Geothermal commercial plants is a 1970s technology. Ahuachapan in El Salvador has been running commercially for 41 years. Because it is an old technology it doesn't use superheated steam like modern plants, thus the steam handling is not more difficult than in the heating applications mentioned here.
I'm in favour of having my cake and eat it too. I'm all for preservation of worthy (ymmv about what is worthy) house stock. At the same time the vast majority of people won't live in restored San Francisco houses, but in new building stock. Let San Francisco be non-passive, and let the rich people there (is there non rich people moving into San Francisco nowadays?) pay for cooling and heating it. But perhaps the new stock being built in Atlanta could be LEED certificated.
If I were King of the USA I would require that any rental building with more than eight units had to be LEED certificated. That, or I would require that the landlord paid the HVAC bill.
My carpenter paid $500/mo in electricity in his rented apartment because the landlord has no incentive to pay perhaps $2,000 to insulate it. There is a plainly seen hidden incentive to make a large fraction of our housing stock less efficient.
I'm surprised about what Tod says. It might be a US issue, driven more by liability than property damage concerns.
Geothermal plants can't be less vanilla. The over the ground portion is a steam turbine and a regular generator. The turbine is the same kind as in regular steam plants going back one hundred years. There is no boiler (which is the part more prone to failures) and instead you have pipes coming up and back down from a well dug not very differently than a not very deep oil well.
Oldest plants I've seen come from the 1970s. I have actually not heard about any major incident in them. There are plenty in Central America and they all get commercial insurance, mostly from the London market (which is where most power plant specialized reinsurers apparently are based).
But the question should be: Should I have Cheyenne be powered through renewables and the East Coast through conventional sources, or should I have Cheyenne and the East Coast powered through conventional sources?
Really, there are no purple and yellow KWhs that have to be apportioned equally or the EC people will be sad. If you are reducing the total fuel consumption you are improving the situation over the baseline.
That's where I think we disagree, I think you can bend the curve. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit. Replacing wood hearths with solar ovens, for instance, would not only reduce massive volumes of CO2 and soot, it would reduce deforestation immensely.
You know you can see the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the air? Haiti has been thoroughly deforestated. Dom. Rep. still has its tree canopy.
I think the "lower" in lower standards of living needs to be better defined.
Is a 2,000 soft house for a family of four a lower standard than a 3,000? Well, yes, it is.
It's also substantially more than what I grew up in, in an upper middle class, private school educatated, Perrier water ice cubes splendor, and 2.5 times the size of the original houses in my very gentrified Houston inner ring suburb.
And it's huge for European or Asian standards
And it requires only 2/3 of the energy to cool or heat. And that is a big improvement.
What a 2,000 sq house is not is the Middle Ages.
It all starts with a low-flow shower. Be the change you can be.
1. I thought First World countries had genocide fishing planned, but you are saying something different, instead. My bad.
2. To address -again- the substance of your comment, relatively small increments in living standards dramatically reduce children per female. For instance, in Lat Am Fertility has dropped from 7 to 4 to 2.5 in the last few decades. Look at the graph in page 9 of this Princeton paper. There are countries in Lat Am at below replacement level.
Even in sub Saharan Africa, the region with the highest fertility, the rates are dropping, though the drop there has deaccelerated recently
So we don't need to kill people. People are selecting to reduce their fertility on their own. My four grandparents combined (all born in the late XIX century) had more grand children than great grandchildren, and I'm a dude in my 50s (and the youngest of all the grandchildren by a whooping 14 years). My father had four children and three grandchildren.
Finally, someone that said what I was thinking while reading the OP and comments.
There are plenty of small things that everyone can do that would do a lot of good cumulatively. More reliance in renewable and distributed energy sources, and a reduction in per capita energy consumption would do wonders
Specific examples:
1. Deforestation is not just driven by organic Starbucks coffee. Using wood for cooking is responsible for massive deforestation. Replacing wood stoves with solar ovens would reduce deforestation and improve the health of billions (we in the West have forgotten how bad hearth smoke is for our health).
2. Using run of River 0.5 and 1MW micro hydro plants would serve millions with minimal ecological impact
3. Fuel efficiency: I have family in the UK. Their very regular plain Toyota Aris driving in London traffic has probably twice the mpg of my Honda CRV running the Houston highways. Their old Rover did too. Charging for gasoline what they charge in Europe or Lat Am would reduce consumption massively
4. Insulate your house. I built my own 2,000 sq feet house in Houston. I splurged an extra $ 2,000 in as much insulation as could be packed. My house has non stop A/c day and nite. I never paid more than $200 in electric bill (and I contract a 100% wind power utility, though I'm clear its just a gimmick). A carpenter that came to work in the house pays $500 in his much smaller apartment. Come on, the Germans can build houses that don't require AC or heating in winter.
5. More about my only wind utility. I work in utilities. I fully understand my energy is coming from gas plans, but I am sending a price signal to incentivize the building of more wind generation, at a trivial -though not zero- cost to me, trivial because insulation.
Also, if available, gas water heating is more efficient than electricity. If possible, tankless is even better.
6. Even more about wind and solar: Ten years ago wind could only compete with fossil fuel or LNG thermal plants. Solar could not compete with anyone. Ten years later, Economies of scale in wind plant manufacturing and improved PV materials are making wind/solar highly competitive without subsidies even against coal and certain gas fired combined cycle facilities. A wind/solar plant combined with a cheap rapid fire aeroderivative gas plant to take over when wind is not available can be cheaper than replacing an existing CC plant with a similar one.
7. Don't buy garbage plastic bags. Reuse the bags from the supermarket. And recycle. I recycle more than twice what I send to a land fill. I buy a recyclable bottle of water in the road, I take it home to recycle.
Reciclyng is probably an area where more governmental nudges would do wonders, btw.
8. Batteries are improving substantially. Governmental support in R&D for new batteries materials are bringing important break thoughts to the market that should be available, Wotan willing, in the next ten years.
A lot can be done. We just need to get off the current ideological framework of the discussion, a framework that argues that since so much needs to be done, nothing we can do, short of genocide of going back to the Middle Ages, will work, so why bother.
It's also a pity that one of the countries that could have the greatest impact is the one that is still denying climate change is happening, or that it is a problem. When one of the leaders of Congress says this, we do have an issue
(The other two problem countries, China and India, at least recognize the problem is real. I am not familiar with India, but China is trying to reduce its environmental impact without sacrificing its growth. Massive investments in wind, huge gas pie lines crisscrossing the country, prohibitions on building any more smaller, inefficient coal plants, etc. will pay dividends sooner rather than later. Regretfully for China, it's non-coal resources are at opposite ends of the country from where the demand is, and power and gas transmission is gridlocked. There is more wind power currently been produced in Inner Mongolia that can be brought to relatively near Beijing, a situation that will last probably another five years)
Forget about grand plans. Reduce your fishing ecological footprint now.
Gibbon in "Decline and Fall...." discussed the apparent absurdity of field marcshalls and powerful barons kneeling in awe before an infant (he was probably thinking about Louis XV's succession aged five fifty odd years earlier) and then compared favorably the existence of very rigid succession rules, even when those bring infants to the throne, with the might is right succession rules of the Roman Empire, which was never constitutionally an inheritable throne. He was quite Burkean in be living that stability was preferable than having the right guy in the seat of power.
Ignoring for the time being all the mix-up between younger male and older female descendants of Eduard III, and accepting that either Henry VI or Edward IV were legitimate kings, Henry VIII is the legitimate successor of both Lancaster and York claims.
His York claim was actually stronger, as grandson of Edward IV through his oldest daughter. Henry VII's claim is only valid if you accept that the Beauforts (his mother) were eligible to the throne, a claim that is far from clear. But there is no doubt that Elizabeth of York's descendants (which include every king or queen since) are truly legitimate successors to all the Plantagenet branches.
The succession of George I skipped about 50 people -all Catholics- with a better claim, including the house of Orleans that ruled in France 1830-1848 and who are one of the two pretenders to the French throne (probably with the better claim, the other claimant is a second cousin of the King of Spain, a descendant of an older brother of the King's grandfather that resigned his Spanish throne claim; this latter claim assumes that the Uthrech renunciation is invalid under French law). The English succession has jumped through different Royal Houses because it allows for female inheritance. It is now vested in the legitimate King of Bavaria, but was formerly in personal union with the Kings of Savoy/Italy, who also bar women from the throne.
Some years ago, I was part of an equestrian team (I was the oldest!!!) and there was a girl in the team that was finishing high school, and had no idea what she wanted to do in college.
I told her my "women are good engineers" spiel, how successful they can be, how interesting the work is. And then she left for college, left the team, and I didn't hear the end of the story.
Her mother emailed me some months ago to let me know that she is graduating this coming May with her M.Sc in Industrial Engineering, and already has a job lined at Tetrapak. She wanted to share it with me because Caroline (her real name) always says that I was the one that prodded her to at least consider an engineering major
I went to engineering school in the 80s (electrical power to be precise), and, through some fluke, in our group of about 40 people (electrical power ain't the most popular major) about 25% were women. It was indeed a total fluke, since the average for the classes above and below us was about two women per class
Contrary to what you might think, electrical power is very math intensive (linemen are not college graduates, college graduates don't climb pylons), and in those days, computing was revolutionizing the field. Women in our group were at no disadvantage, and were quite successful, to the point that our Dean, also one of the most active and favorite lecturers, said in class that the women were kicking ass (in a more formal and appropriate language I cannot recall now).
Regretfully, few of those women remain in the field today. One of them is now a very successful and powerful executive in a multinational Engineering and Construction firm (*), and a couple more remain in middle management in utilities or consulting firms, but fully adopted the mummy track. But most left to engage in part time jobs or to be fully housewives.
One other of them has an interesting story too. She was burned by her own success. Having lead the EE discipline team in a three year refinery project, she was struck by the client's request that she was to be the lead EE in their next project too. She was burned, resigned, went to business school, graduated with the highest grades (being one of the oldest in her class), and is now a prominent banker at Citibank, specializing in energy customers.
I think part of the problem with women in engineering, is the (I believe mistaken) perception that those careers are not very compatible with being a wife and a mother, and therefore tend to avoid them. Having said that, I notice that women are very prominent nowadays in environmental engineering, but many of those come from biology, or perceived soft fields like urban studies.
(*) Mary (her real name, hehe) is more remarkable because her husband became disabled in an accident, and cannot work any longer, and she was able to juggle her career with taking care of him. However, they never had kids, for reasons that they didn't disclose
If abortion is always wrong, then it should be forbidden.
If abortion is not always wrong, but "it depends", then what we are doing is weighting the different (not always necessarily contrarian) interests of the parties involved: mother, zygote, fetus, pre crown baby, and ancillary actors like the father, the grandparents, or society having to take care of the baby the next 18 years.
Then we can go and find different first principles to weight all these disparate interests. But the first principle, that abortion is wrong, is now out of the window.
My second question is about your Propossed First Principle of Least Intrusive Means. Your link, to a definition in criminal trials, didn't tell me much, but generalizing. (Hey, it's a first principle), least intrusive to whom? Abortion is very intrusive both to the zygote and to the pre crowned baby. But carrying a baby is very intrusive to the mother. What if the baby has a deformity and she cannot care for him for the rest of her or his life, whichever is shorter? Well that's very intrusive, too. What if she is working two fast food jobs and already has two children, and thinks she can't feed this third? Less intrusive but still a lot. What if she is in the middle of her PhD dissertation and really doesn't ant to incur on student loans? Well perhaps not tha intrusive, but then we are talking about a zygot. Or about a pre crowns baby? Do the zygote and the baby have the same rank vs the PhD?
Well, it all depends, you might say.
First principles scare me because they have no feedback mechanism from actual results. If results can modify first principles, then they weren't first or that principled.
I'd rather set a quantifiable goal (reduce abortions) than a first principle (end abortions). I can measure abortions and see if tweaks of the policies increase or decrease the abortions. But fist principled people will tell you that reducing abortions is not the goal because one abortion is too many. That's why you rarely get a Red State increasing access to contraception.
We are picking on on abortions because it's a fairly clear utilitarian vs deontological case. But it's no different than urban crime, mass transit, war on drugs, immigration, or many other subjects.
But that brings you to a policy based on what works (or it's likely to work) versus a policy based on following first principles
Policy of First Principles: Abortion is wrong, we should forbid abortion. Abortion goes underground. Abortions continue, but are less safe. People die. People goes to jail. First principles are duly satisfied.
Policy of it might probably work, first principles be damned: high quality compulsory sex education to reduce unplanned pregnancies. Free or subsidized prenatal medical care and financial support for poor women. Streamlined adoption procedures with open/closed adoption options available. Abortion remains legal, but demand of abortions decreases. We are trading less aborted babies for the lack of a clear message about the wickedness of non marital sex and abortion.
My preference is option two. But I'm of the opinion that the Rod Drehers of the world value sending a moral message based on their own first principles more than they would value the actual results of a policy that provides more of their desired results but ignores the message
Isn't Hillary Clinton's "safe, rare, and legal" recognizing the moral content of abortion?
Being a guy who would be extremely conflicted about having a baby of mine being aborted, and yet supporting the pro choice position fully, I always understood the "rare" bit to be carrying that part of the message.
Do they have room to allow for some abortions, or do they strategically and grudgingly accept some loopholes that they fully expect to close as soon as possible?
Likewise, do they really believe that "women should not be punished for having an abortion, only doctors should"? If so, why these new laws or law projects coming around about investigating miscarriages or prosecuting self induced abortions?
Cut it in the aggregate, or in a per capita, inflation adjusted basis?
Because we are more people now than then, and nominal dollars are not the same as real dollars
I don't know the answer, but I'd be surprised that the per capita, inflation adjusted number is not smaller, and would want to understand why. What are we covering now that we didn't then
Minor injuries included two broken ribs, and assisting included walking several times inside a plane in flames looking for more survivors, and then organizing the survivors and directing them towards where they could be rescued.
And the point in not that there is no contradiction between being a serial adulterer and being a hero, as you point, exactly like being a serial adulterer means zilch with respect to having good ideas about the future of society.
Focusing on the ad hominem says more about you than about G.R.
Whether G.R. Was or was a serial adulterer I don't know, I won't research because I am a lazy sod, and I don't care one way or the other. It definitely didn't get in the way of either his ideas or his personal heroism.
On a completely unrelated issue, but it's one of my pet peeves
Notwithstanding what children learn in grade school, before 1492 people knew that the world was round, and the size of the world was estimated fairly accurately by Eratostenes in Ptolemaic Egypt, 1,800 years before
Also before 1492, people had a fairly good idea of the land distance between Constantinople and China, and least in camel days.
When Columbus was presenting his ideas in France, Portugal, and Spain, he was continuously rebuffed because people knew that the distance between Europe and China was roughly 2/3 of the globe, and no vessel of the time could carry the provisions needed for such a trip without replenishing. And they were all correct, and Columbus was wrong.
Columbus had been in Iceland and had heard about Vineland, He based his calculations on where the Icelanders said the Vineland Coast was. However, no Icelander had been to Vineland in centuries. And of course no one in Southern Europe had heard of Vineland.
Once Columbus arrived somewhere, and got back, it was clear that there was something else in the middle of the way (actually, about 1/3 or the way) and it was worth exploring and see what it was and how many riches it had. But not ten years after the first voyage it was very clear to all involved that there was no China or India anywhere around. Alexander VI (remember the Borgias? him) was already Pope when Columbus made his first trip, and was still pope when he partitioned the globe between Castille and Portugal, with India and China where all contained in the Portugal bit, because no one had any doubt about where they were, except, allegedly, Columbus, that died still claiming he had been to Asia.
My inner pedant is now getting off his high horse and is being sent to bed without dessert for making all this fuss. My inner pedant says he is sorry, but he is still grounded.
As a person that has commissioned, read, and litigated EIAs I have not seen any that did not include the positive economic impacts of the project.
However, at some point, the foreseeable possible or probable costs, including economic costs, of certain projects are too big. Three Gorges is a classic example of a recent project that should have never been built.
Assuan is another. Assuan destroyed the Nile's inundations cycle, and the fertilizing yearly silt that made the cradle of civilization possible has now been replaced by massive tons of artificial fertilizer, the cost of which is bankrupting the country.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “In Search of Anthropocene Ethics”
Geothermal commercial plants is a 1970s technology. Ahuachapan in El Salvador has been running commercially for 41 years. Because it is an old technology it doesn't use superheated steam like modern plants, thus the steam handling is not more difficult than in the heating applications mentioned here.
"
Corncobs? There are no corncobs in India, or Brazil, or the Philippines, or Indonesia, or Bangladesh, or Haiti for that matter
The deforestation for fuel is a massive problem worldwide. It not only releases CO2 and other worse pollutants, it also reduces the CO2 sinks.
"
I'm in favour of having my cake and eat it too. I'm all for preservation of worthy (ymmv about what is worthy) house stock. At the same time the vast majority of people won't live in restored San Francisco houses, but in new building stock. Let San Francisco be non-passive, and let the rich people there (is there non rich people moving into San Francisco nowadays?) pay for cooling and heating it. But perhaps the new stock being built in Atlanta could be LEED certificated.
If I were King of the USA I would require that any rental building with more than eight units had to be LEED certificated. That, or I would require that the landlord paid the HVAC bill.
My carpenter paid $500/mo in electricity in his rented apartment because the landlord has no incentive to pay perhaps $2,000 to insulate it. There is a plainly seen hidden incentive to make a large fraction of our housing stock less efficient.
"
I'm surprised about what Tod says. It might be a US issue, driven more by liability than property damage concerns.
Geothermal plants can't be less vanilla. The over the ground portion is a steam turbine and a regular generator. The turbine is the same kind as in regular steam plants going back one hundred years. There is no boiler (which is the part more prone to failures) and instead you have pipes coming up and back down from a well dug not very differently than a not very deep oil well.
Oldest plants I've seen come from the 1970s. I have actually not heard about any major incident in them. There are plenty in Central America and they all get commercial insurance, mostly from the London market (which is where most power plant specialized reinsurers apparently are based).
"
But the question should be: Should I have Cheyenne be powered through renewables and the East Coast through conventional sources, or should I have Cheyenne and the East Coast powered through conventional sources?
Really, there are no purple and yellow KWhs that have to be apportioned equally or the EC people will be sad. If you are reducing the total fuel consumption you are improving the situation over the baseline.
"
That's where I think we disagree, I think you can bend the curve. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit. Replacing wood hearths with solar ovens, for instance, would not only reduce massive volumes of CO2 and soot, it would reduce deforestation immensely.
You know you can see the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic from the air? Haiti has been thoroughly deforestated. Dom. Rep. still has its tree canopy.
"
I think the "lower" in lower standards of living needs to be better defined.
Is a 2,000 soft house for a family of four a lower standard than a 3,000? Well, yes, it is.
It's also substantially more than what I grew up in, in an upper middle class, private school educatated, Perrier water ice cubes splendor, and 2.5 times the size of the original houses in my very gentrified Houston inner ring suburb.
And it's huge for European or Asian standards
And it requires only 2/3 of the energy to cool or heat. And that is a big improvement.
What a 2,000 sq house is not is the Middle Ages.
It all starts with a low-flow shower. Be the change you can be.
"
And the US has how many?
I'm actually happily surprised it's so many. There are many site requirements fora functioning Passivhaus.
"
Forget the genocide. Focus on the low flow showers.
What we want?
Low flow showers
When we want them?
Now!!!
"
1. I thought First World countries had genocide fishing planned, but you are saying something different, instead. My bad.
2. To address -again- the substance of your comment, relatively small increments in living standards dramatically reduce children per female. For instance, in Lat Am Fertility has dropped from 7 to 4 to 2.5 in the last few decades. Look at the graph in page 9 of this Princeton paper. There are countries in Lat Am at below replacement level.
http://paa2009.princeton.edu/papers/92033
Or page 13 of this one, for a view since the 50s
https://www.ined.fr/fichier/s_rubrique/211/chronicle_ameriquel_e.en.pdf
Even in sub Saharan Africa, the region with the highest fertility, the rates are dropping, though the drop there has deaccelerated recently
So we don't need to kill people. People are selecting to reduce their fertility on their own. My four grandparents combined (all born in the late XIX century) had more grand children than great grandchildren, and I'm a dude in my 50s (and the youngest of all the grandchildren by a whooping 14 years). My father had four children and three grandchildren.
"
Finally, someone that said what I was thinking while reading the OP and comments.
There are plenty of small things that everyone can do that would do a lot of good cumulatively. More reliance in renewable and distributed energy sources, and a reduction in per capita energy consumption would do wonders
Specific examples:
1. Deforestation is not just driven by organic Starbucks coffee. Using wood for cooking is responsible for massive deforestation. Replacing wood stoves with solar ovens would reduce deforestation and improve the health of billions (we in the West have forgotten how bad hearth smoke is for our health).
2. Using run of River 0.5 and 1MW micro hydro plants would serve millions with minimal ecological impact
3. Fuel efficiency: I have family in the UK. Their very regular plain Toyota Aris driving in London traffic has probably twice the mpg of my Honda CRV running the Houston highways. Their old Rover did too. Charging for gasoline what they charge in Europe or Lat Am would reduce consumption massively
4. Insulate your house. I built my own 2,000 sq feet house in Houston. I splurged an extra $ 2,000 in as much insulation as could be packed. My house has non stop A/c day and nite. I never paid more than $200 in electric bill (and I contract a 100% wind power utility, though I'm clear its just a gimmick). A carpenter that came to work in the house pays $500 in his much smaller apartment. Come on, the Germans can build houses that don't require AC or heating in winter.
5. More about my only wind utility. I work in utilities. I fully understand my energy is coming from gas plans, but I am sending a price signal to incentivize the building of more wind generation, at a trivial -though not zero- cost to me, trivial because insulation.
Also, if available, gas water heating is more efficient than electricity. If possible, tankless is even better.
6. Even more about wind and solar: Ten years ago wind could only compete with fossil fuel or LNG thermal plants. Solar could not compete with anyone. Ten years later, Economies of scale in wind plant manufacturing and improved PV materials are making wind/solar highly competitive without subsidies even against coal and certain gas fired combined cycle facilities. A wind/solar plant combined with a cheap rapid fire aeroderivative gas plant to take over when wind is not available can be cheaper than replacing an existing CC plant with a similar one.
7. Don't buy garbage plastic bags. Reuse the bags from the supermarket. And recycle. I recycle more than twice what I send to a land fill. I buy a recyclable bottle of water in the road, I take it home to recycle.
Reciclyng is probably an area where more governmental nudges would do wonders, btw.
8. Batteries are improving substantially. Governmental support in R&D for new batteries materials are bringing important break thoughts to the market that should be available, Wotan willing, in the next ten years.
A lot can be done. We just need to get off the current ideological framework of the discussion, a framework that argues that since so much needs to be done, nothing we can do, short of genocide of going back to the Middle Ages, will work, so why bother.
It's also a pity that one of the countries that could have the greatest impact is the one that is still denying climate change is happening, or that it is a problem. When one of the leaders of Congress says this, we do have an issue
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/04/bill-nye-the-science-guy-v-ted-cruz-the-human-ooze
(The other two problem countries, China and India, at least recognize the problem is real. I am not familiar with India, but China is trying to reduce its environmental impact without sacrificing its growth. Massive investments in wind, huge gas pie lines crisscrossing the country, prohibitions on building any more smaller, inefficient coal plants, etc. will pay dividends sooner rather than later. Regretfully for China, it's non-coal resources are at opposite ends of the country from where the demand is, and power and gas transmission is gridlocked. There is more wind power currently been produced in Inner Mongolia that can be brought to relatively near Beijing, a situation that will last probably another five years)
Forget about grand plans. Reduce your fishing ecological footprint now.
On “Dynasties!”
Gibbon in "Decline and Fall...." discussed the apparent absurdity of field marcshalls and powerful barons kneeling in awe before an infant (he was probably thinking about Louis XV's succession aged five fifty odd years earlier) and then compared favorably the existence of very rigid succession rules, even when those bring infants to the throne, with the might is right succession rules of the Roman Empire, which was never constitutionally an inheritable throne. He was quite Burkean in be living that stability was preferable than having the right guy in the seat of power.
"
Ignoring for the time being all the mix-up between younger male and older female descendants of Eduard III, and accepting that either Henry VI or Edward IV were legitimate kings, Henry VIII is the legitimate successor of both Lancaster and York claims.
His York claim was actually stronger, as grandson of Edward IV through his oldest daughter. Henry VII's claim is only valid if you accept that the Beauforts (his mother) were eligible to the throne, a claim that is far from clear. But there is no doubt that Elizabeth of York's descendants (which include every king or queen since) are truly legitimate successors to all the Plantagenet branches.
The succession of George I skipped about 50 people -all Catholics- with a better claim, including the house of Orleans that ruled in France 1830-1848 and who are one of the two pretenders to the French throne (probably with the better claim, the other claimant is a second cousin of the King of Spain, a descendant of an older brother of the King's grandfather that resigned his Spanish throne claim; this latter claim assumes that the Uthrech renunciation is invalid under French law). The English succession has jumped through different Royal Houses because it allows for female inheritance. It is now vested in the legitimate King of Bavaria, but was formerly in personal union with the Kings of Savoy/Italy, who also bar women from the throne.
On “Reflections On The Science Fair”
Some years ago, I was part of an equestrian team (I was the oldest!!!) and there was a girl in the team that was finishing high school, and had no idea what she wanted to do in college.
I told her my "women are good engineers" spiel, how successful they can be, how interesting the work is. And then she left for college, left the team, and I didn't hear the end of the story.
Her mother emailed me some months ago to let me know that she is graduating this coming May with her M.Sc in Industrial Engineering, and already has a job lined at Tetrapak. She wanted to share it with me because Caroline (her real name) always says that I was the one that prodded her to at least consider an engineering major
"
I went to engineering school in the 80s (electrical power to be precise), and, through some fluke, in our group of about 40 people (electrical power ain't the most popular major) about 25% were women. It was indeed a total fluke, since the average for the classes above and below us was about two women per class
Contrary to what you might think, electrical power is very math intensive (linemen are not college graduates, college graduates don't climb pylons), and in those days, computing was revolutionizing the field. Women in our group were at no disadvantage, and were quite successful, to the point that our Dean, also one of the most active and favorite lecturers, said in class that the women were kicking ass (in a more formal and appropriate language I cannot recall now).
Regretfully, few of those women remain in the field today. One of them is now a very successful and powerful executive in a multinational Engineering and Construction firm (*), and a couple more remain in middle management in utilities or consulting firms, but fully adopted the mummy track. But most left to engage in part time jobs or to be fully housewives.
One other of them has an interesting story too. She was burned by her own success. Having lead the EE discipline team in a three year refinery project, she was struck by the client's request that she was to be the lead EE in their next project too. She was burned, resigned, went to business school, graduated with the highest grades (being one of the oldest in her class), and is now a prominent banker at Citibank, specializing in energy customers.
I think part of the problem with women in engineering, is the (I believe mistaken) perception that those careers are not very compatible with being a wife and a mother, and therefore tend to avoid them. Having said that, I notice that women are very prominent nowadays in environmental engineering, but many of those come from biology, or perceived soft fields like urban studies.
(*) Mary (her real name, hehe) is more remarkable because her husband became disabled in an accident, and cannot work any longer, and she was able to juggle her career with taking care of him. However, they never had kids, for reasons that they didn't disclose
On “How Big Is the Big Tent?”
I'm sorry, I'm lost
If abortion is always wrong, then it should be forbidden.
If abortion is not always wrong, but "it depends", then what we are doing is weighting the different (not always necessarily contrarian) interests of the parties involved: mother, zygote, fetus, pre crown baby, and ancillary actors like the father, the grandparents, or society having to take care of the baby the next 18 years.
Then we can go and find different first principles to weight all these disparate interests. But the first principle, that abortion is wrong, is now out of the window.
My second question is about your Propossed First Principle of Least Intrusive Means. Your link, to a definition in criminal trials, didn't tell me much, but generalizing. (Hey, it's a first principle), least intrusive to whom? Abortion is very intrusive both to the zygote and to the pre crowned baby. But carrying a baby is very intrusive to the mother. What if the baby has a deformity and she cannot care for him for the rest of her or his life, whichever is shorter? Well that's very intrusive, too. What if she is working two fast food jobs and already has two children, and thinks she can't feed this third? Less intrusive but still a lot. What if she is in the middle of her PhD dissertation and really doesn't ant to incur on student loans? Well perhaps not tha intrusive, but then we are talking about a zygot. Or about a pre crowns baby? Do the zygote and the baby have the same rank vs the PhD?
Well, it all depends, you might say.
First principles scare me because they have no feedback mechanism from actual results. If results can modify first principles, then they weren't first or that principled.
I'd rather set a quantifiable goal (reduce abortions) than a first principle (end abortions). I can measure abortions and see if tweaks of the policies increase or decrease the abortions. But fist principled people will tell you that reducing abortions is not the goal because one abortion is too many. That's why you rarely get a Red State increasing access to contraception.
We are picking on on abortions because it's a fairly clear utilitarian vs deontological case. But it's no different than urban crime, mass transit, war on drugs, immigration, or many other subjects.
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But that brings you to a policy based on what works (or it's likely to work) versus a policy based on following first principles
Policy of First Principles: Abortion is wrong, we should forbid abortion. Abortion goes underground. Abortions continue, but are less safe. People die. People goes to jail. First principles are duly satisfied.
Policy of it might probably work, first principles be damned: high quality compulsory sex education to reduce unplanned pregnancies. Free or subsidized prenatal medical care and financial support for poor women. Streamlined adoption procedures with open/closed adoption options available. Abortion remains legal, but demand of abortions decreases. We are trading less aborted babies for the lack of a clear message about the wickedness of non marital sex and abortion.
My preference is option two. But I'm of the opinion that the Rod Drehers of the world value sending a moral message based on their own first principles more than they would value the actual results of a policy that provides more of their desired results but ignores the message
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Isn't Hillary Clinton's "safe, rare, and legal" recognizing the moral content of abortion?
Being a guy who would be extremely conflicted about having a baby of mine being aborted, and yet supporting the pro choice position fully, I always understood the "rare" bit to be carrying that part of the message.
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Do they have room to allow for some abortions, or do they strategically and grudgingly accept some loopholes that they fully expect to close as soon as possible?
Likewise, do they really believe that "women should not be punished for having an abortion, only doctors should"? If so, why these new laws or law projects coming around about investigating miscarriages or prosecuting self induced abortions?
On “Seeing Through the Unseen”
Cut it in the aggregate, or in a per capita, inflation adjusted basis?
Because we are more people now than then, and nominal dollars are not the same as real dollars
I don't know the answer, but I'd be surprised that the per capita, inflation adjusted number is not smaller, and would want to understand why. What are we covering now that we didn't then
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Minor injuries included two broken ribs, and assisting included walking several times inside a plane in flames looking for more survivors, and then organizing the survivors and directing them towards where they could be rescued.
And the point in not that there is no contradiction between being a serial adulterer and being a hero, as you point, exactly like being a serial adulterer means zilch with respect to having good ideas about the future of society.
Focusing on the ad hominem says more about you than about G.R.
Whether G.R. Was or was a serial adulterer I don't know, I won't research because I am a lazy sod, and I don't care one way or the other. It definitely didn't get in the way of either his ideas or his personal heroism.
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Gene Roddenberry had other characteristics, you know, like saving people from plane crashes
http://www.snopes.com/roddenberry-plane-crash/ (*)
So not all liberals are just sex crazy redistributivists
(*) I encourage people to look at the link. You probably didn't know this about G. R.
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As much as I support everything you has said above, you just rewrote Anrew Sullivan's contemporary arguments.
Which is fine with me, I think Andrew is a cool guy and I'm proud to be friends with a guy that knows him.
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On a completely unrelated issue, but it's one of my pet peeves
Notwithstanding what children learn in grade school, before 1492 people knew that the world was round, and the size of the world was estimated fairly accurately by Eratostenes in Ptolemaic Egypt, 1,800 years before
Also before 1492, people had a fairly good idea of the land distance between Constantinople and China, and least in camel days.
When Columbus was presenting his ideas in France, Portugal, and Spain, he was continuously rebuffed because people knew that the distance between Europe and China was roughly 2/3 of the globe, and no vessel of the time could carry the provisions needed for such a trip without replenishing. And they were all correct, and Columbus was wrong.
Columbus had been in Iceland and had heard about Vineland, He based his calculations on where the Icelanders said the Vineland Coast was. However, no Icelander had been to Vineland in centuries. And of course no one in Southern Europe had heard of Vineland.
Once Columbus arrived somewhere, and got back, it was clear that there was something else in the middle of the way (actually, about 1/3 or the way) and it was worth exploring and see what it was and how many riches it had. But not ten years after the first voyage it was very clear to all involved that there was no China or India anywhere around. Alexander VI (remember the Borgias? him) was already Pope when Columbus made his first trip, and was still pope when he partitioned the globe between Castille and Portugal, with India and China where all contained in the Portugal bit, because no one had any doubt about where they were, except, allegedly, Columbus, that died still claiming he had been to Asia.
My inner pedant is now getting off his high horse and is being sent to bed without dessert for making all this fuss. My inner pedant says he is sorry, but he is still grounded.
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As a person that has commissioned, read, and litigated EIAs I have not seen any that did not include the positive economic impacts of the project.
However, at some point, the foreseeable possible or probable costs, including economic costs, of certain projects are too big. Three Gorges is a classic example of a recent project that should have never been built.
Assuan is another. Assuan destroyed the Nile's inundations cycle, and the fertilizing yearly silt that made the cradle of civilization possible has now been replaced by massive tons of artificial fertilizer, the cost of which is bankrupting the country.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.