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Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

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Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#251

Post by defrost »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #93
defrost wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough; The gory history of Europe’s mummy-eating fad https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/mummy-eat... The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gruesome-history-... but people generally don't like to be reminded.

Well, the part about grinding up mummies is true enough. Natural resources get processed. "The Western pop cultural canon of ancient Egypt" seems to be a red herring, though; Cleopatra is not part of or associated with ancient Egypt. She would be at the tail end of the Hellenistic period or the beginning of the Roman Empire. The New Kingdom ended a thousand years before she came to power. (Hey, why do we call it "the…

Being fair to krapp and their comment above, I don't think the popular western notion of Egypt that started with the mystic of mummies and proceeded through tomb raiding as "archeology" and included stories of Anthony & Cleopatra, milk baths and asps really didn't clarify much between truly ancient Eygpt and the later era under Rome.

Some people care, of course, and many are better informed today, but there's a body of "common knowledge" out there that just runs it all together in a melange of pyramids and funny walks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv_I-6dJ9p8

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#252

Post by jasomill »

oever wrote: post #56
tjhill wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

xkcd for the xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1393/

The first XKCD was published closer to the release of the original Doom than to the present day.

That's not even close: the first XKCD was published closer to Intel's release of the 386SX than today.

18 years before XKCD, a 386-based PC capable of running Doom would have set you back $6,000–$10,000.

Imagine a game released today that has a 64-core CPU and a 4090 as minimum requirements, and that's roughly what Doom's system requirements would have looked like in 1987.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#253

Post by defrost »

jasomill wrote: post #252
oever wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first XKCD was published closer to the release of the original Doom than to the present day.

That's not even close: the first XKCD was published closer to Intel's release of the 386SX than today. 18 years before XKCD, a 386-based PC capable of running Doom would have set you back $6,000–$10,000. Imagine a game released today that has a 64-core CPU and a 4090 as minimum requirements, and that's roughly what Doom's system requirements would have looked like in 1987.

That was the entry price of legit Compaq Deskpro 386 on first release.

Within six months hobbyist computer enthusiasts were paying half that (or less, IIRC) for PC clones direct from asia.

Source: That's about what I paid for a Doom capable PC at the time.

A pair of second-generation T800 transputer chips and a 4-chip array board to fix them to cost way more at about the same time.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#254

Post by fsflover »

ashildr wrote: post #239
fsflover wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK it's pretty well know how long the shielding works, so you can always renew it. Also, with coal the shielding is impossible at all.

The shielding of the waste, not the shielding of the plants.

Yes this is what I'm talking about.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#255

Post by rcbdev »

foofie wrote: post #120
rcbdev wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It entirely depends on who you think "we" is in "we should make X illegal".

The full quote is "we should make X illegal for countries to (...)". What kind of democratic process do you expect to follow to make something illegal for countries to do anything when they didn't voted for it?

The often proposed EU with qualified majority voting and without individual veto rights would be exactly this kind of system.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#256

Post by ralphhughes »

fifilura wrote: post #140
tonyarkles wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I worked the numbers on nuclear vs storage, I came up with… for the same amount of money and for the same amount of generation capacity, battery storage could provide about 4 hours of electricity before needing to recharge while nuclear could provide about 24 months without needing to shut down for a few days for a fuel change. Pumped hydro storage was better, if you have the water resources and elevation c…

Water magazines and elevation change is required for pumped storage. But why not build that together will already existing hydro plants? The magazines will be full at times, but when they are not, it should be possible to just pump the water back up again and thereby store excess wind and solar power. I live in Sweden, and yeah, flooding large amounts of new land will be impossible by now. The indigenous (Sami) peopl…

Your comment makes a lot more sense if I swap magazines => reservoirs, is that the word you meant?

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#257

Post by master-lincoln »

thiht wrote: post #219
master-lincoln wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate activists are to blame for much of climate change because they advocated against using one risky form of energy production? There were other options and the option of reducing energy usage (and standard of living). So I agree that activists might be responsible for nuclear energy decline in the west, but not that they are to blame for climate change because of that.

> the option of reducing energy usage (and standard of living) That was never an option. It still isn’t.

Why not?

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#258

Post by fragmede »

CM30 wrote: post #67
rcbdev wrote: post #3

Mere ~30 years after discovering the Greenhouse Effect we managed to split the atom, harnessing heretofore unimaginable amounts of energy. Yet almost 100 years later, here we are - Oil and gas dependent, boasting an energy and climate crisis, all the while fooling regulators with worthless climate certificates, unaccountable off-shore factories and just plain rampant fraud when it comes to CO2 emissions.

Unfortunately, nuclear seems to get a bad rep from a lot of people. I suspect this is because of a mixture of things: 1. The rare instances of it going wrong look catastrophic, while the many times it does better than coal/oil/gas go ignored. Kinda like how people fear plane travel more than driving, despite the former being far safer than the latter. 2. It's more expensive to setup, so there's an economic incentive…

There's also the small detail of fission vs fusion. We don't currently have fusion power except from the sun, but if we could make it work (which, noted, we've been trying for quite a number of years to make it work), then we'd have rather nuclear power that is quite a bit better than what we can do today. that might be enough to move the needle on nuclear power, since it doesn't have the waste or melt down issue.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#259

Post by FrustratedMonky »

smegger001 wrote: post #250
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I'm trusting one comment on internet. I'm pretty sure the Chernobyl engineers also said "this is impossible", "this is very safe design that can not fail". Only in hindsight did the failures appear. For Fukushima. Sure, once in a lifetime earthquake. It's always something, and at some point walls can't go any higher. Seems like backup pumps should have been on higher ground. But to think nobody will do somethi…

The difference is in Chernobyl there were mechanical safety systems to stop a meltdown. current designs are such that physics prevents it from being able to melt down. While its possible to improperly maintain safety systems causing them to fail, physics doesn't need maintenance.

Do you have link? I am curious what this design is.

If I just randomly search, it is just hundreds of designs, everyone has a 'theory' on some design that is safe and effective. Hard to filter out the 'crack-pot' from the actual physicists.

Do you have one in-particular.

(edit, also. I ask because Chernobyl was also deemed impossible by 'physics'. Technically it did not melt down first, the reactor didn't 'fail', something else fails, then melt down happens. The risk was never a nuclear explosion, it was release of nuclear material and radiation)

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#260

Post by fifilura »

ralphhughes wrote: post #256
fifilura wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water magazines and elevation change is required for pumped storage. But why not build that together will already existing hydro plants? The magazines will be full at times, but when they are not, it should be possible to just pump the water back up again and thereby store excess wind and solar power. I live in Sweden, and yeah, flooding large amounts of new land will be impossible by now. The indigenous (Sami) peopl…

Your comment makes a lot more sense if I swap magazines => reservoirs, is that the word you meant?

Sorry, yes. Swenglish.
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