• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Here are the actual poll results which the article helpfully does not link to.

    Napolitan News surveys ask an initial question to determine the voter preference for each candidate. Then, a follow-up question is asked of uncommitted voters to see which candidate they are leaning towards. The results are then reported “with leaners.”

    On the initial ask– the number without leaners– it was Trump 50%, Harris 47%.

    This Napolitan News Service survey of 774 Likely Voters was conducted online by Scott Rasmussen on September 25-27, 2024. Field work for the survey was conducted by RMG Research, Inc. and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5.

    I think articles like this based on a single poll which appears to be an outlier are uninformative, but I guess they get clicks.




  • I disagree with you, because a modern human could offer the people of the distant past (with their far less advanced technology) solutions to their problems which would seem miraculous to them. Things that they thought were impossible would be easy for the modern human. The computer may do the same for us, with a solution to climate change that would be, as you put it, magically ecological.

    With that said, the computer wouldn’t be giving humans suggestions. It would be the one in charge. Imagine a group of chimpanzees that somehow create a modern human. (Not a naked guy with nothing, but rather someone with all the knowledge we have now.) That human isn’t going to limit himself to answering questions for very long. This isn’t a perfect analogy because chimpanzees don’t comprehend language, but if a human with a brain just 3.5 times the size of a chimpanzee’s can do so much more than a chimpanzee, a computer with calculational capability orders of magnitude greater than a human’s could be a god compared to us. (The critical thing is to make it a loving god; humans haven’t been good to chimpanzees.)


  • I don’t think you’re imagining the same thing they are when you hear the word “AI”. They’re not imagining a computer that prints out a new idea that is about as good as the ideas that humans have come up with. Even that would be amazing (it would mean that a computer could do science and engineering about as well as a human) but they’re imagining a computer that’s better than any human. Better at everything. It would be the end of the world as we know it, and perhaps the start of something much better. In any case, climate change wouldn’t be our problem anymore.


  • The article compares coal and natural gas based on thermal energy and does not take into account the greater efficiency of natural-gas power plants. According to Yale the efficiency of a coal power plant is 32% and that of a natural gas power plant is 44%. This means that to generate the same amount of electricity, you need 38% more thermal energy from coal than you would from natural gas. I’m surprised that the author neglects this given his focus on performing a full lifecycle assessment.

    Natural gas becomes approximately equal to coal after efficiency is corrected for, using the author’s GWP20 approach. GWP20 means that the effect of global warming is calculated for a 20 year timescale. The author argues that this is the appropriate timescale to use, but he also presents data for the more conventional GWP100 approach, and when this data is adjusted for efficiency, coal is about 25% worse than natural gas.

    I’m not an expert so I can’t speak authoritatively about GWP20 vs GWP100 but I suspect GWP100 is more appropriate in this case. Carbon dioxide is a stable gas but methane degrades fairly quickly. Its lifetime in the atmosphere is approximately 10 years. This means that while a molecule of carbon dioxide can keep trapping heat forever, a molecule of methane will trap only a finite amount of heat. This effect is underestimated using GWP20.

    Edit: Also the Guardian shouldn’t be calling this a “major study”. It’s one guy doing some fairly basic math and publishing in a journal that isn’t particularly prestigious.



  • The federal government uses the term “terminate” rather than “revoke” to describe the decision not to extend TPS, but even the article the OP posted (which is very critical of Trump’s plan) interprets what he said as “not extend”.

    Now Trump plans to forcibly uproot this group of roughly 18,000 people who pay taxes, own homes, have jobs, and support their families. But that’s only the beginning: Up to 2.7 million people could lose protection from deportation if Trump allows immigration programs such as Temporary Protected Status, DACA, and humanitarian parole to lapse during a second term, according to Forbes.


  • The interviewer was the one who used the word “revoke” but Trump does seem like the kind of person who could attempt to end the TPS designation early rather than waiting for it to simply expire a year into his term. Such an attempt would have very little chance of success. Decisions to terminate (as opposed to revoke early) TPS status during Trump’s past presidency are still going through the courts (see Ramos, et al. v. Nielsen, et al.) and not in effect.


  • Trump and the interviewer are talking about Temporary Protected Status, which is temporary.

    A TPS designation can be made for 6, 12, or 18 months at a time. At least 60 days prior to the expiration of TPS, the Secretary [of Homeland Security] must decide whether to extend or terminate a designation based on the conditions in the foreign country.

    Source.

    TPS eligibility for people from Haiti will last until February 3, 2026 unless it is extended. If during a Trump presidency, the federal government does not extend TPS for Haiti, it would be acting well within its established authority.



  • Despite media speculation, Israel is not currently planning to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to four Israeli officials, even though Israel sees Iran’s efforts to create a nuclear weapons program as an existential threat. Targeting nuclear sites, many of which are deep underground, would be hard without U.S. support. President Biden said Wednesday that he would not support an attack by Israel on Iranian nuclear sites.

    I wonder what the strategy here is, given that the USA also wants to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Is the implication here that the USA will not enable an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as long as Iran doesn’t actually try to build a bomb? How confident are Israel and the USA that Iran can’t build a bomb in secret? Is there a way Iran could retaliate against an attack on its nuclear facilities but not against an attack on other major targets?









  • Are you implying that Israel’s much greater number of attacks are because they are doing really tiny attacks or something?

    No, I’m just saying the graph is probably useless. Israel definitely is launching more and larger attacks, because that’s how you win a war. Ideally Hezbollah would be launching zero attacks because Israel launched the massive number of attacks necessary to cripple Hezbollah. A little red bar, then a big blue bar, and finally no red bar at all.

    Israel is doing bigger strikes with less concern for civilian casualties.

    Is this a joke? Hezbollah usually attacks with unguided rockets. This demonstrates zero concern for civilian casualties. Less than zero, actually, because the intent of the attacks is to cause civilian casualties. Relatively few Israeli civilians have died because Israel is successfully defending them, not because Hezbollah’s policy regarding Israeli civilians is different from that of Hamas.

    A cease fire in Gaza would achieve this.

    Even if that is true (and it would only be true in the short term) then Israel would still be foolish to make major concessions to its persistent enemies when it has the military power necessary not to. Meanwhile Hezbollah would be more inclined to launch future attacks because it would see that they worked.