The Netflix show Stranger Things was loosely based on this. It was originally going to be called "Montauk" and take place on Long Island, as there were conspiracies of mind control, time travel, and other experiments going on at Montauk Air Force base.
I would agree if there was something radical from others. It's all been incremental from everyone ever since the iPhone 4. So it's not a CEO thing. There really isn't any new feature that the masses need from these devices anymore.
That said, as you can see from the thunderous applause after every sentence in that auditorium, the herd laps up dull shit.
1. Even if we can't completely prevent it, we can stop it from being much worse.
2. Regardless of the climate changer factor, polluting the air causes cancer, damages ecosystems, harms our food supply, etc.
The mentality of "we can't prevent it, so why bother trying" is like accidentally shooting yourself in the foot, and when finding out it'll have to be amputated, proceeding to shoot your other foot because "what's the point?".
Did you read the article? That's not what it's about at all. The author is saying that we aren't going to "stop" climate change. So instead we should be strategizing how to proactively invest in systems (both natural and man-made) to make them more resilient in the face of changes to come.
Which all conveniently line up with one major political platform. "If you frightened by the coming climate cataclysm, then you should also agree with me on everything."
It's very well-written, but it's not rational. The content is more political than scientific.
It doesn't matter in the least if you agree with a candidate on everything. This one specific subject should be a deal breaker though, regardless of just about any other stance. Your opinion on free market is irrelevant in the face of Extinction.
To be clear: I'm referencing to the part of the article where the author irrationally asserts that [list of one party's policies unrelated to the climate] are related to the climate.
Deciding on what choices to make in response to the climate changing is inherently political. Science can inform the process but can't tell us which selection of responses is "most valid".
Certainly true but decidedly not unusual. To the degree I'm a climate change skeptic it's largely because everyone seems to be using it as a stick to beat some political horse.
Is climate change more of a scientific problem, or a political one? Will the problem de-materialize as soon as some scientists finally figure it all out?
Most versions of the Green New Deal that I've seen heavily incorporate resilience into the plan, it's not solely focused on trying to reverse climate change.
The best systems to proactively invest in are renewable energies and technologies that reduce our energy demand, like building insulation, heat pumps, and electric cars.
The survival of our technological civilization is very much uncertain. It has been since the nuclear age.
If someone wanted to take meaningful action, they would be sinking container ships. In aggregate, they contribute to more pollution (of all kinds), than most singular countries. Nobody is going to war over this, so it's inevitable. If it's inevitable, it's not healthy to pretend otherwise. The earth will survive, humans will survive, and maybe technological action will allow us to terraform the earth in a different or unexpected way (eg Snowpiercer).
This "debate" about what to do is always toothless and desperate and pointless until the death toll starts to mount. Even then, the wealthy will make the same old arguments about irresponsibility and willful ignorance of those with nothing, blaming the victims, which seems to work generation after generation...until finally we get multinational instability and with smaller populations, some semblance of change too late (eg states of the USSR) to recover from the devastation. What's the mini-state of lower california going to do about 150 degree weather and no water? Nothing.
Serious question: I always see 'humans will survive' in these kinds of posts. Why? We know most of the past species are extinct, we are in the middle of a mass extinction event, the climate crisis hasn't even fully begun, and there are other serious problems coming.
So I don't want to be negative, but I do want to stay realistic. Does someone know why humans will survive, and on which time scale this prediction is valid .
People have been inhabiting the Arctic for millennia, and that's a pretty inhospitable place. Granted, it's technologically easier to heat than to cool (just eat lots of fat)
We don't have reliable data that an advanced civilization of our level (yes, we're advanced comparing to many our ancestors) goes extinct. Particularly for reasons like this. So we naturally not sure. On the other hand, we see some examples of wonderful inventiveness - say, in time of a war, but also in time of great geographical discoveries, technology and science achievements etc. So for many it feels like an open question.
As for validity time scale, I'd like to see research myself.
We have some examples. Just look at Petra and some Mayan cities... They fell because climate stopped spring people there - they ran out of water and fell to either starvation or disease.
Mostly they moved elsewhere, but on planet scale that would be much more problematic.
Citing a post in this same discussion: warming by 5 degrees will cause all phytoplankton to die off and as a result we'll run out of oxygen. So no, that's not enough.
Even if it would be, how would you feed these people? How would their underground cave get power for light etc in a CO2-negative world?
AFAIK, the 'biosphere 2' experiment and the experiences with the space stations demonstrated humanity is not capable of surviving long term without mother earth. There are plenty of unknown unknowns.
Breeder reactors are really nice in that they produce lots of energy that you can use to produce food and oxygen. Biosphere 2 was a hippy project that tried to reproduce a complex ecosystem that nobody really understood. The Russians had much more pragmatic approaches. For this project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS-3 it's much easier to see how it could scale up to true self-containment.
Interestingly, from a technological standpoint, container ships could switch to nuclear propulsion tomorrow if they wanted to. The 2 main reasons they haven't is the large up front cost, and the fact that very few nations like the idea of a ship with a nuclear reactor being highjacked by pirates.
I guess that depends on what you consider "weather"
If I said "ground temperature", would it matter to the discussion?
60C (140F) was the Average temp in the triassic. With the amount of water in the air plus the carbon dioxide, I expect to see that in places a couple generations after I die...which is the time period I've referenced (political instability).
The highest ground temperature recorded was 201 degrees at Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972, according to the National Park Service. The maximum air temperature for that day was 128. All types of bad things happen at that point. Water evaporates rapidly at 150, so who cares where the water comes from. It's gone or containers rupture as it turns gaseous. What temperature the air is, doesn't matter.
When people talk about "temperature" they mean air temperature, look at any weather forecast. Human survival is largely dependent on air temperature. While water does evaporate faster at 150 than at, say, 100, it is still well below boiling and not hard to contain -- 150 is a somewhat cooled cup of tea/coffee. Underground piping will be much colder than ground temperature.
At any rate, temperature increase forecasts for the next 100 years are all in the O(1 degree C) range. There are many reasons to mitigate climate change/decrease green house gas output/fight pollution, but let's not spread FUD.
Same goes for solar panel/roof installation, backup battery installation, burying power lines to improve storm resilience, etc. There's no shortage of infrastructure that needs to be built to modernize our system.
Trying to artificially protect jobs in one industry while there's a huge labor shortage in much more productive things like infrastructure modernization or housing construction seems like the antithesis of an efficient market.
Agreed. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, my family lived without electricity for two weeks. We depended on our gasoline-powered truck to procure food and water, transport an ailing grandmother for medical care, and generally survive.
If we and others had depended on the existing electrical infrastructure to power our vehicles, we would have been completely screwed. A chaotic, uncomfortable situation would have become truly dangerous.
I appreciate that use of your vehicles was essential for you during the aftermath of Katrina. But I don't think emergency situations are a good enough rational for using a gasoline-powered car every day. As in many computer science problems, there are benefits from treating the worst case (e.g. medical transport after a natural disaster) and the average case (e.g. commuting to work) separately.
In general, I suspect electric is better in the average case, and gasoline in the case of emergencies. We see this with household power: most people power their houses with electricity, but may use a gas backup generator. For the similar reasons, we should probably drive electric cars to work but continue using gasoline-powered ambulances.
If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social media as their official communications channel. Instead, they should have a government run portal where they relay whatever info they need to.
I'd wager that government-run portals might be even easier to hack.
Regardless of that, separating "official communications" from "personal" would be really tricky. Which tweets would come as "the current president" and which as "the candidate up for re-election"?
In addition to that, there are actually separate accounts (official @POTUS / personal @realDonaldTrump) but Trump-the-person has no incentive to ever use the official account (it's not "his") and so all @POTUS account does is just retweet the personal account, sort of defeating the purpose.
Would it? Is there any country whose leaders are so foppish as to believe what they read on Twitter as though it were some actual diplomatic channel, or even an early warning system?
I'd wager you're correct in your assumption that most decision makers would not be duped by something like that, however a bogus tweet from an official source could be used as plausible cover for leaders who are seeking justification to take actions they wanted to take anyway.
Can you imagine what would have happened if a post-9/11 Iranian leader's account had tweeted "we have successfully acquired nuclear weapons and will be attacking Washington DC and Jerusalem tonight"? Elements within the governments of the USA and Israel have been agitating for war with Iran for decades, and that could give them the cover they need to act on it.
If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social media as their official communications channel. Instead, they should have a government run portal where they relay whatever info they need to.
Likely, yes. Perfect security might be impossible but I hear some people competent people remain in the DoD and NSA despite the administration's efforts.
Certainly it could be if security was an explicit design goal. Security is an afterthought for most social media companies since users getting hacked isn't typically a big deal; including in this case.
Notice, for example, that bank accounts are hacked much less frequently than twitter accounts.
>If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war
I think before going to war with a super power, a country will check with various diplomatic channels if that was really what was said. In addition, if war could be triggered by a tweet, stuff isn't going so well anyway. With the possible exception of North Korea, I can't think of a single country that would go to war with the United States over any possible tweet by the President or anyone else, even if the tweet was real.
While it's unlikely North Korea would just launch missiles on that basis, is that really a gamble you want to take?
Imagine such exploit taking place at a moment of greater tension, and consider the fact that the President is already prone to erratic behavior online which his staff then attempts (or not) to conform to existing policy.
EDIT: right after reading this thread I glanced at the headlines, only to discover that intel analysts are (allegedly) upset that the following Presidential tweet included a snapshot of a till-then classified surveillance image. I offer this as an example of why traditional diplomatic and security norms may be more fragile than you suspect.
They probably mean tweeting something like "At 11:45 EDT, the United States will be launching a tactical missile strike against Iran's Natanz and Karaj nuclear reactors, unless the Ayatollah agrees to permanently cease their operations", not "Fatty Kim Jong-Un is a loser!"
I doubt it would actually start a war, but it could definitely cause problems, especially if they believe the tweet may have actually been a "testing of the waters" rather than a result of a compromised account.
That shared understanding has never existed in history. Intelligence and diplomacy has always been part of warcraft. The Spanish-American War and Pearl Harbor are two notable cases of war triggered by communications.
I think we need to reconsider the value of Twitter as a communications channel, along with the other social media platforms. They should not be taken so seriously.
Am I the old man yelling at the kids to get off my server yet?
I wonder if there's some A/B testing or tailored headlines going on here, because the headline I'm seeing when I click the link is "Most Canadians Are Now Better Off Than Most Americans".
Here's a thought experiment I like to use whenever this comes up.
If someone were to approach you on the street and ask you to do something for them that will take an hour of your time, what amount of money do you think would be a fair compensation for just the time expense? Now add to that the fact that it's not just an hour of someones time, it's also an hour of use of an expensive machine they own and maintain.
I've found that when minimum wage is thought of in this way, anything less than $20-25/hour sounds absurd.
