Space Engine

midtskogen wrote:

As I wrote, if fuel piles up, things get more sensitive.  To most things, just make your pick.

Things are complicated but people want simple answers.  That's also one reason why we still have religions.  Ask someone religious for evidence of God, and he'll find it everywhere.  Ask a climate alarmist for evidence of climate crisis, and he'll find it everywhere.  Often the logical fallacy is a variant of affirming the consequent, because the complexity of the whole system is ignored. 

The big difference being that there are scientific papers confirming this, there are no scientific papers about the existence of a "god."  So that's a false equivalency.  The IPCC goal of carbon net zero by 2050 is fine but in the meanwhile what do we do?  I guessed you missed the interviews where it was discussed how the greed and excesses of previous generations led us to where we are now.

How about people in these fields get off their rear ends and figure out a way to stop these kinds of catastrophes from occurring?  That would be a nice start.  I dont care one bit about economy.  As far as I am concerned, the rich should be taxed 100%.  Multinational corporations should be taxed 100% if they aren't green or be forced out of business.  They've done enough to ruin this planet.  Capitalism is a dead end that only leads to oligarchy.  We need a multinational government (not something powerless like the UN) that prevents things like fracking on public lands and the intentional burning of the Amazon.  These are far too important to allow the nations they exist within to be allowed to control them.  Global universal healthcare with price controls in place would also be a worthy goal.  I am sick and tired of short term thinking "conservatives" seizing power, to have a global government that protects all the resources of the world is where we should be going.  This global government would oversee all national governments and all multinational corporations to regulate them into not polluting and making sure they have a viable roadmap to going completely green.  Anything less than that is not satisfactory.

You are right, activism doesn't bring about change quickly enough.  Thats why we sue these companies and governments like Brazil into oblivion if they aren't following a sustainable path.  We knew about the climate emergency from back in the 80s, but the greedy corporations like Exxon covered it up (going back to the 70s.)  The people involved in these coverups should be jailed for the rest of their lives and the companies involved should be forcibly broken up.  This applies to any corporation that pollutes our bodies and our environment and covers it up instead of cleaning it up.  We've been nice for way too long, if they wreck the planet we need to destroy their lives by taking their freedom and money away from them.  Redistribute the money towards worthy sustainable causes.

You're right, this is about much more than just climate.  This is about restructuring all of human society into something much better, much healthier, much more sustainable and far less wasteful.

And just as I wrote that we've just had one of the largest crude oil accidents in a decade.  These people need to have all their assets confiscated and be put behind bars.  This cartel is so corrupt that there's no punishment harsh enough.

380,000 gallon leak in the Keystone Pipeline- a pipeline which will be shut down when we have a new president next year

Authors are prone to logical fallacies or errors even if they write for scientific journals.  There is a replication crisis, and even if articles are technically not in error, many will still be quite forgettable: The conclusions might follow the observations and stated assumptions, but the assumptions may be wrong making the findings irrelevant.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post it was discussed how the greed and excesses of previous generations led us to where we are now.

Those are the excesses that have saved billions of human lives from disease, suffering or death.  I see a serious ethical problem with that kind of argument.  And those are also the excesses that have enabled us to be able to conserve nature, if we act wisely, rather than exhaust its resources for survival.

midtskogen wrote:

Authors are prone to logical fallacies or errors even if they write for scientific journals.  There is a replication crisis, and even if articles are technically not in error, many will still be quite forgettable: The conclusions might follow the observations and stated assumptions, but the assumptions may be wrong making the findings irrelevant.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post it was discussed how the greed and excesses of previous generations led us to where we are now.

Those are the excesses that have saved billions of human lives from disease, suffering or death.  I see a serious ethical problem with that kind of argument.  And those are also the excesses that have enabled us to be able to conserve nature, if we act wisely, rather than exhaust its resources for survival.

You can rationalize that all you want, but I can do that too.  Maybe if those excesses weren't done we wouldn't be overpopulated right now.  The point being, we need to reduce human population somehow.  Nature created disease for a reason.  The best path towards sustainability is balance.  The previous generations didn't do what they did for altruistic reasons, they did it for one simple reason: greed.  And we are paying for that now.  Humans interfering with that put our ecosystem out of balance and led us towards the mass extinction we're in right now.  Higher rates of cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, autism, etc.  Humans are animals just like any other animals and I dont believe we should be treated any differently.

Yes I know that's morally wrong (so is animal abuse from factory farming, fortunately here in NY we just banned foie gras, which involves forcefeeding poultry), but there are things going on now that are far worse than bad morals.  Part of the reason China has prospered is because they formerly had a two child per family policy.  That kind of policy would be suitable for the rest of the world too. Other animals should be treated just as well as humans are.

*note I dont know if you misunderstood what I said, but in talking about the excesses of previous generations I am talking about things like the proliferation of toxic waste dumps, pesticides, bad land usage, unhealthy food, pollution like plastics, etc.  We're paying for that now with higher rates of the diseases I mentioned.  People and corporations put profits ahead of health.  I want less people on the planet, but I want those people to be healthy.  That's better for humanity and for the rest of the planet.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post Maybe if those excesses weren't done we wouldn't be overpopulated right now.  The point being, we need to reduce human population somehow.

The population can get reduced by both prosperity and suffering.  Mind that it would take an unprecedented amount of suffering, as the population has grown despite Man's mostly miserable history.  The birth rate is under a sustainable level in many countries precisely because of the prosperity and good health. The faster the world can make everybody healthy and wealthy, the fewer humans there will be.  The greatest need is in parts of Africa.  This doesn't necessarily stop people from polluting, but wealth also makes people more able to do something with these problems.

midtskogen wrote:

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post Maybe if those excesses weren't done we wouldn't be overpopulated right now.  The point being, we need to reduce human population somehow.

The population can get reduced by both prosperity and suffering.  Mind that it would take an unprecedented amount of suffering, as the population has grown despite Man's mostly miserable history.  The birth rate is under a sustainable level in many countries precisely because of the prosperity and good health. The faster the world can make everybody healthy and wealthy, the fewer humans there will be.  The greatest need is in parts of Africa.  This doesn't necessarily stop people from polluting, but wealth also makes people more able to do something with these problems.

Yes this is true (and I and many/most believe in combating income disparity by redistributing from the top 0.1% which controls a disproportionate amount of wealth, both the very rich and large corporations- currently we have redistribution going from the middle class to the wealthy, making the disparity even worse), however, especially here in America, the wealthy do more to pollute than they do to clean it up.  Perhaps it is the culture here.  They dont even want universal healthcare, even though it would be for the benefit of all, especially if an epidemic or pandemic arises.  Most of the commercial mass media outlets are controlled by a few rich people, which is why I stick to PBS and NPR- public TV and Radio, which is far better.  Doctors and hospitals want to make excessive amounts of money and big pharma doesn't want their money train derailed-  but their time is limited because there is a large progressive wave occurring, both for the green new deal and for medicare for all.  There's a large list of rich conservative people who have tried to cover up climate change research for decades, mostly shareholders of Exxon or the Koch Brothers.  That's why there is so much anger in America, because the rich control the politics far more than they do in other developed nations- it is to the point where it's been described as an oligarchy by Princeton.
You might find this interesting
“Since the early 1970s, California’s annual wildfire extent increased fivefold, punctuated by extremely large and destructive wildfires in 2017 and 2018,” Williams and his colleagues write in a paper published this summer in Earth’s Future. “This trend was mainly due to an eightfold increase in the summertime forest fire area and was very likely driven by drying of fuels promoted by human‐induced warming.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 81886.html


https://twitter.com/AppleheadEmma/status/1190745818791321601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1190745818791321601&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanpol.com%2Findex.php%3Fapp%3Dcore%26module%3Dsystem%26controller%3Dembed%26url%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fappleheademma%2Fstatus%2F1190745818791321601%3Fs%3D21

That twitter post is interesting because it names rich donors that have spent millions of dollars spreading denialist propaganda.  The parts of the country that buy into denialist propaganda are the same regions that are racist, bigotted, creationist, antivaxxer, etc.  They have a lower level of education so it's easier for them to believe that humankind cannot cause climate change and yet they are the ones who get screwed over the most, because they have frequent earthquakes due to wastewater injection from fracking and explosions from leaking fossil fuel pipelines and ecological disasters from leaking oil.  They dont even recognize the validity of the IPCC and their 2050 deadline for achieving net carbon zero.

I see you've attracted some #ClimateDenier trolls. Let me just say to those browsing the replies:

1/ Denier's haven't been right about ANY of their predictions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... prediction …

1/ inaccurate predictions of climate change deniers



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... prediction




https://t.co/cHzqWMwaPV?amp=1

https://t.co/bEzqsRoth6?amp=1

2/ Fossil fuels have spent 100's of millions to keep tens of BILLIONS in profits flowing:

http://bit.ly/2GBsR9i-dm

http://bit.ly/2W7xr5F-ccd

http://bit.ly/2W7y7rJ-cdm

http://bit.ly/2UFt8gb-yale

http://bit.ly/2GGul38-drex

https://t.co/PkYdaeU2zq?amp=1

3/ MANY accurate climate model predictions:

http://bit.ly/2VtvKym-cbreif1

http://bit.ly/2GrhcJW-sci-amer

http://bit.ly/2GopjHc-sciday

http://bit.ly/2DjL4aj-uncc

http://bit.ly/2GvUBgP-ucsusa

https://t.co/L2vBcHOStY?amp=1

https://t.co/BUUep3As3h?amp=1

https://t.co/OPF01cVQAq

https://t.co/OPF01cVQAq?amp=1

https://t.co/UehV9JIiHE?amp=1

This is good news though:

The Economy Keeps Growing, but Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

https://reason.com/2019/10/09/the-econo ... nd-energy/

Quote
<<The conclusion from this set of graphs is clear: A great reversal of our Industrial Age habits is taking place. The American economy is now experiencing broad and often deep absolute dematerialization. 

Is the rest of the world dematerializing? It's a hard question to answer definitively because there's no equivalent of the detailed and comprehensive USGS data for countries other than America. There is evidence, though, that other advanced industrialized nations are also now getting more from less. Goodall, of course, found that the United Kingdom is now past "peak stuff." And Eurostat data show that countries including Germany, France, and Italy have generally seen flat or declining total consumption of metals, chemicals, and fertilizer in recent years.

Developing countries, especially fast-growing ones such as India and China, are probably not yet dematerializing. But I predict that they will start getting more from less of at least some resources in the not-too-distant future.>>

real progress.

https://twitter.com/i/events/1191456175449088006

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ar-storage

The innovations include an energy-trapping molecule, a storage system that promises to outperform traditional batteries and an energy-storing laminate coating that can be applied to windows and textiles.

 

 

 

Swedish scientists develop energy storing molecule that can be applied as a transparent coating to windows, houses, cars, clothes and release heat when exposed to a catalyst. Still a few years from commercialisation - but pretty amazing potential if it comes good.

 

 

 

Scientists say they’ve figured out how to store solar power for decades, a major energy breakthrough

 

 

 

Scientists in Sweden have figured out how to harness solar power, store it and release it on demand in the form of heat decades after it's been captured

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post real progress

Very little information, and they're mostly saying "give us money".  Unless the energy density and price can compete with existing technology, my guess is that this is limited to very small niches.

midtskogen wrote:

Very little information, and they're mostly saying "give us money".  Unless the energy density and price can compete with existing technology, my guess is that this is limited to very small niches.

This is true now, but eventually in the next decade (not 2020-2029 but maybe 2030-2039) things will be very different.

Salvo wrote:

Source of the post This is true now, but eventually in the next decade (not 2020-2029 but maybe 2030-2039) things will be very different.

There must be some physical limits to the energy density and those may be possible to estimate now.  Of course, if there's a risk that they are not very favourable, it's not going to be a priority during a funding phase.

midtskogen wrote:

Salvo wrote:

Source of the post This is true now, but eventually in the next decade (not 2020-2029 but maybe 2030-2039) things will be very different.

There must be some physical limits to the energy density and those may be possible to estimate now.  Of course, if there's a risk that they are not very favourable, it's not going to be a priority during a funding phase.

It still seems to be in the exploratory stage.  At least they are being honest and saying it is 6 years away from commercialization.
One of the criticisms of solar energy (and wind), something which you rightly point out, is that they take up too much space.  This would help solve that.
Also what do you think of this:
https://theconversation.com/11-000-scie ... ure-126261
TWC is hosting a climate change debate tonight at 8.  I found what Dr Rick Knabb, former National Hurricane Director, said last night very illuminating.  He pointed to a collaboration of research between a few thousand scientists pointing to human overpopulation being the main cause behind all the other things we face (climate change, pollution, mass extinction, land usage, etc.)

 
There is more here (research paper included):

https://theconversation.com/scientists- ... ing-126017

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12874-3

https://theconversation.com/our-shamefu ... 300-126429

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17145

https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resour ... n-dioxide/

This was also posted here:

https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/52687-sea-levels-may-rise-at-up-to-3-meters-per-century-with-1%C2%B0c-more-of-warming/

I remember lead in gasoline mentioned earlier in this thread- I came across this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_ ... ime_trends

 

Late-20th-century trends[edit]
Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Steven Dubner attribute the drop in crime to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s, as they suggest that many would-be neglected children and criminals were never born.[105] On the other hand, Malcolm Gladwell provides a different explanation in his book The Tipping Point; he argues that crime was an "epidemic" and a small reduction by the police was enough to "tip" the balance.[106] Another theory is that widespread exposure to lead pollution from automobile exhaust, which can lower intelligence and increase aggression levels, incited the initial crime wave in the mid-20th century, most acutely affecting heavily trafficked cities like New York. A strong correlation was found demonstrating that violent crime rates in New York and other big cities began to fall after lead was removed from American gasoline in the 1970s.[107]

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... ine?page=1

The Trump administration’s war on science and public health continues...

E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking.

A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study’s conclusions. E.P.A. officials called the plan a step toward transparency and said the disclosure of raw data would allow conclusions to be verified independently.

“We are committed to the highest quality science,” Andrew Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator, told a congressional committee in September. “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.” 

The measure would make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to public health regulations already in place.

“This means the E.P.A. can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.

Public health experts warned that studies that have been used for decades — to show, for example, that mercury from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioral disorders in children — might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.

For instance, a groundbreaking 1993 Harvard University project that definitively linked polluted air to premature deaths, currently the foundation of the nation’s air-quality laws, could become inadmissible. When gathering data for their research, known as the Six Cities study, scientists signed confidentiality agreements to track the private medical and occupational histories of more than 22,000 people in six cities. They combined that personal data with home air-quality data to study the link between chronic exposure to air pollution and mortality.

But the fossil fuel industry and some Republican lawmakers have long criticized the analysis and a similar study by the American Cancer Society, saying the underlying data sets of both were never made public, preventing independent analysis of the conclusions.

The change is part of a broader administration effort to weaken the scientific underpinnings of policymaking. Senior administration officials have tried to water down the testimony of government scientists, publicly chastised scientists who have dissented from President Trump’s positions and blocked government researchers from traveling to conferences to present their work. 

In this case, the administration is taking aim at public health studies conducted outside the government that could justify tightening regulations on smog in the air, mercury in water, lead in paint and other potential threats to human health.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/clim ... -ios-share

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/clim ... -ios-share
The key is this:

But the fossil fuel industry and some Republican lawmakers have long criticized the analysis and a similar study by the American Cancer Society, saying the underlying data sets of both were never made public, preventing independent analysis of the conclusions.

 

The fossil fuel industry LOL.  The fossil fuel and chemical industries (which are forcing the rollback on pesticide regulations that damage the developing brains of children) are as much of a fraud as the Tobacco industry ever was.  And so are their Republican enablers.  And the Trump EPA.

New movie coming out about DuPont, PFOA/PFOS contamination, etc., on November 22nd, based on some of the things I've already mentioned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)

The movie is reportedly based on the 2016 article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" by Nathaniel Rich, published in The New York Times Magazine.[3][4] Much of the underlying story was first reported in-depth by two other journalists, Mariah Blake, whose 2015 article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia," ran in HuffPost Highline[5] and was a National Magazine Award finalist,[6] and Sharon Lerner, whose series, Bad Chemistry, ran in the Intercept.[7][8][9]

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/maga ... tmare.html

https://deadline.com/2019/01/anne-hatha ... 202532048/

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/art ... rkersburg/

https://theintercept.com/2015/08/17/tef ... st-dupont/

https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dup ... deception/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)#cite_note-9

Inspired by a shocking true story, a tenacious attorney (Ruffalo) uncovers a dark secret that connects a growing number of unexplained deaths due to one of the world's largest corporations, DuPont. In the process, he risks everything – his future, his family, and his own life – to expose the truth.