahaha! Sump pump go brrrrr..."

[Brett]

Here is the gun constitutional carry map of the US, scroll down and you can
see the history over time as as right to carry has swept over the US
leaving just a tiny handful of gun control states.

https://www.gunstocarry.com/ccw-reciprocity-map/

[MitchAlsup]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 3:55:49 PM UTC-5, BGB wrote:
> On 10/9/2021 5:07 AM, David Brown wrote:
> > On 09/10/2021 04:38, Quadibloc wrote:
> >> On Friday, October 8, 2021 at 12:28:11 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:

> Yeah.
>
> One has a tradeoff.
>
> On one hand, one can have an autocracy / oligarchy / ...
>
> Or, on the other hand, one can have a democracy which reduces down to
> unfiltered public opinion. Whichever position can win over the masses
> better, wins.
>
>
> Arguably, a "representative democracy" is a reasonable compromise, as
> one can assume that the representatives have at least some level of
> merit to get into the position of being elected into a position of
> authority.
>
> Though, in the latter, one then has to distinguish between whether the
> votes determine the results directly, or whether the votes are treated
> more like public-opinion polls. People might get upset and consider
> their vote useless if it is regularly ignored.
>

Consider my positions on things:: given the top 4 things that "get" of
"discourage" my vote on an issue or politician or political party--
exactly NONE of then have been available for me to VOTE for or
against in my entire <voting> lifetime !!
<
I am not being represented by anyone {local, county, state, country}
on any of the topics that actually sway my vote--and I think that the
parties have carefully set up the scenario that way.

>
> But, at the same time, if the representatives only act within the the
> bounds of the public vote, then it reduces to a similar situation to the
> direct democracy. In this case, the number of officials elected per a
> given area and population may come into play, ...
>
> Then one may end up with people in more densely populated areas
> complaining that they have less representation than those in less
> densely populated areas, since under this system, ...
>
> ...
>
>
> So, at least, in these senses, the current system in the US would appear
> to be reasonably sensibly designed.
>
> Though one major flaw with a system like this:
> It reduces down to two parties almost invariably;
<

Something the founding fathers warned us against.

<
> At some point, an instability may develop, and one of the parties may be
> effectively evicted from the system (reducing it to a single party system,).
<

Many would argue that we have already achieved this.

>
> Once it collapses to single-party rule, a march towards oligarchy seems
> almost inevitable, short of being able to pull a "hard reset" on the
> whole system.
<

What happens when BOTH parties want to march to oligarchy--just
different versions of oligarchy ?

>
> It seems like the founders who came up with the system were aware of all
> of this, though in this case it is unclear why they didn't specify the
> use of a cumulative voting / weighted voting at all levels, which would
> likely have been more stable over a longer time-frame than the use of a
> "winner takes all" system.
<

They had seen the conflicts of Parliamentary election systems and did
not want to repeat.

>
> ...
>
>
> Though, I will admit that, in any case, I am not terribly optimistic
> about the longer term future. I suspect it may be partly a case of
> "people don't realize yet just how badly everything is hosed...".
>

Unlike last time {North versus South}: this time it is Urban versus Rural.
<
Urban is winning the population count,
Suburban are "somewhat" aligned with Urban,
Rural has no where to draw new resources*.
<
You cannot have a "civil war" with cities against rurals. There are no convenient
boundaries that can be drawn.
<
Rural would have great opportunities to increase their ability to attract new
resources, if they merely accepted refugees and immigrants........Oh Well.....

[Stephen Fuld]

Lots of counter examples show this to be incorrect, e.g. Israel,
Germany, Italy. You can easily end up with lots of parties, so the
government is invariably a coalition.

[BGB]

But, those countries, in their current forms, have governments which are
a lot younger than the US.

Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.

So, I don't think these countries can be counted as counter-examples.

[Tom Gardner]

On 09/10/21 16:02, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> I certainly agree with that.  And, as I said elsewhere, we are far from
> perfect.  But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that e.g. western Europe
> with its US "influence", was far better off than eastern Europe with its Soviet
> "influence".  And just ask the people of Hong Kong about Chinese "influence". :-(

Yes indeed.

But it is equally keeping sight of the fact that the USA wasn't
"in Europe" for solely altruistic reasons.

Europe gave the US an unsinkable aircraft carrier, mobile missile
sites, and listening posts, a few hours/days to mobilise while
the Soviets were rolling across Europe, and markets for their
trade goods.

[Stephen Fuld]

Of course, that is true. The US benefited as well as the western
European countries. But contrast that with eastern Europe, where the
Soviet Union benefited, but the countries no so much. :-(

[Stephen Fuld]

True. Whether they, and countries like them, will move toward fewer
parties in the future remains to be seen.

> Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
> US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
> was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
> prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.

I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
the leader directly. They are Parliamentary systems where the people
vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
the people choose the leader. I do believe the local elections are
"first past the post".

One effect of this when discussions with single issue voters happens.
In the US, each party has views on many/most issues, and prior to the
elections, individual voters choose the party whose "bundle" of
positions most closely allies with their own. In their systems, a party
can be organized around primarily a single issue, and the "bundling"
happens in the negotiations to form the government which occurs after
the elections.

Of course, as with most such discussions, there are advantages and
disadvantages of both systems.

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 10:14:53 AM UTC-6, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <5b31fbcb-20c9-4841...@googlegroups.com>,
> jsa...@ecn.ab.ca (Quadibloc) wrote:

> > The United States _chose_ to issue an ultimatum to Nazi
> > Germany to either declare war on Japan, or face war with the
> > United States; presumably, it could have fought with Japan alone,
> > and ignored events in Europe - or at least only insisted that
> > Germany break its alliance with Japan, and not aid it in any way
> > to avoid war with the U.S..

> Citation?

I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere. I could not find it quickly in
a Google search, however - it does not appear to have been in
Roosevelt's address to Congress on December 8 or his Fireside
Chat of December 9.

> The usually accepted view is that Germany (and Italy) declared
> war on the USA first, which responded by declaring war on them.

Yes, that is true. Germany declared war on the U.S. on December 11,
1941.

> They were
> not obliged to declare war on the USA by any treaties or other
> obligations to Japan.

Supposedly the Tripartite Pact would contradict that, but I won't
try to debate the details of that.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

How are _they_ counterexamples? Those aren't countries that
use "the current system in the US", they're countries that use
the Parliamentary system instead.

John Savard

[John Levine]

According to Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>:

>However, on December 7, 1941, it was _Japan_ that bombed Pearl
>Harbor. The United States _chose_ to issue an ultimatum to Nazi
>Germany to either declare war on Japan, or face war with the

>United States; ...

Sorry, but that is completely untrue. Germany had been pushing Japan
to expand the war in the Pacific, although they were surprised
that Japan attacked the U.S. when they did. The Tripartite pact
obliged Germany to come to Japan's aid if they were attacked, but
not if Japan attacked first, and Ribbentrop tried to talk
Hitler out of what was even at the time an obvious huge mistake.

The Wikipedia article on this item is pretty good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl]

Stephen Fuld <sf...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> On 10/8/2021 6:16 PM, anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:

> > Stephen Fuld <sf...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> >> On 10/8/2021 1:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
> >>> On 08/10/2021 03:31, Branimir Maksimovic wrote:
> >>>> On 2021-10-08, MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> wrote:
> >>>>> <
> >>>>> Greed is what got all those industries into China !
> >>>>> What motivation will get us out ?
> >>>>
> >>>> Not needed. As greed drives China as well, there would
> >>>> be no interrest conflict except that China firms as
> >>>> China firms are not welocome in the west :P
> >>>
> >>> Don't mix up "the west" and "the USA". Most of the west is happy to
> >>> work with China, albeit carefully and with quiet mumblings about "human
> >>> rights" as long as the complaints won't affect business too much.
> >>>
> >>> The USA likes to define itself as "the good guy" in the world, and that
> >>> means that they always need a "bad guy" - an enemy worthy of them. The
> >>> real threat - military, economic, diplomatic, etc., is less important
> >>> than the image of threat they can conjure in people's minds.
> >>
> >> Or, to look at it the other way, Europe tends to ignore real threats
> >> until they get really bad, then rely on the USA to "bail them out". See
> >> Nazi Germany, or ask the many former communist block countries if the
> >> Soviet Union threat was real or only an image.
> >

> > If you look at actions threat was USA. In period of 1950-1990 USA
> > conducted several military interventions:
> >
> > Korean War
> > Gwatemala 1954 intervention
> > Bay of Pig invasion
> > Dominican 1965 intervention
> > Wietnam War (with bombing of neigbours)
> > Grenada 1983
> > Panama 1990
> >
> > In that period I know of 4 soviet intervention:
> >
> > Soviet air force in Korean War
> > intervention in Hungary 1956
> > intervention in Czechoslovakia 1968
> > Afganistan War
>
> If you want to say that the US is far from perfect; that we sometimes
> don't act in ways consistent with the image we have of ourselves and try
> to project to others, and that we make mistakes, then I certainly agree.
>
>
> > And while USA happlily threatens and attacks other countries to this
> > day,
>
> I disagree with the characterization of "happily". And I don't think we
> have attacked any country in the last say 15 years (Since Iraq, which
> was a bad blunder for us). And I think we really aren't threatening
> anyone today who isn't threatening us or our allies.

Hmm, bombing of Kadafy army in Libia, and rockects fired at Assad
does not count as attack? (One can argue that those were right,
but this does not affect if it was an attack or not). And killing
of Suleimani? Commesurate answer would be Iraninans killing
Mike Pompeo. I think that USA would consider such killing as
attack on USA. So by USian logic killing of Suleimani was attack
on Iran.

And now there is beauty of modern technology: drones. AFAIK US
drones regularly kill people in Yemen and several other countries.

> > soviet system collapsed after (and partially due to) Afganistan
> > War: important part of "soviet package" was preserving peace.
> > With Afganistan war this was broken and caused significant drop
> > in popular support for sovoer regime.
>
> Agreed.
>
>
> > Of couse, soviet block had plans to attack "west". But realistically,
> > west and USA in particular always had much stronger forces.
> > And reality of modern war is that army which refuses to attack
> > looses. Soviet block could hope that in case of war western
> > losses would be high enough to deter attack and that apparently
> > worked, we had peace in Europe for long time.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't understand what point you are making here. Clearly
> the deterrence of NATO prevented the Soviet Union from expanding their
> dominance in eastern Europe to western Europe.

You are procjeting USA attitude here. Soviet Union was not in business
of conquering other countris and turning them to communism. They
supported communist movements around the world, but that was for
local people to "build communism". And if any western Europe
country would turn to comminism, I do not think that this would
be Soviet Union dominance. Rather, such a county would be
important independent member of communist block, the same as China
had completely independent policy.

> > In Poland, where I live we do not have much sentiment for Soviet
> > Union, it was percevied as foreign force exploiting Poland and
> > forcing Soviet interest on Poland.
>
> OK.
>
>
> > But now we replaced this
> > by USA forcing their interest on Poland.
>
> In what way is the US forcing its interests on Poland? I confess to not
> a lot of knowledge about the subject. My impression, drawn mostly for
> western media, is that Poland, after a period of growth of democracy and
> its economy, is experiencing a period of more populist, anti democratic
> positions, and that both the US and western Europe are "concerned".
>
> You are obviously much closer and more knowledgeable about the
> situation, so please tell us what we should know.

If you look at politics, Poland had no reason to go to Iraq, except
for pleasing USA. More recently ruling coalition made a bad law,
penalizing critique of Poland. There were many voices against the
law, but ruling coalition presed forward. They made U-turn only
after intervention of US ambassador...

Concerning elections, ATM we seem to be in better position than
US. Nobody questions validity of elections, voting went smoothly
(without queues, etc). During voting everbody has to present
photo ID and this is not a problem because everybody has photo ID.
Prisoners have voting right and there are arrangements to that
they can vote. So no problem that somebody was illegally
allowed or rejected vote: all have voting rights.

We have legal mess: government tries to control courts.
That was partially blocked by EU, but where they can
government nominates judges on party line. And after
they packed constitutional court with their people we
have juggements like one which says that essentally all
abortions are unconstitutional, another one which says
that state law take precedence over EU law (this could
block appeals to EU courts and is intended to block
EU legal directives).

> > Of couse, dependence
> > on USA has some advantages compared to dependence on Soviet
> > Union.
>
> How is Poland dependent on the US?

1) Like large part of world: USA can put sanctions on given
entity. AFAICS ususaly this is applied transitvely: US
companies are not allowed to trade with banned entity,
US companies are not allowed to trade with companies trading
with banned entity etc. In interconnected world it means
that either (normal case) victim is left without help and
hit as hard as US wishes or (did not happen up to now)
the rest of world unites against US.
2) Poland has position in the middle of Europe, deemed
strategic by Russians. Due to Russian pressure we
either agree to Russian dominance or need strong
support. ATM US promises such support, but clearly
there is price: agreeing to US dominance.
3) During communist time most weapons for Polish army
was manufactured in Poland (some where original Polish
designs, majority was Russian constructions manufactured
under licence). When Poland left soviet block, we
were able to cover most needs of army by local production.
This is no longer the case. AFAIK we lost technical
ability to make old constructions and new one mostly
are imports (mainly from US).

> > but USA policy is not so nice as USA propaganda tries
> > to claim.
>
> I wouldn't doubt that, but I don't have much knowledge. What are we
> doing that isn't "nice"?

A lot. Simple example involving Poland is Stare Kiejkuty. CIA
had secret prison there and tortured prisoners there.

> >>> Currently,
> >>> China is the favourite enemy of the USA. I don't mean that China does
> >>> /not/ pose a threat, economic, diplomatic and military, to the USA or
> >>> other countries - merely that the USA exaggerates it for its own purposes.
> >>
> >> Or, conversely, Europe downplays it for its own purposes. It's a matter
> >> of perspective.
> >
> > I read recent article about increase of China naval forces. According
> > to ariticle China is a threat because now US Navy no longer is stronger
> > in sees surrounding China. In other words, USA can no longer
> > realistically threaten China with naval intervention on China shores,
> > so China is a threat to USA.
>
> I don't think anyone in the US is worried about naval intervention on
> China's shores, unless they attack Taiwan. On the other hand, there is
> evidence that Australia is worried about China's navy. Clearly China is
> building up its Navy. The question is why and what are they planning?

Great Britain and later US have tradition on navel blockades:
they send navy to block or limit trade they do no like. Clearly
China has legitimate interest in protecting its trade (which is
mostly via see). Concerning Taiwan, it is clearly artificially
(by extrnal force) separated from China. Regardless of political
system on Taiwan China has legitimate interest in ensuring
that Taiwan is not used as military base against China.

Concerning Australia, I do not know what their worry is.

> BTW, I am aware that this is all very OT for comp.arch. I am willing to
> pursue it further, (I enjoy learning other's perspectives.) but if
> others object, I understand and will stop.

The same here. Normaly I avoid political topics, but this
time I gave up to temptation. Let me say that running joke
in communist Poland was "In America they are beating Negros"
(sorry for non-PC word, but I am trying to be faithfull to
original wording). Meaning was that communist propaganda
was taking about western problems, but was silent about
problems that affected people in Poland. However, from
distance I can see that a lot of that propaganda were
true. And some problems that seemed abstract/impossible
came or are coming to Poland after fall of communism.
US propaganda and many folks from US say "we are right".
Some people outside find a lot of wrong in US actions.
I could write more, but enough for today.

--
Waldek Hebisch

[MitchAlsup]

It was !

>
> And now there is beauty of modern technology: drones. AFAIK US
> drones regularly kill people in Yemen and several other countries.
>
> > > soviet system collapsed after (and partially due to) Afganistan
> > > War: important part of "soviet package" was preserving peace.
> > > With Afganistan war this was broken and caused significant drop
> > > in popular support for sovoer regime.
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> >
> > > Of couse, soviet block had plans to attack "west". But realistically,
> > > west and USA in particular always had much stronger forces.
> > > And reality of modern war is that army which refuses to attack
> > > looses. Soviet block could hope that in case of war western
> > > losses would be high enough to deter attack and that apparently
> > > worked, we had peace in Europe for long time.
> >
> > I'm sorry, I don't understand what point you are making here. Clearly
> > the deterrence of NATO prevented the Soviet Union from expanding their
> > dominance in eastern Europe to western Europe.
<

A long time ago.

>
> You are procjeting USA attitude here. Soviet Union was not in business
> of conquering other countris and turning them to communism. They
> supported communist movements around the world, but that was for
> local people to "build communism". And if any western Europe
> country would turn to comminism, I do not think that this would
> be Soviet Union dominance. Rather, such a county would be
> important independent member of communist block, the same as China
> had completely independent policy.
>
> > > In Poland, where I live we do not have much sentiment for Soviet
> > > Union, it was percevied as foreign force exploiting Poland and
> > > forcing Soviet interest on Poland.
> >
> > OK.
> >
> >
> > > But now we replaced this
> > > by USA forcing their interest on Poland.
> >
> > In what way is the US forcing its interests on Poland? I confess to not
> > a lot of knowledge about the subject. My impression, drawn mostly for
> > western media, is that Poland, after a period of growth of democracy and
> > its economy, is experiencing a period of more populist, anti democratic
> > positions, and that both the US and western Europe are "concerned".
> >
> > You are obviously much closer and more knowledgeable about the
> > situation, so please tell us what we should know.
>
> If you look at politics, Poland had no reason to go to Iraq, except
> for pleasing USA. More recently ruling coalition made a bad law,
> penalizing critique of Poland. There were many voices against the
<

This is a good place to point out the vast difference between a
critique and a criticism. One can be bad or good, the other is universally
bad from at least one side.

<
> law, but ruling coalition presed forward. They made U-turn only
> after intervention of US ambassador...
>
> Concerning elections, ATM we seem to be in better position than
> US. Nobody questions validity of elections, voting went smoothly
> (without queues, etc). During voting everbody has to present
> photo ID and this is not a problem because everybody has photo ID.
> Prisoners have voting right and there are arrangements to that
> they can vote. So no problem that somebody was illegally
> allowed or rejected vote: all have voting rights.
<

Our voting problems over here are completely artificial, and up
until the previous election, nobody EVER questioned the result
of the result.
<
However, both parties are losing membership, and there are
more people not associated with either party that are in either
party {25%-40%-25%:: roughly}. One party is attempting to
maintain control by Gerrymandering voting districts. I have 4
rent houses within 4 miles of each other. They are in 4 different
voting districts (state senate) !?!?!
<
Much of the stupidity of American politics could be solved by
having a viable 3rd party. One side says:: blah, the other retorts
with:: "oh yeah", the 3rd could simply stand up and say "both
are poor directions for the country to go."

Sure but the rest of the world has legitimate interests in keeping
the semiconductor output of Taiwan from falling into the hands
of the Chinese. {Or we have to rebuild our own semiconductor
industry--which is not a bad idea, BTW}

[Stephen Fuld]

My point was responding to the earlier part of BGB's post (that you
snipped) about "this" being a "representative democracy"

Parliamentary and Presidential are two different ways of implementing
representative democracy.

[MitchAlsup]

On Sunday, October 10, 2021 at 6:13:45 PM UTC-5, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> On 10/10/2021 12:02 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 11:59:48 PM UTC-6, Stephen Fuld wrote:
> >> On 10/9/2021 1:55 PM, BGB wrote:
> >
> >>> So, at least, in these senses, the current system in the US would appear
> >>> to be reasonably sensibly designed.
> >
> >>> Though one major flaw with a system like this:
> >>> It reduces down to two parties almost invariably;
> >
> >> Lots of counter examples show this to be incorrect, e.g. Israel,
> >> Germany, Italy. You can easily end up with lots of parties, so the
> >> government is invariably a coalition.
> >
> > How are _they_ counterexamples? Those aren't countries that
> > use "the current system in the US", they're countries that use
> > the Parliamentary system instead.
<
> My point was responding to the earlier part of BGB's post (that you
> snipped) about "this" being a "representative democracy"
<

As I stated above:: for the entirely of my ability to vote for or against
parties, people, and policies, not once have I been presented with
something to vote on that in any way represents my view on that thing.
<
I ask you:: In what way am I being "represented" ?

>
> Parliamentary and Presidential are two different ways of implementing
> representative democracy.
<

It is only representational if something in your life you get to vote on
something that represents your feelings about that subject.
<
Otherwise it is not much more than a coin flip:: and benevolent dictator
would likely generate a better outcome.

[anti...@math.uni.wroc.pl]

Stephen Fuld <sf...@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> wrote:
> On 10/10/2021 12:02 AM, BGB wrote:
>
> > Also, none of those countries seems to use the same voting system as the
> > US ("first past the post" + "winner takes all"). Which was the point I
> > was getting at here. Namely, that a system like the one the US uses is
> > prone to almost invariably collapse down to two parties.
>
> I think a bigger difference is that they don't have the people vote for
> the leader directly. They are Parliamentary systems where the people
> vote for a local candidate of a particular party, and the parties, not
> the people choose the leader. I do believe the local elections are
> "first past the post".

AFAIK most countries use "proportional representation". How does
it work? In Poland in 2015 we had 41 voting districts and 460
places in parlament. That is on average sligthtly more than 11
members of parlament per districts. Each candidate represented
some party. There were voting thresholds: party which get less
than 5% of votes were disqualified. Parties could form
coalition and then coalition needed at least 8% of votes.
In each district places were distributed using D'Hooft rule.
Basically, there is "price" (number of votes) for place. Each
party gets as many places as its votes allow. Within party candidates
are sorted according to number of votes they obtained
and places available to party are allocated starting from
higest scoring candidate. Normally description of this
procedure is much more complicated, but effect is that
"price" is set at level so that all parties together get
exactly places allocated to disctrict.

District of size 11 has strong bias against smaller parties,
normaly to get any place in a district party needs of order
9% votes or more, which is more than national threshold.
Due to regional variation party that gets say 5.1% of votes
in the country ususaly gets some place in parlament, but
order of magnitude less than 5%.

AFAICS main advantage of such system is that it removes most
incentives to gerrymandering: by gerrymandering party can
get at most 1 place per district and would need extremally
accurate estimate of voting pattern for any gain.

My impressing is that original idea of D'Hooft rule was
to apply it in scale of country, then it would produce
reasonably accurate representation of voter preferences
to parties. As above, with threshold and districts
of order of 15% of voters are without representation and
next 10% gets tiny representation. OTOH big parties
end up with higher proportion of places than votes.

Disadvantages are that party system with threshold means
that there are no independent candidates. Also,
candidates are strongly connected to party and only
weakly to voters in their district: personally unpopular
candidate has basically warranted place in parlament
when allocated to district where party is strong and
party does not provide enough alternative candidates.
On voter side, D'Hooft rule means that voter looks
more at party membership and less at personal qualites
of candidate.

Anyway, this system is quite different than "first past
the post".

As an extra thing, when there is single position (say
president or city mayor) normal system is two phase
one. In first phase there may be many candidates,
it one gets majority then he/she is declared a winner.
Otherwise there is second phase between two highest
scoring candidates.

BTW: There were various proposals to improve representation
of minority views. Thinking about this I came to
scheme that may be new which I call "random voting".
It should work as follows: first there is normal
voting and votes are counted. Then candidate is
chosen randomly, with probablity proportional to
received number of votes. In this scheme expected
number of places is exactly proportional to number
of votes. In scale of country random variation
would create some deviation from proportionality,
but smaller than most existing schemes. Also,
this scheme removes most incentives for "tactical
voting": voting from somebody different than most
preffered candidate has no advantages. Of course
from point of view of ruling class this is very
bad: results of election would represent views
of population and argument of sort "most voters
support our position" in many cases would be
shown false.

--
Waldek Hebisch

[Stefan Monnier]

> It is only representational if something in your life you get to vote on
> something that represents your feelings about that subject.
>
> Otherwise it is not much more than a coin flip:: and benevolent dictator
> would likely generate a better outcome.

In my experience, the most important aspect is that the government
shouldn't suck and for that it needs to satisfy two criteria:

- It shouldn't be too corrupt.
- It should avoid groupthink.

Both of those tend to be naturally satisfied by spreading the power
among enough people who don't trust each other yet have to agree with
each other to make decisions.

I.e. you want to start with a scheme which avoids concentration of power
in the hands of a single (or very few) party and which ensures some
regular churn.

Maybe you won't get great bold decision making from that, but you'll
avoid most of the big blunders.
For that reason, I think such a governing system would deserve the name
"conservative" and it's a kind of conservative I could support.


Stefan


PS: No, I don't think such a system would work well to handle climate
change :-(

[Thomas Koenig]

Stefan Monnier <mon...@iro.umontreal.ca> schrieb:

>> It is only representational if something in your life you get to vote on
>> something that represents your feelings about that subject.
>>
>> Otherwise it is not much more than a coin flip:: and benevolent dictator
>> would likely generate a better outcome.
>
> In my experience, the most important aspect is that the government
> shouldn't suck and for that it needs to satisfy two criteria:
>
> - It shouldn't be too corrupt.
> - It should avoid groupthink.

- It should not be able to change major things easily.

[Terje Mathisen]

Norway is similar but not exactly equal. We just had a nation-wide
election that resulted in a new coalition taking over this week.

The election system is based on the old 19-county division of the
country and 169 delegates to the parliament: 150 of them are distributed
to the districts, using the "each person gets one vote, while each
square km gets a bit more than one vote" in order to make sure that
rural, lower population districts gets a stronger representation.

Within each district the representatives are distributed proportionally
to the number of (human) votes.

At the end of this process each party which have received at least 4% of
the total vote count takes part in the final proportionality equalizer,
where 19 additional representatives, one from each district, is handed
out so as to make the total representation level as close to
proportional as possible. In effect this means that a party which gets
3.8% can end up with one or two representatives, while hitting 4.2% gets
them six or seven.

The math used for that final stage usually results in some candidates
getting in or not with hair-thin margins, since the actual person
selected depends both on the local district vote count and the total
vote counts for each party.

The nicest part is that today the exiting cabinet is delivering the
budget for next year, while the new prime minister and cabinet takes
over the responsibility for it later this week. :-)

Terje

--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

[Terje Mathisen]

Which is why you require a 2/3 majority vote in two separate election
terms, i.e. with 4+ years between them.

This is also the reason why several countries have given up on gradual
changes to their main laws and instead decided to start from scratch,
even if that isn't really legal according to the existing rules.

[Tom Gardner]

As someone that went through the E/W Germany borders 6 times
in the 1970 (and again in Nov 89 less than a week after the
fall!), the differences were /very/ apparent :)

I also knew someone that trotted around the USSR determining
reception of the BBC radio, and he confirmed all the propaganda
stories we were brought up on.

[Marcus]

On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>
>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>> onto the grid ??
>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
> <
> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
> and as industries consume more energy.)

Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.

Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
up at a faster pace...

A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
wind, which is at some 25%).

>>
>> Personally, though, I think that if we _really_ want to stop global
>> warming, we need to have a solution that's acceptable to... more
>> conservative Americans. (Including some who still wouldn't vote
>> for Trump.)
> <
> If no more carbon was emitted into the atmosphere starting tomorrow,
> the earth will continue to warm through 2300 !! probably close to 5ºC.
> {Science news a few weeks ago}

Yep. We're pretty much screwed. Stopping global warming is not going to
happen (but it does not hurt to slow it down to give people and cities a
chance to adapt to new water levels etc).

/Marcus

[JimBrakefield]

Have a few theories about American democracy:
The key feature is overlapping jurisdictions
If one level of government goes bad and the next level up or down works correctly,
then the other level(s) take up the slack.

In the final analysis government is a competitive business, people are mobile and
will move to where government offers better value for your tax dollar.
For instance the mob took over Newark NJ and extracted taxes without providing value.
All the big companies left and tax revenue and the city shrank.

Another favorite idea: one's vote is proportional to taxes paid. So it someone manages
to avoid taxes, then their vote does not count (in practice there needs to be a baseline
vote as a result of citizenship and probably an addition for military service).

[BGB]

Unless it slows down, sometime soon; at current rates by ~ 2200-2300 we
will be at similar CO2 levels as what was present during the
Permian-Triassic extinction event (*1), which is, arguably not good...

*1: Assuming linear emissions at the same rate. Given it was pretty much
accelerating ever since thoughout the late 20th century, it is possible
that "business as usual" could hit these levels by ~ 2150 or maybe sooner.

Nevermind just the warming or rising sea levels.


Like, ideally, people should cut this stuff out before we risk the mass
die-off of pretty much all complex plant and animal life on the planet...

[BGB]

The situation is a little different for someone like myself (Gen Y), who
isn't old enough to remember the USSR or Cold War in any sort of
first-hand sense; pretty much all of it mostly reduced to things one has
heard about or seen on TV.

Instead, the majority of my life has existed in the whole "War on
Terror" era.


But, I am old enough to have experienced first-hand the era of CRT
monitors and dial-up modems. Well, and started using computers and
poking around at writing code when I was still fairly young.

And, in some sense, a lot of my current projects still exist within the
confines of vestiges (or "legacy") of code I wrote back in middle and
high-school... (Some of which was admittedly kinda asinine, like
high-school age self being like "Sure, why not, XML DOM seems like a
great format for ASTs!"; despite being much of a lifetime later, in
BGBCC, I am still left with some of the fallout from these original
design choices, *1...).

*1: Though, admittedly, BGBCC was not itself written while I was in HS,
it was a fork of a fork of code I had written in HS, which is where the
whole XML DOM for ASTs thing came from... But, not exactly like I can
travel back a few decades and be like "Damn it, no, use JSON instead!
Put the libxml2 away and please don't look at it again!". Past self,
"But what about using SQL for ...?", slaps it out of past selves' hands.



Well, for better or worse, the next generation is trying to build their
empires on Python and Haxe and similar; yet to be seen for how many of
them, this will come back to bite them...

Though, when some Gen Z guy manages to become a millionaire by writing a
rhythm game in a few thousand lines of Haxe, it almost seems like it is
time for me to just put on a hat and go ride off into the sunset...

[Terje Mathisen]

Marcus wrote:
> On 2021-10-08 17:43, MitchAlsup wrote:
>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 6:21:49 PM UTC-6, MitchAlsup wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
>>>> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
>>>> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
>>>> onto the grid ??
>>> Yes. It is claimed that new energy storage technologies will make it
>>> possible to meet our power needs from wind and solar.
>> <
>> So, what has grown to 2%-5% will be able to run at 130% in 20 years !?!
>> (130% provides for the growth in energy consumption as population grows
>> and as industries consume more energy.)
>
> Not sure if it can reach 130% in 20 years, but we can surely do better.
>
> Solar is actually quite cheap, and a very safe investment (near zero
> maintenance costs and guaranteed power delivery for a few decades). The
> only real problem w.r.t. investment in solar is that the price of panels
> are dropping so fast ;-) OTOH that means that you can just keep ramping
> up at a faster pace...
>
> A simple trick that can be done with solar (that can't really be done
> with any other energy source) is to subsidize solar panels for homes.
> This was done in Germany, and they're up at 10% solar (that's excluding
> wind, which is at some 25%).

10-15 years ago I thought nuclear was humanity's only option, but then I
learned that a 100x100 km slice of Sahara would produce more energy that
the world is currently using.

Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
end up with an energy storage problem: Is is just as obvious that we
cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries so we either need
some alternate form of energy storage that does scale, or humanity must
adjust to only using significant power during daytime.

Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
going offshore is better.

Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.

Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
output level swing?

[BGB]

I guess one possibility could be converting water (probably from the
ocean) into H2 and O2, or alternatively, someone devises a practical way
to convert water and CO2 back into a usable fuel.

Reacting H2 and CO2 to produce CH4 and H2O, and maybe polymerizing the
CH4 back into longer-chain hydrocarbons; using massive amounts of solar
power to pull all this off.

Then one can ship off the gases in large tanks to use as combustible
fuels (or use fuel-cells, but these are fairly expensive compared with
gas turbines or combustion engines).


I guess another crazy idea would be large air-ships, which double as a
flying cargo ship for liquified gas canisters, and also as a large
storage tank for gaseous hydrogen (also serves as a lifting gas). So,
giant flying fuel tanks.


Could in premise put lots of solar in places like Nevada and Utah, but
not a whole lot of water there. Could almost make sense to run a
pipepline through the Rocky Mountains to allow piping in large amounts
of ocean water (could maybe also be used as a water supply for Vegas and
Phoenix and similar as well, as an alternative to doing the whole
"reclaimed water" thing).

Places like California and Israel have access to both deserts and the
ocean (as do many places in West Africa, ...).

> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> going offshore is better.
>
> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>

Possible, but only really relevant to coastal areas.

Granted, I guess transmission lines can go a long ways, so say, much of
the US could benefit if a bunch of tidal stuff was built in, say,
Louisiana and similar...

> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> output level swing?
>

Most reactors can be throttled.
Though, ideally, don't really want yet more light-water-reactors though.


> Terje
>

[Terje Mathisen]

MitchAlsup wrote:
> On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 2:49:07 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
>> A while back, a big topic in the news was how China was bullying
>> the world by limiting its exports of rare earth metals, in violation
>> of certain trade agreements.
>>
>> The minerals from which rare earth metals are extracted, however,
>> are common in many places around the world. China had no
>> monopoly - except that it was hard to perform the extraction
>> anywhere else, due to environmental concerns and economic
>> factors.
>>
>> Now this:
>>
>> https://www.techspot.com/news/91552-reduced-silicon-output-china-leading-increased-chip-production.html
>>
>> Silicon - one of the Earth's most common elements, the basis
>> for most kinds of rock - would seem the most unlikely thing for
>> any country to be able to monopolize.
>>
>> And this time, the shortage isn't due to a direct intention by China,
>> but instead due to restrictions on energy use the country put in
>> place to reduce pollution!

> <
> Has anyone given a thought to where all the electricity is going to
> come from once we transition completely away from carbon based
> energy sources (excepting for airplanes) and dump all those EV cars
> onto the grid ??

Yes, of course!

a) Switching all cars to EVs increase the need for electricity by
something like 4% (depending upon where in the world you are).

b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.

With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.

[Marcus]

That's an obvious and huge drawback. I wonder what new doors would open
up if we stopped thinking that we need 100% energy efficiency, though.
E.g. with coal etc, we sure do not want to throw away 50% of the
produced energy - but with solar and wind? Does it matter if we
overproduce and/or have losses in energy storage solutions? It seems to
me that even low efficiency/durability energy storage solutions could be
viable. And rather than thinking electrical batteries there are plenty
of other options, suitable at different scales (water + gravity (dams),
heating/freezing liquid/gas, kinetic/flywheel, etc).

> Wind helps even though it often blows less in the evening/early night,
> going offshore is better.
>
> Tidal power would solve the entire issue simply because there are huge
> phase delays between max tide over surprisingly short distances, i.e.
> the UK has more than a full 6 hour period around its coast.
>
> Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
> really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
> possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
> output level swing?

Another thing about nuclear is that it's a very centralized energy
source (unless someone comes up with super-safe mini-scale plants that
people are fine with having in their neighborhoods). E.g. in Sweden we
have traditionally had a ~50/50 split between hydro and nuclear (wind
is replacing nuclear in recent years, though), but we have >10x the
number of hydro power plants compared to nuclear power plants.

Wind and especially solar are much more suitable for distributed energy
production, which in turn has benefits in terms of resilience and such.

/Marcus

[Anton Ertl]

Terje Mathisen <terje.m...@tmsw.no> writes:
>Solar has the obvious huge drawback of only producing 10-11 hours/day,
>and long-distance transmission lines that could transport the energy
>needed across 6+ time zones are simply not going to happen, so we then
>end up with an energy storage problem:

We built pumped-storage hydro in the 70s to store the night-time
surplus from river hydro, coal, and (German) nuclear power plants, so
that would be no problem in principle, except:

* the rise in energy production and consumption means that the
pumped-storage systems of yesteryear are no longer sufficient

* Solar power is much less when the wheather is cloudy. Maybe a rare
problem in the Sahara, but there you have the political instability
as a problem.

* Wind power also suffers from longer (and less predictable) cycles
than the day-night consumption patterns.

I think though, that when you consider a larger political entity like
the EU, the USA, or China, low production in one place can be
compensated by high production elsewhere. You are not going to have
clouds and calm wind everywhere at the same time.

And they are building bigger pumped-storage facilities, e.g.,
<https://www.verbund.com/de-at/ueber-verbund/news-presse/presse/2016/10/07/reisseck2>

>Is is just as obvious that we
>cannot store 13-14 hours of energy need in batteries

There have been fantasies of using electric car batteries for that,
but it is going to need some interesting marketing to pull this off.
Maybe the kind of marketing Xerox employed to get their copiers into
the market, i.e., lease batteries rather than selling them with the
car.

>Nuclear is close to the worst possible night-time fill-in since it
>really wants to run at optimal power output day and night, but it is
>possible that more modern reactor designs are more amenable to a 24-hour
>output level swing?

No new reactors needed. There are reactors in production (forgot the
name, but one of them is in Germany) that have been designed for
reaction times on the order of minutes (shutdown probably has to be
more gradual to avoid Xenon poisoning, or you then have to live with
not being able to restart the reactor for a day or so). However, the
economics of nuclear power mean that such a reactor is still driven at
maximum utilization. Apparently the fuel and other marginal costs are
so cheap that you don't shut the reactor down even when electricity
price is low. Instead, you rather sell it at a low price to a
pumped-storage facility (or something that's not quite that, in order
to save taxes). So while nuclear power is expensive in fixed costs,
it is cheap in marginal costs.

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7...@googlegroups.com>

[Thomas Koenig]

Anton Ertl <an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> schrieb:

> I think though, that when you consider a larger political entity like
> the EU, the USA, or China, low production in one place can be
> compensated by high production elsewhere. You are not going to have
> clouds and calm wind everywhere at the same time.

If you look at the EU, you will have a dark season everywhere at
once, and you will also have EU-wide calm periods. One or two weeks
is not uncommon, this is the feared "Dunkelflaute" (dark wind lull).

I've run a few calculations a few years back. If you wanted to
bridge two week's electricity demand in winter of Germany alone,
you would have to lift Lake Constance by 200 m. Lake Constance
has around 1/6 of the annual rainfall on Germany, so any reasonable
amount of hydro storage is going to involve geoengineering on
a scale that nobody has even dreamt of up to now.

Storing the energy for two weeks in Tesla batteries (assuming they
are 100% full, can be used to 100%) would cost around three times
the gross anual national product of Germnany.

The interesting question is: How far do you want to bridge the
Dunkelflaute, and where do you decide to stop investing and
shut down your whole country, or the whole of the EU?

[Branimir Maksimovic]

Electricity is cheap to produce eg wind power water power all clean
sources.
> Terje
>


--

7-77-777
Evil Sinner!
with software, you repeat same experiment, expecting different results...

[Terje Mathisen]

I agree with that, more or less, but you didn't respond to my post which
was how a liter of gasoline or diesel require so much electricity to
refine it that you can more or less bypass the refinery and the ICE
pollution and instead use the electricity in an EV.

[Michael S]

You forgot to state a summary: if storage is solved then generation become trivial. But storage is not solved yet.

[Michael S]

P.S.
Majority of the storage can be replaced by breakthrough it distribution. But only by really huge breakthrough.
Mere RTS wouldn't do.

[MitchAlsup]

OK, you just kicked 50% of the voters out of voting. I wonder how the various parties
that depend on their votes will react.
<
BTW that 50% is comprised of 48.5% lower class, and 1% upper middle class and
0.5% "1%-ers".

[MitchAlsup]

When you perform electrolysis on water with salt in it you get H2 and Cl2
not H2 and O2. And while CL2 makes an efficient oxidizer, you really don't
want the HCl it produces..........

With time constants of about 1 day. If a light water reactor has been running
for 1 year it takes about 7 days for it to cool sufficiently you no longer have
to run the cooling water pumps. This was Fukushima's problem.

[MitchAlsup]

Both Nuclear and Coal have time constants over 1 day to get up to optimal
thermal efficiency. Thereby, these plants are fired up, placed on line and
then run at 100% power for 6 months to 6 years, before they are taken
off line for maintenance. These are the base load generators (>40% of
the entire capacity) and a major reason we have all those street lights
the power companies need something to consume all the base power
when everyone is asleep.

[MitchAlsup]

To get down this low, they have to be 5× more thermally efficient that
your Hybrid Honda.

>
> b) Running a refinery takes a _lot_ of electricity! In fact, it takes so
> much that a modern EV use less KWh to drive a given route than an
> average ICE vehicle needs to produce the gasoline/diesel it will burn.
<

Citation ?

>
> With a highly efficient modern small diesel the case isn't quite that
> clear, but EVs will definitely be a part of the solution.
<

EVs will be "THE" solution for transportation needs of less than 200 miles
(300 Km) but will remain a nuisance for trips of 500 Miles or more.

[Tim Rentsch]

chris <chris-...@tridac.net> writes:

[...]

> I've been monitoring the climate change issue for over a decade, and
> it's not so clear cut as those with an agenda would claim. Climate
> change, yes, but no evidence for a climate emergency. [...]

You're deluded.

[Tim Rentsch]

JimBrakefield <jim.bra...@ieee.org> writes:

[...]

> Another favorite idea: one's vote is proportional to taxes
> paid.

Should be proportional to what percentage of their income
is paid in taxes. And that should include all taxes, not
just income tax -- taxes like social security and sales
tax make up a big chunk of the tax bite for ordinary
people, and they are sharply regressive.

[Tim Rentsch]

MitchAlsup <Mitch...@aol.com> writes:

[...]

> Both Nuclear and Coal have time constants over 1 day to get up
> to optimal thermal efficiency. Thereby, these plants are fired
> up, placed on line and then run at 100% power for 6 months to 6
> years, before they are taken off line for maintenance. These
> are the base load generators (>40% of the entire capacity) and
> a major reason we have all those street lights the power
> companies need something to consume all the base power when
> everyone is asleep.

And that's why we have all those friggin street lights? That by
itself is sufficient reason to switch off of these technologies.

[Ivan Godard]

I have heard it asserted that half of the energy cost of a car is
driving it, and the other half is building it. So if AI can make
self-drive taxis universal enough to get half the car fleet off
driveways then you cut 25% off the global transportation budget.

[BGB]

I wasn't saying that one would be running electrolysis on raw seawater
though, I know this much.

Reverse osmosis is a thing. It takes power to pump water through a
membrane, but power is something one has plenty of in this scenario.


There is also solar desalinization as well, where the heat from sunlight
is used to boil (and thus distill) the water. Could potentially get
clean / potable water after the steam is used to drive a turbine or
similar, then do electrolysis on the output.

In this case one could have the seawater serving multiple purposes
within a concentrating solar facility.


Either way, one ends up with a few major waste products:
NaCl, MgSO4, LiO, ...


Both strategies should also be able to produce enough clean water that
it could be used as a water supply for any nearby cities as well, as
opposed to needing to rely on rainfall and natural rivers / lakes.

It is likely that there could be higher water output than it would be
viable to convert via electrolysis.


Design could be tweaked based on how much excess potable water is needed
for any nearby cities in the area.

OK. Didn't take into account that the time to throttle it was longer the
daytime cycle.

I guess the question would be how much (or how quickly), one could
throttle the output of a molten salt reactor or similar.

There is the pebble bed reactor, but it does not seem like there is any
obvious way to throttle this design.

[MitchAlsup]

Trains get several hundred miles to the ton/gallon
Trucks get several miles to the ton/gallon
<
By your logic, trains would have taken over bulk transportation......
The opposite has actually happened.

[MitchAlsup]

Just lob these back into the sea.

>
>
> Both strategies should also be able to produce enough clean water that
> it could be used as a water supply for any nearby cities as well, as
> opposed to needing to rely on rainfall and natural rivers / lakes.
>
> It is likely that there could be higher water output than it would be
> viable to convert via electrolysis.
<

Me thinks you should lookup the desalination facilities on aircraft carriers
and submarines before coming to any near final conclusions.

Also note: steam power is quadratic with respect to throttling, so you have
to run about 3/4 throttle to get 1/2 power out of it. And ALL of the coal and
Nukes are steam based. {Hint: 3/4 power raises the cost of energy by 40%
and kills thermal efficiency.}

>
> I guess the question would be how much (or how quickly), one could
> throttle the output of a molten salt reactor or similar.
<

If the power ends up being generated by steam turbines, the above holds.
<
Even Natural Gas Combined Cycle power plants have this property,
although a better time constant and a slightly lower differential cost structure.

[BGB]

FWIW: In one past place I lived, they were basically burning raw crude
oil to run the generators. In areas near the generator, there was a
persistent smell like that of burning tires in the air...

Not sure what their emissions were like.


> Terje
>