[HN Gopher] 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)
Author : jonathanjaeger
Score : 262 points
Date : 2020-06-18 18:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencemag.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencemag.org)
| ummonk wrote:
| > What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly,
| wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern
| Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
|
| Hastening its collapse several centuries later?
| asdff wrote:
| It did. Justinians gains in italy were lost not long after the
| plague to the lombards, who saw a power vacuum. The empire had
| just spent quite a bit on wars and capital expenses, and the
| tax base never recovered. It hobbled the economy and manpower
| of the empire and left it susceptible to attacks from enemies
| virtually on all sides, and territory shrunk by the century
| until Constantinople was merely a city state, mostly abandoned
| within its rotting walls which it no longer had the manpower to
| fully defend, with a few Grecian possessions and vassal states
| by the time it succumbed to the Turks.
| chromaton wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535-...
| duxup wrote:
| From 536 through the end of the Justinian plague in 543... what
| level of mortality are we talking about?
|
| The article indicates that the plague killed 35%-55% of the
| population.
| bwanab wrote:
| I've recently gotten through this period in the "History of
| Byzantium" podcast series. Justinian had just recently retaken
| many of the old western Roman provinces, not least of which was
| Rome itself, and the breadbasket of North Africa. Things were
| finally looking good for the Romans again when the plague hit.
| The armies were unfortunately overextended and now half their
| ranks were dead or dying. It was an irresistible target for the
| Persians, the steppe horsemen and the Goths which ultimately
| weakened them all just in time for the Arab invasions.
| datenhorst wrote:
| I listened to this years ago but could still remember
| Procopius' quote. I just looked it up and apparently the
| consensus at the time of recording (2013) was a meteor strike
| rather than a volcanic eruption. Interesting.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Wonderful series. Absolutely amazing. ...and he's now producing
| the set that extends through the Crusades.
|
| If you haven't listened to it, the one on the Siege of 717
| deserves it's own bowl of popcorn - super super entertaining.
|
| I loved the original The History of Rome podcast that goes
| through to the fall of the West, but I think I've come to
| prefer this one even more.
|
| The first few episodes require a little patience as the author
| gets his footing - but it pays off. Awesome podcast.
| shoes_for_thee wrote:
| Not for me it wasn't.
| 01100011 wrote:
| And this is why we, as a species, need to embrace science and
| technology, and engineer solutions to ensure our survival and
| prosperity.
|
| We need geoengineering now. If a volcanic eruption occurs and
| blocks out a significant portion of light, we need a way to
| compensate for it(solar mirroring/concentration?), or eliminate
| the particulates.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Hmm, you know you feel lucky to live in the present when a sign
| of coming _out_ of the worst time in history was a _rise_ in
| "airborne lead".
| afterburner wrote:
| > Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium,
| in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread
| rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of
| the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick
| says.
|
| I dunno, sounds like 541 was the worst year to be alive. That
| year also had a second volcano eruption according to the article.
| ardit33 wrote:
| It seems to have been over a decade of misery.... and I guess
| 536 was the start/first year of it....
| avibhu wrote:
| Reminds me of the year without a summer[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
| _kst_ wrote:
| For those who don't follow the link, it's 1816.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The Christian revolution around that time in Europe also put
| civilisation back there. See "The Darkening Age" by Catherine
| Nixey
| Ascetik wrote:
| Christian 'revolution'? What nonsense. The missionaries were
| never interested in revolution (not in the modern sense at
| least), but converting people to Catholicism. St. Bede's
| History of the Church in England is a good example. Or the life
| of St. Boniface. The term "Dark Ages" was coined by anti-
| Christians to undermine the conversion of Europe to the
| Catholic faith.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A glance at Wikipedia
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age) indicates
| that the book was _not_ well received - not by Christians, but
| by academics.
| freehunter wrote:
| I have no skin in the game either way but it seems like any
| book that tries to tackle controversial materials would have
| some people who don't like it. Interestingly the Wikipedia
| page _only_ lists negative feedback in the Reception section,
| despite the book having generally good reviews and accolades
| from multiple different experts.
|
| The fact that the book won awards from NYT, Royal Society of
| Literature, BBC, and many other publications and is well-
| reviewed, yet Wikipedia only lists negative feedback in the
| Reception section indicates to me that there must be bias in
| the Wikipedia article. I don't see any other answer for why
| more than half of the article is just listing criticism that
| doesn't seem to be reflected across the broader industry.
|
| Again I haven't read the book and don't really care about the
| subject matter either way, but the Wikipedia does not seem to
| hide its bias.
| MannishMan wrote:
| I know this is pedantic, but based on the order of events in the
| article wouldn't 543 be the worst year to be alive? By then you
| would have experienced the cumulative horror of starving and
| freezing through two volcanic events and watching a third to half
| of your friends and family die of plague. 536 would have a been
| frightening and confusing as the volcanic fog began to roll in,
| but you couldn't know the terror of what was to come.
| afterburner wrote:
| Plague and second volcano hitting in 541 is also a good
| candidate.
| kanobo wrote:
| That's not pedantic, it's a good comment. I had the same
| thought when reading the article and wondered if others were
| wondering the same.
| yesplorer wrote:
| I agree with you, but I also think 536 could be considered
| worst because of the initial shock. But as other events roll in
| with time, people may become used to expecting the worst.
|
| I'm thinking this way because of our current situation with the
| corona virus. Initially people were all into doing everything
| to protect themselves but as time goes in, we kind of get used
| to living our lives around the existence of the pandemic and
| the videos of people dropping dead in china aren't going around
| anymore.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Objectively you are right, subjectively I think what matters is
| short term contrast. 535 vs 536 has a much steeped drop in
| quality of life than 542 vs 543.
| danharaj wrote:
| Maybe not for Americans :) The eruption was hypothesized to have
| occurred in North America but did the team try to cross reference
| with native accounts of that time period?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Sounds like it was a cold time
| mark-r wrote:
| I don't think native accounts had dates associated with them,
| even if you could track them down.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| According to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%...
| there is some evidence of it hitting the Moche culture in Peru.
| vkou wrote:
| Given that ~90% of native Americans were killed over the first
| decades of European contact by smallpox, measles, and war, it's
| entirely possible that there had been a worse year for them.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is an interesting point context matters.
| jandrese wrote:
| North American natives were not good about writing stuff down,
| and by the time Europeans showed up it was almost a millennium
| later so the records would have been scanty even if the
| Europeans hadn't gone on insane rampages spreading death,
| disease, and destruction everywhere they went.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Though worldwide it's difficult to keep records intact for a
| thousand years, the Mayans had writing systems for nearly two
| thousand years. The Spanish priests burned any writing they
| found during the Mayan conquest,
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Doesn't "not good" in this context mean NEVER. Are there any
| native tribes/peoples that had a writing system before
| European contact? AFAICT, it's one of the main causes so many
| native languages are dying/extinct.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Having a writing system and using it to record history are
| surprisingly independent. For example, in ancient India
| they wrote all kinds of stuff down, but virtually none of
| it is history. Most of what we know about the history of
| India comes from the records of other peoples who came into
| contact with the Indians.
| yorwba wrote:
| Writing developed in America long before Europeans showed
| up and continued to be used until Europeans showed up, but
| the Europeans destroyed most books they could find and
| forced the natives to learn the colonizers' languages.
| That's the main cause why so many native languages are
| dying/extinct.
|
| Further reading:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_writing_systems
| anonAndOn wrote:
| It looks like writing developed in present-day Mexico and
| never made it north of the desert border (Mojave/
| Sonoran/ Chihuahua). So NONE of the estimated 296
| languages spoken by natives in US and Canada had a
| written language that we have evidence of. [0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_
| the_Am...
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There's at least one script that's absolutely, a 100%
| definitive written language, Maya. There are about half a
| dozen more that qualify for certain reasonable definitions
| of writing. Beyond that, there are hundreds of systems of
| proto-writing that rely primarily on the cultural context
| of the speaker to interpret. These were still used to
| record events and stories, though.
| murat131 wrote:
| Writing was invented in Mesopotamia around 3200BC, while in
| the Americas the necessity of writing things down triggered
| the same invention around 600BC. Main reason was because
| Eurasia was in the east-west plane where climate is similar
| and communication/commerce was not difficult to employ which
| helped Europe, ME, Asia, and far east to increase
| interaction. Americas on the other hand lays on the north-
| south plane, Isthmus of Panama is narrow to pass through,
| variances in climate and terrain greatly limited
| communication and commerce between north and south. When
| European showed up on the shores of Caribbeans and the
| mainland of Americas it was already too late.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Clearly, you've read Guns, Germs, Steel, whose accuracy
| when it comes to anthropology is on the same level as the
| (Christian) Bible's accuracy with respect to cosmology.
|
| > Americas on the other hand lays on the north-south plane,
| Isthmus of Panama is narrow to pass through, variances in
| climate and terrain greatly limited communication and
| commerce between north and south.
|
| It should be noted that there is rather little evidence of
| technologies spreading along the main East-West axis of
| Eurasia (particularly Neolithic technologies), while there
| is far more evidence of such technology spreading along the
| North-South axis of the Americas. For example, pottery may
| well have spread from its invention in the Amazon
| Rainforest across the Caribbean to Mesoamerica and the
| Southeast US; corn did spread from its initial
| domestication Mesoamerica to both the US (where it largely
| supplanted preexisting domesticants) and down into the
| Andes (where it supplemented the existing potato crops);
| and metallurgy spread from its Andean origins along the
| Pacific coast to Western Mexico and the Southwest US.
| danharaj wrote:
| Oral traditions record, among other things, historical
| events.
| refurb wrote:
| This is my understanding from chatting with a number of
| First Nation in Canada.
|
| Most of the tribe's stories were passed down verbally,
| rather than written down.
| datenhorst wrote:
| It's interesting to imagine that the ramifications of this were
| still felt in the 620s when Mohamed united the Arab tribes and he
| and his successors pretty much overran the Byzantine and Persian
| empires.
| LukeEF wrote:
| I don't mean to be too precise, but the article is slightly
| undermined by the claim in the graphic that the 543 Justinian
| plague hurried the collapse of the eastern Roman Empire. The
| 'Eastern' Roman Empire fell in 1453 when the walls of
| Constantinople were breached by the Ottomans. Very difficult to
| claim that the Romans fell in the 6th Century. I mean nearly 500
| years later Basil is rolling back into Syria on the back of
| repeated victories over the Bulgarians. Always feel let down by
| these sorts of overblown claims that are easy to slap into an
| info-graphic.
| indigo945 wrote:
| The precise date of the fall of the Roman Empire -- and the
| point where it became Byzantium -- is a subject of debate.
| There is no unanimous agreement that referring to
| Constantinople as the Roman Empire is much more useful than,
| say, calling the Holy Roman Empire "Roman". Whatever your
| personal views may be on this matter, there indeed are some
| scholars that date the fall of the Roman Empire on the failure
| of Justinian's restauratio imperii, which coincided with the
| plague. [1]
|
| [1]:
| http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=F33DA79F872937C22C8...
| deanCommie wrote:
| These kinds of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions could happen today
| right?
|
| What's.......our intended process for dealing with this?
|
| Are there any technical solutions for dispersing ash from the
| atmosphere?
|
| I know this is a stupidly naive question to some degree - how do
| you prevent acts of god, but I am curious if someone has thought
| about it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Are there any technical solutions for dispersing ash from the
| atmosphere?
|
| Seems like the dispersal of the ash is the problem, and you'd
| want to be collecting it.
| mc32 wrote:
| That would be quite the challenge since fine silica and other
| particles would foul just about any kind of machinery.
| [deleted]
| komali2 wrote:
| > What's.......our intended process for dealing with this?
|
| The extent of the USA's preparedness, from the federal agency
| in charge handling Emergencies, is a website with a bullet
| point list of what you should have in a first aid kit in your
| house:
|
| https://www.ready.gov/kit
|
| I'm being only partially facetious. There are of course
| multiple agencies at the federal, state, county, and local
| level with their own plans and processes in place for this kind
| of thing.
|
| But! We can look to the past for what would happen.
|
| Katrina taught us that the US federal government doesn't have
| the resources, means, or disposition to rescue people from
| disaster zones. It also taught us that as an individual or
| family, the best thing you can do is take evacuation warnings
| _very_ seriously, and be ready to be able to provide for
| yourself and your family for the short and long term. So,
| ready.gov build a kit, and stuff it full of cash while you 're
| at it. Keep the cars gassed up.
|
| Katrina also taught us that the US government will choose to
| enforce "property rights" before it will ensure people in
| disaster zones have shelter, water, or food. You could flip
| from one channel with a helicopter view of people waving for
| help on a roof, and another channel would be showing National
| Guard soldiers with rifles chasing off "looters." Hm.
|
| The COVID pandemic also taught us that partisans and
| capitalists are motivated to prioritize the wellbeing of the
| stock market over humans lives - all the more reason to prepare
| to protect yourself and family rather than count on the Gov
| coming to your aid.
|
| I'm not saying the homesteaders and preppers aren't a little
| crazy, but I'm also not saying they don't have the right
| idea...
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| USA is about 4% of the global population, the US government
| stance is not really relevant.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Spot on. We no longer have a government for the people, by
| the people, of the people. Just take a look at the net worth
| statistics of our congresscritters and their voting records.
|
| In fact, we never really have. Initially, only free, white
| landowners could even _vote_!
|
| Edit: ah, found yet another "thing you can't say on HN," I
| suppose. :) Talk about lack of TP in stores: +6. Talk about
| how our "representatives" don't represent most of us: -2
| castis wrote:
| one of the attributes of an act of god is being unpreventable
| by humans.
|
| in the event of something like this, having the supplies to
| just weather the fallout would be best. a years worth of
| supplies on-hand would be a good start.
| waterhouse wrote:
| > one of the attributes of an act of god is being
| unpreventable by humans.
|
| That may be, but the set of things that humans can prevent
| gets larger over time. For example, 100 years ago, an
| asteroid hitting the earth would be an act of God we could do
| nothing about, but today it is at least within the realm of
| possibility that we could observe a large asteroid on a
| collision course and send in a spacecraft or missile to
| divert it.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance
| castis wrote:
| As much as I hope I never witness this, watching humanity
| strap a rocket to an asteroid for this purpose would
| probably rank #1 on the list of Most Bitchin Things Ever.
| SllX wrote:
| Hmm, well we saw something like it recently and it mostly just
| stranded people in Europe from what I recall. Eyjafjallajokull
| erupted in Iceland about 10 years ago and there wasn't anything
| we could do but wait it out, and it was a lot less severe than
| what's described in this article.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Although it's worth asking, did the eruption affect
| agricultural output in Iceland? Maybe modern farming is just
| resilient enough against volcanic eruptions, as it is against
| all the other things that used to cause famines.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Modern farming is not resilient in any way. Production is
| centralized, mechanized and heavily reliant on outside
| inputs. Global trade lessens the degree to which a regional
| crop failure affects a population. Smaller, distributed,
| local farms lessen the reliance on trade but still very
| much rely on our gracious host to provide clean rain and
| sun. The only way to escape that is immense amounts of
| electricity for indoor farming.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's my understanding that even the worst case eruptions
| described in the article didn't make it globally
| impossible to grow crops. IIUC they just produced a
| higher than normal prevalence of local issues.
| SllX wrote:
| That's outside my expertise, but there's a few good replies
| to your question already. My understanding is that while
| the eruption occurred in Iceland, the effects of it were
| overwhelmingly felt further south and southeast in Europe,
| although I'm sure there were flight delays in Iceland as a
| result. I'm sorry to say most of my remembrance of this
| event was through a few bloggers I was following at the
| time who were personally affected.
| arnarbi wrote:
| For the recent eruption prevailing winds were from the
| north, and the volcano is on the south coast. So most of
| the effects were blown out to sea. But farms in the
| vicinity of the volcano certainly felt it:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/iceland-
| volcano-p... (see e.g. the photos from 5.11.10)
|
| http://lisa.lbhi.is/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=2747
|
| https://www.vegagerdin.is/Vefur2.nsf/Files/Ahrif_eldgossins
| _...
|
| The larger eruption in 1783 killed over half of livestock,
| and a quarter of the human population in the ensuing
| famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki
| klyrs wrote:
| Edit: don't take my word for it, apparently this is a popular
| myth
|
| Read up on Yellowstone, for example -- AFAIK it's "due for a
| big one" but it blows up so infrequently and so
| catastrophically that there's no real plan other than "maybe
| think about not living in North America."
|
| But hey, volcanic ash is a coolant for the climate -- a few
| well-placed eruptions could do some good, on a global scale
| (sorry about the locals)...
| politelemon wrote:
| I looked it up, but according to this, it isn't due for a big
| one, it's merely media hyperbole.
|
| >Although fascinating, the new findings do not imply
| increased geologic hazards at Yellowstone, and certainly do
| not increase the chances of a 'supereruption' in the near
| future. Contrary to some media reports, Yellowstone is not
| 'overdue' for a supereruption.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera#Volcanoes
|
| www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2014/01/reactions-yellowstone-
| supervolcano-study-ranged-hysteria-ho-hum24449
| ericmay wrote:
| Don't think it's "overdue"[0]. I think that's just a myth in
| popular culture.
|
| [0] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/yellowstone-overdue-eruption-
| when-...
| kjs3 wrote:
| _What 's.......our intended process for dealing with this?_
|
| Same as other existential threats like asteroids. Spend a
| relative pittance on monitoring, not much else.
| nopzor wrote:
| correct, it could happen today.
|
| humans are really bad at conceptualizing the risk from such
| events. we are also overdue for another major solar geo storm
| (ie. like the carrington event).
| divbzero wrote:
| A solar storm of similar magnitude passed through Earth's
| orbit in 2012 but missed hitting Earth. [1]
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_2012
| [deleted]
| quotha wrote:
| Watch this film:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Inferno_(film)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Since this article, there has been new research indicating that
| the Plague of Justinian may not have been as bad as previously
| thought.
|
| https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/12/02/maybe-first-plague...
| throw3fj43 wrote:
| That claim should be greeted with skepticism, if you are
| interested in learning more please consider this reply:
|
| https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-%E2%80%98Justinian...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Excellent article. I guess it is especially important to be
| somewhat skeptical of "exciting" new research that hits the
| popular press and make sure to read all the analyses.
| chadlavi wrote:
| The worst year to be alive _so far_
| aksss wrote:
| "How Are Things? Better. Better Than Tomorrow, Of Course--Worse
| Than Yesterday" - Credit to Eugene Volokh who posted this old
| saying from Soviet Europe this morning.
| glup wrote:
| +1 for your growth mindset. We can always achieve new levels of
| awfulness.
| izzydata wrote:
| I imagine there will come a time when the earth is just on the
| cusp of no longer being able to sustain the massive population
| that it has grown to or human life at all. Since the earths
| human population will be so high even a 5th of people dying off
| will be drastically more deaths than any worldwide catastrophe
| of the past. Maybe within another 1000 years.
| xwdv wrote:
| Human lives are worth less and less as time goes on and the
| population increases, so by the time this happens the loss of
| life might not be anymore troubling than say the amount of
| people killed in car crashes in a year.
| harryh wrote:
| Current projections of Earth's population have a peak
| population of about 11B (only 40% higher than today) towards
| the end of the century and then declining. It's always hard
| to know what's going to happen in the future, but currently
| it's pretty unlikely that we'll ever see a worldwide
| population all that much higher than what we already have.
| runarberg wrote:
| Two things strike me as odd in this article:
|
| > 536 Icelandic volcano erupts, dimming the sun for 18 months
|
| I'm not aware of any evidence that the 536 eruption happened in
| Iceland. Ash has been found in both Antarctica and Greenland
| indicating that the eruption was probably much closer to the
| equator[1].
|
| > 541-543 The "Justinian" bubonic plague spreads through the
| Mediterranean, killing 35%-55% of the population and speeding the
| collapse of the eastern Roman Empire.
|
| The Roman empire stood for another 9 centuries after the
| Justinian plague. I was under the impression that Justinian the
| Great had overextended the empire in the sixth century so it
| naturally shrunk to a more manageable size.
|
| 1: https://kvennabladid.is/2018/11/20/ekkert-bendir-til-ad-
| risa... (Icelandic)
| asdff wrote:
| Historical consensus favors the plague as quite significant,
| even if the city of constantinople managed to survive
| independently for several more centuries. The weakened
| mediterranian presented opportunities for the gothic tribes to
| take territory in gaul and italy in the decades following, and
| the economy nor the manpower of the empire never recovered. By
| the fall, Constantinople was a hollow shell of what it was,
| controlling hardly any territory and partially in ruins,
| ultimately abandoned by its few remaining allies in the face of
| the Turks.
| koheripbal wrote:
| You are way way way oversimplifying nearly 1000 years of
| history between the plague of Justinian and the fall of
| Constantinople.
|
| The Justinian expansion was untenable. If you look at it on
| the map - there are strong enemies on literally all sides. It
| was a desperate but hopeless attempt to regain the Western
| Empire.
|
| The plague made it worse - but was hardly the catalyst.
| ...and the East Roman Empire was far more than a city state
| for a majority of the remaining NINE centuries.
| cs702 wrote:
| Not just the worst year to be alive, but also the beginning of
| the worst _century_ to be alive:
|
| _" The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into
| economic stagnation that lasted until 640."_
|
| Imagine the kind of horror and suffering that a century of global
| economic stagnation inflicts on _generations_ of people.
| bhaak wrote:
| You can take that even further as the sewage systems in Europe
| didn't recover until the 18th/19th century.
| [deleted]
| Avalaxy wrote:
| Could we use this against global warming? Artificially put
| something in the atmosphere that bounces part of the sunlight
| back?
| Symmetry wrote:
| Many people have proposed putting sulfur dioxide into the upper
| atmosphere. It looks relatively easy and could potentially be
| within the means of even poorer countries like Bangladesh which
| have a lot to loose from rising sea levels. But we can't
| predict exactly how it would turn out and it would certainly
| make ocean acidifcation worse so it's very much a desperation
| play.
| walleeee wrote:
| Yes. Marine cloud brightening has also been proposed. IMO
| we'll almost certainly see either that or stratospheric
| aerosols as nations begin to feel the increasing effects of
| climate change and grow more desperate.
|
| Whether it might be uni- or multilateral is also interesting,
| given the possibly serious effects on e.g. agriculture in
| "downstream" geographic regions. It's not much of a stretch
| to imagine it kicking off some kind of war.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Clearly you're not a fan of sci-fi as every time we do that we
| screw it up. Snowpiercer on TBS is the latest iteration on that
| concept.
|
| More seriously though, I think there are better and more
| economical ways to combat global climate warming.
| harryh wrote:
| Yes, potentially. But the potential side effects are scary.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/solar-geo...
| sprainedankles wrote:
| While an 18-month fog sounds terrifying, I'm absolutely
| fascinated by the amount of clues we can gather from geological
| formations like glaciers. The universe has encoded information in
| so many neat ways, and our ability to cross-reference these
| measurements with written histories is pretty cool.
|
| Fascination aside, this is another one of those sobering
| reminders that whatever I spend my time on as an engineer might
| be worth absolutely nothing in the near-term, and that's a bit
| frustrating. What could I be doing to help engineer a better
| world for future generations? How do I optimize my individual
| talents so I can achieve the most impact in my lifetime? How do I
| find the right team of other humans to work toward this? Convince
| others or myself that it's a worthy cause? (I could care less
| about legacy or personal comforts/gains - I just want to help
| humanity move forward, not maintain it)
| dang wrote:
| Discussed, a little, at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469891
| twic wrote:
| I didn't realise HN had been running _that_ long.
| labster wrote:
| Back then, people had to downvote by bleaching only a portion
| of the illuminated manuscript. Unfortunately the original
| karma logs were lost when the Knights Templar were disbanded.
| dentemple wrote:
| The Defenestration of Prague made for some real lively
| debate here.
| pureliquidhw wrote:
| How susceptible are we to another catastrophic volcano eruption?
|
| After COVID-19 shut down supply chains, there were some
| problematic delays, but seems like we quickly recovered. If the
| entire planet's crops were wiped out, we're all just SOL if we
| don't get canned goods in time? If we had 12 months notice, could
| we as a planet get it together? 6 months? 3 months?
|
| Is there forecasting for volcanoes? (looks like yes:
| https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/forecast.html) How often do
| geologists cry wolf?
| divbzero wrote:
| In our recent past, we experienced some disruption from the
| 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption.
|
| On a less likely and more extreme level, Yellowstone has
| erupted 3 times over the past 2.1 million years [2] and there
| are other known supervolcanos [3] on Earth.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallajokull
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Forecasting volcanoes is a lot like forecasting earthquakes,
| it's really difficult to do and often there's very little
| warning, maybe a couple of days at most, but sometimes comes
| with no warning at all. The White Island volcano killed several
| people last year:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Whakaari_/_White_Island_e...
| This place was a famous tourist destination.
|
| One of my favorite sites for tracking Volcanic eruptions is:
| https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/volcano_news.html . It
| provides real-time updates on volcano advisories.
|
| I would say we're still very susceptible to a supervolcano
| eruption. There is no stopping that level of force. It can
| dramatically shift the climate for years, if not decades. And
| it would be catastrophic for crop production. I suspect we
| would need to move a large portion of our crop production into
| greenhouses and growhouses in order to survive that level of
| event.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| How would green/grow houses help in such a situation?
| closeparen wrote:
| Lava flows are a relatively local and immediate problem,
| what will really get large numbers of people over a long
| period of time is clouds of ash blocking out the sun.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The cold weather would kill crops in all but probably
| tropical latitudes. The lack of sunlight will slow plant
| growth. Placing plants in greenhouses / growhouses would
| keep them warm and you could supplement sunlight with LED
| lighting to feed the plants.
| Exmoor wrote:
| But creating enough greenhouse capacity to feed 8 billion
| people would be incredibly difficult. Bottom line would
| be, if something causes sunlight to be largely blocked
| around the world for a sustained period of time, the
| number of people who would starve to death would likely
| number in the billions.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| The White Island eruption was forecasted though. It's just
| that tourists kept going there regardless.
| alliao wrote:
| whoa any forecast reports? I think the tourists are suing
| the tourism companies right now
| dekervin wrote:
| I am genuinely curious, what hobby of yours makes you track
| volcanic eruptions regularly ?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I just study climate developments and geological history
| sometimes and volcanoes are a big part of that. They've
| shaped life on earth.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| In what sense have we "recovered" from supply chain
| disruptions? I go to the store and still routinely see empty
| shelves where TP should be; have experienced meat shortages in
| recent days; and stores are still rationing things like hand
| sanitizer (when you can find it), canned goods, meat, and rice.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Personally, I haven't seen any empty shelves or shortages
| since early May, and the only rationing I've seen in June is
| on hand sanitizer and instant noodles. I guess I don't know
| whether my area is uncommonly good or yours is uncommonly
| bad.
| adventured wrote:
| I'm in a mid-Atlantic state, the shortages (at all the
| major grocery stores) stopped after the first several weeks
| post initial hoarding rush. That's about two months ago
| now. The grocery stores here are stocked normally, you'd
| never know a pandemic were going on.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| In my state we're going to have a serious problem if the
| outbreaks in our farming communities continue to grow.
| There are like 3 counties here that we are utterly
| dependent on for all our local food and they're all just
| now entering the "exponential" stage on the
| epidemiological curve.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| California? TBH, if the farming areas of California get
| seriously affected, the entire country is going to
| suffer. California produces a lot of food.
| AnssiH wrote:
| > I go to the store and still routinely see empty shelves
| where TP should be;
|
| Huh, so that is why Google Maps keeps asking me whether TP
| was in stock every time I go the store - I did not realize
| there were still actual shortages on that elsewhere, I
| thought it was just a couple of days of panicing in March and
| that Google was just being weird / behind the times.
|
| FWIW, I haven't noticed such disruptions here (Finland) since
| March, so it probably varies a lot regionally.
| usrusr wrote:
| Well, a country of 5.5 million where two of the three
| biggest paper manufacturers are based, if the TP situation
| was worse we would all envy you as the land of the chosen.
| loungelover31 wrote:
| I Imagine it takes a lot for Finland to run low on paper
| products
| _jal wrote:
| > In what sense have we "recovered" from supply chain
| disruptions?
|
| The initial shock has past, and consumer product makers have
| had plenty of time to do whatever they were going to do.
|
| "Recovery" is a word that sets up certain expectations. It
| seems to me that what happened during the first half of this
| year is more usefully considered "change".
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Recovery is patchy. Some locations are fine, others are still
| having problems.
|
| The bigger problem is the lack of any economic or physical
| contingency planning. There was some medical planning of a
| sort for a pandemic, but there seems to be no _economic_
| planning of any kind for catastrophes.
|
| National governments seem to have improvised economic
| solutions to COVID with varying degrees of competence and
| success.
|
| This is negligent and inept. Catastrophes are more or less
| guaranteed, and there should at least be some thought given
| to making sure that the first thing that falls apart isn't
| the national economy.
| ghaff wrote:
| From what I can see in the Boston area--not that I've gone to
| stores much--you still see bare shelves and you can't really
| go to the store and expect to get everything on your shopping
| list.
|
| On the other hand...
|
| Getting food to eat was never a problem at any point. And
| today, reliably getting meat, chicken, dairy, paper products
| even if not exactly what you want, most baking supplies, etc.
| is pretty much a non-problem.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| True, I never had a problem getting enough food. But, I am
| definitely still seeing issues getting most of the things
| you listed out explicitly, at least intermittently.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's definitely not "normal" but it's been increasingly
| getting back to it over the past few weeks where I live.
| ci5er wrote:
| IDK where you live (and I won't ask! because I respect
| privacy and stuff), but in central Texas (Austin) and most of
| the urban markets I have been to (HEB, Central Market,
| Randall's, Trader Joe's, all the regional BBQ joints), I
| don't think I have seen any disruption in anything the whole
| time, except TP, briefly hand-sanitizer and a pop in the
| price of milk. I'm guessing the first two (at least) were
| because of people doing the lemming-thing and over-buying.
|
| I understand that this is/was not the case across the
| country, and I have been a bit baffled about that. (Although
| I do recognize the supply chains to restaurants and to
| corporations (TP) and to grocery stores are not the same and
| don't easily switch on a dime. But, we have meat and yogurt
| and eggs and milk on the shelves, but some friends in
| Connecticut or NYC, for example, say that they do not. And I
| can not understand why.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Eastern supply chains are mostly restored but liquid
| soap, alcohol, Lysol, and other cleaners are unobtanium.
| Some frozen foods are still cleared out because nobody is
| eating out and stores haven't compensated for the demand.
| ci5er wrote:
| Thanks. It's hard to get nation-wide reports by chain.
| All I see are pictures on social media of outraged people
| going: "Why don't we have any sock-eye salmon? And Look!
| The shelves are empty!".
|
| Surely data are the aggregate set of anecdotes, but while
| I see a lot of spot anecdotes, I don't see much data.
| Cerium wrote:
| One angle on the TP problem is that we didn't just have a
| shock, we had a shock and then lasting change in demand. I
| saw an article that says demand for residential sized TP
| rolls is up 40% because a lot of bathroom visits are
| happening in homes that used to happen in work places.
| zaroth wrote:
| Huh, I never thought about the demand shift from WFH. Much
| easier to blame hoarders. But this makes a lot of sense,
| thanks for pointing this out.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I know that, but the point remains that the supply chain
| has not "recovered" in any meaningful sense. Capitalism, in
| fact, guarantees it will not (too expensive to switch
| production from commercial to residential TP). We're going
| to be seeing this phenomenon until people can go back to
| work.
| leetcrew wrote:
| on the other hand, commercial-sized TP works just as well
| and is readily available. it just won't fit on your nice
| TP holder. if this is what capitalism failing looks like,
| I'd say it's not so bad.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I didn't say it was a _failure_ of capitalism, merely a
| property. Had it become necessary to do so, yes, I would
| have either ordered some commercial TP, or bought a
| bidet.
|
| Now, if you want to talk about how we have zillions of
| brands of TP, but they're all made by the same handful of
| companies (illusion of choice), I might argue _that's_ a
| failure mode of capitalism.
|
| #ShitYouCantSayOnHN
| leetcrew wrote:
| sorry, I've seen so many memes lately comparing US
| grocery stores to soviet bread lines that I read a bit of
| that sentiment into your comment.
|
| it was a bit unsettling to see how much stuff was out of
| stock in the first few weeks of the crisis and wonder
| whether that was going to get better or worse. now the
| greatest hardship I face is having to settle for my
| second favorite brand of eggs sometimes. overall, I'm
| surprised at how resilient our system has turned out to
| be. despite the federal government totally dropping the
| ball, the individual states have more or less taken
| appropriate steps to handle their particular
| circumstances. I suspect we may be reopening a little
| early, but only time will tell.
|
| also as an aside, there are certainly some positions that
| are very unpopular on HN. but if you post stuff like
| "#ShitYouCantSayOnHN", you will _definitely_ get
| downvoted.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I'm actually surprised there wasn't more supply chain
| disruption. Cleaning supplies, meat, TP, cold medicine
| (initially), disinfectants of any sort, canned goods,
| rice, dry beans, baking supplies, thermometers, masks,
| and gloves are the major things I noticed had gone
| "missing." My girlfriend and I could have certainly
| survived by modifying our diet and, as I mentioned,
| possibly buying a bidet.
|
| But, we are both fortunate to still have jobs, and places
| to store a small stockpile of these things. I literally
| was able to turn a spare closet into a dry pantry by
| putting a wire shelving unit in there. We still have
| basically a lifetime supply of rice, and a nice selection
| of staple canned goods, just in case things go further
| south. We were not real particular about brands. We have
| access to Amazon and Costco. We will be fine.
|
| This was nowhere near Soviet bread line status. In the
| Soviet Union, perhaps you had to stand in line for bread,
| but, at least there was bread. Here, we let some people
| go without bread, because they're drug addicts, mentally
| unstable, or just don't want to have religion pushed on
| them.
|
| I'm sure this also falls into #ShitYouCantSayOnHN, and I
| don't care about the downvotes. I know you can't say
| anything against the free market or capitalism and expect
| to win any points here. That mildly annoys me, but I'd
| rather have my gray comment out there for other people to
| see, and sacrifice a couple of fake internet points to do
| it. I win enough points back in technical discussions
| that I'm in no danger of losing my downvoting, flagging,
| or vouching capabilities, so it literally does not matter
| to me; I've net gained 12 points just today. I'd rather
| draw the lightning rod to myself so people can see how
| rabid free-market capitalists don't even bother to argue
| a point, instead mashing that down arrow.
|
| People dismiss socialist perspectives here without even
| comment, which is sad. They don't even give the ideas the
| consideration that those who claim socialists are all
| economically illiterate 14 year olds in their mothers'
| basements do. They ignore that Albert Einstein, Stephen
| Hawking, and other prominent intellectuals espouse
| socialist philosophies.
|
| Honestly, I'd be pleased to get downvotes, if there was
| any actual discussion, but that's appararently _verboten_
| here.
| quotha wrote:
| You might be interested in the film "Into the Inferno" by
| Werner Herzog.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Inferno_(film)
| fsckboy wrote:
| How susceptible are we to another catastrophic volcano
| eruption? We're apparently not very susceptible to a few
| degrees of global cooling, so at least we have that going for
| us.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I'm going to plug a charity here, Allfed, working to develop
| technologies to let us survive the loss of conventional
| agriculture for a period of years by working out efficient and
| economical ways to convert things like, e.g., dead trees into
| digestible calories and the plans to deploy them in the event
| of a large volcanic interruption or asteroid strike or nuclear
| exchange.
|
| https://allfed.info/
| ardit33 wrote:
| Note, that after this period (536-600), there were huge swaths of
| Europe that was depopulated, and or decimated, and this enabled
| major migration movements...
|
| Eg. After this period, in the early 600's, Slavic tribes migrated
| south, all the way to Greece/Egean sea, but eventually were
| pushed back to current/modern areas....
|
| So, these events contributed heavily to even modern borders and
| some events....
|
| I know, there are some weird post-modernist movement to say 'dark
| ages were not that bad', but indeed, these were some of the
| darkest/harshest time in our recorded history....
|
| The volcano being in Iceland, could explain on why Britain was
| one of the harshest hit areas by the dark ages....
| umaar wrote:
| I noticed there are a number of popups/stickies/banners on this
| site. How do folks feel about blocking them with uBlock
| considering it's a nonprofit, and one of those banners was asking
| for a donation?
|
| The page in incognito: https://i.imgur.com/EHhGjJ9.png
|
| The page with uBlock, sticky elements removed, and the sidebar
| removed: https://i.imgur.com/mNJFMyj.png
| yesco wrote:
| Personally I find them obnoxious, if they weren't glued to the
| bottom of the screen it'd be better. In fact if they weren't
| already being blocked by ublock I would have immediately added
| them to my filter list manually.
| freetanga wrote:
| 2020: "Hold my beer"
| tus88 wrote:
| The fact this is down-voted shows how far HN has lost its way.
| subsubzero wrote:
| How many people reading this have a years worth of food? Could
| any of us survive something similar to this eruption? I think
| covid really opened alot of peoples eyes to extreme worldwide
| disasters (volcanos, large earthquakes, pandemics) and how most
| are not prepared for it at all and yes these things do and will
| continue to keep happening.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'd just point out that keeping a year's worth of food for a
| rapid and unexpected event is nuclear bunker level prep. It
| also requires spending a _lot_ of money and storage space on
| something that 's going to have to be rotated out every few
| years. And while some things can last pretty much indefinitely,
| other things have shelf lifes and you're probably not going to
| use all those canned goods during normal times.
|
| So there's a very significant annual cost to maintaining that
| perpetual one year supply of necessaries.
| grumple wrote:
| You've got to buy things that you'll eat anyway - like canned
| beans, etc, and use them and replace them regularly.
| ghaff wrote:
| I do not eat canned beans (other than baked beans) or
| canned vegetables generally. Most of the things I would buy
| for "prepping" would be just thrown out in a few years.
| [deleted]
| divbzero wrote:
| I hope this pandemic has opened everyone's eyes to the benefits
| of disaster preparedness. If more of us get into the habit of
| stocking up in advance, we would experience less of a spike in
| demand when the next disaster strikes.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I considered myself an "aspirational Prepper" before the
| pandemic, but I'm getting more and more serious about it.
| Watching society totally freak out over as little as going
| without TP for a few weeks and going without their manicure
| for a few months has been eye-opening.
|
| My plans to stock up on survival supplies and buy a little
| bug out property in a remote spot have gone from "wouldn't
| that be neat?" to "maybe it is time to set some money aside
| and start building up a savings for this" pretty quickly.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I try to be prepared as possible, at least for covid there
| was a little warning, I was extremely concerned late Jan.
| '20 and bought extra TP/paper towels/razors before
| everything went crazy. For a volcanic eruption there is
| little to no warning so having essentials on hand seems
| pretty important. I went to school/knew alot of Mormons and
| used to poke fun at them for having so much canned food(the
| church mentions stocking up on a years worth of food) and
| that doesn't seem that out of line now.
| lgl wrote:
| The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull [0] was a small
| sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day
| to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything
| much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects
| on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a
| matter of "if" but "when".
|
| Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge
| shifts on the planet's thermal equilibrium including our current
| state of global warming or many other unknown events (like
| whatever happened to cause the Younger Dryas [1] "only" ~13k
| years ago which is theorized to have been either a mega eruption,
| impact event or stellar supernova).
|
| It's pretty scary and definitely not something that we're at all
| prepared even with all our technology so we're basically in a
| permanent state of risk of complete reset which is guaranteed to
| happen eventually. Sadly it's not something most of us spend too
| much time thinking or preparing for. I guess this is largely
| because we live very short lives and that make these kind of
| events appear much "larger than life" so they go mostly ignored
| except for some underfunded science departments or the occasional
| billionaire. To me this is the main reason that going
| multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way
| to escape this inevitable doom even though that is also a huge
| barrier to overcome on so many levels.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
| yummypaint wrote:
| It's also a good reason to leave fossil fuels in the ground and
| not just extract them as quickly as possible wherever we find
| them. It seems conceivable that we could eventually find
| ourselves thermodynamically unable to recover after a
| catastrophy like a big solar flare. Unfortunately there is no
| way for anyone to make money by being responsible in this way.
| We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund and
| spending it on cocaine.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I am not too certain of the logic of the arguement - namely
| because fossil fuels are actually pretty damn advanced in
| terms of "actual technology and societal infastructure to
| access and exploit them". We already went through this long
| ago with surface deposits of copper ore as well essentially
| millenia ago.
|
| Effectively the time when it is useful is "when we don't have
| cheaper alternatives yet". We still should strive to make
| renewables and storage the cheaper option though.
|
| To get really pedantic our 20th century understanding of
| power and energy are exactly backwards colloquially from what
| is really provided. Power is energy over time. The "power"
| infastructure was actually largely an energy infastructure
| with the exception of say hydro electric dams - you can only
| burn fuel once no matter how clever your ability to extract
| it. Meanwhile "renewable energy" provides power over its
| period of existence.
| Retric wrote:
| There are a lot of surface level coal deposits right now
| that can be harvested with hand tools. It's simply a
| question of efficiency, if a deposit is not vast nobody
| turns it into a mine.
| Someone wrote:
| I would think the combination of windmills and wood supplies
| should almost always provide a (ssllooww) recovery path.
|
| There will plenty of metals on the surface. Use the wood to
| melt iron. Use iron to make saws. Use saws to cut trees into
| beams and planks. Use beams and planks to build windmills.
| Use windmills to generate power and electricity. Etc.
|
| Using coal and oil we went through the part from using mills
| for power to where we are now in about 250 years. On the one
| hand, if knowledge is retained, that can be sped up. On the
| other hand, it will be a lot harder to go through that
| process without coal and oil.
|
| I would guess the net effect will be that it will take
| longer, as one of the effects of not having coal and oil will
| be lower yields in agriculture and, hence, a much smaller
| world population that also has to make a bigger effort to
| produce food.
| aksss wrote:
| > There's no way for anyone to make money by being
| responsible
|
| Not just that, but there's no way to sustain the level of
| human development (and population) we currently have without
| continuing to feed the energy beast. Our daily burn rate on
| oil/gas/coal is so profoundly high, and growing, that a)
| nothing can fill the gap; and b) it can't be shut down
| without condemning further development (esp. in Africa, India
| and China). Two disconnected factoids to illustrate the level
| of dependency and consumption we have today: without ammonia
| synthesis from fossil fuel, worldwide organic fertilizer
| stock could sustain only about 4bln people - globally; China
| in-serviced more cement (which requires fossil fuels) in like
| five years than the US did in the last 100 years.
|
| To reduce carbon output, you need to switch coal use to
| natural gas where possible. That's the best near term
| solution right now - isolate coal and oil consumption to the
| industries that really need them - e.g. transportation,
| manufacturing - and work on alternative sources of electric
| generation, i.e. hydro where available, nuclear where not,
| unless some miracle net-positive and reliable electric
| generation method becomes available in the meantime.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| We can use nuclear [?] to lower carbon emissions.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Using renewables would be more cost effective, even up to
| 100% replacement of fossil fuels. Cost of storage does
| not change this conclusion.
| aksss wrote:
| There is zero chance of 100% replacement of fossil fuels
| with renewables. Zero. Without a Thanos solution.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk&list=WL&index
| =5&...
|
| EDIT: I mean, you guys are downvoting these comments, and
| I'm sorry to tell you things you don't want to hear, but
| would prefer that you respond with contrary information
| rather than downvoting. Happy to alter my views and
| engage in information sharing.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You're simply wrong, and we will continue to tell you
| things YOU don't want to hear.
|
| Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is altogether more
| practical and economical than doing so with a combination
| of new nuclear and renewables. This wasn't true even ten
| years ago, but the costs of renewables have fallen so
| fast that it's now the case. At the same time, the
| supposed "Nuclear Renaissance" was revealed to be an
| illusion. Nuclear is now a dead technology walking. And
| renewables (and associated technologies like batteries
| and electrolyzers) continue to show cost declines at a
| rate nuclear could only dream of.
|
| BTW, summarize the argument in the video. I don't waste
| my time watching video links.
| airstrike wrote:
| Here's a summary of the video, posted as one of the top
| comments on YT: https://sundaynewsletter.com/february-
| video-summaries/vaclav...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nowhere does he make the case that 100% renewables is
| impossible. It is, of course, a tall order, but
| maintaining and growing a global energy infrastructure OF
| ANY KIND is a tall order.
|
| Smil has argued that energy transitions happen only
| slowly, but I think he's being misled because the current
| rate of cost decline in renewables is unprecedented in
| its speed, as is the willingness of increasing numbers of
| countries to impose CO2 taxes or the equivalent.
| aksss wrote:
| What is wrong in what I have said?
| pfdietz wrote:
| This statement:
|
| "There is zero chance of 100% replacement of fossil fuels
| with renewables. Zero. Without a Thanos solution."
|
| is utter nonsense. I mean, it's as if you're asking me
| what's wrong with a statement that the Earth is flat.
| unFou wrote:
| I'm not sure whether nuclear is better, and renewables
| definitely is a good thing to have in the mix. But
| comparing the carbon emissions of Germany and France, and
| the cost of electricity in both countries would suggest
| that at least currently, renewables without nuclear isn't
| as effective for supplying our power needs as renewables
| with nuclear.
|
| If I've misunderstood this somewhere, I would love to
| learn more.
| simonh wrote:
| Germany jumped the gun. They started investing heavily in
| renewables when they were still very costly and storage
| technologies weren't practical. Things have changed a lot
| in the last 30 years.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You're making an invalid argument there. The current
| generation mix in France and Germany reflects decisions
| made up to decades in the past, when relative prices were
| very different from what they are now. Back in the 20th
| century when France was building reactors, renewables
| were much more expensive. What was the low cost option
| then is not what it is now.
|
| Going forward, even France is having a very hard time
| building reactors, and is finding renewables are cheaper.
| This is one reason why France's nuclear industry is in
| such trouble.
|
| Germany deliberately pushed renewables in order to send
| them down their experience curves. This was spectacularly
| successful, but it has come at a high price to their
| consumers, who are still paying that down. The rest of us
| have reaped the benefit of far lower renewable costs.
| yongjik wrote:
| Okay, then let's look at Japan, which pretty much shut
| down nuclear in 2011. And this is the result:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan#/media/File
| :Ja...
|
| Japan, one of the most technologically developed place in
| the world, cannot use renewables when they shut down
| nuclear. Instead they turn back to coal.
|
| I'm not saying renewables are always inferior - e.g.,
| California would be a perfect place for solar. But in
| every story I've heard of, when nuclear power is turned
| off fossil fuels pick up the slack.
| unFou wrote:
| Sure, so that partly explains why electricity costs so
| much more in Germany than France. But for a lay person
| (ie me), I can't help but compare the carbon emissions
| and air quality between the two countries, and attribute
| the difference to fossil-fuel vs nuclear power plants?
|
| Also, I always assumed the lower renewable costs have
| come from economies of scale due mainly to China
| exploding it's energy production (which renewables makes
| a decent chunk of)
| kortilla wrote:
| Or, you know, just use nuclear.
| aksss wrote:
| I mentioned nuclear. It is secondary to the conversion
| from coal to gas though in terms of near-term realized
| benefit.
|
| Nuclear requires a lot of dereg and testing that will be
| decades out if we start today. This assumes the barriers
| of popular rejection can be overcome. China might pull it
| off, but I don't see the US radiating enthusiasm for it.
| But yeah, since few places on earth can take advantage of
| hydro, I don't see any long-term alternative to nuclear.
| alharith wrote:
| Nuclear. The answer always has been nuclear.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund
| and spending it on cocaine
|
| Not usually a fan of us vs them mentality, but your use of
| "we" here feels bad. Surely, it's all of us that use these
| resources, nobody on HN is self sufficient (please be the
| exception). But at the same time, most of us aren't getting
| much of the "cocaine" here, at least relatively.
|
| It would almost be reasonable to say " _They_ are effectively
| draining our planetary rainy day fund and spending it on
| cocaine ".. whoever _they_ are. The ones with cocaine
| mustaches presumably.
|
| EDIT: Someone paid a lot of money to make this not an "our"
| choice but instead a "their" choice. If you feel like this is
| something you have any real control over, I urge you to
| change things.
| aksss wrote:
| You kidding me? We're all getting the coke. Just because
| you're not Scarface doesn't avoid the fact that all of us
| are awash in plastics, silicone, rare earth metals,
| concrete, steel, precious metals, alloys, goods from far
| flung lands, industrial agriculture and many assumptions
| about available services that rely on the same and ravenous
| upstream fossil fuel consumption. We (as human consumers)
| never had it so good, and if that luxury is unevenly
| distributed, the fact remains that the tide continues to
| lift all boats globally. You certainly benefit from the
| aggregate bounty society as a whole has reaped (enjoy that
| Starbucks!) and directly are living a better life today
| than someone of your station would have lived 300 years
| ago. I don't even know you in the least, but am comfortable
| making that statement categorically because the difference
| is global capabilities is that profound.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > living a better life today than someone of your station
| would have lived 300 years ago
|
| > We (as human consumers) never had it so good
|
| You couldn't possibly understand how much better
| community and and a sense purpose is to the life we're
| living. The fact that we become more and more isolated,
| more and more lied to, more and more defeated and yet:
| you think gimmicky material goods is what defines quality
| of life.. it's depressing.
|
| I've seen so many people of your stance see how wrong
| they are the moment they find community, but I've never
| seen a person lose community and feel like money could
| replace it.
|
| --------
|
| FURTHER! WHAT THE FUCK!? WHY IS ANY OF THIS NECESSARY TO
| GET THESE GOODS!?
|
| Can you really not imagine a world where we make
| technological progress without doing horrible things?!
| How fucking much cool-aid have you drank!?
| simonh wrote:
| It's not either/or, you can have community with or
| without material goods. I do have community and a sense
| of purpose and a satisfying life with my family around
| me. Many don't, but that has always been true at all
| times and all places through everything we know about the
| history of human life. You're writing as though misery
| and suffering were recent inventions of Capitalism,
| previously unknown to mankind.
|
| The fact is though we are all in the developed world
| swimming in material wealth and comfort unimaginable to
| most humans from even a few generations ago. Only an
| incredible abundance of cheap energy and raw materials
| make this possible.
|
| Yes the very wealthy have yachts and helicopters, but if
| you have a reasonably up to date smartphone and laptop, a
| can of Coke or a Starbucks, maybe a PlayStation and a
| microwave oven, etc, there isn't really much a
| billionaire can spend that will get them anything
| significantly better. The main advantage of wealth is
| getting other people to do things for you, but in terms
| of material life were in an incredibly democratic and
| egalitarian era.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I agree that things have gotten better over time, but how
| can you be so smug about it?
|
| The amount of hoarding, infighting, and extortion has
| been disgusting. We're advancing as slow as species
| seemingly could short of completely falling apart and
| destroying their Earth, and even that's in question right
| now.
|
| If we did things the way I'm speaking of, I guarantee you
| we'd have all of these things and more. Going slow and
| doing things right is worth it. Having value for
| creativity, community and labor is worth it. Not
| justifying oppressive decisions we couldn't have changed
| on the basis that we got some cheap consumer crap from
| it... it's worth it to me at least.
|
| This line of thought is unpopular now, but if history is
| any indicator, the sentience of the future will look back
| on these logs and question how the fuck you could read
| these words and not fucking get it. _We would be more
| advanced if we didn 't do these things_. Not the other
| way around.
| simonh wrote:
| You're largely right, we definitely need to move sharply
| in a more sustainable direction. Income inequality is a
| growing problem. However your assertion up thread that we
| in general don't benefit is incredibly naive. I think
| you're conflating disagreement with that position with
| disagreement with a whole host of utterly unrelated
| issues.
| nemo44x wrote:
| What if one believes life in general is more or less
| meaningless and that the "better" feeling you get from
| community is nothing more than various chemical releases
| that can be triggered just the same as consuming as many
| resources as I can while I'm here?
|
| Why seek the good feelings by relying on a community that
| you have no control over than pick your favorite things
| to consume? Why have people that lived within the
| community model for thousands of years defected the first
| chance they could?
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| Yeah, UK kept harassing Iceland because of that mess with
| Icelandic banks. Then suddenly, volcano erupted, airplanes
| started having difficulties landing in Heathrow, and the
| harassment suddenly stopped.
| runarberg wrote:
| 12 Years since, and I still don't understand why the UK went
| after Iceland for reparations. Landsbanki was a private bank
| operating in the UK, and one of the owners Bjorgolfur Thor
| Bjorgolfsson is still doing business in the UK, and is now
| among the top 100 billionaires in the UK (even though he
| caused a 6 billion euro damage that the UK taxpayers paid).
| jcranmer wrote:
| > (like whatever happened to cause the Younger Dryas [1] "only"
| ~13k years ago which is theorized to have been either a mega
| eruption, impact event or stellar supernova)
|
| My understanding is that the current leading theory is a
| drastic shift in outflow of Lake Agassiz (an expanded version
| of Lake Manitoba in Canada).
| f_allwein wrote:
| Michio Kaku wrote about how it is the challenge for each
| civilization to guard against such life-threatening
| catastrophes: https://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-
| extraterrestr...
| ativzzz wrote:
| > To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or
| space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this
| inevitable doom
|
| I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random
| acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal
| in unfamiliar and hostile environments.
|
| If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on
| our home planet, we have no chance of handling them in space or
| on other planets.
| bilegeek wrote:
| That's the issue. If we can't handle the black swan events in
| time, we'll at least have a backup.
|
| Granted, this doesn't cover bigger black swan events like
| gamma ray bursts, where the entire solar system is screwed,
| but it'll at least help with Earthside apocalypse.
|
| The fact that we couldn't handle it is indeed incriminating
| against our abilities as a species, but as they say, perfect
| is the enemy of good.
| cgriswald wrote:
| It's not possible for a gamma ray burst to 'screw' the
| entire solar system. It's already an incredibly unlikely
| event to occur near enough to do damage. Then the beam
| would have to be directed in our direction. _And_ the beam
| would have to essentially hit the solar system edge on or
| face on, but not at any other angle.
|
| Even if all that happened, underground bases would be
| protected, as would above-ground or in-space habitats that
| happened to be protected either by the mass of the body
| they're on by virtue of 'facing away' from the GRB; or by
| virtue of being behind another body (e.g. Jupiter, the sun,
| some body they are orbitting) relative to the GRB. With
| space habitats, they may also be protected by virtue of
| already needing some level of protection against cosmic
| radiation; but that's highly speculative.
|
| A GRB also wouldn't destroy the Earth. It would do a lot of
| damage to its ecosystems, but the Earth would be relatively
| safe again not terribly long after the event, even without
| human intervention. If we had the technology to colonize
| space, we could definitely recolonize the Earth, even in a
| worst case scenario where the entire ecosystem collapses.
| sethammons wrote:
| The idea is not to avoid black swan events entirely, it is to
| have pockets that are missed by a given event. Earth goes
| cold? Well, good thing the moon base can preserve technology
| and knowledge for a hundred years. Solar flare? Good thing we
| have the under-ice base on Europa. Europa explodes? Good
| thing that we are still on Earth. Now if they all happen at
| the same time, like the sun dying, then that is why you want
| to get a star base even further away.
| pogimabus wrote:
| Becoming multiplanetary IS handling it, just not in a
| necessarily "ideal" way. The problem is that we don't want to
| have the reset button hit and have every human in existence
| set back to the stone age technologically; having multiple
| self sustaining human societies on multiple planets mitigates
| that risk in a major way since the likelihood of a disaster
| being so large that it resets technology on both/all planets
| is much smaller than the likelihood of having a disaster that
| does it for just one of them.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I suppose a pandemic would still do it though, assuming
| sustained travel between habitats.
|
| We're gonna want a multi-week airlock to be allowed into
| the Moon & Mars habitats.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Latency provides a natural level of quarantine as well
| even if the volume is high enough for a sustained stream.
| Although there are plenty of messy details involved in
| sufficiency.
| kmonsen wrote:
| The problem is that it is at least 10x easier to fix Earth
| than to terraform Mars, and all the problems we have on
| Earth are going to be there as well.
| baby wrote:
| Resilience is not about fixing something. Otherwise we
| wouldn't have created the internet.
| Symmetry wrote:
| There aren't many catastrophes that would totally wipe out
| Earth but still leave offworld colonies intact. Even after
| a supervolcanic eruption or plague or nuclear war there'll
| probably still be more living humans on Earth than on Mars.
| And supernovas and rogue AIs can wipe out both. I like the
| idea of settling space because I think human lives, if
| they're pleasant, are intrinsically valuable and I'd like
| there to be a trillion people in the solar system
| eventually. But in terms of of overcoming catastrophies
| you're better of donating to groups like Allfed or AI
| safety or arms control groups.
| lgl wrote:
| > There aren't many catastrophes that would totally wipe
| out Earth but still leave offworld colonies intact. Even
| after a supervolcanic eruption or plague or nuclear war
| there'll probably still be more living humans on Earth
| than on Mars.
|
| Supervolcanos, nuclear war and meteor impacts are
| probably the most likely of all and could be survived by
| offworld colonies. And while these could still leave a
| lot of humans on Earth, the biggest issue is that there
| is a big possibility for them to evolve into full blown
| ice ages that could potentially last for millennia which
| would pretty much guarantee extinction since the initial
| phase would most likely also destroy a large portion of
| infrastructure and human knowledge.
|
| > And supernovas and rogue AIs can wipe out both.
|
| I'm not a scientist but I think that supernovas and solar
| flares could maybe be detected with enough advance to
| possibly make sophisticated enough space colonies time
| their orbital movement to get in cover behind large
| bodies and any non-earth planetary colonies would already
| have to be mostly prepared for life under radiation
| shielding and zero atmosphere so the damage would
| probably be less than for everything on Earth's surface.
|
| Rogue AIs, assuming we're the ones building them, I feel
| are the least of our problems although I may be wrong of
| course. Viruses are also a possibility but could also be
| largely mitigated with multiple pockets of humanity
| spread by enough distance.
|
| > But in terms of of overcoming catastrophies you're
| better of donating to groups like Allfed or AI safety or
| arms control groups.
|
| I don't agree since it shouldn't be an either-or
| situation. We should strive to keep our marble safe and
| blue for as long as possible but preemptively prepare for
| any of these well known existential risks.
| arcade79 wrote:
| It's less than 30 years since we had a much, much larger
| eruption than Eyjafjallajokull. Mount Pinatubo erupted one June
| 12th 1991. That was a VEI-6 eruption.
|
| Eyjafjallajokull was only VEI-4.
|
| Now, one can argue about how Eyjafjallajokull caused ashfall in
| most of Europe, while Pinatubo is in the Philippines, but given
| the extent of ashfall from Pinatubo ..
|
| EDIT (forgot link):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatub...
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