Conspiratiorist posted:

What is your VNM's energy source? Propulsion system (both interstellar and maneuvering)? What is your propellant? Are you confident you can procure and refine more at the destination? How do you deal with the hundreds or thousands of years that you spend traveling between stars, constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and impacting interstellar dust at relativistic speeds?

How do you keep a machine that does all of this, that is resilient enough to do all of this, small enough to be functional?

Once you have to push material sciences two steps beyond currently foreseeable technology, beyond what we think can be done but cannot or is impractical to do yet, that's fantasy.

pacmania90 posted:

Get therapy. Seriously.

got any sevens posted:

Lol as if it's affordable in the usa.

Oxxidation posted:

He's Dutch.

Feral Integral posted:

There should be a faux manned space program to entice rich and horrible people and then we just blast them off somewhere lol

Oxxidation posted:

He's Dutch.

AceOfFlames posted:

I'm not, I just work in the Netherlands. FYI.

Salt Fish posted:

Oxxidation posted:

"You must be THIS CULTURED to persist as a species"

MiddleOne posted:

Much like silicon valley billionaires the average sadbrain will when confronted with real-world problems which feel insurmountable invent fictional problems to solve instead. Finding solutions for curbing rising internet-fueled fascism and rapid climate change? Overrated. No what we need to do is to solve how to colonize Mars and how to fight super-AI's, obviously those are the real problems!

This thread has had a lot of stupid derails but this is certainly one of the more out there ones.

blowfish posted:

Space colonies aren't a solution to climate change. They're a means to propagate the human species by sending tiny numbers of either carefully selected people or rich idiots to make a fresh start and build a new better society unencumbered by the political and societal inertia of earth cause climate change on another planet.

MiddleOne posted:

Just gas the thread.

city of doves posted:

i have an idea: let all who read this thread vow to plant a thousand trees in their lifetime

city of doves posted:

and then when our woodland spreads all the way to the borders of the gluttonous city... we shall make war

Son of Rodney posted:

You know what, you're on.

Salt Fish posted:

The average American is responsible for about 18 tons of CO2 per year. A tree will store about 50 pounds of co2 in a year of growing. Therefore you really only need to plant 700 trees per year every year to offset your personal carbon use.

Stairmaster posted:

http://sofiaglobe.com/2017/06/30/bulgaria-code-red-dangerous-weather-alarm-for-saturday-in-much-of-the-country-2/


so yeah bulgaria had a 45c heat wave yesterday.

Salt Fish posted:

The average American is responsible for about 18 tons of CO2 per year. A tree will store about 50 pounds of co2 in a year of growing. Therefore you really only need to plant 700 trees per year every year to offset your personal carbon use.

shrike82 posted:

How long do trees grow because 700 trees to offset my footprint over a long timeframe isn't too bad actually.

BattleMoose posted:

Where exactly do you plan to plant them? I guess if you plan to buy land that you can then plant trees on, I guess that's feasible if you are a 1%er.

shrike82 posted:

How long do trees grow because 700 trees to offset my footprint over a long timeframe isn't too bad actually.

TheBlackVegetable posted:

Until massive forest fires turn your eco- conscious kindling into vaporized carbon, and you have to plant them all again of course.

quote:

On May 27, in the date-growing ­desert town of Turbat in Baluchistan province, the temperature reached 128.3 degrees — the hottest ever reported in Pakistan.

What followed was a month of intense heat and humidity nationwide coinciding with Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting and prayer that ended Sunday. Every day, millions of sweltering Pakistanis struggled to forgo food and water from sunrise to sunset, then roused themselves before dawn to wash, pray, cook and eat.

The Ramadan ordeal has brought into sharp relief the chronic water and power shortages plaguing this arid, Muslim-majority country of 180 million. In cities, families had to fill jugs and bottles from public taps at 3 a.m. In villages, long daily electrical outages stopped fans from whirring and tube wells from pumping water to irrigate parched fields.

As the month dragged on, people lost patience. Violent protests broke out from the vast port city of Karachi to the hilly tribal region of Malakand. Electric-company offices were looted, ­police stations attacked, roads blocked. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered the electricity cuts shortened to several hours a day, but everyone knew that the move was only a temporary appeasement.

quote:

Pakistan’s water problem runs much deeper and has far more potential to devastate the country. Unlike power, water is a finite resource, highly vulnerable to global warming. Pakistan’s access to it depends partly on rivers from India, a hostile neighbor, and regionally on Himalayan glaciers that are beginning to melt. By mid-century, experts predict, the country could run out of water entirely.

Many Pakistanis blame India for using dams to divert river water that, under a treaty signed in the 1960s, should be flowing into Pakistan. India has fought three wars with Pakistan, and people are concerned that the water dispute will intensify under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an ardent Hindu nationalist.

Yet according to experts, much of the water problem stems from domestic negligence and faulty policies.

Pakistan has five large dams and hundreds of small ones, with more planned or being built. But many are poorly maintained, and decrepit pipes leak millions of gallons. Fields are heavily flooded rather than using drip irrigation, thus wasting water and ruining the soil. River water has been diverted to cities, and mountain water has been pumped uphill at great cost.

FourLeaf posted:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...m=.966ceb46c99f

Accretionist posted:

Climate driven migrations will be a hell of a thing to watch

enraged_camel posted:

You won't be just watching them, you will be personally affected even if you live a Western country.

The world can barely deal with a few million Syrian refugees. What do you think is going to happen when a country of 200 million runs out of water?

enraged_camel posted:

What do you think is going to happen when a country of 200 million runs out of water?

Conspiratiorist posted:

On the plus side that'll cut the refugees down some.