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Oh, 2022

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Re: Oh, 2022

#381

Post by klabb3 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #196
elihu wrote: post #123

> "Looking further afield: it seems likely that the end of internal combustion engines will be in sight. Some countries are already scheduling a ban on IC engines to come in after 2030—electric cars are now a maturing technology with clear advantages in every respect except recharge time. Once those IC cars are no longer manufactured, we can expect a very rapid ramp-down of extraction and distribution industries for…

From the comments on Charlie's site, and not by me: Wyvernsridge | January 9, 2022 19:06 | Reply 8: I love these kinds of posts! I would, however, caution about thinking that the end of ICE car manufacturing will be dictated solely by government diktat. It will most likely come earlier and more chaotically because of manufacturers being unable to source parts and components to continue making those cars. The auto ind…

I don't think it's unlikely that ICEs will be phased out as quickly as the optimists are suggesting. Once there's critical momentum things move quickly, so +1 from me.

However, all that new electricity demand needs to come from somewhere. Drawing power from the grid at night works great today, but that's because of a coincidental uneven energy demand, which I doubt will last for too long. Once EVs are truly mainstream, it will (1) saturate the grid at all times of day and (2) make the grid more critical than it already is (meaning mitigations like rolling blackouts are gonna be even more infeasible). Sprinkle some demand surges from A/C and heaters from extreme weather events on top of this, and while we're add it let's decommision nuclear prematurely for political points (see e.g. Germany and Sweden).

Anyway, what I mean to say is that electricity supply will be a real problem (especially in the US due to car centrism) and short sighted politicians will need to provide immediate duct-tape fixes. Fossil fuels are sinfully well suited for fast energy injections, and I'm afraid that will often be the only option.

In other words, I worry little about the ICE-EV transition, but that doesn't mean anything for the fossil-renewables transition in general. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's electricity will be dirtier than today's.

Re: Oh, 2022

#382

Post by inasio »

j0057 wrote: post #61

> low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh And lots of other places. About 1 billion people live along coastlines at 20 meters or less above sea level, and 200 million at 5 meters or less. I live in a wealthy country but well within the 5 meters range and am already having to think about whether it wouldn't be more prudent to sell my house today, now that it's still worth something, and emigrate to somewhere with a…

Friend of mine works at IEA, specifically on water projects. Over drinks he told me his biggest worry is the Himalayas basin destabilizing. Water from those glaciers supply something like 2bn+ people.

Re: Oh, 2022

#383

Post by TranquilMarmot »

maxerickson wrote: post #128
TranquilMarmot wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US and got Chickenpox as a child, I think from a classic "Chickenpox party". I'm not sure if I was also vaccinated against it or not... I got Shingles at 25 (I'm 30 now). I didn't believe it at first because I thought Shingles was an "old person's disease". I remember going to the doctor the day it started, and he just prescribed me some painkillers. I said, "I don't think I'll need those I don't feel t…

There's a shingles vaccine, though it's only approved for over 50: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/in... Doesn't seem to be much out there about whether that is because of insurance coverage or if that is the population they tested in or if there are additional factors.

The experience was awful but since I was young when I got it, I lived through it with basically no aftereffects. I had painkillers but could probably have made it through it without them. If I was 50+ I could see it taking a real toll on my body.

Re: Oh, 2022

#384

Post by tempestn »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #231
xmprt wrote: post #159

I think just as his previous article might have been overly optimistic, this one is overly pessimistic. As the pendulum is in the process of swinging to the other extreme, I think we will see a lot of negative events slowing down now that people are seeing the negative consequences of their actions and try to revert course. For example, even though the world is tending towards a worst place in terms of things like cl…

The pandemic will definitely end in 2022

It looked like that would be the case in 2021 before Delta hit. I certainly think it's possible, but I don't think any of us could say when it will "definitely" end at this point.

Re: Oh, 2022

#385

Post by klabb3 »

beachy wrote: post #278
shmoopi wrote: post #267

Regarding politics, information overflow, and general increase in lunacy. To put it simply, it was expected the level of noise and sensation will rise after smartphones emerged. Loud lunacy seems to be a great way to catch public attention currently and this is well understood by both the media, politicians and vegabonds of wealth. Sensational journalism was always a problem, now add to that billions of people able t…

> But there's good news. I cannot stress enough that it's entirely possible to control the level of exposure to said digital noise. You don't have to follow news, politics and social media intensely. You can just opt out. This is good news in the same sense that it's good news that you can do your bit for the climate crisis by walking everywhere, switching to vegetarianism and wearing only hand-crocheted hemp clothin…

> walking everywhere, switching to vegetarianism and wearing only hand-crocheted hemp clothing

I mean, I agree it's ineffective, but it's hell of a lot better than thinking that paper straws, recycling and buying from companies with some green leaf-looking stamp will solve the problem, which is the majority view. In fact, consuming less — both products and instagrammable experiences — is probably the best you can do in terms of personal footprint, along with not having kids of course.

That said, abstaining and "not playing" isn't gonna cause the revolution, or even a slow paradigm shift. We need to evolve, too. And fortunately, changes happen, even if they rarely get the attention they deserve. One example today is the independent podcast boom - where tabloid-style fear media and Twitter flame wars have been losing market share to... Long form conversation. The cynic in me did not see that coming. It shows, in my opinion, that not even carefully engineered amygdala hijacking is enough to keep people from curiosity and reflection. Human behavior is complex and fascinating.

Re: Oh, 2022

#386

Post by celeduc »

bezospen15 wrote: post #263
j0057 wrote: post #61

> low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh And lots of other places. About 1 billion people live along coastlines at 20 meters or less above sea level, and 200 million at 5 meters or less. I live in a wealthy country but well within the 5 meters range and am already having to think about whether it wouldn't be more prudent to sell my house today, now that it's still worth something, and emigrate to somewhere with a…

You have a solid 20 years before it impacts value. We are getting out in 10 years

Timing a market that's absolutely sure to collapse is notoriously difficult.

Re: Oh, 2022

#387

Post by trinovantes »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #114
ErikAugust wrote: post #76

“If the SARS family of coronaviruses had emerged just a decade earlier it's quite likely we'd be on the brink of civilizational, if not species-level, extinction by now—SARS1 has 20% mortality among patients, MERS (aka SARS2) is up around 35-40% fatal, SARS-NCoV19, aka SARS3, is down around the 1-4% fatality level. If SARS1 had gone pandemic we might plausibly have lost a billion people within two years.” That’s a sc…

The extinction part is hyperbole though - with 7 billion humans out there it would need to hit fatality rates of 99.9...% for a decent chance of the human species to be completely wiped out. And also assuming that it would persist and/or spread well enough to also wipe out the various uncontacted tribes on 2-3 continents.

At that fatality rate, the virus would probably struggle to spread as its carriers would all die first. The sweet spot is probably around 40-50% like the bubonic plague

Re: Oh, 2022

#388

Post by wiether »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #186
walrus01 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the immediate personal need to not live in a flooded zone is one thing to consider another thing to think about is the global geopolitical/civil war/economic possible disruptions and consequences of something like potentially half to 3/4 of bangladesh's population becoming international refugees. imagine what happened with syrians around 2012-2015 and people trying to get into europe multiplied by a factor of 50. and…

Global Warming is absolutely a slow motion comet strike. We don't believe the science, because we don't WANT to believe it. Those of us that DO believe it feel like robots, speaking to the rest of mankind in ones and zeros. And it's still 10-20 years away, we all think. We will just move north (or south). We will just move inland or uphill. We can science our way out of this shit. Not true. None of that is true. When…

First time I read a comment on the Internet about so well how bad things are, how even worse they are going to be and how nothing is actually done to avoid it. Thank you.

And if I may add, before COVID I was also concerned about antibiotic resistance, mainly because of how we produce a big part of our food (meat). But after two years of COVID, and given how we dealt with it so far, I think it's an even more worrying threat than I thought. Combined with air, water and soil pollution, there's too many fires to look after.

Re: Oh, 2022

#390

Post by oblio »

barry-cotter wrote: post #274
oblio wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Incas had a very limited set of Old Worlders coming over, though. Not hundreds of flights per day. Plus it depends on what you mean by civilization. What the Incas built was sophisticated but child's play compared to a modern civilization. A SARS 1 global pandemic would have probably set back the entire world 50 years or more. Cities would have been abandoned, supply chains destroyed, most likely major wars start…

> Diseases > Before 1492, Native Americans (Amerindians) hosted none of the acute infectious diseases that had long bedeviled most of Eurasia and Africa: measles, smallpox, influenza, mumps, typhus, and whooping cough, among others. In most places other than isolated villages, these had become endemic childhood diseases that killed one-fourth to one-half of all children before age six. Survivors, however, carried par…

You didn't address my direct point (speed of propagation) plus guess what, those wiped out several civilizations in the New World, directly contradicting your entire subthread.
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