The energy math doesn’t make sense for grid scale applications with solid objects.

https://youtu.be/iGGOjD_OtAM

However if you can get water between two places it can work quite well. You need to live close to a big change in altitude and do a bit of geoengineering to create the upper and lower reservoirs, which can be destructive to local ecology, but not as much as a dam.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

You can also use pumped air underwater with higher energy losses than pumped storage hydro because of compatibility of air.

https://electricalindustry.ca/changing-scenes/1785-world-s-first-utility-scale-underwater-compressed-air-energy-storage-system-activated-in-lake-ontario/

What kind of a bot response is this? You’re not disabled or living, you’re a bot. Either stop pretending you’re a person or if you are a person make a separate non-bot flagged account.

At home both of those are invalid. You close the lid before you flush so you don’t spread particles everywhere (among many other benefits)

Everyone opens the lid/seat to the desired level. Everyone does their business. Everyone closes the lid. Everyone flushes and washes their hands.

True gender equality!

I think that free speech laws are what stopped us from being proactive against these intolerant fascist views.

They turn tolerance from a social contract into a “paradox” where we have to tolerate the intolerant until they take over.

If we didn’t have such strict free speech laws, we could have deplatformed and jailed these people back when they were at the “protest with confederate and Nazi flags” stage and not had to deal with the neo-fascist government stage.

To put it another way punching Nazis should be legal. A Nazi is a direct existential threat to Jewish people and other minorities. Parading with Nazi paraphernalia in public is violence towards others and punching Nazis is valid self defense. American free speech and self defense laws were written to exclude “inducement” of violence, but that’s been whittled away by the supreme Court, including a ruling that walking around with Nazi flags in a Jewish neighborhood wasn’t bad enough to permit the residents to retaliate in any way because of “free speech”.

Yeah, because like all good money it’s backed by a state with a judicial system and a military.

I do not feel bad for his family. They’re better off. Here is what he said about his (future) 10 year old daughter getting raped www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/charlie-kirks-hardline-abortion-views-resurface-after-his-killing-in-utah-viral-video-101757562999575.html

This guy is an irredeemable ghoul. I’d rather have no dad than a dad that forces me to carry to term and raise a rape baby at 10 years old.

Yes, but we live in a patriarchy. When a grifter grifts millions of us, both as workers and consumers, to become rich they’re “a visionary, amazing, self made man”. But when a woman grifts a single one of these assholes and gets some of their money she’s a “gold digger”.

Buddy, the average American isn’t any more depraved as anyone else. The US just gives guns to people who shouldn’t have them and then provides them no training nor help with their problems.

LMFAO “the main reason is guns, but I don’t like that so let’s mix the data into other categories to obfuscate the issue so no one else can use it to support gun reform”

Yeah, other countries have access to guns, but they also have a lot more licensing requirements and restrictions. That keeps guns away from idiots, unsafe people, and criminals. That’s the difference, gun reform.

You 2A people have zero reading comprehension because I’ve never seen one of you in a well regulated militia.

Human spiral sees one country invading another country, stealing their children, stealing their land, stealing their resources:

“The invaders are the good guys, the victim is actually the bad one. I can’t explain because it’s really complicated. If you see the victim as a victim then you’re just being childish”

Good grief!

Ironically, in statistics, and in the application of statistics to science, a significant result is one that is measurably different from zero. So when a scientist says “no significant effect” they don’t mean “there is an effect, but not a significant one” they mean “there is no measurable effect”.

That STILL doesn’t mean it’s zero, like you said. But it does mean that if the effect was actually zero the data would still be the same. That’s because rabies data is famously unreliable. Often by the time they’re diagnosed, victims are nonverbal. We can get an idea of the species where the stain originated from, but that doesn’t mean that’s the animal that bit the person. If a bat bit a cat who bit a human the test would turn up bat. So was it a undetected bat bite, or a bat infection in a non-bat carrier? We’ll never know because the patient can’t explain anymore. Is it zero, is it a small amount? We don’t know. But what we do know is that if there is a connection between undetected bat bites and rabies in humans, that connection is weak enough to be undetectable using the data we have.

Rabies is a horrible disease, and it’s good they’re being proactive about warning anyone of potential exposure. Luckily for the visitors, the rabies-bat connection, especially without a detectable bite is starting to be proven to be extremely unlikely to cause rabies infections in humans.

www.merlintuttle.org/rabies-in-perspective/

Researchers meeting at the 29th Annual North American Symposium on Bat Research, on October 30, 1999, passed a resolution stating that they “find no credible support for the hypothesis that undetected bites by bats are a significant factor in transmitting rabies to humans.”

summitsystems.co.uk/adiabatic-coolers-vs-cooling-towers/

There are many solutions to this problem. Evaporative cooling is just the cheapest. But it’s only cheap because we don’t charge these water users market rates for water. If they’re threatening drinking water or agricultural water we should just charge them for water usage the same as you pay for drinking water at home. That’s fundamentally what they’re taking when they drain the rivers dry. That way they compete directly on the water market instead of bypassing it.

They’ll install adiabatic coolers in no time.

“If we try to make the world a better place, the conservatives will use that as a pretext to do what they’re already doing”

There was an onion article about almost exactly that lol. https://theonion.com/protesters-urged-not-to-give-trump-administration-pretext-for-what-it-already-doing/

They’re already saying our plan to tackle climate change is going to hurt the economy. But we know that doing nothing will hurt the economy worse. Being scared of them saying what they’re already saying is weak and cowardly. Toughen up and do the right thing.

COVID used to be about 2% fatal, which is huge. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_cruise_ships

Now, as predicted by scientists right at the start, it’s at least 10x less fatal, about on par with a particularly serious strain of flu.

Waiting it out saved A LOT of deaths. Countries with better lockdowns have significantly fewer deaths per capita. Some countries like New Zealand who responded both very quickly AND very seriously were able to benefit from far fewer restrictions as well

The vaccines also reduced severity, and transmissibility of the virus, both at the time as well as now, and they’re still medically recommended for at risk groups.

There was an emergency, the steps we took helped everyone. No one gained anything significant politically except anti-vax fascists who are now running the country.

We on the other hand benefited from fewer fatalities, the first actual progress towards sustainable living with work from home for people who can. We finally made progress on climate goals. We showed the power of collective action through government benefits and healthcare for all when it came to vaccines at least in the US.

It’s too bad we’re working away from those improvements so quickly.

You’re clearly putting a lot of effort into your responses and are being respectful. I don’t think I’ve given you the same respect so far so I’ll try my best.

I agree with the nuances you brought up. I understand you feel it’s better to intervene and be safe than sorry. I see the appeal of that.

I take the opposite stance. I know that the welfare of the child is closely tied to the stress and trauma they endure. In most families that at least nominally love their children that’s related to the stress of the parents. Stressed out parents are bad parents (all else being equal). Taking a child from their parents is a big stressor, that alone will make the child’s life worse.

To me, that’s enough motivation to say that on average the damage you cause through intervention has to be less than the life improvement you gain from intervention.

That’s a hard balance to strike. It can be appealing to say that damage to 100 families is worth it to save one child from irreparable harm.

My personal ethics say that you’re only responsible for your actions. If you don’t act and something bad happens then that’s on the people who did the bad things. On the other hand, if you do act then it’s important to validate that your actions match your intentions to improve the world, using the data you have access to, as best as you can.

I know other people have a value system that compels them to act because not acting can be as much a choice as acting. This type of value system would definitely lead you to intervening more often. I have a hard time internalizing these types of value systems because they’re very problematic at large scale and at edge cases.

I can live in a world with interventionists. But it doesn’t mean I don’t feelthe damage unnecessary interventions cause such as the one in this article.

The article sites 4 studies not one.

Even at that, lower earnings and higher delinquency rates are exactly the kinds of data point that shows unnecessary intervention, like taking a child from the mother over poppy seeds, which maybe you’ll remember is what we were disagreeing about, is bad for children.

It’s clear that the “take the kids from the parents and investigate later” attitude you’re recommending causes more problems than it solves, even though it’s “well meaning” at first glance.

Eating food isn’t a reason to have your kids taken away from any parent, even one who was at risk of drug abuse. This is a known problem with the tests and they should have confirmed it BEFORE acting, not taken the baby and investigated later.

This is exactly the arguments used to ban abortions.

If she’s already found at risk of having an abortion she should be held in a safe birthing room until she gives birth then further analysis can be done, but in the short term the fetus needs to be safeguarded…

That’s what you sound like.

Sorry mate, you can’t just take people’s children because you’re worried, even if you’re well meaning. If you want data here you go: children fare immeasurably better in abusive homes than in the child welfare system:

https://nccpr.org/the-evidence-is-in-foster-care-vs-keeping-families-together-the-definitive-studies/

Turns out being with your family (regular, abusive, or adoptive) is FAR better than any other transient arrangement of care provider, almost universally, even for terrible abuse and neglect.

No, even if there was an existing agreement. You can’t have your kids taken away for eating healthy food.

Drug addicts don’t have less rights than the rest of us.

Eating a salad isn’t the same as endangering your child even if the test can’t tell the difference.

Amazing, thanks for the clarification!