So, no, it might not "wipe out the human species" by any means, but if food production gets harder due to drought, fresh water is harder to find (we're already draining aquifers, Lake Meade is seriously depleted - what do you think happens to Las Vegas then?), we might well see human population go from 7.1+billion to a small fraction of that (100million say). Might not be a bad thing for the planet, but I'm betting if you're one of the 7 billion that don't make it you might not think so.;)
That's a pretty extreme scenario but within the range of possibility. I think for something that severe to occur we'd need to see a lot of positive feedback effects that we're not really sure about at the moment. Of course, if we had any brains at all we'd be building nuclear power plants like they're going out of style, but unfortunately the environmentalists are ensuring that serious global warming will occur by blocking all of the better but not perfect alternatives to coal.
I'd argue that the rule of law is a result of applying the scientific method to social structure and governance.
That's a much more optimistic view of how societies are formed than I think is warranted. You're suggesting that A) The scientific method arose prior to the rule of law B) That the earliest civilizations were deliberately structured and C) That there was some kind of rational review process that went on to throw out bad social structures and try new ones
Republican positions have gotten significantly more extreme starting with Nixon and accelerating as they approached the present. Most previous Republican presidents would never make it out of the primaries today. I was originally registered as a Republican but when they started purging all the moderates and proceeded to go full on crazy it just didn't make sense any more. *shrug* Demographics are going to tear them apart if they don't change their message, it's going to be interesting to watch.
While I hate to say it, Dick Cheney was right, "deficits don't matter."
Well, he was half right. Deficits don't matter as long as they're smaller than GDP growth after adjusting for the trade imbalance and any change in savings preferences.
That depends on the size of the nuclear exchange. Modern nukes are airburst, low radiation weapons (in comparison to the old style ground impact weapons). A major exchange could pretty easily mean the end of our current technological civilization but one big enough to actually wipe out all human life is pretty unlikely.
In the worst case scenarios it could be quite bad indeed, but that's not the same as "it will get too warm for food growth anywhere". Even in the probable scenarios food prices are likely to rise significantly and many of the worlds poorer citizens will experience famine, war and social collapse. The chances of species extinction however are quite slim.
It depends on where the current water is coming from. For example, coastal areas backed by a mountain range with onshore breezes would probably get wetter as greater amounts of seawater evaporate, form clouds and then dump precipitation before going over the mountains. For areas that rely on lakes and rivers the situation will be the opposite as evaporation rates exceed the natural refill rate, see northwestern Kenya for an example.
It depends on how you want to define the terms of course, but essentially what I'm talking about is that society is run by an agreed on set of rules that transcend individual rulers. You don't need lawyers or a written legal code to live under rule of law. For example, some biker gangs are ruled by the strongest most dominant member who does whatever he wants and tells everyone else what to do, or else. That is not rule of law, that's barbarism. On the other hand, other biker gangs have a set of bylaws that are in effect that determine appropriate behavior, how the leader is selected, etc. that is rule of law despite the fact that it's a biker gang. As with most things, it's not a binary issue, instead it's a continuum that flows from barbarism to civilization.
Well, obviously impacts will vary depending on the local geography, but for the most part I was talking about lakes and rivers drying up. In general, higher temperatures lead to more frequent & more severe droughts.
The "rule of law" is badly broken, have you noticed?
It's been bent, that's for certain but it takes quite a bit more bending than we've experienced before it actually breaks. See Somalia for an example of what it looks like when it's broken.
I really appreciate the scientific method and I agree it's a major milestone but it's not our most important discovery, that would be rule of law. Without rule of law there can be no civilization and without civilization there wouldn't be much science going on.
Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt.
With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere.
People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.
Hogwash. Even in the IPCC A1FI scenario, the most pessimistic case presented, total global warming by 2100 is 1.4C to 6.4C. Yes, that would have significant bad effects but it's not going to mean the end of agriculture across the entire planet. Earth isn't going to turn into Venus. The average temp at the equator now is 30C while in Siberia it's only 0.5C. So, if we look at the average high temperature for Novosibirsk during the hottest month of July (25.7) and add the high end of the worst case scenario (6.4C) then we only get 32.1C, so yeah moving north will be an option. I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones, the collapse of many third world governments and a huge refugee crisis but that's not the same as saying it's unsurvivable by humans as a species.
Having everybody live off a high protein diet is unsustainable. There are whole segments of American society that couldn't afford it, never mind the third world, and even if money was no object it would be completely unsustainable from an environmental standpoint.
I was arguing in favor of a low glycemic diet, which while it might have a higher complete protein content than say vegetarianism, is far from unsustainable. If we're going to talk specifically about the paleo diet, yes it tends to be more expensive but that's why we have this thing called the free market to let us sort out everyone's priorities and claims to resources.
Of course, physical activity is even better. I eat whatever the hell I want. You can do that when you're averaging 30 miles a week of running. Pass the cheesecake, mmm'kay?
You can't out train a bad diet. You might be able to suppress the weight gain effects but there are plenty of other bad things that come along with eating cheesecake regularly.
How old is SysV init? How has its "Well I assume I started something, JOB'S DONE!" interface with the rest of the system benefitted us all this time? How can you even connect that to something? You can't trust the exit codes from.. well anything, start/stop/or status because too many scripts just return 0. You can't trust status to exist everywhere or even work right. You can't trust a stop to actually kill all processes.
If nobody is going to make init in its current bounds _determinate_, then who really cares if the replacement is more or less modular.
*shrug* I wasn't suggesting that SysV init was awesome, just that I don't like the design philosophy behind the replacement. They're throwing out modularity, expanding scope, trading text logging for a database and generally making things more "magic". If you want that kind of philosophy why not just go use Mac and call it a day? All that said Init probably does need replacing or at least multi-threading support added.
Obviously having a huge calorie surplus is a problem. One of the advantages of a low glycemic diet is that it naturally cuts out the worst of that without much additional effort. Most of the really terrible stuff for you with lots of calories is also high glycemic. I'm not saying it's the only way, but it sure makes things easier.
A properly designed browser using *nix philosophy wouldn't do those things directly, instead it would use plugins to add that functionality.
An init system should do one thing and do it well, manage the startup of services when called. A proper *nix designed system for monitoring and restart would CALL init, but it shouldn't BE init, otherwise it violates the principle of modularity.
Consider for example looking for all the active settings in a standard Linux config file:
grep -v ^# ldap.conf | tr -s '\n'
By using two standard tools you can do something pretty fancy, basically stripping out all the comments. Could grep be enhanced to include the newline trimming feature? Of course it could, but that's not grep's job, its purpose is to match things not trim things. By keeping the scope narrow you reduce the error space and provide a more flexible toolset.
If you design the monitoring system into init then it can't be used generically to monitor other things and you lose half the value of the tool you've created.
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So, no, it might not "wipe out the human species" by any means, but if food production gets harder due to drought, fresh water is harder to find (we're already draining aquifers, Lake Meade is seriously depleted - what do you think happens to Las Vegas then?), we might well see human population go from 7.1+billion to a small fraction of that (100million say). Might not be a bad thing for the planet, but I'm betting if you're one of the 7 billion that don't make it you might not think so. ;)
That's a pretty extreme scenario but within the range of possibility. I think for something that severe to occur we'd need to see a lot of positive feedback effects that we're not really sure about at the moment. Of course, if we had any brains at all we'd be building nuclear power plants like they're going out of style, but unfortunately the environmentalists are ensuring that serious global warming will occur by blocking all of the better but not perfect alternatives to coal.
I'd argue that the rule of law is a result of applying the scientific method to social structure and governance.
That's a much more optimistic view of how societies are formed than I think is warranted. You're suggesting that A) The scientific method arose prior to the rule of law B) That the earliest civilizations were deliberately structured and C) That there was some kind of rational review process that went on to throw out bad social structures and try new ones
Republican positions have gotten significantly more extreme starting with Nixon and accelerating as they approached the present. Most previous Republican presidents would never make it out of the primaries today. I was originally registered as a Republican but when they started purging all the moderates and proceeded to go full on crazy it just didn't make sense any more. *shrug* Demographics are going to tear them apart if they don't change their message, it's going to be interesting to watch.
Well, in 2010 the bottom 50% owned 1.1% of the nations wealth, so if they're paying 2.5% of the taxes then they're probably getting a raw deal.
Maybe due to the fact that they seem to have gone off the deep end over the last few decades?
I'd fine with it even going to another police department, in another state, that doesn't have a reciprocal agreement for the same.
While I hate to say it, Dick Cheney was right, "deficits don't matter."
Well, he was half right. Deficits don't matter as long as they're smaller than GDP growth after adjusting for the trade imbalance and any change in savings preferences.
(S – I) = (G – T) + (X – M)
That depends on the size of the nuclear exchange. Modern nukes are airburst, low radiation weapons (in comparison to the old style ground impact weapons). A major exchange could pretty easily mean the end of our current technological civilization but one big enough to actually wipe out all human life is pretty unlikely.
In the worst case scenarios it could be quite bad indeed, but that's not the same as "it will get too warm for food growth anywhere". Even in the probable scenarios food prices are likely to rise significantly and many of the worlds poorer citizens will experience famine, war and social collapse. The chances of species extinction however are quite slim.
It depends on where the current water is coming from. For example, coastal areas backed by a mountain range with onshore breezes would probably get wetter as greater amounts of seawater evaporate, form clouds and then dump precipitation before going over the mountains. For areas that rely on lakes and rivers the situation will be the opposite as evaporation rates exceed the natural refill rate, see northwestern Kenya for an example.
It depends on how you want to define the terms of course, but essentially what I'm talking about is that society is run by an agreed on set of rules that transcend individual rulers. You don't need lawyers or a written legal code to live under rule of law. For example, some biker gangs are ruled by the strongest most dominant member who does whatever he wants and tells everyone else what to do, or else. That is not rule of law, that's barbarism. On the other hand, other biker gangs have a set of bylaws that are in effect that determine appropriate behavior, how the leader is selected, etc. that is rule of law despite the fact that it's a biker gang. As with most things, it's not a binary issue, instead it's a continuum that flows from barbarism to civilization.
Well, obviously impacts will vary depending on the local geography, but for the most part I was talking about lakes and rivers drying up. In general, higher temperatures lead to more frequent & more severe droughts.
The "rule of law" is badly broken, have you noticed?
It's been bent, that's for certain but it takes quite a bit more bending than we've experienced before it actually breaks. See Somalia for an example of what it looks like when it's broken.
Technically that would be either tribalism or barbarism, not the same thing at all. Either way, my point stands, not much science going on there.
I really appreciate the scientific method and I agree it's a major milestone but it's not our most important discovery, that would be rule of law. Without rule of law there can be no civilization and without civilization there wouldn't be much science going on.
Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt. With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere. People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.
Hogwash. Even in the IPCC A1FI scenario, the most pessimistic case presented, total global warming by 2100 is 1.4C to 6.4C. Yes, that would have significant bad effects but it's not going to mean the end of agriculture across the entire planet. Earth isn't going to turn into Venus. The average temp at the equator now is 30C while in Siberia it's only 0.5C. So, if we look at the average high temperature for Novosibirsk during the hottest month of July (25.7) and add the high end of the worst case scenario (6.4C) then we only get 32.1C, so yeah moving north will be an option. I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones, the collapse of many third world governments and a huge refugee crisis but that's not the same as saying it's unsurvivable by humans as a species.
Having everybody live off a high protein diet is unsustainable. There are whole segments of American society that couldn't afford it, never mind the third world, and even if money was no object it would be completely unsustainable from an environmental standpoint.
I was arguing in favor of a low glycemic diet, which while it might have a higher complete protein content than say vegetarianism, is far from unsustainable. If we're going to talk specifically about the paleo diet, yes it tends to be more expensive but that's why we have this thing called the free market to let us sort out everyone's priorities and claims to resources.
Of course, physical activity is even better. I eat whatever the hell I want. You can do that when you're averaging 30 miles a week of running. Pass the cheesecake, mmm'kay?
You can't out train a bad diet. You might be able to suppress the weight gain effects but there are plenty of other bad things that come along with eating cheesecake regularly.
We're already engaged in geo-engineering so I'm having trouble seeing how doing it in a smarter more rigorous way is a bad thing.
Wow, so cutting sugar is unsustainable? When did that happen?
How old is SysV init? How has its "Well I assume I started something, JOB'S DONE!" interface with the rest of the system benefitted us all this time? How can you even connect that to something? You can't trust the exit codes from.. well anything, start/stop/or status because too many scripts just return 0. You can't trust status to exist everywhere or even work right. You can't trust a stop to actually kill all processes.
If nobody is going to make init in its current bounds _determinate_, then who really cares if the replacement is more or less modular.
*shrug* I wasn't suggesting that SysV init was awesome, just that I don't like the design philosophy behind the replacement. They're throwing out modularity, expanding scope, trading text logging for a database and generally making things more "magic". If you want that kind of philosophy why not just go use Mac and call it a day? All that said Init probably does need replacing or at least multi-threading support added.
Try running a marathon while being anti-carb and let me know how it works out for you.
Yes, because marathon runners are the average use case.
Obviously having a huge calorie surplus is a problem. One of the advantages of a low glycemic diet is that it naturally cuts out the worst of that without much additional effort. Most of the really terrible stuff for you with lots of calories is also high glycemic. I'm not saying it's the only way, but it sure makes things easier.
Yes, I knew when I posted my example there would plenty of other ways to do it, that's one of the benefits of having a strong toolset.
For a change that merely alters the kind of food you eat It's pretty impressive, obviously it's only one part of the puzzle.
HIIT is better than distance runs, but that's a separate conversation.
A properly designed browser using *nix philosophy wouldn't do those things directly, instead it would use plugins to add that functionality.
An init system should do one thing and do it well, manage the startup of services when called. A proper *nix designed system for monitoring and restart would CALL init, but it shouldn't BE init, otherwise it violates the principle of modularity.
Consider for example looking for all the active settings in a standard Linux config file:
grep -v ^# ldap.conf | tr -s '\n'
By using two standard tools you can do something pretty fancy, basically stripping out all the comments. Could grep be enhanced to include the newline trimming feature? Of course it could, but that's not grep's job, its purpose is to match things not trim things. By keeping the scope narrow you reduce the error space and provide a more flexible toolset.
If you design the monitoring system into init then it can't be used generically to monitor other things and you lose half the value of the tool you've created.