Ask Slashdot: How Will 2019 Look To People 20 Years From Now? 338
Here's an interesting thought exercise from Slashdot reader dryriver :
What is likely to be so different about living in 2039 that it makes our current present in 2019 feel badly dated in many ways? And can we learn lessons about what we are not doing particularly well today in 2019 -- in the technology field for example -- by imagining ourselves looking back at a long bygone 2019 from 20 years in the future...?
Will everything from our current clothing, 4K 2D TVs and film VFX to our computer games, Internet, cars, medical care options and tech gadgets look "terribly dated" to them? Will people in 2039 look at us from their present and think "why couldn't they do X, Y, Z better in 2019?", just as we tend to look 20 years back and wonder "why couldn't they do X, Y, Z better in 1999?"
The original submission argues that "If we could understand today how we look 'from 20 years in the future', including the mistakes we are making compared to how things are (possibly) done in 2039, we might get a better understanding of how we should be doing things today."
So leave your own thoughts in the comments. How will 2019 look to people 20 years from now?
Will everything from our current clothing, 4K 2D TVs and film VFX to our computer games, Internet, cars, medical care options and tech gadgets look "terribly dated" to them? Will people in 2039 look at us from their present and think "why couldn't they do X, Y, Z better in 2019?", just as we tend to look 20 years back and wonder "why couldn't they do X, Y, Z better in 1999?"
The original submission argues that "If we could understand today how we look 'from 20 years in the future', including the mistakes we are making compared to how things are (possibly) done in 2039, we might get a better understanding of how we should be doing things today."
So leave your own thoughts in the comments. How will 2019 look to people 20 years from now?
2019 will look like shit (Score:4)
But less shit than 2039.
Re: (Score:3)
They'll still be listening to "Stairway to Heaven" on the way to work.
The best gift of all... (Score:3, Insightful)
"To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church"
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
- Robert Burns, 1786
Cold (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
In 2039, the average global temperature will have risen about 0.2 degrees, and average global sea level by just over half an inch.
May I borrow your crystal ball ?
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Re:Cold (Score:5, Interesting)
You are talking about global averages.
Local warming have already been much higher in some parts of the world than the global average. The Arctic is one such part.
The poles act as heat sinks: and as their capacity are filled up, we will see more immediate warming elsewhere.
One thing to keep in mind is that, global warming disrupts weather patterns and the effects are therefore not manifested everywhere as warming --- hence why the term "climate change" is much more fitting.
While some regions get more sun and draught, others get more rain. Cool patches move around more, hence why one winter was very cold in NA one year and very cold in EU the other.
And the entire world gets more wind, because more heat means more energy in the atmosphere.
There is a delay between present carbon emissions and measurable climate effects, of around 20-30 years. And despite efforts, carbon emissions are actually still rising.
Therefore, the global average temperature could very well get higher than 0.2 degrees.
Re:Cold (Score:4, Informative)
If you are in a room that is 0.2 C warmer, you wouldn't feel it, but there'd be a lot more kinetic energy in the air. Summed over the entire 10^23 liter volume of the troposphere, that amount of energy is staggering.
That energy is like the Coriolis force; you can't feel it when you walk cross the room but it drives global atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. A world that has a slightly higher temperature on average has vastly different local weather patterns: massive rainfall events in Texas, for example, or extreme cold in central North America while Greenland and the Norwegian Sea experience record wintertime heat.
Half an inch of sea level rise by 2040 is on the extreme low end of estimates, by the way. Middle-of-the-road projections average over six inches. Again, average is a problem here, because actually tidal amplitudes will increase about the mean in sea level rise scenarios, leading to more widespread Extreme Sea Level (ESL) events [source [nature.com]].
Re: (Score:2)
an already existing power source, nuclear power
Because it's not "already existing", since it would have to be increased about tenfold? If it were "already existing", you'd have about 25% less of a problem than you currently have.
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Change takes time (Score:2)
People will look back and be horriefied. (Score:5, Interesting)
They will look back on us and wonder how we could be so blind to the polarization of society that lead to violence. How people could be so focused on the vilification of their political opponents that they couldn't notice that their own faction was getting extreme too.
They will be horrified that we didn't learn from history, and they will fear that they themselves will fall for the trap someday.
It's an insidious trap for people to fall in to, everyone is too afraid to admit the opposition had a point about something, because they will be accused of being one of the others and be attacked by their own.
Re:People will look back and be horriefied. (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect it will get worse. Polarization started with cable "news", and increased with the Internet. More sources of info means people can find somebody who tells them exactly what they want to hear using the same tricks marketers use to sell populations expensive designer sugar-water that takes 9 cents to make.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but civil war and political strife will probably be more common.
How much has changed in the last 20 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
We had CPUs running at 1GHz, Slashdot, mobile phones.
Now we have smartphones and social media. We don't buy music any more. Everyone has high-speed internet and big flat screen TVs. 3.5 GHz processors. 20 years ago, I was expecting a lot more from tech than actually happened.
20 years from now? Electric cars will be commonplace, self-driving cars will be "almost ready". Phones will be slightly thinner.
Where's my flying car? (Score:2)
20 years from now? Electric cars will be commonplace, self-driving cars will be "almost ready". Phones will be slightly thinner.
And flying cars still 20 years away.
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We had CPUs running at 1GHz... Now we have... 3.5 GHz processors.
Obviously in the future we'll also fail to recognize the difference between clock cycles and actual performance.
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In 1999 my computer booted in about .. 20 seconds. 2019 my computer boots in about.. 20 seconds. Sending emails was just fast. Browsing the web was just fine as long you'd have cable or DSL. My cable costed around $40 with a download speed of 8-15Mbps in 1999 (dsl was a bit slower), which was more than enough for a proper browsing experience. We didn't have youtube (yet) but we did have Google, yahoo, instant messengers, a small DIY linux server at home, pretty much everything that makes the web today as it
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I'm just saying, not _that_ much has changed since 1999.
On the desktop, sure the overall experience is fundamentally similar, albeit more fleshed out. The time for fundamental change in the desktop experience was pretty settled by 2002 or so (by which point desktop users were confidently on modern architecture kernels). We have much faster systems than back then and while we are doing largely the same things the same way, things are at least visually very different. Online streaming is one of the areas where things are dramatically different than 20 years ago.
Fo
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and done by a 9600 baud modem using a PC
Only if you were rich, a large corporation or an institution. Most of us plebs were still using 300/1200 modems (I would still access CompuServe at 300 baud to save money) unless you were feeling particularly well off or flush and you paid $400 or so for a 2400 baud modem... But 9600 entering into everyday use pretty much got skipped (not because the tech wasn't available but because of surcharges from hosts and networks) and bumped directly to 14400 when that "internet thing" started catching on, mid-1990'
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As to your snark - so did he, you just clipped it out.
Re:How much has changed in the last 20 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1995 there was a special episode of the BBC TV programme "Tomorrow's World", which covered new inventions and speculated about the future, on the subject of life in 2020. So only five years more than we are being asked to predict here.
They expected self driving cars to be common already. Beds would be replaced by some kind of force field that let you levitate. No real appreciation of what the internet would become, just the usual stuff like video calls but from a hard wired phone.
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Intolerance (Score:2)
They'll look back in amazement at how intolerant people were to people with another political opinion.
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Say what you will about the far right, but actual oppressive behaviour predominantly comes from the "woke" side.
Remind me, who commits most of the shootings in the US again? (Hint: It's not the muslims).
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Minority gang members. So no, not Muslims.
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Perhaps by 2039 everyone will realize that it's evil people that murder, not the guns. Not likely, but one can have hope.
Oh gee, what an amazing discovery! Now we only need to get rid of all the metal detectors and gun control and simply replace them with automated mind readers and auto abortions for people with evil DNA, how easy!
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The woke SJWs didn't close down the British Parliament to prevent them from voting for "incorrect" policies. The far-right European Research Group did that.
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Say what you will about the far right, but actual oppressive behaviour predominantly comes from the "woke" side.
What? Voter oppression, racist policing... I mean, why even bother to go on? You're totally fucking bananas.
Offensive (Score:5, Interesting)
We are offending someone right now with something we are doing, but they won't tell us about it until 2039. The funny thing is that they probably aren't offended right now, but we my be arrested for it in 2039.
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but we my be arrested for it in 2039
I keep hearing these complaints, and while I agree that people are getting fired or boycotted for being politically incorrect, I never heard about someone getting arrested for it. Care to prove me wrong?
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In the UK in 2015, almost 900 people were arrested in London alone for "offensive" Tweets [independent.co.uk].
They continue with more recent examples of arresting a 15-year old boy for "racial abuse" [bbc.com] after he tweeted about a footballer, and a women for "deadnaming" and "misgendering" [dailymail.co.uk] someone on Twitter.
Thankfully, in the US, it is nearly impossible to be arrested for saying politically incorrect things. Although there have been attempts to change that...
Re: (Score:2)
Just read the two articles. Article 1 ends with claiming that someone who got arrested for a bomb threat was arrested for "offending people", which is clearly not the case. Article 2 is disputed here https://www.lgbtqnation.com/20... [lgbtqnation.com] by the transwoman who claims that the woman was arrested for sharing her private data. While I do agree that lgbtqnation.com is likely biased, I would say the same is true for the source that you brought (the daily mail).
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The article does not mention a bomb-threat anywhere, so I don't know what you are talking about. Here:
That's the statement, direct from the people that arrested the boy.
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Laws aren't retroactive, you can't be arrested for doing something that is currently legal and later made illegal.
All the current historic abuse stuff was illegal at the time.
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"Currently" Change the law and you change that sentence. Something we always need guard against.
Re:Offensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Laws aren't retroactive
Laws aren't SUPPOSED to be retroactive. Pay attention to some of the shit that's happening today.
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Laws aren't retroactive
Laws aren't SUPPOSED to be retroactive. Pay attention to some of the shit that's happening today.
Please name even one example.
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I think GP is referring to things like "Cosby" and #MeToo and whatever else. Abuses of power and things like that. Things that actually were illegal then, but perhaps not "offensive" due to their general acceptance as being "just the way it is".
Not offensive to abusers, maybe. Most of us were not aware of it, so we weren't given a chance of whether or not to be offended.
But now the "woke" (fucking stupid ass term, btw) are offended, so they're stretching back 20 years to find illegalities and start crying about them.
I'm okay with holding people accountable for rapes they committed twenty years ago, since those rapes are still affecting the victims today.
Not much different (Score:3)
First off, let's not kid ourselves, 2039 will be very similar to 2019. TVs will be common, though 720p and 1080p tvs will still be selling. Usable VR headsets will finally be almost out. More people will own cars with active safety features. We may have a few advances medically. Cancer and many infectious diseases will be more curable. We may even have some signs of being able to turn things around in fighting autoimmune diseases. I expect there will be stronger proofs that fusion as a viable energy source is possible and steps will be taken to make it happen. Thats about the only differences I expect.
Re:Not much different (Score:4, Informative)
TVs will be common, though 720p and 1080p tvs will still be selling.
I doubt that, just like nobody sells CRT monitors or non-flat TVs - at least I haven't seen a new one for sale for many years, don't shoot me if they're sold in some weird niche - I think they'll go out of production. Here's the stats from my price comparison site in Norway: 720p: 32, 1080i: 1, 1080p: 114, 4K: 471, 8K: 11. That is to say 76% of TVs for sale are already 4K+. There is one 65" FullHD model from 2016 still for sale the rest is 55" or less, with one exception the 720p models are 32" or less.
Samsung doesn't have a single FullHD TV in their 2019 lineup, the cheapest of the cheap is the RU7100 series that is still 4K. Same with LG, cheapest is the SM8500 series but that's 4K too. Phillips and Sony has one FullHD model at the bottom of their range each and there's probably a few stragglers from cheap knock-off brands, but I think it's only a matter of time before they go extinct. I'm thinking five more years until they stop making new ones plus five for them to disappear off the market so I doubt you'll find one new already in 2029.
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2039 will be very similar to 2019
This! 20 years is not a long time for a step change in anything. When I think back to turn of the century to where we are now is there really a big difference? I suppose phones changed, the rest of the world was just on a continuous path in an obvious direction. There will probably be one or two changes in technology but on a larger and social scale things don't change in such a short time period. That said in those continuous changes, no there won't be any 720p TVs on the market.
Now on a 50 year timeframe
They'll be disgusted by our sexuality (Score:2)
Either they would be more outgoing and would be shocked that we choose to spend so much time in front of porn and instagram instead of actually going out, or they would be so sterile that they wouldn't understand why we didn't spend even more time in front of porn and Instagram instead of going out.
Systemd; why did people every buy into it? (Score:2)
SkyNet IRL.
Social democracy will be the new consensus (Score:2)
This is a change in degree, not kind; every developed economy is somewhat social democratic. Even the USA has minimum wage, social security, medicare, medicaid, food stamps etc. The debate is not whether these things are necessary, rather it is a ques
We will remember it as the good old days (Score:5, Interesting)
2019 will be looked back upon with the same kind of wistfulness we look back upon 1999 today, thinking how easy everything was back then.
In 2039, the internet will be mostly a one-way medium, much like TV is already today. You will have a few large corporations that control mostly how you can use it, with something akin to the FCC (under control of those corporations) decides who may or may not publish content and create public servers. This will be done as a reaction to fake news getting completely out of hand and it's decided that anyone wanting to publish anything on the internet has to offer a verified name (either of himself or an organization being responsible for the content). This is also the reason why any user participation is pretty much reduced to "verified" accounts that belong to people or organizations that have identified themselves, for the same reasons. Countries that do not have at least the same strict levels of ID system in place are no longer accessible via internet, also for the same reason.
After the big 3D-Printer scandal of 2029 where a certain car manufacturer successfully claimed that the sudden spike of car crashes with one of its model was not due to faulty software blocking the brakes but rather that people avoided paying hundreds of dollars for a decorative plasic part that could be printed for a few cents (and nobody taking them to court over it because one of the first actions of newly elected president Zuckerberg that year was to outlaw law suits by consumer groups on behalf of consumers), the last hole where consumers could actually fix anything on their cars themselves was closed. Changing your oil yourself, provided you could still do it because you had an old enough car that doesn't need to have its oil sensor reset, was already banned 2 years earlier for "environmental reasons".
2019 will also be remembered as the year when you could actually buy some household appliances that didn't need to be registered on the internet with their manufacturer. After more and more software went that way throughout the 2020s where it became virtually impossible to use a computer anymore if it didn't have access to the internet at least once a week, the 2030s were the decade when the rest of the "stuff that uses power" went online. Not as a "may" thing as it was in 2019, but as a "must". That way, TVs link up with your online profile to know what ads to load from their manufacturer site and fridges can provide your insurance with information on what foods you eat to adjust your premiums accordingly with a bonus for healthy eating (read: We jack up the premium and if we find fudge and soda in your fridge, we keep it there). Also, of course, to meter and adjust your power consumption and limit it to environmentally acceptable levels. You might want to not wash your clothing in summer when you need your alotted power for the AC. That way you also get your water consumption down, which means you won't get as many nasty emails from the waterworks for being such a waster.
Speaking of ACs, there's also good news, Sweden and Finland will have much more agreeable Winters.
Messing with the data collection done by those appliances will be a federal offense, this is done after the big hacking spree of the 2024 election where state hackers ("most likely Russian" became a very popular internet meme, with the picture of that alien guy with the weird hairdo) caused the election to be repeated in three states after it has been shown that the election machines there were so blatantly manipulated that this time it could not be covered up anymore. In reaction, interfering with ANY machines on the internet has been made a federal offense, which in the usual kid-with-bathwater manner of course also applied to any fridge and toaster. This, as a side effect, also pretty much cleaned up any of those "maker" movements along with any "right to repair" you might still have had.
Need I go on or do you already want to hang yourself now?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm quite happy with the winters we have here right now. I don't want them to be any more mild.
I like real winters, with actual ice and snow: when you could skate and ski, and the snow-covered landscape is beautiful.
Global warming has already given us more of grey rainy autumn weather than what used to experienced in my childhood years.
There is a big difference between -5C and above: Below that, there is less m
Maybe not so bad (Score:3)
How does 2009 technology look now?
Not that different to what we have now, just incremental improvements. Certainly when you compare 1999 technology to 2009, or 1989 to 1999, or 1979 to 1989.
Fashions will certainly change, and the designs will look a bit dated, but in terms of what they are actually capable of doing, unless there is some big leap forward, and that is impossible to predict, then it looks like we are closer to the end of the current technological revolution than the beginning.
Agitated year (Score:2)
People can't even learn from history. (Score:2)
People can't even avoid making the same stupid mistakes they should have learned from from history.
And now you assume they'll suddenly have the drive, desire, or ability to predict the future in order to avoid mistakes?
Yeah, good luck with that shit. I'll take Human Ignorance for $500 Alex.
The next stupid hairstyle (Score:2)
No More Unix in 2039! (Score:2)
2038 Problem [wikipedia.org]
Humans driving (Score:2)
How could they let ordinary people just drive a ton of metal freely around in public, at high speeds, with no way to override what they were doing? Sounds absolutely lethal!
Death can be a positive (Score:2)
Eating meat may finally be socially taboo (Score:2)
Impossible to answer (Score:2)
We'll know in 20 years or maybe we won't for some reasons, e.g. biological weapons, a new pandemic, a physics experiment which turns the solar system into the void, a huge interstellar meteorite which wipes out most of life on Earth, AGI which decides that human beings are bad/redundant for this planet and proceeds to eliminate us, and plenty other things which could end our species existence.
In the end there's only now.
Yeah, and.... (Score:2)
This is some of the most fatuous logic I've come across. 'If I could mind-read, I'd do better business dealings.' 'If I could see the future I'd avoid the plane/train/car that was going to crash."
Fucking moronic.
The easy extrapolations (Score:2)
Fiber optic internet will be way, way more common. Together with the spread of newer cell phone/WiFi standards and Starlink enabling you to set up a hot spot pretty much anywhere at a much more reasonable rate it'll be lightning fast connections for everyone. Today world literacy is at 86%, subtract 20 years of elderly dying off and add 20 years of youths joining and practically everyone can read and write. Today there are 2.5 billion people who don't have a cell phone and 3.3 billion that don't have Intern
Next quarters results ... (Score:2)
And I bet you 10c that its the same in 20 years time.
Children of Millennials will leave for college (Score:2)
"Man Who Thought He'd Lost All Purpose In Life Loses Last Additional Bit Of Purpose He Didn't Even Know He Still Had"
JAVA will be the new COBOL and ... (Score:2)
FORTRAN will still dominate physics ... and COBOL will still dominate finance.
2019 they were worried for no reason (Score:2)
Not that different... (Score:2)
Will everything from our current clothing, 4K 2D TVs and film VFX to our computer games, Internet, cars, medical care options and tech gadgets look "terribly dated" to them?
Unless you go side by side, most people would be hard pressed to notice the difference between a 15 year old 1080p video and a 4k video.
There's no reason to imagine that in 20 years we'll hit anything approaching having enough info to do parallax in video streams or display technologies outside of VR headsets, and stereoscopic without parallax has already been a fad that has subsided.
Special effects were also good 15 years ago (the main practical difference is that studios are able to do things much faster
20 years from now (Score:3)
The year of Linux on the Desktop will nearly be here. Seriously, people will look back at Brexit and say it was the nail in the coffin of British influence in the world and it happened at exactly the same time as a useful idiot was in the White House. Both will have been revealed having had the Russians buttering the stairs in the background.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Didn't really do much other than bullshit a lot, no real long term effect on shit, just meh.
I wish that were true, and I think you're right about his non-effect on domestic policy (yeah, he's trying to roll a lot of stuff back, but it'll be reinstated), but I think Trump has already done serious and irreparable damage to America's place in the world. Our allies will never trust us as much as they did, and Trump is working hard to ensure that China is the leader of the world economy (they probably were on their way there anyway, but he's closed the window on our slim chances).
OTOH, with regard t
Re:Oh that is easy.. (Score:5, Informative)
Curious, the guys in 1932 actually killed people, did Antifa ever kill someone? I sure as hell know that American Neonazis did.
Yes they have and have been actively trying for years, It's hilarious how Antifa collaborators ONLY focus on "killed" and not "attacks and injured". Just off the top of my head:
2017 Congressional baseball shooting - Bernie supporter, targeted Republican representatives, nearly killed Steve Scalise.
2017 Bikelock Bandit. Leftist court system let the perp off with probation with what should have been an attempted murder charge.
2019 ICE detention facility attack - bombs and rifle.
2019 Dayton shooter - Elizabeth Warren supporter - 10 dead.
Various violence in places like Portland where Antifa beats up random people and Journalists.
Just go on YouTube and search "Antifa Violence". The violence that is going on almost exclusively belongs to the left. (Mostly privileged, rich, white people going to these and getting arrested.) Not only that, it is often with the permission of local leftists politicians, like in Portland. Anyone and everyone who gets their news from places other than CNN knows this. You aren't fooling anyone.
The irony is that this sort of street violence, by the 1930s "Anti-facist" communist groups, is exactly the sort of thing that propelled the NAZIs into power. Those same tactics are doing nothing except ensuring Trump's re-election.
Survivors (Score:2)
The survivors of World War 3 will lament the rise of autocrats across the globe and the ethnonationalists that supported them.
Re:In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 20 (Score:5, Informative)
I think they will look back and think: “Why didn’t they prevent climate change?” They knew it would happen for 30 years already back then!
Re:In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 20 (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, they'll lament that they're still not doing anything about it.
Re: In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 2 (Score:2)
Ma, i want Earth temperature dropped 1 degree Celsius...
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https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101984012 [jw.org]
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Shell(!) released a movie in the early 1990s to warn politicians, people in industry and even scolars about climate change. Nothing changed.
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It's mostly about money. Politicians know if that if they raise taxes, hurt some industries. or otherwise annoy those with the money that they won't get re-elected. You can spend money galore on the military and military adventures, because that always means more money for industry. Even if everyone on the board of directors is for taking action against climate change, they still won't vote for it because they feel they must always vote for the company's best interests and if they buck the trend they'll l
Re:In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 20 (Score:4, Insightful)
there will not be "climate refugees" in 20 years.
I think that's overly optimistic, probably because you're defining "climate refugees" too narrowly. There's a strong argument to be made that we already have millions of climate refugees: the Syrians. This argument depends on attributing the unprecedented decade-long Syrian drought to climate change, which is unprovable but reasonable. That drought drove millions of Syrians from the countryside to the cities and created the pressures that enabled the creation of IS and the Syrian civil war.
Climate change isn't only going to make the planet warmer and raise seas, it's going to reshape weather patterns. Lots of areas that are currently highly productive for agriculture are going to become non-productive. Similarly, many areas that are currently non-productive because of weather are going to get better weather and become great cropland (though not having had good weather for millennia may not have much in the way of good soil, necessitating heavy fertilization). The resulting disruptions will cause famine, starvation and war in many parts of the world, and those will produce millions of refugees -- climate refugees, even if they look like war refugees or famine refugees.
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I think they will look back and think: “Why didn’t they prevent climate change?” They knew it would happen for 30 years already back then!
ha! you're assuming that the remaining sentient beings will be capable of speech. personally, my feeling is that in 20 years time, the beings that are alive on the planet will be going "ribbit, ribbit, moo, neigh, caw, caw, and hee-haaw".
the occasional african grey *might* be still left to order goods through amazon alexa... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/2... [cnbc.com]
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the occasional african grey *might* be still left to order goods through amazon alexa...
Then the orders would be fulfilled by robots and delivered by autonomous drones.
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the occasional african grey *might* be still left to order goods through amazon alexa...
Then the orders would be fulfilled by robots and delivered by autonomous drones.
haha or... https://youtu.be/EIfD2g9QOTo?t... [youtu.be] :)
Or maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
we'll still be arguing about starting the effort in 2039 because, even now, 20 years ago was already late to commit seriously to reversing the effects of global warming.
My impression is, those in power are happy to see how bad it can get just as an experiment - Happy to dispose of whole populations and naively thinking they can control the fallout to their own benefit.
Re: In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 2 (Score:2)
I do not have words to describe the idiocy of your circlejerk comment. Let it be on the conscience of 4 imbeciles that modded you up.
Re:In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 20 (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget the bad guys ~30 years ago.
George Bush (sr) successfully stopped a climate treaty at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, after pressure from the US oil industry.
This was before disinformation. There was "debate" then. No "two sides to the story" to slow down progress. Everyone knew what was going on.
Global carbon emissions have risen highly since then, with a small dip caused by the financial crisis in 2007-2008.
Re: In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 2 (Score:2, Informative)
Re: In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Solving the problem hinges on making the non-CO2-generating and non-polluting solution to be the cheapest solution. Read a prediction that renewables like wind and solar would surpass natural gas as the cheapest solution in about 2035. After that, we will not have to convince China and India to stop polluting and stop generating CO2, they will do it because they can save money doing it. The solution will then be at hand.
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"We will simply substitute renewable-generated electricity for burning things to do manufacturing and solve that little problem."
Unfortunately that is not so simple. How do you make massive amounts of steel using only renewable-generated electricity, for instance?
Re: In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately that is not so simple. How do you make massive amounts of steel using only renewable-generated electricity, for instance?
With extreme difficulty. Even though we've long since retrofitted to electric for blast furnaces, renewables can't cover the sudden spikes in electricity required for the various grades of steel used. On top of that you still need a variety of quality carbon sources for making coke properly.
Ah so much ignorant BS, or else just propaganda (you be the judge).
Modern iron making (the precursor to making steel) is being done with direct reduction and uses electricity and any non-oxidized carbon source can be used, natural gas is popular, but it could captured from the air for a zero carbon footprint. As the gas is being used as a chemical reagent, not a fuel, cost is much less of an issue.
After the iron is produced, in modern mills it is turned into steel with either basic oxygen or electric arc processes, neither of which use any carbon at all. The oxygen is produced from the air with electric compressors, so it is electricity all the way down. World production of metallurgical coke peaked in 2014 and is now declining, a decline that can be accelerated if modern iron and steel processes are promoted. Needing coal for iron/steel are obsolescent old tech which produces inferior quality product (more contamination).
The "renewables can't cover the sudden spikes in electricity" is just BS pulled out of thin air. Like any industry power in taken from the grid as needed, the grid handles "sudden spikes" just find. But if that were really a problem (its not) then batteries would a perfect solution, holding only as much power as needed for the spike.
Re: In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from (Score:4, Informative)
Ah so much ignorant BS, or else just propaganda (you be the judge).
Well you sure did that so well on your own. Iron is the raw ore, you need to 'cook' it first in order to get the impurities out. FYI this is similar to the cooking require of limestone in preparation of making concrete. Steel requires the input of carbon to make. Using NG requires preparation before it can be used as a carbon source, as there are heavy impurities in the burn process that can cause serious issues with the steel. Prepared coke is the preferred method as the impurities are heavily controlled during it's manufacture. Otherwise you see things like what happened with all those cars(mazda? toyota? can't remember) years ago, with panel pitting due to heavy impurities in the rolled steel which accelerated rusting.
Metallurgical coke peaked in 2014 because of two things: China has been vastly undercutting steel production for the better part of 20 years now, to the point that manufacturing companies haven't been able to ride it out. Second there is a glut of both low grade, and higher grade steel and higher graded coke on the market for around 10 years.
The "renewables can't cover the sudden spikes in electricity" is just BS pulled out of thin air. Like any industry power in taken from the grid as needed, the grid handles "sudden spikes" just find. But if that were really a problem (its not) then batteries would a perfect solution, holding only as much power as needed for the spike.
Nope. Because renewable can't suddenly spin up an extra generation even at that when steel companies it. Either locally they use their own power plant(most often coal) which offsets the extra production(this extra power when not needed is sold directly back out or traded when extra can't be produced), or they contact the utility directly to make sure that there is enough surplus capacity, or book specific times to have extra capacity. Power generation is allocated on a "need to use" basis and there's usually less than 1000MW difference between expected demand and extra production. When there's a deficit companies buy extra production from another region if it's available, when it's not things like blackouts occur.
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Re:In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 20 (Score:4, Insightful)
...It essentially meant...
Meaning, it did nothing of the kind but I will make up something and claim that the Accords required it, and use that to explain my opposition to them.
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Actually, people in 2039 looking back at climate change alarmists in 2019 will think "those idiots actually thought the government could change the climate!" They'll clearly see that the computer climate models of 2019 where worthless (many of us IN 2019 already know that) and that climate was poorly understood.
Not only that but in the future we will look back to today and wonder how we could think that the climate of 2019 was somehow ideal. Like most everything in engineering there is compromise. Assuming we could geo-engineer the planet there will be dispute on what levels of which gasses is "best". There was a lot of climate change before humans came along, and still plenty after. Some of those changes could be considered beneficial.
What might be their thought could be something like... "Those idiots actual
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That was pretty easy to discern from your view on the Bangladeshi's. What? You thought we'd mistake your projection for facts about 'the other'?
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I don't think (s)he meant it that way. I think (s)he was referring to people who say things like: "Amsterdam will get the climate of Southern France. What's not to like about that?" and never talk about the people who live further south.
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Re:In 2039, 2019 will be like 1970s viewed from 20 (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure where you got the extra like (as I type this) but this is just stupidly ignorant blather. You have never Googled actual population growth projections even once in your life it appears.
Every part of the world, except Africa, is already on track to have a declining population once the current demographic surge passes through its reproductive years. It will take some time for this to happen in Africa, being the poorest region on the planet, but just as with the poor, underdeveloped countries of Eurasia and the Americas, they will enter below replacement level birth rates also eventually.
Current projections have world population peaking at about 11 billion on about 2100 (this is a 50% increase from the present).
You can find projections that assume that the birth rates in Africa, unlike every other part of the world will never turn around, and leads to somewhat higher figures by 2100, but that is statistics abuse -- believing that current trends never change, despite evidence everywhere else that they do. Even the argument that the birth rates in Africa will never decline because it will remain poor (and assuming that that condition is perpetually true) ignores Bangladesh -- one of the poorest countries in the world, with a conservative culture, but is below the replacement rate right now.
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Difficulty being it is fairly obvious now how much pretension and megalomania (and if we're honest, a tremendous sense of freedom) exuded from the 70s only to be replaced by the pretension and megalomania of now. Peel back one horror and find another and it will just be another fad and creeping oblivion ushering us into 2040.
One the one hand I hope the human race lives on to accomplish even greater things. On the other, I wouldn't be surprised if we are snuffed out by our own hand.
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I like him and he actually has a good point. Modern internet really has become more similar to 1984.
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Eh? Why the Score of 0? I was looking for this one or something along these lines, but I don't have any mod points to give it.
I don't think the population problem will kill us off, however. Even nuclear warfare would leave some survivors. I think it will probably be a bioweapon created with one of those cheap CRISPR kits they are selling right now.
Sorry, but I've concluded that's how the Fermi Paradox is resolved in most cases. I think there might be some AIs out there that have survived past the crisis we
Re:Middle aged folks view... (Score:4, Insightful)
Will if one thing's clear in 20 years time the millennials will find some good excuses to hate the younger generations, because every generation seems to find a way to do that.
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Will if one thing's clear in 20 years time the millennials will find some good excuses to hate the younger generations, because every generation seems to find a way to do that.
As this happens we will see Speaker Pelosi celebrate her 99th birthday and yet another successful election to Speaker of the House.
No doubt President Ocasio-Cortez will congratulate the Speaker of this moment in her state of the union address. Speaker Pelosi will be overheard on a live microphone complaining about the millenials.
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https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/201... [ucsd.edu]
That does sum it up well. This slowed future technology development likely goes double for any advancement in fusion power. We might be closer to determining the bounds of the problem on sustained fusion but no closer in building anything that could be considered an energy positive prototype.
Re:Trump. (Score:4, Funny)