41–50 of 104 posts
How many nuclear powered vessels would it take to generate and pump in sufficient oxygen?
Well, considering most of the atmospheric oxygen is produced by phytoplankton in the ocean that's a receipt for suffocation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dinosaurs died off. Earth is fine. I think unless we start blowing up Earth with nuclear weapons on purpose, it will be fine. If humans are gone today, the CO2 levels will go back to normal pretty quickly with plenty of animals surviving all over the place.
> Earth will be fine I'm so tired of hearing this empty phrase being used. Sure it was fun as a punchline but move along already. It's such a derailment of the discussion. It doesn't state what we mean by "earth" - is it the rock, the ecosystem, life itself? And it implies that the "earth" that is fine is the one that we actually should care about. I have no idea, because the way it's used is not really falsifiable a…
Regardless, when I say Earth, I mean the rock and likely ecosystems that currently exist and might develop on it. I think these things cannot be easily separated that's why Earth is used.
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> as apex predators we are extremely dependent on the lower branches of the foodchain working properly Would you mind elaborating on this? It's not clear to me how we would be less dependent on lower branches of the food chain if we weren't apex predators.
The key is extremely. As an example, DDT sprayed to get rid of certain insects killed off a large number of birds at the top of the food chain, such trouble tends to concentrate. So poison the lower levels and the intermediate levels might survive but the apex species will suffer the most.
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We fixed the ozone layer and stopped acid rain. We can fix this. It just takes commitment.
We didn't have to give up cars for the ozone layer, though. In fact, no one had to give up anything, because they invented new types of aerosol propellents. We are never going to fix this.
Never is a long time.
As a community, HN seems to think nuclear energy is easy while carpooling or flying less are misguided wastes of effort.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We fixed the ozone layer and stopped acid rain. We can fix this. It just takes commitment.
We didn't have to give up cars for the ozone layer, though. In fact, no one had to give up anything, because they invented new types of aerosol propellents. We are never going to fix this.
It's just going to take way longer to switch over, since those things are way larger parts of everyone's life and economics than hairspray was.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key is extremely. As an example, DDT sprayed to get rid of certain insects killed off a large number of birds at the top of the food chain, such trouble tends to concentrate. So poison the lower levels and the intermediate levels might survive but the apex species will suffer the most.
Oh, if you're referring to biological magnification then yes, but that's not the problem we're talking about, right? We're talking about global warming, which leads to species dying off (due to habitat loss, etc.) rather than staying alive but accumulating toxins... that's where I don't get how things would be any different if we were lower in the food chain?
I hate this feeling of hopelessness regarding global warming. It feels like even if you were a billionaire/massive corp, at some point you would say "wow we should stop, or else there won't even be a world to spend this money in".