Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Apologies for the delay! I've been very busy with Christmas and the like - seeing family ranks a bit more highly on my priority list than the culture war.
There's no real academic or scientific debate on this subject - I'm not saying that we're going to have to start building Noah's Ark tomorrow, but the projected sea level rises over the next few hundred years are going to do this with ease. Complicated systems like the global climate are also vulnerable to sudden shocks - if something causes a large glacier or ice-shelf to drop into the ocean we could be seeing those levels rise faster than predicted. Again, this won't be a problem for us - but it will have our descendants cursing our names in the future.
You're right - Russia is a big winner of climate change. But what you're missing is that the increase in global temperatures is also going to drive a massive increase in adverse weather events. While the equitable climate on the other side of climate change is going to be very nice for a lot of people, the transition period is going to be rather nasty. Existing farming infrastructure will have to be moved and there are going to be a wide variety of extreme storms, floods and other natural disasters.
France had to bail their nuclear power system out because it wasn't economical - and up til now they got their uranium for a 50th of the price thanks to their colonial holdings in Africa. If you scroll back up I've actually had this conversation before, in this very thread even.
Do you think this is an actual argument? "If a doctor earns more money than a janitor, why is this doctor fresh out of medical school with tons of debt poorer than a janitor who is retiring after saving and investing for their entire life? Checkmate, liberals." I am legitimately struggling to understand the argument you're making here. Ultimately, they were richer in the sense that they had potential to do a lot more than we did. Personally I think going to the moon again would have been a better use of those fossil fuels than vastly inflating the American population then rendering a vast majority of that population clinically obese - a society that did NOT make that choice would actually be unironically richer in my opinion.
"There's no real academic debate about what might happen hundreds of years in the future" - Okay .
I know some academics are prone to dramatic predictions of doom, but you know you don't have to take everything they say at face value, right? It honestly reads like you never double-check anything, do the barest of common-sense questioning.
Questions such as:
How can you reconcile 'all ports being underwater soon' with 'actual sea level rise for a century and a half being 0.2 m'. 'all ports Underwater' to me means 'dozens of meters', at least. How do you get from one to the other, when the straight extrapolation falls far short?
Why, if we are on a 'nasty transitory period' is, as always, the productivity of farmland increasing?
Why, if nuclear energy is 'uneconomical', does France have such cheap electricity compared to 'nuclear-exiting' Germany, and why does it export so much of it?
Why, if EROEI is determinant, were past societies with better EROEI so much poorer than we are?
In this particular case, what I'm looking at are the results of paleoclimatology studies which looked at the nature of the Earth's climate and atmosphere in the times when the carbon which we are currently pumping into the atmosphere was already there and hadn't been locked away in the form of fossil fuels. There's no real debate on the topic - when you increase the insulating effect of the atmosphere, global temperatures rise. Do you actually have a reasoned and well thought out rebuttal to that claim? I'd love to see it if you do, but so far nobody has managed to step up to the plate.
It's ironic that you accuse me of not double-checking anything when you claim that I said "all ports being underwater soon" but when I check my actual post I put that event hundreds of years into the future. Soon on a geological timescale to be sure, but the actual answer to this objection is just for you to stop hallucinating.
Because we're pumping massive amounts of fossil fuels into them for one, and because the nasty transition stage is only just beginning. The key points of this nasty transition are going to be an increase in adverse weather events and shifting climate belts that make the optimal distribution of farmland and farming infrastructure very different to where they are now. But on that note, I also said that some people are going to be winners - Russia especially.
Because France purchased their uranium for cents on the dollar due to their colonial holdings in Africa, and because their government has since bailed out their nuclear power system because it wasn't able to financially sustain itself. I've had this argument several times before - if you want to learn more, look up Françafrique. When you factor in the declining EROEI of current uranium deposits, solar and other renewable energy sources outcompete nuclear in every way that matters - outside of specific circumstances where nuclear's unique characteristics make it valuable (nuclear submarines, precarious geopolitical situations, production of valuable isotopes, etc).
If a doctor makes more money than a janitor, why is a doctor fresh out of medical school with lots of student debt poorer than a janitor who has just retired after saving and investing for their entire career?
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