Then allow me to ease your mind. Leeches are not a problem in the marine environment of the Florida Keys, unless you are a turtle. They person you replied to changed the topic slightly from the Everglades, where they could be a problem. In either case I'd worry about midges and mosquitos first.
Similarly with alligators, they are primarily freshwater and uncommon in the keys. American crocodiles can tolerate the marine environment better, but they are threatened as a species and have just two confirmed attacks in 75 years.
So wear a personal flotation device and you should be okay.
Incorrect. There is more fructose in HFCS used in Coke, HFCS 55. Fructose is metabolized in the liver, and stored as fat there. Glucose is directly metabolized by cells throughout the body.
Also there is no single reason that HFCS is demonized, there are multiple good reasons why it is harmful in the US. It is also not a singular cause to all US diet related pathologies.
Staying on topic, the chemicals the EPA will no longer enforce the laws for pollution for are demonstrably harmful.
The EPA has unilaterally decided not to do its job because it doesn't care about the health of the citizens of the US.
It turns out the acidic environment in most beverages inverts the sucrose in cane sugar to form a 50:50 mix of fructose and glucose. In the end, the fructose/glucose ratio in cane-sugar-sweetened drinks becomes similar to high-fructose corn syrup, which is about 55:42. And the reaction is quick: about half the sucrose gets inverted in about three weeks. [1]
He's going to mortally wound the US economy, which was already precarious.
The US is not competitive with China, absent the USD. The Federal Reserve is a foundational reason why the USD is the most important global currency for trade.
There are nontrivial odds of Venezuela style outcomes for the US. The US media - particularly partisan mainstream conservative sources like FOX and CNBC - is drastically understating the damage this administration is to the US position in the global economic system.
> The US is not competitive with China, absent the USD.
I'm sorry, but this is absurd. The US produces an enormous amount of goods and services, many of which are hard to replicate, and has a huge amount of natural resources available to it.
This is not some reciprocal action, it's just logical fallout that the US is no longer reliable as a military ally under this administration, and capable of electing similar leadership in the future. Much, much more of this is ahead. It will impact the USD.
At this point you just have to make peace with very bad futures. We will all die, and sometimes there is nothing you can do to prevent things. To save the world, more people have to be willing to fight for this than currently are.
The pure physics of the situation are staggering. The specific heat capacity of water is huge. The volume of ocean surface is huge. We are completely fucked. Everything you've read minimizing this or pretending we can continue with business as usual is a lie. Atmosphere SO2, enhanced rock weathering, ocean iron fertilization - it is horseshit. We had to reduce emissions 30 years ago, and simply chose not to.
The idea we can preserve our standard of living through technology is comically false. At this point, every large nation on earth would have to simultaneously cut emissions by more than half, we'd have to create a coordinated global Manhattan Project around alternative energy, and another global Manhattan Project around geoengineering (while not tipping ourselves into an ice age). It would require unprecedented leadership and cooperartion.
The US currently has the stupidest president it has ever had, surrounded by psychopaths that do not care about human suffering and act on base zero sum power calculus. The world is at war. The tech industry is greedily and actively accelerating this with crypto and AI buildout. The odds of the human species successful navigation of this extinction - at a civilization level - event is almost zero.
bondarchuk: I changed this, please delete your comment.
I'm frustrated and anxious about all this stuff too. Sometimes it feels out of control.
I think it is worth noting we tend to assume bigger negative consequences of behavior when that behavior is perceived as a moral violation [1].
A lot of people are frustrated that humanity is doing the "wrong" thing on climate change. I think that leads us to feel like some apocalypse must be imminent, almost like we are due for a karmic punishment from the desecrated and offended Earth.
It's scary that the planet is warming rapidly, especially with the consequences of that remaining largely unknown. But I think there's still plenty of hope that the 21st century will be at least relatively good for humanity.
I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. We are in a tough situation. If you are panicking and feel like the end is nigh, I think it's good to give yourself permission to calm down. We'll need calm to make it through, especially at the unfortunate times when we just have to wait it out because there's no immediate practical way to make things better.
> The odds of the human species successful navigation of this extinction - at a civilization level - event is almost zero.
In that case, you should have no problem accepting this deal. I'll give you $10 right now. In exchange, you'll give me half of your net worth in 100 years (assume both of us will somehow be alive if civilization survives).
Humans are sub-Saharan tropical apes that somehow made it to every major landmass and climate zone in the world on stone age technology. As a species we'll be fine. Agriculture is only about 4% of the world's economic output, which gives us a lot of headroom. If it comes down it it, we triple that and probably feed the world off entirely off hydroponics in Canada and Russia.
> We had to reduce emissions 30 years ago, and simply chose not to
Greenhouse gas emissions have been rising to fuel growth that allows billions of people to achieve a quality of life that we would consider basic. Meanwhile, America's greenhouse gas emissions are below what they were 30 years ago. On a per-capita basis, they are over 25% lower.
I get shunned by the tribe for saying this, but at this point you just have to make peace with very bad winters. We will all freeze, and sometimes there is nothing you can do to prevent the ice spirits. To save the tribe, more people have to be willing to hunt the great beasts than currently are.
The pure spirits of the situation are staggering. The cold breath of the ice demons is endless. The expanse of frozen wasteland is endless. We are completely cursed.
Everything the elders have told you about warmer lands or pretending we can continue following the old herds is a lie. Fire-keeping rituals, cave paintings for good luck, offering bones to sky spirits - it is all worthless. We had to migrate south 30 seasons ago, and the tribe leaders simply chose not to.
The idea we can preserve our way of life through better spear-making is laughably false. At this point, every large tribe on the tundra would have to simultaneously share their hunting grounds, we’d have to create a coordinated great alliance around mammoth hunting, and another great alliance around fire-keeping (while not angering the flame spirits into abandoning us).
The tribe currently has the most foolish shaman it has ever had, surrounded by warriors that do not care about the starving and act on base dominance over the best hunting spots. The clans are at war. The young hunters are greedily and actively making this worse by overhunting the remaining herds and hoarding flint. The odds of our people’s successful survival of this great freezing - at a tribal level - catastrophe is almost zero.
You can mock this, but the data doesn't care what either of us think.
Current Mediterranean water temps are +6C above normal, as observed over peak human civilization in the 20th century. That is 6kWh per cubic meter, in just the Mediterranean. The article briefly mentions this extending 30m down.
To give the order of magnitude of the energy involved, the Mediterranean surface area is 2,500,000,000,000 sq m. At 6kWh cu m and 18m deep, that is the energy equivalent of about 390,000 megatons. Or about 8,000 Tsar Bombas. The Mediterranean is small, about 0.7% of ocean surface area.
1 Tsar Bomba (50 MT = 2e17J) is about 1/28,000,000 of the total solar power delivered to Earth annually, so about 1.4 seconds of top-of-atmosphere solar power (~1.5 million PWh / year).
On the other hand, it roughly equals 1/2000 to 1/3000 of annual global energy consumption (~175 PWh / year) so about 4 hours of human energy.
The energy of those 8000 Tsar Bombas in the Mediterranean then is the same as all of human energy, electrical and fossil and otherwise, going to heating up that sea for a little over 2 years straight, or focussing all sunlight over the disc of the Earth on it for 3 hours.
(All these figures depend on who you ask as all the figures are a little bit fuzzy).
It also shows that any key to climate change revolves around adjusting the modulation of insolation and/or retention - the actual energy used by humans is, for the forseeable future, completely irrelevant except on local scales like warm water outflows into rivers and seas.
Plants and any organisms in photosynthesis-dependent food chains may have issues with modifying the degree of insolation.
Also, again, the Mediterranian is 1/100-1/200th of global ocean surface area. And we have melted a lot of ice cap/glacier mass. The latent heat of fusion of water is very large, also.
Long term, insolation and retention are important, but short term we are reaching the limits of the "Free Ride" portion of climate change where energy sinks absorb the additional delta created by the CO2 induced greenhouse effect.
edit: the tsar bomba was to try to make it tangible, as people don't understand these orders of magnitudes well.
The point is not that "we're not fucked" (we probably are pretty fucked). Just that Tsar Bomba yield, like basically any amount of energy directly generated by human endeavour, is a pretty irrelevant unit of energy when talking about the climate because they are on a completely different scale.
270Trillion kWh is about 1.5 × the total energy from the sun that hits the earth in one hour. I'm not sure if that helps, and the trillion-kilo is kinda gross.
I will not allow Palantir to extend their reality distortion field to me. They are consultants. They are also engineers. Other places call them FEs. But they didn't invent some new class of engineering, they just rebranded one.
One and the same. It would be like if I tried to call my product Tactical Software as a Service
It would still only be software as a service, but I would just brand it in a way to make it more appealing to certain buyer personas without any actual investment or commitment on my part.
Question, are they morons? Is your disagreement with them really that simple? Was it necessary to call them that? I don't like posting this comment, because it will be distracting and tone policing. I was just going to downvote and flag your comment and move on, but I think you offered some valuable information about the policy and I'd like to hear more without the divisive parts that add less value.
Yes. Poorer people buy things made overseas that requires a lot of shipping, and are lower quality that require more frequent replacement. They tend to have more children. They usually have more polluting energy sources. And there are many orders of magnitude more of them than rich people.
None of this is their fault, but ignoring it isn't good either.
All aircraft emissions are just 3% of US total. If all rich people (either the top 1% or 10%) reduced their emissions to zero tomorrow we would still not reach reduction targets needed to avoid catastrophic warming.
>Yes. Poorer people buy things made overseas that requires a lot of shipping, and are lower quality that require more frequent replacement. They tend to have more children. They usually have more polluting energy sources. And there are many orders of magnitude more of them than rich people.
A few cheap gadgets are dwarfed by a flight to Bali, new SUV or large house.
Aircraft emissions are 3% of the global total, for the US it is much higher (~9%)[1] and for the richest 10% it is higher again.
You can't get away from the fact that emissions are going to be reasonably well correlated with spending [2] and the poor don't spend very much.
>Everyone needs to contribute.
If we get a real handle on our carbon emissions then the lives of the poor will improve.
Besides anything else although the birth rate varies according to income the variation isn't that big. It's dwarfed by the difference in income and hence consumption.
Having a child is on of the most carbon intensive actions any given person can make.
The numbers are what they are. Rich people have much greater obligation to reduce their emissions. They benefit most from economic activity and they cause the most emissions per capita.
If there were zero rich people tomorrow we would still have an emissions problem for the climate.
I indelicately started a contentious topic that didn't have to exist. If I were given a fresh chance, I'd have just said that carbon emissions and the changes they are causing to the planet are a bigger problem than any single economic class or nation.
That might have caused some controversy, too, but is closer to what I meant. Your point is well taken, but maybe if I posted differently the ensuing discussion would have been less acrimonious.
I think you spoke directly to the room's elephant. The topic is contentious because it is less than zero sum. It isn't even that the pie cannot be grown larger, but some people have already eaten most of it and must continue to eat as more people decide they also want pie.
Human activity will have climatic impact. At a specific emission rate per capita, what is the number of humans that can exist? Who decides which humans continue to exist?
nickff: I agree it was borderline. My sentiment was closer to suggesting we look past tone to how shocking the content is. The human brain tries to normalize things, but a statement like this would have been unprecedented before 2016. People would have resigned or been fired, it would have been a scandal.
I think the comment you replied to was criticizing the "/rofl". These shallow reaction/dismissal comments really are turning this site into the hell-hole that Reddit already is.
The top-level comment added nothing to the conversation that this site is supposed to be about. We are supposed to assume that commenters read thee article, and if they did, a LOL, ROFL, or WTF doesn't move the conversation forward.
Then allow me to ease your mind. Leeches are not a problem in the marine environment of the Florida Keys, unless you are a turtle. They person you replied to changed the topic slightly from the Everglades, where they could be a problem. In either case I'd worry about midges and mosquitos first.
Similarly with alligators, they are primarily freshwater and uncommon in the keys. American crocodiles can tolerate the marine environment better, but they are threatened as a species and have just two confirmed attacks in 75 years.
So wear a personal flotation device and you should be okay.