If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Policy / Politique
The fee for tournament organizers advertising on ChessTalk is $20/event or $100/yearly unlimited for the year.
Les frais d'inscription des organisateurs de tournoi sur ChessTalk sont de 20 $/événement ou de 100 $/année illimitée.
You can etransfer to Henry Lam at chesstalkforum at gmail dot com
Transfér à Henry Lam à chesstalkforum@gmail.com
Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
General Guidelines
---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
Some Basics
1. Under Board "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) there are 3 sections dealing with General Forum Usage, User Profile Features, and Reading and Posting Messages. These deal with everything from Avatars to Your Notifications. Most general technical questions are covered there. Here is a link to the FAQs. https://forum.chesstalk.com/help
2. Consider using the SEARCH button if you are looking for information. You may find your question has already been answered in a previous thread.
3. If you've looked for an answer to a question, and not found one, then you should consider asking your question in a new thread. For example, there have already been questions and discussion regarding: how to do chess diagrams (FENs); crosstables that line up properly; and the numerous little “glitches” that every new site will have.
4. Read pinned or sticky threads, like this one, if they look important. This applies especially to newcomers.
5. Read the thread you're posting in before you post. There are a variety of ways to look at a thread. These are covered under “Display Modes”.
6. Thread titles: please provide some details in your thread title. This is useful for a number of reasons. It helps ChessTalk members to quickly skim the threads. It prevents duplication of threads. And so on.
7. Unnecessary thread proliferation (e.g., deliberately creating a new thread that duplicates existing discussion) is discouraged. Look to see if a thread on your topic may have already been started and, if so, consider adding your contribution to the pre-existing thread. However, starting new threads to explore side-issues that are not relevant to the original subject is strongly encouraged. A single thread on the Canadian Open, with hundreds of posts on multiple sub-topics, is no better than a dozen threads on the Open covering only a few topics. Use your good judgment when starting a new thread.
8. If and/or when sub-forums are created, please make sure to create threads in the proper place.
Debate
9. Give an opinion and back it up with a reason. Throwaway comments such as "Game X pwnz because my friend and I think so!" could be considered pointless at best, and inflammatory at worst.
10. Try to give your own opinions, not simply those copied and pasted from reviews or opinions of your friends.
Unacceptable behavior and warnings
11. In registering here at ChessTalk please note that the same or similar rules apply here as applied at the previous Boardhost message board. In particular, the following content is not permitted to appear in any messages:
* Racism
* Hatred
* Harassment
* Adult content
* Obscene material
* Nudity or pornography
* Material that infringes intellectual property or other proprietary rights of any party
* Material the posting of which is tortious or violates a contractual or fiduciary obligation you or we owe to another party
* Piracy, hacking, viruses, worms, or warez
* Spam
* Any illegal content
* unapproved Commercial banner advertisements or revenue-generating links
* Any link to or any images from a site containing any material outlined in these restrictions
* Any material deemed offensive or inappropriate by the Board staff
12. Users are welcome to challenge other points of view and opinions, but should do so respectfully. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Posts and threads with unacceptable content can be closed or deleted altogether. Furthermore, a range of sanctions are possible - from a simple warning to a temporary or even a permanent banning from ChessTalk.
Helping to Moderate
13. 'Report' links (an exclamation mark inside a triangle) can be found in many places throughout the board. These links allow users to alert the board staff to anything which is offensive, objectionable or illegal. Please consider using this feature if the need arises.
Advice for free
14. You should exercise the same caution with Private Messages as you would with any public posting.
You're being facetious right? Normal changes in meterological conditions such as milder or wilder winters do not prove global climate change. However, they also do not provide 'ironclad' evidence that global warming does not exist. Last winter's mild conditions did not prove global warming. This years predicted heavier snowfall and colder winter does not then do just the opposite and in turn disprove global warming. Neither point of view should rely on such shoddy evidence as absolute proof. Prove it one year, disprove it next year depending on which way the snow blows. Not likely. In the first place your time frame of 2 years and geographic frame of our area hardly covers a sufficient time and portion of the earth to prove anything. Far from being the type of argument of the AGW side as you label it. It is the type of argument favoured by those who have a limited appreciation of the issues under discussion. The type of argument the Wiarton Willy crowd would appreciate.
Last edited by Zeljko Kitich; Tuesday, 20th November, 2012, 07:19 PM.
That is, cut resource consumption in half while doubling population and increasing the global standard of living. It's a tall order, but there are organizations actively figuring out the path to achieve this.
That doesn't make any sense. History shows us that as soon as a cheaper/cleaner energy source comes up, we crave on it and rapidly get back to the unsustainable track.
Do you seriously think that a 10 fold decrease in energy cost/pollution means we can last 10 times longer? False. It means that everybody in the world can now afford our standard of living.
History lesson: Global energy consumption has been following an unsustainable exponential trend (+3%/year) for centuries. Major breakthroughs in terms of energy production occurred over that period and nothing ever changed. Why would it be different now?
Honestly, I'm not pessimistic and I don't think we'll be in any serious trouble for a while, but our current course IS unsustainable. Our only reliable source of energy is the sun and this implies a physical limitation that we will have to address at some point.
That doesn't make any sense. History shows us that as soon as a cheaper/cleaner energy source comes up, we crave on it and rapidly get back to the unsustainable track.
Do you seriously think that a 10 fold decrease in energy cost/pollution means we can last 10 times longer? False. It means that everybody in the world can now afford our standard of living.
So?
History lesson: Global energy consumption has been following an unsustainable exponential trend (+3%/year) for centuries.
That is debateable.
Major breakthroughs in terms of energy production occurred over that period and nothing ever changed. Why would it be different now?
Honestly, I'm not pessimistic and I don't think we'll be in any serious trouble for a while, but our current course IS unsustainable.
Malthus was making that same argument a couple of centuries ago. There have been new wrinkles since his time and it is likely there will be more in the next two centuries.
Our only reliable source of energy is the sun and this implies a physical limitation that we will have to address at some point.
Interesting discussion but there are some pretty large assumptions being made to sustain the argument. It is interesting that in some of the comments to that article the Club of Rome is almost deified despite getting every prediction wrong. It takes special skill to get everything wrong.
This is a free non-credit online course on climate change that will be starting in the future. I have already signed up for it. I'm suggesting others on either side of the debate might want to do the same. https://www.coursera.org/course/climatechange from the University of Melbourne. I have taken several other courses on Coursera and they have all been quite good.
That doesn't make any sense. History shows us that as soon as a cheaper/cleaner energy source comes up, we crave on it and rapidly get back to the unsustainable track.
Do you seriously think that a 10 fold decrease in energy cost/pollution means we can last 10 times longer? False. It means that everybody in the world can now afford our standard of living.
History lesson: Global energy consumption has been following an unsustainable exponential trend (+3%/year) for centuries. Major breakthroughs in terms of energy production occurred over that period and nothing ever changed. Why would it be different now?
1. It does make sense because the book isn't predicting efficiency; it's attempting to plan efficiencies, and not just little bits. We've been doing this with food production for some time. They have concrete ideas for the rest.
2. We're not talking about stagnation in technology nor stagnation in population or quality of life. All will increase, and we need to ensure the technology side is ahead of the consumption side.
3. Major breakthroughs in production enabled continuing increases in consumption. This is true. To clarify what's different, suppose power production remains stagnant. Technology is coming which will drastically increase what we can do with that same power. Or, enable us to do more with less power. We won't need to grow power production or consumption.
If this is false, we may need to take more exotic measures to sustain things, but such are also becoming feasible.
3. Major breakthroughs in production enabled continuing increases in consumption. This is true. To clarify what's different, suppose power production remains stagnant. Technology is coming which will drastically increase what we can do with that same power. Or, enable us to do more with less power. We won't need to grow power production or consumption.
If this is false, we may need to take more exotic measures to sustain things, but such are also becoming feasible.
Physics: there is just that much you can do with a certain amount of power... For example, our cars are roughly 20% efficient in terms of converting chemical energy into actual movement. Yes, you can gain a little bit, but not that much. A few generations at best.
Your 'exotic measures', in my view, imply discoveries that would change the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics. Good luck with that.
My point is not about predicting the exact date for a Malthusian apocalypse. Malthus himself was pretty stupid in his assumptions. However, the data clearly shows that we are on an unsustainable exponential growth track. If we don't address this issue, it will be a huge problem at some point in the future. Global warming is, in my view, a very good warning.
For those of you worried about global overpopulation and resource consumption it is time to get very worried as one of the key elements keeping populations in check is about to go away. Here is one product (one of several) that promises to give people in the developing world clean water on a very inexpensive basis when compared to the alternatives.
In the long term this should reduce the rate of overpopulation as people won't be tempted to have ten kids to make sure that two or three survive into adulthood.
We had better hide this invention from the Malthusian he man human haters club since the possibility does exist that it could be scaled up if they ever get tired of waiting for their predictions for the end of the world and actually started implementing a strategy to help bring the apocalypse about on an accelerated timetable. Today mice and bugs, tomorrow,... hunting humans...
Physics: there is just that much you can do with a certain amount of power... For example, our cars are roughly 20% efficient in terms of converting chemical energy into actual movement. Yes, you can gain a little bit, but not that much. A few generations at best.
Your 'exotic measures', in my view, imply discoveries that would change the fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics. Good luck with that.
My point is not about predicting the exact date for a Malthusian apocalypse. Malthus himself was pretty stupid in his assumptions. However, the data clearly shows that we are on an unsustainable exponential growth track. If we don't address this issue, it will be a huge problem at some point in the future. Global warming is, in my view, a very good warning.
You're thinking along different lines than I am. I'm saying
(1) there are many ways to increase power, and we aren't close to tapping out. Continuing exponential growth will take centuries to exhaust energy resources.
(2) We probably are better off if we don't continue exponential growth. There are ways to reduce that curve. For your example of transportation, we can reduce the amount of transportation and the distances required. Dramatically reduce the weight of cars to reduce fuel. Develop local on-demand manufacturing. These steps are each limited measures that offset general growth trends, but they suffice for now.
(3) Exotic measures would be steps taken to mitigate the impact of our resource consumption, not new physics. I don't know what form that will be. Random example: microwave lasers beaming energy through space.
The main point is not that these are easy or guaranteed to happen. The point is that these are possible and good and necessary. Let's pursue them.
(1) there are many ways to increase power, and we aren't close to tapping out. Continuing exponential growth will take centuries to exhaust energy resources.
As I wrote, history shows us that technological breakthroughs have little to no effect on the global trend. When we have more power available, we use it. It may change in the future, I don't know. But I have serious doubts.
For example, modern cars are much lighter than old cars and much more energy efficient. And any of these is more efficient than riding a horse carriage. Yet, none of these led to a reduction in total energy consumption.
And I do not agree that we are far from taping out.
The calculation is simple. In 1 hour, we receive as much energy from the sun as we consume in a year (total energy consumption, not just solar). Sounds good, we can still increase our energy consumption by a factor of:
24 x 365 = 8760
That's our theoretical limit, assuming 100% efficiency everywhere. It's a little ridiculous, because the earth would be covered in solar panels, but whatever. This is our theoretical limit for a sustainable operation.
What about +3%/year exponential energy consumption?
EC = 1.03^n
with EC being the relative energy consumption and 'n' being the number of years from now. How much time before EC reaches 8760? Surprisingly, it's only a bit over 300 years. And I'm making some ridiculously optimistic assumptions here.
For example, we could use only 50% of the incoming sunlight and assume 50% conversion efficiency (much better than currently). With these numbers, we get down to just over 250 years before reaching the limit. Add in a few other assumptions to be more realistic and you rapidly get under 200 years.
Not saying it will happen, just saying that it's an issue we should address now. Not in 200 years.
Excellent news, fantastic. Education in climate change scares the life out of the deniers. There is almost no chance that they would take the course, assuming that it is legitimate.
Tweet
Comment