IDarryl's blog

Why an Emission Trading Scheme is a good idea

Is the climate changing?  Yes

Is the climate changing because of human intervention? Maybe

Is an Emision Traiding Scheme a good idea: Hell Yeah!

 

At the moment, it is hard to determine of humans are to blame for climate change. While the climate scientists are adiment that it is proven science, many of the vocal proponants have taken an absolutist view that have alientated believers like myself.

It can be proven by observations that the weather paterns in my part of Australia are changing. It is getting hotter and dryer. Weather events are becoming extreame.

The science underlining greenhouse gas is also provable by observation. Venius has a high CO2 atmosphere, that traps in solar heat making the world hotter than an earth like atmosphere in the same orbit.

However, the earth has gone through vilont climate change in the past, and there is an argument that we may be overdue to an ice age.

What this has to an Emission Trading Scheme (or ETS). For me, not much. I feel that reducing emissions into the atmosphere is a good idea, just from a moral point.

1. The earth atmosphere is a finely tuned system, and we should not be mucking about with it, because we really dont know what the repercussions are.

2. Most emissions are also polutants, and there is a proven link between health and polution.

3. Oil and coal is a finate resource. Ideally we should be using Oil for a wide range of uses, but we burn it to release its chemically stored energy.

So why an ETS?

Any company that produces waste, has to pay to dispose of it. Governments impose regulations on where it is to be dumped, the way it is to be dumped and the monitoring of enviromental impact of the waste.

Excpet for Gas Waste.

At the moment, gas emissions do not have a cost associated with it. Governments do monitor emissions for some noxious elements. But gas emissions are getting a free ride compared to liquid and solid wastes.

Imposing a value to emissions will ironically give it a value. At the moment, emissions have no value whatsoever. An ETS turns emissions into a comodity. People will invest in ways to store or manage emissions. People will look for ways to reduce emissions. Someone may even work out a way to value add to emissions, and do something with it that is unfeasable today, because it is easier to emit the waste gas rather than look at other options.

And the cost associated with an ETS. Yes there is a cost, however, everyone has been subsidising emissions by not imposing a value to it! It is cheaper and easier to emit waste gasses, even with the possable costs on the health and climate effects. So we pay via health care and energy costs. So no matter which way we go, there is cost associated, even if we ignore the matter entirely

So, even of your a cliate sceptic, concider an ETS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Been mulling over an idea for a story.

What finally kicked me from procrastination to action was Neil Gaiman starting a story using twitter. Follow that good idea with the twitter tag of #bbcawdio

Here is my bad idea of a story. Feedback and flames welcome.

Geff had an self image problem. Which can be a problem in itself. 

Being a half human, half ghanvii hybrid, and related to the Ghan royal family to boot would cause issues at the best of times. 

Being ambushed by the enemy while in transit two thousand kilometers away from the Pluto Hyperspace station does present itself as a good example of a problem.

The problem facing Geff and creating the self image problem was being told he was a god.  The ghanvii did have a large pantheon of gods, and the pantheon had all the morality of the Olympian Gods and the respect of peace of the Norse gods. This and the general indifference most ghanvii hold to their gods made ghanvii religion the laughing stock of most Terrans.  

So having two members of said highly rediculed pantheon present in a cabin with Geff, 2000 kilometers away from Pluto station during an enemy ambush advising an incredulous Geff No Faction Ghan that he was a god was creating problems for one Geff No Faction Ghan.

Except for the part of his soul that totally believed it.

"Ok, so if I am a god, what am I suppose to do?"

The god known as the Trickster or Comedian (depending on the translation) looked at Geff. "Thief and I was hopping you would tell us."

Oh, joy.

The Thief of Hearts, dressed in traditional and ancient ghanvii bronze armour that did nothing to hide the godess' stunning good looks shrugged. "Generally you would pull out a half insane idea that generally works. Maybe we thought it would come naturally once you realised your powers again." 

"Maybe I can just open a warp tunnel between this ship and the enemy!" said a half hysterical Geff. "And we storm it with bronze weaponry and a spoon I have left over from my lunch! Are you both insane or just me!"

The clear plexmond bulkhead that faced out to space started to shimmer, as if a rock hit a still pond. "Ah!" cried the Comedian "A portal! Why didn't we think of that!". And with a cry jumped into what should have been solid diamond like hull and disappeared. 

Thief turned to Geff. "Grab that spoon thing, whatever that is. And do come with us, if only to keep Comedian restrained. You know how excited he can be against the enemy." And she to jumped into aprently solid hull bulkhead. 

"Lord Jesus, protect us fools". Grabbing the spoon, Geff jumped into the shimmering warp tunnel and left the natural universe.

The verwon fan club page

I recieved a tweet from this creepy yank sheila called verwan. And I quote"@idarryl Hey, what happened to the blog about starting my fan club? LOL"

Right. Never refusing a request, here is my Verwon fan blog.

Please note some of these FACTS may in fact may be delusional creations

Verwon sprang from a large oyster shell. The poor oyster farmer who had the misfortune of opening the shell (and is still recieving therapy) was in fact awestruck by her stunning looks and complete lack of clothing that he fell out of his boat and managed to hit a wing cherub who was rushing to put clothing on said verwon.

verwon is the reason the global financial crisis happened. All the Wall Street traders where too busy saining marrage proposals to her via Twitter that they forgot to feed the hamster powering the computer. And you thought it was Lehman Bothers.

The fall of communism was the result of verwan asking Soviet Russia nicely to stop. And they did.

The bible is wrong. God is female, and is named verwon. And was played by Alanis Morrisette in Dogma because Kevin Smith could not afford verwon's appearance fees.

The President of the United States is verwon. Obama is just her stunt double.

The Grand Old Party is named after one of verwon's birthday parties. The punch was rumoured to be equisite!

The eye in the Illuminati pyramid that appears in the US banknotes is verwon's. All of them.

Chuck Norris fears verwon. And with good reason.

The end of the world discribed in the bible HAS happened. verwon thought it was silly and removed all memories of it from everyones minds, except for those crazy doomsday cultists. They are in fact what verwon calls "perfromance art".

Douglas Adams wrote that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. that is in fact Mr Adams' code for verwon, because if he wrote verwon into the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, verwon was going to make HIM the complaints manager of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

verwon is modest. Whole choirs of children sing praise of her modesty. For centuries. Non Stop.

follow verwon on twitter: www.twitter.com/verwon or her blog http://verwon.com/

 

Back from the interwebs

No updates for a while. Why? I can barely be coherent with twitter and there is only 140 characters deal with there.

Been committing to much time (tm) on Multiplayer Online games. Here is some ill informed and worthless opinion on some of the games I have recently played. 

Warhammer Online is Dead to me. The RvR was not compelling enough, the public quests where imposable to do solo and no one wanted to do them. And the social element is pathetic.

Played Eve Onlone. I did like it, but it requires far more investment in time and effort that I particularly want to put in. The timed based skill system and level free game play is a good thing and bad thing, as it allows you to do things level based games require grinding, at the cost of commiting time and forethought in planning your skill progression and waiting for the skills to be learnt. I will eventually go back. 

World of Warcraft is a good game, and I would still treat it as my second MMROPG, except that AION is now out and I had free access to it for the beta and release month. I do like Aion, the graphics are top notch, The quest are very WOWish, and I yet to get a character to PvPvE level. I got a Sorcerer to level 21 untill realised i dont like squishy character and now have a level 19 Templar (tank type) which I am enjoying.

Is Aion WoW 2? The quests are very simular, but the character classes feel different. The spell system is closer to the EQ2 model with spells becoming obsolete and replaced by newer version of the same spell. Flight and gliding adds a nice touch to Aion gameplay. 

If Aion has an issue for me, it is the gold spam. It is at horrific levels in the game. When I log in I spend 2 minutes blocking all the spambots in the chat channels. Again, for a newish game I realise that many of the tools that older games like WoW, EQII and City of Heroes are not there in Aion.

Also, Dungeon and Dragons Online. I actually like this game a lot. The quests are challenging and many require puzzle solving or passing requirements before progression. There are the 10 kill rats missions, but for the main, each instanced quest is refreshing and worth working out. There is also a grind to these quests, as when you do a lower difficulty, it unlocks the next hardest difficulty. The DDO free model is compelling and well implemented. And because it is free, you can allways go back without commiting money to subscription.   

In other , bad news, dear reader, I am getting the itch to blog more again, so be prepared for more useless crap from me in the future.

My Blah Life

I should have posted more, but life is meh right now.

I have been playing Warhammer online . The PvP (or Realm v Realm as it is called in game) is quite good and quite aggravating at the same time. You need to play a fair bit of it to unlock some good ingame rewards, but getting a war party together to raid the keeps can be a pain.

Part of the problem is that there is a couple of tactics, the pad sit and the zerg.

The pad sit is that everyone gathers on a weapons pad on the floor of a keep, then drag the keep boss away from his guards and kill him.

The zerg is get a large group of people, and just kill the keep boss.

The problem is, especially if you get a random pick up war party, people are dumb (tm)

The Pad sit requires people to get of the pad when the boss is away from his guards. However, people just dont move off the pad. The boss resets. Hilarity Ensures.

The Zerg requires everyone in the war party requires everyone to pour damage onto the boss. Problem is that people just dont get their role. Healers dont heal. Tanks dont grab aggro and take damage. Ranged Damage are not protected, close in fighters are not supported. Hillarity again Ensures.

I think that there is some great elements in Warhammer that make it better than WoW and EQ2 (but City of Heroes is still my game of choice, pity I am waiting for i14 to drop to get the mojo flowing). WAR is proof your game is only as good as your players.

And of cause, I am not the worlds best MMORPG player :-)

Losi McMasters Bujold - Authors on the Air Podcast

The new Mac's are out.

New speedbump on the Mac range at Apple . The Mac mini excites me greatly.I am using a Core Due with 2gb memory. It does all that I want excpet play games.

The new Mac Mini uses the Nvidia new mobility chips. This for the mac mini is great. The price (around A$1000) is a good value for a small format PC.

However, the iMac has also the new mobility graphics. To get a real graphics card, you need to spend A$3000. That is an expensive computer. Considering a PC specced around the same is far, far cheaper.

Not sure, but for $1000 more , you can go to  a Mac Pro, and have  a lot more expansion capabilities.

I dunno, but I think the Mac Mini is the way to go. But why do I have to spend $30 for an apple remote?

Heirs of Alexandria

 

This series from Baen I have found to be really enjoyable. Written by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and David Freer (who worked solo on the third book) it is a fantasy series based on an alternative earth.

While not a fan per se of alternative earth books, in fantasy I love the effect, as sometimes the real world is more complex and easier to explain than ye old pissweak fantasy setting.

The persumption here is that pagan magic is known and respected, and that the catholic church is not as dominant as it is in our world. The Shadow of The Lion is set mainly in Vencie, and the city is as much a cast member as the strong characters that you meet. The fact that Venice is such a unique city in archetecture and history allows the reader to explore it during the course of the novel (from the slums and swamps to the richest houses).

 

This Rough Magic is also set in Venice (but mainly to tie up some elements of the last book, and to launch the focus characters to Cofu. This is a great book, as it safely avoids a clean cut resolution and instead uses a compramise to resolve one issue. It has also a great seige in it, very illistrative of the military tactics of the period (late medievil).

A Mandkind Witch is a side aventure, one however is placed in the chronology of the story arc. Only focusing of Manfred and Eric, it is set in Denmark, and is greatly influnced on Grendel and other regional myths.

I do hope more books come out, but I do recomend these books, especially as the story is well constructed, the characters you feel for them, and future sequals will hoefully not be just tacked on for the cash, but fleshing out this wonderfull setting.

 

 

 

Steve Jobs hates me, but I am loving what he is sending out!

The scene. A Dell DM061 which due to MS Vista, poor drivers, and a lame ATI x1300 graphics card made my life miserable.

Disclaimer: I am a proud Linux Hippie (tm) , however, I do not feel complete unless I have at least 3 operating systems on my computer (hell, I have 1TB, room to spare!)

Windows Vista. The minute I sighted Windows 7 x64 beta, Vista was DTM (Dead to me).  While I had issues with the signed drivers on the x64 version of Win7, it was nothing like the sheer frustration of being unable to run the one game I wanted to un on my new computer (City of Heroes). Simple things like the UI changes to reduce some of the blatant stupidities of Vista (No shutdown menu without crawling down a  series of menu options, the congo line of icons on the toolbar every application insists needs to be there, UAC [asking 3 times "Do I realy want to do something" then saying "Oops, sorry, cant do it"] sold me. Yes you can say to me "I run vista, and I have no problems". Well, yeah, but I dont care. When an OS makes you howl in utter hatred, nothing is going to redeem it. And Vista did. For about a year. The service pack was too late.

Mac OS X. I have a Mac mini. A core duo 512mb system. Lovely. Small. Remarcably good. However, it is under spec the day I bought it (I shoudl have upgraded the Ram). Lack of graphic card (Steve, mate, ATI or Nvidia do nice onboard graphics now. The Mini needs a model bump. That is all) not so much of an issue, but the specs make it hard to edit a None Inch Nails Garrage Band sound file, and Leopard is pushing the friendship resource wise.

So, what to do?

HACKINTOSH baby!

Installed iDeneb 1.3 (about 6 times, there is a level of complexity that needs to be removed for the punters). Still have issues (my RT73 based USB wireless card is flakey, but I knew that when I had issues installing drivers for it on Linux), but for the first time I feel that my Dell has an OS that uses all the resosources for good not evil. KDE4 comes close, but the KDE version of Ubuntu is one generation behind the Gnome version in terms of "It Just Works".

The Irony is that I am looking to install Win7 on my mack mini.

Steve must really hate me now :-S

Scarility real profile

Raised on a steady diet of comic books, you grew up to be an unstable lunatic, whose wacky ambitions are only matched by your delusions of grandeur. You're too crafty to get caught, otherwise you'd certainly be locked away in the loony bin!

Take the quiz!

Champions Online "What Hero are you?"