I took off all my clothes.
July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
411–420 of 522 posts
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
The claims that climate change is likely mostly man made are based on a combination of well-established physics and chemistry as well as observations of how climate change correlates with the various conditions which are theorized to drive it, which gives a pretty clear idea of the direct contributions, and we have very good ideas of the root causes of those direct contributions, at least to the extent of which ones…
Yeah, those physics and chemistry models are made by scientists who are really, really smart and are 100% correct, 100% of the time. They have lab coats and all. It's definitely possible to model the whole climate system. Amazon is making recommendations with machine learning AI and shit.
And your qualification is that you read HN?
I'll stick with the scientists thanks.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just price. None of the technologies you mention scale to anywhere near the levels of a nuclear powerplant. It's a huge engineering issue that, while most likely solvable, simply hasn't been solved yet.
How so? Pretty much any building you can point at has enough space for batteries to sustain its power needs overnight. The only reason we haven't all run out and done it is because, first, it's not necessary with the grid as it is now, and second, it costs a whole lot. The engineering issues are in getting this stuff to be sufficiently cost effective that we can afford to put them into wide use.
How many batteries can we build? How do we build them on such a large scale? Do we mine enough raw materials for so many batteries? Are there enough materials for so many batteries? How do we cool them? How do we replace the faulty ones? How long do they last? How many people do we need to maintain them? How do we train them? How do we dispose of the batteries?
Not all of these questions have have hard or problematic answers (e.g. especially the last one is probably much worse for nuclear), but they do need to be answered, at all. We've been answering these questions for nuclear for the past 50 years.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogethe…
What do you mean? You're discarding the solution as something completely impractical when the reality is that import tariffs and taxes are very effective at controlling certain behaviors and mitigating the second-order effects of certain economic activity. Recycling, sin taxes, environmental regulation and control for polluting industries. They are not 100% effective but they are clearly way more effective than the a…
I think the dispute is over exactly how effective they would be at actually changing the climate, though.
In the meantime, since they are very effective at changing economic activity, as you describe, the argument is that you would soon see disparities in economic output, and geopolitical power, and even immigration inflows / outflows between the countries that institute these onerous regulations, and those that don't.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having kids especially in the west is probably the least environmental friendly thing you could do.
If we stop having kids, then why would we bother to protect the environment?
Its a question I ask myself as I don't plan on having any. There is some instinct in me to avoid suffering of future generations. It seems to be the right thing to do. Not sure where that comes from.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. There are advanced cultures in the world without this ambition you speak of (I'm looking at you, Holland), where convenient life in a local environment that is all accessible by bike, eating lots of fish, and caring less about immense wealth and impressions and more about quality of life.. it is attainable.
I'd be interested to see a comparison on the amount of advertising done per capita in Holland vs. the United States. Once I stopped watching television, I was no longer exposed to such incessant advertising. As a result, I stopped caring so much about impractical consumption. I.e. buying the new car they show every 10 minutes in such persuasive and skillfully crafted multi-million dollar targeted advertisements.
Me too. I rail against advertising incessantly on here, but I really think it's far nearer to the core of the issue than a lot of people think.
Even a lot of anti-ad folk are like "just make them less intrusive and it'll be fine". No, that's just an extra annoyance. Ads are, at their very essence, incredibly bad.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#417It never ceases to bewilder me that nuclear power isn't taken seriously as a replacement for fossil-burning baseload generation.
...particularly when there are tens of thousands of warheads that can be re-purposed. Megatons-to-megawatts is the closest modern equivalent of swords-to-plowshares; it's harder to think of something the world needs more.
It'd be brilliant to see the US and Russia develop a new arms-control agreement under which warheads are gradually decommissioned and their power metals reworked into civilian-grade fuel suitable (only) for use in power generation, retaining effective near-parity of weapons throughout so that nobody has to get uncomfortable under the old MAD-style rules, and ending with enough of a remaining stockpile to ensure national security - and an enormously advantageous trade position besides.
But that's far too optimistic and sensible to ever happen.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
"add lots of taxes" - How incredibly naive. Any tax money would be wasted. Some people would pay more, some corrupt people will find a way to spend that tax money, and almost nothing else would change. Well maybe, you'll make it so poor people can't drive or cool their houses in the summer, but the middle class and up won't change their behavior. I wish you "just tax it" people would hold your electives accountable f…
As far as this scenario is concerned, it doesn't matter that the tax money is wasted. The point is to discourage consumption.
Discourage consumption by who? People without money?
You're busy looking up, and forgetting there's a class or two of people below you that would be [disproportionately] affected by your policy.
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, those physics and chemistry models are made by scientists who are really, really smart and are 100% correct, 100% of the time. They have lab coats and all. It's definitely possible to model the whole climate system. Amazon is making recommendations with machine learning AI and shit.
And your qualification is that you read HN? I'll stick with the scientists thanks.
No, my qualification is that I create statistical models for living and I know how flawed they are. What are yours?
Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as this scenario is concerned, it doesn't matter that the tax money is wasted. The point is to discourage consumption.
Discourage consumption by who? People without money? You're busy looking up, and forgetting there's a class or two of people below you that would be [disproportionately] affected by your policy.
If you think everyone should have access to some meat, you can take some of that tax money and use it to subsidize a minimal amount of meat consumption for low-income families.