271–280 of 522 posts
[1] https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_ha04600x.pd...
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> 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…
Trade-off: Humanity as a species ends. Which gadget do you feel is worth that?
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> 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…
I think you're looking at the world's history with rose-colored glasses. World poverty is at the lowest levels today than it has been in recorded history: https://ourworldindata.org/slides/world-poverty/#/declining-... I think you'd be hard pressed to find a time in history when life was better than it is today. And if you did find one, it would be so long ago than population levels were a fragment of what they are n…
You mean how we can fix the leaks.
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"Ultimately it is the lack of spirituality in people that's killing the planet." Bad accounting is killing our planet. Neglecting important parts of the balance sheet creates perverse incentives.
If everyone was seeking enlightenment, there would be no incentives. Incentives are entirely constructions of the ego. Also, most of the posters seem ignorant to the fact that science and rationality are equally as dogmatic as the most fundamentalist religion. All beliefs are false, there is no argument against that.
I can't argue spirituality, enlightenment. "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him."
While I personally believe we'd all be better off reconnecting with awe, wonder, our place in the universe... When's the last time you watched the Milky Way? Heard the birds singing without the roar of airliners? ...Those beliefs aren't actionable.
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"Ultimately it is the lack of spirituality in people that's killing the planet." Bad accounting is killing our planet. Neglecting important parts of the balance sheet creates perverse incentives.
If everyone was seeking enlightenment, there would be no incentives. Incentives are entirely constructions of the ego. Also, most of the posters seem ignorant to the fact that science and rationality are equally as dogmatic as the most fundamentalist religion. All beliefs are false, there is no argument against that.
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
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> 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…
Trade-off: Humanity as a species ends. Which gadget do you feel is worth that?
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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…
Make charcoal from wood?
Can someone explain: - since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming - the catastrophic climate prediction models have not proven effective at predicting climate - we should expect moderate increases in warming, which can be beneficial (livable climate, crops etc) - the unquestionable benefits of hydro carbon energy to bring people out of poverty and into modern prosperity (food, healthcare, modern technology) ..what…
- since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming Where does this affirmation come from ?
"The existing concentrations of a particular gas dictate the effect that additional molecules of that gas can have. For gases such as the halocarbons, where the naturally occurring concentrations are zero or very small, their forcing is close to linear in concentration for present-day concentrations. Gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are present in such quantities that significant absorption is already occurring and it is found that their forcing is approximately proportional to the square root of their concentration. (snip) For carbon dioxide, as has already been mentioned, parts of the spectrum are already so opaque that additional molecules of carbon dioxide are even less effective, the forcing is found to be logarithmic in concentration."
From page 49 of http://ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_02...
I don't understand why more isn't done to implement large-scale carbon capture and storage technologies. There are quite well-understood and proven technologies to do this, but they don't seem to be on anybody's agenda. Trying to bring down CO2 concentration by convincing people to give up cars, food and planes is obviously a losing strategy. If we're serious about preventing climate change we're going to have to act…
Aren't trees the ultimate carbon-capture devices? They are solar powered, turn co2 into building materials, and require very little maintenance.
They also take up a lot of space.
[EDIT] I should probably clarify that I have nothing against trees, and they definitely can help with sequestration, and they have lots nice properties. I was mainly reacting against "the ultimate carbon-capture devices", which they really are not.
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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.
Brookings seem to have made a fair effort (best I've seen thus far). It makes sense that combined-cycle gas turbines would pip nuclear power (in most scenarios examined) as they produce highly dispatchable electricity (i.e. their output levels can be changed very rapidly in response to fluctuations in demand for electricity). You can forecast and 'plan ahead' with nuclear, but the ramping times are currently too slow. So you either overbuild, rely on a limited amount of grid-level storage or throw a more responsive form of generation into the mix (i.e. gas turbines).
Most of the cost of nuclear is in building the plant, after which the variable cost of generation is tiny (i.e. you just run it full-bore all the time, since oversupplying doesn't carry a high cost). Coal probably has a similar cost profile (maybe with slightly higher relative variable costs), although on a smaller scale and in a relatively under-regulated market: the WHO estimates pollution from coal-fired generation, not taking into account climate-change, kills ~1m people per year, whereas nuclear containment buildings must be built to withstand a plane crashing directly into it.
But the really big take-away for me is that, if we want to mitigate climate change efficiently (which I'm starting to think is the same as saying 'if we want to mitigate it at all'), we really badly need to place a price on carbon emissions (and their equivalents). It sucks that both extreme sides of the debate don't seem to want this: vested interests will obviously oppose it, and 'extreme greens' seem to think it's some sort of immoral conspiracy designed to allow financial markets to make money off climate change (if we're talking 'cap and trade').
Those who don't like market-based mechanisms such as 'cap and trade' should consider the other side of the coin: it creates the opportunity for direct action on your part. You could buy emissions permits on the open market and then sit on them, permanently lowering the emissions cap. You can finally 'put your money where your mouth is'.