6198

Is soapstone a stone that’s like soap or a soap made from Stone?

6199

So this is pretty cool conceptually, but I fail to see how it’s remotely scalable. The land use for a single foundry would be immense.

6200

“Heliogen, which is also backed by billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong”

I’ve heard him talk live at CTIA 2011:

M.D. first, billionaire second IMO.

Exciting news indeed. Thanks for the link! Carbon-free hydrogen as a potential fuel source is worth pursuing.

6201

There is a lot of empty, nearly-worthless land in the western US.

6202

nature can be quite ironic … hey nature, kill us with the climate, but spare us with your irony!

6203
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My sister just shared news from the Australian fires with me. I had no idea. I guess I am not watching the news enough.

6205

Very much still screwed:

6206

Well, the good news is that, not only are countries failing to meet their inadequate goals, emissions are still rising. Oh wait, that’s not good news.

In actual good news, while the wildfires have been horrible for koalas, they are not functionally extinct, nor have they lost 80% of their habitat:

6207

That is good news! And yes, the functionally extinct definitely gave the impression that our current and upcoming children may never live in a world where Koala’s exist which was… alarming, well alongside other alarm bells in here.

6208

The ‘functionally extinct’ label comes from just one group though, while other koala groups seem to be more optimistic. I hope it’s the latter case!

EDIT - Oh weird, I didn’t see the following messages until my reply!

6209

ohjoy

6210
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image

6213

That was a cheery read. :(

6214

Source article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0

If current national pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are implemented — and that’s a big ‘if’ — they are likely to result in at least 3 °C of global warming. This is despite the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement to limit warming to well below 2 °C. Some economists, assuming that climate tipping points are of very low probability (even if they would be catastrophic), have suggested that 3 °C warming is optimal from a cost–benefit perspective. However, if tipping points are looking more likely, then the ‘optimal policy’ recommendation of simple cost–benefit climate-economy models4 aligns with those of the recent IPCC report2. In other words, warming must be limited to 1.5 °C. This requires an emergency response.

This is why I find the Democratic debates very frustrating. We are right now in a crisis which dwarfs World War II in its potential consequences for the species, and we’re lucky if three minutes of discussion get sandwiched in next to a thirty-minute dissertation on the difference between Medicare For All and Medicare For All Who Want It. It’s the very definition of “arranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” and that’s coming from the good guys, the party that actually acknowledges the climate crisis and says rational things about climate policy.

6215

Yeah, it’s like people absorbed the message around 1989 that climate crisis is something we need to deal with sometime in the next 30-40 years, and despite it being 30 years later (and the models getting even more scary since then), it’s still treated as something to be done sometime in the next few decades.

6216

The only way to attack climate change is make it priority #1 in the western world, adjust all our economies toward addressing it simultaneously, and then coax/bribe/force the rest of the world to go along.

Basically climate change is said and people say “are you saying it’s my fault, and I have to pay for it?” and then decide to do nothing. As long as it’s “us” vs “them” nobody is going to do anything.

6217

Has there been a time in recent history where politics in the West was more about “us versus them”?