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The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

climate.gov

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Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#211

Post by croes »

transcriptase wrote: post #161
ketzo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a bunch of headlines last week about DOGE firing half of NOAA then rehiring them. I don’t think you should consider anywhere sacrosanct.

To be fair there have been a bunch of headlines about a great many things, like office closures without mentioning the minor detail that the offices haven’t been used in years, the workforce is remote, and there is no impact on service delivery or staffing. Doesn’t stop journalists from dancing around the implication if it makes the orange man and mars man look bad though.

Musk is suddenly a fan of remote work?

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#212

Post by dagss »

y33t wrote: post #188
typewithrhythm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans cannot reliably determine the difference in one degree c, even though it's bigger... Fahrenheit is too fine grained, and has no interesting points relative to the things I interact with. I freeze an boil water often, however

The base units of the metric system are often not very ergonomic. Why is a meter so damn big? And why is a gram so damn small? I can barely detect a gram. And a meter is frickin huge, causing people to usually divide it into hundredths of a meter, which you can hardly picture in your mind unless you already know what it looks like, especially arbitrary counts of cm. Metric's only real advantage is that it shares the…

As a metric user: This is about your lack of familiarity.

E.g. can picture lumber expressed in cm or mm very easily. E.g., if you work with beams that are 48mm / 5 cm or 98mm / 10cm a lot then those sizes becomes second nature. Just as easy to picture as 2 inch, 4 inch, 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch etc that is in use in US.

And saying that something is 200m away is exactly as intuitive as however many feet that is. A large meter has a usecase.

I feel square metres for houses is very natural unit and square feet sounds awkward (each patch of house area is so small you can do nothing with it, a square metre gets you somewhere..).

Making yet another system of units sounds like massive pain and as someone who are used to metric I see no advantages.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#213

Post by tfourb »

cyberax wrote: post #128
matthewdgreen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a delusional part of the Internet that is convinced that nuclear is the only future, and solar and wind aren’t. To settle this, you basically need to look at what China is doing —- which is to build a lot of nuclear and then exponentially more solar and wind. We’re a huge percentage of the way down the slide to a mostly renewable world with storage, and some nuclear at the edges. But it isn’t a comp…

> There seems to be a delusional part of the Internet that is convinced that nuclear is the only future, and solar and wind aren’t. "Exponentially more" means literally nothing. 1 is also an exponent. China is building literally everything. It's also a geographically diverse country, with wide ranges of different climates. Solar is appropriate for Hainan, but makes little sense for Harbin.

Have a Look at the statistics, before nitpicking. Solar and wind dwarfs nuclear in China and increasingly so.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#214

Post by tfourb »

renewiltord wrote: post #201
acdha wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmentalists have been pushing wind, solar, etc. for the last half century. There are a few shortsighted people who oppose wind farms but they represent a large, complex multinational movement in the same way that any one of us represents the tech industry, which is to say not at all. In many cases, if you look at the complainants it’s also reasonable to question whether they’re fully honest about their motivati…

Environmentalists push renewables the way homelessness activists push housing: It’s a great idea if it is near no one, hurts no one’s views, impacts zero birds, affects zero animals, and is not built for profit by the rich. I suppose I could use their terminology, though: responsibly sited, balancing conservation priorities, and protecting local communities. I recall, in my college years, being told how Real Communis…

I am an „environmentalist“ and I’m in full and public Sport of the hundreds of windmills in clear view of my town and the solar on every new residential development, including my own house. As are all other „environmentalists“ I know.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#216

Post by [deleted] »

aorloff wrote: post #204
erikpukinskis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that possible? Can you describe the chain of events that would lead to that? Seems vanishingly unlikely to me, on the face of it, but I admit I am not read up on all the possible doomsday scenarios.

it all started with the invention of Ice9

[deleted]

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#218

Post by renewiltord »

tfourb wrote: post #214
renewiltord wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmentalists push renewables the way homelessness activists push housing: It’s a great idea if it is near no one, hurts no one’s views, impacts zero birds, affects zero animals, and is not built for profit by the rich. I suppose I could use their terminology, though: responsibly sited, balancing conservation priorities, and protecting local communities. I recall, in my college years, being told how Real Communis…

I am an „environmentalist“ and I’m in full and public Sport of the hundreds of windmills in clear view of my town and the solar on every new residential development, including my own house. As are all other „environmentalists“ I know.

I’m comfortable restricting my position to the US. Things may be different elsewhere, even in Canada.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#219

Post by ashoeafoot »

jacobolus wrote: post #207
ericfr11 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US science will go down big time. Big Corp (oil, pharma,.. ) will get richer

"Big corp" will be massively harmed in the medium term, like everyone else. The NIH is critical for the pharma industry, and the USGS is critical for natural resource extraction industries (etc.). Blowing up federal agencies might juice profits for a quarter or two, but even that is pretty questionable/risky. If the whole economy goes into recession, many basic resources obtained from overseas get taxed, retaliatory…

There are no vibrant monarchys or aristocracys or oligarchys. What do these people think everyone fled from Europe to the us for? In a monarchy everything fouls and rots.. look a trumps buianesses, the us is his last casino to bankrupt..

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#220

Post by acdha »

renewiltord wrote: post #201
acdha wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmentalists have been pushing wind, solar, etc. for the last half century. There are a few shortsighted people who oppose wind farms but they represent a large, complex multinational movement in the same way that any one of us represents the tech industry, which is to say not at all. In many cases, if you look at the complainants it’s also reasonable to question whether they’re fully honest about their motivati…

Environmentalists push renewables the way homelessness activists push housing: It’s a great idea if it is near no one, hurts no one’s views, impacts zero birds, affects zero animals, and is not built for profit by the rich. I suppose I could use their terminology, though: responsibly sited, balancing conservation priorities, and protecting local communities. I recall, in my college years, being told how Real Communis…

If you’re going to make that kind of sweeping claim representing many different people and groups, I’m going to need to see some data. What you’re describing sounds more like the mechanism I described, where rich people use the language of environmentalism to make their NIMBY activities sound less venal but that’s saying that those specific people are hypocrites rather than a general commentary on the entire field.
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