Lightning Knight posted:

This is paywalled so sorry if it answers this question, but how did that happen in the first place? The building of infrastructure in places where it isn’t working that is. Is that a common problem with solar and wind?

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

so here's the walter russell mead article:

Some Guy TT posted:

what about the ughyurs has become a sort of performative social media response to anyone talking about dumb gossip its basically the new free tibet

John_A_Tallon posted:

Amnesty International has published a report accusing China of torturing Uyghur Muslims in internment camps.: https://mobile.twitter.com/dwnews/status/1403910747781009412
Or even edit a line so that you have Amnesty International has published a report accusing China of torturing Uyghur Muslims in internment camps. instead.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wPq0M_T8JQ

CaptainACAB posted:

Is Lithuania the one with statues commemorating the SS or is that Latvia?

je1 healthcare posted:

It's probably worth pointing out that China continues to experience regular mass-stabbings attacks against civilians

mawarannahr posted:

Agrajag posted:

wtf even is this

this literally looks like some smoothbrained "analyst" drew a couple of lines like its some kind of real world fact and called it a day

quote:

The hypothesis of a long, severe, and costly war is depicted in Figure 2.1 as notional graphs of expected cumulative declines, or attri- tion, in military capability over time in 2015 and 2025, a period during which Chinese A2AD capability is expected to improve relative to U.S. strike capability. The dotted lines in Figure 2.1 represent a hypothetical moment (T1), within days of the start (T 0), when the sides take stock and decide whether to continue fighting. For our purposes, the figure separates a short conflict from a long one. T 2 is posited as one year; although fighting could continue beyond that, the pattern of losses would remain more or less the same. The first graph (2015) shows that China and the United States both suffer significant but unequal losses in the brief early stage and can expect increasingly divergent losses as war goes on, favoring the United States. The second (2025) shows the effects of improved Chinese A2AD in years to come: China suffers reduced, though still sizable, short-term losses; the United States suffers increased short-term losses; and the gap in expected long-term losses closes.

Doctor Jeep posted:

i don't get this graph at all, i understand the one with 2 lines, but this has 4 lines (lower and upper line of each blue/pink area) and they can't both represent loss in military capability?

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

The United States would definitely lose a war with China over Taiwan, is the thing.

quote:

By 2025, enhanced Chinese A2AD will have shrunk the gap between Chinese and U.S. military losses: Chinese losses would still be very heavy; U.S. losses, though less than China’s, could be much heavier than in a 2015 war. Even as U.S. military victory became less likely, Chinese victory would remain elusive. Because both sides would be able to continue to inflict severe losses, neither one would likely be willing to accept defeat. History offers no encouragement that destructive but stalemated fighting induces belligerents to agree to stop. A severe, lengthy, militarily inconclusive war would weaken and leave both powers vulnerable to other threats.

The prospect of a military standoff means that war could eventually be decided by nonmilitary factors. These should favor the United States now and in the future. Although war would harm both economies, damage to China’s could be catastrophic and lasting: on the order of a 25–35 percent reduction in Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) in a yearlong war, compared with a reduction in U.S. GDP on the order of 5–10 percent. Even a mild conflict, unless ended promptly, could weaken China’s economy. A long and severe war could ravage China’s economy, stall its hard-earned development, and cause widespread hardship and dislocation.

Such economic damage could in turn aggravate political turmoil and embolden separatists in China. Although the regime and its security forces presumably could withstand such challenges, doing so might necessitate increased oppressiveness, tax the capacity, and undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the midst of a very difficult war. In contrast, U.S. domestic partisan skirmishing could handicap the war effort but not endanger societal stability, much less the survival of the state, no matter how long and harsh the conflict, so long as it remains conventional. Escalating cyberwarfare, while injurious to both sides, could worsen China’s economic problems and impede the government’s ability to control a restive population.

International responses could, on balance, also favor the United States in a long and severe war: The support of U.S. East Asian allies could hurt China’s military chances; responses of Russia, India, and NATO would have less impact; and NATO could neutralize Russian opportunistic threats in Europe. Japan’s entry would be likely if the nation were party to the underlying dispute and almost certain if its territory (where U.S. bases are) were attacked. With Tokyo’s more permissive interpretation of constitutional limits on use of force and programmed improvements in Japanese military capabilities, Japan’s entry could make a difference by 2025 in the course and results of war. Heightened turmoil in the Middle East could be harmful to both Chinese and U.S. interests.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

has biden released loving anything or is this all based on tiktoks of equipment convoys and sat photos of truck depots

V. Illych L. posted:

that number *is* high-balling things, but yeah british empire was megadeath as business and we've all sort of forgotten about it lol

indigi posted:

lifetime production+storage+environmental cost of fission fuel is way higher than many forms of fusion, even the "clean" stuff that's a byproduct of other mining operations like thorium. and even if the only fusion that works out is SuperSphere pellets that unit price will eventually come down

Slavvy posted:

What if, and hear me out here, we stopped caring about whether things are cheap or expensive and just did them because they're good, instead

indigi posted:

...no

Raskolnikov38 posted:

how many centuries will it take renewables to fulfill anerica’a current 4220 terawatt thirst

bedpan posted:

im going to lose my drat mind! the correct terms are bimbo and bimbette!

Fitzy Fitz posted:

I'm curious what some free-floating balloon can supposedly accomplish that satellites can't. Is it 1944?

DiscountDildos posted:

Chinese foreign ministry should just come out with something like "the balloon seems to be causing you much distress so feel free to shoot it down so you can calm down." then sit back and watch as we neither shoot it down nor calm down.

Man Musk posted:

Every day British people are braver than the Chinese Communist Party. Amazing, but expected.

https://twitter.com/PeoplesDailyapp/status/1654814516188774400

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1654806035683483649

quote:

For the first time, the new Policing Act gives examples of what might amount to “serious disruption to the life of the community”. These include:
significant delay to the delivery of a time-sensitive product to consumers of that product
prolonged disruption of access to any essential goods or services, such as money, food, water, energy, or fuel, among others.
New definition of disruption: What does this mean for protesters?
By definition, the aim of many protests is to draw attention to a social issue. Causing disruption is often an effective tactic to achieve this. The new wording gives the police very broad powers to decide what amounts to “serious disruption”. As a result, people are now at greater risk of being caught by the new definition and being subject to police conditions, which limits the freedom to protest.
NOISE TRIGGER
The Act also brings in a new noise trigger. There are two new situations where the police can put conditions on a protest march if it’s too noisy:
if they think the noise generated by protesters may result in “serious disruption” to the activities of an organisation in the area, or
if they think the noise generated by protesters may have a significant impact by causing harassment, intimidation, alarm or distress to people in the area.

Comrade Koba posted:

~140 people dead over a period of 40 years is not the holocaust it’s made out to be every time the GDR gets mentioned anywhere

gradenko_2000 posted:

oh look: https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/10/04/23/pcg-names-ship-likely-involved-in-scarborough-collision



nothing to do with China after all

Cpt_Obvious posted:

I thought they branded it socialism with Chinese characteristics.

quote:

Chinese censors deleted an article on Wednesday that reportedly leaked full-year population figures for 2023, revealing a plummeting birth rate despite ongoing efforts by the ruling party to encourage people to have families.

While official figures won't be confirmed until Jan. 17, the Mother and Infant Daily news service said 7.88 million babies were born across China 2023, 1.68 million fewer than in 2022.

Given that 11 million people died this year, China's population has therefore fallen by 3.12 million, the population of a medium-sized Chinese city, the report said, citing the City Data account on Baidu's Tieba forum site.

The City Data post had been deleted by Wednesday evening local time, suggesting that the topic is a highly sensitive one for the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which is keen to sing the praises of the economy in a bid to boost people's confidence in the future.

However, the reported figures were in line with earlier estimates, including one by Peking University School of Medicine scholar Qiao Jie, who told a forum in August that the number of newborns has plummeted by 40% over the past five years.

"The number of births in 2023 is expected to range from 7-8 million," Qiao was quoted as saying by the China Business News.

The journal China Philanthropist predicted in May that new births this year would come in under the 8 million mark, extrapolating figures that were available at the time.

corona familiar posted:

vaxxed?

quote:

A Chinese expert who declined to be named for fear of reprisals told Radio Free Asia that the leaked figures likely signal a turning point in the aging of the population, and blamed the three years of stringent zero-COVID policies under Xi.

"The official statistics for negative population growth in 2023 are the direct result of three years of pandemic restrictions and the zero-COVID policy, which dampened people's desire to have children," the expert said.

"Now, the aging of society is truly accelerating, and birth rates can't keep up with [that].”

The researcher said people have no energy left after three years of zero-COVID policies.

quote:

Though lasting for only a short time, these “contrails” have a daily impact on atmospheric temperatures that is greater than that from the accumulated carbon emissions from all aircraft since the Wright Brothers first took to the skies more than a century ago.

More alarming still, researchers warned late last month that efforts by engineers to cut aircraft CO2 emissions by making their engines more fuel-efficient will create more, whiter, and longer-lasting contrails — notably in the tropics, where the biggest increases in flights are expected. In a paper being widely praised by other experts in the field, Lisa Bock and Ulrike Burkhardt of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, forecast a near-tripling in the “radiative forcing” from contrails by 2050.

Aircraft emissions are rising up the climate agenda. With renewable energy taking over from fossil fuels in power generation, and the rise of electric cars, the continued surge in flights is increasingly seen as potentially the worst future threat to the climate, not least because there are as yet no carbon-free replacement technologies or international regulations to bring down emissions.

Civilian aircraft currently emit about 2 percent of anthropogenic CO2 and, once the effects of contrails are included, cause 5 percent of warming. But there is a key difference. While CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and has a long-lasting effect, contrails last a matter of hours at most, and their warming impact is temporary.

unwantedplatypus posted:

I was under the impression that biofuels referred to fuels made from photosynthetic organisms. Ultimately making the biofuels requires more energy than is gained from burning them so its not an energy source, but the process itself is carbon neutral because the organisms use atmospheric CO2; and energy could be supplied from solar, wind, hydro, etc.

unwantedplatypus posted:

I suspect you don't need to turn the amazon rainforest into switchgrass plantations if you're using biofuels for niche applications which require energy-dense low-weight fuel (such as air travel) rather than attempting to replace all of our fossil fuel consumption.

unwantedplatypus posted:

As part of a comprehensive land use change cutting out many of the gross inefficiencies of land usage, you could probably still reserve some amount of land for biofuel production while drastically reducing total land use compared to present levels.

Something something "none of this matters because it is socio-politically impossible."

"Hey I noticed you're talking about decarbonization. Did you know that its impossible and useless and you're an idiot for talking about it?"
"Did you know nuclear is bad because of the large time to pay-off and high construction costs?"
"Did you know solar and wind will only be used to add to the energy capacity of our fundamentally fossil-fuel based civilization?"
"Did you know biofuels require croplands to growth?"
"Did you know new coal power plants are still being opened?"
"Did you know that soil degradation is a civilizational threat independent of CO2 levels?"
"Did you know about the clathrate gun?"
"Did you know about the Thwaites ice sheet?"
"Did you know about the aerosol effect?"
"Did you know that geo-engineering is easy to do and could easily make things worse"?
"Did you know about aquifer depletion?"

Genuinely one of the most tedious and numerous types of guy in C-SPAM.

I do not even care, at this point, if it is objectively correct. It can be safely assumed that any discussion of a future where everyone doesn't die is pre-supposing a future in which global civilization persists, even if that particular scenario is unlikely. The alternative warrants no discussion and will be something we simply suffer through until we don't.

Orange Devil posted:

Is it riverine or seagoing?

Trimson Grondag 3 posted:

hell yeah of course noted chip maker BAE got some funding.