wheelerof4te (u/wheelerof4te)

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

inglor_cz · 2 years ago

Whoa. You are overestimating the American military capacity by a lot.

There are regionally used strong currencies like the Euro. Us Euros mostly do our internal trade in, well, Euros, without being bombed or even sanctioned. That is quite a lot of trade.

Aside from the Euro, there isn't much of a competition in the international arena. China wants to control the renminbi tightly, which precludes its wider adoption as a reserve currency. UK is a shadow of its former imperial self, and so is the pound. The Japanese economy is too weak for the yen to be a serious competitor.

And with currencies like the rupee, you will find that few people outside India are willing to trust them. Russians now sell a lot of oil to India for rupees (and note that there does not seem to be any initiative to bomb India for engaging in this trade), but then are basically forced to use those same rupees to buy stuff from India again, and Indian exports aren't a great match for Russian economic needs.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

"Russians now sell a lot of oil to India for rupees (and note that there does not seem to be any initiative to bomb India for engaging in this trade), but then are basically forced to use those same rupees to buy stuff from India again".

That is how the world economy used to work, before the petrodollar.

Now, Saudis or Qatar or pick your favorite Middle eastern monarch sell oil to US and everyone else in exchange for $USD. Since oil is used in nearly every other product line, either for transport or actual product, now world trade depends on how much $USD you have to buy said oil.

Euro is irrelevant outside of Europe.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

thinkcontext · 2 years ago

> At the time, atmospheric CO2 concentration was at a whopping 3000 to 9000 ppm! The average temperature wasn’t much more than 10 degrees C above today’s

You talk like +10C is nbd. Are you aware of how much landmass was covered by water during that time?

I'm no expert but that would cause human civilization to take a dramatically different form if not outright extinction.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

No, I'm saying that 420 parts per million is still much lower than 3000-9000 parts per million.

Also, even a number they chose is plain trolling. Of all numbers, 420 ppm is what they "calculated".

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

inglor_cz · 2 years ago

There is something like 40 thousand American soldiers in Germany. Way, way too little to influence actual policy of a rich country with > 80 million people.

I speak German and I can guarantee you that American military presence has approximately zero influence on German politics.

This is not how an "occupied" country works. You know how an occupied country looks like? Like Czechoslovakia after 1968. The Soviet troops were permanently stationed there to cow our own Communists into submission to the Moscow line. Once it became clear that Gorbachev was no longer willing to actually use them for this purpose, the regime disintegrated within a few years.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

"I speak German and I can guarantee you that American military presence has approximately zero influence on German politics."

Then why the fuck did they put sanctions on Russia? Why the fuck did they agree to buy a much more expensive liquid gas from the US when they had a cheaper alternative that allowed them to have such a great economy? And why did they not react when Nord Stream pipelines, the source of that cheap gas, got blown up?

What, they just sucked it up and said "hell, it's worth it, at least Russia is bad!"?

They tanked their own economy because Uncle Sam told them to do so, and not a single rational decision has ever been made by the German government since February 2022.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

radu_floricica · 2 years ago

Meh. Geoengineering is the actual solution, even thought it's politically impossible to voice. See global warming after ships stopped burning sulfur. We're stuck on "carbon" as if this is the only variable we can control.

A mix of naturalistic fallacy with tribalism, maybe? The politically correct truth is that carbon is the only thing we've ever changed in nature, so it's the proper and safe act to move it back. Any attempt to point out that neither is true gets coded as a political attack and wrongthink.

Either way it's a non issue. AIG or not, we're definitely going to have at least much better ML models allowing for real predictions of interventions. Chances of global warming actually being a problem long term are hovering around zero right now.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

You can't argue with "the truth" here. Global warming has been a mainstream scarecrow for decades now.

In truth, it was just a way to slow down the growth of rival industrialized countries, or countries that are yet to industrialize. By promoting expensive, inefficient "clean" energy sources (but not nuclear!), they are stunting the growth of developing nations.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

lazide · 2 years ago

Photosynthesis won’t really help here without ways to sequester biomass on extremely large scales, which we don’t seem to have.

The original biomass was sequestered via methods/means that don’t seem to exist anymore, and we’ve been digging it out/pumping it out and releasing it.

Without a means to get it back underground, it will just be rereleased when it rots.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

So, in addition to ignoring the very solution nature gave us, you argue that we must bury the dead plant matter because the CO2 will be released back into the atmosphere if we don't.

You realize there are bacteria and insects that eat this matter and that it is used as a fertilizer?

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

nec4b · 2 years ago

>> upsetting the balance

Do we know what the right balance of CO2 is?

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

Of course we don't have a clue.

But people will pull all kinds of crazy out of their ass to justify the climate-change hoax.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

api · 2 years ago

Wealthy in what way? I’m sure the South had massively rich plantation owners and bankers, but like most resource extraction economies I suspect monetary velocity was lower and the general public was much poorer and less educated. Extraction economies usually amass a lot of static wealth but are poor in terms of dynamic wealth.

The relationship with Northern capitalists would have been similar to what you see today with petrostates, resource extraction states, and vendors of cheap labor.

Had the South survived I would suspect it would be much poorer today than the North as its economy would probably get stuck in extraction and labor exploitation. Chattel slavery would probably have ended when fossil fuels were discovered at large scale and it might be a petrostate now.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

"Had the South survived I would suspect it would be much poorer today than the North as its economy would probably get stuck in extraction and labor exploitation"

You do know how the US economy works today? You know why everyone accepts the US dollar, a literal piece of paper, in exchange for real, tangible goods?

Because they will be sanctioned and bombed to oblivion if they don't. Now, tell me how this is not a "wealth extraction" economy.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

inglor_cz · 2 years ago

Not an American, so I don't really want to engage in your culture wars, but still... your comment is very Chomsky-ite.

The slavery part is questionable. While slavery made money for the slave owners, the South as a whole was poor and couldn't keep up with the North when it came to actual economic activity. That is why they lost their war of survival.

Looking at other slave-owning societies of the 1800s, none can be described as particularly rich today. One of the reasons why slavery died out in the Western world was that it was becoming uneconomical in a world that was shifting from agriculture to industry. Even the Nazis often lost money on their slave-operated industries; people are just too clever not to be able to sabotage such subtle operations if they hate you enough. Slavery is really only economically efficient in sex, back-breaking work in the fields or mines, or possibly household help.

"Quasi-vassality" is a Putinesque formulation. Neither Japan nor Germany are in any sense of the word American vassal states. They are kept in the American-led coalition mostly by their self-interest, because taking part in a global trade network is, for industrial powers like those two, much preferable to not doing so. And if they find any American political or military action questionable, they stay out of it, unlike actual vassals, who were usually compelled to provide manpower for their liege's wars.

Neither Japan nor Germany engaged themselves in Vietnam or Iraq, for example.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

"Neither Japan nor Germany are in any sense of the word American vassal states."

Both states harbor huge US military bases. Bases that were established after literal military occupation and not by choice.

It's safe to say that they can't truly be free and choose their own policies. By definition, they are both occupied states.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

adamlett · 2 years ago

Asking you to consider an analogous situation is hardly the same as claiming you said anything you didn’t.

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

The US did benefit from slavery and the fact that most of Europe ended up destroyed in WWII.

However, it did not use green energy to build up its huge industry. It used fossil fuels. If it did use carbon-free energy sources, I would have agreed and wouldn't be such a climate-change skeptic now.

wheelerof4te commented on Large amounts of carbon capture as a solution is an 'illusion' electrek.co/2023/11/23/la... · Posted by u/voisin

kragen · 2 years ago

there is a curious lack of verifiable quantitative data in your comment

consider the possible worlds in which you are mistaken. how would you tell whether you are in one or not

because to the rest of us it looks like you are mistaken

wheelerof4te · 2 years ago

"there is a curious lack of verifiable quantitative data in your comment"

Sorry, the climate-change megalomaniacs have skewed every discussion about this in the mainstream media. You will have to search for the data in the alternative sources.

"because to the rest of us it looks like you are mistaken"

I don't see any big changes when compared to the last 30 years, do you? What I do see is one big hysteria by the first-world countries who are imposing expensive, inefficient green energy on the rest of the world. Curiously, they are not doing anything to reduce the emissions they produce.