from the don't-let-the-changes-get-you-down dept.
Why our continued use of fossil fuels is creating a financial time bomb:
We know roughly how much more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere before we exceed our climate goals—limiting warming to 1.5° to 2° C above pre-industrial temperatures. From that, we can figure out how much more fossil fuel we can burn before we emit that much carbon dioxide. But when you compare those numbers with our known fossil fuel reserves, things get jaw-dropping.
To reach our climate goals, we'll need to leave a third of the oil, half of the natural gas, and nearly all the coal we're aware of sitting in the ground, unused.
Yet we have—and are still building—infrastructure that is predicated on burning far more than that: mines, oil and gas wells, refineries, and the distribution networks that get all those products to market; power plants, cars, trains, boats, and airplanes that use the fuels. If we're to reach our climate goals, some of those things will have to be intentionally shut down and left to sit idle before they can deliver a return on the money they cost to produce.
But it's not just physical capital that will cause problems if we decide to get serious about addressing climate change. We have workers who are trained to use all of the idled hardware, companies that treat the fuel reserves and hardware as an asset on their balance sheets, and various contracts that dictate that the reserves can be exploited.
Collectively, you can think of all of these things as assets—assets that, if we were to get serious about climate change, would see their value drop to zero. At that point, they'd be termed "stranded assets," and their stranding has the potential to unleash economic chaos on the world.
Do you agree with this arguably pessimistic assessment of the situation, and have we already run out of time to take the action necessary to avoid exceeding climate goals? Criticism is easy, but what solutions do you have to the problem?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Spamalope on Thursday May 12 2022, @11:40AM (31 children)
I like to look at what the most powerful and 'in the know' actually do. Are they living like the oceans are rising, we're in a crisis and everyone needs to cut back?
Our most powerful leaders have huge expensive oceanfront estates (Martha's Vinyard etc) and fly on private jets to their SUV/Limos. Either they don't think it's a problem, or they think it's a 'little people' problem. I do seem some getting rich off of carbon credit systems (Al Gore as an example, Earth in the lurch to fuel the carbon credit business). Warren Buffet is investing in Oxy Petroleum.
So what's being done is greatly at odds with what's being said. At the least it's a rules for thee but not me situation. Not so serious *they* need to curtail their own impact.
What can you conclude from those incongruent actions? Are they idiots? Are they so arrogant they'd drill holes in the bottom of a sinking boat? Do they think it'll be fine so they don't have to worry? Some other thing?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @12:08PM (7 children)
What?
Self-made billionaire Elon Musk is prepping for a post-apocalyptic Earth by relocating to another planet.
Self-made billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes is attempting a hostile takeover over Australia's worst emitter AGL.
Former world's richest man, the devil himself, Bill Gates is planning a post-coal future with next generation nuclear power.
Just *some* rich people...
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Thursday May 12 2022, @02:01PM (4 children)
The men you mention are exceptions. And are being demonized by our leaders for it, too. (Esp Elon lately)
I agree that your examples are good ones, but point out that they're a tiny minority. (that said, they're getting outsized results which I applaud and support!)
100+ million dollar net worth political decision makers are buying waterfront property; sponsoring climate conferences they fly private jets to; building huge wasteful homes
Their actual actions amount a combination of 'not in my backyard' exporting of pollution, power grabs and grifting.
Either this is a crisis, and we need to visit those leaders with pitchforks or the alarmists are lying.
It seems more likely the causes of warming are less well known, and the proposed solutions have more to do with political clout and personal profit (somehow it's legal for politicians to short a stock, then demonize the company/industry - just like they sold stock after private pandemic briefings - where it'd be illegal for normal folks).
I'd rather invest pollution solutions not smoke and mirrors designed to enrich politicians and their donors. (save the climate - replace your lightbulbs with these new mercury (CFL) bulbs that'll wind up in your landfill and eventually your water - an idea so great they forced it with legislation! So we got poor quality bulbs with short lives for max mercury...)
I'm all for moving investing in alternatives to fossil fuel. Burning hydrocarbons is the most wasteful thing you can do with them. We should have invested in quality, safe nuke power 50 years ago. Instead research funding was only supplied for weapons tech, and power plants are based on that research. (vs something like real a real thorium project) It would have been faster to get to fusion by first getting cheap, workable fission. With cheap power, the motive for burning carbon is gone and carbon capture is viable. It looks like in practice we'll be forced back to nuke power, but it'll be refined weapons tech based. (improved, safer, but power plant level - no risk of pocket power plants allowing little people to produce cheap power so more politically viable...)
It'll be interesting to see if effort gets directed towards real improvements. (Look at the funds thrown towards Ukraine; now look at clean power where there is progress but by the numbers it's for show so far) Elon - once Starship gets past the ULA/Boeing lobbied obstruction (looks like that anyway), if the ideals of that project work out cost to orbit drops 10-50x. Space power sat viability will be an accounting ROI question instead of sci-fi. I'd like to see investment in disruptive, game changing solutions. (cheap thorium reactors; power sats - those are order of magnitude improvements that should be supported along with gen 5 fission nuke power - a diversity of solutions - but we're not seeing 'this is critical' investment)
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday May 13 2022, @02:04AM (3 children)
Perhaps you'd like to explain how the battery technology of 1955 could have allowed electric cars charged from nuclear power.
Only now has battery technology improved almost enough to allow exclusive use of electric motors for transportation, and it's going to take at least another 20 years to build out the infrastructure.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday May 13 2022, @03:41AM (1 child)
Commuter only electric vehicles could replace a huge amount of petrol usage. Small, cheap, range of about 100 km (60 miles), easily doable with 50's tech. Save the petrol for the long trips. The problems are not the tech.
I don't have an electric car, and the main reason is that it is not economical for legislative reasons. If I bought a small cheap car* to commute to work, I have to pay registration and TAC charges twice, even though I wouldn't actually do any more travel. They have also just introduced a per km charge to replace the petrol tax they lose with electrics. Those fees easily cover the cost difference of petrol vs electric for me, and saving whatever the electric car would have actually cost is just a big bonus.
If you really want to cut fossil fuel usage here's a two step plan:
1/ Build a small cheap electric car with about 100km range. (under $10,000 new)
2/ Allow it to be a free piggyback vehicle on a petrol car registration. Same plates, no extra charges.
People would use the electric for short trips and the petrol when they needed it. Instead, people look at the costs and go "Well I occasionally need the capabilities of the petrol car and it's cheaper to drive it everywhere than to pay all the fees twice".
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday May 13 2022, @03:50AM
* mass of under 600 kg, 2 seats + small cargo (or 4 seats no cargo). Smaller battery means you can make everything lighter.
It probably also becomes worthwhile to cover the roof in solar cells. Won't do much for single trip range, but if you are parked at work all day it would add a few km to your daily range.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2022, @04:15PM
There is a museum down in Los Angeles that had an electric car from the turn of the last century that could get 20-25 miles to a charge in an electric horseless carriage design. There were other battery powered vehicles back then that were perfect for use as commuters, and in fact many sold. What killed them was a simple lack of demand as gasoline vehicles developed more rapidly and the 'freedom of the open road' overshadowed the (at the time) unreliable nature of electrical charging at the home. By the time common folk would have been readily buying electrics en-masse, the petrol/automotive industry had converged and effectively relegated competitors such as electric cars to being also-rans.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:25PM (1 child)
There are no "self-made billionaires", they all started out with rich parents; e.g., Bill Gates' parents were high dollar lawyers for IBM. Were it not for that, you would never have heard of Bill Gates. You can grow up poor and still become a millionaire, but not a thousand times as rich as a millionaire; a billion is a thousand million (but you knew that).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @06:38PM
Ah yes, "You didn't build that!" for the new generation. Got it.
The funny thing is, it's not just a roll of the dice. People lose fortunes all the time. Sure, some have a better head start than others - but only a few turn whatever head start they had to a fortune, and rags-to-riches is still entirely possible. It's just rare.
Anything-to-riches is rare.
Here's the funny thing about building a society; we do it not only to uplift the poor shivering lumpenproletariat wondering whether the cholera, the consumption or the hunger will get them first. We also do it to enable the gifted, the fortunate and the wise to uplift themselves, and by implication the whole of society (if by no other means, by means of paying taxes).
But keep banging that envious drum, I'm sure the sound will feed a multitude.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday May 12 2022, @02:05PM (2 children)
The problem with that thinking is that global warming isn't going to bring the world to an end - it's "just" going to displace billions of people currently living in marginally habitable areas, while making weather far more volatile, agriculture far less reliable (and thus food far more expensive), and driving vast numbers of species to extinction that can't adapt fast enough.
None of that is going to be more than a mild personal inconvenience to a billionaire - they're already paying hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars a day for their gourmet meals, and can just move to someplace that still has pleasant weather and no poor starving people rioting at their gates.
Global warming will only suck for the 99% of people who care about how much things cost. Or the environmental consequences.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:30PM (1 child)
NO, it won't bring the world to an end, but it will cause and is causing a mass extinction and if left unchecked will indeed destroy civilization.
It won't be the first time a single species has caused a mass extinction, but that's no excuse to keep incinerating fossils.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:55PM
Absolutely.
But none of that impacts the ability of billionaires to enjoy the fruits of their carbon-fueled wealth in their private fiefdoms.
My point was only that there's a fundamental flaw in trying to judge whether there's a problem by whether billionaires admit there's a problem. History is full of examples of the "nobility" fueling their excesses with environmental devastation and the bodies of countless peasants. There's absolutely no reason to believe that's changed - and in fact you don't have to look far to find examples even today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:06PM (1 child)
No, or at least not relatively. One can legitimately argue (on the basis of research findings, too) that humans have a built-in cognitive bias against planning for the long-term. We want quick satisfaction today. Worry about tomorrow tomorrow. And if it's beyond the 5-year projection, who the hell cares?
I think they honestly don't care. They assume that infinite growth will continue forever in the economy and that money can solve any problems that pop up. They work with the general assumptions that the market works with, since most of the rich people you're discussing are heavily invested in that model -- which has some aspects of a religion, honestly. Obviously infinite growth forever is impossible, but how else do you explain how so many people seem to buy into that assumption with the stock market, etc.?
We just saw Netflix have it's "Oh SHIT!" moment because apparently some people finally realized that infinite growth in subscribers can't continue forever. DUH! But... apparently, it was so utterly shocking to see Netflix numbers go down that everyone suddenly flees the sinking ship. Look at what happened with the housing market in the early 2000s. Look at BitCoin right now. People buy into stuff all the time thinking it will only ever go up. The real world doesn't work like that. Look at responses to just about any disaster -- in quite a few cases, good planning in advance could help a lot, but how many rich people or governments or large businesses do plan for disaster?
Rich people aren't magically smarter than everyone else. They're usually luckier, more ruthless, and more dedicated in certain ways. And even if they are a bit smarter than everyone else, we all suffer to various extents to the cognitive bias about satisfaction now. If their friends all have oceanfront estates and that's what it takes to be a "rich guy," then aren't they going to have one to be "part of the club"? Same thing with the private jets.
I know a guy personally who is basically self-made and recently became a billionaire. (Though with recent market shifts, maybe he isn't anymore... point is, he has hundreds of millions.) He's not a close friend or anything, but he is the direct boss of a couple members of my extended family. I spent a week with him at one of his houses a few years back... and yeah, it's oceanfront property. But it's in the "cool location" for rich people. For a while he owned two jets, for all sorts of weird reasons... but one thing I definitely heard him express several times in our conversations is how everything is about "keeping up appearances" for rich people. He didn't grow up poor, but he made his own money, and he found the pretentiousness of the "rich people lifestyle" to be insufferable. He's the kind of guy who'd show up wearing jeans at the "no denim" resort (where it's okay to wear a skimpy bikini, but god-forbid the blue jeans...) just to dare someone to call him on it. Even as a 70-year-old guy, he'd drive the scooter around the grounds rather than the golf carts almost everyone else used... just because.
And yet, even for him, to socialize in the right circles, to be part of the culture of the money-making elite, he needed the trappings of the elite to be taken seriously. So he has most of that.
All your examples tell me is that rich people like to do things that rich people do. It's a tautology. And no one's looking past the 5-year projection, or questioning assumptions about growth continuing forever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @06:40PM
Judging by the latest news in Variety about their culture statement, Netflix's OH SHIT moment was also about realising that the people waving the woke banner were only a subset of their potential subscribers, and that if they didn't appeal to a bigger audience, they'd get a smaller slice of whichever pies were available.
I mean, go figure. Deplorables watch shitty made-for-TV movies too. Their money spends like anybody else's.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EvilSS on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:57PM (2 children)
That most know they are old enough that they will be dead before it gets so bad that their fortunes and resources can no long buffer them from it. "Fuck you, I got mine now I'm going to die and leave you with the mess".
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:32PM (1 child)
If they had any morals, they wouldn't be billionaires.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:31PM
Maybe they do have morals, but their moral code doesn't preclude what it would take to be a billionaire.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 12 2022, @06:22PM (9 children)
The most powerful and 'in the know' people I know (and have known throughout my life) have one thing in common: they are old. Generally the more powerful and 'in the know' they are, the older they are.
There's also a well established link between highly successful leaders of large groups (company CEOs, army generals, portfolio managers, etc.) and psychopathy. They achieve their goals with an unusual degree of tunnel-vision, not caring about collateral damage that would concern "most people."
The same thing we can conclude from studying the titans of industry who stalled the removal of asbestos from common use, lead from gasoline and paint, targeting of children with tobacco advertising...
They're not idiots, they know what they're doing: they're achieving a goal - usually maximizing profits.
Are they arrogant? You bet your ass they're arrogant, it's practically a pre-requisite for admission to the 1%ers club. There are always exceptions, but I'd swag that 99% of the 1%ers would be rated as arrogant by the majority of the 99%.
Try this on for size: they don't fucking care about you. Even my 1950 born DINK aunt and uncle who live in the Florida Keys where they're just about certain to be underwater in the coming decades had this to say in 2000: "Yeah, sea level is probably going to rise, but however fast that happens we'll almost certainly be dead before it hurts us." Aged 72, it looks like they're just about right, only a small portion of neighborhoods in the Keys are suffering from rising sea levels today, it will probably be at least 2050 before their driveway is underwater at high tide.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:01AM (8 children)
At present rate of sea level rise that's a mere 10 cm. They'll probably get wiped out by a hurricane before normal high tides are an issue. Is their driveway really that close to the ocean?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:27PM (7 children)
Their house is on stilts, facing open water to the northwest. When the hurricanes have blown from the south or east it empties the bay. When the hurricanes have blown from the north or west they have had water several feet deep with waves up near the ceiling of their ground floor "storage" area.
The low point of the road from their house to the highway isn't much more than 10cm above what is called a king tide.
Sea levels are also not rising equally around the globe. Variations of several cm have been noted along the east coast of the US.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @11:17PM (6 children)
Variations would happen even in the absence of global warming.
But having said that, I can see why your relatives don't care. Their house isn't going to be around all that long anyway. There's no point to a candle that can last centuries when it'll burn in a day.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 15 2022, @01:47PM (5 children)
My relatives don't care because their house is going to be around until they are dead, probably.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 15 2022, @10:49PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 16 2022, @12:40AM (3 children)
>There remains no reason for them to get worked up over minor climate change
Lacking children as they are, you are correct.
If they should live another 50 years in good health, they will likely be forced to move, unless the county lets them live on a street that is regularly under salt water.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 16 2022, @01:33AM (2 children)
So what? Even if there were no climate change or hurricanes, the house will wear down over the years and they'll be forced to move and/or rebuild anyway. Living that close to the sea is hard on houses even without the storms. Nor is that much different from your scenario.
And this was all brought up because you have relatives that just don't have the right attitude concerning climate change. Well, if the threat is that they'd have to move, if they lived 50 years longer rather than 20 years longer. That's for a house so close to the ocean that it'd be floating, if it were any closer.
Well, here's my question. How many billions of peoples' suffering is it worth to save a few people who live in boats on stilts? 50 years from now, no less? This has always been the problem with the climate change narrative. Once you get past the ludicrous narratives, there isn't much to it. And the price tag for the token efforts we've done so far are way more than the benefits.
Going back to the thread, the point about the alleged hypocrisy of the powerful is that they get, just like your DINK aunt and uncle do, that sea level rise just doesn't matter over a human lifetime.
For me, hypocrisy just isn't that interesting. Humans do it naturally, so of course, our leaders would do it just as naturally.
What I think we really should be thinking about here are the important problems such as the huge poverty/overpopulation synergy. We've made vast progress dealing with that - at mild short term cost to the environment.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 16 2022, @11:57AM (1 child)
>Even if there were no climate change or hurricanes, the house will wear down over the years and they'll be forced to move and/or rebuild anyway.
What in the hell are you smoking?
My first house, in Hurricane country, was built in 1935 and is as strong today as when I bought it 30 years ago. Their house is built similarly but better. And even if they need a refresh, we don't burn our houses, take the insurance and move around here, the bulk of the value is in location, not the structure.
Of course a great deal of the location value has been diminished over the past 10 years with the dying of the reef, but my uncle mostly fishes the back country....
>How many billions of peoples' suffering is it worth
You are referring now to the billions who live in coastal cities? The billions there who lack the economic means to relocate except as refugees?
>poverty/overpopulation synergy. We've made vast progress dealing with that - at mild short term cost to the environment.
Vast progress, like the population explosion in Africa? Like India approaching China's official population number at 1.4B? Like the Indians and Chinese that still mostly live in rural poverty, but are migrating to modern cities more polluted than anything the US ever "achieved" before we started outsourcing our heavy industry?
Take another toke and enjoy the view from your rose colored glasses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 18 2022, @02:20AM
If you're close enough to salt water that a mere 10 cm rise could shut you down, then you're getting sea spray - lots of salt on everything. I assure you that 85 years of that will wreck most houses, including yours.
You are referring now to the billions who live in coastal cities? The billions there who lack the economic means to relocate except as refugees?
I know a fix for that. But it requires treating bigger problems than climate change as bigger problems.
Yes, actually. Here's a glaring example. in 1971, population growth rate was ~2.1% per year for a population of roughly 3.8 billion people. If we had continued at that growth rate to present day, we'd be looking at almost 11 billion people not almost 8 billion. That slowing in population growth rate that you continue to fail to acknowledge has already resulted in about a quarter less people than we could have had (assuming Population Bomb-style die-off predictions could be avoided). Even India and Africa have contributed to that slowing.
As to the pollution, they'd be polluted anyway. At least now, the developed world is an exit strategy that doesn't require die offs and/or ecological collapses.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:09PM (1 child)
Assuming that the upper classes are "in the know" is a dangerous game, historic precedent has proven that they are no more capable of accurately predicting drastic change than anyone else. The World Wars, the Great Chinese Famine, the COIVD pandemic, the French and Russian civil wars to name a few - all of those were avertable by the people in power, had they made better calls. These were far more disasterous events for them than losing your mansion when you can afford hundreds of them without sustaining any reduction in lifestyle quality.
Cut it with this nonsense. Both the GW alarmists and the AGW nutjobs need to shut up about oceans rising because none of you have any idea what the science says about it. No, the waters will never rise to a level to bury coastal cities. The predicted ocean rising by scientists by 2050 is 1-2 inches on average, so any oceanside estate built today will be safe from the rising water. Scientific predictions on sea levels have so far been very accurate and we have no reasons to assume they won't be in the foreseeable future.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:48PM
A: https://discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/why-emotional-intelligence-takes-a-dive-among-the-affluent [discovermagazine.com]
B: Why do the rich have oceanfront estates? Pretty simple really: they can afford to lose them, rebuild them after storms, etc. Oceanfront mansions are RARELY the only home owned by their owners.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @10:21PM
The White Star line called. Your tickets for the Titanic are ready for pickup.
They say that the most powerful and 'in the know' people will be on board for this maiden voyage.
Good luck.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 13 2022, @03:04AM
Let's unpack this.
First, STOP WORSHIPPING THE RICH! Why, you might as well be a believer in the Prosperity Gospel. Seems over half of America thinks that way, and if that attitude doesn't change, it's going to get a lot of people dead. Do you have any idea what screwballs many of the rich are? They've let their wealth go to their heads. The worst are massively entitled, spoiled, sadistic brats whose main skill is appearances. Many of them didn't earn wealth and power, they inherited it. Like the Bobby Pellit character in Horrible Bosses.
If you're thinking that's just a movie, I've got a representative anecdote for you. I attended the "management club" dinner at my employer, a manufacturer of heating and cooling systems, just once, and wow, was it educational. The CEO's speech went something like this. He said that if he'd sold the company and invested the proceeds in the stock market, he would be a lot richer. But then, we'd all be out of our jobs, he said, and he didn't want that to happen. When he finished patting himself on the back for that, he said that we should've done better. Should've worked harder, so he'd be richer and wouldn't regret so much that he didn't sell out and invest. He was disappointed in us. We'd let him down.
That CEO had another whopper to say at that dinner, that just so happens to be pertinent to your question. He said that he didn't believe in all this Global Warming nonsense. But, if it was true, then GOOD! Because, the company would get to sell more air conditioners!
If you really are unsure who to ask, try scientists. They're the ones most "in the know", as you put it.
But in the name of humanity, don't sit on your tush waiting for the powerful and rich to reveal The Plan for the Future of Humanity. We already know what their plan is: Let the rest of us die while they ride out the calamity in their super secret and secure bunkers. Some are actually spending significant money on that. Once the world population has been reduced to the 1%, then go forth and multiply. And maybe write memoirs explaining how very stupid the rest of us were for getting ourselves into such a terrible fix, with ample mention that it really was all our fault and we deserved to die. If you think that's an exaggeration, I assure you it isn't. A frightfully large number of them really do think that way.
Now, if there is no further idolizing of the rich with which to dispense, what are we going to do about this problem? I don't know. I fear that we're moving too slowly. I see personal conservation efforts, such as turning off the lights when you leave the room, as hopelessly insignificant. Buy an electric car? No good if only a handful of people do that. Put solar on your roof? Double or triple pane windows? The problem with a lot of those ideas is that while they are pitched as environmentally responsible things to do, their actual benefits are smaller than the costs of retrofitting. I've had many a door-to-door sales pitch about the windows, and they all wanted way more than it was worth. $10,000, to replace 10 windows and 2 patio doors? I ran the numbers and came up with an estimated annual savings of just $175. If they could do the job for $2000, I might chance it. But not for $10k, no way.
The most significant moves so far are the switch from incandescent to LED lighting, the 80plus drive to make computer power supplies at least 80% efficient that concluded about a decade ago, the move from tube TVs and monitors to flat screens, pushing up automobile fuel economy, and the huge increase in A/C efficiencies. Nice, but it won't be enough. We need more. The pandemic had a huge silver lining, stopping a lot of wasteful commuting in favor of remote work and telecommuting. Meantime, there's been a huge growth in wind power. Windmills are all over the parts of the land where it's windy enough. I haven't seen as much solar, but it too is growing by leaps and bounds.
Here's some ideas: Do laundry less often. It is okay to wear a shirt for 2, 3, or even more days between washes. There are even shirts designed for less frequent laundering. Shower less. Most especially if you have a typical tank water heater. Mow less. Bicycle more. Walk more. All these things are win-win. Not only does it save on energy and resources, it's healthier. Showering every day is bad for your skin. On the political front, let's discourage suburban sprawl. People in America especially think little to nothing of driving, don't appreciate how costly in both time and money it is to commute long distances, make house calls, and that sort of thing. More awareness and less willingness to sit in traffic jams in rush hour would be a big help.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday May 13 2022, @11:30AM
First off, I wouldn't call those people "leaders". "Rulers", maybe, but true leaders act for the benefit of the people they're leading, whereas these folks pretty much all act solely in their own interests. Yes, even the allegedly-philanthropic ones who establish foundations that act as a very convenient tax dodge and allow them to take control over charitable efforts and steer those charitable efforts towards buying things from their own companies.
Admittedly, I'm of the viewpoint that once you've reached around 7-8 figures of wealth, if you're spending most of your time trying to get even more money you aren't a leader, you aren't brilliant, you're a selfish jerk who simply refuses to be satisfied. At that level of cash, you and your family have everything you need to live comfortably without working for money anymore, so stop trying to come up with more cash and start doing something useful.
Oh, and as for those beachfront properties: I think you may have a misunderstanding of scale here, because if you're like me having your home completely destroyed would be a major financial blow. But for a billionaire, losing a $10 million home, total loss, no insurance, is no more than 1% of their wealth and will take them at most around 2 months to completely recover, and odds are they have at least one other $10 million home to move to if they happened to actually be in the $10 million home they lost. It's the same scale of loss as somebody making $100K a year having to replace their smartphone - annoying, not completely unnoticed, but completely solvable.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday May 12 2022, @12:04PM (32 children)
You want to get rid of surplus population and obsolete economy again, understood.
War? Too dangerous even for elite these days, pass.
Disease? Artificial pandemic already failed, demonstrably ineffective...
Famine? Just stop production of food by halting oil&gas prerequisites and cease to transport it into cities, that should work.
Hungry people will flock themselves to countryside to survive and fight each other.
It's a plan, isn't it.
https://www.weforum.org/press/2022/05/urgent-action-needed-to-ensure-a-resilient-energy-transition-amid-severe-global-challenges [weforum.org]
Though it has a small design error: your adversaries will not conform to this ideology. They now have their own.
Your pace is belated.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday May 12 2022, @12:15PM (28 children)
Or, and hear me out on this one, we could stop any and all programs that are hellbent on increasing the population. Instead, promote everything that allows people to not propagate. Actually, install incentives to not do it. We have noticed that people are generally not too keen on being killed, so that program is by definition doomed to fail, the resistence to that would be far too big. On the other hand, we know that people are generally quite selfish, if you highlight the drawbacks of having someone dependent on you and at the same time provide them with ways to avoid this, I'm pretty sure we can convince them to not breed like rabbits.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:02PM (24 children)
That's easy. Allow women to control their own bodies and allow them to work. Busy people have less kids. Facts of the last half-century.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:08PM (19 children)
That's a noble goal, but is not enough.
Many woman do want to have babies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:17PM (17 children)
So what? Look at the actual data aka reality. Number of kids in wealthy nations where women have rights is well under 2 per woman meaning the population shrinks. It's even dropping in poorer nations like India. Now if you have anecdotal evidence to the contrary, that is quite irrelevant to the actual population thing. Population reduction is already in the cards.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_recent_value_desc=false [worldbank.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:36PM (16 children)
But the birthrate is skyrocketing in other countries, specifically Africa, and that will offset any declines experienced in other parts of the world.
The UN forecasts predict 11-12 billion humans by 2100, and 70% of that increase will occur in the African continent. And guess what, all of those 3-4B new people will want to be Americans. Not necessarily want to live in America, but like the rest of the world they will want an American lifestyle and be big consumers like Americans, eat like Americans, produce garbage like Americans, own cars and drive like Americans, live in the suburbs like Americans, and pollute like Americans.
All populations boom and bust and humans are no exception. Human population hasn't busted since prehistoric times when mating pairs dropped down into the thousands or some say even just hundreds, but there wont be any bust happening in the upcoming century.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:53PM (3 children)
Or we could provide education and birth control to Africa...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:37PM (2 children)
Yep, I'm not sure why Africa would be any different from the other inhabited continents. Once there's enough prosperity to guarantee that most lineages can continue with fewer children, that's usually what happens. Even on countries like China and India, the birth rates are dropping as they no longer need to have large families as a social safety net.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:52PM (1 child)
Too little, too late. 1.26B Chinese, 1.06B Indians in 2000, 1.41B and 1.38B respectively in 2020. "Think Tanks" predict "peak Chinese population around 2030." Think tanks have been predicting population peaks for decades, they're a lot like fusion power: just around the corner.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:39PM
Think tanks have been predicting population peaks for decades
Not just think tanks, science fiction writers, too. In Kurt Vonnegut's 2BR02B [mcgrewbooks.com] people were eating seaweed because of food shortages by the year 2000.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Touché) by vux984 on Thursday May 12 2022, @05:55PM (8 children)
"The UN forecasts predict 11-12 billion humans by 2100, and 70% of that increase will occur in the African continent. "
This UN forecast?
Growing at a slower pace, world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 11 billion around 2100
https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html [un.org]
I don't think you understand what "peak" means here. It doesn't mean, 9.7 billion in 200, 11 billion by 2100, and even more in 2150. It means, by 2100 the net global population growth will be ZERO or perhaps even negative.
The UN is forecasting the population growth rate to continue to decline until growth stops outright, within a century.
That's not the final word, of course. But pretty much everyone in the scientific community doesn't think global population growth continues unbounded.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @04:00AM (7 children)
Then the UN doesn't understand evolution. The people who have evolved to want kids will replace those who have evolved to not want kids. It's just the way it works. If your parents didn't have any kids, neither will you. Contrariwise, if your parents wanted, and had, lots of kids then it is likely that those kids will also want and have lots of kids.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday May 13 2022, @04:48AM (6 children)
"If your parents wanted, and had, lots of kids then it is likely that those kids will also want and have lots of kids."
That pre-supposes there is a genetic sequence for "wanting to have lots of kids" that can actually be passed on, and further pre-supposes that "wanting lots of kids" will actually result in evolutionary success of that gene. There's no real evidence of the former, but lets for the sake of argument imagine it was a thing. Even then, it's not hard to conceive of a cynical dystopian by our standards future where a family putting all its 'genetic eggs' into releasing a couple kids that it can give all the advantages to will out-compete genes from a family that tries to create bunches of kids it can't support competitively. A future sharing aspects of Gattaca for example.
There are all kinds of plausible futures where the best chance of gene propagation is not "want to have lots of kids". There are lots of evolutionary tracks that have taken this route.
Nevermind the impact of genetic engineering on evolution, artificial selection, etc. In a world that might want zero net growth, and advanced technology we can just eliminate that "wants to have lots of kids gene" whenever it appears.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @09:01AM (1 child)
That's kind of how evolution works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @10:11AM
I think it's unlikely, but it's actually possible that there isn't. There is a desire to have sex, and until recently that automatically meant kids. There must also be a drive to take care of kids once they arrive, but there is not necessarily a drive to actually have them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13 2022, @10:05AM (3 children)
Genetic, memetic, technological, it doesn't matter. All your arguments just change the parameters of the selection pressure. Right now, in the western world, the single most important selection pressure is whether or not lots of children are wanted. Virtually all current human evolution is towards the desire to have children.
Unless you are going to advocate the termination of those "uncompetitive" kids, they certainly will outbreed your carefully cultivated limited offspring.
Your totalitarian gattaca world will simply apply an additional selection to resist the authorities. Future humans will be both rebellious and pro-kids.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Sunday May 15 2022, @11:48AM (2 children)
Yes, your carefree and authority averse Eloi will be unable to work together but make will be excellent breeders.
Little better than zoo animals hunted for sport and food by the far more organized, regulated, and regimented society of Morlocks. :p
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @07:36PM (1 child)
Go read The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins. They are both very entertaining as well as being a great introduction to evolution. Then sit in a quiet spot for a while and really think about it.
If you still don't see any problems with what you have posted in this thread then re-read The Extended Phenotype. At some point a lightbulb will go off in your brain and you will realize that your past understanding of evolution was woefully lacking.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday May 17 2022, @07:33AM
I get all that; I've followed Dawkin's work. The ideas in the extended phenotype don't change the calculus here one bit.
You posit that there is some indomitable survival and propagation advantage conferred by 'wanting to have lots of kids', but that simply might well not be the case. Wanting to have a couple kids, while wanting to deprive others the option of having any kids so they expend engergy on yours instead, and going hard after anyone who wants lots of kids, while virtue signaling your choice to have a 'small reasonable number' to avoid other instances of this trait from attacking you and getting them to band with you reinforcing itself, perpetuating a society and culture around these ideas, legal systems, and the technology to support and enforce it, creating an entire advanced society in service to that strategy and to the exclusion of others ... to directly engage Dawkin's concept ... might be the genetic winningest move in the long run.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 13 2022, @11:48AM (1 child)
I'm not too worried about a boom in the population of Africa. I know something about how average Africans live - I know a bunch of African immigrants and people who spent years in several different areas of the continent - and they on average use up far fewer resources than Americans do. If carbon footprint is a decent approximation of resource usage, than 1 American = 50-100 Africans (it of course depends a lot on where in Africa you're talking about, since Africa is huge and wildly varied politically and economically). Also, Africans have, on average, been able to skip over building lots of inefficient infrastructure that continues to cost Americans a lot of money to maintain without much benefit.
For about 1/3 the wastefulness of Americans, Africans could live like people in western Europe. And they might even find a way to be more efficient than that, because there are some smart Africans who want that sort of thing. If you want to massively improve African quality-of-life without causing major environmental issues, the way you'd do it is to put an end to what could reasonably be called "corporate colonialism", where companies owned by Europeans or Americans like De Beers, Shell, and Nestle are in charge of extracting wealth from Africa's huge natural resources, rather than the governments of European countries, and of course without that wealth extraction you'd have less of a reason for countries and corporations to fund their favorite warlords and dictators.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @11:25PM
My take is that Africa actually is doing better - quality-of-life and environmentally - because of that corporate colonialism. De Beers and Nestle might be nasty, but they're better (and better paying) than the local talent. And when the local business talent improves, those international businesses will have to offer more in order to remain competitive.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:10AM
No it's not. For a glaring counterexample, the highest rate of absolute population growth was in 1988 [wikipedia.org]. Presently, we have about 50% more population than in 1988 and a 10% slower population growth rate. Somethings wrong with the narrative.
How about instead of treating this as a problem, we treat this as an enormous opportunity - getting the low fertility, prosperity, and incredible human benefits of the developed world for everyone, including those Africans.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:53PM
Well, it's a start. Just imagine what could be accomplished already if we just did away with all the unwanted births.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @05:17PM (1 child)
HUH? Women have control over their bodies, but women never want to accept responsibility for their actions. Facts of the last century and through much of history!
As for declining birthrates, some of that is from societal changes but it's mostly from medical advances. Before vaccines and antibiotics and other advances in modern medicine infant and child mortality was as high as 30%, so of course people had more kids if the odds were 1 in 3 that a child wouldn't live past the age of eight.
As for business, who is busier? A single person whose only responsibility is their 8 hours of work, or parents who need to work 8 hours a day PLUS take care of kids 24/7/365? You don't know what real fatigue is and real tiredness is until you've been a parent. Being a parent is not the hardest job in the world, unlike some women who like to congratulate themselves for simply doing their job tell you, but it is a very busy job that completely affects your life.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:12AM
A lot of that responsibility can simply not happen. Then you don't have accept it, want to or not.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 12 2022, @06:29PM (1 child)
If it's so easy, why has population continued to spiral up from 2B to 8B in the past 100 years, 4B to 8B in past 50?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:24AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:19PM (2 children)
"not breed like rabbits"?
You don't want them to breed like HUMANS.
Not having children or only having one is highly unnatural and results in a sick society.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 12 2022, @06:47PM
How so? Still believing the myth of the perpetual growth?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:26AM
Less sick than a society that repeatedly incurs die-offs due to its population growth.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:25PM (1 child)
Millions of hungry people flocking to the countryside to survive will rather defeat the purpose of the boltholes the elites have been building themselves in the countryside.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:55PM
How dare they grow crops where I try to play golf? Have you even tried to hit a golf ball in the middle of a corn field?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:33PM
Artificial pandemic already failed
Please seek psychiatric help for your unfortunate delusions. They have effective drugs for some forms of schizophrenia these days.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @12:57PM (20 children)
The "climate goals" are just as dumb as trying to stop a coronavirus. It just keeps infecting about 50% of the population (and pushing ~10% over the edge if it gets into a nursing home) each year just like all the others.
Everything done was counterproductive, but was a great excuse to concentrate more wealth in certain pockets. We will see the same for the quixotic goal of fighting "climate change".
But neither are the cause of this "financial time bomb". That was created by making a ponzi scheme out of the world reserve currency and rescuing it by printing money every time it is about to collapse. There really is no good solution to this.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:08PM (19 children)
1. 1M dead in US from COVID and seems you are either proud of that or in denial. You would have preferred 10M or more if you just ignored it without vaccine or any restrictions allowing hospitals to actually continue to function? Gasping for air trying to find oxygen ... nah, that could only happen in India because wherever you live is "special"? That's what they thought in India too.
2. seems you need to accept reality of AGW because you can have a discussion about it.
3. if I had $0.1 for every time someone told me that USD is about to collapse ....
Ok, back under the rock with you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:28PM (13 children)
700K Americans die from heart disease every year, yet you're doing nothing to save them. Why don't you care about their lives? McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and every processed food maker keeps pumping everyone full of trans-fats, sugar, and salt, and you whistle and pretend they're not doing anything wrong.
Why do you hate other humans so, so much? Can't you let go of your normal-phobia and stop marginalizing them?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:57PM
Oh don't you worry, that number will come down. You know why heart diseases and cancer are the 2 only things that beat Covid in the death statistics? Because those, too, hit primarily old people. Yeah, we're getting too old. People don't die anymore from preventable diseases...
Oh, wait, they do again now.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:34PM (11 children)
We do a lot of things to try and mitigate that stuff. Those messages are so prevalent you clearly don't even notice them anymore.
We can't just make everything that's unhealthy illegal though. All we can really do is inform people of the hazards and hope they listen. Not sure what you would have us do beyond that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:57PM (7 children)
Phoenix has been mad at reality for a long time and apparently is very bitter at the DNC so he decided to flip ideologies. He is finding out Republicans are no better, in fact worse, and his worldvieww can't handle another crushing defeat so he does what all good Republicans do, falls back on blind faith.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:30PM
Bingo. He's SN's case study in "former liberal" (yeah, bull-SHIT, Phoenix...). Apparently the root of all his frustration is that all the minorities he was so good to didn't spend hours every day worshiping at his feet for being "one of the good ones," and since he's annoyed at how people assume he's a racist because of how so many other white people act, he's decided to...um...go all-in on the aggrieved white genocide train.
Amazing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:40PM (5 children)
It's funny and sad how binary your mind is. Because of course across the whole spectrum of political philosophy, from both the Western and Eastern traditions, there are only two (according to you) possible sets of beliefs.
But it's flattering how much you obsess about my worldview, I guess. Just tell me you haven't built a shrine in your basement with printouts of my Soylent comments, because that would be creepy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @11:54PM
Heh interesting way to make yourself feel better. Sadly was your own fault, repeating your anti-lib personal story so many times we remember it without wanting to. Similar for runaway calling people darkies and wanting to genocide 50 million progressives. Keep your regressive trap shut if you don't want people using your words against you.
But since you're all whiny about being put in a political box but you voted for trump twice! A true independent would have said fuck no to the GOP, so clearly you're on the unhinged spectrum. You don't seem to be Full Qrazy, but you seem to be sliding into it quite steadily as you continue adopting Fox News talking points. Climate change no big deal, minorities are whiners that should just comply, and liberals are tEh ReeL devil. Mmhmm, but ya tone troll harder!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:45AM (3 children)
That would be khayman80 [slashdot.org] level of insanity. One of the more bizarre kooks from Slashdot. It wasn't enough to stalk Slashdot users he disagreed with. He had to debate them, often post by post, on a website echo chamber [dumbscientist.com] that he didn't tell his targets about (I found out about this shrine years later when someone else mentioned it on Slashdot). He obsessed over climate change too as the link indicates.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday May 14 2022, @02:16AM (2 children)
I have always known that Soylent was a motley crew; I contribute to that, but I was always a little proud of being a member of such a bunch of non-conformists.
There are also some who are not playing with a full deck and who attach themselves to others; They exude the skeevy vibes that exemplify the personality traits the Three Letter Agencies hire for. Anti-christs and nazis I can ignore, but creepy DC troglodytes make my skin crawl.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2022, @04:20PM (1 child)
"Anti-christs and nazis I can ignore, but creepy DC troglodytes make my skin crawl."
Thank you!! What a comment, not obly describing yourself, an anti-science ex-politico bitter at the corrupt world of politics. If only you weren't so welcoming to antichrists and nazis . . . . .
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @11:29PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @05:44PM
How about making sure the healthy stuff is cheaper than the unhealthy stuff?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:36PM (1 child)
I agree, so why the hard line on wearing masks that do nothing to mitigate the spread of a virus? After all, have you ever seen a virologist go into the hot zone wearing nothing but an N95 mask? No, of course you haven't, because it's ineffectual. To that same point, why force people to get vaccines they don't want, constrain their freedom of movement and other rights, because public health officials want to give the appearance of doing something?
As you said, the correct course of action is to inform people of the hazards and hope they listen. But that means we also must accept that many people won't listen, and that's their decision.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @09:05PM
So why do some people get so upset when I try to carry cobalt-60 around with me when I go out? Just tell me what you think the hazards are and I'll decide for myself if I should do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @02:38PM (3 children)
To be fair, and countries like Italy have admitted this, that statistic should be changed to say "1M dead in US *with* COVID".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:56PM
Yes, we definitely should take the word of the Anonymous Coward on the internet and not the doctor in the room when the person died to determine the cause of death!
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday May 13 2022, @12:07AM (1 child)
Have a look at excess morality figures if you don't trust the evil doctors. You have a lot of mysterious deaths to explain if you're going to claim COVID wasn't the primary cause.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:48AM
AC has an honest face. I'm sure he's good for it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @06:04PM
It doesn't matter how bad you think these problems are. Whatever is tried to stop a respiratory virus or changing climate will just make things worse.
Instead you can adapt to novel circumstances.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:11PM (6 children)
because greenies took money for Gazprom and done everything in their power to make Europe hostage to Putin.
You should shut your lying maws about your "climate goals", your goal now should be not going to jail for complicity.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday May 12 2022, @03:44PM (5 children)
Oh please, you give the greenies far, far too much credit. As is usual with him, Great Leader Putin does not need help from anyone, he accomplished that all by himself!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @05:21PM (2 children)
You are ascribing godly powers to The Great Leader. Neither the closing down of nuclear power plants in Europe, nor switching to imported coal and gas instead of European sources, could not in this drab Earthy reality be done by one great spell cast from a Kremlin tower. The magic of money requires local hired help, to act through.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:12PM (1 child)
I remember Bush junior. He was blamed for hurricanes, droughts, floods, and more. All great leaders have godly powers, don't they?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @09:06PM
I knew of this one guy who could change the course of hurricanes with just a Sharpie marker! It was bigly impressive.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 13 2022, @11:52AM (1 child)
I agree - he's such a great man, he doesn't need those tens of thousands of troops, he should go right to the front lines of the Ukraine War and take on all of the Ukrainian forces single-handedly! Why doesn't he do that? He could win easily, I'm sure, that's what strong and tough and manly leaders do. What is he, some kind of coward?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday May 13 2022, @03:41PM
I guess it was just too cold 'til now. You know how much he enjoys running around bare-chested.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:30PM (3 children)
Their value could drop to zero overnight if we begin tapping stuff like fusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:17PM
Go ahead and turn on your Mr. Fusion. Show all those dumb physicists who've been working on it for decades how it's done.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:37PM
Overnight? I'm pretty sure it will take longer than one night to build a fusion plant.
Anyway, assuming the current predictions of when fusion is ready are correct, we still have decades of renewable sources having worth. Indeed, longer than the expected lifetime of a typical solar cell or windmill.
And if the predictions are wrong, it most probably will take even longer until renewable sources lose their value.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 12 2022, @06:32PM
Their value will be far from zero no matter what the outcome.
Roughnecks working rigs are still qualified for all kinds of shit work that needs doing even after oil rigs are gone.
The rigs themselves can be recycled for the steel, and much of the equipment onboard has value.
Helicopters that shuttle workers to/from oil rigs lose virtually no value when oil production shuts down.
But, overall, yes - a lot of rich people will take a big hit on their relative net-worth if oil production suddenly stops, and look around for the last 50 years since the big OPEC scare - they seem to be protecting their assets quite effectively so far.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2022, @01:35PM (28 children)
The market mechanism already takes care of this question. If it's profitable to build such machinery and train such workers, then companies will do it. If it stops being profitable, they will stop.
Will there be abandoned oil derricks and oil refineries in the landscape? Yes, just like there are abandoned steam-powered tractors and other machinery. Eventually, somebody comes along and turns them into planters or parks [seattle.gov].
Across the West there are towns that were abandoned after their purpose was gone. They're called "ghost towns." Some of them are melting back into the landscape, and others are being re-tooled as tourist attractions or given new life as private homes.
As the internal combustion engine falls out of favor, we should recycle them and produce new machines and tools. That's what we should do and where our focus should be--a responsible transition. As far as the humans trained to work with them, well, they can and do learn to do other things.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @03:16PM (11 children)
Is the last sentence like when journalists told oil workers to learn to code, or when everyone else told journalists to learn to code when they subsequently got laid off.l?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @03:34PM (10 children)
Yes, exactly. Society does not owe you a job as a coal miner. If you work in an industry that is about to disappear, you are going to get hurt. Maybe you should get out before that actually happens. These things don't happen overnight. But for some reason, everyone wants the glory of going down with the ship.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @03:53PM (1 child)
Right, which is why we have all these unemployed COBOL experts sniffling to their governments about how everybody should be forced to use mainframes.
... oh, wait.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2022, @12:53AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @03:55PM
Yes, which is why there should be at least an much push to create alternatives that don't destroy the world as a means of employment.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @03:58PM (4 children)
Oil is going nowhere. Oil workers need only wait for Biden's regime to end and it will be back to keeping everyone warm, on the road, in the sky, and in fertilizer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:58PM (1 child)
So this week is Biden the Radical Socialist Week? See, I thought this was Biden the Do-Nothing Centrist week but I guess my calendar was wrong!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @06:48PM
Biden: a hand puppet with a beating heart and an appetite for ice cream
Biden's regime: the hand up the puppet's rear portal.
See the difference?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sourcery42 on Thursday May 12 2022, @05:41PM (1 child)
BWAAAHAAAHAAA!
Thanks. I needed a good laugh. Yes, Biden's disastrous policies are absolutely gutting the energy industry right now. They're literally hemorrhaging money /s https://www.energystockchannel.com/quotes/?a=chart&ticker=$CRACK321&period=5y&title=5+Years [energystockchannel.com]
The world is hungry for energy. Add a dash of no one invested in maintaining production or growing alternative energy sources much during the Covid downturn, splash in permanently shuttering some uncompetitive refineries, then sprinkle in a bit of WWIII and you get record profits for the energy industry, but yes, the current market and geopolitical situation is clearly all part of Biden's grand scheme. You're the dumbass who sticks the "I did that!" stickers on gas pumps lately, aren't you AC.
I get the point you're trying to make. The way you made it is downright laughable, though.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:06PM
No, nothing is the Biden administration's fault. He is impotent, a reed blowing in the wind, at the mercy of events he can't control. Does that make Biden sound BETTER to you?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:15PM (1 child)
That's the best excuse I've heard yet. I'm just going to quit working!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2022, @08:51PM
As if anyone would notice. More time to shitpost on the internets? But what will you do without your employer's WiFi connention?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:40PM (4 children)
Gasworks is awesome! But it's not quite the panacea you would have us believe...
What’s in the dirt at Seattle’s Gas Works Park? [king5.com]
I would recommend immediately washing your clothes once by themselves and taking a shower when you get home if you do much more than just walk your dog there...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @04:43PM
On a personal note I'm moving back to the Seattle area in about six months and I'm stoked to go home!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:31PM (2 children)
It is if you go there to fly kites from the top of the hill, which is what we used to do.
Anyway, it was a salient example of obsolete industry being repurposed as something else. Another example is the High Line in NYC, which was a rail spur that brought animals down to the meat packing district for slaughter, then sat abandoned for 60 years, and was repurposed as a public park that pegs the meter for awesomeness.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:38PM (1 child)
Kite Hill is the most polluted part of the park!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 13 2022, @07:33PM
Leave my warm childhood memories alone!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 12 2022, @07:36PM (10 children)
You're missing the point here as usual, though.
A lot of this stuff involves leverage, basically promises that the profit they are assumed over the long term to generate will materialize, no matter what. It's more or less borrowing from an assumed or projected future. If that future fails to materialize, not only do you have a tremendous load of stranded assets, you ALSO have a sky-high pile of unserviceable debt. And then there's the energy cost and environmental externalities to consider, something your new God (the Free Market, known in ancient times as Mammon...) deliberately refuses even to countenance.
The Free Market (TM) doesn't exist in vacuum. You are making precisely the same false assumptions -- infinite growth, freely-available resources and raw materials, geopolitical stability -- that everyone has been pointing out for the last 50+ years aren't guaranteed...and, over the last 20, are worse than delusional.
Your attitude of "let the little people repurpose the ruins" is even worse, since it combines the above with a hearty dose of "fuck you, poors." Why should we have to do it this way? Why should people have to suffer and waste their time and energy and money just to get stuck with the scraps of failed monuments to greed and shortsightedness?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 15 2022, @12:27AM (9 children)
I disagree. The assumptions aren't that extreme. An assumption of infinite growth is little different from an assumption of finite growth for a few decades (and really humanity has been growing for many centuries making that assumption much less of a assumption).
And freely available resources? The real assumption is that all resources are scarce and have cost. We even have posters here criticizing the assumption because they think it's an obstruction to a genuine, post-scarcity economy.
And geopolitical stability remains pretty stable even with covid and Russian misbehavior. It's not much of an assumption.
The "fuck you, poors" are getting considerable cheap shit out of this, so I'm just not seeing the problem.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday May 15 2022, @05:12PM (8 children)
Why do you use so many words and say so little? You haven't rebutted anything I've said, obviously or otherwise. You've stuck your fingertips in your ears and started shouting the Gospel According To Mammon According to Mr. Hallow. Economics isn't some kind of magic spell, Hallow. Chanting and repetition won't save you in the face of shifting reality. Everyone and everything bows before physics.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 15 2022, @10:52PM (7 children)
Should I be rebutting what you say?
My take is that you might actually have an interesting point here, should you choose to think about what you're talking about rather than waste time spinning silly yarns about the mean people on the internets.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 16 2022, @04:58AM (6 children)
Your "take" is hot dogshit, and almost completely void of any actual substance.
Wake the fuck up. Humans are not rational actors, resources are not infinite, growth cannot be infinite or even "close enough" as you're putting it, and deliberately producing massive amounts of stranded assets with what capacity we have left is outright evil at this point.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 16 2022, @11:33AM (4 children)
Except of course, humans are often rational enough for those "rational actor" approximations, growth can indeed be close enough (and has been for centuries, not just every now and then!), and those assets need not be stranded - but as Phoenix666 noted, if they are, it's not downright evil, but an opportunity to repurpose those assets so that they are no longer stranded (and help the poorest in the process).
This is a classic straw man argument. You don't even say why these assumptions/evils are even supposed to be something we should talk about.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 17 2022, @02:54AM (3 children)
Trickle-down economics doesn't work, Hallow. At this point there's more evidence for creationism than trickle-down, which is to say, we have real-time and constant disproofs of Reaganomics unfolding in front of our very eyes day to day. And, again, your "repurpose those stranded assets to help the poor" idea is another manifestation of this; it's like saying "the way to solve food insecurity is to feed rich people until they throw up, and then let the poor eat the vomit."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 18 2022, @02:37AM (2 children)
Aside from you, who in this thread has talked about trickle-down? Sorry, neither Phoenix666 nor I did that. You did.
Reagonics is about a particular tax policy from the 1980s - favoring the wealthy (that is, we tax rich people less so that poor people can benefit indirectly). We're not talking tax policy, but the development of productive assets that has as a side effect that it can be repurposed afterward.
This also gets to my point about leverage. Such reuse lessens moderately the amount of leverage since there's some recovery possible even if the fossil fuel assset/infrastructure builders got this completely wrong.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2022, @04:44PM (1 child)
And all of that is trickle-down. All of it amounts to "make the rich richer so they invest in the country on a private level." That is the textbook definition of trickle-down economics. This is a really bad look for you, Hallow. Your economic religious views are being exposed for the hollow, self-destructive puffery they are.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday May 18 2022, @11:41PM
No, it's not. Phoenix666's original post simply pointed out that there's not a lot of drama to a transition away from fossil fuels - due to such ready tools as that market that Phoenix666 mentioned. In other words, your breathless concerns like the load of "stranded assets" just aren't that significant. We already have it figured out.
Then change your optics. You haven't given any reason (not just in this thread - for many years, let us note) that I should care about how things look to you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 20 2022, @03:38AM
Thinking about this post some more, this is just plain dumb. Why would rich people deliberately produce massive amounts of stranded assets? They're not in this to lose money. Sure, I can see something like an idiotic government policy to create said stranded assets, but that can happen with any sort of asset.
Instead we have considerable evidence that we actually have overly strong incentives against producing those assets (at least in the Western World where the concerns of this "financial bomb" are discussed) - like very few refineries built since the 1970s (I see repeatedly the claim that no refinery with "significant downstream unit capacity" has been constructed since 1977) and the obstructing of oil transportation infrastructure (like the successful blocking of Keystone XL). Not much point to worrying about stranded assets when the real problem is a dearth of said assets.