you know how fast barnacles grow. Coral grows just as fast.
Do you have a citation for that? What I've seen is that barnacles grow faster than a lot of things, up to a millimeter every day, whereas larger corals might take an entire year to grow 20mm.
And that assumes that conditions are OK for the corals to grow at all. Considering the rate of warming we're seeing, and that experts are saying bleaching events (like the 2016 event that killed 90% of the Reef's northern third) are likely to be a regular occurrence going forward, your confidence that they'll "just grow back" seems unwarranted. Certainly Australia's own reef scientists do not share your optimism.
it's why we should only allow a government to do the very minimum we must
I was hoping to keep politics out of this discussion, but I'd have to say that the Government "doing the very minimum" is a pretty large part of what let the Reef get into this state in the first place.
No, coral as a whole is not going to go extinct. But some species will (some already have) - many others will not be able to adapt rapidly enough, given the current pace of change. In time, once the climate settles down, the survivors will doubtless adapt to the new norms and new reefs will flourish.
But on more human timescales, it seems all but certain we'll lose most of a major World Heritage site and one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the world. We lost 27% of it in 2016, and we're set to lose up to another third after 2017. I took my kids diving there last year, while there was still something left worth seeing, and the deterioration I've personally witnessed since the 80s and 90s was heartbreaking.
The real crime is that the Australian Government has taken this long to summon even this level of action. Agricultural runoff has been a problem for decades, but the Government has consistently underfunded efforts to improve this, censored UNESCO reports describing the Reef's vulnerability, lobbied hard to avoid an Endangered listing, and both political parties have given every support for major new dredging and coal-handling developments at Abbott Point that will certainly further worsen water quality on the nearby Reef.
Even if you view the Reef merely as a valuable national asset, this negligence will cost us all.
The scientists who have most studied the Reef work for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and these are what they list as primary threats to the reef. Warming is far from the only problem (and acidification is a fair ways down the list) - agricultural runoff has been a problem for years, and the stress from that is aggravating the stress from warming. The other threats are a much bigger issue for the southern third of the reef, where the water remains relatively cool.
Additionally, the science research includes efforts to identify and nurture coral species that are more resistant to warming waters and acidification. It may be too late to preserve the bulk of the Reef in its current form, but we may be able to lay the groundwork to speed any future recovery.
Lithium can be extracted from lepidolite, but not much actually is.
Over 40% of the world's lithium supply comes from Australia, primarily spodumene mines like these. Chile and Argentina produce another 45% from brine evaporation, as is most of China's output which supplies around 7%. The rest comes from the USA, Canada, Brazil, Portugal, and 2% from petalite and spodumene mines in Zimbabwe.
Crab fisherman and oil workers in Kansas and Ohio? I'm sure there's plenty of those jobs - more than enough to go round for any of Amazon's 200,000 employees who feel underpaid (at least the percentage of them with strong enough backs).
You say the jobs aren't skilled, yet the working conditions are "all able to kill you in a moment's notice", so probably they're gonna need experience or intensive training at least - and even then, average wages are rather less than you apparently think, even for trained engineers (or just not as common as all that).
And I like how you sweepingly equate "undereducated" with "drug problems", "alcoholism", and an automatic inability to save for the future - nice profiling there. Best keep all those people away from any cash, probably only make things worse for them.
There are certainly better-paid jobs around, jobs these workers would love to work instead - but those are all taken. Given the high turnover, Amazon workers clearly do leave as soon as a better job opens up.
For the rest, a shit job is better than no job (or the even worse-paying jobs out there too) so they'll take what they can get - even a small income helps to supplement their food stamps or other jobs. Arguably they'd be even worse off without Amazon's employment.
But in no way does that excuse the duty of care Amazon has to the people that make their dramatic business expansion possible. I don't see how Bezos can sleep on his billions while his company works its own employees hard at full-time sweatshop jobs while paying them less than bare survival rates.
Fair point - they were shuttling passengers around for months last year, but with a safety driver. Then they took out the safety driver in November, but I didn't realise they stopped taking passengers for a time - the driverless cars were empty. According to this link, they've been taking actual passengers again for the last month, still sans drivers.
That figure is for global losses, and for all types, not just Chinese freighters. Unless China are the only country losing vessels, the discrepancy is more than a factor of 2.
Level 4 vehicles (fully self-driving, no human attendant, but geofenced to a specific area) are already here, working in real life, and have been all year. Hundreds of these are already ferrying the public around Phoenix, and they now have a licence for full commercial operation.
Expect to see thousands more real self-driving robotaxis in service in the 25 cities they're being tested in today.
If "scarcity" isn't contradicted by "glut" then you have a very different idea of what those words mean than I. If your idea of communication is making vague and unsourced claims then waving away contrary citations by insisting no really, they're not contrary at all, then perhaps you're just not very good at communicating. Adding insults for not immediately grasping whatever your intended meaning was makes it likely you don't even realise this.
Clearly you have your own highly-specific idea about something and are unwilling to expose it to the light of day, so good luck with that.
That's not "economies of scale", that's improved technology over time.
Still not providing anything to back up your opinions I see. Certainly it's easy to find citations saying the opposite:
A glut of low-cost solar panels—mainly manufactured in Asia—have pushed prices down in recent years.
Which directly contradicts your scarcity claims too (and not just recently, either). Yet demand and supply are both still dramatically increasing, with global installed PV increases up to 50% annually. It's hard to deny that scaled-up manufacturing like that contributes a lot to lower manufacturing costs.
As for the "analysts", judge for yourself. I'm going with "misguided", since we're well below that price already.
Yeah I didn't really expect a useful response when asking for actual evidence to back a claim. So here's a couple of quick citations that I found when looking myself (remember to check the sources).
This is what an economy of scale looks like. It's not modest. And production has been increasing by 50% annually so I have no idea why you think it's "scarce" either.
There were claims from "analysts" years ago that solar "couldn't possibly" get below $1.30/W because trillions would have to spent to scale it up enough. It's funny how wilfully blind people can be.
[citations needed] for the "modest" scaling claim, the "scarce" supply claim, the "driving up prices" claim, and especially that ludicrous conclusion.
OTOH it's true that taxpayers contribute in part to renewable energy plants - just as they have been for decades with fossil fuels. Also true that most "free energy" fuelless renewable sources like solar, wind, hydro etc are front-loaded in cost and carbon (though "years to break even" is debatable, and also meaningless in comparison with fossil-fuel alternatives that burn through far more carbon at every stage, from mining & equipment, refining & transportation, and plant construction, even before they get around to setting the stuff on fire for a few decades).
They used to pay for carbon offsets, but they don't need to anymore. What they're paying for now isn't "energy credits" but actual kilowatt hours generated from renewable sources.
It's irrelevant whether those specific electrons power a Google server or Joe Plumber's AC; the generation mix is the important part, and net effect on the grid supply and atmospheric CO2 levels is identical either way.
They're not giving money to renewable projects, they're buying from renewable projects, like any other customer. They're not taking energy from their neighbours, they're paying customers of renewable power plants (that were built just for them). They're not even claiming that all their energy use is renewable sources (because that's hard to prove and meaningless anyway) - they're simply claiming that now they're buying enough renewable energy to cover all their needs.
That level of investment helps build needed scale for the sector, and means that Google services are all carbon-neutral. Not sure what your beef is with that.
While that's true, it doesn't change the duty that drivers also have to not hit pedestrians. In a case where it should be relatively easy to avoid that, they can certainly be judged at fault as well.
In TFA there's another video that isn't an animation, showing live drivers - but the truck isn't exactly Level-4 self driving, either. There's a driver behind the wheel at all times, and of course no mention of what proportion of the journey is performed by the machine, or how many interventions are needed.
SpaceX claim the FH will carry 63,800 kg to LEO, 26,700 kg to GTO, and 16,800 kg to Mars.
ULA say the Delta IV Heavy can do 28,790 kg to LEO and 14,220 kg to GTO, and allegedly 8,000 kg to Mars, so around half the payload. The Delta can currently accommodate a significantly taller payload though (19.1 x 5.1m fairing vs Falcon's 13.1 x 5.2m).
Considering most presidents had their highest popularity ratings in the first year after they were elected, I'd say that was being generous. And I'm not sure if you've noticed yet, but Trump's biggest enemy is himself.
You match Trump's above-his-average current poll against the absolute lowest point of every other president - how is that supposed to be comparable?
Why not compare everyone's lowest, where his 33 puts him merely sixth from the bottom? Or their disapproval rating, where he's second-worst. Or if you actually wanted to genuinely compare overall popularity, maybe look at the averages over their entire terms, where in a field ranging from 45 (Truman and Carter) to 70 (Kennedy), Trump comes in at a decidedly unpopular 38.5.
The TSA demanded (and received) back-door master keys to your luggage for exactly the same reasons, for fighting them terrorists. Guess what? They leaked.
Also, Apple's signing keys are far less valuable, since you need a lot more than that to install software on their phones - and the signing mechanism has long been defeated by jailbreaking anyway. They have no master decryption keys. And there's zero actual evidence that Apple has given back-door access to user devices to China or anyone else, despite vaguely-worded reports about "security checks"; Apple continue to insist that not even Apple can do that.
Slashdot Mirror
you know how fast barnacles grow. Coral grows just as fast.
Do you have a citation for that? What I've seen is that barnacles grow faster than a lot of things, up to a millimeter every day, whereas larger corals might take an entire year to grow 20mm.
And that assumes that conditions are OK for the corals to grow at all. Considering the rate of warming we're seeing, and that experts are saying bleaching events (like the 2016 event that killed 90% of the Reef's northern third) are likely to be a regular occurrence going forward, your confidence that they'll "just grow back" seems unwarranted. Certainly Australia's own reef scientists do not share your optimism.
it's why we should only allow a government to do the very minimum we must
I was hoping to keep politics out of this discussion, but I'd have to say that the Government "doing the very minimum" is a pretty large part of what let the Reef get into this state in the first place.
No, coral as a whole is not going to go extinct. But some species will (some already have) - many others will not be able to adapt rapidly enough, given the current pace of change. In time, once the climate settles down, the survivors will doubtless adapt to the new norms and new reefs will flourish.
But on more human timescales, it seems all but certain we'll lose most of a major World Heritage site and one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the world. We lost 27% of it in 2016, and we're set to lose up to another third after 2017. I took my kids diving there last year, while there was still something left worth seeing, and the deterioration I've personally witnessed since the 80s and 90s was heartbreaking.
The real crime is that the Australian Government has taken this long to summon even this level of action. Agricultural runoff has been a problem for decades, but the Government has consistently underfunded efforts to improve this, censored UNESCO reports describing the Reef's vulnerability, lobbied hard to avoid an Endangered listing, and both political parties have given every support for major new dredging and coal-handling developments at Abbott Point that will certainly further worsen water quality on the nearby Reef.
Even if you view the Reef merely as a valuable national asset, this negligence will cost us all.
The scientists who have most studied the Reef work for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and these are what they list as primary threats to the reef. Warming is far from the only problem (and acidification is a fair ways down the list) - agricultural runoff has been a problem for years, and the stress from that is aggravating the stress from warming. The other threats are a much bigger issue for the southern third of the reef, where the water remains relatively cool.
Additionally, the science research includes efforts to identify and nurture coral species that are more resistant to warming waters and acidification. It may be too late to preserve the bulk of the Reef in its current form, but we may be able to lay the groundwork to speed any future recovery.
many of those were found to be using illegal labor
Can you provide a citation for this, please?
Lithium can be extracted from lepidolite, but not much actually is.
Over 40% of the world's lithium supply comes from Australia, primarily spodumene mines like these. Chile and Argentina produce another 45% from brine evaporation, as is most of China's output which supplies around 7%. The rest comes from the USA, Canada, Brazil, Portugal, and 2% from petalite and spodumene mines in Zimbabwe.
Crab fisherman and oil workers in Kansas and Ohio? I'm sure there's plenty of those jobs - more than enough to go round for any of Amazon's 200,000 employees who feel underpaid (at least the percentage of them with strong enough backs).
You say the jobs aren't skilled, yet the working conditions are "all able to kill you in a moment's notice", so probably they're gonna need experience or intensive training at least - and even then, average wages are rather less than you apparently think, even for trained engineers (or just not as common as all that).
And I like how you sweepingly equate "undereducated" with "drug problems", "alcoholism", and an automatic inability to save for the future - nice profiling there. Best keep all those people away from any cash, probably only make things worse for them.
There are certainly better-paid jobs around, jobs these workers would love to work instead - but those are all taken. Given the high turnover, Amazon workers clearly do leave as soon as a better job opens up.
For the rest, a shit job is better than no job (or the even worse-paying jobs out there too) so they'll take what they can get - even a small income helps to supplement their food stamps or other jobs. Arguably they'd be even worse off without Amazon's employment.
But in no way does that excuse the duty of care Amazon has to the people that make their dramatic business expansion possible. I don't see how Bezos can sleep on his billions while his company works its own employees hard at full-time sweatshop jobs while paying them less than bare survival rates.
Then I'm curious as to the source of OP's numbers.
Fair point - they were shuttling passengers around for months last year, but with a safety driver. Then they took out the safety driver in November, but I didn't realise they stopped taking passengers for a time - the driverless cars were empty. According to this link, they've been taking actual passengers again for the last month, still sans drivers.
That figure is for global losses, and for all types, not just Chinese freighters. Unless China are the only country losing vessels, the discrepancy is more than a factor of 2.
Are these not being reported? Because global ship losses seem a lot less than one every other day
Level 4 vehicles (fully self-driving, no human attendant, but geofenced to a specific area) are already here, working in real life, and have been all year. Hundreds of these are already ferrying the public around Phoenix, and they now have a licence for full commercial operation.
Expect to see thousands more real self-driving robotaxis in service in the 25 cities they're being tested in today.
If "scarcity" isn't contradicted by "glut" then you have a very different idea of what those words mean than I. If your idea of communication is making vague and unsourced claims then waving away contrary citations by insisting no really, they're not contrary at all, then perhaps you're just not very good at communicating. Adding insults for not immediately grasping whatever your intended meaning was makes it likely you don't even realise this.
Clearly you have your own highly-specific idea about something and are unwilling to expose it to the light of day, so good luck with that.
That's not "economies of scale", that's improved technology over time.
Still not providing anything to back up your opinions I see. Certainly it's easy to find citations saying the opposite:
A glut of low-cost solar panels—mainly manufactured in Asia—have pushed prices down in recent years.
Which directly contradicts your scarcity claims too (and not just recently, either). Yet demand and supply are both still dramatically increasing, with global installed PV increases up to 50% annually. It's hard to deny that scaled-up manufacturing like that contributes a lot to lower manufacturing costs.
As for the "analysts", judge for yourself. I'm going with "misguided", since we're well below that price already.
Yeah I didn't really expect a useful response when asking for actual evidence to back a claim. So here's a couple of quick citations that I found when looking myself (remember to check the sources).
This is what an economy of scale looks like. It's not modest. And production has been increasing by 50% annually so I have no idea why you think it's "scarce" either.
There were claims from "analysts" years ago that solar "couldn't possibly" get below $1.30/W because trillions would have to spent to scale it up enough. It's funny how wilfully blind people can be.
[citations needed] for the "modest" scaling claim, the "scarce" supply claim, the "driving up prices" claim, and especially that ludicrous conclusion.
OTOH it's true that taxpayers contribute in part to renewable energy plants - just as they have been for decades with fossil fuels. Also true that most "free energy" fuelless renewable sources like solar, wind, hydro etc are front-loaded in cost and carbon (though "years to break even" is debatable, and also meaningless in comparison with fossil-fuel alternatives that burn through far more carbon at every stage, from mining & equipment, refining & transportation, and plant construction, even before they get around to setting the stuff on fire for a few decades).
They used to pay for carbon offsets, but they don't need to anymore. What they're paying for now isn't "energy credits" but actual kilowatt hours generated from renewable sources.
It's irrelevant whether those specific electrons power a Google server or Joe Plumber's AC; the generation mix is the important part, and net effect on the grid supply and atmospheric CO2 levels is identical either way.
They're not giving money to renewable projects, they're buying from renewable projects, like any other customer. They're not taking energy from their neighbours, they're paying customers of renewable power plants (that were built just for them). They're not even claiming that all their energy use is renewable sources (because that's hard to prove and meaningless anyway) - they're simply claiming that now they're buying enough renewable energy to cover all their needs.
That level of investment helps build needed scale for the sector, and means that Google services are all carbon-neutral. Not sure what your beef is with that.
Google Energy LLC was founded in 2009.
While that's true, it doesn't change the duty that drivers also have to not hit pedestrians. In a case where it should be relatively easy to avoid that, they can certainly be judged at fault as well.
In TFA there's another video that isn't an animation, showing live drivers - but the truck isn't exactly Level-4 self driving, either. There's a driver behind the wheel at all times, and of course no mention of what proportion of the journey is performed by the machine, or how many interventions are needed.
SpaceX claim the FH will carry 63,800 kg to LEO, 26,700 kg to GTO, and 16,800 kg to Mars.
ULA say the Delta IV Heavy can do 28,790 kg to LEO and 14,220 kg to GTO, and allegedly 8,000 kg to Mars, so around half the payload. The Delta can currently accommodate a significantly taller payload though (19.1 x 5.1m fairing vs Falcon's 13.1 x 5.2m).
Considering most presidents had their highest popularity ratings in the first year after they were elected, I'd say that was being generous. And I'm not sure if you've noticed yet, but Trump's biggest enemy is himself.
You match Trump's above-his-average current poll against the absolute lowest point of every other president - how is that supposed to be comparable?
Why not compare everyone's lowest, where his 33 puts him merely sixth from the bottom? Or their disapproval rating, where he's second-worst. Or if you actually wanted to genuinely compare overall popularity, maybe look at the averages over their entire terms, where in a field ranging from 45 (Truman and Carter) to 70 (Kennedy), Trump comes in at a decidedly unpopular 38.5.
The TSA demanded (and received) back-door master keys to your luggage for exactly the same reasons, for fighting them terrorists. Guess what? They leaked.
Also, Apple's signing keys are far less valuable, since you need a lot more than that to install software on their phones - and the signing mechanism has long been defeated by jailbreaking anyway. They have no master decryption keys. And there's zero actual evidence that Apple has given back-door access to user devices to China or anyone else, despite vaguely-worded reports about "security checks"; Apple continue to insist that not even Apple can do that.