Posts by Bart Janssen
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Because putting people in jails frequently and for a long time has been shown again and again to reduce criminal offending … no wait.
Arguing about the breadth of crimes this might apply to is utterly beside the point.
-
Speaker: The purpose of science and its limits, in reply to bmk,
Official business stats would understate R & D conducted too though. I used to have to fill out the quarterly Statistic NZ form and it was so annoying to constantly have to do that you would fill it out as fast as possible and simply put down 0 for R & D rather than the actual number.
That changed for a little while when Labour introduced a tax incentive for R&D. The numbers went up rapidly and it turned out that the big accounting firms were doing lots of R&D that they hadn't previously reported. In fact, surprisingly, they were doing almost exactly the maximum amount of claimable R&D that it was possible to do!
Seriously though, industry R&D is quite reasonably mostly D. While D is critical, if you don't have someone doing R then the only D you can do is with R from other countries.
-
Speaker: The purpose of science and its limits, in reply to Sacha,
We need more of both, but isn’t our private share less than half what it should be?
Agreed of course. Industry R&D is a third or less of OECD averages. As far as anyone can tell from the experiences in other countries (bearing in mind every country is, well, a whole other country) industry investment usually lags behind government investment and that lag is bigger when government investment is lower. So the countries with low government investment have even lower industry investment, as the government investment increases the gap between government and industry gets smaller.
Now the problem of course is cause and effect and our governments have always insisted that they can increase industry investment (by some magical means) without needing to increase government investment.
My problem with that is that over 20 years none of the magic has worked. So my thinking is how about we stop doing things that don't work and simply do the thing that has worked in every other country.
And in case someone thinks I'm talking about huge amounts of money we don't have, science funding is pretty damn small in the scheme of the budgets Keith's data tool is fun and every study shows it pays back non-linearly.
-
Speaker: The purpose of science and its limits, in reply to Sacha,
the real issue for New Zealand R&D
is that our private sector has never invested their share
That is propaganda by the governments (Labour and National).
While it is true that business funding is low, the government funding is at best two thirds of the OECD average (depending on how you count it). That's the average!
All the evidence from overseas shows that business funding only rises after government funding rises so the government(s) pointing the finger at industry is bollocks.
-
Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to BenWilson,
I meant what I was saying over short time period, like 5-10 years.
In 2004 I had two massive CRTs on my desk. 3D printers barely existed then, now people are making their own for fun, in five years there will be 3D print shops in shopping malls (a guess but not an extreme one). Change happens really fast sometimes. New York is currently switching its city lighting over to LEDs. When aid agencies think about taking electricity to developing countries they take solar not diesel generators.
There are bits of energy saving technology all over the place that need only a small change in attitude to be implemented. It seems to me that we don't need much effort on the part f government to change quite dramatically in a short period of time, but we do need the government to stop actively obstructing change and actively promoting inefficient technologies.
-
Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to henry laurensen,
The middle ground where all (including deniers and vested interests, governments etc.) can agree on the goal would seem to be somewhere about here;; increased efficiency, reduced wastage and squandering , and finding cost -competitive alternative energy sources.
Who would lose?
No many. Sadly those who would lose (big oil etc) have a lot of power.
-
Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to BenWilson,
You keep talking about losing things and I keep trying to talk about using something different or better.
Not that I care much about SUV drivers but why can't their bigass'd vehicle be powered by something else. And why can't we send solar powered electric pumps to Cambodia. No loss of the experience, but a huge change in emissions.
-
Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to BenWilson,
I’m completely confused about what you’re saying here.
There are a couple of things here. First we don't need to stop burning all fossil fuels to get carbon emissions to a point where we don't damage the climate (too much). So you don't need to go from 70-80% to 0%, you can probably get away with getting rid of the top 20-30%. Providing you get rid of the really inefficient first.
Next, not all fossil fuel burning is the same. Modern gas fired electricity production is incredibly efficient at turning fossil fuel into usable energy. Yes it would be nice to burn zero gas/coal etc but if we switch from burning fossil fuels inefficiently to burning them efficiently then we use dramatically less to get the same energy needs. And hence produce less CO2 and also less other crap.
or every usage of it increase in efficiency 5 fold
You said it yourself - the difference in efficiency between a recycled truck engine used as an outboard motor in Cambodia and a modern electricity plant is vastly more than 5 fold.
That's why the focus is on cars, particularly big-arsed stupid gas guzzling SUVs. They are an incredibly inefficient use of fossil fuel energy. And that's not even thinking about shitty combustion engines used in the developing world.
So there is good reason to believe we can produce the same amount of energy while burning much less fossil fuel - we probably don't need to go to zero.
Combine that with other sources of energy and you get no real net loss in energy used but a significant (enough?) reduction in emissions.
Next we may not need to use the same amount of energy to have the same (or better) standard of living. LCD monitors use a huge amount less energy than a CRT AND they are better. There was no loss of standard of living when we switched. The same is true of a lot of the things we use. So the argument that any reduction in energy use equals a loss of economic or social wealth or wellbeing is not certain at all.
And finally none of the economic models are anywhere near sophisticated enough to be able to predict what would happen to the world's economy if we actually did reduce energy use.
The only thing we know for certain is that big oil companies will suffer if we use less oil/gas/coal ... "oh the tragedy". Certainly not the economic disaster claimed by most opponents.
-
Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to BenWilson,
Yup all those things.
We don’t have an economic organization that can withstand a drop in consumption.
I would point out that there is sweet F all evidence for the postulated economic loss. It is definitely true that some industries and businesses will suffer economic losses if we reduce fossil fuel emissions. But it is not at all certain that the economic losses to society as a whole would be large or even present at all.
The biggest piece of unsupported scaremongering going on over climate change comes not from the scientists saying the climate is changing but instead from those businesses with vested interests claiming the next great depression is coming.
the drop in quality of life that comes from energy usage reduction to everyone currently using it
There is stuff all evidence that this will occur at all. Either the reduction in energy usage or the reduction in standard of living.
-
Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Moz,
Fascism! Technomancy, call it what you will, the belief that if we can just get those messy people out of the way the technology will work properly.
Nope that's not what I said.
You are suggesting I want to get rid of those in power who won't, in this case, reduce emissions (because I know best). That isn't what I said or meant.
What I'm saying is that IF those in power won't enact one solution to the problem I want to use technology to create other solutions to the problem instead. Hopefully amongst those other solutions there will be something that those in power will accept.
The point is I don't see much value in doing things that have been shown not to work, in this case trying to convince businesses and governments to reduce fossil fuel use by telling them it's a bad thing to do - I'd rather spend my effort figuring out other options.