Yes, the industrial revolution happened. Does that mean any country that has undergone or is undergoing industrialization is more culpable?
Yes, if they emitted CO2 as part of that revolution.
Does that also mean that countries that leapfrog technologies are less responsible?
Yes, if they emitted fewer CO2.
Perhaps, you are arguing that the industrial revolution should have never occurred?
No, I'm not arguing that.
Look, it's very simple. We are where we are, but to get here was a costly process, and we didn't bear all of that cost by ourselves - it was charged against a shared resource, and now other people are affected by it in a very negative way. This isn't about finger-pointing and shaming, it's about who foots which part of the bill to right the wrongs. It stands to reason that those who contributed more to the wrong are also those who should pay more of the bill - all the easier for them to do so because of the higher technological development that resulted out of it for them.
Can you guarantee it, truly? It's not like they can just swim across the ocean to the nearest landmass - there are borders and visas and all that crap Look at all the bickering over refugees right now! And then, of course, you'd need a decent-sized flotilla to actually transport everyone and their belongings.
They are not going to stand there, of course, but they will need outside help. And the question will be, who is going to pay for that help.
No, a ton is a ton. All I was saying is that when you account for over 100 years of emissions that Europe (including Russia) and US did, it dwarfs everybody else, even China. And so you need to look at each country's share in historical emissions since we started burning fossil fuels, as opposed to just the current year's share.
Because they kickstarted the process. Even if we stop emitting completely now, the warming is going to go on for quite a while courtesy of all the CO2 already in atmosphere.
It's not that they matter more in general. It's that when the islands are actually going to get flooded for real (or rather sometime before, when it's still possible to do something about the people), you'll have to look back at the entirety of historical emissions up to that point to divvy up responsibility.
Regardless of what the emissions are today, if you look at historical emissions, it's Western countries that have contributed to the vast majority of anthropogenic CO2 that is in atmosphere now, and that is the proper definition for accountability purposes.
So yes, British, German, French, American etc citizens have warmed their houses by paying for that with deferred drowning of some Pacific Islanders. I don't know about your personal morals, but in general, being in distress is not considered an excuse for assault and murder. Luckily, said drowning hasn't actually happened yet, so there's still time to get those people out of harm's way one way or the other - but insofar as their plight is directly caused by the actions of those other countries, it's those countries that have to pay their due.
From what I remember, the technology to reach those islands requires a multibody craft such as an outrigger canoe (for stability), or else large ships of a kind that wouldn't appear much later - you can't really cross thousands of miles of ocean on a raft or in a simple boat. How old is the oldest known discovered outrigger?
Now to proceed with my answer, have you probably read "Guns, germs and steel" by Jared Diamond? In that book the author asks a question why different civilizations have developed differently by the time the world became global, and his answer is that very basically it boils down to geographic factors.
Yes.
In a similar manner it can be argued that for the foreseeable future Russia won't be a lucrative place to live for a young aspiring adult, because it is cheaper to produce new fantastic gadgets in the South Asia and it's more profitable to design them in the U.S. Russia falls in between, with the climate which increases the costs of production and the economy which does not allow for serious levels of irrecoverable costs (i.e. engineering labor). This pretty much means that the economy of Russia won't boom, and as a boomerang effect its middle class won't rise economically and aspire to claim political leadership.
Your analysis ignores the existence of states in similar, if not worse, predominant climatic conditions, that fare much better in terms of economy and (arguably, more importantly) quality of life. Canada, Finland, Sweden, Iceland... which of these have a problem with outflow of skilled labor?
Then again, the harshness of climate in Russia is also often overstated for effect. A good chunk of European Russia (basically, the lower 2/3 or so) has very reasonable climate. There are plenty of geographic benefits, too, such as a vast network of large rivers that can be readily used for transportation, significant number of natural resources (even in the European part), forests, and quality soil. In fact, the latter could easily enable homesteading, if you're keen to follow the American example.
IMO, for the past few centuries at least, the constraints on development in Russia (or lack thereof, which has been a rare occasion indeed) largely originate from poor governance rather than climatic conditions or that elusive "national mentality". It has everything that is needed to be a very successful, strong country economically - indeed, this shows up in some of the successes that USSR has enjoyed despite everything - but it either squanders those opportunities outright, or when they're actually used for something good, the wealth thus produced goes right past the majority of the populace, in a manner that is more blunt and unfair than even the most income-unequal liberal democratic capitalist countries (such as US).
As it happens, I'm also a Russian, and my current whereabouts are close to Seattle... ~
And yes, I'm pretty sure that the US economy can accommodate us all - or at least the kind of people that you have listed. We have valuable skill sets, and we actually produce wealth - and we pay more in taxes off our income than most natural-born citizens, not to mention all the spending that also creates jobs. Furthermore, we integrate readily: we often marry locals, our kids usually speak English better than they speak Russian (esp. with American moms!), and their kids often don't speak Russian at all; and our cultures are close enough that 1-2 generations is sufficient to get thoroughly Americanized without any conscious efforts effort.
So the bottom line of your cautionary tale is really more of a caution to your country: if it's so easy to convince so many that their country is shit, not just to the point where they nod, but to the point where they pack up their belongings and leave on an expensive and uncertain one-way trip, perhaps there's readily observable truth to the accusation? Should you, perhaps, be doing something to remedy that (and by remedy I mean fix the issues that make people leave, as opposed to, say, closing down the border and instituting exit visas, which seems to be the way the wind is blowing currently - we all know how it ends)?
Well, perhaps you have some nagging doubts about your patriotism, given what kind of things it would require you to support in the past couple of years?
Asia Minor was the Ancient Greek term for it. I don't think it's actively used these days, other than in historical accounts; at least not in English. Anatolia is the more common word for that region.
Ural mountains are the eastern boundary of Europe, not the northern one (they stretch from north to south). The northern boundary is the Arctic ocean. Black Sea is the southern boundary, along with the straights, and further east it's Caucasus mountains and then Caspian sea.
However, this boundary is not only arbitrary, it's relatively (as in, only a couple of centuries) new. There were other definitions before, with various major rivers used as the eastern boundary (e.g. Don or Dnieper). This is because there really isn't any good geographic definition, nor is there a particular need for one - the continent is a single one, Eurasia. Historically, Europe has been more of a political division than geographic (geography played into it only to the extent of defining easy to protect natural boundaries, like rivers and mountains, which then tend to become state boundaries.).
Afghans are actually not Arabs at all (and Arabs are themselves Semitic people). The majority of Afghans are Pashtun, which is an Iranian sub-ethnicity, and the language that they mostly speak is Pashto, an Indo-Iranian language closely related to Persian; the second most popular language is Dari, which is a dialect of Persian. The second largest group are Tajiks, which are also an Iranian sub-ethnicity and speak an Indo-Iranian language very close to Persian. Then come Hazara, who speak Dari and are also Indo-Iranian; Uzbeks, which speak a Turkic language; and Balochi, who are again Indo-Iranian. So none of these are Arabic or Semitic in any way. Arabs and Arab-speakers are a tiny minority in Afghanistan (which kinda makes sense when you realize that it's basically all former territories of Persian Empire dating all the way back to Achaemenids, so ethnically and linguistically it's rooted in Iranian culture.
Also, just FYI, in contemporary American usage, "Oriental" is seen at best an archaism deliberately used to evoke the atmosphere of the times when it was heavily used, and at worst is actually considered derogatory (or culturally alienating; either way, carrying a distinctive implication of racism).
I'm well aware of that. But OP's point wasn't that Israel is as bad in that regard as some Muslim countries - it's certainly not - but rather that it is a theocratic state. I disagree with that as a broad categorization, but it certainly isn't a secular state in a sense most Western countries are, and it has some pretty heavy-handed policies rooted in religion, marriage laws being one of them. I mean, when the state basically gives a monopoly by law, not even to a single religion, but to a single denomination of that religion, to conduct all marriages (with specific exclusions for a couple other recognized religions, but no provisions whatsoever for other denominations or for non-religious people), and their policy on it is restrictive enough in practice that many people have to travel abroad to marry, that's pretty messed up as far as I'm concerned. And it's not the only such thing there, just one that came to mind first. Unfortunately, a lot of that crap dates back to compromises made when the country was founded, and demographics ensure that the Orthodox minority is an important enough voting block that they get away with it.
And looking at its direction in the past couple of years, it seems that it's falling back into its old ways (or rather an incoherent mix of old and even older, from Soviet and Imperial times both), which makes me question just where the problem has really been all this time.
Russia has already announced that it will place S-400 in Syria to provide air cover for its planes.
If you're not familiar with what it is, go and read it up on Wikipedia. Basically, it's the single biggest threat that any NATO plane can face on the battlefield.
The more relevant part here is not the age of the planes, but their respective roles. F-16 is a multirole fighter, Su-24 is a tactical bomber. One is specifically designed to hunt down the other.
The surviving Russian pilot stated that they had zero warnings and zero indications that anything is going wrong right up until the point a missile blew off their tail.
(Of course, this may well be cooked to corroborate the whole "there was no warning" take that has been the official Russian position on this so far.)
The sides are well-defined, but people's allegiance to them is not. Many of units currently a part of Nusra have originally been FSA, and some units that are in Daesh have previously been in Nusra, etc.
The definition of "Europe" and "Asia" is essentially arbitrary, since geographically they form a single contiguous land mass without well-defined boundaries. Using Black Sea, which is effectively an internal lake with an outlet, as the dividing line is just as random as using Urals.
A mindset is not something that changes radically over 60 years.
And there have been plenty of cries along the lines of "Stalin was right" referencing the deportation of Chechens after wars with them in the 90s, and the associated terrorist acts.
Thing is, this law will do nothing about making 3D-printed guns less accessible to be used for criminal purposes. It's still trivial to go and download the schematics and feed them into the printer. Sure, you'd be committing a crime merely by doing so now, but if you're 3D-printing it specifically to go and shoot one, I don't think that you actually care.
In any case, home-made AKs are probably not a good baseline. They still require a reasonably well stocked workbench, and some machinery for things like the barrel. But a single-shot shotgun can literally be made out of two pieces of pipe and a screw, all readily available in any hardware store - and is still more deadly than any of these 3D-printed plastic toys (and for bonus points, no-one is likely to recognize it as a shotgun, especially when it's disassembled).
In USA, at least, "silencer" is the legal term for the device, as used in the National Firearms Act that sets up the regulatory framework.
As to how much relation the Hollywood type has to the real thing, it depends on the specific depiction and the specific real thing. Modern efficient suppressor designs combined with subsonic ammunition that is specifically designed to be suppressed can be pretty damn quiet, especially out of longer barrels where pressure is lower at the muzzle, and in bolt-action or other manual action firearms where the action itself doesn't make any noise during firing.
visible laser beams
You can actually kinda sorta get that IRL sometimes, with a sufficiently powerful laser (which rifle laser sights often are), because it will light up the dust in the air, or particles of water when it's humid (esp. outside).
The problem is that you still have to pay $200 and wait for several months to get one (and it's not a permit, by the way - it's a tax stamp; it does nothing other than produce some revenue for the state). And if it breaks or wears out, you have to pay the same for the next one. And the prices on them are very high largely because of the regulatory environment. And all of this is has no rational basis whatsoever.
Also, while it's legal on federal level, some states specifically ban silencers.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the industrial revolution happened. Does that mean any country that has undergone or is undergoing industrialization is more culpable?
Yes, if they emitted CO2 as part of that revolution.
Does that also mean that countries that leapfrog technologies are less responsible?
Yes, if they emitted fewer CO2.
Perhaps, you are arguing that the industrial revolution should have never occurred?
No, I'm not arguing that.
Look, it's very simple. We are where we are, but to get here was a costly process, and we didn't bear all of that cost by ourselves - it was charged against a shared resource, and now other people are affected by it in a very negative way. This isn't about finger-pointing and shaming, it's about who foots which part of the bill to right the wrongs. It stands to reason that those who contributed more to the wrong are also those who should pay more of the bill - all the easier for them to do so because of the higher technological development that resulted out of it for them.
Can you guarantee it, truly? It's not like they can just swim across the ocean to the nearest landmass - there are borders and visas and all that crap Look at all the bickering over refugees right now! And then, of course, you'd need a decent-sized flotilla to actually transport everyone and their belongings.
They are not going to stand there, of course, but they will need outside help. And the question will be, who is going to pay for that help.
No, a ton is a ton. All I was saying is that when you account for over 100 years of emissions that Europe (including Russia) and US did, it dwarfs everybody else, even China. And so you need to look at each country's share in historical emissions since we started burning fossil fuels, as opposed to just the current year's share.
Because they kickstarted the process. Even if we stop emitting completely now, the warming is going to go on for quite a while courtesy of all the CO2 already in atmosphere.
It's not that they matter more in general. It's that when the islands are actually going to get flooded for real (or rather sometime before, when it's still possible to do something about the people), you'll have to look back at the entirety of historical emissions up to that point to divvy up responsibility.
Regardless of what the emissions are today, if you look at historical emissions, it's Western countries that have contributed to the vast majority of anthropogenic CO2 that is in atmosphere now, and that is the proper definition for accountability purposes.
So yes, British, German, French, American etc citizens have warmed their houses by paying for that with deferred drowning of some Pacific Islanders. I don't know about your personal morals, but in general, being in distress is not considered an excuse for assault and murder. Luckily, said drowning hasn't actually happened yet, so there's still time to get those people out of harm's way one way or the other - but insofar as their plight is directly caused by the actions of those other countries, it's those countries that have to pay their due.
From what I remember, the technology to reach those islands requires a multibody craft such as an outrigger canoe (for stability), or else large ships of a kind that wouldn't appear much later - you can't really cross thousands of miles of ocean on a raft or in a simple boat. How old is the oldest known discovered outrigger?
The reason much of Micronesia and Polynesia were settled so late in human migration (many places just a few thousand years ago)
The more obvious reason is that settling them requires seafaring craft, which requires a sufficiently advanced technological society to produce.
Now to proceed with my answer, have you probably read "Guns, germs and steel" by Jared Diamond? In that book the author asks a question why different civilizations have developed differently by the time the world became global, and his answer is that very basically it boils down to geographic factors.
Yes.
In a similar manner it can be argued that for the foreseeable future Russia won't be a lucrative place to live for a young aspiring adult, because it is cheaper to produce new fantastic gadgets in the South Asia and it's more profitable to design them in the U.S. Russia falls in between, with the climate which increases the costs of production and the economy which does not allow for serious levels of irrecoverable costs (i.e. engineering labor). This pretty much means that the economy of Russia won't boom, and as a boomerang effect its middle class won't rise economically and aspire to claim political leadership.
Your analysis ignores the existence of states in similar, if not worse, predominant climatic conditions, that fare much better in terms of economy and (arguably, more importantly) quality of life. Canada, Finland, Sweden, Iceland... which of these have a problem with outflow of skilled labor?
Then again, the harshness of climate in Russia is also often overstated for effect. A good chunk of European Russia (basically, the lower 2/3 or so) has very reasonable climate. There are plenty of geographic benefits, too, such as a vast network of large rivers that can be readily used for transportation, significant number of natural resources (even in the European part), forests, and quality soil. In fact, the latter could easily enable homesteading, if you're keen to follow the American example.
IMO, for the past few centuries at least, the constraints on development in Russia (or lack thereof, which has been a rare occasion indeed) largely originate from poor governance rather than climatic conditions or that elusive "national mentality". It has everything that is needed to be a very successful, strong country economically - indeed, this shows up in some of the successes that USSR has enjoyed despite everything - but it either squanders those opportunities outright, or when they're actually used for something good, the wealth thus produced goes right past the majority of the populace, in a manner that is more blunt and unfair than even the most income-unequal liberal democratic capitalist countries (such as US).
As it happens, I'm also a Russian, and my current whereabouts are close to Seattle... ~
And yes, I'm pretty sure that the US economy can accommodate us all - or at least the kind of people that you have listed. We have valuable skill sets, and we actually produce wealth - and we pay more in taxes off our income than most natural-born citizens, not to mention all the spending that also creates jobs. Furthermore, we integrate readily: we often marry locals, our kids usually speak English better than they speak Russian (esp. with American moms!), and their kids often don't speak Russian at all; and our cultures are close enough that 1-2 generations is sufficient to get thoroughly Americanized without any conscious efforts effort.
So the bottom line of your cautionary tale is really more of a caution to your country: if it's so easy to convince so many that their country is shit, not just to the point where they nod, but to the point where they pack up their belongings and leave on an expensive and uncertain one-way trip, perhaps there's readily observable truth to the accusation? Should you, perhaps, be doing something to remedy that (and by remedy I mean fix the issues that make people leave, as opposed to, say, closing down the border and instituting exit visas, which seems to be the way the wind is blowing currently - we all know how it ends)?
Well, perhaps you have some nagging doubts about your patriotism, given what kind of things it would require you to support in the past couple of years?
You're right, the new Russian state is authoritarian rather than totalitarian.
Which is to say, it's still shit, it just stinks a little bit less.
Asia Minor was the Ancient Greek term for it. I don't think it's actively used these days, other than in historical accounts; at least not in English. Anatolia is the more common word for that region.
Ural mountains are the eastern boundary of Europe, not the northern one (they stretch from north to south). The northern boundary is the Arctic ocean. Black Sea is the southern boundary, along with the straights, and further east it's Caucasus mountains and then Caspian sea.
However, this boundary is not only arbitrary, it's relatively (as in, only a couple of centuries) new. There were other definitions before, with various major rivers used as the eastern boundary (e.g. Don or Dnieper). This is because there really isn't any good geographic definition, nor is there a particular need for one - the continent is a single one, Eurasia. Historically, Europe has been more of a political division than geographic (geography played into it only to the extent of defining easy to protect natural boundaries, like rivers and mountains, which then tend to become state boundaries.).
Afghans are actually not Arabs at all (and Arabs are themselves Semitic people). The majority of Afghans are Pashtun, which is an Iranian sub-ethnicity, and the language that they mostly speak is Pashto, an Indo-Iranian language closely related to Persian; the second most popular language is Dari, which is a dialect of Persian. The second largest group are Tajiks, which are also an Iranian sub-ethnicity and speak an Indo-Iranian language very close to Persian. Then come Hazara, who speak Dari and are also Indo-Iranian; Uzbeks, which speak a Turkic language; and Balochi, who are again Indo-Iranian. So none of these are Arabic or Semitic in any way. Arabs and Arab-speakers are a tiny minority in Afghanistan (which kinda makes sense when you realize that it's basically all former territories of Persian Empire dating all the way back to Achaemenids, so ethnically and linguistically it's rooted in Iranian culture.
Also, just FYI, in contemporary American usage, "Oriental" is seen at best an archaism deliberately used to evoke the atmosphere of the times when it was heavily used, and at worst is actually considered derogatory (or culturally alienating; either way, carrying a distinctive implication of racism).
I'm well aware of that. But OP's point wasn't that Israel is as bad in that regard as some Muslim countries - it's certainly not - but rather that it is a theocratic state. I disagree with that as a broad categorization, but it certainly isn't a secular state in a sense most Western countries are, and it has some pretty heavy-handed policies rooted in religion, marriage laws being one of them. I mean, when the state basically gives a monopoly by law, not even to a single religion, but to a single denomination of that religion, to conduct all marriages (with specific exclusions for a couple other recognized religions, but no provisions whatsoever for other denominations or for non-religious people), and their policy on it is restrictive enough in practice that many people have to travel abroad to marry, that's pretty messed up as far as I'm concerned. And it's not the only such thing there, just one that came to mind first. Unfortunately, a lot of that crap dates back to compromises made when the country was founded, and demographics ensure that the Orthodox minority is an important enough voting block that they get away with it.
And looking at its direction in the past couple of years, it seems that it's falling back into its old ways (or rather an incoherent mix of old and even older, from Soviet and Imperial times both), which makes me question just where the problem has really been all this time.
Turkey is a fellow NATO member who has been actively supporting Daesh behind the scenes.
At this point, the real question is why they're even in NATO at all. Their interests don't seem to be in line with other members.
Russia has already announced that it will place S-400 in Syria to provide air cover for its planes.
If you're not familiar with what it is, go and read it up on Wikipedia. Basically, it's the single biggest threat that any NATO plane can face on the battlefield.
The more relevant part here is not the age of the planes, but their respective roles. F-16 is a multirole fighter, Su-24 is a tactical bomber. One is specifically designed to hunt down the other.
The surviving Russian pilot stated that they had zero warnings and zero indications that anything is going wrong right up until the point a missile blew off their tail.
(Of course, this may well be cooked to corroborate the whole "there was no warning" take that has been the official Russian position on this so far.)
The sides are well-defined, but people's allegiance to them is not. Many of units currently a part of Nusra have originally been FSA, and some units that are in Daesh have previously been in Nusra, etc.
The definition of "Europe" and "Asia" is essentially arbitrary, since geographically they form a single contiguous land mass without well-defined boundaries. Using Black Sea, which is effectively an internal lake with an outlet, as the dividing line is just as random as using Urals.
While Israel has an open door for Jews worldwide, it's anything but a theocratic state. Gentiles have the same rights as Jews there.
Try getting married in Israel, even as a non-Orthodox Jew (if your marriage somehow goes contrary to Orthodox norms), much less as an atheist.
A mindset is not something that changes radically over 60 years.
And there have been plenty of cries along the lines of "Stalin was right" referencing the deportation of Chechens after wars with them in the 90s, and the associated terrorist acts.
Thing is, this law will do nothing about making 3D-printed guns less accessible to be used for criminal purposes. It's still trivial to go and download the schematics and feed them into the printer. Sure, you'd be committing a crime merely by doing so now, but if you're 3D-printing it specifically to go and shoot one, I don't think that you actually care.
In any case, home-made AKs are probably not a good baseline. They still require a reasonably well stocked workbench, and some machinery for things like the barrel. But a single-shot shotgun can literally be made out of two pieces of pipe and a screw, all readily available in any hardware store - and is still more deadly than any of these 3D-printed plastic toys (and for bonus points, no-one is likely to recognize it as a shotgun, especially when it's disassembled).
I thought silencers were a hollywood invention
In USA, at least, "silencer" is the legal term for the device, as used in the National Firearms Act that sets up the regulatory framework.
As to how much relation the Hollywood type has to the real thing, it depends on the specific depiction and the specific real thing. Modern efficient suppressor designs combined with subsonic ammunition that is specifically designed to be suppressed can be pretty damn quiet, especially out of longer barrels where pressure is lower at the muzzle, and in bolt-action or other manual action firearms where the action itself doesn't make any noise during firing.
visible laser beams
You can actually kinda sorta get that IRL sometimes, with a sufficiently powerful laser (which rifle laser sights often are), because it will light up the dust in the air, or particles of water when it's humid (esp. outside).
The problem is that you still have to pay $200 and wait for several months to get one (and it's not a permit, by the way - it's a tax stamp; it does nothing other than produce some revenue for the state). And if it breaks or wears out, you have to pay the same for the next one. And the prices on them are very high largely because of the regulatory environment. And all of this is has no rational basis whatsoever.
Also, while it's legal on federal level, some states specifically ban silencers.