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funkatron3000 posted:So, looking at the threats to the long term survival of humanity like climate change, disease, meteors, etc... it seems that a reasonable priority for humanity should be to establish self sustainable human outposts somewhere other than earth. There's really nothing else that gives us the same level of long term survival. There's no real reason that non-weather related events should be any worse than they were in the past (ie, Meteors aren't more likely to hit earth because we have tons of carbon in the air). Worrying about stray diseases also seems like an empty gesture because people are becoming more able to combat disease, not less. If the whole world industrializes and growth rates trend the way they have in developed countries, the killer of humanity might just be our own education, not a hurricane.
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Jul 2, 2013 18:09
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funkatron3000 posted:What I'm saying is that climate change will delay our ability to come up with ways to deal with events like meteors, species ending diseases, and other humanity ending events, not that it would increase the chance of them happening or make them worse. And I'm saying we generally have those systems already put into place (Granted, Meteors we can't actually *stop* but we've tracked basically all the ones that would do any damage and they're not projected to hit the Earth).
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Jul 2, 2013 18:18
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Placid Marmot posted:Hahaha... like a retirement fund is going to mean anything in 30 years. I'd just like to note that this exact train of thought was given by people half a century ago for similar and other reasons (eg, defunding social security).
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Jul 31, 2013 05:46
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deptstoremook posted:And, an interesting point, even if all electric energy were supplied by nuclear tomorrow, that would still only account for a relatively small portion of our consumption. Consumption of what, fossil fuels? Because another big chunk (transportation) can be pretty easily switched over to electricity which can then be supplied by Nuclear Power.
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Sep 13, 2013 19:28
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deptstoremook posted:Well now you're going even further into speculative territory. Even if we overcome the very real limitations of uranium production and the construction and deployment of new plants which Cellier describes, now you're proposing that--in the same short span of time--the world's transportation systems could be "pretty easily" converted to electric. If the political will for nuclear plants is already scarce, by what means do you suggest we implement an unprecedented, speedy, and unilateral overhaul of all of our existing means of transportation? By "easy" I mean that there already exists technologies or close equivalents which can replicate our transportation system, but with an electric source. The issue now is as you said, deploying the technology. It's not like (for a bullshit example) "cars aren't feasibly able to be run by electricity and so we need to develop fusion powered engines which don't yet exist". The technology already exists, the only reason it isn't being deployed is inertia*. *And even then you're getting things like plug in hybrids to full on electric vehicles already, even before we switch off of fossil fuels.
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Sep 13, 2013 19:39
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deptstoremook posted:Thanks, Protagorean, for that thoughtful post. You're right, I missed the memo on fossil fuels. I also must have missed the part dictating that all discussion of energy must be prefaced by a binary choice between fossil fuels and nuclear power! It is if you want to discuss baseline power at all.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:08
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Oh dear me posted:Answered above in an edit, sorry; but we could all pick useless medical analogies to suit our argument. Well-meaning emergency treatment that actually made no difference to the problem but led people to think it had, causing a fatal delay before they went for the only effective treatment, for example. Your solution ends up killing lots of people either deliberately or as a side effect to the policies you want to pursue.
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Sep 15, 2013 14:21
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baka kaba posted:
Developed nations also have vastly lower birthrates, which solve all of the "excessive energy use" hysteria all by itself.
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Sep 15, 2013 15:46
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a lovely poster posted:At per capita consumption rates that are not realistic for 6 billion people. There's a double edged sword at play here whether you want to acknowledge it or not. We do have a problem with energy use in the first world, denying it isn't going to get anti-nuclear folks to understand your point more quickly. Energy efficiency has been a primary concern for quite a few years now; per-capita rates are going *down*.
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Sep 15, 2013 21:17
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blowfish posted:However, we still run into the problem that electrically powering even a reduced amount of transportation would still require substantially more power plants because we have to make our own energy dense fuel, regardless of whether energy is stored as batteries or chemically and can't just burn pre-made oil which essentially just needs to be pumped from an oilfield into an engine (with various steps of refinement in between, but still). Uhh, how is refining Uranium any more intensive than refining oil?
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Sep 15, 2013 22:15
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a lovely poster posted:Who's saying it is? Then I'm confused as to why we would need substantially more power plants to make batteries. Unless you have an article saying otherwise, battery creation is probably not any more energy intensive than what we already do to survey for oil, and what we do for uranium mining is probably far below that and even below coal mining. In short (unless you prove otherwise) - Uranium mining + battery making < coal mining + oil surveying+making.
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Sep 15, 2013 22:36
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Ihmemies posted:
This is assuming demand is consistent when we are already seeing a shift toward electric cars and hybrids. Also you're ignoring basic economics. The only reason current reserves are exploited (ie, fracking) is because they are expensive. We already drilled the cheap stuff years ago. If oil doesn't cost a certain amount it isn't worth it to drill. Now, can oil companies use electric vehicles/etc to lower the cost of extraction? Maybe, but probably not to the extent you're thinking of. computer parts fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 20:09
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It's because people don't want to change but they are being forced to. You are seeing shifts to a more green society (CO2 production went down compared to the last year) but it's a very painful shift and people are going to bitch about it.
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Sep 20, 2013 14:32
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Kafka Esq. posted:Are you asking a question about how they get the data, or are you asking whether global warming is happening? He's asking how people know that data collected at a given point on the earth (eg,, Greenland) is representative of global climate rather than just that particular area's climate.
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Sep 24, 2013 01:52
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BONUS ROUND posted:So summer sea ice melts by 2015 +/- a couple of years, whats going to happen? I'm literally dreading waking up every morning thinking that the civilized world is going to poo poo in the next few years. Do I even want to know? Seeing all the evidence towards catastrophe and then seeing deniers claim that its nothing is even worse. World shipping rates drop by a few percentages
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Oct 11, 2013 19:15
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Sogol posted:No they won't. Profit margins will increase. This is already happening. I didn't say who would get the rate drops.
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Oct 11, 2013 23:33
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QUILT_MONSTER_420 posted:I don't know how much of a potential "real bad thing" this is for national climate policies vs. just your run of the mill erosion of capacity to regulate, but I've had both Canadians and Euros get all It sounds like all of that could be solved by "Sovereign immunity, bitches".
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Nov 9, 2013 15:24
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about how gruesome and antidemocratic these measures are:
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Your Sledgehammer posted:The problem I have with this is that "we're already screwed" is just a fact at this point. Why encourage people to live in denial? If we're willing to admit to ourselves that it is impossible to avert disaster, we can better focus on preparing for and mitigating the disaster rather than waste our time on dead ends and wishful thinking. Because this part is false.
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Dec 5, 2013 15:22
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TehSaurus posted:I don't think he was saying that you were wrong about the climate outcome. Rather that wide acceptance of the already guaranteed outcome causing society to more effectively focus on creating solutions is no certainty. Exactly. If you frame it as "well there's nothing we can do to stop [bad thing], but maybe if we work together we can stop [worse thing]", people will tune out after "we can't stop [bad thing]". If you want to make people enthusiastic, you need to frame it as "If we don't change something now then [worse thing] will happen", and omit that [bad thing] is already going to happen.
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Dec 5, 2013 18:21
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OhYeah posted:Wasn't it supposed to get colder in Northern Europe and warmer everywhere else? Like exactly the opposite of what is happening now. Just because something follows a trend doesn't mean there aren't outliers.
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Dec 14, 2013 02:13
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satan!!! posted:I'm not an expert but I think I have a basic understanding. I'm referring to the hysteria on theoildrum.com and in other circles around that time when people were seriously predicting $250+/barrel, which obviously never eventuated. Obviously oil production will eventually peak, but I'm no longer convinced that will be accompanied by as many negative consequences as some people claim. Peak oil is kind of hard to determine because oil production is based on what the price of oil will be - obviously stuff that costs more to extract wouldn't be viable unless oil is more expensive. There will be a point (and arguably we've hit it already) where people can't feasibly buy the oil, however, and when that happens then society either has to adapt or a lot of bad things will happen. Basically, peak oil is kind of a misnomer because it assumes that the supply of oil will be the limiting factor, instead of the demand of the oil at the current price.
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Dec 17, 2013 23:32
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blowfish posted:The Maldives, and if I recall correctly, also some other island nations. In China I think it's going to happen fairly soon if only because the worst areas for air pollution are the areas that the bigwigs live in.
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Jan 7, 2014 02:19
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The New Black posted:I think it's on topic to discuss energy sources and use, since it's at the heart of carbon emissions. In several big cities charging ports are already springing up (and even in my university there are a few around). One of the benefits of electric cars (and what makes them kind of useless for long trips) is that you're expected to plug them in when you get home. This means that you don't need to replicate gas stations but with charging ports or whatever, you just need to build plugs into garages (and that's already A Thing today). The bigger issue with electric cars is more that they're still incredibly expensive, you can't get the same mileage on a single charge that you can with a tank of gas (though they're working on that), and the materials needed to make the batteries are incredibly bottlenecked at the moment (though again that's more due to lack of present demand).
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Jan 21, 2014 23:42
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ikanreed posted:Which I'm sure is playing hell with the buildings, many of which have designs that assume they're built on permafrost. It does get in the 90s in many parts of Alaska during the summer so it's not like they never see this type of weather.
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Feb 4, 2014 23:59
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Alkydere posted:Miami: America's Venice. As a tourist you'll be able to eat all the seafood and grits you want and be driven from place to place by the redneck version of gondoliers using flat-bottomed swamp boats. Good to know Cubans are rednecks now.
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Feb 6, 2014 19:56
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Stew Man Chew posted:I live in South Carolina and it's been precipitating since 3am yesterday morning, this storm has been really terrifying not because of being unable to leave the house or the lovely drivers or whatever but just because of how bizarre it is to have 36 straight hours of snow/sleet. Meanwhile in Texas, we're supposed to have >70 degree weather until at least Wednesday. 
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Feb 13, 2014 15:31
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So if the collapse of civilization is going to happen no matter what, why should I care?
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Feb 16, 2014 14:18
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i am harry posted:Because you have the capacity to do so. To care, or to do something?
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Feb 16, 2014 15:38
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baka kaba posted:
From what I've seen, yeah it's perfectly possible. We have Nuclear plant designs that could work fine (or Solar/Wind/etc if nuclear makes you scared). Most cars could probably be replaced with electric versions no problem (the exception being truckers but that's still the vast majority of vehicles in the US), and if you want to just disincentivize cars you can rebuild cities to be more accommodating; it's not some dark magic that's unknown. The tech problem is mostly solved, it's the propagation and diffusion of that tech that remains the issue, and that's mostly a concern of demand and cost.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:26
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Entropia posted:Humor me. Your last paragraph is literally  .
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Feb 16, 2014 18:59
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Knockknees posted:Chipotle seems to think this could be the case some day. They already charge you an extra $2 for a scoop so I think this is partially bullshit.
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Mar 6, 2014 04:31
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The New Black posted:Really? Given the massive amount of food that is grown just to be fed to animals for mostly Western meat consumption, with the big efficiency loss that goes with it, wouldn't reducing that demand lower the price of those foods for people? A lot of the crops grown are literally not edible for humans but are for animals. There is also currently a glut in production (for food in general, but especially human friendly stuff) so it's not like making things more efficient will necessarily solve world hunger because you still need to get the food out to people.
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Mar 6, 2014 14:10
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The New Black posted:
They don't have to, and even if they do they don't have to for the places that need cheap food the most (the developing world).
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Mar 6, 2014 15:26
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That graph is kind of disingenuous because food doesn't power most of those categories.
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Mar 9, 2014 18:55
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Paper Mac posted:That's the point, yes. If our primary energy input into ag was labour rather than fossil fuels, this wouldn't be a problem. I see what you're saying but your point is just as applicable without the input from food. How much food you get doesn't matter if the input relies on a quickly draining resource. In other words, a better graph would be the amount of energy required to transport x amount of food versus the amount of reserves of that energy we have.
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Mar 9, 2014 19:04
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As mentioned above, the problem is industrial agriculture, not just meat specifically. Growing plants the way we do now is still far over the acceptable carbon boundaries even if it's technically less so than meat. Stopping production of meat while keeping everything else will make things less bad, yes. It will also still gently caress you over.
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Mar 9, 2014 23:12
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petrol blue posted:I don't really see that there is any argument. Unless your arguing that people need meat, then surely it's just a matter of accepting that maybe there's too many people on the planet to keep up with us all having everything we want food-wise. The emissions and environmental effects are the only relevant parts. What does it mean that food production is "at breaking-point" if it doesn't apply to environmental effects? You seem to be of the notion that the loss of efficiency of the food itself is the main problematic factor when in reality you'd do a lot more to increase efficiency by simply not using gas to run your transport trucks, or a million other things not related to actually growing the food. We have a food surplus right now, and we have a population which is not exponentially increasing, despite what you may think. Food production is not the pressing issue.
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Mar 10, 2014 14:42
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FADEtoBLACK posted:So now that fusion power is starting to produce more power than it needs In the same way that the US was totally not having a deficit as long as you don't count the Iraq War. (This never happened) quote:and we're starting to figure out how to manufacture food instead of growing it This never happened either. quote:does this mean that basically we will have to live in enclosed or underground areas eventually? No.
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Mar 10, 2014 15:28
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The Roman Empire was only ended by Turkish invaders so I don't see why that would be an issue.
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Mar 17, 2014 21:08
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enbot posted:It seems like the only way forward that will quickly reduce co2 production while meeting the growing energy needs of china/india/africa is a massive worldwide investment in nuclear energy and some alternative fuels, with the richer countries helping out the poorer countries. But that seems to be a non-starter as well, again because there is huge opposition among environmentalists. India is already doing that though, and China is following (albeit more slowly and this may be disrupted by their coming depression).
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Mar 18, 2014 15:38
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