Comments by "josh fritz" (@joshfritz5345) on "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell"
channel.
-
245
-
79
-
35
-
26
-
25
-
17
-
15
-
6
-
3
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
i consider myself a lazy person, and while there are some people who really, truly do not want to work and will do anything to avoid doing so, many people would be willing to work for a more comfortable standard of living.
i believe that we should give everyone the bare minimum, just enough to live by, and encourage them to seek employment to supplement their basic income. the majority of people would be willing to work for the extra money. many low wage workers actually cannot consistently afford food, running water, electricity, or even sometimes rent, and a universal minimum wage would give them the boost necessary to actually make a living rather than just barely scraping by.
the universal minimum income doesn't even necessarily need to be enough to afford all of the basics of living a normal life, it just needs to be sufficient to allow someone working full time making minimum wage to live.
2
-
The earth's temperature fluctuates naturally with time. Why do we assume that the exact temperature that we are at now is the perfect temperature? The earth was much warmer and cooler at various points throughout history, and life has flourished regardless. Our push for green energy solutions is largely a political one, and the proposed solutions such as electric cars and solar farms will not eliminate carbon emissions, nor even reduce them by very much.
The amount of fossil fuels burned in the mining and manufacturing processes necessary to produce a solar panel is only slightly less than the amount of energy generated by the average solar panel's expected lifetime. Put simply, it would be just as environmentally friendly and much more cost efficient to burn oil for power than it would be to use that oil to build solar panels. Additionally, solar and wind power don't work. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow, and sometimes the sun doesn't shine. When the sun stops, we need backup (likely fossil fuel powered) generators to make up the difference. And no, giant banks of batteries are not the solution. Batteries are enormously expensive, and require huge amounts of toxic rare earth elements on the scale necessary to store cities worth of energy.
We do actually have an environmentally sound method for producing energy. Nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is, in many ways, the perfect power source. It produces few pollutants, and it generates huge amounts of power for a comparatively small investment. France uses large amounts of nuclear power for its energy needs, and they have some of the cheapest energy in Europe. Germany uses large amounts of solar, wind, and similar renewables, and they suffer from some of the highest energy costs in Europe.
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@ChircaSorin04 Why is war a good thing? Wars don't make us richer. Unless you live in Ukraine, why do you care? The only reason the political elite care is because they made personal investments into Ukraine, and now they want western militaries to intervene to protect their assets.
Additionally, if all of the most extreme claims about rising temperatures and sea levels were true, why are so many billionaires buying up beachfront property? It'd be a bad investment. People richer and smarter than us clearly don't believe the claims about rising sea levels.
Try to be more skeptical of things you hear in the future, and be especially skeptical if someone has something to gain from manipulating you. Appeals to emotions, especially fear, are powerful motivators, and there are some rich and politically powerful people out there who have a lot to gain from using fear, be it of a foreign nation, or of a climate crisis, or a political party to change your behavior. Mainstream media is owned by the rich and the political elite, and they use it to push propaganda. This isn't restricted to one political party either, and no political group is innocent of this. Everyone from the agriculture industry, to energy companies, vehicle manufactures, pharmaceutical companies, teachers unions and so many more have powerful lobbies that influence politics and media for their own profit. It's too complex to be understood easily, but start by being skeptical of every claim you hear, no matter where you hear it from.
1
-
1
-
1
-
@LifeGeneralist Yeah, new tech starts out expensive. Fossil fuel giants have nothing to fear from solar and wind because they can't power a whole electric grid. As long as the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, wind and solar can't replace other forms of energy. Hydrogen fuel cells, nuclear energy, and other things that could actually threaten fossil fuel's dominance if they were allowed to thrive, those will never succeed as long as the fossil fuel lobby has influence.
It's also worth noting, as bad as the fossil fuel lobby is, to try to immediately replace fossil fuels with something that is objectively worse would cause great harm to society, and the poor would be hit hardest. Rising energy costs increase the cost of nearly everything. To try to make a drastic overnight shift to renewables as many climate activists push for would kill people. Power outages means food would spoil, and any medicine that needs to be kept cool would expire. People would die, and the rest would be a lot worse off with unreliable access to anything dependent on electricity.
Nuclear is actually a very safe source of energy. The only real danger is political backlash, irrational fear of meltdowns fueled by big oil and coal companies. Renewables unfortunately aren't good for most of the things you listed. Due to their unreliable nature, they can only ever be a supplemental source of power. Germany uses lots of renewables, and it is heavily reliant on importing energy from other countries to cover shortfalls. Renewables (with a few exceptions, hydro and geothermal) are unreliable by nature, and thus can't be used to establish grid stability. They would also greatly increase the cost of energy for the average consumer due to being more expensive than fossil fuels per watt generated.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
i could make more money off of welfare than i am making with both of my jobs combined right now. i could almost live off of $1000, but i'm not making that much most months unless i get an unusually large number of hours in that time period. if we set the universal basic income at $1000, that plus my shitty minimum wage job, and my slightly less shitty part time job together would give me enough money to pay for rent, electricity, water, food, car insurance, and even save a bit of money over time. as it is now however, i'm unable to afford all of those things at the same time, and have to drive without insurance, and live off of waste food that can't be served to customers for whatever reason.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1