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What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

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Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#81

Post by petesergeant »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #69
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #62

Imagine you lived literally in paradise on the most beautiful Pacific atoll - an utterly gorgeous place of peace and serenity and happiness. Literally heaven, surrounded by the most beautiful ocean, reefs and fish. Imagine then they turn up, round you up, take you off your island and send you somewhere else to live forever, taking your home from you. Then they nuke that island repeatedly so it can never be lived on a…

Phrasing it that way makes me think of how the Scots were driven off their land to work in factories.

The Scots were driven off their land by other Scots, though. In addition, comparing subsistence agriculture in a land where you can freeze to death with the absolute abundance of food provided by a tropical island seems a stretch. Having spent considerable time in both the Scottish Highlands -- where my wider family is centered -- and having lived on a tropical island for a few years, it takes a particularly romantic eye to try and make this comparison.

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#82

Post by chickenbig »

somishere wrote: post #57

My wife is currently in the Marshall Islands commemorating an anniversary related to the nuclear testing. The trauma and fallout, cultural and nuclear, persists to this day - over 7 decades (and how many generations?) since the Bravo test. I've heard and read a lot about the atrocities visited upon the Marshallese in the name of research in the last six months. Including around the potential "intentionality" of the h…

> Including around the potential "intentionality" of the human testing

The wikipedia link mentions allegations, but not what (I feel) counts as evidence. Note that I'm not denying that the US Government engaged in radiation test programmes (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Stevens), nor that these were covered up and are ethically questionable. But can such a rumour be falsified?

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#83

Post by kristofferR »

BurningFrog wrote: post #67

The thriving wildlife sounds a lot like Chernobyl. When humans disappear, nature thrives. The higher mutation and cancer rates don't really matter in aggregate.

The Dogs of Chernobyl (great video report):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmVGwOP_zi8

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#84

Post by 9dev »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #62

Imagine you lived literally in paradise on the most beautiful Pacific atoll - an utterly gorgeous place of peace and serenity and happiness. Literally heaven, surrounded by the most beautiful ocean, reefs and fish. Imagine then they turn up, round you up, take you off your island and send you somewhere else to live forever, taking your home from you. Then they nuke that island repeatedly so it can never be lived on a…

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#85

Post by 9dev »

tehjoker wrote: post #29
serviceberry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a lot of environmental movements aren't rooted in utilitarianism, but in deeper beliefs that the endless pursuit of growth is inherently evil. The basic idea is that tigers and wolves have as much right to the planet as we do, and we've already taken too much. Hence the degrowth movement, etc. This is why many environmental activists see cheap, abundant energy as problematic. It would mean less air pollution…

I think this is probably a misrepresentation of degrowth. Perhaps there are some that take an extreme view like that, but it is more that we are very very obviously beyond the limits of sustainable living and something will have to give, now, or worse in the future as we deplete even more resources. Some of these differences won't be "degrowth" but changes, like shifting to high speed rail and buses over personal car…

Its funny how every economist would instantly recognise what needs to be done if we weren’t talking about the climate but a publicly traded company. Imagine the company is spending a whole lot more than it is making revenue; they still have a lot of cash reserves, but it’s clear the current business can’t just continue for much longer.

What do you do? Obviously, the first thing you do is make sure the expenses go down. Cut down the unnecessary, slim every operation to what is really required, stabilise the curve so the slope becomes less steep.

Only then can you start thinking of investments in increasing efficiency by means of technology or long shots.

All of this carries over to humanity; we need to achieve a sustainable curve.

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#86

Post by arp242 »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #62

Imagine you lived literally in paradise on the most beautiful Pacific atoll - an utterly gorgeous place of peace and serenity and happiness. Literally heaven, surrounded by the most beautiful ocean, reefs and fish. Imagine then they turn up, round you up, take you off your island and send you somewhere else to live forever, taking your home from you. Then they nuke that island repeatedly so it can never be lived on a…

I'm not excusing or justifying any actions here, but thinking from a 1946 perspective: the second world war had just ended and we all know about the horrible losses that happened there, both military and civilian. This new hugely destructive weapon has just been developed. The Soviet Union is also developing the weapon, with an unhinged paranoid madman as its absolute leader. Everyone can see the outline of an arms race developing (with the second world war very fresh in memory).

In that context, relocating 167 people to another island within the same country/cultural region barely registers.

Again, I'm not justifying anything, but if I had been around at the time, I'm not sure I would have cared either.

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#87

Post by Cheer2171 »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #65
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #62

Imagine you lived literally in paradise on the most beautiful Pacific atoll - an utterly gorgeous place of peace and serenity and happiness. Literally heaven, surrounded by the most beautiful ocean, reefs and fish. Imagine then they turn up, round you up, take you off your island and send you somewhere else to live forever, taking your home from you. Then they nuke that island repeatedly so it can never be lived on a…

there's plenty of paradise like islands in the pacific. you could move all the canadians to siberia's tundra and they'd probably do well. devil's advocate: GODZILLA and all the excitement and joy the franchise gave people would not be as much a thing without the US trying to blow bikini atoll off aerial maps.

You are a wicked and despicable human being.

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#88

Post by concordDance »

Ma8ee wrote: post #55
concordDance wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence the degrowth movement, etc. The oddest thing about this to me is that they don't seem to think through what exactly this implies. If one truly believes in the need to reduce human population then by far the highest margin things are not things like preserving a few hundred year old forest in England, but mass introduction of contraceptives to the DRC. It'll be places like Nigeria and Congo that dominate in te…

Population growth decreases with education and higher standard of living, not only in Europe.

Yup, but those two countries alone are still going to hit 1.5 billion combined at current rates (DRC has 6.05 TFR declining at 0.05 per decade), momentum is key. And if they attain European rates of resource consumption then by that point they'll be by far the biggest "problem" as far as "degrowthers" are concerned.

And unlike, say, India, getting that number down is much easier (people resist being killed, but freely distributed contraceptives would likely by welcomed by women).

Re: What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today (2017)

#89

Post by concordDance »

somishere wrote: post #66
celticninja wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it turned out there was still a consideration of other people. For example if Nazi Germany got the bomb first then many more people would have been miserable. The greater good

The Marshall Islands tests were carried out after the end of WWII. It's worth considering that the US also used the islands as a dumping ground for waste from previous tests in the US [1] ... At a site which is now under threat of leaking due to the effects of climate change [2] [1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/marshall-islands-nuclear-te... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island

Why would leaking matter? The ocean will dilute the leakage to irrelevance (recall that there's 4 billion tons of Uranium already in the ocean).
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