X-Message-Number: 29261
Subject: Mark's lack of a future.
References: <>
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <>
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:20:19 -0500

"Mark Plus" <> writes from his obsolete hotmail account:
> Yes, plenty of people have armchair solutions for solving the energy
> crisis, none of which seems ever to get implemented.

So long as oil and coal are cheaper than alternatives, they will be
used in preference to them. The alternatives will "become an overnight
success" as soon as they become cheaper. The most important thing
about photovoltaics, for instance, is not the current price, but the
fact that the price is dropping fast while the price of fossil fuel
based energy continues to rise. Until they cross, no one will bother
with solar photovoltaics. After they cross, suddenly market volume
will become outrageous.

Imagine someone in the US T-shirt industry ten years ago saying "oh,
the Chinese are not an issue in T-shirts because they haven't *yet*
taken over the whole market. So what if their cost of production is
dropping and mine is increasing. They haven't taken over yet, so *they
never will*."

We could also have noted in 1910 that automobiles had been around for
almost thirty years without making any serious dent in the
marketplace, or that "aluminum will never be cheap enough to
use". (Imagine saying in 1935 that antibiotics would *never* become a
practical form of mass medical treatment, because manufacturing costs
were not *yet* low enough.)

About your "no one is doing anything", Mark: right now VC spending on
energy is on the order of tens of billions of dollars, though a few
years ago it was a tiny fraction of that. I have friends at some of
the largest VCs in the country, and they're all sending heavily on
energy right now.

In another message, you said amazing things about health care. I
remember seeing your comment about people in Arizona with bad
teeth. Well, I can see people with bad teeth anywhere, but the
question is, how many are there, and how is that number changing with
time? If you bother to look at objective statistics -- and there are
plenty -- you would see that the rate of dental carries has been
dropping steadily since 1970, as has the percentage of the population
with regular access to dental care. Don't believe me? Find a
Statistical Abstract of the US (data available online) and look for
yourself.

You make claims about how you don't see economic improvements, but the
stats completely refute that. In 1970, the percentage of the
population without indoor plumbing was about 7%, and today it is a
fraction of a percent. Look at any figure you like -- how many people
have a fridge, how many people have cars, life expectancy, anything
you like -- and things keep getting better. Doubtless you'll find some
vague way to dismiss this, but the facts are against you, over and
over.

Further, you keep saying things like "ah, with all these advances,
what good has happened for health care!" -- and you say this even as
cancer deaths are falling for the first time, as life expectancy
continues to climb, and as new medical treatments with real benefits
keep pouring out of the lab faster than we can absorb them.  I have
friends who are alive today because of treatments that didn't even
exist ten years ago. The rate of medical innovation is astonishingly
high, though all we hear from you is how sucky things are. In your
world, statins don't exist, gleevec doesn't exist, the myriad of
antiviral medicines developed in just the last ten years don't
exist. In your world, medically induced comas don't save
cerebrovascular injury patients, artemesin isn't treating malaria,
researchers haven't cured Alzheimers in test animals. I don't know
where your world is, but it certainly isn't Earth, because here, the
biomedical news comes out so fast that I can no longer keep up with
the journals.

Everything you claim, Mark, can be objectively examined, and almost
always the facts contradict you. When anyone brings any of it up, you
just say "oh, the internet is a toy" or "it has been almost five years
since they sequenced the genome, and why aren't we immortal yet".

I'll go back now to lurking for another few years. Good luck on your
next message which will explain how I'm entirely wrong, and good luck
explaining how "nothing is improving" while you're typing a message on
a personal computer powerful enough to do weather prediction that you
can buy for $300, and sending it out over the global communications
network. I doubt anyone will convince you, but luckily, your opinion
on this matters little -- the world will keep improving whether you
notice or not.


Perry

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29261