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The Groper posted:Nuclear Reactors provide localized electrical power, not fertilizers, long-distance land shipping, and mechanized farming equipment. Yes, theoretically we could electrify the second two, or run on biofuels, but both will have us chasing our own tails in a world of diminishing returns. Fertilizers from alternative sources are much more attractive with cheap and readily available power.
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Nov 25, 2015 16:26
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rocket_350 posted:Compact SUVs are really just tall station wagons. The association they have with the big truck based SUVs is a creation of marketing only. Also the RAV4 and the Camry have almost identical MPG ratings.
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Dec 4, 2015 18:08
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I don't know what that site is, but the listing on Toyota's website have them both at roughly 25 & 32 (slightly more for the Camry but only on the highway). If I had to guess the people on that site listing their RAV4 primarily drive in the city, while the Camry people mostly drive on the highway.
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Dec 7, 2015 22:57
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Vire posted:What is crazy to me is how little discussion I hear in these kinds of threads about how bad china's coal is loving everything up considering they are creating 50% of the worlds green house gasses alone and breathing the air in that country is literally killing close to a million people every year and its only going to get worst until 2030 where china claims emissions will peak (Fat chance unless they do some radical stuff to fix it.). Because it usually devolves into discussions about restricting the number of children developed nations can have and China actually has a legitimate self interest in reducing emissions (because the party bosses have to live in that poo poo too).
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Dec 8, 2015 18:44
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Ardennes posted:
They are moving away from fossil fuels already. Inertia works both ways - it will take several years of low fuel prices to counteract the existing trends.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:50
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Verge posted:Maybe you misunderstand me. I'm not saying burn less coal (although that's a compromise I'll take!) I'm saying reduce energy demand to a point where solar, wind, hydroelectric and the up-and-coming green energies can keep up with the new low demand. Be realistic, do you think a green energy array would be feasible for cities like Portland or Chicago? Of course, we could use nuclear where necessary but we'd still want to severely reduce energy usage in smaller towns since we don't want a nuclear reactor every 100 miles. Nuclear reactors currently provide about 20% of US electricity needs and there's around 100 plants in the country.
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Dec 15, 2015 02:36
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Rime posted:Nationalize the existing reactors and then build everything under the control of a federal utility, like a modern and civilized country. Since the mandate is to cover operating and upgrade costs, rather than a profit motive, power costs to consumers drop through the floor. Though to be fair in Germany the only effect that seems to have is making it more likely that all the nuclear plants get shut down in favor of coal.
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Dec 16, 2015 15:32
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Why is coal power still in use? Usually inertia.
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Dec 24, 2015 02:24
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Trabisnikof posted:Eh, the coal industry isn't exactly making big (or any) profits anymore...its more that these rich guys/companies know the time is up but they don't want to pay the bill. Yeah, like I said it's inertia. It's cheaper right now to keep what you've got and run it until it breaks down, rather than investing in any sort of upgrades. If we're starting from ground zero, very few people are going to build a coal plant (and no one is going to build a coal plant like a lot of the ones currently in existence because they're only grandfathered in).
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Dec 24, 2015 17:42
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Inglonias posted:China and Japan appear to disagree with you on that one. Japan is specifically doing that because they're being dumbasses about nuclear power and realized too late that they're too far north to generate solar power.
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Dec 24, 2015 21:30
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Inglonias posted:It doesn't matter why they're doing it. Actually, it kinda does, especially looking at the long term trends.
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Dec 25, 2015 07:23
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There's actually a very large and growing movement in China to address the smog. It's more equivalent to how much of a problem Tobacco smoking was here and how it look a lot of effort to have everyone finally say "yeah we all hate it, let's do something about it".
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Dec 26, 2015 16:52
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Up until now every post supported my primary point. With respect to coal miners, gently caress that job, I don't care. We shouldn't be concerned about that, we should have social welfare programs that allow anyone in a dead industry to transition into a productive and useful job, rather than propping up industries that are fundamentally detrimental to progress. I would hope that the US has enough compassion to allow support for labor, but failing that, it is better for the coal industry to die than to protect that subset of laborers, much like I don't shed tears for the military contractors who go out of business if we aren't in perpetual war. What you propose is going to require a large amount of population shifting, and as the recent refugee crisis has shown, that will lead to a large amount of pain and misery.
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Dec 27, 2015 06:06
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Lotka Volterra posted:It's interesting, because there have been small-scale attempts to start to transition coal towns away from being single-industry and it's opposed at every level by the coal companies themselves and politicians. Which attempts are you referring to?
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Dec 28, 2015 19:18
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El Perkele posted:how come so Basically because the ideologies of the 1970s-80s still dominate the parties and they haven't adapted to the times. The easiest example is how nuclear power plants were much maligned in the 70s & 80s so modern green parties focus on getting rid of nuclear at any cost. This is fine, except what often happens is that nuclear plants are shut down in favor of coal plants, which fucks the planet over even more.
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Dec 30, 2015 22:45
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El Perkele posted:Energy policies are not the end-all be-all of environmental policies, which encompass a whole more subjects than "nuclear power all day long". That's one example. The GMO controversy is another example.
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Dec 31, 2015 00:17
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Trabisnikof posted:From a US perspective, I would add: the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. Those are just off the top of my head. All do massive amounts to protect our environment and society to this day. I didn't know Nixon was an environmentalist.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:52
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StabbinHobo posted:chalking everything legislative that happened up to the president of the moment isn't just poo poo politics its poo poo posting He specifically pushed for some of those policies.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:00
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Honj Steak posted:It's also not really the Greens' fault that Germany produces more coal energy than a few years ago. The exit from nuclear energy was decided by a conservative government and it was supposed to be replaced entirely by renewables, but some local politicians and most energy companies decided to push for coal, too. This is even criticised by the current federal minister of energy, who is a social democrat. Have they released responses criticizing the shift towards coal?
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Dec 31, 2015 20:22
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Lotka Volterra posted:To be fair, things like Bt crops and crops that encourage the increased use of pesticides are not good from a wider ecological perspective. Crops that encourage increased use of pesticides are known as "organic".
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Dec 31, 2015 20:43
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Trabisnikof posted:We get it, you're mad cause some hippie stole your lover but your neverending need to beat up on the strawman dumbo-greenie adds nothing to this thread. It is a common misconception that organic crops require fewer pesticides and fewer resources. You can see this misconception (at least in terms of the pesticides) in the person I quoted. Correcting this misconception is required for productive policy regarding resource usage, especially a major field like agriculture.
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Dec 31, 2015 20:54
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Trabisnikof posted:Actually, the post you quoted never mentioned organics at all. That's why it is a very blatant strawman. You seem very testy about organics. Do you happen to live in the Pacific Northwest?
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Dec 31, 2015 20:59
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Lotka Volterra posted:Trabisnikof already said it as well as I could have, I was not at all referring to organic versus GMO crops but thanks for the casual dismissal of something I never said. You provided a defense of Green Party positions of GMOs. Green Parties also tend to support Organic crops as a replacement for GMO crops. I apologize for attributing their beliefs to you, but it is not that far of a logical leap to make given the context.
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Dec 31, 2015 21:05
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blowfish posted:Human birth rates increase, not decrease, in the face of adverse conditions. There's too many people living on earth, but truly it's the poor people who are at fault for existing. I wonder if that same logic extends to vaccinations as well.
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Jan 2, 2016 23:35
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Rime posted:I was pretty clear that it's Norman Borlaugs fault, and he wasn't very poor. If only the rich man had kept his technology from the grubby poors, then they wouldn't be in poverty.
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Jan 3, 2016 01:29
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Protip: Comparing humans to vermin, especially non-white people, make you seem like a huge racist.
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Jan 3, 2016 01:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the biggest reasons that we're seeing fewer children is because birth control exists now. Humans love to gently caress and want to do it even if there isn't enough food to feed all the babies. The other thing is that the reproductive strategy of humans has been changing. In the past it was "hump a lot, poo poo out a dozen babies, hope a few of them survive." Now the strategy is increasingly "have fewer babies, give them good medical care, invest in their future, set them up to succeed." Humans are also not morons and understand we're overpopulating ourselves. There's actually a reason why Malthus never considered that - He was a cleric. At the time, Protestants rejected Birth Control about as fiercely as Catholics did. It's one example of how your ideology can blind you to a simple solution.
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Jan 3, 2016 18:03
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Salt Fish posted:Right now IMO the major 2 reasons that GMO food is bad: No, if anything the opposite is true here. A strain of (eg) wheat that requires less water would be optimized for desert environments, while another version would be used for wetter environments. That's increasing the number of varieties. quote:2) GMO crops are designed to be used with specific fertilizers and it makes it easy and convenient to over-apply them which causes damage to the surrounding environment. That's not inherently true of GMOs, and anyway lots of current plants are over-applied with fertilizers.
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Jan 4, 2016 02:25
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Salt Fish posted:
Only if a local strain exists.
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Jan 4, 2016 02:47
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Salt Fish posted:Unfortunately we don't live in the alternate universe where GMO technology is used in a thoughtful perfect way. We live in *this* world where its used in imperfect ways. Just like a gun is not "just a tool" and has social and cultural connotations more significant than its literal form, so too do GMO foods. The above example wasn't a gun though, it was a hammer. People kill people with hammers all the time, yet they're not banned because they're still useful. You have to prove that GMO foods are used negatively to the same rate as a gun, and that it wouldn't be possible for non-GMO foods to also be used in that manner.
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Jan 4, 2016 06:38
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El Perkele posted:That's just pure insane bullshit and you know it. No? I'm curious to hear how though .
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Jan 4, 2016 06:49
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Lotka Volterra posted:This is the thing that bothers me greatly about climate change. Population growth dictates that we need to increase productivity on existing cropland, but some models of future yields under current climate scenarios suggest that US yields could decrease by anywhere from 31-79% by the end of the century. Right now scientists are working toward a consensus, but no one really knows for certain which is troubling. What is likely to happen under a shifting climate is either we're going to need to develop new, hardier crops or change the types of crops we produce (and hope for the best). It's hard not to resign yourself to the "well, we're doomed" point of view. US isn't the world, and world population is expected to peak by mid century, if not decline by the end of it.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:48
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Prolonged Priapism posted:If you're right then the society will have to change (it should anyway). If not, you've screwed yourself. Saving/investing for retirement is still a really smart thing to do right now and I don't see that changing in a big way for at least 20 years. Yep, what's known right now is that you're guaranteed to lose 2% a year by stuffing your cash under your mattress. This probably has about equal likelihood of getting worse as the likelihood of investment returns going south, so even then it's a choice between 3% growth (optimistic) or 6% losses (again, optimistic).
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Jan 24, 2016 20:33
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I have family in the climatologist circles and at the very least there is severe debate about the outcomes of climate change, with more than a few people saying that this doomsday stuff is overhyped pop science bullshit. It's definitely an issue mind you, one that we should fix, but it won't literally turn into Canticle for Leibowitz by the end of the century.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:32
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Friendly Tumour posted:Maybe, but my understanding is that you can't really build a bell curve of the different possible outcomes based on probability, so models which predict extermely bad outcomes are something you should be losing your night sleep over as much as the least damaging scenarios. What you're referring to is the idea that the likelihoods of outcomes are unknown, so we should assume all outcomes are equally likely.The problem is that you don't know which outcomes can actually happen and which are just baseless fear mongering. Like I don't think most people know that Mad Max the series is ostensibly set in Australia, not Ohio after the Apocalypse or whatever.
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Jan 25, 2016 19:53
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Or you could just use chickens which are still very environmentally conscious and also most people know how to cook them.
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Mar 20, 2016 19:22
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Overflight posted:OK, so can someone please provide or point out to me a proper list of the kind of stuff that WOULD be necessary? I know answers might vary but I think it would put the minds of people like me at ease. For major stuff, things like: - Switching our cars and trucks over to electric power generation - Switching our electric power generation over to renewable and/or carbon neutral sources - Switching our housing away from low density suburbs into more dense urban environments - Building out public transportation, primarily for city level transport but also for longer distance travel Even a single one of these will vastly reduce the amount of carbon emissions that are currently expelled. Beyond that, it's more "getting things up to code with the technology that already exists". These are things like proper insulation, LED lightbulbs, etc. Also I just want to emphasize: those bulleted points might sound minor, but they're actually a very large proportion of the energy we currently use:  Look at the amount of wasted energy that Transportation has. That's what I mean when I say that just switching everything over to electric vehicles will save enormous amounts of energy (and by extension, carbon emissions).
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Mar 20, 2016 20:10
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Uranium Phoenix posted:
None of these really mean much in an environment with heavy recycling (which the current US society has). To use phones as an example, carriers will pay for you to trade in your latest iPhone to them so they can sell it as a refurbished unit to poorer people and make almost double the money as last year. When it finally breaks they'll extract pretty much any valuable materials they can so it can be reused in other phones/electronics/etc. That's also why wood burning is considered carbon neutral - on a geologic scale, it hasn't been out of the atmosphere all that long, versus coal which was locked away for tens of millions of years.
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Mar 20, 2016 21:17
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Potato Salad posted:With respect to economic growth and sustainable lifestyles, is there space in the discussion for universal population control? This was a thing back in the 70s but basically research shows if a country is industrialized enough then birth rates will collapse naturally. You can also argue "well that's too slow we need results now!" but if you believe population is too high now there's not really a way around it other than genocide.
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Mar 21, 2016 16:39
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JohnnySavs posted:This is more movie chat but the Interstellar future involved crop plagues that were so pervasive that even with everyone farming (with fleets of automated equipment no less) Earth was still struggling to feed everyone. Higher prices on organic crops, and even greater prevalence of GMO crops in all likelihood.
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Mar 22, 2016 16:27
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