# Copenhagen Failure **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 21, 2009, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063 "2009-12-21T13:48:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/41 "2009-12-22T01:00:41Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > I think the US took an unfair amount of crap for not going along with Kyoto, and I think the value and ability of researchers and industry to find cost-effective solutions to some of these problems tends to be discounted. Well it doesn’t help their credibility when they outright lie and go on a propaganda campaign to redact public resources that don’t fit within the narrative they want to present. Particularly when a lot of that data they are redacting is readily available and there are lots of other experts ready to stand up and say they disapprove of their findings. The credibility gap of the Pro-AGW side is completely and totally self-inflicted. The boys at the CRU victimized the AGW movement, but of course the AGW movement is circling the wagons rather than feeling completely betrayed which they were. It’s going to take at least a decade for credibility to be restored. You can thank the CRU for that. Or you can continue to blame the opponents who are skeptical rather than the people who got caught perpetrating a lie when it was totally unecessary to do so. Even if you’re right, redacting Wikipedia is going to win you very little sympathy in the long run. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/42 "2009-12-22T01:03:16Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Right, I think one of the points the Sierra Club used to make was that immigration was maintaining & increasing first world numbers though. For instance, the US population is projected to increase by 150 million by 2050. So that will entail a massive increase in emissions (assuming the newcomers have anything like the std carbon footprint). I am not sure I buy that notion. Whether or not they are in the first world or the third world they are still consuming resources. Keeping them poor and starving in the third world in order to keep first world economies small is kind of problematic. Especially since as they develop in the third world their efficiencies are really low and they pollute more due to inferior technology. Not to mention first world economies are built on sustained growth model that would be wrecked by negative population growth, which would cause the welfare state to implode due to a lack of new workers paying into their social security models. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/43 "2009-12-22T01:20:34Z")
> [@](#): > > Not to mention first world economies are built on sustained growth model that would be wrecked by negative population growth, which would cause the welfare state to implode due to a lack of new workers paying into their social security models. It depends on the productivity of the new workers though & subsequent generations. The evidence in terms of a lot of recent immigration is that the subsequent generations are not academically successful. > [@](#): > > Even those who graduate aren’t necessarily headed to success. According to one study, 69 percent of Latino high-school graduates “do not meet college requirements or satisfy prerequisites for most jobs that pay a living wage.” It is difficult to see how the majority-Hispanic labor force of the future can provide the skills that the sophisticated Los Angeles economy demands. Already studies show that as many as 700,000 Los Angeles Latinos and some 65 percent of the city’s illegal immigrants work in L.A.'s huge underground economy. > > The unhappy picture in Los Angeles is replicated to one degree or another across much of California and is taking a huge toll on the state’s economic competitiveness and long-term prospects. California’s educational system, once easily the best in the country, is today mired in mediocrity near the bottom among the 50 states as judged by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in math, science, reading, and writing. And for the first time in its history, California is experiencing an increase in adult illiteracy. In 2003, it had the highest adult illiteracy in the United States, 23 percent nearly 50 percent higher than a decade earlier. In some counties (Imperial at 41 percent, Los Angeles at 33 percent) illiteracy approaches sub-Saharan levels… > > In short, we are witnessing a highly advanced and prosperous state, long endowed with superior human capital, turning into the exact opposite in just one generation. [National Review Online: Stop Illegals, Save CA : NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112167023) Also see Richwine’s analysis. [http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YjQ4N2EyMTQ4NzZjZmNlOWQwN2RiNTZjMWZiZDY4YzQ=](http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YjQ4N2EyMTQ4NzZjZmNlOWQwN2RiNTZjMWZiZDY4YzQ=) ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/44 "2009-12-22T01:23:49Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > It depends on the productivity of the new workers though & subsequent generations. The evidence in terms of a lot of recent immigration is that the subsequent generations are not academically successful. That’s gonna be hard to show considering America was built by immigrants. America would never have been successful if the children of immigrants were not academically successful. I’ll take a look at your links though. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/45 "2009-12-22T01:25:50Z")
> [@](#): > > That’s gonna be hard to show considering America was built by immigrants. America would never have been successful if the children of immigrants were not academically successful. > > I’ll take a look at your links though. That is Richwine’s point though - that the recent waves are not comparable to those of 100 years ago. > [@](#): > > They’re not just like the Irish — or the Italians or the Poles, for that matter. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants after 1965 represents a unique assimilation challenge for the United States. Many optimistic observers have assumed — incorrectly, it turns out — that Hispanic immigrants will follow the same economic trajectory European immigrants did in the early part of the last century. Many of those Europeans came to America with no money and few skills, but their status steadily improved. Their children outperformed them, and their children’s children were often indistinguishable from the “founding stock.” The speed of economic assimilation varied somewhat by ethnic group, but three generations were typically enough to turn “ethnics” into plain old Americans. > > This would be the preferred outcome for the tens of millions of Hispanic Americans, who are significantly poorer and less educated on average than native whites. When immigration skeptics question the wisdom of importing so many unskilled people into our nation at one time, the most common response cites the remarkable progress of Europeans a century ago. “People used to say the Irish or the Poles would always be poor, but look at them today!” For Hispanics, we are led to believe, the same thing will happen. > > But that claim isn’t true. Though about three-quarters of Hispanics living in the U.S. today are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, a significant number have roots here going back many generations. We have several ways to measure their intergenerational progress, and the results leave little room for optimism about their prospects for assimilation. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/46 "2009-12-22T01:27:29Z")
You’re talking about hispanics, not ‘immigrants’. And there is a reason why hispanic immigrants are different, because they can jump the border. Immigrants from nations that have to cross seas to get here are different. African immigrants tend to do very well academically also. I don’t think this is because hispanics are generally inferior, only because we get a much broader cross-section. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/47 "2009-12-22T01:35:18Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Well if the carbon is embedded in the clubs its not in the atmosphere is it? Why are the LEDs a scam? They reduce YOUR carbon footprint. > > Overpopulation is being corrected naturally. Most first world nations are breeding below replacement rate. “Embedded carbon” is the carbon released during manufacture. _‘Embedded carbon’ is the term used to describe the way in which the carbon footprint of a product, as measured by a full lifecycle assessment from ‘cradle to grave’, can be represented in terms of kg of CO² per kg of product._ [http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=1&sid=5&tid=48&cid=188](http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=1&sid=5&tid=48&cid=188) My point is that while we make ourselves feel good with the incremental behaviours, as long as it’s voluntary and incremental, it won’t actually change much. The numbers don’t work on the massive scale needed, and we substitute one bad carbon behaviour for the one we did behave on. And yes I am selfish. So is the rest of the world and that’s my key point: it’s a tragedy of the commons. Overpopulation is not being corrected naturally. There are already too many of us and the currently accepted number is to level off at a little over 9 billion; most of that in the developing world. The greatest increase in carbon emissions is felt to come from the developing world as their current and future populations catch up with getting Stuff. So even if you could effect draconian decreases in the developed world (and you cannot do that with incremental changes), you still lose the long-term numbers. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/48 "2009-12-22T01:48:33Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > “Embedded carbon” is the carbon released during manufacture. > _‘Embedded carbon’ is the term used to describe the way in which the carbon footprint of a product, as measured by a full lifecycle assessment from ‘cradle to grave’, can be represented in terms of kg of CO² per kg of product._ > [http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=1&sid=5&tid=48&cid=188](http://www.igd.com/index.asp?id=1&fid=1&sid=5&tid=48&cid=188) > > My point is that while we make ourselves feel good with the incremental behaviours, as long as it’s voluntary and incremental, it won’t actually change much. The numbers don’t work on the massive scale needed, and we substitute one bad carbon behaviour for the one we did behave on. And yes I am selfish. So is the rest of the world and that’s my key point: it’s a tragedy of the commons. Sure ok. But that doesn’t mean that individual reduction does nothing. > [@](#): > > Overpopulation is not being corrected naturally. There are already too many of us and the currently accepted number is to level off at a little over 9 billion; most of that in the developing world. The greatest increase in carbon emissions is felt to come from the developing world as their current and future populations catch up with getting Stuff. So even if you could effect draconian decreases in the developed world (and you cannot do that with incremental changes), you still lose the long-term numbers. Yes, and that’s also where people are uneducated and aren’t really thinking about controlling the population via their behaviors. Getting the developed world to breed any less than it is is an undesirable outcome. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/49 "2009-12-22T05:00:48Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Ok, so you’ve made your argument. You’re a selfish fuck (hypothetically) who really doesn’t give a shit about anyone else. What does this have to do with the objective fact that LEDs consume less energy than an incandescent? The Tragedy of the Commons is that we’re pretty much ALL selfish fucks to some extent, and you might as well get yours because there will be enough others grabbing everything, you holding back won’t make any difference. You might as well graze your goats on the Commons as much as you can before all the grass is gone, and it WILL be gone whatever you do, because everyone is following the same logic. Think of money and energy as interchangable - it’s actually pretty close in economic terms. If Pedant swaps out all his incandescents with compact fluorescents, he’s going to have a smaller power bill that’ll leave him with money to buy his golf clubs. If people use less energy in one area, they’ll use more in another until their budget runs out. Pretty much everything we do or use consumes energy, and the cost of energy doesn’t reflect the environmental damage that results. To make people use less energy means we have to increase the COST of energy, so Pedant runs out to get his CF bulbs just to stay where he is, wealth-wise. And that’s a valid way to tackle this thing - combine more energy-efficient ways of making stuff and doing stuff with a higher cost of energy. Otherwise all you do is make stuff more cheaply and people can afford more of it. But you have to implement the technology and the energy price hike very carefully so as to not make people POORER, because we live in a democracy and people are selfish fucks… The other way to do it is to make energy without doing environmental damage, which is why I like OTEC and ICETEC and solar towers and nuclear power, and it’s that sort of technology that I think we should be pushing. For a start, we wouldn’t have to force the developing world to stay at its current unlovely living standard for ever, and in the long run we might figure out how everyone can be as rich as us without taking the planet down. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/50 "2009-12-22T05:07:17Z")
> [@matt](#): > > The Tragedy of the Commons is that we’re pretty much ALL selfish fucks to some extent, and you might as well get yours because there will be enough others grabbing everything, you holding back won’t make any difference. You might as well graze your goats on the Commons as much as you can before all the grass is gone, and it WILL be gone whatever you do, because everyone is following the same logic. Yes, this is the reaction if you are an immoral prick who doesn’t consider other people to be of any value. If I have what I need, why should I grab more? > [@](#): > > Think of money and energy as interchangable - it’s actually pretty close in economic terms. If Pedant swaps out all his incandescents with compact fluorescents, he’s going to have a smaller power bill that’ll leave him with money to buy his golf clubs. If people use less energy in one area, they’ll use more in another until their budget runs out. Yes, or he could use that money to pay for a massage, whose carbon footprint is negligible. > [@](#): > > Pretty much everything we do or use consumes energy, and the cost of energy doesn’t reflect the environmental damage that results. To make people use less energy means we have to increase the COST of energy, so Pedant runs out to get his CF bulbs just to stay where he is, wealth-wise. And that’s a valid way to tackle this thing - combine more energy-efficient ways of making stuff and doing stuff with a higher cost of energy. Otherwise all you do is make stuff more cheaply and people can afford more of it. But you have to implement the technology and the energy price hike very carefully so as to not make people POORER, because we live in a democracy and people are selfish fucks… Some things consume more energy than others and it doesn’t necessarily follow a price ratio. A hummer has less fuel economy than a Bentley for instance. > [@](#): > > The other way to do it is to make energy without doing environmental damage, which is why I like OTEC and ICETEC and solar towers and nuclear power, and it’s that sort of technology that I think we should be pushing. For a start, we wouldn’t have to force the developing world to stay at its current unlovely living standard for ever, and in the long run we might figure out how everyone can be as rich as us without taking the planet down. Nuclear Power has a high cost, it is hardly pollution neutral. Sure, I’d prefer solar also, but it also has a pollution cost. Like LEDs they have less of a cost than other technologies. So why don’t we spend the savings on power we get from nuclear or solar on some more cruise missiles? What’s the difference other than scale? ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/51 "2009-12-22T11:16:17Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Yes, this is the reaction if you are an immoral prick who doesn’t consider other people to be of any value. If I have what I need, why should I grab more? > > …Yes, or he could use that money to pay for a massage, whose carbon footprint is negligible. > > …Some things consume more energy than others and it doesn’t necessarily follow a price ratio. A hummer has less fuel economy than a Bentley for instance. All fair points. You’re an idealist! If enough people thought like you, it could make a difference, but the sorry truth is that they don’t. Winning over the populations of the industrialised countries to ramp back the consumerism a bit and make reduced-carbon choices is a battle of hearts and minds that I’m very dubious about the chances of winning. Not that we shouldn’t _try_, but I’d like to have other approaches running in parallel, that assume that on average, we’re going to be the greedy selfish short-sighted illogical status-seeking apes we’ve always been. > [@](#): > > Nuclear Power has a high cost, it is hardly pollution neutral. Sure, I’d prefer solar also, but it also has a pollution cost. Like LEDs they have less of a cost than other technologies. So why don’t we spend the savings on power we get from nuclear or solar on some more cruise missiles? What’s the difference other than scale? All arguable points, and perhaps this isn’t the thread to do it in. I believe that nuclear doesn’t have to be terribly expensive (look at France) and that its pollution is of a very different and much more handleable nature than fossil fuels. Where are you seeing a pollution cost to solar? ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/52 "2009-12-22T12:30:00Z")
It’s ridiculous to think that consumption will decrease when the whole economic system is based on infinite growth. Every incitement in the system favors consumption. A political campaign to decrease consumerism will have to compete with the whole marketing sector, which spends over a **trillion** dollars yearly, just in the US. So let’s spend $50.000.000 on raising awareness. Not enough? Let’s spend $200.000.000 then? Still not enough? Let’s spend a billion dollars on it! Then we will spend one thousandth of what the competition is spending. And although raising awareness is good, and changing to LED is a good way for individuals to save energy, most of emissions and most if energy use isn’t by individuals but by the industry. In my town for example, the one main industry uses up more energy than all the households in the city. Private consumption is about a third of the total consumption, so to get some real changes you have to use policy and legislature. Putting the responsibility on the individual is just not going to cut it. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/53 "2009-12-22T12:43:52Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > Putting the responsibility on the individual is just not going to cut it. Putting the responsibilty _soley_ on the individual isn’t going to cut it, but whatever the industry in your home town is, individuals are the ultimate consumers and they can affect things. E.g. aluminium smelting is very energy-intense. Individuals can recycle, push for their beers and soft drinks to be packaged in reuseable glass bottles rather than cans, change their cars every twelve years rather than every three, and push down the demand for aluminium. Guidance, information, legislation on the packaging etc. would all help. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/54 "2009-12-22T12:55:09Z")
> [@matt](#): > > Putting the responsibilty _soley_ on the individual isn’t going to cut it, but whatever the industry in your home town is, individuals are the ultimate consumers and they can affect things. E.g. aluminium smelting is very energy-intense. Individuals can recycle, push for their beers and soft drinks to be packaged in reuseable glass bottles rather than cans, change their cars every twelve years rather than every three, and push down the demand for aluminium. Guidance, information, legislation on the packaging etc. would all help. Absolutely, but individual responsibility is usually used to draw focus away from collective and political responsibility. The side here that talks most about individual responsibility is at the same time investing our tax money into coal plants. The consumers have a job to do, but so does the public and private sectors. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/55 "2009-12-22T13:00:28Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Yes, this is the reaction if you are an immoral prick who doesn’t consider other people to be of any value. If I have what I need, why should I grab more? > > Some things consume more energy than others and it doesn’t necessarily follow a price ratio. A hummer has less fuel economy than a Bentley for instance. It’s not so much that we are all jerks (perhaps we are) but that we all essentially act in our local or self-interest, and more so when the benefit of not doing so is ill-defined. Some vague future benefit is always ill-defined. The second point is that what we personally define as self-sacrificing or outright altruistic does not necessarily hold up to the cold numbers of reality. So I swap out my incandescents for LEDs but live in a bigger-than-necessary house or…well; you get the idea: it’s total consumption and the whole carbon footprint. Conserve with the LEDs over here to feel good but still maintain a carbon footprint insustainably high if everyone lived at that level. That is the tragedy of the commons. Nitpick (by way of preserving my title): I’d be very surprised if a typically-sold Bentley is more fuel efficient than a typically-sold Hummer. Both lines of cars come in assorted varieties of course. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/56 "2009-12-22T15:32:08Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > It’s not so much that we are all jerks (perhaps we are) but that we all essentially act in our local or self-interest, and more so when the benefit of not doing so is ill-defined. Some vague future benefit is always ill-defined. This is true. So is the fact that not reducing one’s own carbon emissions is not necessarily selfish. If everyone else is not going to reduce theirs, and I reduce mine, I am harming myself to no purpose. My actions do not help the end-state at all. Realistically speaking, as Copenhagen (and Kyoto) seem to show, India and China and Europe and the US are not going to reduce their carbon emissions by agreement. There is a lot of verbiage around it, but that is the bottom line. Therefore it seems to me to be the best course of action to minimize the damage, and maximize the benefits. And, as mentioned, if the price of oil goes thru the roof, the problem becomes, to some degree, self-limiting. But if the US sets hard limits on itself and abides by them, and the Third World does not, this will not eliminate the catastrophe of global warming (assuming it will be such) - it simply adds to the damage to the US. So I would shift our attention to doing what can be done - nuclear power, among other things (although that dolt in the Oval Office [can’t seem to get a clue on the subject](http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=24743)). It is rather like the Obama-care thing - one would hope that politicians would learn from the failure to enact a huge government program that will fix all the issues. It is far more complicated than that. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/57 "2009-12-22T17:24:10Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > The reason I am emphasising Obamas role is because it is an American forum, when I discuss the issue in swedish forums I put the emphasis on the swedish prime minister (who perhaps was the biggest disappointment of all).. If it makes you feel any better the Canadian press claims Canada’s Prime Minister was the biggest disappointment of all. In fact, the environmental lobby in almost EVERY country’s saying the same thing about their leader. Climate change is a real and pressing threat, but Copenhagen wasn’t going to work. It was inevitable the blame game would be heavily fired up over this. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/58 "2009-12-22T17:58:56Z")
Politicians can’t even solve the problems in their own countries, because their first priority is playing politics. I don’t have much optimism for any summit meeting producing results. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/59 "2009-12-22T18:58:08Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > That’s a straw man. No one is saying that ‘nano’ will be magic that cures everything, but it is necessary to realize how much manufacturing will change over the next few years before you start implementing massive social controls on industry. There’s not really such a thing as ‘these materials’. You’re kind of using a crude definition of nanotechnlogy. All it means is materials made at the nanoscale (molecular level). It’s definitely the next step in miniaturization, but the changes will be revolutionary, and the idea that a bunch of bureaucrats from various self-interested nations around the world with all of their piques and grudges will implement some sort of wise Earth-saving policy is Utopianism pure and simple. > > You couldn’t get onto the internet without nanoscale hardware. Your CPU is a nanomachine. > > I didn’t say anything about nanoscale robotics. I was just wrong about being able to separate carbon out from hydrocarbons. Except that you are claiming that we should put off doing anything about climate change because new nanotechnology will change the whole picture without providing any reason why. It sounds like magic to me. It’s true that the modern CPU is nano scale, I’ll give you that one. Solid state devices can get very small, but I don’t see how they can be used to combat climate change. Nanotubes are nothing more than a material until they are put in a device. Nanotubes have uses in transparent conductors and in LED’S, but all of these functions are based on bulk material properties. Simply separating the different types of nanotubes from one another is barely possible. I’m unaware of any scalable system to put nanotubes in nanoscale devices that has been developed. Lithography simply isn’t useful here. It is the same story for nanoparticles of all types. They can make them in large quantities, but they can’t order them in any way that makes them useful beyond just being materials. In most cases, uses are also limited by the ways in which they are made. You don’t have one type of nanotube or one size of nanoparticle being made at a time, you have a large distribution of particles that are very difficult to separate. I see no real reason to believe that there is any type of extraordinary technological revolution under way. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063/60 "2009-12-22T21:12:46Z")
> [@matt](#): > > All arguable points, and perhaps this isn’t the thread to do it in. I believe that nuclear doesn’t have to be terribly expensive (look at France) and that its pollution is of a very different and much more handleable nature than fossil fuels. Well the pollution is much longer term though. > [@](#): > > Where are you seeing a pollution cost to solar? Manufacture and disposal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copenhagen-failure/522063.md?page=4)