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Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which makes the world warmer on average. It also lowers the PH levels of the oceans.

If the oceans die, its very likely that many or even most humans will also. As a human I am pretty strongly opposed to dying, but thats just, like, my opinion man.

 help



The major problem with hydrocarbons today is that we are releasing carbon dioxide stored hundreds of millions of years ago.

If, theoretically, you could produce hydrocarbons from the carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere, then it could be a substantial reduction in net carbon dioxide being added; and it would be compatible with the fuel infrastructure of today.


What must have been the composition of the atmosphere all those hundreds of millions of years ago for all that carbon dioxide to have been removed from the atmosphere and sequestered as biological matter, to then be buried and reacted to form vast quantities of hydrocarbons.

The bind moggles.


Your mind should boggle. It's all pretty amazing.

2.5 billion years ago the earth would have been uninhabitable to most modern life. Single celled life evolved in those conditions and began creating glucose and oxygen from CO2 and water. When those primitive lifeforms died some of them became oil and the CO2 was sequestered.

Over time the CO2 levels dropped until about 20 million years ago the CO2 levels fell to about 300ppm. That's when life as we know it really took off. Yes, it took BILLIONS of years to get there.

Humans have only existed for about 200k years. During that time our CO2 levels have mostly been below about 280ppm. The are now at 429ppm and are rising exponentially. [0]

[0] https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2


What role, if any, did carbonate mineral formation have in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?

In the beginning, the oceans were acidic, because they were formed by the condensation of volcanic gases, which consisted of water, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride (i.e. hydrochloric acid) and a few other less abundant acids.

In time, the oceans have become less and less acidic, by dissolving from the volcanic silicate rocks the oxides of the alkaline metals and alkali earth metals, i.e. mainly of sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. This dissolution has affected both the rocks on the bottom of the oceans and the continental rocks, where rain has washed the soluble oxides, transporting them through rivers to the oceans.

At some point, so much of the alkaline and alkali earth metals from the volcanic rocks have been dissolved that the oceans have become slightly alkaline instead of acidic, like they are today.

At that time, the carbonates of calcium and magnesium have precipitated from sea water, forming sedimentary rocks. Also around that time, many living beings have evolved mechanisms for controlling this precipitation process, in order to build skeletons for themselves. This has resulted in the fact that many sedimentary rocks are not formed by direct precipitation from sea water, but by precipitation from sea water into skeletons, followed by depositing on the bottom the skeletons of dead living beings.

Now, with increasing concentration of CO2, there is the danger that the oceans will become so acidic as to reverse this, dissolving again a part of the carbonate rocks, including the skeletons of many living beings that are made of carbonates.

There is an equilibrium between the concentration of CO2 in water and in air, depending on temperature and pressure. When the CO2 from water precipitated with calcium or magnesium into rocks, that has drawn more CO2 from air into the water, until a new equilibrium was reached, at a reduced concentration of CO2 in the air. If carbonates would be dissolved by acidic sea water, that would liberate CO2, a part of which would go into the air, further increasing the concentration there.

Thus the formation or destruction of carbonate rocks and skeletons adds a positive feedback to the changes of the CO2 concentration in the air, which has the potential to be bad for us.

Even worse is the fact that this is only one of multiple positive feedback mechanisms that can be triggered by changes in the CO2 concentration in the air, which make very difficult or impossible any long term predictions.


I am fairly certain they teach the gist of all of that in even in school-level textbooks on biology/geography.

Hopefully they never stop.

adrian puts it quite well though.

Keeping that in mind;

>What role, if any, did carbonate mineral formation have in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?

Looks like as much as it possibly could.


It was the primary driver until life happened. Then life was, and now they exist in a delicate balance.

I get the idea that the throwaway account was suggesting we can just "do whatever forever" without consequences though, and that's just not true. Most CO2 sequestration on earth is now biological in origin and has been for a very long time.


It's possible to synthesise hydrocarbon analogues of petroluem-based fuels. The problem to date has been that this isn't cost-competitive with petroleum, though the difference is narrower than you might expect. Most famously, a Google X Project attempted this and succeeded technically, but the economics were unfavourable: Project Foghorn: <https://x.company/projects/foghorn/>. Both Germany and South Africa have performed synfuel production (from coal) at industrial scale since the 1930s / 1950s, respectively. Using non-fossil carbon is largely the same chemistry; the process does in fact scale.

Fischer-Tropsch and Sabatier process can both operate with scavenged CO2. There's been some work since the 1990s utilising seawater as a CO2 source, with CO2 capture being far more efficient than from atmospheric sources.

Whilst hydrocarbons have numerous downsides (whether sourced from fossil or renewable sources), they are also quite convenient, exceedingly well-proven, and tremendously useful. In some applications, particularly marine and aviation transport, there are few if any viable alternatives.

I've commented on this numerous times at HN over the years: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.


I hadn't heard of Fischer-Tropsch. Looks like it usually works based on gassification of biomass or existing fossil fuels, so it seems at first glance that it has the same negative externalities as just burning the source material doesn't it?

The Sabatier process looks like it might have much less of that! Very cool stuff. I would love to see a future in which we use uninhabitable, non-arable, desert land to generate cheap synfuel that we can ship wherever needed.


FT can work with pretty much any source of carbon and hydrogen.

The latter might come from an existing hydrocarbon (as with so-called "blue", "grey", "black", or "brown" hydrogen), or from electrolysis, which is not carbon-neutral. If the latter is powered by a carbon-neutral source (surplus renewables, nuclear), it's "green", and carbon-neutral.

CO2 can also be obtained from numerous sources. One prospect suggested when US peak oil was a concern, in the 1960s, was limestone. More recently, the US Naval Research Lab, as well as Google's Project Foghorn, looked at separating CO2 (in the form of carbonic and carbolic acid) from seawater, which is far less energy intensive than direct removal from the atmosphere. I'd looked up the history of research and industrial applications circa 2014, noted here:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20170719101136/https://www.reddi...>

<https://web.archive.org/web/20230601122020/https://old.reddi...>

The US Navy has an interest largely for its carrier fleet. Whilst the carriers themselves are nuclear powered, their aircraft are not, and fuel provisioning for the aircraft fleets is a major logistical hurdle as well as a strategic vulnerability. No need to target the carriers themselves (heavily defended) if the supply tankers can be sunk, something present US adversaries might consider. One prospect would be to effectively recommission older carriers as fuel-synthesis platforms, capable of producing aviation fuel from seawater in situ and not having to transit between fuel depots and the fleet itself. Given the additional costs of transit and strategic significance, the economics should be somewhat more favourable than for civilian use. This was the subject of a number of papers published in the 2010s by the US Naval Research Laboratory (listed above). Earlier research based on other carbon sources was performed at MIT and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1970s and 1960s, respectively.


Fischer-Tropsch is based on the reaction of carbon monoxide with dihydrogen (free hydrogen). This mixture is known as syngas.

While now the cheapest way is to make syngas from methane or from coal, it is possible to make syngas from carbon dioxide that reacts with electrolytic hydrogen.

It is also possible to make equivalent precursors of synthetic hydrocarbons by the electrolysis of carbon dioxide in water.

For these 2 methods, you do not need any fossil fuels, but only electrical energy for electrolysis.

Where the energetic efficiency is still very low is when you want to use clean air as the source of CO2, instead of using a concentrated source of CO2. With very cheap energy, i.e. solar energy that is used at the point of capture, it should still be possible to devise a method of capture for CO2 from the air. Many such methods are known, their only problem being a high energy consumption per the amount of captured CO2, so they are impractical with energy that must be bought from the grid, but I do not see why they could not work when coupled directly with solar panels.


Take The Great Barrier Reef for example.

There’s more of it now than in the reefs recorded history.

Well, 2022 data:

https://www.aims.gov.au/information-centre/news-and-stories/...


Bad news, there has been a fourth great bleaching event going on since January of 23. This time 80+% of all reefs have been impacted and the consensus seems to be that its unlikely there will be any reefs left at all before too long.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/13/coral-re...


Yes yes, The Sky Is Falling™.

All the more reason to give our ounce great nation away to fuck wits who think shooting up Jews is a reasonable idea, making electricity expensive chasing a target that will have approximately no impact on global carbon emissions and further drive manufacturing out of the country, all the while making even my generation (Xillenials) worse off now than we were ten years ago.

Young people and the working poor? They can freeze in the dark on the streets, fuck them.

Turn up unannounced and utter the shibboleth asylum seeker and we roll out the red carpet. Low interest loans so they can start businesses, and priory social housing. Fuck the locals.

And you cum guzzlers keep voting for more of it.

There’s only so much ideology we can take. Check One Nations recently polling.

I’m encouraging young people to get in to the trades, especially brick laying and masonry because if things keep going they way they are…

We’re going to need more walls.

Know what I’m sayin’.


I like the false equivalence between reducing air pollution and not doing hate crimes against Jewish people. I haven’t asked them all individually, but I’m pretty sure my Jewish friends all enjoy breathing clean air.

You’re going to have to explain how you read from what I wrote.

From the site guidelines:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


It's quite impressive to quote the guidelines to someone when your first post breaks a whole bunch of them.

If you can’t be bothered helping, maybe just shut ya ugly face?

Where’s a report button when you need one?

If you click on the time stamp of my earlier comment you should see the option to flag my comment.

Dibber-dobber.


I think you've been listening to the wrong people. That's a whole lot of dog whistles in that screed.

Right, don’t address the substance of the message, just drive-by-dismiss the concerns of a growing segment of voters.

My comment you responded to didn’t happen overnight.

You’re welcome to go through my comment history and address my concerns as detailed over the previous thirteen years, many of which are much more level headed and many contain references to thinkers much more intelligent and way more eloquent than anything I’ll ever write.


Yes yes, The Sky Is Falling™. :)

Haha! Yeah, embarrassing to say that then go on to write that screed.

Time for a top-up!


> Know what I’m sayin’.

I do, and if I were you I would stop to think about your priors. You have stacked an awful lot of ideas on top of each other to build a world view that has lies, misinformation, and unsound science at the base of it. Worse, a lot of it is selfish, but in a way that only works if the entire global economy is a zero sum game. Enlightened self-interest can be right, and even noble, but only if you know the game well enough to comprehend why altruism is still important, and you don't. The world is NOT a zero sum game, and this kind of self-interest is the bad kind.

Some of the logic at the top of your pyramid would be sound, if the bottom wasn't a pile of mush. A few minor points:

1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now (for net new electricity). It's been that way for awhile now, but one particular bubble tries really hard to stop people from learning that. If cost is your concern you should be pushing for more solar, and less of the fuel you literally set fire to and have to keep digging up forever until it runs out.

2) Giving money to hostile Arab nations who hate you is not going to stop anyone from "took 'er jorbs"ing you. In fact, you would have more money if your car didn't literally burn your money constantly and also require expensive oil changes and other maintenance constantly.

3) Pretty much everything you said about loans and housing is based on absolute fabrications, or extreme exaggerations. Even if it weren't, other people receiving assistance doesn't actually cost you anything. The national debt has INCREASED at a record pace under Trump, exactly as it does during every Republican presidency, and it's not because Trump loves helping people so much.

Republican presidents have added about $1.4 trillion per four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by Democrats since 1913. During my lifetime there has never been a Republican president who was fiscally conservative in the slightest. Trump is somehow making it worse while also letting children starve thanks to cutting USAID.

4) There's nothing wrong with the trades, if your body can physically handle it for 40-50 years. It's good and honest work, and we need more folks to go into them. It's also likely to be more stable and less demanding than the kind of work most of us here do.

5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing jobs? The only reasons humans have them is that humans (in some places) are cheaper than robots. Robots are getting cheaper every day. Moving them here will get us a few (even richer) billionaires. Not more jobs (at least not the kind you're probably thinking of). It will also increase the cost of ALL THE THINGS.

The worst part of this mistake is that while normal people spend most of their money billionaires spend only a miniscule fraction of their income. Billionaire money just idles non-productively most of the time, or is engaged in parasitic interest gathering via obscure financial instruments. Giving money to billionaires is kind of like throwing it in the garbage. Giving it to the middle class is good for everyone, because they buy things and drive demand.

Lastly, I'm also a Xennial, and I have to say that I'm better off now than 10 years ago. Maybe I just made better choices?

Either way, drink plenty of water before bed. It will help with the hangover in the morning.


> 1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now

No, that's simply not true.

It's cheaper for MOST of the year, but overall, it's more expensive. Because you can't just tell people, "Well, now, during this cold January, please don't waste electricity because our panels are producing almost nothing." You either need batteries that store energy for weeks of consumption, or backup with fossil fuels, and in any case, that makes solar panels more expensive than fossil fuels.

> Trump is somehow making it worse while also letting children starve thanks to cutting USAID.

It's very strange. In all cases of interaction with the USAID that I know about directly from those interacting with it, and not from media sources, in EVERY case it was liberal propaganda or direct anti-Trump propaganda. And none of the starving children that I know about directly from those who interacted with them, and not from the media, have ever received any food aid from.

I know, of course, that this is an anecdotal case, but I prefer to trust people with whom I am at least superficially acquainted, rather than media companies that are apparently run by pedophiles.

> 5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing jobs? The only reasons humans have them is that humans (in some places) are cheaper than robots.

Because the era of US hegemony is ending, and at some point you simply won't be able to live off the rest of the world. At that point, you'll either have production or you'll simply starve to death. Because food (and robots) don't fall from the sky. And if you don't produce it (and don't take it from the rest of the world through your hegemony), you'll starve and die.

> Billionaire money just idles non-productively most of the time

American workers spend as much money EACH YEAR as billionaires accumulated over generations (mostly in the form of productive capacity, not idling in the piles)

> and I have to say that I'm better off now than 10 years ago. Maybe I just made better choices?

The best choice is to rob the rest of the world and live off them? Well, congratulations on making the better choice that allows you, unlike the REST OF THE WORLD, not work for less than $2 an hour (as 90% of the Earth's population does, thanks to American hegemony).


You do not need backup with fossil fuels.

You need backup with hydrocarbon fuels synthesized from water and CO2, like all the living beings have done for billions of years.

Storing energy in hydrocarbons has a lower efficiency for short term storage, but it has a better efficiency for long term storage, in which case batteries would auto discharge.

So energy storage must use a combination of batteries for short term (for a few days at most) together with methods useful for long term (from a few months to many years), including hydrocarbon synthesis, pumped water, etc.

Synthesizing hydrocarbons from concentrated CO2 has already been done at large scale almost a century ago. Now there are much better methods, e.g. using the electrolysis of CO2.

The most difficult part remains capturing the CO2 from normal air and not from exhaust gases where it is concentrated.

This is a difficult engineering problem, but one solved by bacteria billions of years ago, and which probably would already have some good solution if any serious and well-funded research effort would have been done in this direction, instead of only talking about how it would be desirable but without any concrete action.


> You either need batteries that store energy for weeks of consumption, or backup with fossil fuels, and in any case, that makes solar panels more expensive than fossil fuels.

I love the wild mental gymnastics and cherry picking data these people put themselves through in order to delude themselves in to believing solar is cheaper than gas.

How can it be, when you need to build both. Or freeze in the dark.

As you said, in practice you either need batteries that don’t exist and would be prohibitively expensive because they would sit idle most the year where only hours to days of backup are required, but in winter you need weeks of storage and the output from the panels are significantly reduced so you need to massively overbuild…

OR you need to build gas peaker plants, which also sit idle most the year, but need to be run frequently and maintained to ensure they’re ready to run when needed.

The real world data is available for anyone who wants to run the numbers.

I was in Adelaide and participated in the discussions where Dr Barry Brook[1] and others ran the numbers over ten years ago. Exhaustively ran the numbers, both with real world data from recently built solar and wind, and optimistic projections of future improvements

The fundamentals haven’t changed. Even if the panels themselves were free, the amount or steel and concrete required to replace total global energy requirements with solar and wind is… it’s incomprehensible.

If I recall correctly, it worked out to requiring something absurd like more copper, steel, and concrete, than humans have produced to date (2013 figures) since the start of the Industrial Revolution, every year for the next fifty years just to replace existing energy production and distribution infrastructure, and in so doing we would double or triple atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. We’d then have to work out how to pull those emissions back out of the atmosphere, which wound require further resource use to produce the infrastructure to generate the energy required to extract and sequester the carbon dioxide.

Compare to what we’re doing now which has barely scratched the surface in replacing global energy requirements, with no reduction in carbon dioxide levels.

It all makes a pretty strong case for existing nuclear technology (Gen IV / Gen IV+) to give us time (hundreds of years with existing know uranium reserves) to perfect fast breeder technology so we can use Thorium as nuclear fuel for thousands of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Brook_(scientist)


A big part of it is the industry standard for using the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCoE) as the benchmark metric. By that metric, solar IS the lowest cost power source.

But that definition doesn't take into account availability. This wasn't a problem when all electricity sources were highly available by default. You can burn coal or run the hydro turbines any minute of the year. With the rise of often-unavailable renewable sources like solar and wind that definition is now insufficient and under counts the true like-for-like cost of solar.

By any metric which takes into account minor availability requirements (eg. supplies electricity at night) solar badly loses its cost advantage. It gets even worse if the metric is the still important "deepest winter night" scenario.


> By any metric which takes into account minor availability requirements (eg. supplies electricity at night) solar badly loses its cost advantage. It gets even worse if the metric is the still important "deepest winter night" scenario.

This is wildly incorrect. Batteries have gotten cheaper, solar has gotten cheaper, and even accounting for storage solar now wins by a wide margin even in "wintery" climates.[0]

Ten years ago you were right, but the cost has been falling by a huge percentage every year for about 15 years straight now. There will never be another time when it makes sense to dig up fossil fuels, ship them all over the world, process them, and then set them on fire when we can just slap up a solar panel and store the power for something approximating free on a 20+ year timeline.

Even if we discount the tax breaks (which we should since Trump is a doofus) both the LCOE and LCOS (levelized cost of storage) of PV + battery are lower than for natural gas, coal, nuclear, etc. Wind beats it by a small amount but less of our land is suitable for wind.

[0] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/...


That presentation doesn't support your claim. The closest it gets is that solar attached to 4 hours of batteries is, ignoring tax credits, about (it's hard to read accurately from the graph) ~8% more expensive than combined-cycle plants.

But 4 hours isn't near a full night. At least 12 hours of battery storage would be necessary for that, possibly more depending on light angles and the relative supply-versus-demand loading at different times of day.

Roughly from the graph on page 8, that 4 hours of battery costs $22/MWh over solar alone. Presuming no further solar panels were needed, extending that 4 hours to 12 to cover the night would cost around $44/MWh more, bringing the total cost of 24h-reliable solar+battery to around $97/MWh -- WITH tax credits. Without tax credits it would be $20-$30 higher, but the graph is too low resolution to be precise. That compares poorly to the $65/MWh for combined-cycle for one single night -- which gets no tax credits accounted for in that graph.


You are literally wrong about almost everything you've just said and have been for many years.[0]

There's a great video on Youtube from Technology Connections on youtube if that's more your speed. He talks a bit about how you're being lied to about it regularly and explains the technology a bit.[1] You really should watch it as he explicitly addresses each of your issues here including "what about the batteries."

Solar is literally, and provabley, cheaper than gas. Including the cost of batteries, which are recyclable. That's why something like 96% of investment in new energy is in solar or wind now. It's not activists, it's literally the cheapest way to do it now.

> over ten years ago.

There's your problem. The cost has been coming down by over 90% per year for the last decade. It WAS more expensive, a decade ago. The fundamentals HAVE changed. The panels ARE almost free, and the amount of steel and concrete are negligible.

[0] https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un-energy-transiti...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM


> great video on Youtube from Technology Connections

I don't understand why you're trying to cite conspiracy theories propaganda that's aimed at people with double-digit IQs. His videos are filled with distortions and manipulations, and do not address the real challenges facing the energy sector.

And no, there's no mention of batteries there; it's literally a straw man fight, showing their applicability to daily solar power generation cycles while almost completely ignoring their applicability to annual cycles.

> Solar is literally, and provabley, cheaper than gas. Including the cost of batteries

This is simply not true, considering that people actually need more electricity during the few weeks of the year when solar panels produce the least. It's precisely these few weeks that make solar energy more expensive than fossil fuels.

Just take a weekly chart of the actual energy output of the panels for the year, and calculate the price relative to the worst week

I don't understand why we need to engage in conspiracy theories and pretend that humanity hasn't abandoned fossil fuels because the Jews who rule the world love oil or something (and not because it's simply cheaper).

> That's why something like 96% of investment in new energy is in solar or wind now.

That's because the pedophiles who run the world can charge me 30 cents for electricity instead of the 3 cents it would cost if it were generated by fossil fuels.


> And no, there's no mention of batteries there; it's literally a straw man fight, showing their applicability to daily solar power generation cycles while almost completely ignoring their applicability to annual cycles.

Why is it every single time someone in this thread speaks up they are just plain wrong?

Here is a direct link to the part about batteries. He talks about them for about 15 minutes which is something like a quarter of the video. There is even a chapter mark to take you to that part. He also mentions them half a dozen more times throughout the video and warns in the beginning that people like you will chime in with misinformation without watching the video. You proved him right.

https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?t=3054

> applicability to annual cycles.

He talks about that too. I'm not going to bother linking. Actually watch the video or move on.

> Just take a weekly chart of the actual energy output of the panels for the year, and calculate the price relative to the worst week

I don't have to. The United States government did and even considering the cost of storage, it's still cheaper than all the alternatives. Has been for years now. See my earlier comments for links.

Private investors have done the same math, and that's why almost all new electricity generation being built is solar. It's the basically free money. Nobody with a brain can legitimately think that digging goop out of the desert, doing expensive processing to it, shipping it to the other side of the earth, and literally lighting it on fire (repeatedly forever) is more efficient than "slap up a solar cell and a battery then enjoy free energy for 20-40 years".

> hat's because the pedophiles who run the world can charge me 30 cents for electricity instead of the 3 cents it would cost if it were generated by fossil fuels.

Why would Donald Trump do that? He promised the oil execs anything they wanted for a billion dollars. Again, see my other replies for the receipts on that one. And see Trump inviting Epstein to his wedding for the other part.

*EDIT* To save you the clicks: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/... <-- Note that this specifically includes LCOS as well as LCOE. That's the cost of storage, and even with it solar + battery still beats everything but wind by WIDE margins.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-exec...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Donald_Trump_a...


All in good spirit:

> 1) Solar is (far) cheaper than fossil fuel's now (for net new electricity)

You’re going to have to show your calculations with references for LCOE - Levelised Cost of Electricity. I’ve run the numbers, you can find them and references in my comment history, and I’m not impressed with solar. Solar needs batteries, or some other type of storage, and there are roughly none of those in service so we can only theoretically predict life time costs. I can’t be fucked repeating myself here at the moment for the benefit of someone who thinks I’m a right wing nut job or whatever. Wind too.

> 2) Giving money <blah blah> more money

Again, you’re going to have to show the numbers here. Prove that an equivalent electric vehicle I need for my job is going to be cheaper on a total cost of ownership basis. This is going to be difficult to prove as there isn’t an equivalent EV that can do the miles per day required. And even if there is, can it do it for 500,000km on the same engine and gearbox / battery whatever? Without getting StacheD[1] in my garage while I sleep? It remains to be seem.

> 3) Pretty much …

No no no. The correct answer is: I’m an Australian living in Australia, reading my own governments policies, the social welfare entitlements to new arrivals, seeing the result of zoning restrictions across the road, and experiencing the results of the locals having a fertility rate below replacement, 100,000 abortions a year, resulting in the “need” to import 500,000 foreigners a year from counties no one wants to live in. I actually prefer white culture, I think it’s better, and that we should import more people from the countries we traditionally have, including India, China, Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam, and the Europeans too. I’m not racists, I just like the level of multiculturalism we had not this shoot up a Jewish festival / pro Palestine bullshit.[2]

4) There's nothing wrong with the trades

No shit cunty. I am a tradesman with … 28 years experience in and adjacent to fabrication / manufacturing / primary industries. I’ve also worked as remote-hands for the likes of Google and Akamai in data centres, so a bit of technical experience. I also have some higher education qualifications, and acquaintances in academia.

> 5) Why in the hell would anyone WANT the manufacturing jobs?

Now listen here mate ;) because lots of people, but particularly men, some women too, enjoy making things, breaking things, building things, and getting dirty. We’ve been doing it for millennia and it’s got us this far. It’s my belief that taking that away from society is going to turn out to be a general bad idea, if it ever eventuates.

> I'm better off now than 10 years ago

So am I, for various reasons. Mostly luck really. But that doesn’t negate the numbers. Houses cost more years of income, food costs more hours of labour, eggs cost more than chickens! on a per kg basis. Rent around here tends to cost more than one third of income, which is the definition of housing stress. I wouldn’t necessarily want to be a young person starting out today. The young people around here who are winning are in the trades and come from families who made at least some good choices and can offer finance from the Bank of Mum & Dad, so there’s some hope for ‘em.

I don’t drink alcohol, and I don’t smoke.

____

Edited to add:

> Either way, drink plenty of water before bed. It will help with the hangover in the morning.

It sort of doesn’t though. Most of the effects of alcohol consumption that result in a hangover are caused by an accumulation of acetaldehyde[5] in the blood, the clearance of which is rate limited by an aldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme[6]. That is to say, the clearance of acetaldehyde isn’t rate limited by water …

And the dehydration hypothesis can be debunked empirically by anyone who drinks, for example, beer, which, around here, tends to contain less than 7% alcohol by volume, so beer drinkers are getting a lot of water already and yet they get hungover too. So it can’t be the water.

You can’t say I’m not thorough, and if you check my comment history you’ll find a multi-year period where most of my comments contained extensive references, because that used to be the done thing around here.

_____

Try not to characterise everyone who disagrees with you as wrong, uneducated, out of touch, or whatever. Some of us have been watching and living this slow moving train wreck and we reckon our country deserves better. We’re not uneducated, we are politically engaged, we don’t place all the blame on brown people or whatever. We voted No to the Voice[3] because we see ourselves and each other as literally one nation. We’re not racists, we’re not homophobic or whatever, but the + can go fuck themselves.[3]

Anyways, I appreciate your thoughtful response, and appreciate the conversation (Y)

1. StacheD - https://youtube.com/@stachedtraining?si=Lp6dDc5wstRvltFU

2. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-16/bondi-beach-terrorist...

3. Referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Voice_to_Parliament

4. Aussie comedian Jim Jeffries on ‘+’ https://youtube.com/shorts/zoPxLAE6jEM?si=veUBBHTBiv9aVysJ

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetaldehyde

6. aldehyde dehydrogenase ADLH2 - ALDH2 plays a crucial role in maintaining low blood levels of acetaldehyde during alcohol oxidation.[7] In this pathway (ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetate), the intermediate structures can be toxic, and health problems arise when those intermediates cannot be cleared.[3] When high levels of acetaldehyde occur in the blood, facial flushing, lightheadedness, palpitations, nausea, and general "hangover" symptoms occur. It also is thought to be the cause of a medical condition known as the alcohol flush reaction, also known as "Asian flush" or "Oriental flushing syndrome". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldehyde_dehydrogenase


> Republican presidents have added about $1.4 trillion per four-year term, compared to $1.2 trillion added by Democrats since 1913.

That doesn’t sound right, so I spend twenty three seconds looking it up:

New Report Reveals Democrats Generated 90% of Federal Debt Held by the Public since WWII - https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2011...

As of April 5, 2024, the national debt has grown by about $6.17 trillion, or 21.7%, since Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. - https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president...

Joe Biden - $6.66 trillion - https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/banking/national-de...


Your last source contradicts your first (partisan) source, and also mentions:

> The national debt grew by more than $8.1 trillion during Donald Trump’s presidency, the largest four-year increase in the nation’s history.


I was addressing the claim that Democrats had added merely $1.2 trillion since 1913.

I apologise if that wasn’t clear enough.


You misunderstood. That number is per 4 year term, and is an average. I probably could have phrased it more carefully to make that clear.

Still, 1.4 vs 1.2 is a distinction without a difference.

One party fucked us over slightly less than the other party isn’t really an argument in favour of either.


Its not the same at all though, because the right uses the deficit to excuse their selfish bullshit, like letting children starve, then they go on to increase it by more than the other side whenever they have power.

We get wildly different results, even with the similar spending.

The government exists to benefit the people, not the other way around, and only one side gets that.


"The picture is complex. Recovery here, fresh losses there.

While the recovery we reported last year was welcome news, there are challenges ahead. The spectre of global annual coral bleaching will soon become a reality."

This article also mentions that a recent large recovery was due to el nino conditions

"Great Barrier Reef was reeling from successive disturbances, ranging from marine heatwaves and coral bleaching to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and cyclone damage, with widespread death of many corals especially during the heatwaves of 2016 and 2017.

Since then, the Reef has rebounded. Generally cooler La Niña conditions mean hard corals have recovered significant ground, regrowing from very low levels after a decade of cumulative disturbances to record high levels in 2022 across two-thirds of the reef."

Not sure if you were trying to imply some long term recovery or that global warming didn't hurt it because the article says heatwaves were part of a many other conditions that caused massive damage


No one ever attract public support and funding by saying:

Don’t Panic.

Everything is O.K.

—-

Edited to add: Rate limited so can’t reply without creating more alt accounts than I’m willing to, so:

@Timon3 - that’s actually a really good point, and I follow at least a few folk that could be categorised as such at least some of the time.


No, many people say exactly that and make a lot of money doing so while also telling us that all the evidence is fake.

Trump asked for a billion. [0] He didn't get the whole billion (as far as we know), but he's keeping up his end of the deal.

[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-exec...


Are you going to respond to my earlier comment? Do you have any evidence that this article misinformation besides that attention benefits the author?

Unless you have other evidence that this particular report is exaggerating without justification you can't solely rely on the fact that their opinions/results would benefit them as evidence they are providing misinformation.

It's possible for information to be factual and opinions to be justified from a source while that source also benefits from the information/opinions existing.

I can easily provide counter examples from countless situations that occur each year.

----

If you feel that all scientists and researchers have a lower level of trust because of negative actions of some, that's wrong of course because their reputations aren't connected, but you try to confirm it. For example, find out if a cooler than normal El Nino season would help coral feeds (or whatever)

What you did was tell us you don't trust the information, not because of something specific, but a concept/rule you believe.

Considering you originally misrepresented their findings, perhaps by accident, you should have done more to make your case.


Factually correct, but you also missed the joke.

It was only kinda a joke. It's a joke in the same way that uncle on Facebook makes jokes. You know the one.



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