Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Effectronica posted:

Gen III designs still have fundamental safety concerns, but we'll leave that aside for right now.

So, are you proposing greenfield sites, or expanding existing sites with additional units? In the first case, you need a gigantic array of surveys to identify suitable sites, in the second case, merely a large array of surveys to determine how to construct the additional units. Simple geographical concerns would dictate a mixture in any case.

So, you've got anywhere from 5 (Perry)-15 (Fermi Unit 2) years to construct a unit and have it generating power. How are we going to speed that up? If we're not speeding that up, now we've got to add the cost of the additional natural-gas and renewable facilities to deal with the oncoming generation shortfalls in, not that that's a gigantic cost.

But let's look at the raw cost of construction. Using estimated overnight costs at the low end, $2000/kW, we get $740 billion to replace all the non-nuclear with nuclear as far as current energy generation goes. Using the Moody's estimate of $5000/kW for actual construction costs, we get $1.85 trillion. Not, by any means, a small matter politically, even if only one-seventeenth of US GDP. Global estimates for going nuclear at current levels of electricity generation would in turn require about $12 trillion, about one-seventh of global nominal GDP. Now, I am neglecting renewables, but bear in mind that electrical demand will continue to grow.

Just for kicks, bringing everyone up to 10,000 kWh of electrical consumption (about average between the USA and Germany, France, Japan) using nuclear alone would take $40 trillion, more than half of nominal world GDP.

But these costs will necessarily be amortized out over how long you plan construction to take. Over a decade, it would take only $4 trillion to bring the world up to the electrical capacity of developed countries. In turn, however, this means less effectiveness as a response to climate change.

The actual numbers don't matter so much, however, as the political matter of selling such expenditures, even if we assume a global police state that can crush lay dissent.

Similarly, you need to develop more people who can work in a nuclear power plant. For the US, we would need roughly quadruple the current amount of engineers, operators, and so on, and for nuclearing the world, nine times as many, and for the just solution, thirty times as many. The best way would be to cadre current people, which in turn would necessitate nationalizing, or probably internationalizing, existing reactors. Along with the expenditures necessary to produce people who have the basis for training in turn.

Then you've got the increased demand for skilled laborers, and you've got to sort that mess out, probably necessitating a reworking of labor relations if we're not in the global police state for real.

And then there's the political opposition that would emerge to all this.

So, really, you're massively underestimating the costs.

And all of this is massively easier and cheaper than the alternatives, which is why your first point was laughable nonsense.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 19:29

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 08:57

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Like if you don't switch everyone to nuke power there's really nothing to even talk about. Renewable technology is no where near mature enough to replace fossil fuel fired plants and won't be until long after everyone here is dead if ever.

Considering how fast we need to greatly reduce emissions it doesn't matter how hard it would be to switch to almost entirely nuclear energy, there is literally no other option on the table that isn't pie in sky naive dreams.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 19:43

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Nail Rat posted:

I'm pretty much there already. I mean, the things in our culture that need to change are so ingrained (along with the NEVER COMPROMISE rhetoric that advertisers cater to and shove down our throats) that no change will be possible until climate change is very obviously affecting the quality of life for the majority of people . At that point, any efforts will be palliative.

It's like the end of that terrible movie independence day -we need an unprecedented worldwide response and massive cooperation (and a lot of the changes required would hurt a lot of the countries involved). Except instead of aliens blowing up cites we have computer models telling us unspecified bad things will probably happen at some time in the future. No poo poo it's hard to get things done.

Like just look at hurricanes, we have a hard enough time getting people to evacuate for hurricanes barreling down on them because 'maybe the scientist are wrong and it won't be so bad'.

The story of humanity is one of using tools, science, and ingenuity to solve problems that have occurred, we are collectively terrible at preemption but great at reaction.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 17:51

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

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. A company, for example, may be interested in making a process more efficient so the output becomes cheaper and thus more competitive in the market. But as the products price goes down more people may (probably will) want it so they make more of it, leaving the overall carbon output of the process to be the same because the extra use compensates the gains in efficiency. They also see this a lot with cars- when people buy more efficient cars they tend to drive it more than they would with a less efficient one. Maybe they take an extra roadtrip, drive for fun a bit more, or are less concerned with optimizing their errands and such. Regardless, people tend to target a set fuel cost per month rather than a carbon target, so again you will see that efficiency doesn't tell the whole story.

On the larger scale this same sort of thing happens with countries, in that as they get richer the people tend to waste more energy, be it simply driving when public transportation or biking is an acceptable alternative. I've always thought that the real challenges we face is the overwhelming focus on being green, or making something slightly more efficient, when such gains are an eyedrop in an ocean compared to the developing world modernizing. Kinda like-- Great, we have 100 mpg cars, oh wait now 3 billion more people want to be driving, poo poo.

Trabisnikof posted:

Better efficiency is a big part of how we're going to be able to offer meaningful improvements to the world's population while engaging in climate mitigation and adaptation.

The numbers don't work out, not even close. We could double the efficiency of the US and it wouldn't even be close to the effect of bringing 5 billion more people to that level of energy usage. And of course doubling isn't even close to what is realistically possible in the time frame climate scientists are talking about.

tsa fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jul 17, 2016

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 17:12

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

BattleMoose posted:

Why aren't we doing anything?

Because it's a monumentally complicated problem that requires governments around the world to work together and make long term plans. That's literally never happened in the history of the loving world. People who act shocked that we aren't going anywhere on this issue must not understand it very well. You just don't flip a lightswitch and boom no more carbon. Even the leading scientists and experts are completely divided on the question of how exactly to solve the problem. When Obama asks 10 different experts what they would do and he gets 10 different answers, what exactly is he supposed to do? Never mind that there's not a chance in hell places like china are actually going to hold up their end of the bargain since cheap polluting energy is pretty much the only way they get their people out of poverty.

Trabisnikof posted:

The fact we passed 400ppm has nothing to do with these misguided childfree/pro-suicide ideas.

Claiming you won't have a kid because of climate isn't actually helping.

If you live in the first world you are preventing the massive amount of carbon that would be released over their life actually. You'd have to be an idiot to argue otherwise, regardless of the merit of the total argument.

You have a choice to buy a fuel efficient car, turn off the lights when you aren't in the room, avoid unnecessary travel, blah blah blah. And those things would reduce the amount of carbon being released. You have the choice whether or not to have a kid. That would increase the amount of carbon being released. This isn't rocket dentistry here.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2016 23:41

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

mik posted:

Surprise, Trump was full of poo poo on the campaign trail.

Donald Trump Says He Has �Open Mind� on Climate Change Accord

Wow it didn't even take 2 days to show how loving stupid this post is.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 23:47

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Accretionist posted:

Whaaaat? The internet's introduced massive parallelism and balkanized the landscape. Take advantage of that.

It looks like you're working backwards from the assumption that this is a national campaign pushed by conventional media, the parties and the government, to the exclusion of other programs.

You can get the idea out there by pushing it at Whole Foods and on Instagram. Weave it into the whole organic anti-GMO thing through social media marketing, branding, etc. Get vegetarians to incorporate climate change into their pitches and propaganda. Apply slight, constant pressure and hope it snowballs or at least enters the culture. If it succeeds, it'll help downstream.

Oh man, they say these forums are dead but at least there's still a lot of unintentional comedy that comes out! "It'll help downstream" fuckin' lol. Maybe we need to synergize some disruption too!!

Accretionist posted:

FTFY

If you didn't see my previous posts, I'm rejecting the glib, out-of-hand rejection and derision of policies which aren't 'one step plans to fix everything.' This transitioned into, 'I think pushing for dietary changes would represent negligible costs and might help grease the skids on future (forced) changes.'

People are laughing at you because what you are saying is not only really dumb but also shows a child-like understanding of the scale and the complexity of the problem. Even if we assumed your program would have any success (it won't) what are you actually even talking about? A million people in the US eat less / no meat? 10 Million? A hundred? Meanwhile, literal billions of people in the developing world are massively increasing their meat consumption. Double :lol:

if you have had/ are planning to have a kid-- something that is several orders of a magnitude more environmentally damaging than eating a surf and turf every fuckin' meal.

To even call your suggestion a 'step in the right direction' is laughable. It's not even a drop in ocean. It's like blaming poor people for not being able to afford healthcare because they have smartphones. It's like trying to combat sea rise by taking an eyedropper to the beach. Never mind calling it a "negligible cost"-- let's add the cultural impact of food to the list of things you don't understand! Or how hard it is to change people's diets!

I mean I really am cracking up here-- people fail to eat right and adjust their diets when their doctors tell them continuing how they are could kill them, and this joker things people are going to do so because he is :qq:

about climate change :xd:

Star Man posted:

Misanthropes think there are too many people on the planet and any number is too many. News at 11

Well at the end of the day this really is the issue, or rather the number of people trying to live a modern lifestyle. Our problems aren't really that we eat too much meat, it's that too many people are eating meat. It's not like fish are going extinct because we're worse at managing them than we were 150 years ago, just the opposite in fact. It's because we are trying to feed 8 billion people instead of 1. At the end of the day this problem is very malthusian, it's just that the resource ended up not being food but the energy required to sustain billions of more people trying to live a modern lifestyle.

# ¿ May 8, 2017 18:05

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Rime posted:

Nah, we'll fix all of these problems with minimal upset to society thanks to the use of technology, within the next 10 years before things get life threatening.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about, I post on the internet. If you disagree with me you're just a doo-doo nimblyhead.

Ok Malthus.

I mean for people so obsessed with what experts think and the scientific consensus that all seems to go out the window when people want to doom prophecies like some crazy person ranting on a street corner.

That's not science, that's depression.

tsa fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Oct 15, 2017

# ¿ Oct 15, 2017 17:07

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Trainee PornStar posted:

Depends on how quickly this all happens, give it 50 years or so & I'm pretty sure we will have full on terminator style autonomous robotic soldiers.

I've seen this driving around, admittedly there's a passenger in the driving seat but it gets around Oxford fine.
http://ori.ox.ac.uk/application/robotcar/

I can only imagine what the military have done with this.

People here tend to be massively ignorant when it comes to silicon valley . Like go read the beginning of the tech thread that started 2 years ago - people seriously thought (because they are clueless cynics) that self driving cars were to magic thing that were at least several decades, if not a half a century away :lol:

Meanwhile they've been tested on city roads for millions of miles and the only accidents have been the ones created by real drivers. People largely don't have a loving clue about how fast progress is being made on a lot of tech that is going to make the internet revolution look like blip on the radar.

Nocturtle posted:

Here's a nice article from the Atlantic about the US Democrat party's strategy to address climate change (hint: there isn't one). If nothing else it's a nice summary of recent attempts to address climate change at the US federal level, although the main point of the article is the Democrats don't have a unified strategy and it's unclear they can create one. Particularly relevant:

Labor is not committed to addressing climate change as they (correctly) predict union jobs will inevitably be lost. There is justified skepticism that the federal govt can mitigate the economic impact via assistance or retraining. The Democrats likely need to sweep the House+Senate+Presidency to pass substantive climate change legislation in the face of unified Republican opposition. However any such proposed legislation will likely be deeply controversial even within the party, making such a sweep hard.

This is why Hillary got laughed out of oil country, blabbering about retraining sounds good to some people's ears but they know better than most it never actually works in reality. Of course Trump had no solution either, so :shrug:

VideoGameVet posted:

What occurred at the Paris Climate talks with India seems like a good approach.

India planned on a huge increase in coal plants and wasn't going to sign the accords. A deal was arranged that enabled India to build solar plants and get financing at far lower rates than the typical World Bank ones.

India signed the deal.

Given Africa and India (and now Puerto Rico's) lack of a decent grid, decentralized solar (and wind in some cases) can be a solution.

The problem is it's impossible to decouple increases in standards of living from gg emissions because people loving love meat. It's less of an issue in India but in China thats going to mean a lot more beef consumption. Even in India I'm sure it will be a lot more lamb consumption or something similar that has significantly more footprint than say veggies or chicken.

I mean theoretically you could turn everything into nuclear and solar and cut off most emissions from that but there's no real way to fix the food issue, even in theory at this point. And in reality it's also going to mean people consuming more things which even if produced with clean power will still lead to more greenhouse gases.

So even if the west feels generous and finances massive clean energy projects in the developing world you still wont even come close to meeting the goals we need to reach to stave off the worst effects of gcc.

The fact is there has never been a problem like gcc, which is why it's so strange when people here stamp their feet and are mystified at why it's not fixed yet. Most people here are too young to remember the ozone hole crisis of the 80s but it's a really good example to look at:

We had a environmental crisis, and not only was the science clear but there was also a very clear prescription for how to cure it. And we did. But gcc is orders of magnitude more complicated of a problem. It's like compairing ww1 to nuclear war. We didn't have to worry and the developing world, since they by and large didn't use CFCs. We didn't have to completely reform the world economy overnight, because the alternatives to CFC were simple and already existed. And I could go on and on about the massive differences in scale and uncertainty of the solutions but the point should be obvious by now.

We simply are not a predictive species( just look at this forums' election predictions!) We react to problems and use technology and tools to solve the problem. We didn't invent a wheel because we like round things, we needed to move poo poo around. If there is a solution to gcc, it was always going to be in that vein. There's nothing unique about people today. We simply just have a lot more of them and so we are stressing and stretching our resources exactly as people like Malthus predicted would happen.

It's funny, you see people here mock technological solutions yet thats exactly why, for example, Malthus was wrong about mass starvation: technology massively increased food production. Sure, our kids may have us. Or they will laugh at us like we laugh at Malthus today. Or we will all be dead :shrug:

# ¿ Nov 22, 2017 21:09

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

International air travel is going to only increase in quantity, hope this helps.

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

Ahhh a new climate doomsayer is born because they just can't stomach the thought of minimizing their output for a little while.

This is never going to happen. In fact, just the opposite as India and China become richer and grow their middle class. Also they will consume more meat, a lot more of it in fact. The left is fundamentally at odds with itself on this issue: you cannot raise the standards of living of poor people without also increasing the amount of GHG emissions, and there's no evidence whatsoever for this changing in the next couple decades to half century (even if we massively increase clean energy).

Also if the idea of other people enjoying to travel makes you angry you really should probably see a therapist.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2018 01:50

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

eNeMeE posted:

I'm not sure about that. The answer isn't measured anywhere but given that there are a lot of people who travel like it's going out of style I'd be surprised if even 1/4 of people in the US fly more than once a year and less than 50% fly in a given year.

With median income around 50k a single flight is a non-trivial expense, especially since it would be accompanied by a car rental, and vacations via car or train would make a lot more sense.

Airplane travel is incredibly cheap, and for middle class people well worth the time saved vs. car travel in most cases. You know what isn't cheap? Getting time off- you don't want to waste 4 days of your 2 weeks/ yr vacation driving around in a loving car / (LMAO) train. Not to mention that you are completely ignoring the wear and tear such trips put on your car (people massively underestimate these costs when doing comparisons).

Of course this is all irrelevant since air travel is going loving nowhere .

e: But seriously, have you not looked at ticket prices recently? You can get round trips for like 70-100 bucks for many destinations, literally cheaper than you'd pay in gas even ignoring wear and tear costs.

tsa fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jan 9, 2018

# ¿ Jan 9, 2018 01:58

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Paradoxish posted:

Stuff like this is cool if it's paired with rapid emissions draw downs as a way to buy slightly more time and horrifying if it's used as an excuse to continue emitting. It's basically the same deal as aerosol injection: if we keep emitting and for any reason the shade fails it's like, welp, guess we're getting some rapid loving heating because all we did was temporarily suppress the incoming radiation side of the equation without touching the radiative forcing end of things.

also seems like there are some potentially lovely side effects that would come with just outright reducing the amount of light that reaches the Earth by 2% but I might be wrong about that

It's really interesting how for CC you see the same kind of logic that conservatives use for abortion: people must be punished for their sins. The idea of humans 'getting off' without suffering while still being to use vast amounts of resources (which is the reason standards of living have skyrocketed in the past 1-2 century) actually angers them.

Like it's quite obvious the anger in this thread surrounding technological fixes borders on a pathology that we might not suffer for our actions.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2018 20:51

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Arglebargle III posted:

It's weird seeing all the serious frowning faces on cable news talking about Tillerson being humiliated when you remember that he should be put up against a wall and shot along with the rest of the Exxon executive suite.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2018 15:01

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

StabbinHobo posted:

buried neck deep in a compost heap with a water bottle drip feed just above his head aimed at the top of his forhead

# ¿ Mar 15, 2018 15:02

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

call to action posted:

Notice how the idiot doesn't realize that pathway also has an insane amount of CCS and BCCS that will never ever happen

Also GM, the maker of the Hummer, is still in business you denialist moron, and transitioning to EVs while remaining on carbon powered energy makes literally zero sense.

You sound pretty dumb and uninformed fyi.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2018 15:30

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

VideoGameVet posted:

Did people sacrifice during WWII to aid in the victory over the axis?

Not really and this is a dumb comparison.

E: Like even germany held off on requiring any real sacrifice of the german populace until the war was basically already lost exactly because they knew people get angry quickly.

the idea that there will be large scale sacrifice in the name of climate change is utterly moronic. you can't even get people to turn off lights they aren't using.

tsa fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Apr 13, 2018

# ¿ Apr 13, 2018 23:06

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Thug Lessons posted:

I'm glad the people who used to spend their time losing arguments to me have graduated to ceaselessly whining about me to other people in the most hysterical terms possible.

It's really funny

TheNakedFantastic posted:

If anything it's evident a bunch of people in this thread are depressed misanthropes who aren't really interested in any examination or thesis that doesn't support the most dire predictions because it doesn't allow them to feel as much narcissistic superiority about their lifestyles as childless vegans or whatever. This is a realm beyond any useful evidence based analysis.

It's hardly only climate change where this is the case, there is a critical mass of depression/anxiety/loneliness in modern society that manifests itself in people really getting emotionally involved in these sorts of issues and engaging in the typical in/out group speech. That's where all the "punish the unbelievers, we must suffer for what we have done" comes from imo.

It's also really hard to actually know what the gently caress you are talking about on this subject, so people mask their ignorance by just being hyperbolic assholes who scream at anyone that disagrees with their poorly thought out conclusions.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2018 15:00

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Potato Salad posted:

This isn't about planes and whatever, it's me laughing at you for calling avoiding flights austerity itself, then continuing to laugh at you as you double- and triple-down on it.

You also have a definition for poverty that's commendably incorrect and speaks volumes about your soul.

lmao, you know you are in crazy land when owl of loving cream cheese manages to be a voice of reason.

StabbinHobo posted:

lemme guess you're another person who "believes" in global warming but hasn't done poo poo to lift a finger about it

lemmmmme guess, you're one of those people that "flies" in "airplanes". Your soul is fuckin' dooomed mate.

tsa fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Apr 17, 2018

# ¿ Apr 17, 2018 15:05

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

How are u posted:

Dang, y�all are coming out of the woodwork today.

Yea, there's a lot of really dumb people here that don't have a single loving clue what they are talking about, so they scream and shout and pout like babies.

Libluini posted:

Well, as a long-time lurker in this thread, he isn't wrong. That's basically what happens in this thread. Sometimes interesting stuff gets posted, but most of the time both sides keep forgetting there is no cosmic constant called "My opinion is right and also transforms everyone disagreeing into evil Morloks"

Yep, it's this unfortunately.

self unaware posted:

well yes but you're capable of understanding why it's a bad thing. to most technofetishists we'll be taking subterranian vacuum tunnels to our mars launch ports in 30 years so who cares about ppm

and we'll be... TWICE as rich. think of how easy our problems will be to solve then!

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

In April I flew to south korea and petted this cat:

Take that mother earth. This extremely slight increase in my carbon footprint of taking 1-2 trips a year will be the carbon that does us in because it was used for something fun and life definining instead of being used for something dour like running a clothes dryer.

....You..... Monster!!!

# ¿ May 11, 2018 14:18

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

self unaware posted:

i don't think it's ridiculously wrong, and you're right that china is transitioning into one of the countries guilty and necessary to stop it, but as it stands the us and eu are uniquely poised (with their influence and resources) to handle the problem and simultaneously choose not to in a way that china doesn't. I'd say China does more to progress the fight on climate change than either the us or the eu.

which is to be expected, democracy will never be able to provide an answer to a problem like climate change, it's tragedy of the commons turned up to 11

you really don't seem to fully grasp what's going to happen as the world continues to get richer, there isn't jack loving poo poo the west can do to combat literal billions of people adopting western style diets (which has happened literally everywhere wealth has increased) and western styles of consumption, which are all inextricably linked to climate emissions.

we are not decoupling, to any significant degree, high living standards from climate emissions anytime soon. The left's desire to eliminate worldwide poverty is in direct contradiction to the climate change goals, but people for some reason choose to ignore this because it makes them sad or they are just plain ignorant of the contradiction in the first place.

Africa would loving love to consume beef or other high CC impact foods at US levels and if they have the cash it's absolutely going to happen.

# ¿ May 28, 2018 17:49

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

self unaware posted:

there's no good guy bad guy narrative it's just that the us and the eu are the only ones that can lead this sort of change globally because of their position at the top of the global influence/power chain. china can be a part of that group and it doesn't change anything

They cannot actually. This is no longer a US / EU problem and to continue to treat it as such is pure ignorance.

ATP_Power posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't China have a very aggressive solar deployment program they're implementing and planning on expanding?

this is like saving pennies for your retirement. it's not a drop in the bucket, it's a drop in the ocean.

# ¿ May 28, 2018 17:50

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

like there's a reason smart people and money are going to the technological intervention side of things; you do what you can on the production side but the numbers simply don't work out under any reasonable constraints (social, political, scientific). The current state of affairs is such that (assuming scientists are roughly accurate in how much mitigation we need to avoid bad things from happening) we would need a fully workable plan agreed upon today. Paris was not that plan, and even that couldn't happen. We need Paris^10 and that isn't in the cards.

Ignoring that, if we stopped today there still would be a variety of interventions that would be useful, like pulling existing carbon out of the atmosphere.

https://climateone.org/audio/geo-engineering-climate-solutions

# ¿ May 28, 2018 18:11

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

self unaware posted:

why not?

Because we aren't even in the same universe as that happening look at the loving graphs dumbass.

Point me to a single instance of large increases in standards of living that occurred without massive increases in cc emission. Go on, find it.

# ¿ May 28, 2018 18:12

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

StabbinHobo posted:

fwiw OhYeah i'm not even reading past the first line or two of your posts. your entire tone and phrasing, let alone content is just super duper boring. you're like a lovely background character, the second-sidekick to the bad guy in a movie who's lines could be improv'd by a 9 year old. we've seen every dumb contrarian/skeptic blog post you can link to before. arkane and a half a dozen other idiots like you two already dragged us through all this for huuuuundreds of pages. its cool, I don't expect you to go back and read them or anything, its just you have to understand why we're all too bored by you to engage.

just like its not women's job to explain to men all the ways they're being sexist/patriarchal/rape-culture-y, its not actually our job to do you the favor of spending however many hours it would take to pierce your layers of mental illness and correct your awful opinions. you are very very very clearly not engaging in a serious grown up way, so of course we're not going to adopt you like a misbehaving teenager that just needs love.

lmao

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Aug 1, 2018 16:20

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

imagine making a post that bad ; )

Siljmonster posted:

Nah I love coming to threads to point out how stupid people are

luckily in this thread it's quite easy

# ¿ Aug 1, 2018 16:20

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Perry Mason Jar posted:

Drastically reducing income inequality -- hell, let's just destroy capitalism and institute global full communism -- would go a massive way towards mitigating climate change.

Wow, it's harder to say something more wrong.

There is not a single example of a time/place where increasing living standards didn't result in significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions. Not one. Poor people are far better for the environment than rich people, it's really odd you would make a statement so profoundly at odds with reality and sense-- I mean this is incredibly basic stuff: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/business/china-davos-climate-change.html

People move out of poverty and then immediately consume far more meat and resources than before. Also communist countries have not been historically been any better environmentalists than capitalist countries, in fact the USSR was one of the worst environmental offenders ever.

https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-the-soviet-union-created-central-asias-worst-environmental-disaster/

quote:

The Aral Sea, which is actually classified as a lake, has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s following Soviet irrigation efforts. The lake, which lies between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, began suffering its current fate due to a Soviet-era economic plan that sought to irrigate the nearby desert in Uzbekistan to prompt greater economic output. For a short time, Uzbekistan became the world�s largest exporter of cotton. This economic boom would not have been possible without the Soviet effort to divert water from the rivers that fed the Aral Sea � the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. As a result of that human intervention beginning in the 1960s, the lake began to slowly recede. By 2007, the Aral Sea had shrunk to 10 percent of its original size. According to NASA, this precipitated a broader economic and environmental crisis.

Just one of a billion different things they did that was a disaster -- suffice to say if you think communism has a good track record in this regard you don't know history. I mean communism doesn't stop people from wanting things or wanting higher standards of living it just has never worked that way.

And more things, regardless of the economic organization, basically necessarily means more GHG emissions. Again lets look at China, which has 18% of the worlds population and 28% of the worlds consumption of meat:

http://www.agriculture.gov.au/SiteC...in-china-v2.pdf

quote:

A number of studies have shown that the increase in consumer income in fastgrowing
developing countries, such as China, India and Malaysia, tends to induce
important changes in the amount and composition of food consumption (Garnaut and
Ma 1992, Cranfield et al. 1998, Coyle et al. 1998, Regmi et al. 2001, Jones et al.
2003, Ishida et al. 2003, Liu et al. 2009, and Gandhi and Zhou 2010).

...

According to Table 2.1, the direct consumption of grains per person has dropped from
257 kg in 1985 to 189 kg in 2009 (a decrease of 36 per cent) for rural areas (un-milled
grains) and from 135 kg to 81 kg (a decrease of 67 per cent) in urban areas (milled
grains) (see Box 1 for further details about grain statistics in China). The consumption
of meat (including pork, beef and mutton) and poultry has increased from 12 kg in
total in 1985 to 19.6 kg in 2009 (an increase of 63 per cent) in rural areas and from
22.5 kg in 1985 to 34.7 kg in 2009 (an increase of 54 per cent) in urban areas. While
the percentage increase was larger for rural consumers, the actual increase in volume
terms was significantly larger for urban consumers (12.2 kg for urban compared to 7.6
kg for rural). The consumption of aquatic products, eggs, milk and dairy products has
more than doubled in both rural and urban areas.

More rich = way more meat consumption is an indisputable fact.

People, given the means, love consuming poo poo and always have, there's not a place or time or economic setup where this hasn't been true. The difference was for 99.99999999% of humanity there were < 1 billion people on the planet and for most of that there were like 100-200 million.

The idea that we wave a wand and poof humans no longer act as they have acted for tens of thousands of years is magical thinking that has utterly no evidence to back it up.

tsa fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Aug 17, 2018

# ¿ Aug 17, 2018 00:22

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Plumps posted:

I'm not saying nuclear is bad, but I could think of a few better things to spend that amount of money on.

Thats a dumb way at looking at things.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 18:13

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 08:57

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

VideoGameVet posted:

Sorry, only a masters ... got recruited by a software company out of graduate school.

Anyway, I don't even think batteries make sense on a large scale. What I do know is that the US Nuclear Industry has failed to deliver on its promises. Even with store, wind&solar are now the lowest cost solutions (as long as you don't hide expenses that taxpayers end up covering).

What's more relevant in my background is running companies. I can look at the history of nuclear projects and draw realistic conclusions.

lol

# ¿ Oct 26, 2018 18:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change: Post up your Phd. dissertation, coward