"Hard Sciences" refers to scientific inquiry that is empirical in nature and has results that can be reproduced and confirmed independently. eg: most physics and chemistry
These categories exist, but parent's main example was diet/nutrition, which should fit into the hard science bucket because it's chemistry/biology, but currently involves a lot of soft science-y type studies because it's got so many moving parts.
I'm not sure making a distinction like that is particularly useful, in any case. I think perhaps that people who have studied a lot of science can already make the distinction fairly easily, and having phrases like hard and soft science just serves to create assumptions where they needn't exist.
Some would group biology into a soft science because the margins for error must be relaxed or softened; one cannot eliminate potentially confounding factors from a biological experiment because each organism is unique and fractally complex.
Another categorization is the "natural sciences" and the "social sciences". Natural science is often split into "life science" and "physical science", again because biology is difficult.
I also wonder if we can take it a step further and apply a sort of "instance" versus "principle" science. 'Instance Science' is composed of studies that are trying to observe or experiment with something that is heavily influenced by uncontrollable variables and is highly likely to change. In some sense, the results are more like a snapshot in time than a durably reproducible phenomenon. What we typically call "soft science" and all those studies facing a reproducibility crisis fall into this bucket. Instance Science maps poorly onto "the real world".
Contrast that with 'Principle Science' in which studies are not affected by nearly as many uncontrollable variables and is more closely related to demonstrable cause-and-effect phenomena. The best examples are chemistry and physics. Biology is tricky to categorize in this because I see elements of both in it. For instance, a study investigating whether or not taking an increased dose of Vitamin B helps energy would most certainly belong in Instance Science, but the underlying mechanism of how Vitamin B is involved in the Krebs Cycle is Principle Science.
This idea is still in it's infancy and I'm curious to know people's thoughts on this distinction I'm trying to elaborate on.
Nutrition isn't a "hard science" because people digest food differently, and that varies over time. We adapt. Your first week of a bean diet will be harsh but after the 3rd year you're probably ok. or dead. Some people wouldn't ever adapt to it.
There's "hard science" there but to throw a rope around the whole field is more of an exercise in faith, that there is One True Diet for All People.
Not at all. Adequate science would tease out all the suitable variables for each individual’s diet at any time and situation for their stage of life. Which will include the details of current internal biome, current infections, medical history of their digestive and other organ systems, metabolism cycles, and many more things. And for which outcome where outcomes compete: cancer likelihood, bone health, sperm count, mental dexterity, fat content, etc.
The fact that there are too many variables and that it’s overly challenging to adequately measure them, coupled with challenges in studying people (ethics, self-assessment blind spots, laws against various options) makes nutrituon a squishy science, neither soft (people stuff like economics or psych) nor hard.
Does the fact that people digest food differently make a difference? I feel like the way food is digested is "knowable" in a way that physics is knowable, we just don't have adequate tools to measure all the complexity yet. As opposed to lots of things about sociology being "unknowable," like Asimov's Foundation being fantasy (probably).
In any case, I was attempting to make the point that hard science and soft science are anything but settled categories, which seems borne out by the responses.
I am not a big fan of these distinctions. In fact, they're completely backwards when you look at it from the perspective of difficulty of the sciences. The so-called hard sciences, like physics and chemistry, are far easier than biology, ecology, psychology, etc. These difficulties should not mean that they are lesser as implied by the normal usage of "hard" vs "soft" sciences.
> empirical in nature and has results that can be reproduced and confirmed independently
All sciences conform to this. It's just that reproducing results in physics and chemistry is much, much easier and feasible than in the other sciences.
"hard" doesn't refer to the difficulty level of "hard sciences", but the solidity of the evidence. Basically the same as "hard" evidence in a court case (video footage of a murder, procured from a trusted source, with witnesses and murder weapon intact, as opposed to mere circumstancial evidence).
I know they don’t and didn’t say they did. However, there are implications (if you’ve ever worked with physicists or even engineers you’ll feel the results of these implications), so I suggested that if you do look at it from a different perspective, then you get what I said.
I just don’t think they’re useful terms. In many ways, physics and chemistry are the low hanging fruit of science.
Exactly! It's about the limitations of our tools, which means as the tools evolve, subjects shift more towards hard science as we understand them better.
> The money sent to households was largely used to prop up rents mortgages or food/transportation/insurance and other consumer goods.
i.e. it was used by the people it was given to so they could pay their bills. You know, survive. Can you describe how a world would work where you can have one without the other?
> All that money ended up in business coffers.
...and most of it was then promptly paid out as wages to employees.
I made no comment as to whether it was a good or bad thing. I stated a fact.
But the fact that “the Market” has exploded in value while the Federal and State government is making direct payments in order to help a significant portion of the population just survive should be a little concerning, no?
Ah, yes. It appears the banks that collected monies on mortgages and the landlords collecting rents just paid employees! How stupid of me. That must be why home values and the stock market are testing new highs! All those subsistence employees getting paid.
HN has a heavy socialist lean, you are not allowed to have a differing perspective. Just redistribute your money and be quiet like a good little drone.
The web of deceit surrounding the Republican Party at this point is undeniable unless you have chosen to abandon reality entirely at the point it chafes your opinion.
Isn't it interesting that Trump had control of the reins of power for four years but was never able to actually prosecute Hillary for anything? This should be your clue that there wasn't any "there" there.
I think you're going to be surprised and dismayed at what happens now that the shoe is on the other foot.
What exactly is the big nefarious power in the background whipping the liberal mob into a frenzy?
I get that you want to come off as an enlightened centrist here but you’re gonna have to be specific. What’s the liberal Koch brothers and what’s the liberal Tea Party?
The funny thing is that "whipping the liberal mob into a frenzy" is a literal thing that happened this year that resulted in riots, looting, civil unrest and a full on "autonomous zone" in Seattle.
To my knowledge, the only real harm the Tea Party accomplished was rolling back environmental/emissions regulations.
So you don't think those riots, looting, civl unrest etc had anything to do with the militarization of police and the lack of accountability of law enforcement and public officials in general? Not a response to the George Floyd incident or the countless other incidents that are shockingly similar? Just a random media driven mob out there protesting things that don't actually reflect reality?
Because that is what a "whipped up mob" is. Not angry citizens demanding responsible and accountable law enforcement and action toward that end from their elected officials and unelected police forces.
The problem is that the Libertarianism/free-market policies simply don't work. They've failed to address the growing inability to normal people to have financial security and a reasonable quality of life.
At some point, continuing to advocate those policies in the face of their outcomes becomes negligence at best.
I agree about the negligence, but additionally it's dishonest to talk about libertarian free market policies (for or against) without acknowledging the central bank and its current mission of grossly inflating the currency supply to force most everybody to work continuously. If the middle and lower classes could benefit from increasing productivity with reduced consumer prices, and were allowed to build wealth by saving currency instead of having it eroded away and existing hand to mouth, then they'd have a fighting chance to wield some market power. As it is, they're stuck on the rent treadmill that extracts wealth upwards.
Can you say a little more or link some resources giving a solid link between central banking, inflation, and forcing people to work continuously?
It's an interesting premise and I, like others, dislike the notion that I'll have to work on a treadmill for most of my life. But I don't see the 1-3% inflation rate as more than a sort of incentive to invest in equities (which I also resent), rather than a means of keeping the lower classes away from the fruits of increased productivity.
It's wrong, of course; deflation is not a paradise and even countries which have been pushed into negative interest rates (Switzerland) you still have to work.
Figuring out how the inflation rate is even calculated involves reading through a ~100 page manual. And while the formula are pretty simple, the consequences are actually pretty confusing (eg, if the basket is re-weighted to what people are buying, how feasible is it for inflation to increase faster than wages even if price levels on most goods increase faster than inflation? Are those items naturally removed from the index?). On the other hand, the M2 monetary aggregate is actually simple - and can be used to find a rough estimate of what % of "the money" an asset entitles somebody to.
If you bought a block of gold in, say, 1990, and use the BLS inflation rate it claims you've made substantial real returns over the last 30 years which seems extremely fishy for owning a pet rock. If you calculate what % of the M2 money supply it entitles you to on the other hand its value is about the same. Slightly less, if my figures are right. Seems much more reasonable, the economy should be gaining value faster than a block of metal.
Basically the sort of people who say complain about central banks and inflation are usually the sort of people who can't understand why everyone is so excited about the inflation rate. The issue is availability of assets which are what is needed to retire or live with a sense of financial security (it is 2020, productivity is off the charts - by the numbers people shouldn't need to work full time to live comfortably). M2 deflator instead of inflation also explains circumstantial stuff like why there was a large unhappy population who voted in Trump, or why the population seems to be a bit tense about money despite apparent real growth.
The biggest contributor to income inequality and biggest burden on the masses, is the rise in rental rates, produced by rising land use restrictions, particularly in high productivity coastal metropolitan zones (New York, San Francisco and San Jose):
> They've failed to address the growing inability to normal people to have financial security and a reasonable quality of life.
But that's not a goal of Libertarianism. If anything, it if that problem were addressed, it would be an indication of Libertarianism's failure to meet its Social Darwinist objectives.
The statistical evidence shows that the US has become dramatically more social democratic since the 1960s, so any problems that have emerged can be attributed to social democracy, not libertarianism.
See the effect of public sector unions and collective bargaining on public education:
Annual spending growth (inflation adjusted) on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):
>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%
>Healthcare: 5.7%
>Welfare: 4.1%
Annual economic growth over the time frame:
>2.7%
I have to reiterate that this is annual growth. Many people have turned around and said "4% over 40 years is nothing", missing the fact that it's not 4% over 40 years. It's 4.8% every year, over a span of 40 years.
This represents a massive shift to social democracy.
And the shift has been associated with plummeting labour productivity growth, plummeting wage growth, a slowdown in life expectancy gains, and an explosion in single parenthood:
More generally, there's a negative correlation between government spending levels as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth rates. Your implication, that society is better off with high levels of taxation, is not supported by the science on the matter.
The evidence strongly suggests economic development is most rapidly achieved through adoption of pro-market policies.
The last 30 years has seen the largest most rapid reduction in the global poverty rate in human history, and almost all the decline in poverty was due to economic development, which economists have concluded was massively facilitated by the spread of market institutions like property rights:
There is no reason to assume that this relationship between pro-market policies and high rates of economic growth stops existing for advanced economies.
We see indications of it manifesting across the developed world, like the superior performance of Hong Kong and Singapore relative to other developed economies, or Iceland relative to other Nordic countries, or in cross-European studies correlating low tax rates with high economic growth rates.
Economic growth is the primary source of all improvements in quality of life, so we should have policies that maximize it. It is how an advanced economy comes to be that way.
Distributing property to individuals is what gets that growth though, rather than property rights. Property rights are meaningless when only a couple people own most property.
Growth has stagnated because we've stopped taking land away from its owners to give it to new upstarts, and strong unions which redistributed power and thus wealth back to labour have been neutered by the rich.
A simple counter example: despite having very low taxes, Ireland is not an economic powerhouse; just a hideaway for money. Same thing with Delaware
No, if mandated redistribution was what got growth, countries with more redistribution would have more rapid growth. The opposite is the case.
It is the profit-motivated investment that emerges when people are secure in their right to their private property that expands capital, and with it per capita productivity.
Increases in per capita productivity result in decreases in consumer prices, which translates to broad-based real wage increases as purchasing power increases. Through its effect on consumer prices, productivity growth distributes wealth more effectively than any other mechanism.
>>A simple counter example: despite having very low taxes, Ireland is not an economic powerhouse; just a hideaway for money.
Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Western Europe 40 years and has massively closed the gap with its peers since then.
Apples and oranges here, the US is not a developing nation. The single largest contributor to the decrease in global poverty you cite is a communist country.
A communist nation that realized that the communist way of state ownership and central planning doesn't work and implemented private ownership and a market-based, capitalistic approach to their economy.
Cuba would be an example otherwise? Despite having the nearby superpower trying their hardest to destroy Cuba, their communist system continues to work fine
Cuba is an abysmal failure. People have their occupations set by the government, depend on meager monthly state rations, and have almost no disposal income for consumer purchases.
That's why people flee Cuba for the US and not the other way around.
Cuba was in much better shape than Haiti on the eve of the Cuban revolution. It is only due to its natural advantages and its starting position in 1959 that it is still doing somewhat well relative to very low-income countries like Haiti, despite the damage done by communism and US sanctions.
>Although corruption was rife under Batista, Cuba did flourish economically during his regime. Wages rose significantly;[119] according to the International Labour Organization, the average industrial salary in Cuba was the world's eighth-highest in 1958, and the average agricultural wage was higher than in developed nations such as Denmark, West Germany, Belgium, and France.[119][120] Although a third of the population still lived in poverty, Cuba was one of the five most developed countries in Latin America by the end of the Batista era,[121] with 56% of the population living in cities.[122]
>In the 1950s, Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was roughly equal to that of contemporary Italy, and significantly higher than that of countries such as Japan, although Cuba's GDP per capita was still only a sixth as large as that of the United States.[119][123] According to the United Nations at the time, "one feature of the Cuban social structure [was] a large middle class".[123] Labour rights were also favourable – an eight-hour day had been established in 1933, long before most other countries, and Cuban workers were entitled to a months's paid holiday, nine days' sick leave with pay, and six weeks' holiday before and after childbirth.[124]
>Cuba also had Latin America's highest per capita consumption rates of meat, vegetables, cereals, automobiles, telephones and radios during this period.[120][124][125]:186 Cuba had the fifth-highest number of televisions per capita in the world, and the world's eighth-highest number of radio stations (160). According to the United Nations, 58 different daily newspapers operated in Cuba during the late 1950s, more than any Latin American country save Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.[126] Havana was the world's fourth-most-expensive city at the time,[111] and had more cinemas than New York.[121] Cuba furthermore had the highest level of telephone penetration in Latin America, although many telephone users were still unconnected to switchboards.[122]
>Moreover, Cuba's health service was remarkably developed. By the late 1950s, it had one of the highest numbers of doctors per capita – more than in the United Kingdom at that time – and the third-lowest adult mortality rate in the world. According to the World Health Organization, the island had the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America, and the 13th-lowest in the world – better than in contemporary France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.[120][127][128] Additionally, Cuba's education spending in the 1950s was the highest in Latin America, relative to GDP.[120] Cuba had the fourth-highest literacy rate in the region, at almost 80% according to the United Nations – higher than that of Spain at the time.[126][127][128]
The association between quality-of-life metrics, like wages, and per capita GDP, doesn't disappear when an economy becomes developed.
And China is a highly market-based country, which saw a massive decline in poverty after its pro-market reforms that ended many state subsidies and recognized private property rights, as the Atlantic article I provided above explains.
What is your means for gauging what "works"? To where do you point as your evidence? I ask, mainly because the notion that "libertarian" policies (of both left and right varieties) have been tried in the modern era is a pretty big stretch, to me.
Not even the shallowest stuff people typically refer to, like marijuana decriminalization/legalization laws, qualify as "libertarian" policies. All the states that have legal weed also tax & regulate it heavily with specialized state controls, so we can't call it 'libertarian' in the least.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about what libertarianism is - not to worry, though, because that's pretty common and says nothing about you otherwise. Libertarianism is a radical political position to take; it does not fit neatly into today's political infrastructure. By suggesting it fails to address X, Y, or Z, you are simply projecting your own values onto a system which does not share them with you.
> They've failed to address the growing inability to normal people to have financial security
Libertarians have absolutely no interest in solving this problem. They are not trying to run peoples' lives, they are trying to relieve the people of the power that currently is wielded against them by the state and its cronies. The intent is to liberate people, so that they may be uninhibited in their pursuit of voluntary, peaceful interactions with others. What one chooses to do with this liberation is entirely up to them, and that's what being human is all about.
You are of course free to disagree all you want with these perspectives, but attacking libertarianism in the way you do isn't exactly fair.
No, lies and bullshit would require self reflection. Both of those things have always been things the well fed and well off let their children play pretend with while making sure they never have to figure out how to feed themselves.
I am 44. My entire life, speaking as someone who grew up conservative, libertarianism has either been about weed or drugs. And then about what degree of freedom one should have when arrested with either.
Ask a poor person or a minority what it is like to be arrested with either. Stop role playing nonsense and join the real world.
libertarianism has either been about weed or drugs
I'm not sure what libertarianism you've been looking at. Certainly stopping the war on drugs is one plank of the libertarian platform, but it's only one small piece.
Other issues include stopping America's eternal military actions, reining in public debt, stopping abuse of police power (some overlap with BLM here!), ensuring that civil liberties such as speech, voting, self-defense, and sanctity of private property are protected, and so forth. There's a LOT there (and so assuredly there's space for everybody to find disagreement). It's just wrong to claim that it's all about weed and drugs.
I'm not so sure how helpful this all is, to be honest. While I am sure almost all libertarian-leaning folks would agree with your policy positions, libertarianism is really a system of political thought - not a political party, nor a collection of specific policies.
Libertarians are really united more by their shared political axioms [0], rather than their specific policy views.
How much of that was spin and framing against the Democrats or did anyone seriously believe that they were in favour of mob violence?
New rule: if you don't condemn child rape every Monday morning then until you do it is assumed that you are in favour.
Tiny furors like the "who's wearing an American flag lapel pin" are is too often motivated by political opportunity rather than any real question of where the parties stand on topics. And yes, Democrats do it to Republicans as well, just generally not as frequently. Republicans seem to love their mostly meaningless and unsurprising performative doxologies.
>How much of that was spin and framing against the Democrats or did anyone seriously believe that they were in favour of mob violence?
Do you really think AOC et al are against it? I've seen so much left-wing justification of punching Nazis etc. that I'd be very surprised if there weren't at least a few Democratic politicians in agreement.
Ilhan Omar calls for complete dismantling of the Minneapolis police department around 1:30 in this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj3vdaC4F7c Yes, that's complete dismantling, none of this "redirect a bit of the funds" stuff which got retconned (watch the entire video for more examples). So I wouldn't put anything past her.
The Charles Koch was accused of "whipping up a mob" earlier in this thread, but whatever mob he "whipped up" was a very mild-mannered one which didn't light any fires. It seemed worthwhile to highlight the disparity.
I don't think this is a "tiny" furor. (As you illustrate, even if Democrats don't endorse violence, they are very willing to downplay it!) I recommend this video: https://twitter.com/mrctv/status/1297707698788728832
> Republicans seem to love their mostly meaningless and unsurprising performative doxologies.
You need to update your views for today's political scene. These conditions were true up til around 2008. Since then, the Democrats are now the party that engages in the performative doxologies.
Need I remind you of all that tone-deaf BLM kneeling crap in DC? Or how about the mask mandates? The face masks are the Democrats' "American flag lapel pin."
Liberals and conservatives will rarely condemn the violence of their pet terrorists. As far as violence is concerned, that's the problem with conservatives and liberals. They generally lend tacit support to violence against people they dislike. All with a wink, wink and a nudge, nudge.
That's why we end up with dead police who walk into ambushes, dead black guys who make the mistake of relaxing in their own apartments when lady cops burst in guns blazing, burned stores, dead little old ladies who go to bible studies while black, and dead walmart shoppers who made the mistake of being minority while looking for a San Antonio Spurs dart board at the wrong time.
Extremists are just dangerous people. We should really be bringing the hammer against all these groups wherever we find them, but again, they are protected by their patrons. So they walk the streets tatted and masked up waving around AR's because they know their benefactors will not allow our counter-terrorism units to do what military sense would demand in a sensible world.
There are enough career civil servants out there that believe in the fundamentals of their roles that they keep the machinery of civilization turning along. I don't disagree with the parent's remarks at all - failure to condemn violent acts really is a both sides problem right now.
Have you seen how big the Chernobyl exclusion zone is? are to move your family there?
Have you paid any attention to the after effects at Fukushima? Do you care to realize that we are pushing radiation with unknown effects into the largest body of water (and one of the greatest repositories of life) on Earth? That the effects will likely reverberate for a 1000 years or more?
What is your solution to the problem of accumulating Nuclear waste?
Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia of millennia in order to develop? That fucking with that balance by inviting disastrous and unknown consequences into that careful envelope might turn some people off?
No. You must be right.. just a bunch of loony activists that are clinging desperately to the activist identity.
How shallow and unconsidered an opinion. Did it make you feel as smug as it sounded when you typed it out?
> Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia of millennia in order to develop?
Well, no. We aren't in some mystical radiation balance with nature.
Heritable point mutations are primarily driven by DNA polymerase errors and repair failures, not by radiation damage. Ultraviolet light is good at causing thymidine cross-linking, which can give rise to cancers, but this is irrelevant to heritable change. Likewise, higher energy particles can cut DNA, but compared to crossing over events during chromosomal assortment this has approximately no bearing on heritable change.
I gather all of that evidence was collected from Martian samples? Maybe Venus? Was it derived from DNA developed on the Moon?
What does make Earth just right for you to have developed in order to be aware, gain such knowledge, share such knowledge?
Untold eons of carefully controlled radiant energy emitted by our blessed Sun.
The Sun and its ilk are massive emitters of radiant energy. Light is a form of radiation. Heat is a form of radiation. The universe is full of lifeless rocks either burnt by the sun or left out in the cold. In fact, all the ones we know of exist in this state except this one.
I am not advocating some “mystical radiation balance with nature” so much as pointing out that “life” (as we know it) is playing the long game on controlling radiant energy doses. When we muck about with that by playing our dumb little short game without consideration for the consequences we invite disaster upon ourselves. All of this discussion about global warming is pointless if we leave large swathes of the planet uninhabitable by humans.
The atmosphere does a reasonably good job protecting us from the ravages of open space. One of the positive (for us) results of the particular make-up of that atmosphere is to foster life. Absent that protection (or if we were to act to circumvent it) life struggles to find a foothold. Can't think of anywhere life flourishes other than here.
Places that lack this protection tend to get burnt to a crisp or freeze. Lack of energy is a problem. Too much energy is a problem. The wrong KIND of energy is a problem.
What we call "radioactive material" that is the effluent by-product of nuclear fission is all the wrong kind of energy. I won't recount all the reasons why, but the fact that it is the least likely source of scrambling heritable traits in DNA is actually kind of low on the list (especially given the speed with which it scrambles DNA in living entities).
I am suggesting we shouldn't act to circumvent the protection we have been graciously afforded by the atmosphere. Fucking about with fissile material inside the atmosphere and on the surface is stupid and short sighted.
There is nothing mystical about any of this, it is pure science.
The current trajectory of temperature increase is at least 4~5°C (rather optimistic) in 2100, which would mean that a pretty wide area surrounding the equator will, year-round or for significant parts of the year, have a wet-bulb temperature at or above 35°C. It is the limit at which human life (and mammal life in general) is entirely impossible, due to over-heating.
That unlivable area will include most of India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, etc. Hong-Kong and Taiwan, whether you consider them as part of China or not, will anyway not be livable anymore by then. What do you think will happen when India, a country of 1.3B armed with nuclear weapons, realize it literally has to move somewhere else for survival? Do you think all these people will agree to die in silence, peacefully so as to not inconvenience you?
On top of that grim outlook, agriculture has only been possible relatively recently in human history. Until about 10,000 years ago the climate was not stable enough to reliably grow crops, year after year. That stability is probably already gone. Note that the issue for agriculture (and forests, etc.) is less the actual temperature and more the rain/weather patterns (and evaporation, that links back to temperature).
There is absolutely no guarantee that we will be able to adapt our crops fast enough for agriculture to keep up, especially if there is too much instability around the globe. Without stable crops the number of people that can survive on Earth is not very large. China has recently launched a 'Clean Plate' campaign against food waste. As you can imagine it's not because food is plentiful... but because of excess rain, causing crop failures.
Radioactivity is scary and dangerous in high enough dose. Chernobyl and Fukushima are horrible disasters that should have been avoided, but sadly weren't. But compared to the threat of global warming, risks from nuclear power plants are small, known and manageable. To say it differently, rice from Fukushima may be dangerous, but it's still safer than certain death from lack of rice.
I'm not saying we should be building nuclear power plants everywhere, at all. In any case there's not enough U235 at hand to fill the energy needs of mankind. But I would much prefer we spend fewer resources on closing existing nuclear power plants, and more resources on tackling global warming (looking at my home country, France, and our lignite addicted neighbor, Germany).
I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that "lack of rice" (and lack of clean water) is going to be a major issue whether we build out nuclear or not. I think humanity is in for a dark couple hundred years. The window hasn't closed, but we are hard pressed dealing with all the wrong fights and time is losing.
The less "1000 year tail of disaster" opportunities we can have available when things start to unravel the better. I am less afraid of us killing each other over rice and water than I am of us forcing those that come in the aftermath to deal with our effluence for 50+ generations.
How do you make cement (and by extension concrete)? Limestone calcination: CaCO3 → CaO + CO2
The world concrete production is a larger source of GHG than the entire world fleet of trucks used for goods transportation, with some margin. And that's only accounting CO2 emitted by the chemical reaction itself, not even accounting for the production of the energy necessary for the reaction, that often comes from natural gas.
That CO2 is not being displaced by nuclear power plants, solar panels, wind turbines or batteries in fancy cars. It's being replaced by not using concrete anymore. My point is that GHG emissions go way way further than just electricity production or gasoline to power cars or planes: it's chemistry (fertilizers, concrete, etc) and metallurgy.
I don't hear much about it, not least because I think it's a very hard problem: right now, using less concrete means less constructions. There aren't enough trees, and they don't grow quickly enough, to do everything using wood, although that could be a partial solution. But the construction sector employs A LOT of people. So the path to less concrete is a path to fewer jobs, and a shrinking economy...
There are a whole host of issues that stem from industrialization that are complex and require organized and disciplined action in order to contain. Cohesive action by the entire community of industrial nations is just not on the table at this point without some absolutely massive dislocation of economics or political power. Force is going to be required for change or desperation is going to force compliance. I can only assume based on history that this will all come to force of arms before any other rational solution (systemic enough that it will a difference) is pursued.
I just don't see any road forward without a horrifying body count. It is not impossible to avert that future, it just seems vanishingly improbable.
Look at the current wave of government collapses and civil wars that are exacerbated by the current crisis (ethiopia, peru, bolivia, argentina, zambia, etc.). It will be way worse.
Then think about places that are relatively safe, ie Europe, and relatively easy to migrate from the ME and Africa to. That's 500+M people trying to make their way over. That spells serious unrest in Europe too. And that's not even talking about Vietnam's sand mining catastrophe.
I am highly skeptical of them. It was not my intent to defend them.
I do not consider nuclear energy a viable alternative to the hydrocarbon economy. I have considered it and I have dismissed it. You will not change my mind unless you can produce it off planet. I have dismissed it as a non-viable option (apparently the "non-viable" part is inconceivable to you.) This dismissal is not tied to my need to coddle and protect my identity as an activist.
"It highlights the very important point that activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight."
This line dismisses .. pretty much anyone advocating for change. "I proposed a solution that works for me. They don't like it. They must wish to protect the identity." Pure poppycock.
Not really. Maybe you shouldn't lead with an absolute that you can't possibly claim to know.
> This line dismisses .. pretty much anyone advocating for change. "I proposed a solution that works for me. They don't like it. They must wish to protect the identity." Pure poppycock.
I never claimed that applied for anyone that is advocating for change.
In this case the nuclear power solution could be a viable solution (I don't care for your expertise on the subject). They have rejected a viable solution that could get us X% of the way there. Therefore that tells me they aren't interested in an actual solution. That in tells me they wish to be advocates rather than solving an issue. Therefore anything they tell me is suspect.
Actually, what you wrote was "..activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight."
You surmise in the text that the rejection of nuclear is just out of hand because solving the problem would end the fight. This is what you stated.
Nuclear may be a viable solution to the energy problem. Whether it is a viable solution to the humans altering the planet irrevocably so they can't inhabit it safely anymore problem is open to a bit more conjecture.
There is plenty of energy readily available on the planet without the necessity of continuing to burn off a billion years of carbon capture or splitting atoms, imho.
> Actually, what you wrote was "..activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight."
You surmise in the text that the rejection of nuclear is just out of hand because solving the problem would end the fight. This is what you stated.
No. Note the words "often" and "usually" appear. Therefore not always.
Doses of radioactive elements from high atmosphere Nuclear weapons testing persist in trace amounts in all living things on Earth today. Dispersal of radioactive elements would be faster and point source radioactivity thereby reduced by that due to the nature of the medium into which it was released and the very short duration of the release.
Fukushima because it lacks these characteristics.
Blow up all the shit you want.. nuclear energy (when it fails, and every failure is too often) is way more disruptive then nuclear weapons. Evidence? See Nagasaki today vs Pripyat today.
I don't generally think we should be splitting atoms on the surface of the planet. It has lots of dirty side effects that far outlast our capacity to grapple with the consequences. Humans on the whole are not prepared at this point to think in terms of decades, let alone plan for events that have consequences counted in Milennia.
There are a number of reasons they are not contradictory.. but the most simplistic would work like this:
Day 1: John has $10 and Joe has $100
Day 5: John has $11 and Joe has $250
Day 100: John has $15 and Joe has $1000
They certainly both have more than before, but one of them is much better off (especially if there is some form of inflation in play).
Also, blue collar wages have been largely stagnant or declining when measured against inflation (a very important point) since ~1980 while conversely white collar job incomes have been ballooning against the same measure. In particular, Executive compensation is utterly off the charts comparatively. When tax discount structures that vastly favor investment income over real wages is taken into account, the gains become even more stark (that is, the amount of income that can be retained v must be spent or is taxed).
"The money supply measures reflect the different degrees of liquidity—or spendability—that different types of money have. The narrowest measure, M1, is restricted to the most liquid forms of money; it consists of currency in the hands of the public; travelers checks; demand deposits, and other deposits against which checks can be written. M2 includes M1, plus savings accounts, time deposits of under $100,000, and balances in retail money market mutual funds."
Yea, this one goes from 0 to 100 real quick. The first half is a valid-ish argument, then the second is just an exponentially growing web of conspiracy theories...
"Hard Sciences" refers to scientific inquiry that is empirical in nature and has results that can be reproduced and confirmed independently. eg: most physics and chemistry
"Soft Science" refers to the rest. eg: psychology