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A graph that should be front-page news

lyrebirddreaming.com

231–240 of 469 posts

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#232

If we assume that governments aren't going to address climate change and coordination between private citizens is unlikely to be enough to stop it, has anyone written anything on what individuals should do to avoid its effects? It feels like we are at the point where we should be talking a lot more about how live decent lives assuming that prevention and mitigation are unlikely.

I know of people who bought property in western North Carolina with this mindset. It’s higher elevation, far from coasts, near fertile farm land, with lots of surface water to drink and use. And far from other geo hazards like volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. On paper it checked a lot of boxes for long-term safety.

Then a hurricane went where it had never gone before and wrecked their entire neighborhood.

It’s hard to know exactly how a complex chaotic system is going to react when inputs change. And it only takes one outlier to cause a lot of harm on a local human scale.

This is why so much effort goes into computer modeling of the climate BTW. We know our emissions are changing the climate. But predicting local effects is damn hard.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is crap as well as the graph. And the author made the planet simmer even more to produce this crap.

Data visualization is hard, but what do you think is wrong with the graph?

Graphs tell stories and the only story this one actually tells is "29-year high".

It doesn't do a good job of establishing trends and its sample size is too low to discern how significant of an outlier this is.

Actually there is a similar outlier on the bottom of the graph, which suggests the current outlier might not actually be that significant. And that's definitely not the story intended by the author.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of assumptions about me based on "the important figure should be at the top of the page, not the bottom". Joe Average isn't going to want to read 14 paragraphs before getting to the actual graph the title mentions

The point isn't whether it's true about you in particular, it's about the actual effect it has on the general audience. Improving the design of that article will do absolutely nothing for its public reception. Voicing reasonable reactions to the salient content actually helps furthering the discussion. Nitpicking does the opposite.

"The point isn't whether it's true about you in particular" - then wtf are you saying? That this person can say true things but is still wrong?

I agree with them, and I also agree with the concern in the article. Both can be right. And I think you're off base here with all your unfounded assumptions and straw-manning.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#236
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a very strong claim ("literally zero sense"), but you've provided no argument as to why. I don't believe that the economy can become arbitrarily decoupled from physical goods, which is a hard requirement for infinite growth with finite resources.

Because 1) growth is not directly linked to resources and the richer country is the less growth depends on resource-intensive areas such as farming or industry; 2) it’s absurd to think we are at the stage of growth where resource availability becomes constraint - I’d say it’s on the contrary and we are at the stage where we become far less dependent on resources than are on scarcer side (e.g. thanks to solar uptake).

But the claim must be that physical goods can become an arbitrarily small portion of the economy. Nobody would dispute that they've become smaller. Do you believe that food can become arbitrarily cheap relative to total wealth? Or steel, or silicon? In other words, can the food you eat require an arbitrarily small portion of your income? And looking at nation-states only is an accounting trick; the economy is global.

You again say "it's absurd" and provide no argument. I think the case is not as clear cut as you would like it to be. Solar energy is not an infinite resource.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#237
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just left a comment on this elsewhere, but are you using cloudflare or nextdns? They seem to block archive sites, especially archive.today (archive.is, etc)

It's because I live in the UK

web.archive.org being blocked is alarming! Which ISP? (I'm also in the UK, with Virgin Media, and it isn't blocked for me)

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of that Climate Casino post has some... strong views. So you might want to bear this in mind when reading his analysis: "The human cancer is destructive to every living thing, as humans continue to eat the planet into oblivion. As someone who values “everything else,” I would be one of the first to rally behind the NTHE philosophy if it had any scientific basis at all. I want the human cancer gone from thi…

I can understand the desire to be concerned about the climate systems that keep earth habitable for humans starting to break down might come with some extreme views. It seems almost thinking we can continue as normal given the predictions of climate scientists are now coming true, is the extreme views. I worry that these climate scientists might have under egged their estimates due to a “sensible mindset” rather than…

Optimistic of you to assume it’ll only be fifty years. Do you expect humans to adapt that quickly? The climate will be messed up for centuries at least

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To believe this, you must believe that the economy can become arbitrarily decoupled from any physical good. Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy (and so arbitrarily cheap relative to income)? Steel? Purified silicon? Infrastructure like bridges? I don't. Perpetual growth is incompatible with finite resources. Fortunately, human flourishing does not depend on infinite econ…

> Do you believe that food can become an arbitrarily small proportion of the economy This is not necessary at all for economic growth to be infinite. Food prices can "inflate" and so stay at, let's say 20%, of the economy while the amount of physical food being produced remains flat year after year. That's sort of what's happening with housing, education, and healthcare already. I think seeing prices go up like this…

If physical goods remain a constant proportion of the economy without having more of them but get more expensive, all that's happening is inflation, not economic growth.
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