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I Choose Optimism

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Re: I Choose Optimism

#171

Post by AnimalMuppet »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #107
Animats wrote: post #70

Encouraging trends: - Energy is getting fixed. Simply because wind and solar are cheap, and electric vehicles work well. There will be lots of kicking and screaming during the transition, but 20 years out, it won't be a problem. - We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders. Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Putin remains a problem. - Vaccine technology has made hug…

>- We seem to be past peak crazyness in major national leaders. Donald Trump is out. Boris Johnson is out. Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Putin remains a problem. Not to throw cold water over this too much but Johnson's likely successor is basically him again but without any of the charisma that sold many of the public on him in the first place. Liz Truss is an author of Britannia Unchained which pretty much accuses the…

That's still progress. A crazy leader with charisma is much more dangerous than the same amount of crazy without charisma.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#172

Post by ben_w »

_benedict wrote: post #144
wizofaus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.helium-one.com/helium-market/ Apparently 8%. But all of these industries waste it unnecessarily, due to our failing to price in or consider the future scarcity. Helium as a waste product of fusion reactors is such a pipe dream, and will produce such tiny volumes should that ever happen, that it is not a remotely realistic solution to the problem.

Out of curiosity I put the numbers into Wolfram Alpha, and it suggests that even if 100% of our current power (all power not just electricity) needs came from fusing deuterium and tritium into helium, those reactors would make only about 5.3% of our current helium consumption.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#173

Post by int_19h »

brainzap wrote: post #92
int_19h wrote: post #82

It's hard to be an optimist when it looks like the years we're living in right now are the same future historians will argue about when deciding whether WW3 "actually began" in 2022.

future historians will argue about when deciding whether climate change "actually began" in 2022.

First things first.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#174

Post by thrown_22 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131
thrown_22 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, thank god Russia doesn't have the worlds largest nuclear stock pile of weapons to threaten the world with and has to steal others countries nuclear power plants to threaten them with a dirty bomb. On their border. Less than 100km away from the nearest Russian city.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#175

Post by 8note »

chongli wrote: post #139
goodpoint wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wind and solar might not, but that isn't to say that there arent replacements

Re: I Choose Optimism

#176

Post by 8note »

orang2tang wrote: post #160
boxed wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admitting your stance is lunacy isn't a defense. You should instead ponder why you believe absurdities. "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire (ish). This is the most important quote about how to live in the world. It explains Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, but also the mass rape done by the Catholic Church, 9/11, the current climate change crisis, and on and on. It's the Grand…

if (the_world_is_evil && the_world_hates_the_word_of_god && the_world_hated_jesus_enough_to_kill_him_despite_him_doing_nothing_wrong ){ console.log("maybe it's something you should look into"); } So if you care so much about evil you should ask yourself, who was the only person to walk the Earth who had no evil. That would be Jesus. And what did Jesus say? He said he was God, and quoted the old testament that correct…

There's no lack of people to walk the earth who have no evil though. You have to contrive good people to be evil to make that the case.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#177

Post by 8note »

darkteflon wrote: post #15

It’s great to recognise what we’ve achieved as a species. And maybe the arc of history has historically bent towards justice. What’s different about this moment in time versus any other in human history is that we face not one but two known existential risks. Climate change is the sort of knotty long-term vs short-term, private vs public, incentives problem that we as a species excel at fucking up. In addition to tha…

To which countries that have different idea about using them? So far there's only two camps - the US who has used them on civilians on purpose, and everyone else who have not used them.

Most countries aiming for them want them to prevent American(and maybe Russian ones too now) invasions like what happened in Iraq.

Re: I Choose Optimism

#178

Post by 8note »

deltasevennine wrote: post #151
tforcram wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pragmatism would be the middle ground, or 'dealing with reality as best you can'. I don't think it's possible to actually sit perfectly in the middle, won't you always end up thinking slightly positively or negatively about whatever situation comes up? In that case I think that 'Expect the best but prepare for the worst' is a good mindset to have.

Consider a rock. Is it negative or positive? It is neither. The rock is proof that you can be neutral. Enlightenment is realizing that everything shares the same nature as a rock.

Now consider the rock that somebody threw at your face, and knocked out your tooth. Is it still neutral?

The neutrality is gone as soon as people are involved

Re: I Choose Optimism

#180

Post by _benedict »

wizofaus wrote: post #169
_benedict wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knows is exactly the problem. Hand waving this away for future generations to deal with is exactly the problem. If we can’t imagine how we’ll solve it, we should probably strive not to create the mess.

But we do know that plenty of other current human activities, primarily around extracting stuff from deep underground and pumping it into the atmosphere, are going to cause huge issues for even just our kid's generation, with no realistic technology likely to be developed quickly enough to solve it(*). If we hypothetically needed to use up the earth's remaining helium to fix that I'd support doing so. Running out of…

I’m really not sure what point you’re making. Where has anyone proposed a climate solution by using all of the world’s helium?

What we do use helium for today are things like MRI machines that are medically invaluable, and we do so wastefully potentially denying future generations this technology.

Even if we eventually find alternatives, it may be inferior or we may otherwise deny them technological advantages of similar importance that would be more accessible through access to helium.

The problem is that today Helium is cheap enough we’re happy to boil an MRI machine’s worth off into space for a child’s birthday party.

Climate change is simply another face of the same coin of indifference to the costs we confer on others.

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