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I Choose Optimism

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Re: I Choose Optimism

#111

Post by mypastself »

systemvoltage wrote: post #104
mypastself wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t environmentalists be opposed to coal as well? Or is it simply that they favor it over nuclear power? I’m not particularly well acquainted with German green parties’ policies.

They are. But when they’ve cornered themselves into freezing this winter, lignite coal it is.

Not sure I follow, even if coal were used for heating in Germany. Would the country be in a better environmental situation overall without the activists? I don’t doubt there’s some level of energy hypocrisy currently going on in Europe, but I don’t see how environmentalists have exacerbated the current crisis. Are you referring to their opposition to nuclear energy?

Re: I Choose Optimism

#112

Post by Joeri »

systemvoltage wrote: post #68
throwanapple wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the Great Barrier Reef, it's not as simple as you're saying: https://theconversation.com/record-coral-cover-doesnt-necess...

Maybe, why is this source trustworthy, I have no idea. There are probably many examples of improvement in the environment that goes unreported. I used to trust climate science. That trust is being eroded for me. Just the other day, someone reported that kids are gaining weight due to climate change. The reason? They can’t go out and play when it’s 2 deg C hotter. Come on. I despise climate catastrophization by the me…

Media reporting on climate change is often dramatically wrong, whether it takes the slant of “everything is terrible” or “things are actually great”.

Go read how the IPCC reports are authored, you’ll hopefully develop some faith about the accuracy of what is in them. Then go read the summaries for policy makers to get an idea of what they say. You’ll see that most of what both sides are saying is in there is not what is in there.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#113

Post by systemvoltage »

mypastself wrote: post #111
systemvoltage wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. But when they’ve cornered themselves into freezing this winter, lignite coal it is.

Not sure I follow, even if coal were used for heating in Germany. Would the country be in a better environmental situation overall without the activists? I don’t doubt there’s some level of energy hypocrisy currently going on in Europe, but I don’t see how environmentalists have exacerbated the current crisis. Are you referring to their opposition to nuclear energy?

Yea because if it weren't for these people, Germany would have invested in Nuclear or secure better natural gas than from Russia (Algeria?). Nord Stream 1 was hastily negotiated with the devil. Devil then invaded Crimea to secure the oil fields. Then 8 years later, they did it again with Nord Stream 2! The devil used it as a leverage to take big chunks of Ukraine. Trump warned them (as much as I loathe the guy, he was right, unsophisticatedly but eerily accurate): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O24rulfjA8U

Environmentalists also invested in Solar energy in Germany. It has to be the dumbest idea ever, solar power in Germany is like 10% as efficient as Western USA. It is one of the worst places in Europe to stick solar panels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

In general, Environmentalists do not understand the difference between gardening and farming. It's the Greta crowd that's going to lead this world towards mass starvation of humans. They have no solutions, only blind clueless activism.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#114

Post by worldshit »

mrandish wrote: post #4

It's easy (and popular) to be a pessimist but when I look at objective global data on decade+ time scales, the only rational conclusion is that things are generally getting better for more people in more places than ever before (data like global poverty, infant mortality, literacy, etc). That doesn't mean we don't still have a ways to go and it certainly doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for some people in som…

it's only gotten better if you look at food access, but food access != happiness; depression is rampant because we are being forced to live against our nature. I assure you, I hate being alive in the current world, even if my stomach is full.

Moreover even that is most likely only temporary, we are living inside a consumerist bubble that will soon burst (growing social unrest, ravaging pollution, probably a major war) leaving a horrible mess behind (we don't know how to endure physical discomfort anymore).

Re: I Choose Optimism

#115

Post by systemvoltage »

adrianN wrote: post #105
systemvoltage wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. But when they’ve cornered themselves into freezing this winter, lignite coal it is.

Homes are not heated with nuclear power or lignite, they are heated with gas.

Gas is at risk of cut off this winter. Electric heating will be the primary source if that happens.

> In late June, after Russia reduced supplies by 60%, Berlin triggered the second stage of its national gas emergency plan — one step away from gas rationing.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/07/18/a...

Re: I Choose Optimism

#116

Post by pessimizer »

People who choose what they believe have an entirely different understanding of the concept of belief than I do. Belief is something that is inflicted upon me by my environment, not something I choose based on the lifestyle I want or the people I want to associate with. Consumer belief?

If I could choose my beliefs, I would choose to believe in an almost completely different set of things. All of my beliefs would be self-serving, I'd be really happy about how everything was going every day.

The reason I can't do this is because it would be really damaging to the people around me, and to society. I can't choose to ignore that.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#117

Post by Dudeman112 »

atemerev wrote: post #27
salt-thrower wrote: post #18

This article comes across as extremely tone-deaf, and the author seems unaware of the existential scale of the problems humanity is facing. The fact that the phrase "climate change" only appears once - at the beginning, as a throwaway line - really speaks volumes. If the only problems we face were war and rising Christian fascism, I would also be optimistic, because those things can and have been fought successfully…

Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of habitability of some places. Humans are resilient. And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.

"it's not the end of all life" isn't much of a consolation for those that will have to live through the shitshow

Some people are used to such a good life that the concept of actual, intense, long-term suffering doesn't even register as something that can happen to them. And even when it is pointed out to them there's no gut feeling for how shit life can be

Re: I Choose Optimism

#118

Post by marcus_holmes »

throwanapple wrote: post #103
marcus_holmes wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that all these problems are soluble. We can adapt to climate change. We can create new (clean!) energy sources. Solar is getting more efficient every year. There are new storage solutions appearing every year. As TFA says, despair is not the answer. We can (and will) overcome all these problems.

Can you expand more on those new storage solutions?

here let me google that for you... https://www.forbes.com/sites/mitsubishiheavyindustries/2022/...

Re: I Choose Optimism

#119

Post by alexvoda »

_benedict wrote: post #98
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much energy and resources that gets us do we have? Millions of years worth..... Like really of course you get blank stares it's not an issue that exists.

Millions of years of what? We have maybe a few hundred years of helium if we’re generous with our assumptions and we’re literally squirting that into balloons and letting it float away into the atmosphere and off into space . It’s literally an unrecoverable loss. This is just one of the many resource limits we’re facing as a species, and this is how we address it today.

Since you brought helium into discussion, why do we fill party balloons with helium?

Just how great is the risc of filling them with hidrogen? I know it's flamable and leaks through many materials. But in the context of party balloons just how great is that risc? The quantity is very small. And no ones life depends on it. And in the case of fire, that quantity would burn almost instantly. I doubt it would even have the time to ignite anything other than another flamable gas.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#120

Post by ben_w »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #75
NovaVeles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I have to remind people of all the time - usually I just get blank stares. Forget the dollars and cents tokens on wealth, they can and are manipulated but intentionally and unintentionally. How much energy and resources that gets us do we have? That is the real currency we have to work with. All the debt in the world means nothing if we cannot produce the goods with the token we produced assuming th…

> How much energy and resources that gets us do we have? Millions of years worth..... Like really of course you get blank stares it's not an issue that exists.

What do you have in mind as a "millions of years" power source?

At current rates, fossil fuels will last a few centuries, nuclear a few millennia.

Although geothermal would last for geological timescales, the estimated maximum output only covers current electricity use (~2 TW, well short of the ~17 TW total power use, and ideally we'd increase the minimum power use per person to get closer to European or American levels rather than keeping our current distribution).

The kinetic rotational energy of the earth would last us 400 million years.

Sun will last a few billion, but then we're no longer talking about extractive technologies.

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