• 5 Posts
  • 96 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: December 17th, 2021

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  • I think the future will be good for countries like Canada / Sweden / Russia because global warming will more or less only help them. A lot of land will become better for agriculture / more habitable. Of course they will probably have to deal with some sort of refugee crisis from the global south.

    I don’t know much about this but I don’t think that this is how global warming works ?

    I think this misunderstanding is why the phrase “climate change” is preferred because “global warming” makes it sound like everywhere will be a few degrees warmer which is not really the case.

    My limited understanding is that the average global temperature may be warmer, but that really just means the ocean surface will be warmer, which creates more severe weather patterns.

    The big problems with climate change seem to be quite nuanced, in a nutshell more severe and less predictable weather patterns. For example here in Western Australia maybe 20% of the state is arable land with predictable rainfall. Suppose next year there’s 50% less rainfall in that 20% of the state (it just rains somewhere else) - that’s a catastrophic problem. 50% of the productivity, 50% of the water flowing into dams for industrial and household use. Suppose the following year there’s 50% more rainfall than usual, falling on arable land where it hasn’t rained for a few years - it washes the dry topsoil away again destroying productivity.

    There was an episode about water scarcity on doomsday watch podcast - fascinating & terrifying. There’s a phrase that stuck with me - if climate change is a shark then water scarcity is the teeth.


  • You’re right in a way, but I think you’re applying a narrow definition of “opinion” when I think most people ITT are thinking about “behaviours”.

    Sure, it’s not great to exclude dissenting political opinions, the intolerance paradox being a notable exception. That said, I’m not here to discuss politics.

    Say for example that some users will do anything for fake internet points - post anything, say anything, there behaviour is guided by the pursuit of karma and building some kind of following. Other users will do anything for engagement, whatever it takes to get others to engage with them including trolling. I’m happy enough for these types of users to find more rewarding platforms elsewhere. Note that’s different to excluding them, it’s just being a part of a place that isn’t fertile ground for their fixations.






  • They really are. For me they’re the books by which all others are measured.

    I’m somewhat unsettled by book 4, heaven’s river. I think the interesting concepts of the premise have been more or less exhausted in the first 3 books. I suspect that anything coming after will be more or less “things happening in that universe” rather than investigating that universe.

    I don’t begrudge an author continuing a series - it’s guaranteed success after all. But in the ideal sense it would’ve been nice if the first three books had have stood alone.