AMD vs Intel: Technology, Competition, and Sustainability

emission by perhaps 40 percent per computer. Thousands of existing rack-mounted
servers each generating more than 100 watts must be cooled, so that a reduction of 40
watts in waste heat in a new server chip will save 80 watts in cooling.
No one familiar with the history of pollution control in the United States or
Germany can imagine that even the limited environmental clean-up was voluntary.
Industry fought to preserve its right to destroy the environment. Coal-fueled power plants
still produce enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and trioxide, and
particulates. The Supreme may decide this term if States can force the Bush
Administration’s EPA to regulate release of carbon dioxide (which it refuses to do). The
attempt was previously denied by the Court of Appeals.
The danger of global warming cannot be exaggerated. It is impossible to reassure
ourselves that some technical development will save us. We are unable to overcome
threats that every rational person knows about. Conflicts of economic interest prevent
our solving the problems we face. Tobacco farmers in North Carolina oppose cuts in
tobacco subsidies. Drivers resist increased taxes on gasoline. Gamblers oppose bans on
on-line poker. Automobile companies in Michigan oppose gasoline efficiecy standards.
For SUVs. When we consider the future level of carbon dioxide that will result from
burning the remaining fossil fuels, and the increases in temperature, atmospheric CO 2 ,
and sea level that will result from a “business as usual.” scenario. The predictions of next
century’s rise in CO 2 in the models in K. Hasselman, et al. 7 show disastrous levels in all
three of the outcome variables -- CO 2 concentration, temperature change, and sea level
change are shown for the next millennium for two scenarios, the first, BAU, “business as
usual” shows disastrous increases in all three. The alternative scenario, C/B, “cost
benefit” shows the effects of an optimal emissions path that minimizes the sum of
economic costs caused by projected CO 2 emissions and the projected costs of reducing
emissions (Table). This involves substantial CO 2 sequestration, development of
renewable energy, and other measures to conserve energy, but within available
resources.and world budgets.
No one will ever be able to construct models of energy and economy that are
credible. Initial conditions vary between versions. Many of the equations are
idiosyncratic, unspecified, nonlinear, unidentifiable, and variable in unknown ways. All
economic, social, and political variables are purely synthetic and their future values are
unavoidably unknown and unknowable, even if past values have been estimated by
expert economic, social and behavioral scientists. 8
7 “The Challenge of Long-Term Climate Change,” (oringally 2003, revised and updated), Donald Kennedy,
ed. Science Magazine’s State of the Planet 2006-2007. Washington: Island Press, 2006
8 This does not mean that I believe models of the future are useless, though I am suspicious of millennial
projections. Suppose the learned bishops at the court of the Saxon emperors in CE 1000 had made
projections of the next millennium? I wonder what they would have gotten right, even if some of them were
divinely inspired. None of people living today will be able to falsify these projections, although I make a
possible exception for Ray Kurzweil. Hence they cannot by Popper’s criterion be considered “scientific.” I
suppose that makes them religious.
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