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Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

xkcd.com

41–50 of 286 posts

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#41
post #9

Some other fun “x is closer to y than z”: * We are closer in time to the T rex than the T rex was to the Stegosaurus * We are closer to the time of Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza

I know which one you mean, as I'm sure we all do, but it always amuses me that we refer to her as just 'Cleopatra' because... basically every queen of Egypt in that dynasty was named Cleopatra. They named the vast majority of the boys Ptolemy and the girls Cleopatra. Her mother's name is Cleopatra V Tryphaena. Her daughters name is Cleopatra Selene II. Her Fathers name is Ptolemy XII, she has brothers named Ptolemy X…

Sure, there were many a Cleopatra, but only one was the Cleopatra. :D

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#42
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.

[flagged]

> Unfortunately, we cannot pick and choose civilisational paths like a buffet meal.

In more democratic countries the denizens can indeed pick if they want a government for or against nuclear energy.

> We should make it illegal for software engineers to complain about industrialisation unless they give up laptops, gpus, air-conditioning, coffee machines and refrigerators.

What a silly needlessly polarizing sentiment. What we should make illegal is for countries that have the means and know-how to provide on-demand emission-free electricity for the grid to remain on coal and gas - lest the institutional and societal knowledge on nuclear power plants completely atrophies.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#43
post #9

Some other fun “x is closer to y than z”: * We are closer in time to the T rex than the T rex was to the Stegosaurus * We are closer to the time of Cleopatra than Cleopatra was to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza

I know which one you mean, as I'm sure we all do, but it always amuses me that we refer to her as just 'Cleopatra' because... basically every queen of Egypt in that dynasty was named Cleopatra. They named the vast majority of the boys Ptolemy and the girls Cleopatra. Her mother's name is Cleopatra V Tryphaena. Her daughters name is Cleopatra Selene II. Her Fathers name is Ptolemy XII, she has brothers named Ptolemy X…

The entire Western pop cultural canon of ancient Egypt was created by a culture that ground mummies up for soup. It's not surprising that a lot of complexity and subtlety got lost in translation.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#44

[flagged]

"""In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" to describe the phenomenon of experts reading articles within their fields of expertise and finding them to be error-ridden and full of misunderstanding, but seemingly forgetting those experiences when reading articles in the same publications written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, which they believe to be credible."""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...

Newspapers may have said that, scientists did not, and would not have done. I mean the maximum is about 70m rise if everything melted, and while that would mess all the coastal cities, the adjective "costal" is important. Also the worst case heating isn't expected for a while yet, and the "ice age" discussion that sometimes gets mentioned was on the scale of millennia, not decades.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Unfortunately, we cannot pick and choose civilisational paths like a buffet meal. In more democratic countries the denizens can indeed pick if they want a government for or against nuclear energy. > We should make it illegal for software engineers to complain about industrialisation unless they give up laptops, gpus, air-conditioning, coffee machines and refrigerators. What a silly needlessly polarizing sentiment.…

>illegal is for countries

You can be the first to go fight those wars. There's no 'illegal for countries'.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#47
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can long press the image to get the alt text on the desktop website.

Is it not cut when it's long? It was the case when I had a smartphone a few years ago, I don't know the state of it now though.

You can tap the text: https://i.ibb.co/2SpWSTF/Screenshot-20240226-131157-Chrome-D...

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#48
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically for the alt text, which you can display by clicking on "alt text", instead of having to hover to display the title attribute. And actually, it's better on regular computer for this very reason IMHO. A link or button element could be used though for this button. Fitting to screen width would not be great on many devices, the image could be too small.

You can long press the image to get the alt text on the desktop website.

Half the time on iOS, that now selects text within the image, which is cool, but not so helpful for the alt text.
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