July LC thread so PVN will stop posting LAST - Page 10 - Politics and Economics

Hansen began his career studying Venus, which was once a very Earth-like planet with plenty of life-supporting water before runaway climate change rapidly transformed it into an arid and uninhabitable sphere enveloped in an unbreathable gas

I didn't know that, but it brings up a question: what if, as Elon Musk plans to colonize Mars...

Spoiler:

07-10-2017 , 01:20 AM

#227

microbet

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Yeah, I read it and it's scary. It's going to be depressing if I'm still thinking about this when it's 100 degrees where I'm going to be tomorrow. I didn't really know about the connection between dehydration and kidney problems. I will endeavor even more to remain hydrated.

Last edited by microbet; 07-10-2017 at 01:37 AM.

07-10-2017 , 04:32 AM

#228

ChrisV

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The thing about CO2 causing a decline in cognitive performance was interesting, didn't know about that.

07-10-2017 , 04:57 AM

#229

goofyballer

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Super random question:
- article says CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is currently 400ppm, could increase to 1000 by the end of the century
- in this podcast recommended from OOT (which is super interesting on a number of topics and I imagine politards would enjoy it, relevant one here is episode 2), the guy says that the feeling of suffocation you get when holding your breath is actually your lungs reacting to the increasing level of CO2 and not because of decreasing oxygen (for this reason, if you walk into a room full of inert gas, you would breathe normally until falling unconscious and dying rather quickly)

After some googling I've not been able to find any information about the levels of CO2 concentration that trigger this response/suffocation feeling, and I kinda wonder if having over double the amount of CO2 in the air that we're currently used to would change how long people can hold their breath for.

07-10-2017 , 07:22 AM

#230

pvn

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What's the deal with Chapo? Like, they could only afford two good microphones so matt gets a tin can on a string?

Also, their latest episode on UBI is really turrible. Like omg, UBI is bad because employers won't have to pay a living wage? It's more important to these dumbasses to outsource the social safety net to big bad corporations than actually do something good for people because they are driven primarily by the need to stick it to someone.

07-10-2017 , 07:35 AM

#231

Trolly McTrollson

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Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Earth's atmosphere is only 0.04% CO2, so you probably wouldn't notice if it was doubled to 0.08%.

07-10-2017 , 08:47 AM

#232

Money2Burn

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This should probably go in the environment thread, but I think it will get a little more exposure here. It's an article about what the earth will look like as it warms and what that means for its habitability for humans. Shocker, the outlook is incredibly bleak. Some of this stuff is just horrifying.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...or-humans.html

Quote:

In between scientific reticence and science fiction is science itself. This article is the result of dozens of interviews and exchanges with climatologists and researchers in related fields and reflects hundreds of scientific papers on the subject of climate change. What follows is not a series of predictions of what will happen — that will be determined in large part by the much-less-certain science of human response. Instead, it is a portrait of our best understanding of where the planet is heading absent aggressive action. It is unlikely that all of these warming scenarios will be fully realized, largely because the devastation along the way will shake our complacency. But those scenarios, and not the present climate, are the baseline. In fact, they are our schedule.

Quote:

Climate-change skeptics point out that the planet has warmed and cooled many times before, but the climate window that has allowed for human life is very narrow, even by the standards of planetary history. At 11 or 12 degrees of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. Things almost certainly won’t get that hot this century, though models of unabated emissions do bring us that far eventually. This century, and especially in the tropics, the pain points will pinch much more quickly even than an increase of seven degrees. The key factor is something called wet-bulb temperature, which is a term of measurement as home-laboratory-kit as it sounds: the heat registered on a thermometer wrapped in a damp sock as it’s swung around in the air (since the moisture evaporates from a sock more quickly in dry air, this single number reflects both heat and humidity). At present, most regions reach a wet-bulb maximum of 26 or 27 degrees Celsius; the true red line for habitability is 35 degrees. What is called heat stress comes much sooner.

Actually, we’re about there already. Since 1980, the planet has experienced a 50-fold increase in the number of places experiencing dangerous or extreme heat; a bigger increase is to come. The five warmest summers in Europe since 1500 have all occurred since 2002, and soon, the IPCC warns, simply being outdoors that time of year will be unhealthy for much of the globe. Even if we meet the Paris goals of two degrees warming, cities like Karachi and Kolkata will become close to uninhabitable, annually encountering deadly heat waves like those that crippled them in 2015. At four degrees, the deadly European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many as 2,000 people a day, will be a normal summer. At six, according to an assessment focused only on effects within the U.S. from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, summer labor of any kind would become impossible in the lower Mississippi Valley, and everybody in the country east of the Rockies would be under more heat stress than anyone, anywhere, in the world today. As Joseph Romm has put it in his authoritative primer Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, heat stress in New York City would exceed that of present-day Bahrain, one of the planet’s hottest spots, and the temperature in Bahrain “would induce hyperthermia in even sleeping humans.” The high-end IPCC estimate, remember, is two degrees warmer still. By the end of the century, the World Bank has estimated, the coolest months in tropical South America, Africa, and the Pacific are likely to be warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. Air-conditioning can help but will ultimately only add to the carbon problem; plus, the climate-controlled malls of the Arab emirates aside, it is not remotely plausible to wholesale air-condition all the hottest parts of the world, many of them also the poorest. And indeed, the crisis will be most dramatic across the Middle East and Persian Gulf, where in 2015 the heat index registered temperatures as high as 163 degrees Fahrenheit. As soon as several decades from now, the hajj will become physically impossible for the 2 million Muslims who make the pilgrimage each year.

Quote:

Pollyannaish plant physiologists will point out that the cereal-crop math applies only to those regions already at peak growing temperature, and they are right — theoretically, a warmer climate will make it easier to grow corn in Greenland. But as the pathbreaking work by Rosamond Naylor and David Battisti has shown, the tropics are already too hot to efficiently grow grain, and those places where grain is produced today are already at optimal growing temperature — which means even a small warming will push them down the slope of declining productivity. And you can’t easily move croplands north a few hundred miles, because yields in places like remote Canada and Russia are limited by the quality of soil there; it takes many centuries for the planet to produce optimally fertile dirt.

Drought might be an even bigger problem than heat, with some of the world’s most arable land turning quickly to desert. Precipitation is notoriously hard to model, yet predictions for later this century are basically unanimous: unprecedented droughts nearly everywhere food is today produced. By 2080, without dramatic reductions in emissions, southern Europe will be in permanent extreme drought, much worse than the American dust bowl ever was. The same will be true in Iraq and Syria and much of the rest of the Middle East; some of the most densely populated parts of Australia, Africa, and South America; and the breadbasket regions of China. None of these places, which today supply much of the world’s food, will be reliable sources of any. As for the original dust bowl: The droughts in the American plains and Southwest would not just be worse than in the 1930s, a 2015 NASA study predicted, but worse than any droughts in a thousand years — and that includes those that struck between 1100 and 1300, which “dried up all the rivers East of the Sierra Nevada mountains” and may have been responsible for the death of the Anasazi civilization.

Quote:

Climatologists are very careful when talking about Syria. They want you to know that while climate change did produce a drought that contributed to civil war, it is not exactly fair to saythat the conflict is the result of warming; next door, for instance, Lebanon suffered the same crop failures. But researchers like Marshall Burke and Solomon Hsiang have managed to quantify some of the non-obvious relationships between temperature and violence: For every half-degree of warming, they say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. In climate science, nothing is simple, but the arithmetic is harrowing: A planet five degrees warmer would have at least half again as many wars as we do today. Overall, social conflict could more than double this century.

This is one reason that, as nearly every climate scientist I spoke to pointed out, the U.S. military is obsessed with climate change: The drowning of all American Navy bases by sea-level rise is trouble enough, but being the world’s policeman is quite a bit harder when the crime rate doubles. Of course, it’s not just Syria where climate has contributed to conflict. Some speculate that the elevated level of strife across the Middle East over the past generation reflects the pressures of global warming — a hypothesis all the more cruel considering that warming began accelerating when the industrialized world extracted and then burned the region’s oil.

There is plenty more, but you get the picture. This is not a threat we should be ignoring.

07-10-2017 , 08:55 AM

#233

Money2Burn

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Quote:

Originally Posted by pvn

Matt's voice makes the speakers in my car sound like they have blown out.

07-10-2017 , 09:14 AM

#234

microbet

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Money2burn,

Bad pony!

People talk about Elon and the crazy plan to colonize Mars, but check out his gigafactory(ies).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_1

He has really stepped up to the plate to try to end the use of fossil fuels. They're building a utility energy storage facility in Australia.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.latim...story,amp.html

07-10-2017 , 09:19 AM

#235

microbet

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Quote:

Originally Posted by pvn

I didn't listen to it, but I think there's a valid concern that a UBI that, say, paid half a living would essentially just be a subsidy for Wal-Mart.

07-10-2017 , 10:52 AM

#236

Money2Burn

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Quote:

Originally Posted by microbet

Ah, damn you, Huehue. My pony is clearly already feeling the effects of the warming climate.

07-10-2017 , 11:10 AM

#237

Original Position

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Quote:

Originally Posted by microbet

I didn't listen to it, but I think there's a valid concern that a UBI that, say, paid half a living would essentially just be a subsidy for Wal-Mart.

Wouldn't that be a good thing though? Spread the cost of wage subsidies for low-income workers to the entire economy instead of just low margin industries?

07-10-2017 , 11:17 AM

#238

FlyWf

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The Milo at Berkeley freakouts on Fox are paying off baby, get LASIK now if you eggheads know what's good for you

07-10-2017 , 11:27 AM

#239

Trolly McTrollson

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That really impressive. You gotta work people over pretty hard to make them think higher education is a heel.

07-10-2017 , 11:41 AM

#240

Huehuecoyotl

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Original Position

Wouldn't that be a good thing though? Spread the cost of wage subsidies for low-income workers to the entire economy instead of just low margin industries?

I like Matt Bruneig's point that fear about Wal-Mart leaching off of the state is a version of corporatism, the idea that companies should be good stewards and provide good wages, healthcare, etc. so that their employees should be free from the state. While Germany and a few other countries take that approach to the social contract it's based on a fundamental disconnect that companies treat their employees as merely an input whose cost should be reduced as much as possible just like any other input. That means you'll constantly depend on shaming companies, who have every incentive to try and lower their costs by reducing benefits, to make them provide more generous benefits for their employees so they'll avoid the dole. It would be better to let the state handle the benefits, possibly giving a floor for wages, etc

Last edited by Huehuecoyotl; 07-10-2017 at 12:04 PM.

07-10-2017 , 11:46 AM

#241

microbet

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Original Position

Wouldn't that be a good thing though? Spread the cost of wage subsidies for low-income workers to the entire economy instead of just low margin industries?

Maybe. I just don't think it can go unmanaged. The lowest earners are too easily exploited and will basically work 100% as hard as they can for whatever they are paid as long as it keeps food, medicine, and housing paid for. As long as there is any surplus labor a UBI of half a living wage will entirely go to profit of some employers who lower wages to half a living wage, but would have had to and could afford to pay a full living wage without the UBI.

And then, you could end up creating new work that becomes economical, which could be good, but it could also be pretty wasteful and unproductive.

I just think it's one of those things where instead of thinking you can design a perfect system you need to design something and expect to have to look carefully at it and see if it needs changes or works at all as you go along.

07-10-2017 , 11:51 AM

#242

bobman0330

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Quote:

Originally Posted by microbet

I feel like most billionaires are wildly overrated and Musk is wildly underrated. Building a $50bn production car company from the ground up is a preposterous accomplishment, but while he was doing that he was also moonlighting and bootstrapping a literal rocket science company that is/has revolutionized the space launch industry and may or may not colonize another planet. Also he launched a huge solar panel installer. It's nuts. Also all of his ventures have tremendously positive social benefits.

07-10-2017 , 11:57 AM

#243

Riverman

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None of those things make money

07-10-2017 , 12:03 PM

#244

bobman0330

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Riverman

None of those things make money

I'm sure Musk's heirs would be happier if he had gone into the discount auto-insurance business like Warren, but as someone who doesn't have a direct financial stake in his net worth, it's pretty cool that he is making progress towards creating cars and electricity sources that aren't dependent on carbon and drastically lowering the cost of access to space.

07-10-2017 , 12:09 PM

#245

tomdemaine

Just tries harder

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bobman0330

Taking VC capital and "wasting" it on unprofitable (but possibly effective) shots at softening the effects of climate change is a very good thing. Better than them wasting it on a juicebro 4000 and the trump admin sure as **** isnt going to spend the money. Scam the rich to buy unprofitable battery farms? Yes please.

07-10-2017 , 12:14 PM

#246

microbet

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Quote:

Originally Posted by bobman0330

Yeah. Regardless of how SolarCity sorta sucks and he didn't really found it and whether or not Tesla can build the affordable car and become profitable, some day zero emission transportation will be the dominant method and energy storage will be common. There will be an adoption curve and Elon Musk will have moved that adoption curve 5 years or w/e in the right direction. That's pretty huge imo.

07-10-2017 , 12:16 PM

#247

microbet

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Bobman,

Look at the Rojava thread. I'm anxious for you to see that I didn't just make up that guy's name.

07-10-2017 , 12:41 PM

#248

Shame Trolly !!!1!

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Original Position

Wouldn't that be a good thing though?...

No. Every $$$ the Waltons/etc get is earned by those workers. It's bad enough that the Waltons get to skim off the top. Letting them skim the skim, isn't making things better.

Wage earners need their wages right in their hands. All of it. Right now. Otherwise they wouldn't be renting the lion's share of their entire awake adult life, with no say-so on what they are doing at all during all that time, for pennies on the dollar, and by the flippin' hour.

When you subsidize wages, you are forcing the working folk to have to organize to defeat two sets of bosses: the private boss & the public boss.

Let's say the taxpayers are paying 50% of the Walton's wages out. Walmart workers go on strike. The Walton's brings in scabs. Now the taxpayers are paying the scabs. WTF are you thinking !!!1! With allies like you, who needs enemies.

07-10-2017 , 12:48 PM

#249

batair

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Trolly McTrollson

That really impressive. You gotta work people over pretty hard to make them think higher education is a heel.

Guess they wont use the talking point they use that US education is the best in the world when the best part of it is the part they hate. The university system.

07-10-2017 , 01:06 PM

#250

All-In Flynn

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Quote:

Originally Posted by pvn

What's the deal with Chapo? Like, they could only afford two good microphones so matt gets a tin can on a string?

Matt Christman lives in Cincinatti, he's talking to the other guys over Skype, while the other guys are generally in the same room. Apparently he's moving to NY at some point, so that'll probably improve. Haven't listened to the new ep yet.

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