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Transportation of goods isn't really that big of a cost though. Like there's a reason why China ships out a whole bunch of food to the rest of the world, and why it would probably do so even if the cost of shipping tripled. You'd probably spend more money in the long run just developing the infrastructure for the systems and in the end you're going to only be able to grow a very small (relatively) amount of food.
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Mar 22, 2016 19:37
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Rime posted:You guys are funny. The impact on the first world isn't just going to be high food prices, it's going to be war and social shocks the likes of which we haven't seen in centuries. I didn't know WW2 was centuries ago.
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Mar 22, 2016 20:33
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See the failure with the "collapse of civilization via dumb people" idea is that we've only had like 2-3 generations where people in general weren't total illiterates and morons. Like if *that's* the thing that's going to kill society it would have done so hundreds of years ago.
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Mar 31, 2016 15:47
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Potential BFF posted:I don't buy into the whole Idiocracy thing but nuclear weapons have only existed for 71 years and: Nuclear weapons will not create an Idiocracy society, and you're posting a projection in which most likely the population peaks and decreases.
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Mar 31, 2016 15:54
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Salt Fish posted:The shows 3 possibilities; why is the peak and decreases option most likely? I'm referring to the orange one (it is clearly a peak). The other two are basically "this is the most extreme case our simulation created in either direction". If the red line is what you're basing your worries on, I have several bridges in New York to sell you.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:07
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Potential BFF posted:I'm just saying that in a human time scale we haven't had that much time to do something incredibly stupid with the giant nuclear arsenal and our illiterate moron ancestors didn't have as large of a footprint. 71 years is quite literally a human time scale. It's the life expectancy of a person.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:12
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Potential BFF posted:During which we "progressed" from two gigantic primitive low yield bombs to thousands of all shapes and sizes. Again, I don't actually think the premise of Idiocracy is either profound or actually happening. I'd say we have more opportunities to make things worse than ever before and more people to do it though. Good thing there's an explicit program to decommission warheads. Mozi posted:Yeah, we haven't had a nuclear war over the last 10,000 years, surely now that we have nukes and have gone a few decades without using them on each other we must be good for the next 10,000. The threat of nuclear weapons itself is mostly a Cold War relic. If there is a conflict involving nuclear weapons, it will be one involving regional neighbors, not a worldwide carpeting.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:40
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Salt Fish posted:I think the same thing was thought about the austria-hungry/serbia conflict that spawned WW1. No, they thought the exact opposite. They thought it didn't matter because the war would be over quickly. We've gone from 68,000 active warheads 30 years ago to 4,000 today, the vast majority of which are in the US and Russia. The world is much safer.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:47
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Salt Fish posted:Okay, here is my source: Cool.
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Mar 31, 2016 16:51
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Mozi posted:Let's say the recent articles about sea level rise are accurate and we get 3 feet this century. How will global shipping work when the ports are underwater and there are these gigantic storms? Well firstly "giant storms" aren't necessarily a given. There's an increased probability of storms with higher intensity (at least hurricanes, I don't have the data for storms in general), but that doesn't translate to "Katrina everywhere at every time". As for sea level, engineering solutions already exist and even if they're not enough, you're going to be moving the population inland anyway so it would probably follow that same procedure.
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Mar 31, 2016 17:05
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Mozi posted:Yes, I don't mean to come off as completely hopeless. But not much I have seen over the past couple of decades has increased my hope. This is by design. The media is not your friend.
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Mar 31, 2016 17:11
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Mozi posted:I go more by, how to do the commitments we have made as an international community measure up against what scientists say is necessary? And the science keeps getting clearer and not in a good way. Where have scientists proposed policy? My knowledge of that academic community is more of a predictive nature. Unless you just mean generic "reduce carbon emissions" in which case yeah we're not immediately abandoning fossil fuels.
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Mar 31, 2016 17:17
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Kenzie posted:Global slavery has been on the rise for a long time Someone using absolute numbers ITT.
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Apr 9, 2016 17:30
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Placid Marmot posted:Newsflash: More people probably die to Satan worshippers today than any point in the past.
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Apr 9, 2016 17:38
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Overflight posted:As bad as this sounds, shouldn't we start heavily pushing for subsidized euthanasia? It would alleviate the ones remaining and provide a good option for those who don't want to stick around to see any of this happening. We have that, it's called the Second Amendment.
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Apr 10, 2016 01:55
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A reminder that several public transport systems can be fully automated right now but are not for liability concerns. Your dystopia of everyone being out of a job is a lot farther away than you think.
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Apr 17, 2016 00:28
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oxsnard posted:What's with the obsession with micro grids? I honestly don't understand it. The modern grid is an engineering wonder and allows for efficiencies of scale that are amazing. When you think about sustainability it's easy to fall into a trap where you think that every level of society needs to be self sustainable. In reality this tends to lead to lots of inefficiencies that really don't need to exist. Also the environmentalist movement (at least in the US) is culturally tied to the "organic" movement which tries to promote local produce instead of mass produced food (which again, has lots of inefficiencies associated with it). This leads to wires being crossed. CommieGIR posted:Netherlands is passing a bill by majority that would ban all petrol powered vehicles and sales by 2025. If this was a German-French co-sponsored agreement I could maybe see it working, but good loving luck Netherlands, especially since an abhorrent amount of EU cargo is delivered by 18 wheelers. (There will probably be an exemption for either foreign registered cars or commercial vehicles, or both) computer parts fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 23:37
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Rime posted:
If we get off of fossil fuels for fuel production & energy, those same fossil fuels will still exist. I don't know about the carbon impact of creating those products, but it's very small next to the impact of our transportation and energy networks.
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Apr 19, 2016 20:01
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Isaac0105 posted:Americans are screwed. It's probably the most hopeless place in the entirety of the Western world and I greatly pity anyone my age who has to live there. We have fewer refugees coming our way, so we're probably better in the long run.
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Apr 27, 2016 16:21
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Kudaros posted:I've been looking at getting into a sort of science advising with emphasis on climate and energy. Part of that process is looking at existing advisers and holy poo poo most of them in the areas I've looked at are basically gas, coal, and oil people. It's to the point where I have to be careful about describing my positions and career desires because "energy adviser" is a trigger word for oil executive in some people's mind. There's typically renewable stuff in academia that's billed as "environmental" or "Green" or stuff like that.
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May 14, 2016 21:39
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Venezuela is poo poo because 95% of their exports are oil. So you know, even if the world transitioned to 100% renewables overnight they'd still be hosed.
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May 22, 2016 18:47
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SedanChair posted:What is the point of saying how much of one particular thing it would take to get rid of all the CO2 produced by humans on earth? That's like giving up. Five Billion Football fields!
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May 26, 2016 04:08
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The issues of capitalism and climate change are only really there because the things that cause climate change (coal et all) run the world. There's very little reason to think that a similarly socialist society wouldn't do basically the same thing (i.e., they would also preserve the status quo because they are the status quo). Like, here's one random example: the coal workers union exists to promote the interests of coal workers. This means, above all else, preserving their jobs and preventing them discomfort. Changing jobs creates a whole lot of discomfort, as does removing jobs. Therefore, it's in the coal workers union's best interest to preserve the institution of coal power.
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May 28, 2016 20:18
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khwarezm posted:That example is flawed since a large part of the reason unions seek to maintain the coal industry is because they understand that without it there is little incentive for a capitalist framework to invest in and provide employment in an area like Southern Wales or Appalachia without that key resource. The Socialist solution might involve deliberately moving industry to the region to maintain employment, regardless of whether or not its necessarily the best place to build a shoe factory or what have you. Inevitably that will get criticized for making 'fake' jobs or whatever but its better than depending on lovely industries like coal. From historical records, the Socialist solution was forcibly moving the people elsewhere. Which is really lovely. And even if you are right, that *still* doesn't disprove the fact that retraining is a grueling process even with a good support system, especially the older your workers are.
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May 29, 2016 02:37
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khwarezm posted:I guess if your historical records begin and end with Stalinism you might think that (also Capitalism does it too, you should look into indentured servitude among Southern Asians in the British Empire and the demographic effects this had in places like Guyana, South Africa and Fiji), look at something like the EU's cohesion fund where they spend significant sums of money attempting to keep people and employment in poorer regions like Southern Italy, sometimes in fairly Byzantine ways. So which historical Socialist systems are you pointing to? And isn't the EU's program proof that Capitalism doesn't do that too?
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May 29, 2016 03:07
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khwarezm posted:The Social Democratic systems that have had a big impact in Europe in the last two centuries? It might have to make certain concessions to Capitalism (chiefly its continued existence) but its been integral to quality of life here. Its difficult to disentangle that from the EU too, which isn't entirely an institution that exists to enrich the upper class, its just mostly that, especially now. Yeah, Social Democracy is not Socialism. The EU is firmly capitalist.
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May 29, 2016 03:32
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khwarezm posted:Social Democracy is still meant to aim for an explicitly Socialist end point without Capitalism No, it explicitly doesn't because it doesn't give the means of production to the workers. That's the definition of Socialism. You seem to be using the Tea Party definition of Socialism which is "the government doesn't explicitly gently caress its non-wealthy citizens".
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May 29, 2016 04:41
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Tree Bucket posted:I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die? Nope, worst case is that Europe gets a lot browner but that was kind of inevitable anyway.
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May 29, 2016 17:24
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khwarezm posted:Mass displacement, no biggy. Maybe bad for whites in Europe.
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May 29, 2016 19:54
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Paradoxish posted:So being a refugee is awesome? I mean, the fact that it might be okay for them at some point in the future or for their children is great at all, but most people don't care about long-term trend lines when they're living in the bumpy part of the curve. If we're concerned about the happiness of people right now, we should give up on trying to leave fossil fuels because that is going to upset a lot of people.
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May 29, 2016 20:03
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Paradoxish posted:I don't even understand how this is a response to my post. You conceded that down the line, people would be fine, and the issue is people in the present day. Down the line, the people that depend on fossil fuels (eg, coal miner families) will be fine/better if we moved off of them. The problem is the people today.
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May 29, 2016 20:18
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parcs posted:Showing the change in energy productivity is misleading. It's better to look at energy intensity (of which energy productivity is the inverse). What is the target for energy intensity?
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Jul 17, 2016 15:38
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tsa posted:The problem with efficiency is that there is a tendency that as efficiency goes up, use goes up and the overall picture remains the same. No, not really. This conclusion comes about when you have a very simple system with minimal factors. That is not an accurate picture of most fields, especially those at a national level. computer parts fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Jul 19, 2016 |
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Jul 19, 2016 01:06
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A big flaming stink posted:It works for freeways, right? Like I recall that as freeways are built for better capacity they almost always get completely swallowed up by a rise in the number of cars. I suppose that could be a pent up demand thing. Not in upstate New York, no. The classic car analogy is gas prices btw, although that's a bad one because there's a hidden element: time. Even if gas is 3 cents a gallon people aren't going to commute 100 times as far as if it was $3/gal.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:07
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Placid Marmot posted:Jevon's Paradox does work for roads in general, though I don't know about upstate New York. Cities with large roads typically don't have empty streets or public transportation, so it's a foolish comparison. You've already admitted that Jevon's Paradox doesn't apply to all situations though, so the only reason to think it would apply in the one being discussed is generic cynicism.
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Jul 20, 2016 04:17
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Placid Marmot posted:You seem to be confused about causality. Aside from entirely new modern cities, cities are not built with "large roads", but adapt to increasing road use by adding lanes and roads to relieve pressure on existing roads. As suggested, this may increase usage rather than maintaining usage and reducing congestion. Most cities in the US do not have public transportation as a meaningful substitute. quote:The only situation where I have "admitted that Jevon's Paradox doesn't apply to all situations" is your preposterous 100x reduction in fuel price. Taking account of known economic feedbacks in order to determine climate-related policy is wise, not cynical. They're not known, you just said so.
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Jul 20, 2016 12:29
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parcs posted:If there's one place where Jevon's paradox _does_ apply, it's at the macroeconomic level. So a general improvement in electrical efficiency will surely be more than offset by an increase in the quantity demanded for electricity. Show your work.
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Jul 21, 2016 12:23
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I can't think of an argument with a worse foundation, goddamn. "Well we raised fuel efficiency rates but absolute values of crude consumption rose somehow!" *Ignores literally billions of people industrializing for the first time*
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Jul 22, 2016 01:51
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Rime posted:60 years after the wright brothers, we had the A-12 Blackbird. We're coming up on 49 years since Apollo 11 and we're...desperately reverse engineering the Saturn V engines because our lifting capacity is trash. The only reliable manned transport is hitching rides on Soyuz rockets out of a decrepit and half-abandoned facility in Kazakhstan. We have one crazy millionaire doing research on reusable rocketry. Yeah because space was and currently is literally a dickwaving contest. There's a lot of historical need for air flight, so it was developed very quickly.
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Jul 23, 2016 14:54
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 00:32 |
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Earth will be livable even if we do absolutely nothing for the next century.
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Jul 26, 2016 20:14
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