In this case I'd say the link is the content. So it would be the place where you share the link, rather than the "rendering page", which should be more worried
Well you might like Chomsky's ideas but can you say that you really know him? If no, then how can you be so sure of his character? Even if he was not involved in any of Epstein's illegal activities, a leftist individual secretly hanging out with billionaires on a secluded island is not a good look to say the least
The orders of magnitude are different here. Replacing something that becomes a huge problem within two hundred years with something that (potentially) becomes a problem in a few thousand years -- really is better than spending valuable time on developing an "ideal" solution
Climate change will not end human civilization, unless by "human civilization" you mean the very specific configuration that habitation patterns, agriculture, national boundaries and numbers of living humans all have at this very moment.
Likely hundreds of millions to a few billion will die that need not have died, wars will be fought, relocation and migration will be of unprecedented scope and scale, there will be hunger and disease ... but "human civilization" will persist through all of that. Thats not a reason to celebrate, it's just a reason to describe the risks and outcomes accurately.
Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has any truly authoritative knowledge on when (or if) fissile waste will become a problem, and if it does, just how large (time, space, populations, ecosystems) of a problem it will be.
Human activity aside, every valley with a substantial amount of granite rock about the planet pools with radon gas on a daily basis until the wind clears it out.
While this is just one of those things that's a risk on the order of a pack a day smoking habit to those who live there, radon is a fission by product from the breakdown of the uranium within the granite.
I read this as just an attempt to rationalize fissile waste issues as "more of the same". Maybe you truly feel comfortable doing that, maybe you see it as something else.
I, in contrast, view the development of fission-based nuclear mechanisms (whether for explosives or for power generation) as a distinct break with the past, and a point in human history where an entirely new problem was brought into being. And not just a new problem, but one that would last longer than any human civilization has ever lasted.
So, to me, you comparison of envionmental radon issues with the problems posed by storing and managing the waste produced by fission reactors is ... well, I scarely have words for it.
> I, in contrast, view the development of fission-based nuclear mechanisms (whether for explosives or for power generation) as a distinct break with the past, and a point in human history where an entirely new problem was brought into being.
Radiological material that decays after tens of thousands of years is not a unique new problem, for three reasons.
First, half life is inverse to radioactivity. The longer the half life, the less radioactive it is. There are isotopes with a half life of a billion years. Human biology requires potassium and natural potassium is radioactive, but it doesn't kill you because the half life is so long.
Second, the material with ten thousand year half lives doesn't actually have to be stored for ten thousand years. Nuclear reactors convert elements into other elements. You put it back into a reactor and it turns it into something with a shorter half life. Meanwhile that process produces energy with which to generate electricity. It's absurd that we're not already doing this.
And third, the half life is a red herring. Traditional long-standing toxic waste from industrial processes doesn't have a half life because it persists forever. Plutonium is toxic for thousands of years; heavy metals are toxic until the sun burns out. The fact that it eventually decays is an advantage that propaganda has turned into a problem.
You stated "[No one] has any truly authoritative knowledge on when (or if) fissile waste will become a problem".
I informed you that fissile waste is already a big problem at multiple sites across the planet, several US sites and Russian sites more so than anywhere else, and has been a problem for > 50 years.
You're welcome.
> you comparison of envionmental radon issues with the problems posed by storing and managing the waste produced by fission reactors is ... well, I scarely have words for it.
That's clearly a minor aside .. you ignored the 70+ tonnes of plutonium waste at Hanford.
Billions have been spent dealing with it to date and there's much left to do and spend to clean up that one site.
Don't strawman the issue, it's a large problem and there are tomes on the subject filling shelves.
Humans do need to deal with radioactive waste, this includes the large dams of radioactive waste created as a by product of rare earth and lithium processing.
"Problem" in this context did not mean "a challenging engineering issue to be solved by cleverness and skill and determination". It means "shit dying, ecosystems being destroyed, earth and air and water being polluted, bounds not under human control".
I've been a native english reader for six decades .. your subtextual meaning was not apparent in the comment as written.
Perhaps consider that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else has any truly authoritative knowledge on what is "meant" by third party forum comments and we are all limited to what is clearly written.
If you are truly concerned by the fate of the earth should it become covered in vast tracts of radioactive waste from some yet to be determined mystery source, then perhaps ask yourself could it be worse than when the earth had numerous surface level natural fission reactors?
This certainly is incorrect. Used up fuel can be re-enriched. This isn’t a problem we ever need to solve, because by the time it’s an issue, the waste will have become a viable market product again.
So true. And another benefit would be that domain experts giving a course could focus on teaching and sharing their knowledge instead of being forced to deal with all the organisational fluff around final grading and "catching cheaters" that is a giant waste of their time. (I see only usefulness in grading as a feedback mechanism for students – but not as "certification" of student's knowledge for the outside world. I also believe it would be more healthy for both students and teachers if you the grades were just a guidance tool, not something that will affect your future prospects at life).
At the end of the day the final grades from school / college grades depend on so many factors that this signal is close to noise anyway, but in college it often feels somehow more important than the actual learning and so much time and stress is spent on them.
In a better world I imagine it would be the organisations that need specific knowledge co-sponsoring "exam centers", separate from colleges, where you could go and get a certificate saying how well you know a given subject. Private companies that want to hire the best people actually have a good incentive to make these exams as fair and useful as possible.
To make an analogy with GAN networks in deep learning: the college would act as a generative part and "exam center" would be the discriminative part. It seems to work pretty well in ML, maybe it would work in education too?:D
False dichotomy. The alternative is that the economy is not a zero-sum game, half the world is unlucky to be born in worse-off countries that are the way they are because of their history and geography, and "getting your country straight" is a difficult and complex task that requires cooperation on massive scale.
One thing I don't understand is, what is preventing anyone from just starting a new factory or importing insulin from abroad to sell it cheaper than the competitors?
One of the huge problems with making generic drugs is that you need to demonstrate that your drug does the same thing as the real deal, which isn't as expensive as phase I, II, and III trials for bringing a completely new product to market, but it isn't cheap, fast, or easy. Likewise, setting up proper facilities to manufacture your product isn't cheap, either.
The same used to be said about photography. What is most important in true art is not being skilled with a paintbrush or Photoshop but ability to evoke different emotions and thoughts.
Most people on the planet cannot afford the time and money to change their lifestyles to be environmentally-friendly. And among those few who do, most have other priorities. It is naive to believe that a collective change in consument behaviour will scale up as the solution to Earth's environment problems.
I don't think the parent commenter meant the producers of goods as the "people with actual power". It is just as unreasonable to believe that businesses will suddenly start caring about environment, since that would put them at a disadvantage on the market. (Though I imagine the whole narrative that it is the consumer's responsibility to fix the environment is very convenient for some of the less-environmentally friendly corporations who might be afraid of additional burdens on them so there's an incentive to push that message)
In my opinion the root of the problem is that damaging the environment is not associated with an inherent cost. In my opinion, scalable solutions are those which "use the free market to regulate itself", i.e. things like carbon taxes (to make CO2 emission a cost), shifting cost of garbage utilisation to packaging producers (to make non-recyclable packaging a cost) etc. (+ corresponding change to social programs to lessen the impact of this change on consumers who would not afford increase in the price of goods). But for this to happen there needs to be a political will. For this reason I think that the most environmentally conscious things those of us who live in democracies can do is to vote for environmentally conscious representatives who understand the issue well.
