I caucused for Bernie. I supported Bernie in the primaries. They didn't prevent Bernie from getting the nomination; the majority of Democratic voters voted for Hillary.
Flyover states just believe what they are told to believe by Fox News and political talk radio
There are people who uncritically accept Fox News in pretty much every state. Some states in "Flyover" areas have substantial liberal populations. Colorado and Iowa are both examples.
First you lie. The US emissions of carbon are decreasing both in total and per capita.
Um, did I assert otherwise? I'm not sure where you think I lied since at no point in my comment did I assert that US carbon emissions were going up or constant. But the fact is that the US is doing less about emissions than many other countries. A declining CO2 level is not sufficient by itself- the rate of decline needs to be much faster.
Yes, he has a right not to be marked. One could also reasonably balance that against the right of people to do business with someone to know that the person has a questionable history. Moreover, even if you don't buy into that there's also a basic free speech right. And claiming that free speech which is about things which absolutely everyone agrees is truthful should be shut down because this person's desire not to be marked is a complete misweighing of priorities and basic values.
No, government opposition is slowing things down, and in this case, we're really running out of time to not have very severe damage with lasting largescale economic impact around the globe.
The US and Australia are actually leading the way in renewable energy production. Google and Apple just went 100% renewable with their energy use. Other US companies are looking do the same
On the other hand China and India are ordering more coal plants be built than any other counties. China is taking a look at scaling back coal use but still major cities in China are simply unfit to live in because of pollution.
Africa is scheduled to become major problem in the next ten years too as more power is needed to provide for their growing economies. Coal is the only source of fuel for Africa that is cheap enough for them to exploit.
Actually, there are a lot of solar projects in parts of Africa also. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-race-to-solar-power-africa, but if you note in the comment you are replying to, I specifically included a link to the Solar Electric Light Fund; as I explained in that comment, it is particularly important to help get solar panels for Africa precisely so they don't turn to fossil fuels. So if you are concerned about Africa's fossil fuel production, then by all means donate to SELF.
Agreed that there are a lot of options; I generally push for donating to solar and wind because those are frankly the easiest ones to actually donate to. There's no really easy way to simply donate money to build more nuclear, geothermal or hydro. Solar and wind also have relatively fast turn around times which means that there's a short span between when one donates money to when it is used. A nuclear plant can take a decade or more to build (not that this is a criticism of nuclear power as much as simply recognizing the unfortunate political reality which we have to pragmatically work with).
Complete agreement. We're highly unlikely to solve everything via carbon offsets. We need to transition in general carbon neutral power systems. Unfortunately, while some places are doing a pretty decent job on this, some places, especially the US and Australia, are very much not so. However, there are ways one can help out there as well.
In terms of personal lifestyle differences, the biggest options are to eat less meat and to use a personal car less. If you live somewhere where public transit is an option, you can massively cut down on your carbon footprint by simply using public transit. Not everyone has that option, since you may live somewhere where public transit isn't available or may have a job or family that necessitates getting a car, in which case, if you get a new car, make sure to buy an electric or hybrid. Also in terms of personal activity, one can keep the air conditioning or heating in one's house at not as extreme temperatures or one can better insulate one's house. All these personal changes are also things which overall cause one to save money.
In terms of direct changes to the system as a whole, two good options for solar are donating to Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters, and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ who helps get solar panels for locations in the developing world. SELF's work is especially important because it helps to cut off the potential of rising carbon dioxide in the developing world even as it helps increase their economies. For wind power, I recommend donating to The New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund.
Also, as uncomfortable as it is, responding with political action is important also. The next big upcoming special election in the US is for one of Arizona's House seats. The Democrat who has a decent environmental record is Hiral Tipirnenii http://hiralforcongress.com/, while her opponent has a literal F rating from multiple different environmental groups. So if you want to effect political change, donating to her campaign is a definite option.
This is a really neat idea, and even if the XPRIZE conversions only end up being some of the total carbon used, they could end up being a substantial chunk.
But one shouldn't lose sight that there are effective ways of sinking carbon now. Short term, the best carbon sink is rainforests. In terms of carbon negated per a dollar spent, the best option is Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/. For a typical American lifestyle, completely offsetting one's yearly CO2 production this way is in on the order of 100 to 500 dollars to Cool Earth. Now, that number will go up over time (since what Cool Earth is doing right now is essentially low hanging fruit), but even at slightly larger numbers this is hardly the purview of the rich.
Hmm, does that mean that the summary is biased against the Palestinians for suppressing the message or does that mean that the summary is biased for the Palestinians and against the Israelis by not mentioning that the hackers are spreading their message by damaging popular websites 100% unrelated to the conflict in question? Why not both?
An AI doesn't need to be conscious in any deep sense of the word to be a threat.
Also, there are many people who do active work in AI who share these concerns. Roman Yampolskiy is a prominent, vocal example. See also Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence" which includes in it data from actually surveying AI experts. See also https://philpapers.org/rec/MLLFPI which makes clear that many AI experts are extremely concerned and think that the chance that something bad will happen with AI is not at all low.
So, I don't know precisely what Google is doing here and there's an unfortunate lack of detail. Some other companies have done something similar where part of the extra is going to building new wind or solar panels.
What do you want them to do instead? Pay for more solar and wind? That's precisely what some of those offsets are doing. Protect rainforests which act as carbon sinks? That's also part of it. Moreover, it isn't like this is something exclusively of the rich. People underestimate how much carbon they can get rid of; for example, for a typical American lifestyle, an equivalent carbon sink is 100 to 500 dollars to Cool Earth. Now, that number will go up over time (since what Cool Earth is doing right now is essentially low hanging fruit), but even at slightly larger numbers this is hardly the purview of the rich.
So they're spending money on "clean" power they don't actually use (and apparently nobody actually uses) to somehow atone for "dirty" power they actually do use (and apparently also pay for). Who says environmentalism isn't a religion?
There's nothing wrong with buying carbon offsets or paying for clean power to offset one's own carbon use. There would be a moral problem if for example someone kills someone but donates to Against Malaria as an offset with enough to save one life. That's because murder is fundamentally wrong. But carbon production is only wrong as a consequence of what it will result in. If everyone who could afford to paid for to groups like Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/, the Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/, and the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund, we'd be much further along in actually solving global warming.
It is very likely that the decline in murder rate in the US is due to better emergency care;. See http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108876790200600203. Overall, violence levels have gone down by many metrics worldwide, not just in the US, so this is something likely independent of guns, most likely reduction in lead levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis. As observed by one of the other commentators, per a capita gun rate isn't very useful for predicting or influencing much if the same people who would otherwise own one gun or two guns now own 5 guns.
Yes, but keep in mind that the shuttle's failure rate was well below the planned for failure rate by more than an order of magnitude. However, at the same time, it is worth noting that when the Falcon 9 does finally get human-rated, it will almost certainly be safer than the shuttle since the Dragon can easily abort at pretty much all points in its mission profile.
It is true that the first section of the paper describes poorly framed problems but that's not all that is there. The Exceeding Expectations section of the paper has a whole long list of real solutions that systems found which were better solutions than the known real world solutions. They were exploiting unexpected aspects of actual physics or other parts of a setup.
One can celebrate the myriad human achievements and the progress of civilization and still recognize that our current energy consumption patterns are producing massive amounts of CO2 and methane which threaten the long-term well-being of civilization.
I could spend a large amount of time talking about how Germany has screwed up badly on climate issues including things you don't mention (e.g. turning off their nuclear plants, not putting in any grid storage when they went for renewables, etc.) But note that none of the things I suggested donating to are run by the German government, or a government in general.
This is a tiny blip in total energy use. Long-term changes, both in personal behavior and systemic society aspects needs to occur. Individuals can use more public transit, eat less meat, not keep the heat up really high in winters, etc.
But personal changes are not enough. If one wants to help directly with helping reducing CO2 production then donating to solar and wind charities is the best bet. For solar, the best two seem to be Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ (which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters), and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://self.org/ which gets solar panels for people in developing countries. I'm not 100% sure on an ideal charity for wind, but one good one is the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund . Finally, if one wants to directly reduce CO2 in the short-term, then the best bet is simply directly donating to Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/. In terms of maximum reduction of CO2 per a dollar, Cool Earth is unambiguously the best so if one wants to engage in carbon offsets that's best. A typical American lifestyle can offset their entire yearly carbon budget for about $500 (this won't be the case indefinitely though, as if Cool Earth gets more than about another order of magnitude of funding, the diminishing marginal returns will be start mattering).
Make sure your next car is an electric car. Or see about car pooling to work until then, or taking public transit. This not only reduces oil consumption from countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, it will save you money and help the environment.
Slashdot Mirror
I caucused for Bernie. I supported Bernie in the primaries. They didn't prevent Bernie from getting the nomination; the majority of Democratic voters voted for Hillary.
Really? I was thinking he'll tweet "Passenger died on plane maintained on CHEATING OBAMA's watch! SAD!"
Flyover states just believe what they are told to believe by Fox News and political talk radio
There are people who uncritically accept Fox News in pretty much every state. Some states in "Flyover" areas have substantial liberal populations. Colorado and Iowa are both examples.
First you lie. The US emissions of carbon are decreasing both in total and per capita.
Um, did I assert otherwise? I'm not sure where you think I lied since at no point in my comment did I assert that US carbon emissions were going up or constant. But the fact is that the US is doing less about emissions than many other countries. A declining CO2 level is not sufficient by itself- the rate of decline needs to be much faster.
Yes, he has a right not to be marked. One could also reasonably balance that against the right of people to do business with someone to know that the person has a questionable history. Moreover, even if you don't buy into that there's also a basic free speech right. And claiming that free speech which is about things which absolutely everyone agrees is truthful should be shut down because this person's desire not to be marked is a complete misweighing of priorities and basic values.
No, government opposition is slowing things down, and in this case, we're really running out of time to not have very severe damage with lasting largescale economic impact around the globe.
The US and Australia are actually leading the way in renewable energy production. Google and Apple just went 100% renewable with their energy use. Other US companies are looking do the same
Individual companies aren't a good guide for what is happening. In this case, government policy matters a lot. It is true that Australia has a boom in solar power, but that's despite the current government https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/11/australias-solar-power-boom-could-almost-double-capacity-in-a-year-analysts-say https://www.marketforces.org.au/campaigns/ffs/ not because of it. And in many respects Austarlian coal plants are producing all sorts of pollutants that wouldn't even be allowed in most of China https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/15/australian-coal-power-pollution-would-be-illegal-in-us-europe-and-china-report.
On the other hand China and India are ordering more coal plants be built than any other counties. China is taking a look at scaling back coal use but still major cities in China are simply unfit to live in because of pollution.
It is true that China and India are building new coal plants also, but that's only a fraction of their new grid production. In fact, Chinese cities have become substantially cleaner in the last few years https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-beijing-insight/beijing-may-be-starting-to-win-its-battle-against-smog-idUSKBN1EN0ZJ.
Africa is scheduled to become major problem in the next ten years too as more power is needed to provide for their growing economies. Coal is the only source of fuel for Africa that is cheap enough for them to exploit.
Actually, there are a lot of solar projects in parts of Africa also. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-race-to-solar-power-africa, but if you note in the comment you are replying to, I specifically included a link to the Solar Electric Light Fund; as I explained in that comment, it is particularly important to help get solar panels for Africa precisely so they don't turn to fossil fuels. So if you are concerned about Africa's fossil fuel production, then by all means donate to SELF.
Urban areas are more energy efficient and produce less CO2 per a person generally. See e.g. http://blog.tstc.org/2015/07/20/why-new-york-has-the-lowest-ecological-footprint-of-any-state/. If you actually care about helping the environment at all, you want more people to live in urban areas.
Agreed that there are a lot of options; I generally push for donating to solar and wind because those are frankly the easiest ones to actually donate to. There's no really easy way to simply donate money to build more nuclear, geothermal or hydro. Solar and wind also have relatively fast turn around times which means that there's a short span between when one donates money to when it is used. A nuclear plant can take a decade or more to build (not that this is a criticism of nuclear power as much as simply recognizing the unfortunate political reality which we have to pragmatically work with).
Complete agreement. We're highly unlikely to solve everything via carbon offsets. We need to transition in general carbon neutral power systems. Unfortunately, while some places are doing a pretty decent job on this, some places, especially the US and Australia, are very much not so. However, there are ways one can help out there as well.
In terms of personal lifestyle differences, the biggest options are to eat less meat and to use a personal car less. If you live somewhere where public transit is an option, you can massively cut down on your carbon footprint by simply using public transit. Not everyone has that option, since you may live somewhere where public transit isn't available or may have a job or family that necessitates getting a car, in which case, if you get a new car, make sure to buy an electric or hybrid. Also in terms of personal activity, one can keep the air conditioning or heating in one's house at not as extreme temperatures or one can better insulate one's house. All these personal changes are also things which overall cause one to save money.
In terms of direct changes to the system as a whole, two good options for solar are donating to Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters, and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ who helps get solar panels for locations in the developing world. SELF's work is especially important because it helps to cut off the potential of rising carbon dioxide in the developing world even as it helps increase their economies. For wind power, I recommend donating to The New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund.
Also, as uncomfortable as it is, responding with political action is important also. The next big upcoming special election in the US is for one of Arizona's House seats. The Democrat who has a decent environmental record is Hiral Tipirnenii http://hiralforcongress.com/, while her opponent has a literal F rating from multiple different environmental groups. So if you want to effect political change, donating to her campaign is a definite option.
This is a really neat idea, and even if the XPRIZE conversions only end up being some of the total carbon used, they could end up being a substantial chunk.
But one shouldn't lose sight that there are effective ways of sinking carbon now. Short term, the best carbon sink is rainforests. In terms of carbon negated per a dollar spent, the best option is Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/. For a typical American lifestyle, completely offsetting one's yearly CO2 production this way is in on the order of 100 to 500 dollars to Cool Earth. Now, that number will go up over time (since what Cool Earth is doing right now is essentially low hanging fruit), but even at slightly larger numbers this is hardly the purview of the rich.
Hmm, does that mean that the summary is biased against the Palestinians for suppressing the message or does that mean that the summary is biased for the Palestinians and against the Israelis by not mentioning that the hackers are spreading their message by damaging popular websites 100% unrelated to the conflict in question? Why not both?
How are you defining conscious? It appears that you are implicitly including a large amount of conclusions wrapped up in that word.
An AI doesn't need to be conscious in any deep sense of the word to be a threat. Also, there are many people who do active work in AI who share these concerns. Roman Yampolskiy is a prominent, vocal example. See also Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence" which includes in it data from actually surveying AI experts. See also https://philpapers.org/rec/MLLFPI which makes clear that many AI experts are extremely concerned and think that the chance that something bad will happen with AI is not at all low.
So, I don't know precisely what Google is doing here and there's an unfortunate lack of detail. Some other companies have done something similar where part of the extra is going to building new wind or solar panels.
What do you want them to do instead? Pay for more solar and wind? That's precisely what some of those offsets are doing. Protect rainforests which act as carbon sinks? That's also part of it. Moreover, it isn't like this is something exclusively of the rich. People underestimate how much carbon they can get rid of; for example, for a typical American lifestyle, an equivalent carbon sink is 100 to 500 dollars to Cool Earth. Now, that number will go up over time (since what Cool Earth is doing right now is essentially low hanging fruit), but even at slightly larger numbers this is hardly the purview of the rich.
So they're spending money on "clean" power they don't actually use (and apparently nobody actually uses) to somehow atone for "dirty" power they actually do use (and apparently also pay for). Who says environmentalism isn't a religion?
There's nothing wrong with buying carbon offsets or paying for clean power to offset one's own carbon use. There would be a moral problem if for example someone kills someone but donates to Against Malaria as an offset with enough to save one life. That's because murder is fundamentally wrong. But carbon production is only wrong as a consequence of what it will result in. If everyone who could afford to paid for to groups like Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/, the Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/, and the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund, we'd be much further along in actually solving global warming.
It is very likely that the decline in murder rate in the US is due to better emergency care;. See http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108876790200600203. Overall, violence levels have gone down by many metrics worldwide, not just in the US, so this is something likely independent of guns, most likely reduction in lead levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis. As observed by one of the other commentators, per a capita gun rate isn't very useful for predicting or influencing much if the same people who would otherwise own one gun or two guns now own 5 guns.
Er, yes. That's a silly mistake.
Yes, but keep in mind that the shuttle's failure rate was well below the planned for failure rate by more than an order of magnitude. However, at the same time, it is worth noting that when the Falcon 9 does finally get human-rated, it will almost certainly be safer than the shuttle since the Dragon can easily abort at pretty much all points in its mission profile.
It is true that the first section of the paper describes poorly framed problems but that's not all that is there. The Exceeding Expectations section of the paper has a whole long list of real solutions that systems found which were better solutions than the known real world solutions. They were exploiting unexpected aspects of actual physics or other parts of a setup.
One can celebrate the myriad human achievements and the progress of civilization and still recognize that our current energy consumption patterns are producing massive amounts of CO2 and methane which threaten the long-term well-being of civilization.
I could spend a large amount of time talking about how Germany has screwed up badly on climate issues including things you don't mention (e.g. turning off their nuclear plants, not putting in any grid storage when they went for renewables, etc.) But note that none of the things I suggested donating to are run by the German government, or a government in general.
This is a tiny blip in total energy use. Long-term changes, both in personal behavior and systemic society aspects needs to occur. Individuals can use more public transit, eat less meat, not keep the heat up really high in winters, etc. But personal changes are not enough. If one wants to help directly with helping reducing CO2 production then donating to solar and wind charities is the best bet. For solar, the best two seem to be Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ (which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters), and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://self.org/ which gets solar panels for people in developing countries. I'm not 100% sure on an ideal charity for wind, but one good one is the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund . Finally, if one wants to directly reduce CO2 in the short-term, then the best bet is simply directly donating to Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/. In terms of maximum reduction of CO2 per a dollar, Cool Earth is unambiguously the best so if one wants to engage in carbon offsets that's best. A typical American lifestyle can offset their entire yearly carbon budget for about $500 (this won't be the case indefinitely though, as if Cool Earth gets more than about another order of magnitude of funding, the diminishing marginal returns will be start mattering).
Make sure your next car is an electric car. Or see about car pooling to work until then, or taking public transit. This not only reduces oil consumption from countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, it will save you money and help the environment.