Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries • Hacker News Board

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#161

Post by twobitshifter » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

amrocha wrote: post #109

twobitshifter wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flying thing is weird. It’s really that you emit a lot because you traveled so far. It’s more efficient that driving per mile and slightly less efficient than rail (not sure the type) https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-... So it should be don’t travel so far and if you have to, take a train and if there’s no train, carpool, but fly rather than drive if you are traveling alone.

Most people aren't driving across the country every time they need to go from the east coast to the west coast. If planes didn't exist these trips would also not exist.

Right, our quest for ever faster travel has led to consuming huge amounts of energy. Even something like the interstates has contributed to this by shrinking travel times to downtown and encouraging people to travel greater distances at higher speed.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#162

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #124

carlosjobim wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand how creepy it is of you to go digging into other users comment history and posting about it when there's a disagreement on a topic? Maybe let the arguments speak for themselves? We're not supposed to be some kind of commissars looking for dissidents or witch hunters looking for heretics.

And why should commenting and posting history count any less than a specific comment? That seems to be ... integral to the function of the site itself: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... > Reputation and patterns of behavior matter.

> And why should commenting and posting history count any less than a specific comment?

Because the user/writer is completely unimportant in an endless flowing sea of anonymous text. Whatever one of us writes in a comment, somebody else could as easily have written, that's why only the argument itself is interesting. It is misguided effort to care about any "reputation" of an anonymous user on an anonymous discussion platform, unless you're moderating said platform.

Apologies for the meta-discussion.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#163

Post by amrocha » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 1:45 PM UTC

knewter wrote: post #156

amrocha wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of being "extra precise" here? Aren't you just giving deniers a talking point?

[flagged]

Well no, but it's either pedantic or meant to mislead. If we're in agreement we need to do something about CO2, then we both know we're talking about human sources of CO2, so why be pedantic?

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#164

Post by toss1 » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

midoridensha wrote: post #143

toss1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Our agriculture and food production are major contributors to the damage Yes - deadly serious. I had to travel to the US midwest recently, after not having been there for a long time. As I drove out of the city the first impression of the farmlands was pleasant. But after an hour of highway-speed driving past nothing but bare fields (out of growing season) with scant rows of trees, we became a bit horrified — there…

>And they would be coated with pesticides to ensure that there were no insects, or anything that ate them, or that ate the things that ate the insects, etc.. And indeed, returning to the airport in daytime, there was remarkably little wildlife. Did you also notice a lack of dead insects on your windshield? Maybe you're not old enough to remember, but several decades ago, any significant drive in most of the US would…

Yes, I have sadly noticed that in recent years.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#165

Post by knewter » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

amrocha wrote: post #163

knewter wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well no, but it's either pedantic or meant to mislead. If we're in agreement we need to do something about CO2, then we both know we're talking about human sources of CO2, so why be pedantic?

For one thing, because it's important to know the lower bound of success in order to identify the reasonableness of the proposed solution, competing its perceived costs with its perceived benefits.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#166

Post by suchagain » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #152

tetris11 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My peasant ancestors were eating meat every day 500 years ago. You can find different groups of people all over the world that are documented eating absurdly meat-heavy diets historically. That can't be true, unless your ancestors have always been exceedingly wealthy. Most people's food subsisted on things you would go outside of your house and forage/barter for. Vegetables, grains, mushrooms, pulses and maybe some…

> That can't be true, unless your ancestors have always been exceedingly wealthy. I am honestly not sure where this meme came from. That was sometimes true, for very poor people in places where the population was too high for the amount of land that was seeing agricultural output. For example, this would have been true in parts of the American South amongst the kind of people that were coming down with pellagra, or d…

This conversation seems like it could be clarified with references to subject matter expert’s publishings on the topics related to historical food sources.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#167

Post by bombcar » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #98

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Green Party comes to mind. They pushed for the shuttering of German nuclear plants and ended up increasing CO2 emissions.

They pushed for the shuttering of something they considered (and consider) an existential risk to life on the planet, and believed that movement towards renewable electricity generation would occur relatively quickly (which is now starting to happen, but did not happen as fast as they believed it would). You can call it a failure of judgement, but it's not what was claimed in the GP.

Yeah I was more referring to groups that want to do X, and then when a new "hot button" item appears (climate change, anti-racism, poverty, whatever) they quickly release how doing X is the solution to whatever is currently in the news.

It's most obvious with companies, drinking Coke™ is always the solution, no matter what the problem, even if the problem is drinking too much Coke.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#168

Post by dopidop » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 3:21 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #160

jacquesm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason there is a Van Gogh painting called 'the potato eaters' and it isn't called 'the sides of beef' eaters. Eating meat was a luxury simply because the vast majority of the people was poor. Poor beyond our present day imagination. In between the hunter gatherers (who had a diet that went from 'gluttony' to 'starvation' twice annually) and the industrialized production of meat (and chicken, and fish) the…

It was absolutely normal for most times for most people. I cited a source for you. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in my life studying social conditions and the daily experience historically. I get the feeling we’re not going to be able to meet on this. If expertise isn’t enough for you, well, it is what it is.

Your source do talk about the introduction of tinned and canned meat.

I haven’t find ratio or quantity. But furthermore I find this bit problematic in the context of this conversation.

“ This period was, nutritionally speaking, an island in time; one that was created and subsequently squandered by economic and political forces”

In the light of this last paragraph, it seems incorrect to use this source to qualify the diet or the ( nebulous ) “past”. It seems to apply only for the Victorian era.

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#169

Post by dopidop » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 3:34 PM UTC

formvoltron wrote: post #155

dopidop wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s satire right ?

no. what part would be satire?

Every paragraph has a flair of scientism and “technology will solve everything, don’t you worry.” While ignoring basic physical fact. ( like the intermittence of renewable. And the scarcity of material used in battery manufacturing )

Re: Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

#170

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Sep 14, 2023, 3:39 PM UTC

amrocha wrote: post #163

knewter wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well no, but it's either pedantic or meant to mislead. If we're in agreement we need to do something about CO2, then we both know we're talking about human sources of CO2, so why be pedantic?

Also part of my point is that we do not have to focus on human emission as the only lever. We can also focus on sequestration of natural emission (or sequestration of atmospheric carbon as a whole).

Telling people to not emit carbon dioxide from, say, a health related usage (sanitation) IMO is foolish when we can choose to sequester from other areas. Frankly I think we need to focus on the decarbonization of energy, rather than regulating human behavior.