381–390 of 422 posts
The only even theoretical solutions are:
- A magically effective totalitarian state that watches everyone inside a panopticon.
- Magically undo the damage with a technological breakthrough.
- Immediately leave Earth.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The question is what could we (people who care about climate change) have done differently to get broader political support. Literally nothing. Environmentalists can have done literally nothing different. If an entire party is going to take it upon themselves to make "climate change is a hoax" and their constituents are going to go along with it, you just have a large section of the electorate making terrible decisi…
This is anger and hatred, not logic or strategy. I don’t blame you, honestly. And there are many who feel exactly the same way. But this is why we won’t stop global warming. Because beating our enemies is more important than saving the planet.
It's not the few green militant's fault if one side is denying and attacking science, the same way it's not a few crazy leftists' fault if one side is trying to undermine the rule of law and the constitutional order in order to cling to power.
See what I am doing ? I admitting that there are a few nutcases on my side. You ? You are just issuing a blanket defense of everyone on your side (in another comment) including the most egregious (Musk) while pretending to be in the center.
I am tired of all those fake centrists. "Sure he led a conspiracy to overturn the result of an election but on the other hand remember when Hillary called us deplorables ?"
Can't wait for accountability to make a come back
It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…
I would like to note that the decisions we make at our jobs have the most impact.
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Most people would agree that drug dealers hold more moral responsibility for delivering a product that they know is highly addictive but on the other hand no one would absolve an addict of any responsibility. Even you think addiction is a illness, we still expect people to help themselves by deciding to get help/seek treatment to fight the addiction.
This sounds sensible in isolation, but the real analogy is that the drug dealers have spent billions of dollars convincing the general public that drugs are healthy and better than the alternative of sobriety. And also, when I go to the store to buy my daily needs like food and soap, they’re all packaged in the drugs. Oh and I have to consume the drugs to get to the store because there’s no safe way to get there on f…
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Would you be ok if stores offered the option between a cheap plastic bag and a more expensive non-plastic one? (All the stores here already do it, btw).
I think the externalities of plastic recycling must be internalized economically by requiring all manufacturers of items to pre-pay for the recycling of said items up front, as part of the manufacturing cost. Similar to how bottle returns are managed, which has been very successful. Items which are provably biodegradable or designed to facilitate repair may be exempt.
It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…
How on earth would anyone contribute to its mitigation? Of course everyone, everyone, contributes to its intensification, no matter how "green" they are. Yes of course, people contribute to the intensification in wildly different degrees.
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So… the sun is hotter now than it was what… since the 1950s? The 1850s? The Jurassic period? What scale is do you need to make this claim reasonable? Also, I see a lot of things presented as facts in your comment, you seem to have convinced yourself quite thoroughly.
10% every billion years. So negligible on our timescale, but it is significant if you talk about ancient climate conditions like this thread does.
It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…
Trying to solve climate change in anything but a very narrow sense is like trying to perform humane torturing. One can either treat others humanely _or_ torture them. The two at the same time is impossible. The majority of conversations around climate change focus on doing the same things - modernity - but without the negative effects. Chasing a way to humanely torture children will not in fact stop the torturing of children. The goal is wrong! No amount of "solutions" will help you if they all aim to achieve the goal that itself is the root cause of the issues.
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are you sure we aren't on the >4°C path? AI could very well put us back on it.
AI which helps us design a commerciallizable fusion reactor might buy us a century.
For big reactors: At current aluminium prices, the bill of materials for a global power grid with 1 Ω resistance the long way round is only about 10x the cost ITER (the organisation) expects ITER (the reactor) to be. Plug in your own numbers for target resistance as desired, halve resistance needs double the material.
With such a grid, you can put the PV in Angola and still get useful output in mid-winter nighttime in Anchorage.
For potential small reactors like Helion's "shipping container" target size, I won't say it can't work (I don't know enough to be confident), but I will say that we immediately find we have bigger problems because any hostile actor can simply choose to run them in neutron-source mode and turn everyday cheap depleted uranium* into weaponizable plutonium.
* I note that eBay still clearly has a dictionary merge on all nouns, given my search results came up with this:
Get the best deals for Depleted Uranium Metal at eBay.com. We have a great online selection at the lowest prices with Fast & Free shipping on many items!
It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…
> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…
The individual responsibility is to vote for representatives that prevent such externalization through regulation, and to stand behind such regulation even if it is slightly inconvenient (plastic drinking straws) or somewhat costly (gas, flights).
The biggest problem is that a significant part of the global population is not willing to make even the smallest sacrifice in lifestyle towards such a goal (=> this is often difficult to see if you are in a more left/green bubble, but i absolutely true of the average citizen).
We, as voters, have expressed so little care for climate and environment sustainability that politicians don't even bother catering towards that niche any more.
In the US there was an super obvious choice 25 years ago in the US between genuine, ambitious sustainability and some generic politician not even half as competent as his father, and we all saw the outcome; politicians since barely even bother pretending to be concerned about climate sustainability because voters just don't care.