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I Choose Optimism

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Re: I Choose Optimism

#131

Post by Cthulhu_ »

thrown_22 wrote: post #74
NovaVeles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the camp of we are in overshoot, have been for a very long time. In the same way that a someone can spend way above their income by using the credit card. Looks great now but that looming cloud of debt is coming. Societal wise we have done this via the monkey pore wish for "unlimited energy" in the form of fossil fuels. We got energy unlike anything else in history but at the cost of environmental blow back a…

Or we just stop pretending that nuclear is bad and build the plants to keep an industrial base going past 2050. Hell at this point whoever does will just conquer whoever doesn't. Just like the industrial revolution let whoever burn coal take over the rest. I'm hoping to be in a country that isn't conquered, but the west seems to have entered a death spiral of self delusion.

Well in theory, yes. In practice, the Russians have captured a large nuclear reactor and may use it as a dirty bomb if things don't go their way. Can't turn a solar panel or windmill into a weapon like that. You could turn a hydroelectric dam in a weapon though, I believe that's the plot of a few films. And solar heat collectors are impractical death rays.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#132

Post by wizofaus »

_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.

Has anyone actually seriously worked out how much party balloons contribute to the loss of helium from the atmosphere? And isn't helium an expected waste product from fusion reactors? Not saying it's not an issue but I'm not convinced it's worth getting too upset over just yet.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#133

Post by Cthulhu_ »

systemvoltage wrote: post #113
mypastself wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> The devil used it as a leverage to take big chunks of Ukraine

Tried, but then they got back-up in the form of European and US weapon shipments that are trouncing the Russian's poorly trained forces and equipment - or, that's what the diverse media in my neck of the wood is saying. Russia doesn't seem to be winning or gaining though.

Trump is siding with the Russians and rejected military / financial aid to the Ukraine because they refused to find dirt on Biden or whatever it was about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal

Re: I Choose Optimism

#134

Post by wizofaus »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

American homes in 1950 averaged 983 square feet; by 2014, the size had nearly tripled to 2,657 square feet. Today, 91 percent of our homes are air-conditioned. This is not actually a good thing. This is actually a problem.

If you mean we'd all benefit from houses built so that they were comfortable and spacious without requiring constant artificial heating & cooling, and such that we didn't live so far apart from each other that we relied entirely on unwieldy polluting (and dangerous) automobiles to get anywhere we needed to be, then sure. But the replies to your message suggest plenty of people interpret your message as a requirement to sacrifice living standards.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#135

Post by ljw1001 »

samsquire wrote: post #8
Comevius wrote: post #2

Humans no longer seeing themselves as the pawns of nature is nothing to be proud of. We still depend on nature, nothing have changed, only this dependence is now obfuscated. There is a buffer between us and nature, which makes us utterly blind to the consequences of our actions. We are not living in the best of times, we are living the biggest lie ever. Our way of life is utterly unsustainable, and by our way of life…

Society decided we wanted good things and we took action to get those things. I am against poverty and not having things such as electricity and clean tap water, abundant food, education, hospital care, sewage treatment and proper waste disposal. I like these things, they are good. You would be surprised at how sustainable things are by sheer hard work and will. In other words, we get what we cause. The alternative t…

No solution is worse than a flawed solution. There are many ways to make progress that aren’t being tried, like using tax code to dissuade Americans from buying SUVs, but those are the only American made cars people buy so there is no action.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#136

Post by goodpoint »

chongli wrote: post #86
s-lambert wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar energy isn't free, it takes a lot of metals just to turn solar energy into electrical energy (including batteries for storage) and they don't last forever. Here's a link to a talk from an associate professor doing an estimation of how much metals are needed to switch to renewable energy: https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc?t=2406

Wow, that was a bucket of water in my face the likes of which I’ve never felt before! We are 100% completely screwed! We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into the future. The picture this professor paints is so incredibly bleak that it puts the war in Ukraine and a potential war in Taiwan into perspective. Imagine if all the passengers on the Titanic had nuclear weapons. That’s the situation we’re in. An…

> We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into the future.

Don't make the mistake of confusing energy use with quality of life.

People like to make such alarmist statement around standard of living but we should instead ask ourselves what makes for quality of life.

A good example is planned obsolescence in technology: it greatly increases energy usage and pollution without making consumers happier (on the contrary they hate it)

Re: I Choose Optimism

#137

Post by goodpoint »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #96
adrianN wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar energy is the cheapest form of energy we have. Storage is a bit more expensive, but judging from the amount of metals the video proposes they want to go all-in on battery storage, whereas most experts I heard from propose to use hydrogen (or methane) as a storage medium, precisely because the amount of resources it needs are much smaller.

Hydrogen would also help with re-using all the ICE cars we have (and will continue to have) on the roads. Definitely not a panacaea, and super-inefficient, but that's OK if we're just using it for storage/transportation.

super-inefficient?

Re: I Choose Optimism

#138

Post by boxed »

orang2tang wrote: post #126
boxed wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point is that God loves his people enough to save them, the Church will expand, and Christ will return in glory. ish. It also promises that not even death is an escape, but that God will raise all the dead and judge an enormous majority to be literally thrown into a valley of fire. Reading the Bible I see more of a threat, than a promise.

But just as sin entered the world through one man, it was defeated through one man as well, Jesus Christ. There is no condemnation for anyone who believes in Jesus. So being saved from hell is quite simple, which is why it's called "the good news" or the gospel. And that's God's plan for humanity, and he's begging you to simply seek this man named Jesus. God's wisdom is made that much more powerful in what some might…

There is no threat, unless you do exactly what I say.

Yea, that's the threat.

> I should note that I used to have the same opinion as you! No judgement!

Common thing to hear. I have never believed anyone has ever gone from a strong atheist who reads the bible and can so obviously see the cruelty and madness, and then suddenly turn around and become a christian apologist? It's just as believable as the bible in the first place.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#139

Post by chongli »

goodpoint wrote: post #136
chongli wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that was a bucket of water in my face the likes of which I’ve never felt before! We are 100% completely screwed! We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into the future. The picture this professor paints is so incredibly bleak that it puts the war in Ukraine and a potential war in Taiwan into perspective. Imagine if all the passengers on the Titanic had nuclear weapons. That’s the situation we’re in. An…

> We simply cannot maintain our standard of living into the future. Don't make the mistake of confusing energy use with quality of life. People like to make such alarmist statement around standard of living but we should instead ask ourselves what makes for quality of life. A good example is planned obsolescence in technology: it greatly increases energy usage and pollution without making consumers happier (on the co…

Don't make the mistake of conflating carbon emissions with transportation. So much of our society is built on carbon and personal automobiles are only a part of it. Cement production, globalized shipping, fertilizers for growing food, natural gas for making steel and other heavy industry. No matter how you slice it, wind and solar can't replace any of that stuff.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#140

Post by shepherdjerred »

andrepd wrote: post #93
shepherdjerred wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no amount of renewable energy that will make "average homes are 2,657 square feet and have air conditioning" a sustainable way of living. Why not? Do you think it's impossible for energy to become 'to cheap to meter'?

We're not remotely close to being there yet, and there isn't even a clear path. So we should not act like a miraculous technological invention is gonna fall from the sky and save us.

Sure, I agree that we're nowhere close.

The parent comment said that no amount of renewable energy would make larger houses sustainable. That makes me think he believes that the real issue is about land use, building materials for larger houses, or some other point aside from energy.

I should've been more direct rather than focusing on the energy point, but I suppose I was hoping the commenter would reply about why energy isn't the problem.

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