When exactly will London be flooded? How long will it take? How long will it last? — Mongrel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_BarrierThe barrier was originally designed to protect London against a very high flood level (with an estimated return period of one hundred years) up to the year 2030, after which the protection would decrease, whilst remaining within acceptable limits.[18] At the time of its construction, the barrier was expected to be used 2–3 times per year. It is now being used 6–7 times per year.[19]
This defence level included long-term changes in sea and land levels as understood at that time (c. 1970). Despite global warming and a consequently greater predicted rate of sea level rise, recent analysis extended the working life of the barrier until around 2060–2070. From 1982 until 19 March 2007, the barrier was raised one hundred times to prevent flooding. It is also raised monthly for testing,[20] with a full test closure over high tide once a year.[17]
Personally I don't think matters are that settled. It may very well be possible that the planet has a self-regulating mechanism which is capable to dispose of the warming effect and we just haven't thought of it yet. Us humans are terrible terrible at predicting anything. We can't even predict economic crises - much less how the planet will react to warming.I think an important thing to consider that sacrificing your habitat for the sake of a higher GDP is practically unavoidable in a consumerist and competitive economy.
It's really a sort of miracle that countries actually can look past GDP growth for the sake of preserving the environment for higher GDP growth (e.g Paris climate agreement).
However, I believe that we are past the point of no return in terms of climate change. I guess we'll just to adapt and learn how to live in a new environment. — Question
Wealth creation (and I'm talking about real wealth creation, not peanuts), just like empire building takes the right circumstances, the right positioning and a bit of luck. If you have all that, it's actually not that hard assuming that you also have sufficient intelligence to approach the situation in the right way.Every time someone brings this up, you know they have zero interest in understanding a complex phenomenon such a wealth creation. — Emptyheady
There are many unknowns, but not knowing everything does not equate to not knowing shit. It might not happen, It might be worse than I suggest. We might build a new barrier, or someone might bomb this one. But again, what I don't know, plus what science does not know does not add up to an argument. We do know that sea levels are rising and that the rate has been increasing. — unenlightened
A final point, typically neglected in recent dismal prophesies of machine-human substitution, is that if human labor is indeed rendered superfluous by automation, then our chief economic problem will be one of distribution, not of scarcity. The primary system of income distribution in market economies is rooted in labor scar- city; citizens possess (or acquire) a bundle of valuable “human capital” that, due to its scarcity, generates a flow of income over the career path. If machines were in fact to make human labor superfluous, we would have vast aggregate wealth but a serious challenge in determining who owns it and how to share it. One might presume that with so much wealth at hand, distribution would be relatively straightforward to resolve. But history suggests that this prediction never holds true. There is always perceived scarcity and ongoing conflict over distribution, and I do not expect that this problem will become any less severe as automation advances. — Autor
Godzilla rises from the Pacific and decides he fucking hates Tokyo.
Why won't it happen?
And btw... if you can't explain why it won't happen, that means it's inevitable. — Mongrel
The disempowered masses vote for a return to the industrial age, which they will not get. What they will get is the encouragement to continue the dying industrial past, producing and consuming, until their complete destruction. — unenlightened
I was kind of hoping someone would talk me out of it by showing where I've gone wrong. Pessimism is not my usual mode, nor politics my usual concern. I think it was the combination of Trumpery, Putinism, and at home, Corbynism and anti-Corbynism together with Brexitry that got me wondering what is going on.
I'd like to believe it is just a psychological condition I've got stuck in, but you'll have to work a bit harder to convince me. — unenlightened
This will be accomplished by global warming raising sea levels to flood major centres of population and most of the arable land
supplemented by repressive government and war.
The model changes. Robots don't make stuff for workers to consume because there are no workers. Non workers become non-consumers and have no value to capital. Robots are capital and produce products for capitalists. Everyone else fucks off and dies.
The flexible labour market is just the beginning of the end of labour power. Its not a betrayal, but the operation of historical necessity. This is a neo-Marxist analysis - do you not recognise it? — unenlightened
20th century capitalism defied Marx's predictions by thriving because (a) the nation-state spent a great deal more on non-transfer payments for welfare than in previous centuries, on transfers like pensions, and on the military; and (b) mass markets opened up, in a virtuous circle where better-paid workers bought everything from Henry Ford's cars to Amazon's books. These were the two fundamental sources of vastly-increased aggregate demand that made a lot of people richer than their forebears.
I don't see why there won't continue to be mass markets. — mcdoodle
What's to be done? — mcdoodle
I don't know what to add. — mcdoodle
The best way to have a revolution is to pretend it has already happened. — Jerry Garcia
... try to understand how it comes to be the way it is. — Mongrel
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