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We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

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Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#121

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

willnonya wrote: post #20
debacle wrote: post #6

I recently took a course on greenwashing, the history of distraction in the ecoactivist movement, and effective political activism. I don't know if there's a single movement that has been sidelined more than the conservation movement. Maybe the US labor movement.

It is a bit of a stretch to conflate the conservation and labor movements like that.

It wasn't conflation. It was two examples of movements that can only exist through popular support being sidelined. The ways in which they have been both been sidelined may differ, but the sidelining itself is a common feature of them both.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#122

Post by ryukafalz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #96
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want cars to be an even barely acceptable alternative to public transport: - They should not be stuck in traffic jams - They should not kill children, pedestrians and cyclists - They should be electric without heavy and polluting batteries These aren't unreasonable requirements, or some utopia situation. They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. > - Make a ticket cost the same as or…

You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. In relative terms cars are actually amazingly safe given that we drive them trillions of miles a year. > They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes, and then this comparison will be valid. Until then…

> You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have.

Sure, to some extent. The knowledge we already have about how to prevent e.g. cars killing children, pedestrians, and cyclists is that you slow them down (and separate them which also typically involves taking space from cars to make room). But as seen above in this thread, that kind of thing meets opposition from people who say you're "making good things in life shittier".

> the areas where it't uneconomical or otherwise unfeasible to run rails.

If you've never done this, I suggest taking a look at old maps of the US's passenger rail network. We had a lot more rail in the past than we do now.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#123

Post by ElectricalUnion »

rootusrootus wrote: post #96
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want cars to be an even barely acceptable alternative to public transport: - They should not be stuck in traffic jams - They should not kill children, pedestrians and cyclists - They should be electric without heavy and polluting batteries These aren't unreasonable requirements, or some utopia situation. They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. > - Make a ticket cost the same as or…

You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. In relative terms cars are actually amazingly safe given that we drive them trillions of miles a year. > They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes, and then this comparison will be valid. Until then…

> improving road design with knowledge we already have.

Smaller roads with fewer lanes and lower speeds are very unpopular among car enthusiasts.

> Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes

Cars can't operate everywhere so this is a unrealistic requirement in the first place.

> Do the environmental math on that -- how full does a bus need to be before the pollution per passenger is better than a compact car with one passenger? How about a compact car with four passengers?

Assuming a 1 person/car with a average 19mpg, and a average bus 6.2mpg, you need 3.06 people on a bus before it breaks even.

If you can have 4 people on a compact car with four passengers, you can have a bus with 3 people on it.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#124

Post by landemva »

agentultra wrote: post #70
erulabs wrote: post #38

> billions of dollars have been poured into big pharma, instead of public health and policies My biggest pet peeve is this idea that the human race or even some large swath (“investors”) are doing one thing instead of another. How does one “pour billions in to policies” anyways? How do investors investing in bigpharma in any way impact public health policy? It’s as if the author wants to take the entire human race as…

> it was capitalism that doomed us and capitalism that saved us Saved whom? As I understand what happened it was the biggest wealth transfer in the history of humanity. The disaster investments pouring into the pharmaceutical industry before the pandemic wasn't the reason that the vaccines existed at all ; there was decades of research that went into mRNA based vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry was more than prof…

The covid shots were quickly rolled out because of the emergency use authorizations which exempt the manufacturers and providers from safety regulations and liability. It's not a fair market when a favored industry can provide products without liability. That would be like an airplane manufacture not caring if the planes are unsafe.

FDA is still issuing the EUAs.

https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-...

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#125

Post by worldsayshi »

spchampion2 wrote: post #7

> But this fallacy has been repeatedly exposed. For one, the organisations that are supposed to certify that indeed enough tree-planting has taken place do not have the tools to verify that the declared emissions will definitely be absorbed. Another problem is that many offsetting activities do not actually offset anything. > A recent investigation into the world’s largest carbon standard found that 94 percent of its…

> I realized that it was one of the few markets where both the buyer and seller are perfectly happy with fraud.

The tragedy of the commons is near universal on all transactions and our propensity for neglecting fraud regarding the commons is universal. It just so happens that for these transactions the focus is on the commons.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#126

Post by lezojeda »

edgyquant wrote: post #83
lezojeda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unironically this is how most of the first world thinks while expecting us from the third to completely change our lifestyles and don't we even dare to try to develop the same way you guys did.

Why would you develop your economy like it was the 1800s?

Because burning coal is still cheaper than wind turbines, for example.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#127

Post by starkd »

spchampion2 wrote: post #7

> But this fallacy has been repeatedly exposed. For one, the organisations that are supposed to certify that indeed enough tree-planting has taken place do not have the tools to verify that the declared emissions will definitely be absorbed. Another problem is that many offsetting activities do not actually offset anything. > A recent investigation into the world’s largest carbon standard found that 94 percent of its…

I think the environmental movement went seriously awry by aligning itself with socialist political goals. Socialism is nothing more than a way to monopolize corporate power for tremendous profits. Climate ideals of limiting carbon also diverted attention from real-world pollution concerns - like harm from large-scale mining operations.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#128

Post by landemva »

dublinben wrote: post #118
korroziya wrote: post #21

From the article: "The supposed energy transition that has been undertaken has seen renewable energy production expanded, but there has been no indication that oil and gas are being substituted and ultimately phased out." That's not going to happen for another 27 years at least. I've said it before: Most people (including those who post here) are staggeringly illiterate when it comes to energy. Hydrocarbons store an…

Half of all car trips in the US are under 3 miles.[0] If even a quarter of already existing roads were turned over for use by pedestrians and cyclists, then most people could accomplish those trips without driving with little to no new infrastructure investment. That would substantially reduce our use of gas for transportation overnight, save hundreds of millions of dollars, and millions of tons of CO2 emissions. It…

Do you have neighbors in USA who will walk three miles to the grocery store? USA is ridiculously obese, so those walks would be good in many ways.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#129

Post by mrleinad »

mikeyouse wrote: post #108
mrleinad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not silly if all there's to argue from the other point of view is photons per square meter. Weather also plays a role. I don't mean to say I have the absolute truth, I want to see if they've even considered sun availability for different regions. It seems solar proponents really haven't analyzed it from that point of view, AFAIK.

As far as you know, solar proponents haven't analyzed sun availability in the regions that they're installing solar? Perhaps they have done the analysis and that's why they're spending billions of dollars installing them? The industry has seen something like 75% decreases in cost-per-watt installation costs in the past decade, I can assure you, they're doing the analysis.

Unless you have evidence of those calculations (which should be public of course, right? I mean, it's government spending after all) I'd say they haven't, and they have just been pouring money into a fire pit because it won them votes to say they were going green.

What I mean is, I haven't seen those calculations. Have you, or are you just hoping they have done the math? I wouldn't put any faith on any politician doing any hard math on this whatsoever.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#130

Post by ElectricalUnion »

rootusrootus wrote: post #84
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes a serious amount of hubris to look at the world and think that we can just wave a magic wand and make public transit work It takes a serious amount of hubris to look at the world and not See the fact that most people never had a car and never will. Do you realise that poor people all over the world rely on public transport to survive? There are 190 countries in the world. United states has 6th highest car…

> Do you realise that poor people all over the world rely on public transport to survive? I will go out on a limb here and suggest most of them actually rely on their feet. Bicycle if they can afford it. Then a motorcycle as income permits. And as soon as their lifestyle supports it, a car. The problem with public transit as a solution is that we've had a long time to prove that out. The US had better public transit…

> Note that the only places in which public transit dominates are places so dense that the pain of public transit is less than the pain of making a car work. This does not describe more than perhaps three cities in the United States (and only in their downtown cores) and it never will unless we put an artificial cap on creating new cities.

The "artifical cap against public transit" exists, enacting a low density urban sprawl model on most cities, preventing a alternative from cars from working.

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