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Comment Re:Cost of Net-Zero vs Cost of fossils and disaste (Score 1) 22

I would say they need to be more ambitious. They plan to hit peak emissions in 2045??? The world needs to be aiming for net zero by then, not peak.

$21 trillion is a lot of money, but that's what they plan to spend over decades, not all at once. To both develop and decarbonize the world's most populous country, it's not really that much. And it will pay for itself and then some.

I do want to be fair to them, though. India and China have similar populations, but China's emissions are 3.5 times higher. India is not the main problem right now. If their emissions keep growing, though, they could become the main problem.

Comment There is no "GNU/Linux" (Score 1) 101

The name "GNU/Linux" is a shameless attempt by FSF to take credit for other people's work. In any modern Linux-based OS, almost all the major components come from sources other than GNU. That includes the kernel, the desktop environment, the graphics stack it's built on, the drivers to support your hardware, the package manager, the bundled applications (web browser, file browser, terminal emulator, etc.), and much more. None of these come from GNU. They think their relatively small contribution means they should get top billing on every OS that uses it.

The entire GNU project is only 387 packages, most of which are either obsolete or incredibly obscure. For comparison, Debian includes over 63,000 packages.

Comment Re:I'd really like to hear the justifications (Score 2) 62

They probably believe climate change is real, and it's important to do something about it. The same way you do. It's just that other things are even more important, like their need to stay ahead of their competitors and your need to chat with your virtual girlfriend/boyfriend. They also probably believe it when they claim AI will magically find a solution to climate change, because believing that makes their lives easier and the human capacity for self-deception is incredible.

It's comforting to blame someone else, but morally speaking, the CEO who builds massive data centers is no worse than the ordinary person who eats lots of meat or drives an SUV because they like it better than a small car. They both choose to put their own desires above the welfare of humanity. The CEO's choices have a lot more impact, but there's lots of blame to go around. We just saw a few days ago that ChatGPT has 800 million weekly users. If those people weren't using it, they wouldn't be building data centers.

Comment Re: Turn up the air conditioning, leave the door o (Score 4, Informative) 97

In this case, very little. They're using waste rock from quarries. From the article:

Brazil is also home to hundreds of quarries, many located near farmland. Basalt is abundant and widely used for construction. The process of grinding and crushing the rock for these projects produces small rock fragments that are difficult to sell. Terradot buys them.

But you can't scale this very far using only waste from existing projects. To get this to the point that could make a difference to the climate, you would have to start quarrying and transporting rock on a massive scale just to crush it and spread it on fields. The tradeoffs become more complicated at that point.

Comment Re:Lots of Other Factors Could Contribute As Well (Score 4, Interesting) 128

We actually have a pretty good guess what one of the main factors is: height. Short people tend to live longer than tall people. Women tend to be shorter than men. In fact, that probably accounts for most of the difference. In the linked study, men were 7.8% taller than women and had a 8.4% shorter life expectancy. Other studies have reached similar conclusions. If a man and a woman are the same height, their life expectancies are likely to be similar. Once you correct for height, any remaining difference is small.

Comment Re:Here come the edge cases! (Score 1) 278

Let me fix that for you.

So what happens. Countries force ICEs on us, then it's just too bad if they destroy the planet? Then a new technology may be invented that does not have the same requirements that ICEs have, this making all the energy putting gas stations everywhere a waste and making ICEs worthless. People need the utility of EVs. Maybe not most people, but many people. Anything with these weaknesses can only be a transition to something else. Be concerned about the value of your purchase and hope that it doesn't transition before you sell.

Because for a lot of people, EVs are far more practical than ICEs. In fact, the only concrete downside you keep focusing on is a mainly fictional one (loss of range in cold weather, which for modern EVs is about the same as for most ICEs.) I don't know what new technology you think is going to replace them, because there's nothing else on the horizon. For a while some companies were pushing hydrogen, but EVs thoroughly won that contest.

And that bit about destroying the planet. You really might want to consider it.

Comment Re:Here come the edge cases! (Score 1) 278

Let's see if I understand you correctly. Your argument is that EVs can't work because

1. Most people regularly drive to places far from anywhere populated or any major highway.
2. They're driving so far into the wilderness, they can't get through on a single charge. Perhaps because they're driving through the wilderness in the middle of winter when their range is reduced (but by much less than 30% on most modern EVs--they've gotten a lot better in the last few years).
3. This isn't an issue for conventional cars because there are sufficient gas stations in the wilderness, and the fact that conventional cars also lose significant range in cold weather somehow doesn't matter.
4. Installing EV chargers at those gas stations is impossible because... well, no reason at all.
5. This is the normal case that applies to most people. We can't just say, "If you have unusual needs, you need to choose a car with a longer than usual range." All EVs need to be able to get through hundreds of miles of wilderness in the middle of winter in exceptionally cold climates or they aren't useful.

Is that really your argument?

Let's see. I've never in my whole life driven to somewhere that was far from population and major highways. I've never driven anywhere when the temperature was below -20 C because, like most of the world's population, I live in a place that doesn't regularly get that cold. I sure wouldn't drive into the middle of the wilderness when it's that cold, because that's an insane thing to do. If your car breaks down, you'll probably die.

Here come the edge cases indeed.

Comment Re:Here come the edge cases! (Score 1) 278

You really need to look up the facts before making claims. For example, you claimed

The country may extend to the Arctic circle, but no one lives there. The largest cities are on the coast where it barely freezes.

That is false. Here is data on the climate in Oslo, the largest city in Norway. Look at the table of average temperature by month. Notice that for December through February, the average daily high temperature is below freezing. On an average winter day in Norway's largest city, the temperature never climbs above freezing.

The average daily low temperature, of course, is much lower. Less than -5C in fact, which you just claimed doesn't happen regularly, but in fact happens most nights in the winter.

If you want gas in the middle of nowhere, you need only to truck it there. If you want electricity you need to build massive cables.

How many gas stations have you seen without electricity? None, of course. Gas stations also require electricity. If there's a gas station there, it certainly already has electricity, which means you can plug in an EV charger.

But you were right on one thing: the economics of gas and electricity are totally different. An EV charger costs a fraction as much as a gas station. And once you install it, it's completely automated. No need for a person there running it. No need for trucks to come and deliver gas. Maintenance costs are minimal. And when it reaches the end of its life, it's cheap and easy to remove, unlike a gas station which involves large underground tanks.

Comment Re:Good (Score 2) 155

The whole point of trigger warnings is that they're warnings, nothing more. For people suffering from certain kinds of trauma or PTSD, they're very valuable. If you aren't suffering from that, you can ignore them. 10% of people choosing to skip the content based on the warning sounds about right. For those people it's a big help. The other 90% can and should ignore it because it's warning about something that isn't an issue for them.

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