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What Will Happen in the 2020s

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Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#571
post #416

So, I have a problem with a large number of these points. Each point alone requires a long rebuttal that no one would read. I think Fred is way off here. The bullet points: 1. There will be no global change in human behaviour and activity that is against the short term interests of those people. Period. The way to replace fossil fuels with renewables is by them being a cheaper source of power. We're well on the way h…

> Each point alone requires a long rebuttal that no one would read I'd like to sell you a solution for that. Brief bullet points like the one you made are readable, but when people disagree you need hypertext links to your supporting arguments. I made a web app for creating such trees of arguments. Here's an example in which you'll see I think the dangers of nuclear waste are debatable: https://en.howtruthful.com/o/n…

Reminds me of arguman https://en.arguman.org/

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#572
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you do…

It doesn’t help that I get headaches when I eat my garden grown tomatoes. No such reaction to eating a ribeye. How tall will my children grow up to be on a plant based diet? I want my children to grow up to be stronger than those around them.

Feed them a well-balanced plant-based diet and they’ll be fine. No guarantees on them being stronger than those around them, because if everyone wants this someone’s got to miss out due to chance ;)

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#573
post #17

> We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. Funny, I was digging into this issue just this morning. One family member supports Andrew Yang, but another won't support anyone who advocates for nuclear power. Despite Thorium not being fully proven yet, I lean toward agreement with Yang: https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_p…

I have been hearing how great Thorium reactor are for last 15 years. Still not commercially available, almost as vaporware as fusion.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there's no reason veggie meat wouldn't become much cheaper than real meat. It takes a lot less resources to grow a bushel of soy or wheat or GMO super-grain than a quarter pound of a cow.

It takes basically no resources to graze cattle on grasslands. Plus, as a bonus it sequesters carbon and creates topsoil.

Most of the meat we eat doesn’t come from cattle on grasslands.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#575
post #323
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt dashcams and gps will be required in the next decade but I bet installing them will get you a discount of some kind.

I'd be surprised if cars didn't come with cameras built-in as a standard. Think Tesla Sentry mode.

They should. It wouldn't be hard for carmakers to add a camera at the top of the windshield. The US already requires every new car to come with a backup camera.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. Why Fred thinks China won't have the same short term self-interest that every other country does seems fanciful at best. I think the reason would be that most countries that make short-term decisions are ones that have democratic elections every few years and need to avoid pissing off too many people. China's authoritarian system may have more leeway with short-term pain for longer-term strategic initiatives not…

Our evidence from the 20th century shows that the only countries that are successful are democratic. The list of authoritarian countries that crashed and burned is longer than the list of democratic countries that did the same.

Qatar has been doing rather well, I’d say.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#577
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, make my physical workspace disappear from my view as much as possible. When I'm at my desk, 99% of what I see is my screen, 1% goes for the occasional look at the tea cup. No room, or need, for decorations and fluff.

In a sense, you are already virtualizing your workspace in macintosh-chic :) Perhaps your coworkers would be required to execute a perfect Japanese tea ceremony before interrupting you.

What's the deal with this videogamey bullshit you're proposing? Why would anyone want to participate in this? First thing I'm doing is installing an adblocker/augblocker to byoass this sort of thing.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#578
post #85

Many of these seem like wishful thinking on the part of the author. For example, take the first one: > The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. Oddly enough, if you go back to 2010 for predictions about the next decade, you'll see quite a few people talking about "peak oil." Almost nobody predicted a sharp turnaround in oil production and I don't think anyon…

Peak oil is funny, there were a lot of people that were riding the doom train and predicting that we where heading to the sudden crash kind of collapse. Obviously it didn't happen and those ideas are comical.

Peak oil didn't so much disappear as its ideas matured into a much more realistic depiction of it. Dr Hagans said that naming it peak oil was a bit silly and that it should have been called "Peak benefit of oil to society", that something that I can get behind.

The current idea is that the second peak will occur somewhere in the mid 20's as the debt load on fracking slows down additional drilling locations, this will raise prices and thus bring on even more newer more costly supplies as ultra-deep sea drilling, coal liquefaction becomes viable. Wheather this leads to a new increase in supply of just sustaining a plateau is anyone guess. Hopefully demand decreases and we move to alternative energy sources in time.

Some of the more reserved writers in the field did predict the production rebound and the higher prices that came with it, the idea that the issues of peak oil would be something that is a rocky road type of event that happens and fluctuates over a century not a sudden event. Folks like John Michael Greer and Dr Nate Hagans seem to be the most realistic folks in this area nowadays talking about the limits of oil production while focusing on possible future energy solutions.

John Michael Greer is a staggeringly convincing writer that has a fairly solid concept of the future of western industrial society. Essentially the idea that due to a wide degree of economic, social and environmental factors that we are in a situation that cannot be recovered from. He writes things that I don't want to agree with but they appear to hold water at least on the short term. I would recommend his books 'The Long Decent' and 'Dark Age America'.

The other reason why I mention his work is that his predictions are fairly in line with yours, the idea that the environmental movement is about to go quiet again because of the extreme message being pushed. That we are still learning how the climate reacts and that we do not have all the information. Climate blowback is going to be extreme but it will be a slow moving event.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#579

All cars will be required to have dashcams. Either by insurance companies or by governments. All cars will be required to have GPS, and be tracked in real time. This is already the case with the majority of commercial vehicles. Incremental steps in autonomous cars, first starting with 'drone' cars. Cars and trucks that are operated from a remote location. This will be piggy backed on existing technology. Cheap camera…

Your last point got me thinking about people sitting in a dark room waiting for autonomous cars to have trouble on the road then alert them to intervene, turning 1 driver:1 car into 1 driver:20 cars.

You’d need a pretty good AI to be able to detect that it’s in trouble quickly enough for a human to react in time.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#580
post #138

> Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today. Much of the world’s food production will move from farms to laboratories. This needs a huge asterisks at the end of it right? You could argue that plant based diets already dominate the world. Now if he's claiming that "muscular" foods that are produced in a lab will pound for po…

Same. Beyond the obvious lack of perspective on the developing world (where meat-eating can only grow), entire cultures are completely wrapped up in the rituals around eating meat and will resist any attempt to go back to the bad old days of meat scarcity.

As an Indian, I just hope fake meat can become good enough to stop the widespread adoption of real meat into Indian diets. India is largely vegetarian (eating meat, even in non-vegetarian households, is like a once-a-week affair) and that has been good for the planet.

1.4B people adopting meat as they become wealthier would be disastrous for the planet

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