Spoilers: the per capita lung cancer incidence is going down for all of the 21st century. It is actually improving faster the most recent decade than the previous. What has changed is the total number of new lung cancer cases is slightly increasing.
I wonder how much of that is affected by older smokers being much more vulnerable to Covid? Over 1,000,000 Americans have died to Covid in the last few years and that number is heavily skewed towards older people and smokers.
Could you give examples of any kind? At the end you say "for whatever that is worth", but its worthiness is low given there are no specifics and I don't know you.
The first involved an engineer friend who literally "went off the rails" with one of these big trains. The union went to bat for him for six months or a year or something to try and protect his job. Ultimately they determined that he was at fault, but without the union he would have had no representation or recourse against the train company at all.
A number of others involve injury: the unions make it difficult to terminate employees who are injured on the job; we don't really hear about how dangerous train work is. The article mentions that the conductor is "two" or "three miles" down the track at the end of train.
That is a big deal, because the engineer doesn't necessarily have immediate feedback on when to stop. I've seen with my own eyes guys on the ground trying to guide one of these super-long trains into the yard to connect to other cars and that is some scary stuff.
Finally, furloughs. I've had friends who were furloughed from their jobs at the train companies for years and had to go get a job at a grocery store stocking shelves. The train industry seems so have some regulation games going on at the governmental level and the union level. I'm not sure these guys would ever get their jobs back, with seniority, without union bargaining and playing interference with government.
"yet somehow congress manages to find money for inanities to the tune of billions every year. You'd think if this was seriously catastrophic, we'd be going in to debt to finance better energy solutions."
I don't understand. The people in the US Congress are hamstringing themselves and can barely pass their own legislation, yet somehow that inaction and political gridlock, which existed and will exist regardless of climate change, is somehow proof that...climate change isn't as bad?
You know who else also has a ton of money and a willingness to be dishonest? Every company that produces or relies directly on coal, oil, and gas. They ensure Congress is useless and unable to act by funding a party that ensures nothing happens.
I don't understand this take. Those of us that want to solve climate change want nuclear, we want solar, we want it all. We want to give Hydrogen to Aluminum plants to supplant CO2 they release, we want to electricy cars, we want to feed seaweed to cows to stop their farts.
You might be arguing against a loud majority that is repeating dumb stuff, but surely HN attracts people that can ignore the bad policies and arguments and elevate the best?
> is somehow proof that...climate change isn't as bad?
This is a deliberate mischaracterization of my point. No. Read my initial comment. My goal isn't to say climate change isn't bad. You're doing exactly what I called out above.
"You'd think if this was seriously catastrophic, we'd be going in to debt to finance better energy solutions."
I suppose I could see this as saying "if it really were catastrophic, why aren't we acting like it" as opposed to "it can't be catastrophic if we aren't acting like it".
A subtle difference, but to say it is a "deliberate mischaracterization" is just not true. I read the whole comment chain and I think my initial view was an easy one to arrive at. I would avoid conflating too many things at once.
No. It's to stop psychologically abusing the population and scaring them and their children into thinking the world is going to end in ten years.
If you solve that problem, then we can actually focus on what matters: making sure there isn't a real catastrophe (implementing policies that don't destroy the economy, building alternative energy solutions, etc). If everyone is terrified and panicked, you're more likely to get the whims of a totalitarian authority accepted by the population (go figure).
Instead of having "climate anxiety," kids should instead be excited and curious about what they can learn to help reduce the effects (or mitigate them away entirely).
The goal of a lot of the people here seems to be hysteria.
"The goal of a lot of the people here seems to be hysteria. "
Hadn't you just accused others of mischaracterizing your views? Why are you doing the same to everyone arguing back?
I don't see anyone in this comment chain whose goal is to be hysterical or cause hysteria. We all simply view human caused climate change as obvious and want to solve it. I am quite curious as to how to solve climate change economically, quickly, without giving up too much way of life, liberties, or causing panic.
The public is not being hysterical. Rather the opposite, which is something you already admitted further up: people simply aren't acting at all.
"...when there's a huge peak in electricity demand at 6 pm when everyone gets home?"
The entire electrical generation industry knows all this. They know when clouds are coming and when wind will stop and model it all. Pricing information is sent ahead of time and plants know if they will be required to spin up or spin down well in advance. Especially something as simple as "everyone gets home at 6pm at a regular time every weekday". It is easy for plants with slow ramp times, such as nuclear and coal, to plan for that.
Ironically, ETH switching to PoS is the reason I am holding the currency.
In the future I expect all PoW cryptocurrencies to be banned, or severely hobbled, because of their electricity usage and e-waste. I have a long bet on ETH specifically because of its eventual move to PoS. Bitcoin doesn't even have a plan, and when the legal landscape changes it will be in the worst position to pivot.
We'll just have to see what the future holds. But I got my money down.
Nah, I don't think it can be banned.
At least not in the non-authoritarian parts of the world.
Even if it is, they would need to break my fingers to prevent me running a Bitcoin node. And I will get the blocks via Satellite. If there was a credible threat, we would go somewhere it is not.
If your economic thesis is based on hoping the government bans something, why are you even playing with state-resistant decentralized monetary systems?
> Nah, I don't think it can be banned. At least not in the non-authoritarian parts of the world.
Why can't it be banned? It's wasteful and closer to a Ponzi scheme than an actual currency.
> Even if it is, they would need to break my fingers to prevent me running a Bitcoin node. And I will get the blocks via Satellite. If there was a credible threat, we would go somewhere it is not.
That could be hard if many of the worthwhile places ban it :-)
> If your economic thesis is based on hoping the government bans something, why are you even playing with state-resistant decentralized monetary systems?
Most people in crypto are in it for the money, not for idealism.
As someone who has been in this space a long time, I assure you I am idealistic in my positions. Hopelessly idealistic.
What does Ban even mean? That it is illegal to run in places like the US?
Very unlikely, and as more institutional money flows into it, it grows more unlikely. Some places are starting to put 401k/pension funds into it. Some places are raising it as legal tender. There is also that 1st amendment thing.
So will it banned like drinking straws? (which are still available) Or banned like drugs? (which are still available).
I feel you WANT it to be banned because it tickles your authoritarian tendencies. I am glad we live in a world, at least today, where your wishes are ignored.
"If your economic thesis is based on hoping the government bans something, why are you even playing with state-resistant decentralized monetary systems? "
Because I want to make money? I don't see why that matters.
I don't need or want the technology to be banned. I want mining operations to be illegal in the US, and I want it to be illegal to convert to/from USD.
> How about they start by figuring out the concept of power efficiency in the web code that everyone runs?
Sure, a nice goal, but the Internet consumes maybe 10% of the world's electricity, and I highly doubt that is because of slow webpages. It is also "fairly easy" to green datacenter electrical usage because only the generation source need be changed, as opposed to replacing billions of cars, or even entire industrial practices like cement that give off CO2 as waste byproduct. All of which are in excess of 50% of total electrical usage. That, and we have to convert our powerplants anyway.
Lastly, my understanding of slow webpages is largely IO and latency, not compute, which further reduces the link between slow pages and electrical usage.
How should a doctor know how to treat you if you don't tell them what caused the problems? Doctors don't just hear you list a bunch of things you are "feeling" as symptoms and then output a pill to take. They need to look at your overall health, wellbeing, symptoms, medicine you are taking, diet, etc.
You can't just show up to a hospital with crack or heroin withdrawl and be like "I don't feel well, please help me". They are going to ask why you don't feel well.
Isn't it plausible your medical friends mentioned it a lot because...others around them also mentioned it a lot? Doctors and nurses are just as capable as spreading rumors as anyone else.
Total world Be resource is estimated to be 100,000 tons, although that's likely an underestimate. Still, the MSRE (a 7.4MW(th) reactor) used about a ton of beryllium in the fuel and secondary coolant salts. The world would need several million times the thermal power output of the MSRE to replace fossil fuels.
The ARC fusion reactor concept would require even more Be per MW(th) of output.
Your premise could easily be explained by "the percentage of the American population over 60 has increased steadily."
See: https://www.statista.com/statistics/457822/share-of-old-age-...
So yea, more total cancers diagnosed, cause old people get cancer.