91–100 of 365 posts
We need geoengineering now. If a volcanic eruption occurs and blocks out a significant portion of light, we need a way to compensate for it(solar mirroring/concentration?), or eliminate the particulates.
The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a matter of "if" but "when". Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge shifts on…
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One angle on the TP problem is that we didn't just have a shock, we had a shock and then lasting change in demand. I saw an article that says demand for residential sized TP rolls is up 40% because a lot of bathroom visits are happening in homes that used to happen in work places.
I know that, but the point remains that the supply chain has not “recovered” in any meaningful sense. Capitalism, in fact, guarantees it will not (too expensive to switch production from commercial to residential TP). We’re going to be seeing this phenomenon until people can go back to work.
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In what sense have we “recovered” from supply chain disruptions? I go to the store and still routinely see empty shelves where TP should be; have experienced meat shortages in recent days; and stores are still rationing things like hand sanitizer (when you can find it), canned goods, meat, and rice.
Personally, I haven't seen any empty shelves or shortages since early May, and the only rationing I've seen in June is on hand sanitizer and instant noodles. I guess I don't know whether my area is uncommonly good or yours is uncommonly bad.
Since this article, there has been new research indicating that the Plague of Justinian may not have been as bad as previously thought. https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/12/02/maybe-first-plague...
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-%E2%80%98Justinian...
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Doesn't "not good" in this context mean NEVER. Are there any native tribes/peoples that had a writing system before European contact? AFAICT, it's one of the main causes so many native languages are dying/extinct.
Writing developed in America long before Europeans showed up and continued to be used until Europeans showed up, but the Europeans destroyed most books they could find and forced the natives to learn the colonizers' languages. That's the main cause why so many native languages are dying/extinct. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Am...
The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a matter of "if" but "when". Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge shifts on…
I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal in unfamiliar and hostile environments.
If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on our home planet, we have no chance of handling them in space or on other planets.
These kinds of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions could happen today right? What's.......our intended process for dealing with this? Are there any technical solutions for dispersing ash from the atmosphere? I know this is a stupidly naive question to some degree - how do you prevent acts of god, but I am curious if someone has thought about it.
one of the attributes of an act of god is being unpreventable by humans. in the event of something like this, having the supplies to just weather the fallout would be best. a years worth of supplies on-hand would be a good start.
That may be, but the set of things that humans can prevent gets larger over time. For example, 100 years ago, an asteroid hitting the earth would be an act of God we could do nothing about, but today it is at least within the realm of possibility that we could observe a large asteroid on a collision course and send in a spacecraft or missile to divert it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance
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How would green/grow houses help in such a situation?
The cold weather would kill crops in all but probably tropical latitudes. The lack of sunlight will slow plant growth. Placing plants in greenhouses / growhouses would keep them warm and you could supplement sunlight with LED lighting to feed the plants.
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I know that, but the point remains that the supply chain has not “recovered” in any meaningful sense. Capitalism, in fact, guarantees it will not (too expensive to switch production from commercial to residential TP). We’re going to be seeing this phenomenon until people can go back to work.
on the other hand, commercial-sized TP works just as well and is readily available. it just won't fit on your nice TP holder. if this is what capitalism failing looks like, I'd say it's not so bad.
Now, if you want to talk about how we have zillions of brands of TP, but they’re all made by the same handful of companies (illusion of choice), I might argue that’s a failure mode of capitalism.
#ShitYouCantSayOnHN