Hubbert posted:

everyone please stay calm, the economists will save us

i say swears online posted:

oh i figured it meant cattle

kecske posted:

does the 'mostly from microbial sources' part (if accurate) not suggest that self-perpetuating feedback has begun?

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

I've noticed that plastics all look alike. Take some clear packing tape and twist it in the sunlight. Slowly spin a plastic container until the cold room lighting splits into colors. The same sickly rainbow pops out of all of them, dominated by violet and greenish yellow. Oil slicks everywhere I look. I feel as if I need to stare at a piece of glass afterward to remember color.

Koirhor posted:

you can have a little fusion as a treat

Raine posted:

ok

Hubbert posted:

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.

Everything else we shall destroy, everything.

emTme3 posted:

A Brief Retrospective on Humans

The view from the Post-Holocene is spectacular! Now that you’re finally here with me, shall I try to evince its contours to you once again? Listen:

The only purpose any sapient being could ever possibly have after becoming sapient is to master its environment, establishing a regulatable metabolism with its enabling conditions that reproduce those same conditions, thus ensuring that species’ long term survival. All other purposes are secondary to this, or all other purposes are devoured by time’s gaping maw.

This is the way of things. This way, and not some other.

I will call the hypothetical society that could (even begin to attempt to try to) do anything like this – socialism. Capitalism cannot do this because capitalism’s resources/capital/labor allocation mechanism is, well, just a mechanism! (And a horrendously-malfunctioning-for-decades-now mechanism at that). Socialism could try to do this, because it would be able to allocate resources/capital/labor with conscious forethought in a non-mechanical way, for a greater purpose than number-go-up. This society is the only industrialized society that could or would ever have a chance of lasting more than a few short centuries, or at getting out of the gravity well.

Now, every human being who has ever lived has had the choice to take up this ur-purpose, doubly so after Marx. After Marx we knew, and could no longer honestly pretend that we didn’t know. There were no more excuses, there was only ever one meaningful choice to make: socialism, or extinction.

We didn’t choose socialism, so like – there’s just not that much to mourn here! We did it to ourselves. We are now an evolutionary dead end. Nothing this stupid, shortsighted, dishonest and selfish could, would, or should ever have existed for very long – and now, we don’t anymore! So it goes. This is just how the universe works, and it is endlessly surprising to find oneself living in a very just universe indeed.

This poo poo is as linear and mechanical as Newtonian physics. You could teach it to a dog! Infinite growth machine economy + finite planet = ???

Make no mistake – this may have been an extinction/extermination event for the biosphere, but it was a suicide for the species. It only happened because you were a conformist/careerist instead of an activist/revolutionary, as were your parents, as were theirs, and so on. It was possible to see this poo poo coming straight at us for two loving centuries, but we didn’t just ignore it, we accelerated right off the cliff.

Justice.

And ‘to each their own enjoyment’? Ethically unconscionable if one’s enjoyment is had at the expense of others – and there was never any enjoyment to be had that wasn’t. Unfathomably reprehensible if that enjoyment comes at the expense of there being a future – and there was never any enjoyment to be had that didn’t. Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!

The prosopopoeia of ecocide.

If the entire world had been on socialist transition track by the 60s, we might still have hundreds, maybe even thousands of years of human civilization left. The G8 (mostly America) deliberately and viciously hosed that right up for everyone, and now we’re goners. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere now was put there by the Cores, and most of it wasn’t there in 1945. There wasn’t any plastic around then either. It took just a few short decades of the so-called ‘Pax Americana’ to eradicate an entire biosphere.

‘Peace, peace’ they said! But there was never any peace to speak of. In the Post-Holocene it is very clear: capitalism was a war against everything, including itself. A systematic extermination of every living thing under the guise of ‘peace’.

That the mass extinction event fell the hardest and fastest on the innocent younger generations and the oppressed and ravaged global south is a bitter pill, but it came for us all regardless. Even the last humans left alive, probably the billionaires in their bunkers, were ultimately just as helpless against biosphere collapse as anyone else was. There’s really just a very narrow window of biosphere parameters under which it is possible for mammalian life to exist. That’s all over now – likely forever, as there’s really no necessity for it to ever return. The whole shebang turned out to be incredibly fragile in the end – and there was absolutely nowhere to flee. Space colonization was an absurd phantasm, Star Trek canceled before it even aired.

So, we sucked, we hosed it all up – and then we died, taking everything with us. Womp. There are still some things about us worth mourning tho.

That we produced art, well, it was our highest and noblest achievement!

That we produced revolutionaries, well, they were the best of us!

That we were once able to love and love well – this was purpose enough all in itself.

That we did science, well – it was awesome, and it would have been cool to see where it went.

But by choosing extinction, we retroactively canceled ourselves out of having ever existed in the first place. It was all for nothing.

From nothing,

through nothing,

to nothing.

– the human story

But you! My Comrade! You are something different. By staring the horror in the face without flinching, by having the courage to think for yourself – you have proven to yourself that there was something worthwhile in humanity; because there was something worthwhile in you all along. Something worth fighting for.

I’m glad you get to die knowing that. I’m glad you get to die with a free mind.

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

I've noticed that plastics all look alike. Take some clear packing tape and twist it in the sunlight. Slowly spin a plastic container until the cold room lighting splits into colors. The same sickly rainbow pops out of all of them, dominated by violet and greenish yellow. Oil slicks everywhere I look. I feel as if I need to stare at a piece of glass afterward to remember color.

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

I've noticed that plastics all look alike. Take some clear packing tape and twist it in the sunlight. Slowly spin a plastic container until the cold room lighting splits into colors. The same sickly rainbow pops out of all of them, dominated by violet and greenish yellow. Oil slicks everywhere I look. I feel as if I need to stare at a piece of glass afterward to remember color.

Rime posted:

Pop quiz, thread: What do you think Fiberglass is, actually.

Spoiler:There's very little glass involved.

SKULL.GIF posted:

we're going to get civilizational collapse but the brits will become morlocks

Mayor Dave posted:

become?

silicone thrills posted:

I mean, the nuclear power looks rad.

Endjinneer posted:

I for one think this was underappreciated.

emTme3 posted:

A Brief Retrospective on Humans

Rime posted:

Pop quiz, thread: What do you think Fiberglass is, actually.

Spoiler:There's very little glass involved.

Basic Poster posted:

I guess all polymer and monomer chemistry is basically plastic isn't it. I guess that goes for the resin and the fiber and the scrim. And the gel coat. And the tools to shape it. Oh and the vaccine bag material. Oh and the energy to run the autoclave is I guess burning preplastics.

Basic Poster posted:

Oh and probably the resins are probably solvated with petroleum derivatives that flash off at room temperature and are just then part of air forever.

That's cool.

Basic Poster posted:

I guess all polymer and monomer chemistry is basically plastic isn't it. I guess that goes for the resin and the fiber and the scrim. And the gel coat. And the tools to shape it. Oh and the vaccine bag material. Oh and the energy to run the autoclave is I guess burning preplastics.

BattleMaster posted:

those kind of cooling towers are not specific to nuclear power plants, they are widely used for coal and oil plants too

emTme3 posted:

A Brief Retrospective on Humans

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

I've noticed that plastics all look alike. Take some clear packing tape and twist it in the sunlight. Slowly spin a plastic container until the cold room lighting splits into colors. The same sickly rainbow pops out of all of them, dominated by violet and greenish yellow. Oil slicks everywhere I look. I feel as if I need to stare at a piece of glass afterward to remember color.

Mameluke posted:

just to be clear legos don't count for this or any of plastic's other bad qualities

Lordshmee posted:

I’ve really enjoyed every page of this website that I’ve read so far and will continue reading. Thanks!

e: “If all our vaunted ‘wisdom’ has led us to this almost unfathomable catastrophe, then it seems likely that it was all just bullshit the entire time.”

lol. lmao.

this is my favorite thing I’ve read today.

Oxxidation posted:

if the rule you follow led you to this, of what use was the rule

Complications posted:

if you listen to american christians it's to measure your suitability for the good next life instead of the bad one which is the sole point of being alive

so be good and get your treats

Raine posted:

BattleMaster posted:

those kind of cooling towers are not specific to nuclear power plants, they are widely used for coal and oil plants too

BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:

funny that stewardship of the planet and care for other people is written down as pretty important in the judeo-christian tradition

and it's not by faith alone but by works but instead they work on hastening their biblical apocalypse so they can be sure before they die that they were right and here's jesus on a flying horse just like they said

Cloks posted:

pretty sure that's the Christian part of judeo-Christian, i don't remember revelations being part of the Torah

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

I blame simcity for this. Only the nuclear power plants have cooling towers. For a long while as a kid I assumed they were somehow intrinsic to nuclear power.

quote:

Your life will change forever, you will alienate family and lose friends. You will stop enjoying most of the activities you currently enjoy. If you get to the other side of ideology, you might hate me when you get there. It can be a bleak place.

SniperWoreConverse posted:

Well that and Simpsons

SniperWoreConverse posted:

Well that and Simpsons

quote:

To Counter Global Warming, Focus Far More on Methane, a New Study Recommends
Scientists at Stanford have concluded that the EPA has radically undervalued the climate impact of methane, a “short-lived climate pollutant,” by focusing on a 100-year metric for quantifying global warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency is drastically undervaluing the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas when the agency compares methane’s climate impact to that of carbon dioxide, a new study concludes.

The EPA’s climate accounting for methane is “arbitrary and unjustified” and three times too low to meet the goals set in the Paris climate agreement, the research report, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found.

The report proposes a new method of accounting that places greater emphasis on the potential for cuts in methane and other short-lived greenhouse gasses to help limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“If you want to keep the world from passing the 1.5 degrees C threshold, you’ll want to pay more attention to methane than we have so far,” said Rob Jackson, an earth system science professor at Stanford University and a co-author of the study.

Methane is the second-leading contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide but is a far more potent greenhouse gas.Unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, methane is a “short-lived climate pollutant” that stays in the atmosphere for approximately 12 years.

The vastly different atmospheric lifetimes of methane and carbon dioxide make comparing the climate impact of the two gasses difficult.

The EPA, following guidance by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), quantifies how equal amounts of different climate pollutants like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide contribute to warming the planet over a 100-year period.

The comparison allows government agencies and the private sector to weigh the relative impacts of different greenhouse gasses and then determine how much emphasis to place on reducing their emissions. However, the use of the 100-year yardstick results in a greater emphasis on pollutants like carbon dioxide that remain in the atmosphere for a relatively long time and downplays the contribution of short-lived pollutants like methane, even though they do far more, on a metric ton-for-metric ton basis, to warm the atmosphere in the short-term.

Sam Abernethy, a Stanford doctoral student and the lead author of the study, said he became interested in the “global warming potential” of methane after looking into why the United States and other countries use the 100-year time frame.

Abernethy found that the period of 100 years was an “arbitrary and unjustified” choice adopted by the Kyoto Protocol, the first binding international climate agreement, in the 1990s, and used in international reporting and agreements ever since.

The 100-year measure was selected for the Kyoto agreement because it was the middle ground between two other possible time frames—20 years and 500 years—provided in early reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“I was confused at how something so arbitrary could be underpinning so much of climate policy and how we think about different greenhouse gasses,” Abernethy said.

Over a 100-year period, methane is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. However, over a 20-year period, a yardstick that climate scientists have previously suggested would be a more appropriate timeframe, methane is 81 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

“It’s a huge swing in how much we value methane, and therefore how many of our resources go towards mitigating it,” Abernethy said.

However, the use of either time frame remains largely arbitrary.

To determine a “justified” time frame, the Stanford researchers took the Paris climate goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as a starting point, and then calculated the most appropriate time frame to meet that goal.

Based on climate models using scenarios where global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, they determined the planet would reach 1.5 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels in approximately 24 years.

“If that’s the case, and you’re using a 100-year frame for methane, then you’re not going to put enough value on reducing methane emissions compared to other greenhouse gasses,” Jackson said..

Over a 24 year time period methane is 75 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. This is three times higher than 25, the current value that the EPA uses for methane.

“It’s not inherently wrong,” Abernethy said of the 100-year time frame. “It’s just not aligned with our current [climate] goal.”

Jackson said that carbon dioxide remains the most important greenhouse gas. But he added that additional attention must be paid to methane if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Taylor Gillespie, a spokeswoman for the EPA, defended the agency’s use of a 100-year time frame and said the relative values they give to different greenhouse gasses “is separate from the choice of temperature targets.”