If anyone's looking for something to do about this, I recommend: https://citizensclimatelobby.o...

Anyone else notice, in their scuba diving, that the images for the area always have such colorful reefs from pics? There's the expected tourism pamphlets, but even images in nearby museum-style informative places, showing the area 20 years ago. Then when you go down, it's mostly grey? That's my experience anyway. I've only been down 8 times, mostly the Caribbean.

I guess the most likely reason is marketing decisions by the tourism wing of local government. But I have to suspect at least part of it is just a trend of dying reefs everywhere - related I'd guess to climate change. Maybe some experts can reply with more info - is this a valid theory?

I live in Texas, so compared to everyone around me I'm an extreme leftist and:

I don't mind the government shrinking. gasp!

BUT the important part is I want it to be much more efficient.

I.e. Norway has a tiny recidivism rate - people don't return to jail, but if they land themselves there, it's a communist dream - free education - to the Ph.D. level, sometimes you can come & go as you wish. But the taxpayer ends up saving money because people don't return. And the "criminal" ends up saving their life and becoming a productive citizen.

If we legalized drugs, we could spend 1/3 of our drug-law-enforcement money (plus some sin taxes) on rehabbing people (and just pocket the rest!), and kill the Mexican cartels at the same time. Heh, if I'm a Mexican cartel, I'd sure be silently donating money to Republicans.

I've been to a Taiwanese hospital and was impressed it seemed almost equivalent quality to American ones, and they spend 1/3 (% per capita GDP - so apples to apples) as much as the US on healthcare. (healthcare is complicated, I'm not for sure about single-payer, but definitely improvements like a public option)

I said the scientists came to agreement in '97. Maybe I was slightly off or else I can't find the thing now, but this generally agrees with my statement - look for table 1 'Estimates of consensus':

https://iopscience.iop.org/art...

The increased rainfall is from this:

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

Idk, the government shouldn't necessarily concern itself with the solution, only the incentives. A good carbon tax will incentivize the market to come up with solutions. "Tax" is such a bad word though, that seemed to work against the idea pretty hard. People love to complain. Life is hard, and if you want to be negative, you can find problems and get mad about anything. And that gets amplified when water sources get threatened. But back to the present. Maybe "dividend" is a better word than "tax":

https://citizensclimatelobby.o...

The point is we should have started doing something in the 90's. We didn't. Doesn't mean we can't start doing something now, while at the same time preparing for the inevitable consequences that we've already guaranteed.

Not to mention, invent the tech, sell the tech to ourselves and the rest of the world. Make money. Why be so lazy?

The sky ain't fallin, but it's a changin. 99% of scientific research agrees man is causing the climate to change, and that will bankrupt nations, and cost almost all countries in money, lives, or both.

We need to do that too. But let's recognize the history here.

1997: scientists come to agreement, predicting increased rainfall, droughts, and more powerful storms. 3% of GDP will prevent it.
Deniers: "no way. we have so many bad arguments and don't believe you"

2005: All kinds of records broken for multiple hurricanes. Hundreds of $billions.
2008: Ike, $38bn.
2012: Sandy broke physical records, $70bn.
2013: We verify: Number months record-high rainfall increased in central/Eastern US by > 25% between 1980 and 2013. Record dry months in southern Africa increased by 50%.
2016: we notice CA's Wildfires are 500% bigger.
2017: All kinds of records broken for multiple hurricanes, again, over the previous stellar '05. Hundreds of $billions. Harvey dumped 26tril gallons of water on TX/LA, beating previous record, 16tril. You don't just hurdle past previous records like that unless something is different.

2018: we realize climate change will cost U.S. 10% of GDP per year I think (maybe I'm reading that wrong), by the end of the century
https://www.sciencenews.org/ar...
Let's look back and compare how much it would have cost us in late 90's to prevent the problem - 3%. Maybe - see below.

2019: we have confirmed the problem has not only started, but it's worse than what scientists predicted in the 90's. It's already costing us 0.x% of GDP, and we need to spend a lot more than 3% to fix the problem now.

Also, we have confirmed that entities that spent the 3%, actually made more than 3% back on savings and selling the new technology. So that 3% number we thought we had to spend was more of an investment, and it paid off for the people that made it. On average.

Also, we predict anything we can do towards prevention will at least reduce how bad things will get.

So what could deniers' arguments possibly be now?

Gore knows government and industry working together are the only solution. If taking a jet helps his effort, then it's 1 million times worth it. It's been proven his effort was not enough, because national policy still hasn't made much progress. So I wish he took more jet rides.

I drive a gas efficient car, live close to work, and mostly gave up beef. So what? I'm doing way better than average, but I know the most important change we need to make is to change the laws.

In fact, this idea directly refutes all the rest of your "points":

Changing the law is the only way for humans to address climate change. Yes if every person minimized their emissions, then yes, that would solve it, but it's near impossible to get everyone in a park to even pick up their own trash, so no, you can't count on it. Plus, the more action taken on scale, the less inconvenience to individuals.

But we've seen almost exactly this problem before. Industry created CFC-releasing products. Goverments came together to ban it, and the Ozone hole mostly recovered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There are no rational arguments left against addressing climate change. I know your post was a troll, but I just had too much fun typing stuff out today.

I consider myself "Green" and pro-nuclear. Just a reminder that we exist. (granted, I do recognize it has a number of problems, the biggest involving waste & politics)

I'm not sure processed means finished. As parent post mentions, 64 layers of flash storage could mean hundreds of layers of material. Each layer requires multiple steps, and most steps require both time and temperature.

Imagine trying to bake a layer of cake with a required precision of 1/100th inch of bread rise. If you kill the power before it's done, the cake is too flat or too puffy. They actually call them recipe's in the fab, and it's what all the work of manufacturing is - adjusting recipe's for maximum yield (how many devices on the wafer end up actually working). So if a wafer has gone through 24 layers of work, significant (expensive) machine time has been invested already, and it's "processed", as opposed to a "bare" wafer with 0 layers of work.

Note that some steps in the process are salvageable: if the very top layer messed up, they can "clean" the wafer to erase the mistake and simply back up a few steps. But if the whole fab goes down, I'd guess there's enough backlog in cleaning that you might effectively say 95% is lost for the short term.

Your favorite (I tried RTM & liked it 'ok') and mine don't have self-hosted options, I believe. But I still feel the need to share b/c it seemed like such a simple problem to solve and frustrated me until I found SplenDO on Android. I was also a little surprised by what turned out to be most important for me in a task tracker:
1. web interface. SplenDO allows you to use google calendar tasks. It doesn't matter that it feels clunky at first because what's important is I'm already always logged in, so it's fast and easy.
1. (tied for 1st) ease/speed to jot something down when in a hurry. SplenDO does this by a quick-link in the main Android drag-down bar. I didn't realize how much this helped until I used it for a while.
2. prioritize your list by due-date. again, not how I thought I wanted it to work at first, and it seems impossible to prioritize any other way actually. but the fact that it helps you in both the app and google calendar ends up working really well.

So tl;dr Spendo seems like it sucks, yet it's the only task tracker I've ever used (probably tried >10 or so) that has solved this problem so well that I've used it long term.

Agreed, and in response to parent, I read his article, and was actually starting to change my long term belief because it was mostly credible. Then I got to this (search for 'and concluded'):

So one of the article's most important argument legs is that you can't statistically prove Australia's buyback program had any impact. But:

before the buyback, mass shootings: 2 out of every 3 years

after the buyback, mass shootings: 0 in 20 years

You can't draw a statistical conclusion from that? Cmon, man.

You act like the countries south of us are making all the guns. The truth is Mexico has strict gun laws, they get most of them from us. Now, I'm not sure it would work, but you have to admit it worked for Australia and the UK. The trick is they were surrounded by water. We would have to convince all our neighbors. But Mexico and Canada are already on board. We're the crazy one causing problems for them. If we legalized drugs and controlled guns, the Cartels would lose their income and die. I saw a powerful statistic that ~95% of guns used in murder were stolen from law-abiding citizens. And it's mostly America manufacturing these guns. Makes you think.

Now, I'm not really for banning all guns, I just think people arguing that doing so wouldn't save a lot of lives are not being honest. There are just other arguments. Guns are fun, yes definitely. Guns are used for hunting, yup (granted don't necessarily need handguns or assault weapons). Guns can be used in that insanely rare instance of a modern violent revolution that ends up being for the better, um mayybeee. But, guns don't kill people, can't be regulated, don't escalate violence? Are you kidding, they were invented for killing and oppression, and all other developed countries have proven they can be regulated.

I agree it's the transition period that ruins it, but my conclusion is different. Afaict, communism sounds great until human instinct kicks in. My view of history (biased I'm sure, coming from the US) is that countries that go down that path always find corruption from people in charge, introducing inefficiencies that capitalism doesn't have (as much). This explains, in the most simplistic way, why the US ended up with more wealth than Russia. Ie, the most effective laws allow for human instinct, like trying to get ahead. People always compare themselves and feel good or bad based of the comparison, more than the reality. This also explains why "poor" people of today still feel like they're living in dystopia, despite being "rich" compared to the "poor" of yesterday. By it's extension, it predicts no matter how much AI/robots we develop, we'll always be competitive enough to have full work days and a regular ebb & flow of employment rate.

But I digress, and invite anyone that wants to defend/promote Communism/Socialism to give me the best short and long reads - internet or books.

Lol, in my imagination, at least one Russian troll factory worker will take off the troll hat and post something respectful here. :P

Smh. We have the money and organization to manage disposal properly, yet as individuals we ruin it by manually trashing the place.

I forgot to mention regularly support and donate to bipartisan causes trying to reduce money in politics (example). If I found a cause that tried to get rid of Gerrymandering, I'd support that too. I haven't found a sexy quick fix for these two problems, but if it were easy it would have been done already.

I think I agree with you - there is no answer here, we're stuck with 2 parties for now. What should we do? I always say the same thing - vote for the better of the 2. Slowly but surely, you'll push both parties in the right direction. Sorry, but there is no magic wand. Politics has always been messy, will always be messy. People keep acting like we've never seen such craziness before, but politicians used to fight with duels - guns instead of words. And the words were just as harsh back then too.

I always vote for the best position in the primary, then the best position in the general (usually these are different answers). Try to research individual local candidates. Just do the best research you can. But smart people should not give up. Too many are voting for the guy they'd like to have a beer with or entertains their fantasies with soundbites. Don't leave the decision up to them.