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Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#171

Post by meowface »

olau wrote: post #147
sunir wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of attempts to think about other systems, implement them, and advocate for change. They all lack something important: success. Also ironically it is a market of competing ideas to markets.

> They all lack something important: success. Are you sure? The increasing automation will perhaps give us a future where most people don't have to work and we'll still have plenty of food, shelter, social interaction and entertainment - the latter is almost free in this digital world. Maybe it is just me, but it's as if one can start to see the contours of it forming, slowly, though, as many of the remaining automat…

This will probably happen someday, but it's probably centuries away, or at least a single century away if we're being very optimistic. We have to figure out how we can deal with the problems we're facing in our lifetimes.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#172

Post by [deleted] »

jahaja wrote: post #150
sunir wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may have sounded profound but it comes off poorly because it gets the theory of evolution completely wrong. Success is the differentiator that allows for the selection part of natural selection. Also evolution cannot “grind to a halt” because it is an outcome of thermodynamics. Evolution isn’t a metaphor. It is still the underlying physical process even in selection of political systems.

Did I though? Success is the differentiator post-mutation. If mutation itself ceases due to the prerequisite, evolution does too. But why do you feel the need to read and dissect an analogy so literally in the first place? It's not the point.

[deleted]

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#173

Post by sunir »

jahaja wrote: post #150
sunir wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may have sounded profound but it comes off poorly because it gets the theory of evolution completely wrong. Success is the differentiator that allows for the selection part of natural selection. Also evolution cannot “grind to a halt” because it is an outcome of thermodynamics. Evolution isn’t a metaphor. It is still the underlying physical process even in selection of political systems.

Did I though? Success is the differentiator post-mutation. If mutation itself ceases due to the prerequisite, evolution does too. But why do you feel the need to read and dissect an analogy so literally in the first place? It's not the point.

It’s not an analogy. Evolution is the actual process. No ifs ands or buts about it.

There are myriad attempts to try alternatives to some ideal “market economy”. From Venezuela to Burning Man to Wikipedia to China to Japan to Romania to the Canadian wheat board.

What succeeds, lives.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#174

Post by sunir »

olau wrote: post #147
sunir wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of attempts to think about other systems, implement them, and advocate for change. They all lack something important: success. Also ironically it is a market of competing ideas to markets.

> They all lack something important: success. Are you sure? The increasing automation will perhaps give us a future where most people don't have to work and we'll still have plenty of food, shelter, social interaction and entertainment - the latter is almost free in this digital world. Maybe it is just me, but it's as if one can start to see the contours of it forming, slowly, though, as many of the remaining automat…

Your counterexample is an unrealized future hypothetical utopia. I am not sure where you are going with that, but I am sure that isn’t a “success” because it doesn’t exist yet. That is just a simple question of logical validity not of empiricism.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#175

Post by sunir »

jahaja wrote: post #170
Sacho wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If mutation itself ceases due to the prerequisite, evolution does too. But then your reply doesn't make sense. Here's what parent said: > There are plenty of attempts to think about other systems, implement them , and advocate for change. They all lack something important: success. That part would imply that mutation is happening, just unsuccessfully. If you wanted to disagree with that, then your analogy was just…

Given what I wrote in my original comment I interpret the reply as standard status quo apologetics and implying that success needs to be a prerequisite. Then the analogy seems appropriate no?

Success is the selective measure. Not the prerequisite. The prerequisite is a population that changes over time relative to the selective pressure.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#176

Post by sunir »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #169
sunir wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of attempts to think about other systems, implement them, and advocate for change. They all lack something important: success. Also ironically it is a market of competing ideas to markets.

There's not been too many as it's remarkably difficult to implement an alternative to a market economy outside of revolution. That likely favours specific alternatives. I've not seen attempts to implement any approach that is seeking sustainability, or constrain growth, or break out of the duopoly of centrally planned vs free market. That leaves a lot of ideas, of varying credibility, that have never been trialled in…

Coops, communes, nonprofits, open source projects... lots of attempts to develop a sustainable micro economy. Build up from there.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#177

Post by anonymous »

candiodari wrote: post #118
DennisP wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do that stuff but it's not going to save the world. To save the world we need: a substantial price on carbon, a faster path to developing advanced nuclear power (in addition to continuing renewables deployment), a major rollout of lab-grown meat as soon as it's affordable with decent quality, negative emissions methods both technological (direct air capture) and biological (kelp, reforesting), and maybe some kind o…

> To save the world we need: a substantial price on carbon, No we don't. Global warming is a self-reinforcing effect. So there's no point to slowing down emissions. No point at all. Even if you get it to zero, the resulting concentrations will still accelerate into the right. Even if you get it negative at the same rate we're producing it today (which would eliminate all human co2 contributions EVER in ~60 years) wou…

No post body was provided.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#178

Post by DennisP »

TomK32 wrote: post #97
DennisP wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do that stuff but it's not going to save the world. To save the world we need: a substantial price on carbon, a faster path to developing advanced nuclear power (in addition to continuing renewables deployment), a major rollout of lab-grown meat as soon as it's affordable with decent quality, negative emissions methods both technological (direct air capture) and biological (kelp, reforesting), and maybe some kind o…

> developing advanced nuclear power Deploying renewable energy generators is just so much fast and more flexible, and demolition (either controlled or uncontrolled) isn't such a risk as with a nuclear power plant. Stopping our existing coal power plants while cutting down on energy consumption; Sure, it's an educational problem but during WWII people collected scrap metal for the war effort.

The problem with renewables alone is storage. The big Tesla grid battery in Australia does 100MW and stores 129MWh. Its capital cost was $90 million: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/27/south-aus...

That's great as part of a diverse grid but some areas don't have hydro/geothermal, so if those places want to go entirely carbon-free without nuclear we need to rely entirely on wind/solar/battery. That means, at a minimum, we need to get through a windless night.

So let's say about 12 hours. For 12 GWh we'd need 12,000/129=93 Tesla-scale plants, costing $8.3 billion. That's just for minimum storage, not including the wind turbines and solar panels.

We have to take the current cost of wind/solar and add another 50% or so, since we need to generate enough to fill the storage, not just meet current needs during the day. Then we need to overbuild even more, because on a cloudy day we only get about half as much energy out of our solar panels. Another issue is the sheer amount of lithium and cobalt you'd need; we're pushing the limits already, and we'll need a lot more for electric cars.

At this point you're probably thinking long-distance transmission to collect wind power from a wide area, but that's also expensive. More importantly, it's politically difficult and time-consuming to get the land rights.

By comparison, construction cost for modern conventional nuclear plants is under $8 billion/GW: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-as...

Of course, there are emerging technologies to help with all of this. Wind, solar, and batteries are all getting cheaper, and batteries using other raw materials are being developed.

But if we're going to look to future technologies, let's do that with nuclear as well. Molten salt reactors look way cheaper than conventional reactors, and fast reactors can eat nuclear waste. At least half a dozen startup companies are working on molten salt reactors, several are working on fast reactors, and Russia has two commercial fast reactors on their grid right now.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#179

Post by jahaja »

sunir wrote: post #173
jahaja wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I though? Success is the differentiator post-mutation. If mutation itself ceases due to the prerequisite, evolution does too. But why do you feel the need to read and dissect an analogy so literally in the first place? It's not the point.

It’s not an analogy. Evolution is the actual process. No ifs ands or buts about it. There are myriad attempts to try alternatives to some ideal “market economy”. From Venezuela to Burning Man to Wikipedia to China to Japan to Romania to the Canadian wheat board. What succeeds, lives.

Ok, given your replies I can only conclude that I should never use an analogy in a reply to you ever again. You've read everything literally and run away with it. The only thing I was attempting to say is that the random mutation phase is a part of evolution and that can't have a success prerequisite. This was intended to say that one can't require previous success to be a prerequisite to political and economic ideas.

Re: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

#180

Post by jahaja »

sunir wrote: post #175
jahaja wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what I wrote in my original comment I interpret the reply as standard status quo apologetics and implying that success needs to be a prerequisite. Then the analogy seems appropriate no?

Success is the selective measure. Not the prerequisite. The prerequisite is a population that changes over time relative to the selective pressure.

I have never talked about the selective phase.
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