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Oh, 2022

antipope.org

391–400 of 557 posts

Re: Oh, 2022

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can science our way out of this shit. Not true. Why not? We have a lot of promising developments both in cheap energy production and in reducing the cost to vacuumed green house gases out of the atmosphere. I can easily see a world where we change almost nothing about life and still achieve net negative carbon by just ripping it out of the air. Honestly we even have the technology to do it now just limited will…

> Honestly we even have the technology to do it now just limited will if things ever get real bad that would change very quickly. COVID tells me that’s highly unlikely. We literally have a movement rejecting known-to-save-lives technology for non-scientific reasons. If things get real bad people will dig deeper to try to protect their own lifestyle right now, even if that means screwing things up 10 years from now. A…

> COVID tells me that’s highly unlikely. We literally have a movement rejecting known-to-save-lives technology for non-scientific reasons.

COVID is different because you need a massive majority, 80%+, to follow certain guidelines (vaccine, masks, etc). For carbon it just needs to happen, anyone can do it. If the tech gets cheap enough Bill Gates will just setup shop in the desert and start sucking.

Re: Oh, 2022

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back). I honestly don’t…

Our experience differs from your view. We recently moved from the Bay Area to the Sierra Foothills, near Sonora. There is plenty of land with homes already in place, as well as land suitable for new construction. Land is available in sizes from 10,000 sq. ft. lots to 1,200 acres and everywhere in between. Electricity, propane, and water are commonly available. As a rule of thumb, prices are ~0.25xthe Bay Area. Althou…

> ...increasing number of people who have left the Bay Area and moved to our area. Nearly all of these are remote tech workers.

spot on:

>> a quality of life improvement for a small group of wealthy individuals

Only question is, will the money from this small group of wealthy individuals be sufficient to pay for the full system? We'll see in about 4 years the latest, when satellites will start falling down, and will have to be replaced by new ones...

Re: Oh, 2022

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As long as half your buyers are convinced it isn't going to happen, probably not that hard. Real estate in flood and wildfire zones is still valued very highly today.

Re: Oh, 2022

#394
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…

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…

I wonder where the global cultural position will be when the time comes. Will we of the West choose economic ruin and cultural dilution by mass importation of unskilled bodies or choose to watch 150 million people kill each other while starving to death? Right now the stakes are much lower and our nations would still rather watch refugees die.

Re: Oh, 2022

#395
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They last a hell of a lot longer than they did when we were still putting TEPb in the fuel.

The lifespans of cars have been elongating rapidly. The median car on the road recently passed 12 years. Especially sensible cars with medium-displacement engines making little power through a CVT, these will go a million miles with ease. The long tail of model year 2030 Honda Civics is going to be almost impossible to eradicate without controlling the supply of fossil motor fuels.

I don’t know. I think that few people would prefer to drive an old , slow, non responsive, smelly, inconvenient, and expensive to drive Honda by 2050. These cars are already unloved in Norway. A classic American muscle car or an Italian supercar yes of course, but the Honda Civic will be recycled IMHO.

Re: Oh, 2022

#396
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…

I love the irony in SFBA of major tech companies building their new HQs right on the water's edge. They'll be the first to acknowledge anthropogenic climate change, yet I've never been able to get a satisfactory justification for their realestate decisions.

Re: Oh, 2022

#397
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They last a hell of a lot longer than they did when we were still putting TEPb in the fuel.

The lifespans of cars have been elongating rapidly. The median car on the road recently passed 12 years. Especially sensible cars with medium-displacement engines making little power through a CVT, these will go a million miles with ease. The long tail of model year 2030 Honda Civics is going to be almost impossible to eradicate without controlling the supply of fossil motor fuels.

There will be a demand for synfuels, and conversion kits, because as power generation cost continues to plummet, it will rapidly become too expensive to explore for and extract petroleum to drive any such activity.

Re: Oh, 2022

#398
post #351
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how US food policy continues pushing sugar consumption, driving mortality from secondary effects of liver disease (diabetes, high blood pressure, circulatory disease, cancer metastasis, obesity, gout) and tertiary effects of those, that makes COVID-19 look like, well, flu, he is not pessimistic enough. On the other hand, eliminating sugar (actually, just fructose, and then only with not enough accompanyin…

Vaccinating everyone is a near impossible task but as with most things, you can get almost all the benefits by getting an 80-90% vaccination rate and letting herd immunity take care of the rest.

That might work if you could get all the animals vaccinated, too. But they are not being vaccinated at all, and won't be. They will continue innovating new strains on their own initiative.

Herd immunity works only for microbes that have species preference.

So, herd immunity turns out to be a fond delusion. We can only hope that the mice don't innovate a 40% fatal (in humans) strain as contagious as omicron. We certainly can't prevent it.

Re: Oh, 2022

#399
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…

There's also the option of migration within the country. If we take an elevation map of Bangladesh and compare it to a climate map, there are areas that are higher and still have good climates for crops.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karar-Ahsan/publication...

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicolas-Guilpart-2/publ...

People aren't going to migrate unless there is infrastructure and job opportunities there, so if we want to help these people we should be helping these countries to build new cities that are outside the risk of flood zones. We could even take the opportunity to provide more western standards of living - Dhaka only treats around 1/4 of its waste water - and build more environmentally friendly buildings - Dhaka is within a climate where houses could be heated passively.

Re: Oh, 2022

#400
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…

> half of global shipping. There was a post here just yesterday, of a piece by Bill McKibben on this very topic. 40%. Seems about right to me.[1] > > At this point the proposed bans are on the sale of new vehicles that run on fossil fuels [...] leading to a complete phase-out ... > ... making the policy sound more extreme than it is And the reduction in fossil fuels, too. Gasoline is somewhere between 30% and 40% of…

While gasoline demand may bounce up and down, it is important to remember that no one is pumping petrol out of the ground. It is a component of crude oil and so some fraction of the crude oil demand is being pushed forward by ICE users. If the push stops then demand for crude will drop until some other fractional component user picks up the slack. What will be interesting to see is which fraction will end up hitting a floor first and setting the price -- maybe kerosene (jet fuel) but given the attention upon that fraction recently in terms of global warming I do not see it expanding much, so cutting petrol demand 30%+ could really push crude production down an almost equal percentage.
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