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Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

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Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#151

Post by TeMPOraL »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #117
rndgermandude wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitamin-D deficiency may cause severe covid-19, or severe covid-19 may cause vitamin-D deficiency (covid-19 affects the kidneys second worst after lungs it seems, and you need kidneys for vitamin-D processing), or a little bit of both. Which one it is, is not yet known.

Vitamin D is fat soluble and “buffered” in the body; all of which is to say that no one goes from good vitamin D levels to being vitamin D deficient in the time it takes to get infected and develop serious Covid-19 symptoms.

Unless the body starts burning vitamin D during the infection for some reason.

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#152

Post by mytailorisrich »

remus wrote: post #110
elcapitan wrote: post #93

Hm, is this actually true? According to this travel site, it was already possible before Corona? https://www.nestadventure.com/blog/mount-everest-from-kathma... "Contrary to everyone’s belief, Mount Everest can actually be seen from Kathmandu. The Chandragiri hills in Kathmandu offer a panoramic view of the Himalayan ranges and Mount Everest on a clear day. There are also viewpoints and hill stations just outside Kat…

The 'living memory' claim seems a bit far fetched, too. Let's pretend living memory means the last 100 years, that'd mean air pollution levels in 1920 wee so poor you couldn't see Everest from Kathmandu. I'm no expert, but I don't think Nepal and the surrounding area of China were industrialised at that time, and there definitely weren't many vehicles on the road at the time, so where would the air pollution have com…

The surrounding area of China is Tibet, which is virtually empty, so I doubt there is much pollution over there.

I think the main issue in Kathmandu is that it is surrounded by mountains, which trap pollution in. This is a problem for all cities with similar geography.

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#154

Post by ohyeshedid »

trhway wrote: post #144
ohyeshedid wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see discussions like this I never see thoughts on what to do with all those animals. What do you do with the 70B animals we're no longer consuming?

>Every time I see discussions like this I never see thoughts on what to do with all those animals. [until the aliens bring tomorrow the mass production lines of cheap lab meat] Because of naturally gradual process of lab meat quality increase and price decrease there will be no point in time when suddenly "we have 70B animals we're no longer consuming "

>Once we finally have artificial meat and thus stop killing sentient beings...

But that's literally in your scenario. If you don't have an answer, that's fine, because all of this is idealism. I just never see any conversation pertaining to what we do with all the animals.

It seems like it comes down to a substantial culling, as letting them loose would be disastrous for a few obvious reasons.

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#155

Post by OscarCunningham »

ohyeshedid wrote: post #131
trhway wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't the 70B of farm animals just a part of the "7.5B humans" problem? Anyway, i think that it is a crying shame that we're still farming animals instead of growing artificial meat. Once we finally have artificial meat and thus stop killing sentient beings, i think that would result in a great leap in our conscience, empathy, etc. - it will unleash a great deal of human mental development with natural results in soc…

Every time I see discussions like this I never see thoughts on what to do with all those animals. What do you do with the 70B animals we're no longer consuming?

Continue eating them as usual but stop breeding new ones. Most of them only live a few months, they'll all be gone within two years.

The species won't go extinct either, we can still keep some around in their natural habitats and zoos, which are both much nicer conditions than most farms. Preferably we won't keep around the breeds that were created for farming, they just aren't healthy animals.

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#156

Post by teruakohatu »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #143
teruakohatu wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A polluting factory has to exist somewhere. Edit: I am getting a lot of down votes so let me clarify: if external costs are not internalised, humans will ignore it. Internalising the cost does not even need to mean tax. Many clothing brands in my country, even the budget brands (think Walmart), have been pressured by consumers into using more ethical factories. The same could be done by forcing companies to disclose…

It could have been non-polluting, but instead of redesigning, it's easier now to get nations to compete against each other for the location of that plant - and as part of that competition, relax the environmental protections. The "freedom of movement" for corporations (freedom of movement of capital?) has plenty of benefits, but this is one of the negative side effects.

My solution is for all governments to take responsibility, tax pollution and for consumers to understand the environmental costs of products, possibly by forcing disclosure.

I don't understand what your solution is. Ban importing goods? Tax imported goods based on factory pollution and standards?

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#157

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

iainmerrick wrote: post #103
olivermarks wrote: post #92

Longer term Covid19 is very bad for public transport. People are gravitating back to owning their own germ free vehicles Time to buy a car? Industry hopes for coronavirus silver lining | Free to read https://www.ft.com/content/488d5886-c6af-4e80-a479-36aca26ed...

Though hopefully using them less, at least? If you’re sufficiently worried about COVID to switch from public transport to a car, why would you use it to travel into an office every day?

Because, for most employees, this decision is not theirs, and they need their salary to survive?

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#158

Post by adrianN »

411111111111111 wrote: post #85
acslater00 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for COPD but I'm very familiar with a different chronic pulmonary disease (Cystic Fibrosis), and it seems to _strangely_ not be a huge risk factor for poor COVID outcomes. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S156919932... No one really has a good story for why (and it may not hold) but it seems to be consistent with the idea that the most important variable is truly just age.

Last study I read put a 99% correlation on vitamin d deficiency and getting a severe case of covid19. Which was significantly more than age correlated on the same dataset.

Here is a good article that summarizes what we know about Vitamin D and Covid-19: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23255647

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#159

Post by TeMPOraL »

teruakohatu wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been non-polluting, but instead of redesigning, it's easier now to get nations to compete against each other for the location of that plant - and as part of that competition, relax the environmental protections. The "freedom of movement" for corporations (freedom of movement of capital?) has plenty of benefits, but this is one of the negative side effects.

My solution is for all governments to take responsibility, tax pollution and for consumers to understand the environmental costs of products, possibly by forcing disclosure. I don't understand what your solution is. Ban importing goods? Tax imported goods based on factory pollution and standards?

Knowing the solution is the easy part. The hard part is how to get there, and how to keep the solution working.

"All governments taking responsibility simultaneously" is not something that ever happens. And even if it did, in a moment of selfless reflection of all global leaders, weaker economies will still have a powerful incentive to relax the standards to compete better with stronger economies. I don't have a solution, I'm just saying how things are. Restricting the ability of multinationals to play countries against each other would help in this matter, but it would probably gum up the economy too hard to be worth the attempt (not to mention, it would have to be another thing most governments would have to agree on simultaneously, otherwise the ones to attempt it immediately lose).

The overall point is: it is a tragedy of the commons, just not a local one - an international one. The solution to tragedy of the commons is to have a higher authority unilaterally force participants to limit their use of the commons. But we don't have any higher authority above nation states, so we're ill-equipped to solve tragedies of the commons at international level.

Re: Mount Everest is visible from Kathmandu for first time in living memory

#160

Post by duncanawoods »

jusssi wrote: post #130
valesco wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, however I wonder how they accounted for the fact that most everyone is deficient in vitamin d.

So you made me curious and I googled. Not quite most everyone, it rather seems to be regional: under 20% in Northern Europe, 30-60% in rest of Europe, up to 80% in Middle East. Source: https://eje.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/eje/180/4/EJE-1...

Huh, weird. I would have assumed deficiency would be inversely proportional to amount of sunshine. Do people in northern europe really experience so much more “sun on skin” time or is it wholly diet driven?
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