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Please don't post unsubstantive comments, or flamebait, or take HN threads into ideological battle.
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The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
111–120 of 133 posts
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#112[flagged]
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Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here? They ask you not to use this site for ideological battle, nor to post in the flamewar style. Downvotes of such comments are correct on HN.
Yes, someone else started it, but users here are asked to follow the guidelines whether someone else is or not.
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#113Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here? They ask you not to use this site for ideological battle, nor to post in the flamewar style. Downvotes of such comments are correct on HN. Yes, someone else started it, but users here are asked to follow the guidelines whether someone else is or not.
Sorry I don't understand your criticism. Is it not allowed to discuss capitalism or socialism, it is automatically an "ideological battle"? That doesn't make sense imo.
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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~20 million people die every year, because it is not profitable to feed them, and give them clean water and medicine. So please think about that number. Deaths solely due to a lack of profitability.
Can you give a citation? Where does this happen? Is it really just capitalist unwillingness to deliver food, or are these people in the hands of dictators, and it is capitalist unwillingness to sacrifice soldiers to topple them? And do capitalists start wars, or governments?
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
They believe in a fairy tale of green energy without any side effects. I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution. The irony is that they blame their parents, whose generation protested against nuclear power. Presumably the only alternative that would have stood a chance to reduce climate change.
> I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution. Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution? (Hint: Killing the ecosystem that sustains humans is not it.)
I'm not the one claiming there is an easy solution. I think Bill Gates also said the people claiming there is an easy solution is the biggest problem with fighting climate change, so maybe read his essays on the topic.
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solar apparently hasn't become viable after years of subsidization. And the problem of storing energy is still not solved. There is no solar power at night. Subsidization of coal would of course be equally wrong.
> Solar apparently hasn't become viable after years of subsidization Whether that is true or not: How do you expect it to become viable when coal is subsidized? > And the problem of storing energy is still not solved. Source?
Isn't it common knowledge that the energy storage problem still isn't solved. What solution do you think exists?
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution. Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution? (Hint: Killing the ecosystem that sustains humans is not it.)
> Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution? Nuclear. Solar farms take 450 times more land than nuclear to produce the same amount of energy (source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/08... )
Sorry, but that's just a dumb comparison. For one, solar farms don't use land the same way nuclear power plants do, in terms of effects on the environment/ecosystem (you potentially can even do agriculture on the same land ...). Then, you can't install nuclear power plants on rooftops, but you can put solar panels there, thus using no land at all. And finally, you avoid a lot of losses and don't need as much distribution infrastructure when you have solar panels within the city where the energy is being used.
Also, I don't see how you could build sufficient nuclear capacity in time to sufficiently reduce carbon emissions without compromising safety (after all, nuclear energy is inherently extremely dangerous--the fact that we so far have been able to operate it very safely does not mean that that is an inherent property of the technology that we could maintain if we tried building hundreds of gigawatts in a decade). Nuclear (fission) energy might have been a sensible route in the past, but it doesn't seem so right now.
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution. Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution? (Hint: Killing the ecosystem that sustains humans is not it.)
I'm not the one claiming there is an easy solution. I think Bill Gates also said the people claiming there is an easy solution is the biggest problem with fighting climate change, so maybe read his essays on the topic.
But you claimed that protesters demanding a solution were a problem, or that they were unjustified because they couldn't offer a solution. Why would people have to present a solution in order to demand for their future to not be destroyed?
After all, "solving climate change" is technologically a solved problem. Humanity has all the technological knowledge to switch to carbon-free energy production. The problem are the costs of that switch based on current technology. But if we can't reduce the costs further, that still does not invalidate the demand of protesters who don't want to be stuck with paying the massive price of having to deal with a broken ecosystem later. It's still a perfectly justified demand that current generations pay in order to avoid costs for future generations.
Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here? They ask you not to use this site for ideological battle, nor to post in the flamewar style. Downvotes of such comments are correct on HN. Yes, someone else started it, but users here are asked to follow the guidelines whether someone else is or not.
Sorry I don't understand your criticism. Is it not allowed to discuss capitalism or socialism, it is automatically an "ideological battle"? That doesn't make sense imo.
It's not allowed to foment generic ideological tangents with indignant rhetoric.
"Socialism starved a couple million people" is a classic example. All of that has been repeated countless times. It is predictable, therefore it does not gratify curiosity, therefore it's not what HN is for, and that means it's off topic.
If you have something genuinely new to say, that might be ok—but then an internet forum is not a good medium for that; you should write a book or a scholarly essay instead, and maybe link to it here.