Environmentalism and the future of coal, part one
Jeremy Carl argues that coal will be with us for a long while 43
-
Posted 10:35 AM on 21 Nov 2007
by David Roberts -
Posted in
-
Read More About
David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/david_h_roberts.
Related Stories
A Milestone: 100th Coal Plant Stopped
McCaskill says House climate bill will sink in Senate
Coal-nundrum and Ex-gas-peration
Add a Comment
You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.
Comments
View as Flat
odograph Posted 3:56 am
21 Nov 2007
$20
"If people don't pick up Amory's famous $20 bills lying on the ground, maybe that's because they aren't really there."
Or $20 isn't worth stooping for. The median US new-car price is up to $28K these days. Our Priuses, starting down at $20K, are affordable for most of the market ... but most will spend more both on car and on gas ... as they pursue luxury or whatever.
(The devil on my shoulder says that if the Indians and Chinese are going to keep burning coal, I should trade in my Prius for a 400HP monster ...)
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 5:19 am
21 Nov 2007
A price on carbon is the best thing
you could lobby for. Nobody envisioned cell phones or personal computers or even a Prius a few decades ago and nobody knows what sets of solutions will appear once millions of entrepreneurs are given the incentive by a price on greenhouse gases.
You are limited by what you know. The answers lie in what we don't yet know. To get those answers, we need a price on carbon. If we in the States and the European Union put a price on it, India and China will have no option but to pay that price along with us or find 500 million new customers.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
odograph Posted 5:53 am
21 Nov 2007
A [global] price on carbon is the best thing
you could lobby for, but I think he's saying this is unlikely.
Heck, count future fossil fuel expansion in the former Soviet Union into the mix ... 14F in Moscow, partly cloudy. That's not the kind of thing that motivates GW action.
Permalink
elbarto Posted 12:08 pm
21 Nov 2007
Civilisation has 200 years, tops.
Our basic way of life and economic model presumes growth, we can't grow for much longer. How will any government sell zero growth (=economic recession) or possibly negative growth as what is required to prevent global catastrophe?
http://consumptiongrowth101.com/ConsumptionGrowth101text. ...
A lengthy thought experiment. Can anyone refute the arguments?
Permalink
apsmith Posted 12:44 pm
21 Nov 2007
Here's the problem
The same argument that says new energy technologies won't be taken up quickly enough to tackle the growth of coal use by China and India (and other nations too) has another implication: clean coal technology will not be taken up quickly enough either.
So either we're totally screwed no matter what, or there's something wrong with that argument. I prefer the latter conclusion.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 3:02 pm
21 Nov 2007
So Hansen's argument won't work?...
...that is, Nasa scientist James Hansen's idea that, considering peak oil, we could avert catastrophe by limiting coal and not worrying about oil. Maybe it would be easier to try to turn back oil use and deforestation, which accounts for a large chunk of emissions, and kill coal in the developed countries, if the situation in China and India is hopeless. Unless they can be convinced/economically helped to go solar/wind big-time.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:22 pm
21 Nov 2007
You know whats second to a global price?
You know whats second to a global price on carbon?
A domestic carbon price, and an import carbon tariff for countries in noncompliance.
Permalink
GreenEngineer Posted 4:27 pm
21 Nov 2007
not worth bending down to pick up $20
That's precisely the problem. For all that businesspeople get wrapped up in a knot about the cost of energy, it's generally a very small fraction (less than 5%) of the total cost of doing business. As a result, we waste it right and left, because it's not economical to take the time to do efficient designs. As a result of that, we are forced to build more and more capacity, to satisfy the demand for cheap power and keep the economy growing.
China and India are one thing, but for the West, the long-term best policy will be the one that raises energy costs as quickly as it is possible to do so without crashing the economy. Whether it's a price on carbon or switching to natural gas is of secondary importance: we will treat energy as the precious commodity that it is when, and only when, it is priced accordingly.
The problem is not that Lovins' $20 bills don't exist. They do. They've just been torn into pieces and scattered about, and it's not deemed worthwhile to pick them up, sort them out, and paste them back into currency.
Permalink
Pangolin Posted 7:24 pm
21 Nov 2007
Sez you.
I offer a dissenting scenario.
It is one thing to kill a man; it is a far more dangerous thing to have a living man believe he is already dead, beyond hope of living a life with a wife and child of his own and his parents to guide him. India and China face a future with millions of young men born of gender selective breeding with no women to marry.
Climate Change will affect India and China as well as everywhere else, destroying cropland, drying up water sources and adding extra destruction to extreme weather. This will cause pressures to many families most significantly a reduction in available food, fuel and jobs.
Young men with no prospects, no wives and limited job choices will seek status by engaging in militant action, then terrorism. An obvious target is established power structures and infrastructure including coal burning plants. As coal fumes and ash will be a noxious health hazard and will kill the lower classes in significant numbers this isn't unlikely.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Given multiple cycles of weather disaster, food shortages, air pollution, political cronyism and oppression..... you could have a generation of don't-give-a-shit suicide bombers. These emerged in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict only after economic progress was a closed door for young adult Palestinians.
At some point the remnants of humanity will view coal burning as something akin to pedophilia and cannibalism. Once acceptable in the distant past but unthinkable today. Or there will be no remnant.
Put the Carbon Back
Permalink
ce1907 Posted 11:01 pm
21 Nov 2007
GreyFlcn is correct
and maybe some taxes on the Am corps doing business in India and China
Permalink
odograph Posted 11:29 pm
21 Nov 2007
growth
elbarto, the problem with many pro-growth and anti-growth arguments is that they don't pause to define "growth." They both, for their own reasons, want you to assume you know what it means (good or bad).
Sometimes these same articles will use GDP as a measure for growth. That's a narrow financial measurement, and not one directly related to environmental or sustainability arguments.
Sure, we might conceive of a sustainable society with static GDP. We might also conceive of a sustainable society with growing (or falling) GDP.
In the here and now, I think GDP, and other simple measures of economic growth, are interesting for what they don't tell us about the environmental.
It is simply not true in our world that GDP is proportional to economic damage. Some nations manage to do less harm while making more GDP, and some unfortunates do a great deal of harm while struggling to produce very little GDP.
When the real world shows a flexible connection between "growth" and sustainability, even in the narrow sense of "GDP growth" ... maybe the thing to do is to understand that flexibility and to turn it to our advantage.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:32 am
22 Nov 2007
Sounds good
"...few people want to work on cleaning up a traditional and dirty fuel, even though its contribution to the world's energy supply is more than 50 times that of wind, solar, tidal and geothermal energy combined and it seems overwhelmingly likely to keep growing."
Very good Jeremy, it's easy to see why you are a jetsetting spokesperson for clean coal.
But this is the same old talking point the limboobs have been using for years. You just sound better at this nut wing rhetoric than the typical limboob.
Here is how this fallacious argument works. Renewables are only a tiny percentage of our power source now, therefore they will not be a large contributor in the future, except you add conservation into the fallacy. Very effective. But simple sophistry.
Go back to the 1890s when the horseless carriage was used by less than 1% of the population. If your argument worked, 99% of us would still be driving buggies.
The next infamous talking point.
"...some would certainly be willing to pay a little additional money to have cleaner energy, few would be willing to make the substantial investment that a transition away from coal would entail, even with the substantial attendant environmental benefits."
This is a very popular one. Renewable energy and conservation is too expensive. actually a shift to renewables will not cost economic growth, it will create it by lowering energy costs, pollution related costs, and GHG climate disaster costs. Fossil fuel and nuclear power energy costs are like a huge tax on the world economy payed to multinational corporations. And all good limboobs know that taxes kill growth. No new taxes!!
And here is the solution.
"...as the source of a quarter of the world's energy, that portfolio needs to include clean coal technologies. Natural gas is already expensive and geographically concentrated, and if we begin substituting it for coal in a big way, it is going to become much more expensive."
Make coal into natural gas underground, using natural bacteria, then use the gas in very efficient (70%) solid oxide fuel cell/turbines in a distributed generation power grid. These also run on biogas from the waste stream. This makes coal part of the solution. A perfect backup energy source for a distributed renewable energy generation and storage internet enabled grid.
The mess from the coal remains underground.
Why will India and China adopt this technology as well? The same reason they always have adopted western technology, to compete on a global scale to manufacture and export it. Just as with every other product line invented in the west, bvut now manufactured in lower production cost economies like China and India.
Economics makes revolutions. Government follows along playing catch up. It's high time for government to catch up, as in WW 2 war production. Given a large enough emergency, like GHG climate disaster, oil wars, and war over nuclear proliferation, government action is called for.
The cost of inaction is economic disaster and worse, constitutional disaster, as is now happening under this administration.
Your job that you use to "pay your mortgage" (from "Thank You For Smoking") depends upon your present point of view on clean coal and energy policy. It's just that simple. Simple self-serving sophistry as old as the greek hills.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
cce Posted 6:30 am
22 Nov 2007
Talking points
Another example of a talking point is comparing the world's energy infrastructure to the horse and buggy. Based on that particular argument, we should be riding in flying cars that run on water by now. Some things are harder than others.
We need a level playing field, aggressive emmissions targets, an increasing price on carbon, and real investment in renewables and efficiency. If the result involves "clean coal," then so be it.
Permalink
elbarto Posted 7:30 am
22 Nov 2007
The existential question.
Replying to odograph-
I'm defining growth as the growth in consumption of everything: energy, water, trees, fish, cows, steel, corn, whatever.
The world's population is increasing exponentially and each individual person is striving to achieve a first world standard of living which currently necessitates a profligate consumption of resources. This drives consumption at an even greater rate than population increase.
For me, consumption of coal (and other fossils) is just one small part of the equation and I'm beginning to form the view that it receives disproportionate attention.
Put it this way; lets say we could wave a magic wand and overnight all of humanity was using renewable energy for all processes. What then? Business as usual? Continue strip mining the ocean for fish, strip mining the land for cattle grazing, strip mining the land for metals, on and on.
Replacing all fossil fuels with renewables without stopping (or more likely reversing) consumption of everything else might buy civilisation a few decades.
How likely is it that people will accept the necessary paradigm shift to reverse consumption and live in a manner that only takes things from the Earth at the rate they are replaced by nature?
Do we choose to live indefinitely, at least until the sun starts to die. Or do we burn out in a blaze of glory in a few centuries? In my opinion that question moots all these micro issues like coal etc.
I accept the argument that if we don't stop buring fossils soon we might have our growth sharply curbed for us. But transitioning to renewables is a much easier problem to solve than our propensity to build ever larger castles and monuments so we can bask in our own ingenuity.
I'm still hoping for a future in which human civilisation is almost indistinguishable from nature, yet possesses technology, ability and knowledge far beyond anything we might imagine today.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 8:43 am
22 Nov 2007
Fallacy
You appear to know as much about clean coal and energy policy as you know about informal fallacies. Keep up the good work cce.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
odograph Posted 11:27 pm
22 Nov 2007
growth paths
"How likely is it that people will accept the necessary paradigm shift to reverse consumption and live in a manner that only takes things from the Earth at the rate they are replaced by nature?"
Not likely, but hopefully we can avoid the very worst outcomes. For that we have to keep our eye on what are the most damaging practices at the moment, and going forward.
We want to grow, ideally, by the least damaging route.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 1:27 am
23 Nov 2007
Money talks. We need to go first then!
So if I'm reading this right.
This means that coal has no future in developed countries.
http://greyfalcon.net/costlycoal
http://greyfalcon.net/costlycoal2
But it may have a future in developing countries.
So the only alternative, because money talks;
Is to create renewables which undercut the cost of fossil fuels in developing countries.
And the only way thats going to happen is if developed countries step forward first, and make that happen.
Primarily America.
_
It also pretty much kills the concept of developing countries ever persuing Coal Sequestration, or a Carbon Tax.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 1:59 am
23 Nov 2007
Coal to natural gas
This is a technology the developed world could pursue that would actually lower the cost compared to coal mining and standard coal burning power plants.
Lower cost is what drives innovation. Then other economies, like China and India, would have to follow to compete.
Natural gas used in fuel cell/turbines further lowers energy cost and GHG emission due to much higher efficiency. This system lends itself to a distributed renewable grid with smaller power plants that can also use biogas, and the waste heat can be applied through cogeneration, where it is needed.
Higher efficiency, pipelines carrying natural gas instead of mining and transporting coal, and distributed fuel cells instead of inefficient, GHG spewing coal fired centralized power plants. That would be progress.
And provide perfect distributed backup for wind and solar power.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 2:09 am
23 Nov 2007
ebarto, excellent points --
I've been trying to figure how best to describe what you're talking about, because it's a different problem than global warming. Ecosystem destruction? Desert Earth? There's no name for this vast group of problems, ones that the "limits to growth" authors have been trying to warn us about (also Lester Brown) for decades. Because even if we turned around global warming, this other set of destructive behaviors would doom the planet just the same.
Permalink
elbarto Posted 9:32 pm
23 Nov 2007
Peak Everything...
...beyond which, everything sets into abrupt, permanent and irreversible decline; the Global Collapse.
Permalink
odograph Posted 11:23 pm
23 Nov 2007
Peak "everything"
That kind of synchronization would be pretty amazing ... though it's much easier in fiction, when an author aligns events for maximum effect.
In the real world, we pants wering monkeys have to deduce what are short term financial cycles and what are longer term waves of history.
Some of us are quite convinced we have that figured out, but then, some of us always are.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 12:03 am
24 Nov 2007
Peak mass delusion
The appointment of the chimp. Twice. So maybe reality starts to eclipse incompetence now?
Peak moments of delusion set the scene for a change, a revolution. Duuhbya, an agent of change.
Think about it. He has brought US to the very brink, the herd needs to turn or go over the cliff to extinction.
Maybe dolphins will be the next species to try for global domination.
The nature of reality, the relationship between the microcosim, the single particle. And the macrocosm, the infinity of space/time. The quality of existence, not the quantity.
Consciousness, Idle consciousness. Forever speculating on a street corner named desire.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Michael Tobis Posted 5:03 am
24 Nov 2007
Good job, Grist!
I'm just taking it all in, for the present. I have nothing of substance to add just now.
However, I'd like to congratulate Grist for increasingly being a place where controversies are addressed in an intelligent and mutually respectful way.
This article and, so far, this discussion are fine examples of a very promising trend on this site.
Thanks! Please keep up the good work!
mt
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 6:10 am
24 Nov 2007
Elbarto --
I think "Peak Everything" is actually a different problem than ecosystem destruction. Running out of stuff that is underground, such as fossil fuels and minerals, is very bad for our current civilization, but if anything it would be a plus for global ecosystems, because pulling all of that stuff out of the ground is also destructive.
The problem I was referring to is the destruction of living ecosystems, through overfishing, deforestation, polluting of rivers and air, overgrazing, and soil depletion maybe being the worst offenders. That is, the very biological bases of our own lives, the capacity to grow food and drink and use water, and the control of various global processes (outside of the problem of global warming), are being destroyed.
odo -- Peak everything and ecosystem destruction, or whatever you want to call it, is not a financial question, it's more of an engineering question, will the global production system work if these trends continue?
amazingdrx -- Dolphins don't have manipulative limbs, so I would vote for octopuses as a possible future intelligent species, although that might take a while
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 6:47 am
24 Nov 2007
Dolphin arms and hands
Jon Rynn wrote: Dolphins don't have manipulative limbs
What do you call this?
http://www.neoucom.edu/DLDD/interst/develop/flipper/index ...
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 6:51 am
24 Nov 2007
Unfortunately, I can't see dolphins...
...being able to operate a machine tool or making a stone hammer. Of course, other primates, racoons, and a few other land-based animals could, conceivably, evolve in that direction.
Permalink
odograph Posted 8:30 am
24 Nov 2007
peak price
"odo -- Peak everything and ecosystem destruction, or whatever you want to call it, is not a financial question, it's more of an engineering question, will the global production system work if these trends continue?"
I was trying for a parallel, between our poor perception of future and risk in the financial world, to the need for absolute clarity to hit "peak everything" like a nail on the head.
If we are lousy at prediction, how lucky would we have to be to nail that one?
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 9:00 am
24 Nov 2007
OK, let me push the engineering metaphor --
If you have a structure that seems like it might collapse, you're not necessarily worried about the exact point in time of collapse. The Minneapolis bridge allegedly had a certain number of years before they were supposed to start worrying about that. But you ordinarily work in very large ranges of possibility, in order to avoid that catastrophic collapse.
We have the same situation here. Peak everything, ecosystem destruction, and global warming are pointing to some sort of collapse. Therefore, the system needs to be rebuilt, starting now.
Permalink
odograph Posted 9:21 am
24 Nov 2007
huh?
Is that how engineering really works? We do a paragraph of vague threats (sans numerals) and say "Therefore, the system needs to be rebuilt, starting now."
My goodness ... I better get on the horn to my architect!
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 10:12 am
24 Nov 2007
Wait a minute, odo...
...what threats there are vague? Scientists and engineers work together to understand how structures withstand various stresses, and try to prevent said structures from collapsing. Why wouldn't the global biosphere work in the same way? Are engineers always called on to provide 100% certainty that a structure will fail, and exactly when? Would you not rebuild a structure because you couldn't give such exact predictions?
Permalink
odograph Posted 10:15 am
24 Nov 2007
rearview mirror
Don't the most reasonable peak oil proponents say, in fact, that peak oil will only be visible in the "rearview mirror?"
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 1:38 pm
24 Nov 2007
Yeah, and so do collapsed bridges...
...and even putting peak oil aside, we still have global warming and ecosystem destruction to worry about (Jared Diamond lists 11 crises that must all be solved, but I'll stick to these three, or two if you want to put peak oil aside)
Permalink
odograph Posted 12:26 am
25 Nov 2007
bridges
I hope you are aware that state transportation organizations do use numbers. They know their system and schedule of inspections. They know their rate of failure. When we look it rationally it is very low. There are millions of bridges in this country. Catastrophic failures with loss of life are very few.
A transportation planner would look at failures per million passengers or some such, and see a very low number.
He might also, after a catastrophic failure, reconsider his system. He would study alternate systems and schedules of inspections, and try to calculate how that would change the final outcome, the failures per million passengers.
If the incremental cost of increased inspection gave him the best safety payback I'm sure he'd do it. But then it is also possible that he has on his table better lighting for cross-walks, better markers at train-crossing, and .etc
A rational engineering investigation attempts to balance these things.
It does not pick a few headlines to make "a paragraph of vague threats (sans numerals) and say 'Therefore, the system needs to be rebuilt, starting now.'"
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 2:22 am
25 Nov 2007
Odo --
I think you've pinpointed a particular problem (another one) that we have facing the future -- lack of examples. Unfortunately, we don't have an inventory of examples of dozens or hundreds of other worlds, and how their "intelligent" life forms handled their planetary systems (the lack of contact perhaps not being a good sign). Engineers are very uncomfortable without examples (their uncomfortable even with examples, but without them...). So my engineering example falls down with respect to the culture and mindset of engineers, and the also the general rule that one carefully studies precedent. There is no precedent -- or, not much, except perhaps for the sort of thing Jared Diamond or Thomas Homer-Dixon are doing -- for a planetary collapse of whatever sort. I don't know if there are many examples of rebuilding a one-of-a-kind-system that had never been built before in order to prevent collapse. But I still think we have to try.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 3:41 pm
25 Nov 2007
Dolphin civilization
I saw a Science channel presentation that said roughly 7 asteroids big enough to wipe the face of the planet down to molten rock with no liquid water remaining have hit Earth in it's 5 billion year history.
How many civilizations have arisen from single cell organisms after previous asteroid wipe downs? What were the dominant species like? did they reach the level of technological civilization?
Dolphins might just have evolved in such a way that they could engineer DNA with their own organic distributed computing network, connected telepathically one dolphin brain to the next. Like an idiot savante with a super photographic memory magnified to super computer level.
Molecular engineering using DNA, to produce the devices we have produced with our opposable thumbs developing ever more complex levels of tools. But even with our much evolved tools, very far from stone knives, we are still having a hard time understanding how life uses DNA as a biochemical tool to assemble molecule upon molecule into organisms so complex we are still not able to understand how they work.
If you can build a coral reef or a whale or a human mind, can you build molecular nano engineered superconductors and alloys to make anti gravity space travel a reality? It's in the vein of "Alien", the design of the alien spacecraft was all organic, it was grown.
What could conscious beings who could go within and consciously control DNA create? Without thumbs. Well they could certainly build whole hands, arms, whatever.
Thumbs! They don't need no steenkeeng thumbs! ("Treasure of The Sierra Madre")
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
odograph Posted 10:27 pm
25 Nov 2007
casting dice
Jon, I don't believe that Jared Diamond or Thomas Homer-Dixon have said that the die is cast, or that we are locked on to any one specific future.
I don't believe either of them has (to return to where you approached me in this thread) has endorsed "peak everything."
On the other hand, they, and we, do regularly discuss the risks we face and the actions we might take to mitigate them.
Permalink
odograph Posted 10:29 pm
25 Nov 2007
huh?
"I don't know if there are many examples of rebuilding a one-of-a-kind-system that had never been built before in order to prevent collapse. But I still think we have to try."
Oh, and I think this sentence is completely insane.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 1:36 am
26 Nov 2007
Bad sentence construction, my bad!
Sorry, Odo, I was just trying to say that we need to "try to avoid collapse", picky picky!
Diamond and Homer-Dixon don't say the die is cast, and I think every post I have here implies that the die is not cast, in fact, we have plenty of options which we are in the midst of trying to explore and elaborate. I think they do imply -- although it might be hard to pin them down to actually say so -- that if we continue with business-as-usual, then it's over-the-cliff-time. That's certainly the conclusion one would come to from their work.
Amazingdrx -- I have no idea if some creatures can fiddle with DNA (perhaps that was part of "Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy", dolphin-wise), but what has given humans the capacity to create a civilization (and perhaps destroy the biosphere) is coevolution of very manipulable fingers/hands plus a big brain. Perhaps I am looking at it from my hand-dominated brain, but it seems to me that a n organism has to be able to create tools, by using a very flexible manipulator, to get to "world domination" level, not that that is necessarily a good thing (not that there's anything right about that?)
Permalink
odograph Posted 1:42 am
26 Nov 2007
ok
I've been doing some pretty bad sentences myself lately.
I think the interesting thing about "business as usual" is that it is really "change as usual."
And so it becomes a question of whether our current rate of response (which is not zero) is sufficient. That's a hard one to call, because it hinges on things not directly seen or measured in our world. It hinges on unknowns that we may (or may not) be able to predict.
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 1:50 am
26 Nov 2007
"Change as usual"...
...sounds like a good phrase to me. To put things in a positive light here, Paul Hawken in "Blessed Unrest" seems to be arguing that the vast unseen movement he documents may shape our responses in ways that we have not been considering. I certainly hope so, but I think it's still important to continue to submit various ambitious plans for review (e.g., Lester Brown's proposals in "Plan B, Version 2.0").
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 2:01 am
26 Nov 2007
Syntax and Dolphin engineering
I'm the winner in a bad syntax contest. Grist, why not have one?
Gristmill awards. Most confusing syntax in a comment award! As bio-d says it is like some other language that no one can understand. Not even me sometimes.
Jon molecular engineering is the best of all possible forms of engineering, designing and building (growing)something from each molecule all the way up to the size of a coral reef. It just doesn't get any more powerful in terms of tools than that.
Nano materials that can superconduct, all the miracles imagined by sci-fi. like solar light converted to electrical energy at nearly 100% efficiency, with superconducting solar PV cells.
If engineering at the molecular level could be harnessed, DNA engineering, molecular computing would be possible. A PC on the head of a pin?
The thing about going inward as a quest to explore the nature of life itself and consciousness, instead of looking outward to manipulate the world mechanistically with thumbs and tools, is that it could be a more direct route to that ultimate engineering.
Dolphin telepathy could allow organic computing to break into the DNA workshop, it might take millions of dolphin brains operating in parallel, as distributed computing makes a supercompter over the internet. With enough computing power DNA could be designed like microchips are now.
Organically grown technology.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 2:34 am
26 Nov 2007
Well,
the dolphins better start coding! No wave surfing, much less web surfing!
Permalink
socialscientist Posted 2:29 am
27 Nov 2007
to stop coal, stop cars
The subsidized auto allows energy-wasting sprawl.
http://www.freepublictransit.org
is the beginning of the end of autosprawl.
.
Permalink