The problem with carbon ratios is that the neutrino flux on or around the Earth's surface will be essentially constant, at least insofar as neutrinos of precisely the correct energy. (Remember, first rule of QM: Only valid states are possible, you can't absorb a neutrino if it produces an invalid state.)

To test the C12/C14 ratio theory, you'd need to have something organic in two environments - one with maximum exposure to the neutrinos (say, on the far side of the moon) and the other with minimum exposure to the neutrinos (say, inside a million gallon container of chlorine, dropped into the deepest oceanic trench you can find). Because absorption rates are low, you'd want the experiment to run a long time. If you're growing trees, most live over a century. That should be ample.

After the century is up, collect the samples together and compare C12/C14 ratios. (Due to time varying under gravity, you need to calculate when the sample says the century is up, not when the observer does.) If the C12/C14 claim is valid, the numbers will be identical. If the C12/C14 claim is invalid, the numbers will differ, but you won't know what particular particles caused the difference.

Since the experiment will never be performed, there is no -experimental- evidence that neutrino flux won't alter decay rates. (Remember, the early neutrino detectors in the Black Hills detected something like 6 events a month. It was extremely small and that detector was extremely large. For most samples for C12/C14, the sample is a few grams of matter, not a few tonnes. The difference in flux between the inside of an Egyptian pyramid and a regular woodland will be near-enough bugger all. AMS in carbon dating uses tiny lab systems - the largest I've seen AMS work done on was a 20 MeV tandem accelerator at Daresbury and even that never had the ability to determine if you were getting a consistent change of perhaps 1-2 atoms per megatonne of material (the sort of variation you'd see in any likely circumstance between different laboratory conditions).

All the early chlorine-based neutrino detectors were based on radioactive decay events resulting from a change in isotope, so yes we do. Not in the form of change in decay rates, but certainly in the form of decay event counts.

Well, duh. Computers handle everything in 1s and 0s. If you eliminate the 1s....

Hey! I didn't know Ben Elton had a Slashdot account! Why are you posting anonymously?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDO6bErncPk

The problem with making art an Olympic sport is that Rolf Harris would always win.

It saves cost to the polluter.

Yes, but profit = money in - money out. If you increase money in (by selling more of what you usually make, by diversifying in some way, etc) by more than you increase the money going out to do so, you make more.

Non sequitur. A lot of things are never done correctly, but that doesn't mean the imperfect implementation can be ignored.

I'll accept you hold such a view. For me, the argument always starts at the theoretical decides what point you want to get to, determines if you can get there from here, and determines the consequence of doing so. I don't really see any merit in looking at imperfect implementations as they are done today or were done yesterday, because they're only implemented temporarily until something better comes along and if the ideal is as good as I think it is, then the solutions of today would all be replaced fairly quickly with it once it gets invented.

To an extent, that's my software engineering heritage. I start by specifying the characteristics of the end result that I want and work backwards. I don't start with what I have got and work forwards. In this particular case, I see the forwards approach as particularly troublesome as companies will rightly argue that incremental improvements for a large outlay will hurt them. And indeed they have done so. What they need is to be confronted with a solution that offers dramatic improvements, even if it's for even greater outlay. It's all profit:cost ratios.

You have to make the system such that pollution costs them. Hence, the need for regulation, pollution emission credits or taxes, etc.

The point here is that businesses as a whole will pollute and generate other externalities unless there are policies in place to make that more costly than not doing so. The indirect effect of pollution on society just doesn't in itself generate enough cost on a business to prevent pollution.

Mmmmm. I don't like that argument. Not because I'm pro-free-market (I'm one of those damnable socialists) but because I don't see how to sell it to a public that is highly suspicious and skeptical of ANY regulation whatsoever, no matter what. If the Democrats can't sell halving the deaths from heart attacks and raising the life expectancy of Americans by almost a decade to the public, as that's what the AFCA will end up doing, then they can't sell gold to a money addict and they're certainly not going to sell stringent pollution controls to people who are terrified it'll mean higher bills and fewer jobs. It won't, but you aren't going to get Joe Public to realize that.

I'll accept what you're saying, but I would prefer to be able to present an argument that showed cleanly, clearly and veritably that substantial gains can be made without harming anyone or anything. Provided that would be honest. Money talks and if it can be shown that there's money to be made in being environmentally sound, then that is what the successful businesses will do.

I agree that it is a poorly-done paper, I regard it less as evidence of a 1:N relationship (where N approaches 1) and more as evidence that kooks are attracted to the anti-global warming lobby because of similarities in the structure of the argument as presented by the more hostile elements. That doesn't, of course, mean that the more serious elements of the anti-global warming community do not have a valid point. To argue otherwise would be as stupid as linking the most extreme elements in ANY community with any single element they might have in common with someone else. (I'm sure neo-Nazis put money into banks, it's likely there are drug-runners who support their local parent-teacher associations, etc. It's not possible to take the arguments of the lunatic fringe and extrapolate those arguments to everyone else.)

I know, for example, that there are two highly significant anti-global warming campaigners in Britain - Johnny Ball, a highly gifted mathematician/TV presenter (and former head of the NAGC), beloved by several generations, and David Bellamy, a highly gifted botanist/TV presenter/environmentalist, beloved by a generation of comedians for his expansive style and well-remembered by many who saw his shows,

It's obvious that Johnny Ball has the mathematical skills necessary. Anyone who can teach relativity to 7 year olds at some considerable depth in a short sketch in a TV show AND SUCCEED is a bloody good mathematician. I am unsure of his reasoning, although it does involve him being unconvinced by some of the science, but I am absolutely certain he has very good reasoning. He is nobody's fool. I'd ask him but I admit to having too much damn respect for all his work. He's also old and has had a lot of bad flak over some of the things he's said.

It's also obvious that David Bellamy has the scientific skills. His knowledge of biology and botany are considerable. He's had nothing but flak for most of his working life - entirely undeserved, I might add, and almost entirely political in nature - and again I highly respect what he has been able to do, making me feel very awkward about asking him either. Like Johnny Ball, he's earned respect with blood, sweat and tears. I'd rather he spell out his views than risk offending someone I regard as one of the great heroes of scientific television. Because of his work in ecology and environmentalism, he's provably not in the pockets of the oil companies. Again, he's the kind of guy who I can absolutely trust to have a good reason for his opinion. I think it wrong, in regards to global warming, but I can be certain that he feels his reasoning is solid or he wouldn't hold to it.

It is incredibly difficult for someone nominally on the "outside" to be able to sensibly and maturely sit down and discuss these issues with these sorts of people, although I would dearly love to. First, I -am- an unknown, my opinion has no scientific weight, so why should they listen? But secondly, they're incredibly busy with projects of far greater importance to them. Johnny Ball is forever on speaking events regarding the teaching of mathematics at school and the importance of going beyond mere numeracy into true understanding. They don't have the time to address - to them - very unimportant side-issues.

I regard them as highly probably genuine skeptics - people who would be convinced with the right scientific data processed using reasonable, intelligent methods, presented in a sane, rational manner. I regard most of the scientists who are still in the "skeptical" side as genuine skeptics, with only a few who are religiously devoted to the anti-side with no interest in the science itself. (Just as doctors are investigated and/or struck off for malpractice, scientists who have a religious devotion to an argument in the field they practice without regard to the science should likewise be scrutinized. 1 is never 2, regardless of your personal beliefs, and if you are a scientist in such-and-such a field, you are an authoritative figure on whether x is y. Lying in science is every bit as dangerous as willfully injecting someone with the wrong drug or amputating the wrong leg.)

Skeptics can take some time to be convinced. Cantor's work was not really accepted in his lifetime, and pure mathematics is a lot easier to formally test and verify than inorganic biochemistry on a planetary scale! (We don't really have a spare hundred years, though, which is what several journals thought Cantor would require.)

Those who are not skeptical but cynical, THAT group I believe is 75-85% comprised of the kooks, freaks and conspiracy theorists. I don't know whether to put the religious and purely political anti-GWers in there as well - if so, then it's probably closer to 95-99%. The rest, I believe, are people who don't accept the theory because they don't accept anything. They have no real opinions or beliefs, they don't care enough to have an opinion or belief. They're the Dark Side of the Punk.

No, it is a cost imposed on someone without their choice. One doesn't impose costs just so they can lose money.

I'll rephrase. Pollution is a byproduct of purchased raw materials and energy, and therefore consists of materials that are paid for. If you generate mercury waste, you paid for that mercury to begin with, albeit usually in conjunction with something else the company wants. Nonetheless, you buy the whole ore or whatever it is you are processing. The pollution generates no income. Thus, ultimately in a system-wide view, it is something the company has bought and obtained no return on.

There's not much you can do with something like mercury, unless there's a sudden surge in demand for old-fashioned thermometers, but other byproducts may contain things that are rather more useful. Even with mercury, there's probably something you could sell it for.

(I am not considering regulatory costs in any of this. Regulation, if done correctly, should be a pressure on a company to do its best, to overcome the resistance towards change. In other words, nothing more than the minimum force needed to overcome inertia in a company, where people choose the easy solution rather than the right solution. Regulation is NEVER done correctly, as such it is not worthy of consideration. I will not lower myself to considering substandard processes. And since correct regulation produces the same result as a fully-optimized company, correct regulation has zero impact on such a company.)

Which everyone bothers to do to some degree.

Not in my experience and I've worked in a wide range of companies. They've usually not been successful companies, true, but there's not that many industry giants and if I assume that my experience is a fair reflection of the percentage of good vs wannabes, then most companies aren't optimizing resources. Workflows, maybe. Personnel, maybe. Actual resources, not so much.

And let us keep in mind that the cost of cleanup != the cost of the pollution externality to the rest of society. It frequently is much higher.

I guess I should add that again I'm looking at a system-wide view. The cost of not cleaning up can damage the health of locals and employees, damage the environment (which, in turn, can impact the company - the metal-eating bacteria in the Peak District from pollution release by Industrial Revolution-era industries are playing merry hell with just about everything) and so on. True, this all takes time, hence the idea of looking at cost over two and a half decades rather than three months. It's not direct damage, but it is still damage that impacts the company even without considering regulatory costs.

That doesn't make sense, since the parameter we're changing is amount of clean up costs not the company's degree of compliance with regulation. Obviously, the optimal from the company's point of view here is zero clean up costs. But we already know that results in considerable costs to the rest of society.

I regard regulation as a bunch of BS, so I'm ignoring it. If a company is making the most out of what it has, it is guaranteed to be in compliance with all sensible regulation. Neurotoxins in the food chain damage employees and lower effectiveness, increase sick days and increase insurance costs to the company. It makes no economic sense for a company to mutilate its own staff. But since everyone in the area eats from the same food sources, keeping the staff healthy and mentally at peak will involve keeping everyone in the community healthy and mentally at peak. Especially in the longer-term, since the next-generation of employees will be from the "everyone else" in the community.

This goes for the other considerable costs to society, too. New Orleans was as badly struck as it was by Katrina because industries had altered the river delta in a manner that destroyed sand banks and other naturally-occurring protections (such as trees). By damaging and polluting the environment, the cost to society was certainly vastly greater than the costs to the industries - I won't dispute that for a moment - but I would nonetheless argue that the industries inflicted damage on themselves that exceeded in cost the amount it would have taken to not cause the environmental damage in the first place.

In other words, if they'd spent up-front on NOT polluting and wrecking havoc, they would have had a higher initial cost but a lower long-term cost. ie: they would have made money by acting in a manner that would ALSO have prevented one of the worst natural disasters in recent American history.

I contend this is a common pattern. Aging nuclear reactors are less efficient than modern third-generation ones at converting fuel to power. They also generate more nuclear waste (since there's unspent usable uranium there - enough that it's commercially viable to extract it and reprocess it). So you end up with a greater waste problem AND less power (and therefore less money) than if you replace the reactor. The reactors are all well over their designed lifespans, making them unsafe, but by looking at too small a time window, the cost of replacing a reactor is the largest factor in the equation and so they aren't.

By looking at a very long timeframe, the cost of buying vastly more uranium than is actually used, the cost of refining uranium you're only going to dump, and the cost to society as a whole of dumping that waste uranium, combined, overwhelm the cost of actually building a new reactor that does more and wastes less. After that, the more efficient conversion to electricity plus the reduction in unspent fuel are all variables in the 'sheer profit' category. So, again, helping the environment actually makes money in the long-run.

This, I believe, can be generalized to all businesses that create pollution. The cost of a superior approach is outweighed merely by the profits that superior approach can generate.

Stop for a moment! Why should this even matter? We're talking about a world population of 7+ billion people and many trillions of other organisms. Why should I be so focused on reduction of pollution as a path to profit?

Because the number one factor in company decisions is whether it makes money or loses money. You will never convince companies to do what is morally or ethically right, but you can certainly convince them to do what will beef up their bottom line.

There will come a time when everything doable has been done. THEN it is sensible to look at the ethics and morality, and the broader global picture. The world is one single system and no part of it can ever, really, be totally isolated. What is done one place affects EVERYONE.

I do not believe that that time has yet come. I also believe that companies are sufficiently used to dragging their heels that such an approach will meet too fierce a resistance to overcome. I believe that, right now, the correct strategy is to appeal to the basest nature of the businessman, to show how they're losing money by being cheapskates and polluters. That is an argument I believe they can listen to and comprehend. Once they're used to changing and adapting, then it makes more sense to coax them into looking at the global picture.

For now, though, what matters is getting them to do something and to stop obstructing efforts to improve on the efficiency of technology.

Pollution is a resource you paid for and get no profit from. Ergo, it is an expense.

The "law of diminishing returns" refers to that area of the logistic function (or S-Curve) that is above the midway point. Virtually all economic systems obey the logistic function. Wastage certainly does. If you plot the effort to obtain a resource vs the percent of resource obtained, you will get an S-Curve. The cost to put in any given amount of effort follows an exponential curve.

To maximize money earned, you must minimize wastage. That should be obvious. To maximize profit, you must stop at the point at which the cost to reduce wastage further exceeds the returns from not wasting that resource minus the overheads involved in producing that waste. (Calculators are permitted.)

To maximize short-term profits, you assume zero overheads. That is the current approach used in the US, at leas in companies that bother optimizing at all. SIMPLEX is ancient and superseded but most companies haven't even reached what was state-of-the-art 60 years ago. A zero overhead assumption isn't terribly accurate, as corporations and individuals then pay oodles of tax and/or fines to clean up the mess, but estimating that cost is not trivial and is highly dependent on the timeframe you're concerned with. You will get very different results depending on whether you are analyzing over a quarter year or a quarter century.

However, as most major corporations have a life expectancy in excess of 25 years, a quarter century sounds a better timeframe to work with. You then calculate the cost to the company over that time to employ different waste reduction strategies minus the sum of the reduction in cost to the company due to there being less pollution plus extra revenue through producing more.

The maximum of this is your sweet spot. That is where the company will make the greatest profits over the long term after all clean-up costs have been considered (and therefore no significant pollution remaining).

Ammo explodes at high temperature. Stock up on baseball bats.

Most of these countries do little or nothing on the basis that America doesn't and they can't compete with a rogue superpower.

Secondly, if you compare the pollution and profits produced by former East European industries with American industries, you see American industries produce lower pollution and higher profit. That won't continue forever, sure, but only a fool believes American industries are anywhere near the sweet spot. Ergo, if the USA cuts CO2 emissions AND increases profit as a result, other nations will follow suit simply because that's where the money is.

There is a correlation between those who believe the moon landings were a hoax and AGW cynics (I will not call them skeptics - a skeptic is what Richard Muller is - a person who works on evidence).

Anyone willing to believe in extreme conspiracy theories is, by definition, not working on evidence. They are starting from a conclusion and cherry-picking facts, factoids and tabloid/yellow journalism.

Only the skeptics are likely to be concerned with the results and there simply aren't many of those still opposed to AGW. You need only look at the posts of those hostile to AGW on Slashdot. This is a de-facto nerd/geek hangout, so unlike Yahoo's comment section, the intelligence here is higher than average. The comments, though, are vitriolic, political and dogmatic. They have nothing to do with the evidence or the data, despite the fact that - by definition - these are people capable of understanding both. If you cannot convince the right-wingers on Slashdot, you're not going to convince them anywhere.

Look, NOTHING these days is fit for intended purpose. This is a Seldon Crisis and we don't have a Second Foundation to help us out. (I've been working on it, but between work and beer, there's just no time to get the damn Prime Radiant working.)

Why bother with something that requires reach?

As noted in the Q&A session above, a vaccuum is the minimum energy state, not an empty state. An empty state actually has greater energy than a vaccuum.

Another way to look at it is that an empty state must have zero entropy (forbidden by the laws of thermodynamics). Physics doesn't work well with zeros. Physics allows you to have a system which -averages- out to zero, which is what quantum foam does, but it doesn't permit any individual point in that system to have a zero state.

Quantum foam is the preferred solution. Particles spontaneously appear, diverge, converge, collide and annihilate. Provided the particles have a sum of zero energy and zero mass, and provided they have equal velocity (so momentum also sums to zero), no law has been violated. On average, there is nothing there. The only time that nothing becomes something is when you have superluminal acceleration, such as during the inflationary phase of the universe. At that point, the particles cannot recombine and, because there is NEVER any empty space during that phase, you've now got a hell of a lot of particles with no pairing particle anywhere in the area.

(Remember, a particle cannot collide with an antiparticle whose values don't match, since you'd end up with mass, energy and momentum with nothing to carry it. At the quantum level, ALL interactions must result in a valid state or no interaction occurs.)

Due to some properties of symmetry I don't fully understand, anti-particles can become particles more readily than particles can become anti-particles. The result is that, given long enough, a super-stretched quantum foam will gain positive mass even though it started with an average of zero mass.