If all the carbon removal equipment in the world is only capable of removing around 0.01 million metric tons of carbon a year, but a capacity of 70 million tons a year is required by 2030 and 1 billion tons by 2050, that's 70.000 to 100.000 times as much as we have now. This is not a realistic from an engineering perspective or when considering the way the global economy works.

It's so much harder to remove CO2 from the atmosphere -- where the concentration is a mere 0.04% -- than it is to remove it from engine/furnace exhaust where the CO2 concentration is nearly 100%. The Dutch have a great metaphor for this kind of fools errand: "dweilen met de kraan open" (mopping with the faucet open). If we're ever going to make a a serious attempt to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, we're first going to have to turn off that faucet.

If the simulation hypothesis can't be proven or disproven, if it doesn't explain or predict anything about our reality, then what good is it beyond being an interesting thought experiment?

This kind of situation would be typical for the government agency that I work for. First, experienced IT managers are replaced with "managers" because they are more willing to "cut costs" (and any actual knowledge of the subject is no longer deemed necessary). Second, important applications are written and installed by third party companies, but without any documentation in order to cut costs. Third, too many programmers and sysadmins with critical knowledge are let go so as to cut more costs. As a result, after some years it becomes apparent that nobody knows how the system works anymore; not even the company that installed it. Modifications are no longer possible and the security people recognize that it's not even possible anymore to update the operating systems involved. So the system just sits there, static, and barring any mishaps will run for as long as the requirements don't change or it does not create too much of a drag on the organization. If they do, or it does, a completely new system will be developed, but with a necessary delay and at a cost that dwarfs those previously saved. An example of penny wise pound foolish, but by time it is realized what happened the perpetrators are long gone: après nous le déluge.

When NASA decided to plan and its ambitious Artemis program around a hugely expensive, single-use rocket with an out-dated design, I could just never work up any enthusiasm for it. It reminded me too much of the Constellation program that ended up going nowhere for the same reason. Congress doesn't know what it wants anyway, so why did anyone think this attempt would end up differently? NASA would do far better by concentrating on the lower-budget unmanned missions that they've already had so much success with. Let Musk or the Chinese set up a base on the Moon or Mars if they want, because they'll soon end up abandoning it anyway due to the enormous costs involved.

For years already, account has been a prime target for automation and now, as the power of AI increases, I'm sure the demand for professional accountants will continue to decrease even further.

This hypothesis appears to ignore the international interests of any country thinking of mounting such an attack. For example, if China were to attack the US in this manner, it would soon affect the rest of the world economy and this would also severely affect the Chinese economy, which is very dependent on international trade. What's more, it would soon become obvious that China was relatively unaffected, leading other countries to suspect what was going on. Therefore, this would not only hurt China in the short term, but also in the long term.

What's more, China would have to make this flu vaccination mandatory, or else too many of their own population would become sick, significantly reducing their advantage during the ensuing pandemic. "But, it's just a flu shot. What do they know that we don't know?" This would also lead to too many questions, or not enough of an advantage if their vaccination drive isn't good enough.

My conclusion is therefore that, seeing as we're biologically and economically one big family whether anyone likes it or not, rationally speaking, any such attack will not offer enough of an advantage to anyone.

And you were thinking I didn't know that? Humorless tool.

Soon, all IT jobs would have been lost and and it was going to be back to the stone age for all of us. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Just look at the stock market; the investors knew this was coming. The stench of death was in the air! But, luckily that's now all been averted. Phew! And it's all thanks to the rise of ChatGPT and other AI projects that have come just in time to save us. So, let us rejoice and sing the praises of our new AI overlords, for now the future is looking infinitely less bleak than this article was predicting it was surely going to become!

Despite being a long-time space fan, I've never been able to work up any enthusiasm for this project. With such an out-dated and overly expensive design for such a long-term project, it is bound to scrapped by Congress at some point. And that's despite costing a lot less than various tax cuts given to corporations and the rich, or being absolutely dwarfed by the military budget. Space is really hard and expensive, but I fear that in this neoliberal era of endless austerity measures, Congress just won't have the will to fund such a high-profile science project for long enough.

As electric cars become more popular, the sale of gasoline and diesel will continue to decline to the point where oil companies get into financial trouble. Each time the result will likely be a merger, but output and profits will continue to decline. Availability at the pump will eventually be affected and that will almost certainly be what forces ICE vehicles off the road, perhaps involving more than 50% of those currently still operating.

The main factor that currently limits the lifetime of BEVs is battery design. Actively cooled Li-ion batteries perform better and last a lot longer than passively cooled ones, but are significantly more expensive to produce. Thus, all of the more affordable BEVs have a far more limited lifespan despite their relative cost. This is not helping demand.

Another factor that I personally see as problematic regarding BEVs is the computer, especially when regular software updates are regarded as an important. Practically speaking, a computers almost always has a limited lifespan even if it never breaks down, and these are no exception; at some point it won't be possible to install any more updates unless the computer can be upgraded first. Currently, the only BEVs of which I know that the computer can be upgraded are the Tesla Model S and Model X, but those are hardly cars that most people can afford to drive. On the other hand, perhaps not everyone will see this as such an important issue and it will not cause the prices of used models to decline as steeply as I think.

For over 20 years I've been running my own mail server. My solution for this issue is to make a new alias for every company that wants my email address. For example, if my domain is example.com and the company that wants my email address today is xyz.com, I will make a new alias, just for them, called "xyz.com@example.com", that points to my usual email account. My alias file now contains hundreds of these. And if they want an email reply from me, with just a little extra effort I can do that too.

The advantages are that companies can't track me using my email address, that I can comment out any individual alias that starts receiving spam, and that it's obvious when one of these addresses falls into the wrong hands. I've seen the latter happen only once: a company that started sending me email using an alias address that I had made for another. I called them about it and it turned that the address had been transferred to them via a common parent company; understandable, but still illegal in Europe. I gave them a new alias address to prevent further confusion.

... because our civilization is so energy-hungry and our politics so screwy.

Sure. With every flyby of Jupiter, you make the spacecraft's orbit around the Sun that much longer and more elliptical, each time giving it more speed until a final pass would send it out of the solar system and on its way to that distant target. The only problem is the time it would take, seeing as Jupiter already has a 12-year orbit. I imagine it would add many more decades to the mission, perhaps even centuries.

Heavier planets are definitely better for high-speed gravity assists than lighter ones, but also Voyager 2 could swing by all four of the gas giants because they all happened to be aligned in a very rare event that occurs only once every 175 years (see Grand Tour program). But, as you suggest, due to the very high speed necessary for this mission, the final assists would probably have to be limited to Jupiter and Saturn.

However, even the conjunction between these two planets occurs only about once every 20 years. Moreover, this spacecraft will need to be heading out in a very specific direction relative to the Milky Way. So, to take advantage of a Jupiter/Saturn assist, the planners may first have to pass on one or two of those conjunctions before they are in the right position relative to the spacecraft's necessary direction of travel. But, since that will likely take too long, they'll probably just have to settle for just using Jupiter for the final assist and do the rest with a very powerful engine.

No, I think asking for a spacecraft to travel a distance of 550 AU in a reasonable amount of time using our current propulsion technology and at a reasonable cost is impossible, as are the practical implications of remotely operating a space telescope subject to such an extreme time delay, not to mention the amount of time it will take to transmit any appreciable amount of data from so far away.

Let's see... It's taken Voyager 1 over 44 years to reach a distance of 156 AU, so why would anyone think it's reasonable to fund a space telescope mission that would only start its operations at a minimum of 550 AU? At Voyager's speed, it would take over 150 years to reach that distance. These folks say it'll take them only 25-30 years, meaning they hope their ship will go 46-76% faster. That means they'll be going pretty fast by the time they get to 550 AU, but they'd still have plenty of time to turn around and make their observations before passing 900 AU.

As for the payoff, what can anyone expect from such a mission? After waiting so long for it to actually begin making the observations for which it was designed, hoping that the hardware still works as intended after all that time, it's hard to imagine that we would have the opportunity to properly observe any more than a single promising exoplanet target. After all, if the next nearest target is any more than a very small fraction of a degree in the sky away from the primary target, it would take far too long for the spacecraft and its sunshade to be moved laterally in the correspondingly opposite direction around the sun so that our star would once again be positioned more or less between the telescope and the target.

Of course, all this could change if someone would just develop a much more capable, yet still affordable, propulsion technology for the mission; something like the ion engine from the Dawn mission, but way more efficient and with a nuclear reactor. As for the idea of using a solar sail, it may be possible to use if the spacecraft can first be maneuvered in for a close flyby around the sun (the closer the better) just before heading outwards. However, that's easier said than done, and further away from the sun the sail quickly becomes useless.

Oh, and even if all that works out, let's not forget about how long the round-trip communications with the spacecraft will take: a full week at 550 AU and over 11 days at 900 AU. Therefore, troubleshooting may take months. Also, sending gigabytes of data back to Earth will take years unless the spacecraft has a very powerful transmitter indeed. For comparison, the New Horizons spacecraft has a 2.1 m dish, but when it was at Pluto's distance -- only 40 AU -- it could only manage 1 Kbps. The much older Voyager 1 has a 3.7 m dish, but now only manage 160 bps.

In conclusion, although the idea of this mission is fascinating, it is too impractical.