Heat records shattered,
but fortunately not here.
We can still pretend.
#haiku #senryu #poem #ShortPoem #SmallPoem #SmallPoems #climate #denial #ClimateDenial #Heat #UnseasonablyWarmWeather #RecordHeat #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #collapse #extinction
@kentpitman Kent, have you been following the thorium energy progress in China. Does it give you any hope? I haven't looked closely yet but my impression is that they are getting fairly close to commercial deployment, which they might then push out to the B&R countries. I'm might be full of sh*t though.
Plus with Trump inadvertently giving everyone a push to develop greenER energy....
Have I been following it? No, not recently.
There was a day when I thought green nuclear was an option. Not a perfect option, but better than extinction.
Overall, I think we're past the point where it made sense, and I favor solar and other renewable energies.
Still, we are not going about climate response in an organized way, so it's a complex space. I'm not as negative on it as some people might be.
Oddly, one thing that might end up arguing in its favor is that it supports rent-taking. The oil barons hate solar because it is not. But physics doesn't care about rent, and if what it takes is to have a viable solution that the oil barons are not actively sabotaging, then that is maybe worth pondering. Compromises may need to be made, and progress is not always in a straight line.
@kentpitman wrote:
«Compromises may need to be made, and progress is not always in a straight line.»
Most definitely so.
Somewhat related, I read recently that in Germany they are considering increasing electricity production from coal.
Germany, where they <adverb omitted> stopped nuclear power plants several years ago.
NB: this is a story in progress and, as usual, details matter as well.
It would be interesting to know the reason for that. I'm definitely not an expert in this area, but if I had to guess, the one big reason for backing off from nuclear, even just something that is dirtier, might be that it gets harder and harder to cool these things as the ambient temperature of freshwater sources goes up. Not to mention freshwater being scarce. But that's just a random guess.
I mean, it's possible somebody just gave them a good price on coal and they decided not to care about the future of the planet...
If someone with actual expertise is reading along, they should feel free to offer other/better thoughts.
I, too, would be interested in the differences between the case in Germany and the case in Taiwan.
I easily found out that Taiwan has small coal reserves (unlike Germany).
However, I didn't even try to find out about politics in Taiwan on these matters.
For example, whether there is a Green Party in Taiwan and what their position is, if there is such a party.
I will note also that the answer might not be satisfying.
A lot of times when people ask me questions about technical standards and why certain things are the way they are, the answer ends up being something about random chance or someone's personal preference or who happened to be in the room at the time.
I probably mentioned this before, so apologies for any duplication. But there is a super interesting series called Occupied that I saw on Netflix that isn't there anymore and has gone away to other venues but is worth watching. The series is in Norwegian and I had to watch it with English subtitles, but it was about a hypothetical soft Russian invasion into Norway.
The motivation for it was something to do with a market battle between different nations about where fuel would come from and whether it would be fossil fuel or something cleaner.
The story also explains the multiprong attack on modern political systems that spans bribes and threats. It's one of those kinds of stories that's more about the how and the what, so I don't think I'm spoiling anything by these things I'm saying. You just kind of have to see it.
I was really very sad that they didn't come up with a dubbing in English because they would have reached so many more people with a really important message.
I found myself wondering if it explained to the US political system lately. It was very messy and isn't possible to reduce to just some single thing, and in places that makes the plot feel a little longer than it should be, but I'm not sure they could have told the story better if they did it shorter. They really wanted to work through it all.
Periodically in the show characters would ask each other how it could possibly be that a certain thing was happening in the government, especially with leaders appearing to do things that they had promised not to do. Citizens expecting much more simplistic answers than the story was telling.
(1)
@kentpitman wrote:
«... why certain things are the way they are, the answer ends up being something about random chance or someone's personal preference or who happened to be in the room at the time»
Indeed.
That by itself would not make an answer unsatisfying to me, though.
(An answer would not satisfy me, for example, if it is bogus, incoherent, or too incomplete, to name a few of the acute ones; usually the degree of my satisfaction is about medium.)
I do belong to the school of thought that some kind of randomness often does play a significant role (being not the only factor) in individual events.
I think that in a _longer_ process comprising many events the role of chance (generally) decreases.
(2)
Thank you for describing Occupied.
It certainly sounds like it is worth watching and I can relate to your description in multiple ways.
I have high respect for Scandinavians, including Finland and Iceland, for reasons too numerous to mention.
By the way, I happened to meet once (in the mid-90s) a retired Norwegian army officer.
He had served at a post in the far north of Norway, where their short common border with Russia is (during his time in the army, with the Soviet Union; Sweden, to the south of that stretch, was neutral).
He said they had a single military objective: if the Soviet Union attacked, to raise the alarm in the fifteen minutes they would have at their disposal.
(3)
«... the multiprong attack on modern political systems that spans bribes and threats
...
You just kind of have to see it. »
Yes.
No comfort in it, but I do see a very similar production every day right here on the Bulgarian political scene...
As it happens, I was at an anti-government protest yesterday, but it would take many, many, many more such links for a chain that leads to some improvement.
«... leaders appearing to do things that they had promised not to do. Citizens expecting much more simplistic answers than the story was telling.»
Both of these are, of course, as old as the hills.
So are demagoguery and populism.
Let me quote Shakespeare yet another time:
MARK ANTONY
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
And he proceeds to do exactly that—praise...
Strong agreement on Occupied. So good.
I actually can't stand watching dubbed shows; I much prefer reading subtitles even if it means I miss a few images sometimes. I find it so distracting when the lip movement doesn't match the sound, and I like to hear the sound of the original language and see what, if anything, I can understand.
But you're probably right about reaching a broader audience.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, often the dubbing doesn't seem to convey the emotion in the original very well.
I hear you on this but sometimes that is not the trade. I might wish I could just sit and watch, but it's so much effort. I end up looking away and my brain processes the fact that there is sound I cannot interpret as "nothing going on here", like background music is playing or something, so time passes and I realize, "there are subtitles I'm missing", and then I have to rewind and watch again. And it is very slow going sometimes.
I do appreciate the original intonation. But not so much that I wouldn't gladly trade it away for not having to be totally fixated on the screen in every moment...
I've watched quite a number of Korean dramas in subtitle mode, especially the political and legal ones. But for me, who is a born multitasker, it frustrates me not to be able to do other things at the same time.
Designated survivor: 60 days, for example, and Signal our shows that were just especially good premises and I was really happy I watched. Designated survivor 60 days it's very similar to designated survivor, but importantly different because they didn't just translate it. The Korean system is so similar to ours, they adapted it for their situation. And their constitution has some really important differences that makes a plot go differently. Plus the US is a character that is constantly trying to meddle in their politics, and that was fascinating to watch. But I get why they didn't bother to translate that to English. A lot of people would probably have regarded it as redundant.
By the way, it is my strong impression that many productions are _intentionally made_ to be watched while doing something else.
So, yes, our mileages do vary, our "use cases" vary, and many other trite but true phrases apply.
It's funny you should mention this. When I was a kid, one of my friends mothers, while I was visiting with them on an overnight stay, introduced me to Perry Mason (the TV show, not the person, ha). And she explained why she liked it so much.
It is broken into two parts, so it has two different start points that you can watch from. You can watch the original crime, but you don't have to, because court cases cover that kind of thing. And it's very verbal. You can just listen. You don't have to watch the screen. People do things on the screen, but it's structured so that you can be looking away from the screen and get the entire content.
I confirmed this because I "watched" eventually all the episodes, and being a person with a theatre background, I spent some time pondering The meta of it all, the writing choices and the directorial choices. There are an extraordinary number of episodes. Some I've "seen" several times.
Also, I've seen the new series remakes that they attempted. Some are better than others. But always they tried to make it in keeping with the modern style, which has inevitably got action scenes with chases and fights that are very not typical of the old series. It does have occasional cartoonish fights but not many. Likewise with chases. Mostly just dialogue. And I found when I watch the new series, looking away from the screen for a while during the time when people are not talking, which is something I do a lot, means really I can't have any idea what's happening.
It's fine if I know who's chasing who and it's just filler to get to the end, but sometimes information is conveyed in a visual. An extra person will come in or something important like that. But because it is not thoughtful like the original series, it's very hard to follow.
They focused on fixing pace and style, lost other critical values that they didn't even know were there.
My wife likes to watch things for the story. She wants to know what's going to happen at the end, to such a degree that she often watches movies in sped up form with a narrator describing some of the detail (in Chinese).
I watch for the feels, or perhaps "I watch the feelies." I want to be totally absorbed and concentrated. I need to pause the show if I will be away from the screen for more than a few seconds. I will not watch a show that I didn't start from the beginning.
And yet somehow we agree on a lot of what we want to watch. :) We both highly recommend True Detective, currently on HBO Max. All four seasons were great.
(I used to watch Perry Mason as a kid.)
Indeed.
By the way, you must have noticed long ago that there are two big categories of productions (considering those that are not translated):
(A) those where just listening without seeing the picture gives you most of the content,
and (B) those where watching without hearing the sound gives you most of the content.
It seems to me that most of (A) are TV shows and most of (B) are films "for the big screen".
These two categories do not exhaust all productions, but I think that together they form a very large subset, perhaps a majority.
Yes.
I have the same attitude to dubbing as you do.
Especially liking to hear the original language.
Even if it's not an Indo-European one (like Hungarian and Japanese, thinking of films I have watched).
(Since my mother tongue is Bulgarian, I have watched a great many films either way, some dubbed, some with subtitles.)
It's best to have a choice between dubbed and subtitled, certainly, as it is with many discs (I don't know about streaming, though).
And, of course, I can't speak for anybody else.
It looks like Taiwan got up to the level of 52% of their power mix being nuclear, but the DPP (the "green party") came to power and decided to phase it out. Ironically aligning with environmental groups, it seems.
A personal anecdote, if I may...
My parents, or at least my mother, was strongly anti-nuke in the 70s and I remember going to a protest at the Seabrook NH plant when I was ~10. I can understand it given the lack of awareness about climate change and the waste and proliferation issues (which don't exist nearly as much for thorium).
But even after she knew about climate change my mother reacted with anger seeing a book about nuclear energy on my table. "They got to you" were the words that came out. Sigh, it's hard to change.
Only ...
- Nuclear just pushes the debt to a later generation (waste => unsolved problem)
- There is every indication the world can well live with regenerative energy and a less wasteful management of energy.
@glitzersachen @sigue @vnikolov
Yes, if there's a way not to push to another generation, that's an option we should take. And I think right now, solar wind etc are that option.
But in 2010, that was less clear. And just getting to having a long-term problem instead of a short-term problem would have been progress.
Thank you for adding this detail about Taiwan.
So there indeed may be (some) similarities in the political situation between Taiwan and Germany.
I ought to follow what happens in Taiwan better... in my unlimited free time...
Myself, I strive not to be dogmatic about anything, including nuclear power plants.
Probably I don't always succeed, but it certainly doesn't happen by itself: it usually requires a conscious effort, and often a significant effort.
(I also strive not to be fanatical and puritanical; that seems less difficult, unless I delude myself.)
Repeating the well-known, just saying that both this and that are bad is not enough (except for propaganda purposes).
The degree of badness often makes a big difference.
> might be that it gets harder and harder to cool these things
That's definitely a thing. In the recent heat wave, France turned off nuclear reactors because of the cooling problems.
> might be that it gets harder and harder to cool these things
Wasn't that only an interims measure? You cannot build (or even reactivate) a nuclear reactor over night. It takes years.
@glitzersachen @vnikolov @sigue
I think the general belief in the time frame I was talking about was the climate change would take a long time and that we only needed to address it quickly. So there was a sense that nuclear plants took perhaps 10 years to build and did not rely on trusting research to come through with something so if it had been begun in 2010, they would have been online in 2020.
It seemed to me that a long timeline for climate change was unlikely. In 2008, I privately picked 2035 as likely date of human extinction. Still seems plausible to me now.
I have over the interval between then and now bargain down to believing that's more like the date of civilization collapse. People quibble over whether humans would really go extinct, and how you would prove that. I think it's preposterous to waste any time talking about such things, because it implies that somehow that's enough better that we don't have to worry. So the conversations become more coherent if I just say collapse. I still think actual extinction is not out of the question but it's not worth the quibble time to defend.
But I also didn't want to publish a specific number, because that misses the point as well. Way sooner than 2100 was my point. 2100 makes it feel like everyone involved in the discussion can safely say it won't affect them in their lifetime and so doesn't matter.
I think it's clear to people in Europe especially this week that it will affect them within their lifetime, so I feel unhappily vindicated.
But my point is that if you think that the timeline is short, the importance of doing things like that decisively is key. Too many arguments, especially by environmentalists, are about the right way to do things. Because they feel that the whole problem is caused by doing things the wrong way.
But right now we are in a burning building, with people talking about what the right architecture for safety practices are for building buildings, when really we need to stop the fire.
I am frequently misunderstood when I say we need capitalism to solve this problem. And we need the politicians we have to solve this problem. That is not a statement that I like capitalism, or don't hold it responsible. It is not a statement that I like these politicians. It is purely a statement about how fast climate is moving and about the unreasonableness of saying that we can afford to start a green party and wait for momentum to build, which takes several election cycles. No one's going to switch at the next election. And then those politicians getting into office we'll have to move with them maybe amazing swiftness. I don't think it could be done in fewer than 12 years and that would be super super aggressive. And 12 years from now is 2038, 3 years after I think civilization collapses or we'll be extinct.
I don't believe in long arc politics just now. Having that much time is the goal, not the tactic.
So my point is that sometimes the choices of what you have to do in order to survive or not based on some happy theory about what would be nice if suddenly the world were made of rational people and everybody started behaving in a way that was not selfish. I believe if there is a solution to climate change, it has to work now, not 10 years from now, and it has to assume that people are not all full of virtue, but rather are regular fallible, corruptible folk. They are not, to borrow a metaphor, the army we might wish to have, but the army we actually have. And by army I mean the people who would fix climate change.
Some might even say that we should take the government by storm, pardon in the metaphor. But that would just create chaos that could not be resolved in 10 years either. So we have the economic system we have and the people we have, and I believe that if there is a solution it involves motivating those people to do the right thing. And that's why you hear me saying things like maybe rent taking is an acceptable compromise. Acceptable here relates entirely to my belief about how aggressive the acceleration of climate change is.
I hope I'm wrong. But it matters to have a very definite theory and to understand that you're a gambling all human future on that theory in order to pick an appropriate strategy. I believe the correct strategy is intimately tied up in how much time we have left. And that vague numbers are not helpful.
An acceptable strategy for a 20-year timeline would look different, but it's still involve things people would think are odd compromises.
A 30 year or 50 year timeline but also look different.
But with each of those steps, I would argue that you have much more trouble defending that timeline. It is hard to imagine our political system holding together under climate stress for that period of time.
The rich seem to think that just a few will survive, that money can select, that the rest are expendable. So many questionable assumptions there. But I'm out of space in this ramble, so I'll stop.
Indeed.
The Art of the Possible.
Perhaps this El Niño will succeed where human advocates for addressing climate change haven't.
"Even a fool knows when something hits him."
(Homer, Iliad)
@vnikolov @glitzersachen @sigue
If you wait to know that you've been hit by Climate, you've waited too long to fix it. That we seem to know. We may already be there. It seems to me to follow, therefore that the only viable climate fixes, if we are not there yet, are necessarily guesses. If certainty implies too late. And since the forces of nihilism and short-term profit have weaponized the phrase "you don't know for sure" that's sure fire reason for inaction, it seems to follow that we will not survive as a species. The story of the scorpion on the back of the frog ... in gradually boiling water....
I'd like to be wrong on that. But to be wrong, we have to break one of the links in that chain of reasoning. I would welcome help in doing so.
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2020/03/humanitys-superpower_28.html
I don't really know whether you are wrong.
Perhaps repeating the obvious, the most important thing to do now is to convince enough people, much more than are already convinced, that the necessarily imperfect approaches we have now must be pursued to a much greater degree than they already are.
(Yes, the previous sentence must be edited for clarity.)
I am sure it can be done—creatively and with sustained effort—but I don't know who can and will undertake to do it.
At least what hit Europe now, ist not the El Niño. The El Niño will come on top of this kind of more frequently occurring extreme weather events.
> Overall, I think we're past the point where it made sense, and I favor solar and other renewable energies.
https://www.joshwagenbach.com/blog/inside-the-tmsr-lf1-how-chinas-thorium-reactor-actually-works is a very helpful article on the technology and the challenges the Chinese face. I found it really useful.
But based on that, yeah, the timeline is pretty long. I'm still glad someone's on it.
Most writing about thorium reactors stays at the level of talking points. This is different. A deep technical walkthrough of the TMSR-LF1 - the fuel cycle physics, the molten salt chemistry, the engineering systems, the materials science, and the geopolitical control map of who owns the supply chain. The reactor that could reshape energy, explained from the neutrons up.
Kent Pitman
sigue
Vassil Nikolov | Васил Николов
Nuke Them from Orbit