'I Feel Duped on Climate Change'

Wow. Thanks for the John Stossel link.
Changing what I put in recycle bin now.
By
my recycle bin has been like yours, fuller than garbage.
 
bystander said:
My very liberal but beautiful and sweet niece (who wants to move out of Texas because the election results) told me a couple of years ago she stopped recycling plastic because her research indicated it was basically treated like trash. I didn't challenge her, but thought it was interesting. I've recycled so much stuff over the years. The contents of my cycle bin is almost always 1.5x or 2x of what is in my trash bin.
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My county says recycling reduces landfill space and that landfill space is becoming expensive. I don’t know enough details to know what the county is spending on recycling vs landfill costs.
 
I watched a documentary a couple of weeks ago that goes into the plastic recycling issue and it does seem that most of it is propaganda/greenwashing. There are definitely ways to make use of recycled plastic but it is still more difficult/challenging/expensive to recycle than just buy new materials so most corporations choose the lower bar approach and establish the veneer of recycling while not really doing much to put the collected material back into the supply chain.
 
Germany burns their household waste for energy production since landfilling is seen as a scar on the land.
 
I got suspicious that recycling is treated as trash since they tell us to put everything together - glass, cardboard, plastic. Who would separate all that?
 
mchammer said:
Exactly. Overpopulation became an institution at the UN and other NGO’s. It’s now slowly breaking apart as the earth will likely hit peak population around 2050 and rapidly drop after 2100.
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Peak population may be coming sooner than we think

According to Fernández-Villaverde’s calculations, the combined impact of the yawning misses for emerging market countries and smaller overestimates for wealthy western nations puts the true global population trajectory on the UN’s “low fertility” pathway. That would mean a peak at around 9bn in 2054, 30 years earlier than in the headline forecast.
 
mchammer said:
Peak population may be coming sooner than we think

According to Fernández-Villaverde’s calculations, the combined impact of the yawning misses for emerging market countries and smaller overestimates for wealthy western nations puts the true global population trajectory on the UN’s “low fertility” pathway. That would mean a peak at around 9bn in 2054, 30 years earlier than in the headline forecast.
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I see a decline in birthrates as a positive thing. It will come with some transitory pain (fewer young taking care of more older) and certainly people at the top 5% will not like it, but the rest of us will be better off in the long run if we see a bit of a population decline.

The bigger concern IMO is going to be employment. I don't think most of the world has quite grasped how many people will eventually be displaced in the workforce by AI. While I am a little concerned about "the terminator" scenario, I'm more concerned about 30% of people being unemployed because AI has been used to displace large swaths of existing workers.
 
BrntOrngStmpeDe said:
I see a decline in birthrates as a positive thing. It will come with some transitory pain (fewer young taking care of more older) and certainly people at the top 5% will not like it, but the rest of us will be better off in the long run if we see a bit of a population decline.

The bigger concern IMO is going to be employment. I don't think most of the world has quite grasped how many people will eventually be displaced in the workforce by AI. While I am a little concerned about "the terminator" scenario, I'm more concerned about 30% of people being unemployed because AI has been used to displace large swaths of existing workers.
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What I already see happening is that the lower end of the white collar workers are not being displaced--rather they're (mostly) stepping up, using the technology, becoming a lot more efficient, and taking on roles above their previous status. It's allowing more people to "shine." The organizations are getting more done and there's more work all around.

This sort of thing has happened many times before.
 
The Ice Age Cometh.


"Dozens of record low temperatures could be broken this week as the latest in a series of arctic blasts sweeps through the eastern United States. "
uk.news.yahoo.com

More than 235 million Americans face life-threatening cold as frigid air blasts US this week

Bitter cold temperatures have forced schools to close in the Midwest and winter storm warnings were in effect in eastern states
uk.news.yahoo.com uk.news.yahoo.com
 
This man struggles with the effects of Global Warming

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Chop said:
What I already see happening is that the lower end of the white collar workers are not being displaced--rather they're (mostly) stepping up, using the technology, becoming a lot more efficient, and taking on roles above their previous status. It's allowing more people to "shine." The organizations are getting more done and there's more work all around.

This sort of thing has happened many times before.
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I think that is way too optimistic about the outcome of AI. We are very early into AI and while some may be taking the baby-AI we have now to upskill, it won't be too much longer before companies use the increase in efficiency to scale back the workforce.
 
BrntOrngStmpeDe said:
I think that is way too optimistic about the outcome of AI. We are very early into AI and while some may be taking the baby-AI we have now to upskill, it won't be too much longer before companies use the increase in efficiency to scale back the workforce.
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Treat AI like a junior employee. Better double check the work. But it sure does save a lot of time. Today's AI seems to be very good at summarizing something really long that somebody has written, and at different levels (high altitude, detailed, and comprehensive). Today's AI also has been good for basic research or double checking your research to see if you've left something out. It may identify an angle you never considered, or send you down rabbit trails. It also uses some nifty synonyms for your overused words.

It's not "there" yet, but it's already a helpful tool in certain areas. I don't fear it.
 
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