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The "natural cycle" argument is one of the most common points around climate change denial. It's also one of the most commonly debunked. See the following:

UN - https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/debunking-eight-...

MIT - https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/todays-climate-change-simila...

Columbia University - https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/04/04/how-we-know-cli...

It's also unclear to me how scientists might not have enough data to validate climate change in the last several hundred years, but they do have enough data to validate the natural cycle hypothesis spanning thousands of years.

I'm not going to engage more deeply here because this post has the smell of trolling to it, but if you're engaging in good faith, there are hundreds of reputable reports refuting the natural cycle hypothesis:

https://www.google.com/search?q=natural+cycle+arguments+on+c...



That would mean poaching lol


Um, what?

Baking has been a major hobby for 15 years. I know the dangers of raw egg and flour but licking the bowl/beaters/spoons is still a major highlight of many of my recipes. And, of course, there's always raw cookie dough.

Maybe not the smartest choice for longevity and health, but yes, eating raw flour is totally a thing!


Relatedly, I've read a couple of neat articles on using mine shafts as gravity batteries: https://bigthink.com/the-future/coal-mines-gravity-battery-e...

Major footnote here that I'm wayyyy out of my wheelhouse on this stuff, so there may be reasons that this doesn't work. I invite correction if that's the case so we can all learn some stuff :)


Gravity batteries have horribly low energy densities. There's usually a better option.


I'd say that there is always a better option. Can someone point to a case where a gravity battery would definitely be better than all the alternatives?


Pumped hydro is a form of gravity battery. It doesn't have great energy density, but it has fantastic power density and responsiveness. That's where its strength lies. We have also probably already built most of the ones that could possibly be built.


Closed loop pumped hydro can be built anywhere there's a hill, there's tons of available expansion capacity there


There are 86 large pumped storage sites in the world. It does work, but you need the right geography. You need two good reservoir sites at considerably different levels close to one another. That's somewhat hard to find.


https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-deal-with-pumped-hydro

David Roberts

Yeah, we have a lot of hills. And that's it. So, other than that, you could plop one of these down almost anywhere.

Erik Steimle

That's correct, yeah. You need some proximity, obviously, to transmission and load.


Are you contending that's what happened here? This is not a leading question, I genuinely do not know and am trying to learn more.


/r/angryupvote

:)


In the US, reporting true things is literally never considered slander [0][1][2].

The legal system has recognized truth as a wholly adequate defense to claims of defamation (which includes slander) dating back to 1734 [3] - before the Constitution even written (1787).

--

[0] - "Under the United States law, a statement cannot be held to be actionable as slanderous or libellous if the statement is true but has "slight inaccuracies of expression", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_truth

[1] - "Truth is widely accepted as a complete defense to all defamation claims." https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

[2] - "Truth is an absolute defense to defamation." https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/privileges-defenses-...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger


Retirement


This line of questioning is often brought up in response to pay gap conversations. Universal trends do not explain individual data points, but in general, studies do seem to indicate that pay gaps are real.

https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-a...

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/07/01/racial-ge...

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/women-of-color-and-...


I scanned the first article.

It's difficult to parse, because it says that experience and occupational choice does pay a significant role in the gap. But then editorializes and claims that less experience and occupational choice are due to discriminatory issues in the broader culture.

Culture war issues like this are unfalsifiable in either direction and largely reflect the political persuasion of the person making the argument than anything quantifiable.

Here's another example from the American Progress article:

> Women of color disproportionately work in jobs within the service, care, and domestic work sectors—jobs with historically low pay.

This is an empirically verifiable claim.

> This is due to occupational segregation, which is the funneling of women and men into different jobs based on gender and racial norms and expectations

This is an unfalsifiable political claim. Some unknown force, by some unknown mechanism, forces people to make certain choices.


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