Radbot posted:I don't think it's the right course of action, but if you honestly believe your kids are going to have a lovely life and you still have them anyways, you're A Bad Parent.  maybe not everyone has this idea of a consumerist fossil fuel dependent first world lifestyle as being the only way to a "non-lovely" life do you realize that there are people who live, die, gently caress, have kids, fall in love, etc without ever interacting with fossil fuels
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Sep 22, 2014 19:06
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Necc0 posted:The problem is that we don't have time for baby steps. So do nothing? Lay it on us, what should we be doing, that's possible to do? Or were you just advocating suicide?
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Sep 22, 2014 19:06
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down with slavery posted:
You are so god drat dumb. It's not about not being consumerist, it's about most unique species of life on earth dying and there not being enough arable land to feed everyone. I'm glad not everyone is so intensely solipsistic as to believe fulfilling their own desires to have kids is more important than the child's actual welfare.
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Sep 22, 2014 19:08
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Anyone have that video of that comedian arguing to not have kids because it is one of most carbon intensive things you can do.
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Sep 22, 2014 19:09
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Radbot posted:You are so god drat dumb. It's not about not being consumerist, it's about most unique species of life on earth dying and there not being enough arable land to feed everyone. But there is enough arable land to feed everyone? Also lmao at "the most unique species of life on earth" what kind of bullshit is that quote:I'm glad not everyone is so intensely solipsistic as to believe fulfilling their own desires to have kids is more important than the child's actual welfare. How good of a life do I have to provide for my kid before it's ok by you?
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Sep 22, 2014 19:10
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down with slavery posted:But there is enough arable land to feed everyone? Also lmao at "the most unique species of life on earth" what kind of bullshit is that There is enough arable land to feed everyone if we are OK with accepting that most species will die off as a result. Personally I despise the idea of perpetrating a mass extinction just so we can cram another 4 billion worthless bodies on top of the ones already making GBS threads all over the planet.
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Sep 22, 2014 19:35
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Radbot posted:I don't think it's the right course of action, but if you honestly believe your kids are going to have a lovely life and you still have them anyways, you're A Bad Parent. TBH humanity isn't great at those kinds of predictions. Our ability to model systems, especially really complex ones like weather, is fairly limited. It's why I don't think the doomsaying is particularly productive, it ends up being pretty much like the Rapture, an existential threat only fervent subscribers to the idelogy ever take seriously. It also trivializes a lot of the real sttrugles huge swaths are going through right now due to shifting climates. That's why we should act, because people are suffering, and more people will, unless we prepare and mitigate the effects. But hardships or not, Humanity isn't going to be wiped out or simply let our civilizations be dstroyed. Stupid fatalism about whether or not 'to bring a child into this lovely world' is pointless internet angsting. Ron Paul Atreides fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 19:51
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Edit: woah, there are more pages.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:06
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down with slavery posted:But there is enough arable land to feed everyone? Also lmao at "the most unique species of life on earth" what kind of bullshit is that I said most, not the most, you tard.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:09
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Radbot posted:It's not about not being consumerist, it's about most unique species of life on earth dying and there not being enough arable land to feed everyone. I could put forward a fairly convincing argument that Humans are in fact the most unique species in that they fill a niche that no other creature can occupy (as apposed to say beloved pandas and koalas which do very similar things).
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Sep 22, 2014 20:13
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Oldowan posted:I could put forward a fairly convincing argument that Humans are in fact the most unique species in that they fill a niche that no other creature can occupy Steel cancer 
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Sep 22, 2014 20:15
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Radbot posted:I said most, not the most, you tard. Yeah I would like you to quantify that. We can't even tell what a "unique species" is most of the time. Trust me, I'm as pessimistic/realist as the next guy but you are journeying into crazyland. I would also like to know how good of a life needs to be possible before it makes sense to have a child since you're saying it doesn't.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:16
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Doesn't this change everything? And why have I not heard about it before today from some lovely forum I lurk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor quote:The company hopes to have a prototype working by 2017, scale it up to a full production model by 2022 and to be able to meet global baseload energy demand by 2050
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Sep 22, 2014 20:23
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Bruce Hussein Daddy posted:Doesn't this change everything? And why have I not heard about it before today from some lovely forum I lurk: Good news: fusion power is 30 years away*! *said 30 years ago
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Sep 22, 2014 20:27
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Bruce Hussein Daddy posted:Doesn't this change everything? And why have I not heard about it before today from some lovely forum I lurk: This is a good example of the problem of a lot of technological solutions. That timeline means that technology would only begin to have meaningful impact starting in 2050, when the technology comes online, since if the first production plant was to be completed in 2022 it is unlikely to have widespread follow-on adoption and construction in less than 25 years (this is assuming all positive predictions for the technology are correct and all negative ones are wrong). If we're not meaningfully reducing emissions because we're waiting on plants that will take 20-30+ years to come online, we're not going to have the impacts that are required. What are the current energy costs per kg in the lab and what are the estimates when scaled to production? \/ Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 20:43
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I've posted about this before but my father's work in CCS from plain old atmosphere has been picked up by Arizona State (they focus primarily on humidity-swing capture resins as far as I know, but there's other work being done there too). The website for the new center is here: http://engineering.asu.edu/cnce/ I'd be happy to take any questions about the current state of these technologies to him for a quick(ish) answer - he's a busy dude. A quick quote from their site that I think captures his mentality regarding climate change: "Implicit in CNCE’s approach is the recognition that we have waited too long." Note that I won't take questions to him that revolve around any controversy of AGW, as he is not a climatologist and it would be a waste of time. He's better equipped to answer questions about the current technologies they are investigating with regards to carbon capture air with atmospheric concentrations of CO2.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:44
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Uranium Phoenix posted:"Stop climate change" is an extremely clear goal. And so is "no nuclear power" which is the overwhelming cry of environmentalists and why they are worse than useless on the issue of climate change. A tea partier could deny CC till they are blue in the face and they'd still be better on the issue if they were pro-nuclear than a environmentalist who wants to rip out all the nuke plants to be replaced by fairy tale magic power that's totally going to be invented any day now. And it's sad- these people mean well (usually) but they simply are not educated on the issue. They don't understand the scale of the problem, they don't understand the science of the problem, and they certainly don't understand the concept of risk management. Don't get me wrong it's not like renewable alternatives are bad, they have excellent uses and niche applications. But if you hear someone talking about solar vs. nuclear they just don't understand the issue, or even the idea of baseload power. SedanChair posted:So do nothing? Lay it on us, what should we be doing, that's possible to do? Or were you just advocating suicide? It doesn't really matter either way, I mean for sure replace your incandescents with LEDs but it's going to about as useful as trying to become a millionaire by saving a penny every day. What should we be doing? Advocating nuclear power is honestly about as much as any person posting here can hope to accomplish. What needs to be done? For starters massive support internationally for clean power by the west. The US is the biggest polluter, but we've flatlined for well over 2 decades now while China on the other hand has tripled in the past few and shows no sign of slowing down. And good luck getting that to stop and why should they? Industrialization with cheap (dirty) energy is one of the primary drivers of per capita wealth and life expectancy exploding over the past centuries. The thing is the right wing are completely correct in that internalizing the externalities of dirty energy is going to cost a lot more money, at least in the short run (the only thing people in power care about). So you'd need a lot of money flowing from rich countries that already did the pollution thing, otherwise you'd just be kicking the ladder out. We can talk about these small steps all day, but you aren't actually even making baby steps if they are being offset by things like that. Struensee posted:Even gradually replacing fossil fuel consumption with renewable energy sources (preferably nukes) is better than not replacing them. I'd rather we hit +4 °C than +6 °C by 2100, for example. This should be a no-brainer. Sure that's probably accurate, but when it comes down to actual choices to be made you have to include a scale. How much worse? 5% ? 1000%? Basic risk analysis starts with severity, frequency, and cost; you need decent estimates because resources are limited. If it's going to cost a trillion bucks to stay at 4 vs 6 and 6 wouldn't actually be that much worse, you'd rather dump that money into other things (healthcare research perhaps). Point is it's hardly a no-brainer, complex systems never are. Bruce Hussein Daddy posted:Doesn't this change everything? And why have I not heard about it before today from some lovely forum I lurk: We've had the technological solution that's proven and safe for over a half century now, and it's a hell of a lot loving cheaper than what fusion will be during our lifetime. More people die from falling out of their bed every month (US alone) than have ever died to nuclear power excluding chernobyl. People need to understand that it's not just safe, it's absurdly safe by any statistic used.
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Sep 23, 2014 01:25
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down with slavery posted:But there is enough arable land to feed everyone? Now there is. There won't be if the Earth heats up a few degrees C. It won't even take that much either. The phrase "global environmental catastrophe" gets used for a reason.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:02
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tsa posted:And so is "no nuclear power" which is the overwhelming cry of environmentalists and why they are worse than useless on the issue of climate change. I don't know dude, I know a lot of environmentalists who are ok with nuclear power. I know some who aren't, of course, but they are also usually the anti gmo etc crowd. The actual environmentalists I know are mostly at least ok with nuclear until we can transition to renewables when the technology is there. It is the general public that seems more anti nuclear then the strictly environmental crowd. I think the green party largely being against nuclear, as well as the loud anti nuclear/gmo/vaccines/whatever crowd cause people to overestimate how anti nuclear environmentalists are.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:14
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I guess a lot of the assumption that left-hippies are anti-nuclear comes from the official platform of the Green Party and a few activist groups. You might as well get upset that your local farmers market is anti-nuclear; it has about as much power and influence.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:25
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gently caress You And Diebold posted:The actual environmentalists I know are mostly at least ok with nuclear until we can transition to renewables when the technology is there. A lot of the research into grid alternatives actually works backwards of this. We can build a new wind farm and have it connected to the grid in less than a year, while currently licensed nuclear designs take 20+ years to complete in the US/Europe and new designs have to bake in the licensing lead time too. If you want to see reductions in carbon emissions in the next couple of decades its going to be on the backs of renewables and natural gas replacing coal. In 30-40 years when every fission/fusion dream comes true we can start installing these new amazing designs, but until then renewables are available here and now. SedanChair posted:I guess a lot of the assumption that left-hippies are anti-nuclear comes from the official platform of the Green Party and a few activist groups. You might as well get upset that your local farmers market is anti-nuclear; it has about as much power and influence. Exactly, if you want to build more nukes the real "anti-nuclear" crowd that would need convincing are utilities and power generation companies. They're the ones with the real power that have been burnt by nuclear before. Also there are a lot of environmentalists who have alternative plans for the grid that are 0 nuclear power plans, not because they're rabidly anti-nuclear, but because they want to avoid overcoming anti-nuclear opposition and instead are able to present the plan as "look we can do this even without nukes". \/ Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 02:40
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tsa posted:And so is "no nuclear power" which is the overwhelming cry of environmentalists Please provide evidence for this claim.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:43
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A friend send this earlier today. An accounting firm ran numbers on where we're headed and they're saying we're on track to being 20 years away from disaster? http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/09/a-major-accounting-firm-just-ran-the-numbers-on-climate-change/379994/
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Sep 23, 2014 02:45
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Uranium Phoenix posted:Please provide evidence for this claim. Guess who Joe/Jane Public takes their environmental cues from. https://www.greenpeace.org https://www.sierraclub.org https://wwf.panda.org https://www.foe.org Now go look up the horseshit they come up with to justify their anti-nuclear stance.
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Sep 23, 2014 04:24
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I have a conservative relative who just emailed me this op-ed by Steven E. Koonin from the WSJ about climate change: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565-lMyQjAxMTA0NjIwMjgyMjI5Wj The TL;DR version seems to be there is no consensus because we don't have accurate enough data and we shouldn't go too far into any policy until we get a lot more data on it. Is he right or is an attempt to muddy the waters?
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Sep 23, 2014 05:04
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clockworkjoe posted:I have a conservative relative who just emailed me this op-ed by Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term 
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Sep 23, 2014 05:06
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down with slavery posted:Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term Isn't the DoE basically Exxon's public sector outreach department anyway? I seem to remember stuff like that in the aftermath of the BP disaster.
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Sep 23, 2014 05:11
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ductonius posted:Guess who Joe/Jane Public takes their environmental cues from. You realize that Joe (but not Jane) Public actually supports nuclear, including 50% of Democrats/leaners, right? Here have some data instead of just throwing links about : http://www.gallup.com/poll/153452/americans-favor-nuclear-power-year-fukushima.aspx Its almost as if nuclear's problems aren't just an artifact of public opinion....
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Sep 23, 2014 05:14
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Rime posted:cram another 4 billion worthless bodies on top of the ones already making GBS threads all over the planet. normally I object when people say the left is anti-human but the more I read this thread the more I think conservatives are correct on this point. It seems a lot of environmentalists really do hate humanity, or at least the part they deem surplus. tsa posted:More people die from falling out of their bed every month (US alone) than have ever died to nuclear power excluding chernobyl. People need to understand that it's not just safe, it's absurdly safe by any statistic used. SKELETONS fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 06:53
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ductonius posted:Guess who Joe/Jane Public takes their environmental cues from. A list of a few environmental organizations isn't proof that "the overwhelming cry of environmentalists" is anti-nuclear. Really, the best thing you can say with no polling data that has targeted environmentalists specifically is there's not enough data. However, 50% of Democrats/leaners are pro-nuclear, as Trabisnikof linked above, and that certainly includes a lot of environmentalists. As this article shows, a former Greenpeace activist is spearheading a pro-nuclear campaign and the Sierra Club has officially supported legislation that includes nuclear subsidies. The EDR is interested in nuclear. People in environmental organizations and the organizations themselves are not monolithic in opinion. All of this is in light of the fact that there has been no significant campaign to promote nuclear power. If people bitched less on the internet that we're all doomed and spent more time getting active in their local community or environmentalist or political groups, that (among other policies) has huge potential to change. I know in the organization I'm in, the official stance is anti-nuclear, but I've convinced pretty much everyone in my area that pro-nuclear is a good idea, and several of us are working to spread that stance to the broader organization.
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Sep 23, 2014 06:58
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SKELETONS posted:normally I object when people say the left is anti-human but the more I read this thread the more I think conservatives are correct on this point. It seems a lot of environmentalists really do hate humanity, or at least the part they deem surplus. Please don't take the opinion of a few dumb baby shitheads in this thread (or outside it) to be the general opinion of "the left." Pretty much every leftist I know is active because they like humanity and would like to see people living happier, less oppressed lives.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:00
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SKELETONS posted:normally I object when people say the left is anti-human but the more I read this thread the more I think conservatives are correct on this point. It seems a lot of environmentalists really do hate humanity, or at least the part they deem surplus. Rime is a 'special' kind of 'leftist'. Please don't take him to be representative.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:38
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Uranium Phoenix posted:Please don't take the opinion of a few dumb baby shitheads in this thread (or outside it) to be the general opinion of "the left." Pretty much every leftist I know is active because they like humanity and would like to see people living happier, less oppressed lives. I agree, and most of the politically active friends I have are benevolent like this, but I am always surprised when that element pops up here and in real life and is almost lifted verbatim from conservative fantasy.
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Sep 23, 2014 08:00
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SKELETONS posted:Can I get a citation for this please? Mr Chips fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 08:24
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SKELETONS posted:but I am always surprised when that element pops up here and in real life and is almost lifted verbatim from conservative fantasy. The conservative fantasy is that tree huggers/left/libruls want to kill off most or all of humanity because they're evil/insane/crypto racist. The people here are pointing out there are too many people on the planet already who either want or already have a unsustainable energy/resource usage. Bear in mind we're looking at AGW causing significant if not dramatic disruptions in food/resource/energy supplies over the next few decades too which are likely to cause incredible misery if not flat out kill heaps of people. This is not a situation where millions or billions more people are going to improve things. They will, inadvertently and through no individual personal fault of their own, end up exacerbating the situation.
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Sep 23, 2014 09:22
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:The people here are pointing out there are too many people on the planet already who either want or already have a unsustainable energy/resource usage. Citation needed. There are tons of sustainable resource plans out there. We can live at a energy/resource sustainable level. We choose not to do so, but the only solution isn't a reduction in population.
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Sep 23, 2014 09:50
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Trabisnikof posted:Citation needed. There are tons of sustainable resource plans out there. We can live at a energy/resource sustainable level. We choose not to do so, but the only solution isn't a reduction in population. I think it's a reference to the increasing poverty in the world on top of the fact that we have...what, over a billion people that are food insecure? Energy and resources are becoming increasingly scarce while our population is growing. It also complicates matters in that the Western world lives pretty well and a significant amount of the rest of the world wants to live as well as the Western world does. At the same time westerners aren't exactly jumping to give up their SUVs, 3,000+ calorie a day diets, massive houses, and conspicuous consumption. American business in particular only understands the word "more." The planet can only sustain so many humans. It is only so big. Maybe we need to reduce population, maybe we need to just cap it, but one thing is certain is that we can't grow the way we have been forever. We may very well already have pushed past the maximum capacity for Earth, given that this rock is getting hotter and the environment increasingly damaged. There was a time when we could, in fact, basically just do whatever we wanted and not worry about loving anything up because, you know, just move somewhere else and let the place we wrecked recover. There are too many of us to do that now.
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Sep 23, 2014 10:07
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Energy and resources are becoming increasingly scarce while our population is growing. So I get that there are a lot of people with these feelings, but its not a citation. People have been arguing that the world was over populated for all these reasons since the 1700s at least. There were a lot of generalizations in there, but I want to focus on this one because it seems very misleading. Global energy production and availability are both at an all time high and likewise, resource availability is dramatically higher than ever seen before in history. We have consumer products made with titanium. Tent stakes. The issue isn't that these resources are scare, but that we're concerned about the rate of growth. Its not that power is an expensive resource today, but how much will electricity cost in half a century, that's the concern. The important difference is, there are many sustainable proposals for the out years that don't involve massive population controls or dramatic decreases in cost of living. Sure, if we were facing a per-person energy quota or something, the Malthusian argument would make more sense. But until then, its not the only or the most sensible choice. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 10:35
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Trabisnikof posted:Citation needed. There are tons of sustainable resource plans out there. We can live at a energy/resource sustainable level. We choose not to do so, but the only solution isn't a reduction in population. Trabisnikof posted:Global energy production and availability are both at an all time high and likewise, resource availability is dramatically higher than ever seen before in history. Trabisnikof posted:Sure, if we were facing a per-person energy quota or something, the Malthusian argument would make more sense. PC LOAD LETTER fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 10:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I think it's a reference to the increasing poverty in the world on top of the fact that we have...what, over a billion people that are food insecure? Energy and resources are becoming increasingly scarce while our population is growing. It also complicates matters in that the Western world lives pretty well and a significant amount of the rest of the world wants to live as well as the Western world does. At the same time westerners aren't exactly jumping to give up their SUVs, 3,000+ calorie a day diets, massive houses, and conspicuous consumption. American business in particular only understands the word "more." The planet can only sustain so many humans. It is only so big. Maybe we need to reduce population, maybe we need to just cap it, but one thing is certain is that we can't grow the way we have been forever. We may very well already have pushed past the maximum capacity for Earth, given that this rock is getting hotter and the environment increasingly damaged. There was a time when we could, in fact, basically just do whatever we wanted and not worry about loving anything up because, you know, just move somewhere else and let the place we wrecked recover. There are too many of us to do that now. This sentiment is exactly what I mean - just warmed over Limits to Growth/Malthusian stuff. The pro-human argument is to reverse scarcity with technology and continue growth, rather than have this zero-sum future where every other human getting wealthier is bad because it means taking our share of the pie.
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Sep 23, 2014 10:45
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