#ultravioletcataclysm

[cocainesocialist]

As a professional gardener, were I living in this property-less Ancap nightmare scenario I would much prefer it if the people stealing over the walls to appropriate, apparently, VEGETATION: VARIOUS would just take the fruit. The amount of years it takes for a decent orchard to mature is ridiculous. Also just the idea of all these sweaty shut in keyboard warriors herding cows is hilarious on its own "IF YOU APPRECIATED ORIGINAL APPROPRIATION YOU'D STOP KICKING OVER THE BUCKET"

lool. anarcho communism you say? no poverty? no inequality? no war?? yeah that sounds good HANG ON i can't own 2 cows?? NOT WORTH IT IMO

[cocainesocialist]

Irrelevant comment: there is very little that makes me inwardly shudder more than the the phrase "top lad"

i wish you'd said sooner bc i just changed my name to Toplad McBantermaster. awkwardddd

[probablyasocialecologist]

Why are porn blogs following you?

[cocainesocialist]

You don't like cats?

always preferred starlight express tbh

oh wait the animal. they're alright. i suppose. in video form.

[precocioustween]

That islamophobia link only goes to a post about him defending Laci Green from death threats or something? You also know part of his college degree was based on the study of Islam? and that his job for six years before taking up writing full time was reviewing books about Islam for booklist magazine? Not that that necessarily means anything one way or another but I'm skeptical, is what I'm saying.

Okayyyyyy let’s see what we have here. The link that Ruby linked under “islamophobia” was the link about John Green defending Laci Green after she made a video entitled Islam is Sexist. I, being a Muslim female (yoooo), screamed throughout the entirety of the video and it was not a pretty sight ok. Now I’m not gonna get all religious on you here because that’s not what we’re talking about but think about it this way. John Green, as you clearly stated, has a college degree based on the study of Islam. Now, after studying Islam for your college degree, you have to have figured out that the way the media (including Laci Green’s video) portrays Islam as a sexist religion is completely false and quite frankly it gets on my nerves a lot. Now the fact that he (hopefully) knew that Islam is not a sexist religion and defended someone who made a video entitled “Islam is Sexist” is in fact islamophobia because he is defending someone that is strengthening the false ideas the media has created about Islam and sexism. ALSO LET’S TALK ABOUT AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES. In his book, An Abundance of Katherines, John Green wrote a muslim character and quite frankly, he was one of the most prominent examples of misrepresentation of muslims in the media. The character throws around the word “kafir” a lot and I don’t think that John Green understands that that is a legitimate insult in Islamic Culture, not to be thrown around like the character in the book. Idk man I read the book a long time ago and had a really hard time finishing it because of that one word just ugh ugh ugh ugh. Yeah so just cause he studied islam or reviewed books based on Islam for 6 years, doesn’t make him exempt from being labled islamophobic. I hope this helped explain things.  - Salmaface

[probablyasocialecologist]

Is peak oil really such a huge concern? Unconventional tech like fracking, tar sands and coal liquefaction only gets more profitable the higher prices rise. Considering that most of this stuff is "unburnable" if we want to maintain a relatively hospitable climate, surely it's a problem of too much rather than not enough?

“The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier’s cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground." — Kenneth Deffeyes [x]

That’s partly right, yeah. When peak oil hits we’ll still be sitting on massive amounts of fossil fuels. The issue is that the hydrocarbon fuels left (extracted by unconventional tech) are environmentally unsound and energetically useless. 

It doesn’t matter if prices rise because the EROEI (or Energy returned on energy invested) of those fuels make them virtually useless to society. Over time the EROEI of hydrocarbon supplies has dropped (e.g. 35:1 in 1999 but 18:1 in 2006 for global oil/gas) meaning less energy available for useful work in the economy. Like you said, it’s almost like there’s too much fossil fuels - Canadian oil sands for example are equivalent to 170 billion barrels of crude oil, but after extraction, refinement, transport etc. their EROEI is only 3:1. Other substances like syncrude are estimated to have an EROEI of around 5:1. A lower EROEI means we have to burn even more just to gain the same amount of useful energy as previous “cleaner” fuels like oil and natural gas. And as the EROEI gets closer to 1:1 as we reach the “bottom of the barrel” the substance becomes useless to society. It doesn’t matter how much investment is put into development of these resources - they won’t be much use to us, burning them is an environmental nightmare, and no matter how profitable they become they’ll still be too expensive for an economy accustomed to cheap, “sweet” oil . It’s also commonly thought that no matter how much “unconventional” oil sources we bring online then “projected unconventional oil production cannot mitigate peaking of conventional oil alone.”

(picture source here)

Peak oil is such a huge concern, however, because our global society relies overwhelmingly on cheap, easy to extract supplies of oil. We use it for agriculture, transportation, industry, military. Suitable substitutes like the ones you cited don’t and won’t exist on the necessary size and scale to mitigate the peak. As the “Hirsch Report” states, “…the problem of the peaking of world conventional oil production is unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society.”

Thanks for the question. I probably haven’t answered it fully and completely and that’s just because I suck at answering asks :P. I have a ton of articles and papers on this subject if you want though and have other questions!. :)