I gave up NPR a few years ago, after four decades of frequent listening. It has become more difficult to recognize the attributes which made it so useful and insightful, for so long. Once in a while, they run something which reinforces my opinion that they've strayed into the weeds. A recent example: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197955833
LUSE: I talked to other professors in preparation for this conversation, and something that came up was, like, it's seen by many as a very extreme form of nonviolent direct action.
WOODLY: Yes. I mean, it is the most extreme form of nonviolent direct action because self-immolation is not meant to hurt others. It's not meant to destroy property. It's really meant to use one's own life to make a statement. It's also on a spectrum - right? - like, you know, sort of on a spectrum from, for example, hunger strike. Some people do things like nail parts of their bodies to buildings. And then sort of self-immolation is, like, on that spectrum of the most extreme kinds of nonviolent direct action.
There were a total of three fatalities resulting from Asiana 214. Two passengers died onboard, as a direct consequence of the crash.
As for the third, it was later speculated that they could possibly have already died before encountering airport fire and rescue vehicles. This is still controversial; it is also possible that the original sequence of events was correct.
The primary cause of the crash was a profound lack of airmanship by the flight-deck crew. There was also some mode confusion with the autopilot and autothrottle; however they should have overcome this using fundamental aviation skills. Nobody was minding the actual throttle state.
Either way, it is worth noting the other two fatalities. Thank you.
I should have double-checked. I was going off memory. I lived in SF at the time, and I remembered only the person who died after the crash. My memory was wrong. If I could go back and amend my comment to address this (and other inconsistencies pointed out by others), I would.
We can't have unlimited economic growth for ever without boiling the oceans, or without figuring out a way to have economic growth without increasing energy usage. It's not about global warming, it's about just waste heat and entropy, even assuming maximally efficient engines and 100% renewable energy.
And really, all of that blog post is a special case of the observation that life is a way to more rapidly increase entropy on earth by finding and exploiting energy sources. Eventually earth will reach a life-induced thermal equilibrium which will be incompatible with the continued existence of life on earth.
The sun imparts a certain amount of energy into the earth through tidal forces. We can either capture that energy for our use, or let it heat the Earth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating). The slowdown of the Earth's rotation is the same either way. The paper demonstrates that if you could capture an absurd amount of energy from tides, the earth's rotation would have to slow. But this is vacuously true: you simply can't capture that much energy from tides.
This article needs to die. People see stanford and think it's legit. This is an early grad school student's work and it probably shouldn't be visible outside the dept.
tldr: If global energy usage grows at 2% every year, and we generate 1% of the total demand annually with tidal energy, the Earth's rotation will cease in ~1000 years.
While i won't dispute that tidal energy is not truly sustainable, at least not in the way solar appears to be, i think we can agree that in the short team (a few centuries) cargo ships saving fuel would be a net positive with no measurable impact on the rotation of the planet.
Edit: after some more napkin math, i have a hard time taking this paper seriously at all. It appears to suggest that the available tidal energy would remain constant throughout this process? Also, 1.02^1000 equates to a roughly 400 million factor increase in the current energy demands of the planet. That's not something i'd expect such an advanced civilization to be trying to generate out of some waves.
The rule of 72 is useful. It would give roughly doubling every 35 years for a 1000years means 28 doublings or a bit over 256million x increase in power usage. Only off by ~50%.
I'm guessing that would put the population over a quadrillion, as well, with efficiency increases.
I think I've seen arguments from the same person before.
The key assumption here is a 2% annual increase in world energy demand. No shit sherlock, after 1000 years numbers are huge. Funny thing is he only criticises renewables this way, but if we make the same calculation for any any energy source we pretty much come to the same conclusion. Maybe the person has an agenda?
