But none of the 'silver bullet men' are anywhere near as deluded as those who believe that 'our planetary civilisation is being confronted by a dizzying array of chronic problems – from climate change, to desertification, to ocean acidification...'

Certainly an interesting article. I've never thought of science and technology as a male pathology. Blokes and their sheds - that sort of thing.

There's a spate of these articles appearing who say women have one sort of brain and men have another. That's why women are better at housework, or the arts while the men hunt wilderbeast down George Street. It's rubbish of course and one might be better focused on looking at power relationships rather than brains.

Even so, there is a fetish about technology that it is a magic bullet for saving us from ourselves. Still, if you have a brain tumour, you'd prefer the surgeon to have modern diagnostic tools and lasers to cut it out rather than using a blunt spoon.

Cheryl:"It's rubbish of course and one might be better focused on looking at power relationships rather than brains."

Some evidentiary support of this rather bald claim would be good.
Women have had a great deal of power wihn our society for a very long time, both publicly and privately, yet the lament of women that they lack power seems to be constant.

It seems to me that when women are given a choice of working less they nearly always take it and when they are given the opportunity not to work at all they grab it with relish. No one could argue that being female makes you stupid, but it does make you subject to the usual female drivers, just as being male makes you subject to the relevant male ones.

It's not universal, certainly, but it's a pretty good way to bet. Goldman Sachs did a whole report on the subject I've referenced elsewhere.

On the subject of blokes and their sheds, it's probably a fair comment. Men love stuff that does stuff. Further, we've evolved from a long line of people who had to do stuff the hard way and we really love being able to do it the easy way. It's even better if we can figure out the new best way.

Some blokes take it to heart a bit much perhaps, but in my experience there are lots of blokes who like nothing more than standing around a shed working out how to do a job the best way. There is no real equivalent in female culture, it seems to me: women are far more task-focussed than that and will just do it the hard way if it needs to be done, then complain until some easier way is found...

It should also be pointed out to the author that many of the most seminal developments in our history have been the work of "crackpots". It takes a certain type of personality to endure the slings and arrows perhaps.

“The very same masculine imagination that brought about our dominant nexus in history is right now determining how we progress through these precarious, uncertain times ahead.”

Hardly - rather, the determinant lies with females of our species and how many children in totality they produce. The number of men involved with them, and the male’s respective fertility rates, are something of an irrelevance.

Multiplication of the female fertility rate, by the urge to shop (either for boys’ toys, or for whatever women want) and the energy needed to produce the items: that determines our progress along a road towards continued pollution and resource scarcity - or changing track towards improved tenure on this planet.

Just for the record, I find mechanical stuff and technological wizardry completely boring. My wife does most of the drilling, building and repairing at our place and when the task is beyond her, we get in a tradie. This stuff about men and their sheds is utter rubbish. I've never had a shed, never wanted one and resisted all attempts to inveigle me into having one.

I like to read, go to art galleries with my very knowledgeable wife and go to the footy and cricket with my son, who also has an aversion to sheds and all they entail. I'm with Cheryl on this one. This notion of inherent male or female characteristics is utter nonsense.

I wondered how long it would take the author to get to a gender wars or climate change theme, because these issues are all that occupy the Green's feeble minds. Unfortunately I had to read the whole repetitive 'mere male' style article because he slips both in right at the end. Its also has, oddly, quite sexist undertones.

The fact is that the Greens don't want low cost or infinite energy systems of any sort because not only would their party would be consigned to history, but they would no longer be able to blame and punish people with their austerity campaigns. The Greens despise technology and progress. If you had an idea its obviously the wrong door to knock on.

Unsurprisingly, they do support wind and solar because its expensive and inefficient and costs us dearly in the long run.

Learn from what happened to Spain.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0

I'm not so sure Antiseptic or should that read anti-sceptic?

I'll admit my generalisation if you admit yours about working women.

Surely we're not going to go back and revisit brain size and the kind of rubbish the socio-biologists pumped out in the 30s and 40s about the genetic preconditions of men and women and their ability to drive CARS!

This article is a classic example of Single Lens Theory. If you look at the world through one diagnostic/prognostic lens, you see what you want to see. In this case it's men as clever apes thinking technology will save the world. It's a gender theory.

If I look through the Single Lens Population telescope, I see millions of people teeming across the earth, fornicating like rabbits, eating us out of house and home.

No Single Lens will give you a correct or more correct answer. We must look at numerous factors and see how they interconnect. One shouldn't dismiss population or gender but you shouldn't make it the Taj Mahal of your analysis either.

Cheryl, my statement was based on data from the ABS

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features20Jun+2011

Have a look at the chart titled "Work related injuries by occupation group" and you'll see what I'm referring to.

Further, since 2006 men's injury rate at work has fallen, thanks to improved OH&S training and better work practises, from about 71/1000 to 55/1000. women's has remained constant at 51/1000, despite the fact that women barely appear in any of the dangerous industrial categories. this means that women doing office work are claiming to have been injured as frequently as all men, including those doing dangerous physical work.

Why would I hire a woman?

Cheryl, have a look at this as well

http://www.eowa.gov.au/Pay_Equity/Files/Australias_hidden_resource.pdf

Basically, it advocates a series of measures to both"encourage" women into traditionally male roles and to "punish" women who choose traditional roles.

They say this is necessary because women generally don't choose productive work if they ar left to their own devices.

As I said, it's not universal, but it's the way to bet.

Sorry Antiseptic,

I'm missing something. You initially said:

"It seems to me that when women are given a choice of working less they nearly always take it and when they are given the opportunity not to work at all they grab it with relish."

The ABS make no qualitative interpretation on days off by gender.

Are you suggesting that women will take a day off (rather than men) because there are sales on or because they're bone lazy?

You also inferred that 'given a choice' but in most cases illness is not a choice but rather a fact.

The cost of solar and wind may be expensive, The cost of oil or gas is not set in concrete either. At least solar has a determined lifespan.
All men need a shed, that is where all those mechanical devices we all use come from.
Easy on our females, they were sent to us for a purpose, and they can do things no male has ever done.

Like Senior Victorian , I also have no interest in Men's Sheds . I also have an aversion for Top Gear , football , fishing and most other activities that are supposed to be a source of fascination to men . Surprisingly , perhaps , I enjoy watching , but not participating in , boxing .

Every so often ,some media personality decides that it would be profitable to tell men or women , or people collectively that they all want or love something and then the media regurgitates this assertion as a fact, until many of those who hear the assertion really believe it . It is a bit like the Emperor 's New Clothes . It helps to sell coffee table books and provides material for radio and TV programs , because allegedly this is what people want .

Cheryl, do read the reports again. All I claimed is in there. Have a look at the ABS's primary sources too, if you don't believe me.

As for injury, do you really think that it's reasonable for women white collar workers to make around as many claims for injury as male blue-collar ones? Male white-collar workers only make about half as many claims as their blue-collar brethren.

I'm suggesting that women suffer from lots of conditions they might not want to admit to the boss about. How much PMS is being disguised as other things? Much nicer to claim a case of RSI than admit you're having a hard time with the menopause, too.

Either women fake it, or they're not up to the job. Take your pick, but either way they take a lot more resources to keep employed than men do.

Antiseptic,

that's one of the most unsubstantiated and asinine posts I've read. There is absolutely no hint at that in the cited report or any report I've read on workforce productivity that women are work shy. Nor is it alluded to in the writer's article.

I put it to you that you have merely used this writer's article to flex your misogynist attitudes. Your thinking is regressive. Read more widely.

Visionaries are important, as well as people who have the technical and manual skills to fully realise the dreams.

Some had both. For example, Nikola Tesla.

The author makes no suggestions on how to produce cheap energy.

Me thinks he has just chosen this topic to malign men, a common addiction in our feminist society.

I think the author has scored on own-goal here.

I agree that it most circumstances there is normally no "silver bullet", especially in regards to complex systems that are partially understood.

So why is there so much credibility given to the concepts that (1) anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused global warming and climate change, and (2) the reduction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions can “mitigate climate change”?

The author has perfectly summed this up in the opening paragraph – “This is a story about men and their dreams – alchemist dreams. Part science, part magic, part religion.”

The article further suggests that: “... there is always at least one such guy (this syndrome only afflicts men) in the audience who has in his grasp the triumphant Cornucopian solution – the silver bullet that will herald in a bright future for mankind.”

And: “For one thing, it is not possible to contest the science – their belief is generally more about faith than it is about science, and who can argue against impregnable faith?”

And: “By and large these are the most earnest, dedicated, passionate people you could imagine. But, like anybody deeply infatuated with religion they tend to be smitten with an absolute, rock solid belief. They’ve found their Holy Grail. And that’s the scary bit.”

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to anyone?

Chris. This is complete, unadultered piffle. I read on thinking at some point there was going to be an original or challenging thought. Sadly, the only conclusion i could reach was that as a former advisor to the Greens you had some experience of religious fervour and were quite predictably a technology reactionary. "The quack of today is the professor of tomorrow." (attributed to Sherlock Holmes).

Cheryl:"There is absolutely no hint at that in the cited report or any report I've read on workforce productivity that women are work shy."

Dear me, please try to stay focussed and perhaps try reading things that are referenced. I said that women white-collar workers generally make twice as many injury claims as men. Overall, women make about the same number of claims as men, despite working in mostly safe industries. Some female-dominated industries are dangerous, like kitchen work and some types of nursing, but the vast majority are not, yet the injury rate remains high. This is all in the ABS report. I said that women prefer to work in part-time roles when they can, etc - this is according to Goldman Sachs.

I didn't say it was universal, merely that it is the statistical case. The net outcome, according to Goldman Sachs, is that women are 50% less productive than men. F-I-F-T-Y. They didn't even look at the costs of employing women, which are obviously much higher, making the equation even less favourable.

None of those are my opinions, they are the pinions of Goldman Sachs JB Were and the ABS. Worksafe Australia has more detailed breakdowns if you're interested.

The Goldman Sachs report came from the website of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.

Tides rise and fall, and can be used to produce electricity. If that electricity is sufficient to pay for the cost of developing and maintaining the equipment to produce the electricity, then what has been created is a free energy machine.

Similar with solar power, wind generators etc.

I wonder why the author didn't think of this.

Almost all patents are developed by men, and there is a definite difference between men and women regards inventing and building things.

I wonder why the author didn't think of this.

The article reminds me not to vote for the Green party in the next few elections at least.

Cheryl, I see you've gone all quiet. Did you have a look at those reports or are Goldman Sachs and the ABS too "asinine and unsubstantiated" for you?

It's hurtful when one's assumptions are challenged, isn't it? Even more hurtful when the challenge is based on hard numbers. I can understand why you'd not want to believe the figures, but unless you can come up with something better, I'm afraid they have to stand.

Do try to make sure that whatever you come up with isn't "asinine and unsubstantiated" won't you?

Vanna, tides aren't really very good for power generation, unless they can be buffered in some form of dam. They simply don't have a lot of energy, mostly because they don't rise very fast in most cases. There was a proposal I was actually involved with at the preliminary investigation stage to dam the Exmouth estuary and make a hydro power facility. Exmouth is good because the tide has a range of almost 5 metres, but the proposal fell apart on both environmental grounds and on simple costs. It takes a lot of money to build 30km of dam in alluvium.

Another possible method is to use floats that are driven by tides, but 1 cubic metre of flotation only produces about 1kW per tide in the sorts of tides that we see in SE Australia and the mechanical aspects of capturing that are complex to say the least. The same problem applies to other mechanical methods, such as vanes or impellers.

It's a nice idea, but the energetics don't stack up.

An excellent article grounded in reason--no wonder it has no impact on most of the cohort above.
The old alchemist was indeed motivated by praiseworthy ambitions, but sadly the modern alchemist is an economist, who's insane logic is that the market can cure all ills. The entrepreneur is the amateur alchemist and puts his faith in the economist that the perpetual motion system has indeed been discovered; it's incongruously called the free market. Not only are these modern alchemists able to place absolute faith in the mystical properties of the market, but their able to dismiss with the same breathtaking surmise, irrefutable empirical evidence, as well as their own god-given powers of induction. To wit: "none of the 'silver bullet men' are anywhere near as deluded as those who believe that 'our planetary civilisation is being confronted by a dizzying array of chronic problems – from climate change, to desertification, to ocean acidification'". It's all a conspiracy Jon J, right?
What the author doesn't say explicitly is that the capitalist system has evolved to exploit gendered propensities; it doesn't cater to human needs, it cultivates them, ad nauseam.
As I've said elsewhere, economic growth in a closed system is as subject to entropy as energy is, it's as unequivocal as the second law of thermodynamics--though the minimifidianist is capable of denying anything.
Technology won't solve the problems the free market creates; like any household budget, we have to live within our means. Far from having found the secret to eternal life, we profligately live for the moment.

squeers:"we profligately live for the moment"

The moment is all there is. Any experience is just the sum of the moments that composed it. The trick is to make each moment count as best you can in whatever way you choose to do the measuring.

The great achievers manage to get more out of their moments because they can string them together with more purpose than most bother with. It doesn't really matter if their purpose was "useful" or not - the moments still passed. If they caused someone else to invest their own moments with more purpose, then in such small ways is human life made more tolerable.

Antiseptic,
a philosophy of living in the moment is all well and good, and it's true that he who throws away the present moment throws away all he has. But it's a philosophy "founded" on material security rather than preceding it. Life is precarious and uncertain ultimately, but we do not occupy geological time and in terms of all of human history (the blink of an eye) there has been a mostly prosaic continuity in terms of natural conditions, while we've adapted slowly to regional differences. To apply what amounts to an individualistic and existential philosophy to the rapacious impacts we are having as a species on this ancient biosphere, with no regard for tomorrow, notwithstanding the overwhelming likelihood that the planet would maintain the current equilibrium for millennia if we treated it with respect, shows and utter want of philosophy ("how should we live?") and contempt for all ethical considerations that might have made humanity worth preserving.

squeers:"it's a philosophy "founded" on material security"

Not at all. If one is not materially secure there is even more reason to give primacy to the present. The past is gone and the future unknown. the only way to ensure there is a future at all is to make one's moments count.

I think you should re-read my post above, old boy. You seem to have worked yourself into rather a lather over something quite invisible to me.

I looked at the Title… then I speculated…. I smell “Watermelon”

Then I looked at the bio note of the author and read “social advocate, and former adviser to Australian Greens senator Bob Brown.”

Satisfied my sense of smell is working well I will make this comment

Some men (and even some women) have worked to improve the lot of humanity, inventing silver bullets and mixing magic puddings -

Whilst the small minded, negative, Malthusian levelers and Luddites have cast scorn on their efforts,

despite jumping to take advantage of every innovation from the printing press to the internet and clambering on planes -

to rush off to envirommental conferences to debate the rights of other individuals to choose be alchemists.

Lets face it, without the inspired individuals who see beyond the pig trough of the environazi, we would be looking forward to living like a 17th century French peasant…

instead of, like the greens, looking back toward it as the time of the “Enlightenment”

from the comments ….. I see Squeers is in approval of this load of enviropap…

which means I must be right

Antiseptic:
"You seem to have worked yourself into rather a lather".

A lather? Hardly.
Would love to say more but am pressed for time.

Antiseptic,
Probably tides aren't sufficient to generate much electricity, but if energy output is more than energy input, then there is a free energy machine.

Tides, wind and solar can produce free energy, and there have also been perpetual motion machines developed which ran off a liquid that formed a gas with the heat from sunlight and condensed when in shade (and this was enough to rotate a wheel endlessly if half the wheel was in shade and the other half was in sunlight).

My bet for long term fuel production is using nanotechnology to create a form of artificial photosynthesis and produce a type of biofuel.

Remembering that carbon plus hydrogen produces a hydrocarbon, and there is plenty of carbon and hydrogen.

There is work progressing towards artificial photosynthesis, but without visionaries (who are mostly men) there will be no progress.

In regards to the differences between men and women, only a feminist or university academic would think there are no differences.

All they have to do is look around them.

How many men want to walk down the street wearing a skirt, high heel shoes and carrying a handbag.

Not many at all, (and only a feminist, university academic or perhaps member of the Green party would think that they would).

More on the above

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=21303.php

http://www.economist.com/node/21015679?fsrc=nwl

I say "Let them eat cake" Col Rouge.

Or, a personal favourite that was popular in central Queensland in the 80's:

"Let the b@stards freeze in the dark!"

But I guess the "freezing" part is less relevant now, what with all the global warming and so on ...

Appreciate all of the comments above. To clarify a little:

1) There are many good men and women out there working on clean technologies that can serve a genuine conserver society – a society that lives within its means. All praise to them. The article was about a particular pathology where some folk develop a deep seated belief that they have found a 'silver bullet' technology that defies scientific reality.

2) From my experience the gender connection in this pathology is very strong, but this is not a slight against men, any more than say, Anorexia Nervosa, is a slight against women – because some women are victims of that behaviour. Both genders exhibit extreme behaviours at times and we should be mature enough to simply face up to those behaviours squarely. Social discussion of them is the best remedy so that they are brought out into the open.

I should add that extreme gender behaviours generally apply to a set of individuals, it would be wrong to stereotype either gender altogether owing to the affliction of some.

Chris (author)

When I read the article I thought it was 1600 words saying the author had discovered the sky was blue. To anybody that has spent a decade on the internet it was so plainly self evident, it hardly needed saying.

And then I read the comments here. I was wrong, I guess.

Peter Mac “Let them eat cake” and yes we are both on the same history page….

And it went to her head, almost before it added to her hips

Vanna – I found your urls to artificial photosynthesis very interesting….

I can see how research in this area will be hugely beneficial since it would seem to be the shortest journey between two points from energy source (sunlight) to something useable which could satisfy energy demand (presumably as a gas)

I also agree with the life qualities we all benefit from which result not simply from gender diversity but also individual diversity.

Open minds need room to discover

The author of the article clearly has no imagination and not much intelligence because

No one knows when someone will discover another magic pudding or silver bullet and we are all too ignorant to presume we have discovered and invented all that is possible –

although the hubris of green watermelons and AGW zealots and their political arms are sufficiently arrogant to declare we have.

What a sad world they must live in – so different to the one I look out over – I sometimes feel it must be some other planet……. But strangely, it is the same….

it must be something to do with how different peoples brains work (and research suggests a lefties brain does not)

Squeers:"Would love to say more but am pressed for time."

I'd love to hear what you have to say on this, Squeers. As someone who perforce approaches most problems from first principals, given a lack of genuinely broad reading of the classics, I'm appreciative of the chance for a discussion with people who have greater knowledge of the prior art.

I can't see where my logic falls down, on my own first principles, but I'm very happy, indeed hopeful, that it is shown to be wanting.

I think the nihilist view of an individual in command of his own existence for its own sake is very compelling. It dismisses any need for an over-riding principle and places all the responsibility for "how shall I best live" on the individual to do with as best he can. He sets the bar and he decides whether to jump it or not.

It seems to best explain the problem of existence to me, without falling back on claims of received wisdom in order to justify some imposition of external compulsion. If one does the job of living well, one will prosper and be happy: do it poorly and one will live in squalor and unhappiness. It's all up to you.

Antiseptic,

my only substantial first principle is humanism and all that that entails. It means rather than hiding behind the excuse of fatalism, trying to improve the human lot, including the individual's in the social context, and the social context in the global context (a collectivism that the neoliberals have created and affect to despise!). The neoliberal "individual" doesn't exist; s/he emerges hubristically out of privilege; a caricature of individualism; pure delusion corruptly constructed. All your talk about setting the bar is nonsense; the society sets the bar at different heights according to nepotism, favouritism and random considerations. The neoliberal "individual" is a pathetic parody of what the individual might aspire to.
That's all I have to say here and couldn't care less whether anyone bothers to think about it or not.

squeers, a rather disappointing response, given you said earlier "I'd love to say more but am pressed for time", then you disappeared, so I reminded you.

Your argument is essentially vacant, it seems to me and doesn't address my own position at all or the question I asked you. Shame, really.

Are you sure you really understand your own point of view?