The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)

[TreeA10]

50 years of bad doomsday climate predictions and the planet remains undefeated in proving those predictions wrong.  Throwing an enthusiastic but completely wrong 15 year old into the loss column continues the Earth's perfect record.

[BashiChuni]

2 hours ago, uhhello said:

The 'globe' def isn't in danger.  It'll be here for a long time.  Whether it'll be able to sustain life is up for debate 🙂

It’s absolutely not up for debate. 

[Pooter]

14 hours ago, Negatory said:

Sorry that a kid is trying to reduce fossil fuel usage because of actual global warming, and that the right wing media has literally convinced you to hate her. It’s sad to look at. And I’m sure it’s hard for you to always be so mad about everything.

Also, it’s a typical pattern to have a fallacy on here, but it’s always worthwhile to point out: No one said we needed to disproportionally affect industrializing societies over already industrialized. In fact, the VAST majority of emissions are due to first world consumption and production (US, China, EU). So we could just cut YOUR (and people like your) emissions, and that would be the 90% solution. But you can throw out a totally unrelated point that we should all be able to roll coal in F350s because if we can’t it would hurt Africa. Bro, you (and your base) don’t give a fuck about Africa or the developing world.

She's the one who wants the total ban on fossil fuels. Not my idea dude. She's an ignorant rich child that doesn't understand the 2nd and 3rd order effects of what she's proposing. 

Parts of the developing world still burn wood and dung for heat and would kill to have basic fossil fuel infrastructure. (Which would also be a green improvement.)

Again, It was her stated goal to eliminate fossil fuels in 5 years, not mine.  This would be disastrous to the 3rd world and 1st world alike. Luckily we didn't do it, which might have something to do with it being literally impossible right now. 

Green technologies are progressing but trying to force it down everyone's throat on an unrealistic timeline is how you get the Texas windmill freeze debacle or the California's rolling blackouts or Europe's disastrous dependence on Russian natural gas. This is her personal crusade and it is divorced from the realities of what our power grids demand and what green energy can supply right now. The Energy storage piece is another huge component to the green infrastructure that is not fully figured out yet. 

But if you still don't think she's a spoiled, grandstanding, holier than thou, hypocritical climate influencer I'll offer up this.

Instead of flying commercial from New York to Lisbon for a 2019 climate conference, she chartered a ride on a rich couple's racing catamaran across the Atlantic.  Cool. Super green.  Except for the part where they flew her boat captain commercial from Britain to New York prior to the voyage, later promising the flight would be offset with carbon credits. Which begs the question, why doesn't Greta just fly places and pay for carbon offsets?

 

why it's almost like it's one big publicity stunt

 

[Pooter]

5 hours ago, uhhello said:

The 'globe' def isn't in danger.  It'll be here for a long time.  Whether it'll be able to sustain life is up for debate 🙂

66 million years ago the earth got hit by a 6 mile wide meteor traveling 12 miles per second. It resulted in 600 mph winds, 300 foot mega tsunamis that obliterated global coastlines, threw 25 trillion metric tons of debris into the atmosphere, which rained back down causing mass wildfires destroying 70% of forests on earth. The impact also caused an explosion the equivalent of 72 trillion tons of tnt which is more than all of the nuclear weapons currently on earth combined. 
 

The earth is still here. Still supporting life. 
 

But what's really going to determine the future of earth is whether you drive a F-150 or a Prius to work. 🤦🏻‍♂️

[brabus]

7 hours ago, Pooter said:

Parts of the developing world still burn wood…for heat

[slc]

9 minutes ago, brabus said:

Parts of the developing world still burn wood…for heat

This cracks me up.....only because I actually do burn wood....for heat.  Furnace never gets used in the winter unless I get home from a trip and need to warm up the house

[uhhello]

9 hours ago, Pooter said:

66 million years ago the earth got hit by a 6 mile wide meteor traveling 12 miles per second. It resulted in 600 mph winds, 300 foot mega tsunamis that obliterated global coastlines, threw 25 trillion metric tons of debris into the atmosphere, which rained back down causing mass wildfires destroying 70% of forests on earth. The impact also caused an explosion the equivalent of 72 trillion tons of tnt which is more than all of the nuclear weapons currently on earth combined. 
 

The earth is still here. Still supporting life. 
 

But what's really going to determine the future of earth is whether you drive a F-150 or a Prius to work. 🤦🏻‍♂️

That's my point.  How many humans do you think would have been strolling around after that?  I should have specifically said human life I guess.  My poorly worded point is in the end it doesn't really matter how 'green' we go, the human race is on a timeline.   Well thought out regulation that protects our water, air, and land without fucking over economies and people is what we should be about.  If developed nations are burning coal 20-40 years from now they fucked up.  

Edited June 23, 2023 by uhhello

[Biff_T]

Try stopping the Sun from exploding.  It is going to be hard to survive when that thing is gone.   According to “science”, this is inevitable.   Our time is limited.  Enjoy and respect this planet because we live under the mercy of the Universe, not the other way around.  

[Pooter]

2 hours ago, uhhello said:

That's my point.  How many humans do you think would have been strolling around after that?  I should have specifically said human life I guess.  My poorly worded point is in the end it doesn't really matter how 'green' we go, the human race is on a timeline.   Well thought out regulation that protects our water, air, and land without fucking over economies and people is what we should be about.  If developed nations are burning coal 20-40 years from now they fucked up.  

Yeah it probably wasn't a great time immediately after that impact. But my point is that far more calamitous things have happened to earth than humans driving cars and flying planes, and it's still here supporting life. The earth has been far colder, far hotter, and far more polluted than it is now and supported life throughout.
 

So the notion that we're going to somehow irreparably break the earth or make it completely uninhabitable is just a cute case of humans having main character syndrome, and failing to understand how tiny and insignificant we are in the cosmic sense. 
 

The other piece climate panic pushers fail to account for is how good humans are at adapting.  Earths population grows every year, and climatologists tell us natural disasters are getting more severe and more frequent *citation needed.* But somehow we find that less and less people every year are killed by natural disasters when you adjust for population growth. Seems counterintuitive but that just shows how good we are at adapting to and mitigating problems. 

As green technologies progress they will become cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, and will one day take the place of fossil fuels.  I truly look forward to when that happens. But trying to force them into prime time use prematurely by outlawing energy forms that we still depend on is not the way to do it.  Saddling our economy with restrictions while China still pisses in the pool is also not the way to do it.

[TreeA10]

"State of Fear" written by Michael Crichton sums up the environmental doomsday screeching quite well, keep people scared by preaching doom and gloom so that those preaching gain power and/or wealth.  Despite the 3 or 4 dozen grim predictions since the 1970s of global warming, global cooling, mass starvation, overpopulation, extinction of animal species, seas rising, acid rain, melting polar ice caps, ozone depletion, etc., humans are still here doing better than ever and the planet continues to spin through space.  But 100% failure doesn't deter these people.  I might admire that determination if they weren't so annoying.

[jice]

18 hours ago, Pooter said:

{…luckily we didn’t do what a little girl said.} (But people sure do get worked up over what she says, huh?)

Green technologies are progressing but trying to force it down everyone's throat on an unrealistic timeline is how you get the Texas windmill freeze debacle or the California's rolling blackouts or Europe's disastrous dependence on Russian natural gas.

….

 

Ok, kind of an energy nerd here.

“Texas windmill freeze” was more of a problem having to do with natural gas transportation, which accounts for far more energy production (3-4x) than wind. In Texas, those transport methods aren’t built for cold. Just like Texas houses. You are right though, wind is significant in Texas. If it were a country, it would be the fifth largest wind producing country. But! If wind had failed (as you’d expect in the winter), but gas had worked (as you’d expect anywhere with snowplows), that would have been much less of a disaster.

CA rolling blackouts: You’re right Re: overdoing it on the green energy regulatory requirements, but the ‘energy debt’ in CA also largely is a result of their shortsighted ban on new nuclear plants. Haven’t done the math, but I suspect we wouldn’t see the same blackouts through the 90s and 00s if they weren’t removing those plants from the grid. 
 

Europe natural gas: the other option here is coal, which is not an ideal source for lots of reasons. The rest are cost prohibitive in the short term and work in the US’s favor (provided they’re actually done with Russia) in the long term.  So, you’re right about how they got there and the disaster that it is. And! We should be working really hard (subsidizing) to get European money to the gulf coast and connecting infrastructure so we can sell them the NG we’re otherwise waste flaring in North Dakota fields, Canadian wasteland, and west Texas (though it is cool to see from the air)… plus, even Greta could get behind that one.

[TreeA10]

The Texas freeze (hit -2 at my house) and power loss was also a problem due to environmental improvement.  The gas transportation system in the past used natural gas powered pumps to move gas. Well, we couldn't have that because gas is a fossil fuel and therefore evil.  Electric pumps would be environmentally friendly so the gas pumps are replaced. When the electric grid froze up, the gas power plants went offline.  Genius.

[Smokin]

Coal gets an overly bad name due to mental images from the 60's of coal plants belching out black smoke.  Modern coal plants are not that bad environmentally.  Would be interesting to see a full life cycle comparison of the lithium mining, production, and disposal compared to coal.  Obviously something of an apples to oranges comparison, but if it could be impartially quantified, I wouldn't be surprised to see coal win.

Nuclear is better, but the left seems to dislike it for some reason despite the fact that it seems to be the only realistically cost effective and clean energy source.

[brabus]

It’s the classic situation of multiple things can be true at once:

1. Humans absolutely affect the planet, climate, etc.

2. Humans should continue to develop cleaner energy and bring it to bear when the technology is mature/able to actually support civilization’s energy needs

3. “climate change” as defined/argued by the left is absolutely a complete bullshit lie and only pushed for the gain of wealth/power for select groups of people. People like Greta are just useful idiots in that process. 

[Clark Griswold]

Every time I think we’ve hit peak woke (stupidity)someone raises the bar:

Article argues world must apply 'queer theory' to nuclear weapons policy

https://www.foxnews.com/media/article-argues-world-apply-queer-theory-nuclear-weapons-policy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Biff_T]

1 hour ago, Clark Griswold said:

Every time I think we’ve hit peak woke (stupidity)someone raises the bar:

Article argues world must apply 'queer theory' to nuclear weapons policy

https://www.foxnews.com/media/article-argues-world-apply-queer-theory-nuclear-weapons-policy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I mean, an ICBM is shaped like a dick.  Who wouldn't want to sit on one of those?   

[HeloDude]

On 6/22/2023 at 8:45 AM, Negatory said:

Dumb and distorted. We have hit 1.0C, are going to hit 1.5C of warming shortly, and are well on our way to 4+. What does that mean? It means your children are gonna have much tougher lives. And the point of the quote was not that we would die in 5 years, but that there would be mass deaths in the future if fossil fuels were not significantly curtailed by 2023. But that’s standard for you, you just don’t know how to read.

Sorry that a kid is trying to reduce fossil fuel usage because of actual global warming, and that the right wing media has literally convinced you to hate her. It’s sad to look at. And I’m sure it’s hard for you to always be so mad about everything.

Also, it’s a typical pattern to have a fallacy on here, but it’s always worthwhile to point out: No one said we needed to disproportionally affect industrializing societies over already industrialized. In fact, the VAST majority of emissions are due to first world consumption and production (US, China, EU). So we could just cut YOUR (and people like your) emissions, and that would be the 90% solution. But you can throw out a totally unrelated point that we should all be able to roll coal in F350s because if we can’t it would hurt Africa. Bro, you (and your base) don’t give a fuck about Africa or the developing world.

Let me know when progressives start moving away in droves from expensive coastal cities, you know, because they’re afraid of the effects of “climate change”.  Judge people by their personal actions, not their rhetoric.

[Danger41]

On 6/24/2023 at 1:13 PM, HeloDude said:

Let me know when progressives start moving away in droves from expensive coastal cities, you know, because they’re afraid of the effects of “climate change”.  Judge people by their personal actions, not their rhetoric.

Amen.

On that note, you all seem much more educated on this stuff than I. I’ve done some casual research on power generation and am genuinely flabbergasted why there isn’t a major push for nuclear. Any ideas?

[Standby]

19 minutes ago, Danger41 said:

Amen.

On that note, you all seem much more educated on this stuff than I. I’ve done some casual research on power generation and am genuinely flabbergasted why there isn’t a major push for nuclear. Any ideas?

The same reason why we don’t have a cure for AIDS, why most Wall Street brokers underperform the S&P yet remain propped up, and why bqzips mom hasn’t posted her OF for free to us loyal BaseOps patrons…it’s more lucrative not to. 

[ClearedHot]

3 hours ago, Danger41 said:

Amen.

On that note, you all seem much more educated on this stuff than I. I’ve done some casual research on power generation and am genuinely flabbergasted why there isn’t a major push for nuclear. Any ideas?

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and George Bush

 

[nsplayr]

4 hours ago, Danger41 said:

Amen.

On that note, you all seem much more educated on this stuff than I. I’ve done some casual research on power generation and am genuinely flabbergasted why there isn’t a major push for nuclear. Any ideas?

I'm a very climate/energy-oriented liberal here and I love nuclear. F all the NIMBYs and "greens" on my side of the aisle who fight against it.

From what I've seen we haven't built more due to A) inertia, B) insane regulation leading to insane costs to open a new plant, and C) a political alliance between fossil fuel companies & conservatives plus tree-hugging greens who are scared of radiation that basically caused A and B.

I'm enjoying the benefits of cheaper electricity living in the TVA service region where we have three working nuclear plants. I'd put a micro nuclear reactor in my garage if The Man would let me!

As a country we're decades behind, but the best time to start catching up is now. Small, modular reactors, molten salt reactors, push the boundaries with fusion research, do it all. All energy that is carbon-free is good energy at this point and energy abundance is the key to unlocking an awesome future.

Imagine electricity so abundant that it's not even worth it to meter it, imagine nearly unlimited fresh water due to desalination, minerals mined from asteroids and brought back to earth...all because of energy abundance...LFG.

3 hours ago, Standby said:

The same reason why we don’t have a cure for AIDS...

TBH we kind of do. Not a vaccine, but the beginnings of a real cure: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/5th-person-confirmed-cured-hiv/story?id=97323361

Even short of a true cure, modern AIDS medication regimes put a ton of people in a place where HIV is no longer detectable in their blood. Hell of a win for modern medicine!

Edited June 26, 2023 by nsplayr

[BashiChuni]

2 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I'm a very climate/energy-oriented liberal here and I love nuclear. F all the NIMBYs and "greens" on my side of the aisle who fight against it.

From what I've seen we haven't built more due to A) inertia, B) insane regulation leading to insane costs to open a new plant, and C) a political alliance between fossil fuel companies & conservatives plus tree-hugging greens who are scared of radiation that basically caused A and B.

I'm enjoying the benefits of cheaper electricity living in the TVA service region where we have three working nuclear plants. I'd put a micro nuclear reactor in my garage if The Man would let me!

As a country we're decades behind, but the best time to start catching up is now. Small, modular reactors, molten salt reactors, push the boundaries with fusion research, do it all. All energy that is carbon-free is good energy at this point and energy abundance is the key to unlocking an awesome future.

Imagine electricity so abundant that it's not even worth it to meter it, imagine nearly unlimited fresh water due to desalination, minerals mined from asteroids and brought back to earth...all because of energy abundance...LFG.

TBH we kind of do. Not a vaccine, but the beginnings of a real cure: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/5th-person-confirmed-cured-hiv/story?id=97323361

Even short of a true cure, modern AIDS medication regimes put a ton of people in a place where HIV is no longer detectable in their blood. Hell of a win for modern medicine!

we agree on something its a miracle

[gearhog]

9 hours ago, nsplayr said:

TBH we kind of do. Not a vaccine, but the beginnings of a real cure: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/5th-person-confirmed-cured-hiv/story?id=97323361

Even short of a true cure, modern AIDS medication regimes put a ton of people in a place where HIV is no longer detectable in their blood. Hell of a win for modern medicine!

Glad to see you back! Do you have a link to the research? How was the HIV initially detected and what method was used to determine that it was no longer present? Sorry, it's just that ABCnews is a pretty sketch source.

Also, careful with using "cure" and "treatment regimen" as if they're anywhere close in definition.  One creates a huge cash flow, one does not. A cure is likely not even a remote possibility.

I'm reminded of Kary Mullis. He won the Nobel Prize for inventing PCR tests which the industry later used to detect HIV back when it was a "thing". He had an interesting take on HIV/AIDs. Funny how Nobel Prize winners, like Robert Malone, PhD, who actually invent these medical technologies come to regret how they're used.

https://twitter.com/listen_2learn/status/1630043201078976514?s=20

Edited June 26, 2023 by gearhog

[pawnman]

10 hours ago, nsplayr said:

I'm a very climate/energy-oriented liberal here and I love nuclear. F all the NIMBYs and "greens" on my side of the aisle who fight against it.

From what I've seen we haven't built more due to A) inertia, B) insane regulation leading to insane costs to open a new plant, and C) a political alliance between fossil fuel companies & conservatives plus tree-hugging greens who are scared of radiation that basically caused A and B.

I'm enjoying the benefits of cheaper electricity living in the TVA service region where we have three working nuclear plants. I'd put a micro nuclear reactor in my garage if The Man would let me!

As a country we're decades behind, but the best time to start catching up is now. Small, modular reactors, molten salt reactors, push the boundaries with fusion research, do it all. All energy that is carbon-free is good energy at this point and energy abundance is the key to unlocking an awesome future.

Imagine electricity so abundant that it's not even worth it to meter it, imagine nearly unlimited fresh water due to desalination, minerals mined from asteroids and brought back to earth...all because of energy abundance...LFG.

TBH we kind of do. Not a vaccine, but the beginnings of a real cure: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/5th-person-confirmed-cured-hiv/story?id=97323361

Even short of a true cure, modern AIDS medication regimes put a ton of people in a place where HIV is no longer detectable in their blood. Hell of a win for modern medicine!

Yeah, about those desalination plants...

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-rejects-plan-desalination-plant-2022-05-13/

[jice]

2 minutes ago, pawnman said:

Yeah, about those desalination plants...

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-rejects-plan-desalination-plant-2022-05-13/

There’s a saying about a horse… You can lead a horse to water but you can’t stop the train wreck?