By now it would be good manner for the richest people to invest massively in carbon sequestration.
Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
241–250 of 522 posts
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Foxconn factory workers have a lower suicide rate than the average Chinese.
Can an average Foxconn worker afford an iPhone?
What does that have to do with anything? I build search engines, but cannot afford to buy one. I don't count this as a great injustice.
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the radioactive waste problem solved?
It's a non-problem, compared to various other chemicals we deal with in industry. Nuclear waste is relatively easy to store and there isn't a lot of it. Yes - it's nasty, toxic stuff, but we know how to handle it. Having to store some of it isolated for 10000 years is a concern, yes, especially if you look at the average lifespan of human civilizations. But we already have ways to reuse the waste (fast breeder reacto…
The main benefit - IMO - is that it's relatively compact, lightweight, and solid compared to CO2. If there was a cheap and simple way to condense CO2 into a solid, we could stuff that into the ground instead. But CO2 would have to be stored indefinitely - we will probably see the catastrophic effects of what happens when stored CO2 is released in the atmosphere (permafrost, ice and ocean sediments are releasing their stored CO2 atm). Actually, fossil fuels can be considered to be stored, solid or liquid CO2 already, accumulated over tens or hundreds of millions of years.
On that scale, putting something away for 10K years seems relatively trivial and safe compared to CO2.
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#244Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except here what you label as "pseudo spiritual" is actually the more realistic, scientific and moral way of seeing things. The iPhones and Supermarkets are of the dream reality. A world without consequences, where the Foxconn Factory Workers (or the mines of Congo) do not exist.
The dream reality. I'll bite. What's the dream reality?
Oh, idk. The modern equivalent of Plato's Cave?
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#246We have to expand nuclear power. Many don't like it but at this point we have no other choice. Let solar drive the phasing out of nuclear reactors instead of coal power plants! Sadly in my country (Sweden) nuclear is not only taboo but it's illegal to perform research of the subject.. Laws passed by a severely misinformed "green" movement...
In France we have much nuclear energy, yes it doesn't create much CO2 but the downsides are severe: expensive, long cycles, energy has to be stored in dams anyway. Nuclear incidents get concealed regularly. Leaving nuclear energy is expensive itself.
It seems solar and wind are better investments.
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#247We have to expand nuclear power. Many don't like it but at this point we have no other choice. Let solar drive the phasing out of nuclear reactors instead of coal power plants! Sadly in my country (Sweden) nuclear is not only taboo but it's illegal to perform research of the subject.. Laws passed by a severely misinformed "green" movement...
Yep. Anyone who has bothered to look at the numbers would likely agree with you. To that end: - Here are my numbers on German solar & wind capacity factors (nuclear generally achieves 90% by comparison): https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd... - Sketchier numbers for India: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085871 - The view of the Brookings Institute in 2014: http://www.brookings.edu/~/m…
Thanks for that summary - if I'm right, the summary is that solar is 29 times as expensive as fossil fuels, and wind is 10 times as expensive.
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#248The message I"m getting is not that I have to prepare for something or change energy sources , it's that "our lifestyle is killing the planet much faster than we thought". CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, ou…
> By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger conte…
We get it you are mad.
But you anger makes no sense: your world view is winning. Opinions like the one you replied to are definitely in the minority.
People value their iPhones and disney cruises way more than the natural environment.
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#249The message I"m getting is not that I have to prepare for something or change energy sources , it's that "our lifestyle is killing the planet much faster than we thought". CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, ou…
> By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger conte…
> the ONLY reason you can say this crap is simply because people competed ... and be pretentious and ungrateful about what society have achieved so far.
Even though you're grossly exaggerating what I've said in the comment, I'm still going to answer with a rhetorical question:
What good is all that shit if the price for that is the suffering and death of our children and eventual end of our species ?
This is what the article is really about. ...
My perspective comes from the summers spent with my grandparents - in the village where life was as it has been for thousands of years. They produced no garbage, they breathed clean air and drank clean water. Did they suffer ? Yes of course, from time to time, that's how it's always been.
Frankly, with all our advanced technology, knowledge, medicine, I think we are a lot more unhappier as a whole - you said it yourself, "my blood boils" - and for what ?
Anyway, I think you're angry at the wrong person, because I think we can have both magic and sustainability - if we just change our philosophy. We can look at the last 100 years or so as a 'growth spurt' for humanity - we had to break eggs to make an omelet; now it's time to get back into shape.
Use the best of magic and our ability to create new one and integrate it into a sustainable system, which treats nature as an organism and not as 'resources' and we might be able to survive it.
Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can an average Foxconn worker afford an iPhone?
What does that have to do with anything? I build search engines, but cannot afford to buy one. I don't count this as a great injustice.
Probably because you can use a search engine without owning one.
And yes, I would definetly say it's a problem if workers in a factory can not afford the goods the factory produces.