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ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

khwarezm posted:

When their living standards are directly, negatively afflicted by the results of use of cheap fossil fuels what do you do then? This is exceptionally short sighted thinking.

Their living standards can be absolute garbage as is without burning fossil fuels, or they can burn fossil fuels and have a more bearable existence in the time before the collapse of their society that is guaranteed by climate change that will happen regardless of whether or not their own individual country decides to stop burning fuel tomorrow.

Unless Pakistan and India finally blow each other up and China does full totalitarian and kills 80% of it's population or something there's nothing anyone can do to prevent climate change anyways, so who cares?

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ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Yea, that sounds like something the developed world would do.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

pidan posted:

Considering that according to the article they feed on hydrogen, they'd have a hard time finding a place in nature where there's enough hydrogen to cause any significant impact. Also "The proofs came in yesterday ... it's going to be embargoed by Science" probably means it's bullshit.

....that's not what that sentence means. Science is a magazine.



Why are you being a dipshit on purpose in the climate change thread, you will end up being lumped in with people like Arkane. I can't imagine anyone would want that for themselves.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
I'm not like a marine biologist, but phytoplankton have a generation time of a couple hours to a couple days, so a hundred years seems like an alright period of time to get some adaptation to warmer temperatures.

Not that I really think that there's gonna be a lot of species surviving the end results of anthropogenic climate change, maybe not even global human civilisation as we know it, but suffocation due to loss of phytoplankton probably won't be the specific mechanic of our demise.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Overflight posted:

Again, how am I supposed to live my life with this knowledge? I refuse to raise a family, any and all career goals seem useless to me since society as we know it might not even survive the next 20 years, let alone 100, and most people and family treat me like an annoyance at best. Is the mere act of existing and not being dead supposed to give me some intrinsic joy? Because I don't get it and getting medicated for it doesn't seem like a good prospect because I am afraid of becoming too optimistic and then making choices like raising a family that then will be stuck in this hell and die painfully cursing my name.

gb2e/n?

I think most people in this thread have already accepted our world's fate to some degree, we're kinda over it. Except for the occasional dumb troll I guess.

Society's not going anywhere in the next 20 years, you're gonna be fine. If you don't have kids literally none of this is really your problem.

ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Jun 25, 2016

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
That looks pretty made up from what I can tell, googling it gets nothing legitimate looking or informative at all.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Political will is the only thing that matters, and I honestly believe that anyone who thinks that there is a realistic way to prevent catastrophic climate change is a damned fool. It would take nothing short of a god-emperor of all humanity to enact the level of change required, it's just not going to happen. The changes needed are so massive and they need to be done so far in advance of actual catastrophe that there is no way to explain it to or convince the average person of what needs to be done.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Geoengineering ideas may be ridiculous and dangerous proposals towards preventing the end of global human civilisation due to catastrophic climate change, but if anyone in this thread or anywhere else things that a political solution is possible now, or that one will ever be possible at any point in time, they are either fooling themselves or a complete idiot. There is literally one political solution that can end climate change and it is as follows:

Someone is appointed to be the god-emperor of humanity and everyone is instantly on board with every decision they make, and that person happens to give a poo poo about saving the planet.

That's the only political solution. I'd rather roll the dice on whatever possibly disastrous geoengineering idea we come up with in the next couple decades, because it will quite literally be the only shot we have at fixing the climate.

Human life isn't going to go extinct regardless, the human animal is individually too intelligent for that to happen under almost any circumstance, but the idea that global civilisation as it is today can without any doubt survive the results of climate change in the next century is pretty laughable. What exactly do we expect to happen when the people of India and Pakistan become so desperate as to start a resource war with each other or any other nation that might hold the key to their survival? That they're really going to give a poo poo between choosing to die to unstoppable and unquenchable thirst and starvation or to nuclear hellfire?

And what of us, the wealthy people of the world, are we going to be able to do what it takes to ensure our own survival? Are we going to just close ourselves off to the suffering of billions of people all around the world and convince ourselves that they don't exist? Are we going to accept our greatly reduced quality of life, resist the temptation to elect an angry facist to blame all our problems on someone else and start going to war with other countries in an attempt to gain the resources needed to satiate the desires of our own countrymen? What exactly is the path that an optimist can take here, because short of covering your eyes and ears and lying to yourself about how everything is going to turn out fine I'm not seeing many options here.

ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Sep 30, 2016

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
The part I don't understand is why so many people think that just because we made it 70 years or so without a massive war between multiple aggressive nations erupting and costing the lives of millions of people, that means that it will never happen again. Sure, without such a war happening there's no reason that the people of the first world nations of the future will live in a world not worth existing in, but I don't see much in the way of convincing evidence that world peace, such as it is, can survive the effects of catastrophic climate change.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
It doesn't matter what you think is important, what matters is what the people in charge of the world think is important, and what is politically feasible. Population control is even less popular and taken less seriously than standard climate change policy, which is already totally ignored by everyone and will never be put into action until it's far too late.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

GlyphGryph posted:

Also the rockets are people and no one is ever going to agree to get rid of a significant number of rockets.

You do realize that the only way to redirect the asteroid of this tortured metaphor is to come up with a miracle technology that can remove all the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in like the next 50 years?

If you've got any ideas on how to do that, by all means enlighten us, but I'm not seeing it.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

mik posted:

The problem with dying is I really want to see what happens next.

You just have to survive until the nuclear war, after that there's probably not much worth seeing

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

double nine posted:

question: given that we seem mostly unable to change our behaviours, how much of the world population would have to be brutally murdered for our presence and natural resource exploitation on this planet to be sustainable? 50%, 20%, 10%?


I mean I'm not saying we need orbital death-rays, but at this point, would they help?

If you happen to have an orbital death ray, the best course of action for saving the world would likely be to wipe off any densely populated Chinese, Indian, and American city. I suppose that's roughly two billion people from the first two and at least 300 million from America, which adds up to about a third of the world's population.

It's not really about population numbers though, if you were to eliminate a third of the worlds population but left those three countries alone, you wouldn't affect climate change very much at all.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Anyone looking for something they can do to help really needs to change their general outlook on the situation. There is no prevention at this point, honestly the only real singular tipping point was 16 years ago when Gore conceded the election that he won. If you care about other people, then get as many other people together as you can and learn how to survive in a world without global civilization. You are not going to save the world or make any real difference at all to anyone other than yourself and the people you personally know. The first step is moving out of Florida or any other populated coastal region you might currently live in or near, to somewhere that isn't immediately doomed. The best case scenario is that you will have saved a lot of time and money when the WAIS breaks off, and the worst case scenario is that you will have a better chance at surviving the migration crisis (coming soon to a city near you!) or the facist government that will be elected and necessary to prevent such a crisis from getting you killed.

As people have said earlier, this is assuming that you don't have the money to move to New Zealand and build a secure bunker or compound of some sort.

It's also assuming that the nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in the next decade doesn't lead to anything involving other nations that could lead to a global nuclear winter of such proportions that survival isn't really worth it anymore.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Minge Binge posted:

If you think isolating yourself in an area that might be hospitable in a post warming world than you greatly underestimate the impact of societal collapse. The second lawlessness rules you will be subject to violence. You're cute garden and pigs will be a target. You will die. It's just selfish at this point to abandon society. You're efforts will go lot farther in figuring out how to deal with the current crisis, and how society can continue in a post warming society. Don't be a coward, go down with the ship, and be prepared for suicide.

Well that's one of the reasons people are moving to New Zealand, it's an island where you won't be immediately swarmed by climate refugees since you have to cross an ocean to get there.

Society doesn't just immediately flip the switch from "good" to "collapsed" in one day, it takes time, and anyone who knows it's coming can do more to prepare for it than someone who doesn't, and maybe eventually that means that your group of people move out somewhere remote and hope that nobody can be bothered to bring a tank or something else that you can't hold off with hunting rifles out that far.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Arglebargle III posted:

Is there any serious evidence that wealthy states at high latitudes won't survive rising sea levels, droughts, and high temperatures? Surely North America has a huge cushion of natural resources? The population of Mexico could move into the US and we'd still have much lower population densities than Eurasia.

I think you guys are underestimating the resiliency of states and society. Closed borders really mean closed borders, rationing really means rationing. States don't collapse immediately in these circumstances, if they collapse at all. States survive megadeath events all the time.

Standard of living doesn't have to keep going up. Democracy doesn't have to survive. You're also underestimating the capacity of states to shoot people when things get rough. There's a whole range of possible outcomes between carbon-neutral liberal democracy and total collapse of society.

I've meant for all my posts to accommodate for the likely occurrence of authoritarian and fascist governments taking power in all wealthy first world nations, apologies if it wasn't clear. North America's cushion of natural resources isn't such a comforting idea when taking into account that so many of those will be rendered useless by virtue of being far enough south that they just become desert, which leaves me in the unenviable position of living in the country next door to the one with the most powerful military in the world, that will take our resources by trade agreement first, then by force when necessary.

Resource wars aren't such a happy thought when so many nations are equipped with nuclear arms, and there literally aren't going to be enough resources to go around and feed the entire population when poo poo gets bad.

quote:

Stop watching apocalypse fiction and go out there and join political organizations and even take them over if you can. I dunno, advocate violence if you think it will help

Violence will not help, the state is far too powerful for violence to be effective on any scale that could be considered reasonable, and the people of the first world will never see such a thing as justified until it is far too late to make any real difference in the world. I know this because as a person who knows perfectly well how hosed we are, and has a pretty solid foundation of ideas of what people and places you might want to target to create a better world for the people of tomorrow, I still have absolutely no interest in risking my life or freedom to make a difference in the world. I'm far from alone in that attitude, and to even get most people to that point you'd have to educate their stupid rear end on how hosed we really are regarding climate change. It would be great if someone would go around bombing coal plants and taking out the people responsible for the destruction of the world, but there will never be enough support for such a thing to make a difference in the long run. It's just not the way the first world is set up.

quote:

Building a walled compound in Minnesota just takes you out of the equation.

Uh yes that is the goal? Why would I want to be a part of the equation of the future of this world? It's a bad equation, dude. What do I care if my country survives or not if I'm not around to see it?

ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Dec 10, 2016

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Honj Steak posted:

How badly will central Europe be hit?

Any parts of Europe that are not rendered unlivable by climate change will be quickly swarmed with refugees to a point at which they must either collapse or elect a government ruthless enough to close the borders and shoot anyone who approaches. Don't forget that Europe is ultimately connected by land to the parts of the world that will be most affected by climate change.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
We're already 10,000 years or so into a mass extinction event known as the Holocene extinction (I prefer Anthropocene extinction), and it's just getting started.

People probably don't stress the ocean as much as the land because people live on the land and not in the ocean. I mean I don't really care as much about the death of a large amount of sea life when the death of all available arable land is upon us. I can live without food that comes from the ocean a lot easier than I can live without food that comes from the land.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
I'll admit that I've not researched it as much as I have climate change but I kinda feel like that even if all the shellfish and normal fish die as long as we have plankton around to produce oxygen and evaporation around to give us rain and fresh water we can still eke out a living in whatever theoretical situation it is where arable land still exists but ocean life doesn't anymore.

I mean either way it still comes down to "there's too much CO2 in the air and we're totally hosed and there's nothing we can do to fix it without a giant orbital laser or sudden appearance of a god-emperor of humanity".

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

From what i've been reading, the biggest issue seems to be the rate of acidification. If acidification is done at a slow enough rate, things will be able to cycle through enough generations to adapt. However, if it happens rapidly enough, there is no time for natural selection and everything that isn't extremely resilient to pH-drops dies. Outside of this, there are some more fragile groups, like pteropods, that will simply dissolve under increased acidification.

I'm kinda working under the assumption that there will be an unprecedented rate of extinction of species all over the planet anyways, but I'm fairly confident that that plankton are going to be able to adapt easy enough, considering their generation time is like a few hours to a few days.

If the plankton all die then maybe we'll suffocate, but I don't think of it as particularly high on the list of things that are going to kill us.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
If global civilisation is still around in a hundred years then that means we'll have found a way to survive without the arctic polar ice cap, without the glaciers of the Himalayas, and likely without the entire western third of Antarctica.

If we somehow make it through all of that I feel like we'll have found a fix for the ocean at that point.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
I mean it's a nice thought that someone's gonna be able to come up with a technology that can save the world in the next twenty years, but I'm pretty sure a billion dollars isn't enough to come up with the technology needed to save the world, they spent 2000 times that much on the Iraq War and look how that turned out.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
You cannot reduce consumption without forcing people to do it, it will never happen voluntarily. It doesn't matter what happens to the Middle east or India and China or if Florida sinks entirely into the ocean in the next 20 years, the only way to reduce consumption is by forcing it. If you seriously believe that the American government is going to force people to consume less then I would like to move to the alternate reality you are posting from, because it is not going to happen in this one.

People are hoping for geoengineering to turn out alright because it's literally our only chance at survival. To me it seems unlikely that we will be able to do anything significant, but 30 years ago it seemed unlikely that we'd be walking around with supercomputers in our pockets at all times. It's at least a little comforting to people who still have hope.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
You have to entirely rebuild so many of the largest cities in America to make them liveable without owning a car that it's ridiculous to even think that the will for it could be mustered in time to prevent catastrophe anyways. I shouldn't have implied that Americans (Not just Americans) are consuming an inordinate amount of resources just because they like to, it's due to a great deal of factors that make up not only their (our) culture, but the physical realities of the world in which we find ourselves. Logically speaking, yes, of course these issues could be solved, but who's going to do it? Who's going to give up all that money, and allow it to happen? There's more to the issue than just convincing people that we need to consume less, you need to undo the entire society that we live in from the ground up.

There's no question that it's a political problem, it's just an insurmountable one. There's more to it than politics for sure, but when you mix the interests of the people who's decisions actually matter with the attitude of the general public about the way they live their lives you get an unsolvable problem. You can't get people to consume less in our current society, it's consumer driven capitalism to the extreme, it cannot be stopped without costing the most powerful people in the world so much money that they would never allow it in the first place.

I've tried to avoid this part of the issue because people tend to shut down immediately when you say the word capitalism and write you off as some rear end in a top hat who's still mad that Sanders isn't the president, but it's an unavoidable part of why the political issue cannot be fought. The whole world is set up against the idea of positive change, it doesn't matter what any of us or any other group of random jerks on an internet forum say. There is no enemy for us to fight, there's nobody for us to elect to fix this, there's no policy that can be implemented to change the world in such a way as is necessary to mean poo poo all in the end.

Learn some skills to survive in a world without global human civilisation, and try to get other people to do the same. If you need hope, hope that someone comes up with the technology to save the world, but be ready for it to not happen. You can't save the world, just try to save yourself.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Aside from the mythical heavily enforced compound in New Zealand that we all dream of and can't afford, there is certainly no guarantee for anyone to be safe from whatever comes, but the chances of us literally all dying from it are also quite low, and anyone who does make it in the end are going to be the people who learned how to survive in the long run.

Also I mean you can stay fit into late middle age and beyond without running and destroying your knees. Also You never know how fast things can really come, I mean Syria was a pretty functional state like 6 short years ago, and look at it now. Maybe we'll match their pace, or maybe we'll hold out long enough that it doesn't matter that much in our lifetime (seems unlikely, I must admit), you never really know.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Rap Record Hoarder posted:

See, here's where I agree with you (mostly). The root of the problem is the way that society is structured around capitalist ideas of production, consumption, and trade. Opposing that would provide more space, theoretically speaking, to address climate issues in a more direct manner. But I disagree that it's not possible to convince people of the necessity of that framework. Most people dislike the way that the economy works, that it rewards a few and punishes the rest, and would stand against it if given the opportunity. The enemy is right there. For you to continually tout geoengineering or any other moonshot tech as the answer is to do the work of the opposition for them, by rationalizing the mindset that humanity can gently caress up, infinitely, and never suffer the consequences, because someone, somehow, will save us and therefore the status quo can go unchanged.

I think the part where we might be at an impasse is that I don't think it is possible for us pathetic fuckin proles to generate the awareness or political will we both agree to be necessary, by virtue of the power and wealth of the people keeping it going like it is. We can't fight that, no matter what we do or say, they're the ones with the money and power, and that money and power includes the power to get people to vote against their own interests. They've been doing it for a long time and they're getting better and better at it. There will always be a Democratic party to play The Face, and a Republican party to play The Heel, people on our side will always be content to vote for The Face because it makes them feel better about voting against The Heel. The most progressive option for the future of America was Hillary Clinton, for god's sake! She didn't even mention climate change a single time during any event of importance the whole election! I guess if you think that that fight can be won then there's nothing I can say at this point other than I genuinely do not.

Rap Record Hoarder posted:

If you're so assured that we're hosed and it's going to be every man for himself, why are you posting here? Shouldn't you be trading survival tips in TFR?

Because I don't have the money for that, doomsday prepping is kind of a luxury. My long term plans include a chance at me being able to afford that kind of life at some point in the future, but for now I still live in poverty, and honestly that's not really that likely to change.

ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Dec 16, 2016

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Guy Goodbody posted:

Isn't personal vehicle emissions a really tiny percentage of overall emissions?

About 13% of American emissions are Personal vehicles according to the EPA. That's not nothing, especially from the country with the second highest gross and first highest per capita emissions in the world.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
The whole reason the person in the first place said don't have kids was because those kids lives will loving suck and be much shorter and more painful than our own.

AceOfFlames posted:

So I ask again, how the hell can anyone do anything knowing this sort of thing and not want to immediately hang themselves? I've gotten to the point where everything sounds pointless and I can't convince my therapist to go beyond "Things will work out!"- Only resort is drugs but if civilization collapses those will go as well. I'm hoping every day that I die in a painless accident.

Get over it, dude. What exactly is it about global human civilisation that you're so invested in anyways? Work toward bettering your own future and get used to the idea that most people's futures are going to be pretty loving bad. It's really not your problem, worry about yourself first.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
This entire discussion is asinine, the end game of the Anthropocene extinction event taking place all over the world will take literally millions of years to get back to a diverse functional ecosystem, evolution is a slow loving process. And this entire discussion is assuming that we won't end up with a nuclear winter that blocks out the sun entirely for years and years. Or that human civilisation survives the various non-nuclear wars that are guaranteed to happen between countries all over the world when we start running out of food and water for reals.

Stop trying to find an upside to climate change, it's a bad scene.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
I mean if you really need an upside, you can hold onto the idea that we gently caress up the ocean fast enough that the plankton all dies and we all suffocate, which would leave room for the planet to recover over the course of millions of years, leaving the opportunity for another animal to evolve intelligence well before our planet's 500 million year expiry date.

Even that is unlikely though, humans aren't going to go extinct, just our civilisation will and we'll have a really lovely time for a really long time.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Can you guys like chill out and accept that as long as there is authoritarian rule in place to force people to reduce their consumption in all aspects of their daily life, it really doesn't matter what you think the best way to reduce emissions globally is? Who cares if veganism is better for the environment or not? The game is already over, you guys. The only way to make an actual difference is to blow up coal plants and any other major sources of pollution and manage to not get caught for long enough that you can create a permanent effect on the market that makes them unprofitable, and that's literally impossible. Nobody here is going to do that, myself included. There's really no reason to get this frustrated and start talking past each other and yelling about how mad you are at SA or goons or redditors or whatever, because we are not failing this fight, no matter how admirably or poorly we perform in it, we're decades too late.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Flip Yr Wig posted:

So I think that I've heard that the majority of our fossil fuels come from trees that grew, died, and were buried before fungi had evolved the ability to break down lignin, which allowed trees to decompose and re-emit their carbon. If that is true, does that mean there's no natural carbon sink left for everything we just put into the atmosphere, even over a geologic timescale?

The world is not required to have ice on it in order for life to exist, if that's your concern. Even if it never really cools back down to pre-industrial temperatures, and even if humanity manages to actually suffocate on the result of our own dead oceans (very unlikely even from the most pessimistic point of view), life will continue to exist on Earth for hundreds of millions of years to come. Just because the new climate is not one that will be able to support 7 billion humans and a global civilisation based on constant growth and accelerating consumption at all times, doesn't mean we're gonna end up like Mars or Venus any time soon.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
The human race wasn't really doomed to death at the same time as the planet, we could have advanced enough that evacuation of the solar system could become a real option at some point in the distant future (maybe warp fields or wormholes or some poo poo could have panned out, or maybe someone builds a flying subluminal-speed city-ship), but honestly anyone who thinks that humanity is getting off this chunk of dirt and water and metal and going to live anywhere else for more than a few months is probably fooling themselves at this point.

Anyways, forests are still a carbon sink in the sense that they hold onto a certain amount of carbon that is released when the trees die and absorbed when they are replaced, but they cannot clean the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels, no. Unless someone gets around to building a huge vault to store dead trees in so that they can't decay and release carbon into the atmosphere and then just keep growing forests and cutting them down and storing the trees indefinitely, but I doubt that that's the most likely geoengineering path that anyone's gonna be taking.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
The only real difference between a Trump or Clinton presidency as far as actual actions and results go is that with Trump we might lose access to some satellite data that shows us how hosed we are.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Nobody actually believes that Clinton would have taken any serious action on climate change, do they? Even if you weren't paying any attention to the last election anyone can see that she represented little more than Obama's third term, which is quite obviously not enough to do anything relevant or substantial with regards to climate change. Climate change is no longer a political issue on the national scale in America at all, I know I've said it before but Clinton didn't bring up climate change a single time after the primary.

If it makes you feel better you can work towards change on a local scale and pretend like there's gonna be another Bernie Sanders in 2020 to take Trump down with their hands tied behind their back, but the 2016 election doesn't really matter much in the long run. The ultimate truth of the matter is that it was game over 16 years ago when Al Gore conceded the presidential election. America isn't omnipotent, it can't just save the world by putting Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein or someone at the wheel, nobody's going to be able to freeze the arctic again once it's gone, nobody's going to be able to build a giant vacuum cleaner to magically suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Funky See Funky Do posted:

It's the reaction to the instability that climate change will cause that's the problem. Remember that you currently live in a world with several nuclear weapons aimed at nearly every major population centre on the planet that are ready to fly at a moments notice, that humans are short sighted, self destructive and insane with paranoia about what the other humans might do.

I think any optimism people have is based on the idea that even though India and Pakistan are almost certainly gonna trade nukes, nobody is gonna have a go at America or Russia because they know that those two countries have more nukes than everyone else combined.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
Uh do you really think it's about white vs brown rather than nuclear weapons are the most powerful thing in the consciousness of entire generations of people?

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Potato Salad posted:

BOTH SIDES THE SAME! stuff is going to get us killed.

If we get into this, it'll be the fourth or fifth time in a 365 days this thread will have gotten entangled in the trap of



We already got killed is what we're getting at here.

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Potato Salad posted:

If you are thirty right now and someone says, "Based on your present health profile, income, and spending habits, you're 99% likely to die before you can retire," do you throw your hands up in defeat? Well, apparently you do, but perhaps others would exercise, eat healthier, address other specific medical concerns if possible, engineer their lifestyle around saving, and perhaps assess opportunities for career advancement.

Those are all things you can do with regard to your own life, which is a small scale situation that any person has the ability to change.

This thread is about things that nobody has the ability to change, outside of a few hundred billionaires who don't give a poo poo. It's pretty absurd to compare climate change to the life of a single person.

ChairMaster fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jan 11, 2017

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ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

cowofwar posted:

Yeah but all the regulations around solar came after solar pv tech was reasonably matured. Euro regulations acted as a catalyst to provide demand, and China used monetary policy to greatly expand production in response.

But no carbon capture tech has as of yet matured enough to gain a legislative following. No one wants to subsidize pumping CO2 in to the Earth's crust since that is political unsalable (and IMO dumb/wasteful). Now if a carbon capture tech matured enough to produce something of value that could create a new industry came along then that would be attractive for legislation and government investment and a focus for regulation.

We have really easy access to carbon already, there's really no economical reason for it to be sucked out of the air for a jillion dollars an ounce when it's the fourth most abundant element in the universe, the 15th most abundant in the Earths Crust, and you can get it just by burning some wood or dehydrating sugar or something else easy to do.

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