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On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

environmentalprogress.org

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Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#41

Post by pmiller2 »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #37
aquova wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that this guy is primarily out to sell his book, which he spends quite a bit of time talking about how great it is. As for the points he mentions, some are clearly false. > The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska With global population trends, even if average meat consumption is starting to decrease, the amount of li…

Developed nations are shrinking. Why won't global population do the same, long term?

Bold of you to assume we'll reach the long term.

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#43

Post by gHosts »

pintxo wrote: post #35
wyldfire wrote: post #6

It always seemed to me like the greatest hedge we could have is having human colonies on other planets. Because global disasters of so many kinds could sum up to extinction. While I realize that could be many decades away, it does seem like prioritizing it would make it happen much faster. > The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural ga…

> Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did According to [1]: The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969, and to a worldwide cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s. This does sound more like Greenpeace (founded 1971) being the reason than switching to petroleum (no reason to expect much u…

There are quite a few remnants of the Whaling industry around NZ... it's clear that one of the major reasons was they were so damn near extinct it wasn't anywhere close to energy profitable to hunt them anymore.

For some phantasmagorical stubborn up yours world, various nations continue to hunt them. Sea shepherds have been fighting that sort of crassness.

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#44

Post by mcphage »

mulmen wrote: post #21
mcphage wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the particulates caused by wood fires are terrible for our lungs, especially inside houses: https://samharris.org/the-fireplace-delusion/

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of starting point I was looking for.

You're welcome :-)

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#45

Post by bioinformatics »

gHosts wrote: post #33
kick wrote: post #7

This is a really misleading piece, by the way. This person has been speaking against environmentalism for over a decade now; he literally wrote a book about it sixteen years ago that attracted an amount of controversy. He doesn't deserve to speak for environmentalists; his actions for the past decade are pro-capital, any pro-environment effect was secondary. He's an economist, not an environmentalist, and he's trying…

I tried to find the source for the AOC quote.... I want (as always, whether Trump or AOC, to see the exact quote in context) and encountered a interesting new form of obfuscation... Proof by reference to a 4 hours long video!

You really should try that Google thing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/24/ocasio-co...

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#46

Post by jhanschoo »

jjk166 wrote: post #40
jhanschoo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It always seemed to me like the greatest hedge we could have is having human colonies on other planets. Because global disasters of so many kinds could sum up to extinction. While I realize that could be many decades away, it does seem like prioritizing it would make it happen much faster. I don't understand how setting up a colony on Mars, space, or the moon can be cheaper or more sustainable than the equivalent i…

If you put it on earth, it has to survive whatever renders the earth uninhabitable. Given the very large number of potential bad things that could happen, something that can confidently survive all of them would be very difficult to make. If it's on another world, it is obviously already in a pretty inhospitable environment that is expensive to access, but that environment is unlikely to get catastrophically worse at…

But what catastrophes could render the Earth so much more uninhabitable than Mars everyday?

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#47

Post by haltingproblem »

Michael Crichton's famous speech "Alien's cause global warming" is reprised in [1]. Is there truth in the environmental claims. I am sure there is. The environmental movement and climate scientists have shifted to activism that it is hard to differentiate truth and science from activism and propaganda.

They environmentalists and their activism appears like a cross between Big Tobacco marketing, PETA and the Westboro baptist Church with a dash of Scientology thrown in for good measure.

Tell me about that other planet colonization thing again ;)

In all seriousness, who here really thinks we will have mass deaths, upwards of 10% of the population of the earth in the next 10 year timeframe from global warming? What about 15 years? 20 years?

How about 5%? What odds are you proffering and how much would you like to wager on it?

[1] https://mindmatters.ai/2020/06/twenty-years-on-aliens-still-...

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#48

Post by dang »

bioinformatics wrote: post #45
gHosts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to find the source for the AOC quote.... I want (as always, whether Trump or AOC, to see the exact quote in context) and encountered a interesting new form of obfuscation... Proof by reference to a 4 hours long video!

You really should try that Google thing https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/24/ocasio-co...

Please don't be a jerk on HN, even when someone didn't Google.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#49

Post by Oletros »

haltingproblem wrote: post #47

Michael Crichton's famous speech "Alien's cause global warming" is reprised in [1]. Is there truth in the environmental claims. I am sure there is. The environmental movement and climate scientists have shifted to activism that it is hard to differentiate truth and science from activism and propaganda. They environmentalists and their activism appears like a cross between Big Tobacco marketing, PETA and the Westboro…

> and climate scientists have shifted to activism that it is hard to differentiate truth and science from activism and propaganda.

Any example of this?

Re: On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare

#50

Post by jjk166 »

jhanschoo wrote: post #46
jjk166 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put it on earth, it has to survive whatever renders the earth uninhabitable. Given the very large number of potential bad things that could happen, something that can confidently survive all of them would be very difficult to make. If it's on another world, it is obviously already in a pretty inhospitable environment that is expensive to access, but that environment is unlikely to get catastrophically worse at…

But what catastrophes could render the Earth so much more uninhabitable than Mars everyday?

You don't design safety systems for every day, you design them for the worst day. For example, on earth there are nuclear weapons, so anything designed to last has to be able to survive a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. Even though a post-nuclear earth would still be nicer than mars, it's easier to survive on mars for centuries than survive that fraction of a second of nuclear fire. And it's not just nuclear - if you are going to have a single point of failure, it has to survive every possible thing - it needs to be nuke proof, germ proof, chemical proof, earthquake proof... Redundancy is much cheaper.

Presumably the martian back-ups would return to earth as soon as the danger of the calamity had passed, so you still get all the benefits of Earth's habitability afterwards. Only the pre-catastrophe society needs to build and support a mars base.

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